as compensation, paid her father a thousand pounds for the loss of her services at concerts. It was an eminently discreditable business all round. But the young lady did not want admirers. especially in a family which migrated to Bath in 1771. Two of its members were Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his elder brother, Charles, both of them as poor as their itinerant father, but as foolishly proud, though with better reason. The girl preferred Richard, and in that showed her good sense. But she was said to be so thorough a flirt, that she was at the same time giving Charles to understand he was the favoured suitor.[1] At last, knowing that her father's consent to a marriage with Richard would be refused, she eloped with him to France, and was placed by him in a convent. Brought back by her father, she was married to Sheridan on April 13, 1773. While this comedy was proceeding at Bath, Herschel made a brief run across to Hanover in April 1772, and returned for his sister in August. He was able to settle a small annuity on his mother in compensation for the loss Caroline's removal would entail on the household. She felt herself to be her mother's slave, to be bought and sold. After a journey of ten days, they reached London on the 26th of August, where, "when the shops were lighted up, they went to see all that was to be seen, of which she only remembered the opticians' shops, for she did not think they looked at any other."
- ↑ "Mrs. Sheridan is with us," Hannah More writes to her sister at Bristol in 1778, "and her husband comes down on evenings. I find I have mistaken this lady; she is unaffected and sensible; converses and reads extremely well, and writes prettily." Mrs. Sheridan was nine or ten years younger than Hannah More.
