Plan: Introduction 3

Chapter 2. Death and commemoration
2.1 Family life
In December 1815 Sheridan became ill and was largely confined to bed. He died in poverty. However, dukes, earls, lords, viscounts, the Lord Mayor of London, and other notables attended his funeral, and he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
In 1825 the Irish writer Thomas Moore published a sympathetic two-volume biography, Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, which became a major influence on subsequent perceptions. A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque was unveiled in 1881 to commemorate Sheridan at 14 Savile Row in Mayfair.[21] Another plaque is in Stafford.
Family life
He was twice married. He and his first wife Elizabeth had a son:
Thomas (Tom) Sheridan, who married Caroline Henrietta Callander, daughter of Col. Sir James Campbell of Craigforth, Stirling, and Ardkinglas Argyll, and was the father of Helen Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye, Caroline Norton and Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset
Elizabeth also had a daughter, Mary, born 30 March 1792 but fathered by her lover, Lord Edward FitzGerald.[22] After Elizabeth's death, Sheridan fulfilled his promise to look after Thomas and FitzGerald's baby daughter. A nurse was employed to care for the child at his Wanstead home.[23] The baby had a series of fits one evening in October 1793, when she was 18 months old, dying before a doctor could attend. She was interred beside her mother at Wells Cathedral.[24]
In 1795, Richard B. Sheridan married Esther Jane Ogle (1776–1817), daughter of the Dean of Winchester. They had at least one child: Charles Brinsley Sheridan (1796–1843).[25] At one time Sheridan owned Downe House, Richmond Hill in London.[26]
Affairs
Sheridan was a womanizer. He had recorded affairs with Frances Crewe, Lady Crewe (he dedicated his 1777 play The School for Scandal to her), and a disastrous affair with Harriet Spencer, Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough, beginning in 1789. Sheridan's affair with Harriet was disastrous for her, as the worst case scenario actually happened: her abusive husband Viscount Duncannon, Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough walked in on Harriet and Sheridan having intercourse. Violently enraged, Duncannon immediately wanted to divorce Harriet. Divorce in the 18th century was social ruin for women, and Harriet narrowly escaped such calamity only when Duncannon's father William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough and the powerful Cavendish clan sided with Harriet, making divorcing her social suicide.[27]
Whilst attempting to win back his wife Eliza Elizabeth Ann Linley, one of multiple similar occasions, he conceived a child with a governess named Caroline Townsend in 1789. Sheridan's friends Georgiana, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and Harriet, Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough helped him arrange for Caroline to go abroad to deliver, and adopted the baby, whom they named Fanny Mortimer. Fanny "grew up at Devonshire House as a sort of foundling, inhabiting a nether world between the servants' quarters and the nursery. After Georgiana died in 1806, Harriet sent Fanny to private school and eventually saw her marry quite well. Fanny always suspected that either Harriet or Georgiana was her mother and never quite recovered from learning that her true mother was a mere governess."[28]