Though I often flinched to hear the news of the day, I cherished Sheridan’s visits. I was too much alone in my thoughts, which in my solitude have always tended to melancholy. Absent the gaiety of the theatre, my time was occupied chiefly with reflection, unless I felt strong enough to entertain little Maria Elizabeth. I missed Mother, who was home in Bristol; and though I should have liked her to come down to London for my lying-in, we both knew that I was of an age where it was meet that I superintend my own establishment.
Besides, I knew too well how she and Mr. Robinson could take advantage of my weakened state and conspire to ambush my better judgment. Perhaps that should not have been a concern, for Tom was rarely at home, preferring to spend his days gambling in the clubs and carousing in the coffeehouses. His nights removed him from our hearth as well. I could only imagine that his winnings at the faro tables—in addition to the money that as my husband he was legally entitled to leech from my earnings—funded his rakish conduct. Our household was managed entirely on my salary from Drury Lane.
On May 24, 1777, my second daughter, Sophia, was christened in the actors’ church, St. Paul’s Covent Garden. But the brief labor and easy delivery did not augur a charmed life. She wouldn’t take my breast and no one could fathom why. She grew frailer and sickly. I blamed myself. Had I nursed Maria Elizabeth for too long? Were my bosoms, never very ample to begin with, too inadequate somehow to give suck?
At the end of only six weeks, I lost her. Numb with disbelief was the state in which Sheridan found me when he called on me that day, the little sufferer still on my lap, her soul flown up to God. Only minutes earlier, Sophia had expired in my arms in convulsions. My distress was indescribable. I cursed myself, recalling the time when as an infant Maria had endured similar convulsions whilst, overexerted and overheated from dancing, I was nursing her. What had I done this time? I had led a quiet confinement, no parties or balls, and yet my tiny daughter was taken from me.
I was gazing upon her lifeless body with agonizing anxiety when Sheridan tiptoed into my chamber. “She’s gone,” I murmured. “Just now.” My hot tears baptized her soft, colorless cheeks with my shame, guilt, and incomprehension. “And I don’t know what to do.”
“May I?” my friend asked, with exquisite sensibility. I nodded mutely and he approached me, stopping to rest his eyes upon the little dear resting in my lap. “Beautiful little creature,” he breathed, sighing with such a sympathetic sorrow that I thought my heart would burst from my breast. Had I ever heard such a sigh from a husband’s bosom?
Sheridan’s gentle solicitousness released from me a torrent of emotions. I wept for poor tiny Sophia, and for the knowledge that I never was beloved by him whom destiny allotted to be the legal ruler of my actions. And yet, I could not condemn Mr. Robinson, for too well I know that we cannot command whither our affections wend. One can no more choose to fall in love with someone than they can select the color of their skin. And marriages were almost always pecuniary arrangements.
As if he read my mind, Sheridan asked softly, “Where is Mr. Robinson?” It was kind of him to make inquiry as if he were ignorant of my husband’s conduct, for everyone knew that he kept two mistresses, one of whom was a figure dancer at Drury Lane—my own backyard, as ’twere—and the other a fancy woman of professed libertinism near Covent Garden. Whilst he continually gratified his own caprice, Mr. Robinson observed no decency in his infidelities, exposing me perennially to the most degrading mortification.
“I will summon a doctor,” said Sheridan. He bent over me and kissed my brow. “You know that you will be welcome at Drury Lane whenever you are able to return. Let me know so I may arrange the schedule to accommodate your performances. Mayhap the work will soothe your troubled soul.” He turned to leave, with a last glance at the lifeless form nestled in my skirts. “When these rooms afford you no comforts, take solace in the knowledge that the theatre is your home.”
“I cannot now,” I mumbled. “I should not be able to summon a dram of wit or gaiety, even in sham. Forgive me…I cannot honor the remainder of my engagement this season.” After several moments of silence I said, “Permit me to depart for Bath that I might recuperate my health and spirits. From there I should like to make the short journey to Bristol to visit my mother’s home. Wandering the haunts of my birthplace always seems to make me whole, somehow.”
Sheridan granted my wish; and after some weeks in Bath, and a pilgrimage to Bristol’s antique minster, in whose shadows I used to hide when a child, I returned to London, still restless, still perplexed with painful solicitudes.
Perhaps I was more like my mother than I’d been willing to admit; I saw her with new eyes during our visit in Bristol. She, too, had lost an infant daughter.
Sophia’s death made me wish to keep little Maria even closer to my bosom. Though I’d always been quick to acknowledge our differences in temperament, it surprised me to realize that I was stitching the same picture Mother had made when she feared to let me stray too far from her hem. And yet she had dashed my dreams to wed me to a deceiving rake, for which I remained unable to forgive her. Those traitorous colors I vowed never to sew into the fabric of my surviving daughter’s life.
There was much to condole and much to consider.
I was not yet twenty years old.
