Another anecdote we heard during our recent tour of Bath concerned the C18th playwright (and later politican) Sheridan. Apparently, we were told, he eloped with his eighteen-year-old beloved, without her parents’ consent – his carriage drawing up late one night outside her family home to whisk her away.
I scarcely know where to start with the ideas this sparked. The obvious one, first: the young lady being found some weeks later in London, brought back to the family home and soundly whipped by her father for bringing such shame on herself and on the family.
Or Sheridan himself, explaining that now she was no longer under her father’s wing, he would take care of her discipline. She’d protest; he’d spank her soundly to establish his authority, and then take her up to the bedroom for the first time…
But what of her maid back home? Clearly, the master of the house would thrash her severely for her part in the escape plan – for, surely, she must have helped her lady to pack a trunk? Or maybe the butler would be told to haul her into the master’s presence, and together they’d beat her until she confessed all that her mistress had told her about her plans…?
Having no specific knowledge of 18th century customs myself, I wonder whether Sheridan’s contemporaries would have thought of the parental spanking and the maid’s punishment as
“perverted reality” at all (as opposed to the elopement itself).
From a fictional perspective, the last variant is most intriguing. Conflicting loyalties are often a good story-telling device and the master’s fury towards his eloped daughter unloading on the poor maid adds some extra spice.
First option is my favourite. Second one comes very close to the first.
Excellent post as always, Abel!