An Irishman's Diary

BORN IN CAVAN in 1684, Dr Thomas Sheridan is now most famous as the grandfather of another Sheridan, playwright Richard Brinsley. But he was a confidante of Swift in his time, and a well-known clergyman and scholar in his own right. So much so that his reputed last words – 273 years ago on this date – are recorded in that venerable almanac, Chambers' Book of Days.

Here’s what it says: “On the 10th of September 1738, Dr Sheridan was sitting, after dinner, in the house of a friend. The conversation happening to turn on the force and direction of the wind, Sheridan said: ‘Let the wind blow east, west, north, or south, the immortal soul will take its flight to the destined point;’ and leaning back in his chair, instantly expired.” One can’t help being a little suspicious about this, however. Because if you were the friend in whose house a guest had just expired instantly, your first thought would hardly be to memorise his last quotation.

Some element of panic must have ensued: Sheridan was only 54, after all. And by the time you’d checked pulse, called a doctor, interviewed the cook, and so on, you might struggle to recall exactly what anyone had said earlier, never mind quote it verbatim. Unless, perhaps, you were a cold-blooded journalist whose first reaction to the doctor’s illness had been to reach for a notebook.

In any case, whether he said the exact words or not – or whether, having said them, he failed to ruin the effect by adding something less memorable like “I’ll have another cup of tea if there’s one in it” – the quotation was perhaps only the second most famous of the dead man’s life.

As with Swift, Sheridan’s career had not thrived under the Whig-supported King George I. But his fall from favour apparently arose from a single piece of bad luck, or judgment. To wit, one Sunday, he chose as his preaching theme a well-known line from the Sermon on the Mount: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” The problem was that the day in question was the king’s birthday. And when news of Dr Sheridan’s unintended sarcasm became known, the consequences were dire. He was struck off the lord-lieutenant’s list of chaplains, parents withdrew their children from his school, and any hope of career advancement vanished. As Swift put it: “He had killed his own fortunes with a chance-shot from an unlucky text.”

WE'LL come back to chance shots later, but in a pleasant coincidence, a bookshop in Galway will later today host the launch of a new biography of a man whose supposed last words are among the most famous of the genre. In fact, as its title hints, More Lives than One: The Remarkable Wilde Family through the Generations, the book is not just about Oscar. Even so, he does dominate the cover and contents. And of course, both versions of his FLW feature.

The slightly less famous quip is about him dying, as he had lived, beyond his means. But the one generally quoted as his parting witticism concerned the decor of his Paris hotel room, viz: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” These words were indeed recorded by a journalist, Claire de Pratz, so we can trust them implicitly. Against which is the inconvenient detail that Wilde said them to her on October 29th, 1900, a full month before his wallpaper finally won the duel.

Sick man that he was, he must have said a few other things, less witty, in the interim. As with many such quotations, probably, the remembered words are not so much “famous last” as “last famous”. But I suppose even the greatest writers have occasionally needed the hand of a good editor. Wilde of all people would hardly have complained.

More Lives that Oneis written by Galway poet and teacher Gerard Hanberry, by the way. It's published by Collins Press at €24.99, and will be unveiled in Charlie Byrne's bookshop, in Middle Street, at 6pm.

BACK TO chance shots, meanwhile. On which subject, even Wilde’s wit would have been surpassed – albeit unknowingly – by the American Civil War general John Sedgwick, if only a popular version of his final words were completely accurate.

The editors have over-reached themselves in this case, however, because there were witnesses. And as amusing as it might have been (for everyone except him), Maj-Gen Sedgwick was not cut down by a sniper just as he said: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist . . .” He did, according to those around him, complete the sentence, while chiding his men for ducking the bullets of Confederate snipers in the Battle of Spotsylvania. Not only that, but having said it once with no ill effects, he further tempted fate by repeating it.

His troops were being ordered to move positions at the time, and in the process were ducking enemy potshots, unnecessarily, as the general thought. But the last soldier Sedgwick thus berated responded that he had dodged a shell once by ducking, and had been a strong believer in keeping his head down ever since. Whereupon, the general laughed and said: “All right my man, go to your place.” And those were his actual last words, before a sniper, like a slow actor who had twice missed the cue, finally blundered onto the stage in the middle of the next line.