Author: Sheridan, Louisa Henrietta
Biography:
SHERIDAN, Louisa Henrietta, later WYATT (1810?-41)
Details of her birth and baptism are not certain. Her father was Captain William Brownlow Sheridan (1784-1836), an Irish officer, originally from Dublin, who died at Belgrave Street South, Westminster, on 30 Aug. 1836, after complications arising from a shooting accident, leaving a widow and only daughter (Limerick Chronicle). Ancestry trees incorrectly give her parents as the higher-ranking Lt.-General Sir William (Wetby) Sheridan (1776-1836) and Mary Louisa Addison (1794-1836), who both died at Paris but were not her parents. The confusion was introduced in 1855 by Richard Robert Madden, editor of Lady’s Blessington’s correspondence, and is perhaps understandable given her later marriage and death in Paris. However, her 1836-38 letters to Lady Blessington were written from 7 Belgrave Street South, her father’s address. It seems likely she was born in Ireland. She might be the Henrietta Louisa Sheridan baptised on 30 Aug. 1805 in Dublin, daughter of William and Margaret Sheridan, but there is no corroboration. She acquired an early reputation for her beauty, manners, conversation and musical ability, and became the editor of an annual, The Comic Offering, or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth (1831-5). She also edited The Diadem (1838) and contributed to many other annuals: Forget-Me-Not, Friendship’s Offering, Keepsake, Book of Beauty. She was a protégée of the Irish actress Harriet Mellon, later Duchess of St. Albans (1777-1837), who left her a £50 annuity. She suffered from ill health 1837-38 and shortly thereafter went to Paris (where there were several Sheridans who were possibly relatives). She married Sir Henry Robartes Wyatt, Colonel of the 1st Regiment of Life Guards, on 8 Sept. 1840 at the British Embassy chapel, Paris. She died of consumption at the Champs Elysées, Paris, on 2 Oct. 184 and was buried at Montmartre on 6 Oct., with her age given as 31. (GM Sept. 1836, 324, Nov. 1840, 534, Oct. 1842, 436; Limerick Chronicle 21 Sept. 1836; Boyle, 262-4; Sidney Lee, “Memoir of George Smith [1824-1901]” DNB; R. R. Madden, ed., The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington [1855], 2: 320-2; Tamara L. Hunt, “Louisa Henrietta Sheridan’s ‘Comic Offering’ and the Critics,” Victorian Periodicals Review 29 [1996], 95-115; portrait in Friendship’s Offering [1838]) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Sheridan