This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
NOTABLE IRISHWOMEN.
147

His romantic marriage with the beautiful Miss Linley, of Bath, has been made recently the subject of a novel by the well-known Irish novelist, Mr. F. Frankfort Moore, and is called A Nest of Linnets. Tom Sheridan, Lady Dufferin's father, was one of those very clever people who seem as though they ought to make a figure in the world, and end by doing nothing in it. He was always ready with a repartee. One day, when his father, who never had any ready money, threatened to cut him off with a shilling, he said, "You don't happen to have that shilling about you now, do you, sir?" He married Caroline Henrietta Callander, daughter of Colonel Callander, of Craigforth and Ardkinglas, who was the authoress of several novels, one of them being Carwell, in which the hero is hanged. This gave rise to a hon mot of Sydney Smith's, who said, "he knew Mrs. Sheridan was a Callander, but he was not aware she was a Newgate Calendar!" She accompanied her husband to the Cape, where he died, and she, with her elder daughter, Helen, afterwards Lady Dufferin, returned to England. Rooms were granted to the widow, who was left badly off, with seven children on her hands, at Hampton Court Palace. The three daughters were all tall and stately, and all dowered with remarkable beauty. They were often called "the three graces," and "the fairest of the lair."