P. G. Wodehouse Minor Characters - Audrey Sheridan

Audrey Sheridan

The real target of Peter Burns's affection in The Little Nugget, Mrs Sheridan was born Audrey Blake, daughter of a dissolute and rather bad-tempered artist, who eked a meagre living from advertising work and magazine illustrations. When Burns appeared on the scene, Audrey's father encouraged the match, despite Burn's arrogant patronage of the young girl, but died of pneumonia a week after they became engaged.

Audrey fled and married a Mr Sheridan, an artist friend of her father's, and went with him to New York. He died two years later, but we later learn that he had abandoned her almost immediately after they arrived in America, leaving her penniless. She worked variously as a nurse, a waitress, a dressmaker and on the stage with a touring company, among other things, before an old friend who had learned painting from her father found her work with Elmer Ford, as governess to his son Ogden.

She thus appears in The Little Nugget, aged around twenty-five, small, graceful, pretty and brisk, with clear, steady eyes, a sensitive but firm mouth, Irish-blue eyes with expressive, rather heavy brows, and a strong, independent air resulting from her years of adversity.

She feels sorry for Nesta Ford when she must help Mr Mennick deprive her of her son, but she agrees with her employer that Nesta has spoiled the boy. Sent to Sanstead House to keep watch over him, she is reunited with Burns, and finds him a changed man. Her trust in him is shaken when she learns of his mission to kidnap the boy, but is later restored during the dramatic siege of the school. She admits to having made every effort to steal Burns away from his fiancee, but is chivalrous when she learns of Cynthia's identity, and fate must intervene to ensure her happiness.