Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  To MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 26, 1805.

  I have been reading a power of good books: Montesquieu sur la Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, which I recommend to you as a book you will admire, because it furnishes so much food for thought, it shows how history may be studied for the advantage of mankind, not for the mere purpose of remembering facts and repeating them.

  Sneyd [Footnote: Second son of Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth.] has come home to spend a week of vacation with us. He is now full of logic, and we perpetually hear the words syllogisms, and predicates, majors and minors, universals and particulars, affirmatives and negatives, and BAROK and BARBARA, not Barbara Allen or any of her relations: and we have learnt by logic that a stone is not an animal, and conversely that an animal is not a stone. I really think a man talking logic on the stage might be made as diverting as the character of the Apprentice who is arithmetically mad; pray read it: my father read it to us a few nights ago, and though I had a most violent headache, so that I was forced to hold my head on both sides whilst I laughed, yet I could not refrain. Much I attribute to my father’s reading, but something must be left to Murphy. I have some idea of writing in the intervals of my severer studies for Professional Education, a comedy for my father’s birthday, but I shall do it up in my own room, and shall not produce it till it is finished. I found the first hint of it in the strangest place that anybody could invent, for it was in Dallas’s History of the Maroons, and you may read the book to find it out, and ten to one you miss it. At all events pray read the book, for it is extremely interesting and entertaining: it presents a new world with new manners to the imagination, and the whole bears the stamp of truth. It is not well written in general, but there are particular parts admirable from truth of description and force of feeling.

  Your little goddaughter Sophy is one of the most engaging little creatures I ever saw, and knows almost all the birds and beasts in Bewick from the tom-tit to the hip-po-pot-a-mus, and names them in a sweet little droll voice.

  To HENRY EDGEWORTH, AT EDINBURGH. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 1805.

  It gives me the most sincere pleasure to see your letters to my father written just as if you were talking to a favourite friend of your own age, and with that manly simplicity characteristic of your mind and manner from the time you were able to speak. There is something in this perfect openness and in the courage of daring to be always yourself, which attaches more than I can express, more than all the Chesterfieldian arts and graces that ever were practised.

  The worked sleeves are for Mrs. Stewart, and you are to offer them to her, — nobody can say I do not know how to choose my ambassadors well! If Mrs. Stewart should begin to say, “O! it is a pity Miss Edgeworth should spend her time at such work!” please to interrupt her speech, though that is very rude, and tell her that I like work very much, and that I have only done this at odd times, after breakfast you know, when my father reads out Pope’s Homer, or when there are long sittings, when it is much more agreeable to move one’s fingers than to have to sit with hands crossed or clasped immovably. I by no means accede to the doctrine that ladies cannot attend to anything else when they are working: besides, it is contrary, is not it, to all the theories of Zoonomia? Does not Dr. Darwin show that certain habitual motions go on without interrupting trains of thought? And do not common sense and experience, whom I respect even above Dr. Darwin, show the same thing?

  To MISS SOPHY RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 25, 1805.

  To-morrow we all, viz. Mr. Edgeworth, two Miss Sneyds, and Miss Harriet Beaufort, and Miss Fanny Brown, and Miss Maria, and Miss Charlotte, and Miss Honora, and Mr. William Edgeworth, go in one coach and one chaise to Castle Forbes, to see a play acted by the Ladies Elizabeth and Adelaide Forbes, Miss Parkins, Lord Rancliffe, Lord Forbes, and I don’t know how many grandees with tufts on their heads, for every grandee man must now you know have a tuft or ridge of hair upon the middle of his pate. Have you read Kotzebue’s Paris? Some parts entertaining, mostly stuff. We have heard from Lovell, still a prisoner at Verdun, but in hopes of peace, poor fellow.

  To C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH, AT TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 4, 1805.

  We are all very happy and tolerably merry with the assistance of William and the young tribe, who are always at his heels and in full chorus with him. Charlotte cordials me twice a day with Cecilia, which she reads charmingly, and which entertains me as much at the third reading as it did at the first.

  We are a little, but very little afraid of being swallowed up by the

  French: they have so much to swallow and digest before they come to us!

  They did come once very near to be sure, but they got nothing by it.

  To MISS S. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 1, 1805.

  My father’s birthday was kept yesterday, much more agreeably than last year, for then we had company in the house. Yesterday Sneyd, now at home for his vacation, who is ever the promoter of gaiety, contrived a pretty little fête champêtre, which surprised us all most agreeably. After dinner he persuaded me that it was indispensably necessary for my health that I should take an airing; accordingly the chaise came to the door, and Anne Nangle, and my mother, with little Lucy in her arms, and Maria were rolled off, and after them on horseback came rosy Charlotte, all smiles, and Henry, with eyes brilliant with pleasure — riding again with Charlotte after eight months’ absence. It was a delightful evening, and we thought we were pleasing ourselves sufficiently by the airing, so we came home thinking of nothing at all, when, as we drove round, our ears were suddenly struck with the sound of music, and as if by enchantment, a fairy festival appeared upon the green. In the midst of an amphitheatre of verdant festoons suspended from white staffs, on which the scarlet streamers of the yeomen were flying, appeared a company of youths and maidens in white, their heads adorned with flowers, dancing; while their mothers and their little children were seated on benches round the amphitheatre. John Langan sat on the pier of the dining-room steps, with Harriet on one knee and Sophy on the other, and Fanny standing beside him. In the course of the evening William danced a reel with Fanny and Harriet, to the great delight of the spectators. Cakes and syllabubs served in great abundance by good Kitty, formed no inconsiderable part of the pleasures of the evening. William, who is at present in the height of electrical enthusiasm, proposed to the dancers a few electrical sparks, to complete the joys of the day. All — men, women, and children — flocked into the study after him to be shocked, and their various gestures and expressions of surprise and terror mixed with laughter, were really diverting to my mother, Anne Nangle, and me, who had judiciously posted ourselves in the gallery. Charlotte and Sneyd, as soon as it was dark, came to summon us, and we found the little amphitheatre on the grass-plat illuminated, the lights mixed with the green boughs and flowers were beautiful, and boys with flambeaux waving about had an excellent effect. I do wish you could have seen the honest, happy face of George, as he held his flambeau bolt upright at his station, looking at his own pretty daughter Mary. O my dear aunt, how much our pleasure would have been increased if you had been sitting beside us at the dining-room window.

  To MISS MARGARET RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 21, 1805.

  I had a most pleasant long letter from my father to-day. He has become acquainted with Mrs. Crewe—”Buff and blue and Mrs. Crewe” — and gives an account of a déjeûner at which he assisted at her house at Hampstead as quite delightful. Miss Crewe charmed him by praising “To-morrow,” and he claimed, he says, remuneration on the spot — a song, which it is not easy to obtain: she sang, and he thought her singing worthy of its celebrity. He was charmed with old Dr. Burney, who at eighty-two was the most lively, well-bred, agreeable man in the room. Lord Stanhope begged to be presented to him, and he thought him the most wonderful man he ever met.

  Tell my aunt Leonora is in the press.

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Sept 6, 1805.

  Thank you, thank you. Unless you could jump into that skin out of which I was ready t
o jump when your letter was read, you could not tell how very much I am obliged by your so kindly consenting to come.

  I have been at Pakenham Hall and Castle Forbes: at Pakenham Hall I was delighted with “that sweetest music,” the praises of a friend, from a person of judgment and taste. I do not know when I have felt so much pleasure as in hearing sweet Kitty Pakenham speak of your Sophy; I never saw her look more animated or more pretty than when she was speaking of her.

  Lady Elizabeth Pakenham has sent to me a little pony, as quiet and almost as small as a dog, on which I go trit-trot, trit-trot; but I hope it will never take it into its head to add

  When we come to the stile,

  Skip we go over.

  To MISS SOPHY RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 7, 1806.

  I am ashamed to tell you I have been so idle that I have not yet finished Madame de Fleury. You will allow that we have gadded about enough lately: Sonna, Pakenham Hall, Farnham, and Castle Forbes. I don’t think I told you that I grew quite fond of Lady Judith Maxwell, and I flatter myself she did not dislike me, because she did not keep me in the ante-chamber of her mind, but let me into the boudoir at once.

  So Lord Henry Petty is Chancellor of the Exchequer — at twenty-four on the pinnacle of glory!

  Sneyd and Charlotte have begun Sir Charles Grandison: I almost envy them the pleasure of reading Clementina’s history for the first time. It is one of those pleasures which is never repeated in life.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. ROSSTREVOR, March 21, 1806.

  I have spent a very happy week at Collon; [Footnote: Dr. Beaufort, father of the fourth Mrs. Edgeworth, was Vicar of Collon.] I never saw your mother in such excellent spirits. She and Dr. Beaufort were so good as to bring me to Dundalk, where my aunt had appointed to meet me; but her courage failed her about going over the Mountain road, and she sent Mr. Corry’s chaise with hired horses. I foresaw we should have a battle about those horses, and so we had — only a skirmish, in which I came off victorious! Your father, who, next to mine, is, I think, the best and most agreeable traveller in the world, walked us about Dundalk and to the Quay, etc., whilst the horses were resting, and we ate black cherries and were very merry. They pitied me for the ten-mile stage I was to go alone, but I did not pity myself, for I had Sir William Jones’s and Sir William Chambers’s Asiatic Miscellany. The metaphysical poetry of India, however, is not to my taste; and though the Indian Cupid, with his bow of sugar-cane and string of bees and five arrows for the five senses, is a very pretty and very ingenious little fellow, I have a preference in favour of our own Cupid, and of the two would rather leave orders with “my porter” to admit the “well-known boy.” [Footnote: From an Address to Cupid, by the Duc de Nivernois, translated by Mr. Edgeworth.]

  Besides the company of Sir William Jones, I had the pleasure of meeting on the road Mr. Parkinson Ruxton and Sir Chichester Fortescue, who had been commissioned by my aunt to hail me; they accordingly did so, and after a mutual broadside of compliments, they sheered off. The road to Newry is like Wales — Ravensdale, three miles of wood, glen, and mountain.

  My aunt and Sophy were on the steps of the inn at Newry to receive me. The road from Newry to Rosstrevor is both sublime and beautiful. The inn at Rosstrevor is like the best sort of English breakfasting inn. But to proceed with my journey, for I must go two miles and a half from Rosstrevor to my aunt’s house. Sublime mountains and sea — road, a flat gravelled walk, walled on the precipice side. You see a slated English or Welsh-looking farmhouse amongst some stunted trees, apparently in the sea; you turn down a long avenue of firs, only three feet high, but old-looking, six rows deep on each side. The two former proprietors of this mansion had opposite tastes — one all for straight, and the other all for serpentine lines; and there was a war between snug and picturesque, of which the traces appear every step you proceed. You seem driving down into the sea, to which this avenue leads; but you suddenly turn and go back from the shore, through stunted trees of various sorts scattered over a wild common, then a dwarf mixture of shrubbery and orchard, and you are at the end of the house, which is pretty. The front is ugly, but from it you look upon the bay of Carlingford — Carlingford Head opposite to you — vessels under sail, near and distant — little islands, sea-birds, and landmarks standing in the sea. Behind the house the mountains of Morne. I saw all this with admiration, tired as I was, for it was seven o’clock. In the parlour is a surprising chimney-piece, as gigantic as that at Grandsire’s at Calais, with wonderful wooden ornaments and a tablet representing Alexander’s progress through India, he looking very pert, driving four lions.

  After dinner I was so tired, that in spite of all my desire to see and hear, I was obliged to lie down and refit. After resting, but not sleeping, I groped my way down the broad old staircase, felt my road, passed two clock-cases on the landing-place, and arrived in the parlour, where I was glad to see candles and tea, and my dear aunt, and Sophy, and Margaret’s illumined, affectionate faces. Tea. “Come, now,” says my aunt, “let us show Maria the wonderful passage; it looks best by candlelight.” I followed my guide through a place that looks like Mrs. Radcliffe in lower life — passage after passage, very low-roofed, and full of strange lumber; came to a den of a bed-chamber, then another, and a study, all like the hold of a ship, and fusty; but in this study were mahogany bookcases, glass doors, and well-bound, excellent books. All kinds of tables, broken and stowed on top of each other, and parts of looking-glasses, looking as if they had been there a hundred years, and jelly glasses on a glass stand, as if somebody had supped there the night before. Turn from the study and you see a staircase, more like a step-ladder, very narrow, but one could squeeze up at a time, by which we went into a place like that you may remember at the post-house in the Low Countries — two chambers, if chambers they could be called, quite remote from the rest of the house, low ceilings, strange scraps of many-coloured paper on the walls, an old camp bed, a feather bed with half the feathers out; one window, low, but wide.

  “Out of that window,” said my aunt, “as Isabella told us, the corpse was carried.”

  “Who is Isabella?” cried I; but before my aunt could answer I was struck with new wonder at the sight of two French looking-glasses, in gilt frames, side by side, reaching from the ceiling to the floor, and placed exactly opposite the bed! [Footnote: This mysterious apartment had belonged to a poor crazed lady who died there, and who had, as Isabella, the gardener’s wife, related, a passion for fine papers, different patterns of which were put on the walls to please her, and also the French mirrors, on which she delighted to look from her bed. And when she died her coffin was, to avoid the crooked passages, taken out of the window.]

  I was now so tired that I could neither see, hear, nor understand, imagine, or wonder any longer. Sophy somehow managed to get my clothes off, and literally put me into bed. The images of all these people and things flitted before my eyes for a few seconds, and then I was fast asleep.

  Mrs. and Miss Fortescue came in the morning, and among other things mentioned the fancy ball in Dublin. Mrs. Sheridan [Footnote: Mrs. Tom Sheridan.] was the handsomest woman there. The Duchess of Bedford was dressed as Mary Queen of Scots, and danced with Lord Darnley. At supper the Duchess motioned to Lady Darnley to come to her table; but Lady Darnley refused, as she had a party of young ladies. The Duchess reproached her rather angrily. “Oh,” said Lady Darnley, “when the Queen of Scots was talking to Darnley, it would not have done for me to have been too near them.”

  MRS. EDGEWORTH to MISS SOPHY RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 3, 1806.

  We were at Gaybrook when your letter came, and when the good news of Miss Pakenham’s happiness arrived: [Footnote: Catherine, second daughter of the second Lord Longford, married, 10th April 1806, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the first and great Duke of Wellington. He had, at this time, just returned from India, after a stay of eleven years.] it was announced there in a very pleasant, sprightly letter from your friend Miss Fortescue. Your account of the whole affair is really ad
mirable, and is one of those tales of real life in which the romance is far superior to the generality of fictions. I hope the imaginations of this hero and heroine have not been too much exalted, and that they may not find the enjoyment of a happiness so long wished for inferior to what they expected. Pray tell dear good Lady Elizabeth we are so delighted with the news, and so engrossed by it, that, waking or sleeping, the image of Miss Pakenham swims before our eyes. To make the romance perfect we want two material documents — a description of the person of Sir Arthur, and a knowledge of the time when the interview after his return took place.

  MARIA to MRS. EDGEWORTH. ALLENSTOWN, May-day, 1806.

  Dr. Beaufort, tell Charlotte, saw Sir Arthur Wellesley at the Castle: handsome, very brown, quite bald, and a hooked nose. He could not travel with Lady Wellesley; he went by the mail. He had overstayed his leave a day. She travelled under the care of his brother, the clergyman.

  To MISS MARGARET RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 23, 1806.

  I have been laughed at most unmercifully by some of the phlegmatic personages round the library table for my impatience to send you The Mine. “Do you think Margaret cannot live five minutes longer without it? Saddle the mare, and ride to Dublin, and thence to Black Castle or Chantony with it, my dear!”