Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  We have been much entertained with Le petit Carilloneur. I would send it to you, only it is a society book; but I do send by a carman two volumes of Alfieri’s Life and Kirwan’s Essay on Happiness, and the Drogheda edition of Parent’s Assistant, which, with your leave, I present to your servant Richard.

  The Grinding Organ [Footnote: Afterwards published in 1827 in a small volume, entitled Little Plays.] went off on Friday night better than I could have expected, and seemed to please the spectators. Mrs. Pakenham brought four children, and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson two sons, Mr. and Mrs. Keating two daughters, which, with the Beauforts, Molly, George, and the rest of the servants, formed the whole audience. I am sure you would have enjoyed the pleasure the Bristows showed on seeing and hearing Mary Bristow perform her part, which she did with perfect propriety. Sophy and Fanny were excellent, but as they were doomed to be the good children, they had not ample room and verge enough to display powers equal to the little termagant heroine of the night. William in his Old Man (to use the newspaper style) was correct and natural. Mr. Edgeworth as the English Farmer evinced much knowledge of true English character and humour. Miss Edgeworth as the Widow Ross, “a cursed scold,” was quite at home. It is to be regretted that the Widow Ross has no voice, as a song in character was of course expected; the Farmer certainly gave “a fair challenge to a fair lady.” His Daniel Cooper was given in an excellent style, and was loudly encored.

  April 28.

  The Primate [Footnote: William Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh, fifth son of the third Earl of Bute.] was very agreeable during the two days he spent here. My father travelled with him from Dublin to Ardbraccan, and this reputed silent man never ceased talking and telling entertaining anecdotes till the carriage stopped at the steps at Ardbraccan. This I could hardly credit till I myself heard his Grace burst forth in conversation. The truth of his character gives such value to everything he says, even to his humorous stories. He has two things in his character which I think seldom meet — a strong taste for humour, and strong feelings of indignation. In his eye you may often see alternately the secret laughing expression of humour, and the sudden open flash of indignation. He is a man of the warmest feelings, with the coldest exterior I ever saw — a master mind. I could not but be charmed with him, because I saw that he thoroughly appreciated my father.

  * * * * *

  Tales of Fashionable Life were published in June 1809, and greatly added to the celebrity of their authoress. “Almeria” is the best, and full of admirable pictures of character. In all, the object is to depict the vapid and useless existence of those who live only for society. Sometimes the moralising becomes tiresome. “Vraiment Miss Edgeworth est digne de l’enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans votre triste utilité,” said Madame de Staël to M. Dumont when she had read the Tales. In that age of romantic fiction an attempt to depict life as it really was took the reading world by surprise.

  “As a writer of tales and novels,” wrote Lord Dudley in the Quarterly Review, “Miss Edgeworth has a very marked peculiarity. It is that of venturing to dispense common sense to her readers, and to bring them within the precincts of real life and natural feeling. She presents them with no incredible adventures or inconceivable sentiments, no hyperbolical representations of uncommon characters, or monstrous exhibitions of exaggerated passion. Without excluding love from her pages, she knows how to assign to it its just limits. She neither degrades the sentiment from its true dignity, nor lifts it to a burlesque elevation. It takes its proper place among the passions. Her heroes and heroines, if such they may be called, are never miraculously good, nor detestably wicked. They are such men and women as we see and converse with every day of our lives, with the same proportional mixture in them of what is right and what is wrong, of what is great and what is little.”

  Lord Jeffrey, writing in the Edinburgh Review, said: “The writings of Miss Edgeworth exhibit so singular an union of sober sense and inexhaustible invention, so minute a knowledge of all that distinguishes manners, or touches on happiness in every condition of human fortune, and so just an estimate both of the real sources of enjoyment, and of the illusions by which they are so often obstructed, that we should separate her from the ordinary manufacturers of novels, and speak of her Tales as works of more serious importance than much of the true history and solemn philosophy that comes daily under our inspection…. It is impossible, I think, to read ten pages in any of her writings without feeling, not only that the whole, but that every part of them, was intended to do good.”

  * * * * *

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 1809.

  A copy of Tales of Fashionable Life [Footnote: The first set containing “Ennui,” “Madame de Fleury,” “Almeria,” “The Dun,” and “Manoeuvring,” in three volumes.] reached us yesterday in a Foster frank: they looked well enough, — not very good paper, but better than Popular Tales. I am going to write a story called “To-day,” [Footnote: Never written.] as a match for “To-morrow,” in which I mean to show that Impatience is as bad as Procrastination, and the desire to do too much to-day, and to enjoy too much at present, is as bad as putting off everything till to-morrow. What do you think of this plan? Write next post, as, while my father is away, I am going to write a story for his birthday. My other plan was to write a story in which young men of all the different professions should act a part, like the “Contrast” in higher life, [Footnote: “Patronage.”] or the “Freeman Family,” only without princes, and without any possible allusion to our own family. I have another sub-plan of writing “Coelebina in search of a Husband,” without my father’s knowing it, and without reading Coelebs, that I may neither imitate nor abuse it.

  I daresay you can borrow Powell’s Sermons from Ardbraccan or Dr. Beaufort; the Primate lent them to my father. There is a charge on the connection between merit and preferment, and one discourse on the influence of academical studies and a recluse life, which I particularly admire, and wish it had been quoted in Professional Education.

  Mr. Holland, a grand-nephew of Mr. Wedgwood’s, and son to a surgeon at Knutsford, Cheshire, and intended for a physician, came here in the course of a pedestrian tour — spent two days — very well informed. Ask my mother when she goes to you to tell you all that Mr. Holland told us about Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Marcet, who is the author of Conversations on Chemistry — a charming woman, by his account.

  To MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 22, 1809.

  I have just been reading Carleton’s Memoirs, and am in love with the captain and with his general, Lord Peterborough; and I have also been reading one of the worst-written books in the language, but it has both instructed and entertained me — Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Johnson. He has thrown a heap of rubbish of his own over poor Johnson, which would have smothered any less gigantic genius.

  M. Dumont writes from Lord Henry Petty’s: “Nous avons lu en société à Bounds, Tales of Fashionable Life. Toute société est un petit théâtre. ‘Ennui’ et ‘Manoeuvring’ ont eu un succès marqué, il a été très vif. Nous avons trouvé un grand nombre des dialogues du meilleur comique, c’est à dire ceux où les personnages se developpent sans le vouloir, et sont plaisants sans songer à l’être. Il y a des scènes charmantes dans ‘Madame de Fleury.’ Ne craignez pas les difficultés, c’est là où vous brillez.”

  To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH. Nov 30.

  We have had a bevy of wits here — Mr. Chenevix, Mr. Henry Hamilton, Leslie Foster, and his particular friend Mr. Fitzgerald. Somebody asked if Miss White [Footnote: The then well-known Miss Lydia White, for many years a central figure in London literary society.] was a bluestocking. “Oh yes, she is; I can’t tell you how blue. What is bluer than blue?”—”Morbleu,” exclaimed Lord Norbury. Miss White herself comes next week.

  Dec. 11.

  Among other things Miss White entertained my father with was a method of drawing the human figure, and putting it into any attitude you please: she had just learned it from Lady Charleville — or ra
ther not learned it. A whole day was spent in drawing circles all over the human figure, and I saw various skeletons in chains, and I was told the intersections of these were to show where the centres of gravity were to be; but my gravity could not stand the sight of these ineffectual conjuring tricks, and my father was out of patience himself. He seized a sheet of paper and wrote to Lady Charleville, and she answered in one of the most polite letters I ever read, inviting him to go to Charleville Forest, and he will go and see these magical incantations performed by the enchantress herself.

  To MISS RUXTON. December 1809.

  I have spent five delightful days at Sonna and Pakenham Hall. Mrs.

  Tuite’s kindness and Mr. Chenevix’s various anecdotes, French and

  Spanish, delighted us at Sonna; and you know the various charms both for

  the head and heart at Pakenham Hall.

  I have just been reading, for the fourth time, I believe, The Simple Story, which I intended this time to read as a critic, that I might write to Mrs. Inchbald about it; but I was so carried away by it that I was totally incapable of thinking of Mrs. Inchbald or anything but Miss Milner and Doriforth, who appeared to me real persons whom I saw and heard, and who had such power to interest me, that I cried my eyes almost out before I came to the end of the story: I think it the most pathetic and the most powerfully interesting tale I ever read. I was obliged to go from it to correct Belinda for Mrs. Barbauld, who is going to insert it in her collection of novels, with a preface; and I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or stone Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces: and really, I have not the heart or the patience to correct her. As the hackney coachman said, “Mend you! better make a new one.”

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Jan. 1810.

  I have had a very flattering and grateful letter from Lydia White; she has sent me a comedy of Kelly’s — A Word to the Wise. She says the Heiress is taken from it. Just about the same time I had a letter from Mrs. Apreece: [Footnote: Afterwards Lady Davy.] she is at Edinburgh, and seems charmed with all the wits there; and, as I hear from Mr. Holland, [Footnote: Afterwards Sir Henry Holland.] the young physician who was here last summer, she is much admired by them. Mrs. Hamilton and she like one another particularly; they can never cross, for no two human beings are, body and mind, form and substance, more unlike. We thought Mr. Holland, when he was here, a young man of abilities — his letter has fully justified this opinion: it has excited my father’s enthusiastic admiration. He says Walter Scott is going to publish a new poem; I do not augur well of the title, The Lady of the Lake. I hope this lady will not disgrace him. Mr. Stewart has not recovered, nor ever will recover, the loss of his son: Mr. Holland says the conclusion of his lectures this season was most pathetic and impressive—”placing before the view of his auditors a series of eight-and-thirty years, in which he had zealously devoted himself to the duties of his office; and giving the impression that this year would be the period of his public life.”

  I have had a most agreeable letter from my darling old Mrs. Clifford; she sent me a curiosity — a worked muslin cap, which cost sixpence, done in tambour stitch, by a steam-engine. Mrs. Clifford tells me that Mrs. Hannah More was lately at Dawlish, and excited more curiosity there, and engrossed more attention, than any of the distinguished personages who were there, not excepting the Prince of Orange. The gentleman from whom she drew Cælebs was there, but most of those who saw him did him the justice to declare that he was a much more agreeable man than Cælebs. If you have any curiosity to know his name, I can tell you that — young Mr. Harford, of Blaise Castle.

  Feb. 1810.

  My father has just had a letter from your good friend Sir Rupert George, who desires to be affectionately remembered to you and my uncle. His letter is in answer to one my father wrote to him about his clear and honourable evidence on this Walcheren business. Sir Rupert says: “I must confess I feel vain in receiving commendations from such a quarter. The situation in which I was placed was perfectly new to me, and I had no rule for the government of my conduct but the one which has, I trust, governed all my actions through life — to speak the truth, and fear not. Allow me on this occasion to repeat to you an expression of the late Mrs. Delany’s to me a few years before she died: ‘The Georges, I knew, would always prosper, from their integrity of conduct. Don’t call this flattery: I am too old to flatter any one, particularly a grand-nephew; and to convince you of my sincerity, I will add — for which, perhaps, you will not thank me — that there is not an ounce of wit in the whole family.’”

  “Oh how my sister would like to see this letter of Sir Rupert’s!” said my father; and straightway he told, very much to Sophy and Lucy’s edification, the history of his dividing with sister Peg the first peach he ever had in his life.

  March 2.

  Have you any commands to Iceland? My young friend Mr. Holland proposes going there from Edinburgh in April. Sir George Mackenzie is the chief mover of the expedition.

  This epigram or epitaph was written by Lord I-don’t-know-who, upon Doctor Addington — Pitt’s Addington — in old French:

  Cy dessous reposant

  Le sieur Addington git:

  Politique soi-disant,

  Médecin malgré lui.

  March 19.

  The other day we had a visit from a Mrs. Coffy — no relation, she says, to your Mrs. Coffy. She looked exactly like one of the pictures of the old London Cries. She came to tell us that she had been at Verdun, and had seen Lovell. From her description of the place and of him, we had no doubt she had actually seen him. She came over to Ireland to prove that some man who is a prisoner at Verdun, and who is a life in a lease, is not dead, but “all alive, ho!” and my father certified for her that he believed she had been there. She knew nothing of Lovell but that he was well, and fat, and a very merry gentleman two years ago. She had been taken by a French privateer as she was going to see her sons in Jersey, and left Verdun at a quarter of an hour’s notice, as the women were allowed to come home, and she had not time to tell this to Lovell, or get a letter from him to his friends. She was, as Kitty said, “a comical body,” but very entertaining, and acted a woman chopping bread and selling un liv’ — deux liv’ — trois liv’ — Ah, bon, bon, as well as Molly Coffy [Footnote: Mrs. Molly Coffy, for fifty years Mrs. Ruxton’s housekeeper.] herself acted the elephant. She was children’s maid to Mr. Estwick, and Mr. Estwick is, my father says, son to a Mr. Estwick who used to be your partner and admirer at Bath in former times!!

  To C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 1810.

  I do not like Lord Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong, and worthy of Pope and The Dunciad. But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the “paralytic muse” of the man who had been his guardian, and is his relation, and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither a great nor good mind; and I feel dislike and disgust for his Lordship.

  To MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 1810.

  Now I have to announce the safe arrival of my aunts and Honora in good looks and good spirits. My father went to Dublin to meet them. I am sorry he did not see the Count de Salis, [Footnote: The Count de Salis, just then going to be married to Miss Foster, daughter of Mr. Edgeworth’s old friend and schoolfellow, the Bishop of Clogher.] but he was much pleased with Harriet Foster, which I am glad of; for I love her.

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 21, 1810.

  When shall we two meet again? This is a question which occurs to me much oftener than even you think, and it always comes into my mind when I am in any society I peculiarly like, or when I am reading any book particularly suited to my taste and feelings; and now it comes á propos to the Bishop of Meath and Mrs. O’Beirne and The Lady of the Lake. By great good fortune, and by the good-nature of Lady Charlotte Rawdon, we had The Lady of t
he Lake to read just when the O’Beirnes were with us. A most delightful reading we had; my father, the Bishop, and Mr. Jephson reading it aloud alternately. It is a charming poem: a most interesting story, generous, finely-drawn characters, and in many parts the finest poetry. But for an old prepossession — an unconquerable prepossession — in favour of the old minstrel, I think I should prefer this to either the Lay or Marmion. Our pleasure in reading it was increased by the sympathy and enthusiasm of the guests.

  Have you read, or tried to read, Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse’s three volumes of Letters? and have you read Madame du Deffand? [Footnote: The blind friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole.] Some of the letters in her collection are very entertaining; those of the Duchesse de Choiseul, the Comte de Broglie, Sir James Macdonald, and a few of Madame du Deffand’s: the others are full of fade compliments and tiresome trifling, but altogether curious as a picture of that profligate, heartless, brilliant, and ennuyed society. There is in these letters, I think, a stronger picture of ennui than in Alfieri’s Life. Was his passion for the Countess of Albany, or for horses, or for pure Tuscan, the strongest? or did not he love NOTORIETY better than all three?