Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  Sept. 1810.

  Sir Thomas and Lady Ackland spent a day here: he is nephew to my friend Mrs. Charles Hoare. He says he is twenty-three, but he looks like eighteen.

  To MISS RUXTON. Oct. 1810.

  We have had a visit from Captain Pakenham, the Admiral’s son, this week: I like him. I was particularly pleased with his respectful manner to my father. He has some of his father’s quickness of repartee, but with his own manner — no affectation of his father’s style. We were talking of a Mrs. —— . “What,” said I, “is she alive still? The last time I saw her she seemed as if she had lived that one day longer by particular desire.”—”I am sure, then,” said Captain Pakenham, in a slow, gentle voice,—”I am sure, then, I cannot tell at whose desire.”

  I have been hard at work at Mrs. Leadbeater: I fear my notes are rubbish.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Edgeworth writes:

  Mrs. Leadbeater, the Quaker lady who lived at Ballitore, whose father had been tutor to Edmund Burke, and whose Letters have been published, wrote to Maria this year, asking her advice about a book she had written, Cottage Dialogues, and sent the MS. to her. Mr. Edgeworth was so much pleased with it, that Maria offered, at Mr. Edgeworth’s suggestion, to add a few notes to give her name to the book; and it was published by Johnson’s successor with great success.

  Mr. Edgeworth, Maria, and I went this autumn to Kilkenny to see the amateur theatricals, with which we were much delighted. Mr. Edgeworth, who remembered Garrick, said he never saw such tragic acting as Mr. Rothe, in Othello: how true to nature it was, appeared from the observation of our servant, Pat Newman, who had never seen a play before, when Mr. Edgeworth asked him if he did not pity the poor woman smothered in bed: “It was a pity of her, but I declare I pitied the man the most.” The town was full to overflowing, but we were most hospitably received, though our friends the O’Beirnes were their guests, by Doctor and Mrs. Butler. He had been a friend of Mr. Edgeworth’s when he lived in the county of Longford, and she had been, when Miss Rothwell, a Dublin acquaintance of mine. This visit to Kilkenny was rich in recollections for Maria: the incomparable acting, the number of celebrated people there assembled, the supper in the great gallery of old grand Kilkenny Castle, the superb hospitality, the number of beautiful women and witty men, the gaiety, the spirit, and the brilliancy of the whole, could have been seen nowhere else.

  MISS EDGEWORTH to MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 1810.

  We are to set out for Dublin on the 13th, to hear Davy’s Lectures. Lord Fingal was so kind as to come here yesterday with Lady Teresa Dease, and he told me that my uncle is gone to Dublin. Tell me everything about it clearly. Honora, Fanny, and William go with us.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Edgeworth interpolates:

  We spent a few weeks in Dublin. Davy’s Lectures not only opened a new world of knowledge to ourselves and to our young people, but were especially gratifying to Mr. Edgeworth and Maria, confirming, by the eloquence, ingenuity, and philosophy which they displayed, the high idea they had so early formed of Mr. Davy’s powers.

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 1811.

  I think Hardy’s Life of Lord Charlemont interesting, and many parts written in a beautiful style; but I don’t think he gives a clear, well-proportioned history of the times. There is a want of keeping and perspective in it. The pipe of the man smoking out of the window is as high as the house. Mr. Hardy is more a portrait than a history painter.

  If you have any curiosity to know the names of the writers of some of the articles in the Edinburgh Review, I can tell you, having had to-day, from my literary intelligencer, Mr. Holland, two huge sheets, very entertaining and sensible. Jeffrey wrote the article on Parliamentary Reform and that on the Curse of Kehama, Sydney Smith that on Toleration, and Malthus that on Bullion; and if you have any curiosity, I can also tell you those in the Quarterly, among whom Canning is one. Thank my aunt for her information about Walter Scott; my father will write immediately to ask him here. I wish we lived in an old castle, and had millions of old legends for him. Have you seen Campbell’s poem of O’Connor’s Child? it is beautiful. In many parts I think it is superior to Scott.

  May-day.

  This being May-day, one of the wettest I have ever seen, I have been regaled, not with garlands of May flowers, but with the legal pleasures of the season; I have heard of nothing but giving notices to quit, taking possession, ejectments, flittings, etc. What do you think of a tenant who took one of the nice new houses in this town, and left it with every lock torn off the doors, and with a large stone, such as John Langan could not lift, driven actually through the boarded floor of the parlour? The brute, however, is rich, and if he does not die of whisky before the law can get its hand into his pocket, he will pay for this waste.

  I have had another [Footnote: No less than five letters were received by Miss Edgeworth at different times, from different young people, asking for a description of the dresses in the “Contrast.”] odd letter signed by three young ladies — Clarissa Craven, Rachel Biddle, and Eliza Finch, who, after sundry compliments in very pretty language, and with all the appearance of seriousness, beg that I will do them the favour to satisfy the curiosity they feel about the wedding dresses of the Frankland family in the “Contrast.” I have answered in a way that will stand for either jest or earnest; I have said that, at a sale of Admiral Tipsey’s smuggled goods, Mrs. Hungerford bought French cambric muslin wedding gowns for the brides, the collars trimmed in the most becoming manner, as a Monmouth milliner assured me, with Valenciennes lace, from Admiral Tipsey’s spoils. I have given all the particulars of the bridegrooms’ accoutrements, and signed myself the young ladies’ “obedient servant and perhaps dupe.”

  I am going on with “Patronage,” and wish I could show it to you. Do get O’Connor’s Child, Campbell’s beautiful poem.

  Last Saturday there was the most violent storm of thunder and lightning I ever saw in Ireland, and once I thought I felt the ground shake under me, for which thought I was at the time laughed to scorn; but I find that at the same time the shock of an earthquake was felt in the country, which shook Lissard House to its foundations. I tell it to you in the very words in which it was told to me by Sneyd, who had it from Councillor Cummin. A man was certainly killed by the lightning near Finac, for the said councillor was knocked up at six o’clock in the morning, to know if there was to be a coroner’s inquest.

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 30, 1811.

  I have written a little play for our present large juvenile audience, [Footnote: Mrs. Beddoes and her three children were now at Edgeworthstown.] not for them to act, but to hear; I read it out last night, and it was liked. The scene is in Ireland, and the title “The Absentee.” When will you let me read it to you? I would rather read it to you up in a garret than to the most brilliant audience in Christendom.

  Anna’s children are very affectionate. Henry is beautiful, and the most graceful creature I ever saw. The eight children are as happy together as the day is long, and give no sort of trouble.

  What book do you think Buonaparte was reading at the siege of Acre? — Madame de Staël sur l’influence des Passions! His opinion of her and of her works has wonderfully changed since then. He does not follow Mazarin’s wise maxim, “Let them talk provided they let me act.” He may yet find the recoil of that press, with which he meddles so incautiously, more dangerous than those cannon of which he well knows the management.

  Note Physical and Economical

  I am informed from high authority, that if you give Glauber’s salts to hens, they will lay eggs as fast as you please!

  * * * * *

  To MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, October 1811.

  Davy spent a day here last week, and was as usual full of entertainment and information of various kinds. He is gone to Connemara, I believe, to fish, for he is a little mad about fishing; and very ungrateful it is of me to say so, for he sent to us from Boyle the finest trout! and a trou
t of Davy’s catching is, I presume, worth ten trouts caught by vulgar mortals. Sneyd went with him to Boyle, saw Lord Lorton’s fine place, and spent a pleasant day. Two of Mr. Davy’s fishing friends have since called upon us: Mr. Solly, a great mineralogist, and Mr. Children, a man of Kent.

  I am working away at “Patronage,” but cannot at all come up to my idea of what it should be.

  To MRS. MARY SNEYD. ARDBRACCAN HOUSE, Nov. 1811.

  Nothing worthy of note occurred on our journey to Pakenham Hall, where we found to our surprise dear Lady Longford and Lord Longford, who had come an hour before on one of his flying visits, and a whole tribe of merry laughing children, Stewarts and Hamiltons. Lady Longford showed us a picture of Lady Wellington and her children; they are beautiful, and she says very like — Lady Wellington is not like: it is absurd to attempt to draw Lady Wellington’s face; she has no face, it is all countenance. My father and Lady Elizabeth played at cribbage, and I was looking on: they counted so quickly fifteen two, fifteen four, that I was never able to keep up with them, and made a sorry figure. Worse again at some genealogies and intermarriages, which Lady Elizabeth undertook to explain to me, till at last she threw her arms flat down on each side in indignant despair, and exclaimed, “Well! you are the stupidest creature alive!”

  When Lord Longford came in I escaped from cribbage and heard many entertaining things: one was of his meeting a man in the mail coach, who looked as if he was gouty, and seemed as if he could not stir without great difficulty, and never without the assistance of a companion, who never moved an inch from him. At last Lord Longford discovered that this gentleman’s gouty overalls covered fetters; that he was a malefactor in irons, and his companion a Bow Street officer, who treated his prisoner with the greatest politeness. “Give me leave, sir — excuse me — one on your arm and one on mine, and then we are sure we can’t leave one another.”

  A worse travelling companion this than the bear, whom Lord Longford found one morning in the coach when day dawned, opposite to him — the gentleman in the fur cloak, as he had all night supposed him to be!

  * * * * *

  A second series of Tales of Fashionable Life appeared in 1812. Of these “The Absentee” was a masterpiece, and contains one scene which Macaulay declared to be the best thing written of its kind since the opening of the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. Yet Mrs. Edgeworth tells that the greater part of “The Absentee” was “written under the torture of the toothache; it was only by keeping her mouth full of some strong lotion that Maria could allay the pain, and yet, though in this state of suffering, she never wrote with more spirit and rapidity.” Mr. Edgeworth advised the conclusion to be a Letter from Larry, the postillion: he wrote one, and she wrote another; he much preferred hers, which is the admirable finale to “The Absentee.”

  * * * * *

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MISS MARGARET RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, July 20, 1812.

  I am heartily obliged to my dear Sophy — never mind, you need not turn to the direction, it is to Margaret, my dear, though it begins with thanks to Sophy — for being in such haste to relieve my mind from the agony it was in that Fashionable Tales should reach my aunt. I cannot by any form of words express how delighted I am that you are none of you angry with me, and that my uncle and aunt are pleased with what they have read of “The Absentee.” I long to hear whether their favour continues to the end and extends to the catastrophe, that dangerous rock upon which poor authors, even after a prosperous voyage, are wrecked, sometimes while their friends are actually hailing them from the shore. I have the Rosamond vase [Footnote: A glass vase which Miss Edgeworth painted for Mrs. Ruxton, in brown, from Flaxman’s designs for the Odyssey.] madness so strong upon me, that I am out of my dear bed regularly at half-past seven in the morning, and never find it more than half an hour till breakfast time, so happy am I daubing. On one side I have Ulysses longing to taste Circe’s cakes, but saying, “No, thank you,” like a very good boy: and on the other side I have him just come home, and the old nurse washing his feet, and his queen fast asleep in her chair by a lamp, which I hope will not set her on fire, though it is, in spite of my best endeavours, so much out of the perpendicular that nothing but a miracle can keep it from falling on Penelope’s crown.

  Little Pakenham is going on bravely (not two months old), and I am just beginning to write again, and am in “Patronage,” and have corrected all the faults you pointed out to me; and Susan, who was a fool, is now Rosamond and a wit.

  I suppose you have heard various jeux d’esprit on the marriage of Sir

  Humphry Davy and Mrs. Apreece? I scarcely think any of them worth

  copying: the best idea is stolen from the bon mot on Sir John Carr,

  “The Traveller beknighted.”

  “When Mr. Davy concluded his last Lecture by saying that we were but in the Dawn of Science, he probably did not expect to be so soon beknighted.”

  I forget the lines: the following I recollect better: —

  To the famed widow vainly bow

  Church, Army, Bar, and Navy;

  Says she, I dare not take a vow,

  But I will take my Davy.

  Another my father thinks is better:

  Too many men have often seen

  Their talents underrated;

  But Davy owns that his have been

  Duly Appreeciated.

  Aug 22.

  I enclose a copy of Lovell’s letter, which will give my dear aunt exquisite pleasure. His request to my father to pass him over, a prisoner and of precarious health, and make his next brother his heir, shows that if he has suffered he has at least had an opportunity of showing what he is. We shall do all we can to get at Talleyrand or some friend for his exchange. How happy Lady Wellington must be at this glorious victory. Had you in your paper an account of her running as fast as she could to Lord Bury at Lord Bathurst’s when he alighted, to learn the first news of her husband! Vive l’enthousiasme! Without it characters may be very snug and comfortable in the world, but there is a degree of happiness which they will never taste, and of which they have no more idea than an oyster can have.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. BLACK CASTLE, Oct. 1812.

  After a most delightful journey with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hamilton, laughing, singing, and talking, we dined with them. [Footnote: Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton were paying a visit at Edgeworthstown, when the papers announced Mr. Sadler’s intention of crossing the Channel in a balloon from Dublin. Mr. Edgeworth proposed to Mr. Hamilton that they should go to Dublin together to see the ascent, and he and Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, Maria, Sneyd, William, and two little sisters formed the party.] Dear old Mr. Sackville Hamilton dined with us, fresh from London: intellectual and corporeal dainties in abundance. The first morning was spent in cursing Mr. Sadler for not going up, and in seeing the Dublin Society House. A charming picture of Mr. Foster, by Beachey, with plans in his hand, looking full of thought and starting into life and action. Spent an hour looking over the books of prints in the library — Fanny particularly pleased with a Houbracken: Harriet with Daniel’s Indian Antiquities: my father with Sir Christopher Wren’s and Inigo Jones’s designs. After dinner Richard Ruxton came in, and said my aunt and uncle had thoughts of coming up to see the balloon. In the evening at Astley’s. The second day to see the elephant: how I pitied this noble animal, cooped up under the command of a scarcely human creature, who had not half as much reason as himself. Went on to see the Panorama of Edinburgh: I never saw a sight that pleased me more; Edinburgh was before me — Princes Street and George Street — the Castle — the bridge over dry land where the woman met us and said, “Poor little things they be.” At first a mistiness, like what there is in nature over a city before the sun breaks out; then the sun shining on the buildings, trees, and mountains.

  Thursday morning, to our inexpressible joy, was fine, and the flag, the signal that Sadler would ascend, was, to the joy of thousands, flying from the top of Nelson’s Pillar. Dressed quickly — breakfasted I don’t know how — job coach
punctual: crowds in motion even at nine o’clock in the streets: tide flowing all one way to Belvidere Gardens, lent by the proprietor for the occasion: called at Sneyd’s lodgings in Anne Street: he and William gone: drove on; when we came near Belvidere such strings of carriages, such crowds of people on the road and on the raised footpath, there was no stirring: troops lined the road at each side: guard with officers at each entrance to prevent mischief; but unfortunately there were only two entrances, not nearly enough for such a confluence of people. Most imprudently we and several others got out of our carriages upon the raised footpath, in hopes of getting immediately at the garden door, which was within two yards of us, but nothing I ever felt was equal to the pressure of the crowd: they closed over our little heads, I thought we must have been flattened, and the breath squeezed out of our bodies. My father held Harriet fast, I behind him held Fanny with such a grasp! and dragged her on with a force I did not know I possessed. I really thought your children would never see you again with all their bones whole, and I cannot tell you what I suffered for ten minutes. My father, quite pale, calling with a stentor voice to the sentinels. A fat woman nearly separated me from Fanny. My father fairly kicked off the terrace a man who was intent upon nothing but an odious bag of cakes which he held close to his breast, swearing and pushing. Before us were Mrs. Smyley and Mr. Smyley, with a lady he was protecting. Unable to protect anybody, he looked more frightened than if he had lost a hundred causes: the lady continually saying, “Let me back! let me back! if I could once get to my carriage!”

  The tide carried us on to the door. An admirable Scotch officer, who was mounting guard with a drawn sword, his face dropping perspiration, exclaimed at the sight of Harriet, “Oh the child! take care of that child! she will be crushed to death!” He made a soldier put his musket across the doorway, so as to force a place for her to creep under: quick as lightning in she darted, and Fanny and I and my father after her. All was serene, uncrowded, and fresh within the park.