Social success did not turn her head: —
Certainly no people can have seen more of the world than we have done in the last three months. By seeing the world I mean seeing varieties of characters and manners, and being behind the scenes of life in many different societies and families. The constant chorus of our moral as we drive home together at night is, “How happy we are to be so fond of each other! How happy we are to be independent of all we see here! How happy that we have our dear home to return to at last!”
Her sisters told on their return how readily Miss Edgeworth would quit the company of the greatest people of the day, to superintend their dress or arrange some pleasure for them. “We often wondered,” they said, “what her admirers would say, after all the profound remarks and brilliant witticisms they had listened to, if they heard all her delightful nonsense with us.”
The sisters’ gay life continued without intermission, only varied now and then by visits to French country houses. Among the most agreeable people they met Miss Edgeworth numbered some Russians and Poles. At the house of the Princess Potemkin she first made wondering acquaintance with, what is now fortunately a matter of course, the more refined mode of serving dinner known as à la Russe. She met, too, Prince Rostopchin, the man who burned Moscow by first setting fire to his own house: —
I never saw a more striking Calmuck countenance. From his conversation as well as from his actions I should think him a man of great strength of character. Speaking of the Russians, he compared their civilization to a naked man looking at himself in a gilt-framed mirror, and he told an anecdote that illustrated the perfunctory method of government. The Governor of Siberia lived at Petersburg and never went near his Government. One day the Emperor, in presence of this Governor and Rostopchin, was boasting of his far-sightedness. “Commend me,” said Rostopchin, “to M. le Gouverneur, who sees so well from Petersburg to Siberia.”
At a breakfast at Camille Jordain’s were assembled three of the most distinguished of the party who called themselves Les Doctrinaires, and alleged that they were more attached to measures than to men: —
These three doctrinaires were Casimir Perier, Royer Collard and Benjamin Constant, who is, I believe, of a more violent party. I do not like him at all; his countenance, voice, manner and conversation are all disagreeable to me. He is a fair, “whithky” looking man, very near-sighted, with spectacles which seemed to pinch his nose. He pokes out his chin to keep his spectacles on, and yet looks over the top of his spectacles, squinching up his eyes, so that you cannot see your way into his mind. Then he speaks through his nose and with a lisp, strangely contrasting with the vehemence of his emphasis. He does not give me any confidence in the sincerity of his patriotism, nor any high idea of his talents, though he seems to have a mighty high idea of them himself. He has been well called Le Héros des Brochures. We sat beside one another, and I think felt a mutual antipathy. On the other side of me was Royer Collard, suffering with toothache and swelled face; but notwithstanding the distortion of the swelling, the natural expression of his countenance and the strength and sincerity of his soul made their way, and the frankness of his character and plain superiority of his talents were manifest in five minutes’ conversation.
In June Miss Edgeworth and her sisters left Paris for a tour in Switzerland, visiting their friends the Moilliets, who lived at Pregny, near Geneva. Their house, which had formerly belonged to Josephine, commanded a superb view of the lake and of Mont Blanc. It was a surprise to Miss Edgeworth to find how much she was impressed with the beauty of the scenery about her: —
I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life — a new idea, a new feeling, standing alone in the mind.
Geneva was at that time enjoying what has been termed its Augustan age. An unusual number of distinguished persons resided there, and it was besides largely resorted to by eminent men and women from all lands, most of whom Miss Edgeworth met at the house of her host. Besides, Monsieur Pictet and Monsieur Dumont, these old, faithful friends, were also domiciled at Geneva, and strove to do the honors of the place. Among temporary residents were such men and women as Dr. and Mrs. Marcet, Arago, De Candolle, the botanist, Freiherr von Stein, Madame Necker de Saussure, and Sismondi. They also met Bonstetten, the poet Gray’s youthful friend, then an old man, who spoke with enthusiasm of Madame de Staël.
This mixture of persons from all parts of the world gave a piquancy to the reunions that were held at Geneva. Sometimes the guests met in the evening at a house in town, sometimes at breakfast in the different country villas in all the freshness of the sweet Swiss morning, sometimes by moonlight on lawns sloping down to the lake; when they would sit under trees or stroll about, while tea and ices and the famous varieties of Geneva cakes were handed round. It was at one of these evening assemblies that Miss Edgeworth, while talking to De Candolle in her most brilliant strain, attracted a crowd five deep.
Several short excursions into the lower Alpine regions were made from Geneva by the sisters and their friends; but though Miss Edgeworth enjoyed the beauties of nature beyond her expectations, she yet, as before in her letters, mentions persons and matters of intellectual interest more frequently than scenery. It was a keen gratification to her that M. Dumont spoke well of the now published memoirs. She cared more for this than for the many compliments that were paid to herself, only a few of which she modestly records, and then only because she knows they will please the dear ones at home. At Coppet the party breakfasted with M. de Staël, who showed them all the rooms once inhabited by his mother, which Miss Edgeworth “could not regard as common rooms; they have a classical power over the mind.” M. de Staël told her —
That his mother never gave any work to the public in the form in which she had originally composed it. She changed the arrangement and expression of her thoughts with such facility, and was so little attached to her own first views of the subject, that often a work was completely remodeled by her while passing through the press. Her father disliked to see her make any formal preparation for writing when she was young, so that she used to write often on the corner of the chimney-piece or on a pasteboard held in her hand, and always in the room with others, for her father could not bear her to be out of the room, and this habit of writing without preparation she preserved ever afterwards.
M. de Staël told me of a curious interview he had with Bonaparte when he was enraged with his mother, who had published remarks on his government, concluding with “Eh bien! vous avez raison aussi. Je conçois qu’un fils doit toujours faire la defense de sa mère, mais enfin, si monsieur veut écrire des libelles, il faut aller en Angleterre. Ou bien s’il cherche la gloire c’est en Angleterre qu’il faut aller. C’est l’Angleterre, ou la France — il n’y a que ces deux pays en Europe — dans le monde.”
During her absence abroad Miss Edgeworth had revised the manuscript of the latter portion of Rosamond and sent it home to press. At the eleventh hour her publisher discovered that there was not enough material to complete two volumes, and urged her to supply more copy without delay. “I was a little provoked,” she writes on first hearing the news, “but this feeling lasted but a moment, and my mind fixed on what is to be done. It is by no means necessary for me to be at home or in any particular place to invent or to write.” Instantly she set to work, and in the midst of all social attractions and distractions around her she wrote the two additional chapters called The Bracelet of Memory and Blind Kate.
Late in October the Misses Edgeworth left Switzerland for Paris, visiting Lyons on their way. The town had a special interest for Miss Edgeworth because of her father’s early residence there. By the end of October they were once more settled at Paris in a floor to themselves, with a valet de place and a femme de chambre. Another gay three months followed, seeing old friends and making new ones: —
We have seen Mademoiselle Mar
s twice, or thrice rather, in the Mariage de Figaro, and in the little pieces of Le jaloux sans amour and La jeunesse de Henri Cinq, and admire her exceedingly. En petit comité the other night at the Duchesse d’Escars, a discussion took place between the Duchesse de la Force, Marmont and Pozzo di Borgo on the bon et mauvais ton of different expressions; bonne société is an expression bourgeoise. You may say bonne compagnie or la haute société. “Violà des nuances,” as Madame d’Escars said. Such a wonderful jabbering as these grandees made about these small matters! It puts me in mind of a conversation in the World on good company, which we all used to admire.
In December the travellers were back again in London, but several more visits were paid before they returned to Ireland. Thus they halted at Clifton to see Miss Edgeworth’s sister Emmeline, who was married there, and stayed at Bowood, Easton Grey, Badminton and various other houses, in all of which they met with a warm welcome. Beloved Aunt Ruxton, too, had to be seen on the way home. It was March before the sisters reached Edgeworthstown, after not quite a year’s absence; a year that seemed to Miss Edgeworth like a delightful dream, full of Alps and glaciers and cascades and Mont Blanc, and “troops of acquaintances in splendid succession and visionary confusion” — a dream of which the sober certainty of happiness remained, assuring her that all that had passed had been no dream, but a reality.
CHAPTER XII. THE MEMOIRS PUBLISHED. — 1821 TO 1825.
The Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth had been published during Miss Edgeworth’s stay on the Continent. After all the anxiety she had felt while preparing the work for the press, she was now able to write to her friends at home: —
You would scarcely believe, my dear friends, the calm of mind and the sort of satisfied resignation I feel as to my father’s life. I suppose the two years of doubt and extreme anxiety that I felt exhausted all my power of doubting. I know that I have done my very best, I know that I have done my duty, and I firmly believe that if my dear father could see the whole, he would be satisfied with what I have done.
Still she was sensitive to what those said who had known and loved him; and though Mrs. Ruxton had gone through the manuscript, it was a satisfaction to her to hear that on seeing the work in print she had not altered her views on it. She wrote: —
The irremediable words once past the press, I knew that the happiness of my life was at stake. Even if all the rest of the world had praised it and you had been dissatisfied, how miserable I should have been!
The world was not so lenient in its criticism. It failed to see what right the work had to exist; it acquiesced in what Miss Edgeworth had felt, that she of all persons was the least fitted to be the biographer of the man she so blindly adored.
The first volume is entirely Mr. Edgeworth’s own writing, the second is hers; she takes up the narrative on his final removal to Ireland. Although written in his heavy-footed, stilted style, that broke forth now and again into comic pomposity, of the two his is the more entertaining, for he tells many stories that do not concern himself alone. Thus, though he is by no means a graphic writer, we can gather from his pages some notion of the little provincial Mutual Admiration Society that was gathered together at Lichfield under the ægis of Dr. Darwin; of the nature of society in Ireland during his youth; of the state of mechanical science in England. But there is also much that is puerile, some few things that are in bad taste; and the book contains, besides, some really careless blunders with regard to events for which the data were within the reach of all. In Miss Edgeworth’s portion it is easily seen that she does not write freely. Even her style, usually more flexible and spontaneous, has caught a reflection from his, while the position in which she stood to the object of her work hindered her from exercising that keen, critical judgment which she possessed, and which would certainly have come to the fore had the subject of her work been a stranger to her. Only while writing about such events as do not immediately deal with her father is she herself. Probably the very anxiety she felt regarding the book was a dim, unformulated consciousness that she had not made it all she desired. The press spoke but coolly. The Quarterly Review published a somewhat savage article; indeed, with so much bitterness was it written, that though one is at all times inclined to deprecate the theory of personal enmity, so dear to the wounded vanity of authors, it does suggest the possibility of having been the outcome of malice. But more likely still is it that Mr. Edgeworth’s boastful egotism so irritated the writer that he wrote what certainly could not fail to be cruelly wounding to a family who regarded their hero as perfect in all respects. After every allowance has been made for this acrimonious tone (no rare feature in either of the quarterlies in the days of their bumptious youth), the attack certainly contained much that was warranted by circumstances. The writer had not impugned thoughtlessly or ignorantly. He put a sure finger on the contradictions and inaccuracies that occurred in Mr. Edgeworth’s narrative, and he gave chapter and verse for his objections. Such criticism, though severe, could not be called wholly unjust. The article, however, raised a perfect storm of indignation among the Edgeworths’ Friends. Some called it wicked, others only denounced it as silly. Miss Edgeworth, being in France, was out of the way of seeing the Quarterly, and after what she had heard, she simply and wisely resolved never to read it. Indeed, she took the whole matter more philosophically than her friends, and hastened to beg her dearest Aunt Ruxton never to lose another night’s sleep or another moment’s thought on the Quarterly Review. And certainly, whatever the reviewers might say, Miss Edgeworth had the satisfaction before the year was out of preparing a second edition, and in her seventy-seventh year a third was called for. For this third edition she re-wrote nearly the whole of her portion. With her habitual modesty she assumed that it was her part of the work that had been found long and heavy. Nothing is more touching, more lovable, than the modesty of this woman, so lauded, honored and praised by all her generation that she could not remain ignorant of her fame. But simplicity was the very foundation of her character, and the woman always went before the author.
On her return from France Miss Edgeworth resumed the quiet, dearly-loved routine of home-life. She was always glad to get home again, even now, and to be with the stepmother, sisters and brothers she loved so tenderly. Here is a pretty picture of the daily course of their existence: —
So you like to hear of all our little doings; so I will tell you that, about eight o’clock, Fanny being by that time up and dressed, and at her little table, Harriet comes and reads to me Madame de Sevigné’s letters, of which I never tire; and I almost envy Fanny and Harriet the pleasure of reading them for the first time. After breakfast I take my little table into Lucy’s room and write there for an hour: she likes to have me in her room, though she only hears the scribble, scribble; she is generally reading at that hour or doing Margaret’s delight — algebra. I am doing the sequel to Frank. Walking, reading and talking fill the rest of the day. I do not read much; it tires my eyes, and I have not yet finished the Life of Wesley. I think it a most curious, entertaining and instructive book. A life of Pitt by the Bishop of Winchester is coming out; he wrote to Murray about it, who asked his friends, “Who is George Winton, who writes to me about publishing Pitt’s life?”
Soon after his return from enforced exile Lovell Edgeworth had established a school at Edgeworthstown, after a plan proposed by his father, in which boys of all classes and creeds should be educated together. It succeeded admirably, and was a source of interest and occupation not only to its founder, but to Miss Edgeworth, who always threw herself with ardor into everything that interested those about her.
The lives of women are rarely eventful, and Miss Edgeworth’s was perhaps less so than that of most. Her existence moved in the quiet circle of home, and like most women she was much and often occupied with what she happily calls “the necessary business of life, which must be done behind the scenes.” The monotony of her existence was only broken by visits to and from friends, and by receiving letters, events in those days of f
ew newspapers, when letters were longer, more detailed than they are now, when they were sent round to a whole circle for perusal, when those who were abroad penned long descriptions of all they saw in what are now beaten tracks familiar to most persons as Piccadilly. The even course of life at Edgeworthstown certainly did not furnish much material for letters except to those interested in the well-being of the numerous members of the household; and Miss Edgeworth’s are mostly filled with domestic details of this nature. In August, 1821, she writes: —
What do you think is my employment out of doors, and what it has been this week past? My garden? No such elegant thing; but making a gutter! a sewer and a pathway in the street of Edgeworthstown; and I do declare I am as much interested about it as I ever was in writing anything in my life. We have never here yet found it necessary to have recourse to public contribution for the poor, but it is necessary to give some assistance to the laboring class; and I find that making the said gutter and pathway will employ twenty men for three weeks.
In the late autumn she yielded to the invitations of her many English friends to spend some time among them. She took with her her former travelling companions, for without some of her family Miss Edgeworth felt as if she had left too many pieces of herself behind, and could not enjoy anything thoroughly. Once more the sisters passed some interesting and agreeable months, visiting at the houses of various friends; and during the spring and winter months hiring a house of their own in London, where they entertained and were entertained. They lived in a whirl of town dissipation, knowing six different and totally independent sets: “scientific, literary, political, travelled, artist, and the fine fashionable of various shades.” Miss Edgeworth found the different styles of conversation very entertaining, and sent home bright pictures of the various things she saw and heard.
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