A Book of Sibyls Part 4

In this Claude-Lorraine-plum-tinted valley stood the house which Mr. Day had taken, and where Mr. Edgeworth had come on an eventful visit. Miss Seward herself lived with her parents in the Bishop's palace at Lichfield.

There was also a younger sister, 'Miss Sally,' who died as a girl, and another very beautiful young lady their friend, by name Honora Sneyd, placed under Mrs. Seward's care. She was the heroine of Major Andre's unhappy romance. He too lived at Lichfield with his mother, and his hopeless love gives a tragic reality to this by-gone holiday of youth and merry-making. As one reads the old letters and memoirs the echoes of laughter reach us. One can almost see the young folks all coming together out of the Cathedral Close, where so much of their time was pa.s.sed; the beautiful Honora, surrounded by friends and adorers, chaperoned by the graceful Muse her senior, also much admired, and much made of. Thomas Day is perhaps striding after them in silence with keen critical glances; his long black locks flow unpowdered down his back. In contrast to him comes his brilliant and dressy companion, Mr. Edgeworth, who talks so agreeably. I can imagine little Sabrina, Day's adopted foundling, of whom so many stories have been told, following shyly at her guardian's side in her simple dress and childish beauty, and Andre's young handsome face turned towards Miss Sneyd. So they pa.s.s on happy and contented in each other's company, Honora in the midst, beautiful, stately, reserved: she too was one of those not destined to be old.

Miss Seward seems to have loved this friend with a very sincere and admiring affection, and to have bitterly mourned her early death. Her letters abound in apostrophes to the lost Honora. But perhaps the poor Muse expected almost too much from friendship, too much from life.

She expected, as we all do at times, that her friends should be not themselves but her, that they should lead not their lives but her own.

So much at least one may gather from the various phases of her style and correspondence, and her complaints of Honora's estrangement and subsequent coldness. Perhaps, also, Miss Seward's many vagaries and sentiments may have frozen Honora's sympathies. Miss Seward was all asterisks and notes of exclamation. Honora seems to have forced feeling down to its most scrupulous expression. She never lived to be softened by experience, to suit herself to others by degrees: with great love she also inspired awe and a sort of surprise. One can imagine her pointing the moral of the purple jar, as it was told long afterwards by her stepdaughter, then a little girl playing at her own mother's knee in her nursery by the river.

People in the days of shilling postage were better correspondents than they are now when we have to be content with pennyworths of news and of affectionate intercourse. Their descriptions and many details bring all the chief characters vividly before us, and carry us into the hearts and the pocket-books of the little society at Lichfield as it then was. The town must have been an agreeable sojourn in those days for people of some pretension and small performance. The inhabitants of Lichfield seem actually to have read each other's verses, and having done so to have taken the trouble to sit down and write out their raptures. They were a pleasant lively company living round about the old cathedral towers, meeting in the Close or the adjacent gardens or the hospitable Palace itself. Here the company would sip tea, talk mild literature of their own and good criticism at second hand, quoting Dr. Johnson to one another with the familiarity of townsfolk. From Erasmus Darwin, too, they must have gained something of vigour and originality.

With all her absurdities Miss Seward had some real critical power and appreciation; and some of her lines are very pretty.[1] An 'Ode to the Sun' is only what might have been expected from this Lichfield Corinne.

Her best known productions are an 'Elegy on Captain Cook,' a 'Monody on Major Andre,' whom she had known from her early youth; and there is a poem, 'Louisa,' of which she herself speaks very highly. But even more than her poetry did she pique herself upon her epistolary correspondence.

It must have been well worth while writing letters when they were not only prized by the writer and the recipients, but commented on by their friends in after years. 'Court Dewes, Esq.,' writes, after five years, for copies of Miss Seward's epistles to Miss Rogers and Miss Weston, of which the latter begins:--'Soothing and welcome to me, dear Sophia, is the regret you express for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we have recently pa.s.sed together in this ancient and embowered mansion! I had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which you vanished. How p.r.o.ne are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly coercion of employment at the very instant in which it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy!' Then follows a sprightly attack before which Johnson may have quailed indeed.

'Is the Fe-fa-fum of literature that snuffs afar the fame of his brother authors, and thirsts for its destruction, to be allowed to gallop unmolested over the fields of criticism? A few pebbles from the well-springs of truth and eloquence are all that is wanted to bring the might of his envy low.' This celebrated letter, which may stand as a specimen of the whole six volumes, concludes with the following apostrophe:--'Virtuous friendship, how pure, how sacred are thy delights! Sophia, thy mind is capable of tasting them in all their poignance: against how many of life's incidents may that capacity be considered as a counterpoise!'

Footnote 1: In a notice of Miss Seward in the _Annual Register_, just after her death in 1809, the writer, who seems to have known her, says:--'Conscious of ability, she freely displayed herself in a manner equally remote from annoyance and affectation.... Her errors arose from a glowing imagination joined to an excessive sensibility, cherished instead of repressed by early habits. It is understood that she has left the whole of her works to Mr. Scott, the northern poet, with a view to their publication with her life and posthumous pieces.'

There were constant rubs, which are not to be wondered at, between Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, who, though a poet, was also a singularly witty, downright man, outspoken and humorous. The lady admires his genius, bitterly resents his sarcasms; of his celebrated work, the 'Botanic Garden,' she says, 'It is a string of poetic brilliants, and they are of the first water, but the eye will be apt to want the intersticial black velvet to give effect to their l.u.s.tre.' In later days, notwithstanding her 'elegant language,' as Mr. Charles Darwin calls it, she said several spiteful things of her old friend, but they seem more prompted by private pique than malice.

If Miss Seward was the Minerva and Dr. Darwin the Jupiter of the Lichfield society, its philosopher was Thomas Day, of whom Miss Seward's description is so good that I cannot help one more quotation:--

'Powder and fine clothes were at that time the appendages of gentlemen; Mr. Day wore not either. He was tall and stooped in the shoulders, full made but not corpulent, and in his meditative and melancholy air a degree of awkwardness and dignity were blended.' She then compares him with his guest, Mr. Edgeworth. 'Less graceful, less amusing, less brilliant than Mr. E., but more highly imaginative, more cla.s.sical, and a deeper reasoner; strict integrity, energetic friendship, open-handed generosity, and diffusive charity, greatly overbalanced on the side of virtue, the tincture of misanthropic gloom and proud contempt of common life society.' Wright, of Derby, painted a full-length picture of Mr.

Day in 1770. 'Mr. Day looks upward enthusiastically, meditating on the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand ... a flash of lightning plays in his hair and illuminates the contents of the volume.'

'Dr. Darwin,' adds Miss Seward, 'sat to Mr. Wright about the same period--_that_ was a simply contemplative portrait of the most perfect resemblance.'

III.

Maria must have been three years old this eventful Christmas time when her father, leaving his wife in Berkshire, came to stay with Mr. Day at Lichfield, and first made the acquaintance of Miss Seward and her poetic circle. Mr. Day, who had once already been disappointed in love, and whose romantic scheme of adopting his foundlings and of educating one of them to be his wife, has often been described, had brought one of the maidens to the house he had taken at Lichfield. This was Sabrina, as he had called her. Lucretia, having been found troublesome, had been sent off with a dowry to be apprenticed to a milliner. Sabrina was a charming little girl of thirteen; everybody liked her, especially the friendly ladies at the Palace, who received her with constant kindness, as they did Mr. Day himself and his visitor. What Miss Seward thought of Sabrina's education I do not know. The poor child was to be taught to despise luxury, to ignore fear, to be superior to pain. She appears, however, to have been very fond of her benefactor, but to have constantly provoked him by starting and screaming whenever he fired uncharged pistols at her skirts, or dropped hot melted sealing-wax on her bare arms. She is described as lovely and artless, not fond of books, incapable of understanding scientific problems, or of keeping the imaginary and terrible secrets with which her guardian used to try her nerves. I do not know when it first occurred to him that Honora Sneyd was all that his dreams could have imagined. One day he left Sabrina under many restrictions, and returning unexpectedly found her wearing some garment or handkerchief of which he did not approve, and discarded her on the spot and for ever. Poor Sabrina was evidently not meant to mate and soar with philosophical eagles. After this episode, she too was despatched, to board with an old lady, in peace for a time, let us hope, and in tranquil mediocrity.

Mr. Edgeworth approved of this arrangement; he had never considered that Sabrina was suited to his friend. But being taken in due time to call at the Palace, he was charmed with Miss Seward, and still more by all he saw of Honora; comparing her, alas! in his mind 'with all other women, and secretly acknowledging her superiority.' At first, he says, Miss Seward's brilliance overshadowed Honora, but very soon her merits grew upon the bystanders.

Mr. Edgeworth carefully concealed his feelings except from his host, who was beginning himself to contemplate a marriage with Miss Sneyd. Mr.

Day presently proposed formally in writing for the hand of the lovely Honora, and Mr. Edgeworth was to take the packet and to bring back the answer; and being married himself, and out of the running, he appears to have been unselfishly anxious for his friend's success. In the packet Mr. Day had written down the conditions to which he should expect his wife to subscribe. She would have to begin at once by giving up all luxuries, amenities, and intercourse with the world, and promise to continue to seclude herself entirely in his company. Miss Sneyd does not seem to have kept Mr. Edgeworth waiting long while she wrote her answer decidedly saying that she could not admit the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions, nor the necessity for 'seclusion from society to preserve female virtue.' Finding that Honora absolutely refused to change her way of life, Mr. Day went into a fever, for which Dr. Darwin bled him. Nor did he recover until another Miss Sneyd, Elizabeth by name, made her appearance in the Close.

Mr. Edgeworth, who was of a lively and active disposition, had introduced archery among the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and he describes a fine summer evening's entertainment pa.s.sed in agreeable sports, followed by dancing and music, in the course of which Honora's sister, Miss Elizabeth, appeared for the first time on the Lichfield scene, and immediately joined in the country dance. There is a vivid description of the two sisters in Mr. Edgeworth's memoirs, of the beautiful and distinguished Honora, loving science, serious, eager, reserved; of the more lovely but less graceful Elizabeth, with less of energy, more of humour and of social gifts than her sister. Elizabeth Sneyd was, says Edgeworth, struck by Day's eloquence, by his unbounded generosity, by his scorn of wealth. His educating a young girl for his wife seemed to her romantic and extraordinary; and she seems to have thought it possible to yield to the evident admiration she had aroused in him. But, whether in fun or in seriousness, she represented to him that he could not with justice decry accomplishments and graces that he had not acquired. She wished him to go abroad for a time to study to perfect himself in all that was wanting; on her own part she promised not to go to Bath, London, or any public place of amus.e.m.e.nt until his return, and to read certain books which he recommended.

Meanwhile Mr. Edgeworth had made no secret of his own feeling for Honora to Mr. Day, 'who with all the eloquence of virtue and of friendship'

urged him to fly, to accompany him abroad, and to shun dangers he could not hope to overcome. Edgeworth consented to this proposal, and the two friends started for Paris, visiting Rousseau on their way. They spent the winter at Lyons, as it was a place where excellent masters of all sorts were to be found; and here Mr. Day, with excess of zeal--

put himself (says his friend) to every species of torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to compel his Antigallican limbs, in spite of their natural rigidity, to dance and fence, and manage the _great horse_. To perform his promise to Miss E. Sneyd honourably, he gave up seven or eight hours of the day to these exercises, for which he had not the slightest taste, and for which, except horsemanship, he manifested the most sovereign contempt. It was astonishing to behold the energy with which he persevered in these pursuits. I have seen him stand between two boards which reached from the ground higher than his knees: these boards were adjusted with screws so as barely to permit him to bend his knees, and to rise up and sink down. By these means Mr.

Huise proposed to force Mr. Day's knees outwards; but s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g was in vain. He succeeded in torturing his patient; but original formation and inveterate habit resisted all his endeavours at personal improvement. I could not help pitying my philosophic friend, pent up in durance vile for hours together, with his feet in the stocks, a book in his hand, and contempt in his heart.

Mr. Edgeworth meanwhile lodged himself 'in excellent and agreeable apartments,' and occupied himself with engineering. He is certainly curiously outspoken in his memoirs; and explains that the first Mrs.

Edgeworth, Maria's mother, with many merits, was of a complaining disposition, and did not make him so happy at home as a woman of a more lively temper might have succeeded in doing. He was tempted, he said, to look for happiness elsewhere than in his home. Perhaps domestic affairs may have been complicated by a warm-hearted but troublesome little son, who at Day's suggestion had been brought up upon the Rousseau system, and was in consequence quite unmanageable, and a worry to everybody.

Poor Mrs. Edgeworth's complainings were not to last very long. She joined her husband at Lyons, and after a time, having a dread of lying-in abroad, returned home to die in her confinement, leaving four little children. Maria could remember being taken into her mother's room to see her for the last time.

Mr. Edgeworth hurried back to England, and was met by his friend Thomas Day, who had preceded him, and whose own suit does not seem to have prospered meanwhile. But though notwithstanding all his efforts Thomas Day had not been fortunate in securing Elizabeth Sneyd's affections, he could still feel for his friend. His first words were to tell Edgeworth that Honora was still free, more beautiful than ever; while Virtue and Honour commanded it, he had done all he could to divide them; now he wished to be the first to promote their meeting. The meeting resulted in an engagement, and Mr. Edgeworth and Miss Sneyd were married within four months by the benevolent old canon in the Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral.

Mrs. Seward wept; Miss Seward, 'notwithstanding some imaginary dissatisfaction about a bridesmaid,' was really glad of the marriage, we are told; and the young couple immediately went over to Ireland.

IV.

Though her life was so short, Honora Edgeworth seems to have made the deepest impression on all those she came across. Over little Maria she had the greatest influence. There is a pretty description of the child standing lost in wondering admiration of her stepmother's beauty, as she watched her soon after her marriage dressing at her toilet-table. Little Maria's feeling for her stepmother was very deep and real, and the influence of those few years lasted for a lifetime. Her own exquisite carefulness she always ascribed to it, and to this example may also be attributed her habits of order and self-government, her life of reason and deliberate judgment.

The seven years of Honora's married life seem to have been very peaceful and happy. She shared her husband's pursuits, and wished for nothing outside her own home. She began with him to write those little books which were afterwards published. It is just a century ago since she and Mr. Edgeworth planned the early histories of Harry and Lucy and Frank; while Mr. Day began his 'Sandford and Merton,' which at first was intended to appear at the same time, though eventually the third part was not published till 1789.

As a girl of seventeen Honora Sneyd had once been threatened with consumption. After seven years of married life the cruel malady again declared itself; and though Dr. Darwin did all that human resource could do, and though every tender care surrounded her, the poor young lady rapidly sank. There is a sad, prim, most affecting letter, addressed to little Maria by the dying woman shortly before the end; and then comes that one written by the father, which is to tell her that all is over.

If Mr. Edgeworth was certainly unfortunate in losing again and again the happiness of his home, he was more fortunate than most people in being able to rally from his grief. He does not appear to have been unfaithful in feeling. Years after, Edgeworth, writing to console Mrs. Day upon her husband's death, speaks in the most touching way of all he had suffered when Honora died, and of the struggle he had made to regain his hold of life. This letter is in curious contrast to that one written at the time, as he sits by poor Honora's deathbed; it reads strangely cold and irrelevant in these days when people are not ashamed of feeling or of describing what they feel. 'Continue, my dear daughter'--he writes to Maria, who was then thirteen years old--'the desire which you feel of becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character, with such an understanding as yours, necessarily ensue; but true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection, and from being thoroughly convinced of what experience in general teaches too late, that to be happy we must be good.'

'Such a letter, written at such a time,' says the kind biographer, 'made the impression it was intended to convey; and the wish to act up to the high opinion her father had formed of her character became an exciting and controlling power over the whole of Maria's future life.' On her deathbed, Honora urged her husband to marry again, and a.s.sured him that the woman to suit him was her sister Elizabeth. Her influence was so great upon them both that, although Elizabeth was attached to some one else, and Mr. Edgeworth believed her to be little suited to himself, they were presently engaged and married, not without many difficulties.

The result proved how rightly Honora had judged.

It was to her father that Maria owed the suggestion of her first start in literature. Immediately after Honora's death he tells her to write a tale about the length of a 'Spectator,' on the subject of generosity.

'It must be taken from history or romance, must be sent the day se'nnight after you receive this; and I beg you will take some pains about it.' A young gentleman from Oxford was also set to work to try his powers on the same subject, and Mr. William Sneyd, at Lichfield, was to be judge between the two performances. He gave his verdict for Maria: 'An excellent story and very well written: but where's the generosity?'

This, we are told, became a sort of proverb in the Edgeworth family.

The little girl meanwhile had been sent to school to a certain Mrs.

Lataffiere, where she was taught to use her fingers, to write a lovely delicate hand, to work white satin waistcoats for her papa. She was then removed to a fashionable establishment in Upper Wimpole Street, where, says her stepmother, 'she underwent all the usual tortures of backboards, iron collars, and dumb-bells, with the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out the muscles and increase the growth,--a signal failure in her case.' (Miss Edgeworth was always a very tiny person.) There is a description given of Maria at this school of hers of the little maiden absorbed in her book with all the other children at play, while she sits in her favourite place in front of a carved oak cabinet, quite unconscious of the presence of the romping girls all about her.

Hers was a very interesting character as it appears in the Memoirs--sincere, intelligent, self-contained, and yet dependent; methodical, observant. Sometimes as one reads of her in early life one is reminded of some of the personal characteristics of the writer who perhaps of all writers least resembles Miss Edgeworth in her art--of Charlotte Bronte, whose books are essentially of the modern and pa.s.sionate school, but whose strangely mixed character seemed rather to belong to the orderly and neatly ruled existence of Queen Charlotte's reign. People's lives as they really are don't perhaps vary very much, but people's lives as they seem to be a.s.suredly change with the fashions.

Miss Edgeworth and Miss Bronte were both Irishwomen, who have often, with all their outcome, the timidity which arises from quick and sensitive feeling. But the likeness does not go very deep. Maria, whose diffidence and timidity were personal, but who had a firm and unalterable belief in family traditions, may have been saved from some danger of prejudice and limitation by a most fortunate though trying illness which affected her eyesight, and which caused her to be removed from her school with its monstrous elegancies to the care of Mr. Day, that kindest and sternest of friends.

This philosopher in love had been bitterly mortified when the lively Elizabeth Sneyd, instead of welcoming his return, could not conceal her laughter at his uncouth elegancies, and confessed that, on the whole, she had liked him better as he was before. He forswore Lichfield and marriage, and went abroad to forget. He turned his thoughts to politics; he wrote pamphlets on public subjects and letters upon slavery. His poem of the 'Dying Negro' had been very much admired. Miss Hannah More speaks of it in her Memoirs. The subject of slavery was much before people's minds, and Day's influence had not a little to do with the rising indignation.

Among Day's readers and admirers was one person who was destined to have a most important influence upon his life. By a strange chance his extraordinary ideal was destined to be realised; and a young lady, good, accomplished, rich, devoted, who had read his books, and sympathised with his generous dreams, was ready not only to consent to his strange conditions, but to give him her whole heart and find her best happiness in his society and in carrying out his experiments and fancies. She was Miss Esther Milnes, of Yorkshire, an heiress; and though at first Day hesitated and could not believe in the reality of her feeling, her constancy and singleness of mind were not to be resisted, and they were married at Bath in 1778. We hear of Mr. and Mrs. Day spending the first winter of their married life at Hampstead, and of Mrs. Day, thickly shodden, walking with him in a snowstorm on the common, and ascribing her renewed vigour to her husband's Spartan advice.

Day and his wife eventually established themselves at Anningsley, near Chobham. He had insisted upon settling her fortune upon herself, but Mrs. Day a.s.sisted him in every way, and sympathised in his many schemes and benevolent ventures. When he neglected to make a window to the dressing-room he built for her, we hear of her uncomplainingly lighting her candles; to please him she worked as a servant in the house, and all their large means were bestowed in philanthropic and charitable schemes.

Mr. Edgeworth quotes his friend's reproof to Mrs. Day, who was fond of music: 'Shall we beguile the time with the strains of a lute while our fellow-creatures are starving?' 'I am out of pocket every year about 300_l._ by the farm I keep,' Day writes his to his friend Edgeworth.

'The soil I have taken in hand, I am convinced, is one of the most completely barren in England.' He then goes on to explain his reasons for what he is about. 'It enables me to employ the poor, and the result of all my speculations about humanity is that the only way of benefiting mankind is to give them employment and make them earn their money.'

There is a pretty description of the worthy couple in their home dispensing help and benefits all round about, draining, planting, teaching, doctoring--nothing came amiss to them. Their chief friend and neighbour was Samuel Cobbett, who understood their plans, and sympathised in their efforts, which, naturally enough, were viewed with doubt and mistrust by most of the people round about. It was at Anningsley that Mr. Day finished 'Sandford and Merton,' begun many years before. His death was very sudden, and was brought about by one of his own benevolent theories. He used to maintain that kindness alone could tame animals; and he was killed by a fall from a favourite colt which he was breaking in. Mrs. Day never recovered the shock. She lived two years hidden in her home, absolutely inconsolable, and then died and was laid by her husband's side in the churchyard at Wargrave by the river.

It was to the care of these worthy people that little Maria was sent when she was ill, and she was doctored by them both physically and morally. 'Bishop Berkeley's tar-water was still considered a specific for all complaints,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'Mr. Day thought it would be of use to Maria's inflamed eyes, and he used to bring a large tumbler full of it to her every morning. She dreaded his "Now, Miss Maria, drink this." But there was, in spite of his stern voice, something of pity and sympathy in his countenance. His excellent library was open to her, and he directed her studies. His severe reasoning and uncompromising truth of mind awakened all her powers, and the questions he put to her and the working out of the answers, the necessity of perfect accuracy in all her words, suited the natural truth of her mind; and though such strictness was not agreeable, she even then perceived its advantage, and in after life was grateful for it.'

V.

We have seen how Miss Elizabeth Sneyd, who could not make up her mind to marry Mr. Day notwithstanding all he had gone through for her sake, had eventually consented to become Mr. Edgeworth's third wife. With this stepmother for many years to come Maria lived in an affectionate intimacy, only to be exceeded by that most faithful companionship which existed for fifty years between her and the lady from whose memoirs I quote.

It was about 1782 that Maria went home to live at Edgeworthtown with her father and his wife, with the many young brothers and sisters. The family was a large one, and already consisted of her own sisters, of Honora the daughter of Mrs. Honora, and Lovell her son. To these succeeded many others of the third generation; and two sisters of Mrs.

Edgeworth's, who also made their home at Edgeworthtown.

Maria had once before been there, "very young, but she was now old enough to be struck with the difference then so striking between Ireland and England." The tones and looks, the melancholy and the gaiety of the people, were so new and extraordinary to her that the delineations she long afterwards made of Irish character probably owe their life and truth to the impression made on her mind at this time as a stranger. Though it was June when they landed, there was snow on the roses she ran out to gather, and she felt altogether in a new and unfamiliar country.

She herself describes the feelings of the master of a family returning to an Irish home:--

Wherever he turned his eyes, in or out of his home, damp dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, finishing--all were wanting. The backyard and even the front lawn round the windows of the house were filled with loungers, followers, and pet.i.tioners; tenants, undertenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent were to have audience; and they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations, reciprocations, and quarrels each under each interminable.