A Book of Sibyls Part 5

Her account of her father's dealings with them is admirable:--

I was with him constantly, and I was amused and interested in seeing how he made his way through their complaints, pet.i.tions, and grievances with decision and despatch, he all the time in good humour with the people and they delighted with him, though he often rated them roundly when they stood before him perverse in litigation, helpless in procrastination, detected in cunning or convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character almost as soon as he understood theirs.

Mr. Edgeworth had in a very remarkable degree that power of ruling and administering which is one of the rarest of gifts. He seems to have shown great firmness and good sense in his conduct in the troubled times in which he lived. He saw to his own affairs, administered justice, put down middlemen as far as possible, reorganised the letting out of the estate. Unlike many of his neighbours, he was careful not to sacrifice the future to present ease of mind and of pocket. He put down rack-rents and bribes of every sort, and did his best to establish things upon a firm and lasting basis.

But if it was not possible even for Mr. Edgeworth to make such things all they should have been outside the house, the sketch given of the family life at home is very pleasant. The father lives in perfect confidence with his children, admitting them to his confidence, interesting them in his experiments, spending his days with them, consulting them. There are no reservations; he does his business in the great sitting-room, surrounded by his family. I have heard it described as a large ground-floor room, with windows to the garden and with two columns supporting the further end, by one of which Maria's writing-desk used to be placed--a desk which her father had devised for her, which used to be drawn out to the fireside when she worked. Does not Mr.

Edgeworth also mention in one of his letters a picture of Thomas Day hanging over a sofa against the wall? Books in plenty there were, we may be sure, and perhaps models of ingenious machines and different appliances for scientific work. Sir Henry Holland and Mr. Ticknor give a curious description of Mr. Edgeworth's many ingenious inventions. There were strange locks to the rooms and telegraphic despatches to the kitchen; clocks at the one side of the house were wound up by simply opening certain doors at the other end. It has been remarked that all Miss Edgeworth's heroes had a smattering of science. Several of her brothers inherited her father's turn for it. We hear of them raising steeples and establishing telegraphs in partnership with him. Maria shared of the family labours and used to help her father in the business connected with the estate, to a.s.sist him, also, to keep the accounts.

She had a special turn for accounts, and she was pleased with her exquisitely neat columns and by the accuracy with which her figures fell into their proper places. Long after her father's death this knowledge and experience enabled her to manage the estate for her eldest stepbrother, Mr. Lovell Edgeworth. She was able, at a time of great national difficulty and anxious crisis, to meet a storm in which many a larger fortune was wrecked.

But in 1782 she was a young girl only beginning life. Storms were not yet, and she was putting out her wings in the sunshine. Her father set her to translate 'Adele et Theodore,' by Madame de Genlis (she had a great facility for languages, and her French was really remarkable).

Holcroft's version of the book, however, appeared, and the Edgeworth translation was never completed. Mr. Day wrote a letter to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on the occasion. It seemed horrible to Mr. Day that a woman should appear in print.

It is possible that the Edgeworth family was no exception to the rule by which large and clever and animated families are apt to live in a certain atmosphere of their own. But, notwithstanding this strong family bias, few people can have seen more of the world, felt its temper more justly, or appreciated more fully the interesting varieties of people to be found in it than Maria Edgeworth. Within easy reach of Edgeworthtown were different agreeable and cultivated houses. There was Pakenham Hall with Lord Longford for its master; one of its daughters was the future d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington, 'who was always Kitty Pakenham for her old friends.' There at Castle Forbes also lived, I take it, more than one of the well-bred and delightful persons, out of 'Patronage,' and the 'Absentee,' who may, in real life, have borne the names of Lady Moira and Lady Granard. Besides, there were cousins and relations without number--Foxes, Ruxtons, marriages and intermarriages; and when the time came for occasional absences and expeditions from home, the circles seem to have spread incalculably in every direction. The Edgeworths appear to have been a genuinely sociable clan, interested in others and certainly interesting to them.

VI.

The first letter given in the Memoirs from Maria to her favourite aunt Ruxton is a very sad one, which tells of the early death of her sister Honora, a beautiful girl of fifteen, the only daughter of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, who died of consumption, as her mother had died. This letter, written in the dry phraseology of the time, is nevertheless full of feeling, above all for her father who was, as Maria says elsewhere, ever since she could think or feel, the first object and motive of her mind.

Mrs. Edgeworth describes her sister-in-law as follows:--

Mrs. Ruxton resembled her brother in the wit and vivacity of her mind and strong affections; her grace and charm of manner were such that a gentleman once said of her; 'If I were to see Mrs.

Ruxton in rags as a beggar woman sitting on the doorstep, I should say "Madam" to her.' 'To write to her Aunt Ruxton was, as long as she lived, Maria's greatest pleasure while away from her,' says Mrs. Edgeworth, 'and to be with her was a happiness she enjoyed with never flagging and supreme delight. Blackcastle was within a few hours' drive of Edgeworthtown, and to go to Blackcastle was the holiday of her life.'

Mrs. Edgeworth tells a story of Maria once staying at Blackcastle and tearing out the t.i.tle page of 'Belinda,' so that her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, read the book without any suspicion of the author. She was so delighted with it that she insisted on Maria listening to page after page, exclaiming 'Is not that admirably written?' 'Admirably read, I think,'

said Maria; until her aunt, quite provoked by her faint acquiescence, says, 'I am sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a rival author;' at which poor Maria burst into tears, and Mrs. Ruxton could never bear the book mentioned afterwards.

It was with Mrs. Ruxton that a little boy, born just after the death of the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' was left on the occasion of the departure of the Edgeworth family for Clifton, in 1792, where Mr.

Edgeworth spent a couple of years for the health of one of his sons. In July the poor little brother dies in Ireland. 'There does not, now that little Thomas is gone, exist even a person of the same name as Mr. Day,'

says Mr. Edgeworth, who concludes his letter philosophically, as the father of twenty children may be allowed to do, by expressing a hope that to his nurses, Mrs. Ruxton and her daughter, 'the remembrance of their own goodness will soon obliterate the painful impression of his miserable end.' During their stay at Clifton Richard Edgeworth, the eldest son, who had been brought up upon Rousseau's system, and who seems to have found the Old World too restricted a sphere for his energies, after going to sea and disappearing for some years, suddenly paid them a visit from South Carolina, where he had settled and married.

The young man was gladly welcomed by them all. He had been long separated from home, and he eventually died very young in America; but his sister always clung to him with fond affection, and when he left them to return home she seems to have felt his departure very much. 'Last Sat.u.r.day my poor brother Richard took leave of us to return to America. He has gone up to London with my father and mother, and is to sail from thence. We could not part from him without great pain and regret, for he made us all extremely fond of him.'

Notwithstanding these melancholy events, Maria Edgeworth seems to have led a happy busy life all this time among her friends, her relations, her many interests, her many fancies and facts, making much of the children, of whom she writes pleasant descriptions to her aunt.

'Charlotte is very engaging and promises to be handsome. Sneyd is, and promises everything. Henry will, I think, through life always do more than he promises. Little Honora is a sprightly blue-eyed child at nurse with a woman who is the picture of health and simplicity. Lovell is perfectly well. Doctor Darwin has paid him very handsome compliments on his lines on the Barbarini Vase in the first part of the "Botanic Garden."'

Mr. Edgeworth, however, found the time long at Clifton, though, as usual, he at once improved his opportunities, paid visits to his friends in London and elsewhere, and renewed many former intimacies and correspondences.

Maria also paid a visit to London, but the time had not come for her to enjoy society, and the extreme shyness of which Mrs. Edgeworth speaks made it pain to her to be in society in those early days. 'Since I have been away from home,' she writes, 'I have missed the society of my father, mother, and sisters more than I can express, and more than beforehand I could have thought possible. I long to see them all again.

Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand what an aching void is perfectly.' Very soon we hear of her at home again, 'scratching away at the Freeman family.' Mr. Edgeworth is reading aloud Gay's 'Trivia' among other things, which she recommends to her aunt. 'I had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved to read the same books with them at the same hour than to look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers.' There is another book, a new book for the children, mentioned about this time, 'Evenings at Home,' which they all admire immensely.

Miss Edgeworth was now about twenty-six, at an age when a woman's powers have fully ripened; a change comes over her style; there is a fulness of description in her letters and a security of expression which show maturity. Her habit of writing was now established, and she describes the constant interest her father took and his share in all she did. Some of the slighter stories she first wrote upon a slate and read out to her brothers and sisters; others she sketched for her father's approval, and arranged and altered as he suggested. The letters for literary ladies were with the publishers by this time, and these were followed by various stories and early lessons, portions of 'Parents' a.s.sistant,'

and of popular tales, all of which were sent out in packets and lent from one member of the family to another before finally reaching Mr.

Johnson, the publisher's, hands. Maria Edgeworth in some of her letters from Clifton alludes with some indignation to the story of Mrs. Hannah More's ungrateful _protegee_ Lactilla, the literary milkwoman, whose poems Hannah More was at such pains to bring before the world, and for whom, with her kind preface and warm commendations and subscription list, she was able to obtain the large sum of 500_l._ The ungrateful Lactilla, who had been starving when Mrs. More found her out, seems to have lost her head in this sudden prosperity, and to have accused her benefactress of wishing to steal a portion of the money. Maria Edgeworth must have been also interested in some family marriages which took place about this time. Her own sister Anna became engaged to Dr. Beddoes, of Clifton, whose name appears as prescribing for the authors of various memoirs of that day. He is 'a man of ability, of a great name in the scientific world,' says Mr. Edgeworth, who favoured the Doctor's 'declared pa.s.sion,' as a proposal was then called, and the marriage accordingly took place on their return to Ireland. Emmeline, another sister, was soon after married to Mr. King, a surgeon, also living at Bristol, and Maria was now left the only remaining daughter of the first marriage, to be good aunt, sister, friend to all the younger members of the party. She was all this, but she herself expressly states that her father would never allow her to be turned into a nursery drudge; her share of the family was limited to one special little boy. Meanwhile her pen-and-ink children are growing up, and starting out in the world on their own merits.

'I beg, dear Sophy,' she writes to her cousin, 'that you will not call my little stories by the sublime name of my works; I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and bound the same size as 'Evenings at Home,' but I am afraid you will dislike the t.i.tle. My father had sent the 'Parents' Friend,' but Mr.

Johnson has degraded it into 'Parents' a.s.sistant.'

In 1797, says Miss Beaufort, who was to be so soon more intimately connected with the Edgeworth family, Johnson wished to publish more volumes of the 'Parents' a.s.sistant' on fine paper, with prints, and Mrs.

Ruxton asked me to make some designs for them. These designs seem to have given great satisfaction to the Edgeworth party, and especially to a little boy called William, Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest boy, who grew up to be a fine young man, but who died young of the cruel family complaint.

Mrs. Edgeworth's health was also failing all this time--'Though she makes epigrams she is far from well,' says Maria; but they, none of them seem seriously alarmed. Mr. Edgeworth, in the intervals of politics, is absorbed in a telegraph, which, with the help of his sons, he is trying to establish. It is one which will act by night as well as by day.

It was a time of change and stir for Ireland, disaffection growing and put down for a time by the soldiers; armed bands going about 'defending'

the country and breaking its windows. In 1794 threats of a French invasion had alarmed everybody, and now again in 1796 came rumours of every description, and Mr. Edgeworth was very much disappointed that his proposal for establishing a telegraph across the water to England was rejected by Government. He also writes to Dr. Darwin that he had offered himself as a candidate for the county, and been obliged to relinquish at the last moment; but these minor disappointments were lost in the trouble which fell upon the household in the following year--the death of the mother of the family, who sank rapidly and died of consumption in 1797.

VII.

When Mr. Edgeworth himself died (not, as we may be sure, without many active post-mortem wishes and directions) he left his entertaining Memoirs half finished, and he desired his daughter Maria in the most emphatic way to complete them, and to publish them without changing or altering anything that he had written. People reading them were surprised by the contents; many blamed Miss Edgeworth for making them public, not knowing how solemn and binding these dying commands of her father's had been, says Mrs. Leadbeater, writing at the time to Mrs.

Trench. Many severe and wounding reviews appeared, and this may have influenced Miss Edgeworth in her own objection to having her Memoirs published by her family.

Mr. Edgeworth's life was most extraordinary, comprising in fact three or four lives in the place of that one usually allowed to most people, some of us having to be moderately content with a half or three-quarters of existence. But his versatility of mind was no less remarkable than his tenacity of purpose and strength of affection, though some measure of sentiment must have certainly been wanting, and his fourth marriage must have taken most people by surprise. The writer once expressed her surprise at the extraordinary influence that Mr. Edgeworth seems to have had over women and over the many members of his family who continued to reside in his home after all the various changes which had taken place there. Lady S---- to whom she spoke is one who has seen more of life than most of us, who has for years past carried help to the far-away and mysterious East, but whose natural place is at home in the more prosperous and unattainable West End. This lady said, 'You do not in the least understand what my Uncle Edgeworth was. I never knew anything like him. Brilliant, full of energy and charm, he was something quite extraordinary and irresistible. If you had known him you would not have wondered at anything.'

'I had in the spring of that year (1797) paid my first visit to Edgeworthtown with my mother and sister,' writes Miss Beaufort, afterwards Mrs. Edgeworth, the author of the Memoirs. 'My father had long before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time.

His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr.

Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 several times, and at last offered me his hand, which I accepted.'

Maria, who was at first very much opposed to the match, would not have been herself the most devoted and faithful of daughters if she had not eventually agreed to her father's wishes, and, as daughters do, come by degrees to feel with him and to see with his eyes. The influence of a father over a daughter where real sympathy exists is one of the very deepest and strongest that can be imagined. Miss Beaufort herself seems also to have had some special attraction for Maria. She was about her own age. She must have been a person of singularly sweet character and gentle liberality of mind. 'You will come into a new family, but you will not come as a stranger, dear Miss Beaufort,' writes generous Maria.

'You will not lead a new life, but only continue to lead the life you have been used to in your own happy cultivated family.' And her stepmother in a few feeling words describes all that Maria was to her from the very first when she came as a bride to the home where the sisters and the children of the lately lost wife were all a.s.sembled to meet her.

It gives an unpleasant thrill to read of the newly-married lady coming along to her home in a postchaise, and seeing something odd on the side of the road. 'Look to the other side; don't look at it,' says Mr.

Edgeworth; and when they had pa.s.sed he tells his bride that it was the body of a man hung by the rebels between the shafts of a car.

The family at Edgeworthtown consisted of two ladies, sisters of the late Mrs. Edgeworth, who made it their home, and of Maria, the last of the first family. Lovell, now the eldest son, was away; but there were also four daughters and three sons at home.

All agreed in making me feel at once at home and part of the family; all received me with the most unaffected cordiality; but from Maria it was something more. She more than fulfilled the promise of her letter; she made me at once her most intimate friend, and in every trifle of the day treated me with the most generous confidence.

Those times were even more serious than they are now; we hear of Mr.

Bond, the High Sheriff, paying 'a pale visit' to Edgeworthtown. 'I am going on in the old way, writing stories,' says Maria Edgeworth, writing in 1798. 'I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with my hands before me would not make any one of us one degree safer.... Simple Susan went to Foxhall a few days ago for Lady Anne to carry her to England.'... 'My father has made our little rooms so nice for us,' she continues; 'they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh! rebels, oh!

French spare them. We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves.'

On August 29 we find from Miss Edgeworth's letter to her cousin that the French have got to Castlebar. 'The Lord-Lieutenant is now at Athlone, and it is supposed it will be their next object of attack. My father's corps of yeomanry are extremely attached to him and seem fully in earnest; but, alas! by some strange negligence, their arms have not yet arrived from Dublin.... We, who are so near the scene of action, cannot by any means discover what _number_ of the French actually landed; some say 800, some 1,800, some 18,000.'

The family had a narrow escape that day, for two officers, who were in charge of some ammunition, offered to take them under their protection as far as Longford. Mr. Edgeworth most fortunately detained them. 'Half an hour afterwards, as we were quietly sitting in the portico, we heard, as we thought close to us, the report of a pistol or a clap of thunder which shook the house. The officer soon after returned almost speechless; he could hardly explain what had happened. The ammunition cart, containing nearly three barrels of gunpowder, took fire, and burnt half-way on the road to Longford. The man who drove the cart was blown to atoms. Nothing of him could be found. Two of the horses were killed; others were blown to pieces, and their limbs scattered to a distance.

The head and body of a man were found a hundred and twenty yards from the spot.... If we had gone with this ammunition cart, we must have been killed. An hour or two afterwards we were obliged to fly from Edgeworthtown. The pikemen, 300 in number, were within a mile of the town; my mother and Charlotte and I rode; pa.s.sed the trunk of the dead man, b.l.o.o.d.y limbs of horses, and two dead horses, by the help of men who pulled on our steeds--all safely lodged now in Mrs. Fallon's inn.'

'Before we had reached the place where the cart had been blown up,' says Mrs. Edgeworth, 'Mr. Edgeworth suddenly recollected that he had left on the table in his study a list of the yeomanry corps which he feared might endanger the poor fellows and their families if it fell into the hands of the rebels. He galloped back for it. It was at the hazard of his life; but the rebels had not yet appeared. He burned the paper, and rejoined us safely.' The Memoirs give a most interesting and spirited account of the next few days. The rebels spared Mr. Edgeworth's house, although they broke into it. After a time the family were told that all was safe for their return, and the account of their coming home, as it is given in the second volume of Mr. Edgeworth's life by his daughter, is a model of style and admirable description.

In 1799 Mr. Edgeworth came into Parliament for the borough of St.

Johnstown. He was a Unionist by conviction, but he did not think the times were yet ripe for the Union, and he therefore voted against it.

In some of his letters to Dr. Darwin written at this time, he says that he was offered 3,000 guineas for his seat for the few remaining weeks of the session, which, needless to say, he refused, not thinking it well, as he says, '_to quarrel with myself_.' He also adds that Maria continues writing for children under the persuasion that she cannot be more serviceably employed; and he sends (with his usual perspicuity) affectionate messages to the Doctor's 'good amiable lady and _his giant brood_.' But this long friendly correspondence was coming to an end. The Doctor's letters, so quietly humorous and to the point, Mr. Edgeworth's answers with all their characteristic and lively variety, were nearly at an end.

It was in 1800 that Maria had achieved her great success, and published 'Castle Rackrent,' a book--not for children this time--which made everybody talk who read, and those read who had only talked before. This work was published anonymously, and so great was its reputation that some one was at the pains to copy out the whole of the story with erasures and different signs of authenticity, and a.s.sume the authorship.

One very distinctive mark of Maria Edgeworth's mind is the honest candour and genuine critical faculty which is hers. Her appreciation of her own work and that of others is unaffected and really discriminating, whether it is 'Corinne' or a simple story which she is reading, or Scott's new novel the 'Pirate,' or one of her own ma.n.u.scripts which she estimates justly and reasonably. 'I have read "Corinne" with my father, and I like it better than he does. In one word, I am dazzled by the genius, provoked by the absurdities, and in admiration of the taste and critical judgment of Italian literature displayed throughout the whole work: but I will not dilate upon it in a letter. I could talk for three hours to you and my aunt.'

Elsewhere she speaks with the warmest admiration of a 'Simple Story.'

Jane Austen's books were not yet published; but another writer, for whom Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter had a very great regard and admiration, was Mrs. Barbauld, who in all the heavy trials and sorrows of her later life found no little help and comfort in the friendship and constancy of Maria Edgeworth. Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld, upon Mr. Edgeworth's invitation, paid him a visit at Clifton, where he was again staying in 1799, and where the last Mrs. Edgeworth's eldest child was born. There is a little anecdote of domestic life at this time in the Memoirs which gives one a glimpse, not of an auth.o.r.ess, but of a very sympathising and impressionable person. 'Maria took her little sister to bring down to her father, but when she had descended a few steps a panic seized her, and she was afraid to go either backwards or forwards. She sat down on the stairs afraid she should drop the child, afraid that its head would come off, and afraid that her father would find her sitting there and laugh at her, till seeing the footman pa.s.sing she called "Samuel" in a terrified voice, and made him walk before her backwards down the stairs till she safely reached the sitting-room.' For all these younger children Maria seems to have had a most tender and motherly regard, as indeed for all her young brothers and sisters of the different families.

Many of them were the heroines of her various stories, and few heroines are more charming than some of Miss Edgeworth's. Rosamund is said by some to have been Maria herself, impulsive, warm-hearted, timid, and yet full of spirit and animation.

In his last letter to Mr. Edgeworth Dr. Darwin writes kindly of the auth.o.r.ess, and sends her a message. The letter is dated April 17, 1802.