Maria Edgeworth Part 11

than she did in earlier life. _Helen_ is so much superior in ease, nature and poetry, that it makes us deplore that Miss Edgeworth's talents had not been allowed unchecked sway. Not only is the fable more skillfully framed, but the whole shows greater pa.s.sion and finer insight into the more subtle moods of humanity. Too often when men and women go on writing far into their latter years we are apt to wish that, like Prospero, they had buried their wand before it had lost its power. This is not the case with Miss Edgeworth. _Helen_, her last novel, which appeared after so long a silence, is in some respects the most charming of her tales--a fact doubtless due in some measure to the time that had elapsed since the cessation of her father's active influence. The old brilliancy, the quick humor, the strong sense of justice and truth which is the moral backbone of her work, are there as before; but through the whole tale there breathes a new spirit of wider tenderness for weak, struggling human nature, and a gentleness towards its foibles, which her earlier writings lacked. Years had taught her a wider toleration, had shown her, too, how large a part quick, unreasoning instincts and impulses play in the lives of men and women, even of those whose constant struggle it is to subdue act and thought to the rule of duty. _Helen_ is more of a romance than any of its predecessors, perhaps because the chief interest of the tale is concentrated in the heroine, who is the central figure round which the other persons of the story revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier novels the subsidiary characters are the most interesting and amusing. We wish Belinda well, but she does not move our feelings as does Lady Delacour, and Sir Philip Baddeley is infinitely more diverting than Clarence Harvey is fascinating. And it is the same in all the others, while the centre of _Helen_ is the girl herself. Yet the other characters are no less admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the occasional quaint gleams of humor. In its way Miss Edgeworth never limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Davenant, the large-brained, large-hearted woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, keen sense and real vigor of character, mingled with prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an imperfect adherence in practice to her own theories of right and wrong, and a stern power of self-judgment. There is nothing exaggerated in this admirable and vigorous piece of work. We comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear of the mother whose unswerving truth cows her, while it attracts the answering truth of nature of her truer and stronger friend. Equally good is the character of Lady Cecilia, through whose duplicity and cowardice arise all Helen's troubles; her husband, General Clarendon, who held

All fraud and cunning in disdain, A friend to truth, in speech and action plain;

the malicious Lady Beatrice and her silly, pretty sister; while Horace Churchill, the man about town, who is more modern in tone than Miss Edgeworth's earlier portraits of the same cla.s.s, loses nothing by comparison with them. Despite his restless egotism, his spitefulness, his generally unpleasant character, he is a gentleman in all outside seeming, the old-fashioned, perfect tone of high breeding marks him, and he is even capable of a certain generosity that seems more an inherited instinct than a part of his individual nature. Esther, the general's sister, is one of the quaintest and most delightful characters in the book, drawn with kindliness and humor--a girl with the power of a n.o.ble woman hidden under the crust of a gruff and abrupt exterior, which springs half from shyness, half from a defiant love of truth and hatred of conventional chains. The purpose of _Helen_ is to show how much the sufferings and dissensions of social life arise from the prevailing digressions from truth, often due in the first instance to small society politenesses. Its key-note lies in the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of Miss Clarendon: "I wish that word _fib_ was out of the English language, and _white lie_ drummed out after it. Things by their right names, and we should all do much better. Truth must be told, whether agreeable or not." Most perfectly and naturally is the imbroglio brought to pa.s.s, the entanglement caused by the love-letters, the way in which every fresh deceit on the part of Cecilia, meant to be harmless, tells in her husband's mind against the friend behind whom she is basely hiding her own fault. With Cecilia, whose failings were of the kind with which Miss Edgeworth had least mercy, she is singularly gentle. For once she lets us pity the offender while we condemn the crime. Life had probably taught her that consequences are so surely unpitying that she no longer felt the need to insist on this, as she had done in former years, when she would probably have sketched for us the whole course of Cecilia's punishment, whose nature she now only indicates. Helen is a charming heroine; no wax doll of impossible perfection, but a very woman, wayward and weak sometimes, but true, high-spirited, impulsively generous, staunch in her friendship and her love, with deep and pa.s.sionate feelings controlled, not crushed, by duty.

Another marked change is shown in the manner in which Helen and Granville Beauclerc fall in love. Miss Edgeworth had always protested against the doctrine that love is a mere matter of personal beauty; she showed how it may enslave for a moment, but that a preference resting on so precarious a foundation was but a paltry tribute to her s.e.x. Love, she rightly preached, must be founded on higher motives; but her heroes and heroines were too apt to fall in love in an edifying and instructive manner; they know too well why they succ.u.mbed to the tender pa.s.sion.

Until now she had almost denied the existence of romantic love, agreeing, it would seem, with her own Mrs. Broadhurst: "Ask half the men you are acquainted with why they are married, and their answer, if they speak the truth, will be: 'Because I met Miss Such-a-one at such a place, and we were continually together.'" "'Propinquity, propinquity,'

as my father used to say--and he was married five times, and twice to heiresses." That amiable and respectable Bluebeard, Miss Edgeworth's father, had hitherto held final sway over her characters. Was it the removal of this influence that allowed Helen and Granville to fall in love in a more rational manner? Helen does not now wait to see whether Beauclerc has every virtue under the sun before she ventures to love him; indeed, she sees his foibles clearly, and it is just when she believes that he has shown a lack of honor and sincerity that in her burst of grief she discovers that she loves him; loves him whatever he is, whatever he does. As for Granville, he falls in love in a thorough-going, earnest manner, which increases our feeling of his reality. It has been objected to Miss Edgeworth's love-making that it is stiff as compared with that of the present day. It certainly presents a contrast to that of the Broughton school; but the loves of Helen and Granville, as told by her in so real and human a manner, reveal their feelings to be none the less tender that they are not hysterical, or any the less deep for their power of modesty, reverence and reserve.

_Helen_ was suggested by Crabbe's tale, _The Confidant_, but that feeling which is sinfully gratified and severely punished in Crabbe's story becomes refined and reformed in Miss Edgeworth's crucible. It is, however, interesting to compare her romance with the rapid sketch of the stern original. Another new feature in _Helen_ is a tendency to describe natural objects. Until now there had never been in Miss Edgeworth's writings a description of scenery or a sign of delight in it. She had, as we know, a contempt for the mere pleasures of the senses, and so little appreciation of the beautiful that she once condemns a character who buys something to gratify the eye, not recognizing that the eye, as well as the body and mind, must be fed. Yet in _Helen_, to our surprise, we encounter some lovingly detailed scenic bits; we even find her citing Wordsworth. It is clear she had not remained wholly untouched by the new influences surging around her. Another feature of _Helen_ is the lack of a didactic tone. Speaking of Scott's novels, she remarks that his morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously obtrusive, but woven in through the very texture of the stuff. She knew that her faults lay in the opposite direction, and it is evident she had striven to avoid them. A writer who can learn from criticism and experience, who can adopt a new method of writing when past the age of sixty, is a remarkable writer indeed.

The fears that Miss Edgeworth had felt concerning _Helen_ were truly uncalled for, but the eagerness with which she listened to criticisms upon it showed how little confident she felt of it herself. To her friend Dr. Holland she wrote after its appearance:--

DEAR SIR:

I am very glad that you have been pleased with _Helen_--far above my expectations! And I thank you for that warmth of kindness with which you enter into all the details of the characters and plan of the story. Nothing but regard for the author could have made you give so much importance to my tale. It has always been my fault to let the moral end I had in view appear too soon and too clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, notwithstanding some pains which I certainly _thought_ I took to correct it, should still abide by me. As to Lady Davenant's loving Helen better than she did her daughter--I can't help it, nor could she. It is her fault, not mine, and I can only say it was very natural that, after having begun by mistake and neglect in her early education, she should feel afterwards disinclined to one who was a constant object of self-reproach to her. Lady Davenant is not represented as a perfect character. All, then, that I have to answer for is, whether her faults are natural to the character I drew, and tend in their representation to the moral I would _enforce_ or _insinuate_.

Oh, thank you for telling me of my blunder in making the dean die of _apoplexy_ with his eyes fixed on Helen. Absurd! How shall I kill him in the next edition, if ever I am allowed an opportunity?

Would palsy do? May there not be a partial power of _will_ surviving a stroke of palsy, which would permit the poor old man to die with his eyes directed to his niece? Please to answer this question; and if palsy will not do my business, please to suggest something that will, and with as little alteration of the text as maybe. Not because I am unwilling to take the trouble of correcting, but that I don't think it worth while to make alterations, even emendations, of great length. Better make a new one, according to Pope's hackney coachman's principle. (The punctuation shall be mended.)

CHAPTER XIV.

LAST YEARS.

More and more Miss Edgeworth's life revolved round home and friends. "In this world, in which I have lived nearly three-quarters of a century, I have found nothing one-quarter so well worth living for as old friends,"

she said. In her person old age was seen in its most attractive form.

Her lively interests remained undimmed. At seventy she even set herself to learn a new language, Spanish, while her impulsiveness never became extinct, though she playfully hoped that, provided she lived so long, she might perhaps at eighty arrive at years of discretion. It was in 1835 that Mr. Ticknor, the American historian of Spanish literature, visited Edgeworthstown. He has recorded in his journal a pleasing and vivid picture of his visit. He describes Miss Edgeworth as small, short and spare, with frank and kind manners, always looking straight into the face of those she spoke to with a pair of mild, deep gray eyes. Her kindness and vivacity instantly put her visitors at ease. Mr. Ticknor was also impressed with the harmony that existed in a family composed of the most heterogeneous relationships. What struck him about Miss Edgeworth herself was her uncommon quickness of perception, her fertility of allusion, and the great resources of fact which a remarkable memory supplied to her. He likens her conversation to that of her own Lady Davenant. Mr. Ticknor observed that though she would talk freely about herself and her works, she never introduced the subject, and never seemed glad to continue it. Indeed, though he watched carefully for it, he could not detect either any of the mystification or the vanity of authorship. He was struck with her good nature and desire to defend everybody, even Lady Morgan, as far as she could, though never so far as to be unreasonable.

"In her intercourse with her family she was quite delightful, referring constantly to Mrs. Edgeworth, who seems to be the authority in all matters of fact, and most kindly repeating jokes to her infirm aunt, Mrs. Sneyd, who cannot hear them, and who seems to have for her the most unbounded affection and admiration."

The dispersion of so many members of her family imposed much letter-writing on Miss Edgeworth, for all turned to her graphic pen for news of the dear old home. And, as before when she was away, those she left behind had to share in her pleasures, or they would be but sorry pleasures to her. Death, as well as marriages, had thinned the family ranks. Tenacious and warm in her affections as she was, Miss Edgeworth never took a morbid view concerning those who were gone. Everything morbid was foreign to her nature.

There is something mournful, yet pleasingly painful, in the sense of the ideal presence of the long-loved dead. Those images people and fill the mind with unselfish thoughts, and with the salutary feeling of responsibility and constant desire to be and to act in this world as the superior friend would have wished and approved.

And there were so many still left to love, young and old. "Who would not like to live to be old if they could be so happy in friends as I am?"

The enthusiastic affection in her peculiar family relations, which she kept unimpaired, cannot be better shown than by quoting one of the countless letters she wrote concerning those dear to her:--

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, NOV. 1, 1838.

MY DEAR MR. AND MRS. TICKNOR:

I know so well your kind feelings towards all this family, that I am sure you will be pleased with the intelligence which I am going to communicate to you.

My sister Honora is going to be happily married to a person every way suited to her (and that is saying a great deal), as you who most kindly and justly appreciated her will readily join with me in thinking. The gentleman's name, Captain Beaufort, R. N., perhaps you may be acquainted with, as he is in a public situation, and not unknown to literary and scientific fame. He is a naval officer. (I hope you like this officer's name?) He made some years ago a survey of the coast of Caramania, and wrote a small volume on that survey, which has obtained for him a good reputation. He has been for some years Hydrographer Royal.... In one word, he is a person publicly esteemed; and privately he is beloved and esteemed by all who know him best. He is and has been well known to us ever since the present Mrs. Edgeworth's marriage with my father. Captain Beaufort is Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest brother. As Mrs. E. is Honora's _step_mother, you see that he is no relation whatever to Honora.

But the nearness of the connection has given us all the best means of knowing him thoroughly. He was my dear father's most beloved pupil and friend; by pupil I only mean that his being so much younger made him look up to my father with reverence, and learn from him in science and literature with delight. Thus has he been long connected with all I love. He has been a widower two years. He has three sons and four daughters.... The youngest daughter, Emily, is a delightful child. Captain Beaufort lives in London, 11 Gloucester place; has a very comfortable house, and sufficient fortune for all their moderate wishes. Honora's fortune, which is ample, will give them affluence.

My dear Mrs. Ticknor, I know you particularly liked Honora, and that you will be interested in hearing all these particulars, though it seems impertinent to detail them across the Atlantic to one who will, I fear, never see any one of the persons I have mentioned. Yet affections such as yours keep warm very long and at a great distance.

I feel that I have got into a snug little corner in both your hearts, and that you will excuse a great deal from me; therefore I go on without scruple drawing upon your sympathy, and you will not protest my draft.

You saw how devoted Honora was to her aunt, Mrs. Mary Sneyd, whom you liked so much; and you will easily imagine what a struggle there has been in Honora's mind before she could consent to a marriage with even such a man as Captain Beaufort, when it must separate her from her aunt. Captain Beaufort himself felt this so much that he never would have pressed it. He once thought that she might be prevailed upon to accompany them to London and to live with them. But Mrs. Mary Sneyd could not bear to leave Mrs.

Edgeworth, and this place which she has made her heart's home. She decided Captain Beaufort and her niece to make her happy by completing their union, and letting her feel that she did not prevent the felicity of the two persons she loves best now in the world. She remains with us.

The marriage is to take place next Tuesday or Thursday, and my Aunt Mary will go to the church with her niece and give her away. I must tell you a little characteristic trait of this aunt, the least selfish of all human beings. She has been practicing getting up early in the morning, which she has not done for two years--has never got up for breakfast. But she has trained herself to rising at the hour at which she must rise on the wedding-day, and has walked up and down her own room the distance she must walk up and down the aisle of the church, to insure her being accustomed to the exertion and able to accomplish it easily. This she did for a long time without our knowing it, till Honora found it out. Mrs.

Mary Sneyd is quite well and in excellent spirits.

A younger sister of mine, Lucy, of whom you have heard us speak as an invalid, who was at Clifton with that dear Sophy whom we have lost, is now recovered, and has returned home to take Honora's place with her Aunt Mary; and Aunt Mary likes to have her, and Lucy feels this a great motive to her to overcome a number of nervous feelings, which formed part of her illness. A regular course of occupations and duties, and feeling herself essential to the happiness and the holding together of a family she so loves, will be the best strengthening medicine for her. She arrived at home last night. My sister f.a.n.n.y and her husband, Lestock Wilson, are with us. My sister has much improved in health; she is now able to walk without pain, and bore her long journey and voyage here wonderfully. I have always regretted, and always shall regret, that this sister f.a.n.n.y of mine had not the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you. You really must revisit England. My sister Harriet Butler, and Mr. Butler, and the three little dear Foxes, are all around me at this instant. Barry Fox, their father, will be with us in a few days, and Captain Beaufort returns from London on Monday. You see what a large and happy family we are!!!

Do I not give you some proof, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor, of my affection in writing to you at this moment? and if I write without much sense or connection you will not be surprised.

My head is really upside down, and my feelings so divided between joy and sorrow--joy for Honora's happiness, but sorrow for the parting that must be!

It will all settle down under the hand of strong necessity and of lenient time. My sisters f.a.n.n.y and Harriet will stay with us some weeks after the marriage; this will be a great comfort.

Mr. Butler will perform the happy, awful ceremony. How people who do not love can ever dare to marry, to approach the altar to p.r.o.nounce that solemn vow, I cannot conceive.

My thoughts are so engrossed by this subject that I absolutely cannot tell you of anything else. You must tell me of everything that interests you, else I shall not forgive myself for my egotism.

I am most sincerely and affectionately, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, with affectionate remembrances to your engaging daughter, not forgetting your little darling,

Yours most sincerely,

MARIA EDGEWORTH.

Mention Lockhart's _Memoirs of Scott_, of which my head and heart were full before this present all-engrossing subject overcame me.

I shall be quite rational again, I am sure, by the time your answer reaches me, so pray do not treat me as quite a hopeless person to write rationally to.

Mrs. Edgeworth desires me to send you her very affectionate remembrances.

I believe, I am almost sure, that I wrote to you, my dear Mr.

Ticknor, some months ago while you were on the Continent, to thank you for the present you sent me, through Mr. Norton's means, of an American edition of my works. I thought it beautifully printed and bound, and the engravings excellent, particularly that for _Helen_, and the vignette for _Helen_, which we have not in the English edition. I have another American copy of this edition, and I have left yours for life with my brother Francis and my Spanish sister Rosa, who live in a little cottage near Windsor, and have not money to indulge themselves in the luxury of books. I hope you will not be angry with me for so doing; no, I think you will be glad that I made your present give me the greatest possible sum of pleasure. Take into account the pride I felt in saying, _Mr.

Ticknor sent me these books_.

I am ashamed to see that I have come so far in a second sheet, and in spite of all the wonderings at what can Maria _be about_?

_Sense in my next._

In answer to a letter from Mr. Ticknor, describing to her his library, in which the only picture was one of Sir Walter Scott, Miss Edgeworth wrote a reply, of which a portion has been published, but which contains besides an able parallel, or rather contrast, between Washington and Napoleon, worthy of preservation for its own sake, and as a testimony to her unimpaired powers:--

TRIM, NOV. 19TH, 1840.

"Who talks of '_Boston_' in a voice so sweet?" Who wishes to see me there? and to show me their home, their family, their country? I have been there--at Boston! "Yes, and in Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor's happy, beautiful home." I have been up "the slope of the Boston hillside," have seen "the fifty acres of public park" in all its verdure, with "its rich and venerable trees," its graveled promenade surrounding it, with those n.o.ble rows of venerable elms on either side. I have gone up the hillside and the steps profusely decked with luxuriant creepers; I have walked into Mr. and Mrs.

Ticknor's house, as I was desired--have seen the three rooms opening into one another, have sat in the library, too, and thought--and thought it all charming. Looking into the country, as you know the windows all do, I saw down through "the vista of trees" to the quiet bay and the "beautiful" hills beyond, and I "watched the glories of the setting sun" lighting up country and town, "trees, turf and water!"--an Italian sun not more gorgeously attended than this "New England luminary" setting or rising. I met Sir Walter Scott in Mr. Ticknor's library with all his benign, calm expression of countenance, his eye of genius and his mouth of humor--such as he was before the life of life was gone, such as genius loved to see him, such as American genius has _given_ him to American friendship, immortalized in person as in mind. His very self I see feeling, thinking and about to speak--and to a friend to whom he loved to speak; and well placed and to his liking he seems in this congenial library, presiding and sympathizing. But my dear madam, ten thousand books, "about ten thousand books," do you say this library contains? My dear Mrs. Ticknor! Then I am afraid you must have double rows--and that is a plague. But you may ask why do I conceive you have double rows? Because I cannot conceive how else the book-cases could hold the ten thousand. Your library is 34 by 22, you say. But to be sure you have not given me the height, and that height may make out room enough. Pray have it measured for me, that I may drive this odious notion of _double rows_ out of my head--"and what a head," you may say, "that must be that could calculate in such a place and at such a time!" It was not my poor head, I a.s.sure you, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, but Captain Beaufort's ultra-accurate head. I gave him through Honora the description of your library, and he (jealous, I am clear, for the magnitude and number of his own library and volumes) set to work at 22 by 34--and there I leave him--till I have _the height_ to confound him completely. You see, my dear friends, that you need not again ask me _to go_ to see you--for I have seen and I know everything about your home; full as well I know Boston and your home as you know ours at Edgeworthstown. It is your turn now to come and see us again. But I am afraid to invite you, lest you should be disenchanted, and we should lose the delightful gratification we enjoy in your glamor of friendship. Aunt Mary, however, is really all you think and saw her, and in her ninety-first year still a proof as you describe her--and a remarkable proof--of the power of mind over time, suffering and infirmities; and an example of Christian virtues making old age lovely and interesting.