Maria Edgeworth Part 8

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 Stael.

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 a.s.semblies 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 Stael, who showed them all the rooms once inhabited by his mother, which Miss Edgeworth "could not regard as common rooms; they have a cla.s.sical power over the mind." M. de Stael 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 pa.s.sing 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 Stael 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 concois qu'un fils doit toujours faire la defense de sa mere, mais enfin, si monsieur veut ecrire 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 ma.n.u.script 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 Mars 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 pet.i.t comite_ the other night at the d.u.c.h.esse d'Escars, a discussion took place between the d.u.c.h.esse de la Force, Marmont and Pozzo di Borgo on the _bon et mauvais ton_ of different expressions; _bonne societe_ is an expression bourgeoise. You may say _bonne compagnie_ or _la haute societe_. "_Viola 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, a.s.suring her that all that had pa.s.sed 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 aegis 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 b.u.mptious youth), the attack certainly contained much that was warranted by circ.u.mstances. 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 a.s.sumed 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, f.a.n.n.y being by that time up and dressed, and at her little table, Harriet comes and reads to me Madame de Sevigne's letters, of which I never tire; and I almost envy f.a.n.n.y 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 cla.s.ses 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 few 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 a.s.sistance to the laboring cla.s.s; 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 pa.s.sed 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.

In the hurried life we have led for some weeks past, and among the great variety of ill.u.s.trious and foolish people we have seen pa.s.s in rapid panoramas before us, some remain forever fixed in the memory and some few touch the heart.

At one house Mrs. Somerville was met and thus described:--

Mrs. Somerville--little, slightly made, fair hair, pink color; small, gray, round, intelligent, smiling eyes; very pleasing countenance; remarkably soft voice, strong but well-bred Scotch accent; timid, not disqualifying timid, but naturally modest, yet with a degree of self-possession through it which prevents her being in the least awkward, and gives her all the advantages of her understanding, at the same time that it adds a prepossessing charm to her manner and takes off all dread of her superior scientific learning.

Some days were happily spent visiting Mr. Ricardo, with whose fairness in argument Miss Edgeworth was struck. While her sisters danced, acted charades or played round games, Miss Edgeworth conversed with the elders of the company; but she was ever ready to turn from grave to gay, and often the first to improvise a masquerade or to arrange an impromptu charade. Wherever there was laughter and young people, there she was a favorite and sought-for companion. Her life during these months in England certainly did not lack outward variety, and she was happy for herself, and yet happier because she saw her sisters pleased and beloved. A few extracts from her London letters best reflect her life:--

Yesterday we went, the moment we had swallowed our breakfast, by appointment to Newgate. The private door opened at sight of our tickets, and the great doors and the little doors, and the thick doors and doors of all sorts, were unbolted and unlocked, and on we went through dreary but clean pa.s.sages, till we came to a room where rows of empty benches fronted us, and a table, on which lay a large Bible. Several ladies and gentlemen entered and took their seats on benches at either side of the table, in silence.

Enter Mrs. Fry in a drab-colored silk cloak, and plain, borderless Quaker cap; a most benevolent countenance--Guido Madonna face--calm, benign. "I must make an inquiry: Is Maria Edgeworth here, and where?" I went forward: she bade us come and sit beside her. Her first smile as she looked upon me I can never forget. The prisoners came in, and in an orderly manner ranged themselves on the benches. All quite clean faces, hair, caps and hands. On a very low bench in front little children were seated and settled by their mothers. Almost all these women, about thirty, were under sentence of transportation; some few only were there for imprisonment. One who did not appear was under sentence of death--frequently women when sentenced to death became ill and unable to attend Mrs. Fry; the others came regularly and voluntarily.

She opened the Bible and read in the most sweetly solemn, sedate voice I ever heard, slowly and distinctly, without anything in the manner that could distract attention from the matter. Sometimes she paused to explain, which she did with great judgment, addressing the convicts: "_We_ have felt; _we_ are convinced." They were very attentive, unexpectedly interested, I thought, in all she said, and touched by her manner. There was nothing put on in their countenances, not any appearance of hypocrisy. I studied their countenances carefully, but I could not see any which, without knowing to whom they belonged, I should have decided was bad; yet Mrs. Fry a.s.sured me that all of those women had been of the worst sort. She confirmed what we have read and heard, that it was by their love of their children that she first obtained influence over these abandoned women. When she first took notice of one or two of their fine children, the mothers said that if she could but save their children from the misery they had gone through in vice, they would do anything she bid them. And when they saw the change made in their children by her schooling, they begged to attend themselves. I could not have conceived that the love of their children could have remained so strong in hearts in which every other feeling of virtue had so long been dead. The Vicar of Wakefield's sermon in prison is, it seems, founded on a deep and true knowledge of human nature; the spark of good is often smothered, never wholly extinguished. Mrs. Fry often says an extempore prayer, but this day she was quite silent, while she covered her face with her hands for some minutes; the women were perfectly silent with their eyes fixed upon her, and when she said, "You may go," they went away _slowly_. The children sat quite still the whole time; when one leaned, her mother behind sat her upright.

Mrs. Fry told us that the dividing the women into cla.s.ses has been of the greatest advantage, and putting them under the care of monitors. There is some little pecuniary advantage attached to the office of monitor, which makes them emulous to obtain it. We went through the female wards with Mrs. Fry, and saw the women at various works, knitting, rug-making, etc. They have done a great deal of needlework very neatly, and some very ingenious. When I expressed my foolish wonder at this to Mrs. Fry's sister, she replied, "We have to do, recollect, ma'am, not with fools, but with rogues."

Far from being disappointed with the sight of what Mrs. Fry has effected, I was delighted. We emerged again from the thick, dark, silent walls of Newgate to the bustling city, and thence to the elegant part of the town; and before we had time to arrange our ideas, and while the mild Quaker face and voice, and wonderful resolution and successful exertion of this admirable woman, were fresh in our minds, morning visitors flowed in and common life again went on.

At Almack's, that exclusive paradise of fashion to which they were admitted, Lord Londonderry came up and talked to Miss Edgeworth about _Castle Rackrent_ and Ireland generally. He expressed himself as having been dying with impatience to be introduced to her. She navely says:--

It surprised me very much to perceive the rapidity with which a minister's having talked to a person spread through the room.

Everybody I met afterwards that night and the next day observed to me that they had seen Lord Londonderry talking to me a great while.

Mrs. Siddons was among the persons whose acquaintance they formed.

She gave us the history of her first acting of Lady Macbeth, and of her resolving, in the sleep scene, to lay down the candlestick, contrary to the precedent of Mrs. Pritchard and all the traditions, before she began to wash her hands and say, "Out, vile spot!"

Sheridan knocked violently at her door during the five minutes she had desired to have entirely to herself to compose her spirits before the play began. He burst in and prophesied that she would ruin herself forever if she persevered in this resolution to lay down the candlestick! She persisted, however, in her resolution, succeeded, was applauded, and Sheridan begged her pardon. She described well the awe she felt, and the power of the excitement given to her by the sight of Burke, Fox, Sheridan and Sir Joshua Reynolds in the pit.

Morning, dinner, evening parties, succeeded one another. Miss Edgeworth had not even time to note them. In June (1822) the sisters at last returned home, Miss Edgeworth by no means loth to resume the thread of her domestic affairs. She set to work upon the _Sequel to Harry and Lucy_, which was one among the duty-tasks she deemed it right to do, because her father had wished it to be completed. "I could never be easy writing anything for my own amus.e.m.e.nt till I had done this, which I know my father wished to have finished."

Portions of Ireland were suffering from famine that summer. The deplorable state of the south in especial aroused all Miss Edgeworth's sympathies. But she feared that as one source of grievance was removed another would spring up.

The minds bent on mischief are unconquered. In fact it is almost the avowed object of the people to drive the remaining resident gentry from the country. I do not think the hatred is between Protestant and Catholic, but between landlord and tenant. I should say, between tenant and landlord. The landlords are the greatest sufferers. Observe, what I have said applies only to the south. The north is in good condition. The neighborhood of Scotland and imported grafted habits of industry have made that part of Ireland almost Scotch. Our tenantry pay comparatively well.

She proceeded to show, however, that they were all at least a year behind-hand with their rent, and that Lovell let them pay just when they liked, not insisting upon a rent-day.

In the spring of 1823 Miss Edgeworth and her sisters, Sophy and Harriet, paid some visits in Scotland. At Edinburgh they settled into lodgings near their friends, the Alisons; but the very first evening was spent with Scott, who desired that they should hear some Highland boat-songs at his house. Of this introduction to Scott, and the first evening spent with him, Miss Edgeworth penned a most vivid account.

The next day Scott insisted on showing them the sights of Edinburgh, about whose beauties he was enthusiastic.