Maria Edgeworth Part 9

His conversation all the time better than anything we could see, full of apropos anecdote, historic, serious or comic, just as occasion called for it, and all with a _bonhommie_ and an ease that made us forget it was any trouble even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal stairs.

Indeed, Scott almost took forcible possession of the Misses Edgeworth, so anxious was he to show honor to the author whom he regarded as the most distinguished of contemporary novelists.

How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes, I cannot conceive. He appears to have nothing to think of but to be amusing, and he never tires, though he is so entertaining. He far surpa.s.ses my expectations.

Their delight in each other's society was mutual. Scott wrote to a friend at the time:--

I have very little news to send you. Miss Edgeworth is at present the great lioness of Edinburgh, and a very nice lioness. She is full of fun and spirit; a little slight figure, very active in her motions, very good-humored and full of enthusiasm.

Many of the "Northern Lights" were absent at the time of Miss Edgeworth's visit, but she made the acquaintance of Jeffrey, renewed many old friendships and formed new ties. It was a feature of Miss Edgeworth, as it had been of her father, and it is one that speaks eloquently in favor of their characters, that they never lost a friend or dropped connection with those in whom they had once been interested.

Friends once made were friends for life, and were sure of a warm welcome if they came to Ireland, or of a ready answer to any call they might make upon time or heart. Miss Edgeworth's amiable character won for her a far larger circle of friends than her father ever possessed; she had none of those angles in her character which repelled so many from him.

Wherever she went she expressed her gratified surprise at the cordiality which people showed towards her, and she met no less of it in Scotland than elsewhere.

After a few weeks spent at Edinburgh William Edgeworth joined his sisters in a tour through the Highlands. Loch Katrine had, of course, special interest to her because of its connection with Scott. She does not think it more beautiful than Killarney: "But where is the lake of our own or any other times that has such delightful power over the imagination by the recollection it raises?"

This Highland tour afforded her great pleasure. "The 'felicity-hunters'

have found more felicity than such hunters usually meet with."

Unfortunately it ended badly. She caught cold, and was taken ill with a very severe attack of erysipelas that laid her up for ten days in a small Scotch inn. She had been ailing more or less for some months past, and this attack was probably only a climax. As soon as she could move, some friends took her into their house and nursed her tenderly, but she was weak for some time after. But almost before it was true, she tells her stepmother that she is off the invalid list. Scott was anxious to have her at Abbotsford, and promised to nurse her carefully. At the end of July she and her sisters yielded to his friendly entreaties, and spent a fortnight with him in his home. Lockhart speaks of the time of her visit as one of the happiest in Scott's life. Until the Misses Edgeworth arrived the season had been wet. It was a great joy to Sir Walter that with her appearance summer appeared too. On his expressing this, Miss Sophy Edgeworth mentioned the Irish tune, "You've brought the summer with you," and repeated the first line of the words Moore had adapted to it. "How pretty!" said Sir Walter; "Moore's the man for songs. Campbell can write an ode and I can write a ballad, but Moore beats us all at a song."

Miss Edgeworth was charmed with Scott and his home, with the excursions he took with them, with the drives she had with him in his little carriage, during which the flow of his anecdotes, wit and wisdom never ceased. His joyous manner and life of mind, his looks of fond pride in his children, the pleasantness of his easy manners, his keen sense of humor, enchanted her. She also liked Lady Scott, a liking that was returned. Miss Edgeworth considered her

A most kind-hearted, hospitable person, who had much more sense and more knowledge of character and discrimination than many of those who ridiculed her. I know I never can forget her kindness to me when I was ill at Abbotsford. Her last words at parting were: "G.o.d bless you! we shall never meet again." At that time it was much more likely that I should have died, I thought, than she.

This was not Miss Edgeworth's first visit to Edinburgh, and Lady Scott expressed her surprise that Sir Walter and she had not met earlier.

"Why," said Sir Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my dear, Miss Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not grown at all."

Sir Walter was as sorry to part with his guests as Miss Edgeworth was to go, but she felt that the longer she lingered the more difficult it would be to depart.

After paying some more Scotch visits and a few Irish ones, the Misses Edgeworth returned home in September, and life once more became uneventful. Even to Mrs. Ruxton there was nothing to tell.

It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or launching. You ask what I am doing. Nothing but reading and idling, and paving a gutter and yard to Honora's pig-sty and school-house. What have I been reading? The _Siege of Valencia_, by Mrs. Hemans, which is an hour too long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry I have read for years.

Sickness, deaths, marriages and births were of frequent occurrence in that large family. Miss Edgeworth's heart was capacious and could answer to all calls made upon it. Whether it was to rejoice with those that rejoiced, or to weep with those that wept, she always responded.

It is the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced age, to see friend after friend go, for so much it detaches one from life; yet it still more makes us value the friends we have left. And continually, at every fresh blow, I really _wonder_, and am thankful, most truly thankful, that I have so many, so much left.

A young sister who had ailed for years, and was obliged to lie flat on a couch, was a constant source of solicitude. What could be done to divert her, to comfort her, or alleviate her sufferings, was always in Miss Edgeworth's mind. Lucy's name often occurs in her letters, and whenever she is absent and there is anything especially amusing to relate, the letter is always addressed to her. In 1824 Miss Edgeworth lost her sister, Mrs. Beddoes. A few months before, Sophy was married to a Captain Fox. She was grieved to lose this sister and the marriage affected her deeply.

Though Miss Edgeworth was now past fifty, she showed neither bodily nor mental signs of advancing years. Indeed, mentally she was as fresh and as young as ever, and her letters reflect the same pleasure in life and all it offers that they evinced throughout. Only on New Year's day, which was also her birthday, does she indulge in any reflections concerning the flight of time. Here is a letter written in 1825:--

A happy new year to you, my dearest aunt, to you to whom I now look, as much as I can to any one now living, for the rays of pleasure that I expect to gild my bright evening of life. As we advance in life, we become more curious, more fastidious in gilding and gilders. We find to our cost that all that glitters is not gold, and your every-day bungling carvers and gilders will not do.

Our evening gilders must be more skillful than those who flashed and daubed away in the morning of life, and gilt with any tinsel the weatherc.o.c.k for the morning sun. You may perceive, my dear aunt, by my having got so finely to the weatherc.o.c.k and the rising sun, that I am out of the hands of my dear apothecaries, and playing away again with a superfluity of life. (N. B.--I am surprisingly prudent.) Honora's cough has almost subsided, and Lucy can sit upright the greater part of the day. "G.o.d bless the mark!" as Molly Bristow would say, if she heard me; "don't be bragging."

Not many days later, when her stepmother and some friends, "poor souls and full-dress bodies," had gone out to dinner, she penned another long letter to the same correspondent, a letter delightfully fresh in tone and full of her personality:--

In a few days I trust--you know I am a great truster--you will receive a packet franked by Lord Bathurst, containing only a little pocket-book--_Friendship's Offering for 1825_, dizened out. I fear you will think it too fine for your taste, but there is in it, as you will find, the old _Mental Thermometer_, which was once a favorite of yours. You will wonder how it came there. Simply thus: Last autumn came by the coach a parcel containing just such a book as this for last year, and a letter from Mr. Lupton Relfe--a foreigner settled in London--and he prayed in most polite bookseller strain that I would look over my portfolio for some trifle for this book for 1825. I might have looked over "my portfolio" till doomsday, as I have not an unpublished sc.r.a.p, except _Taken for Granted_. But I recollected the _Mental Thermometer_, and that it had never been _out_, except in the _Irish Farmer's Journal_, not known in England. So I routed in the garret, under pyramids of old newspapers, with my mother's prognostics that I never should find it, and loud prophecies that I should catch my death, which I did not; but dirty and dusty and cobwebby, I came forth, after two hours' groveling, with my object in my hand; cut it out, added a few lines of new end to it, and packed it off to Lupton Relfe, telling him that it was an old thing written when I was sixteen. Weeks elapsed, and I heard no more, when there came a letter exuberant in grat.i.tude, and sending a parcel containing six copies of the new memorandum-book, and a most beautiful twelfth edition of Scott's poetical works, bound in the most elegant manner, and with most beautifully engraved frontispieces and vignettes, and a 5 note. I was quite ashamed--but I have done all I could for him by giving the _Friendship's Offering_ to all the fine people I could think of.

The set of Scott's works made a nice New Year's gift for Harriet; she had seen this edition at Edinburgh and particularly wished for it. The 5 note I have sent to Harriet Beaufort to be laid out in books for f.a.n.n.y Stewart. Little did I think the poor old _Thermometer_ would give me so much pleasure. Here comes the carriage rolling round. I feel guilty. What will my mother say to me--so long a letter at this time of night? Yours affectionately, in all the haste of guilt, conscience-stricken; that is, found out.

No: all safe, all innocent--because not found out.

FINIS.

By the author of _Moral Tales_ and _Practical Education_.

In 1825 Scott paid his long-promised visit to Edgeworthstown. He came in August, bringing with him his daughter, Lockhart and Mr. Crampton, a surgeon friend of the Edgeworths, "who equally gratified both the novelists by breaking the toils of his great practice to witness their meeting on his native soil." Miss Edgeworth writes:--

I am glad that kind Crampton had the reward of this journey; though frequently hid from each other by clouds of dust in their open carriage, they had, as they told us, never ceased talking They like each other as much as two men of so much genius and so much benevolence should, and we rejoice to be the bond of union.

Sir Walter delights the heart of every creature who sees, hears and knows him. He is most benignant as well as most entertaining; the n.o.blest and the gentlest of lions, and his face, especially the lower part of it, is excessively like a lion; he and Mr. Crampton and Mr. Jephson were delighted together. The school band after dinner by moonlight playing Scotch tunes, and the boys at leap-frog, delighted Sir Walter. Next day we went to the school for a very short time and saw a little of everything, and a most favorable impression was left. It being Sat.u.r.day, religious instruction was going on when we went in. Catholics with their priests in one room; Protestants with Mr. Keating in the other.

More delightful conversation I have seldom in my life heard than we have been blessed with these three days. What a touch of sorrow must mix with the pleasures of all who have had great losses.

Lovell, my mother and I, at twelve o'clock at night, joined in exclaiming, "How delightful! O! that he had lived to see and hear this!"

Of the details of this visit, Lockhart, in his _Life of Scott_, has furnished an account. He draws attention to the curious coincidence that Goldsmith and Maria Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and knowledge of Irish character from the same district, Pallesmore being indeed the property of the Edgeworths.

After a week's stay Sir Walter and his friends departed to visit Killarney; and Miss Edgeworth, her sister Harriet and brother William were easily persuaded to be of the party. The journey was a delightful one to all concerned; and though a few little mishaps occurred, such as the difficulties of finding post-horses to convey so large a party, everything was turned to enjoyment. Sir Walter and Miss Edgeworth shared this faculty of looking on the bright side of the necessary discomforts of a journey, and extracting amus.e.m.e.nt from every incident--a faculty for want of which so many travellers fail to enjoy themselves. They charmed all with whom they came in contact, down to the very boatman who rowed them on the lake of Killarney, and who, rowing Lord Macaulay twenty years afterwards, told him that the circ.u.mstance had made him amends for missing a hanging that day! On Sir Walter Scott's birthday a large gathering of the clans Edgeworth and Scott took place at Dublin.

"Sir Walter's health was drunk with more feeling than gaiety," and on that same evening he and Miss Edgeworth parted, never to meet again.

CHAPTER XIII.

1826 TO 1834.

It was in 1825 that the second part of _Harry and Lucy_ was published, completing the labors planned for Miss Edgeworth by her father. The good reception it met with caused her to contemplate writing some more short tales, but she missed the guiding friend that had so long directed her.

A story called _Taken for Granted_ had long been on the stocks. Though never finished, she was occupied with it for some time, and began to see clearly where her difficulties lay.

Your observations about the difficulties of _Taken for Granted_ are excellent; I "take for granted" I shall be able to conquer them. If only one instance were taken, the whole story must turn upon that, and be constructed to bear on one point; and that pointing to the moral would not appear natural. As Sir Walter said to me in reply to my observing, "It is difficult to introduce the moral without displeasing the reader": "The rats won't go into the trap if they smell the hand of the rat-catcher."

The opening of the year 1826 was one of general financial depression.

This was, of course, felt yet more acutely in Ireland, where money affairs are never too flourishing. Even the estate of Edgeworthstown, that had as yet safely weathered all storms, was affected, and it was in consequence of this that, at her brother Lovell's desire, Miss Edgeworth once more resumed the rent-receiving and general management, which since her father's death she had abandoned. With consummate skill and energy she managed so that her family escaped the flood that swamped so many.

For Miss Edgeworth had keen business faculties, though, except in the matter of the estate, they had never been called into play. Her stepmother tells how--

"The great difficulty was paying everybody when rents were not to be had; but Maria, resolutely avoiding the expense and annoyance of employing a solicitor, undertook the whole, borrowing money in small sums, paying off enc.u.mbrances, and repaying the borrowed money as the times improved; thus enabling her brother to keep the land which so many proprietors were then obliged to sell. While never distressing the tenants, she at last brought the whole business to a triumphant conclusion."

Yet at no time was Miss Edgeworth absorbed in one thing only; her wide and universal interests could not slumber. Thus, with all the work of a large estate on her hands, she still found time to read extensively. The letters published by Sir Walter Scott under the pseudonym of Sir Malachy Malagrowther had just appeared. They interested her strangely.

Lord Carrington was so kind as to frank to me these extraordinary performances, which shall reach you through Lord Rosse, if you please. It is wonderful that a poet could work up such an enthusiasm about one-pound notes; wonderful that a lawyer should venture to be so violent on the occasion as to talk of brandishing claymores, and pa.s.sing the fiery cross from hand to hand; and yet there is the Chancellor of the Exchequer answering it from his place in Parliament as a national concern! If Pat had written it, the Attorney-General would, perhaps, have noticed it; but "Up with the shillalah!" in Pat's mouth, and "Out with the claymore!" in Sir Malachy's, are different quite.

A visit from Sir Humphrey Davy during the summer was a great delight.

Miss Edgeworth speaks of the range and pitch of his mind with high praise, and relates besides an amusing anecdote that he told:--

Sir Humphrey repeated to us a remarkable criticism of Bonaparte's on Talma's acting: "You don't play Nero well; you gesticulate too much; you speak with too much vehemence. A despot does not need all that; he need only _p.r.o.nounce_. _Il sait qu'il se suffit._ And,"

added Talma, who told this to Sir Humphrey, "Bonaparte, as he said this, folded his arms in his well-known manner, and stood as if his att.i.tude expressed the sentiment."

A little later another sister was taken from the family circle by marriage; this time it was Miss Edgeworth's travelling companion and friend Harriet, who married Mr. Butler, a clergyman. The home party was thinning, and Miss Edgeworth, who liked to have a large number of her loved ones about her, felt this keenly. But happily young nephews and nieces were springing up to take the places of those who were gone, and fill the house with that sunshine of child-life and child-laughter that had seldom been absent from its walls.