Richard Lovell Edgeworth Part 7

The work was fatiguing, but the open air life seemed to give him new vigour, and his health was reestablished.

The work had interested him much, and he believed that an immense tract of bog might be reclaimed. The obstacles he foresaw were want of capital and the danger of litigation. As long as the bogs were unprofitable there was no incitement to a strict definition of boundaries, but if the land was reclaimed many lawsuits would follow. Maria thus describes the difficulties encountered by her father:--'He wished to undertake the improvement of a large tract of bog in his neighbourhood, and for this purpose desired to purchase it from the proprietor; but the proprietor had not the power or the inclination to sell it. My father, anxious to try a decisive experiment on a large scale, proposed to rent it from him, and offered a rent, till then unheard of, for bogland. The proprietor professed himself satisfied to accept the proposal, provided my father would undertake to indemnify him for any expense to which he might be put by future lawsuits concerning the property or boundaries of this bog. He was aware that if he were to give a lease for a long term, even for sixty years, this would raise the idea that the bog would become profitable; and still further, if ever it should be really improved and profitable, it would become an object of contention and litigation to many who might fancy they had claims, which, as long as the bog was nearly without value, they found it not worth while to urge. It was impossible to enter into the insurance proposed, and, consequently, he could not obtain this tract of bog, or further prosecute his plan. The same sort of difficulty must frequently recur. Parts of different estates pa.s.s through extensive tracts of bog, of which the boundaries are uncertain. The right to cut the turf is usually vested in the occupiers of adjoining farms; but they are at constant war with each other about boundaries, and these disputes, involving the original grants of the lands, hundreds of years ago, with all subsequent deeds and settlements, appear absolutely interminable. . . .

'It may not be at present a question of much interest to the British public, because no such large decisive experiment as was proposed has yet been tried as to the value and attainableness of the object; but its magnitude and importance are incontestable, the whole extent of peat soil in Ireland exceeding, as it is confidently p.r.o.nounced, 2,830,000 acres, of which about half might be converted to the general purposes of agriculture.'

It was in 1811 that Edgeworth constructed, 'upon a plan of his own invention, a spire for the church of Edgeworth Town. This spire was formed of a skeleton of iron, covered with slates, painted and sanded to resemble Portland stone. It was put together on the ground within the tower of the church, and when finished it was drawn up at once, with the a.s.sistance of counterbalancing weights, to the top of the tower, and there to be fixed in its place.

'The novelty of the construction of this spire, even in this its first skeleton state, excited attention, and as it drew towards its completion, and near the moment when, with its covering of slates, altogether amounting to many tons weight, it was to move, or not to move, fifty feet from the ground to the top of the tower, everybody in the neighbourhood, forming different opinions of the probability of its success or failure, became interested in the event.

'Several of my father's friends and acquaintances, in our own and from adjoining counties, came to see it drawn up. Fortunately, it happened to be a very fine autumn day, and the groups of spectators of different ranks and ages, a.s.sembled and waging in silent expectation, gave a picturesque effect to the whole. A bugle sounded as the signal for ascent. The top of the spire appearing through the tower of the church, began to move upwards; its gilt ball and arrow glittered in the sun, while with motion that was scarcely perceptible it rose majestically. Not one word or interjection was uttered by any of the men who worked the windla.s.ses at the top of the tower.

'It reached its destined station in eighteen minutes, and then a flag streamed from its summit and gave notice that all was safe. Not the slightest accident or difficulty occurred.' Maria adds:--'The conduct of the whole had been trusted to my brother William (the civil engineer), and the first words my father said, when he was congratulated upon the success of the work, were that his son's steadiness in conducting business and commanding men gave him infinitely more satisfaction than he could feel from the success of any invention of his own.'

Towards the close of 1811 Edgeworth was requested, as he understood, by a committee of the House of Commons on Broad Wheels, to look over and report on a ma.s.s of evidence on the subject. This he did, but then found that it was a private request of the chairman, Sir John Sinclair, who begged that the report might be given to the Board of Agriculture. This Edgeworth declined, but wrote instead and presented An Essay on Springs applied to Carts; and in 1813 he published an essay on Roads, and Wheel Carriages. His daughter writes:--'In the course of the drudgery which he went through he received a great counterbalancing pleasure from the following pa.s.sage, which he chanced to meet with in a letter to the committee, written by a gentleman to whom he was personally a stranger:

'"Mr. Edgeworth was the first who pointed out the great benefit of springs in aiding the draught of horses. The subject deserves more attention than it has. .h.i.therto met with. No discovery relative to carriages has been made in our time of equal importance; and the ingenious author of it deserves highly of some mark of public grat.i.tude."'

Maria adds:--'Those ingenious ideas, which had been but the amus.e.m.e.nt of youth, as he advanced in life, he turned to public utility: for instance, the mode of conveying secret and swift intelligence, which he had suggested at first only to decide a trifling wager between him and some young n.o.bleman, he afterwards improved into a national telegraph, and through all difficulties and disappointments persevered till it was established. In the same manner, his juvenile amus.e.m.e.nts with the sailing chariot led to experiments on the resistance of the air, which in more mature years he pursued in the patient spirit of philosophical investigation, and turned to good account for the real business of life, and for the advancement of science.

'On this subject, in the year 1783, he published in the Transactions of the Royal Society (vol. 73) "An Essay on the Resistance of the Air," of which the object, as he states, is to determine the force of the wind upon surfaces of different size and figure, or upon the same surface, when placed in different directions, inclined at different angles, or curved in different arches. . . . After trying several experiments on surfaces of various shapes, he ascertained the difference of resistance in different cases, suggested the probable cause of these variations, and opened a large field for future curious and useful speculation; useful it may be called, as well as curious, because such knowledge applies immediately to the wants and active business of life, to the construction of wind- and water-mills, and to the extensive purposes of navigation. The theory of philosophers and the practice of mechanics and seamen were, and perhaps are still, at variance as to the manner in which sails of wind-mills and of ships should be set. Dr. Hooke, in his day, expressed "his surprise at the obstinacy of seamen in continuing, after what appeared the clearest demonstration to the contrary, to prefer what are called bellying or bunting sails, to such as are hauled tight." The doctor said that he would, at some future time, add the test of experiment to mathematical investigation in support of his theory.

'It is remarkable that this test of experiment, when at length it was applied, confirmed the truth of what the philosopher had reprobated as an obstinate vulgar error. My father, in his Essay on the Resistance of the Air, gives the result of his experiments on a flat and curved surface of the same dimensions, and explains the cause of the error into which Dr. Hooke, M. Parent, and other mathematicians had fallen in their theoretic reasonings. . . .

'It is remarkable that a man of naturally lively imagination and of inventive genius should not, in science, have ever followed any fanciful theory of his own, but that all he did should have been characterised by patient investigation and prudent experiment. . . .

'In science, it is not given to man to finish; to persevere, to advance a step or two, is all that can be accomplished, and all that will be expected by the real philosopher.

'"We will endeavour" is the humble and becoming motto of our philosophical society.'

CHAPTER 12

In his seventy-first year Edgeworth had a dangerous illness, and though he seemed to recover from it for a time, he never regained his former strength. One great privation was that, from the failure of his sight, he became dependent on others to read and write for him. But his cheerful fort.i.tude did not fail, though he felt that his days were numbered. He had promised to try some private experiments for the Dublin Society, and with the help of his son William he carried out a set of experiments on wheel carriages in April 1815 and in May 1816.

Almost his last literary effort was to dictate some pages which he contributed to his daughter Maria's novel Ormond, and he delighted in having the proofsheets read to him and in correcting them. Mrs.

Ritchie has given some touching details of his last days in her Introduction to a new edition of Ormond.

Maria writes:--'The whole of Moriaty's history, and his escape from prison, were dictated without any alteration, or hesitation of a word, to Honora and me. This history Mr. Edgeworth heard from the actual hero of it, Michael Dunne, whom he chanced to meet in the town of Navan, where he was living respectably. He kept a shop where Mr. Edgeworth went to purchase some boards, and observing something very remarkable about the man's countenance, he questioned him as they were looking at the lumber in his yard, and Dunne readily told his tale almost in the very words used by Moriaty. . . . Mr.

Edgeworth also wrote the meeting between Moriaty and his wife when he jumps out of the carriage the moment he hears her voice.'

Edgeworth kept his intellectual faculties to the last. 'To the last they continued clear, vigorous, energetic; and to the last were exerted in doing good, and in fulfilling every duty, public and private. . . .

'In the closing hours of his life his bodily sufferings subsided, and in the most serene and happy state, he said, before he sank to that sleep from which he never wakened:

'"I die with the soft feeling of grat.i.tude to my friends and submission to the G.o.d who made me."'

He died the 13th of June 1817.

It may be thought to be an easy task to make an abridgment of a biography, but in some ways it is almost as difficult as it is for the sketcher to choose what he will put into his picture and yet preserve a due proportion and give a faithful idea of the whole scene before him. I have tried to give such portions of the Memoirs as will present the many-sided character of R. L. Edgeworth in relation to his scientific, literary, and educational work, and in relation to his position as a landlord, a father, and a friend. He was a singular instance of great mental activity with little ambition; of a genial nature in his own family circle and among his friends, he withdrew from the mult.i.tude, and refused to lower his standard of cultivated intercourse in order to win favour with coa.r.s.er natures. He is chiefly remembered now as an educational reformer and as the guide of Maria Edgeworth in the earlier stages of her literary career. What she achieved was in great part due to her father's judicious training and encouragement.

A little more ambition and the spur of poverty might have made Edgeworth better known as an inventor of useful machines: it is curious to remark how nearly he invented the bicycle. He saw the advantage that light railways would be to Ireland, but the breath of mechanical life, steam, as a power, he did not foresee.

He might have written a book on 'The Domestic Life,' so fully had he mastered the secrets of a happy home. He was naturally pa.s.sionate, but had trained himself to be on his guard against his temper, and was always anxious to improve and to correct any bad habit or fault: even in old age he was constantly on the watch lest bodily infirmities should lead to moral deterioration. He was not too proud to own when he had made mistakes, but used the experience he had gained, and carefully studied his own character and the circ.u.mstances which had been most beneficial in forming it. He controlled his expenses as prudently as his temper, and would not allow his inventive faculties to lead him into unjustifiable outlays. His daughter mentions that 'when he was a youth of nineteen, an old gentleman, who saw him pa.s.sing by his window, said of him, judging by the liveliness of his manner and appearance, "There goes a young fellow who will in a few years dissipate all the fortune his prudent father has been nursing for him his whole life."

'The prophecy was, by a kind neighbour, repeated to him, and, as I have heard him say, it made such an impression as tended considerably to prevent its own accomplishment.

'He acquired the habit of calculating and forming estimates most accurately. He not only estimated what every object of fancy and taste would cost, but he accustomed himself to consider what the actual enjoyment of the indulgence would be. ... He upon all occasions carefully separated the idea of the pleasure of possession from that of contemplating any object of taste.'

She also mentions that 'he observed, that the happiness that people derive from the cultivation of their understandings is not in proportion to the talents and capacities of the individual, but is compounded of the united measure of these, and of the use made of them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in disappointment, and excites too often the powerful pa.s.sions of envy and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their spirits and their life in deploring that they were not born with more abilities. But though so many lament the want of talents, few actually derive as much happiness as they might from the share of understanding which they possess. My father never wasted his time in deploring the want of that which he could by exertion acquire. Nor did he suffer fame in any pursuit to be his first object.'

We feel that we are in the moral atmosphere of Paley and Butler when she adds:--'Far beyond the pleasures of celebrity, or praise in any form, he cla.s.sed self-approbation and benevolence: these he thought the most secure sources of satisfaction in this world.' This is the spirit of the Eighteenth Century, the clear cold tone of the moral philosopher, not the enthusiastic impulse of the fervid theologian, of Pusey, Keble, or Newman. One star does indeed differ from another in glory, but all give brilliance to our firmament and raise our thoughts from earth.

Such a life as Richard Edgeworth's seems to me to be more instructive than even that excellent moral guide-book written by Sir John Lubbock, The Uses of Life, because abstract maxims take less hold of uncultivated or una.n.a.lytical minds than the portrait of a man of flesh and blood. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress reaches many hearts which are unmoved by an ordinary sermon, and Edgeworth's life was indeed a progress, a constant striving not only to improve himself but to help others onward in the right way. He showed what a good landlord could do in Ireland, and what a good father can do in binding a family in happy union.