The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume I Part 15

Mrs. Edgeworth writes:

Mrs. Leadbeater, the Quaker lady who lived at Ballitore, whose father had been tutor to Edmund Burke, and whose Letters have been published, wrote to Maria this year, asking her advice about a book she had written, _Cottage Dialogues_, and sent the MS. to her. Mr. Edgeworth was so much pleased with it, that Maria offered, at Mr. Edgeworth's suggestion, to add a few notes to give her name to the book; and it was published by Johnson's successor with great success.

Mr. Edgeworth, Maria, and I went this autumn to Kilkenny to see the amateur theatricals, with which we were much delighted. Mr. Edgeworth, who remembered Garrick, said he never saw such tragic acting as Mr.

Rothe, in _Oth.e.l.lo_: how true to nature it was, appeared from the observation of our servant, Pat Newman, who had never seen a play before, when Mr. Edgeworth asked him if he did not pity the poor woman smothered in bed: "It was a pity of her, but I declare I pitied the man the most." The town was full to overflowing, but we were most hospitably received, though our friends the O'Beirnes were their guests, by Doctor and Mrs. Butler. He had been a friend of Mr. Edgeworth's when he lived in the county of Longford, and she had been, when Miss Rothwell, a Dublin acquaintance of mine. This visit to Kilkenny was rich in recollections for Maria: the incomparable acting, the number of celebrated people there a.s.sembled, the supper in the great gallery of old grand Kilkenny Castle, the superb hospitality, the number of beautiful women and witty men, the gaiety, the spirit, and the brilliancy of the whole, could have been seen nowhere else.

MISS EDGEWORTH _to_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Nov. 1810._

We are to set out for Dublin on the 13th, to hear Davy's Lectures. Lord Fingal was so kind as to come here yesterday with Lady Teresa Dease, and he told me that my uncle is gone to Dublin. Tell me everything about it clearly. Honora, f.a.n.n.y, and William go with us.

Mrs. Edgeworth interpolates:

We spent a few weeks in Dublin. Davy's Lectures not only opened a new world of knowledge to ourselves and to our young people, but were especially gratifying to Mr. Edgeworth and Maria, confirming, by the eloquence, ingenuity, and philosophy which they displayed, the high idea they had so early formed of Mr. Davy's powers.

MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _April 1811._

I think Hardy's _Life of Lord Charlemont_ interesting, and many parts written in a beautiful style; but I don't think he gives a clear, well-proportioned history of the times. There is a want of _keeping_ and perspective in it. The pipe of the man smoking out of the window is as high as the house. Mr. Hardy is more a portrait than a history painter.

If you have any curiosity to know the names of the writers of some of the articles in the _Edinburgh Review_, I can tell you, having had to-day, from my literary intelligencer, Mr. Holland, two huge sheets, very entertaining and sensible. Jeffrey wrote the article on Parliamentary Reform and that on the Curse of Kehama, Sydney Smith that on Toleration, and Malthus that on Bullion; and if you have any curiosity, I can also tell you those in the _Quarterly_, among whom Canning is one. Thank my aunt for her information about Walter Scott; my father will write immediately to ask him here. I wish we lived in an old castle, and had millions of old legends for him. Have you seen Campbell's poem of _O'Connor's Child_? it is beautiful. In many parts I think it is superior to Scott.

_May-day._

This being May-day, one of the wettest I have ever seen, I have been regaled, not with garlands of May flowers, but with the _legal_ pleasures of the season; I have heard of nothing but _giving notices to quit, taking possession, ejectments, flittings_, etc. What do you think of a tenant who took one of the nice new houses in this town, and left it with every lock torn off the doors, and with a large stone, such as John Langan could not lift, driven actually through the boarded floor of the parlour? The brute, however, is rich, and if he does not die of whisky before the law can get its hand into his pocket, he will pay for this waste.

I have had another [Footnote: No less than five letters were received by Miss Edgeworth at different times, from different young people, asking for a description of the dresses in the "Contrast."] odd letter signed by three young ladies--Clarissa Craven, Rachel Biddle, and Eliza Finch, who, after sundry compliments in very pretty language, and with all the appearance of seriousness, beg that I will do them the favour to satisfy the curiosity they feel about the wedding dresses of the Frankland family in the "Contrast." I have answered in a way that will stand for either jest or earnest; I have said that, at a sale of Admiral Tipsey's smuggled goods, Mrs. Hungerford bought French cambric muslin wedding gowns for the brides, the collars trimmed in the most becoming manner, as a Monmouth milliner a.s.sured me, with Valenciennes lace, from Admiral Tipsey's spoils. I have given all the particulars of the bridegrooms'

accoutrements, and signed myself the young ladies' "obedient servant and perhaps _dupe._"

I am going on with "Patronage," and wish I could show it to you. _Do_ get _O'Connor's Child_, Campbell's beautiful poem.

Last Sat.u.r.day there was the most violent storm of thunder and lightning I ever saw in Ireland, and once I thought I felt the ground shake under me, for which thought I was at the time laughed to scorn; but I find that at the same time the shock of an earthquake was felt _in the country, which shook Lissard House to its foundations._ I tell it to you in the very words in which it was told to me by Sneyd, who had it from Councillor c.u.mmin. A man was certainly killed by the lightning near Finac, _for_ the said councillor was knocked up at six o'clock in the morning, _to know_ if there was to be a coroner's inquest.

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Aug. 30, 1811._

I have written a little play for our present large juvenile audience, [Footnote: Mrs. Beddoes and her three children were now at Edgeworthstown.] not for them to act, but to hear; I read it out last night, and it was liked. The scene is in Ireland, and the t.i.tle "The Absentee." When will you let me read it to you? I would rather read it to you up in a garret than to the most brilliant audience in Christendom.

Anna's children are very affectionate. Henry is beautiful, and the most graceful creature I ever saw. The eight children are as happy together as the day is long, and give no sort of trouble.

What book do you think Buonaparte was reading at the siege of Acre?--_Madame de Stael sur l'influence des Pa.s.sions_! His opinion of her and of her works has wonderfully changed since then. He does not follow Mazarin's wise maxim, "Let them _talk_ provided they let me _act._" He may yet find the recoil of that press, with which he meddles so incautiously, more dangerous than those cannon of which he well knows the management.

_Note Physical and Economical_

I am informed from high authority, that if you give Glauber's salts to hens, they will lay eggs as fast as you please!

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _October 1811._

Davy spent a day here last week, and was as usual full of entertainment and information of various kinds. He is gone to Connemara, I believe, to fish, for he is a little mad about fishing; and very ungrateful it is of me to say so, for he sent to us from Boyle the finest trout! and a trout of Davy's catching is, I presume, worth ten trouts caught by vulgar mortals. Sneyd went with him to Boyle, saw Lord Lorton's fine place, and spent a pleasant day. Two of Mr. Davy's fishing friends have since called upon us: Mr. Solly, a great mineralogist, and Mr. Children, a man of Kent.

I am working away at "Patronage," but cannot at all come up to my idea of what it should be.

_To_ MRS. MARY SNEYD.

ARDBRACCAN HOUSE, _Nov. 1811._

Nothing worthy of note occurred on our journey to Pakenham Hall, where we found to our surprise dear Lady Longford and Lord Longford, who had come an hour before on one of his flying visits, and a whole tribe of merry laughing children, Stewarts and Hamiltons. Lady Longford showed us a picture of Lady Wellington and her children; they are beautiful, and she says very like--Lady Wellington is not like: it is absurd to attempt to draw Lady Wellington's face; she has no _face_, it is all countenance. My father and Lady Elizabeth played at cribbage, and I was looking on: they counted so quickly fifteen two, fifteen four, that I was never able to keep up with them, and made a sorry figure. Worse again at some genealogies and intermarriages, which Lady Elizabeth undertook to explain to me, till at last she threw her arms flat down on each side in indignant despair, and exclaimed, "Well! you are the stupidest creature alive!"

When Lord Longford came in I escaped from cribbage and heard many entertaining things: one was of his meeting a man in the mail coach, who looked as if he was gouty, and seemed as if he could not stir without great difficulty, and never without the a.s.sistance of a companion, who never moved an inch from him. At last Lord Longford discovered that this _gentleman's_ gouty overalls covered _fetters_; that he was a malefactor in irons, and his companion a Bow Street officer, who treated his prisoner with the greatest politeness. "Give me leave, sir--excuse me--one on your arm and one on mine, and then we are sure we can't leave one another."

A worse travelling companion this than the bear, whom Lord Longford found one morning in the coach when day dawned, opposite to him--the gentleman in the fur cloak, as he had all night supposed him to be!

A second series of _Tales of Fashionable Life_ appeared in 1812. Of these "The Absentee" was a masterpiece, and contains one scene which Macaulay declared to be the best thing written of its kind since the opening of the twenty-second book of the _Odyssey._ Yet Mrs. Edgeworth tells that the greater part of "The Absentee" was "written under the torture of the toothache; it was only by keeping her mouth full of some strong lotion that Maria could allay the pain, and yet, though in this state of suffering, she never wrote with more spirit and rapidity." Mr.

Edgeworth advised the conclusion to be a Letter from Larry, the postillion: he wrote one, and she wrote another; he much preferred hers, which is the admirable finale to "The Absentee."

MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MISS MARGARET RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _July 20, 1812._

I am heartily obliged to my dear Sophy--never mind, you need not turn to the direction, it _is_ to Margaret, my dear, though it begins with thanks to Sophy--for being in such haste to relieve my mind from the agony it was in that _Fashionable Tales_ should reach my aunt. I cannot by any form of words express how delighted I am that you are none of you angry with me, and that my uncle and aunt are pleased with what they have read of "The Absentee." I long to hear whether their favour continues to the end and extends to the catastrophe, that dangerous rock upon which poor authors, even after a prosperous voyage, are wrecked, sometimes while their friends are actually hailing them from the sh.o.r.e.

I have the _Rosamond_ vase [Footnote: A gla.s.s vase which Miss Edgeworth painted for Mrs. Ruxton, in brown, from Flaxman's designs for the _Odyssey._] madness so strong upon me, that I am out of my dear bed regularly at half-past seven in the morning, and never find it more than half an hour till breakfast time, so happy am I daubing. On one side I have Ulysses longing to taste Circe's cakes, but saying, "No, thank you," like a very good boy: and on the other side I have him just come home, and the old nurse washing his feet, and his queen fast asleep in her chair by a lamp, which I hope will not set her on fire, though it is, in spite of my best endeavours, so much out of the perpendicular that nothing but a miracle can keep it from falling on Penelope's crown.

Little Pakenham is going on bravely (not two months old), and I am just _beginning_ to write again, and am _in_ "Patronage," and have corrected all the faults you pointed out to me; and Susan, who was a fool, is now Rosamond and a wit.

I suppose you have heard various _jeux d'esprit_ on the marriage of Sir Humphry Davy and Mrs. Apreece? I scarcely think any of them worth copying: the best _idea_ is stolen from the _bon mot_ on Sir John Carr, "The Traveller be_k_nighted."

"When Mr. Davy concluded his last Lecture by saying that we were but in the _Dawn_ of Science, he probably did not expect to be so soon be_k_nighted."

I forget the lines: the following I recollect better:--