The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 14

Her last words at parting were, "G.o.d bless you! we shall never meet again." At the time it was much more likely that I should have died, I thought, than she. Sir Walter said he had been interrupted in his letter by many domestic distresses. The first two pages had been begun two months ago, and were in answer to a letter of mine inquiring about the truth of his losses, etc. Of these he spoke with cheerful fort.i.tude, but with no bravado. He said that his losses had been great, but that he had enough left to live on; that he had had many gratifying offers of a.s.sistance, but that what he had done foolishly he would bear manfully; that he would take it all upon his own shoulders, and that he had great comfort in knowing that Lady Scott was not a person who cared about money, and that "Beatrice," as he calls Anne Scott, bore her altered prospects with cheerfulness. "She is of a very generous disposition, and poor Janie proffered her whole fortune as if it had been a gooseberry."

After writing this much the letter appeared to have been thrown aside and forgotten to be sent, till he was roused again by a letter from me about poor Mr. Jephson. The domestic distresses which had interrupted the course of his thoughts were, the illness of his dear little grandson Lockhart, one of the finest and most engaging children I ever saw; and then Lady Scott's illness and death. He says that the letters of Malachy Malagrowther cost him but a day apiece.

_July 10_.

Sir Humphry Davy has been with us since Thursday, and his visit has been delightful; he has always been kind and constant in his friendship to us. I had expressed a great wish to see the "Discourses" which he annually addressed to the Royal Society, as President, on the presentation of the medals. He has been urged to publish them, but to this he has never yet consented. I had the courage--indeed, I thought at the time the rashness--to ask him to let me see the MS. of one which I was particularly anxious to see, as it related to Dr. Brinkley: Sir Humphry was so very kind to have a copy made for me of _all_ his Discourses. I found them fully equal to my expectations, quite worthy of the genius and reputation of Sir Humphry Davy, and becoming the President of the Royal Society of England; giving a complete view of the discoveries and progress of science in England within the last six years, compressed into the smallest compa.s.s compatible with clearness, written with all the dignity of perfect simplicity and candour, like one sensible to national glory, but free from national jealousy; whose great object as a philosopher is the general advancement of science over the whole world, and whose great pleasure is in conferring well-earned praise. His addresses to those to whom he presents the medals are n.o.bLE--always appreciating the past with generous satisfaction, yet continually exciting to future exertion. In each new discovery he opens views beyond what the discoverer had foreseen, and from each new invention shows how fresh combinations present themselves, so that in the world of science there must be room enough for the exertions of all: the best and truest moral against envy, and all those petty jealousies which have disgraced scientific as well as literary men.

Travelling, and his increased acquaintance with the world, has enlarged the _range_ without lowering the _pitch_ of Sir Humphry's mind--an allusion I have borrowed from an entertaining essay on training hawks sent to me by Sir John Sebright. Do you know that there is at this moment a gentleman in Ireland, near Belfast, who trains hawks and goes a-hawking--a Mr. Sinclair?

Sir Humphry repeated to us a remarkable criticism of Buonaparte'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 Humphry, "Buonaparte, as he said this, folded his arms in his well-known manner, and stood as if his att.i.tude expressed the sentiment."

Sir Humphry thinks that, of all of royal race he has seen, legitimate or illegitimate, _n.o.ble par l'epee_, or n.o.ble by "just hereditary sway,"

the late Emperor of Russia was the most really n.o.ble-minded and the least ostentatious. A vast number of his munificent gifts to men of letters are known only to those by whom they were received. He has frequently sent tokens of approbation to scientific men in various foreign countries for inventions in arts and sciences which he had found useful in his dominions. A _caisse_ arrived from Russia for Sir Humphry, which he thought were some mineralogical specimens which had been promised to him; but on opening it there appeared a superb piece of plate, with a letter from the Emperor of Russia presenting it to him, as a mark of grat.i.tude for the safety lamp. The design on the plate, the Emperor adds, was his own: it represents the genius of fire, with his bow and arrows broken.

Among other good things which Sir Humphry accomplished in his travels was the abolition of the _corda_, of ancient use in Naples,--an instrument of torture by which the criminal was hung up by a cord tied round his joined wrists, and then pulled down and let fall from a height, dislocating his wrists to a certainty, and giving a chance of breaking his arms and legs. This instrument chanced to be set up near the hotel where Sir Humphry and Lady Davy resided: they could not bear the sight, and changed their lodgings. The next time Sir Humphry was at Court the King asked why he had changed his residence. Sir Humphry explained, and expressed himself so strongly, that he awakened dormant Royal feeling, and this instrument of torture was abolished. Sir Humphry had previously represented to our Queen Caroline, then at Naples, that here was an opportunity of doing good, and of rendering herself deservedly popular. She was struck with the idea at the time, but forgot it; and then Sir Humphry took it up, and with the a.s.sistance of the public opinion of all the English, it was accomplished.

Yesterday, when I came down to breakfast, I found Sir Humphry with a countenance radiant with pleasure, and eager to tell me that Captain Parry is to be sent out upon a new Polar expedition.

_August 14_.

This day, my dearest aunt, our wishes have been accomplished--the sacred, awful vow has been p.r.o.nounced, and Harriet and Mr. Butler drove from the church door to Cloona. [Footnote: Harriet, second daughter of the fourth Mrs. Edgeworth, married the Rev. Richard Butler, Rector of Trim, and afterwards Dean of Clonmacnoise.]

Lucy bore the trials of the day wonderfully well. She was at the wedding, and much agitated when it came to the conclusion and the parting; but there was, fortunately, something to be done immediately afterwards--Sophy's [Footnote: Mrs. Barry Fox.] child to be christened; a very nice, pretty little child it is--Maxwell.

William Beaufort alarmed us by a sudden illness on Sat.u.r.day: however, he was able to appear today and perform both ceremonies, and does not seem to have suffered by the double exertion.

_To_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.

BLACK CASTLE, _Sept. 3, 1826_.

Thank you for wishing to be with me, but I am sure it will be better for you to be at the sea. Here, though I am obliged to think of actual business between-times, I have every motive and means for diversion for myself, both on my own account and on my aunt's. We run in and out, and laugh and talk nonsense; and every little thing amuses us together: the cat, the dog, the hog, Mr. Barry, or a _parachute_ blown from the dandelion.

_Nov. 19_.

Bess Fitzherbert has written an entertaining letter to Mrs. Barry, in which she mentions one of the dishes they had just had at dinner at Pozzo, between Modena and Bologna: cold boiled eels, with preserved pears, a toothpick or skewer stuck in each to take them up by, instead of a fork. My aunt's friend, Madame Boschi, near Bologna, offered to send a garden-chair drawn by bullocks for Bess, the road not being pa.s.sable for _common cattle_.

_To_ C.S. EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Dec. 26, 1826_.

I send your account, and have done my best. I have not read _Boyne Water_, but have got Lindley Murray's _Memoir_, and thank you for mentioning it. Harriet and Mr. Butler come to-morrow. Sophy Fox and Barry, and their beautiful and amiable little Maxwell, are here. How you will like that child, and make it see "upper air!" How long since those times when you used to show its mother and Harriet upper air! Do you remember how you used to do it to frighten me, and how I used to shut my eyes when you threw them up, and you used to call to me to look? Ah! _le bon temps!_ But we are all very happy now, and it is delightful to hear a child's voice cooing, or even crying again in this house. Never did infant cry less than Maxwell: in short, it is the most charming little animal I ever saw. "Animal yourself, sir!" [Footnote: Mr. Edgeworth, admiring a baby in a nurse's arms, called it "a fine little animal." To which the nurse indignantly replied, "Animal yourself, sir!"]

Pakenham ornamented the library yesterday with holly, and crowned plaster-of-Paris Sappho with laurels, and Mrs. Hope's picture with myrtle (i.e. box), and perched a great stuffed owl in an ivy bush on the top of a great screen which shades the sofa by the fire from the window at its back. I am excessively happy to be at home again, after my four months' absence at Black Castle.

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Dec. 28, 1826_.

After spending four months with you, it is most delightful to me to receive from you such a.s.surances that I have been a pleasure and a comfort to you. I often think of William's most just and characteristic expression, that you have given him a desire to live to advanced age, by showing him how much happiness can be felt and conferred in age, where the affections and intellectual faculties are preserved in all their vivacity. In you there is a peculiar habit of allowing constantly for the _compensating_ good qualities of all connected with you, and never unjustly expecting impossible perfections. This, which I have so often admired in you, I have often determined to imitate; and in this my sixtieth year, to commence in a few days, I will, I am resolved, make great progress. "Rosamond at sixty," says Margaret.

We are all a very happy party here, and I wish you could see at this moment sitting opposite to me on sofa and in arm-chair the mother and daughter and grand-child.

_To_ MRS. BANNATYNE.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Feb. 26, 1827_.

By some strange chance I was taken away from home just after the time when Colonel Stewart's pamphlet on India, which you were so kind as to send me, arrived; in short, I never read it till a few days ago. I am in admiration of it; it is beautifully written, with such clearness, lucid order, simplicity, dignity, strength, and eloquence--eloquence resulting from strong feeling. The views of its vast subject are comprehensive and masterly; the policy sound, both theoretically and practically considered; the morality as sound as the policy, indeed no policy can be sound unless joined with morality. The sensibility and philanthropy that not only breathe but live and act in this book are of the true, manly, enduring sort--not the affected, sickly, spurious kind, which is displayed only for the trick of the poet or orator. It is a book which a good and wise man must ever rejoice in having written, and which will be satisfactory to him even to the last moment of his life.

Have you seen the _Tales of the O'Hara Family_--the second series? They are of unequal value; one called the "Nowlans" is a work of great genius. Another book has much amused us, Captain Head's _Rough Sketches_, most animated and masterly sketches of his journey across the Pampas. There is much information and much good political economy condensed in his three chapters on speculators.

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 4, 1827_.

I went with Pakenham to meet my mother at Castle Pollard, and we had such a nice long talk in the carriage coming back, our tongues never intermitting one single second, I believe. I am glad you liked my graceful gentleman-like bear, and his graceful gentleman-like Italian leader. [Footnote: A travelling showman and bear.] We have had a succession of actors and actresses, as I may call them, personating beggars, all at the last gasp of distress; so perfect, too, was one Englishwoman that she set at defiance all the combined ingenuity of the Library in cross-questioning her, and after writing a long letter for her to a Rev. Mr. Strainer, of Athlone, I was quite at a loss to decide whether she was a cheat or not, when one of the Longford police officers chanced to dine with us, I mentioned her, and out came the truth; she had imposed on him and every one at Longford, and had borrowed a child to pa.s.s for her own. We sent for our distressed lady, who was very "sick and weak with a huge blister on her chest," and low voice and delicate motions. Oh! if you had seen her when the police officer came into the room and charged her with the borrowed child. Her countenance, voice, and motions all at once changed; her voice went up at once to _scold-pitch_, and turning round on her chair she faced the chief; but words in writing cannot do justice to the scene. I must act it for you.

We are now reading the _Voyage of the "Blonde" to the Sandwich Islands_, with the remains of the King and the Queen. [Footnote: King Kamehameha II., of the Sandwich Islands, and his Queen, who died of the measles in John Street, Adelphi, in 1824.] Pray get this book, it will delight you.

Of the _Blonde_, you know the present Lord Byron is commander--the name strikes the ear continually--new fame, new a.s.sociations; reverting, too, to the old Commodore Byron's sort of fame. How curious, how fleeting "this life in other's breath!"

A little box of curiosities from my most amiable American Jewess my mother presented to me this morning at the breakfast table: I was in an ecstasy, but shortlived was my joy, for I was thunderstruck the next instant by my mother's catching my arm and stopping my hand with the vehement exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."--"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't--what _am_ I doing?" She took the _wreath_ of cotton wool from my pa.s.sive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool--no one can wish his existence prolonged.

The painful family of death More hideous than their queen.

_April 8_.

I am quite well and in high good-humour and good spirits in consequence of having received the whole of Lovell's half-year's rents in full, with pleasure to the tenants, and without the least fatigue or anxiety to myself.

We are reading the second part of _Vivian Grey_, which we like better than the first. There is a scene of gamesters and swindlers wonderfully well done. I know who wrote _Almack's_. Lady de Ros tells me it is by Mrs. Purvis, sister to Lady Blessington; this accounts for both the knowledge of high, and the habits of low, life which appear in the book.

"Poor dear Almack's," Lady de Ros says, is not what it was--when people were poor in London, and there were few private b.a.l.l.s, Almack's was all in all. Her sailor son is going to publish a Journal of a Tour, including the United States and Niagara.

_To_ C.S. EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _April 12, 1827_.

Now I have done all my agent business, I will tell you what Mr. Hope, in a letter I had from him this morning, says of _Almack's_. "It might have been a pretty thing, but I think it but a poor one. Of all slangs, that of fashion is easiest overdone. People do not _hold forth_ about what is with them a matter of course. Willis, or his waiters, might have furnished all the characteristic materials. The author ever and anon makes up for want of wit by stringing together common French milliner phrases, which have no merit but that of being exotics in England. The point consists in his _italics_. Besides, he only describes the proceedings, not the spirit of the inst.i.tution of Almack's. It was rather a bold thing in London to put FEASTING out of fashion, and to make a seven-shilling ball the thing to which all aspired to be admitted, and many without the least hope of succeeding. It was the triumph of aristocracy over mere wealth. It put down the Grimes's of former days, with their nectarines and peaches at Christmas, and in so far it improved society."

All this is very true, but I do not think he does justice to the author.

I particularly like the dialogue in the third volume, where Lady Anne Norbury debits and credits her hopes of happiness with her two admirers: no waiting-maid could have written that. In the second volume, also, I think there is a scene between Lord and Lady Norbury in their dressing-room, about getting rid of their guests and making room for others, which is nicely touched: the Lord and Lady are politely unfeeling; it is all kept within bounds.