The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 18

_March 14_.

I hope your mother is better, and now inhaling spring life. Tell her, with my love, that I have exhibited her work [Footnote: A scarf embroidered with flowers, worked for Miss Edgeworth by Mrs. Beaufort, when she was ninety-two.] at various places to the admiration and almost incredulity of all beholders--such beautiful flowers at ninety-two!

At last we were fortunately at home when Lady Wellesley and Miss Caton called, and, thanks to my impudence in having written to him the moment he landed, and thanks to his good nature, Sir John Malcolm came at the same moment, and Lady Wellesley and he talked most agreeably over former times in India and later times in Ireland. Lady Wellesley is not nearly so tall or magnificent a person as I expected. Her face beautiful, her manner rather too diplomatically studied. People say "she has a remarkably good manner;" perfectly good manners are never "remarkable,"

felt, not seen. Sir John is as entertaining and delightful as his Persian sketches, and as instructive as his _Central India_.

_To_ HER SISTER HARRIET--MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET,

_March 16, 1831_.

The days are hardly long enough to read all men's speeches in Parliament. I get the result into me from f.a.n.n.y, and read only the notables. Mr. North's speech was, as you say, the best and plainest he ever made, and was so esteemed. Macaulay's reads better than it was spoken, quite marred in the delivery, and he does not look the orator; but no matter, in spite of his outside, his inside will get him on: he has far more power in him than Mr. North.

Get the eleventh volume of the new edition of Sir Walter's poems, containing a new Introduction and Essay on Ballads and ballad writing, all entertaining, and a model for egotists which very few will be able to follow, though many will strive and be laughed at for their pains.

_March 29_.

Old as I am and imaginative as I am thought to be, I have really always found that the pleasures I have expected would be great have actually been greater in the enjoyment than in the antic.i.p.ation. This is written in my sixty-fourth year. The pleasure of being with f.a.n.n.y [Footnote: Lestock Wilson.] has been far, far greater than I had expected. The pleasures here altogether, including the kindness of old friends and the civilities of acquaintances, are still more enhanced than I had calculated upon by the home and the quiet library, and easy-chair morning retreat I enjoy. Our long-expected visit to Herschel above all has far surpa.s.sed my expectations, raised as they were and warm from the fresh enthusiasm kindled by his last work.

Mrs. Herschel, who by the bye is very pretty, which does no harm, is such a delightful person, with so much simplicity and so much sense, so fit to sympathise with him in all things intellectual and moral, and making all her guests comfortable and happy without any apparent effort; she was extremely kind to f.a.n.n.y, and Mr. Herschel to Lestock.

Thursday I went down to Slough alone in f.a.n.n.y's carriage, as Lestock was not well, and she would not leave him. There was no company, and the evening was delightfully spent in hearing and talking. I had made various pencil notes in my copy of his book to ask for explanations, and so patient and kind and clear they were.

On Sat.u.r.day I began to grow very anxious about six o'clock, and Mrs.

Herschel good-naturedly sympathised with me, and we stood at the window that looks out on a distant turn of the London road, and at last I saw a carriage gla.s.s flash and then an outline of a well-known coachman's form, and then the green chaise, and all right.

There were at dinner the Provost of Eton in his wig, a large fine presence of a Provost--Dr. Goodall; Mrs. Hervey, very pretty, and gave me a gardenia like a Cape jessamine, white, sweet smelling--much talking of it and smelling and handing it about; Mrs. Gwatkin, one of Sir Joshua Reynold's nieces, has been very pretty, and though deaf is very agreeable--enthusiastically and affectionately fond of her uncle--indignant at the idea of his not having himself written the _Discourses_; "Burke or Johnson indeed! no such thing--he wrote them himself. I am evidence, he used to employ me as his secretary: often I have been in the room when he has been composing, walking up and down the room, stopping sometimes to write a sentence," etc.

On Sunday to Windsor Chapel; saw the King and the Queen, and little Prince George of Cambridge, seen each through the separate compartments of their bay window up aloft. The service lasted three hours, and then we went, by particular desire, to Eton College, to see the Provost and Mrs. Goodall, and the pictures of all the celebrated men. Some of these portraits taken when very young are interesting; some from being like, some from being quite unlike what one would expect from their after characters. We saw the books of themes and poems that had been judged worth preserving. Canning's and Lord Wellesley's much esteemed. Drawers full of prints; many rare books; the original unique copy of _Reynard the Fox_--the table of contents of which is so exceedingly diverting I would fain have copied it on the spot, but the Provost told me a copy could be had at every stall for one penny.

Got home to Herschel's while the sun yet shone, and I having the day before begged the favour of him to repeat for f.a.n.n.y and Lestock the experiments and explanations on polarised light and periodical colours, he had everything ready, and very kindly went over it all again, and afterwards said to Mrs. Herschel, "It is delightful to explain these things to Mrs. Wilson; she can understand anything with the least possible explanation."

It was a fine moonlight night, and he took us out to see Saturn and his rings, and the Moon and her volcanoes. Saturn, I thought, looked very much as he used to do; but the Moon did surprise and charm me--very different from anything I had seen or imagined of the moon. A large portion of a seemingly immense globe of something like rough ice, resplendent with light and all over protuberances like those on the outside of an oyster sh.e.l.l, supposing it immensely magnified in a Brobdingnag microscope, a l.u.s.trous-mica look all over the protuberances, and a distinctly marked mountain-in-a-map in the middle shaded delicately off.

I must remark to you that all the time we were seeing we were eighteen feet aloft, on a little stage about eight feet by three, with a slight iron rod rail on three sides, but quite open to fall in front, and Lestock repeatedly warned me not to forget and step forwards.

Monday, our visit, alas! was to come to an end. Mr. Herschel offered to take Lestock to town in his gig, which he accepted with pleasure, and f.a.n.n.y and I went with Mrs. Herschel to see Sir Joshua's pictures at Mrs.

Gwatkin's. There is one of Charles Fox done when he was eighteen: the face so faded that it looks like an unfinished sketch, not the least like any other picture I have ever seen of the jolly, moon-faced Charles Fox, but some resemblance to the boy of thirteen in the print I begged from Lord Buchan. The original "Girl with a m.u.f.f" is here; the original also of "Simplicity," who has now flowers in her lap in consequence of the observation of a foolish woman who, looking at the picture as it was originally painted, with the child's hands interlaced, with the backs of the hands turned up, "How beautiful! How natural the dish of prawns the dear little thing has in her lap!"

Sir Joshua threw the flowers over the prawns.

There appeared in this collection many sad results of Sir Joshua's experiments on colours; a very fine copy of his from Rembrandt's picture of himself, all but the face so black as to be unintelligible. There was the first Sir Joshua ever drew of himself--and his last; this invaluable last is going--black cracks and ma.s.ses of bladdery paint. He painted Mrs. Gwatkin seven times. "But don't be vain, my dear, I only use your head as I would that of any beggar--as a good practice."

Her husband is a true Roast Beef of Old England King and Const.i.tution man, who most good-naturedly hunted out from his archives a letter of Hannah More's, which happened to be particularly interesting to me, on Garrick in the character of Hamlet; it was good, giving a decided view of what Garrick at least thought the unity of the character.

From metaphysics to physics, we finished with a n.o.ble slice of the roast beef of Old England, "fed, ma'am," said Mr. Gwatkin, "by his present Majesty, G.o.d bless him."

Arrived at No. 1 in good time, and dined yesterday at Lady Davy's.

Rogers, Gally Knight, Lord Mahon, and Lord Ashburner, who was very agreeable. He has been eleven years roaming the world, and is not foreign-fangled. Mrs. Marcet, who came in the evening, was the happiness of it to me.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET,

_April 1831_.

Such a day as yesterday! sun shining--neither too hot nor too cold. This was just the time of year, I think, that you saw Knowle, and I never did see a place and house which pleased me more; exceedingly entertained with the portraits, endless to particularise. Several of Grammont's beauties, not so good in colours as in black and white. Sir Walter's black and white portrait of James I. made the full length of his unkingly Majesty a hundred times more interesting to me than it could otherwise have been,--mean, odd, strange-looking mortal. And then the silver room, as it is called, how it was gilt to me by the genius of romance, all Heriot's masterpieces there, would have been but cups and boxes ranged on toilette table and India cabinet but for the master magician touch. But we had to leave Knowle as we had engaged the day before at Brandfold to go to Mr. Jones (on the Distribution of Wealth) at Brasted. Such crowds of ideas as he poured forth, uttering so rapidly as to keep one quite on the stretch not to miss any of the good things.

Half of them, I am sure, I have forgotten, but note for futurity; specially a fair-haired heiress now living, shut up in an old place called the Moate, old as King John's time. Mr. Jones had invited Dr. and Mrs. Felton, and had a luncheon _comme il y en a peu_ and wines of every degree: hock from Bremen, brought over by our mutual friend Mr. Jacob, and far too valuable for an ignoramus like me to swallow.

Chevening? You are afraid we shall not have time to see Chantrey's monument. "O! but you must see it," said Mr. Jones, and so he and Dr.

Felton ordered gig and pony carriage to let our horses rest, and follow and meet us, and away we went. Mr. Jones driving me in his gig to a beautiful parky place where Dr. Felton flourishes for the summer, and saw his children, who had wished to see the mother of Frank and Rosamond. Then through Mr. Manning's beautiful place--never travelling a high road or a by-road all the way to Chevening churchyard. The white marble monument of Lady Frederica Stanhope is in the church; plain though she was in life, she is beautiful in death, something of exquisite tenderness in the expression of her countenance, maternal tenderness, and repose, matronly repose, and yet the freshness of youth in the rounded arm and delicate hand that lightly, affectionately presses the infant--she dies, if dying it can be called, so placid, so happy; the head half-turned sinks into the pillow, which, without touching, one can hardly believe to be marble. I am sure Harriet recollects Lady Frederica at Paris, just before she was married.

We left Chevening, and can never forget it, and drove through the wealds and the charts, called, as Mr. Jones tells me, from the charters, and see a chapel built by Porteus to civilise some of the wicked ones of the wealds or wilds, and Ireton's house, [Footnote: Groombridge Place.]

where some say Cromwell lived, now belonging to Perkins the brewer. Then "see to the right that rich green field, where King Henry VIII. used to stop and wind his horn, that people might gather and drag himself and suite through the slough," and it was near eight before we got to town, and Lestock waiting dinner with the patience of Job. He, Lestock, not Job, is a delightful person to live with, never annoyed about hours or trifles of that kind.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET,

_April 30, 1831_.

On Monday last I drove to Apsley House, without the slightest suspicion that the d.u.c.h.ess had been worse than when I had last seen her. When I saw the gate only just opened enough to let out the porter's head, and saw Smith parleying with him, nothing occurred to me but that the man doubted whether I was a person who ought to be admitted; so I put out my card, when Smith, returning, said, "Ma'am, the _d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington died on Sat.u.r.day morning!_"

The good-natured porter, seeing that I was "really a friend," as he said, went into the house at my request, to ask if I could see her maid; and after a few minutes the gates opened softly, and I went into that melancholy house, into that great, silent hall: window-shutters closed: not a creature to be seen or heard.

At last a man-servant appeared, and as I moved towards the side of the house where I had formerly been--"Not that way, ma'am; walk in here, if you please."

Then came, in black, that maid, of whose attachment the d.u.c.h.ess had, the last time I saw her, spoken so highly and truly, as I now saw by the first look and words. "Too true, ma'am--_she_ is gone from us! her Grace died on Sat.u.r.day."

"Was the Duke in town?"

"Yes, ma'am, BESIDE HER."

Not a word more, but I was glad to have that certain. Lord Charles had arrived in time; not Lord Douro. The d.u.c.h.ess had remained much as I last saw her on the sofa for a fortnight; then confined to her bed some days, but then seemed much better; had been up again, and out in that room and on that sofa, as when we heard her conversing so charmingly. They had no apprehension of her danger, nor had she herself till Friday, when she was seized with violent pain, and died on Sat.u.r.day morning, "calm and resigned."

The poor maid could hardly speak. She went in and brought me a lock of her mistress's hair, silver gray, all but a few light brown, that just recalled the beautiful Kitty Pakenham!

So ended that sweet, innocent--shall we say happy, or unhappy life?

Happy, I should think, _through all_; happy in her good feelings and good conscience, and warm affections, still LOVING on! Happy in her faith, her hope, and her charity!

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

LONDON, _May 6, 1831_.