The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 19

One of our farewell visits yesterday was to Mrs. Lushington; and when we had talked our fill about our brother Pakenham, we went to politics, of which every head in London is fuller than it can hold. Lord Suffield described the scene in the House of Lords [Footnote: On the opening of Parliament, when the King was to propose the bringing in of the Reform Bill.] as more extraordinary than could have been imagined or believed.

One lord held down by force, and one bawling at the top of his voice, even when the door opened, and the King appeared as his lordship p.r.o.nounced the word "RUIN!"

Ruin did not seize the King, however, nor was he in the least affected by the uproar. He walked calmly on.

"I kept my eye upon him," Lord Suffield said; "I looked at his knees, they did not tremble in the least. I am sure I could not have walked so firmly; I do not believe another man present could have been so calm."

The King quietly took out his paper, felt for his spectacles, put them on composedly, and read with a firm voice. They say nothing was ever like the confusion and violence since the time of Charles I. and Cromwell.

The day before yesterday we did a prodigious deal. Mr. Drummond came at ten o'clock, by appointment, to take us to the Mint, to see the double printing press; and we saw everything, from the casting the types to the drying the sheet; and then to the India House. There was some little stop while Pakenham's card, with a pencil message to Dr. Wilkins, was sent up. While this was doing, a superb mock-majesty man, in scarlet cloak and c.o.c.ked hat, bedizened with gold, motioned us away. "Coachman, drive on; no carriage can stand before the India House--that's the rule."

Dr. Wilkins came out of his comfortable den to receive us, laid down his book and spectacles, and showed us everything. The strangest thing we saw was a toy of Tippoo Sahib's, worthy of a despot--an English soldier, as large as life, in his uniform, hat, and everything, painted and varnished, lying at full length, and a furious tiger over him; a handle, invisible at a distance, in his ribs, which, when turned by the slave, produced sounds like the growling of the tiger and the groans of the man!

We had a very pleasant day at Epping. Mrs. Napier went with us; I inside with her, f.a.n.n.y on the barouche-seat with Pakenham, and Lestock behind with Sneyd. The place is so much improved! I saw f.a.n.n.y's horse Baronet: very pretty.

_2 o'clock, Luncheon._

Pakenham is eating his last bit of gooseberry pie: enter Sneyd: boxes--hammering--dreadful notes of preparation. Pakenham yesterday wore the trefoil pin with his aunt's hair, and the sleeve-b.u.t.tons with his mother's and sister's hair; and I have added a locket to hang to his watch-chain, with a bit, very scarce, of my own hair. The wind is fair: we shall hear from him from Deal.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

NORTH AUDLEY STREET,

_May 7, 1831_.

I wrote to Harriet yesterday all about Pakenham to the moment he left this house with Sneyd to join Lestock in the City, and go on to Gravesend.

Half an hour after we had parted from Pakenham, and before we had recovered sense, came a great rap at the door. "Will you see anybody, ma'am?" I was going to say, "No, n.o.body," but I bid Smith ask the name, when behind him, as I spoke, enter Mrs. Lushington. "I have forced my way up--forgive me, it is for Pakenham; I hope I am not too late; I've brought him _good_ letters from Mrs. Charles Lushington."

Comprehending instantly the value of the letters, and our carriage being most luckily at the door, into it f.a.n.n.y and I got, and drove as hard as we could down to the dock, to the very place where they were to take the Gravesend boat. You may imagine the anxiety we were in to be in time, boat waiting for no one; and then the stoppages of odious carts and hackney coaches in the City: I do not believe we spoke three words to each other all that long way. At last, when within a few minutes of the end of our time, we were encompa.s.sed with carts, drays, and omnibuses, in an impenetrable line seemingly before us. f.a.n.n.y sent Smith on foot with the letters and a pencil note. We got on wonderfully, our coachman being really an angel. We reached the wharf. "Is the Gravesend boat gone?" "No, ma'am, not this half-hour; half after four, instead of four, to-day."

We took breath, but were still anxious, watching each with head out on our own side; for Smith had not appeared, and Lestock, Sneyd, and Pakenham had not arrived: great fear of missing them and the letters in the hurly-burly of packages, and packers, and pa.s.sengers, and sailors, and _orderers_, and hackney coaches, and coachmen, and boatmen, men, women, and children swarming and bawling.

But at last Smith and Lestock appeared together, and the letters got into Pakenham's hand: he and Sneyd had gone into the boat, so we saw no more of them; but Lestock sent us off on a new hurry-skurry for pistols, ordered but not brought. To the Minerva counting-house we drove, to send the pistols by some boatswain there: got to counting-house: "Boatswain gone?" "No, ma'am, not yet," said the dear, smiling clerk. So all was right, and Pakenham had his pistols.

SALDEN HOUSE, MRS. CARR'S,

_June 6, 1831_.

My last days in London crowned the whole in all that was entertaining, curious, gratifying, and delightful to head and heart. I am writing while Isabella Carr is reading out _Destiny_, and very well she reads the Scotch; so you may think I cannot enter into details of the past at present, but I must just note--

Lady Elizabeth Whitbread and four Lady Harleys.

Opera with Lady Guilford and two daughters: _Medea_, Pasta: thrilling shiver, gliding sideways to her children, and sudden retreat.

French play: Leontine Fay in _Une Faute_--the most admirable actress I ever saw, and in the most touching piece. Three young men--Mr.

Whitbread, Major Keppel, and Lord Mahon--separately told me the impression made on them by this actress was such that they could not sleep afterwards! I had no trial how this would be with me, because we went off from the playhouse to Sir James South's, to see the occultation of Jupiter's satellites: that was indeed a sublime reality, and no wonder we were broad awake till three o'clock.

Next morning St. Paul's: moral sublime. I sat next Rammohun Roy, and heard all he said. One curious inquiry he made; "Why are the boys set _above_ the girls?" Sermon by the Bishop of Nova Scotia: Judge Haliburton sat between f.a.n.n.y and me. Luncheon at the Bishop of Llandaff's: forty people. Came home: packed up. Mr. Creed at dinner, and this last day delightful.

_To_ CAPTAIN BASIL HALL.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _August 14, 1831_.

My last visit to universal London confirms to my own feelings your eulogium. I never was so happy there in my life, because I had besides all the external pleasures, the solid satisfaction of a home there, and domestic pleasures, without which I should soon grow a-weary of the world, and wish the business of the town were done. I should be very sorry if I were told this minute that I was never to see London again, and yet I am wondrous contented and happy at home. I hope you will come and see some time whether I am only making believe or telling true.

You say I must never say a discouraging word to you, because you are so easily discouraged: for shame! What is that but saying, "Flatter me"?

Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be. Instead of flattering I will give you this wholesome caution: in your new volumes do not weaken the effect by giving too much of a good thing; do not be lengthy; cut well before you go to press, and then the rest will live all the better. With your facility, this cannot cost you much.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

ROSTREVOR, [Footnote: Where the Miss Ruxtons were now living.]

_Oct. 2, 1831_.

Lestock was gratified by my joining him at Armagh. Mr. Allott was most hospitable. We walked to the cathedral, and saw views of great extent and beauty, and heard learned disquisitions about architecture, and a curious anecdote in support of a favourite theory of his, that small stones _grouted_ together, with lime and water put in hot, defies old Time. Great alarm was excited some time ago at Winchester Cathedral: the princ.i.p.al pillars seemed to be giving way, out of the perpendicular, and _bulged_. They fell to work _shoring_ and propping; but, in spite of all, the pillars still seemed to be giving way more and more, and they feared the whole would come down. Rennie was sent for, but Rennie was ill, and died. At last an architect looked at the pillars, picked at them, took off a facing of stone, and found, what he had suspected, that it was only this facing that had given way and bulged, and that the inside was a solid pillar of masonry,--small stones grouted together so firmly that the cement was as hard as the stone.

Dr. and Mrs. Robinson came in the evening: his conversation is admirable; such an affluence of ideas, so full of genius and master thoughts. He gave me an excellent disquisition on the effect which transcendental mathematics produces on the mind, and traced up the history of mathematics from Euclid, appealing to diagrams and resting on images, to that higher sort where they are put out of the question, where we reason by symbols as in algebra, and work on in the dark till they get to the light, or till the light comes out of the dark--sure that it will come out. He went over Newton, and on through the history of modern times--Brinkley, Lagrange, Hamilton--just giving to me, ignorant, a notion of what each had done.

Mrs. O'Beirne--dear, kind soul!--would accompany me on the jaunting-car all the way from Newry to Rostrevor, and I am very glad she did; and as the day was fine and the tide in, I thought it would be pleasant on that beautiful road; and so it would have been, but for the droves of cows--Oh, those weary cows with the longest horns!--and if ever I laughed at you for being afraid of cows, you may have your revenge now.

Every quarter of a mile, at least, came a tangled ma.s.s of these brutes, and their fright made them more terrible, for they knew no more what they were doing than I did myself; and there I was sitting at their mercy, and the horn of one or t'other continually within an inch of my eye, my mouth, or my breast, and no retreat; and they might any moment stick me on the top of one of these horns, and toss me with one jerk into the sea! Mrs. O'Beirne kept telling me she was used to it, and that nothing ever happened; but by the time I reached Rostrevor I was as poor a worn-out rag as ever you saw.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Dec. 22, 1831._

Francis was married on the 19th to Rosa Florentina Eroles; Sneyd, f.a.n.n.y, and Lestock were present. The bride was dressed in a plain white muslin, with a mantilla lace veil of her own work on her head, without any hat, after the fashion of her own country, with a small wreath of silver flowers in her dark hair. Her sister was dressed English fashion, in a bonnet. Both Sneyd and f.a.n.n.y say that nothing could appear more gentlemanlike, gentle, amiable, and happy than the bridegroom.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _April 20, 1832_.

Can you conceive yourself to be an old lamp at the point of extinction, and dreading the smell you would make at going out, and the execrations which in your dying flickerings you might hear? And then you can conceive the sudden starting up again of the flame, when fresh oil is poured into the lamp. And can you conceive what that poor lamp would feel returning to light and life? So felt I when I had read your letter on reading what I sent to you of _Helen_. You have given me new life and spirit to go on with her. I would have gone on from principle, and the desire to do what my father advised--to finish whatever I began; but now I feel all the difference between working for a dead or a live horse.

My auriculas are superb, and my peony tree has eighteen full-swelled buds: it will be in glory by the time Sophy and Mag arrive.

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

EDGEWORTHSTOWN. _Aug. 1, 1832_.

It is impossible to tell you how much I miss you. Never, except at my Aunt Ruxton's, did I ever pa.s.s my time away from home so entirely to my own enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured the cheerful sky.