The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 25

I think that nothing less than the decided, perhaps despotic hand of the Duke of Wellington, could prevent this catastrophe, and the sense of Mr.

Peel will aid, I trust. The Duke has been a stander-by and has had leisure to repent the error which turned him out before, viz. of declaring that he would have no reform. Mr. Peel has well guarded against this in his address on his return. What we must pray for is, that the hands of the present Government may be strengthened sufficiently to enable them to prevent the mischiefs prepared by the last Administration, and that, having seen the error, they may be wise in time.

Innumerable were the improvements which were effected by Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth for the advantage of their poorer neighbours in the immediate vicinity of their home. Cottagers' houses were rebuilt or made comfortable, schools built, and roads improved. A legacy of diamonds from a relation was sold by Miss Edgeworth that she might build a market house in the village, with a room over it for the magistrates' Petty Sessions. She endeavoured to be on the best terms with the Catholic priests, to whom she showed constant kindness and hospitality. Her poorer neighbours were made sharers in all her interests or pleasures, and all those she employed were treated as friends rather than servants.

All her sympathies were in behalf of Ireland. Yet she met with no return of affection or sympathy. In 1836 we find Mrs. Farrar writing of Edgeworthstown:

It was market-day: so the main street was full of the lower order of Irish, with their horses and carts, a.s.ses and panniers, tables and stands full of eatables and articles of clothing. Sometimes the cart or car served as a counter on which to display their goods. The women, in bright-coloured cotton gowns and white caps with full double borders, made a very gay appearance. But as we pa.s.sed through the crowd to the schoolhouse the enmity of the Papists to Protestant landholders was but too evident.

Though Mrs. Edgeworth had been the Lady Bountiful of the village for many years, there were no bows for her or her friends, no making way before her, no touching of hats, no pleasant looks. A sullen expression and a dogged immovability were on every side of us.

MARIA _to_ PAKENHAM EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN,

ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN THE MORNING, 1835.

How provoking, how chilling a feeling it gives of the distance between us, my dear Pakenham, that we must wait twelve months for an answer to any question the most important or the most trivial! But, thank heaven, letters and journals--bating this year between--do bring us happily together, almost face to face and smile to smile. I have often admired the poor Irishman's oratorical bull when he exclaimed, as he looked through a telescope for the first time and saw the people at a cottage door, miles off, brought near, "Then I heard 'em speak quite plain, I think." I think I sometimes hear you speaking and hear the people call you Sahib.

You have seen in the papers the death of our amiable friend, Mr.

Malthus. How well he loved you! His lectureship on Political Economy has been filled up by a very able and deserving friend of mine, Mr. Jones, whose book on Rents you have just been reading, and whose book and self I had the pleasure of first introducing to Lord Lansdowne, under whose Administration this appointment was made. The pupils at Haileybury must now learn from Jones's lectures the objections he made to Malthus's system! I remember once hearing the answer of a sceptic in Political Economy, when reproached with not being of some Political Economy Club.

"Whenever I see any two of you gentlemen agree, I shall be happy to agree with you."

I hope your box of seeds will come safe and will grow. I daresay Harriet will have told you of the Cornish gentleman she met at Black Castle, who told of the blue hydrangea fifteen feet high, and bearing such a profusion of flowers that they were counted, 2352 bunches, each bunch as large as his head! We endeavoured to correct, and said florets for bunches, presuming he so meant, but he distinctly said bunches--so make what you can of it.

_March 19_.

Yesterday I am sure you recollected and honoured as Barry and Sophy's wedding day. Honora had the breakfast table covered with flowers, primroses, violets, polyanthus, and laurustinus, and some of Sophy's own snowdrops, double and single, which obligingly lingered on purpose to celebrate the day.

Did you see how Lord Darnley cut his foot with an axe while he was hewing the root of a tree, and died in consequence of lock-jaw! Harriet, who knew him and all the good he did in their neighbourhood, is very sorry for him.

I have not, I believe, mentioned to you any books except my own; but we have been amused with the _Invisible Gentleman_. You must swallow one monstrous magical absurdity at the beginning, and the rest will go down glibly--that is, _amusing_.

_Instructive and entertaining_: Burne's _Mission to Lah.o.r.e and Bokhara_.

_Instructive, interesting, and entertaining_: Roget on _Physiology, with reference to Theology_--one of the Bridgewater Treatises, full of facts the most curious, arranged in the most beautifully luminous manner. The infinitely large, and the infinitely small in creation, admirably displayed.

Hannah More's _Letters_: many of them entertaining--many admirable for manner and matter, altogether too much; two volumes would have been better than four.

Inglis's _Ireland_: I think he is an honest writer, a man of great observation and ability, and a true admirer of the beauties of nature.

He exaggerates and makes some mistakes, as all travellers do.

Still drops from life some withering joy away.

Year after year, we must witness these sad losses. Aunt Alicia gone! and Aunt Bess Waller, of whom you were so fond. What an amiable and highly cultivated mind she had, and so hospitable and kind.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 31, 1835_.

Harriet told me, my dear Sophy, that she found you in bed, reading _Popular Tales_, or some of my old things--thank you, thank you, my dear, for loving them. I hope that this will find you better, and that your Black Castle walks, leaning on that kind Isabella's arm, will have quite restored you.

I have been reading Roget's most admirable Bridgewater Treatise--admirable in every way, scientific, moral, and religious, in the most deep and exalted manner--religious, raising the mind through nature's works up to nature's G.o.d, which must increase and exalt piety where it exists, and create and confirm the devotional feelings where they have lain dormant. All his facts are most curious, and the exclamation, "how fearfully and wonderfully we are made," may be extended to the ugliest tadpole that _wabbles_ in a ditch till he is a frog, and the microscope invented by that creature man endowed with--

Luckily a hair in my pen stopped me, or I might have gone on to another page, in my hot fit of enthusiasm.

_To MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Sept. 1835_.

Have you seen in the papers reports about the marriage of Lord John Russell to Lady R.? All true--Lady Ribblesdale, _ci-devant_ Adelaide Lister, Aunt Mary's niece, a young widow with a charming little boy; this morning Aunt Mary had a letter from Lady Ribblesdale herself. If she was to marry again she could not have made a more suitable match. He is a very domestic man, and, save his party violence and folly, very amiable and sensible.

Mr. George Ticknor [Footnote: The well-known Professor of Modern Literature at Harvard University, author of the _History of Spanish Literature_, etc. Born 1791, died 1871.] and his family visited Edgeworthstown in August 1835, and remained there several days, which were a very interesting and happy time to Miss Edgeworth. Mr. Ticknor describes his visit at great length in his journals, and the first appearance of Miss Edgeworth:

A small, short, spare lady of about sixty-seven, with extremely frank and kind manners, and who always looks straight into your face with a pair of mild deep gray eyes whenever she speaks to you. Her conversation, always ready, is as full of vivacity and variety as I can imagine. It is also no less full of good-nature. She is disposed to defend everybody, as far as she can, though never so far as to be unreasonable. And in her intercourse with her family she is quite delightful, referring constantly to Mrs. Edgeworth, who seems to be the authority for all matters of fact, and most kindly repeating jokes to her infirm aunt, Miss Sneyd, who cannot hear them, and who seems to have for her the most unbounded affection and admiration.

About herself as an author she seems to have no reserve or secrets....

But, though she talks freely about herself and her works, she never introduces the subject, and never seems glad to continue it. She talks quite as well, and with quite as much interest, on everything else.

It is plain that the family make a harmonious whole, and by those who visited Edgeworthstown when it was much larger, and were proud of the children of all the wives of Mr. Edgeworth, with their connections produced by marriage, so as to prove the most heterogeneous relationships, I am told there was always the same striking union and agreeable intercourse among them all, to the number of sometimes fifteen or twenty.

...The house, and many of its arrangements--the bells, the doors, etc.--bear witness to that love of mechanical trifling of which Mr.

Edgeworth was so often accused. But things in general are very convenient and comfortable through the house, though, as elsewhere in Ireland, there is a want of English exactness and finish. However, all such matters, even if carried much farther than they are, would be mere trifles in the midst of so much kindness, hospitality, and intellectual pleasures of the highest order as we enjoyed under their roof, where hospitality is so abundant that they have often had twenty or thirty friends come upon them unexpectedly, when the family was much larger than it is now.

Maria Edgeworth was now the real owner of Edgeworthstown. Her half-brother Lovell's embarra.s.sments had obliged him to sell his paternal inheritance, and Miss Edgeworth gladly expended the fortune which had come to her through literature in preserving it from falling into the hands of strangers. She only stipulated that she herself should remain as much "a background figure" as before. Lovell Edgeworth was still the apparent owner of Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Edgeworth was still the mistress of the house, consulted and deferred to in everything. In her note of invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor she says: "The sooner you can come to us the better, because Mrs. Edgeworth is now at home with us ...

as you would find this house much more agreeable when she is at home; and in truth you never could see it to advantage, or see things as they really are in this family, unless when she makes part of it, and when she is at the head of it." [Footnote: _Life of George Ticknor_.] Maria Edgeworth unconsciously depicted herself when describing Miss Emma Granby, "The Modern Griselda."

All her thoughts were intent upon making her friends happy. She seemed to live in them more than in herself, and from sympathy rose the greatest pleasure and pain of her existence. Her sympathy was not of that useless kind which is called forth only by the elegant fict.i.tious sorrows of a heroine of romance; hers was ready for all the occasions of real life; nor was it to be easily checked by the imperfections of those to whom she could be of service.

Amongst those who visited Edgeworthstown about this time was the American auth.o.r.ess, Mrs. Farrar, who writes: