The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 30

MARIA _to_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Dec. 3, 1843_.

We dined at Dr. Lushington's last Thursday--the dinner was very merry and good-humoured. Mr. Richardson was there, and delighted I was to see him, and he talked so affectionately of Sir Walter and auld lang syne times; and Mr. Bentham, the botanist, too, was there, Pakenham's friend, a very agreeable man. After dinner too was to me very entertaining, for I found that a lady, introduced to me as Mrs. Hawse, was daughter to Brunel, and she told me all the truth of her brother and the half-guinea in his throat, and the incision in his windpipe, and his coughing it up at last, and Brodie seeing and s.n.a.t.c.hing it from between his teeth, and driving over all London to show it.

And now we are going to tea at Dr. Holland's.

_Monday morning._

That we had a very pleasant evening I need scarcely say, but to Boswell Sydney Smith would out-Boswell Boswell. He talked of course of Ireland and the Priests, and I gave good, and I trust true testimony to their being, before they took to politics--excellent parish priests, and he talked of Bishop Higgins and Repeal agitations, and I told him of "Don't be antic.i.p.ating," and laughing at brogue (how easy!) led him to tell me of a conversation of his with Bishop Doyle in former days--beginning with "My lord," propitiously and propitiatingly, "My lord, don't you think it would be a good plan to have your clergy paid by the State?"

Bishop Doyle a.s.sured him it would never be accepted. "But, suppose every one of your clergy found, 150 lodged in the bank for them, and at 5 per cent for arrears?"

"Ah! Mr. Smith, you have a way of putting things!"

Sydney Smith, on his side, was enchanted with Maria Edgeworth--"Miss Edgeworth was delightful, so clever and sensible. She does not say witty things, but there is such a perfume of wit runs through all her conversation as makes it very brilliant."

MISS EDGEWORTH _to_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

_Christmas Day._

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With the addition which Lestock has just been telling to Waller--

With your pockets full of money and your cellars full of beer.

Yesterday, Sunday, your kind friends, the Andrews', took Waller with us to the Temple church--it has been, you know, all new painted and dressed since I saw it last, and the knights in dark bronze-coloured marble repaired. The tiled floor is too new, not like Mr. Butler's most respectable reverend old tiles. Mr. Andrews took us all over the church after service, and in particular pointed out one old window of painted gla.s.s, in which the bright red colour is so bright in such full freshness as is inimitable in modern art.

We went from church to luncheon at Mrs. Andrews', and such a luncheon; I refrain from a whole page which might be spent on it. Then Mrs. Andrews took Waller and me a drive three times round the park, a most pleasant drive in such a bright sunshiny day. So many happy little children under the trees and on the pathways.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Jan. 1844_.

Thank you, and pray do you thank for me all the dear kind brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces, all round you, their centre and spring of good, for all the pleasure they, on my seventy-seventh birthday, from Barry's to dear little Mary's, all gave me--pleasure such as cannot be bought for money. Who would not like to live to be old if they could be so happy in friends as I am? I cannot help enclosing to you Lucy's and Dr. Robinson's greeting, as you will feel with me the pleasure both gave me.

Dumb Francis was here on that happy first of January and a.s.sured me on his slate that he was very happy and grateful. I never see him without my Francis's sonnet repeating itself, "The soul of honour," etc.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Jan. 5, 1844_.

I have been reading and am reading Bentham's _Memoirs_; he could write plain English before he invented his strange lingo, and the account of his childhood and youth is exceedingly entertaining. f.a.n.n.y reads to us at night, much to Waller's interest and entertainment, Lieutenant Eyre's account of that horrid Cabul expedition--what a disgrace to the British arms and name in India. Mr. Pakenham and his nice wife came in while I was writing this, and when I asked him if the prestige of British superiority would be destroyed in India, he said, "No: we have redeemed ourselves so n.o.bly."

Waller is occupied every spare moment perfecting a Leyden phial, coated and chained properly, and giving quite large and grand sparks and pretty sharp shocks.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Jan. 1844_.

The day before yesterday f.a.n.n.y and I walked to see Mrs. Napier, all in black for Lady Clare--the suddenness of whose death, scarcely a moment's interval between the bright flash of life and the dark silence of death, was most striking and awful.

Yesterday we went to see dear Lady Elizabeth Whitbread, all as it used to be, beautiful camellias, but she herself so sad--Miss Grant is dying.

Nothing can surpa.s.s her true tenderness to this faithful, gentle, sincere old friend. All these illnesses and deaths are the more striking I think in a bustling capital city, than they would be in the country surrounded by one's family. There is something shocking in seeing the bustling, struggling crowd who care nothing for one another dead or alive: and they may say, so much the better, we are spared unavailing thought and anguish, and yet I would rather have the thought and even the anguish--for without pain there is no pleasure for the heart no prayer for Indifference for me! Every _memento mori_ comes with some force to me at seventy-seven, and I do pray most earnestly and devoutly to G.o.d, as my father did before me, that my body may not survive my mind, and that I may leave a tender not unpleasing recollection in their hearts.

Though I have written this, my dear mother, and feel it truly, I am not the least melancholy, or apprehensive or afraid of dying, and as to the rest I am truly resigned, and trust to the goodness of my Creator living or dying.

_Jan. 13_.

Thursday evening at Rogers's--the party was made for us and as small as possible, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Davy, Mr. and Mrs. Empson, and Mr. Compton and Lord Northampton. Mr. Empson is very little altered in twelve years: the same affectionate heart and the same excellent head.

Lord Northampton is very conversable; and Mr. Compton brought me sugared words from troops of children.

HALF-PAST SIX P.M.

Just returned from Mrs. Drummond's--beautiful house and two pretty children--and we went to see Anna Carr's beautiful drawings of Ceylon, and no time for more.

_Feb. 1_.

Miss Fox's illness detained Lord and Lady Lansdowne at Bowood--she is rather better. We went to Lansdowne House yesterday, and saw Lady Shelburne for the first time, handsome, and very amiable in countenance.

Lady Louisa was most charming in her attention to me, and she has a most sensible, deep-thinking face.

_Feb. 2_.

Snowing and fogging, as white and as dark and disagreeable as ever it can be. Thank heaven, to-day was not yesterday, which was dry, bright sunshine, on purpose to grace the Queen, and to pleasure us three in particular. f.a.n.n.y ended yesterday by telling you how fortunate, or rather how kind, people had been in working out three tickets for me, at the last hour, at the last moment; for Lord Lovelace came himself between eleven and twelve at night with a ticket, which he gave me, at Lady Byron's request. You may guess how happy I was to have the third ticket for Honora, and we were all full dressed, punctual to the minute, in f.a.n.n.y's carriage, and with my new-dressed opossum cloak covering our knees, as warm as young toasts.

I spare you all that you will see in the newspapers. The first view of the House did not strike me as so grand as the old House, but my mouth was stopped by "_Pro tempore_ only, you know." We went up an ignominiously small staircase, and the man at the bottom, piteously perspiring, cried out, "On, on, ladies! don't stop the way! room enough above!" But there was one objection to going on, that there were no seats above: however, we made ourselves small--no great difficulty--and, taking to the wall, we left a scarcely practicable pa.s.s for those who, less wary and more obedient than ourselves, went up one by one to the highmost void. f.a.n.n.y feared for me that I should never be able to _stand_ it, when somehow or another my name was p.r.o.nounced and heard by one of the Miss Southebys, who stretched her cordial hand.

"Glad--proud--glad--we'll squeeze--we'll make room for you between me and my friend Miss Fitzhugh;" and so I was bodkin, but never touched the bench till long after. I cast a lingering look at my deserted sisters twain. "No, no, we can't do that!" so, that hope killed off, I took to make the best of my own selfish position, and surveyed all beneath me, from the black heads of the reporter gentlemen, with their pencils and papers before them in the form and desk immediately below me, to the depths of the hall, in all its long extent; and sprawling and stretching in the midst--with the feathered and lappeted and jewelled peeresses on their right, and their foreign excellencies on the left--were the long-robed, ermined judges, laying their wigs together and shaking hands, their wigs' many-curled tails shaking on their backs. And the wigs jointly and severally looked like so many vast white and gray birds'-nests from Brobdingnag, with a black hole at the top of each, for the birds to creep out or in. More and more scarlet-ermined dignitaries and n.o.bles swarmed into the hall, and then, in at the scarlet door, came, with white ribbon shoulder-knots and streamers flying in all directions, a broad scarlet five-row-ermined figure, with high, bald forehead, facetious face, and jovial, hail-fellow-well-met countenance, princely withal, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and the sidelong peeress benches stretched their fair hands, and he his ungloved royal hand hastily here and there and everywhere, and chattering so loud and long, that even the remote gallery could hear the "Ha, ha, haw!" which followed ever and anon; and we blessed ourselves, and thought we should never hear the Queen; but I was told he would be silent when the Queen came, and so it proved.

The guns were heard: once, twice, and at the second all were silent: even His Royal Highness of Cambridge ceased to rustle and flutter, and stood n.o.bly still.

Enter the crown and cushion and sword of state and mace--the Queen, leaning on Prince Albert's arm. She did not go up the steps to the throne well--caught her foot and stumbled against the edge of the footstool, which was too high. She did not seat herself in a decided, queenlike manner, and after sitting down pottered too much with her drapery, arranging her petticoats. That footstool was much too high! her knees were crumpled up, and her figure, short enough already, was foreshortened as she sat, and her drapery did not come to the edge of the stool: as my neighbour Miss Fitzhugh whispered, "Bad effect."

However and nevertheless, the better half of her looked perfectly ladylike and queenlike; her head finely shaped, and well held on her shoulders with her likeness of a kingly crown, that diadem of diamonds.

Beautifully fair the neck and arms; and the arms moved gracefully, and never too much. I could not at that distance judge of her countenance, but I heard people on the bench near me saying that she looked "divinely gracious."

Dead silence: more of majesty implied in that silence than in all the magnificence around. She spoke, low and well: "My lords and gentlemen, be seated." Then she received from the lord-in-waiting her speech, and read: her voice, perfectly distinct and clear, was heard by us ultimate auditors; it was not quite so fine a voice as I had been taught to expect; it had not the full rich tones nor the varied powers and inflections of a perfect voice. She read with good sense, as if she perfectly understood, but did not fully or warmly feel, what she was reading. It was more a girl's well-read lesson than a Queen p.r.o.nouncing her speech. She did not lay emphasis sufficient to mark the gradations of importance in the subjects, and she did not make pauses enough. The best-p.r.o.nounced paragraphs were those about France and Ireland, her firm determination to preserve inviolate the legislative union; and "I am resolved to act in strict conformity with this declaration" she p.r.o.nounced strongly and well. She showed less confidence in reading about the suspension of the elective franchise, and in the conclusion, emphasis and soul were wanting, when they were called for, when she said, "In full confidence of your loyalty and wisdom, and with an earnest prayer to Almighty G.o.d," etc.

Her Majesty's exit I was much pleased to look at, it was so graceful and so gracious. She took time enough for all her motions, noticing all properly, from "my dear uncle"--words I distinctly heard as she pa.s.sed the Duke of Cambridge--to the last expectant fair one at the doorway.