The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 32

No pen or hand but my own shall answer your most affectionate letter, my dear own Margaret, or welcome you again to your native country--damp as it is--warm and comfortable with good old,--and young, friends--and young, for your young friends Mary Anne and Charlotte were heartily glad to see you. As to the old, I will yield to no mortal living. In the first place is the plain immovable fact that I am the OLDEST friend you have living, and as to actual knowledge of you I defy any one to match me, ever since you were an infant at Foxhall, and through the Black Castle cottage times with dear Sophy and all. What changes and chances, and ups and downs, we have seen together!

_To_ MISS MARGARET RUXTON.

TRIM, _March 1, 1846_.

Pakenham and Christina [Footnote: In February, Pakenham Edgeworth had married Christina, daughter of Dr. Hugh Macpherson of Aberdeen.] arrived here in excellent time, charmed with their kind reception at Black Castle. From the first moment I set eyes and ears upon Christina I liked her,--it seemed to me as if she was not a new bride coming a stranger amongst us, but one of the family fitting at once into her place as a part of a joining map that had been wanting and is now happily found.

_To_ LADY BEAUFORT.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 31, 1846_.

I hope, dear Honora, that the rhododendrons will not exhaust themselves; at this moment yours opposite the library window are in the most beautiful profuse blow you can conceive, and at the end of my garden indescribably beautiful, and scarlet thorn beside. The peony tree has happily survived its removal, and is covered with flowers.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _June 24, 1846_.

I must try your patience a bit more in a most _th.o.r.n.y_ affair----How "th.o.r.n.y"?

You will never know till a box arrives by the coach, Edward being under orders to convey it to Granard in the gig. Why Edward? Why in the gig?

Because the box is too heavy for Mick Dolan or any other gossoon to carry. "And what can be in it?" Wait till you see,--and I hope you may only see and not feel. _Citoyenne, n'y touchez pas_. Vegetable, animal, or mineral? Four-and-twenty questions might be spent upon it, and you would be none the wiser.

Now to be plain, the box contains "the old man's head;" now you know.

Cacti sent to me by Sir William Hooker; your mother has not room for more than two, which she kept. Thunderstorm and hail-shower, half-past eleven.

The death of Maria Edgeworth's half-brother Francis on 12th October 1846 was a great grief to the family. The same autumn saw the beginning of the Irish famine.

MARIA _to_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

_February 9, 1847_.

Mr. Powell instigated me to beg some relief for the poor from the Quaker a.s.sociation in Dublin--so, much against the grain, I penned a letter to Mr. Harvey, the only person whose name I know on the committee, and prayed some a.s.sistance for Mr. Powell, our vicar, to get us over the next two months, and your mother represented to me that men and boys who can get employment in draining especially, cannot _stand_ the work in the wet for want of strong shoes; so, in for a penny, in for a pound; ask for a lamb, ask for a sheep. I made _bould_ to axe my FRIENDS for as many pairs of brogues as they could afford, or as much leather and soles, which would be better still, as this would enable us to set sundry starving shoemakers to work. By return of post came a letter to "Most respected Friend," or something better, I forget what, and I have sent the letter to f.a.n.n.y--granting 30 for food--offering a soup boiler for eighty gallons, if we had not one large enough, and sending 10 for women's work: and telling me they would lay my shoe pet.i.tion before the Clothing Committee. [Footnote: Leather was sent by these benevolent gentlemen, and brogues were made for men and boys, and proved to be of the first service.]

_February 22_.

The people are now beginning to sow, and I hope they will accordingly reap in due course. Mr. Hinds has laid down a good rule, not to give seed to any tenants but those who can produce the receipt for the last half-year's rent. Barry has been exceedingly kind in staying with us, doing your mother all manner of good, looking after blunders in draining, etc.

_March 13_.

I have been working as hard as an a.s.s to get the pleasure of writing to you, and have not been able to accomplish it. I have only time to say, a gentleman from the Birmingham Relief Committee has sent me 5 for the starving Irish. How good people are! I send Mrs. Cruger's letter, and have written to the ladies of America, specially, as she desires, to those of New York, and your mother approved, and I asked for barley seed, which, as Mr. Powell and Gahan and your mother say, to be of any use must come before May--but I asked for money as well as seed.--St.u.r.dy beggars.

_March 22_.

You will see how good the Irish Americans [Footnote: The Irish porters who carried the seed corn sent from Philadelphia to the sh.o.r.e for embarkation refused to be paid.] have been, and are; I wish the rich Argosie was come.

_April 9_.

"Ou peut-on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?" I found it, my dear, exactly where I knew it was, in Alison's _History_. On Buonaparte's return from Egypt, the Old Guard surrounding him and the band playing this. I know Mary Anne and Charlotte have the music. I have seen it with my eyes and heard it with my ears; I have it in the memory of my heart--I have made all the use I want of it now in the new story I am writing, and mean to publish in Chambers's _Miscellany_, and to give the proceeds to the Poor Relief Fund.

_April 26_.

Having seen in the newspapers that the Australians had sent a considerable sum for the relief of the distressed Irish, and that they had directed it to the care of "His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin,"

meaning Dr. Murray, I wrote to our Archbishop Whately, playing upon this graceless proceeding towards him, and to the best of my capacity, without flattery. I did what I could to make my letter honestly pleasing to His Grace, and I received the most prompt, polite, and to the point reply, a.s.suring me that the Australians were not so graceless in their doings as in their words, that they had made a remittance of a considerable sum to him, and that if I apply to the Central Relief Committee, in whose hands he placed it, he has no doubt my application will be attended to.

This was nuts and apples to me, or, better at present, rice and oatmeal, and I have accordingly written to "My Lords and Gentlemen." The Archbishop, civilly, to show how valuable he deemed my approbation! has sent me a corrected copy of his speech, with good new notes and protest and preface. He says it is impossible to conceive how ignorant the English still are of Ireland, and how positive in their ignorance.

_April 28_.

Mr. Powell has received from Government 105 on his sending up the list of subscriptions here for a hundred guineas, according to their promise, to give as much as any parish subscribed towards its own relief. This he means to lay out in bread and rice and meal--not all in soup; that he may encourage them to cook at home and not be mere craving beggars.

_To_ LADY BEAUFORT.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 8, 1847_.

Most heartily do I rejoice that we may hope that you may be able to come; I do not say come with f.a.n.n.y, for that might hurry and hazard you, but in the days of harvest home, if harvest home does ever come again to our poor country, and you will rejoice with us in the brightened day.

I cannot answer your Admiral's question as to the number of deaths caused by the famine. I believe that no one can form a just estimate. In different districts the estimates and a.s.sertions are widely different, and the priests keep no registry. Mr. Tuite, who was here yesterday, told us that in the House of Commons the contradictory statements of the Irish members astonished and grieved him, as he knew the bad effect it would have in diminishing their credit with the English. Two hundred and fifty thousand is the report of the Police up to April. Mr. Tuite thought a third more deaths than usual had been in his neighbourhood. My mother and Mr. Powell say that the increase of deaths above ordinary times has not in this parish been as much as one-third.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 19, 1847_.

The fever, or whatever it is, has been, Lucy says, dreadful about Armagh; many gentlemen have it; one who exerted himself much for the poor--was distributing meal, saw a poor girl so weak, she could not hold her ap.r.o.n stretched out for it; he went and held it for her--she was in the fever; he went home, felt ill, had the fever, and died.

_June 7_.

What magnificent convolvulus! we had not one blown for f.a.n.n.y's birthday.

Do not trouble yourself about my cough or cold, for I am doing, and shall do, very well; and I would have had twenty times the cough for the really exquisite pleasure I have received from Sir Henry Marsh's letter: no such generous offer was ever made with more politeness and good taste. In the midst of all that may go wrong in the world there is really _much good_, and so much that is honourable to our human nature.

When Margaret is with you, if she likes to see _Orlandino_ in his present _deshabille_, she is welcome. [Footnote: This story was the first of a series edited by William Chambers. It was practically "a temperance story." Speaking in it of the influence of Father Matthews, Miss Edgeworth says: "Since the time of the Crusades, never has one single voice awakened such moral energies; never was the call of one man so universally, so promptly, so long obeyed. Never, since the world began, were countless mult.i.tudes so influenced and so successfully diverted by one mind to one peaceful purpose. Never were n.o.bler ends by n.o.bler means attained."]

_June 11_.