UC-NRLF VV,~^ E'. TALES FROM MARIA EDGEWORTH - '" f t' ' . ~~~~~"^ ^- ' - ' ' Cofynght. 1305, by HbH, fadntr. Or*, & (^ 1903 <\ ONE of the things which perplexes the dreamer for in spite of the critics there are dreamers still is the almost complete extinction of the early editions of certain popular works. The pompous, respectable, full- wigged folios, with their long lists of subscribers, and their magniloquent dedications, find their permanent abiding places in noblemen's libraries, where, unless, with the Chrysostom in Pope, they are used for the smoothing of bands or the drying of flowers, nobody ever disturbs them. They are sacred by their bulk : like the regimental big drum, they are too large to be mislaid. But where are all the first copies of that little octavo of 246 pages, price eighteen pence, " Printed by T. Maxey for Rich. Marriot in S. Dunstans Church- yard, Fleetstreet," in 1653, which constitute the editio princeps of Walton's Angler* Probably they were worn* out in the pockets of Honest Izaak's "brothers of the Angle," or left to bake and cockle in wayside vii 336083 Introduction alehouse windows, or dropped in the deep grass by some casual owner, more careful for baits and flies or possibly for the contents of a leathern bottle, than all the " choicely-good " madrigals of Maudlin the Milk- maid. In any case, there are very few of the little tomes, with their quaint coppers of fishes, in existence now, nor is it silver that pays for them. And that other eighteen-penny book, put forth by " Nath. Pon- der at the Peacock in the Poultrey near Cornhil" five and. twenty years later The Pilgrims Progress from This World^ to That which is to come why is it that there are only five known copies, none quite perfect, now existing, of which the best sold not long since for more than ^1,400? One of them, the first that came to light, had been preserved owing to its having taken sanctuary, almost upon publication, in a great library, where it was forgotten. But the rest that passed over Mr. Ponder's counter in the Poultry were they all lost or destroyed? Probably they were worn, and thumbed, and dog's-eared out of existence. But they are gone; and gone apparently beyond reach of re- covery. These remarks which need not be styled reflections have been suggested by the difficulty experienced by the writer in obtaining particulars as to the first form of the work which is here, in part, reprinted. As a matter of course, children's books are more liable to disappear than any others. They are sooner torn, soiled, dismembered, disintegrated : sooner find their way to that mysterious unlocated limbo of lost things, which engulfs so much. Yet one scarcely expected that Introduction even the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of Miss Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant. Such, however, seems to be the case. Ac- cording to the catalogue, there is no earlier copy at Bloomsbury, than the first part of the second edition ; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in which most of the author's biographers speak of the book, it can scarcely outside private collections be very easily accessible. Fortunately, the old Monthly Review for September, 1796, with a most unusual forethought for posterity, gives, as a heading to its notice, a precise and very categorical account of the first edition. The Parent's Assistant; or, Stories for Children was, it ap- pears, published in two parts making three small duo- decimo volumes. The price, bound, was six shillings. There was no author's name, but it was said to be " by E. M." (i. e., Edgeworth, Maria) and the publisher was Cowper's Dissenter publisher, Joseph Johnson, of No. 72, St. Paul's Churchyard. Part I. contained " The Little Dog Trusty; or, The Liar and the Boy of Truth "; " The Orange Man; or, the Honest Boy and the Thief"; "Lazy Lawrence"; " Tarleton " ; and The False Key." Part 1 1. , " The Purple Jar," " The Bracelets," "Mademoiselle Panache," "The Birthday Present," "Old Poz," and "The Mimic." In the same year, 1796, a second edition was issued, appar- ently with some supplementary stories (e. g., "Barring Out"); and in 1800 came a third edition in six volumes. In this the text was increased by " Simple Susan," " The Little Merchants," "The Basket Woman," "The White Pigeon," " The Orphans," " Waste Not, Want Introduction Not," Forgive and Forget," " The Barring Out," and " Eton Montem." One story, " The Purple Jar " of Part II. of the first edition, was withdrawn, and after- wards included in the Rosamond series ; while the sto- ries entitled respectively " Little Dog Trusty " and " The Orange Man " have disappeared from the col- lection, probably for the reason given in one of the first prefaces, namely, that they " were written for a much ear- lier age than any of the others, and with such a perfect simplicity of expression as, to many, may appear in- sipid and ridiculous." The six volumes of the third edition came out successively on the first day of the first six months of 1800. The Monthly Reviewer of the first edition, it may be added, was highly laudatory ; and his commendations show that the early critics of the author were fully alive to her distinctive qualities. " The moral and prudential lessons of these volumes," said the writer, " are judiciously chosen ; and the stories are invented with great ingenuity, and are happily con- trived to excite curiosity and awaken feeling, without the aid of improbable fiction or extravagant adventure. The language is varied in its degree of simplicity, to suit the pieces to different ages, but is throughout neat and correct; and, without the least approach towards vulgarity or meanness, it is adapted with peculiar felic- ity to the understandings of children. The author's taste, in this class of writing, appears to have been formed on the best models ; and the work will not dis- credit a place on the same shelf with Berquin's Child's Friend, Mrs. Barbauld's Lessons for Children, and Dr. Aikin's Evenings at Home. The story of " Lazy Law- Introduction rence," the notice goes on, is " one of the best lectures on industry we have ever read." The Critical Review, which also gave a short account of the book in its number for January, 1797, does not rehearse the contents. But it confirms the title, etc., adding that the price, in boards, was 43 6d, and its praise, though brief, is very much to the point. " The present production [it says] is particularly sensible and judicious, the stories are well written, simple, and affecting ; calculated, not only for moral improve- ment, but to exercise the best affections of the human heart." With one of the books mentioned by the Monthly Review Evenings at Home Miss Edgeworth was prepared, at all events in appearance, to ally herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her cousin, Miss Buxton, " are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home, and I am afraid you will not like the title." Her father had sent the book to press as the Parent's Friend, a name no doubt suggested by the Child's Friend of Berquin ; but " Mr. Johnson (the publisher)," continues Miss Edgeworth, " has degraded it into the Parent's Assistant (which I dislike particu- larly from association with an old book of arithmetic called the Tutor's Assistant." The ground of objec- tion is not a very forcible one, but the Parent's Assistant is certainly an infelicitous title. From some other of the author's letters we are able to trace the gradual growth of the book. Mr. Edgeworth, her father, a man of much mental energy, and many projects, was greatly interested in education or, as he would have Introduction styled it, practical education and long before this date, as early, indeed, as May, 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a London school, to write him a tale, about the length of a Spectator, upon the subject of " Generosity," to be taken from history or romance. This was her first essay in fiction ; and it was pronounced by the judge to whom it was submitted, in competition with a simi- lar production by a young gentleman from Oxford, to be " an excellent story, and extremely well written," although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat damaging inquiry, " But where's the Gen- erosity ? " The question cannot be answeerd now, as the story has not been preserved, though the inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with the young author, who was wont to add that her first effort contained " a sentence of inextricable con- fusion between a saddle, a man, and his horse." This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed herself, for her style, as her first reviewers admitted, is conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speak- ing and writing had indeed been early impressed upon her. Her father's doctrinaire ally and co-discipli- narian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of Sandford and Merton y and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that " he talked like a book," had been unwearied in bringing this home to his young friend, when she visited him in her London school days. Not content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berke- ley's Tar Water that chosen beverage of Young and Richardson he was unwearied in ministering to Introduction her understanding. " His severe reasoning and un- compromising truth of mind awakened all her powers; and the questions he put to her, and the working out of the answers, the necessity of perfect accuracy in all her words, suited the natural truth of her mind ; and, though such strictness was not always agreeable, she even then perceived its advantage, and in after-life was grateful for it." The discipline which she underwent from the inex- orable Mr. Day was continued by her father when she quitted school and moved with her family to the parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose principles were as vigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in fact, to act as his agent. She was frequently with him in the many disputes and dif- ficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry ; and, apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the character and peculiarities of the people, she no doubt very early acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest agents which is a noticeable feature even of her childish books. It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to "Generosity"; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation of the Adele et Theodore of Mme. de Genlis, those letters upon education by which that gentle moralist acquired -to use her own words at once " the suffrages of the public, and the irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers Introduction and their partisans." At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr. Edgeworth's mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered strength; and he began to correct his daughter's manuscript for the press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft's complete translation appeared and made the labour useless. Yet it was not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss Edge- worth's faculty of expression, and increasing her vo- cabulary to say nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of Mme. de Genlis's most important work, may have had on her own subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile, her mentor, Mr. Day, was delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, that rooted antipathy to female authorship of which we find so many traces in Miss Burney's novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of a translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had not become the author of Sandford and Merton, which, as a matter of. fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply intended as a short story to be inserted in the Harry and Lucy which Mr. Edgeworth wrote in col- laboration with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although sensible of Mr. Day's prejudices, appear to have deferred to his arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed that, in Miss Edgeworth's first publication, ten years later, Introduction the Letters to Literary Ladies, she employed and em- bodied much that he had advanced. But for the present she continued to write though solely for her private amusement essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of these last must have been " Old Poz," a pleasant study of a country justice, which appeared in Part II. of the first issue of the Parent's Assistant, and which we are told was acted by the Edgeworth children in a little theatre which had been erected for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth's practice first to write her stories (as did the famous Miss Pinkerton her Johnsonian epistles) upon a slate, and then to read them out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. " Her writing for children," says one of her biographers, " was the natural outgrowth of a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of several little brothers and sisters." According to her own account, her first critic was her father. "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I always told my father my first rough plans ; and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix im- mediately upon that which would best answer the pur- pose ; * Sketch that and shew it to me ' : These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hopes of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected. ( I don't want any of your painting none Introduction of your drapery: I can imagine all that; let me see the bare skeleton.'" Of the first issue of the Parent's Assistant in 1796 we have already given a sufficient account. In Miss Edgeworth's " Preface," which is not here reprinted, she has explicitly set forth the intention of several of the stories. " Lazy Lawrence," we are told, illustrates the advantages of industry and demonstrates that peo- ple feel cheerful and happy when they are employed; while "Tarleton " represents " the danger and the folly of that weakness of mind, and that easiness to be led, which too often pass for good nature." " The False Key " points out the evils to which a well-educated boy, on first going to service, is exposed from the profligacy of his fellow servants; "The Mimic," the drawbacks of vulgar acquaintances ; " Barring Out," the errors to which high spirit and the love of party are apt to lead, and so forth. In the final paragraph Miss Edgeworth touches upon what any fresh reader must at once recognise as her supreme merit her faculty for drama- tising her story, or, in her actual words, for keeping " alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy." The amount of ingenious invention and of clever expedient in these professedly nursery stones, is indeed extraordinary ; and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which to use Dr. Johnson's words con- cerning Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer " the inci- dents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the admirable little tale of " The Mimic," in which the most un- looked-for occurrences succeed each other in the most xvi Introduction natural way, while the disappearance, at the end, of the little sweep, who has departed up the chimney in Fred- erick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a master stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the finish a surprise which is only to be compared to that other wonderful surprise in The Rose and the Ring of Thackeray, where the long-lost and obnoxious porter at the palace, hav- ing been turned by the Fairy Blackstick into a door- knocker for his insolence, is restored to the sorrowing Servants' Hall precisely when his services are again required in his capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuff 's husband. But in Miss Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. " Fairies were not much in her line," says Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, " but philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards or to point a moral." Although, by their sub-title, these stories are profes- sedly composed for children, they are almost as attrac- tive to grown-up readers. This is partly owing to their narrative skill ; partly also to the clear character- isation which already betrays the coming author of Castle Rackrent, and Belinda, and Patronage, which last, under its first name of The Freeman Family, was al- ready partly written, although many years were still to elapse before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the personages in the Parent 1 s Assistant xvii Introduction that the writer, however sedulous to describe "such sit- uations only as children can easily imagine, was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of hu- man nature like bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the butler in "The False Key," or Mrs. Pomfret, the house- keeper of the same story, whose prejudices against the " Villaintropic Society/' and its unholy dealings with the "drugs and refuges " of humanity, are quite in the style of the excellent Mrs. Slipslop of a great novelist whose works we should have scarcely expected to find among the paper-backed and gray-boarded books which lined the shelves at Edgeworthstown. Mrs. Theresa Tattle again, in " The Mimic," is a type which requires but little to fit it for a subordinate part in a novel. In one case we seem to detect an actual portrait. Mr. Somer- ville of Somerville, in Ireland, to whom that little vil- lage belonged, who had done so much " to inspire his tenantry with a taste for order and domestic happiness, and took every means in his power to encourage indus- trious, well-behaved people to settle in his neighbour- hood," can surely be none other than the father of the author of the Parent's Assistant, the busy and be- neficent Mr. Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown. Twelve only of the sixteen stories which make up the modern editions of the Parent's Assistant are here reprinted. "Old Poz" and "Eton Montem," both of which are in dialogue form, have been advisedly omitted, as also have been the very early stories of "The Bracelets" and "The Birthday Present "the latter of which may hereafter appear in a future volume of the Rosamond series, to which, like " The Introduction Purple Jar," it was subsequently added. The story of the French governess, " Mademoiselle Panache," which appears in very few editions after the first, has also no place in this collection. AUSTIN DOBSON. BALING, August, 1903. CONTENT INTRODUCTION . , vn-xix THE ORPHANS . . . . i LAZY LAWRENCE , . .27 THE FALSE KEY . . , , ,62 SIMPLE SUSAN . . . . . .87 THE WHITE PIGEON . . . ..160 FORGIVE AND FORGET . . . . 175 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT; OR, Two STRINGS TO YOUR Bow 191 THE MIMIC ...... 225 THE BARRING OUT ; OR, PARTY SPIRIT . . 264 xxi Contents PAGE THE LITTLE MERCHANTS .... 309 TARLTOX . . . . p -373 THE BASKET-WOMAN , xxn FRONTISPIECE "Where? oh where did you find it?" HEADING TO INTRODUCTION . . . . . vii HEADING TO TABLE OF CONTENTS .... XXI HEADING TO LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . xxiii " The orphans were left alone " i "Mary took her goat with her" . . . . .5 "A potato and a sup of something" . . . 19 " Lounging upon a gate " . . . . . .27 Going to market ...... 27 Lazy Lawrence . . . . . . -33 " He saw that his pile of mats had disappeared " . 45 "* They've got the thieves '" . . . . . 57 The False Key 62 '"You will carry this letter to my sister'" . . 62 "Fresh flowers for her bees' 5 . 87 " The Queen of the May "... 87 "The gentleman asked her how many miles it was" . 91 "Carolling in honour of the May" . . . . 101 "The old harper" ... . 123 xxiii List of Illustrations PAGE "The pet lamb" . . . . . 133 "It would hop about the kitchen" . . . .160 The sign of "The White Pigeon" . . . .160 "Mr. Cox put himself into a boxing attitude" , 163 "The Pigeon grew so tame" . . . . .169 "'You will break your china jar' 31 .... 175 "'What do you want, my patient little fellow?'" . .175 "'The everlasting whipcord, I declare!'" . ,191 "'What an excellent motto! 5 " . . . .191 "Playing at cat's cradle" ..... 197 "'I must take care to pick my way nicely'" . . .213 "A sudden gust of wind " . . . . .219 " Frederick showing how the Doctor goes to sleep " . . 225 The Mimic ....... 225 "She met Mrs. Montague's children" . . . . 227 " ' The Chimney-sweepers, ma'am ' " . . . . 247 "'Will he die?' cried Marianne" . . . .259 "The doors were locked" . . . .. .264 "The Barring Out" . . . . . .264 " The group of sleepers "..... 287 '"I'm so weak, I can't help laughing'" . . . 297 "He overtook Francesco " . . . . . 309 "As the old cock crows, so crows the young" . . . 309 "He started and looked up" 323 "'Why these large tears?'" . . -335 "The Brindled Cow" ..... 349 "They were the best players in the school" . .373 " He thought he heard a door open " . . 373 "A violent struggle" . . . . . .387 "'We'll help you to pick them up' 75 . 396 The postilion .... , . 396 "Annie held the hat " . . 401 XXIV e