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 Eminent Women Series 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN H. INGEAM 
 
 MAEIA EDGEWOBTH 
 
 (All rights reserved.)
 
 ISAAC FOUT 
 LIBRARY
 
 MARIA EDGEWORTH 
 
 BY 
 
 HELEN ZIMMERN. 
 
 LONDON: 
 W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATEELOO PLACE. S.W, 
 
 1883. 
 
 (All rights reserved.)
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED TiT W. H. ALLEN & CO., V-J WATERLOO PLACE.
 
 Ui.11. Y UHOll X WA \^J-\J 
 
 PR SANTA BARBARA 
 
 2^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Though many notices of Miss Edgeworth have appeared 
 from time to time, nothing approaching to a Life of 
 her has been published in this country. As I have had 
 the good fortune to have access to an unpublished 
 memoir of her, written by her step-mother, as well as 
 to a large number of her private letters, I am enabled 
 to place what I hope is at least an authentic biography 
 before the reader. Besides much kindness received 
 from the members of Miss Edgeworth's family, I have 
 also to acknowledge my obligations for help afforded 
 in the preparation of this little book to Mrs. and Miss 
 Ticknor of Rhode Island, U.S.A., Mrs. Le Breton, Sir 
 Henry Holland, Bart., the Rev. Canon Holland, the 
 Rev. Dr. Sadler, and Mr. P. Y. Edgeworth. 
 
 H. Z. 
 
 London, August 1883. •
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— Introductory 
 
 CHAPTER II.— Early Years . 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Girlhood .... 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— Womanhood 
 
 CHAPTER V.— "Practical Education."— Chil 
 
 dren's Books ..... 
 CHAPTER VI.— Irish and Moral Tales . 
 CHAPTER VII.— In France and at Home 
 CHAPTER VIII. — Fashionable and Popular 
 
 Tales ....... 
 
 CHAPTER IX.— Visit to London.— Mr. Edge 
 
 worth's Death ..... 
 CHAPTER X. — Later Novels. — General 
 
 Estimate ...... 
 
 CHAPTER XL — Visits Abroad and at Home 
 CHAPTER XII.— Mr. Edgeworth's Memoirs 
 
 published. — 1821 to 1825 . 
 CHAPTER XIH.— 1826 to 1834 . 
 CHAPTER XIV.— Last Tears . 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 7 
 15 
 26 
 
 34 
 
 50 
 62 
 
 82 
 
 103 
 
 115 
 139 
 
 154 
 171 
 194
 
 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Too many memoirs begin with tradition ; to trace 
 a subject ab ovo seems to have a fatal attraction for 
 the human mind. It is not needful to retrace so far 
 in speaking of Miss Edgeworth; but, for a right 
 understanding of her life and social position, it is 
 necessary to say some words about her ancestry. Of 
 her family and descent she might well be proud, if 
 ancestry alone, apart from the question whether those 
 ancestors of themselves merit the admiration of their 
 descendants, be a legitimate source of pride. The 
 Edgeworths, originally established it is believed at 
 Edgeworth,nowEdgeware, in Middlesex, would appear 
 to have settled in Ireland in the sixteenth century. 
 The earliest of whom we have historical record is 
 Roger Edge worth, a monk, who followed in the foot- 
 steps of his sovereign, Henry VIII., both by being 
 a defender of the faith, and by succumbing to the 
 bright eyes of beauty, for whose sake he finally 
 renounced Catholicism and married. His sons — 
 
 1
 
 2 MART A EDGEWOliTll. 
 
 ESdward and Francis — went to Ireland. The elder 
 brother, Edward, became Bishop of Down and Connor, 
 and died without issue. It was the younger, Francis, 
 who founded the house of Edgeworth of Edgeworths- 
 town j and ever since Edgeworthstown, in the county 
 of Longford, Ireland, has remained in the possession of 
 the family whence it derived its name. The Edge- 
 worths soon became one of the most powerful families 
 in the district, and experienced their full share of the 
 perils and vicissitudes of the stormy period that ap- 
 parently ended with the victories of William III. 
 Most members of the family seem to have been gay 
 and extravagant, living in alternate affluence and dis- 
 tress, and several of Maria Edgeworth's characters of 
 Irish squires are derived from her ancestors. The 
 family continued Protestant — the famous Abbe Edge- 
 worth was a convert — and Maria Edgeworth's great- 
 grandfather was so zealous in the reformed cause as to 
 earn for himself the soubriquet of " Protestant Frank. " 
 His son married a Welsh lady, who became the mother 
 of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a man who will always 
 be remembered as the father of his daughter. He was, 
 however, something more than this ; and as the lives 
 of the father and daughter were throughout so inti- 
 mately interwoven, a brief account of his career is 
 needful for a comprehension of hers. 
 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born at Bath in 1744, 
 and spent his early years partly in England, partly in 
 Ireland, receiving a careful education. In his youth 
 he was known as " a gay philosopher," in the days 
 when the word philosopher was still used in its true 
 sense of a lover of wisdom. Light-hearted and gay, good- 
 humoured and self-complacent; possessed of an active 
 and cultivated mind, just aud fearless, but troubled
 
 RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. 3 
 
 with neither loftiness nor depth of feeling, Richard 
 Lovell Edgeworth was nevertheless a remarkable per- 
 sonage, when the time at which he lived is taken into 
 account. He foresaw much of the progress our own 
 century has made, clearly indicated some of its features, 
 and actually achieved for agriculture and industry a 
 multitude of inventions, modest as far as the glory the 
 world attaches to them, but none the less useful for 
 the services they render. Many of his ideas, rejected 
 as visionary and impracticable when he first promul- 
 gated them, have now become the common property of 
 mankind. He was no mere theorist; when he had 
 established a theory he loved to put it into practice, 
 and as his theories ranged over many and wide fields, 
 so did his experiments. Even in late life, when most 
 persons care only to cultivate repose, he threw him- 
 self, with all the ardour of youth, into schemes of 
 improvement for the good of Ireland; for he was 
 sincerely devoted to her true welfare, and held in 
 contempt the mock patriotism that looks only to 
 popularity. In early life he sowed a certain quantity 
 of wild oats, the result of the superabundant animal 
 spirits that distinguished him, and at the age of sixteen 
 contracted a mock-marriage, which his father found 
 needful to have annulled by a process of law. After 
 this escapade he was entered at Corpus Christi, 
 Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. During his resi- 
 dence he became intimate with the family of Mr. 
 Elers, a gentleman of German descent, who resided at 
 Black Bourton, and was father to several pretty girls. 
 Mr. Elers had previously warned the elder Edgeworth 
 against introducing into his home circle the gay and 
 gallant Richard, remarking that he could give his 
 daughters no fortunes that would make them suitable
 
 4 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 matches for this young gentleman. Mr. Edgeworth, 
 however, turned a deaf ear to the warning, and the 
 result was that the collegian became so intimate at 
 the house, and in time so entangled by the court 
 he had paid to one of the daughters, that, although 
 he had meanwhile seen women he liked better, he 
 could not honourably extricate himself. In later life, 
 he playfully said : " Nothing but a lady ever did 
 turn me aside from my duty." He certainly was 
 all his days peculiarly susceptible to female charms, 
 and, had opportunity been afforded him, might have 
 rivalled Henry VIII. in the number of his wives. 
 This second marriage gave as little satisfaction to his 
 father as the first, but the elder Edgeworth wisely 
 recognised the fact that he was himself not wholly 
 blameless in the matter. He, therefore, a few months 
 after the ceremony had been performed at Gretna 
 Green, gave his consent to a formal re-marriage by 
 license. Thus, before he was twenty, Richard Lovell 
 Edgeworth was a husband and a father. The marriage 
 entered upon so hastily, proved unfortunate ; the pair 
 were totally unsuited to one another; and though 
 Mrs. Edgeworth appears to have been a worthy woman, 
 to judge from the few and somewhat ungenerous 
 allusions her husband makes to her in his biography, 
 they did not sympathise intellectually, a point he might 
 have discovered before marriage. The consequence 
 was, that he sought sympathy and pleasure elsewhere. 
 He divided his time between Ireland, London, and 
 Lichfield. The latter city was the centre of a some- 
 what prim, self-conscious, exclusive literary coterie, in 
 which Dr. Darwin, the singer of the Botanic Garden, 
 Miss Anna Seward, the " Swan of Lichfield/' and the 
 eccentric wife-trainer, Thomas Day, the author of
 
 RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. 5 
 
 Sandford and Merton, were conspicuous figures. They 
 were most of them still iu their youthful hey-day, un- 
 known to fame, and, as yet, scarcely aspiring towards 
 it. Here, in this, to him, congenial circle of eager 
 and ardent young spirits, Richard Lovell Edgeworth 
 loved to disport himself; now finding a sympathetic 
 observer of his mechanical inventions in Mr. Watt, 
 Dr. Darwin, or Mr. Wedgwood ; now flirting with the 
 fair Anna. He must have posed as a bachelor, for he 
 relates how, on one occasion, when paying compli- 
 ments to Miss Seward, Mrs. Darwin took the oppor- 
 tunity of drinking " Mrs. Edgewortlr's health/' a name 
 that caused manifest surprise to the object of his 
 affections. Here, too, he became imbued with the 
 educational theories of Rousseau, which clung to him, 
 in a modified degree, throughout his life, and according 
 to which, in their most pronounced form, he educated 
 his eldest son. Here, further, at the age of twenty- 
 six, he met the woman he was to love most deeply. 
 From the moment he saw Miss Honora Sneyd, Mr. 
 Edgeworth became enamoured, and in his attentions 
 to her he does not seem to have borne in mind the 
 fact that he was a married man. 
 
 " I am not a man of prejudices," he complacently 
 wrote in later life, Ci I have had four wives.* The 
 second and third were sisters, and I was in love with 
 the second in the life-time of the first." 
 
 The man who could make this public statement, and 
 who could, moreover, leave to his daughter the task of 
 publishing the record of his ill-assorted union with the 
 woman who was her mother, was certainly one in 
 
 * It was his habit, and that of his family, to drop all mention of 
 the earlier marriage
 
 6 MARIA EBGEWOBTH. 
 
 whom good taste and good feeling were not pre- 
 eminent. The birth of this daughter, who was destined 
 to he his companion and friend, is an event he does 
 not even note in his memoirs, which are more occupied 
 with his affection for Miss Sneyd, from whose fascina- 
 tions he at last felt it would be prudent to break away. 
 He left England for a lengthened stay in France, 
 taking with him his son, whose Rousseau education 
 was to be continued, and accompanied by Mr- Day, 
 who, to please Miss Elizabeth Sneyd, was about to put 
 himself through a course of dancing and deportment, 
 with a view to winning her consent to a marriage if 
 he could succeed in taming his savage limbs and ideas 
 into proper social decorum. The death of his wife 
 recalled Mr. Edgcworth to England. With all possible 
 speed he hastened to Lichfield, proposed to Honora 
 Sneyd, was accepted, and married her within four 
 months of his wife's demise. Mr. Edgeworth, the 
 elder, had died some time previously ; the son was now, 
 therefore, master of Edgeworthstown. Immediately 
 after his marriage he set out for Ireland, taking with 
 him his bride and four little children. From that 
 date forward a new era in his life commenced ; it 
 was not to run any longer in a separate course from 
 that of his familv.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY YEARS. 
 
 Maria Edgeworth was born January 1st, 1767, in 
 the house of her grandfather, Mr. Elers. Thus this 
 distinguished authoress was an Englishwoman by 
 birth, though Irish and German by race. At Black 
 Bourton her earliest years were spent. Her father, 
 who had taken in hand his little son to train accord- 
 ing to the principles enunciated in Emile, took little 
 notice of her, leaving her to the care of a fond soft- 
 hearted mother and doting aunts. The result was 
 that the vivacity of her early wit was encouraged 
 and the sallies of her quick temper unrepressed. Of 
 her mother she retained little remembrance beyond 
 her death, and how she was taken into the room to 
 receive her last kiss. Mrs. Edgeworth had died in 
 London at the house of some aunts in Great Russell 
 Street, and there Maria remained until her father's 
 second marriage. Of her new mother Maria at first 
 felt great awe, which soon gave place to sincere regard 
 and admiration. Her father had been to her from 
 babyhood the embodiment of perfection, and the mere 
 fact that he required love from her for his new wife 
 was sufficient to ensure it. But she also learnt to
 
 8 MARIA EDGEW011TH. 
 
 love her for licr own sake, and, indeed, if the state- 
 ment of so partial a witness as Mr. Edgeworth can 
 be accepted, she must have been a woman of un- 
 common power and charm. 
 
 Of her first visit to Ireland Maria recollected little 
 except that she was a mischievous child. One day, 
 when no one heeded her, she amused herself with 
 cutting out the squares in a checked sofa-cover. 
 Another day she trampled through a number of hot- 
 bed frames that had just been glazed and laid on 
 the grass. She could recall her delight at the crashing 
 of the glass ; but most immorally, and in direct oppo- 
 sition to her later doctrines, did not remember either 
 cutting her feet or being punished for this freak. 
 It was probably her exuberant spirits, added to the 
 fact that Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health began to 
 fail after her removal to the damp climate of Ireland, 
 that caused Maria to be sent to school. In 1775 she 
 was placed at Derby with a Mrs. Lataffiere, of whom 
 she always spoke with gratitude and affection. Though 
 eight years old she would seem to have known very 
 little, for she was wont to record that on the first 
 day of her entrance into the school she felt more 
 admiration at a child younger than herself repeating 
 the nine parts of speech, than she ever felt after- 
 wards for any effort of human genius. The first letter 
 extant from her pen is dated thence, and though of 
 no intrinsic merit, but rather the ordinary formal 
 letter of a child under such circumstances, it deserves 
 quotation because it is the first. 
 
 Dear Mamma, Derby, March 30, 177G. 
 
 It is with the greatest pleasure I write to you as I flatter 
 myself it will make you happy to hear from me. I hope you and my 
 dear papa are well. School now seems agreeable to me. I have begun
 
 EARLY YEARS. 9 
 
 French and dancing, and intend to make ['• great " was written, hut a 
 line drawn through it] improvement in everything I learn. I know that 
 it will give you great satisfaction to hear that I am a good girl. My 
 cousin Clay sends her love to you; mine to my father and sisters, who 
 I hope are well. Pray give my duty to papa and accept the same 
 from, dear Mamma, 
 
 Your dutiful Daughter. 
 
 It was at Derby that Maria learnt to write the clear 
 neat hand that never altered to the end of her life; and 
 here too she acquired her proficiency in embroidery, 
 an art she also practised with success. As her parents 
 shortly after came to reside in England for the benefit 
 of Mrs. Edgeworth's health, Maria spent her holidays 
 with them. Her step-mother appears to have taken 
 great pains with her, conversing with her as an equal 
 in every respect but age. 
 
 Her father had already commenced with her his 
 system of educatiug the powers of the young mind 
 by analytical reflection. He soon saw that hers was 
 of no ordinary capacity. In 1780 he writes to her : — 
 
 It would be very agreeable to me, my dear Maria, to have letters 
 from you Familiarly : I wish to know what you like and what you 
 dislike ; I wish to communicate to you what little knowledge I have 
 acquired, that you may have a tincture of every species of literature, 
 and form your taste by choice and not by chance. Adieu ! enjoy the 
 pleasure of increasing the love and esteem of your excellent mother 
 and of your 
 
 Affectionate Father. 
 
 Your poor mother continues extremely ill. 
 
 Less than a month afterwards Mr. Edgeworth had 
 to announce the death of his wife. The letter in which 
 he does so throws light on the relationship of father, 
 daughter, and stepmother : — 
 
 My dear Daughter, 
 
 At six o'clock on Thursday morning your excellent mother 
 expired in my arms. She now lies dead beside me, and I know I am 
 doing what would give her pleasure if she were capable of feeling
 
 10 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 anything, by writing to you at this time to lix her excellent image in 
 your blind. 
 
 As you grow older and become acquainted with more of my friend . 
 you will hoar from every mouth the mosl exalted character of your 
 incomparable mother. You will bo convinced, by your own reflections 
 upon her conduct, thai she fulfilled the part of a mothor towards \<>u 
 and towards your sisters, without partiality for her own or servile 
 indulgence towards mino. Her heart, conscious of rectitude, was 
 above the fear of raising suspicions to her disadvantage in the mind of 
 your father or in the minds of your other relatives. And though her 
 timely restraint of you, and that steadiness of behaviour, yielding 
 fondness towards you only by the exact measure of your conduit . a1 
 first alarmed those who did not know her, yet now, my dearest 
 daughter, every person who has the least connection with my family 
 is anxious to give sincere testimony to their admiration of those 
 very circumstances which they had too hastily, and from a common 
 and well-grounded opinion, associated with the idea of a second 
 wife. 
 
 Continue, my dear daughter, the desire which you feel of becoming 
 amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character 
 with such an understanding as yours necessarily ensue : but true judg- 
 ment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your 
 behaviour, can be had only from reflection and from being thoroughly 
 convinced of what experience teaches, in general too late, that to be 
 happy we must be good. 
 
 God bless you and make you ambitious of that valuable praise which 
 the amiable character of your dear mother forces from the virtuous 
 and the wise. My writing to you in my present situation will, my 
 dearest daughter, be remembered by you as the strongest proof of the 
 love of 
 
 Your approving and affectionate Father. 
 
 This letter, written at such a time, conveyed the 
 impression intended, and thenceforward, even more 
 than previously, the will to act up to the high opinion 
 her father had formed of her character constituted 
 the key-note of Maria Edgeworth's life, the exciting and 
 controlling power. 
 
 At school as well as at home, Maria distinguished 
 herself as an entertaining story-teller. She soon 
 learnt, with all the tact of an improvisatrice, to know
 
 EARLY YEARS. 11 
 
 which tale was most successful. Many of these were 
 taken from books, but most were original. While 
 entertaining her companions Maria studied their 
 characters. It was at school she developed her keen 
 penetration into the motives that sway actions. Here 
 also she saw numbers, though on a small scale, and 
 could estimate the effect of the voice on the multitude 
 and the ease with which a mass can be governed. 
 Very early indeed her father encouraged her to put 
 her imaginings on paper ; a remarkable proof of his 
 enlightenment, for those were the days when female 
 authorship was held in slight esteem, when for a 
 woman to use her pen was regarded as a dangerous 
 stepping beyond her boundary, which exposed her to 
 suspicion and aversion. Soon after Mrs. Honora 
 Edgewortlr's death Mr. Edge worth wrote : — 
 
 I also beg that you will send me a tale, about the length of a 
 Spectator, upon the subject of generosity ; it must be taken from 
 history or romance, and must be sent the day se'nnight after you 
 receive this, and I beg you will take some pains abotit it. 
 
 The same subject was given to a lad at Oxford, and 
 Mr. Sneyd was chosen as umpire. He pronounced 
 Maria's far the best. "An excellent story," he 
 said, " and extremely well written, but where is the 
 Generosity ? " a saying which became a household 
 proverb. This first story is not preserved ; but Miss 
 Edgeworth used to say that there was in it a sentence 
 of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and 
 his horse. 
 
 The same year Maria was removed from her unpre- 
 tentious school to a fashionable establishment in 
 London. Here she was to learn deportment and the 
 showy accomplishments that in those days constituted 
 the chief branches of a young lady's education. She
 
 12 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 was duly tortured on backboards, pinioned in iron 
 collars, made to use dumb-bells, and some rather 
 stringent measures were taken to draw out her muscles 
 and increase her stature. In vain ; by nature she was 
 a small woman, and small she remained. She also 
 learnt to dance with grace in the days when dancing 
 was something more dignified than a tearing romp, 
 but music she failed in utterly. She had no taste 
 for this art, and her music master, with a wisdom 
 unhappily too rare, advised her to abandon the 
 attempt to learn. She had been so well grounded 
 in French and Italian, that when she came to do the 
 exercises set her, she found them so easy that she 
 wrote out at once those intended for the whole 
 quarter, keeping them strung together in her desk, 
 and unstringing them as required. The spare time 
 thus secured was employed in reading for her own 
 pleasure. Her favourite seat during play-time was 
 under a cabinet which stood in the school-room, and 
 here she often remained so absorbed in her book as 
 to be deaf to all uproar. This early habit of con- 
 centrated attention was to stand her in good stead 
 through life. 
 
 "While his daughter was thus acquiring culture 
 Mr. Edgeworth was once more engaged in courtship. 
 Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, recognising her husband's 
 nature, had recommended him on her death-bed to 
 marry her sister Elizabeth, whose pi'oposed marriage 
 to Mr. Day had long ago fallen through. Though 
 neither Elizabeth nor Mr. Edgeworth thought them- 
 selves suited to one another, Honora's advice prevailed, 
 and within eight months after his last wife's death 
 Mr. Edgeworth was once more married. It does not 
 appear what Maria, now old enough to judge, thought
 
 EARLY YEARS. 13 
 
 of this new marriage, contracted so precipitately after 
 the loss of one to whom Mr. Edgeworth was so devoted ; 
 but she doubtless held it right, as she held all done by 
 her father, and she became to her new mother a warm 
 and helpful friend. 
 
 Soon after this marriage Maria's eyes grew inflamed, 
 and a leading physician pronounced in her hearing 
 that she would infallibly lose her sight. The physical 
 and mental sufferings hereby induced were keen, 
 but they were borne with fortitude and patience. 
 The summer holidays were spent as she had spent 
 some previous ones, at Mr. Day's. This eccentric 
 person had at last found a wife to his mind, and 
 was settled in Surrey. The contrast between the 
 mental atmosphere of her school, where externals were 
 chiefly considered, and that at Mr. Day's, where these 
 were scorned, did not fail to exercise an influence. 
 She was deeply attached to her host, whose lofty mind 
 and romantic character she honoured. His meta- 
 physical inquiries carried her into another world. 
 Forbidden to use her eyes too much, she learnt in 
 conversation with him ; the icy strength of his system 
 came at the right moment for annealing her principles ; 
 his severe reasoning and uncompromising love of truth 
 awakened her powers, and the questions he put to her, 
 the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited 
 the bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not 
 always agreeable, she even then perceived its advan- 
 tages, and in after life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day. 
 The direction he gave her studies influenced her, as 
 his friendship had in earlier days influenced her father. 
 Mr. Day further plied her with tar-water, then deemed 
 a sovereign remedy for all complaints. Either owing 
 to this or the change of air, her eyes certainly grew
 
 14 MARIA EDGEWOimi. 
 
 better, and her general health improved, although she 
 remained delicate, subject to headaches, and unequal 
 to much bodily exertion. 
 
 The following year (1782) her father resolved to 
 return to Ireland to reside. He had seen on his brief 
 visits the mischievous results of absenteeism, and felt 
 that if it were in the power of any man to serve the 
 country which gave him bread, he ought to sacrifice 
 every inferior consideration and reside where he could 
 be most useful. As, however, Mrs. Honora Edge- 
 worth's health could not be pronounced an " inferior 
 consideration/' Mr. Edgeworth had been forced to live 
 in England. Now, though his new wife had even before 
 marriage shown consumptive symptoms, her constitu- 
 tion had so much strengthened that it seemed possible 
 to inhabit the family house. Mr. Edgeworth therefore 
 returned to Ireland with a firm determination to dedi- 
 cate the remainder of his life to the education of 
 his children, the improvement of his estate, and the 
 endeavour to contribute to the amelioration of its 
 inhabitants. He took Maria with him, and there now 
 began for her the tranquil current of existence that 
 was diversified by no remarkable events outside the 
 domain of friendship and kindred. The home she 
 now entered, the social and domestic duties she now 
 undertook, continued the same for life. Her return 
 to Ireland marks an epoch in her history.
 
 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GIRLHOOD. 
 
 Ireland is not among those countries that arouse in the 
 hearts of strangers a desire to pitch their tents, and 
 to judge from the readiness with which her own 
 children leave her, we cannot suppose that they find 
 her a fascinating land. And little wonder, when we 
 consider the state of ferment and disorder which, in 
 a greater or less degree, has always prevailed there. 
 Yet Miss Edgeworth says : — 
 
 Things and persons are so much improved in Ireland of latter days 
 that only those who can remember how they were some thirty or 
 forty years ago, can conceive the variety of domestic grievances 
 which, in those times, assailed the master of a family immediately 
 upon his arrival at his Irish home. Wherever he turned his eyes, in 
 or out of his house, damp, dilapidation, waste, appeared. Painting, 
 glazing, roofing, fencing, furnishing, all were wanting. The back- 
 yard, and even the front-lawn, round the windows of the house, were 
 filled with loungers, " followers," and petitioners ; tenants, under- 
 tenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent, were to have audience; and 
 they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations, recipro- 
 cating and quarrels each under each interminably. Alternately as 
 landlord and magistrate, the proprietor of an estate had to listen to 
 perpetual complaints, petty wranglings and equivocations, in which no 
 human sagacity could discover the truth or award justice. 
 
 Returning to the country at the age of sixteen,* 
 
 * Miss Edgeworth, in her father's Life, states that she was but 
 twelve years old when she returned to Ireland. The date she gives,
 
 16 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Maria Edgeworth looked at everything with fresh eyes. 
 She was much struck with the difference between 
 England and Ireland ; the tones and looks, the melan- 
 choly and gaiety of the people were new and extra- 
 ordinary to her. A deep impression was made upon 
 her observant mind, and she laid the foundations for 
 those acute delineations of Irish character with which 
 she afterwards delighted the world. It was her good 
 fortune and ours that at an age when the mind is most 
 impressionable she came into these novel scenes in lieu 
 of having lived in their midst from childhood, when 
 it is unlikely that she would so well have seized their 
 salient traits. 
 
 It was June when the family arrived at Edge- 
 worthstown, and though nominally summer, there was 
 snow on the roses Maria ran out to gather. She felt 
 as if transported into a novel and curious world. 
 Unfortunately neither the situation nor the house of 
 Edgeworthstown were beautiful; there was nothing 
 here to arouse romance in the girl's nature. The 
 country of Longford is in general flat, consisting of 
 large districts of bog ; only on the northern boundaries 
 are there some remarkably sterile mountains. The 
 house was an old-fashioned mansion built with no 
 pretensions to beauty. It needed much alteration 
 and enlargement to suit the requirements of a grow- 
 ing family, and to accommodate his seven children 
 suitably Mr. Edgevvorth saw himself forced to build. 
 His extreme good sense guarded him from the usual 
 
 however, and that afterwards given by her stepmother, show that 
 she must have been sixteen when the removal took place. It can, 
 therefore, have been a mere lapsus calami on her part, as this emi- 
 nently sensible woman was incapable of the silly weakness of concealing 
 her age.
 
 GIRLHOOD. 17 
 
 errors committed by the Irish squires of that period, 
 who were either content to live in wretched houses, 
 out of repair, or to commence building on a scale as 
 though they had the mines of Peru at their com- 
 mand, and then abandoning their plans as though they 
 had not sixpence. The house at Edgeworthstown, 
 without ever having pretensions to architecture, was 
 simply made habitable. From the very commence- 
 ment they began the even tenor of life that was to 
 distinguish the family. The father was the centre 
 of this remarkably united household. Miss Edgeworth 
 says : — 
 
 Some men live with their family without letting them know their 
 affairs ; and however great may be their affection and esteem for 
 their wives and children, think that they have nothing to do with 
 business. This was not my fathers way of thinking. Whatever 
 business he had to do was done in the midst of his family, usually 
 in the common sitting-room, so that we were intimately acquainted, 
 not only with his general principles of conduct, but with the most 
 minute details of their every-day application. I further enjoyed some 
 peculiar advantages : — he kindly wished to give me habits of busi- 
 ness ; and for this purpose allowed me, during many years, to assist 
 him in copying his letters of business, and in receiving his rents. 
 
 Indeed from their arrival the eldest daughter 
 was employed as her father's agent, for it was Mr. 
 Edgeworttr's conviction that to remedy some of the 
 worst evils of his unhappy country, it was needful to 
 get rid of the middle-men. On his own estate he was 
 resolved not to let everything go wrong for the good 
 old Irish reason that it had always been so. He 
 laboured with zeal, justice, forbearance. He received 
 his rents direct, he chose his tenants for their character, 
 he resisted sub-division of holdings, and showed no 
 favour to creed or nationality. Miss Edgeworth proved 
 herself his worthy daughter. She exhibited acuteness 
 and patience in dealing with the tenants, admiring 
 
 2
 
 18 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 their talents while seeing their faults; generous, she 
 was not to be duped ; and just, she was not severe. 
 Thus in a brief time, thanks to this firm but kindly 
 government, their estate came to be one of the best 
 managed in the county. The work it induced was 
 certainly fortunate for Maria ; besides teaching her 
 habits of business, it made her familiar with the modes 
 of thought and expression of the Irish. She learnt 
 to know them thoroughly and truly at their best and 
 at their worst. 
 
 But Maria's entire time was not occupied with the 
 tenantry. It was a part of her father's system that 
 young children should not be left to servants, from 
 whom he deemed, not without justice, that they learnt 
 much that was undesirable. He therefore committed to 
 the charge of each of his elder girls one of their younger 
 brothers and sisters, and little Henry, Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Edgeworth's child, fell to Maria's lot. She devoted 
 herself with ardour to the boy and was fondly 
 attached to him. But it was of course the father who 
 superintended the general education, following the 
 lines afterwards laid down in Practical Education. 
 His system certainly succeeded with his numerous 
 children, though it might as a rule incline to make 
 the pupils somewhat presumptuous, self-sufficient and 
 pragmatical. The animation spread through the house 
 by connecting the children with all that was going on 
 was highly useful ; it awakened and excited mental 
 exertion, and braced the young people to exercise inde- 
 pendence of thought. Mr. Edgeworth made no empty 
 boast when he wrote to Mr. Darwin : — 
 
 " I do not think one tear per month is shed in this 
 house, nor the voice of reproof heard, nor the hand of 
 restraint felt."
 
 GIRLHOOD. 19 
 
 How primitive was the state of Ireland in those 
 days can be gathered from the fact that except bread 
 and meat, all articles of food and household require- 
 ment were to be had only in Dublin, and not always 
 even there. Neither was there much congenial 
 society. The Edgeworths had no liking for the 
 country gentlemen who spent their lives in shooting, 
 hunting, and carousing, booby squires who did not 
 even know that their position put duties upon them. 
 Formal dinners and long sittings with the smallest of 
 small talk were the order of the day and night. 
 They were, however, fortunate in finding in this 
 social wilderness some few persons really worth know- 
 ing, chief among whom were the families resident at 
 Pakenham Hall and Castle Forbes. The former house, 
 the residence of Lord Longford, was only twelve 
 miles distant, but it was separated from Edgeworths- 
 town by a vast bog, a bad road, an awkward ferry and 
 an ugly country. Nevertheless these obstacles were 
 braved, and at Pakenham Hall Maria met many 
 people of literary and political distinction. At Castle 
 Forbes, some nine miles distant, by a more practicable 
 road, there was also to be met society varied and 
 agreeable, more especially so when Lady Granard's 
 mother, Lady Moira, was in the country. Lady Moira 
 was a woman of noble character, much conversational 
 talent and general knowledge. As daughter to the 
 Countess of Huntingdon she had seen much strange 
 society, and had been in the very midst of the Evan- 
 gelical revival. Besides this she was a person of great 
 influence in Ireland ; her house in Dublin was the 
 resort of the wise and witty of the day, hence she was 
 able to initiate Maria into a new and larger world, to 
 expand her ideas, and to increase her insight into 
 
 2 *
 
 20 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 character. It was indeed fortunate for Miss Edgeworth 
 that this old lady took a special fancy to her. She 
 was in those days very reserved in manner and little 
 inclined to converse, a contrast to after years, when 
 her conversation delighted all listeners. It was, per- 
 haps, partly weak health that made her silent, but 
 probably yet more the consciousness of great powers 
 which were under-rated or misunderstood by her 
 youthful contemporaries. She had no frivolous society 
 small talk to offer them. Lady Moira, however, 
 recognised the capacity of this timid, plain, inoffensive 
 young girl. She talked to her, drew her out, plied her 
 with anecdotes of her own experiences in life, and gave 
 her the benefit of her riper wisdom. 
 
 Thus Miss Edgeworth early lived with and learnt to 
 understand the fashionable society of which she wrote 
 so much. It is always fortunate for a novelist to be 
 born, as she was, amid the advantages of refinement 
 and breeding, without being elevated out of reach of 
 the interests and pleasures which dwell in the middle 
 ranks. For want of this many, even amongst the 
 most eminent writers of fiction, have suffered ship- 
 wreck. 
 
 While thus reserved in society, Maria relaxed with 
 her father. She knew he appreciated her powers, and 
 his approbation was sufficient at all times to satisfy 
 her. One of her pleasures was to ride out with him — 
 not that she was a good horse-woman, for she was 
 constitutionally timid, — but because it afforded her the 
 opportunity of uninterrupted exchange of talk. It 
 was on these rides that most of their writings were 
 planned. 
 
 In the autumn of their return to Ireland (1782) 
 Miss Edgeworth began, at her father's suggestion, to
 
 GIRLHOOD. 21 
 
 translate Madame cle Genlis's Adele et Theodore. 
 It was her first work intended for publication. The 
 appearance of Holcroft's translation prevented its 
 execution, but neither she nor her father regarded the 
 time bestowed on it as misspent : it gave her that 
 readiness and choice of words which translation teaches. 
 Mr. Day, who had a horror of female authorship, 
 remonstrated with Mr. Edgeworth for having ever 
 allowed his daughter to translate, and, when he 
 heard that the publication was prevented, wrote a 
 congratulatory letter on the event. It was from the 
 recollection of the arguments he used, and from her 
 father's replies, that five years afterwards Miss Edge- 
 worth wrote her Letters to Literary Ladies, though 
 they were not published till after the death of Mr. 
 Day. Indeed, it is possible that had he lived Maria 
 Edgeworth would have remained unknown to fame ; so 
 great was her father's deference to his judgment, 
 though sensible that there was much prejudice mixed 
 with his reasons. " Yet," adds Miss Edgeworth, 
 ■" though publication was out of our thoughts, as 
 subjects occurred, many essays and tales were written 
 for private amusement. " 
 
 The first stories she wrote were some of those now 
 in the Parent's Assistant and Early Lessons. She 
 wrote them on a slate, read them out to her sisters 
 and brothers, and, if they approved, copied them. Thus 
 they were at once put to the test of childish criticism ; 
 and it is this, and living all her life among children, 
 that has made Miss Edgeworth's children's stories so in- 
 imitable. She understood children, knew them, sympa- 
 thised with them. Her father's large and ever-increasing 
 family, in which there were children of all ages, gave 
 her a wide and varied audience of youthful critics,
 
 22 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 among: the severest in the world. Many of her longer 
 talcs and novels were also written or planned during 
 these years. Her father had, however, imbued her 
 with the Horatian maxim novumque prematttr in unman, 
 so that many things lay by for years to be considered 
 by her and her father, reconnected, revised, with the 
 result that nothing was ever given to the world but 
 the best she could produce. 
 
 Thus, contented, busy, useful, the even course of 
 her girlhood flowed on and merged iuto early woman- 
 hood, with no more exciting breaks than the arrival 
 of a box of new books from London, an occasional 
 visit to her neighbours, or best of all to Black Castle, 
 a few hours' drive from Edgeworthstown, where lived 
 her father's favourite sister, Mrs. Ruxton, her aunt 
 and life-long friend. For forty-two years aunt and 
 niece carried on an uninterrupted correspondence, 
 while their meetings were sources of never-failing 
 delight. 
 
 In 1789 the sudden death of Mr. Day deprived Mr. 
 Edgeworth of a valued friend. This man, who, for a 
 person not actually insane, was certainly one of the 
 oddest that ever walked this earth, with his mixture of 
 mauvaise Iionte and savage pride, misanthropy and 
 philanthropy, had exercised a great influence on both 
 their lives. They felt his loss keenly. Another sorrow 
 quickly followed. Honora, the only daughter of Mrs. 
 Honora Edgeworth, a girl of fifteen, endowed with 
 beauty and talents, fell a victim to the family disease. 
 The next year Lovell, the now only surviving child of 
 Honora, also showed signs of consumption. It became 
 needful to remove him from Ireland, and Mr. and Mrs. 
 Edgeworth therefore crossed to England, leaving Maria 
 in charge of the other children. A house was taken
 
 GIRLHOOD. 23 
 
 at Clifton, and here Miss Edgeworth and her charges 
 rejoined their parents. The conveying so large a 
 party so long a journey in those days was no small 
 undertaking for a young woman of twenty-four. The 
 responsibility was terrible to her, though she after- 
 wards dwelt only on the comic side. At one of the 
 inns where they slept, the landlady's patience was so 
 much tried by the number of little people getting out 
 of the carriage, and the quantity of luggage, that she 
 exclaimed, " Haven't you brought the kitchen grate 
 too?" 
 
 At Clifton the Edgeworths resided for two years. 
 Miss Edgeworth writes to her uncle Ruxton : — 
 
 We live just the same kind of life that we used to do at Edge- 
 worthstown, and though we move amongst numbers are not moved 
 by them, but feel independent of them for our daily amusement. 
 All the Phantusmas I had conjured up to frighten myself, vanished 
 after I had been here a week, for I found that they were but phantoms 
 of my imagination, as you very truly told me. We live very near 
 the Downs, where we have almost every day charming walks, and all 
 the children go bounding about over hill and dale along with us. 
 
 In a later letter she says that they are not quite as 
 happy here as at home, but have a great choice of 
 books which they enjoy. While at Clifton the eldest 
 son visited them. His Rousseau education had turned 
 him out an ungovernable child of nature ; he neither 
 could nor would learn, so there remained no alternative 
 but to allow him to follow his inclinations, which 
 happily led him towards nothing more mischievous than 
 a sailor's life. At Clifton, too, they became acquainted 
 with Dr. Beddoes, who soon after married Maria's sister 
 Anna, and became the father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 
 the poet of Death. A baby child also died within 
 those two years, which thus embraced meetings, part- 
 ings, courtships, much pleasant social intercourse, and
 
 24 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 much serious study. For Maria it also included a 
 visit to an old school-fellow in London : — 
 
 She was exceeding kind to me. and I spent most of my time with 
 her as I liked. I say most, because a good deal of it was spent in 
 company, where I heard <>f nothing but chariots and horses, and 
 curricles and tandems. Oh. to what contempt I exposed myself in a 
 luckless hour, by asking what a tandem was ! Since I have been 
 away from home I have missed the society and fondness of my father, 
 mother and sisters, more than I can express, and more than before- 
 hand I could have thought possible ; I long to see them all again. 
 Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand 
 what an aching void is perfectly well. 
 
 A letter written from Clifton is a charming speci- 
 men of Miss Edgeworth's easy warm-hearted family 
 missives, which, like most family letters, contain little 
 of intrinsic value, and yet throw much light upon the 
 nature of their writer : — 
 
 Clifton, Dec. 13. 1792. 
 
 The day of retribution is at hand, my dear aunt. The month of 
 May will soon come, and then when we meet face to face, and voucher 
 to voucher, it shall be truly seen whose letter-writing account stands 
 fullest and fairest in the world. Till then "we'll leave it all to your 
 honour's honour." But why does my dear aunt write " I can have but 
 little more time to spend with my brother in my life?'' as if she 
 was an old woman of one hundred and ninety-nine and upwards. I 
 remember the day I left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect, 
 that " you had one foot in the grave " ; and though I saw you standing 
 before me in perfect health, sound wind and limb, I had the weakness 
 to feel frightened, and never to think of examining where your feet 
 really were. But in the month of May we hope to find thorn safe in 
 your shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out, and thai all 
 the black clouds in the political horizon will be dispersed, and that 
 " freemen" will, by that time, eat their puddings and hold their tongues. 
 Anna and I stayed one week with Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were 
 very thoroughly occupied all the time with seeing and — I won't say 
 with being seen; for though we were at three balls, I do not believe 
 anyone saw us. The upper rooms we thought very splendid and the 
 play-houses pretty, but not so good as the theatre at Bristol. We 
 walked all over Bath with my father, and liked it extremely: he 
 showed us the house where he was born.
 
 GIRLHOOD. 25 
 
 The day of retribution was indeed nearer at hand 
 than she anticipated. In the autumn of 1793 the news 
 of Irish disturbances grew so alarming that Mr. Edge- 
 worth thought it his duty to return immediately. 
 The caravan was therefore once more transported to 
 Edgeworthstown.
 
 26 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WOMANHOOD. 
 
 On their return the Edgeworths at first inclined to 
 think that the English papers had exaggerated the 
 Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a condition of 
 permanent discontent, they were relieved to find that 
 though there were alarms of outrages committed by 
 " Hearts of Oak Boys " and " Defenders " though there 
 were nightly marauders about Edgeworthstown, though 
 Mr. Edgeworth had been threatened with assassination, 
 still, all things considered, " things in their neighbour- 
 hood were tolerably quiet/' In this matter as in 
 others, of course, the basis of comparison alone consti- 
 tutes the value of the inference deduced. In any case 
 the family resumed their quiet course of existence ; 
 Mr. Edgeworth busy with the invention of a telegraph, 
 Miss Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little 
 ones, visiting and being visited by her aunt Ruxton. 
 In the evenings the family gathered round the fireside 
 and the father read aloud. Late in 1793 Miss Edge- 
 worth writes : — 
 
 This evening my father has been reading out Gay's Trivia, to our 
 great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you 
 and Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us. If you have
 
 WOMANHOOD. 27 
 
 Trivia, and if you have time, will you humour your niece so far as to 
 look at it ? I had much rather make a bargain with anyone I loved 
 to read the same book with them at the same hour, than to look at 
 the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. " Ah ! that is because my 
 dear niece has no taste and no eyes." But I assure you I am learning 
 the use of my eyes main fast, and make no doubt, please Heaven I 
 live to be sixty, to see as well as my neighbours. I am scratching 
 away very hard at the Freeman Family.* 
 
 That Miss Edgewortli was not affected by the current 
 sentimentalism of the period the above remark shows. 
 Indeed, her earliest letters evince her practical straight- 
 forward common-sense. Romance had no place in her 
 nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her Letters 
 to Literary Ladies. She wrote to her cousin : 
 
 Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after Letters 
 to Literary Ladies. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can be 
 expected, nor are they likely to mend at present : when they are fit to 
 be seen — if that happy time ever arrives — their first visit shall be to 
 Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of crooked 
 marks of Papa's critical indignation, besides various abusive marginal 
 notes, which I would not have you see for half-a-crown sterling, nor 
 my aunt for a whole crown as pure as King Hiero's. 
 
 The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were 
 going on prosperously side by side with those of war ; 
 the disturbances, of which Miss Edgewortli continues 
 to write quite lightly, having become sufficiently serious 
 to require military intervention. 
 
 In ] 795 the Letters to Literary Ladies were pub- 
 lished. Considering the time when the work was 
 written it showed much independence and advance of 
 thought, though to-day it would be stigmatised as 
 somewhat retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea 
 in favour of female education, repeating arguments 
 that of late years have been well-worn, and of which 
 
 * Afterwards changed into Patronage
 
 28 MARIA EDGE WORTH. 
 
 the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom 
 of according education to women, no longer stands 
 in need. The book is interesting to-day merely as 
 another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his 
 daughter were advanced in thought. They could not 
 be brought to the common opinion then prevalent that 
 ignorance was a woman's safe-guard, that taste for 
 literature was calculated to lead to ill-conduct, though 
 even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as 
 Mr. Day endorsed Sir Anthony Absolute's dictum 
 that the extent of a woman's erudition should consist 
 in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous 
 combinations. 
 
 Not even the honours of first authorship could 
 cause Miss Edgeworth's private letters, then any more 
 than afterwards, to be occupied with herself. " I beg, 
 dear Sophy," she writes to her cousin, " that you will 
 not call my little stories by the sublime title of ' my 
 works ' ; I shall else be ashamed when the little 
 mouse comes forth." It is the affairs of others, the 
 things that it will please or amuse her correspondents 
 to hear, that she writes about. The tone is always 
 good-humoured and kindly. 
 
 Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was 
 disturbed by the insurgents. She writes, Jan. 1796 : 
 
 You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county of Meath 
 was the seat of war, must know that we emulate your courage: and 
 I assure you, in your own words. •• that whilst our terrified neighbours 
 sec nightly visions of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows 
 unbarred." I must observe, though, that it is only those doors and 
 windows that have neither bolts nor bars that we leave unbarred, and 
 these are more at present than we wish oven for the reputation of our 
 valour. All that I crave for my own part is that if I am to have my 
 throat cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with 
 charcoal. I shall look at every person that comes here very closely, 
 to see if there be any marks of charcoal upon their visages. Old
 
 WOMANHOOD. 29 
 
 wrinkled offenders, I shoidd suppose, would never lie able to wash out 
 their stains, but in others a very clean face will, in my mind, be a 
 strong symptom of guilt, — clean hands proof positive, and clean nails 
 ought to hang a man. 
 
 In 1796 appeared the first volume of the Parent's 
 Assistant. It is agreeable to learn from a letter of 
 hers that she was not responsible for this clumsy title. 
 
 My father had sent the Parent's Friend, but Mr. Johnson has de- 
 graded it into the Parent's Assistant, which I dislike particularly from 
 association with an old book of arithmetic called the Tutor's 
 Assistant. 
 
 The book was so successful that the publisher 
 expressed a wish for more volumes, to be brought out 
 with illustrations. Miss Beaufort, the daughter of 
 a neighbouring clergyman, was entrusted with the 
 artistic commission, which led to an intimacy between 
 the families. Meanwhile Miss Edgeworth, stimulated 
 by success, continued to write new stories and to correct 
 and revise old ones. The Moral Tales were conceived at 
 this time, and the idea of writing on Irish Bulls had 
 occurred to her. She was also busy upon Practical 
 Education. At the same time Mrs. Elizabeth Edge- 
 worth's health, that had long been precarious, gave way, 
 and in November 1797, to the sorrow of all the circle, 
 she fell a victim to consumption. As before, Mr. 
 Edgeworth was soon consoled. It was in the direc- 
 tion of Miss Beaufort that he turned his eyes. There 
 must certainly have been something attactive in this 
 man, now past fifty, three times a widower, with a 
 numerous family by different wives, that could induce 
 a young girl to regard him as a wooer. Miss Edge- 
 worth frankly owns that when she first knew of this 
 attachment she did not wish for the marriage. But 
 her father, with his persuasive tongue, overcame her 
 objections.
 
 30 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Mr. Edgeworth himself announced his intending 
 nuptials to Dr. Darwin, at the end of a long letter 
 dealing with the upas tree, frogs, agriculture, hot water- 
 pipes, and so forth. 
 
 And now for my piece of news, which I have kept for the last : I 
 am going t° 1 1C married to a young lady of small fortune and large 
 accomplishments — compared with my age, much youth (not quite 30) 
 and more prudence — some heauty, more sense — uncommon talents, 
 more uncommon temper — liked by my family, loved by me. If I can 
 say all this three years hence, shall not I have been a fortunate, not to 
 say a wise man ? 
 
 He was able to say so not only three years after, but 
 to the end of his life. Whatever may be thought of 
 Mr. Edgeworth's many and hasty marriages, it must 
 be admitted that they all turned out to the happiness 
 of himself and his children. Miss Edgeworth wrote a 
 long letter to her future stepmother, characteristic 
 both of her amiable disposition, her filial piety, and her 
 method of regarding love. " Miss Edgeworth's Cupid," 
 as Byron observed, "was always something of a Pres- 
 byterian." In it she assures Miss Beaufort (who was 
 her junior) that she will find her "gratefully exact 
 en belle fi lie '' ; a promise she fulfilled beyond the letter. 
 
 Within seven months of his late wife's death, just as 
 public affairs were assuming a still stormier aspect, 
 and the nation about to burst into the rebellion of 
 1798, Mr. Edgeworth was once more a bridegroom. 
 The wedding trip of the couple took them through 
 the disturbed districts ; they beheld rebels hidden in 
 the potato furrows, and passed a car between whose 
 shafts the owner had been hanged — a victim to the 
 " Defenders." But in the house of Edgeworthstown 
 there was, as ever, peace and concord ; and the trying 
 situation upon which the new wife was called to enter 
 was smoothed for her even by the children of the
 
 WOMANHOOD. 31 
 
 woman whom she had so quickly displaced in their 
 father's affection. 
 
 In an incredibly short time all things and people 
 found themselves in their proper places, and the new 
 Mrs. Edgeworth soon proved herself a fitting person 
 to hold the reins of household government. Only a 
 month after the marriage Miss Edgeworth can tell her 
 cousin : 
 
 We are indeed happy : the more I see of my friend and mother, the 
 more I love and esteem her, and the more I feel the truth of all that 
 I have heard you say in her praise. So little change has been made 
 in the way of living, that you would feel as if you were going on with 
 your usual occupations and conversation amongst us. We laugh and 
 talk and enjoy the good of every day, which is more than sufficient. 
 How long this may last we cannot tell. I am going on in the old way, 
 writing stories. I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with 
 my hands before me would not make any of us one degree safer. I 
 have finished a volume of wee-wee stories about the size of the 
 Purple Jar, all about Rosamond. My father has made our little 
 rooms so nice for us ; they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh, 
 rebels ! oh, French ! spare them. We have never injured you, and all 
 we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves. 
 
 The summer passed with immunity from open insur- 
 rection in county Longford ; but it shortly appeared that 
 the people were secretly leagued with the rest of their 
 countrymen , and only waited the arrival of the French 
 to break into rebellion. Soon the whole district about 
 Edgeworthstown was disturbed, and in September it 
 was needful for the family to beat a precipitate retreat 
 from home, leaving it in the hands of the rebels. 
 Happily it was spared from pillage, thanks to one of 
 the invaders, to whom Mr. Edgeworth had once shown 
 kindness. The family were only away five days ; a 
 battle had speedily settled the rebels and dispersed 
 the French, whom their own allies had deserted at 
 the first volley. But those days, although only five
 
 32 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 days, seemed a life-time to Miss Edgeworth, from the 
 dangers and anxieties the family underwent in their 
 course. 
 
 By November all disturbances had so far subsided 
 around Edgeworthstown as to allow the family to busy 
 themselves with private theatricals, Miss Edgeworth 
 writing the play, the children acting it, the father 
 building the stage. At the end of the year Mr. 
 Edgeworth was returned for the last Irish Parlia- 
 ment, and the family went with him to Dublin. The 
 Union was then the hot theme of debate, the Irish 
 having incontestably shown themselves incapable of 
 home rule. Mr. Edgeworth very characteristically 
 spoke for the Union and voted against it, declaring 
 11 that England has not any right to do Ireland good 
 against her will." 
 
 In the spring of 1799 Mr., Mrs., and Miss Edge- 
 worth went to England and renewed their acquaint- 
 ance with Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin, and Mr. William 
 Strutt of Derby. They also came into contact with 
 many literary celebrities, Mr. Edgeworth now posing 
 as an author upon the strength of Practical Education, 
 written in partnership with his daughter, who was 
 ever not only willing but anxious that he should bear off 
 all the honour and glory. Among their acquaintance 
 was Mrs. Barbauld, for whom both father and 
 daughter conceived a genuine regard, and whom Mr. 
 Edgeworth liked the more because she was a proof 
 of the soundness of his belief that the cultivation of 
 literary tastes does not necessarily unfit a woman for 
 her domestic duties. In London they also visited their 
 publisher, Mr. Johnson, an intelligent, generous, but 
 most dilatory man, who was then confined in King's 
 Bench Prison on account of some publication held
 
 VISIT TO ENGLAND. 33 
 
 treasonable. Of this English visit there are, unfor- 
 tunately, only two letters preserved; one announcing 
 the birth of another baby into this already huge 
 family, the other treating of " a young man, Mr. 
 Davy,* who has applied himself much to chemistry, 
 has made some discoveries of importance, and en- 
 thusiastically expects wonders will be performed by 
 the use of certain gases/' 
 
 With the dissolution of the last Irish Parliament, 
 Mr. Edgeworth's public duties came to an end, and the 
 quiet happy life at Edgeworthstown recommenced its 
 even course, marked only by the publication of Miss 
 Edgeworth's works, and by births and deaths in the 
 family circle. 
 
 * Afterwards Sir Humphrey Davy.
 
 34 MARIA EBGEWORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " PRACTICAL EDUCATION." CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 
 
 Two circumstances must never be lost sight of in 
 
 speaking of Miss Edgeworth's writings ; the one, that 
 
 she did not write from the inner prompting of genius, 
 
 hut rather because it had been suggested by her 
 
 father ; the other, that she wrote throughout with a 
 
 purpose in view, and by no means only for the sake of 
 
 affording amusement. To blame her, therefore, as has 
 
 been so often done, for being utilitarian in her aim, is 
 
 to blame her for having attained her goal. A minor 
 
 consideration, but one that often proves of no minor 
 
 weight, was the fact that Miss Edgeworth never needed 
 
 to follow authorship as a profession ; its pecuniary 
 
 results were of no moment to her, and hence she was 
 
 spared all the bitterness and incidental anxieties of an 
 
 author's life, the working when the brain should rest, 
 
 the imperative need to go on, no matter whether there 
 
 be aught to say or not. Her path, in this respect, as 
 
 in all others, traversed the high-roads of life. Fame 
 
 at once succeeded effort ; the heart-sickness of hope 
 
 deferred was never hers ; she was therefore neither 
 
 soured nor embittered by feeling within herself powers 
 
 which the world was unwilling or slow to acknowledge.
 
 ' ' PR A CTICAL ED UCA TION" 35 
 
 It was in 1798 that were published two large octavo 
 volumes, called Practical Education, bearing upon the 
 title-page the joint names of Richard Lovell and Maria 
 Edgeworth. This was the first partnership work of 
 father and daughter, that literary partnership " which 
 for so many years," says Miss Edgeworth, " was the 
 joy and pride of my life." The book was the outcome 
 of a series of observations and facts relative to children, 
 not originally intended for publication, registered first 
 by Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and after- 
 wards continued by Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth. In 
 consequence of Mr. Edgeworth's exhortations, Miss 
 Edgeworth also began in 1791 to note down anecdotes 
 of the children around her, and to write out some of 
 her father's conversation lessons. The reason for 
 giving all this to the world was that though assertions 
 and theories on education abounded, facts and experi- 
 ments were wanting. Undaunted by the fear of 
 ridicule, or the imputation of egotism, Mr. Edgeworth 
 bade his daughter work the raw materials into shape, 
 blending with anecdotes and lessons the principles of 
 education that were peculiarly his. For this work, Miss 
 Edgeworth claims for her father the merit of having 
 been the first to recommend, both by practice and 
 precept, what Bacon called the experimental method 
 in education. Mr. Edgeworth, as we know, was a 
 disciple of the crude mechanical school of Rousseau ; 
 and though, owing to his failure with his eldest son, 
 he had seen the necessity of. some modification, he 
 had never wholly abandoned it, and had imbued his 
 daughter with the same ideas. Happily for her, how- 
 ever, her earliest training had been less rigid than 
 that of her brothers and sisters. She thus obtained 
 elbow-room for that development which her father's 
 
 3 *
 
 36 MARIA EDOEWOBTH, 
 
 formal and overloading system might have crushed. 
 But of this she was unconscious, and she was ready to 
 echo his opinions, believe in them blindly, and propa- 
 gate them. 
 
 The book, though prolix, dull, and prosy in part, 
 containing much repetition, many paltry illustrations, 
 many passages, such as the chapter on servants, that 
 might be omitted with advantage, was, as a whole, of 
 value, and would not even now be quite out of date. 
 But its chief and abiding merit is that it was a step in 
 the right direction; and its worth must, on that account, 
 be emphasised, although this was exaggerated by Miss 
 Edgeworth's filial fondness. There were in those days 
 no text books for the first principles of knowledge for 
 the young ; and though education had been a favourite 
 theme with all the philosophers, from Aristotle to 
 Locke, their systems were too remote for practical 
 application. The inevitable but lamentable conse- 
 quence was, that theories of education were disregarded 
 just by those very persons who had the training of the 
 young in their hands. They were pleased to sneer at 
 them as metaphysics. So much space was given in 
 works of this nature to speculation, so little to prac- 
 tical application of proved and admitted truths, that 
 the mere word metaphysics sounded to the majority of 
 readers as a name denoting something perplexing and 
 profound, but useless as a whole. Yet, as Miss Edge- 
 worth pertinently observed in her preface to Harry and 
 Lucy, after being too much the fashion, metaphysics 
 had been thrown aside too disdainfully, and their use 
 and abuse confounded. Without an attentive ex- 
 amination of the operations of the mind, especially as 
 developed at an early age, every attempt at systematic 
 education is mere working at random. The great
 
 "PRACTICAL EDUCATION." 37 
 
 merit of Mr. and Miss Edgewortlr's work may be 
 stated in her own words : — 
 
 Surely it would be doing good service to bring into popular form 
 all that metaphysicians have discovered which can bo applied to 
 practice in education. This was early and long my father's object. 
 The art of teaching to invent — I dare not say, but of awakening and 
 assisting the inventive power by daily exercise and excitement, and by 
 the application of philosophic principles to trivial occurrences, he 
 believed might be pursued with infinite advantage to the rising 
 generation. 
 
 The authors of Practical Education did not seek to 
 appeal to grave and learned persons like the former 
 writers on these themes, but to the bulk of mankind, 
 in whose hands, after all, lies their application. In 
 this series of somewhat rambling essays, of the most 
 miscellaneous description, there are no abstruse or 
 learned disquisitions, there is nothing like a process of 
 reasoning from beginning to end ; it is essentially a 
 treatise for the mass. On every page there are remarks 
 for which previous authorities can be found ; original 
 ideas are rare ; nevertheless the whole is expressed so 
 lucidly and familiarly, the entire work is so crowded 
 with illustrations of the simplest and most obvious 
 kind, that " the unwary reader can easily be entrapped 
 into the belief that he is perusing nothing more serious 
 than a lively and agreeable essay upon the tempers and 
 capacities of children, written by two good-natured 
 persons who are fond of amusing themselves with 
 young people." Mr. Edgeworth believed according to 
 the proverb, " that youth and white paper can take all 
 impressions," that everything could be achieved by 
 education ; that, given the individual, it was possible to 
 make of him whatever the instructor pleased. Of 
 course our present more scientific mode of thought, 
 our superior scientific knowledge, shows us the im-
 
 38 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 tenability of so dogmatic a persuasion ; but it \\ as 
 characteristic of the eighteenth century, forms the 
 key-note to many of their educational experiments, 
 and furnishes the reason of their failures. The times 
 when Mr. Edgeworth wrote and devised his doctrines 
 were " the good old days when George the Third was 
 King," when education was at a discount, when to 
 have a taste for literature was to be held a pedant or 
 a prig. If Mr. Edgeworth went too far in his earnest 
 advocacy of careful training for the young of both 
 sexes, in his belief in the result, our modern school 
 has perhaps, in the latter respect, erred on the other 
 side. We know now that it is out of the power of 
 education to change nature. Yet our scientific know- 
 ledge has inclined us, perhaps unduly, to under-rate 
 the value of training, and to allow too much play to 
 the doctrine of laissez-faire. As ever, the truth lies 
 in the middle; and in any case, because we are at 
 present going through a period of reaction, we should 
 refrain from sneering at those perhaps over-earnest 
 men, of whom Mr. Edgeworth was a type, who, in a 
 frivolous age, rebelled against their unthinking con- 
 temporaries. It is too much the fashion to stigmatise 
 these men as prigs ; pragmatic no doubt they were, 
 conceited and self-confident, and, like all minorities, 
 over-ardent. Still it cannot be enough borne in mind 
 that the people of that period who thought, thought 
 more and read more thoroughly than those of to-day. 
 They came to original conclusions ; they did not im- 
 bibe so much at second-hand by means of criticism 
 and ready-made opinions. Of this, Miss Edgeworth 
 and her father were notable examples ; to this her 
 letters bear abundant testimony. 
 
 In the preface to Practical Education the respective
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 39 
 
 shares of father and daughter in the work are stated. 
 He wrote all relating to the art of teaching in 
 the chapter on tasks, grammar, classical literature, 
 geography, chronology, arithmetic, and mechanics ; 
 the rest, considerably more than half, was by her. 
 
 " The firm of Edgeworth and Co.," as Sydney 
 Smith named them, had now attained literary notoriety. 
 Their book, on its appearance, was praised and abused 
 enough to render its authors speedily famous. Mr. 
 Edgeworth, with his enormous family, had, of course, 
 had good opportunities of observation and experiment 
 in the domain of education. It was conceded that 
 there was much that was wise and useful in his pages 
 mixed with much that was absurd and dogmatic. But 
 the real life and animation for his tenets was to come 
 from his daughter, who was to carry them further than 
 they would undoubtedly otherwise have gone, and the 
 fact that quite two generations of English men and 
 women were instilled into Edgeworthian doctrines is 
 due entirely and alone to her. She made it the business 
 of her life to illustrate the pedantic maxims of her 
 father, and it has been ably remarked that between 
 these narrow banks her genius flowed through many 
 and diverse volumes of amusing tales. It was with 
 this aim in view that The Parent's Assistant, Harry 
 and Lucy, Frank and Rosamond, and Early Lessons, 
 those companions of the nursery, were penned. Though 
 not all published at this time — the continuation of 
 Harry and Lucy not, indeed, until many years later — 
 it is convenient to treat of them all together, as they 
 are one in unity of thought and design. 
 
 Fully to estimate what Miss Edgeworth did for the 
 children of her time, and that immediately succeeding 
 it, it is needful to point out the wide contrast between
 
 40 MARIA EDGEWnirril. 
 
 those days and ours. To-day the best authors do not 
 think it beneath their dignity to write for children, 
 quite otherwise; while formerly few persons of any 
 literary ability condescended to write children's 
 books. In those days, therefore, nursery libraries 
 were not, as now, richly stocked, and children cither 
 did not read at all, or, if they were of a reading 
 disposition, read the works intended for their elders, 
 often, it must be admitted, with the good result, that 
 a solid foundation of knowledge of the English classics 
 was laid. Still it was only exceptional children who 
 attempted these tougher tasks, most either did not read 
 at all or read such poor literature as was at hand. In 
 a series of able articles published some years ago, Miss 
 Yonge has traced the history of children's books. For 
 a long time there were no such things, then came 
 some tales translated from the French and judiciously 
 trimmed, besides a few original stories of more or less 
 merit, to which latter category belonged Goody Two- 
 Shoes. This was followed by the reign of didactic 
 works which began with Mrs. Trimmer, whose original 
 impulse came from Rousseau. It was his Emile that 
 had aroused the school which produced Madame de 
 Genlis in France, Campe in Germany, and in England 
 the Aikins, Hannah More, the Taylors of Norwich, 
 and Mr. Day. It was a famine that had to be met, 
 and much stodgy food was devoured, many long hard 
 words were laboriously spelt out, the pabulum offered 
 was but too often dull and dreary. Realism had 
 invaded the nursery, strong high purpose was the 
 first aim in view, and entertainment was held a 
 secondary consideration. As for the poor dear fairies, 
 they had been placed under a ban by the followers of 
 Jean Jacques. Fairy talcs were treated as the novels
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 41 
 
 of childhood, and held by this school to cultivate the 
 heart and imagination unduly, and to arouse disgust 
 with the assigned lot in life, which is rarely romantic, 
 but consists rather of common-place pleasure and 
 pain. 
 
 The Edgeworths' ambition was to write the history 
 of realities in an entertaining manner; they held that 
 it was better for purposes of education, and more 
 suited to the tastes of children, than improbable fiction. 
 The first proposition may, perhaps, be conceded, the 
 second scarcely. In any case, however, Mr. Edge- 
 worth, who had a special leaning to the jejune, had a 
 particular dislike to this form of fiction. " Why," he 
 asked, " should the mind be filled with fantastic visions? 
 Why should so much valuable time be lost? Why 
 should we vitiate their taste and spoil their appetite 
 by suffering them to feed upon sweetmeats ? " Even 
 poetical allusions, he thought, should be avoided in 
 books for children. On the other hand, with the happy 
 intuition he often displayed, he recognised that the 
 current children's books of his time erred in intro- 
 ducing too much that was purely didactic, too many 
 general reflections. He urged his daughter to avoid 
 these errors, to bear action in view, and that, whether 
 in morals or in science, the thing to be taught should 
 seem to arise from the circumstances in which the 
 little persons of the drama were placed. He saw 
 that in order to prevent precepts from tiring the eye 
 and mind, it was necessary to make the stories in 
 which they were introduced dramatic, to keep alive 
 hope, fear, and curiosity by some degree of intricacy. 
 
 Admirably did his daughter carry out the precepts 
 he thus laid down. It was Miss Edgeworth who really 
 inaugurated for England the reign of didactic fiction-
 
 42 MARIA EDGEWOBTH. 
 
 Though never losing sight of her aim, she also never 
 lost sight of the amusement of her young readers. 
 She rightly comprehended that only by captivating 
 their senses could she conquer and influence their 
 reason. Her children's tales, written with motion and 
 spirit, were told in the simple language of the young. 
 She went straight to the hearts of her little readers 
 because they could understand her, they needed no 
 grown person to explain to them sesquipedalian words. 
 There is a freshness about her stories that children 
 are quick to respond to, and it arises from the fact 
 that the children she depicts for her readers are 
 real. Miss Edgeworth knew what children were 
 like, she saw them not only from without but from 
 within, she had lived all her life among little 
 people. Their world never became a paradise from 
 which she was shut out. The advantages she thus 
 enjoyed were as rare as they are important for the due 
 comprehension of the needs of childhood, and she 
 utilised them to the utmost. The chief charm of her 
 talcs, that which makes them sui generis both now 
 and then, is that she not only wrote in the language 
 of children, but, what is even rarer, from the child's 
 point of view. 
 
 There are yet among us those who owe their earliest 
 pleasures to Miss Edgeworth, and if of late she has 
 been somewhat jostled out of the nursery and school- 
 room because it is the tendency of the modern child to 
 revolt against all attempts to teach it unawares, we 
 are far from sure that the change is wholly for the 
 better. It was a just perception of this that caused 
 Miss Yonge to say in The Stokesley Secret that her 
 heroes "would read any books that made no preten- 
 sions to be instructive, but even a fact about a lion or
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 43 
 
 an elephant made them detect wisdom in disguise and 
 throw it aside." The modern child finds, it is said, 
 Miss Edgeworth's tales dry ; American books of a 
 semi-novelistic character, rattling stories of wild ad- 
 venture, are preferred. 
 
 This may be so, but we cannot help thinking that, 
 just in these days, when the ethical standard held up 
 to children is not too high, a judicious admixture of 
 these works with Miss Edgeworth's high-minded 
 stories, inculcating self-sacrifice, unselfishness, obedi- 
 ence, and other neglected virtues, might be of great 
 advantage. There are sundry of Miss Edgeworth's 
 children's tales that are truly engrossing, veritable 
 masterpieces of style and execution. Who is there, 
 no matter how advanced his age, who cannot read with 
 pleasure the tales of Lazy Lawrence, Tarlton, The 
 Bracelets, Waste nut Want not, Forgive and Forget — 
 ■e tutti quant i. Who is there whom it much disturbs 
 that the account of Eton Montem is not accurate, and 
 that perhaps there could have been nothing more 
 unfortunate than to lay the scene of action of The 
 Little Merchants in Naples, the one spot in all the 
 earth where the events therein described could not 
 have happened ? Change the name of the locality, 
 the charm of the tale remains, and the absurdity is 
 removed. Nor must it be forgotten that children, 
 less well read than their elders, are less alive to 
 these blemishes, which are, after all, of no real import. 
 Of Simple Susan, so great a person as Sir Walter 
 Scott said that " when the boy brings back the lamb 
 to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put 
 down the book and cry/ 5 Then as to Rosamond, 
 who does not feel a true affection for that impetuous, 
 impulsive little girl, and who is there (so greatly have
 
 44 MARIA EDGEWORTR. 
 
 our ideas of morality changed) that does not think that 
 in the matter of the famous Purple Jar, an unjustifi- 
 able trick was played upon her by her mother ? It was 
 a part of the Edgeworth system to make misdirected or 
 mistaken desires stultify themselves; but the child 
 should have been informed of the nature of the jar, 
 and if then she still persisted in her choice, she would 
 have been fairly treated, which now she is not. Frank 
 remains a capital book for little people, and if, occa- 
 sionally, Miss Edgeworth's juvenile tales reflect too 
 much of the stiff wisdom of her age, these are matters 
 which children, not morally blase, hardly remark. On 
 the other hand, there is never anything mawkish in her 
 pages, she never fills the mind with yearnings for the 
 impossible, she never works too much upon the suscep- 
 tibilities, which modern child-literature so often does. 
 Her writings for children are certainly sui generis, not 
 because she has attempted what has never been attempted 
 before, but because she succeeded where others failed. 
 She made even her youngest reader comprehend that 
 virtue is its own reward, while avoiding the error invari- 
 ably fallen into by writers for the young, of representing 
 virtue as always triumphant, vice as uniformly punished 
 — a fallacy even children are quick to detect. It 
 has been objected to her that she checks enthusiasm, 
 the source of some of the noblest actions of mankind. 
 This is true, she has somewhat erred on the repressive 
 side, but her purpose was right and good. She saw 
 plainly that enthusiasm, generous in its origin, is but 
 too often the source of misfortune, ill-judged effort, 
 and consequent disappointment. Moderation, the 
 duties of contentment and industry, are what she loves 
 to uphold ; the lower, humbler, but no less effective 
 virtues of existence.
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 45 
 
 On the other hand, it is clear, from her letters, that 
 she herself was not devoid of enthusiasm, and here, 
 again, it was probably her father's influence that made 
 her exclude it from her writings. In one of her letters 
 she says : — 
 
 Vive Fenthousiasme ! Without it characters may be very snug and 
 comfortable in the world, but there is a degree of happiness which 
 they will never taste, and of which they have no more idea than an 
 oyster can have. 
 
 Harry and Lucy falls sharply into two parts. The 
 earlier portion was intended to be read before Rosa- 
 mond, and after Frank, the latter was the last of the 
 juvenile series. The work had been begun by Mr. Edge- 
 worth and his wife Honora, from the need of a book 
 to follow Mrs. Barbauld's lessons, and as a story to 
 be inserted in this work Mr. Day had originally 
 written Sandford and Merton. Harry and Lucy was 
 printed, but not published. It was kept, as originally 
 meant, only for the Edgeworth children ■ but after more 
 than twenty years, Mr. Edgeworth passed the work on 
 to his daughter, and bade her complete it and prepare 
 it for publication. The first portion thus came out 
 early in the century, while the last part did not appear 
 till 1825. 
 
 Harry and Lucy is unquestionably heavy in parts, 
 especially the latter half, yet first principles are well 
 explained and popularised, and instruction and tale 
 so skilfully blended that the young reader cannot 
 skip the one and read the other. The main idea 
 and the chief merit of these volumes, not at once 
 perhaps obvious, is that of enforcing in a popular form 
 the necessity of exercising the faculties of children, 
 so that they should be, in part, their own instructors, 
 and of adding to those more common incentives to
 
 46 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 study, which consist of rewards and punishments, the 
 far surer, nobler, and more effective stimulus of 
 curiosity kept alive by variety and the pleasure of 
 successful invention. It was the desire of the authors 
 to show with what ease the faculty of thinking may 
 be cultivated in children, a point on which Miss 
 Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. In Harry 
 and Lucy are explained simply and familiarly, some- 
 times in conversations between the children and their 
 parents and friends, sometimes in dialogue between the 
 children themselves, the rudiments of science, princi- 
 pally of chemistry and physics, and the application of 
 these to the common purposes of life. And herein Ave 
 again encounter one of the grand merits of the Edge- 
 worths, which we can to-day better appreciate than 
 their contemporaries. They saw clearly what in their 
 day was apprehended only by very few, the importance 
 that the study of science was to acquire in the future. 
 Miss Edgeworth says : — 
 
 My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific as well as 
 literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly and spread so widely, 
 would render it necessary to make some provision for the early 
 instruction of youth in science, in addition to the great and successful 
 attention paid to classical literatures 
 
 And even apart from the immense importance of 
 science in our daily life, science is, of all studies, that 
 best suited to the growth of a child's mental powers. 
 Novelty and variety are the spells of early life, and to 
 work these well and helpfully is the greatest good that 
 can be done to young people. Miss Edgeworth in 
 Harry and Lucy, as a whole succeeds in rousing her 
 readers' curiosity without making them suspect design, 
 and avoids all idea of a task. Thus the leading prin- 
 ciples of science are unfolded in familiar experiments
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 47 
 
 which give young learners the delight they would have 
 in playing some interesting game, exercising their 
 ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having once 
 felt the pleasures of success, a permanent incentive 
 to knowledge is induced, which it remains with the 
 parents or tutors to improve. The books are obviously 
 not such as are meant to be read at a sitting, and there- 
 fore can only be put into the hands of young people 
 with judicious care. But in the Edgeworths' time, 
 neither old nor young devoured books after the manner 
 of to-day. The apparently desultory and accidental 
 plan of the book was really designed, purpose and 
 moral being more skilfully disguised than is the case 
 with Miss Edgewortlr's tales for her equals. One 
 of its great charms lies in the characters of the 
 principal dramatis persona, whose temperaments are 
 exquisitely sketched, maintained, and contrasted. 
 Lucy, the lively, playful girl, who often allows her 
 imagination to go rambling far afield from her judg- 
 ment, a little inclined to be volatile, loving a joke, is 
 cousin german to Rosamond, and, like this little girl, 
 truly lovable. She supplies the lighter element, while 
 the sterner is supplied by Harry, the brother she 
 idolises, who is partly her companion, partly her 
 teacher. He has a sure and steady, rather than a 
 brilliant and rapid intellect, great mental curiosity, and 
 great patience in acquiring information. He is more 
 apt to discern differences than to perceive resemblances, 
 and therefore he does not always understand the wit 
 and fun of Lucy, which at times even provoke him. 
 In the conversations between them there is much 
 judicious sprinkling of childish banter and nonsense, 
 " an alloy necessary to make sense work well/' to use 
 Miss Edgeworth's own expressive words. A pity that
 
 48 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 the ever delightful " Great Panjandrum " therein intro- 
 duced is not her own, but only a quotation from a little- 
 known nonsense genius. 
 
 This sequel to Harry and Lucy was far from finding 
 universal favour. Sir Walter Scott wrote of it to 
 Joanna Baillie : — 
 
 I have not the pen of our friend Miss Edgeworth. who writes all 
 the while she laughs, talks, eats and drinks, and I helievo, though I 
 do not pretend to he so far in the scent, all the time she sleeps too. 
 She has good luck in having a pen which walks at once so un- 
 weariedly and so well. I do not, however, quite like her last book 
 on education {Harry and Lucy), considered as a general work. She 
 should have limited the title to Education in Natural Philosophy, 
 or some such term, for there is no great use in teaching children in 
 general to roof houses or build bridges, which, after all, a carpenter 
 or a mason does a great deal better at 2s. 6d. a day. Your ordinary 
 Harry should be kept to his grammar, and your Lucy of most 
 common occurrence would be kept employed on her sampler, instead 
 >f wasting wood and cutting their lingers, which I am convinced they 
 did, though their historian says nothing of it. 
 
 That both she and her father exacted much from 
 their pupils and readers is beyond question, but they 
 regarded this as a wholesome effort, and they were 
 probably right. One thing is certain ; that whatever 
 their short-comings, Miss Edgeworth's children's tales 
 exercised a wide, deep, and lasting influence over a 
 long range of time, and nothing of equal or even 
 approximate importance arose coeval with them. It 
 was she who first brought rational morality to the 
 level of the comprehension of childhood, who taught 
 the language of virtue and truth in the alphabet of 
 the young, thus forestalling the teaching of schools 
 by her rare power of combining ethics with entertain- 
 ment. Miss Edgeworth can still with advantage and 
 pleasure hold her own even upon the present well- 
 stocked nursery book-shelves, and it might be well
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 49 
 
 for the next generation if we saw her there a little 
 oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth any day, with all 
 her arid, utilitarianism, her realism, than the sickly 
 sentimental unrealities of a far too popular modern 
 school.
 
 50 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IRISH AND MORAL TALES. 
 
 In 1800 was published anonymously a small book 
 called Castle Rackrent. It professed to be a Hiber- 
 nian tale, taken from facts and from the manners of 
 the Irish squires before the year 1782. It proved to 
 be a most entertaining, witty history of the fortunes 
 of an Irish estate, told professedly by an illiterate, 
 partial old steward, who recounted the story of the 
 Rackrent family in his vernacular with the full confi- 
 dence that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir 
 Kit, and Sir Condy were as interesting to all the 
 world as they were to himself. Honest Thady, as this 
 curious but characteristic specimen of Irish good- 
 humour, fidelity and wrong-headedness was pleased to 
 call himself, having no conception of the true applica- 
 tion of this epithet, had certainly shown literary per- 
 ception, or rather his creator for him. For this was 
 no other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood confessed 
 upon the title-page of the second edition that was 
 clamorously demanded within a few mouths of issue. 
 The confession was wrung from her because some one 
 had not only asserted that he was the author, but had
 
 CASTLE BACKRENT. 51 
 
 actually taken the trouble to copy out several pages 
 with corrections and erasures, as if it were his original 
 manuscript. It was in this work that Miss Edgeworth 
 first struck her own peculiar vein, and had she never 
 written anything but Castle Rackrent her fame could 
 not have died. It is a page torn from the national 
 history of Ireland, inimitable, perennially delightful, 
 equally humorous and pathetic, holding up with 
 shrewd wit and keen perception, mingled with sym- 
 pathetic indulgence, the follies and vices that have 
 caused, and in a modified degree still cause, no small 
 proportion of the social miseries that have afflicted 
 and still afflict that unhappy land. Here are por- 
 trayed a series of Irish landlords with their odd 
 discrepancies and striking individualities, alternately 
 drunken, litigious, pugilistic, slovenly, and densely 
 ignorant ; or else easy, extravagant, and good-natured 
 to the point of vice ; all, however, of one mind in 
 being profoundly indifferent to their own or their 
 tenants' welfare. The sharp contrasts of the magni- 
 ficent and paltry that characterised their state of 
 living, with the mixed confidence in a special Pro- 
 vidence and their own good luck that distinguished 
 their muddle-headed mode of thought, is forcibly held 
 up to view. No conclusions are drawn; the narrative, 
 which never flags or drags, is rattled off with spirit, 
 the abundant anecdotes are poured forth with true 
 Irish exuberance, while the humour of the story arises 
 in great measure from the sublime unconsciousness 
 of the story-teller to the wit, naivete, or absurdity 
 of his remarks. We are held spell-bound, we laugh 
 and weep in a breath, we are almost over-persuaded 
 by loyal old Thady to pardon the errors of the 
 family, "one of the most ancient in the kingdom, 
 
 4 *
 
 52 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 related to the kings of Ireland, but that was before 
 my time." 
 
 If there was an ulterior end in view in this story 
 beyond that of recording national characteristics which 
 she had had peculiarly good opportunities of observing, 
 and which she here reproduced from the life with 
 broad, full strokes, Miss Edgeworth has masked it so 
 happily that it does not obtrude itself. The society 
 and manners of the Irish are painted as equally pro- 
 voking and endearing. The book is an epitome of the 
 Irish character, rt fighting like devils for conciliation, 
 and hating one another for the love of God." Never 
 did laughter and tears, sympathy and repugnance, lie 
 more closely together than in this tale. It is curious 
 to read the author's prefatory apology when there 
 are still alive, in every exasperated form, the very con- 
 ditions she thinks belong to a state of things rapidly 
 passing away " owing to the probable loss of Irish 
 identity after the union with England." The supposed 
 " obsolete prejudices and animosities of race " are un- 
 happily still extant. Perhaps it is partly this fact that 
 makes Miss Edgeworth's Irish Tales so fresh to this 
 day. But only in part, on their own account alone 
 they are delightful, and Castle Rackrent even more 
 than the rest. 
 
 We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss Edge- 
 worth wrote Castle Rackrent unassisted by her father, 
 and judging how infinitely superior in spontaneity, 
 flexibility, and nervousness of style, force, pith, and 
 boldness, it is to those of her writings with which he 
 meddled, it is forcibly impressed upon us that Mr. 
 Edgeworth's literary tinkering of his daughter's works 
 was far from being to their advantage. Her next 
 published book was her first attempt to deal with the
 
 BELINDA. 53 
 
 novel proper. In Belinda she strove to delineate the 
 follies and hollowness of fashionable life. The heroine 
 is rather a lifeless puppet ; but the more truly promi- 
 nent figure, Lady Delacour, is drawn with power and 
 keen intuition. A woman of gay and frivolous ante- 
 cedents, striving to rise into a higher atmosphere 
 under the ennobling influences of a pure friendship, 
 and finding the task a difficult one, was no easy 
 character to draw or to sustain. Had Lady Delacour 
 died heroically, as Miss Edgeworth had planned, and 
 as the whole course of the story leads the reader to 
 expect, the book would have been a success. But to 
 allow her to recover, to cause her to evolve a reformed 
 character after a type psychologically impossible to 
 one of her temperament, weakened the force of the 
 foregoing pages, and rendered them untrue. Again, 
 it is on Miss Edgeworth's spoken testimony to 
 Mrs. Barbauld that we learn that she meant to make 
 Lady Delacour die, but that it was her father who 
 suggested the alteration ; and since it was a part of the 
 Edgeworthian creed to believe in such simple and 
 sudden reformations, she accepted his counsel, to the 
 artistic injury of her tale. It was Mr. Edgeworth, too, 
 who wrote and interpolated the worthless, and high- 
 flown Virginia episode in which Clarence Harvey takes 
 to the freak of wife-training after the pattern of Mr. 
 Day. This incident is quite out of keeping with the 
 character of Clarence, who is depicted a wooden dandy, 
 but not a romantic fool. These changes, willingly sub- 
 mitted to by Miss Edgeworth, who had the most un- 
 bounded belief in her father's superior wisdom on all 
 points whatsoever, also mark his idiosyncracy, for 
 Mr. Edgeworth was a most rare and curious compound 
 of utilitarianism and wild romance.
 
 54 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 It is almost possible, in Miss Edgeworth's works, to 
 venture to point out the passages that have been 
 tampered with, and those where she has been allowed 
 free play, Tims there are portions of Belinda in which 
 she is as much at her best as in Castle Rackrent, or 
 other of her master- pieces. Who but she could have 
 penned the lively description given by Sir Philip 
 Baddeley of the fetes at Frogmore? How exquisitely is 
 this ill-natured fool made to paint himself , how truthful 
 is the picture, free from any taint of exaggeration. Sir 
 Philip's endeavour to disgust Belinda with Clarence 
 Harvey, his manner of attempting it, and his final 
 proposal, is a very masterpiece of caustic humour. 
 
 Belinda was no favourite with Miss Edgeworth. Writ- 
 ing to Mrs. Barbauld some years later, she says : — 
 
 Belinda is but an uninteresting personage after all. ... I was not 
 either in "Belinda or Leonora sufficiently aware that the goodness of a 
 heroine interests only in proportion to the perils and trials t'> which 
 it is exposed. 
 
 And again, after revising it for republication, she 
 
 says : — 
 
 I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or 
 stone Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces; really, I 
 have not the heart or the patience to correct her. As the hackney 
 coachman said. " Mend you ! Better make a new one." 
 
 Miss Edgeworth was therefore capable of self criti- 
 cism. Indeed, at no time did she set even a due value 
 on her own work, still less an exaggerated one. To 
 the day of her death she sincerely believed that all the 
 honour and glory she had reaped belonged of right to 
 her father alone. But there was yet another reason 
 why Miss Edgeworth never liked Belinda. She was 
 staying at Black Castle when the first printed copy 
 reached her. Before her aunt saw it, she contrived to
 
 ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS. 55 
 
 tear out the title pages of the three volumes, and Mrs. 
 Ruxton thus read it without the least suspicion as to its 
 authorship. She was much delighted, and insisted on 
 reading out to her niece passage after passage. Miss 
 Edgeworth pretended to be deeply interested in some 
 book she was herself reading, and when Mrs. Ruxton 
 exclaimed,, " Is not that admirably written ? " replied, 
 " Admirably read, I think/' " It may not be so very 
 good/' added Mrs. Ruxton, " but it shows just the sort 
 of knowledge of high life which people have who live in 
 the world ." But in vain she appealed to Miss Edge- 
 worth for sympathy, until, provoked by her faint 
 acquiescence, Mrs. Ruxton at last accused her of being 
 envious. " I am sorry to see my little Maria unable to 
 bear the praises of a rival author ." This remark 
 made Miss Edgeworth burst into tears and show her 
 aunt the title-pages of the book. But Mrs. Ruxton 
 was not pleased, she never wholly liked Belinda after- 
 wards, and Miss Edgeworth had always a painful recol- 
 lection that her aunt had suspected her of the meanness 
 of envy. 
 
 In 1802 was published the Essay on Irish Bulls, 
 bearing on its title page the names of father and 
 daughter. Its title appears to have misled even the 
 Irish ; at least it is related that an Irish gentleman, 
 secretary to an agricultural society, who was much 
 interested in improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent 
 for it, expecting to find a work on live stock. We have 
 Miss Edgeworth's own account of the genesis of the 
 book : — 
 
 The first design of the essay was my father's : under the semblance 
 of attack, he wished to show the English public the eloquence, wit, 
 and talents of the lower classes of people in Ireland. Working 
 zealously upon the ideas which he suggested, sometimes what was 
 spoken by him was afterwards written by me ; or when I wrote my
 
 56 MARIA EDGEWOltTH. 
 
 lirst thoughts, they were corrected and improved by him; so that no 
 book was ever written more completely in partnership. On this, as 
 on most subjects, whether light or serious, when wo wrote together, 
 it would now lie difficult, almost impossible, to recollect which 
 thoughts originally were his and which were mine. All passages in 
 which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions must be his 
 exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant of the learned languages. 
 The notes on the Dublin shoe-black's metaphorical language I recollect 
 are chiefly his. 
 
 I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, indescribable 
 Irish tones and gestures, of which written language can give but a 
 faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never over- 
 stepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked ex- 
 quisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people, without 
 condescending to produce effect by caricature. He knew not only 
 their comic talents, but their powers of pathos; and often when he 
 bad just heard from them some pathetic complaint, he has repeated 
 it to me while the impression was fresh. In the chapter on wit and 
 eloquence in Irish Bulls there is a speech of a poor freeholder to a 
 candidate who asked for his vote ; this speech was made to my father 
 when lie was canvassing the county of Longford. It was repeated to 
 me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it down instantly, without, I 
 believe, the variation of a word. 
 
 The complaint of a poor widow against her landlord, 
 and his reply, were quoted by Campbell in his Lectures 
 on Eloquence, as happy specimens, under the convic- 
 tion that they were fictitious. Miss Edgeworth assures 
 us that they are " unembellished facts," that her father 
 was the magistrate before whom the complaint and de- 
 fence were made, and that she wrote down the speeches 
 word for word as he repeated them to her. This Essay 
 on Irish Bulls, though a somewhat rambling and dis- 
 cursive composition, is a most readable one, full of good 
 stories, pathetic and humorous. Besides giving 
 critical and apt illustrations, the authors did justice to 
 the better traits of the Irish character. It was an 
 earnest vindication of the national intellect from the 
 charge of habitual blundering, showing how blundering 
 is common to all countries, and is no more Irish than
 
 MORAL TALES. 57 
 
 Persian. They further proved that most so-called bulls 
 are no bulls at all, but often a poetic license, a heart- 
 spoken effusion, and that thus the offence became a 
 grace beyond the reach of art. 
 
 Moral Tales also saw the light in 1801. They too 
 were written to illustrate Practical Education, but 
 aimed at readers of a more advanced age than the 
 children's tales ; in fact both here and elsewhere Miss 
 Edgeworth strove to do on a larger scale what was 
 achieved by the ancient form of parable, to make an 
 attractive medium for the instruction and conviction 
 of minds. It was a fancy of hers, and perhaps a 
 characteristic of her age, when female authorship was 
 held in somewhat doubtful repute, that she invariably 
 insisted on appearing before the public under cover of 
 her father's name. He therefore wrote for Moral Tales, 
 as afterwards for all her works, one of his ludicrously 
 bombastic prefaces, which, whatever they may have 
 done in his own time, would certainly to-day be the 
 most effective means of repelling readers. The stories 
 are six in number. Forester, The Prussian Vase, The 
 Good Aunt, Angelina, The Good French Governess, 
 and Mademoiselle Panache. Of these the plots are 
 for the most part poorly contrived, the narrative 
 hammered out invita Minerva, and, owing to their 
 aim, nothing capricious or accidental is permitted. 
 Too obviously they are the mature fruits of purpose 
 and reflection, not happy effusions of the fancy, and 
 hence also not always successful. Sometimes the 
 fault lay with the subject that afforded too little 
 scope, sometimes the moral striven after did not 
 admit of the embellishments requisite for a work of 
 amusement. One thing, however, is certain; that 
 Miss Edgeworth honestly endeavoured to combine
 
 58 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 entertainment with instruction, and that, taken as a 
 whole, she succeeded. She did not shelter herself 
 behind the Baying that // est permis cFennuyer en 
 moralities d'ici jusqu'a Constantinople. But it is the 
 key to her writings, to their excellencies and their 
 defects, that the duty of a moral teacher was always 
 uppermost in her mind. Her aim was not to display 
 her own talents, but to make her readers substantially 
 better and happier, to show how easy and agreeable to 
 practice are high principles. Again and again she 
 insists, with irrefragable force, that it is the ordinary 
 and attainable qualities of life rather than the lofty 
 and heroic ones on which our substantial happiness 
 depends, an insistance new in the domain of fiction, 
 which as a rule preaches other doctrines. With this 
 end in view she had necessarily to sacrifice some free- 
 dom and grace of invention to illustrate her moral 
 aphorisms, her salutary truths, and she yielded to the 
 temptation to exaggerate in order to make her work 
 more impressive. Her Moral Tales are a series of 
 climaces of instances, an enlargement of La Bruyere's 
 idea, a method allowable to creations of fancy, but 
 not quite justifiable when applied to the probable. 
 Moreover, it was a feature of the 18th century, to 
 which in many respects Miss Edgeworth belonged, 
 that its tales and novels were not analytic. Psychology 
 based upon biology was as yet unknown, or in so 
 empirical a stage as to be remote from practical appli- 
 cation. The writers of those days depict their charac- 
 ters not as the complex bundles of good and bad 
 qualities and potentialities that even the veriest 
 scribbler paints them to-day, but as sharply good or 
 bad, so that one flaw of character, one vice, one folly, 
 was made to be the origin of all their disasters. It is,.
 
 MORAL TALES. 59 
 
 of course, always dangerous when the author plays the 
 part of Providence, and can twist the narrative to suit 
 the moral ; but this censure applies to all moral tales, 
 by no matter whom. Miss Edgeworth strove to 
 civilise and instruct by the rehearsal of a tale, and if 
 we all, from the perversity of human nature, rather 
 revolt against being talked to for our good, it must 
 ever be added in her praise that she generally allures 
 us and makes us listen to her maxims of right living. 
 Her self-imposed task was neither humble nor easy, 
 but one that required judgment, patience, and much 
 knowledge of the world ; her moral wholesomeness 
 cannot be rated too highly or be too much commended. 
 If she ascribed too large a share of morality to the 
 head instead of the heart, this was the result of the 
 doctrines with which her father had imbued her. 
 
 The most successful of the Moral Tales is beyond 
 question Angelina. Its moral is not obtrusive, 
 its fable is well-constructed, the tale is told with 
 point, spirit, gentle but incisive satire. The senti- 
 mental young lady, a female Don Quixote, roaming 
 the world in search of an unknown friend whose 
 acquaintance she has made solely through the 
 medium of her writings, is a genus that is not extinct. 
 Never has Miss Edgeworth been happier than here, 
 when she combats her heroine's errors, not by serious 
 arguments but with the shafts of ridicule. The tale 
 is a gem. Forester, on the other hand, for which 
 Mr. Edgeworth claims that it is a male version of the 
 same character, does not strike us in that light, nor 
 is it as perfect in conception or execution. The charac- 
 ter of the eccentric youth who scorns the common 
 forms of civilised society, and is filled with visionary 
 schemes of benevolence and happiness, was based, it
 
 60 MARIA EDGE WORTH. 
 
 would seem, upon that of Mr. Day, and, as a portrait, 
 was doubtless a happy one. But the hero fails to 
 interest, his aberrations are simply foolish, the means 
 Avhereby he is redeemed too mechanical and crude, the 
 whole both too detailed and too much condensed to hold 
 our attention or to seem probable. The Good French 
 Governess embodies the Edgeworthian mode of giving 
 lessons, which was to make them pleasures, not tasks 
 to the pupils ; maxims now universally recognised and 
 practised, but new in the days when for little children 
 there were no pleasant roads to learning in the shape 
 of kindergarten. The Good Aunt insists upon the 
 necessity of home example and instruction, the lack of 
 which no school training can supply. It is the weakest 
 of all the tales, and verges dangerously upon the 
 namby-pamby. Mademoiselle Panache, according to 
 Mr. Edgeworth, is " a sketch of the necessary con- 
 sequences of imprudently trusting the happiness of a 
 daughter to the care of those who can teach nothing 
 but accomplishments " ; but which, according to most 
 readers, will be pronounced the melancholy result of an 
 ignorance that could mistake an illiterate French 
 milliner for an accomplished French governess. It is 
 unjust to lay the results of the tuition of such a per- 
 sonage to the charge of that favourite scape-goat, the 
 frivolity of the French nation. The Prussian Vase, 
 a talc, again acccording to Mr. Edgeworth, " designed 
 principally for young gentlemen who are intended for 
 the bar," is a pretty but apocryphal anecdote attri- 
 buted to Frederic the Great, of a nature impossible to the 
 mental bias of that enlightened despot. It is moreover 
 aneulogium of the English mode of trial by jury. 
 
 Taken as a whole, these tales may be said to enforce 
 the doctrine that unhappiness is more often the result
 
 MORAL TALES. 61 
 
 of defects of character than of external circumstances. 
 Like all Miss Edgeworth's writings, they found instant 
 favour and were translated into French and German. 
 With no desire to detract from their merits, we cannot 
 avoid the inference that this circumstance points to a 
 great lack of contemporary foreign fiction of a pure 
 and attractive kind.
 
 62 MARIA EDGE WORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN FBANCE AND AT HOME. 
 
 The peace, or rather the truce, of Amiens had induced 
 many travellers to visit France. They all returned 
 enraptured with what they had seen of society in Paris, 
 and with the masterpieces of art dragged thither as the 
 spoils of military despotism. Letters from some of 
 these tourists awakened in Mr. Edgeworth a wish to 
 revisit France. The desire took shape as resolve after 
 the visit to Edgeworthstown of M. Pictet, of Geneva, 
 who promised the family letters of introduction to, 
 and a cordial welcome among, the thinkers of the land. 
 As translator of Practical Education, and as the editor 
 of the Bibliotheque Britannique,* in which he had pub- 
 lished most of Miss Edgeworth's Moral Tales, and 
 detailed criticisms of both father and daughter, he had 
 certainly prepared the way for their favourable reception. 
 The tour was therefore arranged for the autumn of 
 1802, a roomy coach was purchased, and in Septem- 
 ber Mr., Mrs., Miss, and Miss Charlotte Edgeworth, 
 started for their continental trip. 
 
 * Miss Edgeworth erroneously, but persistently, speaks of this 
 publication as the Journal Britannique.
 
 LEICESTER. 63 
 
 The series of letters Miss Edgeworth wrote home 
 during this time are most entertaining, unaffected, 
 sprightly, and graphic. She often sketches a character, 
 a national peculiarity, with a touch, while on the 
 other hand, she does not shirk detail if only she can 
 succeed in presenting a vivid picture of all she is 
 beholding to those dear ones at home who are debarred 
 from the same enjoyment. Carnarvon, Bangor, 
 Etruria, and Leicester were visited on the way out. 
 At Leicester Miss Edgeworth had an amusing adven- 
 ture : — 
 
 Handsome town, good shops. Walked, whilst dinner was getting 
 ready, to a circulating library. My father asked for Belinda, Bulk, 
 &c. : found they were in good repute ; Castle Raclcrent in better — the 
 others often borrowed, but Castle Rackrent often bought. The book- 
 seller, an open-hearted man, begged us to look at a book of poems 
 just published by a Leicester lady, a Miss Watts. I recollected to 
 have seen some years ago a sjDecimen of this lady's proposed trans- 
 lation of Tasso, which my father had highly admired. He told the 
 bookseller that we would pay our respects to Miss Watts, if it would 
 be agreeable to her. When we had dined, we set out with our 
 enthusiastic bookseller. We were shown by the light of a lanthorn 
 along a very narrow passage between high walls, to the door of a decent- 
 looking house : a maid-servant, candle in hand, received us. " Be 
 pleased, ladies, to walk upstairs." A neatish room, nothing extra- 
 ordinary in it except the inhabitants — Mrs. Watts, a tall, black-eyed, 
 prim, dragon-looking woman in the back-ground ; Miss Watts, a tall 
 young lady in white, fresh colour, fair, thin, oval face, rather pretty. 
 The moment Mrs. Edgeworth entered, Miss Watts, taking her for the 
 authoress, darted forward with arms, long thin arms, outstretched to 
 their utmost swing. " Oh, what an honour this is ! " each word and 
 syllable rising in tone till the last reached a scream. Instead of 
 embracing my mother, as her first action threatened, she started v back 
 to the farthest end of the room, which was not light enough to show 
 her attitude distinctly, but it seemed to be intended to express the 
 receding of awe-struck admiration — stopped by the wall. Charlotte 
 and I passed by unnoticed, and seated ourselves, by the old lady's 
 desire ; she, after many twistings of her wrists, elbows and neck, all 
 of which appeared to be dislocated, fixed herself in her arm-chair, 
 resting her hands on the black mahogany splayed elbows. Her
 
 64 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 person was no aooner al real than her eyes and all her features began 
 to move in all directions. Sho looked like a nervous and suspicions 
 
 person electrified. She seemed 1" be the acting partner in this house, 
 to watch over her treasure of a daughter, to supply her with worldly 
 wisdom, to look upon her as a phoenix, and — scold her. 
 
 Miss Watts was all ecstasy and lifting up of hands and eyes, 
 speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical tone with -which a 
 puppet-master supplies his puppets. I all the time sat like a mouse. 
 My father asked. ••Which of those ladies, madam, do you think is 
 vour sister-authoress? " " I am no physiognomist" — in a screech — 
 " but I do imagine that to be the lady," bowing, as she sat, almost to 
 the ground, and pointing to Mrs. Edgewortb. "No; guess again.'' 
 " Then that must be she," bowing to Charlotte. " No." " Then this 
 lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal I was. for she 
 bad never seen me till this instant. To make me somo amends, she 
 now drew her chair close to me, and began to pour forth praises : 
 " Lady Delacour, oh ! Letters for Literary Ladies, oh ! " 
 
 Now for the pathetic part. This poor girl sold a novel in four 
 volumes for ten guineas to Lane. My father is afraid, though she 
 has considerable talents, to recommend her to Johnson lest she should 
 not answer ! Poor girl ! what a pity she had no friend to direct her 
 talents ! How much she made mo feel the value of mine ! 
 
 After a trip through the Low Countries, the 
 travellers entered France and received many civilities 
 in all the towns they passed through, thanks to the 
 fact that the Bibliotheque Britannique was taken in 
 every public library. At Paris the Edgeworths were 
 admitted into the best society of the period, which 
 consisted of the remains of the French nobility, and of 
 men of letters and science. The old Abbe" Morellet, 
 " respected as one of the most reasonable of all the 
 wits of France," the doyen of French literature, was a 
 previous acquaintance. By his introductions and those 
 of M. Pictct, added to the prestige of their own names 
 and their relationship to the Abbe Edgewortb, the 
 most exclusive houses were opened to the family, and 
 they thus became acquainted with everyone worth 
 knowing, among whom were La Harpe, Madame de
 
 ROUSSEAU'S "JULIE." 65 
 
 Genlis, Kosciusko, Madame Becamier, the Comte de 
 Segur, Dumont, Suard, Camille Jordan. In all circles 
 the subject of politics was carefully avoided ; the com- 
 pany held themselves aloof, and wilfully ignored the 
 important issues that were surging around them ; their 
 conversation turned chiefly on new plays, novels, and 
 critical essays. As is usual in such small circles with 
 limited interests, a good deal of mutual admiration was 
 practised, and the Edgeworths received their due share. 
 At the Abbe Morellet's Miss Edgeworth met Madame 
 <TOudinot, Rousseau's " Julie." This is her impres- 
 sion : — 
 
 Julie is now seventy-two years of age, a thin woman in a little 
 black bonnet ; she appeared to me shockingly ugly ; she squints 
 so much that it is impossible to tell which way she is looking ; but 
 no sooner did I hear her speak than I began to like her, and no 
 sooner was I seated beside her than I began to mid in her 
 countenance a most benevolent and agreeable expression. She 
 entered into conversation immediately ; her manner invited and 
 could not fail to obtain confidence. She seems as gay and open- 
 hearted as a girl of fifteen. It has been said of her that she not only 
 never did any harm, but never suspected any. She is possessed of 
 that art which Lord Kaimes said he would prefer to the finest gift 
 from the queen of the fairies : the art of seizing the best side of every 
 object. She has had great misfortunes, but she has still retained the 
 power of making herself and her friends happy. Even during the 
 horrors of the Revolution, if she met with a flower, a butterfly, an 
 agreeable smell, a pretty colour, she would turn her attention to 
 these, and for a moment suspend the sense of misery — not from 
 frivolity, but from real philosophy. No one has exerted themselves 
 with more energy in the service of her friends. I felt in her company 
 the delightful influence of a cheerful temper and soft, attractive 
 manners, — enthusiasm which age cannot extinguish, and which spends. 
 but does not waste itself on small but not trifling objects. I wish I 
 •could at seventy-two be such a woman ! She told me that Rousseau, 
 whilst he was writing so finely on education, and leaving his own 
 children in the Foundling Hospital, defended himself with so much 
 ■eloquence that even those who blamed him in their hearts could not 
 find tongues to answer him. Once at dinner at Madame d'Oudinot's 
 there was a fine pyramid of fruit. Rousseau in helping himself
 
 66 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 took the peach which formed the base of the pyramid, and the rest 
 fell immediately. •■ Rousseau," said she, " that is what yon always 
 do with all cur systems: yon pull down with a ajpigle touch; 
 hut who will build up what you pull down?" 1 asked if be was 
 grateful for all the kindness shown to him? "No, he grate- 
 
 ful; be bad a thousand had qualities, but I turned my attention 
 from them to his genius and the good he had done mankind." 
 
 La Harpc was visited in his own home : — 
 
 He lives in a wretched house, and we went up dirty stairs, through 
 dirty passages, where T wondered how fine ladies' trains and noses 
 could go ; and were received in a dark, small den by the philosopher, 
 or rather Devot, for he spurns the name of philosopher. He was in a 
 dirty, reddish night-gown, and very dirty mght-cap bound round the 
 forehead with a superlatively dirty, chocolate-coloured ribbon. 
 Madame Etecamier. the beautiful, the elegant, robed in white satin 
 'rimmed with white fur. seated herself on the elbow of his arm-chair. 
 And besought him to repeat his verses. Charlotte has drawn a picture 
 of this scene. 
 
 An interesting visit was also paid to Madame de 
 Genlis : — 
 
 She had previously written to say she would be glad to be personally 
 acquainted with Mr. and Miss Edgeworth. She lives — where do you 
 think ? — where Sully used to live, at the Arsenal. Buonaparte has 
 given her apartments there. Now, I do not know what you imagine 
 in reading Sully's memoirs, but I always imagined that the Arsenal 
 was one large building with a facade to it. like a very large hotel or 
 a palace, and I fancied it was somewhere in the middle of Paris. On 
 the contrary, it is quite in the suburbs. We drove on and on, and at 
 last we came to a heavy archway, like what you see at the entrance to a 
 fortified town. We drove under it forthe length of three orfour yards in 
 total darkness, and then we found ourselves, as well as we could see by 
 the light of some dim lamps, in a large square court surrounded by build- 
 ings : hero we thought we wore to alight. No such thing : tho coach- 
 man drove under another thick archway, lighted at the entrance by a 
 single lamp. We found ourselves in another court, and still we went 
 on, archway after archway, court after court, in all which reigned 
 desolate silence. I thought the archways and the courts and the 
 desolate silence would never end. At last tho coachman stopped, and 
 asked for the tenth time where the lady lived. It is excessively 
 difficult to find people in Paris ; we thought the names of Madame de 
 Genlis and the Arsenal would have been sufficient; but tho whole of 
 this congregation of courts and gateways and houses is called the
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS. 67 
 
 Arsenal; and hundreds and hundreds of people inhabit it who an* 
 probably perfect strangers to Madame de Genlis. At the doors whore 
 our coachman 1 enquired, some answered that they knew nothing of 
 her: some that she lived in the Faubourg St. Germain: others 
 believed that she might he at Passy; others had heard that she had 
 apartments given to her by the Government somewhere in the 
 Arsenal, but could not tell where. While the coachman thus hogged 
 his way. we, anxiously looking out at him from the middle of the 
 great square where we were left, listened for the answers that were 
 given, and which often from the distance escaped our ears. At last a 
 door pretty near to us opened, and our coachman's head and hat were 
 illuminated by the candle held by the person who opened the door ; 
 and as the two figures parted from each other, we could distinctly see 
 the expression of the countenances and their lips move. The result 
 of this parley was successful : we were directed to the house where 
 Madame de Genlis lived, and thought all difficulties ended. No such 
 thing : her apartments were still to be sought for. We saw before us 
 a large, crooked, ruinous stone staircase, lighted by a single bit of 
 candle hanging in a vile tin lantern, in an angle of the bare wall at 
 the turn of the staircase — only just light enough to see that the walls 
 wore bare and old, and the stairs immoderately dirty. There were 
 no signs of the place being inhabited except this lamp, which could 
 not have been lighted without hands. I stood still in melancholy 
 astonishment, while my father groped his way into a kind of porter's 
 lodge or den at the foot of the stairs, where he found a man who was 
 porter to various people who inhabited this house. You know the 
 Parisian houses are inhabited by hordes of different people, and the 
 stairs are in fact streets, and dirty streets, to their dwellings. The 
 porter, who was neither obliging nor intelligent, carelessly said that 
 " Madame de Genlis logeait au seconde a gauche, qu'il faudrait tirer sir 
 sonnette" — he believed she was at home if she was not gone out. Up 
 we went by ourselves, for this porter, though we were strangers, and 
 pleaded that we were so, never offered to stir a step to guide or to 
 light us. When we got to the second stage, we finally saw, by the 
 light from the one candle at the first landing-place, two dirty large 
 folding-doors, one set on the right and one on the left, and having on 
 each a bell no larger than what you see in the small parlour of a 
 small English inn. My father pulled one bell and waited some 
 minutes — no answer; pulled the other bell and waited — no answer : 
 thumped at the left door — no answer ; pushed and pulled at it — could 
 not open it ; pushed open one of the right-hand folding-doors — utter 
 darkness ; went in as w r ell as we could feel — there was no furniture. 
 After we had been there a few seconds, we could discern the bare 
 walls and some strange lumber in one corner. The room was a
 
 <;s MARIA i: i>a i: worth. 
 
 prodigious height, like an old play-house, and we went down again to 
 
 the stupid or surly porter. He came upstairs very unwillingly, and 
 pointed to a deep recess between the stairs and the f olding-doors : 
 ••.!//<:.' voila la parte; tirez la sonnette." He and his candle went 
 down, and my father had just time to seize the handle of the bell, 
 when we were again in darkness. After ringing this feeble bell, wo 
 presently heard doors open and little footsteps approaching nigh. 
 The door was opened by a girl of about Honora's size, holding an ill- 
 set-up wavering candle in her hand, the light of which fell full upon 
 her face and figure. Her face was remarkably intelligent, dark 
 sparkling eyes, dark hair, curled in the most fashionable long cork- 
 screw ringlets over her eyes and cheeks. She parted the ringlets to 
 take a full view of us. and we were equally impatient to take a full 
 view of her. The dress of her tigure by no means suited the head 
 and the elegance of her attitude. What her " nether weeds " might 
 be we could not distinctly see, but they seemed to be a coarse, short 
 petticoat, like what Molly Bristow's children would wear, not on 
 Sundays ; a woollen grey spencer above, pinned with a single pin by 
 the lapels tight across the neck under the chin, and open all below. 
 After surveying us and hearing that our name was Edgeworth, she 
 smiled graciously, and bid us follow her, saying. " Martian est chez 
 die." She led the way with the grace of a young lady who has been 
 taught to dance, across two ante-chambers, miserable-looking, but, 
 miserable or not. no house in Paris can be without them. The girl, 
 or young lady, for we were still in doubt which to think her, led us 
 into a small room, in which the candles were so well screened by a 
 green tin screen that we could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a 
 lady in black who rose from her arm-chair by the fireside as the door 
 opened ; a great puff of smoke came from the huge fireplace at the 
 same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards 
 her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs, and 
 work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and bird-cages, 
 and a harp. She did not speak, and as her back was now turned to 
 both fire and candle I could not see her face, nor anything but the 
 outline of her form and her attitude. Her form was the remains of 
 a fine form, and her attitude that of a woman used to a better drawing- 
 room. I. being foremost, and she silent, was compelled to speak to 
 the figure in darkness : " Madame de Gentis nuns a fait /'/tonneur de 
 nous mander qu'elle voufait bien nous permettre de lui rendre visite, ft 
 de lui offrir nos respects," said I, or words to that effect; to which she 
 replied by taking my band, and saying something in which " charmie " 
 was the most intelligible word. Whilst she spoke she looked over my 
 shoulder at my father, whose bow. I presume, told her he was a 
 gentleman, for she spoke to him immediately as if she wished to
 
 MADAME DE GEN LIS. 69" 
 
 please, and seated us in fauteuils near the lire. I then had a full view 
 of her face and figure. She looked like the full-length picture of my 
 great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have seen in the garret, very 
 thin and melancholy, but her face not so handsome as my grand- 
 mother's ; dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips, two 
 or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier 
 might wear— altogether an appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out 
 health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me there was 
 nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had been taught 
 to expect by many even of her enemies. She seemed to me to be 
 alive only to literary quarrels and jealousies ; the muscles of her face 
 as she spoke, or my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily 
 expressed hatred and anger whenever any not of her own party were 
 mentioned. She is now, you know, devote acharne'e. When I 
 mentioned with some enthusiasm the good Abbe' Morellot, who has 
 written so courageously in favour of the French exiled nobility and 
 their children, she answered in a sharp voice, " Out, e'est un homme 
 de beaucoup d'esprit, a ce qu'on dit. a ce que je crois meme, mais il 
 fa ut vous apprendre qu'il ri 'est pas des Noti-es." My father spoke of 
 Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and explained how he had defended 
 her in the Irish House of Commons. Instead of being pleased and 
 touched, her mind instantly diverged into an elaborate and artificial 
 exculpation of Lady Edward and herself, proving, or attempting to 
 ju'ove, that she never knew any of her husband's plans ; that she 
 utterly disapproved of them, at least of all she suspected of them. 
 This defence was quite lost upon us, who never thought of attacking ; 
 but Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to be 
 attacked that she has defences and apologies ready prepared, suited 
 to all possible occasions. She spoke of Madame de Stael's Delphine 
 with detestation ; of another new and fashionable novel, Ame'lie, w r ith 
 abhorrence, and kissed my forehead twice because I had not read it, 
 " Vous autres Anglaises, vous etes modestes ! " Where was Madame de 
 Genlis' sense of delicacy when she penned and published Les Chevaliers 
 du Cigne ? Forgive, my dear Aunt Mary. You begged me to see her 
 with favoiu - able eyes, and I went to see her after seeing her Rosiere 
 de Salency, with the most favourable disposition, but I could not like 
 her. There was something of malignity in her countenance and 
 conversation that repelled love, and of hypocrisy which annihilated 
 esteem ; and from time to time I saw, or thought I saw, through the 
 gloom of her countenance, a gleam of coquetry.* But my father 
 
 * A contemporary epigram ran thus :— 
 
 •• La Genlis se consume en efforts superflus, 
 La vertu n'en veut pas ; le vice n'en veut plus.'"
 
 70 MARIA EDGEWOBTH. 
 
 judges much more favourably of her than 1 do ; she evidently took 
 pains to please him, and be aa] a he is sure she is a person o^ er t 
 mind he could gain great ascendancy. Be thinks her a woman of 
 violent passions, unbridled imagination, and ill-tempered, bu1 aol 
 malevolent; one who has been so torn to pieces thai she now turns 
 upon her enemies, and longs to tear in her turn. Be says Bhe has 
 certainrj greal powers of pleasing, though I certainly neither saw nor 
 felt thorn. But you know, my dear aunt, that I am not famous for 
 judging sandy of strangers on a dxbI visit, and I mighl be prejudiced 
 or mortified by Madame de Qenlis assuring me thai she had never 
 read anything of mine except Belinda, had heard of Practical Educa- 
 tion, and heard it much praised, hut had never seen it. She has just 
 published an additional volume of her Petits Romans, in which there 
 are some beautiful stories; but you must not expect another 
 Mademoisellt d\ Clermont — one such story in an age is as much aa one 
 
 can reasonably expect. 
 
 I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl who showed 
 ns in is a girl whom she is educating. " El/e m'appelle Martian, mats 
 i Hi rCest pas ma filli ." The manner in which this little girl spoke to 
 Madame de Genlis, and looked at her, appeared to me more in her 
 favour than anything else. She certainly spoke to her with freedom 
 and fondness, and without any affectation. I went to look at what 
 the child was writing: she was translating Darwin's Zoonomia. I 
 read some of thetranslation.it was excellent; she was. 1 think she 
 said, ten years old. It is certain that Madame de Genlis mad 
 present Duke of Orleans* such an excellent mathematician thai when 
 he was, during his emigration, in distress for bread, he tai 
 mathematics as a professor in one of the German universities. If we 
 could see or converse with one of her pupils, and hear what they 
 think of her. we should be able to form a better judgmenl than from 
 all that her books and her enemies say for or againsl her. I Bay her 
 books, not her friends and enemies, for I fear she has no friends to 
 plead for her except her books. I never me1 anyone of any party 
 who was her friend. This strikes me with real melancholy, to Bee a 
 •woman of the first talents in Europe, who had lived and shone in the 
 gay court of the gayest nation in the world, now deserted and forlorn. 
 living in wretched lodgings, with some of the pictures and finery — the 
 wreck of her fortunes — before her eyes; without society, without a 
 single friend, admired — and despised : she lived literally in spite, not 
 in pity. Her cruelty in drawing a profligate character of the Queen, 
 
 • Afterwards King Louis Philippe. It was at a Swiss school that 
 he taught, not at a German university.
 
 M. EDELCBANTZ. 71 
 
 after her execution, in Les Chevaliers tin Cigru ; her taking her pupils at 
 the beginning of the Revolution to the revolutionary clubs ; her con- 
 nection with the late Duke of Orleans, and her hypocrisy about it: her 
 insisting on being governess to his children when the Duchess did not 
 wish it, and its being supposed that it was she who instigated the 
 Duke in all his horrible conduct ; and, more than all the rest, her 
 own attacks and apologies, have brought her into all this isolated 
 state of reprobation. And now T , my dear aunt, I have told you 
 all I know, or have heard, or think about her ; and perhaps I 
 have tired you. but I fancied that it was a subject particularly 
 interesting to you ; and if I have been mistaken, you will, with 
 your usual good nature, forgive me and say, " I am sure Maria meant 
 it kindly.'' 
 
 While at Paris, at the mature age of thirty-six, 
 there happened to Miss Edgeworth what is said to be 
 the most important episode in a woman's life, — she fell 
 in love. The object of her affections was a M. Edel- 
 crantz, a Swede, private secretary to the King, 
 whose strong spirited character and able conver- 
 sation attrac ed her greatly. She had not, however, 
 reasoned com truing her feelings, and never realised 
 either how strong they were or dreamed that they would 
 be reciprocated. Knowing herself to be plain and, as 
 she deemed, unattractive, and being no longer young, 
 it did not occur to her that any man would wish to 
 marry her. While writing a long, chatty letter to hei 
 aunt one day in December, she was suddenly inter- 
 rupted by his visit and proposal : — 
 
 Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will surprise 
 you as much as it surprised me, by the coming in of Monsieur Edel- 
 crantz, a Swedish gentleman, whom we have mentioned to you. of 
 superior understanding and mild manners : he came to offer me his 
 hand and heart ! ! 
 
 My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attachment, for I 
 have seen very little of him, and have not had time to form any 
 judgment, except that I think nothing could tempt me to leave my 
 own dear friends and my own country to live in Sweden. My dearest 
 aunt, I write to you the first moment, as, next to my father and
 
 7-2 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 mother, do person in the world feels bo much interest in all that 
 concerns me. 1 need not tell you that my father, 
 
 '• Such in this moment as in .-ill tin- past," 
 
 is kindness itself —kindness far superior to what [ deserve, but 1 am 
 grateful for it. 
 
 A few days later she writes to her cousin : — 
 
 I take it for granted, my dear friend, that you have by this time 
 Been a letter I wrote a few days ago to my aunt. To you, as to her, 
 every thought of my mind is open. I persist in refusing to leave my 
 country and friends to live at the court of Stockholm. And he tills 
 me (of course) that there is nothing he would not sacrifice for me 
 except his duty ; he lias been all his life in the service of the King of 
 Sweden, has places under him, and is actually employed in collecting 
 information for a large political establishment. He thinks himself 
 bound in honour to finish what he has begun. He says he should not 
 fear the ridicule or blame that would be thrown upon him by his 
 countrymen for quitting his country at his age, but that he would 
 despise himself if he abandoned his duty for any passion. This is all 
 very reasonable, but reasonable for him only, not for me. and I have 
 never felt anything for him but esteem and gratitude. 
 
 Mrs. Edgeworth supplements these letters in the 
 unpublished memoir of her step-daughter, which she 
 wrote for her family and nearest friends. She says : — 
 
 Even after her return to Edgeworthstown, it was long before Maria 
 recovered the elasticity of her mind. She exerted all her powers of 
 self-command, and turned her attention to everything which her 
 father suggested for her to write. But Leonora, which she began 
 immediately after our return home, was written with the hope of 
 pleasing the Chevalier Edelcrantz : it was written in a style which he 
 liked, and the idea of what ho would think of it was, I believe, present 
 to her in every page she wrote. She never heard that he had even 
 read it. From the time they parted at Paris, there was no sort of 
 communication between them: and beyond the chance which brought 
 as sometimes into company with travellers who had been in Sweden, 
 or the casual mention of M. Edelcrantz in the newspapers or scientific 
 journals, we never heard more of one who had been of such supreme 
 interest to her. as to us all at Paris, and of whom Maria continued to 
 have all her life the most romantic recollection. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth's self-control was manifested at
 
 IN FRANCE. 73 
 
 once — in none of her other letters does the matter 
 recur, they are as chatty and lively as ever ; but the 
 incident throws much light both upon her character 
 and the precepts of repression of feelings she loved to 
 inculcate. She had not merely preached, but practised 
 them. 
 
 In January 1803 Mr. Edgeworth suddenly received a 
 peremptory order from the French Government to quit 
 Paris in twenty-four hours, and France in fifteen days. 
 Much amazed, he went to Passy, taking Miss Edge- 
 worth with him, and quietly awaited the solution of 
 the riddle. It proved that Bonaparte believed him to 
 be brother to the Abbe Edgeworth, the devoted friend 
 of Louis XVI., and not till it was explained to him that 
 the relationship was more distant was Mr. Edgeworth 
 allowed to return. The cause for the order, as for its 
 withdrawal, was petty. The Edgeworths' visit was, 
 however, after all, brought to an abrupt conclusion. 
 Rumours of imminent hostilities began to be heard and 
 though the reports circulated were most contradictory, 
 Mr. Edgeworth thought it wise to be ready for departure. 
 It was decided that M. Le Breton, who was well- 
 informed about Bonaparte's plans, should, at a certain 
 evening party, give Mr. Edgeworth a hint, and, as he 
 dared neither speak nor write, he was suddenly to put 
 on his hat if war were probable. The hat was put on, 
 and Mr. Edgeworth and his family hurried away from 
 Paris. They were but just in time. Mr. Lovell Edge- 
 worth, who was on his way from Geneva, and never 
 received his father's warning letter, was stopped on his 
 journey, made prisoner, and remained among the 
 detenus till 1814. 
 
 After a short stay in London, the family went to 
 Edinburgh to visit Henry Edgeworth, who had shown
 
 74 MARIA EDGEWOKTH. 
 
 signs of the family malady. Here they spout an agree- 
 able time, seeing the many men of learning who in 
 those days made Edinburgh a delightful residence. 
 Warm friendships were formed with the Alisons, the 
 Dngald Stewarts, and Professor Playfair. 
 
 Returned to Edgeworthstown, Miss Edgeworth set to 
 work industriously to prepare for the press her Popular 
 Talcs, and write Leonora and several of the Tales of 
 Fashionable Life. She exerted all her powers of self- 
 command to throw her energy into her writing, and 
 to follow up every suggestion made by her father; 
 but it was clear to those who observed her closely, that 
 she had not forgotten the man of whom, all her life, 
 she retained a tender memory. It was long before 
 she thoroughly recovered her elasticit}' of spirits, and 
 the mental struggle did not pass over without leaving 
 its mark. Early in 1805 Miss Edgeworth fell seriously 
 ill with a low, nervous fever; it was some while 
 before she could leave her room, read, or even speak. 
 As she got better, she liked to be read to, though scarcely 
 able to express her thanks. The first day she was really 
 convalescent was destined to mark an era in her life. 
 While she was lying on the library sofa, her sister 
 Charlotte read out to her The Lay of tlie Last Minstrel, 
 then just published. It was the beginning of Miss 
 Edgewortb/s enthusiastic admiration of Scott, which 
 resulted in a warm friendship between the two authors. 
 
 From the time of the Edgeworths' return, Ireland 
 had been agitated with the fears of a French invasion, 
 and Mr. Edgeworth once more exerted himself to estab- 
 lish telegraphic communication across the country. As 
 usual, his family joined him in his pursuits, and Miss 
 Edgeworth, with the rest, was kept employed in copy- 
 ing out the vocabularies used in conversations. The
 
 GRISELDA. 75 
 
 year 1804- was almost engrossed by this. Nevertheless, 
 she found time to write Grisekla at odd moments in her 
 own room. Her father knew nothing either of the 
 plan of the book or of its execution, and she sent it on 
 her own account to her publisher, Johnson, with the 
 request to print the title page of a single copy without 
 her name, and to send it over to Mr. Edgeworth as a 
 new novel just come out. Miss Sneyd, who was in the 
 secret, led him to peruse it quickly. He read it with 
 surprise and admiration, and feeling convinced that 
 Miss Edgeworth had not had the actual time to write 
 it, and yet seeing it was like her style, he fancied his 
 daughter Anna (Mrs. Beddoes) must have written it 
 to please him. When at last he was told that it was 
 by his favourite daughter, he was amused at the trick, 
 and delighted at having admired the book without know- 
 ing its author. This was one of the many little ways in 
 which the Edgeworths loved to please one another. A 
 happier, more united household it would be hard to 
 find among circumstances fraught with elements of 
 domestic discord — the children and relatives of four 
 wives, of the most diverse characters and tastes, living 
 peaceably under one roof. Vitality, unwearying activity 
 free from restlessness, distinguished most of its mem- 
 bers, and especially the father and eldest daughter. 
 Nor was there anything prim or starched in the home 
 atmosphere ; though ethically severe and maintained at 
 a high level of thought, gaiety, laughter, and all the 
 lighter domestic graces prevailed. Miss Edgeworth's 
 letters reflect a cheerful, united home of the kind she 
 loves to paint. Like many united families, the Edge- 
 worths were strong in a belief in their own relations, 
 they had the clan-feeling well developed. Not a 
 member went forth from the paternal nest but was hold
 
 76 MARIA EBGEWORTH. 
 
 in constant remembrance, in constant intercourse with 
 home, and it was usually Miss Edgeworth's ready pen 
 that kept the link well knit. Hence the large number 
 of her family letters extant, many of which have no 
 separate interest for the world, bnt which, taken as a 
 whole, reflect both her own unselfish personality, and 
 the busy life of young and old around her. In her 
 letters she never dwells on troubles ; they overflow with 
 spirits, life, and hope. As they are apt to be long and 
 diffuse, it is not easy to quote from them ; but every one 
 presents a nature that beat in unison with all that is 
 noble and good. She was alive to everything around 
 her, full of generous sympathies, enthusiastic in her 
 admiration of all that had been achieved by others. 
 Her praises came fresh and warm from a warm 
 and eloquent Irish heart. That these utterances are 
 toned down and tamed in her books, is yet another 
 proof how the need to illustrate her father's ulterior 
 aims cramped her in the expression of her feelings. His 
 mind, though she knew it not, was inferior to hers, and 
 though it was in some respects like her own, it yet 
 hung heavy on the wings of her fancy. In later life she 
 wrote more letters to acquaintances than at this time. 
 In these years she says to a friend who upbraided her 
 for not writing oftener : — 
 
 I do not carry on what is called a regular correspondence with 
 anybody except with one or two of my very nearest relations. And 
 it is best to tell you the plain truth, that my father particularly dis- 
 likes to see me writing letters : therefore I write as few as I possibly 
 can. 
 
 Of herself she speaks least of all, of her writings 
 seldom, and when she does, but incidentally. Without 
 certainly intending it, she painted herself when she writes 
 of Mrs. Emma Granby ('• the modern Grisclda") : — 
 
 All her thoughts were intent upon making her friends happy. She
 
 AT HOME. 77 
 
 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 hy the elegant 
 fictitious sorrows of a heroine of romance ; hers was ready for all the 
 occasions of real life ; nor was it to he easily checked by the imper- 
 fections of those to whom she could be of service. 
 
 It is one of the most delightful features in Miss 
 Edgeworth, that in her the dignity of the author is 
 sustained by the moral worth of the individual, a com- 
 bination unhappily not common. 
 
 Visits to and from neighbours or friends, more or 
 less eminent, visits from nephews and nieces, letters 
 from all quarters of the globe, prevented the life at 
 Edgeworthstown from ever becoming stagnant, even if 
 a home so full of young people could have been devoid 
 of life. Then, too, though the Edgeworths kept them- 
 selves aloof from politics, the course of public affairs 
 did not always hold aloof from them, and at various 
 times the disturbed state of Ireland caused them dis- 
 comfort and fears. Sorrows and sickness, too, did not 
 refrain from entering that happy home. There were 
 the usual juvenile illnesses, there were births, there 
 were sicknesses among the elder branches. In 1807 
 Charlotte, the darling; of the family, died after much 
 suffering, a victim to hereditary consumption. In 1809 
 Mr. Edgeworth himself was seriously ill, and Henry's 
 health, too, became so precarious that it was needful 
 to send him to Madeira. For a long time it seemed 
 likely that Miss Edgeworth would go out to nurse him, 
 but the project fell to the ground ; and a few years later 
 this brother, her especial nursling, also died of pul- 
 monary disease. 
 
 The sorrow for Charlotte's death cast a cloud over 
 all the year 1807. During its course Miss Edgeworth's 
 greatest pleasure was the planting of a new garden her
 
 MARIA EDGEWOBTH. 
 
 father had Laid out for her near to her own room, that 
 had been enlarged and altered together with some 
 alterations to the main building. She was at all times 
 an enthusiastic gardener, finding pleasure and health 
 in the pursuit. " My garden adds very much to my 
 happiness, especially as lionora and all the children 
 have shares in it." Then, too, Miss Edge worth was- 
 kept constantly employed attending to the affairs of 
 the tenants; no rapid, easy, or routine task in Ireland. 
 Thus she writes on one occasion : — 
 
 This being May-Day, one of the wettest I have ever seen, I have 
 been regaled, not with garlands of May flowers, but with the legal 
 pleasures of the season : I have heard nothing but giving notices to 
 quit, taking possession, ejectments, flitlings, &c. What do you think 
 of a tenant who took one of the nice new houses in this town, and 
 left it with every lock torn off the doors, and with a large stone, such 
 as John Langan* could not lift, driven actually through the boarded 
 floor of the parlour? The brute, however, is rich; and if he does 
 not die of whisky before the law can get its hand into his pocket, he 
 will pay for this waste. 
 
 No wonder she once sighs, "I wish I had time to 
 write some more Early Lessons, or to do half the 
 things I wish to do." With the calls on her time, 
 domestic, philanthropic, and social, it is only amazing 
 that she wrote so much. Her method of working is 
 described by herself in some detail. From its very 
 nature it could not fail to induce a certain stiffness 
 and over-anxious finish. She says : — 
 
 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 immediately upon that which would besl answer the 
 purpose. " Sketch that, and show it to me." The words, from the 
 
 * John Langan was the steward ; in face and figure the prototype 
 of Thady in Castle Racbent.
 
 METHOD OF WORK. 79 
 
 experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope <>f 
 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 
 of your drapery ! I can imagine all that. Let me see the bare 
 skeleton." 
 
 It seemed to me sometimes impossible that he could understand 
 the very slight sketches I made; when, hefore I was conscious 
 that I had expressed this doubt in my countenance, he always 
 saw it. 
 
 " Now. my dear little daughter, I know, does not believe that I under- 
 stand her." Then he would, in his own words, fill up my sketch, paint 
 the description, or represent the character intended, with such life, that 
 I was quite convinced he not only seized the ideas, but that he saw 
 with the prophetic eye of taste the utmost that could be made of 
 them. After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the 
 filling it up till it had been worked upon for a week or fortnight, or 
 till the first thirty or forty pages were written ; then they were read 
 to him, and if he thought them going on tolerably well, the pleasure 
 in his eyes, the approving sound of his voice, even without the praise 
 he so warmly bestowed, were sufficient and delightful incitements to 
 " go on and finish." When he thought that there was spirit in what 
 was written, but that it reqivired, as it often did, great correction, he 
 would say : "Leave that to me; it is my business to cut and correct, 
 yours to write on." His skill in ratting, his decision in criticism, was 
 peculiarly useful to me. His ready invention and infinite resource, 
 when I had run myself into difficulties, never failed to extricate me 
 at my utmost need. It was the happy experience of this, and my 
 consequent reliance on his ability, decision, and perfect honesty, that 
 relieved me from the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so much 
 subject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished anything 
 without his support. He inspired in my mind a degree of hope and 
 confidence, essential in the first instance to the full exertion of the 
 mental powers, and necessary to ensure perseverance in any occu- 
 pation. Such, happily for me, was his power over my mind, that no 
 one thing I ever began to write was ever left unfinished. 
 
 That such a process was calculated to check inspira- 
 tion is obvious. To suffer one hand to chisel and 
 clip the productions of another, to insert into a 
 finished frame-work incongruous episodes intended to 
 work out a pet idea, was as inartistic as it was pernicious.
 
 80 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 The method could not fail to induce a certain self- 
 consciousness on the part of the writer fatal to spon- 
 taneity, a certain complacent, careful laying out of 
 plans, apt to disturb, if not to distract, the reader by 
 drawing his attention from the fabric to the machinery. 
 It was this that laid Miss Edgeworth open to the 
 charge, so often made, of a mechanical spirit in her 
 writings. For our own part, after reading her letters, 
 with which her father certainly did not meddle, we are 
 inclined to lay most of her faults to the charge of the 
 monitor and guide, whose assistance she so much 
 over-rated. He, on the other hand, saw other dan- 
 gers in their system. Writing to Mrs. Inchbald, he 
 says : — 
 
 Maria has one great disadvantage in this house — she has eight or 
 nine auditors who are no contemptible judges of literature, to whom 
 she reads whatever she intends to publish. Now, she reads and acts 
 so admirably well, that she can make what is really dull appear to be 
 lively. 
 
 Indeed, everything was done in public in that 
 family. All Miss Edgeworth's works were written in 
 the common sitting-room, with the noise of playing 
 children about her. Her early habits of abstraction 
 stood her in good stead, and, at her little table by 
 the fire, she would sit for half an hour together, 
 without stirring, with her pen in her hand, or else 
 scribble away very fast in the neat writing that never 
 altered to the end. A certain occasional want of 
 closeness in her reasoning may, perhaps, however, have 
 resulted from this habit of writing in public, since the 
 effort of abstraction made by the brain must of 
 necessity absorb some of its power. Considering how 
 large was the family continually around her, it is suffi- 
 ciently astonishing that she could do it at all. Once
 
 7JV FRANCE AND AT HOME. 81 
 
 when such surprise was expressed, Mrs. Edgeworth 
 said : " Maria was always the same, her mind was so 
 rightly balanced, everything so honestly weighed, that 
 she suffered no inconvenience from what would disturb 
 or distract any ordinary writer/' 
 
 6
 
 82 MARIA EDGE WORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 
 
 When the literary history of the nineteenth century 
 is written, its historians will be amazed to find how 
 important a part the contributions of women have 
 played therein. At the meeting-point of the two 
 centuries it was Miss Edgeworth in Ireland, Miss 
 Austen in England, and Miss Ferrier in Scotland, who 
 for Great Britain inaugurated an era of female author- 
 ship that stood and sought to stand simply upon its 
 own merits, neither striving to be masculine nor 
 addressing itself exclusively to women. Fielding, 
 Smollett, and the older novelists were not solicitous 
 about virtue. They wrote for men readers only, and 
 if they amused, their end was attained. But when 
 women became readers a new need arose, and with 
 the need came a new supply. The finer ethical 
 instincts of women were revolted by the grossness of 
 the Tom Joneses, the Tristram Shandys of literature ; 
 and as society became purer, manners less coarse, 
 men too asked for mental food that should be less 
 gross in texture. Miss Burney had led the way to a 
 new era, a new style, both in fictitious literature and 
 in female authorship. It was in her foot-steps that
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 83 
 
 Miss Edgeworth trod ; but while Miss Burney aimed 
 at amusement only, Miss Edgeworth inaugurated the 
 novel with a purpose. 
 
 Perhaps no phrase has been more misunderstood 
 than this of " a novel with a purpose/' Obviously it is 
 not only right but imperative that a novel, or any work 
 of art, should have a leading idea, an aim ; but this is 
 markedly different from a didactic purpose, which is 
 implied by the phrase. Headers of novels demand 
 before all else to be entertained, and are justified in 
 that demand, and they merely submit to such instruc- 
 tion or moralising as can be poured into their minds 
 without giving them too much trouble. Miss Edge- 
 worth lost sight of this too often ; indeed, it was a 
 point of view that did not enter into her philosophy, 
 narrowed as her experience was by the boundaries of 
 home and the all-pervading influence of her father's 
 passion for the didactic. The omission proved the 
 stumbling-block that hindered her novels from attain- 
 ing the highest excellence. A moral was ever upper- 
 most in Miss Edgeworth's mind, and for its sake she 
 often strained truth and sacrificed tenderness. She 
 was for ever weighted by her purpose ; hence her imagi- 
 nation, her talents, had not free play, and hence the 
 tendency in all her writings to make things take a 
 more definite course than they do in real life, where 
 purpose and results are not always immediately in 
 harmony, nor indeed always evident. Miss Kavanagh 
 has aptly said, " Life is more mysterious than Miss 
 Edgeworth has made it." Having said this, however, 
 we have laid our finger upon the weak point of her 
 novels, in which there is so much to praise, such 
 marked ability, such delicious humour, such exuberant 
 ereative fancy and variety, that the general public does 
 
 6 *
 
 84 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 \(m\ ill to have allowed them to sink so much into 
 oblivion. 
 
 Between the years 1804 and 1813 Miss Edgeworth 
 published Leonora, Griselda, and the stories of various 
 length that were issued under the collective titles of 
 Talcs from Fashionable Life and Popular Tales. Leo- 
 nora was the first work she wrote after her return from 
 France, where she had enlarged the sphere of her 
 mind and heart. It is a marked improvement upon 
 Belinda, the fable is better contrived, the language 
 flows more easily. It was penned with a view to please 
 M. Edelcrantz, and in respect of being written for 
 one special reader, Leonora recalls that curious work 
 by Madame Riccoboni, Lettres de Fanni Butlerd a 
 Milord Charles Alfred, published as a fiction, but in 
 reality only the collection of the writer's love-letters 
 to the Englishman who had wronged and deserted her. 
 " Mistris Fanni to one reader," was the significant 
 heading to the preface of that book. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth's purpose in Leonora certainly led 
 her into an entirely new path. To use her own words, 
 no one would have believed that she could have been 
 such an expert in the language of sentimental logic. 
 For her doubly romantic purpose she was able to argue 
 with all the sophistry and casuistry of false, artificial, 
 and exaggerated feeling that can make vices assume 
 the air of virtues, and virtues those of vices, until it 
 is impossible even to know them asunder. The story 
 itself rests upon a narrow and not very probable foun- 
 dation. Its great fault is that it is too long drawn 
 out for its base. The principal characters are a virtuous, 
 outwardly cold and precise, inwardly warm-hearted 
 English wife, and a well-bred English husband, led 
 astray by the machinations of a Frenchified coquette
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 85 
 
 who sets upon him from pure desceuvrement, and for 
 whom any other person who had come into her path 
 at that moment would have been equally acceptable 
 game. The work is thrown into the form of letters, 
 which gives to Miss Edgeworth an opportunity, inimit- 
 ably carried out, of making all the personages paint 
 themselves and speak in the language that is most 
 natural to them. These letters are excellently varied. 
 Lady Olivia's teem with French and German sentiment 
 and metaphysics of self-deception ; Leonora's are as 
 candid and generous as herself, yet though her 
 motives are lofty, we discern a certain air of aris- 
 tocratic hauteur ; while the good sense in General 
 
 B 's is bluntly expressed. 
 
 The fault of the story is that the husband's conver- 
 sion ought to have been brought about by purely 
 moral means, and not by the accidental interception of 
 his false mistress's letters. Thus the value of the 
 whole moral is destroyed by its creator. That Delphine 
 in a manner suggested this story, that but for this 
 romance Leonora might not have assumed its peculiar 
 shape, may be taken almost for granted. A certain 
 notion of refuting this corrupt story, then at the high 
 tide of its popularity, may also have been present in 
 Miss Edgeworth's mind, who at no time was so much 
 self-absorbed as to lose sight of the ultimate aim in all 
 her writings. Those were the days of excessive sensi- 
 bility, when to yearn after elective affinities was the 
 fashion. From such a state of feeling Miss Edgeworth's 
 temperament and training secured her, and for very 
 fear of it she erred in an opposite extreme. But with 
 the true artist's instinct she recognised that it was in 
 the air, and she makes it the theme of a romance 
 that holds it up not only to ridicule, but shows with
 
 86 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 relentless force into what abysms it may lead its 
 votaries. Over this novel Miss Edgeworth expended 
 much time and care; it was subjected to frequent 
 revision, while her father "cut, scrawled, and inter- 
 lined without mercy." It is certainly polished ad 
 unguem, as he rightly deemed that a book of this 
 nature, devoid of regular story, must be; but it might 
 have been cut down still more with advantage. 
 
 It is the peculiarity of Miss Edgeworth/s novels, and 
 may be accepted as their key-note, that she systemati- 
 cally addressed herself to the understanding rather 
 than to the heart of her readers, and that she rarely 
 forgot her educational aim. After having striven to 
 instruct children and young men and women, she 
 tried, in a series of tales selected from fashionable life, 
 " to point out some of the errors to which the higher 
 classes of society are disposed." It is an open question 
 whether it is possible to correct society, or whether 
 that is a hopeless task because society is too vain and 
 silly to listen to words of wisdom. "England," said 
 Mr. Pecksniff, " England expects every man to do 
 his duty. England will be disappointed." Miss 
 Edgeworth, however, who never doubted the value of 
 tuition, attempted the task, and she was certainly 
 right in so far that if it were possible to open the eyes 
 of this class of persons, it would be by means of enter- 
 taining stories. Of course she only appealed to those 
 who, though not gifted with enough good sense to go 
 right of their own accord, are yet not past teaching, 
 or too devoid of sense to be teachable, and she took 
 immense pains to show how the greater part of our 
 troubles in life arise from ignorance rather than from 
 vice or incapacity. To teach the art of living, the 
 science of being happy, is her one endeavour; and
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 87 
 
 thus her fancy, her wit, her strictures are all made to 
 bend to her main purpose, that of being the vehicles 
 of her practical philosophy. Yet to regard Miss 
 Edgeworth as a mere teaching machine is to do her 
 gross injustice. Like most people, she was better 
 than her creed. Despite her doctrines, her genius was 
 too strong for her, and it is thanks to this that sundry 
 of these tales from " Fashionable Life " are among her 
 highest and most successful efforts. They are also as 
 a whole more powerful and varied than any of her 
 previous productions. 
 
 The first series consisted of four stories. Ennui, 
 The Dun, Manoeuvring, and Almeria," of which the 
 f^rst is by far the longest. As is too often the case 
 with Miss Edgeworth, the plot is clumsily and coldly 
 contrived, the proportions not well maintained ; but 
 the work abounds with masterly delineations of charac- 
 ter, and is a striking picture of the satiety induced by 
 being born, like the hero Lord G-lenthorne, on the 
 pinnacle of fortune, so that he has nothing to do but 
 to sit still and enjoy the barrenness of the prospect, 
 or to eat toffee like the Duke in Patience. He tries 
 all amusements but finds them wanting, and he would 
 probably have been ruined mentally and bodily if a 
 convenient catastrophe had not precipitated him tem- 
 porarily into indigence and aroused all those better 
 qualities of his nature and excellent abilities that lay 
 buried and inert. It is not the least skilful part of 
 this clever tale that it is told as an autobiography, 
 the hero himself both consciously and unconsciously 
 dissecting his foibles. Much of the scene is laid in 
 Ireland, and gives Miss Edgeworth scope for those 
 amusing collateral incidents, those racy delineations 
 of the various classes of Irish society, in which she is
 
 88 MARIA EBGEWORTH. 
 
 still uusurpassed. She knew how to hit off to the 
 life the several peculiarities of respective stations and 
 characters, and we know not whom most to admire 
 and delight in : the Irish pauper who officiates as postil- 
 lion, and who assures Lord Glenthorne that his crazy 
 chaise is the best in the country — " we have two more, 
 to be sure, but one has no top and the other no 
 bottom " — the warm-hearted, impulsive, happy-go- 
 lucky Irish nurse who has no scruple about com- 
 mitting a crime for the sake of those she loves ; or 
 Lady Geraldine, the high-born, high-bred Irish peeress 
 who speaks with an Irish accent, uses Irish idioms, 
 and whose language is more interrogative, more 
 exclamatory, more rhetorical, accompanied with more 
 animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture, 
 than that of the English ladies with whom she is con- 
 trasted. With inimitable skill we are made to see 
 that there is something foreign in this lady's manner, 
 something rather French than English, and yet not 
 French either but indigenous. Of course rebels play 
 a part in the story — it would not be a true Irish story 
 without them — but, as usual, Miss Edgeworth dwells 
 by preference upon the milder, more engaging aspects 
 of the Irish character, upon their strange pathetic life; 
 and while not ignoring, brings into as little prominence 
 as may be, the frequent perjuries, the vindictive pas- 
 sions, the midnight butcheries, the lawless ferocity, 
 the treacherous cruelty of her half-savage com- 
 patriots. 
 
 The Dun is a short tale in Miss Edgeworth's most 
 didactic and least happy style, dealing with a theme 
 that should be more often emphasized and brought 
 into view ; namely, the unfeeling thoughtlessness of 
 the rich, that withholds from the poor the result of
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 89 
 
 their earnings, one of the most frequent and serious 
 injuries perpetrated by the wealthy upon their indigent 
 brethren. 
 
 Manoeuvring is a detailed account of the machina- 
 tions of a certain Mrs. Beaumont, a country lady, who 
 expends a great deal of Machiavellism, left-handed 
 wisdom, and intrigue upon the projects of her children's 
 marriages, and also upon securing to her family the 
 fortune of an old gentleman who never had a thought 
 of disposing of it otherwise. The mortifications and 
 defeats to which her circuitous policy constantly 
 exposes her, constitute the plot and the moral of the 
 tale, which is not ill-conceived, and yet for some cause 
 fails to interest us long. 
 
 In Almeria, Miss Edgeworth's admirable story-telling 
 powers, her grace and shrewdness, are once more seen 
 at their very best. It is the history of a woman who 
 has sacrificed all the happiness of life, all the better 
 instincts of her nature, for the empty ambition of 
 being admitted into the charmed circle of fashionable 
 society ; and who, though she finds out in time that it 
 is Dead-Sea apples she has sought, has become so im- 
 meshed that she cannot break away, but leads an 
 existence of pleasure-hunting, ever seeking, never 
 finding that commodity, a warning example of 
 
 How the world its veterans rewards — 
 A youth of folly, an old age of cards. 
 
 The moral is not insisted on, but is allowed to speak 
 for itself, and is, on that account, far more eloquent. 
 
 Except when dealing with Irish scenes, Miss Edge- 
 worth is never happier than when painting the perverse 
 or intriguing fine ladies of society, who, having no real 
 troubles or anxieties to occupy them, shielded from 
 the physical evils of existence, make to themselves
 
 90 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 others, and find occupation for their empty heads and 
 hours, with results put hefore us so simply, and 
 devoid of euphemism, by Dr. Watts. Well in- 
 deed has the proverb said, " An empty mind is the 
 devil's house. " In her kindly way Miss Edgeworth 
 can be scathing, and she exercises this power upon 
 women of mere fashion. The ladies of the period 
 were less occupied with public and philanthropic 
 schemes than they are now, and hence had more time 
 to expend on follies and frivolities. The whole pitiful 
 system of unreal existence led by these women is 
 exposed with an almost remorseless hand, for Miss 
 Edgeworth had no tenderness for foolish failings. 
 Inimitably, too, we are made to see how then, as now, 
 there was tolerated in fashionable society a degree of 
 vulgarity which would neither be suffered nor attempted 
 in lower life. It was just because Miss Edgeworth's 
 lines were cast among the rich and idle that she was 
 able to understand all the misery and heartlessness of 
 the lives of a large section of this community. We 
 see how their petty cravings, their preposterous pur- 
 suits, bring positive misery on themselves, if not on 
 others; how their dispositions are sophisticated, their 
 tempers warped, their time and talents wasted, in their 
 restless chase after social distinction, after the craze of 
 being in the fashion. " The scourges of the pros- 
 perous/' thus happily have these i»iant curses of mere 
 fashionable life been defined. Miss Edgeworth cer- 
 tainly understood fully the nature of the disorder of 
 her patients, the ennui, the stagnation of life and 
 feeling that devoured them and sunk many of them at 
 last to a depth at which they no longer merited the 
 name of rational human beings. At the same time, 
 and this is a point that must be insisted upon, there is
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 91 
 
 no sourness about Miss Edgeworth's pictures of good 
 society ; her pen, in speaking of it, is not dipped in 
 vinegar and wormwood, as was the pen of Thackeray, 
 and sometimes even that of George Eliot. Without 
 snobbishness, without envy, she writes quite simply, 
 and absolutely objectively, of that which surged around 
 her whenever she left the quiet of Edgeworthstown and 
 visited in some of the many noble houses of Ireland, 
 Scotland, and England, in which she was a familiar 
 friend. That her pictures of contemporary society 
 were correct has never been disputed. She reproduced 
 faithfully not only its coarser and silly side, but also 
 the more brilliant conversational features, that make it 
 contrast so favourably with that of our own day, in 
 which the art of talking has been lost. Lord Jeffrey, 
 an authority, and one not given to flattery, says that 
 Miss Edgeworth need not be afraid of being excelled 
 in " that faithful but flattering representation of the 
 spoken language of persons of wit and politeness — in 
 that light and graceful tone of raillery and argument 
 — and in that gift of sportive but cutting medisance 
 which is sure of success in those circles where success 
 is supposed to be most difficult and desirable." In 
 support of his statement he points to the conver- 
 sation of Lady Delacour (Belinda), Lady Dashfort 
 (Absentee) , and Lady Geraldine (Ennui). 
 
 The first series of Tales from Fashionable Life met 
 with so much favour, that the publisher clamoured for 
 more. Some were lying ready, others had to be 
 written, but in 1812 Miss Edgeworth was able to issue 
 a second series, containing three stories, of which one, 
 The Absentee, ranks worthily beside Castle Rackrent as 
 a masterpiece. The evils this story sought to expose 
 came daily under Miss Edgeworth' s observation; she
 
 92 MAUI A EDGEWORTH. 
 
 beheld the Irish landed gentry forsake their homes 
 and their duties in order to go to London and cut 
 a figure in fashionable society, spending beyond 
 their means, oblivious of the state of home affairs, 
 and merely regarding their properties as good milch 
 kine. How their unfortunate tenants were ground 
 down in order to meet these claims they neither knew 
 nor cared. Lord and Lady Clonbrony, the absentees, 
 are drawn with vivid touches : she is devoured by 
 ambition to shine in a society for which she is not 
 fitted, and voluntarily submits to any humiliations and 
 rebuffs, any sacrifices, to attain this end ; he, uprooted 
 from his wonted surroundings, cannot acclimatise him- 
 self to new ones, and, merely to pass his time, sinks 
 into the vices of gaming and betting. Lady Clon- 
 brony affects a contempt for her native land, and 
 pretends she is not Irish. As, however, she cannot rid 
 herself of an Irish pronunciation and Irish phrases, 
 she is constantly placed in the dilemma of holding her 
 tongue and appearing yet more foolish than she is ; or, 
 by mistaking reverse of wrong for right, so carica- 
 turing the English pronunciation that thus alone she 
 betrayed herself not to be English. In vain, too, this 
 lady struggles to school her free, good-natured Irish 
 manner, into the cold, sober, stiff deportment she 
 deems English. The results to which all this gives 
 rise are delineated with consummate skill and good- 
 humoured satire. The scenes that occur in London 
 society are highly diverting, but the story gains in 
 deeper interest when it shifts to Ireland, whither Lady 
 Clonbrony drives her only son, Lord Colambre, whom 
 she has sought to marry against his will to an English 
 heiress. Unknown to his tenants, from whom he has 
 so long been absent, and further purposely disguised
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 9$ 
 
 in order to elicit the truth concerning certain un- 
 favourable rumours that have reached his ears, Lord 
 Colambre is a witness of the oppressions under which 
 his tenants labour from an unscrupulous and rapacious 
 agent, who feels secure in his master's absence, and in 
 that master's indifference to all but the money result 
 of his estate. Charmingly is the Irish character here 
 described ; we see it in its best phases, with all its 
 kindliness, wit, generosity. There are elements of 
 simple pathos scattered about this story. With delicate 
 and playful humour, we are shown the heroic and 
 imaginative side of the Irish peasantry. We quite love 
 the kindly old woman who kills her last fowl to furnish 
 supper to the stranger, whom she does not know to- 
 be her landlord. On the other hand, we are amused 
 beyond measure with Mrs. Rafferty, the Dublin grocer's 
 wife and parvenue, who, in the absence of those who 
 should have upheld Irish society, is able to make that 
 dash that Lady Clonbrony vainly seeks to make in 
 London. Her mixture of taste and incongruity, finery 
 and vulgarity, affectation and ignorance, is delightful. 
 The dinner-party scene at her house would make the 
 reputation of many a modern novelist. It was a 
 dinner of profusion and pretension, during which Mrs. 
 Rafferty toiled in vain to conceal the blunders of her 
 two untrained servants, who were expected to do the 
 work of five accomplished waiters, talking high art 
 meanwhile to her lordly guest, and occasionally venting 
 her ill-humour at the servants' blunders upon her 
 unfortunate husband, calling out so loud that all the 
 table could hear, " Corny Rafferty, Corny Rafferty, 
 you 're no more gud at the fut of my table than a stick 
 of celery ! " As for the scene in which Lord Co- 
 lambre discovers himself to his tenantry and to their
 
 94 MAUI A EDGEWOHTH. 
 
 oppressor, Macaulay has ventured to pronounce it the 
 best thing written of its kind since the opening of 
 the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. No mean 
 authority and no mean praise ! As a story it is certainly 
 one of the best contrived, and the end is particularly 
 happy. Instead of a tedious moral there is a racy 
 letter from the post-boy who drove Lord Colambre 
 and who paints, with true Hibernian vivacity and 
 some delicious malaprops, the ultimate return of 
 the Clonbrony family to their estate, which, to the 
 optimistic Irish mind, represents the end of all their 
 troubles and the inauguration of a new era of pros- 
 perity and justice. For one thing, it is so much more 
 in keeping that an uncultured peasant, rather than a 
 thoughtful and philosophical mind, should believe in 
 so simple a solution to evils of long standing, that what 
 we should have felt an error in Miss Edgeworth, be- 
 comes right and natural in Larry. The suggestion 
 for this conclusion came from Mr. Edgeworth, and he 
 wrote a letter for the purpose. Miss Edgeworth, how- 
 ever, wrote one too, and her father so much preferred 
 hers that it was chosen to form the admirable finale 
 to the Absentee. 
 
 What perfect self-control Miss Edgeworth possessed 
 may be judged from the fact that the whole of 
 the Absentee, so- full of wit and spirit, was written 
 in great part while she was suffering agonies from 
 toothache. Only by keeping her mouth full of some 
 strong lotion, could she in any way allay the pain, 
 yet her family state that never did she write with 
 more rapidity and ease. Her even-handed justice, her 
 stem love of truth, are markedly shown in this novel, 
 &he does not exaggerate for the sake of strengthening 
 her effects ; thus, for example, she does not make all
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 95 
 
 her agents bad, as some writers would have done, 
 indeed, one is a very model middle-man. She is always 
 far more careful to be true than to be effective, she 
 uses the sober colours of reality, she paints with no 
 tints warmer than life. The chief and abiding; merit 
 of her Irish scenes is not that of describing what had 
 not been described before, but of describing well what 
 had been described ill. 
 
 Vivian was written with extreme care, and by no 
 means with the same rapidity, yet it cannot be com- 
 pared to the Absentee. Here Miss Edgeworth was once 
 more clogged by her purpose, and unable for a moment 
 to lose sight of it. " I have put my head and shoulders 
 to the business," she writes to her cousin, " and if I 
 don't make a good story of it, it shall not be for want 
 of pains/'' It proved no easy task, and only the fact 
 that her father so much approved it, upheld her. " My 
 father says Vivian will stand next to Mrs. Beaumont 
 and Ennui, I have ten days more work on it, and then 
 huzza ! ten days more purgatory at other corrections, 
 and then a heaven upon earth of idleness and reading, 
 which is my idleness." Vivianis a particularly aggra- 
 vating story, so excellent that it is hard to comprehend 
 why it is not of that first-class merit which it just seems 
 to miss. Its aim is to illustrate the evils and perplexi- 
 ties that arise from vacillation and infirmity of purpose, 
 and it is rather a series of incidents than one well- 
 rounded plot. Miss Edgeworth loves to paint, not an 
 episode in a life, but the history of a whole life career. 
 This permits her to trace out those gradual evolutions 
 of some fault of character in which she displays such 
 consummate ability, such precision, and metaphysical 
 subtlety. The hero, Vivian, a man of good dispositions, 
 but lacking firmness of purpose, cannot say " no,"
 
 96 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 while at the same time he has all the spirit of opposi- 
 tion which seems to go hand in hand with weak charac- 
 ters, and is by them mistaken for resolution. The 
 faults, the errors, the griefs, this trait of character leads 
 him into are the staple of the story, which ends mourn- 
 fully, since Vivian's inability to cure himself of his 
 fault finally leads to his own death in a duel. He has 
 not inaptly been named " a domestic Hamlet/' Like 
 Hamlet, he is neither able to accommodate himself to 
 life as it is, nor strong enough to strike out a new life 
 on his own account. The tale abounds in clever 
 pictures of aristocratic and political society, and is full 
 of the intrigues, the petty meannesses of social leaders. 
 As usual, the moral instances are both striking and 
 amusing, reason and ridicule being mixed in those just 
 proportions that Miss Edgeworth knew how to blend so 
 happily. A serious defect is undoubtedly the fact that 
 it is not possible to care for the hero, and hence we 
 grow rather indifferent to his good or ill fortune, and 
 after a while are weary of the undoubted skill and per- 
 verted ingenuity with which he apologises for his vacilla- 
 tion. On the other hand, as ever with Miss Edgeworth, 
 the subordinate characters are throughout excellent, 
 drawn with force and life-like power. Lord Gliston- 
 bury alone would redeem the book from the possibility 
 of being dull. This talkative, conceited man, of neither 
 principle nor understanding, who chatters adopted 
 opinions and original nonsense, who loves to hear 
 himself speak, and believes he is uttering great things, 
 is a distinct creation. 
 
 The story of Madame de Fleury is slight in texture. 
 It relates the experience of a rich and benevolent 
 French lady who conducts a school for poor children 
 after the Edgeworth type, and is rather a transcript from
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 97 
 
 real life than a tale. Formal and conventional though 
 it is, however, it was never wholly possible to Miss 
 Edgeworth to belie her genius. Invariably she intro- 
 duces some character, trait, or observation that redeems 
 even a dull tale from condemnation. In this case it is 
 the delicate skill with which is depicted the gradual 
 decline in character of Manon, who, from an un- 
 conscientious child becomes a bold, unscrupulous 
 woman. It was in penning Madame de Fleury that 
 Miss Edgeworth encountered the difficulty she had 
 observed of making truth and fiction mix well together. 
 Ernilie de Coulanges is the too correctly virtuous 
 and rather colourless daughter of a refugee French 
 countess, whose provoking character is deftly depicted 
 with its selfishness, its self-absorption, that renders 
 her both ungrateful and regardless of the comfort 
 of the English lady who has most generously enter- 
 tained her at no little personal inconvenience. Un- 
 fortunately an irritable temper mars Mrs. Somers's 
 good generous nature, and causes her to weary out even 
 the affections of those who have most cause to love her. 
 It also renders her suspicious of the probity, the good 
 intentions of her friends. She loves to arouse senti- 
 mental quarrels, the bickerings and ultimate reconcilia- 
 tion give her real pleasure, as a form of mental titilla- 
 tion, and she fails to see that, though with her it is all 
 surface, as her real feelings are not aroused, this may 
 not be the case with her victims. Mrs. Somers, who 
 may rank as the true heroine, is a bold, yet highly 
 finished portrait, conceived and executed in Miss Edge- 
 worth's best manner. The countess is little less happy. 
 Miss Edgeworth possessed in a high degree that intui- 
 tive judgment of character which is more common in 
 women than in men, and which, when properly exer- 
 
 7
 
 98 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 cised, balanced by judgment and matured by experi- 
 ence, explains the success they have met with in the 
 domain of fictitious literature. 
 
 Again and again Miss Edgeworth proved the fecund 
 creativencss with which she could delineate the moral 
 and intellectual anatomy of the most varied and various 
 characters. Her personages are animate with life and 
 brightness. Above all else she was an artist in detail, 
 and never more felicitous than when furnishing studies 
 of foible in female form. Of this the Modern Griselda 
 is a notable instance, a brilliant performance, almost too 
 brilliant, for it scintillates with wit and epigrammatic 
 wisdom, it never fails or flags for one little moment, so 
 that at last the reader's attention is in danger of being 
 surfeited by a feast of good things. The fable is the 
 direct opposite to that of the old story of Griselda. In 
 the words of Milton we are shown how it befalls the man 
 
 Who to worth in woman over-trusting, 
 Lets her will rule : restraint she will not brook ; 
 And loft to heraolf, if evil thence ensue, 
 She first his weak indulgence will accuse. 
 
 This the Modern Griselda does to her husband's 
 cost and her own. The story is a remarkable evidence 
 of Miss Edgeworth's independence of genius. She 
 showed no weak sympathy with the failings of her sex 
 just because it was her sex, but, like a true friend, held 
 them up to view and pointed them out for correction. 
 Her objectiveness did not ensure her, however, from 
 misconstruction ; Mrs. Barbauld wrote to her : — 
 
 I became very impatient for your Griselda before Johnson thought 
 proper to produce it ; need I add wo have road it with great plea- 
 sure. It is charming, like everything you write, but I can toll you 
 the gentlemen like it bettor than tho ladies, and if you were to be 
 tried by a jury of your own sex, I do not know what punishment you 
 might be sentenced to for having betrayed their cause. " The author
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 99 
 
 is one of your own sox, we men have nothing to do but to stand by 
 and laugh," was the remark of a gentleman, no less candid a man 
 than Dr. Aiken: and then the moral (a general moral if I understand 
 it right) that a man must not indulge his wife too much ! If I were 
 a new-married woman, I do not know whether I would forgive you till 
 you had made the amende honorable, by writing something to expose 
 the men. All, however, are unanimous in admiring the sprightliness 
 of the dialogue and the ingenious and varied porverseness of the 
 heroine. 
 
 To this letter Miss Edgeworth replied : — 
 
 Let me assure you that the little tale was written in playfulness, 
 not bitterness of heart. Not one of the female committee who sat 
 upon it every day whilst it was writing and reading, ever imagined 
 that it should be thought a severe libel upon the sex, perhaps because 
 their attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who at least is as much 
 a panegyric as Mrs. Bolingbroke is a satiro upon the sex. 
 
 Popular Tales were issued, and also in great part 
 written, before the two series of Fashionable Tales, and, 
 taken as a whole, do not approach them in merit. 
 They are more crude in conception, more didactic in 
 manner ; the moral is too obviously thrust into view, 
 and at times even the very philosophy the author 
 strives to inculcate is halting. The intensity and 
 severe restraint of her purpose had blinded her vision, 
 perverted her logic; and thus the value of some of 
 these ingenious apologues is lowered. There is a 
 character of childishness and poorness about many of 
 these tales that detracts seriously from the really 
 accurate observation and acute knowledge of human 
 nature that they enclose. Further, too, there is always 
 such a sober, practical, authentic air about all Miss 
 Edgeworth's narratives that glaring inconsistencies and 
 forced catastrophes strike us with double force as 
 ludicrous and unnatural when introduced by her. We 
 certainly incline to think that the result of perusing 
 at one sitting the two volumes of Miss Edgeworth's 
 
 17 *
 
 100 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Popular Tales could lead to that outburst of phari- 
 saical pride : 
 
 Said I then to my heart, " Here 's a lesson for me! 
 
 That man's hut a picture of what I might be; 
 
 But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding, 
 
 Who have taught me, betimes, to love working and reading." 
 
 Popular Tales were devised with a view to correct 
 the errors and temptations of middle-class life, and 
 were intended for a class which in those days was not 
 much in the habit of reading. 
 
 Mr. and Miss Edgevvorth, though advanced and 
 liberal thinkers in many ways, were conservative in 
 others, and, curiously enough, carried the idea of class 
 distinction into the domain of reading. They deemed 
 that to reach the middle classes a different character 
 of story must be conceived from that destined for per- 
 sons of rank. There is a naivete, a gentle absurdity, 
 about this simple fancy that we cannot help attribut- 
 ing to Mr. Edgeworth's unimaginative mind. In a 
 brief but bombastic preface this worthy personage 
 sets forth the pretension of the writer of these stories, 
 and gives a list of the classes for which they are 
 adapted. Why did he not also devise some method 
 by which to ensure that none of the tales should be 
 read or bought save by persons of a certain social 
 standard? It would have been equally reasonable. 
 To make a distinction between tales for children and 
 for adults is proper and right ; to draw a fine distinc- 
 tion between classes, unfit and childish. The process 
 of natural selection will of its own accord effect the 
 result that no one will read that which is tedious. Yet 
 even when hampered by the illustration of copy-book 
 morality, Miss Edgeworth could not hide her power. 
 She never repeats herself, every story is unlike the
 
 FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 101 
 
 other; she does not angrily apply herself to the cor- 
 rection of the vices and abuses she holds peculiar to 
 the class she addresses; neither does she magnify, even 
 though she emphasizes. We only behold them shorn 
 of the indulgences and palliations they too often meet 
 with. She was neither a Utopian purist nor a sen- 
 timental innocent ; nor can she belie a natural 
 tendency to make her ethics rather a code of high- 
 minded expediency than of high principle for its 
 own sake only. Throughout her writings she shows 
 that from low as well as high motives, good actions 
 are the best ; but she never suffers her characters 
 to rest in the reward of a quiet conscience. Her 
 supreme good sense was always mingled with a regard 
 for the social proprieties ; she never loses these quite 
 from sight, her idea of right is as much to preserve 
 these as for right itself. For, after all, Miss Edge- 
 worth's life revolved amid the fashionable world, and 
 lofty as her aims are, she was not wholly untainted 
 by her surroundings. She accounts it no crime in her 
 heroines if they look out for a good establishment, 
 money, horses, carriages; provided always that the 
 man they marry be no dunce, she will overlook any 
 little lack of affection. But, after all, she was teaching 
 only in accordance with the superficial philosophy of 
 the last century, which led people to found their 
 doctrines entirely upon self-interest. 
 
 Still a tone of rationality and good sense was so new 
 in the tales of Miss Edgeworth's period, that to this 
 alone a large share of the undoubted success and 
 popularity of the Popular Tales may be ascribed. 
 Lord Jeffrey, criticising them at the time of their 
 appearance, remarked " that it required almost the 
 same courage to get rid of the jargon of fashionable
 
 102 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 life, and the swarms of peers, foundlings and seducers, 
 as it did to sweep away the mythological persons of 
 antiquity and to introduce characters who spoke and 
 acted like those who were to peruse these adventures/' 
 Miss Edgeworth was certainly the first woman to 
 make domestic fiction the vehicle of great and neces- 
 sary truths, and on this account alone she must ever 
 take high rank, and be forgiven if that which has been 
 said of her in general be specially true of Popular 
 Tales, that : — " She walks by the side of her characters 
 as Mentor by the side of Telemachus, keeping them 
 out of all manner of pleasant mischief, and wagging 
 the monitory head, and waving the remonstrating 
 finger, should their breath come thick at approaching 
 adventures."
 
 103 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 VISIT TO LONDON. ME. EDGEWORTH'S DEATH. 
 
 Busily, happily, uneventfully time flowed on at Edge- 
 
 worthstown, while abroad Miss Edgeworth's fame was 
 
 steadily on the increase. But whatever the world 
 
 might say, however kind, nay flattering, its verdict, 
 
 this pre-eminently sensible woman did not suffer herself 
 
 to be deluded by success. That she knew precisely, 
 
 and gauged correctly, the extent and limits of her 
 
 power, is proved by a letter written to Mr. Elton 
 
 Hammond, who had over-zealously defended her from 
 
 criticism : — 
 
 I thank you for your friendly zeal in defence of my powers of 
 pathos and sublimity, but I think it carries you much too far, and 
 you imagine that I refrain from principle or virtue from displaying 
 powers which I really do not possess. I assure you I am not in the 
 least degree capable of writing a dithyrambic ode, or any other kind of 
 ode. Therefore it would be the meanest affectation in me to pretend 
 to refrain from such efforts of genius. In novel- writing I certainly 
 have from principle avoided all exaggerated sentiment ; but I am well 
 aware that many other writers possess in a much higher degree than 
 I do the power of pathos and the art of touching the passions. As 
 to how I should use these powers if I had them, perhaps I cannot 
 fairly judge, but all I am at present sure of is that I will not depre- 
 ciate that which I do not possess. 
 
 Another letter to the same correspondent deserves 
 quotation, as giving her views on authorship. Mr.
 
 104 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Hammond had consulted her as to the advisability of 
 his adventuring on that career. Miss Edgevvorth 
 replied : — 
 
 If everybody were to wait till they could write a book in which 
 there should not be a single fault or error, the press might stand still 
 for ages yet unborn. Mankind must have arrived at the summit of 
 knowledge beforo language could be as perfect as you expect yours 
 to be. Till ideas are exact, just and sufficient, how can words which 
 represent them be accurate ? The advantage of the art of printing is 
 that the mistakes of individuals in reasoning and writing, will be cor- 
 rected in time by the public — so that the cause of truth cannot suffer, 
 and I presume you are too much of a philosopher to mind the trifling 
 mortification to your vanity which the detection of a mistake might 
 occasion. You know that some sensible person has obsorved, only in 
 other words, that we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday. ... I 
 think that only little or weak minds are so dreadfully afraid of being 
 ever in the wrong. Those who foel that they have resources, that they 
 have means of compensating for errors, have never this horror of 
 being found in a mistake. 
 
 In the spring of 1813, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Edge- 
 worth, visited London, where they were much lionised. 
 According to contemporaries, it was the daughter for 
 whom the attentions were mainly meant, though she, 
 of course, deemed them intended for her father. 
 Crabb Robinson said that Miss Edgeworth gained 
 the good-will of everyone during this visit. Not so 
 her father : his " cocksureness," dictatorial and dog- 
 matic manner, gave much offence in society. 
 
 They met everyone worth meeting during their brief 
 stay, and many famous names glint across the pages of 
 the one letter that has been preserved treating of this 
 London visit. Perhaps it was the only one written, 
 for she describes themselves as being, from morning 
 till night, in a whirl of gaiety and sight-seeing, " that 
 how we got through the day and night with our heads 
 on our shoulders, is a matter of astonishment to 
 me. . . . But I trust we have left London without
 
 VISIT TO LONDON. 105 
 
 acquiring any taste for dissipation, or catching the 
 rage for finery and fine people." In this one letter 
 there are, unfortunately, none of those delightfully 
 detailed descriptions of persons and events that she 
 gave from France. Among the distinguished persons 
 she met, Lord Byron is mentioned. Singularly enough 
 she dismisses him with just the last remark that one 
 would have expected concerning the poet, about whose 
 good looks, at least, the world was unanimous: "Of 
 Lord Byron, I can only tell you that his appear- 
 ance is nothing that you would remark." He, on his 
 part, was more favourably impressed. He writes in 
 his journal : — 
 
 I had been the lion of 1812. Miss Edgeworth and Mine, de Stael 
 with The Cossack, towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the 
 succeeding year. I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety 
 elderly red complexion, but active, brisk, and restless. He was 70^ 
 but did not look 50, no, nor 48 even. I had seen poor Fitz-Patrick 
 not very long before — a man of pleasure, wit and eloquence, all 
 things. He tottered — but still'talked like a gentleman, though feebly ; 
 Edgeworth bounced about and talked loud and long ; but he seemed 
 neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old. 
 
 Byron then remarks that he heard Mr. Edgeworth 
 boast of having put down Dr. Parr, a boast which 
 Byron took leave to think not true. He adds : 
 
 For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement, vivacious, and full 
 of life. He bids fair for a hundred years. He was not much ad- 
 mired in London, and I remember a " ryghte merrie " and conceited 
 jest which was rife among the gallants of the day — viz. a paper had 
 been presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage, to which all 
 men had been called to subscribe ; whereupon Thomas Moore, of 
 profane and poetical memory, did propose that a similar paper should 
 be subscribed and «Vcu?«scribed for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to 
 Ireland ! The fact was, everybody cared more about her. She was a 
 nice little unassuming " Jeanie Deans " looking body, as we Scotch 
 say, and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking. Her conversation 
 was as quiet as herself. One would never have guessed she could
 
 106 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 write her name ; whereas her father talked, not as if ho could write 
 nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing. 
 
 To turn from them to their works, I admire them ; but they oxcito 
 no feeling and they leave no love — except for some Irish steward or 
 postillion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is pro- 
 found — and may be useful. 
 
 To the Edgeworths' regret, they left London before 
 the arrival of Madame de Stael, for whom all the 
 world was eagerly looking. The poet Rogers, noted 
 for malicious sayings, asserted at a dinner-party that 
 this was not accident, but design ; that Madame de 
 Stael would not arrive till Miss Edge worth had gone. 
 xt Madame de Stael would not like two stars shining at 
 the same time." Fortunately, for once, he was re- 
 proved ; for it happened that, unknown to him, Madame 
 de StaePs son was of the company, who indignantly 
 repelled the insinuation that his mother could be 
 capable of such meanness. 
 
 As always, Miss Edgeworth was glad to get home 
 again : — 
 
 The brilliant panorama of London is over, and I have enjoyed more 
 pleasure and have had more amusement, infinitely more than I 
 expected, and received more attention, more kindness, than I could 
 have thought it possible would be shown to me ; I have enjoyed the 
 delight of seeing my father esteemed and honoured by the best judges 
 in England; I have felt the pleasure of seeing my true friend and 
 mother — for she has been a mother to me — appreciated in the best 
 society : and now, with the fulness of content, I return home, loving 
 my own friends and my own mode of life preferably to all others, 
 after comparison with all that is fine and gay, and rich and rare. 
 ******** 
 
 I feol that I return with fresh pleasure to literary work from having 
 been so long idle, and I have a famishing appetite for reading. All 
 that we saw in London I am sure I enjoyed, while it was passing, as 
 much as possible ; but I should be very sorry to live in that whirling 
 vortex, and I find my taste and conviction confirmed on my return to 
 my natural friends and my dear home. 
 
 Seeing Patronage through the press, and writing the
 
 MR. EDGEWORTH'S ILLNESS. 107 
 
 continuations of Frank, Rosamond, Harry and Lucy, 
 were Miss Edgeworth's immediate occupations on her 
 return. 
 
 Early in 1814, Mr. Edgeworth showed the first 
 infirmities of age, which resulted in a long and painful 
 illness. During its course, Miss Edgeworth's letters 
 were only bulletins of his health. The anxiety the 
 family had so long felt concerning Lovell Edgeworth, 
 on whom, on Mr. Edgeworth's death, all his duties 
 would devolve, and who was still a prisoner, was 
 heightened by this event. It was, therefore, an in- 
 creased joy when, upon the entrance of the Allies into 
 Paris, after a forcible detention of eleven years, Lovell 
 Edgeworth was at last released, and able to hasten 
 home. The pleasure of seeing him helped to restore his 
 father's health ; but it was evident that Mr. Edge- 
 worth's constitution had received a shock, and he 
 himself never swerved from the opinion that his ex- 
 istence might be prolonged a year, or even two, but 
 that permanent recovery was out of all question. This 
 did not depress him. As before, he continued to be 
 actively employed, interested in all new things, in all 
 the life about him, and repeatedly exclaimed, " How 
 I enjoy my existence ! " " He did not for his own 
 sake desire length of life," says his daughter, " but it 
 was his prayer that his mind might not decay before 
 his body." He assured his friends that as far as this 
 might be allowed to depend on his own watchful care 
 over his understanding and his temper, he would 
 preserve himself through the trials of sickness and 
 suffering, to the last, such as they could continue to 
 respect and love. This assurance he faithfully re- 
 deemed, by dint of a self-control and a regard for the 
 comfort of others that cannot be too much commended,
 
 108 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 and which of itself alone would win pardon for many 
 of his irritating faults. 
 
 Waverley had just appeared, and everyone was 
 reading and discussing it. Scott, who had always 
 been an ardent admirer of Miss Edgeworth, and who 
 said in after years that he should in all likelihood 
 never have thought of a Scotch novel had he not read 
 Maria Edgeworth's exquisite pieces of Irish character, 
 had desired his publisher to send her a copy on its first 
 appearance, inscribed, " From the Author/' She had, 
 however, not yet received this copy when late one 
 night, after having finished hearing the story read 
 aloud to her family, in all the first fervour of admira- 
 tion, she sat down to write to the unknown author. 
 Mrs. Edgeworth, who had been the reader, relates that 
 as she closed the volume, Mr. Edgeworth exclaimed 
 " Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus," and with these words 
 Miss Edgeworth began her long and ardently-appre- 
 ciative letter to the nameless novelist. All Miss 
 Edgeworth's ready, generous, truly Irish enthusiasm 
 breaks forth in this epistle, which is too laudatory, too 
 much written a la volte to be truly critical. But Miss 
 Edgeworth never was critical when her feelings came 
 into play, or were allowed their course unchecked. 
 She narrates to Scott how the story was read aloud, 
 how when ended they all felt depressed to think that 
 they must return to the flat realities of life, and how 
 little disposed they were to read the "Postscript, which 
 should have been a Preface/' While she was writing 
 her letter, Mrs. Edgeworth opened the book again, and 
 noticed this chapter. 
 
 " Well, let us hear it," said my father. Mrs. Edgeworth read on. 
 Oh ! my dear sir, how much pleasure would my father, my mothor, 
 my whole family, as well as myself, have lost if wo had uot read to
 
 MISS EDGEWORTH AND " WAVERLEY." 109 
 
 the last page ! And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly — we 
 had been so completely absorbed, that every thought of ourselves, 
 of our own authorship, was far, far away. I thank you for the 
 honour you have done us, and for the pleasure you have given us, 
 great in proportion to the opinion we had formed of the work we had 
 just perused, and, believe me, every opinion I have in this letter ex- 
 pressed, was formed before any individual in the family had peeped 
 to the end of the book, or knew how much we owed you. 
 
 Your obliged and grateful 
 
 Maria Edgeworth. 
 
 To this letter Ballantyne replied ; thus, even towards 
 Miss Edgeworth, Scott kept up his anonymity. A little 
 later she tells a friend : — " Scott says upon his honour 
 that he had nothing to do with Guy Mannering, though 
 he had a little to do, he says, with Waverley." 
 
 The following winter was spent by the family at 
 Dublin, for the sake of first-class medical advice for 
 Mr. Edgeworth. That indefatigable, active-minded old 
 man meantime, though far from well, made experi- 
 ments on wheel carriages, and published a report. 
 There was much gaiety and some interesting society to 
 enliven the winter, but nothing worthy of note is 
 recorded by Miss Edgeworth. Anxiety on account of 
 her beloved father was uppermost in her mind, yet she 
 continued to write, and was busy upon some plays and 
 upon preparing a third edition of Patronage. In this 
 third edition she made some important alterations, 
 changing the denouement to gratify remonstrances that 
 bad reached her. She did not like this alteration, and 
 doubted the propriety of making it after a work had 
 gone through two editions. Her father, however, ap- 
 proved, and the public was more satisfied. There was 
 certainly much that was unnatural in the previous course 
 -of the tale, in which the newly-married wife refuses to
 
 110 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 go abroad with her adored husband, but lets hira go 
 alone and remains with her father, who, it is true, 
 was in grief, but who had another daughter to console 
 him. This might be Edgeworthian, but it was not 
 human nature ; and the incident gave universal 
 offence. 
 
 Every new book of value found its way to Edge- 
 worthstown, and was eagerly read and discussed by the 
 family. Miss Austen was soon an established favourite, 
 while Mrs. Inchbald had long been valued. An occa- 
 sional correspondence was maintained with her. 
 Writing of the Simple Story, Miss Edgeworth 
 says : — 
 
 By the force that is necessary to repress feelings we judge of the 
 intensity of the feeling, and yon always contrive to give us by intelli- 
 gible but simple signs the measure of this force. Writers of inferior 
 genius waste their words in describing feeling, in making those who 
 pretend to be agitated by passion describe the effects of that pas- 
 sion and talk of the rending of their hearts, &c. — a gross blunder, as 
 gross as any Irish blunder — for the heart cannot feel and describe its 
 own feelings at the samo moment. It is •• being like a bird in two 
 places at once." . . . Did you really draw the characters from life, or 
 did you invent them? You excel, I think, peculiarly, in avoiding 
 what is commonly called Jine writing — a sort of writing which I detest, 
 which calls the attention away from the thine/ to the manner, from the 
 feeling to the language, which sacrifices everything to the sound, to 
 the mere rounding of a period, which mistakes stage effect for nature. 
 All who are at all used to writing know and detect the trick of the trade 
 immediately, and, speaking for myself, I know that the writing which 
 has the least appearance of literary manufacture, almost always 
 pleases me the best. It. has more originality in narration of fictitious 
 events, it most surely succeeds in giving the idea of reality and in 
 making the biographer for the time pass for nothing. But there are 
 fow who can in this manner bear the mortification of staying 
 behind the scenes. They peep out, eager for applause, and destroy 
 all illusion by crying, " / said it! 1 wrote it! / invented it all! 
 Call me to the stage, and crown me directly ! " 
 
 Mrs. Inchbald had written praising Patronage, but
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MBS. INCHBALD. Ill 
 
 she had also found some faults. To this Miss Edge- 
 worth replied : — 
 
 My dear Mrs. Inchbald, 
 
 Nobody living but yourself could or would have written tho 
 letter I have just received from you. I wish you could have been 
 present when it was read at our breakfast table, that you might have 
 seen what hearty entertainment and delight it gave to father, mother, 
 author, aunts, brothers, and sisters, all to the number of twelve. 
 Loud laughter at your utter detestation of poor Erasmus " as nau- 
 seous as his medicines." and your impatience at all the variety of 
 impertinent characters who distract your attention from Lord Old- 
 borough. Your clinging to him quite satisfied us all. It was on this 
 character my father placed his dependence, and we all agreed that 
 if you had not liked him there would have been no hope for us. We 
 are in the main of your opinion, that Erasmus and his letters are tire- 
 some; but then please recollect that we had our moral to work out, and 
 to show to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the reader how in 
 various professions young men may get on without patronage. 
 To the good of our moral we were obliged to sacrifice, perhaps we 
 have sacrificed in vain. Wherever we are tiresome we may be pretty 
 sure of this, and after all, as Madame de Stael says, "good intentions 
 go for nothing in works of art " — much better in French, " La bonne 
 intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit." 
 
 You will make me forswear truth altogether, for I find whenever I 
 meddle with the least bit of truth I can make nothing of it, and it 
 regularly turns out ill for me. Three things to which you object are 
 facts, and that which you most abhor is most true. A nobleman 
 whom I never saw and whose name I have forgotten, else I should not 
 have used the anecdote — the word which you thought I could not 
 have written and ought not to have known how to sjDell. But pray 
 observe, the fair authoress does not say this odious word in her own 
 proper person. Why impute to me the characteristic improprieties 
 of my characters ? I meant to mark the contrast between the nice- 
 ness of his grace's pride and the coarseness of his expression. I have 
 now changed the word severe into coarse to mark this to the reader. 
 But I cannot alter, without spoiling the fact. I tried if saliva would 
 do, but it would not. So you must bear it as well as you can and 
 hate His Grace of Greenwich as much as you will — but don't hate me. 
 Did you hate Cervantes for drawing Sancho Panza eating behind the 
 door? 
 
 My next fact, you say, is an old story. May be so, and may be it 
 belonged to your writer originally, but I can assure you it happened
 
 112 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 very lately to a gentleman in Ireland, and only the parting with the 
 servant was added. I admit the story is ill told, and not worth tell- 
 ing, and you must admit that it is very natural or it would not have 
 happened twice. 
 
 The sixpence under the seal is my third fact. This happened in our 
 own family. One of my own grandfather's uncles forged a will, and 
 my grandfather recovered the estate my father now possesses hy the 
 detection of the forgery of a sixpence under the seal. 
 
 Thank you, thank you, thank you. for liking the two Clays. 
 But pray don't envelope all the country gentleman of England in 
 English Clay. 
 
 Thank you, thank you, thank you, says my father, for liking 
 Lady Jane Grandville. Her ladyship is his favourite, but nobody has 
 ever mentioned her in their letters but you. I cannot belive that you 
 ever resembled that selfish, hollow Lady Angelica. Would you over 
 
 have guessed that the character of Rosamond is like M. E. ? All 
 
 ■who know me intimately say it is as like as it is possible. Those who 
 do not know me intimately would never guess it. 
 
 Harrington came next. The idea of writing a story 
 of which the hero should be a Jew was not her own, 
 but suggested by an unknown correspondent in the 
 United States, a Jewish lady, who gently reproached 
 her for having so often made Jews ridiculous, and 
 begged she would write a story that should treat of a 
 good Jew. Scarcely was it finished than she began 
 Ormond. In February 1817 she read the first chapter 
 to her father as they were driving out to pay a visit, 
 the last Mr. Edgeworth ever paid. His health had 
 become a source of grave anxiety, and though he 
 masked all his sufferings with cheerfulness and touch- 
 ing unselfishness, it was too evident that his case was 
 serious. The interest and delight he took in Ormond, 
 and his desire to see the story finished, encouraged Miss 
 Edgeworth to go on. 
 
 Her stepmother writes : 
 
 In all her anguish of mind at the state of his health, Maria, 
 by a wonderful effort of affection and genius, produced those 
 gay and brilliant pages, some of the gayest and most brilliant she
 
 PREFACE TO " ORMOND." 113 
 
 ever composed . . . The admirable characters of King Corny 
 and Sir Ulick O'Shane. and all the wonderful scenes full of wit, 
 humour, and feeling, were written in agony of anxiety, with trembling 
 hand and tearful eyes. As she finished chapter after chapter, she read 
 them out, the whole family assembling in her father's room to listen 
 to them. Her father enjoyed these readings so exceedingly, as to 
 reward her for the wonderful efforts she made. 
 
 Enfeebled as he was by illness, and often while en- 
 during pain, Mr. Edgeworth nevertheless continued 
 as before to revise his daughter's MS. with " an 
 acuteness, a perseverance of attention of which I 
 cannot bear to think," she writes in after years. " He 
 would work at it in his bed for hours together, once at 
 an end for six hours, during an interval of sickness and 
 exquisite pain." 
 
 Thanks to the kindness of her publisher, she was able 
 on Mr. Edgeworth's birthday (May 1817) to put the 
 printed volumes into his hands. It was the last book of 
 hers to which he was to write a preface, and it was 
 characteristic, like his others : — 
 
 In my seventy-fourth year, I have the satisfaction of seeing another 
 work of my daughter brought before the public. This was more than 
 I could have expected from my advanced age and declining health. I 
 have been reprehended by some of the public critics for the notices 
 which I have annexed to my daughter's works. As I do not know 
 their reasons for this reprehension, I cannot submit even to their 
 respectable authority. I trust, however, the British public will sym- 
 pathise with what a father feels for a daughter's literary success, 
 particularly as this father and daughter have written various works 
 in partnership. The natural and happy confidence reposed in me by 
 my daughter puts it in my power to assure the public that she does 
 not write negligently. I can assert that twice as many pages were 
 written for these volumes as are now printed. 
 
 And, now, indulgent reader, I beg you to pardon this intrusion, and 
 with the most grateful acknowledgments, I bid you farewell for 
 ever. 
 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth. 
 
 This preface was dated May 31st, 1817. On June 
 
 8
 
 114 MA HI A EDGFAV011TH. 
 
 13th Mr. Edgeworth died, retaining to the last, as he 
 had prayed, his intellectual faculties. His death was 
 an acute grief to the whole family, a terrible, an irre- 
 parable blow to his eldest daughter. She was almost 
 overwhelmed by sorrow, and during the first months that 
 followed her father's death she wrote scarcely any letters. 
 She had not the heart to do so ; besides, her eye-sight 
 had been so injured by weeping, as well as by overwork 
 the previous winter, when she had been sitting up at 
 night, struggling with her grief and writing Ormond, that 
 it caused real alarm to her friends. She was unable to 
 use her eyes without pain, " the tears," she said, " felt 
 like the cutting of a knife." On this account, as well 
 as from her sorrow, the rest of the year is a blank in 
 her life. In the late autumn she went to stay at Black 
 Castle with Mrs. Ruxton, who cheered and nursed her. 
 With rare strength of mind she followed the medical 
 directions to abstain from reading and writing. 
 Needlework, too, of which she was fond, was forbidden 
 to her; she therefore learned to knit in order to employ 
 herself. With patience, fortitude, and cheerful dis- 
 regard of self, she bore the mental and physical suffer- 
 ings that marked the year 1817 a black one in her 
 life.
 
 115 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 LATER NOVELS. GENERAL ESTIMATE. 
 
 Few of Miss Edgeworth's stories were written quickly. 
 In her case, however, the Horatian maxim was scarcely 
 justified, for her best tales are almost without excep- 
 tion those written with a running pen. Patronage was 
 one that was longest in hand, having originated in 1787 
 from a story told by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his wife 
 when recovering from her confinement. From her 
 frequent mention of it, quite contrary to her usual 
 custom, one may conclude she did not find it an 
 easy task. In 1811 she writes, " I am working away 
 at Patronage, but cannot at all come up to my idea of 
 what it should be/' We do not know whether it ever 
 did, but whatever her verdict may finally have been, it 
 is certain that Patronage, though one of the longest 
 and most ambitious of her stories is, as a story, one of 
 the least successful. It is laboured ; art and design 
 are too apparent, the purpose has too fatally hampered 
 the invention. There is no denying that, while con- 
 taining many excellent scenes, much shrewd observation 
 of character, Patronage drags, and the reader is weary 
 ere he has done. It is both artificial and commonplace, 
 and what is more unfortunate still, the whole fabric is
 
 116 MARIA EDGEWOKTH. 
 
 built upon a confusion of premises. Its purpose is to 
 demonstrate the evils that result from patronage, and 
 to show how much more successful are those who rely 
 only upon their own exertions. Both premises involve a 
 petitio principii. A capable person helped at the 
 outset may have cause eternally to bless the patron who 
 enabled him to start at once in his proper groove, 
 instead of wasting strength and time after the endea- 
 vour — often vain — to find it unassisted. Had she 
 attempted to prove that it was better for each person 
 to fight his way alone, because this was better for the 
 moral development of his character, it would have been 
 another matter. But this is not the line she pursues. 
 There are no such subtle psychic problems worked out. 
 The whole question is treated from the surface only, 
 and the two families chosen to "point the moral" are 
 not fairly contrasted. The Percys, the good people 
 who shrink from help so nervously that they would 
 rather do themselves harm than accept a helping hand, 
 possess every virtue and capacity under the sun, while 
 their rivals and relatives, the Falconers, have no 
 resources but those of cringing falsehood. They are 
 absolutely incapable, have learnt nothing, do not care 
 to learn, and depend entirely upon finding a patron. 
 They further rely upon their luck that, when settled in 
 their various posts, no untoward accident may reveal 
 their inability to fill them. Thus sound morality, good 
 sense, and an independent spirit, are contrasted with 
 meanness, folly, and ignorance. As an eminent critic 
 has well remarked: — "The rival families are so un- 
 equal that they cannot be handicapped for the race. 
 The one has all the good qualities, the other almost 
 all the bad. Reverse the position : encumber the 
 Percys (to borrow a Johnsonian phrase) with any
 
 PATRONAGE. 117 
 
 amount of help ; leave the Falconers entirely to their 
 own resources; and the sole difference in the result 
 under any easily conceivable circumstances will be, 
 that the Percys will rise more rapidly and the Falconers 
 will never rise at all." 
 
 The materials of the fable, therefore, are not happy, 
 neither, such as they are, are they artfully managed. 
 The working out is bald, the moral bluntly enforced. 
 Never was Miss Edgeworth more weighted by her aim, 
 never were the fallacies of her cut-and-dried theories 
 better illustrated. In this, her longest work, it is 
 specially evident that her manner was not adapted 
 to what the French call ouvrages de longue haleine. 
 But if we at once dismiss from our minds the 
 idea of deriving instruction from the fable, if we 
 judiciously skip the dull pages of rhetoric or moral 
 preachings that are interspersed, we can gain much real 
 enjoyment from this book, whose characters are excel- 
 lently planned and consistently carried out. Patronage 
 contains some of Miss Edgeworth's fiuest creations. 
 The Percys as a whole are 
 
 Too bright and good 
 For human nature's daily food ; 
 
 but even in their family had grown up a character 
 whom we can love, with whom we can sympathise — the 
 warm-hearted, generously impulsive, sprightly Rosa- 
 mond, who, according to her own testimony, resembled 
 her creator. Caroline Percy is one of the very wise, 
 self-contained, and excellent young persons who so 
 often appear under different disguises in Miss Edge- 
 worth's tales. She is exactly one of those heroines to 
 whom applies the wickedly witty remark put by Bulwer 
 into the mouth of Darrell in What will he do with it ? 
 " Many years since I read Miss Edgeworth's novels,
 
 118 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 and in conversing with Miss Honoria Vipont, mcthinks 
 I confer with one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines — so 
 rational, so prudent, so well-behaved — so free from silly 
 romantic notions — so replete with solid information, 
 moral philosophy, and natural history — so sure to 
 regulate her watch and her heart to the precise mo- 
 ment, for the one to strike and the other to throb — 
 and to marry at last a respectable steady husband, 
 whom she will win with dignity and would love with 
 — decorum ! a very superior girl indeed." * 
 
 There is also a certain family likeness in the good 
 fathers of her books. They are, as a rule, preter- 
 naturally wise, circumspect, and apt to resemble Mr- 
 Edgeworth. It has been well remarked that though 
 Ave are told that a just man sins seven times a day, Miss 
 Edgeworth's just heroes and heroines never fall. Un- 
 doubtedly there is a want of variety as well as of human 
 nature in her good characters, but not so in her bad. 
 There she ranges over so wide a field that we can but 
 wonder whence she gathered all this vast experience. 
 She owned a perfect mine of social satire, and the skill 
 with which she drew upon it and shaped her various 
 characters, so as to give them a positive personal inte- 
 rest and vitality, is astounding. She is equally happy 
 in her villains, her fools, her fops ; indeed, in painting 
 these latter species Miss Edgeworth is unrivalled. She 
 seemed to know every weakness and absurdity of which 
 human nature is capable. The manner in which she 
 holds this up to view is sometimes almost remorseless, 
 as from the altitude of one who has absolutely nothing 
 in common with such creatures. In Patronage we have 
 
 * It is but fair to add that Bulwcr in a note disclaims tho excessive 
 severity and sweeping character of this criticism.
 
 PATRONAGE. L19 
 
 several such. Inimitable are the two Clays, brothers, 
 men of large fortunes, which they spend in all manner 
 of extravagance and profligacy, not from inclination 
 but merely to purchase admission into fine company. 
 They are known respectively as French and English 
 Clay : the one affecting a preference for all that is 
 French ; the other, a cold, reserved, dull man, as affec- 
 tedly denouncing everything foreign, boasting loudly 
 that everything about him is English, that only what is 
 English is worthy attention, " but whether this arises 
 from love of his country or contempt of his brother " 
 does not appear. If there is anything to choose between 
 these two capital creations, English Clay is perhaps the 
 better. His slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence, 
 and solemn self-importance are wonderfully sustained ; 
 but hardly less excellent is his brother, with his affected 
 tones, his foreign airs, and quick, talkative vanity. 
 Lord William is another remarkably well-drawn 
 picture. He is an upright, honourable, and enlightened 
 nobleman, who constantly fails to do himself justice, 
 because he labours under that morbid shyness known 
 as mauvaise honte, so common in England, so rare out 
 of her borders. The patron, Lord Oldborough, a high- 
 minded, austere, but absorbingly ambitious man, is 
 elaborated with much care and penetration. Very 
 skilfully are we made to feel that his vices are rather 
 those of his position than of his heart. Nor must 
 Buckhurst Falconer be passed over, the only member 
 of the Falconer family who has one redeeming feature. 
 He once had a heart, and, though weak as water, and 
 swayed by the low principles that prevail in his family, 
 he cannot succeed in stifling every good or noble 
 feeling, though he has striven hard to compass this end. 
 These will crop forth occasionally, though they cannot
 
 120 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 May his descent down the path of corruption. But they 
 permit us to feel for him, to pity him ; he is no cut-and- 
 dried mechanical knave. 
 
 A hook that contains so many fine conceptions 
 cannot he called a failure even to-day, and since Miss 
 Edgeworth's contemporaries admitted her premises, it 
 is no wonder that on its appearance Patronage achieved 
 a great success. In those days, when novel-writing 
 had not become so much of an art as now, the rapid 
 downfall of the whole Falconer family within the space 
 of a few weeks presented nothing ludicrous. Such in- 
 cidents were familiar in romance, and held allowable 
 there, even if known to be untrue to life. We now 
 judge from the latter standard only, and reject, even in 
 fiction, the improbable. In Patronage, Miss Edge- 
 worth's fondness for poetical justice has certainly 
 carried her very far. Here, as in other of her stories, 
 difficulties are not allowed to develop and be overcome 
 gradually, but the knot is cut in the most ludicrously 
 childish and awkward manner, a summary catastrophe 
 is imagined, so that the modern reader cannot forbear 
 a smile. Still, Patronage remains a remarkable book, 
 replete with sound sense, acute observation, and rapid 
 graphic illustrations of character. 
 
 Scarcely so Harrington. Here, as in Patronage, 
 Miss Edgeworth had set herself to work out a moral, 
 this time an apology for the Jews. It was written to 
 suggestion, and was on a theme that lay entirely out- 
 side the domain of her experience. She had to evolve 
 a Jew out of her moral consciousness, and her de- 
 lineation is as little successful as that of other writers 
 who have set themselves the same task. Her zeal 
 outran her judgment; her elaborate apology is feeble ; 
 and if the Jews needed vindication they could hardly
 
 HARRINGTON. 121 
 
 be flattered by one of this nature. For she does not 
 introduce us to a true Jew at all. Her ideas were 
 based upon that rare and beautiful character Moses 
 Mendelssohn, a character as little typical of the Jewish 
 as of any other race or religious creed, but common to 
 all men who think and feel philosophically and have 
 raised themselves above the petty prejudices of man- 
 kind. This was as much as to say that only a Jew 
 who was no Jew was admirable and estimable. And 
 even his daughter Berenice, whom we are led to regard 
 throughout as a Jewess, is finally discovered to have 
 been born of a Christian mother, and christened in her 
 youth, so that her lover Harrington can marry her 
 without any sacrifice to his social and racial prejudices. 
 This is weak indeed, since the whole purpose of the 
 story was to overcome the baseless dislike Harrington 
 had from childhood entertained for the mere name of 
 Jew. It would, therefore, have been far more to the 
 purpose had his prejudices been really, and not only 
 apparently, overcome. The truth is that Miss Edge- 
 worth herself was a lady not free from prejudices ; 
 and a regard for the opinion of the world, for birth 
 and social station, was one of these. At the eleventh 
 hour she probably could not reconcile herself to letting 
 her hero, a man of good society, marry a Spanish 
 Jewess ; and since he had shown himself willing to do 
 so, carried away by his deep and sincere feeling, she 
 doubtless held that he had done enough, and so terrible 
 a fate must be averted from his head. 
 
 The story could not, and did not, satisfy Miss 
 Mordecafs requirements, though she accepted it is 
 an attempt at making amends. But the authoress 
 herself recognised, in later life, that her friend " had 
 no reason to be satisfied with it, as the Jewess turns
 
 122 ma in a i:ik;i:\\<>L'th. 
 
 out to be a Christian. Yet she was good enough to 
 accept it as a peace-offering, and to consider that this 
 was an Irish blunder, which, with the best intentions, 
 I could not avoid.'' 
 
 Contemporary opinion certainly treated Harrington 
 as not one of the happiest of their favourite novelist's 
 stories. Yet, with all its palpable defects, there is such 
 an admixture of excellence, that Harrington should not 
 be left unread, even though we may regret that such 
 capital figures, painted with such nice skill and delicate 
 discrimination, should be imbedded in so puerile a tale. 
 The characters are keenly and lightly drawn, standing 
 out boldly and clearly. The jargon of society is once 
 more successfully reproduced, as well as those fashion- 
 able ladies who hide the claws of a tigress under a 
 velvet paw, and whose complex and shifting nature 
 Miss Edgeworth understood so well and reproduced so 
 faithfully. How she, with her simple direct character, 
 came to comprehend them so fully, is almost a marvel. 
 But intuition of character was a forte with Miss Edge- 
 worth, and the grand secret of her novelistic success. 
 Her truth of touch was remarkable. Lady Anne 
 Mowbray is a perfect model of that mixture of feline 
 grace and obstinate silliness which the world so much 
 admires in its young ladies ; while her mother's insig- 
 nificance, which is not disguised by a stately formal 
 manner, is delineated and sustained to perfection. 
 Lord Mowbray is yet another of Miss Edgcworth's 
 marvellously acute portraits of a true man of the 
 world, of an evil nature. This is concealed by a fair 
 semblance and good manners, so that it is needful to 
 know him well to guess at the villain that is hidden 
 under this attractive disguise. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth is at her ease and at her happiest
 
 OBMONB. 123 
 
 in Ormond. Here she is on Irish ground, always for 
 her the best, where she moves with most abandon; 
 where she casts aside for a time some of her cold 
 philosophy, and allows herself to appear as the viva- 
 cious Irishwoman, which at heart she was. Ireland, 
 with its long history of bloodshed and social disorder, 
 had none of those romantic incidents to offer to the 
 novelist that were to be found in the equally wild but 
 more noble and chivalric history of Scotland. Hence 
 Sir Walter Scott had an easier task to perform than 
 Miss Edgeworth. The history of which he treated 
 allowed of judicious and poetic gilding. It lifted into 
 more romantic regions. Irish history has, unfortu- 
 nately, never been elevating, soul-ennobling. It is 
 too much the record of rebellious seditions and foolish 
 intrigues, lightly entered upon, inconsistently carried 
 out. Such a history could scarcely kindle romantic 
 ideas and desires in the hearts of youth as did Scott's 
 pictures ; and Miss Edgeworth did wisely in her Irish 
 tales to leave history carefully on one side, and to deal 
 only with the Hibernian character and the delineation 
 of social manners. For many years the mere name of 
 Irishman had been regarded in England as a term of 
 reproach, and they figured as buffoons in all the novels 
 and plays of the period. It was Miss Edgeworth who 
 first came to the rescue of her countrymen, and she did 
 this by no exaggerated praises, but by sympathetic, yet 
 true, presentment. Her national story of Castle Rackrent 
 had established for her a reputation as a relentlessly 
 truthful writer. She had invested the tale with none 
 of the poetical glamour employed by most historical 
 novelists, who seek to hide from sight the ugly sores 
 that exist in the society they depict, and thus endeavour 
 to make us deem that those good old times of which
 
 124 MM! I A EDGEWORTH. 
 
 they write had, despite their lawlessness, some power 
 -of strength and goodness unknown to us. Miss Edge- 
 worth was too realistic a portrait painter to employ 
 such methods ; hence, where Sir Walter Scott's rich 
 imagination led him at times astray, she, on her part, 
 was oftener hampered for want of that faculty. Still, 
 her very reserve was fortunate, considering the theme 
 on which it was exercised, as matters Irish have, for 
 some cause, never been treated with judicial calmness. 
 Hence to no writer are the Irish so much indebted. 
 Their less judicious friends were satisfied with indig- 
 nantly repelling the charges made against them, while 
 national partiality magnified all their gifts. Miss 
 Edgeworth felt with them, loved them, but she was not 
 blinded by her affection. Starting from the assumption 
 that the prejudices which existed against her country- 
 men arose from imperfect acquaintance with them, she 
 candidly presented them, just as they were, with both 
 their virtues and vices unvarnished. 
 
 After Castle Rackrent, Ormond was certainly the 
 finest effort of Miss Edgeworth's genius; and it is 
 scarcely fanciful to believe that it owes some of its 
 excellence to the influence exerted upon her mind by 
 Wuverley. Had she but had Scott's eye for nature, 
 and introduced us to some of the beautiful scenery in 
 which her story occurs, the book might worthily rank 
 beside any of the Scotch Waverley novels. Was it 
 owing to Scott's influence, also, that we have in this 
 •case a less obtrusive moral ? 
 
 The story of Ormond is in some respects the reverse 
 of Vivian. The hero possesses innate force of charac- 
 ter, and we watch in his career the progress of a mind 
 that has not been cultivated but shows itself capable 
 of being educated by circumstances. Ormond is one
 
 OBMOND. 125 
 
 of those persons in whom native intuition takes the 
 place of instruction, and who of their proper strength 
 are equal to all emergencies. The complications of 
 the story arise from these inward propensities of his 
 nature and the contending influences from without 
 with which he has to grapple. He was an orphan 
 who had been adopted by Sir Ulick O'Shane, but had 
 not been educated because Sir Ulick deemed that 
 there was no use in giving him the education of a 
 landed gentleman when he was not likely to have an 
 estate. An unfortunate difference with Sir Ulick's 
 wife obliged Ormond to leave his guardian's roof and 
 avail himself of the hospitality of a cousin, Cornelius 
 O'Shane, who called himself King of the Black Islands 
 after his estate. More familiarly this original is spoken 
 of as King Corny. Besides being one of the most 
 delightful creations in romantic literature, he is an 
 instructive study towards the comprehension of the 
 Irish character. Macaulay pointed out, in speaking 
 of the aboriginal aristocracy of Ireland, that Miss 
 Edgeworth's King Corny belonged to a later and much 
 more civilized generation, but added that, " whoever 
 has studied that admirable portrait can form some 
 notion of what King Corny's great-grandfather must 
 have been like." King Corny is a most genuine 
 character; there is no nonsense, no false reticence 
 about him ; he is hasty and violent at times, but he 
 is not ashamed to show it, neither does he hide his 
 warm, kind heart. His frank and unsuspecting nature 
 makes him adored by all his tenantry, none of whom 
 would wrong their king. There is not a page in 
 which he figures that does not furnish charming read- 
 ing, and there is not a reader but will resent that King 
 Corny is made to die so early in the book. It is all
 
 126 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 the more vexatious to have the most original and at- 
 tractive figure thus removed, because it was needless for 
 the due development of the story. That the interest, 
 which certainly Hags after his demise, is sustained at 
 all is a proof that the story, as a story, is above Miss 
 Kdgc worth's average. And, indeed, attention is well 
 maintained to the end, notwithstanding a few most 
 marvellously unnatural incidents that occur in the 
 latter portion and stagger belief. They once more 
 reveal Miss Edgeworth's curious clumsiness in getting 
 her brain children out of the difficulties in which she 
 has involved them. The quick alternation of laughter 
 and tears that is a marked feature of her Irish tales 
 recurs in the earlier portions of the book, where the 
 scene is laid in the Black Islands, of which Harry 
 Ormond becomes "prince presumptive." The famous 
 postilion's letter in the Absentee is hard run by the letter 
 King Corny writes to Ormond when offering him his 
 hospitality. Admirable, too, is the account of his 
 reception by the single-hearted, generous, though 
 eccentric monarch. This reception scene is character- 
 istic of the primitive and somewhat dissolute manners 
 of the time. Indeed, the whole of Harry Ormond's 
 residence in the Black Islands affords Miss Edgeworth 
 opportunities for exercising her peculiar felicity in dis- 
 playing manners and customs. She does not present 
 these by merely a few prominent and striking traits, 
 but with delicate skill she insinuates little touches here 
 and there that give local colour and perfume to the 
 whole. It is quite true that Miss Edgeworth's books 
 bear reading twice; once for the general impression, 
 the second time to see how cunningly this impression 
 is produced. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth, not having in the case of Ormond
 
 ORMOND. 127 
 
 weighted herself with a text, we have hardly any of 
 her "unco' gude" characters, but many of those 
 mixtures that are truer to poor humanity. The excep- 
 tions are Lady and Miss Annaly, some of her monoto- 
 nously similar pattern women, and Dr. Cambray, one 
 of her dull and wooden immaculate men. Happily 
 they appear but little in the story. The most able 
 character, after king Corny, is Sir Ulick O'Shane, the 
 political schemer and trimmer. A more vulgar or 
 common-place writer would have represented him as an 
 offensive hypocrite. Miss Edgeworth does not paint 
 him in repellent colours, but lets him reveal his 
 baseness little by little, and rather against his 
 will, until the final catastrophe presents him in 
 all his native vileness. His easy and agreeable 
 social manners, his gentlemanly mode of feeling and 
 acting, due, no doubt, to a long inheritance of gentle- 
 manly traditions, are shown with profound penetration. 
 It is a part of Miss Edgeworth'' s power to evince how 
 "great effects from trivial causes spring"; she makes 
 us vividly realise all the circumstances under which her 
 events occur. Thus we witness their development, 
 instead of being only presented with the final results. 
 This was rather a new departure in her day, when 
 events finished, cut and dried, were alone considered 
 worthy of note. In her conversations she shows con- 
 siderable dramatic skill; they are enlivened not only 
 by looks and gestures, but by what is often as signi- 
 ficant, by moments of silence, by changes of counten- 
 ance, by all the minor matters that distinguish spoken 
 from written words. Neither in dramatic presentation 
 of incident, nor in picturesqueness and vividness of 
 character-drawing, has Miss Edgeworth ever touched a 
 higher standard than in Ormond. The fact that it
 
 128 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 was written and Bent to press so quickly, in order 
 to gratify her sick lather, proved in its favour. The 
 result was that it was penned with more spontaneity, 
 was less carefully worked up than either Patronage, 
 or Belinda, or even The Absentee, and consequently it 
 reads more naturally. There are fewer forced sentences, 
 fewer attempts at pointed and epigrammatic writing. 
 These epigrammatic sentences, which, with but few 
 exceptions, are but half epigrams, are somewhat aggra- 
 vating, especially if too constantly repeated, since they 
 thus picture neither common nor uncommon talk. It 
 is this tendency, carried to its highest expression in the 
 Modern Grisetda, that makes Miss Edgeworth's person- 
 ages, while acting and thinking like real people, not 
 always talk as men and women would. As a rule, how- 
 ever, her style is easy, finished, flexible, and at times 
 racy, and, while seldom rising to eloquence, never sink- 
 ing to tameness. Now and then it is a trifle cold, and 
 she is too fond of erudite or far-fetched illustrations. 
 The conversation of her day was, to use the language 
 of the day, " polite " ; that is to say, slightly stilted, 
 prim, and confined within narrow bounds, and that she 
 reflected it is a matter of course, but, as a whole, she 
 managed to keep herself singularly free from its worst 
 features. Indeed, her work was really of first-rate 
 quality, and if we read it without troubling ourselves 
 about her ethical designs or expecting to find a cleverly 
 told plot, we cannot fail to derive enjoyment from it, 
 or to comprehend why her contemporaries rated her so 
 highly, though they, on their part, perhaps, valued her 
 moral teaching more than the present generation, which 
 does not believe in mere sermons as panaceas. Indeed, 
 now-a-days, the fashion is too much to divorce art 
 from didactic intention. In those days it was the
 
 GENERAL ESTIMATE. 129 
 
 fashion to over-rate the service works of imagination 
 can render virtue. 
 
 It would be easy to bring forward testimony regard- 
 ing the fervent admiration bestowed on Miss Edgeworth 
 by her contemporaries. She certainly missed, but she 
 only just missed, the highest greatness. Did Madame 
 de Stael put her sure finger on the cause when she said, 
 after reading Fashionable Tales and expressing her 
 great admiration, " que Miss Edgeworth etait digne de 
 V enthousiasme , mais qu'elle s'est perdue dans la triste 
 utilite?" Yet to preach utility was held by Miss Edge- 
 worth as a duty ; but for this she might perhaps never 
 have written at all, since no pecuniary needs drove her 
 to authorship. And allowing for this moral strain in 
 her works, and the blemishes that result thence, which 
 compared with all she achieved are but trivial, in 
 estimating her work as a whole, we may well afford 
 to change what Chateaubriand called " the petty and 
 meagre criticism of defects, for the comprehensive and 
 prolific criticism of beauties." We must not look for 
 features such as she cannot furnish, any more than we 
 should seek for figs upon an apple tree. There are 
 certain things Miss Edgeworth can do, and do inimi- 
 tably, there are others entirely foreign to her sphere. 
 Her novels have been described as a sort of essence 
 of common-sense, and even more happily it has been 
 said that it was her genius to be wise. We must be 
 content to take that which she can offer ; and since she 
 offers so much, why should we not be content? Miss 
 Edgeworth wrote of ordinary human life, and not of 
 tremendous catastrophes or highly romantic incidents. 
 Hers was no heated fancy ; she had no comprehension of 
 those fiery passions, those sensibilities that burn like 
 tinder at contact with the feeblest spark ; she does not 
 
 9
 
 130 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 believe in chance, that favourite of so many novelists ; 
 neither does she deal in ruined castles, underground 
 galleries nor spectres, as was the fashion in her day. In 
 her stories events mostly occur as in sober and habitual 
 fact. In avoiding the stock-in-trade of her contem- 
 poraries, she boldly struck out a line of her own which 
 answers in some respects to the modern realistic novel, 
 though devoid, of course, of its anatomical and physio- 
 logical character. She used materials which her pre- 
 decessors had scorned as worthless. She endeavoured 
 to show that there is a poetry in self-restraint as well as 
 in passion, though at the very time she wrote it was the 
 fashion to sneer at this, and to laud as fine that self- 
 forgetfulness, that trampling down of all obstacles, no 
 matter of what nature, sung by Byron and Shelley. She 
 permitted just that amount of tenderness which the owner 
 could keep under due control. She had no taste for what 
 was named the grandeur, beauty, and mystery of crime. 
 She seldom devoted her attention to crimes at all, but 
 gave it to those minor virtues and vices that contribute 
 more largely to our daily sufferings or enjoyments. The 
 novels of her day were too apt to bring forward angels 
 or monsters, and though she, also, erred at times in 
 the former respect, yet on the whole she departed from 
 it, and was among the first to strike out that path 
 since so successfully trodden, especially by female 
 novelists, and notably by George Eliot, that of inte- 
 resting us in persons moving in the common walks of 
 men. In her Popular and Moral Tales she was en- 
 cumbered like a clergyman in his sermon, and hence 
 a too solemn and rather stifling air of moral reflection 
 is apt to pervade. That she overcame it as much as 
 she did, that her novels are as attractive and readable 
 as they are, is to the credit of her genius, which not
 
 GENERAL ESTIMATE. 131 
 
 even Mr. Edgeworth could wholly overlay and stifle, 
 and she thus with few exceptions triumphed over that 
 tendency to the " goody/' from which it seems so 
 difficult for works intended for edification to keep 
 themselves exempt. Nexc to her children's and Irish 
 tales she is most excellent in her studies from fashion- 
 able life. Her heroes and heroines moving in the 
 dismal round of inanities, mis-called diversions, are 
 portraits touched up with nice care in detail, with a 
 keen eye for subtilties and demi-tints. She loved to 
 expose the false and mawkish doctrines thought fit for 
 women. Her fashionable heroines followed the senti- 
 mental teachings of Rousseau and Mrs. Chapone, and 
 held that the highest mission of woman is to please, 
 and that she should be not only excused but com- 
 mended if she employed every art to compass that end. 
 High-mindedness was a factor unknown or at least 
 unadmitted in their philosophy, fashion governed all • 
 to be in the fashion was the main object of their lives. 
 Miss Edgeworth did not condemn this too mercilessly 
 or from too lofty a platform. Her morality, though 
 unexceptionable, is never austere; she allows and 
 even sanctions worldly wisdom within certain limits, 
 she was too much a woman of the world herself to set 
 up Utopian or ascetic standards. To make conscience 
 agree with the demands of polite opinion was admitted 
 to be a desirable and important factor. After all, we 
 are all more or less affected by the mental atmosphere 
 in which we live ; none of us can wholly get outside the 
 spiritual air that environs us, and see things from 
 different points of view; and Miss Edgeworth could 
 do so less than many because she was less highly en- 
 dowed with sympathetic imagination. Thus her short- 
 comings are in her case, more than in that of many 
 
 9 *
 
 132 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 others, the fault of her surroundings and education. 
 For, placed immediately under Mr. Edgeworth's per- 
 sonal influence, his powers of suasion and plausible 
 presentment, it -was not easy to escape, and his 
 daughter never questioned his final wisdom or de- 
 sired such escape. In a critical reading of her books 
 it is amusing to note how ever and again her father 
 crops forth. Thus her heroes constantly ask what 
 manner of education the young lady of their choice 
 has received, because as " prudent men " they feel that 
 only on this can they base their future hopes of happi- 
 ness. And yet, strangely enough, with this absolute 
 faith in the power of education, is combined a belief 
 that nothing, not even this almighty thing, can over- 
 come the fact that if a girl be the daughter of a woman 
 who has at any time forgotten herself, no matter how 
 good the education may have been, no matter that 
 this parent may have died at her birth or the child 
 never lived beside her, Miss Edgeworth's heroes 
 regard her as necessarily lost, consider that it is 
 impossible she should continue in the straight path. 
 They will stifle their strongest feelings, make them- 
 selves and the girl miserable rather than marry her. 
 A special instance of this occurs in The Absentee, 
 where Lord Colambre prefers to break off his en- 
 gagement with his adored cousin, the charming 
 and high-principled Grace Nugent, rather than wed 
 her after he hears a rumour that her mother has 
 not been legally married to her father. Hence a deus 
 ex machina has to be evoked, who, like all such gods 
 cuts the Gordian knot in bungling fashion. After 
 attributing all possibilities to education, there is quite 
 a comic inconsistency in this method of visiting the 
 offences of the wrong-doer upon the victim. But
 
 GENERAL ESTIMATE. 133 
 
 Miss Edgeworth, or rather her father, appeared to 
 have no comprehension of the fact that misfortunes 
 of birth most frequently act on the children as a 
 deterrent; so that they make, as it were, hereditary 
 expiation. But here appears the want of tenderness 
 in Miss Edgeworth's work, a quality she owned as a 
 woman, and lacked as an author. The two were cer- 
 tainly curiously different at times. But though not 
 tender, she is always amiable and kindly, even though 
 she does not look far beneath the surface, and never 
 deals with the soul. Unknown to her were its silent 
 tragedies, its conflicts, hopes and fears. Those feel- 
 ings that did not manifest themselves in life or action 
 were beyond her range of comprehension. She had 
 a genius for observing such things as can be observed ; 
 the lower depths are never stirred by herself or her 
 characters. But it was her genius for observation, 
 her power of reproducing what she had seen, that 
 made her greatness, a greatness limited in its extent, 
 but none the less greatness of its kind. Her works 
 fully merit the admiration they have so long enjoyed. 
 
 An amusing summing-up of Miss Edgeworth^s 
 novels is given by Leigh Hunt in his poem, " Blue 
 Stocking Revels/' Apollo gives a ball to all the 
 eminent contemporary authoresses, and criticises his 
 guests as they enter. 
 
 At the sight of Miss Edgeworth, he says : — 
 
 '• Here comes one 
 As sincere and as kind as lives under the sun ; 
 Not poetical, eh ? nor much given to insist 
 On utilities not in utility's list. 
 
 (Things nevertheless without which the large heart 
 Of my world would but play a poor husk of a part.) 
 But most truly, within her own sphere sympathetic, 
 And that's no mean help towards the practic-poetic."
 
 134 MIL' I A EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Then smiling, he said a must singular thing, 
 
 lie thanked her for making him •• sa < og ! " 
 
 Bui for fear she should fancy he did uol approve her in 
 
 Matters more weighty, praised her Manoeuvring. 
 
 A book which, if aughl could pierce craniuma bo den 
 
 Might Bupply cunning folks with a little g< 
 
 •• And her I ri ih" ( In' added ) " poor souls ! so impressed him 
 
 lie knew not if mosl they amused or distressed him.'' 
 
 And now, finally, we are confronted with the ques- 
 tion, will Miss Edgeworth's works live, or will they be 
 left to grow dusty upon the library-shelves, in company 
 with many names much respected in their day ? Who 
 shall say? The novel is, of its very essence, the 
 most ephemeral style of literature, since it deals with 
 the ever-shifting pictures of its time. Nor is this 
 unjust. The novelist of worth receives, as a rule, his 
 meed of recognition in his life-time, which is not the lot 
 of writers in all branches of literature. On the other 
 hand, to the student of manners, novels have a value 
 no historian can outvie, and on this account alone 
 Miss Edgeworth's should not be left unread. But not 
 only on this account, for it is perhaps just in this 
 direction that they err somewhat ; for though no 
 doubt true pictures of one section of society, there is 
 no denying that Miss Edgeworth's outlook is not 
 catholic; that the world, as she saw it, was prescribed 
 almost exclusively within the bounds of so-called 
 " good society/' a circle in which the heights and 
 depths of life and feeling are rarely touched, because 
 of the conventional boundaries within which its in- 
 mates are cooped. 
 
 Whence then the undeniable fact that Miss Edge- 
 worth has gradually grown to join that band of 
 authors known as standard, who are more spoken of 
 than read ? There is so much in her mode of life-
 
 GENERAL ESTIMATE. 135 
 
 conception that is entirely modern, so much that is in 
 keeping rather with the advanced school of utilitarian 
 ethicists than with the more sentimental school of her 
 day, that it certainly does appear puzzling why she has 
 not better maintained her place ; for it would be idle 
 to pretend that she has maintained it such as it was 
 in her life-time. It cannot be because her plots are 
 ill- constructed. When at her best she holds attention 
 notwithstanding. Nor does an author's power to 
 engross us at all depend on his constructive faculty. 
 Indeed, some of those writers who most hold their 
 readers have distinctly lacked this gift, which often 
 exists independently of fine novelistic qualities. In 
 portions of her work, Miss Edgeworth need fear no 
 rivals. Why is it, then, that in attempting an estimate 
 of her powers, while allowing to her first-class excel- 
 lencies, we have to deny her a first-class place, thus 
 condoning, to some extent, those who leave her unread 
 to turn to less edifying and admirable writers. Is it 
 not because there is absent from Maria Edgeworth's 
 writings that divine spark of the ideal that alone 
 allows works to live for all time, that spark which it is 
 given to many an inferior author to own, while it is 
 here denied to a woman of great intellectual power. 
 While pre-eminently upright, high-principled and 
 virtuous, Miss Edgeworth's ethics are pervaded by a 
 certain coldness and self-consciousness, that irresistibly 
 gives to her good people a Pharisaical character; an 
 impression from which it is always difficult, and at 
 times impossible, for the reader to shake himself free. 
 Her heroes and heroines act with too little spontaneity; 
 they seem to calculate and know too surely the exact 
 sum total of ultimate gain that will, in a justly-ordered 
 world, accrue to them for their good actions, their
 
 136 MAI; I A KDGEWORTH. 
 
 self-sacrifice and devotion. Her heroes are almost as 
 calculating as her villains. 
 
 It is a severe test to which to put an author, to read 
 all his works consecutively; but it is one that more 
 surely than aught else enables us to mark his place 
 of merit. If he can stand this trial, he is decidedly 
 above the average ; if he issue thence triumphant, he 
 may, without hesitation, be pronounced among the 
 great. Miss Edgeworth weathers this test very re- 
 spectably ; indeed it, more than all else, enforces upon 
 the reader the great versatility she displays in character 
 and situation. Yet it is just after such a perusal that 
 the absolute lack of the ideal element is so strongly 
 borne in upon us. As the thirsty mountaineer drinks 
 eagerly from the first clear streamlet that meets him 
 trickling down from the heights, so Miss Edgeworth's 
 readers eagerly turn from her to some more spontaneous 
 writer to quench the drought that this continuous 
 perusal has engendered. Even in this prosaic and 
 materialistic age the belief in blue roses is happily not 
 wholly dead ; and though we will not suffer the garden 
 of a novelist to grow no other plant, because we know 
 that one filled with blue roses only is out of nature in 
 this terrestrial globe, yet, in a well-ordered parterre, 
 we do require that the blue rose should also have its 
 place. It is to novelist and poet that the cultivation 
 of this rare and heaven-born plant has been entrusted. 
 Miss Edgeworth knew it not. Neither by hereditary 
 tendency, nor by training, had she made acquaintance 
 with this wonder-flower, for whose botanical analysis 
 Mr. Edgeworth would have searched a Flora in vain, 
 and whose existence he would, therefore, stoutly have 
 denied. With "little stores of maxims," like Tenny- 
 son's faithless love, Miss Edgeworth, acting from the
 
 GENERAL ESTIMATE. 137 
 
 very highest motives, after careful and philosophic 
 deliberation, at personal suffering to herself, in her 
 printed words, preached down the instincts of the 
 heart. She knew not that excellent as utilitarianism 
 is in its place and sphere, there is something more, 
 something beyond, that is needed to form the basis 
 upon which human actions are set in motion. For 
 the spiritual and divine element in man she made no 
 allowance, and it was this that drew down on her, 
 from shallow contemporary critics, that condemnation 
 of want of religion, flung in a narrow dogmatic spirit, 
 that wounded her so deeply. Outwardly the Edgeworths 
 conformed to the established faith, and though liberal* 
 in the sense of being wide-minded, they were not, in 
 religious matters, advanced in thought. Indeed, they 
 thought little, if at all, of the next world, finding full 
 occupation for their minds in this. Miss Edgeworth 
 was hemmed in by the visible; she did not seek to 
 justify the ways of God to man; life was to her no 
 riddle; if man would but act rightly, all would be 
 well ; she deemed that it is given into his own hands 
 to do good or evil, to be happy or the reverse. There 
 was in her nothing of the poet and the seer ; and by 
 so much as she fails to speak to humanity in all its 
 aspects, by so much she fails to take rank among the 
 greatest teachers of our race. But, with wisdom and 
 good sense, she recognised her limitations ; she set 
 herself a humbler, but no less useful task ; she carried 
 out her aim faithfully and conscientiously, and by so 
 much she too must be ranked among the good and 
 faithful servants who do the work appointed by their 
 Lord. And, after all, is not the harmony of humanity 
 best served by the free emission of the most diverse 
 notes ? Miss Edgeworth set herself to preach utili-
 
 138 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 tarianism, and the minor virtues. She succeeded; and 
 in so far as she succeeded in that which she set 
 herself to do, life was for her successful, and she was 
 great.
 
 139 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 VISITS ABROAD AND AT HOME. 
 
 Life at Edgeworthstown underwent no outward change 
 owing to the death of its master. His place was taken 
 by his eldest and unmarried son Lovell, who sought, 
 to the best of his abilities, to keep the house a 
 home for his father's widow and his numerous brothers 
 and sisters, an endeavour in which he was successful. 
 Miss Edgeworth describes herself at this time as 
 " quite absorbed in low domestic interests, of which 
 only those who love home and love us can possibly 
 bear to hear/' 
 
 For some years after her father's death all she did 
 was done as an effort, and more from a high sense of 
 duty and from the thought that it would have pleased 
 him who was gone, than from any inner desire to 
 act. When the family, after a short absence, re- 
 assembled at Edgeworthstown, it required all her 
 inherited activity of mind, all her acquired self- 
 command, to enable her to keep up her spirits on 
 re-entering that house in which for her the light was 
 quenched. It was well for her not only that work 
 was the purpose in life of all that family, that no 
 drones were suffered in that household, but that her
 
 140 MARIA EBGEWORTH. 
 
 work had been planned for her by her father, and that, 
 in settling down to it, she was obeying his commands. 
 It had been not only his darling wish, but his dying 
 injunction, that she should complete the memoir of 
 his life which he had begun and abandoned ten years 
 previously. Why Mr. Edgeworth had written his life 
 is not made clear, even by the preface in which he 
 attempts to explain the reasons that impelled him. 
 The real reason was probably the excessive importance 
 he attached to himself and his actions. It had always 
 been his intention that Miss Edgeworth should revise 
 and complete this memoir ; but, when lie was dying, he 
 emphatically enjoined that it should be published 
 without any change. This complicated her task, which 
 she felt a heavy one. Excepting a few passages, he 
 had never shown what he had written even to his own 
 family ; and, when he was urged by them to continue 
 it, he used to say, " he would leave the rest to be 
 finished by his daughter Maria."" Almost before her 
 eyes were recovered she set to work upon her pious 
 duty. Her anxiety lest she should not do justice to 
 the theme weighed upon her so greatly that she could 
 hardly speak of the memoirs even to her most intimate 
 friends. It is reflected in the touchingly helpless 
 preface she prefixed to the second volume : — 
 
 Till now I have never on any occasion addressed myself to the 
 public alone, and Bpeaking in the first person. This egotism is not 
 only repugnant to my habits, but most painful and melancholy. 
 Formerly I had always a friend and father who spoke and wrote for 
 me ; one who exerted for me all the powers of his strong mind, even 
 tn the very last. Far more than his protecting kindness I regret, at 
 this moment, the want of his guiding judgment now when it is most 
 important to me — where his fame is at stake. 
 
 To save her eye-sight, her sisters assisted her in 
 copying, or in writing from her dictation ; but, even so
 
 LIFE AT HOME. 141 
 
 she was forced to use her own vision, and while busy 
 
 with the memoirs she allowed herself little of what 
 
 was now her greatest relaxation, writing letters to 
 
 her friends : 
 
 We are looking to the bright side of every object that remains to 
 us, and many blessings we have still. I am now correcting what I 
 had written of my father's life, and shall be for some months, so shall 
 not write any letters of such length as this. 
 
 Bear up and struggle as she would, bitterly and 
 painfully she missed the always kind and ready ad- 
 viser, the sympathetic intellectual companion, who had 
 stood by her side till now and aided her in every 
 difficult task. She felt like "drifting over an unknown 
 sea, without chart or compass." Nor were her spirits, 
 or those of the family, raised by outward events. Wet 
 seasons had induced famine and typhus-fever, and the 
 tenants were suffering from disease and distress. Then, 
 too, the family had their own private anxieties in the 
 illness of William, Lovell, and Fanny. They were all 
 more or less delicate; most of them had inherited 
 consumptive tendencies, and many months rarely passed 
 without Miss Edgeworth having to record cases of 
 sickness in those about her. These illnesses always 
 absorbed her whole attention, called forth all her kind- 
 liness and unselfishness. She was ever the ready 
 willing nurse, the writer of bulletins to those away, 
 the cheerer of long sad hours of suffering. They were 
 weary months those early ones of 1818, and only in 
 her affections did she find comfort. She writes : 
 
 I was always fond of being loved, but of late I am become 
 more sensible of the soothing power of affectionate expressions. 
 Indeed, I have reason, although much has been taken from me, 
 to be heartily grateful for all I have left of excellent friends and 
 for much, much unexpected kindness which has been shown to me 
 and mine, not only by persons unconnected by any natural ties with 
 me or them, but from mere acquaintance become friends.
 
 L42 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 In June, she is able to announce, " I am now within 
 two months' work of finishing all I mean to write; 
 but the work of revision and consideration — O ! most 
 anxious consideration." She was still desirous of 
 having the opinion of friends, and more especially she 
 desired the opinion of M. Dumont. Hearing he was to 
 stay with Lord Lansdowne, at Bowood, she yielded 
 to the importunities of these friends, and went there 
 to meet him, taking with her her sister Honora. She 
 was soon able to tell Mrs. Edgeworth that Dumont 
 " has been very much pleased with my father's manu- 
 script ; he has read a good deal and likes it. He hates 
 Mr. Day in spite of all his good qualities ; he says he 
 knows he could not bear that sort of man, who has 
 such pride and misanthropies about trifles, raising 
 a great theory of morals upon an amour propre 
 blesse." 
 
 The change of scene was clearly beneficial to her. 
 Once more her letters were filled with the anecdotes, 
 the interesting talk she hears, accounts of which she 
 knows will give pleasure to those at home. To give 
 pleasure to others was always the one thought upper- 
 most in her mind. " I am a vile correspondent when 
 I have nothing to say ; but at least I do write in some 
 sort of way when I know I have something to say that 
 will give pleasure to my friends." The whole character 
 of the woman is revealed in these simple words. 
 Among the good stories she tells from Bowood is one 
 concerning Madame de Stael : — 
 
 Madame de Staiil — I tumble anecdotes together as I recollect them 
 — Madame de Stael had a great wish to see Mr. Bowles, the poet, or as 
 Lord Byron call him, the sonneteer ; she admired his sonnets and his 
 •• Spirit of Maritime Discovery," and ranked him high as an English 
 genius. In riding to Bowood, he fell and sjjrained his shoulder, but
 
 JOANNA BAILLIE. 143 
 
 still came on. Lord Lansdowne alluded to this in presenting him to 
 Madame de Stael, before dinner, in the midst of the listening circle. 
 She began to compliment him and herself upon the exertion he had 
 made to come and see her : " O ma'am, say no more, for I would have 
 . done a great deal more to see so great a curiosity I " Lord Lans- 
 downe says it is impossible to describe the shock in Madame de StaeTs 
 face — the breathless astonishment and the total change produced in 
 her opinion of the man. She said afterwards to Lord Lansdowne, 
 who had told her he was a simple country clergyman, " Je vois bien 
 que ce n'e.st qu'un simple cure' qui n'a pas le sens commun quoique grand 
 po'ete ! " 
 
 From Bowood Miss Edgeworth paid some other 
 visits, seeing many old friends, and among them Mrs. 
 Barbauld and the Miss Baillies. 
 
 Joanna Baillie and her sister, most kind, cordial, and warm- 
 hearted, came running down their little flagged walk to welcome us — 
 both Joanna and her sister have such agreeable and new conversation 
 — not old trumpery literature over again, and reviews, but new circum- 
 stances worth telling apropos to every subject that is touched upon : 
 frank observations on character without either ill-nature or the fear 
 of committing themselves : no blue-stocking tittle-tattle or habits of 
 worshipping or being worshipped : domestic, affectionate, good to 
 live with and without fussing, continually doing what is most obliging 
 and whatever makes us feel most at home. Breakfast is very plea- 
 sant in this house, the two good sisters look so neat and cheerful. 
 
 Although she had met with much encouraging criti- 
 cism in the matter of her father's life, she still hesitated 
 to publish. " The result of all I see, think, and feel," 
 she tells her step-mother, " is, that we should be in no 
 haste." Down to the very business arrangements the 
 book weighed on her. She had hitherto left all such 
 details to her father; and her kind friend Johnson 
 being also dead, she felt yet more undecided how to 
 act. At every moment, in every detail of her life, she 
 missed her father ; but she was too brave a woman not 
 to struggle with her grief, or not to adapt herself to 
 altered conditions. Her eyes still caused her much
 
 Ill MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 trouble, and for nearly two years she was obliged to 
 give them almost entire rest, 
 
 But for her patience and fortitude in following the 
 doctor's injunctions, it seems possible she might have 
 entirely lost her sight. As it was, a complete recovery 
 took place ; and though at times her eyes were weak, 
 she was able, to the end of her life, to read, write, and 
 work with ease. At the end of the year 1819 she is 
 able gleefully to tell her cousin that she must now 
 make up for lost time and read. 
 
 "Now that I have eyes to read again, I find it 
 delightful, and I have a voracious appetite and a relish 
 for food ; good, bad, and indifferent, I am afraid, like 
 a half-famished shipwrecked wretch. 
 
 She read all the new literature of the day, and 
 eagerly inquired among all her friends what they 
 commended. Byron's Don Juan had caused much 
 talk, but this did not attract her. 
 
 After what you have told me, and after all I hear from every good 
 judge of Don Juan, Inever desire to see it — the only regret I feel 
 upon the subject is, thai any pearls should be found, as I am told 
 they may lie found, in this intellectual dung-hill. How can the public 
 allow this drunken, flagitious actor to appear before them, disgracing 
 genius and the taste of his country ? In Scott's last tales there are all 
 the signs of a master mind, but now and then all the spasms in the 
 stomach, for which I pity him. I am glad ho is going to try some 
 new scheme, for ho has, I think, exhausted every variety of Scotch 
 character. 
 
 It was not till early in 1820 that the memoirs of Mr. 
 Edgeworth were completed. Having arranged that they 
 should appear at Easter, Miss Edgeworth resolved to 
 carry out a long-cherished plan, that of visiting Paris 
 in company with her two young sisters, Fanny and 
 Harriet. At one time it seemed as if political events 
 were too unsettled to make this project advisable,
 
 PARIS. 145 
 
 on which account she asked her good friend, Dr. 
 Holland, of Knutsford to propose some other plans. 
 Very significant is the remark she makes : " Observe 
 that Fanny and I both prefer society, good society, 
 even to fine landscapes, or even to volcanoes." Finally 
 Paris was pronounced safe, and they set out thither. 
 It was on this occasion, when crossing to Holyhead, 
 that she made her first acquaintance with a steam-boat. 
 She disliked what she called the "jigging motion," which, 
 she said, was like the shake felt in a carriage when a 
 pig is scratching himself against the hind wheel while 
 waiting at an Irish inn door. Her letters to her step- 
 mother and sisters during this trip are frequent and 
 detailed. At Paris they stayed some months, establish- 
 ing themselves domestically in apartments in the Place 
 du Palais Bourbon. " Madame Maria Edgeworth et 
 Mademoiselles ses sveurs" ran their visiting cards, which 
 were soon left at the best Parisian houses. Many new 
 friends were added to those they had previously made, 
 and under the changed regime, the connection of Miss 
 Edgeworth with the Abbe Edgeworth became a pass- 
 port to the homes of the old nobility. The circum- 
 stance that Miss Edgeworth was a most accomplished 
 French scholar, speaking the language with as much 
 ease as if it were her own, enabled her thoroughly to 
 enter into and enjoy the society that was offered her. 
 Her knowledge of French classic literature charmed 
 her hosts, and brought out all their best powers of 
 conversation. Her ready sympathy and real interest 
 won their hearts and induced many of them to tell her 
 the sad stories of their adventures in the revolutionary 
 days. But her intercourse was not confined to the aris- 
 tocracy. Her hereditary taste for science brought her 
 in contact with most of the distinguished scientific men 
 
 10
 
 146 J/l/,7.1 EDGEWORTH. 
 
 of Franco, while literary society was, of course, thrown 
 open to her. She noticed a great alteration in manners 
 since their last visit. 
 
 1 should observe thai :i great change has taken place; the men 
 huddle together now in France .-is they used to do in England, talking 
 politics with their backs to the women in a corner, or even in the 
 middle of the room, without minding them in the least, and the 
 ladies complain :m<l look very disconsolate, and many ask, "if this 
 be Paris?" and others sen-am Ultra nonsense or Liberal nonsei 
 make themselves of consequence and to attract the attention of the 
 gentlemen In 1803, under the First Consul's reign, when all free 
 dom of discussion on public affairs was dangerous, and when all par- 
 ties were glad to forgel the horrors of the revolutionary days, conver- 
 sation was limited to literary or scientific subjects, and was therefore 
 much more agreeable to foreigners ; now in 1820, the verb politique); 
 to talk politics, had heen invented. 
 
 As a foreigner, Miss Edgeworth was enabled to visit 
 at the houses of all factions, and she found much enter- 
 tainment in hearing their opinions and diametrically 
 opposite views. The Emigrants spoke of the Liberals 
 with the bitterest detestation as revolutionary monsters, 
 the Liberals spoke of the Ultras as bigoted idiots. One 
 of these said of a lady celebrated in 1803 as a brilliant 
 talker, " Autrefois elle (/rait de Vesprit, mats elle est 
 devenue Ultra, devote et bete." While not sympathising 
 with the insolence of either party, Miss Edgeworth 
 extracted some diversion and yet more moral reflection 
 from all she saw. Writing to Dr. Holland after she 
 had been an observer for some time, she says : — 
 
 Upon the whole, after comparing the society in Paris and London, 
 I far prefer the London society, and feel a much stronger desire to 
 return to London than ever to revisit Paris. There is scarcely any 
 new literature or any taste for old literature in Paris. In London the 
 production of a single article in the Edinboro 1 or Quarterly Review, 
 the lustre, however evanescent, it easts on the reviewer or the author, 
 is a proof of the importance of literature in fashionable society. No 
 such thing in Paris. Even the Parisian men of science, many of them 
 equal, some superior to ours, are obliged or think themselves obliged
 
 PABIS. 147 
 
 to turn statesmen, and sorry statesmen they make. Everything in 
 Parisian society is, as it were, tainted by polities, and the politicians 
 themselves seem to be mere actors. I could forgive all their violence 
 and the noise they make, screaming always all at a time, if they were 
 really actuated by patriotism, but it seemed to me all for effect. A 
 few exceptions of course to prove the rule. 
 
 The more she saw of Parisian life, the more convinced 
 she felt that the French required, if not a despot, at 
 least an absolute monarch to reign over them. A 
 brilliant and ready talker, Miss Edgeworth was also an 
 able listener, and hence her society was much sought 
 after, while the beauty, intelligence, and excellent 
 dressing of her sisters caused them also to be regarded 
 as acquisitions in days when the continent was not 
 swamped with tourists as it is now, and natives were 
 therefore able to open their doors. A galaxy of bril- 
 liant and historical names pass across the pages of Miss 
 Edgeworth's letters, and many a reminiscence she liar 
 preserved of them. Her account of the various parties to 
 which they went are so vivacious and graphic that those 
 for whom they were written must have felt as if they 
 had been present too, and had listened to all the talk 
 in which science, politics, literature, and nonsense were 
 mixed in happy proportions. Here is an account of an 
 evening at Cuvier's : 
 
 Prony, with his hair nearly in my plate, was telling me most enter- 
 taining anecdotes of Bonaparte ; and Ouvier, with his head nearly 
 meeting him, talking as hard as he could, not striving to show learn- 
 ing or wit — quite the contrary ; frank, open-hearted genius, delighted 
 to be together at home and at ease. This was the most flattering 
 and agreeable thing to me that could possibly be. Harriet was on the 
 off side, and every now and then he turned to her in the midst of his 
 anecdotes, and made her so completely one of us ; and there was such 
 a prodigious noise, nobody could hear but ourselves. Both Cuvier 
 and Prony agreed that Bonaparte never could bear to have any 
 but a decided answer. " One day," said Cuvier, " I nearly ruined 
 myself by considering before I answered. He asked me, ' Faut il 
 introduire le sacra de bettetrave en France V ' • D'abord, Sire, il /'an/ 
 
 10 *
 
 148 MARIA EDGEWOltTU. 
 
 songt r si vos colonies ' i Faut il avoir l< sucn di bt ttt travt < n France .' ' 
 
 • Mais, Sire, ilfaut examiner ' • Bah! jt /< demanderaia BerthoUet.' 
 
 This despotic, laconic mode of insisting on learning everything in two 
 words bad its inconveniences. One day he asked the master of the 
 woods at Fontainehlean, "How many acres of wood here?" 
 master, an honest man, stopped to recollect. "Bali!" and the 
 under-master came forward and said any number that came into his 
 head. Bonaparte immediately took the mastership from the first 
 and gave it to the second. "Qu'arrivait il?" continued Prony; 
 rogue who gave the guess answer was soon found cutting down 
 and Belling quantities of the tries, and Bonaparte had to take the 
 rangership from him and reinstate the honest hesitator." 
 
 Many of her good stories had to be cut short or 
 omitted for lack of time to tell them. " I find always 
 that when I come to the end of my paper, I have not 
 told you half the entertaining things I had treasured 
 up for you,'* she tells her step-mother. As in London, 
 they lived in a constant whirl of gaiety. But Miss 
 Edgeworth never forgot others amid the distinctions paid 
 to herself. She was constantly thinking either what 
 would please those left behind, or what kind act she 
 could do for those around her ; and if it were nothing 
 more than helping other English visitors to gain a 
 glimpse of French Society, she set herself with all 
 ardour to accomplish it. 
 
 Next to the delight of seeing my sisters so justly appreciated and 
 
 BO happy at Paris, my greatest pleasure has been in the power of 
 introducing people to each other, who longed to meet, but could not 
 contrive it before. 
 
 Social success did not turn her head. 
 
 Certainly no people can have seen more of the world than we have 
 done in the last three months. By seeing the world, I mean seeing 
 varieties of characters and manners, and being behind the scones of 
 Ufe in many different societies and families. The constant chorus 
 of our Moral as we drive home together at night is, " How happy we 
 are to be so fond of each other. How happy we are to be indepen- 
 dent of all we see here! How happy that we have our dear home to 
 return to at last ! "
 
 PAB18. 149 
 
 Her sisters told on their return how readily Miss 
 Edgeworth would quit the company of the greatest 
 people of the day, to superintend their dress or 
 arrange some pleasure for them. " We often won- 
 dered/' they said, " what her admirers would say, after 
 all the profound remarks and brilliant witticisms they 
 had listened to, if they heard all her delightful nonsense 
 with us/' 
 
 The sisters' gay life continued without intermission, 
 onty varied now and then by visits to French country 
 houses. Among the most agreeable people they met 
 Miss Edgeworth numbered some Russians and Poles. 
 At the house of the Princess Potemkin she first made 
 wondering acquaintance with, what is now fortunately 
 a matter of course, the more refined mode of serving 
 dinner known as a la Russe. She met too Prince 
 Rostopchin, the man who burned Moscow, by first 
 setting fire to his own house. 
 
 I never saw a more striking Calmuck countenance. From his con- 
 versation, as well as from his actions, I should think him a man of 
 great strength of character. Speaking of the Russians, he compared 
 their civilisation to a naked man looking at himself in a gilt-framed 
 mirror, and he told an anecdote that illustrated the perfunctory 
 method of government : — The Governor of Siberia lived at Peters- 
 burgh and never went near his Government. One day the Emperor, 
 in presence of this governor and Rostopchin, was boasting of his far- 
 sightedness. •• Commend me," said Rostopchin, " to M. le Gouverneur, 
 who sees so well from Petersburgh to Siberia.'' 
 
 At a breakfast at Camille Jordain's, were assembled 
 three of the most distinguished of the party who called 
 themselves Les Doctrinaires, and alleged that they 
 were more attached to measures than to men. 
 
 These three Doctrinaires were Casimir Perier, Royer Collard, and 
 Benjamin Constant, who is, I believe, of a more violent party. I do 
 not like him at all ; his countenance, voice, manner and conversation 
 are all disagreeable to me. He is a fair " whithky "-looking man, very
 
 150 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 near-sighted, with spectacles which seemed to pinch his nose. Hi 
 
 - out his chin tn keep hi-- spectacles on, and yet looks over the 
 ti«]i of his spectacles, squinching np his eyes, bo that yon cannot see- 
 yonr way into his mind. Then he Bpeaks through his nose ami with 
 a lisp, strangely contrasting with the vehemence of his emphasis. I fe 
 does nol ^ r i\ e me any confidence in the sincerity <>f his patriotism, nor 
 any high idea of his talents, though he seems to have a mighty high 
 
 idea of them himself. He has I n well called /.' HeYosdes Brochures. 
 
 We -at beside one another, and I think felt a mutual antipathy. On 
 the other side of me was Boyer Collard, suffering with toothache and 
 swelled face; but notwithstanding the distortion of the swelling, the 
 natural expression of his countenance and the strength ami sincerity 
 of his soul made their way. and the frankness of his character and 
 plain superiority of his talent- were manifest in live minutes* conver- 
 sation. 
 
 In June Miss Edgeworth and her sisters left Paris for 
 a tour in Switzerland, visiting their friends the Moilliets, 
 who lived at Pregny, near Geneva. Their house, which 
 had formerly belonged to Josephine, commanded a 
 superb view of the lake and of Mont Blanc. It was a 
 surprise to Miss Edgeworth to find how much she was 
 impressed with the beauty of the scenery about her. 
 
 I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much plea- 
 sure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this 
 country. The first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an 
 era in my life — a new idea, a new feeling, standing alone in the 
 mind. 
 
 Geneva was at that time enjoying what has been 
 termed its Augustan age. An unusual number of 
 distinguished persons resided there, and it was besides 
 largely resorted to by eminent men and women from 
 all lands, most of whom Miss Edgeworth met at the 
 house of her host. Besides, Monsieur Pictet and Mon- 
 sieur Dumont, these old, faithful friends, were also 
 domiciled at Geneva, and strove to do the honours 
 of the place. Among temporary residents were such 
 men and women as Dr. and Mrs Marcet, Arago, De 
 Candolle, the botanist, Freiherr von Stein, Madame
 
 GENEVA. 151 
 
 Necker de Saussure, and Sismondi. They also met 
 Bonstetten, the poet Gray's youthful friend, then an old 
 man, who spoke with enthusiasm of Madame de Stael. 
 
 This mixture of persons from all parts of the world 
 gave a piquancy to the reunions that were held at 
 Geneva. Sometimes the guests met in the evening at 
 a house in town, sometimes at breakfast in the different 
 country villas in all the freshness of the sweet Swiss 
 morning, sometimes by moonlight on lawns sloping 
 down to the lake ; when they would sit under trees or 
 stroll about, while tea and ices and the famous 
 varieties of Geneva cakes were handed round. It was 
 at one of these evening assemblies that Miss Edge- 
 worth, while talking to de Candolle in her most bril- 
 liant strain, attracted a crowd five deep. 
 
 Several short excursions into the lower Alpine 
 regions were made from Geneva by the sisters and 
 their friends; but though Miss Edgeworth enjoyed the 
 beauties of nature beyond her expectations, she yet, 
 as before in her letters, mentions persons and matters 
 of intellectual interest more frequently than scenery. 
 It was a keen gratification to her that M. Dumont 
 spoke well of the now published memoirs. She 
 cared more for this than for the many compliments 
 that were paid to herself, only a few of which she 
 modestly records, and then only because she knows they 
 will please the dear ones at home. At Coppet the party 
 breakfasted with M. de Stael, who showed them all the 
 rooms once inhabited by his mother, which Miss 
 Edgeworth ' ' could not regard as common rooms, they 
 have a classical power over the mind." M. de Stael 
 told her — 
 
 That his mother never gave any work to the public in the form in 
 which she had originally composed it ; she changed the arrangement
 
 152 1/I/.7I EDGEWORTH. 
 
 .and expression "f her thoughts with such Facility, and was so little 
 attached to her own firsl views of the subject, thai often a work was 
 completely re-modelled by her while passing through the press. Her 
 father disliked to Bee her make any formal preparation for writing 
 when she was young, so thai she used to write often <>n the corner 
 of the chimney piece, or on a pasteboard held in her hand, and always 
 in the room with others, for her father could not bear her to be out 
 <>f the room, and this habit "f writing without preparation she pre- 
 served ever afterwards. 
 
 M. de Stael told me of a curious interview he had with Buonaparte 
 when he was enraged with his mother, who had published remarks 
 on his government — concluding with "Eh Men! vous avez raison 
 /niss/. .A concois qu'un fils doit toujours faire la defenst de sa mere, mats 
 <ii /in, si monsieur veut ecrire des libelles, ilfaut alter en Angleterre. Ou 
 bien s'il cherche la gloin e'est en Angletem qu'il faut alter. Cesi 
 PAngleterre, ou la franc* — it rCy a qw ces deux pays en Europe — dans 
 le iiit'in/i . 
 
 During her absence abroad Miss Edgeworth had re- 
 vised the manuscript of the latter portion of Rosamond 
 and sent it home to press. At the eleventh hour her 
 publisher discovered that there was not enough material 
 to complete two volumes, and urged her to supply more 
 copy without delay. " I was a little provoked," she 
 writes on first hearing the news, " but this feeling 
 lasted but a moment, and my mind fixed on what is 
 to be done. It is by no means necessary for me to 
 be at home or in any particular place to invent or to 
 write/' Instantly she set to work, and, in the midst 
 of ail the social attractions and distractions around her, 
 she wrote the two additional chapters called The 
 Bracelet of Memory and Blind Kate. 
 
 Late in October the Misses Edgeworth left Switzer- 
 land for Paris, visiting Lyons on their way. The town 
 had a special interest for Miss Edgeworth because of her 
 lather's early residence there. By the end of October 
 they were once more settled at Paris in a floor to them- 
 selves with a valet de place and a femme de chambre.
 
 HOME AGAIN. 153 
 
 Another gay three months followed, seeing old friends 
 
 and making new ones. 
 
 We have seen Mademoiselle Mars twice, or thrice ratter, in the 
 Mariage de Figaro, and in the little pieces of Le jaloux sans amour 
 and Lajeunesse de Henri Cinq, and admire her exceedingly. Enpetit 
 i-Dinitc the other night at the Duchesse d'Esears, a discussion took 
 place between the Duchesse de la Force, Marmoxit, and Pozzo di 
 Borgo on the bon et mauvais ton of different expressions ; bonne soci€t6 
 is an expression bourgeoise. You may say bonne compagnie or la 
 haute soci€t€. " Vbila des nuances" as Madame d'Esears said. Such a 
 wonderful jabbering as these grandees made about these small 
 matters. It puts me in mind of a conversation in the World on good 
 company, which we all used to admire. 
 
 In December the travellers were back again in 
 London, but several more visits were paid before they 
 returned to Ireland. Thus, they halted at Clifton, to 
 see Miss Edgeworth's sister Emmeline who was married 
 there, and stayed at Bowood, Easton Grey, Badminton, 
 and various other houses, in all of which they met 
 with a warm welcome. Beloved Aunt Buxton, too, 
 had to be seen on the way home. It was March before 
 the sisters reached Edgeworthstown, after not quite a 
 year's absence, a year that seemed to Miss Edgeworth 
 like a delightful dream, full of Alps and glaciers and cas- 
 cades, and Mont Blanc, and " troops of acquaintances 
 in splendid succession and visionary confusion/' a 
 dream of which the sober certainty of happiness 
 remained, assuring her that all that had passed had 
 been no dream but a realitv.
 
 154 MA Iff A r.in: i:\Yoirrii. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MEMOIRS PUBLISHED. 1821 TO 1825. 
 
 The Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth had been 
 published during Miss Edgeworth's stay on the Conti- 
 nent. After all the anxiety she had felt while pre- 
 paring the work for the press, she was now able to 
 write to her friends at home : — 
 
 You would scarcely believe, my dear friends, the calm of mind and 
 the suit of satisfied resignation [feel as to uiy father's life. I sup- 
 pose tin- t wo years of doubt and extreme anxiety that I felt, exhausted 
 all my power of doubting. [ know that I have done my very best, I 
 know that I have done my duty, and 1 firmly believe that if my dear 
 father could see the whole, he would be satisfied with what I have 
 done. 
 
 Still she was sensitive to what those said who had 
 known and loved him ; and though Mrs. Ruxton had 
 gone through the manuscript, it was a satisfaction to 
 her to hear that on seeing the work in print she had 
 not altered her views on it. She wrote : — 
 
 ''The irremediable words once pasl the press, 1 knew that the 
 happiness of my life was at stake. Even if all the rest of the world 
 
 had praised it and you had 1 n dissatisfied, how miserable I should 
 
 ha\ e been.'' 
 
 The world was not so lenient in its criticism. It 
 failed to see what right the work had to exist j it
 
 MR. EDGEWORTH'S MEMOIRS. 155 
 
 acquiesced in what Miss Edgeworth had felt, that she 
 of all persons was the least fitted to be the biographer 
 of the man whom she so blindly adored. 
 
 The first volume is entirely Mr. Edgeworth's own 
 writing, the second is hers ; she takes up the narrative 
 on his final removal to Ireland. Although written in 
 his heavy-footed, stilted style that broke forth now and 
 again into comic pomposity, of the two, his is the most 
 entertaining, for he tells many stories that do not concern 
 himself alone. Thus, though he is by no means a 
 graphic writer, we can gather from his pages some 
 notion of the little provincial Mutual Admiration Society 
 that was gathered together at Lichfield under the segis of 
 Dr. Darwin; of the nature of society in Ireland during 
 his youth ; of the state of mechanical science in 
 England. But there is also much that is puerile, some 
 few things that are in bad taste; and the book contains, 
 besides, some really careless blunders with regard to 
 events for which the data were within reach of all. 
 In Miss Edgewortlr's portion it is easily seen that she 
 does not write freely. Even her style, usually more 
 flexible and spontaneous, has caught a reflection from 
 his, while the position in which she stood to the object 
 of her work hindered her from exercising that keen 
 critical judgment which she possessed, and which would 
 certainly have come to the fore had the subject of her 
 work been a stranger to her. Only while writing 
 about such events as do not immediately deal with her 
 father is she herself. Probably the very anxiety she 
 felt regarding the book was a dim, unformulated con- 
 sciousness that she had not made it all she desired. 
 The press spoke but coolly. The Quarterly Review 
 published a somewhat savage article ; indeed, with so 
 much bitterness was it written, that though one is at
 
 L56 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 all times inclined to deprecate the theory of personal 
 enmity, so clear to the wounded vanity of authors, it 
 does suggest the possibility of having been the out- 
 come of malice. But more likely still is it that Mr. 
 Edgeworth'a boastful egotism so irritated the writer 
 that he wrote what certainly could not fail to be 
 cruelly wounding to a family who regarded their hero 
 as perfect in all respects. After every allowance has 
 been made for this acrimonious tone (no rare feature in 
 either of the quarterlies in the days of their bumptious 
 youth), the attack certainly contained much that was 
 warranted by circumstances. The writer had not 
 impugned thoughtlessly or ignorantly. He put a 
 sure finger on the contradictions and inaccuracies that 
 ■occurred in Mr. Edgeworth's narrative, and he gave 
 chapter and verse for his objections. Such criticism, 
 though severe, could not be called wholly unjust. The 
 article, however, raised a perfect storm of indignation 
 among the Edgeworths' friends. Some called it wicked, 
 others only denounced it as silly. Miss Edgeworth, 
 being in France, was out of the way of seeing the 
 Quarterly, and after what she had heard, she simply 
 and wisely resolved never to read it. Indeed, she took 
 the whole matter more philosophically than her friends, 
 and hastened to beg her dearest Aunt Ruxton never 
 to lose another night's sleep or another moment's 
 thought on the Quarterly Review. And certainly, 
 whatever the reviewers might say, Miss Edgeworth 
 had the satisfaction before the year was out of pro- 
 paring a second edition, and in her seventy-seventh 
 year a third was called for. For this third edition she 
 re-wrote nearly the whole of her portion. With her 
 habitual modesty she assumed that it was her part of 
 the work that had been found long and heavv.
 
 HOME LIFE. 157 
 
 Nothing is more touching, more lovable, than the 
 modesty of this woman, so lauded, honoured and 
 praised by all her generation that she could not remain 
 ignorant of her fame. But simplicity was the very 
 foundation of her character, and the woman always 
 went before the author. 
 
 On her return from France Miss Edgeworth resumed 
 the quiet, dearly-loved routine of home life. She was 
 always glad to get home again, even now, and to be 
 with the step-mother, sisters and brothers she loved 
 so tenderly. Here is a pretty picture of the daily 
 course of their existence : — 
 
 So you like to hear of all our little doings : so I will tell you that, 
 ahout eight o'clock, Fanny being by that time up and dressed, and 
 at her little table, Harriet comes and reads to me Madame de Sevigne's 
 letters, of which I never tire : and I almost envy Fanny and Harriet 
 the pleasure of reading them for the first time. After breakfast I take 
 my little table into Lucy's room, and write there for an hour: she 
 likes to have me in her room, though she only hears the scribble, 
 scribble ; she is generally reading at that hour, or doing Margaret's 
 delight — algebra. I am doing the sequel to Frank. Walking, read- 
 ing, and talking fill the rest of the day. I do not read much, it tires 
 my eyes, and I have not yet finished the Life of Wesley. I think it a 
 most curious, entertaining, and instructive book. A life of Pitt by the 
 Bishop of Winchester is coming out ; he wrote to Murray about it, 
 who asked his friends, " Who is George Winton, who writes to me 
 about publishing Pitt's life? " 
 
 Soon after his return from enforced exile Lovell 
 Edgeworth had established a school at Edgeworthstown, 
 after a plan proposed by his father, in which boys of 
 all classes and creeds should be educated together. It 
 succeeded admirably and was a source of interest aud 
 occupation not only to its founder, but to Miss Edge- 
 worth, who always threw herself with ardour into 
 everything that interested those about her. 
 
 The lives of women are rarely eventful, and Miss
 
 158 MABLA EDGEWOBTH. 
 
 ESdgeworth's was perhaps less so than that of most. 
 
 Her existence moved in the quiet circle of home, and 
 
 like most women she was much and often occupied 
 
 with what she happily calls " the necessary business of 
 
 life, which must be done behind the scenes." The 
 
 monotony of her existence was onty broken by visits 
 
 to and from friends, and by receiving letters, events in 
 
 those days of few newspapers, when letters were longer, 
 
 more detailed than they are now, when they were sent 
 
 round to a whole circle for perusal, when those who 
 
 were abroad penned long descriptions of all they saw 
 
 in what are now beaten tracks familiar to most persons 
 
 as Piccadilly. The even course of life at Edgeworths- 
 
 town certainly did not furnish much material for 
 
 letters except to those interested in the well-being of 
 
 the numerous members of the household, and Miss 
 
 Edgew T orth's are mostly filled with domestic details of 
 
 this nature. In August 1821 she writes : — 
 
 What '1" Y"U think is my employmenl out <>f doors, mid what ii 
 been this week past ? My garden? \'<> such elegant thing; but 
 making a gutter! a sewer and a pathway in tin' Btreet of Edgeworths- 
 town; and I do declare lam as much interested about it as I ever 
 was in writing anything in my life. We have never here yet found it 
 necessary t<> have recourse to public contribution forthe poor. 1ml it is 
 necessary to give some assistance to the labouring class ; ami I find 
 that making the said gutter and pathway will employ twenty men for 
 three weeks. 
 
 In the late autumn she yielded to the invitations of 
 her many English friends to spend some time among 
 them. She took with her her former travelling com- 
 panions, for without some of her family Miss Edge- 
 worth felt as if she had left too many pieces of herself 
 behind, and could not enjoy anything thoroughly. 
 Once more the sisters passed some interesting and 
 agreeable months, visiting at the houses of various
 
 LONDON. 159 
 
 friends ; and during the spring and winter months 
 hiring a house of their own in London, where they 
 entertained and were entertained. They lived in a 
 whirl of town dissipation, knowing six different and 
 totally independent sets, " scientific, literary, political, 
 travelled, artist, and the fine fashionable of various 
 shades.'" Miss Edgeworth found the different styles 
 of conversation very entertaining, and sent home bright 
 pictures of the various things she saw and heard. 
 
 In the hurried life we have led for some weeks past, and among the 
 great variety of illustrious and foolish people we have seen pass in 
 rapid panoramas before us, some remain for ever fixed in the memory 
 and some few touch the heart. 
 
 At one house, Mrs. Somerville was met and thus 
 described : — 
 
 Mrs. Somerville — little, slightly made, fair hair, pink colour ; small 
 grey, round, intelligent, smiling eyes ; very pleasing countenance ; 
 remarkably soft voice, strong but well-bred Scotch accent ; timid, not 
 disqualifying timid, but naturally modest, yet with a degree of self- 
 possession through it which prevents her being in the least awkward, 
 and gives her all the advantage of her understanding, at the same 
 time that it adds a prepossessing charm to her manner and takes off 
 all dread of her superior scientific learning. 
 
 Some days were happily spent visiting Mr. Ricardo, 
 with whose fairness in argument Miss Edgeworth was 
 struck. While her sisters danced, acted charades, or 
 played round games, Miss Edgeworth conversed with 
 the elders of the company ; but she was ever ready to 
 turn from grave to gay, and often the first to improvise 
 a masquerade or to arrange an impromptu charade. 
 Wherever there was laughter and young people, there 
 she was a favourite and sought-for companion. Her 
 life, during these months in England, certainly did 
 not lack outward variety, and she was happy for her- 
 self, and yet happier because she saw her sisters pleased
 
 !«;<» ma in a i:i><n:\Yoi:Tii. 
 
 and beloved. A IVw extracts IVom her London letters 
 besl reflect her life : — 
 
 Yesterday we went, the moment we had swallowed onr breakfast, 
 by appointment to Newgate. The private door opened al sight of 
 our tickets, and the great doors and the little dooro, and the thick 
 doors, and doors of all sorts, were unbolted and unlocked, and on we 
 wont through dreary bu1 clean passages, till we came to a room where 
 rows of empty benches fronted us, and a table, on which lay a large 
 Bible. Several ladies and gentlemen entered and took their seats on 
 benches at either side of the table, in silence. 
 
 Enter Mrs Pry in a drab-coloured silk cloak, and plain borderless 
 Quaker cap; a most benevolent countenance— Guido Madonna face 
 —calm, benign. "I must make an inquiry, is .Maria Edgewortb here, 
 and where?" I wenl forward: she hade us come and sit beside her. Hei 
 lirst smile as she looked upon me I can never forget. The pri- 
 soners came in, and in an orderly manner ranged themselves on the 
 benches. All quite clean faces, hair, caps, and hands. On a very low 
 bench in front, little children were seated and were settled by their 
 mothers. Almost all these women, about thirty, were under sentence 
 of transportation, seme few only were for imprisonment. One who 
 did net appear was under sentence of death —frequently women when 
 sentenced to death lie, vine ill and unable to attend Mrs. Fry; the 
 others come regularly and voluntarily. 
 
 She opened the Bible, and read in the must sweetly solemn, sedate 
 voice I ever heard, slowly and distinctly, without anything in the 
 manner that could distract attention from the matter. Sometimes 
 she paused to explain, which she did with great judgment, addressing 
 the convicts. •• We have felt; wt are convinced." They wore very 
 attentive, unexpectedly interested, I thought, in all she said, and 
 touched by her manner. There was nothing put on in their coun- 
 tenances, not any appearance of hypocrisy. I studied their coun- 
 tenances carefully, hut I could not see any which, without knowing to 
 whom they belonged, I should have decided was bad ; yet Mrs. Pry 
 assured mo that all those women had been of the worst sort. She 
 confirmed what we have read and heard, that it was by their love of 
 their children thai she first obtained influence over these abandoned 
 women. When she first took notice of one or two of their fine chil- 
 dren, the mothers said that if she could hut save their children from 
 the misery they had gone through in vice, they would do anything she 
 hid them. And when they sail the change made in their children bj 
 her schooling, they begged to attend themselves. I could not have 
 
 conceived that the love of their children could have remained so 
 strong in hearts in which every other feeling of virtue had so long
 
 LONDON. 161 
 
 been dead. The Vicar of Wakefield's sermon in prison is, it seems, 
 founded on a deep and true knowledge of human nature, — the spark 
 of good is often smothered, never wholly extinguished. Mrs. Fry often 
 says an extempore prayer, but this day she was quite silent, while she 
 covered her face with her hands for some minutes ; the women were 
 perfectly silent with their eyes fixed upon her, and when she said, 
 " You may go," they went away slowly. The children sat quite still 
 the whole time, — when one leaned, her mother behind set her upright. 
 Mrs. Fry told us that the dividing the women into classes has been of 
 the greatest advantage, and putting them under the care of monitors. 
 There is some little pecuniary advantage attached to the office of 
 monitor, which makes them emulous to obtain it. We went through 
 the female wards with Mrs. Fry, and saw the women at various 
 works, knitting, rug-making, etc. They have done a great deal 
 of needle-work very neatly, and some very ingenious. When I ex- 
 pressed my foolish wonder at this to Mrs. Fry's sister, she replied, 
 " We have to do, recollect, ma'am, not with fools, but with rogues." 
 ****** it- 
 
 Far from being disappointed with the sight of what Mrs. Fry has 
 effected, I was delighted. We emerged again from the thick dark 
 silent walls of Newgate to the bustling city, and thence to the elegant 
 part of the town ; and before we had time to arrange our ideas, and 
 while the mild Quaker face and voice, and wonderful resolution and 
 successful exertion of this admirable woman were fresh in our minds, 
 morning visitors flowed in and common fife again went on. 
 
 At Almack's, that exclusive Paradise of Fashion to 
 
 which they were admitted, Lord Londonderry came up 
 
 and talked to Miss Edgeworth about Castle Rackrent 
 
 and Ireland generally. He expressed himself as having 
 
 been dying with impatience to be introduced to her. 
 
 She naively says : — 
 
 It surprised me very much to perceive the rapidity with which 
 a minister's having talked to a person spread through the room. 
 Everybody I met afterwards that night and the next day observed 
 to me that they had seen Lord Londonderry talking to me a great 
 while. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons was among the persons whose acquain- 
 tance they formed. 
 
 She gave us the history of her first acting of Lady Macbeth, and 
 of her resolving, in the sleep scene, to lay down the candle-stick, con- 
 
 11
 
 162 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 trary to the precedent ol Mi-. Pritchard and all the traditions, before 
 she began to wash her hands and Bay, "Chrl rile BpotI" Sheridan 
 knocked violently al her door during the five minutes she had 
 desired to have entirely to herself in compose her spirits before the 
 play began. Ho burst in, ami prophesied that she would ruin her- 
 self for ever if she persevered in this resolution to lay down the 
 eandlc-stick ! She persisted, however, in her determination, succeeded, 
 was applauded, and Sheridan begged her pardon. She described well 
 the awe she felt, and the power of the excitement given to her by the 
 sight of Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Sir Joshua Reynolds in tho 
 pit. 
 
 Morning, dinner, evening parties, succeeded one 
 another. Miss Edgeworth had not even time to note 
 them. In June (1822), the sisters at last returned 
 home, Miss Edgeworth by no means loth to resume 
 the thread ol* her domestic affairs. She set to work 
 upon the Sequel to Harry and Lucy, which was one 
 among the duty-tasks she deemed it right to do, 
 because her father had wished it to be completed. 
 " I could never be easy writing anything for my own 
 amusement till I have done this, which I know my 
 father wished to have finished." 
 
 Portions of Ireland were suffering from famine that 
 summer. The deplorable state of the south in especial 
 aroused all Miss Edgcwortlv's sympathies. But she 
 feared that as one source of grievance was removed 
 another would spring up. 
 
 The minds bent on mischief are unconquered In fact it is almost 
 the avowed object of the people to drive tho remaining resident gentry 
 from the country. I do not think the hatred is between Protestant 
 and Catholic, but between landlord and tenant. 1 should Bay, between 
 tenant and landlord. The landlords are the greatest sufferers. 
 Observe what I have said applies only to the south. The north is in 
 good condition. The neighbourhood of Scotland and imported grafted 
 habits of industry, have made that part of Ireland almost Scotch. 
 Our tonantry pay comparatively well. 
 
 She proceeded to show, however, that they were all at
 
 SIB WALTER SCOTT. 163 
 
 least a year behind-hand with their rent, and that 
 Lovell let them pay just when they liked, not insisting 
 upon a rent-day. 
 
 In the spring of 1823, Miss Edgeworth and her 
 sisters, Sophy and Harriet, paid some visits in Scot- 
 land. At Edinburgh they settled into lodgings near 
 their friends the Alisons ; but the very first evening 
 was spent with Scott, who desired that they should 
 hear some Highland boat-songs at his house. Of this 
 introduction to Scott, and the first evening spent with 
 him, Miss Edgeworth penned a most vivid account. 
 
 The next day Scott insisted on showing them the 
 sights of Edinburgh, about whose beauties he was 
 enthusiastic. 
 
 His conversation allfthe time better than anything we could see, 
 full of apropos anecdote, historic, serious, or comic, just as occasion 
 called for it, and all with a bonhommie and an ease that made us forget 
 it was any trouble even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal 
 stairs. 
 
 Indeed Scott almost took forcible possession of the 
 Miss Edgeworths, so anxious was he to show honour 
 to the author whom he regarded as the most dis- 
 tinguished of contemporary novelists. 
 
 How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes, I cannot 
 conceive ; he appears to have nothing to think of but to be amusing, 
 and he never tires, though he is so entertaining. He far surpasses 
 my expectations. 
 
 Their delight in each other's society was mutual. 
 Scott wrote to a friend at the time : — 
 
 I have very little news to send you : Miss Edgeworth is at present 
 the great lioness of Edinburgh, and a very nice lioness ; she is full 
 of fun and spirit ; a little slight figure, very active in her motions, 
 very good-humoured, and full of enthusiasm. 
 
 Many of the " Northern Lights " were absent at the 
 time of Miss Edgewortlx's visit, but she made the 
 
 11 *
 
 164 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 acquaintance of Jeffrey, renewed many old friendships, 
 and formed new ties. It was a feature of Miss Edge- 
 worth, as it had been of her father, and it is one that 
 speaks eloquently in favour of their characters, that 
 they never lost a friend, or dropped connection with 
 those in whom they had once been interested. Friends 
 once made were friends for life, and were sure of a 
 warm welcome if they came to Ireland, or of a ready 
 answer to any call they might make upon time or 
 heart. Miss Edgeworth's amiable character won for 
 her a far larger circle of friends than her father ever 
 possessed, she had none of those angles in her character 
 which repelled so many from him. Wherever she went 
 she expressed her gratified surprise at the cordiality 
 which people showed towards her, and she met no less 
 of it in Scotland than elsewhere. 
 
 After a few weeks spent at Edinburgh, William Edge- 
 worth joined his sisters in a tour through the High- 
 lands. Loch Katrine had, of course, special interest to 
 her, because of its connection with Scott. She does 
 not think it more beautiful than Killarney : " But 
 where is the lake of our own or any other times, 
 that has such delightful power over the imagination 
 by the recollection it raises ? " 
 
 This Highland tour afforded her great pleasure. 
 "The 'felicity-hunters' have found more felicity than 
 such hunters usually meet with." Unfortunately it 
 ended badly. She caught cold, and was taken ill with 
 a very severe attack of erysipelas that laid her up for ten 
 days in a small Scotch inn. She had been ailing more 
 or less for some months past, and this attack was pro- 
 bably only a climax. As soon as she could move, some 
 friends took her into their house and nursed her 
 tenderly, but she was weak for some time after. But
 
 SIB WALTER SCOTT. 165 
 
 almost before it was true, she tells her step-mother that 
 she is off the invalid list. Scott was anxious to have 
 her at Abbotsford, and promised to nurse her carefully. 
 At the end of July she and her sisters yielded to his 
 friendly entreaties, and spent a fortnight with him in 
 his home. Lockhart speaks of the time of her visit as 
 one of the happiest in Scott's life. Until the Miss 
 Edge worths arrived the season had been wet. It 
 was a great joy to Sir Walter that with her appear- 
 ance summer appeared too. On his expressing this, 
 Miss Sophy Edgeworth mentioned the Irish tune 
 " You 've brought the summer with you," and repeated 
 the first line of the words Moore had adapted to it. 
 "How pretty!" said Sir Walter; "Moore's the man 
 for songs. Campbell can write an ode and I can write 
 a ballad, but Moore beats us all at a song." 
 
 Miss Edgeworth was charmed with Scott and his 
 home, with the excursions he took them, with the 
 drives she had with him in his little carriage, during 
 which the flow of his anecdotes, wit, and wisdom, never 
 ceased. His joyous manner and life of mind, his 
 looks of fond pride in his children, the pleasantness of 
 his easy manners, his keen sense of humour, enchanted 
 her. She also liked Lady Scott, a liking that was 
 returned. Miss Edgeworth considered her 
 
 A most kind-hearted, hospitable person, who had much more sense 
 and more knowledge of character and discrimination than many of 
 those who ridiculed her. I know I never can forget her kindness to 
 me when I was ill at Abbotsford. Her last words at parting were, 
 " God bless you ! we shall never meet again." At that time it was 
 much more likely that I should have died, I thought, than she. 
 
 This was not Miss Edgeworth's first visit to Edin- 
 burgh, and Lady Scott expressed her surprise that Sir 
 Walter and she had not met earlier. " Why," said Sir
 
 166 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my 
 dear, Miss Edge worth was not a lion then, and my 
 mane, you know, was not grown at all." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was as sorry to part with his guests 
 as Miss Edgeworth was to go, but she felt that the 
 longer she lingered the more difficult it would be to 
 depart. 
 
 After paying some more Scotch visits, and a few 
 Irish ones, the Miss Edgeworths returned home in 
 September, and life once more became uneventful. 
 Even to Mrs. Ruxton there was nothing to tell. 
 
 It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day 
 longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or launching. You 
 ask what I am doing? Nothing, bul reading ami idling, and paving a 
 gutter and yard to Honora's pig-stye and school-house. What have 
 
 I I ji reading? The Siege <>f Valencia, by Mrs Hemans, which is 
 
 an hour too long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry 
 I have read for years. 
 
 Sickness, deaths, marriages and births were of fre- 
 quent occurrence in that large family. Miss Edge- 
 worth's heart was capacious and could answer to all 
 calls made upon it. Whether it was to rejoice with 
 those that rejoiced, or to weep with those that wept, she 
 always responded. 
 
 It is the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced age, to see 
 friend after friend go, for so much it detaches one from life ; yet it 
 still more makes us value the friends we have left. And continually, 
 at every fresh blow, I really wonder, and am thankful, most truly 
 thankful, that I have so many, so much left. 
 
 A young sister who had ailed for years, and was 
 obliged to lie flat on a couch, was a constant source of 
 solicitude. What could be done to divert her, to com- 
 fort her, or alleviate her sufferings, was always in Miss 
 Edgeworth's mind. Lucy's name occurs often in her 
 letters, and whenever she is absent and there is any-
 
 HOME LIFE. 167 
 
 thing especially amusing to relate, the letter is always 
 addressed to her. In 18.24 Miss Edgeworth lost her 
 sister, Mrs. Beddoes. A few months before, Sophy 
 was married to a Captain Fox. She was grieved 
 to lose this sister, and the marriage affected her 
 deeply. 
 
 Though Miss Edgeworth was now past fifty, she 
 showed neither bodily nor mental signs of advancing 
 years. Indeed, mentally she was as fresh and as young 
 as ever, and her letters reflect the same pleasure in life 
 and all it offers that they evinced throughout. Only on 
 New Year's Day, which was also her birthday, does she 
 indulge in any reflections concerning the flight of time. 
 Here is a letter written in 1825 : — 
 
 A happy new year to you, my dearest aunt, to you to whom I now 
 look as much as I can to anyone now living, for the rays of pleasure 
 that I expect to gild my bright evening of life. As we advance in life 
 we become more curious, more fastidious in gilding and gilders ; we 
 find, to our cost, that all that glitters is not gold, and your every-day 
 bungling carvers and gilders will not do. Our evening gilders must be 
 more skilful than those who flashed and daubed away in the morning 
 of lif e, and gilt with any tinsel, the weathercock for the morning sun. 
 You may perceive, my dear aunt, by my having got so finely to the 
 weathercock, and the rising sun, that I am out of the hands of all my 
 dear apothecaries, and playing away again with a superfluity of life. 
 (N.B. I am surprisingly prudent.) Honora's cough has almost sub- 
 sided, and Lucy can sit upright the greater part of the day. " God 
 bless the mark ! " as Molly Bristow would say, if she heard me, 
 " don't be bragging." 
 
 Not many days later, when her step-mother and 
 some friends, " poor souls and full-dressed bodies/' 
 had gone out to dinner, she penned another long 
 letter to the same correspondent, a letter delightfully 
 fresh in tone and full of her personality : — 
 
 In a few days I trust — you know I am a great truster — you will 
 receive a packet franked by Lord Bathurst, containing only a little
 
 168 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 pocket-book — Friendship's Offering for 1K.">. ili/.encd out. I fear yon 
 will think it too line for your taste, bul there is in it,. 'is you will 
 tind, the old Mental Thermometer, which was once a favourite of 
 
 yours. You will wonder how it came there. Simply thus: I. 
 autumn came by the coach a parcel containing just such a book as 
 this for last year, and a letter from Mr. Lupton Itclfe — a foreigner 
 settled in London — ami lie prayed in most polite bookseller strain that 
 I would look over my portfolio for some trifle for this book for L826, 
 I might have looked over "my portfolio " till doomsday, as I have not 
 an unpublished scrap, exe.pt Taken for Granted. But I recollected 
 the Mental Thermometer, and that it had never been out, except in 
 the Irish Farmer's Journal, — not known in England. So I routed in 
 the garret, under pyramids of old newspapers, with my mother's 
 prognostics that I never should find it. and loud prophecies that I 
 should catch my death, which I 'lid not ; but dirty and dusty ami 
 cobwebby, I came forth, after two hours' grovelling, with my object in 
 my hand. Cut it out. added a few lines of new end to it, and packed it 
 off to Lupton Relfe. telling him that it was an old thing written when 
 I was sixteen. Weeks elapsed, and I heard no more, when there came 
 a letter exuberant in gratitude, and sending a parcel containing six 
 copies of the new memorandum book, and a most beautiful twelfth 
 edition of Scott's poetical works, bound in the most elegant manner, 
 and with most beautifully engraved frontispieces and vignettes, and a 
 £i> note. I was quite ashamed — but I have done all I could for him, 
 by giving the Friendship's Offerings to all the tine peoplel could think 
 of. The set of Scott's works made a nice new year's gift for Harriet : 
 she had seen this edition at Edinburgh and particularly wished for it. 
 The £5 I have sent to Harriet Beaufort to he laid out in books for 
 Fanny Stewart. Little did I think the poor old Thermometer would 
 give me so much pleasure. Here comes the carriage rolling round. 
 I feel guilty. What will my mother say to me. so long a letter at 
 this time of night? Yours affectionately, in all the haste of guilt. 
 conscience stricken: that is. found out. 
 
 No : all safe, all innocent — because not found out. 
 Kims. 
 
 By the author of Mora/ Tales and Practical Education. 
 
 In 1825, Scott paid his long-promised visit to Edge- 
 •vvorthstown. He came in August, bringing with him 
 his daughter, Lockhart, and Mr. Crampton, a surgeon 
 friend of the Edgeworths, " who equally gratified both 
 the novelists by breaking the toils of his great practice
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 169 
 
 to witness their meeting on his native soil." Miss 
 Edgeworth writes : — 
 
 I am glad that kind Crampton had the reward of this journey; 
 though frequently hid from each other by clouds of dust in their 
 open carriage, they had, as they told us, never ceased talking. They 
 like each other as much as two men of so much genius and so much 
 benevolence should, and we rejoice to be the bond of union. 
 ******* 
 
 Sir Walter delights the heart of every creature who sees, hears, 
 and knows him. He is most benignant as well as most entertaining ; 
 the noblest and the gentlest of lions, and his face, especially the lower 
 part of it, is excessively like a lion ; he and Mr. Crampton and Mr. 
 Jephson were delighted together. The school band after dinner by 
 moonlight playing Scotch tunes, and the boys at leap-frog, delighted 
 Sir Walter. Nest day we went to the school for a very short time. 
 and saw a little of everything, and a most favourable impression was 
 left. It being Saturday, religious instruction was going on when we 
 went in. Catholics with their priest in one room ; Protestants with 
 Mr. Keating in the other. More delightful conversation I have seldom 
 in my life heard than we have been blessed with these three days. 
 What a touch of sorrow must mix with the pleasures of all who have 
 had great losses. Lovell, my mother, and I, at twelve o'clock at 
 night, joined in exclaiming, " How delightful ! 0! that he had lived 
 to see and hear this ! " 
 
 Of the details of this visit, Lockhart, in his Life of 
 Scott, has furnished an account. He draws attention 
 to the curious coincidence that Goldsmith and Maria 
 Edgeworth should both have derived their early love 
 and knowledge of Irish character from the same 
 district, Pallesmore being indeed in the property of the 
 Edgeworths. 
 
 After a week's stay, Sir Walter and his friends 
 departed to visit Killarney ; and Miss Edgeworth, her 
 sister Harriet, and brother William, were easily per- 
 suaded to be of the party. The journey was a delightful 
 one to all concerned; and though a few little mis- 
 haps occurred, such as the difficulties of finding post- 
 horses to convey so large a party, everything was
 
 170 MARIA EDGEWOBTH. 
 
 turned to enjoyment. Sir Walter and Miss Bdgeworth 
 shared this faculty of looking on the bright side of the 
 necessary discomforts of a journey, and extracting 
 amusement from every incident, a faculty for want of 
 which so many travellers fail to enjoy themselves. 
 They charmed all with whom they came in contact, 
 down to the very boatman who rowed them on the 
 lake of Killarney, and who, rowing Lord Macaulay 
 twenty years afterwards, told him that the circumstance 
 had made him amends for missing a hanging that day ! 
 On Sir Walter Scott's birthday a large gathering of 
 the clans Edgeworth and Scott took place at Dublin. 
 "Sir Walter's health was drunk with more feeling than 
 gaiety," and on that same evening he and Miss Edge- 
 worth parted, never to meet again.
 
 171 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1826 to 1834. 
 
 It was in 1825 that the second part of Harry and Lucy 
 was published, completing the labours planned for Miss 
 Edgeworth by her father. The good reception it met 
 with caused her to contemplate writing some more 
 short tales, but she missed the guiding friend that had 
 so long directed her. A story called Taken for Granted 
 had long been on the stocks. Though never finished, 
 she was occupied with it for some time, and began to 
 see clearly where her difficulties lay. 
 
 Your observations about tbe difficulties of Taken for Granted are 
 excellent ; I " take for granted " I shall be able to conquer them. If 
 only one instance were taken, the whole story must turn upon that, 
 and be constructed to bear on one point ; and that pointing to the 
 moral would not appear natural. As Sir Walter said to me in reply to 
 my observing, " It is difficult to introduce the moral without dis- 
 pleasing the reader," " The rats won't go into the trap if they smell the 
 hand of the rat-catcher." 
 
 The opening of the year 1826 was one of general 
 financial depression. This was, of course, felt yet more 
 acutely in Ireland, where money affairs are never too 
 flourishing. Even the estate of Edgeworthstown, that 
 had as yet safely weathered all storms, was affected, and 
 it was in consequence of this that, at her brother
 
 172 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 LovelTs desire, Miss Edgeworth once more resumed 
 the rent-receiving and general management, which, 
 since her father's death, she had abandoned. With 
 consummate skill and energy she managed so that her 
 family escaped the flood that swamped so many. For 
 Miss Edgeworth had keen business faculties, though, 
 except in the matter of the estate, they had never been 
 called into play. Her step-mother tells how : — 
 
 " The great difficulty was paying everybody when 
 rents were not to be had ; but Maria, resolutely avoid- 
 ing the expense and annoyance of employing a solicitor, 
 undertook the whole, borrowing money in small sums, 
 paying off encumbrances and repaying the borrowed 
 money as the times improved ; thus enabling her brother 
 to keep the land which so many proprietors were then 
 obliged to sell, while never distressing the tenants, she 
 at last brought the whole business to a triumphant 
 conclusion." 
 
 Yet at no time was Miss Edgeworth absorbed in one 
 thing only; her wide and universal interests could not 
 slumber. Thus, with all the work of a large estate on 
 her hands, she still found time to read extensively. The 
 letters published by Sir Walter Scott under the 
 pseudonym of Sir Malachy Malagrowther had just 
 appeared. They interested her strangely. 
 
 Lord Carrington was so kind as to frank to me these extraordinary 
 performances, which shall reach you through Lord Rosse, if you please. 
 It is wonderful that a poet could work up such an enthusiasm about 
 one-pound notes ; wonderful that a lawyer should venture to be so 
 violent on the occasion as to talk of brandishing claymores, and 
 passing the fiery cross from hand to hand; and yet there is the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer answering it from his place in Parliament 
 as a national concern ! If Pat had written it, the Attorney-General 
 would, perhaps, have noticed it ; but " Up with the shillela! " in Pat's 
 mouth, and " Out with the claymore ! *' in Sir Malachy'e, are different 
 quite.
 
 HOME LIFE. 173 
 
 A visit from Sir Humphrey Davy during the 
 summer was a great delight. Miss Edge worth speaks 
 of the range and pitch of his mind with high praise, 
 and relates besides an amusing anecdote that he told : — 
 
 Sir Humphrey repeated to us a remarkable criticism of Bonaparte's 
 on Talma's acting : " You don't play Nero well ; you gesticulate too 
 much ; you speak with too much vehemence. A despot does not need 
 all that ; he need onty pronounce. II sait qviil se suffit. And," added 
 Talma, who told this to Sir Humphrey, " Bonaparte, as he said this, 
 folded his arms in his well-known manner, and stood as if his attitude 
 expressed the sentiment." 
 
 A little later another sister was taken from the 
 family circle by marriage ; this time it was Miss Edge- 
 worth's travelling companion and friend Harriet, who 
 married Mr. Butler, a clergyman. The home party 
 was thinning, and Miss Edgeworth, who liked to have 
 a large number of her loved ones about her, felt this 
 keenly. But happily young nephews and nieces were 
 springing up to take the place of those who were gone 
 and fill the house with that sunshine of child life and 
 child laughter, that had seldom been absent from its 
 walls. 
 
 She wrote to her brother about a little nephew : — 
 
 How you will like that child and make it see " upper air." How 
 long since those times when you used to show its mother and Harriet 
 upper air ! Do you remember how you used to do it to frighten me, 
 and how I used to shut my eyes when you threw them up, and how you 
 used to call me to look ! Ah ! le bon temps ! But we are all very 
 happy now, and it is delightful to hear a child's voice cooing, or even 
 crying, again in this house. 
 
 She was devoted to children, and never happier than 
 when surrounded by them. They in their turn loved 
 the kind little old lady — for she was getting an old lady 
 now — who played with them so merrily, who entered 
 into all their fun, who told them such pretty stories,
 
 174 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 who plied tlicra with pennies and all manner of good 
 and pretty things. She never lost the power of speak- 
 ing their language, her letters to children are among 
 some of the most genial she wrote. She was pleased 
 and gratified when the little ones liked her or her 
 stories. 
 
 Visits to Mrs. Ruxton at Black Castle, to married 
 brothers and sisters, or to friends, formed more and 
 more frequent interludes in her home life; but each 
 time she returns, Miss Edgeworth records her excessive 
 happiness to find herself at Edgeworthstown again, with 
 her beloved step-mother and those who still were left. 
 
 After one such visit to Mrs. Ruxton, she writes to 
 her : — 
 
 After spending four months with you, it is most delightful to me to 
 receive from you such assurances that I have been a pleasure and a 
 comfort to you. I often think of William's most just and characteristic 
 expression, that you have given him a desire to live to advanced age, 
 by showing him how much happiness can be felt and conferred in age, 
 whore the affections and intellectual faculties are preserved in all their 
 vivacity. In you there is a peculiar habit of allowing constantly for 
 the compensating good qualities of all connected with you, and never 
 unjustly expecting impossible perfections. This, which I have so often 
 admired in you, I have often determined to imitate; and in this my 
 sixtieth year, to commence in a few days, I will, I am resolved, make 
 great progress. " Rosamond at sixty," says Margaret. We are all a 
 very happy party here, and I wish you could see at this moment, 
 sitting opposite to me on a sofa and in an arm-chair the mother and 
 daughter and grand-child. 
 
 The outward course of existence at home was one of 
 quiet routine. Habits of order had been early impressed 
 upon Miss Edgeworth by Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, and, 
 though naturally impetuous, she had curbed herself to 
 act with method. It was thanks to these acquired 
 habits that she was able to accomplish daily such a 
 surprising amount of multifarious work. It was her
 
 HOME LIFE. 175 
 
 custom to get up at seven, take a cup of coffee, read 
 her letters, and then walk out about three quarters of 
 an hour before breakfast. So punctual and regular 
 was she that for many years a lady residing in the 
 village used to be roused by her maid with the words, 
 " Miss Edgeworth's walking, ma'am, it's eight o'clock.'" 
 She generally returned with her hands full of roses or 
 other flowers that she had gathered, and, taking her 
 needle-work or knitting, would sit down at the family 
 breakfast, a meal that was a special favourite of hers, 
 though she rarely partook of anything. But while the 
 others were eating she delighted to read out to them 
 such extracts from the letters she had received as she 
 thought would please them. She listened, too, while 
 the newspaper was read aloud, although its literary and 
 scientific contents always attracted her more than its 
 political ; for in politics, except Irish, she took little 
 interest. 
 
 This social meal ended, she would sit down to write, 
 penning letters, attending to business, or inditing 
 stories if any such were in progress. She almost always 
 wrote in the common sitting-room, as she had done 
 during her father's life-time, and for many years on a 
 little desk he had made for her, and on which, shortly 
 before his death, he had inscribed the words : — 
 
 On this humble desk were written all the numerous works of my 
 daughter, Maria Edgeworth,in the common sitting-room of my family. 
 In these works, which were chiefly written to please me, she has 
 never attacked the personal character of any human being, or inter- 
 fered with the opinions of any sect or party, religious or political ; 
 while endeavouring to inform and instruct others, she improved and 
 amused her own mind and gratified her heart, which I do believe is 
 better than her head. 
 
 R. L. E. 
 
 After her father's death she used a writing-desk that
 
 176 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 bad been his, and which accompanied her whenever 
 she went away. At home it was placed on a table lie 
 had made, and to which she, inheriting some of his 
 faculty for mechanical inventions, had attached some 
 ingenious contrivances of her own, such as brackets, 
 fire-screens, and paper rests. In summer time this 
 little table was generally rolled into a recess behind the 
 pillars of the library, in winter it stood near the fire. 
 She wrote on folio sheets, which she sewed together in 
 chapters, and her MSS. were wonderfully neat, clean, 
 and free from erasures. At luncheon time she ceased 
 writing, and since she made this her chief meal in the 
 day, she was obliged, often most unwillingly, to forego 
 her desire to return to her desk. But she knew that to 
 write directly after eating was bad for her, and she 
 submitted instead to doing some needle- work. It was 
 while working with her needle, however, that most of 
 her stories were conceived and developed. 
 
 Sometimes she would drive out in the afternoon. 
 She was rather nervous about horses, and always sat 
 with her back to them that she might not see them. 
 When quite at her ease on the score of coachman and 
 steeds, she greatly enjoyed a drive in an open carriage, 
 talking and laughing all the time, and amusing her 
 companions with her endless flow of anecdotes and fun. 
 With her habitual indifference to nature she rarely 
 knew and still less cared whither the drive had been 
 directed. Most commonly she wrote again till dinner 
 time. In her latter years she would retire and sleep 
 for an hour after this meal, rejoining the family circle 
 at the tea-table. The evenings w r ere usually spent in 
 reading aloud ; sometimes Miss Edgeworth was the 
 reader, sometimes she would work and listen while 
 others read. The enjoyment she felt in literature was
 
 HOME LIFE. 177 
 
 imparted to those about her j she would manage to 
 extract something, either knowledge or amusement, 
 out of the dullest book. Her stepmother says that 
 she would often linger after the usual bed-time, to 
 talk over what she had heard, when bright, deep, or 
 solid observations would alternate with gay anecdotes 
 apropos of the work or its author. For Miss Edge- 
 worth's best talk was not reserved for abroad, but was 
 rather poured forth at its best when surrounded by 
 those she loved. That her conversation was at all 
 times delightful there is abundant testimony. Mr. 
 Ticknor says of it : " There was a life and spirit about 
 her conversation, she threw herself into it with such 
 abandon, she retorted with such brilliant repartee, and, 
 in short, she talked with such extraordinary flow of 
 natural talent, that I don't know whether anything 
 of the kind could be finer." 
 
 It is said that even those who came to pay a mere 
 morning call would often remain for hours, loth to 
 terminate the conversation. Nor was her talk by any 
 means uniformly grave ; she knew most happily how 
 to blend the grave and gay ; she loved to laugh herself 
 and arouse laughter in others, and when she laughed, 
 she did so with all the exuberant enjoyment of an 
 Irishwoman. Indeed, there was far more of the light- 
 hearted merry Irishwoman in Miss Edgeworth than 
 her writings, especially her moral tales, would lead the 
 world to suppose. In her, Irish good qualities were 
 mingled with practical wisdom, judgment, and good 
 sense, and produced a combination both rare and 
 charming. She said of herself that she was ugly, 
 remarking that she was the last ugly person left, the 
 rest of the world were no longer anything but plain ; 
 but those who knew her did not subscribe to this 
 
 12
 
 178 MMtIA EDGEWORTR. 
 
 verdict. She was not, and never had been, good- 
 looking*; but a face that beamed sucli kindliness, 
 reflected such intelligence, could never be really plain. 
 In form, she was petite ; her well-made, almost elegant 
 figure, that remained slight to the last, was enhanced 
 by a scrupulously trim appearance. She was very neat 
 and particular in her dress, and was not only always 
 tidy, but well-attired, and in accordance with the 
 fashion. She maintained throughout her life that a 
 woman should not be above attending to her dress. 
 Ostentation of any kind was foreign to her nature. 
 When a relative died, leaving her a pair of valuable 
 diamond ear-rings and pearl bracelets, her instant 
 thought was, what good could she do with them. 
 They were sold at once, and with the proceeds she 
 built a village market-house, and a room for the 
 magistrate's petty sessions. Her generosity, both in 
 giving money, time, and labour for others, was bound- 
 less ; and her kindnesses were made doubly kind by 
 the thoughtfulness with which they were executed. 
 Thus, for example, many of her tenants and neigh- 
 bours had relations or friends who had emigrated to 
 the United States. These poor people often found 
 that letters they wrote to America miscarried, a fre- 
 quent reason being, of course, insufficient or illegible 
 addresses. To obviate this, Miss Edgeworth caused 
 them to send her all their letters, which she then 
 forwarded once a month. This labour often gave her 
 no small trouble, but she grudged neither this nor 
 the time spent in making up the monthly packet. 
 Her poor neighbours, she deemed, repaid her only 
 
 * She always refused to have her portrail taken, and all published 
 
 o-called portraits of Maria Edgoworth are purely fancy productions.
 
 HOME LIFE. 179 
 
 too richly by their gratitude. She was certainly one 
 of the few people who practise what they preach ; 
 she exemplified in her own person all those judicious 
 plans and rules for helping the needy which she had 
 brought forward in her works. When it is further 
 remembered that Miss Edgeworth retained, to the very 
 last, until her 82nd year, that faculty, which is judged 
 the exclusive gift of youth, of admitting new interests 
 into her life, and that she further made them to run 
 side by side with those she had held of yore, in this 
 mode enriching and widening her mental and emotional 
 horizon, it is little wonder that her old age was one 
 of serene felicity. 
 
 The marriage of Fanny Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's 
 favourite among all her younger sisters, was a real 
 grief to her for the moment, though, with her usual 
 unselfishness, she upbraided herself for feeling such 
 " shameful, weak, selfish sorrow, at parting with this 
 darling child. " A pleasure of a very different kind 
 came to her shortly after in the shape of Sir Walter 
 Scott's introduction to his collected Waverley Novels. 
 The sheets, while passing through the press, had been 
 sent to her, and she felt that Scott had, in the 
 most delightful and kind manner, said everything that 
 could gratify her "as an author, friend, and human 
 creature.'" 
 
 You might well say that I should bo "ill to please" — you might 
 have said impossible to please — if what you sent to me had not 
 pleased, gratified, delighted me to the top of my bent ; saturated me 
 head and heart with the most grateful sense of the kindness of my 
 most admired friend, and with the unspeakable gratification of such a 
 testimony of his esteem and affection. I know full well, most 
 sincerely I feel, that he over-values infinitely what I have written : 
 but of this I am proud, because it proves to me that private friend- 
 ship of his which I value above all, even his public praise. . . . 
 
 12 *
 
 180 MA HI A KhGFAYOU'ni. 
 
 Bolievo mo, my dear sir, I feel it nil ; and if I could, as you 
 Bay, Hatter myself that Sir Walter Scott was in any degree inllueneed 
 to write and publish his novels from seeing my sketches of Irish 
 character, 1 should indeed triumph in the thought of having boon the 
 proximate cause of such happiness to millions. 
 
 Among the many advanced movements that Mr. 
 ESdgeworth had advocated was the cause of Catholic 
 Emancipation. In such public measures as her father 
 had felt an interest, Miss Edgeworth felt one too ; and 
 it was a great joy to her that not only she, but her 
 father's sister, had lived to see this measure carried. 
 It is amusing to learn that it was a grievance of 
 O'Connell's against Miss Edgeworth that she never 
 directly espoused this cause by means of her pen. 
 This was, in real fact, a compliment, as showing what 
 a power her writings had become. 
 
 In the summer, the " reaper whose name is death " 
 re-appeared amidst that united family, carrying off 
 this time the able engineer, William Edgeworth, who 
 also succumbed to the fatal family malady. It was a 
 shock and a grief to his devoted sister, who sorrowed 
 the more when she saw her juniors go before her, 
 and the grief told on her own health. She was ailing 
 until autumn, often confined to the sofa, and forbidden 
 her pen, though happily for her, neither her needle 
 nor her books. Her idle fancy began once more to 
 weave romances, and she planned the story of Helen, 
 and made some notes for it. Contrary to her previous 
 custom, she did not draw up a complete sketch, as she 
 had done while writing under her father's guidance. 
 She jotted down the rough outlines, and trusted to 
 spontaneous promptings to fill in the details. But she 
 was not even certain at all whether she should attempt 
 to write it; and, although encouraged by the success
 
 HELEN. 181 
 
 of Harry and Lucy, she was nervous about grappling 
 with higher work, deprived of the guide who had been 
 her life-long stay. For years she had rejected all 
 suggestions to turn her attention once more to novel- 
 writing, and, but for the encouragement of her sister 
 Harriet (Mrs. Butler), Helen would probably never 
 have seen the light. It was first seriously thought of 
 in 1830, but proceeded slowly. Life brought more 
 interruptions to her than it had done in youth — family 
 events, visits of kindness and pleasure, absorbed much 
 time. Then, too, she was greatly engrossed by her 
 agency business, to which all else was made to defer. 
 She was punctual, we are told, not only to the day, but 
 to the hour, of her payments ; and her exertions to 
 have the rents paid, and the money ready for these 
 payments, were unvarying. She herself looked after 
 the repairs, the letting of the village houses, the drains, 
 gutters and pathways, the employment of the poor, — 
 in short, all the hundred and one duties that devolve 
 upon the steward of landed property. It was con- 
 sidered by her family that all this exertion was in no 
 wise too much for her, that, on the contrary, it was 
 good for her health, inducing her to walk out and take 
 more exercise than she would have done without an 
 object in view. Even the very drudgery of accounts, 
 and letters of business, says her step-mother, " though 
 at times almost too much for her bodily strength, 
 invigorated her mind; and she went from the rent- 
 book to her little desk and the manuscript of Helen 
 with renewed vigour. She never wrote fiction with 
 more life and spirit than when she had been for some 
 time completely occupied with the hard realities of 
 life." 
 
 Nevertheless, Helen progressed slowly, and was
 
 182 MARIA EDGEWOliTII. 
 
 several times in danger <>i being thrust aside. She 
 wrote to her sister : — 
 
 My dear Harriet, can you conceive yourself to be as old lamp 
 at the pomt of extinction, and dreading the smell you would make 
 at going out. and the execrations which in your dying Bickerings 
 rou might hear? And then you can conceive the sudden Btarting 
 up again of the Ham.' 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 mo now 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. 
 
 To the day of her death, Miss Edgeworth never 
 became the prudent, staid, self-contained person, we 
 should imagine her from her books, did we possess 
 them only as guides to her character. Rosamond 
 remained as generously impulsive as ever. On one 
 occasion she writes to Mrs. Ruxton : — 
 
 It is very happy for your little niece that you have so much the 
 habit of expressing to her your kind feelings. I really think that if 
 my thoughts and feelings were shut up completely within me. I should 
 burst in a week, like a steam engine without a snifting-elack. now 
 called by the grander name of a safety-valve. You want to know 
 what I am doing and thinking of: of ditches, drains, and sewers, of 
 dragging quicks from one hedge and sticking them down into another, 
 at the imminent peril of their green lives ; of two houses to let, one 
 tenant promised from the Isle of Man, and another from the Irish 
 Survey; of two bullfinches, each in his cage on tho table — one who 
 would sing if he could, and the other who could sing, I am told, if 
 he would. Then I am thinking for three hours a day of Helen, to 
 what purpose I dare not say. 
 
 Before the year 1830 was ended, Miss Edgeworth 
 
 had lost this aunt, whom she had loved so long and 
 
 fondly. It was the severing of a life-long friendship, 
 
 ' the heaviest blow that had befallen her since her 
 
 father's death. She was in London when the event
 
 HOME LIFE. 183 
 
 took place, and it was some comfort to her to find 
 herself so kindly welcomed by those whom she had 
 liked best in years gone by. She says sadly : — 
 
 It is always gratifying to find old friends the same after long 
 absence, but it has been particularly so to me now, when not only 
 the leaves of the pleasures of life fall naturally in its winter, but 
 when the great branches on whom happiness depended are gone. 
 
 During this visit she kept out of all large parties, 
 but renewed many old ties. One of the things she 
 enjoyed most was a children's party at Mrs. Lockhart's. 
 She was in her element among the young ones. " If 
 Mrs. Lockhart had invented for ever she could not 
 have found what would please me more/' This London 
 visit extended over some months. 
 
 Old as I am, and imaginative as I am thought to be, I have really 
 always found that the pleasures I have expected would be great, have 
 actually been greater in the enjoyment than in the anticipation. This 
 is written in my sixty-fourth year. The pleasure of being with Fanny 
 has been far far greater than I had expected. The pleasures here 
 altogether, including the kindness of old friends, and the civilities of 
 acquaintances, are still more enhanced than I had calculated upon by 
 the home and the quiet library, and easy-chair morning retreat, I 
 enjoy. 
 
 On her return to Edgeworthstown she wrote : — 
 
 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. 
 It is most gratifying to me, at such a distance, to hear and to believe 
 that such kind and cultivated friends as you miss my company, and 
 wish for my future return. 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. 
 
 It is a curious circumstance, but a fact of frequent 
 observation, that large families are often more united 
 than small ones. The 'Edge worths were a case in.
 
 184 MARIA EDQEWORTH. 
 
 point. They had that devoted affection, that blind 
 belief in one another, that often distinguishes a clan. 
 
 They preferred each other's society to that of strangers ; 
 they regarded themselves as beings apart; what one 
 did, the others approved; harmony and good-wdl 
 reigned supreme. With so many different families 
 living under one roof, it was a rare and curious fusion, 
 this home party, of which one of the brothers said 
 that " each star is worthy of separate observation for 
 its serenity, brilliancy, or magnitude ; but it is as a 
 constellation they claim most regard, linked together 
 by strong attachment, and moving in harmony through 
 their useful course/' 
 
 It was as a star of the first magnitude in this constel- 
 lation that Ali>s Edgeworth loved to move and have 
 ler being, and she chose to be set there rather than 
 nine in brilliancy alone. Miss Edgeworth, the 
 woman, must always be thought of in connection with 
 her home and home attachments. To love, shrouded 
 in the quiet obscurity of domestic life, was the secret 
 of existence to this simple-minded nature. 
 
 That Helen was liked by the home circle was a real 
 pleasure to its author. She w-as anxious for criticism 
 and took all she received in good part. " I am a 
 creature/' she once said, "that can take advice, can be 
 the better for it, and am never offended by it." The 
 family approval given, the manuscript was despatched 
 to London with more confidence than she hud ever 
 expected to feel again in a literary work. Lockhart 
 managed the business arrangements, for to this she 
 did not feel equal, and when asked if the book should 
 be in two or three volumes, replied : — 
 
 I have satisfied my own conscience, which is my point, as I know 
 that, far from having stretched a single page, or a single .sentence, to
 
 IRELAND. 185 
 
 make out a third volume, I have cut ;is much as ever I could — cut it to 
 the quick; and now it matters not whether it be printed in three or in 
 two volumes. If tiresome to the ear in three, it would be equally so in 
 two, and would look worse to the eye. 
 
 The reason why her new story was not an Irish one 
 she gives in a letter to a brother in India : — 
 
 I should tell you beforehand that there is no humour in it, and no 
 Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a 
 book of fiction — realities are too strong, party-passions too violent to 
 bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The 
 people would only break the glass, and curse the fool who hold the 
 mirror up to nature — distorted nature, in a fever. We are in too 
 perilous a case to laugh, humour would be out of season, worse than 
 bad taste. Whenever the danger is past, as the man in the sonnet 
 says, " We may look back on the hardest part and laugh." Then I 
 shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter Scott once said to me, 
 "Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets forward so well in other 
 countries, is so miserable in his own?" A very difficult question: I 
 fear above my power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen. 
 and look, and read. 
 
 Things were once more in a bad way in that unhappy 
 country, and Miss Edgeworth saw great distress all 
 around her. A letter written at that time might 
 almost be written to-day : — 
 
 I fear we have much to go through in this coimtry before we come 
 to quiet, settled life, and a ready obedience to the laws. There is 
 literally no rein of law at this moment to hold the Irish ; and through 
 the whole country there is what I cannot justly call a spirit of Reform, 
 but a spirit of Revolution, under the name of reform ; a restless 
 desire to overthrow what is, and a hope — more than a hope — an 
 expectation, of gaining liberty or wealth, or both, in the struggle ; and 
 if they do gain either, they will lose both again, and be worse off than 
 •ever — they will afterwards quarrel amongst themselves, destroy one 
 another, and be again enslaved with heavier chains. I am, and have 
 been all my life, a sincere friend to moderate measures, as long as 
 reason can be heard ; but there comes a time, at the actual com- 
 mencement of uproar, when reason caimot be heard, and when the 
 ultimate law of force must be resorted to, to prevent greater evils. 
 That time was lost in the beginning of the French Revolution— I hope it
 
 186 MM IT A EDGEWORTH, 
 
 may qo1 be lost in Ireland. Tt possible thai this ootmtry 
 
 can now i, ( . tranqtullised withoul military force to re-establish lav 
 
 le must be made to obey the laws, or they cannot be ruled after 
 any c Nor would the mob l><> able to rule if they got all 
 
 lesire ; they would only tear each other to pieces, and die drunk 
 <<r famish sober. The misfortune of this country baa been that 
 England has always yielded to clamour what Bhould have been gra 
 to justice. 
 
 As Miss Edgeworth advanced in life she often spoke 
 of " my poor Ireland/' showing that hopelessness with 
 regard to the problem had dawned on her. She was a 
 patriot, but belonged to no party ; and was blind 
 neither to the nation's wrongs., follies, nor crimes. 
 She grew more and more to advocate the laissez faire 
 system. She contended that her observations, which 
 extended over so long a period of time, had shown her 
 steady progression in Ireland, and she believed that 
 the land would ultimately do well if people would only 
 not force their political nostrums upon it. What 
 she did demand from England was equality of legisla- 
 tion, but no more ; and this accorded, she believed 
 Ireland would rise from her state of degradation, 
 though of necessity the rise would be slow, since the 
 length of time of recovery must be in proportion to 
 the length and force of the infliction. Mrs. Hall very 
 rightly remarked that Miss Edgeworth's affection for 
 Ireland was " philosophic." Yet another change Miss 
 Edgeworth observed in the Irish, and one that made 
 them less useful to her for literary purposes : 
 
 The modern peasantry imagine they have a part to play in 
 the organisation of their country; their heads are fuller of politics 
 than fun ; in fact, they have been drilled into thinking about 
 what they cannot understand, and so have; become reserved and 
 suspicious — that is, to what they used to be. 
 
 After Helen had passed through the press, Miss 
 Edgeworth accompanied her friends Sir Culling and
 
 HELEN. 187 
 
 Lady Smith in a trip through Connemara. Of the 
 adventures they had on this journey — real Irish 
 adventures, with innumerable sloughs to traverse, with 
 roads that imperilled life, with inns whose dirt and 
 discomfort passed belief, with roadside hospitality 
 from kindly but eccentric gentlefolks — Miss Edge- 
 worth wrote a letter some forty pages long to a brother 
 in India. For fun and graphic vivacity it is not sur- 
 passed by the best of her printed Irish scenes. After 
 her return " rents and odious accounts " kept her 
 mind from running too much upon Helen, about which 
 she was more anxious than about any book she had 
 ever sent into the world. It soon proved as great a 
 success as her earlier works, and a second edition was 
 demanded after a few weeks. Her own feelings about 
 the matter are expressed in a letter she wrote to Mr. 
 Bannatyne, who had congratulated her on its public 
 reception : — 
 
 My dear Mb. Bannatyne, 
 
 I thank you with all my heart for the " nervousness " you felt 
 about my venturing again before the public, and it is a heart-ielt as 
 well as a head-ielt satisfaction to me that you do not think I have 
 lowered what my father took such pains to raise for me. You 
 cannot conceive how much afraid I was myself to venture what had 
 not his corrections and his sanction. For many, many years that 
 feeling deterred me from any attempt in this line. Of what conse- 
 quence, then, to my happiness it is to be assured, by friends on whose 
 sincerity and judgment I can depend, that I have not done what I 
 ought to repent, or to be ashamed of. 
 
 Concerning Helen contemporary public opinion was 
 much divided; some regarded it as a falling-off in 
 power, others as an advance, but all agreed that there 
 was a change. The change is one of tone and feeling, 
 induced in part, no doubt, by the fact that it was the 
 emanation of her own brain only ; in part that years
 
 I**! MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 had caused Miss Edgeworth, as it causes all of us, to 
 regard life from a different standpoint. Experience 
 had taught her to 
 
 Gentler scan her brother man 
 
 than she did in earlier life. Helen is so much superior 
 in ease, nature and poetry, that it makes us deplore 
 that Miss Edgeworth's talents had not been allowed 
 unchecked sway. Not only is the fable more skilfully 
 framed, but the whole shows greater passion and finer 
 insight into the more subtle moods of humanity. 
 Too often when men and women go on writing far 
 into their latter years we are apt to wish that, like 
 Prospero, they had buried their wand before it had 
 lust its power. This is not the case with Miss Edge- 
 worth. Helen, her last novel, which appeared after so 
 long a silence, is in some respects the most charming 
 of her tales, a fact doubtless due in some measure to 
 the time that had elapsed since the cessation of her 
 father's active influence. The old brilliancy, the quick 
 humour, the strong sense of justice and truth which 
 is the moral back- bone of her work, are there as before; 
 but through the whole tale there breathes a new spirit 
 of wider tenderness for weak, struggling human nature, 
 and a gentleness towards its foibles which her earlier 
 writings lacked. Years had taught her a wider tolera- 
 tion, had shown her, too, how large a part quick 
 unreasoning instincts and impulses play in the lives 
 of men and women, even of those whose constant 
 struggle it is to subdue act and thought to the rule of 
 duty. Helen is more of a romance than any of its 
 predecessors, perhaps because the chief interest of the 
 tale is concentrated in the heroine, who is the central 
 figure round which the other persons of the story
 
 HELEN. 189 
 
 revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier novels the 
 subsidiary characters are the most interesting and 
 amusing. We wish Belinda well, but she does not 
 move our feelings as does Lady Delacour, and Sir 
 Philip Baddeley is infinitely more diverting than 
 Clarence Harvey is fascinating. And it is the same in 
 all the others, while the centre of Helen is the girl her- 
 self. Yet the other characters are no less admirably 
 drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the 
 occasional quaint gleams of humour'. In its way Miss 
 Edgeworth never limned a finer portrait than that 
 of Lady Davenant, the large-brained, large-hearted 
 woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, 
 keen sense and real vigour of character, mingled with 
 prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an imperfect 
 adherence in practice to her own theories of right 
 and wrong, and a stern power of self- judgment. There 
 is nothing exaggerated in this admirable and vigorous 
 piece of work. We comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear 
 of the mother whese unswerving truth cows her, while 
 it attracts the answering truth of nature of her truer 
 and stronger friend. Equally good is the character of 
 Lady Cecilia, through whose duplicity and cowardice 
 arise all Helen's troubles ; her husband, General 
 Clarendon, who held 
 
 All fraud and cunning in disdain, 
 A friend to truth, in speech and action plain ; 
 
 the malicious Lady Beatrice and her silly pretty sister ; 
 while Horace Churchill, the man about town, who is 
 more modern in tone than Miss Edgeworth's earlier 
 portraits of the same class, loses nothing by comparison 
 with them. Despite his restless egotism, his spiteful- 
 ness, his generally unpleasant character, he is a gentle-
 
 190 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 man in :ill outside seeming, the old-fashioned perfect 
 tone of high-breeding marks him, and he is even capa- 
 ble of a certain generosity that seems more an inherited 
 instinct than a part of his individual nature. Esther, 
 the General's sister, is one of the quaintest and most 
 delightful characters in the book, drawn with kindli- 
 ness and humour, a girl with the power of a noble 
 woman hidden under the crust of a gruff and abrupt, 
 exterior, which springs half from shyness, half from a 
 defiant love of truth and hatred of conventional chains. 
 The purpose of Helen is to show how much the suffer- 
 ings and dissensions of social life arise from the pre- 
 vailing digressions from truth, often due in the first 
 instance to small society politenesses. Its key-note lies 
 in the ejaculation of Miss Clarendon : " I wish that 
 word fib was out of the English language, and white lie 
 drummed out after it. Things by their right names, and 
 we should all do much better. Truth must be told, 
 whether agreeable or not/' Most perfectly and 
 naturally is the imbroglio brought to pass, the en- 
 tanglement caused by the love-letters, the way in which 
 every fresh deceit on the part of Cecilia, meant to be 
 harmless, tells in her husband's mind against the 
 friend behind whom she is basely hiding her own fault. 
 With Cecilia, whose failings were of the kind with 
 which Miss Edgeworth had least mercy, she is singu- 
 larly gentle. For once she lets us pity the offender 
 while we condemn the crime. Life had probably 
 taught her that consequences are so surely unpitying, 
 that she no Longer felt the need to insist on this as she 
 had done in former years, when she would probably 
 have sketched for us the whole course of Cecilia's 
 punishment, whose nature she now only indicates. 
 Helen is a charming heroine, no wax doll of impossible
 
 HELEN. 191 
 
 perfection, but a very woman, wayward and weak some- 
 times, but true, high-spirited, impulsively generous, 
 staunch in her friendship and her love, with deep 
 and passionate feelings controlled, not crushed, by 
 duty. Another marked change is shown in the 
 manner in which Helen and Granville Beauclerc 
 fall in love. Miss Edgeworth had always protested 
 against the doctrine that love is a mere matter of 
 personal beauty, she showed how it may enslave for a 
 moment, but that a preference resting on so precarious 
 a foundation was but a paltry tribute to her sex. Love, 
 she rightly preached, must be founded on higher 
 motives ; but her heroes and heroines were too apt to 
 fall in love in an edifying and instructive manner, they 
 knew too well why they succumbed to the tender passion. 
 Until now she had almost denied the existence of 
 romantic love, agreeing, it would seem, with her own 
 Mrs. Broadhurst : " Ask half the men you are acquainted 
 with why they are married, and their answer, if they 
 speak the truth, will be — ' Because I met Miss such-a- 
 one at such a place, and we were continually together/ " 
 " c Propinquity, propinquity/ as my father used to say — 
 and he was married five times, and twice to heiresses." 
 That amiable and respectable Bluebeard, Miss Edge- 
 worth's father, had hitherto held final sway over her 
 characters. Was it the removal of his influence that 
 allowed H elen and Granville to fall in love in a more 
 rational manner ? Helen does not now wait to see 
 whether Beauclerc has every virtue under the sun 
 before she ventures to love him ; indeed, she sees his 
 foibles clearly, and it is just when she believes that 
 he has shown a lack of honour and sincerity that 
 in her burst of grief she discovers that she loves 
 him, loves him whatever he is, whatever he does. As
 
 192 .1/.I/.7J EDGKWORTH. 
 
 for Granville, he falls in love in a thorough- going, 
 earnest manner which increases our feeling of his 
 reality. It has hern objected to Miss Edgcworth's 
 love-making that it is stiff as compared with that 
 of the present day. It certainly presents a contrast 
 to that of the Broughton school ; but the loves of 
 Helen and Granville as told by her in so real and 
 human a manner, reveal their feelings to be none the 
 less tender that they are not hysterical, or any the less 
 deep for their power of modesty, reverence, and reserve. 
 Helen was suggested by Crabbe's tale, The Confidant, 
 but that feeling which is sinfully gratified and severely 
 punished in Crabbers story becomes refined and 
 reformed in Miss Edgeworth's crucible. It is, however, 
 interesting to compar*e her romance with the rapid 
 sketch of the stern original. Another new feature in 
 Helen is a tendency to describe natural objects. Until 
 now, there had never been in Miss Edgeworth's 
 writings a description of scenery or a sign of delight in 
 it. She had, as we know, a contempt for the mere 
 pleasures of the senses, and so little appreciation of the 
 beautiful that she once condemns a character who buys 
 something to gratify the eye, not recognising that the 
 eye, as well as the body and mind, must be fed. Yet 
 in Helen, to our surprise, Ave encounter some lovingly 
 detailed scenic bits, wc even find her citing Words- 
 worth. It is clear she had not remained wholly un- 
 touched by the new influences surging around her. 
 Another feature of Helen is the lack of a didactic 
 tone. Speaking of Scott's novels, she remarks that his 
 morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously obtru- 
 sive, but woven in through the very texture of the stuff. 
 She knew that her faults lay in the opposite direction, 
 and it is evident she had striven to avoid them. A
 
 HELEN. 193 
 
 writer who can learn from criticism and experience, 
 who can adopt a new method of writing when past the 
 age of sixty, is a remarkable writer indeed. 
 
 The fears that Miss Edgeworth had felt concerning 
 Helen were truly uncalled for, but the eagerness with 
 which she listened to criticisms upon it showed how 
 little confident she felt of it herself. To her friend 
 Dr. Holland she wrote after its appearance : — 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I am very glad that you have been pleased with Helen — far 
 above my expectations ! And I thank you for that warmth of kind- 
 ness with which you enter into all the details of the characters and 
 plan of the story. Nothing but regard for the author could have 
 made you give so much importance to my tale. It has always been 
 my fault to let the moral end I had in view appear too soon and too 
 clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, notwithstanding 
 some pains which I certainly thought I took to correct it, should still 
 abide by me. As to Lady Davenant's loving Helen better than she 
 did her daughter — I can't help it — nor could she. It is her fault, not 
 mine, and I can only say it was very natural that, after having begun 
 by mistake and neglect in her early education, she should feel after- 
 wards disinclined to one who was a constant object of self-reproach 
 to her. Lady Davenant is not represented as a perfect character. 
 All, then, that I have to answ r er for is, whether her faults are natural 
 to the character I drew, and tend in their representation to the moral 
 I would enforce or insinuate. 
 
 Oh, thank you for telling me of my blunder in making the Dean die 
 of apoplexy with his eyes fixed on Helen. Absurd ! How shall I kill 
 him in the next edition, if ever I am allowed an opportunity ? Would 
 palsy do ? May there not be a partial power of will surviving a 
 stroke of palsy, which would permit the poor old man to die with his 
 eyes directed to his niece ? Please to answer this question ; and if 
 palsy will not do my business, please to suggest something that will, 
 and with as little alteration of the text as may be. Not because I am 
 unwilling to take the trouble of correcting, but that I don't think it 
 worth while to make alterations, even emendations, of great length. 
 Better make a new one, according to Pope's hackney coachman's 
 principle. (The punctuation shall be mended.) 
 
 13
 
 194 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 v LAST YEARS. 
 
 More and more Miss Edgeworth's life revolved round 
 home and friends. " In this world, in which I have 
 lived nearly three-quarters of a century, I have found 
 nothing one quarter so well worth living for as old 
 friends/' she said. In her person, old age was seen 
 in its most attractive form. Her lively interests re- 
 mained undimmed. At seventy she even set herself 
 to learn a new language, Spanish, while her impul- 
 siveness never became extinct, though she playfully 
 hoped that — provided she lived so long — she might 
 perhaps at eighty arrive at years of discretion. It was 
 in 1835 that Mr. Ticknor, the American historian of 
 Spanish literature, visited Edgeworthstown. He has 
 recorded in his journal a pleasing and vivid picture of 
 his visit. He describes Miss Edgeworth as small, 
 short, and spare, with frank and kind manners, always 
 looking straight into the face of those she spoke to 
 with a pair of mild, deep grey eyes. Her kindness and 
 vivacity instantly put her visitors at ease. Mr. Ticknor 
 was also impressed with the harmony that existed 
 in a family composed of the most heterogeneous 
 relationships. What struck him about Miss Edge-
 
 HOME LIFE. 195 
 
 worth herself was her uncommon quickness of per- 
 ception, her fertility of allusion, and the great resources 
 of fact which a remarkable memory supplied to her. 
 He likens her conversation to that of her own Lady 
 Davenant. Mr. Ticknor observed that though she would 
 talk f reely about herself and her works, she never intro- 
 duced the subject, and never seemed glad to continue 
 it. Indeed, though he watched carefully for it, he 
 could not detect either any of the mystification or the 
 vanity of authorship. He was struck with her good 
 nature and desire to defend everybody, even Lady 
 Morgan, as far as she could, though never so far as to 
 be unreasonable. 
 
 " In her intercourse with her family she was quite 
 delightful, referring constantly to Mrs. Edgeworth, 
 who seems to be the authority in all matters of fact, 
 and most kindly repeating jokes to her infirm aunt, 
 Mrs. Sneyd, who cannot hear them, and who seems 
 to have for her the most unbounded affection and 
 admiration/' 
 
 The dispersion of so many members of her family 
 imposed much letter-writiug on Miss Edgeworth, for 
 all turned to her graphic pen for news of the dear old 
 home. And, as before when she was away, those she 
 left behind had to share in her pleasures, or they 
 would be but sorry pleasures to her. Death, as well 
 as marriages, had thinned the family ranks. Tenacious 
 and warm in her affections as she was, Miss Edgeworth 
 never took a morbid view concerning those who were 
 gone. Everything morbid was foreign to her nature. 
 
 There is something mournful, yet pleasingly painful, in the sense of 
 the ideal presence of the long-loved dead. Those images people and 
 fill the mind with unselfish thoughts, and with the salutary feeling of 
 responsibility and constant desire to be and to act in this world as the 
 superior friend would have wished and approved. 
 
 13 *
 
 196 MARIA EDGEWOETH. 
 
 And there were so many still left to love, young and 
 old. "Who would not like to live to be old if they 
 could be so happy in friends as I am?" The enthusi- 
 astic affection in her peculiar family relations, which 
 she kept unimpaired, cannot be better shown than by 
 quoting one of the countless letters she wrote con- 
 cerning those dear to her : — 
 
 Edgewortks Town, 
 My dear Mb. and Mrs. Ticknor, Nov. 1st, 1838. 
 
 I know so well your kind feelings towards all this family, that I 
 am sure you will be pleased with the intelligence which I am going to 
 communicate to you. 
 
 My sister, Honora, is going to be happily married to a person every 
 way suited to her (and that is saying a great deal), as you who most 
 kindly and justly appreciated her will readily join with me in thinking. 
 The gentleman's name, Captain Beaufort, R.N., perhaps j r ou may be 
 acquainted with, as he is in a public situation, and not unknown to 
 literary and scientific fame. He is a naval officer (I hope you like this 
 officer's name ?). He made some years ago a survey of the coast of 
 Caramania, and wrote a small volume on that survey, which has 
 obtained for him a good reputation. He has been for some years Hydro- 
 grapher Royal ; ... in one word, he is a person publicly esteemed. 
 And privately he is beloved and esteemed by all who know him, most 
 by those who know him best. He is and has been well known to us 
 ever since the present Mrs. Edgeworth's marriage with my father; 
 Captain Beaufort is Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest brother. As Mrs. E. 
 is Honora's step-mother, you see that he is no relation whatever to 
 Honora. But the nearness of the connexion has given us all the best 
 means of knowing him thoroughly. He was my dear father's most 
 beloved pupil and friend ; by pupil I only mean that his being so much 
 younger made him look up to my father with reverence, and learn 
 from him in science and literature with delight. Thus has he been 
 long connected with all I love. He has been a widower two years. 
 He has three sons and four daughters. . . . The youngest daughter, 
 Emily, is a delightful child. Captain Beaufort lives in London, 
 11 Gloucester Place ; has a very comfortable house, and sufficient 
 fortune for all their moderate wishes. Honora's fortune, which is 
 ample, will give them affluence. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Ticknor, I know you particularly liked Honora, and 
 that you will be interested in hoaring all these particulars, though it 
 seems impertinent to detail them across the Atlantic to one who will,
 
 HOME LIFE. 197 
 
 I fear, never see anyone of the persons I have mentioned. Yet 
 affections such as yours keep warm very long and at a great 
 distance. 
 
 I feel that I have got into a snug little corner in both your hearts, 
 .and that you will excuse a great deal from me, therefore I go on 
 without scruple drawing upon your sympathy, and you will not protest 
 my draft. 
 
 You saw how devoted Honora was to her aunt, Mrs. Mary Sneyd, 
 whom you liked so much ; and you will easily imagine what a. struggle 
 there has been in Honora's mind before she could consent to a marriage 
 with even such a man as Captain Beaufort, when it must separate her 
 from her aunt. Captain Beaufort himself felt this so much that he 
 never would have pressed it. He once thought that she might be 
 prevailed upon to accompany them to London, and to live with them. 
 But Mrs. Mary Sneyd could not bear to leave Mrs. Edgeworth, and this 
 place which she has made her heart's home. She decided Captain 
 Beaufort and her niece to make her happy by completing their union, 
 and letting her feel that she did not prevent the felicity of the two 
 persons she loves best now in the world. She remains with us. 
 
 The marriage is to take place next Tuesday or Thursday, and my 
 aunt Mary will go to the church with her niece and give her away. I 
 must tell you a little characteristic trait of this aunt, the least selfish 
 of all human beings. She has been practising getting up early in the 
 morning, which she has not done for two years — has never got up for 
 breakfast. But she has trained herself to rising at the hour at which 
 she must rise on the wedding-day, and has walked up and down her 
 own room the distance she must walk up and down the aisle of the 
 church, to ensure her being accustomed to the exertion, and able to 
 accomplish it easily. This she did for a long time without our 
 knowing it, till Honora found it out. Mrs. Mary Sneyd is quite well 
 and in excellent spirits. 
 
 A younger sister of mine, Lucy, of whom you have heard us speak 
 as an invalid, who was at Clifton with that dear Sophy whom we have 
 lost, is now recovered, and has returned home to take Honora's place 
 with her aunt Mary ; and aunt Mary likes to have her, and Lucy feels 
 this a great motive to her to overcome a number of nervous feelings, 
 which formed parf of her illness. A regular course of occupations and 
 duties, and feeling herself essential to the happiness and the holding 
 together of a family she so loves, will be the best strengthening 
 medicine for her. She arrived at home last night. My sister Fanny 
 and her husband, Lestocke Wilson, are with us. My sister has much 
 improved in health ; she is now able to walk without pain, and bore 
 her long journey and voyage here wonderfully. I have always 
 regretted, and always shall regret, that this sister Fanny of mine had
 
 198 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 not tho pleasure of 1" ming acquainted with yon. You really must 
 
 re-visit England. My Bister Harriet Butler, and Mr. Butler, ami the 
 three little dear Foxes, are all round me at this instant. Barry Pox, 
 their father, will be with as in a few days, and Captain Beaufort 
 returns from London on Monday. You see what a large and happy 
 family we are ! ! ! 
 
 Do I not give you some proof, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor, of my 
 affection in writing to you at this moment, and if I write without much 
 sense or connexion you will not be surprised. 
 
 My head is really upside down, and my feelings so divided between 
 joy and sorrow — joy for Honora's happiness, but sorrow for the parting 
 that must be ! 
 
 It will all settle down under the hand of strong necessity and of 
 lenient time. My sisters Fanny and Harriet will stay with us some 
 weeks after the marriage ; this will be a great comfort. 
 
 ,Mr. Butler will perform the happy, awful ceremony. How people 
 who do not love can ever dare to marry, to approach the altar to 
 pronounce that solemn vow, I cannot concoive. 
 
 My thoughts are so engrossed by this subject that I absolutely 
 cannot tell you of anything else. You must tell me of everything that 
 interests you, else I shall not forgive myself for my egotism. 
 
 I am most sincerely and affectionately, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, with 
 affectionate remembrances to your engaging daughter, not forgetting 
 your little darling, 
 
 Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Maria Edgkwortii. 
 
 Mention Loekhart's Memoirs of Scott, of which my head and heart 
 were full before this present all-engrossing subject overcame me. 
 
 I shall be quite rational again, I am sure, by the time your answer 
 reaches me, so pray do not treat me as quite a hopeless person to 
 write rationally to. 
 
 Mrs. Edgeworth desires me to send you her very affectionate 
 remembrances. 
 
 I believe, I am almost sure, that I wrote to you, my dear Mr. Ticknor,. 
 some months ago while you were on the Continent, to thank you for 
 the present you sent me, through Mr. Norton's means, of an American 
 edition of my works. I thought it beautifully printed and bound, and 
 the engravings excellent, particularly that for Helen, and the vignottc 
 for Helen, which we have not in the English edition. I have another 
 American copy of this edition, and I have left yours for life with my 
 brother Francis and my Spanish sister Rosa, who live in a little 
 cottage near Windsor, and have not money to indulge themselves in 
 the luxury of books. I hope you will not be angry with me for so-
 
 LETTER TO MB. TICKNOR. 199 
 
 doing ; no, I think you will be glad that I made your present give me 
 the greatest possible sum of pleasure. Take into account the pride I 
 felt in saj r ing, Mr. Ticknor sent me these books. 
 
 I am ashamed to see that I have come so far in a second sheet, and 
 in spite of all the wonderings at what can Maria be about? 
 Sense in my next. 
 
 In answer to a letter from Mr. Ticknor, describing 
 to her his library, in which the only picture was one of 
 Sir Walter Scott, Miss Edgeworth wrote a reply, of 
 which a portion has been published, but which contains 
 besides an able parallel, or rather contrast, between 
 Washington and Napoleon, worthy of preservation for 
 its own sake, and as a testimony to her unimpaired 
 
 powers. 
 
 Trim, Nov. 19th, 1840. 
 "Who talks of ' Boston'' in a voice so sweet"? ! Who wishes to see 
 me there ? and to shew me their home, their family, their country ? 
 I have been there — at Boston ? " Yes — and in Mr. and Mrs. Tick- 
 nor's happy beautiful home." I have been up " the slope of the Boston 
 Hill-side " have seen " the 50 acres of public park " in all its verdure 
 with "its rich and venerable trees," its gravelled promenade surround- 
 ing it with those noble rows of venerable elms on either side. I have 
 gone lip the hill-side and the steps profusely decked with luxuriant 
 creepers, — I have walked into Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor's house as I was 
 desired, — have seen the three rooms opening into one another, have 
 sat in the library too — and thought, — and thought it all charming ! 
 Looking into the country as you know the windows all do, I saw down 
 through "the vista of trees " to the quiet bay and "the beautiful" 
 hills beyond, and I " watched the glories of the" setting sun lighting 
 up country and town, "trees, turf, and water 1" — an Italian sun not 
 more gorgeously attended than this " New England luminary " setting 
 or rising. I met Sir Walter Scott in Mr. Ticknor's library with all his 
 benign calm expression of countenance, his eye of genius and his 
 mouth of humor — such as he was before the lif e of life was gone, such 
 as genius loved to see him, such as American genius has given him 
 to American friendship, immortalized in person as in mind. His very 
 self I see feeling, thinking, and about to speak — and to a friend to 
 whom he loved to speak — and well placed and to his liking he 
 seems in this congenial library — presiding and sympathising. But my 
 dear Madam, Ten thousand books, " about ten thousand books " do 
 you say this library contains ? My dear Mrs. Ticknor ! Then I am
 
 200 MA HI A EDQEWORTH. 
 
 afraid you must have double rows — and thai is a ])laguc. But you 
 may ask why do i conceive yon nave donble rows? Because I can- 
 not conceive how else the hook-cases could bold tbe 10,000. Your 
 Library is :'•! by 22 you Bay. Bui to be sure you have not given mo 
 theheigbl and thai height may make out room enough. Pray have 
 it measured for me; thai I may drive this odious notion of double 
 rows out of my head — •• and what a head, you may say. that must be 
 th.it could calculate in such a place and a1 Buchatime!" It was 
 not my poor head 1 assure you. my dear .Mrs. Ticknor, but Captain 
 Beaufort's ultra-accurate head. J gave him through Honora the 
 description of your library — and he (jealous 1 am clear for the mag- 
 nitude and number of his own library and volumes) set to work at 
 22x^4 — and there I leave him — till I have the height to confound 
 him completely. You see, my dear friends, that you need not again 
 ask me to go to see you — for I have seen and I know everything about 
 your home : full as well I know Boston and your home as you know 
 ours at Edgeworthstown. It is your turn now to come to see us 
 again. But I am afraid to invite you. lest you should be disenchanted, 
 and we should lose the delightful gratification we enjoy in your 
 glamour of friendship. Aunt Mary, however, is really all you think 
 and saw her — and in her 91st year still a proof as you describe her, — 
 and a remarkable proof of the power of mind over time, suffering and 
 infirmities; and an example of Christian virtues making old age 
 lovely and interesting. 
 
 Your prayer, that she might have health and strength to 
 enjoy the gathering of friends round her has been granted. 
 Honora and her husband, and Fanny and her husband, have 
 all been with us this summer for months ; and we have enjoyed 
 ourselves as much as your kind heart could wish. Especially 
 " that beautiful specimen of <i highly cultivated gentlewoman" as 
 you so well called Mrs. E., has been blest with the sight of all 
 her children round her, all her living daughters and their husbands, 
 and her grand-children. Francis will settle at home and be a 
 good country gentleman and his own agenl — to Mrs. E.'s and all 
 our inexpressible comforl and support — also for the good of the 
 country, as a resident landlord and magistrate much needed. As 
 hi is at homo I can be spared from the rent-receiving business, &c, 
 and leaving him with his mother, Aunt Mary and Lucy, I can 
 indulge myself by accepting an often-urged invitation from my two 
 sisters Fanny and Honora, to spend some months with them in 
 London. T have chosen to go at this quiet time of year as I particu- 
 larly wish not to encounter the bustle and. dissipation and lionising of 
 London. For tho' I am such a minnikin lion now. and so old, literally 
 without teeth or claws, still there be, that might r-attle at the grate to
 
 LETTER TO MR. TICKNOR. 201 
 
 make me get up and come out and stand up to play tricks for tkem — 
 and this I am not able or inclined to do. I am afraid I should growl 
 i — I never could be as good-humored as Sir Walter Scott used to be, 
 ■when rattled for and made to " come out and stand on his hind legs " 
 as he used to describe it, and then go quietly to sleep again. 
 
 I shall use my privilege of 72 — rising 73 — and shall keep in my 
 comfortable den — I will not go out. " Nobody asked you, Ma'am," to 
 play Lion, may perhaps be said or sung to me, and I shall not be 
 sorry nor mortified by not being asked to exhibit, — but heartily happy 
 to be with my sisters and their family and family friends — All for 
 which I go — knowing my own mind very well I speak the mere plain 
 truth. I shall return home to Edgeworthstown before the London 
 Season, as it is called, commences, i.e. by the end of March, or at the 
 very beginning of April. 
 
 This is all I have, for the present, to tell you of my dear self, or 
 of our family doings or plannings. You see I depend enough on the 
 sincerity of your curiosity and sympathy, and I thank you in kind 
 .for all you have been so affectionately good to tell me of yourselves. 
 
 I have been lately reading Thibeaudeau's ten volumes of the History 
 of Napoleon — Le Consulat and /'Empire "■ — immediately after having 
 read the life of Washington by Sparks, a book which I think I men- 
 tioned to you had been sent to me by an American Jewess of Philadel- 
 phia, Miss Gratz. A most valuable present — a most interesting w T ork 
 it is. The comparison between the characters, power, deeds, fortune and 
 fate of Washington and Napoleon continually pressed on my mind as 
 I read their lives ; and continually I wished that some modern 
 Plutarch with more of religious, if not more of moral and political 
 knowledge and philosophy than the ancient times afforded, would 
 draw a parallel — no not a parallel, for that could not be — but a com- 
 parison between Napoleon and Washington. It would give in the 
 result a comparison between Moral and Intellectual power on the 
 highest scale, and with the fullest display in which they have ever 
 been seen in two national heroes. The superior, the universal abili- 
 ties of Bonaparte, his power of perseverance, of transition, of resource, 
 of comprehensiveness, of adaptation of means to ends and all tending 
 .to his own aggrandisement, and his appetite for dominion growing 
 with what it fed upon, have altogether been most astonishingly dis- 
 played in the Frenchman's history of Napoleon. The integrity, dis- 
 interestedness, discretion, persevering adherence to one great pur- 
 .pose, marking the character and the career of Washington, are all 
 faithfully portrayed by his American biographer, and confirmed by 
 state papers and by the testimony of an independent World. The 
 comparison between what Napoleon and Washington did living, and 
 left dying, of the fruits and consequences of their deeds, would surely
 
 202 MAI! I A KDGEWORTH. 
 
 l>c a most striking and useful moral and political Lesson on true and 
 falsi- glory, and further would afford the strongest illustrations of t ho 
 difference in human affairs of what is called the power of Fortune 
 and the influence <>f prestigt and the power of moral chai'actcr and 
 virtue See Napoleon deserted at his utmost need, by those his 
 prosperous bounty gorged. See Napoleon forced to abdicate his twice 
 snatched Imperial sceptre ! — and compare this with your Washington 
 laying down his dictatorship, his absolute dominion, voluntarily, the 
 moment he had accomplished his great purpose of making his beloved 
 country, the New World, free and independent. Then the deep silent 
 attachment shown to him when he retired from the army, parted from 
 military power, took leave of public life, is most touching — quite sub- 
 lime in its truth and simplicity, in as strong contrast as possible with 
 all the French acclamations, inconstancy, frivolity, desertion, treachery, 
 insult toward their prostrate idol of an Emperor. I felt while I read, 
 and I feel while I reflect, how much of the difference between Napo- 
 leon and Washington must be ascribed to the different times, nations, 
 circumstances in which they were placed. But independent of all 
 these, the comparison ably and clearly drawn would lie between the 
 individual characters — between moral and religions power and 
 influence and intellectual powers even supported by military glory 
 and political despotism. The comparison would ultimately he 
 between success and merit — and between their transient and durable 
 effects — their worldly and never-dying consequences. 
 
 Forgive me, my dear Mrs. Tieknor, for my having been actually 
 run away with thus, and forgetting what I was going to say when I 
 began. I was going to say that I wish Mr. Tieknor would draw the 
 comparison between these two heroes of False and True Glory — 
 between real Patriotism, true and great to the last, and Ambition 
 using patriotism as a mask and having it struck from his hand 
 powerless at the last. There is no one more able, better fitted to 
 draw this than your husband. Channing has said well of the 
 character of Napoleon as far as he went. But Mr. Tieknor, I con- 
 ceive, has wider views, more means of information, and a less 
 rhetorical style than Channing; and Sparks, having been the biographer 
 of Washington, might be considered as a party too much concerned 
 to be quite impartial. I am ashamed to have written so much that 
 must seem common-place to him. But I will not tear the pages, as I 
 am tempted to do, because there is a possibility that when you read 
 them to him it might turn his mind to the subject — and no matter for 
 the rest. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I do not know whether I was most interested, dear Mrs. Tieknor, 
 in your picture of your domestic life and happy house and home, or
 
 LETTER TO MR. TICKNOR. 203 
 
 by the view you gave me of your public festivity and celebration of 
 your American day of days — your national festival in honor of your 
 Declaration of Independence. It was never, I suppose, more joyously, 
 innocently, and advantageously held than on the day you describe so 
 delightfully with the accuracy of an eye-witness. I think I too have 
 seen all this, and thank you for showing it to me. It is a picture that 
 will never leave the memory of my heart. I only wish that we could 
 ever hope to have in Ireland any occasion or possibility of such 
 happy and peaceable meetings, with united sympathy and for the 
 keeping alive a feeling of national patriotism. No such point of union 
 can be found, alas, in Ireland — no subject upon which sects and 
 parties could coalesce for one hour, or join in rejoicing or feeling for 
 their country ! Father Matthews, one might have hoped, considering 
 the good he has effected for all Ireland, and considering his own un- 
 impeachable character and his real liberality, admitting all sects and 
 all parties to take his pledge and share his benevolent efforts, might 
 have formed a central point rovind which all might gather. But no 
 such hope ! for as I am just now assured, his very Christian charity 
 and liberality are complained of by his Catholic brethren, priests 
 and laity, who now begin to abuse him for giving the pledge to 
 Protestants, and say, " What good our fastings, our temperance, our 
 being of the true faith, if Father Matthews treats heretics all as one, 
 as Catholics themselves ! and would have 'em saved in this world and 
 the next too ! Then I would not doubt but at the last he 'd turn tail ! 
 aye, turn Protestant himself entirely." I have written so much to 
 Mr. Ticknor about Father Matthews that I must here stop, or take 
 care lest I run on with him again. Once set a running you see how I 
 go on. You having encouraged me, and I from having conversed 
 with you even for a few days, we have so much knowledge of each 
 other's minds that it is as easy and pleasant to me to write as to speak 
 to you. I will send you some Irish Tales newly published by Mrs. 
 Hall, which I think you will like, both from their being well-written 
 and interesting portraitures of Irish life and manners, and from the 
 conciliating, amiable, and truly feminine (not meaning feeble) tone in 
 which they are written. 
 
 I have not yet thanked you enough, I feel, for Rollo. Our children 
 all, and we ourselves, delight in him at play and at work, and every 
 way, and we wish to see more of him. If there be any more of him, 
 pray pack him up bag and baggage and send him off by first 
 steamer, steam-haste. By the by, are you or your children ac- 
 quainted with the Elephant who in his haste forgot to pack up his 
 trunk.
 
 204 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 If you are nnt acquainted with him, I shall have the pleasure of 
 introducing him to you and yours. 
 
 Meantime, if you wish to he amused, and with what is now and 
 what is true, read Mrs. Wilmott's Memoirs <;/' the Princess hnshkoff, 
 and her own residence in Russia. We know enough of the author to 
 warrant the whole to be true. I do not say that she tells the whole 
 truth, hut that all she docs tell is true, and what she does not tell she 
 was bound in honor and friendship, and by the tacit inviolable com- 
 between confidence shewn and accepted, never to reveal, much 
 less to publish. Both in the Princess Dashkoff's own Memoirs (very 
 able and curious) and in Mrs. Wilmott's continuation (very amusing 
 And new), there are from time to time great gaps, on coming to which 
 the reader cries I In! ll<t! and feels that he must skip over. These 
 gaps are never covered over ; and when we come even to dangerous 
 ground we see that we must not turn that way, or hope to get on in 
 utter darkness and our guide deserting — or, if not deserting, standing 
 stock still, obstinately dumb. These memoirs are not a book on 
 which History could absolutely be founded, but a book to which the 
 judicious historian might safely rejer for illustrations — and even for 
 materials — all which it affords being sound and solid. Much more, in 
 short, may these Memoirs be depended upon than any or many of the 
 French varnished and vamped up Memoires pour servir a VHistoire, 
 
 After reading the book I wrote to Mrs. Wilmot, and after homage 
 due to her talents and her truth, I ventured to express, what I 
 am sure you will feel if you read the volume, some horror, towards 
 the (dose, at the Princess Dashkoff's accepting for herself or her sister, 
 or for whoever it was. a ball from Orloff the murderer — that Orloff 
 who with his own hand strangled his emperor. 
 
 Mrs. Wilmot made me but a lame apology for her dear princess. I 
 think, and an odd answer for herself. In the first place, she said, It 
 was so long ago. As if such a murder could be a by-gone tale! or as 
 if thirty or forty or any number of years could purify or cleanse a 
 murderer in the eyes and sense of Humanity or Justice! In the next 
 place she pleaded that she was so much pleased by Orloff 's angel 
 daughter who stood beside him, and then with his parental delight in 
 her beauty, simplicity, and elegance in the dance. 
 
 Mrs. Wilmot was sure I should have felt as she did. ami have for- 
 gotten the murderer in the father. But, on the contrary. I am afraid 
 I should have forgotten the father in the murderer; I fear I should 
 have seen only " the vilt spot " which would never out of that handl 
 And oh ! that horrible knee — I see it pressing on the body of the 
 breathless Peter ; and, through all the music of the ball-room band, 
 mcthinks I hear " shrieks of an agonising king."' 
 
 Possibly in Russia, '• murder is lawful made by the excess," and
 
 LETTER TO MR. TIGKNOR. 205 
 
 may bo palliated by the impartial historian's observing, '• // was then 
 necessary that the Emperor should cease to be " — soft synonyme for 
 assassination ! 
 
 I ought not to leave Mrs. Wilmot and the Princess Dashkoff , how- 
 ever this may be, with a tragical and unmerited impression on your 
 mind. I am quite convinced the princess had nothing to do with this 
 horrid affair, or that our countrywoman never would have gone or 
 never would have staid with her. 
 
 I can also assure you that when you read these memoirs, you will 
 be convinced, as I am, that the Princess Dashkoff was quite pure from 
 all the Empress Catharine's libertine intrigues (I can use no softer 
 phrase). This is proved by facts, not words, for no word does she 
 say on the subject. But the fact is that during Orloff, the favorite 
 Orloff 's reign and his numerous successors, the Princess Dashkoff was 
 never at court, banished herself on her travels or at her far distant 
 territories, she over-rated, idolised Catharine, but was her real friend, 
 not flatterer. 
 
 It is scarcely worth telling you, but I will for your diversion mention 
 that I asked Mrs. Wilmot whether the Princess Dashkoff evermore 
 went about in the costume, which she described, of a man's great coat, 
 with stars and strings over it, at the ball, and with the sentimental old 
 souvenir silk handkerchief about her throat. Yes. But Mrs. Wilmot 
 would not let me laugh at her friend, and I liked her all the better. 
 She defended the oddity, by the kindness of the motive. It was not 
 affectation of singularity, but privilege of originality that should be 
 allowed to a being so feeling and so educated by circumstances, and 
 so isolated — so let the ragged handkerchief and the old gloves museum- 
 ised pass, and even the old overall of the man's coat on a woman and 
 a princess — so be it. 
 
 But from the time of the Cardinal Chigi and his one stump of a 
 twenty-years-old pen on which he piqued himself, I quite agree with 
 Cardinal Mazarin* that these petty singularities are proofs of a little 
 mind, instead of originality of genius. 
 
 And now, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, " Bisogna levar l'incommodita" — 
 to use the parting phrase of a vulgar Italian who feels that she has 
 made an unconscionable visit ; or, as the Cockney would say as she 
 got up to depart from a morning visitation, " Time for me to be going, I 
 think." And if you do not think so, or have not thought so ten pages 
 ago, you are more indulgent and fonder of me than I had any right 
 or reason to expect, even after all I have heard from and seen of you. 
 
 I promise you that you shall not be so tried again for a twelvemonth 
 
 * This anecdote, attributed by Miss Edgeworth to Mazarin, is told 
 by De Retz, and is to be found in his Memoirs.
 
 206 MMUA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 to come, at the least. Give my kind remembrances to your eldest 
 daughter who bo kindly remembers me, and give a kiss for me to your 
 youngest, that dear little play-thing who cannot remember me. but 
 whom I Bhall never forget; nor her Father's fond look at her, when 
 the tear was forgot as soon as shod. 
 
 Ever affectionately, Dear Mrs. Ticknor, 
 Your obliged friend, 
 
 Maria Edgkworth. 
 
 Turn over, 
 and as the children's Fairy boards say, " You shall see 
 what you shall see." 
 
 N.B. — Among the various seratchifications and scarifications in this 
 volume, you may remark thai there have been reiterated scratches at 
 Mrs. and Miss Wilmot, and attempts alternately to turn the lady into 
 Mrs. and Miss. 
 
 But be it now declared and understood that the lady is not either 
 Mrs. or Miss Wilmot, but Mrs. Bradford — born Wilmot, daughter of 
 a Mr. and Mrs. Wilmot of Cork — went over to Russia to better herself 
 at the invitation of the Princess Dashkoff, who had, in a visit to 
 Ireland, become acquainted with some of her family. What motives 
 induced her to go to Russia — except the general notion of bettering 
 her fortune — I cannot tell. But she did better her fortune, for the 
 princess gave her pearls in strings, and diamonds in necklaces and 
 tings, and five thousand solid pounds in her pocket, for all which she 
 had like to have been poisoned before she could clear away with them 
 out of Russia. 
 
 When she came back she married, or was married to, Mr. Bradford, 
 a clergyman, and now lives in Sussex. England. 
 
 Now, in consideration of my having further bored you with all this, 
 be pleased whenever yon see Mrs. or Miss Wilmot in the foregoing 
 pages to read Mrs. Bradford, and you will save me thereby the 
 trouble and danger of scratching Mrs. or Miss Wilmot into ten or 
 eleven holes. 
 
 The visit to London referred to was paid. Part of 
 the time was spent agreeably visiting friends, seeing 
 sights, and reading new books, among them Darwin's 
 Voyage in the Beagle, which delighted Miss Edge- 
 worth. But the larger portion of her stay was 
 occupied in nursing her sister Fanny through a weary 
 illness, with the added mental anxiety of knowing
 
 HOME LIFE. 207 
 
 that Mrs. Edgeworth was ill at home. Both invalids, 
 however, happily recovered, yet Miss Edgeworth was 
 to find an empty chair on her return ; her aunt, Mary 
 Sneyd, had been taken away, at the advanced age of 
 ninety. As often before, she felt the sorrow keenly, 
 but rallied bravely from its effects for the sake of those 
 who were left, and who depended on her yet more. 
 
 During the summer of 1842, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. 
 Hall visited Ireland. They spent some days at Edge- 
 worthstown, with the avowed purpose of writing of its 
 occupants, and we have from their pen also a pleasant 
 picture of the family home-life. 
 
 " The library at Edgeworthstown " [say the writers] 
 " is by no means the reserved and solitary room that 
 libraries are in general. It is large and spacious and 
 lofty; well stored with books, and embellished with 
 those most valuable of all classes of prints — the sug- 
 gestive ; it is also picturesque, having been added to 
 so as to increase its breadth ; the addition is supported 
 by square pillars, and the beautiful lawn seen through 
 the windows, embellished and varied by clumps of 
 trees judiciously planted, imparts much cheerfulness to 
 the exterior. An oblong table in the centre is a sort 
 of rallying-point for the family, who group around it 
 — reading, writing, or working ; while Miss Edge- 
 worth, only anxious upon one point — that all in the 
 house should do exactly as they like, without reference 
 to her — sits quietly and abstractedly in her own 
 peculiar corner on the sofa, her desk — upon which lies 
 Sir Walter Scott's pen, given to her by him when in 
 Ireland — placed before her upon a little quaint table, 
 as unassuming as possible. Miss Edgeworth's ab- 
 stractedness would puzzle the philosophers : in that 
 same corner, and upon that table, she has written nearly
 
 208 MARIA EDGEWOliTH. 
 
 all that has enlightened and delighted the world. There 
 she writes as eloquently as ever, wrapt up to all ap- 
 pearance in her subject, yet knowing, by a sort of 
 instinct, when she is really wanted in dialogue; and, 
 without laving down her pen, hardly looking up from 
 her page, she will, by a judicious sentence wisely and 
 kindly spoken, explain and elucidate in a few words, so 
 as to clear up any difficulty ; or turn the conversation 
 into a new and more pleasing current. She has the 
 most harmonious way of throwing in explanations' — 
 informing without embarrassing. A very large family 
 party assemble daily in this charming room, young and 
 old bound alike to the spot by the strong cords of 
 memory and love. Mr. Francis Edgeworth, the 
 youngest son of the present Mrs. Edgeworth, and of 
 course Miss Edgeworth's youngest brother, has a 
 family of little ones who seem to enjoy the freedom of 
 the library as much as their elders. To set these little 
 people right if they are wrong j to rise from her table to 
 fetch them a toy, or even to save a servant a journey ; 
 to mount the steps and find a volume that escapes all 
 eyes but her own, and, having done so, to find exactly 
 the passage wanted, — are hourly employments of this 
 most unspoiled and admirable woman. She will then 
 resume her pen, and, what is more extraordinary, 
 hardly seem to have even frayed the thread of her ideas ;. 
 her mind is so rightly balanced, everything is so 
 honestly weighed, that she suffers no inconvenience 
 From what would disturb and distract an ordinary 
 writer." 
 
 Miss Edgeworth wrote of this notice : — 
 
 Mrs. Hall has sent to mo her last number, in which she give-. 
 Edgeworthstown. All the world here are pleased with it, and so am 
 I. I like the way in which she has mentioned my father particularly.
 
 IN LONDON. 209 
 
 There is an evident kindness of heart, and care to avoid everything that 
 could hurt any of our feelings, and at the same time a warmth of 
 affectionate feeling unaffectedly expressed, that we all like it in spite 
 of our dislike to that sort of thing. 
 
 Early in 1843, Miss Edgeworth was taken seriously 
 ill with a bilious fever, from the effects of which she 
 recovered but slowly. In late autumn she once more 
 went to London to pass the winter with her sister. It 
 was to be her last visit. She enjoyed it with all the 
 freshness of youth, sight-seeing and visiting without 
 fatigue, even attending au opening of Parliament, 
 which she protested had not tired her more than if she 
 had been eighteen. Her prayer and hope was, as it 
 had been her father's, that her body might not survive 
 her mind, and that she might leave a tender and not 
 unpleasing recollection of herself in the hearts of her 
 friends. Her letters certainly showed no falling-off in 
 power, as is amply proved by one written during this 
 visit to her Boston friends : — 
 
 London, 1, North Audley Street, 
 
 Grosvenor Square, January 1st, 1844. 
 
 My dear Friends Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor, — I cannot begin this 
 new year better, or more to my own heartfelt satisfaction, than by 
 greeting you with my best wishes for many many happy years to you of 
 your domestic felicity and public estimation — estimation superior to 
 celebrity, jon know, Mr. Ticknor, disdaining notoriety, which all low 
 minds run after and all high minds despise. How I see this every 
 day in this London world, and hear it from all other worlds — loudly 
 from your new world across the great Atlantic, where those who make 
 their boast of independence and equality are struggling and quarreling 
 for petty pre-eminence and " vile trash." 
 
 I have been here with my sister, Mrs. Wilson, in a peaceful happy 
 home these six weeks, and the rattle of Grosvenor Square, at the 
 corner of which her house is, never disturbs the quiet of her little 
 library, which is at the back of the house, and looks out upon gardens 
 and trees (such as they are ! ) 
 
 Among the pleasantest days I have enjoyed in London society, 
 among friends of old standing and acquaintance of distinguished 
 
 14
 
 210 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 talents, I spent two days at my very good old friend Dr. Holland's, 
 where I beard yonr name and yonr letter to your countrymen on 
 Sidney Smith's memorial sp..ken of in the highest terms of just 
 estimation! \,,\\ know tli.it Dr. Holland is married to Sydney Smith's 
 daughter. I hope you know Dr. Holland's hook. Medical Notes, 
 which, though the title might seem exclusively professional, is full of 
 Bnch genera] and profound views of the human mind as well as b 
 that it could not lmt be interesting to you, and would prove to you 
 for my present purpose that he is a person whoso estimation and whose 
 praise is worthy of you. . . . 
 
 I do not know whether you made acquaintance, when you were in 
 London, with Sydney Smith's brother, Mr. Robert S., or as he is 
 strangely cognomened (or nicknamed) Bobus Smith. He is well 
 known as one of the celebrities of Holland House, where he has been 
 figuring this half century. But he no longer figures as a diner-out, 
 and indeed I believe from that notoriety he always seceded. He is 
 now old and blind, but nevertheless has a most intelligent, energetic 
 countenance, and I should almost say penetrating eye. When he 
 turns and seems to look at me. I feel as if he looked into my face, and 
 am glad so to feel, as he encourages me to open my mind to him by open- 
 ing his own at once to me. I saw him for the first time a few evenings ago 
 at Dr. Holland's, and sat between him and your American ambassador, 
 Mr. Everett. I was much pleased by their manner towards each other, 
 and by all they said of the letter of which I spoke. Mr. R. Smith has 
 in the opinion of all who know him and his brother, the strongest and 
 highest and deepest powers of the two; not so much wit, but a more 
 sound. Logical understanding — superior might in the reasoning faculty. 
 If the two brothers' hands grasped and grappled for mastery, with 
 elbows set down upon the table, in the fashion in which schoolboys 
 and others try strength, Robert Smith's hand would be uppermost 
 and Sidney's must give way. laughing perhaps, and protending that he 
 only gave way to fight another day. But independently of victory or 
 trials of strength, the earnestness for truth of the blind brother would 
 decide my interest and sympathy in his favor. 
 
 Mr. Everett and Mr. R. Smith seemed to me properly to esteem 
 each other, and to speak with perfect courtesy and discretion upon 
 the most delicate national questions, on which, in truth, they liberally 
 agreed more than could have been or was expected by the bystanders 
 of different parties. Oh, Party Spirit! Party Spirit! how many 
 follies, how many outrages are committed in thy name, even in 
 common conversation ! 
 
 Mr. Everett did me the honor to come to visit us a few mornings 
 after I had first met him at Dr. Holland's, and sat a good hour con-
 
 ERYSIPELAS. 211 
 
 versing as if we had been long known to each other. It is to me 
 the most gratifying proof of esteem to be thus let at once into 
 the real mind, the sanctum sanctorum, instead of being kept with 
 ceremonials and compliments on the steps, in the antechamber, or 
 even in the salle de reception doing Kotoo Chinese or any other 
 fashion. 
 
 We went over vast fields of thought in our short hour, from America 
 to France, and to England and to Ireland, Washington, La Fayette, 
 Bonaparte, O'Connell. You may guess it could only be a vue oVoiseau, 
 flying too, but still a pounce down upon a true point now and then, 
 and agreeing in our general unchangeable view that moral excellence 
 is essential to make the man really great ; that the highest intellectual 
 superiority that can be given by Omnipotence to mortal ought not and 
 does not. even in human opinion, entitle him without moral worth to 
 the character of great. Mr. Everett tells me that Washington Irving 
 is going to publish another life of Washington. I fear his workman- 
 ship will be too fine and delicate for the main matter. Boldness — 
 boldness — boldness — and brevity. Oh, the strength of Brevity ! 
 Brevity keeps fast hold of the memory, and more fast hold of the 
 judgment ; the w 7 hole process, en petit compris, goes in a few words 
 with the verdict to " long posterity" while elegance only charms the 
 taste, accoi-ds with the present fashion of literature, and passes away 
 gliding gracefully into " mere oblivion." 
 
 Lecture upon brevity well exemplified by present correspondent. 
 
 A severe attack of erysipelas laid her low this 
 summer ; but, if it weakened her body, it did not 
 depress her mental faculties. She writes to her cousin 
 with all the buoyancy of youth : — 
 
 I am right glad to look forward to the hope of seeing you again, 
 and talking all manner of nonsense and sense, and laughing myself 
 and making you laugh, as I used to do, though I am six year 
 beyond the allotted age and have had so many attacks of illness 
 within the last two years ; but I am as Bess Fitzherbert and poor 
 dear Sophy used to say, like one of those pith puppets that you 
 knock down in vain, they always start up the same as ever. . . . 
 Sir Henry Marsh managed me with skill, and let me recover slowly 
 as Nature requires at advanced age. I am obliged to repeat myself, 
 " advanced age," because really and truly neither my spirits nor my 
 powers of locomotion and facility of running up and down stairs 
 would put me in mind of it. I do not find either my love for my 
 friends or my love of literature in the least failing. I enjoyed even
 
 212 MARIA EDUEWORTH. 
 
 when flattest in my bed hearing Harriet Butler reading to me till 
 eleven o'clooh at night. 
 
 Her interest in the current literature was sustained ; 
 and though she had little sympathy with the romantic 
 school of poetry and fiction that had arisen, her 
 criticisms were both fair and acute. Of the modern 
 French writers she said : — 
 
 All the fashionable French Novelists will soon he reduced to 
 advertising for a new vice, instead of, like the Roman emperor, simply 
 for a now pleasure. It seems to me with the Parisian novelists a 
 first principle now that there is no pleasure without vice, and no vice 
 without pleasure, but that the old world vices having been exhausted 
 they must strain their genius to invent new: and so they do, in the 
 most wonderful and approved had manner, if I may judge from the 
 few specimens I have looked at. 
 
 Henrietta Temple she condemns as "trash," "morally 
 proving that who does wrong should be rewarded with 
 love and fortune." Indeed, so eager was she over 
 books, so ardently did she still enter into all adventures 
 and details, that when she was ill her doctor found it 
 needful to prescribe that her reading must be confined 
 to some old well-known work, or else something that 
 should entertain and interest her without over-exciting 
 her or straining her attention. 
 
 During the whole of 1846, the long illness and 
 death of her brother Francis absorbed all Miss Edge- 
 worth's interest. Next year came the terrible potato 
 famine. She strained every nerve to help the sufferers; 
 her time, her thoughts, her purse, her Avhole strength, 
 were devoted to the poor. She could hardly feel or 
 think on any other theme ; plans to relieve the distress, 
 petitions for aid, filled her letters. She even turned 
 her attention once more to writing, in order to get 
 more money for her starving countrymen. The result
 
 ORLANDINO. 213 
 
 was Orlandino, a tale for children, relating the fortunes 
 and reformation of a graceless truant. It was the 
 last work she published, her literary career thus 
 ending, as it began, with a tale to give gladness to 
 childhood. She had her reward in a great pleasure 
 that came to her from America. The children of 
 Boston, hearing what pains their kind friend in Ireland 
 was taking for her unhappy compatriots, as a recog- 
 nition of their love for her and her writings, organised 
 a subscription. At the end of a few weeks, they were 
 able to send her 150 barrels of flour and rice. They 
 came with the simple address, worth more to her than 
 many phrases, " To Miss Edgeworth, for her poor." 
 She was deeply touched and grateful. It touched her 
 also that the porters, who carried the grain down to 
 the shore, refused to be paid; and, with her own 
 hands, she knitted a woollen comforter for each man, 
 and sent them to a friend for distribution. Before 
 they reached their destination, the hands that had 
 worked them were cold, and the beating of that warm, 
 kind heart stilled for ever. 
 
 For scarcely was the famine over, and before Miss 
 Edgeworth's over-taxed strength had time to recoup, 
 another and yet heavier blow was to befall her. 
 Indeed, many deaths and sorrows as she had known, 
 in some respects this was the severest that had for 
 some years come upon her. It was natural to see the 
 old go before her, but not so the young, and when in 
 1848 her favourite sister Fanny died rather suddenly, 
 Miss Edgeworth felt that the dearest living object of 
 her love had gone. 
 
 The shock did not apparently tell on her health, as 
 she continued to employ herself with her usual interest 
 and sympathy in all the weal and woe of her family
 
 214 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 and many friends, but the life-spring had snapped, 
 unknown perhaps even to her, certainly unknown to 
 those around her. For she bore up bravely, cheer- 
 fully, and was to all appearance as bright as ever. 
 Next to doing good, reading was still her greatest 
 pleasure : — 
 
 Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age. Last 
 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I 
 had as much enjoyment from books as ever I had in my life. 
 
 History gave her particular delight : — 
 
 I am surprised to find how much more history interests me now 
 than when I was young, and how much more I am now interested in 
 the same events recorded, and their causes and consequences shown, 
 in this history of the French Revolution, and in all the history of 
 Europe during the last quarter of a century, than I was when the 
 news came fresh and fresh in the newspapers. I do not think I had 
 sense enough to take in the relations and proportions of the events. 
 It was like moving a magnifying glass over the parts of a beetle, and 
 not taking in the whole. 
 
 Macaulay's history charmed her, and in all her first 
 enthusiasm she wrote a long letter about it to her old 
 friend Sir Henry Holland. He showed it to Macaulay, 
 who was so struck with its discrimination and ability 
 that he begged to be allowed to keep it. Among 
 all the incidents connected with the publication of his 
 book, nothing, it is said, pleased Macaulay more than 
 the gratification he had contrived to give to Miss 
 Edgeworth as a small return for the enjoyment which, 
 during more than forty years, he had derived from her 
 writings. 
 
 My ukak Du. Holland, Trim, April 2nd, 1849. 
 
 I ha vi' just finished Macaulay's two volumes of the History of 
 England with the same feeling that you expressed — regret at coming 
 to the end, and longing for another volume — the most uncommon 
 feeling, I suppose, that readers of two thick octavo volumes of
 
 MAC A ULAY'S HISTORY. 215 
 
 history of England and of times so well known, or whose story has 
 been so often written, ever experienced. In truth, in the whole course 
 of reading or hearing it read I was sorry to stop and glad to go on. 
 It bears peculiarly well that severe test of being read aloud ; it never 
 wearies the ear by the long resounding line, but keeps the attention 
 alive by the energy shown. It is the perfection of style, so varied, 
 and yet the same in fitness, in propriety, in perspicuity, in grace, 
 in dignity and eloquence, and, whenever naturally called forth, in that 
 just indignation which makes the historian as well as the poet. If 
 Voltaire says ti'ue that " the style is the man," what a man must 
 Macaulay be ! But the man is in fact as much more than the style, 
 as the matter is more than the manner. It is astonishing with what 
 ease Macaulay wields, manages, arranges his vast materials collected 
 far and near, and knows their value and proportions so as to give 
 the utmost strength and force and fight and life to the whole, and 
 sustains the whole. Such new lights are thrown upon historic facts 
 and historic characters that the old appear new, and that which had 
 been dull becomes bright and entertaining and interesting. Exceed- 
 ingly interesting he has made history by the happy use and aid of 
 biography and anecdote. A word brings the individual before us, 
 and shows not only his character, but the character of the times, and 
 at once illustrates or condemns to everlasting fame. Macaulay has 
 proved by example how false Madame de Stael's principle was that 
 biography and biographical anecdotes were altogether inadmissible in 
 history — below the dignity or breaking the proportion or unity, I 
 suppose she thought. But whatever might be her reasons, she gave 
 this opinion to Dumont, who told it to me. Much good it did her ! 
 How much more interesting historical precis in painting or in writing, 
 which is painting in word, are made by the introduction of portraits 
 of celebrated individuals — either as actors or even as spectators, the 
 bold figures live, and merely by their life further the action and 
 impress the sense of truth and reality. I have pleasure, my dear 
 Dr. Holland, in pointing out to you, warm as it first comes, the 
 admiration which this work has raised to this height in my mind. I 
 know this will give you sympathetic pleasure. 
 
 And now, my good friend, in return I require from you prompt 
 and entire belief in an assertion which I am about to make, which 
 may appear to you at first incredible. But try-try, at all events the 
 effort will give you occasion to determine a question which, perhaps, 
 -excellent metaphysician as you have shown yourself, you never 
 settled, whether you can or cannot believe at will. 
 
 That which I require you to believe is iggp that all the admiration 
 I have expressed of Macaulay's work is quite uninfluenced by the
 
 216 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 atiafaotion, vanity, pride, surprise, delight, I bad En limine 
 own Dame in a note !!!!!! 
 
 Be assnred, believe it or not, aa you may or can, that neither my 
 vanity nor my gratitude weighed with my judgment in the slig 
 degree in the opinion I formed, or in thai warmth with which it was 
 poured out. In fact, I bad Formed my opinion, and expressed it with 
 qo less warmth t" my friends round me. reading the liook to me, 
 before I came to that note ; moreover, there was a mixture of shame 
 and twinge of pain with the pleasure, the pride I fell in haying a lino 
 in his immortal Bistory given to me when the historian makes no 
 mention of Sir Walter Scotl throughout the work, even in places 
 where it seems impossible thai < lenius could resist paying the becoming 
 tribute which Genius owes and loves to pay to Genius. I cannol 
 conceive how this could be. I cannot bring myself to imagine that 
 the words Tory or Whig, or Dissenter or Churchman, or feeling of 
 party or natural spirit, could bias such a man as Macaulay. Perhaps 
 he reserves himself for the 46, and T hope in heaven it ia so, and that 
 you will tell me I am very impetuous and prematurely impertinent. 
 Meanwhile, be 1 so good to make my grateful and deeply-felt thanks 
 to the great author for the honor which he has done me. 'When 1 was 
 in London some years ago, and when I had the pleasure of meeting 
 .Mr. Macaulay, I took the liberty of expressing a wish that he would 
 visit Ireland, and that if he did we might have the bonor of seeing 
 bim al our house. I am very glad to rind that the Battle of the Boyne 
 will tiring him here. He must have now so many invitations from 
 those who have the highest inducement to offer, thai I bardly dare to 
 repeat my request. Bui will you, my dear friends, do whatever you 
 can with propriety for as, and say how much Mrs. Edgeworth and 
 myself and our whole family would be gratified by his giving us even 
 a call on his way to some better place, and even an bour of his con- 
 versation. I am now at Trim with my sister and dear brother. Trim 
 and its ruins, and the tower, and where kings and generals and poets 
 have been, would perhaps, he may think, be worth his seeing. Dean 
 Butler and my sister feel as I do how many claims Mr. Macaulay 
 must have upon his time in his visit to Ireland; but they desire me 
 to say that if anything should bring bim into this neighbourhood, 
 they should think themselves highly honoured by receiving him. I 
 am sure he would be interested by Mr. Butler's conversation and 
 irks on various parts of Macaulay's History, /should exceedingly 
 like to hear commentated and discussed. Little i must come in. you 
 see, at every close. You will observe that, in speaking of Macaulay's 
 work, I have spoken only of the style, the only point of which I 
 could presume to think my opinion could be of any value. Of the
 
 LAST LETTER. 217 
 
 great attributes, of the essential qualities of the historian, accuracy, 
 fidelity, impartiality, I could not, even if I thought myself qualified 
 to judge, attempt to speak in this letter. But I am sensible that I 
 have neither the knowledge nor the strength, much less the coolness 
 of judgment necessary, to make opinion valuable on such subjects. 
 I could easily give my own opinion, but — of no use. The less I am 
 inclined to speak when I do not know, the more I am anxious to hear ; 
 and most delightful and profitable would it be to me to hoar the 
 great historian himself speak on many points which I hear discussed 
 by my learned brother. Dean Butler, and others (on Clarendon's 
 character, &c. &c. &c). We have not yet seen any of the public 
 reviews of Macaulay's History. No doubt the stinging, little, ephemeral 
 insects will come out in swarms to buz and fly-blow in the sunshine. 
 The warmer, the brighter, the thicker the swarm will be to prick. I 
 hope you will read this unconscionable lengthy letter when you are 
 in your carriage, rolling about from patient to patient, and be 
 patient yourself then, my dear doctor. You are always so very 
 
 good and kind to me that 1 encroach. I seldom write such long 
 
 espistles. As the most impudent beggar-woman in our town says to 
 Mrs. E., " Ma'am, your ladyship, I never beg from anyone so much as 
 your ladyship ; troth, never from any but you." . . . 
 
 Give my most kind and affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Holland 
 and your daughters and sons, and 
 
 Believe me most garrulously and sincerely yours. 
 Maria Edgeworth. 
 
 This letter, so characteristic in its humility and 
 generous admiration, shows no sign of old age or im- 
 paired faculties, neither is there any trace of this in 
 one of the last she ever wrote, addressed to her sister 
 Harriet : — 
 
 I am heartily obliged and delighted by your being such a goose 
 and Richard such a gander, as to be frightened out of your wits at 
 my going up the ladder to take off the top of the clock ! Know, then, 
 that I am quite worthy of that most unmerited definition of man, " A 
 creature that looks before and after." Before I let on to anybody my 
 doubts of my own capability of reaching the nail on which to hang 
 the top, I called Shaw, and made her stand at the foot of the ladder 
 while I went up, and found I could no more reach the nail than I 
 could reach the moon. Exit Shaw ! 
 
 15
 
 ■_>ls MARIA EDGEWORTH. 
 
 Prudence of M. !■'... Acl 2: Summoned Oassidy, and informed him 
 
 that I was to wind np the clock, and tliat he was promoted to take 
 
 off the top for me; and then u|> I went and wound the clock, and 
 wound it as I had done before you were born, as there ia nothing 
 easier, only to see that it is not going to maintain at the very instant, 
 which is plainly to he noted by the position of the maintaining pin on 
 the little outer wheel relative to the first deep tooth. You see I am 
 not quite a nincompoop. I send my lines: — 
 
 " Ireland, with all thy faults, thy follies too, 
 I love thee still : still with a candid eye must view 
 Thy wit too quick, still blundering into sense ; 
 Thy reckless humour : sad improvidence ; 
 And even what sober judges follies call — 
 I, looking at the heart, forget them all." 
 
 Mama E., May 1849. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth had been staying with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Butler in the spring. When taking leave she 
 was unusually agitated and depressed, but said as she 
 went away : " At Whitsuntide I shall return." On 
 the very day before she was to redeem this promise 
 she drove out in apparent good health, when a 
 sudden feeling of weakness overcame her and made 
 her return to the house. Severe pains in the region 
 of the heart set in, and after a few hours illness 
 Maria Edgeworth died — died as she had fondly wished, 
 at home, in the arms of her step-mother. Yet 
 another of her wishes was granted : she had spared 
 her friends the anguish of seeing her suffer from 
 protracted illness. May 22nd, 1849, she rose from 
 the banquet of life where, in her own words, she had 
 been a happy guest. 
 
 In her latter years Miss Edgeworth had been asked 
 to furnish prefaces of a biographical character to her 
 novels. She refused, saying she had nothing personal 
 to tell. " As a woman, my life, wholly domestic,
 
 THE END. 219 
 
 cannot afford anything interesting to the public ; ] 
 am like the ' needy knife-grinder/ I have no story 
 to tell." 
 
 Was she right ? or is not the story of so loving and 
 lovable a life worth telling ?
 
 LONDON : 
 PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
 
 University of California Library 
 Los Angeles 
 
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