Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  You will look very blank when you come back from the sea, and find what doings there have been at Black Castle in your absence. Anna was extremely sorry that she could not see you again before she left Ireland; but you will soon be in the same kingdom again, and that is one great point gained, as Mr. Weaver, a travelling astronomical lecturer, who carried the universe about in a box, told us. “Sir,” said he to my father, “when you look at a map, do you know that the east is always on your right hand, and the west on your left?”—”Yes,” replied my father, with a very modest look, “I believe I do.”—”Well,” said the man of learning, “that’s one great point gained.”

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, 1795.

  My father returned late on Friday night, bringing with him a very bad and a very good thing; the bad thing was a bad cold — the good is Aunt Mary Sneyd. Emmeline was delayed some days at Lichfield by the broken bridges, and bad roads, floods and snows, which have stopped man, and beast, and mail coaches. Mr. Cox, the man who sells camomile drops under the title of Oriental Pearls, wrote an apology to my Aunt Mary for neglecting to send the Pearls in the following elegant phrase: “That the mistake she mentioned he could no ways account for but by presuming that it must have arisen from impediments occasioned by the inclemencies of the season!”

  When my father went to see Lord Charlemont, he came to meet him, saying,

  “I must claim relationship with you, Mr. Edgeworth. I am related to the

  Abbé Edgeworth, who is I think an honour to the kingdom — I should say to

  human nature.”

  EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 11, 1795.

  My father and Lovell have been out almost every day, when there are no robbers to be committed to jail, at the Logograph.[Footnote: A name invented to suit the anti-Gallican prejudices of the day.] This is the new name instead of the Telegraph, because of its allusion to the logographic printing press, which prints words instead of letters. Phaenologue was thought of, but Logograph sounds better. My father will allow me to manufacture an essay on the Logograph, he furnishing the solid materials and I spinning them. I am now looking over, for this purpose, Wilkins’s Real Character, or an Essay towards a Universal Philosophical Language. It is a scarce and very ingenious book; some of the phraseology is so much out of the present fashion, that it would make you smile: such as the synonym for a little man, a Dandiprat. Likewise two prints, one of them a long sheet of men with their throats cut, so as to show the windpipe whilst working out the different letters of the alphabet. The other print of all the birds and beasts packed ready to go into the ark.

  Sir Walter James has written a very kind and sensible letter to my father, promising all his influence with his Viceregal brother-in-law about the telegraph. My father means to get a letter from him to Lord Camden, and present it himself, though he rather doubts whether, all things taken together, it is prudent to tie himself to Government. The raising the militia has occasioned disturbances in this county. Lord Granard’s carriage was pelted at Athlone. The poor people here are robbed every night. Last night a poor old woman was considerably roasted: the man, who called himself Captain Roast, is committed to jail, he was positively sworn to here this morning. Do you know what they mean by the White Tooths? Men who stick two pieces of broken tobacco pipes at each corner of the mouth, to disguise the face and voice.

  April 20.

  Here is a whirlwind in our county, and no angel to direct it, though many booted and spurred desire no better than to ride in it. There is indeed an old woman in Ballymahon, who has been the guardian angel of General Crosby; she has averted a terrible storm, which was just ready to burst over his head. The General, by mistake, went into the town of Ballymahon, before his troops came up; and while he was in the inn, a mob of five hundred people gathered in the street. The landlady of the inn called General Crosby aside, and told him, that if the people found him they would certainly tear him to pieces. The General hesitated, but the abler general, the landlady, sallied forth and called aloud in a distinct voice, “Bring round the chaise-and-four for the gentleman from Lanesborough, who is going to Athlone.” The General got into the chaise incog., and returning towards Athlone met his troops, and thus effected a most admirable retreat.

  Monday Night.

  Richard [Footnote: His last visit to Ireland. He returned to America, and died there in 1796.] and Lovell are at the Bracket Gate. I hope you know the Bracket Gate, it is near Mr. Whitney’s, and so called, as tradition informs me, from being painted red and white like a bracket cow. I am not clear what sort of an animal a bracket cow is, but I suppose it is something not unlike a dun cow and a gate joined together. Richard and Lovell have a nice tent, and a clock, and white lights, and are trying nocturnal telegraphs, which are now brought to satisfactory perfection.

  I am finishing “Toys and Tasks;” I wish I might insert your letter to Sneyd, [Footnote: Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth’s second boy.] with the receipt for the dye, as a specimen of experiments for children. Sneyd with sparkling eyes returns you his sincere thanks, and my mother with her love sends you the following lines, which she composed to-day for him:

  To give me all that art can give,

  My aunt and mother try:

  One teaches me the way to live,

  The other how to dye.

  But though she makes epigrams, my mother is far from well.

  * * * * *

  This year Letters for Literary Ladies, Miss Edgeworth’s first published work, was produced by Johnson. In 1796 she published the collection of stories known as The Parent’s Assistant. In these, in the simplest language, and with wonderful understanding of children, and what would come home to their hearts, she continued to illustrate the maxims of her father. The “Purple Jar” and “Lazy Laurence” are perhaps the best-known stories of the first edition. To another was added “Simple Susan,” of which 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.” Most of these stories were written in the excitement of very troubled times in Ireland.

  * * * * *

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Saturday Night, Jan. 1796.

  My father is gone to a Longford committee, where he will I suppose hear many dreadful Defender stories: he came home yesterday fully persuaded that a poor man in this neighbourhood, a Mr. Houlton, had been murdered, but he found he was only kilt, and “as well as could be expected,” after being twice robbed and twice cut with a bayonet. 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 see nightly visions of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows unbarred.”

  I must observe though, that it is only those doors and windows which have neither bolts nor bars, that we leave unbarred, and these are more at present than we wish, even 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 wrinkled offenders I should suppose would never be 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.

  To MISS S. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 27, 1796.

  Long may you feel impatient to hear from your friends, my dear Sophy, and long may you express your impatience as agreeably. I have a great deal bottled, or rather bundled up for you. Though I most earnestly wish that my father was in that situation [Footnote: M.P. for the County of Longford.] which Sir T. Fetherstone now graces, and though my father had done me the honour to let me copy his Election letters for him, I am not the least infected with the electioneering rage. Whilst the Election lasted we saw him only a few minutes in the course of the day, then indeed he entertained us to our hearts’
content; now his mind seems relieved from a disagreeable load, and we have more of his company.

  You do not mention Madame Roland, therefore I am not sure whether you have read her; if you have only read her in the translation which talks of her Uncle Bimont’s dying of a “fit of the gout translated to his chest,” you have done her injustice. We think some of her memoirs beautifully written, and like Rousseau: she was a great woman and died heroically, but I don’t think she became more amiable, and certainly not more happy by meddling with politics; for — her head is cut off, and her husband has shot himself. I think if I had been Mons. Roland I should not have shot myself for her sake, and I question whether he would not have left undrawn the trigger if he could have seen all she intended to say of him to posterity: she has painted him as a harsh, stiff, pedantic man, to whom she devoted herself from a sense of duty; her own superiority, and his infinite obligations to her, she has taken sufficient pains to blazon forth to the world. I do not like all this, and her duty work, and her full-length portrait of herself by herself. The foolish and haughty Madame de Boismorrel, who sat upon the sofa, and asked her if she ever wore feathers, was probably one of the remote causes of the French Revolution: for Madame Roland’s Republican spirit seems to have retained a long and lively remembrance of this aristocratic visit.

  As soon as the blind bookseller [Footnote: A pedlar who travelled through the country, and sometimes picked up at sales curious books new and old.] can find them for us, we shall read Miss Williams’s Letters. I am glad we both prefer the same parts in Dr. Aikin’s Letters: I liked that on the choice of a wife, but I beg to except the word helper, which is used so often and is associated with a helper in the stables. Lovell dined with Mr. Aikin at Mr. Stewart’s, at Edinburgh, and has seen the Comte d’Artois, who he says has rather a silly face, especially when it smiles. Sneyd is delighted with the four volumes of Evenings at Home, which we have just got, and has pitched upon the best stories, which he does not, like M. Dalambert, spoil in the reading—”Perseverance against Fortune,” “The Price of a Victory,” and “Capriole.” We were reading an account of the pinna the other day, and very much regretted that your pinna’s brown silk tuft had been eaten by the mice — what will they not eat? — they have eaten my thimble case! I am sorry to say that, from these last accounts of the pinna and his cancer friend, Dr. Darwin’s beautiful description is more poetic than accurate. The cancer is neither watchman nor market-woman to the pinna, nor yet his friend: he has free ingress to his house, it is true, and is often found there, but he does not visit on equal terms, or on a friendly footing, for the moment the pinna gets him in he shuts the door and eats him; or if he is not hungry, kills the poor shrimp and keeps him in the house till the next day’s dinner. I am sorry Dr. Darwin’s story is not true.

  Saturday Night.

  I do not know whether you ever heard of a Mr. Pallas, who lives at Grouse Hall. He lately received information that a certain Defender was to be found in a lone house, which was described to him; he took a party of men with him in the night, and got to the house very early in the morning: it was scarcely light. The soldiers searched the house, but no man was to be found. Mr. Pallas ordered them to search again, for that he was certain the man was there: they searched again, in vain. They gave up the point, and were preparing to mount their horses when one man who had stayed a little behind his companions, saw something moving at the end of the garden behind the house: he looked again, and beheld a man’s arm come out of the ground. He ran towards the spot and called his companions, but the arm had disappeared; they searched, but nothing was to be seen, and though the soldier persisted in his story he was not believed. “Come,” said one of the party, “don’t waste your time here looking for an apparition among these cabbage-stalks, come back once more to the house.” They went to the house, and there stood the man they were in search of, in the middle of the kitchen.

  Upon examination, it was found that a secret passage had been practised from the kitchen to the garden, opening under an old meal chest with a false bottom, which he could push up and down at pleasure. He had returned one moment too soon.

  I beg, dear Sophy, 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. The stories are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home, but I am afraid you will dislike the title; my father had sent The Parent’s Friend, [Footnote: Mr. Edgeworth had wished the book to bear this title.] but Mr. Johnson has degraded it into The Parent’s Assistant, which I dislike particularly, from association with an old book of arithmetic called The Tutor’s Assistant.

  * * * * *

  This was the first appearance of The Parent’s Assistant, in one small volume, with the “Purple Jar,” which afterwards formed part of Rosamond.

  * * * * *

  To MRS. RUXTON. 1796.

  We heard from Lovell [Footnote: Gone to London with Mr. Edgeworth’s telegraphic invention.] last post. He had reached London, and waited immediately on Colonel Brownrigg, who was extremely civil, and said he would present him any day he pleased to the Duke of York. He was delighted with the telegraphic prospect in his journey: from Nettlebed to Long Compton, a distance of fifty miles, he saw plainly. He was afraid that the motion of the stage would have been too violent to agree with his model telegraph—”his pretty, delicate little telly,” as Lovell calls it. He therefore indulged her all the way with a seat in a post-chaise, “which I bestowed upon her with pleasure, because I am convinced that, when she comes to stand in the world upon ground of her own, she will be an honour to her guardian, her parents, and her country.”

  * * * * *

  Miss Edgeworth now began to write some of the stories which were afterwards published under the title of Moral Tales, but which she at first intended as a sequel to The Parent’s Assistant; and she began to think of writing Irish Bulls.

  * * * * *

  To MISS SOPHY RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Oct. 1797.

  I do not like to pour out the gratitude I feel for your unremitting kindness to me, my dear Sophy, in vain thanks; but I may as well pour it out in words, as I shall probably never be able to return the many good turns you have done me. I am not nearly ready yet for Irish Bulls. I am going directly to Parent’s Assistant. Any good anecdotes from the age of five to fifteen, good latitude and longitude, will suit me; and if you can tell me any pleasing misfortunes of emigrants, so much the better. I have a great desire to draw a picture of an anti-Mademoiselle Panache, a well-informed, well-bred French governess, an emigrant.

  By the blind bookseller my father will send you some books, and I hope that we shall soon have finished Godwin, that he may set out for Black Castle. There are some parts of his book [Footnote: Essays, by the author of Caleb Williams.] that I think you will like much—”On Frankness,” and “Self-taught Genius;” but you will find much to blame in his style, and you will be surprised that he should have written a dissertation upon English style. I think his essay on Avarice and Profusion will please you, even after Smith: he has gone a step farther. I am going to write a story for boys, [Footnote: The Good Aunt.] which will, I believe, make a volume to follow the Good French Governess. My father thinks a volume of trials and a volume of plays would be good for children. He met the other day with two men who were ready to go to law about a horse which one had bought from the other, because he had one little fault. “What is the fault?” said my father. “Sir, the horse was standing with us all the other day in our cabin at the fire, and plump he fell down upon the middle of the fire and put it out; and it was a mercy he didn’t kill my wife and children as he fell into the midst of them all. But this is not all, sir; he strayed into a neighbour’s field of oats, and fell down in the midst of the oats, and spoiled as much as he could have eaten honestly in a week. But that’s not all, sir; one day, please your honour, I rode him out in a hurry to a fair, and he lay down with me in the ford, and I lost my fair.”

  * * * * *

  F
or the last few years Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth’s sisters, Charlotte and Mary Sneyd, had lived entirely at Edgeworthstown, not only beloved and honoured by the children of their two sisters, but tenderly welcomed and cherished by the children of their predecessor, especially by Maria, to whom no real aunts could have been more dear. During the seventeen years through which her married life lasted, Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth had become increasingly the centre of the family circle, to which she had herself added five sons and four daughters. In every relation of life she was admirable. Through the summer of 1797 her health rapidly declined, and in November she died.

  Mr. Edgeworth, then past fifty, had truly valued his third wife, of whom he said that he had “never seen her out of temper, and never received from her an unkind word or an angry look.” Yet, when he lost her, after his peculiar fashion, he immediately began to think of marrying again.

  Dr. Beaufort, Vicar of Collon, was an agreeable and cultivated man, and had long been a welcome guest at Mrs. Ruxton’s house of Black Castle. His eldest daughter, who was a clever artist, had designed and drawn some illustrations for Maria Edgeworth’s stories. With these Mr. Edgeworth found fault, and the good-humour and sense with which his criticisms were received charmed him, and led to an intimacy. Six months after his wife’s death he married Miss Beaufort.

  It may sound strange, but it is nevertheless true, that, in Miss Beaufort, even more than in her predecessors, he gave to his children a wise and kind mother, and a most entirely devoted friend.

  * * * * *

  MISS EDGEWORTH to MISS BEAUFORT. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 16, 1798.