Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  MARIA EDGEWORTH to MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 16. 1828.

  Thank you, thank you for the roses; the yellow Scotch and Knight’s dark red, and the ever-blowing, came quite fresh, and just at the moment I wanted them, when I had taken to my garden, after finishing my gutters. Lady Hartland told me that the common people call the rose des quatre saisons, the quarter session rose.

  Have you read the Recollections of Hyacinth O’Gara? It is a little sixpenny book; I venture to say you would like it; I wish I was reading it to you. I am much pleased with Napier’s History of the Peninsular War. The Spanish character and all that influenced it, accidentally and permanently, is admirably drawn. There is the evidence of truth in the work. Heber is charming, but I haven’t read him! People often say “charming” of books they have not read; but I have read extracts in two reviews, and have the pleasure of the book on the table before me.

  I have not a scrap of news for you, except that an ass and a calf walked over my flower-beds, and that I did not kill either of them. If the ass had not provoked me to this degree, I was in imminent danger of growing too fond of him, as I never could meet him drawing loads without stopping to pat him, till clouds of dust rose from his thick hide. But now, I will take no more notice of him — for a week!

  To MISS RUXTON EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Jan. 1, 1829.

  Fanny Edgeworth is now Fanny Wilson; [Footnote: Frances Maria, eldest daughter of the fourth Mrs. Edgeworth, married Lestock P. Wilson, Esq., of London.] I can hardly believe it! She is gone! I feel it, and long must feel it, with anguish, selfish anguish. But she will be happy — of that I have the most firm, delightful conviction; and therefore all that I cannot help now feeling is, I know, only surface feeling, and will soon pass away. The more I have seen and known of Lestock, the more I like him and love him, and am convinced I shall always love him, whose every word and look bears the stamp and value of sincerity.

  Both their voices pronounced the words of the marriage vow with perfect clearness and decision. Mr. Butler performed the ceremony with great feeling and simplicity. I will tell my dearest aunt and you all the little circumstances; at present they are all in confusion, great and small, near and distant, and I am sick at heart in the midst of it all with the shameful, weak, selfish, uppermost sorrow of parting with this darling child.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. BLOOMFIELD, Jan. 19, 1829.

  An immense concourse of people, cavalcade and carriages innumerable, passed by here to-day. We saw it, and you will see it all in the newspapers. Banners with Constitutional Agitation printed in black, Mobility and Nobility in black, crape hatbands, etc. Lord Anglesea’s two little sons riding between two officers, in the midst of the hurricane mob, struck me most. One of the boys, a little midge, seemed to stick on the horse by accident, or by mere dint of fearlessness: the officer put his arm round him once, and set him up, the boy’s head looking another way, and the horse keeping on his way, through such noise, and struggling, and waves multitudinous of mob.

  There is an entertaining article in the Quarterly Review on The Subaltern. I do not like that on Madame de Genlis — coarse, and over-doing the object by prejudice and virulence. The review of Scott’s Prefaces is ungrounded and confused — how different from his own writing! But there is an article worth all the rest put together, on Scientific Institutions, written in such a mild, really philosophical spirit, such a pure, GREAT MAN’S desire to do good; I cannot but wish and hope it might prove to be Captain Beaufort’s. If you have not read it, never rest till you do.

  To CAPTAIN BASIL HALL. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 12, 1829.

  … If I could, as you say, flatter myself that Sir Walter Scott was in any degree influenced to write and publish his novels from seeing my sketches of Irish character, I should indeed triumph in the “thought of having been the proximate cause of such happiness to millions.”

  In what admirable taste Sir Walter Scott’s introduction [Footnote: To the new edition of Waverley.] is written! No man ever contrived to speak so delightfully of himself, so as to gratify public curiosity, and yet to avoid all appearance of egotism, — to let the public into his mind, into all that is most interesting and most useful to posterity to know of his history, and yet to avoid all improper, all impertinent, all superfluous disclosures.

  Children’s questions are often simply sublime: the question your three-years-old asked was of these—”Who sanded the seashore?”

  To MISS RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 29, 1829.

  I cannot forbear writing specially to you, as I know you will feel so much about Captain Beaufort’s appointment to the Hydrographership; I wish poor William had been permitted the pleasure of hearing of it. [Footnote: William Edgeworth had died of consumption on 7th May after a two months’ illness.] It would have given him pleasure even on his dying bed, noble, generous creature as he was; he would have rejoiced for his friend, and have felt that merit is sometimes rewarded in this world. This appointment is, in every respect, all that Captain Beaufort wished for himself, and all that his friends can desire for him. As one of the first people in the Admiralty said, “Beaufort is the only man in England fit for the place.”

  Very touching letters have come to us from people whom we scarcely knew, whom William had attached so much; and many whom he had employed speak of him as the kindest of masters, and as a benefactor whose memory will be ever revered.

  To MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Sept. 27, 1829.

  I am now able, with the consent of all my dear guardians, to write with my own hand to assure you that I am quite well.

  I enjoyed the snatches I was able to have of Wordsworth’s conversation, and I think I had quite as much as was good for me. He has a good philosophical bust, a long, thin, gaunt face, much wrinkled and weatherbeaten: of the Curwen style of figure and face, but with a more cheerful and benevolent expression.

  While confined to my sofa and forbidden my pen, I have been reading a good deal: 1st, Cinq Mars, a French novel, with which I think you would be charmed, because I am; 2nd, The Collegians, in which there is much genius and strong drawing of human nature, but not elegant: terrible pictures of the passions, and horrible, breathless interest, especially in the third volume, which never flags till the last huddled twenty pages. My guardians turn their eyes reproachfully upon me. Mr. William Hamilton has been with us since the day before Wordsworth came, and we continue to like him.

  May 3, 1830.

  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-clack, 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 bull-finches, each in his cage on the 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. At night we read Dr. Madden’s Travels to Constantinople and elsewhere, in which there are most curious facts: admirable letter about the plague; a new mode of treatment, curing seventy-five in a hundred; and a family living in a mummy vault, and selling mummies. You must read it.

  My peony tree is the most beautiful thing on earth. Poor dear Lord Oriel gave it me. His own is dead, and he is dead; but love for him lives in me still.

  Sir Stamford Raffles is one of the finest characters I ever read of, and did more than is almost credible. I have been amused with The Armenians, [Footnote: A novel by Macfarlane.] — amused with its pictures of Greek, Armenian, and Turkish life, and interested in its very romantic story.

  July 19.

  If there should not be any insuperable objection to it on your part, I

  will do mysel
f the pleasure of being in your arms the first week in

  August, that I may be some time with you before I take my departure for

  England for the winter.

  The people about us are now in great distress, having neither work nor food; and we are going to buy meal to distribute at half-price. Meal was twenty-three shillings a hundred, and potatoes sevenpence a stone, last market-day at Granard. Three weeks longer must the people be supported till new food comes from the earth.

  * * * * *

  This is the last letter Maria Edgeworth addressed to her aunt. She paid her intended visit to her in August, but had left her before her last illness began. Mrs. Ruxton died on the 1st of November, while Maria was in London with her sister Fanny — Mrs. Lestock Wilson. The loss of her aunt was the greatest Miss Edgeworth had sustained since the death of her father. She had ever been the object of exceeding love, one with whom every thought and feeling was shared, one of her greatest sources of happiness.

  * * * * *

  MARIA to MISS RUXTON. 69 WELBECK STREET, LONDON.

  Dec. 8, 1830.

  All my friends have been kind in writing to me accounts of you, my dear Sophy. You and Margaret are quite right to spend the winter at Black Castle; and the pain you must endure in breaking through all the old associations and deep remembrances will, I trust, be repaid, both in the sense of doing right and in the affection of numbers attached to you.

  I spent a fortnight with Sneyd very happily, in spite of mobs and incendiaries. Brandfold is a very pretty place, and to me a very pleasant house. The library, the principal room, has a trellis along the whole front, with ‘spagnolette windows opening into it, and a pretty conservatory at the end, with another glass door opening into it. The views seen between the arches of the trellis beautiful; flower-knots in the grass, with stocks, hydrangeas, and crimson and pale China roses in profuse blow. Sneyd enjoys everything about him so much, it is quite delightful to see him in his home. You have heard from Honora of the sense and steadiness with which he resisted the mob at Goudhurst.

  I spent a morning and an evening very pleasantly at Lansdowne House. They had begged me to come and drink tea with them in private, and to come early: I went at nine: I had been expected at eight. All Lady Lansdowne’s own family, and as she politely said, “All my old friends at Bowood” now living: Miss Fox, Lord John Russell, Lord Auckland, the young Romillys, Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Wishaw, Mr. Turner, — whom I must do myself the justice to say I recollected immediately, who showed us the Bank seventeen years ago, — and Conversation Sharpe.

  They say that Charles X. is quite at his ease, amusing himself, and not troubling himself about the fate of Polignac, or any of his ministers: there is great danger for them, but still I hope the French will not disgrace this revolution by spilling their blood. Lord Lansdowne mentioned an instance of the present King Louis Philippe’s présence d’esprit: a mob in Paris surrounded him—”Que desirez-vous, messieurs?” “Nous désirons Napoléon.” “Eh bien, allez donc le trouver.” The mob laughed, cheered, and dispersed.

  I have seen dear good Joanna Baillie several times, and the Carrs. It has been a great pleasure to me to feel myself so kindly received by those I liked best in London years ago. 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.

  Dr. Holland’s children are very fine, happy-looking children, and he does seem so to enjoy them. His little boy, in reply to the commonplace, aggravating question of

  “Who loves you? Nobody in this world loves you!”

  “Yes, there is somebody: papa loves me, I know — I am sure!” and throwing himself on his back on his Aunt Mary’s lap, he looked up at his father with such a sweet, confident smile. The father was standing between Sir Edward Alderson and Southey, the one sure he had him by the ear, and the other by the imagination; but the child had him by the heart. He smiled and nodded at his boy, and with an emphasis in which the whole soul spoke low, but strong, said, “Yes, I do love you.” Neither the lawyer nor the poet heard him.

  All my friends understand that I keep out of all fine company and great parties, and see only my friends.

  Here the carriage came to the door, and we have been to see Mrs. Calcott, who was Mrs. Graham, who was very glad to see me, and entertaining; and Lady Elizabeth Whitbread as kind and affectionate as ever. She is struggling between her natural pride on her brother’s ministerial appointment, and her natural affection which fears for his health.

  Joanna Baillie tells me that Lord Dudley wrote to Sir Walter, offering to take upon himself the whole debt, and be paid by instalments. Sir Walter wrote a charming note of refusal.

  Thursday.

  I saw Talleyrand at Lansdowne House — like a corpse, with his hair dressed “aîles de pigeon” bien poudré. As Lord Lansdowne drolly said, “How much those aîles de pigeon have gone through unchanged! How many revolutions have they seen! how many changes of their master’s mind!” Talleyrand has less countenance than any man of talents I ever saw. He seems to think not only that la parole était donné à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée, but that expression of countenance was given to him as a curse, to betray his emotions: therefore he has exerted all his abilities to conquer all expression, and to throw into his face that “no meaning” which puzzles more than wit; but I heard none. His niece, the Duchesse de Dino, was there: little, and ugly — plain, I should say — nobody is ugly now but myself.

  To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH. 1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Jan. 8, 1831.

  Now I will tell you of my delightful young Christmas party at Mrs. Lockhart’s. After dinner she arranged a round table in the corner of the room, on which stood a magnificent iced plum cake. There were to be twelve children: impossible to have room for chairs all round the table: it was settled that the king and queen alone should be invited to the honours of the sitting; but Mr. Lockhart, in a low voice, said, “Johnny! there must, my dear Sophia, you know, be a chair for Johnny here — all’s right now.”

  Enter first, Miss Binning, a young lady of fifteen, Johnny’s particular friend, who had been invited to make crowns for the king and queen — a very nice elegant-looking girl with a slight figure.

  Then came from the top of the stairs peals of merry laughter, and in came the revel rout; the king and queen with their gilt paper admirable crowns on their heads, and little coronation robes; the queen was Mrs. Lockhart’s youngest child, like a dear little fairy; and the king to match. All the others in various ways pleasing and prettily simply dressed in muslins of a variety of colours; plenty of ringlets of glossy hair, fair or brown, none black, with laughing blue eyes. And now they look at the tickets they have drawn for their twelfth-night characters, and read them out. After eating as much as well could be compassed, the revel rout ran upstairs again to the drawing-room, where open space and verge enough had been made for hunt the slipper; and down they all popped in the circle, of which you may see the likeness in the Pleasures of Memory. Then came dancing; and as the little and large dancers were all Scotch, I need not say how good it was. Mrs. Lockhart is really a delightful creature, the more lovable the closer one comes to her and in London. How very, very kind of her to invite me to this quite family party; if she had invented for ever, she could not have found what would please me more.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. LONDON, January 20.

  I write this “certificate of existence,” and moreover, an affidavit of my being a-foot [Footnote: Miss Edgeworth had twisted her foot a few nights before in getting out of the carriage, and was unable to use it for some days.] again, and can go downstairs with one foot foremost like a child, and wore a black satin shoe like another last night at Mrs. Elliot’s.

  Now sign, seal, and deliver for the bare life — of Mrs. Hope and the

  Duchess of Wellington in my next.

  January 22.

 
I left off at the Duchess of Wellington. I heard she was ill and determined to write and ask if she wished to see me; a hundred of the little London remoras delayed and stopped me and fortunately — I almost always find cause to rejoice instead of deploring when I have delayed to execute an intention, so that I must conclude that my fault is precipitation not procrastination. The very day I had my pen in my hand to write to her and was called away to write some other letter, much to my annoyance; much to my delight a few hours afterwards came a little pencil note, begging me to come to Apsley House if I wished to please an early friend who could never forget the kindness she had received at Edgeworthstown. I had not been able to put my foot to the ground, but I found it easy with motive to trample on impossibilities, and there is no going upstairs at Apsley House, for the Duke has had apartments on the ground floor, a whole suite, appropriated to the Duchess now that she is so ill, and I had only to go leaning on Fanny’s arm, through a long passage to a magnificent room — not magnificent from its size, height, length, or breadth, but from its contents: the presents of Cities, Kingdoms, and Sovereigns. In the midst, on a high, narrow, mattressed sofa like Lucy’s, all white and paler than ever Lucy was, paler than marble, lay as if laid out a corpse, the Duchess of Wellington. Always little and delicate-looking, she now looked a miniature figure of herself in wax-work. As I entered I heard her voice before I saw her, before I could distinguish her features among the borders of her cap; only saw the place where her head lay on the huge raised pillow; the head moved, the head only, and the sweet voice of Kitty Pakenham exclaimed, “O! Miss Edgeworth, you are the truest of the true — the kindest of the kind.” And a little, delicate, death-like white hand stretched itself out to me before I could reach the couch, and when I got there I could not speak — not a syllable, but she, with most perfect composure, more than composure, cheerfulness of tone, went on speaking; as she spoke, all the Kitty Pakenham expression appeared in that little shrunk face, and the very faint colour rose, and the smile of former times. She raised herself more and more, and spoke with more and more animation in charming language and with all her peculiar grace and elegance of kindness recollected so much of past times and of my father particularly, whose affection she convinced me had touched her deeply.