Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

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by Maria Edgeworth


  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 part 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, Lestock 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 not the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you. You really must revisit England. My sister Harriet Butler, and Mr. Butler, and the three dear little Foxes, are all round me at this instant. Barry Fox, their father, will be with us in a few days, and Captain Beaufort returns from London on Monday. You see what a large and happy family we are!

  Mr. Butler will perform the happy, awful ceremony. How people who do not love can even dare to marry, to approach the altar to pronounce that solemn vow, I cannot conceive.

  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.

  To MISS MARGARET RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 8, 1838.

  You are the first person I write to upon returning from church after the accomplishment of Honora and Captain Beaufort’s marriage. Captain Beaufort was affected more than any man I ever saw in the same circumstances, yet in the most manly manner. Aunt Mary went to church, as she had intended: they had both received her blessing, kneeling as to a mother, the evening before in her own room. Lestock and Barry were at the church door, to hand her up the aisle. Old Mr. Keating was there, excellent, warm-hearted man; and Mr. Butler performed the ceremony. The bride and bridegroom went off from the church door, and are, I suppose, by this time, five o’clock, at Trim.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 25, 1839.

  You will, I am sure, give me credit for having so well and pleasantly performed our visits — Rosa, Lucy, and Francis with me — to the Pakenhams and Pollards. Francis found Mr. Pollard very agreeable, and was charmed with Mrs. Pollard’s manners and conversation. We called on Mrs. Dease on our return, and walked in her garden, in which, in all my seventy years, I never walked before, and saw huge bunches of crimson Indian pinks, some of which are now in my garden, and well doing there.

  In the morning, before we went to Kinturk, came a note from a gentleman at the White Hart, Edgeworthstown, waiting for an answer: an American medical professor, Dr. Gibson. It was very unlucky that I was engaged to go out — irrevocably settled: however, I sat two hours and a half with Dr. Gibson, and very clever and agreeable I found him.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. TRIM, Nov. 1, 1840.

  I am perfect, dearest mother, so no more about it, and thank you from my heart and every component part of my precious self for all the care and successful care you have taken of me, your old petted nursling. Thank you and Mrs. Mitchell for the potted meat luncheon, and Mr. Tuite for his grapes, — Mary Anne and Charlotte had some. I was less tired than I could have expected when I reached Trim, and there was Mr. Butler on the steps ready to welcome us, and candles and firelight in the drawing-room so cheerful. I slept like a sleeping top. Harriet read out Ferdinand and Isabella, which, with all its chivalresque interest, I do like very much. I am sure Rosa’s [Footnote: Mrs. Francis Edgeworth.] Spanish interest in the book will grow by that it feeds upon, and I am very glad that she who has such fresh genuine pleasure in literature should have this book, which is so beautifully written, because it is so well felt by the author. Poor kind man. I will write to Mr. Ticknor as soon as I come to Finis.

  The birds got home well; but travelling, Harriet tells me, does not agree with them, because they cannot stick upon their perch, and it is a perpetual struggle between cling and jolt.

  Nov. 10.

  I enclose a note of Miss Crampton’s and two notes of Lady Normanby’s. I never read more unaffected, affectionate, wife-like letters. How gratifying they must be to Crampton, and it raises one’s opinion of Lord Normanby himself to find he can so attach a woman and a wife.

  The History of a Flirt, which Harriet is reading to me, is rather entertaining but not interesting — a new and ingenious idea of a flirt, who is not looking for establishment or match-making, and therefore her disinterestedness charms all the lords and gentlemen who have been used to match-making mothers and young-lady-hunters for titles, and under favour of this disinterestedness her insolence and faithlessness is passed over, while all the time she is in love with a captain with “soft Venetian eyes,” as Mrs. Thrale used to say of Piozzi.

  Nov. 16.

  The ear-comforter or earwig is beautiful and comfortable, and is, I hear, as becoming to me as was the Chancellor’s wig to Francis Forbes when he acted Of Age To-morrow. I am acting of age to-day, and very gay, and perhaps may arrive at years of discretion at eighty, if I live so long. I certainly wish to live till next month that I may see you all at home again. You know the classic distich, which my father pointed out and translated for me, which was over the entrance door of the Cross Keys inn, near Beighterton:

  If you are told you will die to-morrow you smile:

  If you are told you will die a month hence you will sigh.

  I do not know where this may be in a book, but I know it is in human nature.

  To MR. TICKNOR. TRIM, Nov. 19, 1840.

  … I am afraid to invite you to come and see us again, 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 good years 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 been with us all this summer for months; and we have enjoyed ourselves as much as your kind heart could wish. Especially “that beautiful specimen of a highly cultivated gentlewoman,” as you so well called Mrs. Edgeworth, has been blest with the sight of all her children round her, all her living daughters and their husbands, and her grandchildren. Francis will settle at home, and be a good country gentleman and his own agent, to Mrs. Edgeworth’s and all our inexpressible comfort and support, also for the good of the county, as a resident landlord and magistrate much needed. As he is at home I can be spared from the rent-receiving business, etc., 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. I have chosen to go at this quiet time of year, as I particularly wish not to encounter the bustle and dissipation and lionising of London. For though I am such a minnikin lion now, and so old, literally without teeth or claws, still there be, that might rattle at the grate to make me get up and come out, and stand up to play tricks for them, and this I am not able or inclined to do. I am afraid I should growl; I never could be as good-natured 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 seventy-two — rising seventy-three — 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 plain truth. I shall return 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.

  … I do not know whether I was most interested, dear Mrs. Ticknor, in your picture of your domestic life and happy house and home, or in the view you gave me of your public festivity and celebration of your American day of days — your national festival in honour 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 an 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 unimpeachable character and his great liberality, admitting all sects and all parties to take his pledge and share his benevolent efforts, might have formed a central point round which all might gather. But no such hope! for 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 treat heretics all as one, as Catholics themselves! and would have them 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.”

  To MRS. R. BUTLER. 1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Dec. 26.

  While Francis is pro-ing and con-ing with Fanny about alterations in

  his house at Clewer, I may go on with my scribbling, and tell you that

  Honora luncheoned here, and then off we went to Mrs. Debrizey’s, Mrs.

  Darwin’s, Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgewood, Mrs. Guillemard, and Mrs. Marcet — at

  Mrs. Edward Romilly’s.

  Mrs. Darwin is the youngest daughter of Jos. Wedgewood, and is worthy of both father and mother; affectionate, and unaffected, and — young as she is, full of old times, she has her mother’s radiantly cheerful countenance, even now, debarred from all London gaieties and all gaiety but that of her own mind by close attendance on her sick husband.

  Mrs. Marcet was ill in bed, but Mr. and Mrs. Edward Romilly were pleasing and willing to be pleased, and he talked over his father’s Memoirs candidly and sensibly, and like a good son and a man of sense.

  “I had like to have forgotten “ — strange expression! can Mr. Butler explain it? I had like to have forgotten and must tell Aunt Mary about Mrs. Lister calling.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. January 2, 1841.

  Thank you for your birthday good wishes. How many birthdays have brought me the same never-failing kindness.

  A very pleasant meeting we had yesterday at your brother’s. [Footnote: Recently married to Honora Edgeworth.] Honora, dear Honora, was so nice and kind, nobody but ourselves. At second course appeared the essential trifle, [Footnote: A trifle always appeared on Maria Edgeworth’s birthday, because once on New Year’s Day when a trifle had been ordered and the dish was placed on the table there was found under the flowers, not cake and cream, but a little story Maria had written, “A Trifle.” The young folk had a real trifle afterwards.] and, trifle as it was, it was quite delightful to me with Honora’s smile.

  Did you ever taste figs stuffed with almonds? I hope you never may taste them! very bad, I assure you, but how the almonds got in puzzled me; all tight and closed as the outer skin looks without ridge or joining.

  Did you ever taste Imperial Tokay? Your brother gave me some of the best ever tasted, I am told; and what do you think I said?

  “Why, this cannot be Tokay!”

  “Did you ever taste Tokay before?” said he.

  “O yes, very often; but this is not Tokay.”

  “Be pleased to tell us what it is then,” quoth Lestock.

  “I don’t know; but not Tokay, or a different sort from what I ever tasted, for that was sour and always drunk in green glasses.”

  Suddenly I recollected that I meant Hock!

  Do you recollect the history of the Irishman, who declared that he had seen anchovies growing on the walls at Gibraltar? Challenged a gentleman for doubting him, met, and fired, and hit his man, and when the man who was hit, sprang up as he received the shot, and the second observed—”How he capers!”

  “By the powers! It was capers I meant ‘stead of anchovies.”

  To MRS. R. BUTLER. 1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Jan. 10, 1841.

  À propos du pluie, à propos du beau temps — I think of you and ten thousand times a week. (“I hate exaggeration.”) I wish for you when I am in want of some unremembered or disremembered name. I do love that Irish verb disremember, and I conjugate it daily from the infinitive to the preterpluperfect. Last week I preterpluperfectly disremembered when talking to Morris of Fortunio’s gifted men, whether the legs of him who outrunneth the hare were tied with green or red? Parties run high for green and for red — please to settle the question.

  Fanny has been reading to me Darwin’s Voyage; delightful it is.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. 1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Jan. 13, 1841.

  Most agreeable dinner here yesterday; the convives were: Dr. Lushington, Mr. Andrews; Mrs. Andrews at the last sent a regret — ill in bed with a headache. Honora came in her stead. Mr. Macintosh and Miss Carr; Dr. Lushington beside Fanny, and carving remarkably well and most entertaining and agreeable; he raised the heart’s laugh frequently, and the head’s by fresh, not old-faded-London-diner-out bon-mots, anecdotes, and facts worth knowing, all with the assistance of Mr. Andrews, so remarkably agreeable and gentlemanly a gentleman; they played into each other’s hands and mine delightfully, and Fanny’s, and Honora’s, and the ball came to everybody pat, in turn. The ball did I say? Boomerang I should have said, for it came back always nicely to the thrower.

  I must tell you an anecdote I heard yesterday from Mr. Kenyon, brother of Lord Kenyon’s, a saying of Mrs. Brooke, sister of Baron Garrow, who, notwithstanding his bullying manner in court, was a man easily swayed in private, always influenced by the last thing said by the last person in his company — all which was compressed by Mrs. Brooke into: “With my brother presence is power.”

  To MRS. R. BUTLER. 1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Feb. 24, 1841.

  My ultimate intention and best hope for my own selfish satisfaction is to go with you and Mr. Butler to that poor uncentred [Footnote: Mrs. Mary Sneyd died at the age of ninety, on the 10th of February 1841.] desolate home at Edgeworthstown.

  What an inexpressible comfort that you were with your mother, Lucy, and

  Honora, and my dear lost aunt to the last.

  To MRS. EDGEWORTH. March 14, 1841.

  Here I am, like a Sybarite, but with luxuries such as a Sybarite or Sybaritess never dreamed of: a cup of good coffee and some dry toast and butter, a good coal fire on my right, a light window on my left, dressing-table opposite, with large looking-glass, which reflects, not my face, which for good reasons of my own I never wish to see, but a beautiful green lawn and cedars of Lebanon; and on my mantelpiece stand jars of Nankin china, and shells from — Ocean knows where. And where do you think I am? At Heathfield Lodge, Croydon, the seat of Gerard Ralstone, Esq.; and met here at a large dinner yesterday Mr. Napier, and he comes for me to-morrow, and takes me to Forest Hill. At this dinner were two celebrated American gentlemen — Mr. Sparkes, who wrote Washington’s Life; and Mr. Clisson, a man of fortune, and benevolently enthusiastic about colonisation in Liberia.

  After luncheon I saw march by
to church a whole regiment of youths from

  Addiscombe, which is near here.

  But now I must retrograde to tell you, as I have a few minutes more than I expected, of a visit I had an hour before I set out, from a man fresh from Africa — a Scotchman by birth, a missionary by vocation, who had been twenty years abroad, almost all that time in Africa: sent to the Hottentots in the first place, and he converted many. They were taught to sow and to reap, and the women to sew in the other way, all by this indefatigable Mr. Moffatt; and they taught him on their part how to do the CLUCK, and Mr. Moffatt did it for me. It is indescribable and inimitable. It is not so loud as a hen’s cluck to her chickens, but more quick and abrupt.

  He said that when he was ordered to return home, he felt it as a sentence of banishment. “I had lived so long in Africa, I felt it my home, and I had almost forgotten how to speak English. I almost dreaded to be among white faces again.”

  1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET.

  Mr. Napier brought me here by half after twelve.

  I had a delightful drive with him in his little pony phaeton from Croydon to Forest Hill. Mr. and Mrs. Napier are more and more delightful to me in conversation and manners the more I see of them. A brother, Captain Napier, very conversable, and full of humour; he has a charming daughter, and has been in all parts of the world, and loves Ireland and the Irish.

 

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