Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  ‘A taste for reading and literary conversation has been universally acquired and diffused. Literature has become, as my father long ago prophesied that it would become, fashionable; so that it is really necessary to all, who would appear to advantage, even in the society of their country neighbours.’

  Referring to her father’s conversational powers, Maria adds: ‘His style in speaking and writing were as different as it is possible to conceive. In writing, cool and careful, as if on his guard against his natural liveliness of imagination; he was so cautious to avoid exaggeration, that he sometimes repressed enthusiasm. The character of his writings, if I mistake not, is good sense; the characteristic of his conversation was genius and vivacity — one moment playing on the surface, the next diving to the bottom of the subject. When anything touched his feelings, exciting either admiration or indignation, he poured forth enthusiastic eloquence, and then changed quickly to reasoning or wit. His transitions from one thought and feeling, or from one subject and tone to another, were so frequent and rapid, as to surprise, and sometimes to bewilder persons of slow intellect; but always to entertain and delight those of quick capacity. . . .

  ‘His openness in conversation went too far, almost to imprudence, exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be misunderstood. . . . Whenever he perceived in any of his friends, or in one of his children, an error of mind, or fault of character, dangerous to their happiness; or when he saw good opportunity of doing them service, by apposite and strong remark or eloquent appeal in conversation, he pursued his object with all the boldness of truth, and with all the warmth of affection. . . .

  ‘I will not deny, what I have heard from some whose truth and sense I cannot question, that his manner, somewhat unusual, of drawing people out, however kindly intended, often abashed the timid, and alarmed the cautious; but, in the judgments to be formed of the understandings of all with whom he conversed, he was uncommonly indulgent. He allowed for the prejudices or for the deficiencies of education; and he foresaw, with the prophetic eye of benevolence, what the understanding or character might become if certain improvements were effected. In discerning genius or abilities of any kind, his penetration was so quick and just that it seemed as if he possessed some mental divining rod revealing to him hidden veins of talent, and giving him the power of discovering mines of intellectual wealth, which lay unsuspected even by the possessor.

  ‘To young persons his manner was most kind and encouraging. I have been gratified by the assurance that many have owed to the instruction and encouragement received from him in casual conversation their first hopes of themselves, their resolution to improve, and a happy change in the colour and fortune of their future lives. . . . Time mellowed but did not impair his vivacity; so that seeming less connected with high animal spirits, it acquired more the character of intellectual energy. Still in age, as in youth, he never needed the stimulus of convivial company, or of new auditors; his spirits and conversation were always more delightful in his own family and in everyday life than in company, even the most literary or distinguished.’

  The relations between Edgeworth and his daughter Maria were peculiarly close, and she gratefully acknowledges how much she owed to his suggestions and criticisms. He did not share his friend Mr. Day’s objections to literary ladies, and was a great admirer of Mrs. Barbauld’s writings:

  ‘Ever the true friend and champion of female literature, and zealous for the honour of the female sex, he rejoiced with all the enthusiasm of a warm heart when he found, as he now did, female genius guided by feminine discretion. He exulted in every instance of literary celebrity, supported by the amiable and respectable virtues of private life; proving by example that the cultivation of female talents does not unfit women for their domestic duties and situation in society.’

  When Maria began to write she always told her father her rough plan, and he, ‘with the instinct of a good critic, used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.—”Sketch that and show it to me!” — These words’ (she adds), ‘from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hopes of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I use 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.” . . .

  ‘After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the filling it up till it had been worked upon for a week or a 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 excitements to “go on and finish.” When he thought that there was spirit in what was written, but that it required, 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 cutting, his decision in criticism, was peculiarly useful to me. His ready invention and infinite resource, when I had run myself into difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate me at my utmost need. . . .

  ‘Independently of all the advantages, which I as an individual received from my father’s constant course of literary instruction, this was of considerable utility in another and less selfish point of view. My father called upon all the family to hear and judge of all we were writing. The taste for literature, and for judging of literary composition, was by this means formed and exercised in a large family, including a succession of nine or ten children, who grew up during the course of these twenty-five years. Stories of children exercised the judgment of children, and so on in proportion to their respective ages, all giving their opinions, and trying their powers of criticism fearlessly and freely. . . .

  ‘He would sometimes advise me to lay by what was done for several months, and turn my mind to something else, that we might look back at it afterwards with fresh eyes. . . .

  ‘I may mention, because it leads to a general principle of criticism, that, in many cases, the attempt to join truth and fiction did not succeed: for instance, Mr. Day’s educating Sabrina for his wife suggested the story of Virginia and Clarence Hervey in “Belinda.” But to avoid representing the real character of Mr. Day, which I did not think it right to draw, I used the incident with fictitious characters, which I made as unlike the real persons as I possibly could. My father observed to me afterwards that, in this and other instances, the very circumstances that were taken from real life are those that have been objected to as improbable or impossible; for this, as he showed me, there are good and sufficient reasons. In the first place, anxiety to avoid drawing the characters that were to be blameable or ridiculous from any individuals in real life, led me to apply whatever circumstances were taken from reality to characters quite different from those to whom the facts had occurred; and consequently, when so applied, they were unsuitable and improbable: besides, as my father remarked the circumstances which in real life fix the attention, because they are out of the common course of events, are for this very reason unfit for the moral purposes, as well as for the dramatic effect of fiction. The interest we take in hearing an uncommon fact often depends on our belief in its truth. Introduce it into fiction, and this interest ceases, the reader stops to question the truth or probability of the narrative, the illusion and the dramatic effect are destroyed; and as to the moral, no safe conclusion for conduct can be drawn from any circumstances which have not frequently happened, and which are not likely often to recur. In proportion as events are extraordinary, they are useless or unsafe as foundations for prudential reasoning.

  ‘Besides all this, there are usually some small concurrent circumstances connected with extraordinary facts, which we like and admit as evidences of the truth, but which the rules of composition and taste forbid the introducing into fiction; so that the writer is reduced to the difficulty either of omitting the evidence on which the belief of
reality rests, or of introducing what may be contrary to good taste, incongruous, out of proportion to the rest of the story, delaying its progress or destructive of its unity. In short, it is dangerous to put a patch of truth into a fiction, for the truth is too strong for the fiction, and on all sides pulls it asunder.’

  To live with Edgeworth must have been to enjoy a constant mental stimulus; he could not bear his companions to use words without attaching ideas to them; he did not want talk to consist of a fluent utterance of second-hand thoughts, but always encouraged the expression of genuine opinion.

  To show how willing Edgeworth was to help a child in understanding a word which was new to it, I will quote from one of his letters to Maria:

  ‘Give my love to little F, and tell her that I had not time to explain a section to her. I therefore beg that, with as little explanation as possible, you will bisect a lemon before her, and point out the appearance of the rind, of the cavities, and seeds; and afterwards, at your leisure, get a small cylinder of wood turned for her, and cut it into a transverse section and into a longitudinal section.’

  It is curious to note the difference in tone which there is between the children’s books written by him and Maria and those of the second half of the nineteenth century. Our duty to our neighbour is the Edgeworth watchword, while our duty to God is the watchword of Miss Yonge and her school of writers. The swing of the pendulum is constantly passing from morality to religion and back again, because both are required for the perfect life.

  Among the experiments which Edgeworth made in the management of his children was that: ‘Formerly’ (Maria writes)’ from having observed how apt children are to dispute and quarrel when they are left much together, and from fear of the strong becoming tyrants, and the weak slaves, it had been thought prudent to separate them a good deal. It was believed that they would consequently grow fonder of each other’s company, and that they would enjoy it more as they grew more reasonable, from not having the recollection of anything disagreeable in each other’s tempers. But my father became thoroughly convinced that the separation of children in a family may lead to evils greater than any partial good that can result from it. The attempt may induce artifice and disobedience on the part of the children; the separation can scarcely be effected; and, if it were effected, would tend to make the children miserable. He saw that their little quarrels, and the crossings of their tempers and fancies, are nothing in comparison with the inestimable blessings of that fondness, that family affection which grows up among children, who have with each other an early and constant community of pleasures and pains. Separation as a punishment, as a just consequence of children’s quarrelling, and as the best means of preventing their disputes, he always found useful. But, except in extreme cases, he had rarely recourse to it, and such seldom occurred. . . . The greatest change, which twenty years further experience made in his practice and opinions in education, was to lessen rather than to increase regulations and restrictions. He saw that, where there is liberty of action, one thing balances another; that nice calculations lead to false results in practice, because we cannot command all the necesssary circumstances of the data. . . .

  ‘For many years of his life he had, I think, been under one important mistake, in his expectations relative to the conduct of his fellow-creatures, and of the effects of cultivating the human understanding. He had believed that, if rational creatures could be made clearly to see and understand that virtue will render them happy, and vice will render them miserable, either in this world or in the next, they would afterwards, in consequence of this conviction, follow virtue, and avoid vice. . . .

  ‘Hence, both as to national and domestic education, he formerly dwelt principally upon the cultivation of the understanding, meaning chiefly the reasoning faculty as applied to the conduct. But to see the best, and to follow it, are not, alas! necessary consequences of each other. Resolution is often wanting where conviction is perfect. — Resolution is most necessary to all our active, and habit most essential to all our passive virtues. Probably nine times out of ten the instances of imprudent or vicious conduct arise, not from want of knowledge of good and evil, or from want of conviction that the one leads to happiness, and the other to misery; but from actual deficiency in the strength of resolution, deficiency arising from want of early training in the habit of self control.’

  Maria adds: ‘The silence which has been observed in Practical Education on the subject of religion has been misunderstood by some, and misrepresented by others. … To those who, with upright and benevolent intentions, from a sense of public duty, and in a spirit of Christian charity, made remonstrances on this subject, he thought it due to give all the explanation in his power;’ and he writes: ‘The authors continue to preserve the silence upon this subject, which they before thought prudent; but they disavow, in explicit terms, the design of laying down a system of education founded upon morality, exclusive of religion. . . . We most earnestly deprecate the imputation of disregarding religion in Education. . . . We are convinced that religious obligation is indispensably necessary in the education of all descriptions of people in every part of the world.

  ‘We dread fanaticism and intolerance, whilst we wish to hold religion in a higher point of view than as a subject of seclusive possession, or of outward exhibition. To introduce the awful ideas of God’s superintendence upon puerile occasions, we decline. … I hope I shall obtain the justice due to me on the subject, and that it will appear that I consider religion, in the large sense of the word, to be the only certain bond of society.

  ‘You have turned back our thoughts to this most important subject (education), upon which, next to a universal reverence for religion, we believe the happiness of mankind to depend.’ Maria adds: ‘I have often been witness of the care with which he explained the nature and enforced the observance of that great bond of civil society, which rests upon religion. The solemnity of the manner in which he administered an oath can never leave my memory; and I have seen the salutary effect this produced on the minds of those of the lower Irish, who are supposed to be the least susceptible of such impressions. But it was not on the terrors of religion he chiefly dwelt. No man could be more sensible than he was of the consolatory, fortifying influence of the Christian religion in sustaining the mind in adversity, poverty, and age. No man knew better its power to carry hope and peace in the hour of death to the penitent criminal. When from party bigotry it has happened that a priest has been denied admittance to the condemned criminal, my father has gone to the county gaol to soothe the sufferer’s mind, and to receive that confession on which, to the poor Catholic’s belief, his salvation depended. . . . Nor did he ever weaken in any heart in which it ever existed that which he considered as the greatest blessing that a human creature can enjoy — firm religious faith and hope.’

  The following extract from a letter written to the Roman Catholics of the County of Longford will show that Edgeworth was no bigoted Protestant, but was in advance of his time in the broad views he took of religious liberty: ‘Ever since I have taken any part in the politics of Ireland, I have uniformly thought that there should be no civil distinctions between its inhabitants upon account of their religious opinions. I concurred with a great character at the national convention, in endeavouring to persuade our Roman Catholic brethren to take a decided part in favour of parliamentary reform. They declined it; and it then became absurd and dangerous for individuals to demand rights in the name of a class of citizens who would not avow their claim to them. . . . I wish … to declare myself in favour of a full participation of rights amongst every denomination of men in Ireland; and if I can, by my personal interference at any public meeting of our county, serve your cause, I shall think it my duty to attend.’

  CHAPTER 7

  DURING Edgeworth’s stay in England in 1792 and 1793 he paid frequent visits to London, and he used to describe to his children a curious meeting which he had in a coffee-house with an old acquaintance whom he had not seen for thirty
years:’ He observed a gentleman eyeing him with much attention, who at last exclaimed, “It is he. Certainly, sir, you are Mr. Edgeworth?”

  ‘“I am, sir.”

  ‘“Gentlemen,” said the stranger, with much importance, addressing himself to several people who were near him, “here is the best dancer in England, and a man to whom I am under infinite obligations, for I owe to him the foundation of my fortune. Mr. Edgeworth and I were scholars of the famous, Aldridge; and once when we practised together, Mr. Edgeworth excelled me so much, that I sat down upon the ground, and burst out a-crying; he could actually complete an entrechat of ten distinct beats, which I could not accomplish! However, I was well consoled by him; for he invented, for Aldridge’s benefit, The Tambourine Dance, which had uncommon success. The dresses were Chinese. Twelve assistants held small drums furnished with bells; these were struck in the air by the dancer’s feet when held as high as their arms could reach. This Aldridge performed, and improved upon by stretching his legs asunder, so as to strike two drums at the same time. Those not being the days of elegant dancing, I afterwards,” continued the stranger, “exhibited at Paris the tambourine dance, to so much advantage, that I made fifteen hundred pounds by it.”

  ‘The person who made this singular address and eulogium was the celebrated dancer, Mr. Slingsby His testimony proves that my father did not overrate his powers as a dancer; but it was not to boast of a frivolous excellence that he told this anecdote to his children; it was to express his satisfaction at having, after the first effervescence of boyish spirits had subsided, cultivated his understanding, turned his inventive powers to useful objects, and chosen as the companions of his maturer years men of the first order of intellect.’