Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  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 degraded it into 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 neighboring 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 Edgeworth’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 direction of Miss Beaufort that he turned his eyes. There must certainly have been something attractive 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 Edgeworth 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.

  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 to be married to a young lady of small fortune and large accomplishments — compared with my age, much youth (not quite 30) and more prudence — some beauty, 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 Presbyterian.” In it she assures Miss Beaufort (who was her junior) that she will find her “gratefully exact en belle fille;” 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 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 insurrection 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 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 Parliament, 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 “that England has not any right to do Ireland good against her will.”

  In the spring of 1799 Mr., Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth went to England and renewed their acquaintance 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 honor 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 treasonable. Of this English visit there are, unfortunately, 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 enthusiastically 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.

  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, but 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.

  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 afterwards 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 experiments 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, however, 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 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 propagate 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 emphasized, 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 favorite theme with all the philosophers, from Aristotle to Locke, their systems were too remote for practical application. The inevitable but lamentable consequence 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 practical 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 Edgeworth 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 examination 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 merit of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth’s works 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 be 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 untenability of so dogmatic a persuasion; but it was 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 knowledge 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 contemporaries. It is too much the fashion to stigmatize 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 imbibe 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 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 & 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 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 either 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 Aikens, 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 tales were treated as the novels 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.