Maria Edgeworth
by Helen Zimmern · English · Gutenberg #33268 · 484,376 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Maria Edgeworth
Author: Helen Zimmern
Release date: July 26, 2010 [eBook #33268]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33268
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, the University of Michigan
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIA EDGEWORTH ***
Produced by Chuck Greif, the University of Michigan
Libraries and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
Famous Women.
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
_The next volumes in the Famous Women Series will be_:
SARAH AND ANGELINA GRIMKE. By Mrs. Birney.
ANNE BRADSTREET. By Helen Campbell.
_Already published_:
GEORGE ELIOT. By Miss Blind.
EMILY BRONTE. By Miss Robinson.
GEORGE SAND. By Miss Thomas.
MARY LAMB. By Mrs. Gilchrist
MARGARET FULLER. By Julia Ward Howe.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. By Miss Zimmern.
[Illustration: FAMOUS WOMEN]
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
BY
HELEN ZIMMERN.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1884.
_Copyright, 1883_, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
PREFACE.
Though many notices of Miss Edgeworth have appeared from time to time,
nothing approaching to a Life of her has been published in this country.
As I have had the good fortune to have access to an unpublished memoir
of her, written by her stepmother, as well as to a large number of her
private letters, I am enabled to place what I hope is at least an
authentic biography before the reader. Besides much kindness received
from the members of Miss Edgeworth's family, I have also to acknowledge
my obligations for help afforded in the preparation of this little book
to Mrs. George Ticknor and Miss Ticknor of Boston, U. S. A., Mrs. Le
Breton, Sir Henry Holland, Bart., the Rev. Canon Holland, the Rev. Dr.
Sadler and Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth.
H. Z.
LONDON, August, 1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 9
CHAPTER II.
EARLY YEARS 17
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD 28
CHAPTER IV.
WOMANHOOD 42
CHAPTER V.
"PRACTICAL EDUCATION"--CHILDREN'S BOOKS 52
CHAPTER VI.
IRISH AND MORAL TALES 73
CHAPTER VII.
IN FRANCE AND AT HOME 88
CHAPTER VIII.
FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES 116
CHAPTER IX.
VISIT TO LONDON--MR. EDGEWORTH'S DEATH 144
CHAPTER X.
LATER NOVELS--GENERAL ESTIMATE 161
CHAPTER XI.
VISITS ABROAD AND AT HOME 193
CHAPTER XII.
MR. EDGEWORTH'S MEMOIRS PUBLISHED--1821
TO 1825 214
CHAPTER XIII.
1826 TO 1834 237
CHAPTER XIV.
LAST YEARS 269
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Too many memoirs begin with tradition; to trace a subject _ab ovo_ seems
to have a fatal attraction for the human mind. It is not needful to
retrace so far in speaking of Miss Edgeworth; but, for a right
understanding of her life and social position, it is necessary to say
some words about her ancestry. Of her family and descent she might well
be proud, if ancestry alone, apart from the question whether those
ancestors of themselves merit the admiration of their descendants, be a
legitimate source of pride. The Edgeworths, originally established, it
is believed, at Edgeworth, now Edgeware, in Middlesex, would appear to
have settled in Ireland in the sixteenth century. The earliest of whom
we have historical record is Roger Edgeworth, a monk, who followed in
the footsteps of his sovereign, Henry VIII., both by being a defender
of the faith and by succumbing to the bright eyes of beauty, for whose
sake he finally renounced Catholicism and married. His sons, Edward and
Francis; went to Ireland. The elder brother, Edward, became Bishop of
Down and Connor, and died without issue. It was the younger, Francis,
who founded the house of Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown; and ever since
Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, Ireland, has remained in the
possession of the family whence it derived its name. The Edgeworths soon
became one of the most powerful families in the district, and
experienced their full share of the perils and vicissitudes of the
stormy period that apparently ended with the victories of William III.
Most members of the family seem to have been gay and extravagant, living
in alternate affluence and distress, and several of Maria Edgeworth's
characters of Irish squires are derived from her ancestors. The family
continued Protestant--the famous Abbe Edgeworth was a convert--and Maria
Edgeworth's great-grandfather was so zealous in the reformed cause as to
earn for himself the sobriquet of "Protestant Frank." His son married a
Welsh lady, who became the mother of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a man who
will always be remembered as the father of his daughter. He was,
however, something more than this; and as the lives of the father and
daughter were throughout so intimately interwoven, a brief account of
his career is needful for a comprehension of hers.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born at Bath in 1744, and spent his early
years partly in England, partly in Ireland, receiving a careful
education. In his youth he was known as "a gay philosopher," in the days
when the word philosopher was still used in its true sense of a lover of
wisdom. Light-hearted and gay, good-humored and self-complacent;
possessed of an active and cultivated mind, just and fearless, but
troubled with neither loftiness nor depth of feeling, Richard Lovell
Edgeworth was nevertheless a remarkable personage, when the time at
which he lived is taken into account. He foresaw much of the progress
our own century has made, clearly indicated some of its features, and
actually achieved for agriculture and industry a multitude of
inventions, modest as far as the glory of the world attaches to them,
but none the less useful for the services they render. Many of his
ideas, rejected as visionary and impracticable when he first promulgated
them, have now become the common property of mankind. He was no mere
theorist; when he had established a theory he loved to put it into
practice, and as his theories ranged over many and wide fields, so did
his experiments. Even in late life, when most persons care only to
cultivate repose, he threw himself, with all the ardor of youth, into
schemes of improvement for the good of Ireland; for he was sincerely
devoted to her true welfare, and held in contempt the mock patriotism
that looks only to popularity. In early life he sowed a certain quantity
of wild oats, the result of the super-abundant animal spirits that
distinguished him, and at the age of sixteen contracted a mock-marriage,
which his father found needful to have annulled by a process of law.
After this escapade he was entered at Corpus Christi, Oxford, as a
gentleman commoner. During his residence he became intimate with the
family of Mr. Elers, a gentleman of German descent, who resided at Black
Bourton, and was father to several pretty girls. Mr. Elers had
previously warned the elder Edgeworth against introducing into his home
circle the gay and gallant Richard, remarking that he could give his
daughters no fortunes that would make them suitable matches for this
young gentleman. Mr. Edgeworth, however, turned a deaf ear to the
warning, and the result was that the collegian became so intimate at the
house, and in time so entangled by the court he had paid to one of the
daughters, that, although he had meanwhile seen women he liked better,
he could not honorably extricate himself. In later life he playfully
said: "Nothing but a lady ever did turn me aside from my duty." He
certainly was all his days peculiarly susceptible to female charms, and,
had opportunity been afforded him, might have rivalled Henry VIII. in
the number of his wives. This second marriage gave as little
satisfaction to his father as the first, but the elder Edgeworth wisely
recognized the fact that he was himself not wholly blameless in the
matter. He, therefore, a few months after the ceremony had been
performed at Gretna Green, gave his consent to a formal re-marriage by
license. Thus, before he was twenty, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was a
husband and a father. The marriage entered upon so hastily proved
unfortunate; the pair were totally unsuited to one another; and though
Mrs. Edgeworth appears to have been a worthy woman, to judge from the
few and somewhat ungenerous allusions her husband makes to her in his
biography, they did not sympathize intellectually--a point he might have
discovered before marriage. The consequence was that he sought sympathy
and pleasure elsewhere. He divided his time between Ireland, London and
Lichfield. The latter city was the centre of a somewhat prim,
self-conscious, exclusive literary coterie, in which Dr. Darwin, the
singer of the _Botanic Garden_, Miss Anna Seward, the "Swan of
Lichfield," and the eccentric wife-trainer, Thomas Day, the author of
_Sanford and Merton_, were conspicuous figures. They were most of them
still in their youthful hey-day, unknown to fame, and, as yet, scarcely
aspiring towards it. Here, in this, to him, congenial circle of eager
and ardent young spirits, Richard Lovell Edgeworth loved to disport
himself; now finding a sympathetic observer of his mechanical inventions
in Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin or Mr. Wedgwood; now flirting with the fair
Anna. He must have posed as a bachelor, for he relates how, on one
occasion, when paying compliments to Miss Seward, Mrs. Darwin took the
opportunity of drinking "Mrs. Edgeworth's health," a name that caused
manifest surprise to the object of his affections. Here, too, he became
imbued with the educational theories of Rousseau, which clung to him, in
a modified degree, throughout his life, and according to which, in their
most pronounced form, he educated his eldest son. Here, further, at the
age of twenty-six, he met the woman he was to love most deeply. From the
moment he saw Miss Honora Sneyd, Mr. Edgeworth became enamored, and in
his attentions to her he does not seem to have borne in mind the fact
that he was a married man.
"I am not a man of prejudices," he complacently wrote in later life; "I
have had four wives.[1] The second and third were sisters, and I was in
love with the second in the life-time of the first."
The man who could make this public statement, and who could, moreover,
leave to his daughter the task of publishing the record of his
ill-assorted union with the woman who was her mother, was certainly one
in whom good taste and good feeling were not preeminent. The birth of
this daughter, who was destined to be his companion and friend, is an
event he does not even note in his memoirs, which are more occupied with
his affection for Miss Sneyd, from whose fascinations he at last felt it
would be prudent to break away. He left England for a lengthened stay in
France, taking with him his son, whose Rousseau education was to be
continued, and accompanied by Mr. Day, who, to please Miss Elizabeth
Sneyd, was about to put himself through a course of dancing and
deportment, with a view to winning her consent to a marriage if he could
succeed in taming his savage limbs and ideas into proper social
decorum. The death of his wife recalled Mr. Edgeworth to England. With
all possible speed he hastened to Lichfield, proposed to Honora Sneyd,
was accepted, and married her within four months of his wife's demise.
Mr. Edgeworth, the elder, had died some time previously; the son was
now, therefore, master of Edgeworthstown. Immediately after his marriage
he set out for Ireland, taking with him his bride and four little
children. From that date forward a new era in his life commenced. It was
not to run any longer in a separate course from that of his family.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY YEARS.
MARIA EDGEWORTH was born January 1st, 1767, in the house of her
grandfather, Mr. Elers. Thus this distinguished authoress was an
Englishwoman by birth, though Irish and German by race. At Black Bourton
her earliest years were spent. Her father, who had taken in hand his
little son to train according to the principles enunciated in _Emile_,
took little notice of her, leaving her to the care of a fond,
soft-hearted mother and doting aunts. The result was that the vivacity
of her early wit was encouraged and the sallies of her quick temper
unrepressed. Of her mother she retained little remembrance beyond her
death, and how she was taken into the room to receive her last kiss.
Mrs. Edgeworth had died in London at the house of some aunts in Great
Russell street, and there Maria remained until her father's second
marriage. Of her new mother Maria at first felt great awe, which soon
gave place to sincere regard and admiration. Her father had been to her
from babyhood the embodiment of perfection, and the mere fact that he
required love from her for his new wife was sufficient to insure it. But
she also learnt to love her for her own sake, and, indeed, if the
statement of so partial a witness as Mr. Edgeworth can be accepted, she
must have been a woman of uncommon power and charm.
Of her first visit to Ireland Maria recollected little except that she
was a mischievous child. One day, when no one heeded her, she amused
herself with cutting out the squares in a checked sofa-cover. Another
day she trampled through a number of hot-bed frames that had just been
glazed and laid on the grass. She could recall her delight at the
crashing of the glass; but most immorally, and in direct opposition to
her later doctrines, did not remember either cutting her feet or being
punished for this freak. It was probably her exuberant spirits, added to
the fact that Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health began to fail after her
removal to the damp climate of Ireland, that caused Maria to be sent to
school. In 1775 she was placed at Derby with a Mrs. Latffiere, of whom
she always spoke with gratitude and affection. Though eight years old,
she would seem to have known very little, for she was wont to record
that on the first day of her entrance into the school she felt more
admiration at a child younger than herself repeating the nine parts of
speech, than she ever felt afterwards for any effort of human genius.
The first letter extant from her pen is dated thence, and though of no
intrinsic merit, but rather the ordinary formal letter of a child under
such circumstances, it deserves quotation because it is the first.
DERBY, March 30, 1776.
DEAR MAMMA:
It is with the greatest pleasure I write to you, as I flatter
myself it will make you happy to hear from me. I hope you and my
dear papa are well. School now seems agreeable to me. I have begun
French and dancing, and intend to make ["great" was written, but a
line was drawn through it] improvement in everything I learn. I
know that it will give you great satisfaction to hear that I am a
good girl. My cousin Clay sends her love to you; mine to father and
sisters, who I hope are well. Pray give my duty to papa, and accept
the same from, dear mamma,
YOUR DUTIFUL DAUGHTER.
It was at Derby that Maria learnt to write the clear, neat hand that
never altered to the end of her life; and here too she acquired her
proficiency in embroidery, an art she also practiced with success. As
her parents shortly after came to reside in England for the benefit of
Mrs. Edgeworth's health, Maria spent her holidays with them. Her
stepmother appears to have taken great pains with her, conversing with
her as an equal in every respect but age.
Her father had already commenced with her his system of educating the
powers of the young mind by analytical reflection. He soon saw that hers
was of no ordinary capacity. In 1780 he writes to her:--
It would be very agreeable to me, my dear Maria, to have letters
from you FAMILIARLY: I wish to know what you like and what you
dislike; I wish to communicate to you what little knowledge I have
acquired, that you may have a tincture of every species of
literature, and form your taste by choice and not by chance. Adieu!
enjoy the pleasure of increasing the love and esteem of your
excellent mother and of your
AFFECTIONATE FATHER.
Your poor mother continues extremely ill.
Less than a month afterwards Mr. Edgeworth had to announce the death of
his wife. The letter in which he does so throws light on the
relationship of father, daughter and stepmother:--
MY DEAR DAUGHTER:
At six o'clock on Thursday morning your excellent mother expired in
my arms. She now lies dead beside me, and I know I am doing what
would give her pleasure if she were capable of feeling anything, by
writing to you at this time to fix her excellent image in your
mind.
As you grow older and become acquainted with more of my friends,
you will hear from every mouth the most exalted character of your
incomparable mother. You will be convinced, by your own reflections
upon her conduct, that she fulfilled the part of a mother towards
you and towards your sisters, without partiality for her own or
servile indulgence towards mine. Her heart, conscious of rectitude,
was above the fear of raising suspicions to her disadvantage in the
mind of your father or in the minds of other relatives. And though
her timely restraint of you, and that steadiness of behavior,
yielding fondness towards you only by the exact measure of your
conduct, at first alarmed those who did not know her, yet now, my
dearest daughter, every person who has the least connection with my
family is anxious to give sincere testimony to their admiration of
those very circumstances which they had too hastily, and from a
common and well-grounded opinion, associated with the idea of a
second wife.
Continue, my dear daughter, the desire which you feel of becoming
amiable, prudent and of USE. The ornamental parts of a character
with such an understanding as yours necessarily ensue; but true
judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation
of your behavior, can be had only from reflection and from being
thoroughly convinced of what experience teaches, in general too
late, that to be happy we must be good.
God bless you and make you ambitious of that valuable praise which
the amiable character of your dear mother forces from the virtuous
and the wise. My writing to you in my present situation will, my
dearest daughter, be remembered by you as the strongest proof of
the love of
YOUR APPROVING AND AFFECTIONATE FATHER.
This letter, written at such a time, conveyed the impression intended,
and thenceforward, even more than previously, the will to act up to the
high opinion her father had formed of her character constituted the
key-note of Maria Edgeworth's life, the exciting and controlling power.
At school as well as at home Maria distinguished herself as an
entertaining story-teller. She soon learnt, with all the tact of an
_improvisatrice_, to know which tale was most successful. Many of these
were taken from books, but most were original. While entertaining her
companions Maria studied their characters. It was at school she
developed her keen penetration into the motives that sway actions. Here
also she saw numbers, though on a small scale, and could estimate the
effect of the voice on the multitude and the ease with which a mass can
be governed. Very early indeed her father encouraged her to put her
imaginings on paper; a remarkable proof of his enlightenment, for those
were the days when female authorship was held in slight esteem, when for
a woman to use her pen was regarded as a dangerous stepping beyond her
boundary, which exposed her to suspicion and aversion. Soon after Mrs.
Honora Edgeworth's death Mr. Edgeworth wrote:--
I also beg that you will send me a tale, about the length of a
_Spectator_, upon the subject of GENEROSITY. It must be taken from
history or romance, and must be sent the day se'nnight after you
receive this, and I beg you will take some pains about it.
The same subject was given to a lad at Oxford, and Mr. Sneyd was chosen
as umpire. He pronounced Maria's far the best. "An excellent story," he
said, "and extremely well written, but where is the generosity?"--a
saying which became a household proverb. This first story is not
preserved, but Miss Edgeworth used to say that there was in it a
sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man and his
horse.
The same year Maria was removed from her unpretentious school to a
fashionable establishment in London. Here she was to learn deportment
and the showy accomplishments that in those days constituted the chief
branches of a young lady's education. She was duly tortured on
blackboards, pinioned in iron collars, made to use dumb-bells, and some
rather stringent measures were taken to draw out her muscles and
increase her stature. In vain; by nature she was a small woman, and
small she remained. She also learnt to dance with grace in the days when
dancing was something more dignified than a tearing romp, but music she
failed in utterly. She had no taste for this art, and her music master,
with a wisdom unhappily too rare, advised her to abandon the attempt to
learn. She had been so well grounded in French and Italian, that when
she came to do the exercises set her, she found them so easy that she
wrote out at once those intended for the whole quarter, keeping them
strung together in her desk, and unstringing them as required. The spare
time thus secured was employed in reading for her own pleasure. Her
favorite seat during play-time was under a cabinet which stood in the
school-room, and here she often remained so absorbed in her book as to
be deaf to all uproar. This early habit of concentrated attention was to
stand her in good stead through life.
While his daughter was thus acquiring culture, Mr. Edgeworth was once
more engaged in courtship. Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, recognizing her
husband's nature, had recommended him on her death-bed to marry her
sister Elizabeth, whose proposed marriage to Mr. Day had long ago fallen
through. Though neither Elizabeth nor Mr. Edgeworth thought themselves
suited to one another, Honora's advice prevailed, and within eight
months after his last wife's death Mr. Edgeworth was once more married.
It does not appear what Maria, now old enough to judge, thought of this
new marriage, contracted so precipitately after the loss of one to whom
Mr. Edgeworth was so devoted; but she doubtless held it right, as she
held all done by her father, and she became to her new mother a warm
and helpful friend.
Soon after this marriage Maria's eyes grew inflamed, and a leading
physician pronounced in her hearing that she would infallibly lose her
sight. The physical and mental sufferings hereby induced were keen, but
they were borne with fortitude and patience. The summer holidays were
spent as she had spent some previous ones--at Mr. Day's. This eccentric
person had at last found a wife to his mind, and was settled in Surrey.
The contrast between the mental atmosphere of her school, where
externals were chiefly considered, and that at Mr. Day's, where these
were scorned, did not fail to exercise an influence. She was deeply
attached to her host, whose lofty mind and romantic character she
honored. His metaphysical inquiries carried her into another world.
Forbidden to use her eyes too much, she learnt in conversation with him.
The icy strength of his system came at the right moment for annealing
her principles, his severe reasoning and uncompromising love of truth
awakened her powers, and the questions he put to her, the necessity of
perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the bent of her mind. Though
such strictness was not always agreeable, she even then perceived its
advantages, and in after-life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day. The
direction he gave her studies influenced her, as his friendship had in
earlier days influenced her father. Mr. Day further plied her with
tar-water, then deemed a sovereign remedy for all complaints. Either
owing to this or the change of air, her eyes certainly grew better and
her general health improved, although she remained delicate, subject to
headaches, and unequal to much bodily exertion.
The following year (1782) her father resolved to return to Ireland to
reside. He had seen on his brief visits the mischievous results of
absenteeism, and felt that if it were in the power of any man to serve
the country which gave him bread, he ought to sacrifice every inferior
consideration and reside where he could be most useful. As, however,
Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health could not be pronounced an "inferior
consideration," Mr. Edgeworth had been forced to live in England. Now,
though his new wife had even before marriage shown consumptive symptoms,
her constitution had so much strengthened that it seemed possible to
inhabit the family house. Mr. Edgeworth therefore returned to Ireland
with a firm determination to dedicate the remainder of his life to the
education of his children, the improvement of his estate, and the
endeavor to contribute to the amelioration of its inhabitants. He took
Maria with him, and there now began for her the tranquil current of
existence that was diversified by no remarkable events outside the
domain of friendship and kindred. The home she now entered, the social
and domestic duties she now undertook, continued the same for life. Her
return to Ireland marks an epoch in her history.
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD.
Ireland is not among those countries that arouse in the hearts of
strangers a desire to pitch their tents, and to judge from the readiness
with which her own children leave her, we cannot suppose that they find
her a fascinating land. And little wonder, when we consider the state of
ferment and disorder which, in a greater or less degree, has always
prevailed there. Yet Miss Edgeworth says:--
Things and persons are so much improved in Ireland of latter days,
that only those who can remember how they were some thirty or forty
years ago can conceive the variety of domestic grievances which, in
those times, assailed the master of a family immediately upon his
arrival at his Irish home. Wherever he turned his eyes, in or out
of his house, damp, dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting,
glazing, roofing, fencing, furnishing, all were wanting. The back
yard, and even the front lawn round the windows of the house, were
filled with loungers, "followers" and petitioners; tenants,
under-tenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent, were to have audience;
and they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations,
reciprocating and quarrels each under each interminably.
Alternately as landlord and magistrate, the proprietor of an estate
had to listen to perpetual complaints, petty wranglings and
equivocations, in which no human sagacity could discover the truth
or award justice.
Returning to the country at the age of sixteen,[2] Maria Edgeworth
looked at everything with fresh eyes. She was much struck with the
difference between England and Ireland; the tones and looks, the
melancholy and gaiety of the people, were new and extraordinary to her.
A deep impression was made upon her observant mind, and she laid the
foundations for those acute delineations of Irish character with which
she afterwards delighted the world. It was her good fortune and ours
that at an age when the mind is most impressionable she came into these
novel scenes in lieu of having lived in their midst from childhood, when
it is unlikely that she would so well have seized their salient traits.
It was June when the family arrived at Edgeworthstown, and though
nominally summer, there was snow on the roses Maria ran out to gather.
She felt as if transported into a novel and curious world. Unfortunately
neither the situation nor the house of Edgeworthstown were beautiful;
there was nothing here to arouse romance in the girl's nature. The
country of Longford is in general flat, consisting of large districts of
bog; only on the northern boundaries are there some remarkably sterile
mountains. The house was an old-fashioned mansion, built with no
pretensions to beauty. It needed much alteration and enlargement to suit
the requirements of a growing family, and to accommodate his seven
children suitably, Mr. Edgeworth saw himself forced to build. His
extreme good sense guarded him from the usual errors committed by the
Irish squires of that period, who were either content to live in
wretched houses, out of repair, or to commence building on a scale as
though they had the mines of Peru at their command, and then abandoning
their plans as though they had not sixpence. The house at
Edgeworthstown, without ever having pretensions to architecture, was
simply made habitable. From the very commencement they began the even
tenor of life that was to distinguish the family. The father was the
centre of this remarkably united household. Miss Edgeworth says:--
Some men live with their family without letting them know their
affairs; and, however great may be their affection and esteem for
their wives and children, think that they have nothing to do with
business. This was not my father's way of thinking. Whatever
business he had to do was done in the midst of his family, usually
in the common sitting-room, so that we were intimately acquainted,
not only with his general principles of conduct, but with the most
minute details of their every-day application. I further enjoyed
some peculiar advantages: he kindly wished to give me habits of
business; and for this purpose allowed me, during many years, to
assist him in copying his letters of business, and in receiving his
rents.
Indeed, from their arrival the eldest daughter was employed as her
father's agent, for it was Mr. Edgeworth's conviction that to remedy
some of the worst evils of his unhappy country, it was needful to get
rid of the middle-men. On his own estate he was resolved not to let
everything go wrong for the good old Irish reason that it had always
been so. He labored with zeal, justice, forbearance. He received his
rents direct, he chose his tenants for their character, he resisted
sub-division of holdings, and showed no favor to creed or nationality.
Miss Edgeworth proved herself his worthy daughter. She exhibited
acuteness and patience in dealing with the tenants, admiring their
talents while seeing their faults; generous, she was not to be duped;
and just, she was not severe. Thus in a brief time, thanks to this firm
but kindly government, their estate came to be one of the best managed
in the county. The work it induced was certainly fortunate for Maria;
besides teaching her habits of business, it made her familiar with the
modes of thought and expression of the Irish. She learnt to know them
thoroughly and truly at their best and at their worst.
But Maria's entire time was not occupied with the tenantry. It was a
part of her father's system that young children should not be left to
servants, from whom he deemed, not without justice, that they learnt
much that was undesirable. He therefore committed to the charge of each
of his elder girls one of their younger brothers and sisters, and little
Henry, Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's child, fell to Maria's lot. She
devoted herself with ardor to the boy, and was fondly attached to him.
But it was, of course, the father who superintended the general
education, following the lines afterwards laid down in _Practical
Education_. His system certainly succeeded with his numerous children,
though it might, as a rule, incline to make the pupils somewhat
presumptuous, self-sufficient and pragmatical. The animation spread
through the house by connecting the children with all that was going on
was highly useful; it awakened and excited mental exertion, and braced
the young people to exercise independence of thought. Mr. Edgeworth made
no empty boast when he wrote to Mr. Darwin:--
"I do not think one tear per month is shed in this house, nor the voice
of reproof heard, nor the hand of restraint felt."
How primitive was the state of Ireland in those days can be gathered
from the fact that, except bread and meat, all articles of food and
household requirement were to be had only in Dublin, and not always even
there. Neither was there much congenial society. The Edgeworths had no
liking for the country gentlemen who spent their lives in shooting,
hunting and carousing,--booby squires who did not even know that their
position put duties upon them. Formal dinners and long sittings, with
the smallest of small talk, were the order of the day and night. They
were, however, fortunate in finding in this social wilderness some few
persons really worth knowing, chief among whom were the families
resident at Pakenham Hall and Castle Forbes. The former house, the
residence of Lord Longford, was only twelve miles distant, but it was
separated from Edgeworthstown by a vast bog, a bad road, an awkward
ferry and an ugly country. Nevertheless, these obstacles were braved,
and at Pakenham Hall Maria met many people of literary and political
distinction. At Castle Forbes, some nine miles distant, by a more
practicable road, there was also to be met society varied and agreeable,
more especially so when Lady Granard's mother, Lady Moira, was in the
country. Lady Moira was a woman of noble character, much conversational
talent and general knowledge. As daughter to the Countess of Huntingdon
she had seen much strange society, and had been in the very midst of the
evangelical revival. Besides this she was a person of great influence in
Ireland. Her house in Dublin was the resort of the wise and witty of the
day, hence she was able to initiate Maria into a new and larger world,
to expand her ideas, and to increase her insight into character. It was
indeed fortunate for Miss Edgeworth that this old lady took a special
fancy to her. She was in those days very reserved in manner and little
inclined to converse--a contrast to after years, when her conversation
delighted all listeners. It was, perhaps, partly weak health that made
her silent, but probably yet more the consciousness of great powers
which were under-rated or misunderstood by her youthful contemporaries.
She had no frivolous small society talk to offer them. Lady Moira,
however, recognized the capacity of this timid, plain, inoffensive young
girl. She talked to her, drew her out, plied her with anecdotes of her
own experiences in life, and gave her the benefit of her riper wisdom.
Thus Miss Edgeworth early lived with and learnt to understand the
fashionable society of which she wrote so much. It is always fortunate
for a novelist to be born, as she was, amid the advantages of refinement
and breeding, without being elevated out of reach of the interests and
pleasures which dwell in the middle ranks. For want of this, many, even
amongst the most eminent writers of fiction, have suffered shipwreck.
While thus reserved in society, Maria relaxed with her father. She knew
he appreciated her powers, and his approbation was sufficient at all
times to satisfy her. One of her pleasures was to ride out with him--not
that she was a good horsewoman, for she was constitutionally timid, but
because it afforded her the opportunity of uninterrupted exchange of
talk. It was on these rides that most of their writings were planned.
In the autumn of their return to Ireland (1782) Miss Edgeworth began, at
her father's suggestion, to translate Madame de Genlis' _Adele et
Theodore_. It was her first work intended for publication. The
appearance of Holcroft's translation prevented its execution, but
neither she nor her father regarded the time bestowed on it as misspent;
it gave her that readiness and choice of words which translation
teaches. Mr. Day, who had a horror of female authorship, remonstrated
with Mr. Edgeworth for having ever allowed his daughter to translate,
and when he heard that the publication was prevented, wrote a
congratulatory letter on the event. It was from the recollection of the
arguments he used, and from her father's replies, that five years
afterwards Miss Edgeworth wrote her _Letters to Literary Ladies_, though
they were not published till after the death of Mr. Day. Indeed, it is
possible that had he lived Maria Edgeworth would have remained unknown
to fame, so great was her father's deference to his judgment, though
sensible that there was much prejudice mixed with his reasons. "Yet,"
adds Miss Edgeworth, "though publication was out of our thoughts, as
subjects occurred, many essays and tales were written for private
amusement."
The first stories she wrote were some of those now in the _Parent's
Assistant_ and _Early Lessons_. She wrote them on a slate, read them
out to her sisters and brothers, and, if they approved, copied them.
Thus they were at once put to the test of childish criticism; and it is
this, and living all her life among children, that has made Miss
Edgeworth's children's stories so inimitable. She understood children,
knew them, sympathized with them. Her father's large and ever-increasing
family, in which there were children of all ages, gave her a wide and
varied audience of youthful critics, among the severest in the world.
Many of her longer tales and novels were also written or planned during
these years. Her father had, however, imbued her with the Horatian
maxim, _novumque prematur in annum_, so that many things lay by for
years to be considered by her and her father, recorrected, revised, with
the result that nothing was ever given to the world but the best she
could produce.
Thus, contented, busy, useful, the even course of her girlhood flowed on
and merged into early womanhood, with no more exciting breaks than the
arrival of a box of new books from London, an occasional visit to her
neighbors, or, best of all, to Black Castle, a few hours' drive from
Edgeworthstown, where lived her father's favorite sister, Mrs. Ruxton,
her aunt and life-long friend. For forty-two years aunt and niece
carried on an uninterrupted correspondence, while their meetings were
sources of never-failing delight.
In 1789 the sudden death of Mr. Day deprived Mr. Edgeworth of a valued
friend. This man, who, for a person not actually insane, was certainly
one of the oddest that ever walked this earth, with his mixture of
_mauvaise honte_ and savage pride, misanthropy and philanthropy, had
exercised a great influence on both their lives. They felt his loss
keenly. Another sorrow quickly followed. Honora, the only daughter of
Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, a girl of fifteen, endowed with beauty and
talents, fell a victim to the family disease. The next year Lovell, the
now only surviving child of Honora, also showed signs of consumption. It
became needful to remove him from Ireland, and Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth
therefore crossed to England, leaving Maria in charge of the other
children. A house was taken at Clifton, and here Miss Edgeworth and her
charges rejoined their parents. The conveying so large a party so long a
journey in those days was no small undertaking for a young woman of
twenty-four. The responsibility was terrible to her, though she
afterwards dwelt only on the comic side. At one of the inns where they
slept, the landlady's patience was so much tried by the number of
little people getting out of the carriage and the quantity of luggage,
that she exclaimed: "Haven't you brought the kitchen grate too?"
At Clifton the Edgeworths resided for two years. Miss Edgeworth writes
to her Uncle Ruxton:--
We live just the same kind of life that we used to do at
Edgeworthstown, and though we move amongst numbers, are not moved
by them, but feel independent of them for our daily amusement. All
the _phantasmas_ I had conjured up to frighten myself vanished
after I had been here a week, for I found that they were but
phantoms of my imagination, as you very truly told me. We live very
near the Downs, where we have almost every day charming walks, and
all the children go bounding about over hill and dale along with
us.
In a later letter she says that they are not quite as happy here as at
home, but have a great choice of books which they enjoy. While at
Clifton the eldest son visited them. His Rousseau education had turned
him out an ungovernable child of nature; he neither could nor would
learn, so there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his
inclinations, which happily led him towards nothing more mischievous
than a sailor's life. At Clifton, too, they became acquainted with Dr.
Beddoes, who soon after married Maria's sister Anna, and became the
father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the poet of Death. A baby child also
died within those two years, which thus embraced meetings, partings,
courtships, much pleasant social intercourse, and much serious study.
For Maria it also included a visit to an old school-fellow in London:--
She was exceeding kind to me, and I spent most of my time with her
as I liked. I say most, because a good deal of it was spent in
company, where I heard of nothing but chariots and horses, and
curricles and tandems. Oh, to what contempt I exposed myself in a
luckless hour, by asking what a tandem was! Since I have been away
from home I have missed the society and fondness of my father,
mother and sisters, more than I can express, and more than
beforehand I could have thought possible; I long to see them all
again. Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I
understand what an aching void is perfectly well.
A letter written from Clifton is a charming specimen of Miss Edgeworth's
easy, warm-hearted family missives, which, like most family letters,
contain little of intrinsic value, and yet throw much light upon the
nature of their writer:--
CLIFTON, Dec. 13, 1792.
The day of retribution is at hand, my dear aunt. The month of May
will soon come, and then when we meet face to face, and voucher to
voucher, it shall be truly seen whose letter-writing account stands
fullest and fairest in the world. Till then "we'll leave it all to
your honor's honor." But why does my dear aunt write, "I can have
but little more time to spend with my brother in my life," as if
she was an old woman of one hundred and ninety-nine and upwards? I
remember the day I left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect,
that "you had one foot in the grave;" and though I saw you standing
before me in perfect health, sound wind and limb, I had the
weakness to feel frightened, and never to think of examining where
your feet really were. But in the month of May we hope to find them
safe in your shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out,
and that all the black clouds in the political horizon will be
dispersed, and that "freemen" will, by that time, eat their
puddings and hold their tongues. Anna and I stayed one week with
Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were very thoroughly occupied all the time
with seeing and--I won't say with being seen; for though we were at
three balls, I do not believe any one saw us. The upper rooms we
thought very splendid and the play-houses pretty, but not so good
as the theatre at Bristol. We walked all over Bath with my father,
and liked it extremely: he showed us the house where he was born.
The day of retribution was indeed nearer at hand than she anticipated.
In the autumn of 1793 the news of Irish disturbances grew so alarming
that Mr. Edgeworth thought it his duty to return immediately. The
caravan was therefore once more transported to Edgeworthstown.
CHAPTER IV.
WOMANHOOD.
On their return the Edgeworths at first inclined to think that the
English papers had exaggerated the Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a
condition of permanent discontent, they were relieved to find that
though there were alarms of outrages committed by "Hearts of Oak Boys"
and "Defenders," though there were nightly marauders about
Edgeworthstown, though Mr. Edgeworth had been threatened with
assassination, still, all things considered, "things in their
neighborhood were tolerably quiet." In this matter as in others, of
course, the basis of comparison alone constitutes the value of the
inference deduced. In any case the family resumed their quiet course of
existence; Mr. Edgeworth busy with the invention of a telegraph, Miss
Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little ones, visiting and
being visited by her Aunt Ruxton. In the evenings the family gathered
round the fireside and the father read aloud. Late in 1793 Miss
Edgeworth writes:--
This evening my father has been reading out Gay's _Trivia_, to our
great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you and
Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us. If you have
_Trivia_, and if you have time, will you humor your niece so far as
to look at it? I had much rather make a bargain with any one I
loved to read the same book with them at the same hour, than to
look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. "Ah! that is
because my dear niece has no taste and no eyes." But I assure you I
am learning the use of my eyes main fast, and make no doubt, please
Heaven I live to be sixty, to see as well as my neighbors. I am
scratching away very hard at the _Freeman Family_.[3]
That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by the current sentimentalism of
the period, the above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest letters evince
her practical, straightforward common sense. Romance had no place in her
nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her _Letters to Literary Ladies_.
She wrote to her cousin:--
Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after _Letters
to Literary Ladies_. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can
be expected, nor are they likely to mend at present; when they are
fit to be seen--if that happy time ever arrives--their first visit
shall be to Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of
crooked marks of papa's critical indignation, besides various
abusive marginal notes, which I would not have you see for
half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole crown as pure as
King Hiero's.
The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were going on
prosperously side by side with those of war; the disturbances, of which
Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, having become
sufficiently serious to require military intervention.
In 1795 the _Letters to Literary Ladies_ were published. Considering the
time when the work was written it showed much independence and advance
of thought, though to-day it would be stigmatized as somewhat
retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea in favor of female education,
repeating arguments that of late years have been well worn, and of which
the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom of according
education to women, no longer stands in need. The book is interesting
to-day merely as another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his
daughter were advanced in thought. They could not be brought to the
common opinion then prevalent that ignorance was a woman's safeguard,
that taste for literature was calculated to lead to ill conduct, though
even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as Mr. Day indorsed Sir
Anthony Absolute's dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition should
consist in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous
combinations.
Not even the honors of first authorship could cause Miss Edgeworth's
private letters, then any more than afterwards, to be occupied with
herself. "I beg, dear Sophy," she writes to her cousin, "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." It is the affairs of
others, the things that it will please or amuse her correspondents to
hear, that she writes about. The tone is always good-humored and kindly.
Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was disturbed by the
insurgents. She writes, January, 1796:--
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 neighbors
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 that have neither bolts nor bars that we leave
unbarred, and these are more at present than we wish even for the
reputation of our valor. 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.
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,[4] 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.
The Edgeworths' ambition was to write the history of realities in an
entertaining manner; they held that it was better for purposes of
education, and more suited to the tastes of children, than improbable
fiction. The first proposition may, perhaps, be conceded, the second
scarcely. In any case, however, Mr. Edgeworth, who had a special leaning
to the _jejune_, had a particular dislike to this form of fiction.
"Why," he asked, "should the mind be filled with fantastic visions? Why
should so much valuable time be lost? Why should we vitiate their taste
and spoil their appetite by suffering them to feed upon sweetmeats?"
Even poetical allusions, he thought, should be avoided in books for
children. On the other hand, with the happy intuition he often
displayed, he recognized that the current children's books of his time
erred in introducing too much that was purely didactic, too many general
reflections. He urged his daughter to avoid these errors, to bear action
in view, and that whether in morals or in science, the thing to be
taught should seem to arise from the circumstances in which the little
persons of the drama were placed. He saw that in order to prevent
precepts from tiring the eye and mind, it was necessary to make the
stories in which they were introduced dramatic, to keep alive hope, fear
and curiosity by some degree of intricacy.
Admirably did his daughter carry out the precepts he thus laid down. It
was Miss Edgeworth who really inaugurated for England the reign of
didactic fiction. Though never losing sight of her aim, she also never
lost sight of the amusement of her young readers. She rightly
comprehended that only by captivating their senses could she conquer and
influence their reason. Her children's tales, written with motion and
spirit, were told in the simple language of the young. She went straight
to the hearts of her little readers because they could understand her;
they needed no grown person to explain to them sesquipedalian words.
There is a freshness about her stories that children are quick to
respond to, and it arises from the fact that the children she depicts
for her readers are real. Miss Edgeworth knew what children were like;
she saw them not only from without but from within; she had lived all
her life among little people. Their world never became a paradise from
which she was shut out. The advantages she thus enjoyed were as rare as
they are important for the due comprehension of the needs of childhood,
and she utilized them to the utmost. The chief charm of her tales, that
which makes them _sui generis_ both now and then, is that she not only
wrote in the language of children, but, what is even rarer, from the
child's point of view.
There are yet among us those who owe their earliest pleasures to Miss
Edgeworth, and if of late she has been somewhat jostled out of the
nursery and school-room because it is the tendency of the modern child
to revolt against all attempts to teach it unawares, we are far from
sure that the change is wholly for the better. It was a just perception
of this that caused Miss Yonge to say in _The Stokesley Secret_ that her
heroes "would read any books that made no pretensions to be instructive,
but even a fact about a lion or an elephant made them detect wisdom in
disguise, and throw it aside." The modern child finds, it is said, Miss
Edgeworth's tales dry; American books of a semi-novelistic character,
rattling stories of wild adventure, are preferred.
This may be so, but we cannot help thinking that, just in these days,
when the ethical standard held up to children is not too high, a
judicious admixture of these works with Miss Edgeworth's high-minded
stories, inculcating self-sacrifice, unselfishness, obedience, and other
neglected virtues, might be of great advantage. There are sundry of Miss
Edgeworth's children's tales that are truly engrossing, veritable
masterpieces of style and execution. Who is there, no matter how
advanced his age, who cannot read with pleasure the tales of _Lazy
Lawrence_, _Tarlton_, _The Bracelets_, _Waste Not Want Not_, _Forgive
and Forget_, _e tutti quanti_? Who is there whom it much disturbs that
the account of Eton Montem is not accurate, and that perhaps there could
have been nothing more unfortunate than to lay the scene of action of
_The Little Merchants_ in Naples, the one spot in all the earth where
the events therein described could not have happened? Change the name of
the locality, the charm of the tale remains and the absurdity is
removed. Nor must it be forgotten that children, less well read than
their elders, are less alive to these blemishes, which are, after all,
of no real import. Of _Simple Susan_, so great a person as 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." Then as to
_Rosamond_, who does not feel a true affection for that impetuous,
impulsive little girl, and who is there (so greatly have our ideas of
morality changed) that does not think that in the matter of the famous
_Purple Jar_, an unjustifiable trick was played upon her by her mother?
It was a part of the Edgeworth system to make misdirected or mistaken
desires stultify themselves; but the child should have been informed of
the nature of the jar, and if then she still persisted in her choice,
she would have been fairly treated, which now she is not. _Frank_
remains a capital book for little people, and if, occasionally, Miss
Edgeworth's juvenile tales reflect too much of the stiff wisdom of her
age, these are matters which children, not morally _blase_, hardly
remark. On the other hand, there is never anything mawkish in her pages,
she never fills the mind with yearnings for the impossible, she never
works too much upon the susceptibilities, which modern child-literature
so often does. Her writings for children are certainly _sui generis_,
not because she has attempted what has never been attempted before, but
because she succeeded where others failed. She made even her youngest
reader comprehend that virtue is its own reward, while avoiding the
error invariably fallen into by writers for the young, of representing
virtues as always triumphant, vice as uniformly punished--a fallacy even
children are quick to detect. It has been objected to her that she
checks enthusiasm, the source of some of the noblest actions of mankind.
This is true; she has somewhat erred on the repressive side, but her
purpose was right and good. She saw plainly that enthusiasm, generous in
its origin, is but too often the source of misfortune, ill-judged
effort, and consequent disappointment. Moderation, the duties of
contentment and industry, are what she loves to uphold; the lower,
humbler, but no less effective virtues of existence.
On the other hand it is clear, from her letters, that she herself was
not devoid of enthusiasm, and here, again, it was probably her father's
influence that made her exclude it from her writings. In one of her
letters she says:--
_Vive l'enthousiasme!_ Without it characters may be very snug and
comfortable in the world, but there is a degree of happiness which
they will never taste, and of which they have no more idea than an
oyster can have.
_Harry and Lucy_ falls sharply into two parts. The earlier portion was
intended to be read before _Rosamond_, and after _Frank_; the latter was
the last of the juvenile series. The work had been begun by Mr.
Edgeworth and his wife Honora, from the need of a book to follow Mrs.
Barbauld's lessons, and as a story to be inserted in this work Mr. Day
had originally written _Sandford and Merton_. _Harry and Lucy_ was
printed, but not published. It was kept, as originally meant, only for
the Edgeworth children; but after more than twenty years Mr. Edgeworth
passed the work on to his daughter, and bade her complete it and prepare
it for publication. The first portion thus came out early in the
century, while the last part did not appear till 1825.
_Harry and Lucy_ is unquestionably heavy in parts, especially the latter
half, yet first principles are well explained and popularized, and
instruction and tale so skillfully blended that the young reader cannot
skip the one and read the other. The main idea and the chief merit of
these volumes, not at once perhaps obvious, is that of enforcing in a
popular form the necessity of exercising the faculties of children, so
that they should be, in part, their own instructors, and of adding to
those more common incentives to study, which consist of rewards and
punishments, the far surer, nobler and more effective stimulus of
curiosity kept alive by variety and the pleasure of successful
invention. It was the desire of the authors to show with what ease the
faculty of thinking may be cultivated in children, a point on which Miss
Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. In _Harry and Lucy_ are
explained simply and familiarly, sometimes in conversations between the
children and their parents and friends, sometimes in dialogue between
the children themselves, the rudiments of science, principally of
chemistry and physics, and the application of these to the common
purposes of life. And herein we again encounter one of the grand merits
of the Edgeworths, which we can to-day better appreciate than their
contemporaries. They saw clearly what in their day was apprehended only
by very few, the importance that the study of science was to acquire in
the future. Miss Edgeworth says:--
My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific as well as
literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly and spread so
widely, would render it necessary to make some provision for the
early instruction of youth in science, in addition to the great and
successful attention paid to classical literatures.
And even apart from the immense importance of science in our daily life,
science is, of all studies, that best suited to the growth of a child's
mental powers. Novelty and variety are the spells of early life, and to
work these well and helpfully is the greatest good that can be done to
young people. Miss Edgeworth, in _Harry and Lucy_, as a whole succeeds
in rousing her reader's curiosity without making them suspect design,
and avoids all idea of a task. Thus the leading principles of science
are unfolded in familiar experiments which give young learners the
delight they would have in playing some interesting game, exercising
their ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having once felt the
pleasures of success, a permanent incentive to knowledge is induced,
which it remains with the parents or tutors to improve. The books are
obviously not such as are meant to be read at a sitting, and therefore
can only be put into the hands of young people with judicious care. But
in the Edgeworths' time neither old nor young devoured books after the
manner of to-day. The apparently desultory and accidental plan of the
book was really designed, purpose and moral being more skillfully
disguised than is the case with Miss Edgeworth's tales for her equals.
One of its great charms lies in the characters of the principal
_dramatis personae_, whose temperaments are exquisitely sketched,
maintained and contrasted. Lucy, the lively, playful girl, who often
allows her imagination to go rambling far afield from her judgment, a
little inclined to be volatile, loving a joke, is cousin german to
Rosamond, and, like this little girl, truly lovable. She supplies the
lighter element, while the sterner is supplied by Harry, the brother she
idolizes, who is partly her companion, partly her teacher. He has a sure
and steady rather than a brilliant and rapid intellect, great mental
curiosity and great patience in acquiring information. He is more apt to
discern differences than to perceive resemblances, and therefore he does
not always understand the wit and fun of Lucy, which at times even
provoke him. In the conversations between them there is much judicious
sprinkling of childish banter and nonsense, "an alloy necessary to make
sense work well," to use Miss Edgeworth's own expressive words. A pity
that the ever-delightful "Great Panjandrum" therein introduced is not
her own, but only a quotation from a little-known nonsense genius.
This sequel to _Harry and Lucy_ was far from finding universal favor.
Sir Walter Scott wrote of it to Joanna Baillie:--
I have not the pen of our friend Miss Edgeworth, who writes all the
while she laughs, talks, eats and drinks, and I believe, though I
do not pretend to be so far in the secret, all the time she sleeps
too. She has good luck in having a pen which walks at once so
unweariedly and so well. I do not, however, quite like her last
book on education (_Harry and Lucy_), considered as a general work.
She should have limited the title to _Education in Natural
Philosophy_, or some such term, for there is no great use in
teaching children in general to roof houses or build bridges,
which, after all, a carpenter or a mason does a great deal better
at 2s. 6d. a day. Your ordinary Harry should be kept to his
grammar, and your Lucy of most common occurrence would be kept
employed on her sampler, instead of wasting wood and cutting their
fingers, which I am convinced they did, though their historian says
nothing of it.
That both she and her father exacted much from their pupils and readers
is beyond question, but they regarded this as a wholesome effort, and
they were probably right. One thing is certain: that whatever their
shortcomings, Miss Edgeworth's children's tales exercised a wide, deep
and lasting influence over a long range of time, and nothing of equal or
even approximate importance arose coeval with them. It was she who first
brought rational morality to the level of the comprehension of
childhood, who taught the language of virtue and truth in the alphabet
of the young, thus forestalling the teaching of schools by her rare
power of combining ethics with entertainment. Miss Edgeworth can still
with advantage and pleasure hold her own even upon the present
well-stocked nursery book-shelves, and it might be well for the next
generation if we saw her there a little oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth
any day, with all her arid utilitarianism, her realism, than the sickly
sentimental unrealities of a far too popular modern school.
CHAPTER VI.
IRISH AND MORAL TALES.
In 1800 was published anonymously a small book called _Castle Rackrent_.
It professed to be a Hibernian tale, taken from facts and from the
manners of the Irish squires before the year 1782. It proved to be a
most entertaining, witty history of the fortunes of an Irish estate,
told professedly by an illiterate, partial old steward, who recounted
the story of the Rackrent family in his vernacular with the full
confidence that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit and Sir
Condy were as interesting to all the world as they were to himself.
_Honest_ Thaby, as this curious but characteristic specimen of Irish
good humor, fidelity and wrong-headedness was pleased to call himself,
having no conception of the true application of this epithet, had
certainly shown literary perception, or rather his creator for him. For
this was no other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood confessed upon the
title-page of the second edition that was clamorously demanded within a
few months of issue. The confession was wrung from her because some one
had not only asserted that he was the author, but had actually taken the
trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures, as if
it were his original manuscript. It was in this work that Miss Edgeworth
first struck her own peculiar vein, and had she never written anything
but _Castle Rackrent_ her fame could not have died. It is a page torn
from the national history of Ireland, inimitable, perennially
delightful, equally humorous and pathetic, holding up with shrewd wit
and keen perception, mingled with sympathetic indulgence, the follies
and vices that have caused, and in a modified degree still cause, no
small proportion of the social miseries that have afflicted and still
afflict that unhappy land.
Here are portrayed a series of Irish landlords with their odd
discrepancies and striking individualities, alternately drunken,
litigious, pugilistic, slovenly and densely ignorant; or else easy,
extravagant and good-natured to the point of vice; all, however, of one
mind in being profoundly indifferent to their own or their tenants'
welfare. The sharp contrasts of the magnificent and paltry that
characterized their state of living, with the mixed confidence in a
special Providence and their own good luck that distinguished their
muddle-headed mode of thought, is forcibly held up to view. No
conclusions are drawn; the narrative, which never flags or drags, is
rattled off with spirit, the abundant anecdotes are poured forth with
true Irish exuberance, while the humor of the story arises in great
measure from the sublime unconsciousness of the story-teller to the wit,
naivete or absurdity of his remarks. We are held spell-bound, we laugh
and weep in a breath, we are almost over-persuaded by loyal old Thady to
pardon the errors of the family, "one of the most ancient in the
kingdom, related to the kings of Ireland, but that was before my time."
If there was an ulterior end in view in this story beyond that of
recording national characteristics which she had had peculiarly good
opportunities for observing, and which she here reproduced from the life
with broad, full strokes, Miss Edgeworth has masked it so happily that
it does not obtrude itself. The society and manners of the Irish are
painted as equally provoking and endearing. The book is an epitome of
the Irish character, "fighting like devils for conciliation, and hating
one another for the love of God." Never did laughter and tears, sympathy
and repugnance, lie more closely together than in this tale. It is
curious to read the author's prefatory apology when there are still
alive, in every exasperated form, the very conditions she thinks belong
to a state of things rapidly passing away, "owing to the probable loss
of Irish identity after the union with England." The supposed "obsolete
prejudices and animosities of race" are unhappily still extant. Perhaps
it is partly this fact that makes Miss Edgeworth's Irish tales so fresh
to this day. But only in part; on their own account alone they are
delightful, and _Castle Rackrent_ even more than the rest.
We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss Edgeworth wrote _Castle
Rackrent_ unassisted by her father, and judging how infinitely superior
in spontaneity, flexibility, and nervousness of style, force, pith and
boldness, it is to those of her writings with which he meddled, it is
forcibly impressed upon us that Mr. Edgeworth's literary tinkering of
his daughter's works was far from being to their advantage. Her next
published book was her first attempt to deal with the novel proper. In
_Belinda_ she strove to delineate the follies and hollowness of
fashionable life. The heroine is rather a lifeless puppet; but the more
truly prominent figure, Lady Delacour, is drawn with power and keen
intuition. A woman of gay and frivolous antecedents, striving to rise
into a higher atmosphere under the ennobling influences of a pure
friendship, and finding the task a difficult one, was no easy character
to draw or to sustain. Had Lady Delacour died heroically, as Miss
Edgeworth had planned, and as the whole course of the story leads the
reader to expect, the book would have been a success. But to allow her
to recover, to cause her to evolve a reformed character after a type
psychologically impossible to one of her temperament, weakened the force
of the foregoing pages and rendered them untrue. Again, it is on Miss
Edgeworth's spoken testimony to Mrs. Barbauld that we learn that she
meant to make Lady Delacour die, but that it was her father who
suggested the alteration; and since it was a part of the Edgeworthian
creed to believe in such simple and sudden reformations, she accepted
his counsel, to the artistic injury of her tale. It was Mr. Edgeworth,
too, who wrote and interpolated the worthless and high-flown Virginia
episode, in which Clarence Harvey takes to the freak of wife-training
after the pattern of Mr. Day. This incident is quite out of keeping with
the character of Clarence, who is depicted a wooden dandy, but not a
romantic fool. These changes, willingly submitted to by Miss Edgeworth,
who had the most unbounded belief in her father's superior wisdom on all
points whatsoever, also mark his idiosyncracy, for Mr. Edgeworth was a
most rare and curious compound of utilitarianism and wild romance.
It is almost possible, in Miss Edgeworth's works, to venture to point
out the passages that have been tampered with and those where she has
been allowed free play. Thus there are portions of _Belinda_ in which
she is as much at her best as in _Castle Rackrent_, or other of her
masterpieces. Who but she could have penned the lively description given
by Sir Philip Baddeley of the fetes at Frogmore? How exquisitely is this
ill-natured fool made to paint himself, how truthful is the picture,
free from any taint of exaggeration! Sir Philip's endeavor to disgust
Belinda with Clarence Harvey, his manner of attempting it, and his final
proposal, is a very masterpiece of caustic humor.
_Belinda_ was no favorite with Miss Edgeworth. Writing to Mrs. Barbauld
some years later, she says:--
Belinda is but an uninteresting personage after all.... I was not
either in _Belinda_ or _Leonora_ sufficiently aware that the
_goodness_ of a heroine interests only in proportion to the perils
and trials to which it is exposed.
And again, after revising it for republication, she says:--
I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or
stone, Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces; really
I have not the heart or the patience to _correct_ her. As the
hackney coachman said, "Mend _you_! Better make a new one."
Miss Edgeworth was therefore capable of self-criticism. Indeed, at no
time did she set even a due value on her own work, still less an
exaggerated one. To the day of her death she sincerely believed that all
the honor and glory she had reaped belonged of right to her father
alone. But there was yet another reason why Miss Edgeworth never liked
_Belinda_. She was staying at Black Castle when the first printed copy
reached her. Before her aunt saw it she contrived to tear out the
title-pages of the three volumes, and Mrs. Ruxton thus read it without
the least suspicion as to its authorship. She was much delighted, and
insisted on reading out to her niece passage after passage. Miss
Edgeworth pretended to be deeply interested in some book she was herself
reading, and when Mrs. Ruxton exclaimed, "Is not that admirably
written?" replied, "Admirably read, I think." "It may not be so very
good," added Mrs. Ruxton, "but it shows just the sort of knowledge of
high life which people have who live in the world." But in vain she
appealed to Miss Edgeworth for sympathy, until, provoked by her faint
acquiescence, Mrs. Ruxton at last accused her of being envious. "I am
sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a rival
author." This remark made Miss Edgeworth burst into tears and show her
aunt the title-pages of the book. But Mrs. Ruxton was not pleased; she
never wholly liked _Belinda_ afterwards, and Miss Edgeworth had always a
painful recollection that her aunt had suspected her of the meanness of
envy.
In 1802 was published the _Essay on Irish Bulls_, bearing on its
title-page the names of father and daughter. Its title appears to have
misled even the Irish: at least it is related that an Irish gentleman,
secretary to an agricultural society, who was much interested in
improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent for it, expecting to find a
work on live stock. We have Miss Edgeworth's own account of the genesis
of the book:--
The first design of the essay was my father's: under the semblance
of attack, he wished to show the English public the eloquence, wit
and talents of the lower classes of people in Ireland. Working
zealously upon the ideas which he suggested, sometimes what was
spoken by him was afterwards written by me; or when I wrote my
first thoughts, they were corrected and improved by him; so that no
book was ever written more completely in partnership. On this, as
on most subjects, whether light or serious, when we wrote together,
it would now be difficult, almost impossible, to recollect which
thoughts originally were his and which were mine. All passages in
which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions must be his
exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant of the learned
languages. The notes on the Dublin shoe-black's metaphorical
language I recollect are chiefly his.
I have heard him tell that story with all the natural,
indescribable Irish tones and gestures, of which written language
can give but a faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish,
because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of
nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit
of the people, without condescending to produce effect by
caricature. He knew not only their comic talents, but their powers
of pathos; and often when he had just heard from them some pathetic
complaint, he has repeated it to me while the impression was fresh.
In the chapter on wit and eloquence in _Irish Bulls_ there is a
speech of a poor freeholder to a candidate who asked for his vote;
this speech was made to my father when he was canvassing the county
of Longford. It was repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I
wrote it down instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a
word.
The complaint of a poor widow against her landlord, and his reply, were
quoted by Campbell in his _Lectures on Eloquence_, as happy specimens,
under the conviction that they were fictitious. Miss Edgeworth assures
us that they are "unembellished facts," that her father was the
magistrate before whom the complaint and defense were made, and that she
wrote down the speeches word for word as he repeated them to her. This
_Essay on Irish Bulls_, though a somewhat rambling and discursive
composition, is a readable one, full of good stories, pathetic and
humorous. Besides giving critical and apt illustrations, the authors did
justice to the better traits of the Irish character. It was an earnest
vindication of the national intellect from the charge of habitual
blundering, showing how blundering is common to all countries, and is no
more Irish than Persian. They further proved that most so-called bulls
are no bulls at all, but often a poetic license, a heart-spoken
effusion, and that thus the offense became a grace beyond the reach of
art.
_Moral Tales_ also saw the light in 1801. They too were written to
illustrate _Practical Education_, but aimed at readers of a more
advanced age than the children's tales; in fact, both here and elsewhere
Miss Edgeworth strove to do on a larger scale what was achieved by the
ancient form of parable, to make an attractive medium for the
instruction and conviction of minds. It was a fancy of hers, and perhaps
a characteristic of her age, when female authorship was held in somewhat
doubtful repute, that she invariably insisted on appearing before the
public under cover of her father's name. He therefore wrote for _Moral
Tales_, as afterwards for all her works, one of his ludicrously
bombastic prefaces, which, whatever they may have done in his own time,
would certainly to-day be the most effective means of repelling readers.
The stories are six in number: _Forester_, _The Prussian Vase_, _The
Good Aunt_, _Angelina_, _The Good French Governess_, and _Mademoiselle
Panache_. Of these the plots are for the most part poorly contrived, the
narrative hammered out _invita Minerva_, and, owing to their aim,
nothing capricious or accidental is permitted. Too obviously they are
the mature fruits of purpose and reflection, not happy effusions of the
fancy, and hence also not always successful. Sometimes the fault lay
with the subject that afforded too little scope, sometimes the moral
striven after did not admit of the embellishments requisite for a work
of amusement. One thing, however, is certain: that Miss Edgeworth
honestly endeavored to combine entertainment with instruction, and that,
taken as a whole, she succeeded. She did not shelter herself behind the
saying that _Il est permis d'ennuyer en moralites d'ici jusqu'a
Constantinople_. But it is the key to her writings, to their excellences
and their defects, that the duty of a moral teacher was always uppermost
in her mind. Her aim was not to display her own talents, but to make her
readers substantially better and happier, to show how easy and
agreeable to practice are high principles. Again and again she insists,
with irrefragable force, that it is the ordinary and attainable
qualities of life rather than the lofty and heroic ones on which our
substantial happiness depends, an insistance new in the domain of
fiction, which as a rule preaches other doctrines. With this end in view
she had necessarily to sacrifice some freedom and grace of invention to
illustrate her moral aphorisms, her salutary truths, and she yielded to
the temptation to exaggerate in order to make her work more impressive.
Her _Moral Tales_ are a series of climaces of instances, an enlargement
of La Bruyere's idea, a method allowable to creations of fancy, but not
quite justifiable when applied to the probable. Moreover, it was a
feature of the eighteenth century, to which in many respects Miss
Edgeworth belonged, that its tales and novels were not analytic.
Psychology based upon biology was as yet unknown, or in so empirical a
stage as to be remote from practical application. The writers of those
days depict their characters not as the complex bundles of good and bad
qualities and potentialities that even the veriest scribbler paints them
to-day, but as sharply good or bad, so that one flaw of character, one
vice, one folly, was made to be the origin of all their disasters. It
is, of course, always dangerous when the author plays the part of
Providence, and can twist the narrative to suit the moral; but this
censure applies to all moral tales, by no matter whom. Miss Edgeworth
strove to civilize and instruct by the rehearsal of a tale, and if we
all, from the perversity of human nature, rather revolt against being
talked to for our good, it must ever be added in her praise that she
generally allures us and makes us listen to her maxims of right living.
Her self-imposed task was neither humble nor easy, but one that required
judgment, patience and much knowledge of the world; her moral
wholesomeness cannot be rated too highly or be too much commended. If
she ascribed too large a share of morality to the head instead of the
heart, this was the result of the doctrines with which her father had
imbued her.
The most successful of the _Moral Tales_ is beyond question _Angelina_.
Its moral is not obtrusive, its fable is well constructed, the tale is
told with point, spirit, gentle but incisive satire. The sentimental
young lady, a female Don Quixote, roaming the world in search of an
unknown friend whose acquaintance she has made solely through the medium
of her writings, is a genus that is not extinct. Never has Miss
Edgeworth been happier than here, when she combats her heroine's errors,
not by serious arguments, but with the shafts of ridicule. The tale is a
gem. _Forester_, on the other hand, for which Mr. Edgeworth claims that
it is a male version of the same character, does not strike us in that
light, nor is it as perfect in conception or execution. The character of
the eccentric youth who scorns the common forms of civilized society,
and is filled with visionary schemes of benevolence and happiness, was
based, it would seem, upon that of Mr. Day, and, as a portrait, was
doubtless a happy one. But the hero fails to interest, his aberrations
are simply foolish, the means whereby he is redeemed too mechanical and
crude, the whole both too detailed and too much condensed to hold our
attention or to seem probable. _The Good French Governess_ embodies the
Edgeworthian mode of giving lessons, which was to make them pleasures,
not tasks, to the pupils; maxims now universally recognized and
practiced, but new in the days when for little children there were no
pleasant roads to learning in the shape of _kindergaerten_. _The Good
Aunt_ insists upon the necessity of home example and instruction, the
lack of which no school training can supply. It is the weakest of all
the tales, and verges dangerously upon the namby-pamby. _Mademoiselle
Panache_, according to Mr. Edgeworth, is "a sketch of the necessary
consequences of imprudently trusting the happiness of a daughter to the
care of those who can teach nothing but accomplishments;" but which,
according to most readers, will be pronounced the melancholy result of
an ignorance that could mistake an illiterate French milliner for an
accomplished French governess. It is unjust to lay the results of the
tuition of such a personage to the charge of that favorite
scape-goat--the frivolity of the French nation. _The Prussian Vase_, a
tale, again according to Mr. Edgeworth, "designed principally for young
gentlemen who are intended for the bar," is a pretty but apocryphal
anecdote attributed to Frederic the Great, of a nature impossible to the
mental bias of that enlightened despot. It is, moreover, an eulogium of
the English mode of trial by jury.
Taken as a whole, these tales may be said to enforce the doctrine that
unhappiness is more often the result of defects of character than of
external circumstances. Like all Miss Edgeworth's writings, they found
instant favor and were translated into French and German. With no desire
to detract from their merits, we cannot avoid the inference that this
circumstance points to a great lack of contemporary foreign fiction of a
pure and attractive kind.
CHAPTER VII.
IN FRANCE AND AT HOME.
The peace, or rather the truce, of Amiens had induced many travellers to
visit France. They all returned enraptured with what they had seen of
society in Paris, and with the masterpieces of art dragged thither, as
the spoils of military despotism. Letters from some of these tourists
awakened in Mr. Edgeworth a wish to revisit France. The desire took
shape as resolve after the visit to Edgeworthstown of M. Pictet, of
Geneva, who promised the family letters of introduction to, and a
cordial welcome among, the thinkers of the land. As translator of
_Practical Education_, and as the editor of the _Bibliotheque
Britannique_,[5] in which he had published most of Miss Edgeworth's
_Moral Tales_, and detailed criticisms of both father and daughter, he
had certainly prepared the way for their favorable reception. The tour
was therefore arranged for the autumn of 1802, a roomy coach was
purchased, and in September Mr., Mrs., Miss and Miss Charlotte Edgeworth
started for their continental trip.
The series of letters Miss Edgeworth wrote home during this time are
most entertaining, unaffected, sprightly and graphic. She often sketches
a character, a national peculiarity, with a touch, while on the other
hand she does not shirk detail if only she can succeed in presenting a
vivid picture of all she is beholding to those dear ones at home who are
debarred from the same enjoyment. Carnarvon, Bangor, Etruria and
Leicester were visited on the way out. At Leicester Miss Edgeworth had
an amusing adventure:--
Handsome town, good shops. Walked, whilst dinner was getting ready,
to a circulating library. My father asked for _Belinda_, _Bulls_,
etc.: found they were in good repute; _Castle Rackrent_ in
better--the others often borrowed, but _Castle Rackrent_ often
bought. The bookseller, an open-hearted man, begged us to look at a
book of poems just published by a Leicester lady, a Miss Watts. I
recollected to have seen some years ago a specimen of this lady's
proposed translation of Tasso, which my father had highly admired.
He told the bookseller that we would pay our respects to Miss Watts
if it would be agreeable to her. When we had dined we set out with
our enthusiastic bookseller. We were shown by the light of a
lantern along a very narrow passage between high walls, to the
door of a decent-looking house: a maid-servant, candle in hand,
received us. "Be pleased, ladies, to walk up stairs." A neatish
room, nothing extraordinary in it except the inhabitants: Mrs.
Watts, a tall, black-eyed, prim, dragon-looking woman, in the
background; Miss Watts, a tall young lady in white, fresh color,
fair, thin, oval face, rather pretty. The moment Mrs. Edgeworth
entered, Miss Watts, taking her for the authoress, darted forward
with arms, long thin arms, outstretched to their, utmost swing.
"Oh, what an honor this is!" each word and syllable rising in tone
till the last reached a scream. Instead of embracing my mother, as
her first action threatened, she started back to the farthest end
of the room, which was not light enough to show her attitude
distinctly, but it seemed to be intended to express the receding of
awestruck admiration--stopped by the wall. Charlotte and I passed
by unnoticed, and seated ourselves, by the old lady's desire; she,
after many twistings of her wrists, elbows and neck, all of which
appeared to be dislocated, fixed herself in her arm-chair, resting
her hands on the black mahogany splayed elbows. Her person was no
sooner at rest than her eyes and all her features began to move in
all directions. She looked like a nervous and suspicious person
electrified. She seemed to be the acting partner in this house, to
watch over her treasure of a daughter, to supply her with wordly
wisdom, to look upon her as a phoenix, and--scold her.
Miss Watts was all ecstasy and lifting up of hands and eyes,
speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical tone with which a
puppet-master supplies his puppets. I all the time sat like a
mouse. My father asked, "Which of those ladies, madam, do you think
is your sister-authoress?" "I am no physiognomist"--in a
screech--"but I do imagine that to be the lady," bowing, as she
sat, almost to the ground, and pointing to Mrs. Edgeworth. "No;
guess again." "Then that must be she," bowing to Charlotte. "No."
"Then this lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal I
was, for she had never seen me till this instant. To make me some
amends, she now drew her chair close to me and began to pour forth
praises: "Lady Delacour, oh! _Letters for Literary Ladies_, oh!"
Now for the pathetic part. This poor girl sold a novel in four
volumes for ten guineas to Lane. My father is afraid, though she
has considerable talents, to recommend her to Johnson, lest she
should not answer! Poor girl! what a pity she had no friend to
direct her talents! How much she made me feel the value of mine!
After a trip through the Low Countries, the travellers entered France
and received many civilities in all the towns they passed through,
thanks to the fact that the _Bibliotheque Britannique_ was taken in
every public library. At Paris the Edgeworths were admitted into the
best society of the period, which consisted of the remains of the French
nobility, and of men of letters and science. The old Abbe Morellet,
"respected as one of the most _reasonable_ of all the wits of France,"
the _doyen_ of French literature, was a previous acquaintance. By his
introductions and those of M. Pictet, added to the prestige of their own
names and their relationship to the Abbe Edgeworth, the most exclusive
houses were opened to the family, and they thus became acquainted with
every one worth knowing, among whom were La Harpe, Madame de Genlis,
Kosciusko, Madame Recamier, the Comte de Segur, Dumont, Suard, Camille
Jordan. In all circles the subject of politics was carefully avoided;
the company held themselves aloof, and wilfully ignored the important
issues that were surging around them; their conversation turned chiefly
on new plays, novels and critical essays. As is usual in such small
circles with limited interests, a good deal of mutual admiration was
practiced, and the Edgeworths received their due share.
At the Abbe Morellet's Miss Edgeworth met Madame d'Oudinot, Rousseau's
"Julie." This is her impression:--
Julie is now seventy-two years of age, a thin woman in a little
black bonnet; she appeared to me shockingly ugly; she squints so
much that it is impossible to tell which way she is looking; but no
sooner did I hear her speak than I began to like her, and no sooner
was I seated beside her than I began to find in her countenance a
most benevolent and agreeable expression. She entered into
conversation immediately; her manner invited and could not fail to
obtain confidence. She seems as gay and open-hearted as a girl of
fifteen. It has been said of her that she not only never did any
harm, but never suspected any. She is possessed of that art which
Lord Kaimes said he would prefer to the finest gift from the queen
of the fairies: the art of seizing the best side of every object.
She has had great misfortunes, but she has still retained the power
of making herself and her friends happy. Even during the horrors
of the Revolution, if she met with a flower, a butterfly, an
agreeable smell, a pretty color, she would turn her attention to
these, and for a moment suspend the sense of misery--not from
frivolity, but from real philosophy. No one has exerted themselves
with more energy in the service of her friends. I felt in her
company the delightful influence of a cheerful temper and soft,
attractive manners--enthusiasm which age cannot extinguish, and
which spends, but does not waste itself on small but not trifling
objects. I wish I could at seventy-two be such a woman! She told me
that Rousseau, whilst he was writing so finely on education, and
leaving his own children in the Foundling Hospital, defended
himself with so much eloquence that even those who blamed him in
their hearts could not find tongues to answer him. Once at dinner
at Madame d'Oudinot's there was a fine pyramid of fruit. Rousseau
in helping himself took the peach which formed the base of the
pyramid, and the rest fell immediately. "Rousseau," said she, "that
is what you always do with all our systems; you pull down with a
single touch; but who will build up what you pull down?" I asked if
he was grateful for all the kindness shown to him. "No, he was
ungrateful; he had a thousand bad qualities, but I turned my
attention from them to his genius and the good he had done
mankind."
La Harpe was visited in his own home:--
He lives in a wretched house, and we went up dirty stairs, through
dirty passages, where I wondered how fine ladies' trains and noses
could go; and were received in a dark, small den by the
philosopher, or rather _devot_, for he spurns the name of
philosopher. He was in a dirty, reddish night-gown, and very dirty
night-cap bound round the forehead with a superlatively dirty,
chocolate-colored ribbon. Madame Recamier, the beautiful, the
elegant, robed in white satin, trimmed with white fur, seated
herself on the elbow of his arm-chair, and besought him to repeat
his verses. Charlotte has drawn a picture of this scene.
An interesting visit was also paid to Madame de Genlis:--
She had previously written to say she would be glad to be
personally acquainted with Mr. and Miss Edgeworth. She lives--where
do you think?--where Sully used to live, at the Arsenal. Bonaparte
has given her apartments there. Now, I do not know what you imagine
in reading Sully's memoirs, but I always imagined that the Arsenal
was one large building with a facade to it, like a very large hotel
or a palace, and I fancied it was somewhere in the middle of Paris.
On the contrary, it is quite in the suburbs. We drove on and on,
and at last we came to a heavy archway, like what you see at the
entrance to a fortified town. We drove under it for the length of
three or four yards in total darkness, and then we found ourselves,
as well as we could see by the light of some dim lamps, in a large
square court surrounded by buildings: here we thought we were to
alight. No such thing: the coachman drove under another thick
archway, lighted at the entrance by a single lamp. We found
ourselves in another court, and still we went on, archway after
archway, court after court, in all which reigned desolate silence.
I thought the archways and the courts and the desolate silence
would never end. At last the coachman stopped, and asked for the
tenth time where the lady lived. It is excessively difficult to
find people in Paris; we thought the names of Madame de Genlis and
the Arsenal would have been sufficient; but the whole of this
congregation of courts and gateways and houses is called the
Arsenal; and hundreds and hundreds of people inhabit it who are
probably perfect strangers to Madame de Genlis. At the doors where
our coachman inquired, some answered that they knew nothing of her;
some that she lived in the Faubourg St. Germain; others believed
that she might be at Passy; others had heard that she had
apartments given to her by the Government somewhere in the Arsenal,
but could not tell where. While the coachman thus begged his way,
we, anxiously looking out at him from the middle of the great
square where we were left, listened for the answers that were
given, and which often from the distance escaped our ears. At last
a door pretty near to us opened, and our coachman's head and hat
were illuminated by the candle held by the person who opened the
door; and as the two figures parted from each other, we could
distinctly see the expression of the countenances and their lips
move. The result of this parley was successful; we were directed to
the house where Madame de Genlis lived, and thought all
difficulties ended. No such thing; her apartments were still to be
sought for. We saw before us a large, crooked, ruinous stone
staircase, lighted by a single bit of candle hanging in a vile tin
lantern, in an angle of the bare wall at the turn of the
staircase--only just light enough to see that the walls were bare
and old, and the stairs immoderately dirty. There were no signs of
the place being inhabited except this lamp, which could not have
been lighted without hands. I stood still in melancholy
astonishment, while my father groped his way into a kind of
porter's lodge or den at the foot of the stairs, where he found a
man who was porter to various people who inhabited this house. You
know the Parisian houses are inhabited by hordes of different
people, and the stairs are in fact streets, and dirty streets, to
their dwellings. The porter, who was neither obliging nor
intelligent, carelessly said that "_Madame de Genlis logeait au
seconde a gauche, qu'il faudrait tirer sa sonnette_"--he believed
she was at home if she was not gone out. Up we went by ourselves,
for this porter, though we were strangers and pleaded that we were
so, never offered to stir a step to guide or to light us. When we
got to the second stage, we finally saw, by the light from the one
candle at the first landing-place, two dirty, large folding doors,
one set on the right and one on the left, and having on each a bell
no larger than what you see in the small parlor of a small English
inn. My father pulled one bell and waited some minutes--no answer;
pulled the other bell and waited--no answer; thumped at the left
door--no answer; pushed and pulled at it--could not open it; pushed
open one of the right-hand folding doors--utter darkness; went in
as well as we could feel--there was no furniture. After we had been
there a few seconds we could discern the bare walls and some
strange lumber in one corner. The room was a prodigious height,
like an old play-house, and we went down again to the stupid or
surly porter. He came up stairs very unwillingly, and pointed to a
deep recess between the stairs and the folding doors: "_Allez!
voila la porte; tirez la sonnette._" He and his candle went down,
and my father had just time to seize the handle of the bell, when
we were again in darkness. After ringing this feeble bell, we
presently heard doors open and little footsteps approaching nigh.
The door was opened by a girl of about Honora's size, holding an
ill-set-up, wavering candle in her hand, the light of which fell
full upon her face and figure. Her face was remarkably
intelligent, dark, sparkling eyes, dark hair, curled in the most
fashionable long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and cheeks. She
parted the ringlets to take a full view of us, and we were equally
impatient to take a full view of her. The dress of her figure by no
means suited the head and the elegance of her attitude. What her
"nether weeds" might be we could not distinctly see, but they
seemed to be a coarse, short petticoat, like what Molly Bristow's
children would wear, not on Sundays; a woolen gray spencer above,
pinned with a single pin by the lapels tight across the neck under
the chin, and open all below. After surveying us and hearing that
our name was Edgeworth, she smiled graciously and bid us follow
her, saying, "_Maman est chez elle._" She led the way with the
grace of a young lady who has been taught to dance, across two
ante-chambers, miserable-looking, but miserable or not, no house in
Paris can be without them. The girl or young lady, for we were
still in doubt which to think her, led us into a small room, in
which the candles were so well screened by a green tin screen that
we could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black who
rose from her arm-chair by the fireside as the door opened; a great
puff of smoke came from the huge fireplace at the same moment. She
came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could
through a confusion of tables, chairs and work-baskets, china,
writing-desks and inkstands, and bird-cages and a harp. She did not
speak, and as her back was now turned to both fire and candle I
could not see her face, nor anything but the outline of her form
and her attitude. Her form was the remains of a fine form, and her
attitude that of a woman used to a better drawing-room. I, being
foremost, and she silent, was compelled to speak to the figure in
darkness: "_Madame de Genlis nous a fait l'honneur de nous mander
qu'elle voulait bien nous permettre de lui rendre visite, et de lui
offrir nos respects_," said I, or words to that effect; to which
she replied by taking my hand, and saying something in which
"_charmee_" was the most intelligible word. Whilst she spoke she
looked over my shoulder at my father, whose bow, I presume, told
her he was a gentleman, for she spoke to him immediately as if she
wished to please, and seated us in fauteuils near the fire. I then
had a full view of her face and figure. She looked like the
full-length picture of my great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have
seen in the garret, very thin and melancholy, but her face not so
handsome as my grandmother's; dark eyes, long sallow cheeks,
compressed thin lips, two or three black ringlets on a high
forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear--altogether an
appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out health, and excessive but
guarded irritability. To me there was nothing of that engaging,
captivating manner which I had been taught to expect by many even
of her enemies. She seemed to me to be alive only to literary
quarrels and jealousies; the muscles of her face as she spoke, or
my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily expressed hatred and
anger whenever any not of her own party were mentioned. She is now,
you know, _devote acharnee_. When I mentioned with some enthusiasm
the good Abbe Morellet, who has written so courageously in favor of
the French exiled nobility and their children, she answered in a
sharp voice: "_Oui, c'est un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, a ce qu'on
je crois meme, mais il faut apprendre qu'il n'est pas des Notres._"
My father spoke of Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and explained
how he had defended her in the Irish House of Commons. Instead of
being pleased and touched, her mind instantly diverged into an
elaborate and artificial exculpation of Lady Edward and herself,
proving, or attempting to prove, that she never knew any of her
husband's plans; that she utterly disapproved of them, at least of
all she suspected of them.
This defense was quite lost upon us, who never thought of
attacking; but Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to
be attacked that she has defenses and apologies ready prepared,
suited to all possible occasions. She spoke of Madame de Stael's
_Delphine_ with detestation; of another new and fashionable novel,
_Amelie_, with abhorrence, and kissed my forehead twice because I
had not read it; "_Vous autres Anglaises, vous etes modestes!_"
Where was Madame de Genlis' sense of delicacy when she penned and
published _Les Chevaliers du Cigne?_ Forgive, my dear Aunt Mary.
You begged me to see her with favorable eyes, and I went to see her
after seeing her _Rosiere de Salency_, with the most favorable
disposition, but I could not like her. There was something of
malignity in her countenance and conversation that repelled love,
and of hypocrisy which annihilated esteem; and from time to time I
saw, or thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance, a
gleam of coquetry.[6] But my father judges much more favorably of
her than I do. She evidently took pains to please him, and he says
he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could gain great
ascendancy. He thinks her a woman of violent passions, unbridled
imagination and ill-tempered, but not malevolent; one who has been
so torn to pieces that she now turns upon her enemies, and longs to
tear in her turn. He says she has certainly great powers of
pleasing, though I certainly neither saw nor felt them. But you
know, my dear aunt, that I am not famous for judging sanely of
strangers on a first visit, and I might be prejudiced or mortified
by Madame de Genlis assuring me that she had never read anything of
mine except _Belinda_, had heard of _Practical Education_, and
heard it much praised, but had never seen it. She has just
published an additional volume of her _Petits Romans_, in which
there are some beautiful stories; but you must not expect another
_Mademoiselle de Clermont_--one such story in an age is as much as
one can reasonably expect.
I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl who showed
us in is a girl whom she is educating. "_Elle m'appelle Maman, mais
elle n'est pas ma fille._" The manner in which this little girl
spoke to Madame de Genlis, and looked at her, appeared to me more
in her favor than anything else. She certainly spoke to her with
freedom and fondness, and without any affectation. I went to look
at what the child was writing. She was translating Darwin's
_Zoonomia_. I read some of the translation; it was excellent. She
was, I think she said, ten years old. It is certain that Madame de
Genlis made the present Duke of Orleans[7] such an excellent
mathematician, that when he was, during his emigration, in distress
for bread, he taught mathematics as a professor in one of the
German universities. If we could see or converse with one of her
pupils, and hear what they think of her, we should be able to form
a better judgment than from all that her books and her enemies say
for or against her. I say her books, not her friends and enemies,
for I fear she has no friends to plead for her except her books. I
never met any one of any party who was her friend. This strikes me
with real melancholy, to see a woman of the first talents in
Europe, who had lived and shone in the gay court of the gayest
nation in the world, now deserted and forlorn, living in wretched
lodgings, with some of the pictures and finery--the wreck of her
fortunes--before her eyes; without society, without a single
friend, admired--and despised. She lived literally in spite, not in
pity. Her cruelty in drawing a profligate character of the queen,
after her execution, in _Les Chevaliers du Cigne_; her taking her
pupils at the beginning of the Revolution to the revolutionary
clubs; her connection with the late Duke of Orleans, and her
hypocrisy about it; her insisting on being governess to his
children when the duchess did not wish it, and its being supposed
that it was she who instigated the duke in all his horrible
conduct; and, more than all the rest, her own attacks and
apologies, have brought her into all this isolated state of
reprobation. And now, my dear aunt, I have told you all I know, or
have heard or think about her; and perhaps I have tired you, but I
fancied that it was a subject particularly interesting to you; and
if I have been mistaken you will, with your usual good nature,
forgive me and say, "I am sure Maria meant it kindly."
While at Paris, at the mature age of thirty-six, there happened to Miss
Edgeworth what is said to be the most important episode in a woman's
life--she fell in love. The object of her affections was a M.
Edelcrantz, a Swede, private secretary to the King, whose strong,
spirited character and able conversation attracted her greatly. She had
not, however, reasoned concerning her feelings, and never realized
either how strong they were, or dreamed that they would be reciprocated.
Knowing herself to be plain and, as she deemed, unattractive, and being
no longer young, it did not occur to her that any man would wish to
marry her. While writing a long, chatty letter to her aunt one day in
December, she was suddenly interrupted by his visit and proposal:--
Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will
surprise you as much as it surprised me, by the coming in of
Monsieur Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman, whom we have mentioned to
you, of superior understanding and mild manners; he came to offer
me his hand and heart!!
My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attachment, for I have
seen very little of him, and have not had time to form any
judgment, except that I think nothing could tempt me to leave my
own dear friends and my own country to live in Sweden. My dearest
aunt, I write to you the first moment, as, next to my father and
mother, no person in the world feels so much interest in all that
concerns me. I need not tell you that my father,
"Such in this moment as in all the past,"
is kindness itself--kindness far superior to what I deserve, but I
am grateful for it.
A few days later she writes to her cousin:--
I take it for granted, my dear friend, that you have by this time
seen a letter I wrote a few days ago to my aunt. To you, as to
her, every thought of my mind is open. I persist in refusing to
leave my country and friends to live at the court of Stockholm. And
he tells me (of course) that there is nothing he would not
sacrifice for me except his duty; he has been all his life in the
service of the King of Sweden, has places under him, and is
actually employed in collecting information for a large political
establishment. He thinks himself bound in honor to finish what he
has begun. He says he should not fear the ridicule or blame that
would be thrown upon him by his countrymen for quitting his country
at his age, but that he would despise himself if he abandoned his
duty for any passion. This is all very reasonable, but reasonable
for him only, not for me, and I have never felt anything for him
but esteem and gratitude.
Mrs. Edgeworth supplements these letters in the unpublished memoir of
her stepdaughter, which she wrote for her family and nearest friends.
She says:--
Even after her return to Edgeworthstown it was long before Maria
recovered the elasticity of her mind. She exerted all her powers of
self-command, and turned her attention to everything which her
father suggested for her to write. But _Leonora_, which she began
immediately after our return home, was written with the hope of
pleasing the Chevalier Edelcrantz; it was written in a style which
he liked, and the idea of what he would think of it was, I believe,
present to her in every page she wrote. She never heard that he had
even read it. From the time they parted at Paris there was no sort
of communication between them; and beyond the chance which brought
us sometimes into company with travellers who had been in Sweden,
or the casual mention of M. Edelcrantz in the newspapers or the
scientific journals, we never heard more of one who had been of
such supreme interest to her, as to us all at Paris, and of whom
Maria continued to have all her life the most romantic
recollection.
Miss Edgeworth's self-control was manifested at once. In none of her
other letters does the matter recur; they are as chatty and lively as
ever; but the incident throws much light both upon her character and the
precepts of repression of feelings she loved to inculcate. She had not
merely preached, but practiced them.
In January, 1803, Mr. Edgeworth suddenly received a peremptory order
from the French Government to quit Paris in twenty-four hours and France
in fifteen days. Much amazed, he went to Passy, taking Miss Edgeworth
with him, and quietly awaited the solution of the riddle. It proved that
Bonaparte believed him to be brother to the Abbe Edgeworth, the devoted
friend of Louis XVI., and not till it was explained to him that the
relationship was more distant was Mr. Edgeworth allowed to return. The
cause for the order, as for its withdrawal, was petty. The Edgeworths'
visit was, however, after all, brought to an abrupt conclusion. Rumors
of imminent hostilities began to be heard, and though the reports
circulated were most contradictory, Mr. Edgeworth thought it wise to be
ready for departure. It was decided that M. Le Breton, who was well
informed about Bonaparte's plans, should, at a certain evening party,
give Mr. Edgeworth a hint, and, as he dared neither speak nor write, he
was suddenly to put on his hat if war were probable. The hat was put on,
and Mr. Edgeworth and his family hurried away from Paris. They were but
just in time. Mr. Lovell Edgeworth, who was on his way from Geneva, and
never received his father's warning letter, was stopped on his journey,
made prisoner, and remained among the _detenus_ till 1814.
After a short stay in London the family went to Edinburgh to visit Henry
Edgeworth, who had shown signs of the family malady. Here they spent an
agreeable time, seeing the many men of learning who in those days made
Edinburgh a delightful residence. Warm friendships were formed with the
Alisons, the Dugald Stewarts, and Professor Playfair.
Returned to Edgeworthstown, Miss Edgeworth set to work industriously to
prepare for the press her _Popular Tales_, and write _Leonora_ and
several of the _Tales of Fashionable Life_. She exerted all her powers
of self-command to throw her energy into her writing, and to follow up
every suggestion made by her father; but it was clear to those who
observed her closely that she had not forgotten the man of whom, all her
life, she retained a tender memory. It was long before she thoroughly
recovered her elasticity of spirits, and the mental struggle did not
pass over without leaving its mark. Early in 1805 Miss Edgeworth fell
seriously ill with a low, nervous fever; it was some while before she
could leave her room, read, or even speak. As she got better she liked
to be read to, though scarcely able to express her thanks. The first day
she was really convalescent was destined to mark an era in her life.
While she was lying on the library sofa her sister Charlotte read out to
her _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, then just published. It was the
beginning of Miss Edgeworth's enthusiastic admiration of Scott, which
resulted in a warm friendship between the two authors.
From the time of the Edgeworths' return Ireland had been agitated with
the fears of a French invasion, and Mr. Edgeworth once more exerted
himself to establish telegraphic communication across the country. As
usual, his family joined him in his pursuits, and Miss Edgeworth, with
the rest, was kept employed in copying out the vocabularies used in
conversations. The year 1804 was almost engrossed by this. Nevertheless
she found time to write _Griselda_ at odd moments in her own room. Her
father knew nothing either of the plan of the book or of its execution,
and she sent it on her own account to her publisher, Johnson, with the
request to print the title-page of a single copy without her name, and
to send it over to Mr. Edgeworth as a new novel just come out. Miss
Sneyd, who was in the secret, led him to peruse it quickly. He read it
with surprise and admiration, and feeling convinced that Miss Edgeworth
had not had the actual time to write it, and yet seeing it was like her
style, he fancied his daughter Anna (Mrs. Beddoes) must have written it
to please him. When at last he was told that it was by his favorite
daughter, he was amused at the trick, and delighted at having admired
the book without knowing its author. This was one of the many little
ways in which the Edgeworths loved to please one another. A happier,
more united household it would be hard to find among circumstances
fraught with elements of domestic discord--the children and relatives of
four wives, of the most diverse characters and tastes, living peaceably
under one roof. Vitality, unwearying activity free from restlessness,
distinguished most of its members, and especially the father and eldest
daughter. Nor was there anything prim or starched in the home
atmosphere; though ethically severe and maintained at a high level of
thought, gaiety, laughter and all the lighter domestic graces prevailed.
Miss Edgeworth's letters reflect a cheerful, united home of the kind she
loves to paint. Like many united families, the Edgeworths were strong in
a belief in their own relations; they had the clan feeling well
developed. Not a member went forth from the paternal nest but was held
in constant remembrance, in constant intercourse with home, and it was
usually Miss Edgeworth's ready pen that kept the link well knit. Hence
the large number of her family letters extant, many of which have no
separate interest for the world, but which, taken as a whole, reflect
both her own unselfish personality and the busy life of young and old
around her. In her letters she never dwells on troubles; they overflow
with spirits, life and hope. As they are apt to be long and diffuse, it
is not easy to quote from them; but every one presents a nature that
beat in unison with all that is noble and good. She was alive to
everything around her, full of generous sympathies, enthusiastic in her
admiration of all that had been achieved by others. Her praises came
fresh and warm from a warm and eloquent Irish heart. That these
utterances are toned down and tamed in her books, is yet another proof
how the need to illustrate her father's ulterior aims cramped her in the
expression of her feelings. His mind, though she knew it not, was
inferior to hers, and though it was in some respects like her own, it
yet hung heavy on the wings of her fancy. In later life she wrote more
letters to acquaintances than at this time. In these years she says to a
friend who upbraided her for not writing oftener:--
I do not carry on what is called a regular correspondence with
anybody except with one or two of my very nearest relations. And it
is best to tell you the plain truth, that my father particularly
dislikes to see me writing letters; therefore I write as few as I
possibly can.
Of herself she speaks least of all, of her writings seldom, and when she
does, but incidentally. Without certainly intending it, she painted
herself when she writes of Mrs. Emma Granby ("the modern Griselda"):--
All her thoughts were intent upon making her friends happy. She
seemed to live in them more than in herself, and from sympathy rose
the greatest pleasure and pain of her existence. Her sympathy was
not of that useless kind which is called forth only by the elegant
fictitious sorrows of a heroine of romance; hers was ready for all
the occasions of real life; nor was it to be easily checked by the
imperfections of those to whom she could be of service.
It is one of the most delightful features in Miss Edgeworth, that in her
the dignity of the author is sustained by the moral worth of the
individual--a combination unhappily not common.
Visits to and from neighbors or friends, more or less eminent, visits
from nephews and nieces, letters from all quarters of the globe,
prevented the life at Edgeworthstown from ever becoming stagnant, even
if a home so full of young people could be devoid of life. Then, too,
though the Edgeworths kept themselves aloof from politics, the course of
public affairs did not always hold aloof from them, and at various times
the disturbed state of Ireland caused them discomfort and fears. Sorrows
and sickness, too, did not refrain from entering that happy home. There
were the usual juvenile illnesses, there were births, there were
sicknesses among the elder branches. In 1807 Charlotte, the darling of
the family, died after much suffering, a victim to hereditary
consumption. In 1809 Mr. Edgeworth himself was seriously ill, and
Henry's health, too, became so precarious that it was needful to send
him to Madeira. For a long time it seemed likely that Miss Edgeworth
would go out to nurse him, but the project fell to the ground; and a few
years later this brother, her especial nursling, also died of pulmonary
disease.
The sorrow for Charlotte's death cast a cloud over all the year 1807.
During its course Miss Edgeworth's greatest pleasure was the planting of
a new garden her father had laid out for her near her own room, that had
been enlarged and altered, together with some alterations to the main
building. She was at all times an enthusiastic gardener, finding
pleasure and health in the pursuit. "My garden adds very much to my
happiness, especially as Honora and all the children have shares in it."
Then, too, Miss Edgeworth was kept constantly employed attending to the
affairs of the tenants; no rapid, easy or routine task in Ireland. Thus
she writes on one occasion:--
This being May day, one of the wettest I have ever seen, I have
been regaled, not with garlands of May flowers, but with the legal
pleasures of the season. I have heard nothing but giving notices to
quit, taking possession, ejectments, flittings, etc. What do you
think of a tenant who took one of the nice new houses in this town,
and left it with every lock torn off the doors, and with a large
stone, such as John Langan[8] could not lift, driven actually
through the boarded floor of the parlor? The brute, however, is
rich; and if he does not die of whiskey before the law can get its
hand into his pocket, he will pay for this waste.
No wonder she once sighs, "I wish I had time to write some more _Early
Lessons_, or to do half the things I wish to do." With the calls on her
time, domestic, philanthropic and social, it is only amazing that she
wrote so much. Her method of working is described by herself in some
detail. From its very nature it could not fail to induce a certain
stiffness and over-anxious finish. She says:--
Whenever I thought of writing anything I always told my father my
first rough plans; and always, with the instinct of a good critic,
he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the
purpose. "Sketch that, and show it to me." The words, from the
experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of
success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a
particular part, I used 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."
It seemed to me sometimes impossible that he could understand the
very slight sketches I made; when, before I was conscious that I
had expressed this doubt in my countenance, he always saw it.
"Now, my dear little daughter, I know, does not believe that I
understand her." Then he would, in his own words, fill up my
sketch, paint the description, or represent the character intended,
with such life, that I was quite convinced he not only seized the
ideas, but that he saw with the prophetic eye of taste the utmost
that could be made of them. After a sketch had his approbation, he
would not see the filling up till it had been worked upon for a
week or 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 incitements 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, never failed to extricate
me at my utmost need. It was the happy experience of this, and my
consequent reliance on his ability, decision and perfect honesty,
that relieved me from the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so
much subject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished
anything without his support. He inspired in my mind a degree of
hope and confidence, essential in the first instance to the full
exertion of the mental powers, and necessary to insure perseverance
in any occupation. Such, happily for me, was his power over my
mind, that no one thing I ever began to write was ever left
unfinished.
That such a process was calculated to check inspiration is obvious. To
suffer one hand to chisel and clip the productions of another, to insert
into a finished frame-work incongruous episodes intended to work out a
pet idea, was as inartistic as it was pernicious. The method could not
fail to induce a certain self-consciousness on the part of the writer
fatal to spontaneity, a certain complacent, careful laying out of plans,
apt to disturb if not to distract the reader by drawing his attention
from the fabric to the machinery. It was this that laid Miss Edgeworth
open to the charge, so often made, of a mechanical spirit in her
writings. For our own part, after reading her letters, with which her
father certainly did not meddle, we are inclined to lay most of her
faults to the charge of the monitor and guide whose assistance she so
much over-rated. He, on the other hand, saw other dangers in their
system. Writing to Mrs. Inchbald, he says:--
Maria has one great disadvantage in this house--she has eight or
nine auditors who are no contemptible judges of literature, to whom
she reads whatever she intends to publish. Now, she reads and acts
so admirably well, that she can make what is really dull appear to
be lively.
Indeed, everything was done in public in that family. All Miss
Edgeworth's works were written in the common sitting-room, with the
noise of playing children about her. Her early habits of abstraction
stood her in good stead, and, at her little table by the fire, she would
sit for half an hour together, without stirring, with her pen in her
hand, or else scribble away very fast in the neat writing that never
altered to the end. A certain occasional want of closeness in her
reasoning may perhaps, however, have resulted from this habit of writing
in public, since the effort of abstraction made by the brain must of
necessity absorb some of its power. Considering how large was the family
continually around her, it is sufficiently astonishing that she could do
it at all. Once when such surprise was expressed, Mrs. Edgeworth said:
"Maria was always the same; her mind was so rightly balanced, everything
was so honestly weighed, that she suffered no inconvenience from what
would disturb or distract any ordinary writer."
CHAPTER VIII.
FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES.
When the literary history of the nineteenth century is written, its
historians will be amazed to find how important a part the contributions
of women have played therein. At the meeting-point of the two centuries
it was Miss Edgeworth in Ireland, Miss Austen in England, and Miss
Ferrier in Scotland, who for Great Britain inaugurated an era of female
authorship that stood and sought to stand simply upon its own merits,
neither striving to be masculine nor addressing itself exclusively to
women. Fielding, Smollett and the older novelists were not solicitous
about virtue. They wrote for men readers only, and if they amused, their
end was attained. But when women became readers a new need arose, and
with the need came a new supply. The finer ethical instincts of women
were revolted by the grossness of the Tom Joneses, the Tristram Shandys
of literature; and as society became purer, manners less coarse, men
too asked for mental food that should be less gross in texture. Miss
Burney had led the way to a new era, a new style, both in fictitious
literature and in female authorship. It was in her footsteps that Miss
Edgeworth trod; but while Miss Burney aimed at amusement only, Miss
Edgeworth inaugurated the novel with a purpose.
Perhaps no phrase has been more misunderstood than this of "a novel with
a purpose."
Obviously it is not only right but imperative that a novel, or any work
of art, should have a leading idea, an aim; but this is markedly
different from a didactic purpose, which is implied by the phrase.
Readers of novels demand before all else to be entertained, and are
justified in that demand, and they merely submit to such instruction or
moralizing as can be poured into their minds without giving them too
much trouble. Miss Edgeworth lost sight of this too often; indeed, it
was a point of view that did not enter into her philosophy, narrowed as
her experience was by the boundaries of home and the all-pervading
influence of her father's passion for the didactic. The omission proved
the stumbling-block that hindered her novels from attaining the highest
excellence. A moral was ever uppermost in Miss Edgeworth's mind, and for
its sake she often strained truth and sacrificed tenderness. She was
forever weighted by her purpose; hence her imagination, her talents, had
not free play, and hence the tendency in all her writings to make things
take a more definite course than they do in real life, where purpose and
results are not always immediately in harmony, nor indeed always
evident. Miss Kavanagh has aptly said, "Life is more mysterious than
Miss Edgeworth has made it." Having said this, however, we have laid our
finger upon the weak point of her novels, in which there is so much to
praise, such marked ability, such delicious humor, such exuberant
creative fancy and variety, that the general public does very ill to
have allowed them to sink so much into oblivion.
Between the years 1804 and 1813 Miss Edgeworth published _Leonora_,
_Griselda_, and the stories of various length that were issued under the
collective titles of _Tales front Fashionable Life_ and _Popular Tales_.
_Leonora_ was the first work she wrote after her return from France,
where she had enlarged the sphere of her mind and heart. It is a marked
improvement upon _Belinda_, the fable is better contrived, the language
flows more easily. It was penned with a view to please M. Edelcrantz,
and in respect of being written for one special reader, _Leonora_
recalls that curious work by Madame Riccoboni, _Lettres de Fanni
Butlerd a Milord Charles Alfred_, published as a fiction, but in reality
only the collection of the writer's love-letters to the Englishman who
had wronged and deserted her. "Mistris Fanni to one reader," was the
significant heading to the preface of that book.
Miss Edgeworth's purpose in _Leonora_ certainly led her into an entirely
new path. To use her own words, no one would have believed that she
could have been such an expert in the language of sentimental logic. For
her doubly romantic purpose she was able to argue with all the sophistry
and casuistry, of false, artificial and exaggerated feeling that can
make vices assume the air of virtues, and virtues those of vices, until
it is impossible even to know them asunder. The story itself rests upon
a narrow and not very probable foundation. Its great fault is that it is
too long drawn out for its base. The principal characters are a
virtuous, outwardly cold and precise, inwardly warm-hearted English
wife, and a well-bred English husband, led astray by the machinations of
a Frenchified coquette who sets upon him from pure _desoeuvrement_,
and for whom any other person who had come into her path at that moment
would have been equally acceptable game. The work is thrown into the
form of letters, which gives to Miss Edgeworth an opportunity,
inimitably carried out, of making all the personages paint themselves
and speak in the language that is most natural to them. These letters
are excellently varied. Lady Olivia's teem with French and German
sentiment and metaphysics of self-deception; Leonora's are as candid and
generous as herself--yet though her motives are lofty, we discern a
certain air of aristocratic hauteur; while the good sense in General
B---- 's is bluntly expressed.
The fault of the story is that the husband's conversion ought to have
been brought about by purely moral means, and not by the accidental
interception of his false mistress' letters. Thus the value of the whole
moral is destroyed by its creator. That _Delphine_ in a manner suggested
this story, that but for this romance _Leonora_ might not have assumed
its peculiar shape, may be taken almost for granted. A certain notion of
refuting this corrupt story, then at the high tide of its popularity,
may also have been present in Miss Edgeworth's mind, who at no time was
so much self-absorbed as to lose sight of the ultimate aim in all her
writings. Those were the days of excessive sensibility, when to yearn
after elective affinities was the fashion. From such a state of feeling
Miss Edgeworth's temperament and training secured her, and for very
fear of it she erred in an opposite extreme. But with the true artist's
instinct she recognized that it was in the air, and she makes it the
theme of a romance that holds it up not only to ridicule, but shows with
relentless force into what abysms it may lead its votaries. Over this
novel Miss Edgeworth expended much time and care; it was subjected to
frequent revision, while her father "cut, scrawled and interlined
without mercy." It is certainly polished _ad unguem_, as he rightly
deemed that a book of this nature, devoid of regular story, must be; but
it might have been cut down still more with advantage.
It is the peculiarity of Miss Edgeworth's novels, and may be accepted as
their key-note, that she systematically addressed herself to the
understanding rather than to the heart of her readers, and that she
rarely forgot her educational aim. After having striven to instruct
children and young men and women, she tried, in a series of tales
selected from fashionable life, "to point out some of the errors to
which the higher classes of society are disposed." It is an open
question whether it is possible to correct society, or whether that is a
hopeless task because society is too vain and silly to listen to words
of wisdom. "England," said Mr. Pecksniff, "England expects every man to
do his duty. England will be disappointed." Miss Edgeworth, however, who
never doubted the value of tuition, attempted the task, and she was
certainly right in so far that if it were possible to open the eyes of
this class of persons, it would be by means of entertaining stories. Of
course she only appealed to those who, though not gifted with enough
good sense to go right of their own accord, are yet not past teaching,
or too devoid of sense to be teachable, and she took immense pains to
show how the greater part of our troubles in life arise from ignorance
rather than from vice and incapacity. To teach the art of living, the
science of being happy, is her one endeavor; and thus her fancy, her
wit, her strictures, are all made to bend to her main purpose, that of
being the vehicles of her practical philosophy. Yet to regard Miss
Edgeworth as a mere teaching machine is to do her gross injustice. Like
most people, she was better than her creed. Despite her doctrines, her
genius was too strong for her, and it is thanks to this that sundry of
these tales from _Fashionable Life_ are among her highest and most
successful efforts. They are also as a whole more powerful and varied
than any of her previous productions.
The first series consisted of four stories: _Ennui_, _The Dun_,
_Manoeuvring_, and _Almeria_, of which the first is by far the
longest. As is too often the case with Miss Edgeworth, the plot is
clumsily and coldly contrived, the proportions not well maintained; but
the work abounds with masterly delineations of character, and is a
striking picture of the satiety induced by being born, like the hero,
Lord Glenthorne, on the pinnacle of fortune, so that he has nothing to
do but to sit still and enjoy the barrenness of the prospect, or to eat
toffee, like the duke in _Patience_. He tries all amusements, but finds
them wanting, and he would probably have been ruined mentally and bodily
if a convenient catastrophe had not precipitated him temporarily into
indigence and aroused all those better qualities of his nature and
excellent abilities that lay buried and inert. It is not the least
skillful part of this clever tale that it is told as an autobiography,
the hero himself both consciously and unconsciously dissecting his
foibles. Much of the scene is laid in Ireland, and gives Miss Edgeworth
scope for those amusing collateral incidents, those racy delineations of
the various classes of Irish society, in which she is still unsurpassed.
She knew how to hit off to the life the several peculiarities of
respective stations and characters, and we know not whom most to admire
and delight in: the Irish pauper who officiates as postilion, and who
assures Lord Glenthorne that his crazy chaise is the best in the
country--"we have two more, to be sure, but one has no top and the other
no bottom;" the warm-hearted, impulsive, happy-go-lucky Irish nurse, who
has no scruple about committing a crime for the sake of those she loves;
or Lady Geraldine, the high-born, high-bred Irish peeress, who speaks
with an Irish accent, uses Irish idioms, and whose language is more
interrogative, more exclamatory, more rhetorical, accompanied with more
animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture, than that of the
English ladies with whom she is contrasted. With inimitable skill we are
made to see that there is something foreign in this lady's manner,
something rather French than English, and yet not French either, but
indigenous. Of course, rebels play a part in the story--it would not be
a true Irish story without them, but, as usual, Miss Edgeworth dwells by
preference upon the milder, more engaging aspects of the Irish
character, upon their strange, pathetic life; and while not ignoring,
brings into as little prominence as may be the frequent perjuries, the
vindictive passions, the midnight butcheries, the lawless ferocity, the
treacherous cruelty, of her half-savage compatriots.
_The Dun_ is a short tale in Miss Edgeworth's most didactic and least
happy style, dealing with a theme that should be more often emphasized
and brought into view; namely, the unfeeling thoughtlessness of the
rich, that withholds from the poor the result of their earnings, one of
the most frequent and serious injuries perpetrated by the wealthy upon
their indigent brethren.
_Manoeuvring_ is a detailed account of the machinations of a certain
Mrs. Beaumont, a country lady, who expends a great deal of Machiavelism,
left-handed wisdom and intrigue upon the projects of her children's
marriages, and also upon securing to her family the fortune of an old
gentleman who never had a thought of disposing of it otherwise. The
mortification and defeats to which her circuitous policy constantly
exposes her constitute the plot and the moral of the tale, which is not
ill-conceived, and yet for some cause fails to interest us long.
In _Almeria_, Miss Edgeworth's admirable story-telling powers, her grace
and shrewdness, are once more seen at their very best. It is the history
of a woman who has sacrificed all the happiness of life, all the better
instincts of her nature, for the empty ambition of being admitted into
the charmed circle of fashionable society; and who, though she finds out
in time that it is Dead Sea apples she has sought, has become so
immeshed that she cannot break away, but leads an existence of
pleasure-hunting, ever seeking, never finding that commodity, a warning
example of
How the world its veterans rewards--
A youth of folly, an old age of cards.
The moral is not insisted on, but is allowed to speak for itself, and is
on that account far more eloquent.
Except when dealing with Irish scenes, Miss Edgeworth is never happier
than when painting the perverse or intriguing fine ladies of society,
who, having no real troubles or anxieties to occupy them, shielded from
the physical evils of existence, make to themselves others, and find
occupation for their empty heads and hours, with results put before us
so simply, and devoid of euphemism, by Dr. Watts. Well indeed has the
proverb said, "An empty mind is the devil's house." In her kindly way
Miss Edgeworth can be scathing, and she exercises this power upon women
of mere fashion. The ladies of the period were less occupied with public
and philanthropic schemes than they are now, and hence had more time to
expend on follies and frivolities. The whole pitiful system of unreal
existence led by these women is exposed with an almost remorseless
hand, for Miss Edgeworth had no tenderness for foolish failings.
Inimitably, too, we are made to see how then, as now, there was
tolerated in fashionable society a degree of vulgarity which would
neither be suffered nor attempted in lower life. It was just because
Miss Edgeworth's lines were cast among the rich and idle that she was
able to understand all the misery and heartlessness of the lives of a
large section of this community. We see how their petty cravings, their
preposterous pursuits, bring positive misery on themselves if not on
others; how their dispositions are sophisticated, their tempers warped,
their time and talents wasted, in their restless chase after social
distinction, after the craze of being in the fashion. "The scourges of
the prosperous;" thus happily have these giant curses of mere
fashionable life been defined. Miss Edgeworth certainly understood fully
the nature of the disorder of her patients, the _ennui_, the stagnation
of life and feeling that devoured them and sunk many of them at last to
a depth at which they no longer merited the name of rational human
beings. At the same time (and this is a point which must be insisted
upon) there is no sourness about Miss Edgeworth's pictures of good
society; her pen, in speaking of it, is not dipped in vinegar and
wormwood, as was the pen of Thackeray, and sometimes even that of George
Eliot. Without snobbishness, without envy, she writes quite simply, and
absolutely objectively, of that which surged around her whenever she
left the quiet of Edgeworthstown and visited in some of the many noble
houses of Ireland, Scotland and England, in which she was a familiar
friend. That her pictures of contemporary society were correct has never
been disputed. She reproduced faithfully not only its coarser and silly
side, but also the more brilliant conversational features, that make it
contrast so favorably with that of our own day, in which the art of
talking has been lost. Lord Jeffrey, an authority, and one not given to
flattery, says that Miss Edgeworth need not be afraid of being excelled
in "that faithful but flattering representation of the spoken language
of persons of wit and politeness--in that light and graceful tone of
raillery and argument, and in that gift of sportive but cutting
_medisance_ which is sure of success in those circles where success is
supposed to be most difficult and desirable." In support of his
statement he points to the conversation of Lady Delacour (_Belinda_),
Lady Dashfort (_Absentee_) and Lady Geraldine (_Ennui_).
The first series of _Tales from Fashionable_ _Life_ met with so much
favor that the publisher clamored for more. Some were lying ready,
others had to be written, but in 1812 Miss Edgeworth was able to issue a
second series, containing three stories, of which one, _The Absentee_,
ranks worthily beside _Castle Rackrent_ as a masterpiece. The evils this
story sought to expose came daily under Miss Edgeworth's observation;
she beheld the Irish landed gentry forsake their homes and their duties
in order to go to London and cut a figure in fashionable society,
spending beyond their means, oblivious of the state of home affairs, and
merely regarding their properties as good milch kine. How their
unfortunate tenants were ground down in order to meet these claims they
neither knew nor cared. Lord and Lady Clonbrony, the absentees, are
drawn with vivid touches: she is devoured by ambition to shine in a
society for which she is not fitted, and voluntarily submits to any
humiliations and rebuffs, any sacrifices, to attain this end; he,
uprooted from his wonted surroundings, cannot acclimatize himself to new
ones, and, merely to pass his time, sinks into the vices of gaming and
betting. Lady Clonbrony affects a contempt for her native land and
pretends she is not Irish. As, however, she cannot rid herself of an
Irish pronunciation and Irish phrases, she is constantly placed in the
dilemma of holding her tongue and appearing yet more foolish than she
is; or, by mistaking reverse of wrong for right, so caricaturing the
English pronunciation that thus alone she betrayed herself not to be
English. In vain, too, this lady struggles to school her free,
good-natured Irish manner into the cold, sober, stiff deportment she
deems English. The results to which all this gives rise are delineated
with consummate skill and good-humored satire. The scenes that occur in
London society are highly diverting, but the story gains in deeper
interest when it shifts to Ireland, whither Lady Clonbrony drives her
only son, Lord Colambre, whom she has sought to marry against his will
to an English heiress. Unknown to his tenants, from whom he has so long
been absent, and further purposely disguised in order to elicit the
truth concerning certain unfavorable rumors that have reached his ears,
Lord Colambre is a witness of the oppressions under which his tenants
labor from an unscrupulous and rapacious agent, who feels secure in his
master's absence, and in that master's indifference to all but the money
result of his estate. Charmingly is the Irish character here described;
we see it in its best phases, with all its kindliness, wit, generosity.
There are elements of simple pathos scattered about this story. With
delicate and playful humor we are shown the heroic and imaginative side
of the Irish peasantry. We quite love the kindly old woman who kills her
last fowl to furnish supper to the stranger, whom she does not know to
be her landlord. On the other hand we are amused beyond measure with
Mrs. Rafferty, the Dublin grocer's wife and _parvenue_, who, in the
absence of those who should have upheld Irish society, is able to make
that dash that Lady Clonbrony vainly seeks to make in London. Her
mixture of taste and incongruity, finery and vulgarity, affectation and
ignorance, is delightful. The dinner-party scene at her house would make
the reputation of many a modern novelist. It was a dinner of profusion
and pretension, during which Mrs. Rafferty toiled in vain to conceal the
blunders of her two untrained servants, who were expected to do the work
of five accomplished waiters, talking high art meanwhile to her lordly
guest, and occasionally venting her ill humor at the servants' blunders
upon her unfortunate husband, calling out so loud that all the table
could hear, "Corny Rafferty, Corny Rafferty, you're no more _gud_ at the
_fut_ of my table than a stick of celery!" As for the scene in which
Lord Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry and to their oppressor,
Macaulay has ventured to pronounce it the best thing written of its kind
since the opening of the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. No mean
authority and no mean praise! As a story it is certainly one of the best
contrived, and the end is particularly happy. Instead of a tedious moral
there is a racy letter from the post-boy who drove Lord Colambre, and
who paints, with true Hibernian vivacity and some delicious malaprops,
the ultimate return of the Clonbrony family to their estate, which, to
the optimistic Irish mind, represents the end of all their troubles and
the inauguration of a new era of prosperity and justice. For one thing,
it is so much more in keeping that an uncultured peasant, rather than a
thoughtful and philosophical mind, should believe in so simple a
solution to evils of long standing; that what we should have felt an
error in Miss Edgeworth becomes right and natural in Larry. The
suggestion for this conclusion came from Mr. Edgeworth, and he wrote a
letter for the purpose. Miss Edgeworth, however, wrote one too, and her
father so much preferred hers that it was chosen to form the admirable
finale to the _Absentee_.
What perfect self-control Miss Edgeworth possessed may be judged from
the fact that the whole of the _Absentee_, so full of wit and spirit,
was written in great part while she was suffering agonies from
toothache. Only by keeping her mouth full of some strong lotion could
she in any way allay the pain, yet her family state that never did she
write with more rapidity and ease. Her even-handed justice, her stern
love of truth, are markedly shown in this novel. She does not exaggerate
for the sake of strengthening her effects; thus, for example, she does
not make all her agents bad, as some writers would have done; indeed,
one is a very model middle-man. She is always far more careful to be
true than to be effective, she uses the sober colors of reality, she
paints with no tints warmer than life. The chief and abiding merit of
her Irish scenes is not that of describing what had not been described
before, but of describing well what had been described ill.
_Vivian_ was written with extreme care and by no means with the same
rapidity, yet it cannot be compared to the _Absentee_. Here Miss
Edgeworth was once more clogged by her purpose and unable for a moment
to lose sight of it. "I have put my head and shoulders to the business,"
she writes to her cousin, "and if I don't make a good story of it, it
shall not be for want of pains." It proved no easy task, and only the
fact that her father so much approved it, upheld her. "My father says
_Vivian_ will stand next to _Mrs. Beaumont_ and _Ennui_. I have ten
days' more work on it, and then huzza! ten days' more purgatory at
other corrections, and then a heaven upon earth of idleness and
reading, which is my idleness." _Vivian_ is a particularly aggravating
story, so excellent that it is hard to comprehend why it is not of that
first-class merit which it just seems to miss. Its aim is to illustrate
the evils and perplexities that arise from vacillation and infirmity of
purpose, and it is rather a series of incidents than one well-rounded
plot. Miss Edgeworth loves to paint, not an episode in life, but the
history of a whole life-career. This permits her to trace out those
gradual evolutions of some fault of character in which she displays such
consummate ability, such precision and metaphysical subtlety. The hero,
Vivian, a man of good disposition, but lacking firmness of purpose,
cannot say "no," while at the same time he has all the spirit of
opposition which seems to go hand in hand with weak characters, and is
by them mistaken for resolution. The faults, the errors, the griefs,
this trait of character leads him into are the staple of the story,
which ends mournfully, since Vivian's inability to cure himself of his
fault finally leads to his own death in a duel. He has not inaptly been
named "a domestic Hamlet." Like Hamlet, he is neither able to
accommodate himself to life as it is, nor strong enough to strike out a
new life on his own account. The tale abounds in clever pictures of
aristocratic and political society, and is full of the intrigues, the
petty meannesses of social leaders. As usual, the moral instances are
both striking and amusing, reason and ridicule being mixed in those just
proportions that Miss Edgeworth knew how to blend so happily. A serious
defect is undoubtedly the fact that it is not possible to care for the
hero, and hence we grow rather indifferent to his good or ill fortune,
and after a while are weary of the undoubted skill and perverted
ingenuity with which he apologizes for his vacillation. On the other
hand, as ever with Miss Edgeworth, the subordinate characters are
throughout excellent, drawn with force and life-like power. Lord
Glistonbury alone would redeem the book from the possibility of being
dull. This talkative, conceited man, of neither principle nor
understanding, who chatters adopted opinions and original nonsense, who
loves to hear himself speak, and believes he is uttering great things,
is a distinct creation.
The story of _Madame de Fleury_ is slight in texture. It relates the
experience of a rich and benevolent French lady who conducts a school
for poor children after the Edgeworth type, and is rather a transcript
from real life than a tale. Formal and conventional though it is,
however, it was never wholly possible to Miss Edgeworth to belie her
genius. Invariably she introduces some character, trait or observation
that redeems even a dull tale from condemnation. In this case it is the
delicate skill with which is depicted the gradual decline in character
of Manon, who from an unconscientious child becomes a bold, unscrupulous
woman. It was in penning _Madame de Fleury_ that Miss Edgeworth
encountered the difficulty she had observed of making truth and fiction
mix well together. _Emilie de Coulanges_ is the too correctly virtuous
and rather colorless daughter of a refugee French countess, whose
provoking character is deftly depicted with its selfishness, its
self-absorption, that renders her both ungrateful and regardless of the
comfort of the English lady who has most generously entertained her at
no little personal inconvenience. Unfortunately an irritable temper mars
Mrs. Somers' good, generous nature, and causes her to weary out even the
affections of those who have most cause to love her. It also renders her
suspicious of the probity, the good intentions of her friends. She loves
to arouse sentimental quarrels; the bickerings and ultimate
reconciliation give her real pleasure, as a form of mental titillation,
and she fails to see that, though with her it is all surface, as her
real feelings are not aroused, this may not be the case with her
victims. Mrs. Somers, who may rank as the true heroine, is a bold yet
highly-finished portrait, conceived and executed in Miss Edgeworth's
best manner. The countess is little less happy. Miss Edgeworth possessed
in a high degree that intuitive judgment of character which is more
common in women than in men, and which, when properly exercised,
balanced by judgment and matured by experience, explains the success
they have met with in the domain of fictitious literature.
Again and again Miss Edgeworth proved the fecund creativeness with which
she could delineate the moral and intellectual anatomy of the most
varied and various characters. Her personages are animate with life and
brightness. Above all else she was an artist in detail, and never more
felicitous than when furnishing studies of foible in female form. Of
this the _Modern Griselda_ is a notable instance--a brilliant
performance, almost too brilliant, for it scintillates with wit and
epigrammatic wisdom; it never fails or flags for one little moment, so
that at last the reader's attention is in danger of being surfeited by a
feast of good things. The fable is the direct opposite to that of the
old story of Griselda. In the words of Milton we are shown how it
befalls the man
Who to worth in woman over-trusting,
Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook;
And left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
She first his weak indulgence will accuse.
This the modern Griselda does to her husband's cost and her own. The
story is a remarkable evidence of Miss Edgeworth's independence of
genius. She showed no weak sympathy with the failings of her sex just
because it was her sex, but, like a true friend, held them up to view
and pointed them out for correction. Her objectiveness did not insure
her, however, from misconstruction. Mrs. Barbauld wrote to her:--
I became very impatient for your _Griselda_ before Johnson thought
proper to produce it; need I add we have read it with great
pleasure? It is charming, like everything you write, but I can tell
you the gentlemen like it better than the ladies, and if you were
to be tried by a jury of your own sex I do not know what punishment
you might be sentenced to for having betrayed their cause. "The
author is one of your own sex; we men have nothing to do but to
stand by and laugh," was the remark of a gentleman, no less candid
a man than Dr. Aiken: and then the moral (a general moral if I
understand it right) that a man must not indulge his wife too much!
If I were a new-married woman I do not know whether I would forgive
you till you had made the _amende honorable_ by writing something
to expose the men. All, however, are unanimous in admiring the
sprightliness of the dialogue and the ingenious and varied
perverseness of the heroine.
To this letter Miss Edgeworth replied:--
Let me assure you that the little tale was written in playfulness,
not bitterness of heart. Not one of the female committee who sat
upon it every day whilst it was writing and reading ever imagined
that it should be thought a severe libel upon the sex, perhaps
because their attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who at least is
as much a panegyric as Mrs. Bolingbroke is a satire upon the sex.
_Popular Tales_ were issued, and also in great part written, before the
two series of _Fashionable Tales_, and, taken as a whole, do not
approach them in merit. They are more crude in conception, more didactic
in manner; the moral is too obviously thrust into view, and at times
even the very philosophy the author strives to inculcate is halting. The
intensity and severe restraint of her purpose had blinded her vision,
perverted her logic; and thus the value of some of these ingenious
apologues is lowered. There is a character of childishness and poorness
about many of these tales that detracts seriously from the really
accurate observation and acute knowledge of human nature that they
inclose. Further, too, there is always such a sober, practical,
authentic air about all Miss Edgeworth's narratives, that glaring
inconsistencies and forced catastrophes strike us with double force as
ludicrous and unnatural when introduced by her. We certainly incline to
think that the result of perusing at one sitting the two volumes of Miss
Edgeworth's _Popular Tales_ could lead to that outburst of pharisaical
pride:--
Said I then to my heart, "Here's a lesson for me!
That man's but a picture of what I might be;
But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding,
Who have taught me, betimes, to love working and reading."
_Popular Tales_ were devised with a view to correct the errors and
temptations of middle-class life, and were intended for a class which in
those days was not much in the habit of reading.
Mr. and Miss Edgeworth, though advanced and liberal thinkers in many
ways, were conservative in others, and, curiously enough, carried the
idea of class distinction into the domain of reading. They deemed that
to reach the middle classes a different character of story must be
conceived from that destined for persons of rank. There is a naivete, a
gentle absurdity, about this simple fancy that we cannot help
attributing to Mr. Edgeworth's unimaginative mind. In a brief but
bombastic preface this worthy personage sets forth the pretension of the
writer of these stories, and gives a list of the classes for which they
are adapted. Why did he not also devise some method, by which to insure
that none of the tales should be read or bought save by persons of a
certain social standard? It would have been equally reasonable. To make
a distinction between tales for children and for adults is proper and
right; to draw a fine distinction between classes, unfit and childish.
The process of natural selection will of its own accord effect the
result that no one will read that which is tedious. Yet even when
hampered by the illustration of copy-book morality, Miss Edgeworth could
not hide her power. She never repeats herself; every story is unlike the
other. She does not angrily apply herself to the correction of the vices
and abuses she holds peculiar to the class she addresses; neither does
she magnify, even though she emphasizes. We only behold them shorn of
the indulgences and palliations they too often meet with. She was
neither a Utopian purist nor a sentimental innocent; nor can she belie a
natural tendency to make her ethics rather a code of high-minded
expediency than of high principle for its own sake only. Throughout her
writings she shows that from low as well as high motives, good actions
are the best; but she never suffers her characters to rest in the reward
of a quiet conscience. Her supreme good sense was always mingled with a
regard for the social proprieties; she never loses these quite from
sight; her idea of right is as much to preserve these as for right
itself. For, after all, Miss Edgeworth's life revolved amid the
fashionable world, and lofty as her aims are, she was not wholly
untainted by her surroundings. She accounts it no crime in her heroines
if they look out for a good establishment, money, horses, carriages;
provided always that the man they marry be no dunce, she will overlook
any little lack of affection. But, after all, she was teaching only in
accordance with the superficial philosophy of the last century, which
led people to found their doctrines entirely upon self-interest.
Still, a tone of rationality and good sense was so new in the tales of
Miss Edgeworth's period, that to this alone a large share of the
undoubted success and popularity of the _Popular Tales_ may be ascribed.
Lord Jeffrey, criticising them at the time of their appearance, remarked
that "it required almost the same courage to get rid of the jargon of
fashionable life, and the swarms of peers, foundlings and seducers, as
it did to sweep away the mythological persons of antiquity and to
introduce characters who spoke and acted like those who were to peruse
these adventures." Miss Edgeworth was certainly the first woman to make
domestic fiction the vehicle of great and necessary truths, and on this
account alone she must ever take high rank, and be forgiven if that
which has been said of her in general be specially true of _Popular
Tales_, that: "She walks by the side of her characters as Mentor by the
side of Telemachus, keeping them out of all manner of pleasant mischief,
and wagging the monitory head and waving the remonstrating finger,
should their breath come thick at approaching adventures."
CHAPTER IX.
VISIT TO LONDON.--MR. EDGEWORTH'S DEATH.
Busily, happily, uneventfully time flowed on at Edgeworthstown, while
abroad Miss Edgeworth's fame was steadily on the increase. But whatever
the world might say, however kind, nay flattering, its verdict, this
preeminently sensible woman did not suffer herself to be deluded by
success. That she knew precisely and gauged correctly the extent and
limits of her power, is proved by a letter written to Mr. Elton Hammond,
who had over-zealously defended her from criticism:--
I thank you for your friendly zeal in defense of my powers of
pathos and sublimity, but I think it carries you much too far, and
you imagine that I refrain from principle or virtue from displaying
powers which I really do not possess. I assure you that I am not in
the least degree capable of writing a dithyrambic ode, or any other
kind of ode. Therefore it would be the meanest affectation in me to
pretend to refrain from such efforts of genius. In novel-writing I
certainly have from principle avoided all exaggerated sentiment;
but I am well aware that many other writers possess in a much
higher degree than I do the power of pathos and the art of
touching the passions. As to how I should use these powers if I had
them, perhaps I cannot fairly judge, but all I am at present sure
of is that I will not depreciate that which I do not possess.
Another letter to the same correspondent deserves quotation, as giving
her views on authorship. Mr. Hammond had consulted her as to the
advisability of his adventuring on that career. Miss Edgeworth
replied:--
If everybody were to wait till they could write a book in which
there should not be a single fault or error, the press might stand
still for ages yet unborn. Mankind must have arrived at the summit
of knowledge before language could be as perfect as you expect
yours to be. Till ideas are exact, just and sufficient, how can
words which represent them be accurate? The advantage of the art of
printing is that the mistakes of individuals in reasoning and
writing will be corrected in time by the public--so that the cause
of truth cannot suffer, and I presume you are too much of a
philosopher to mind the trifling mortification to your vanity which
the detection of a mistake might occasion. You know that some
sensible person has observed, only in other words, that we are
wiser to-day than we were yesterday.... I think that only little or
weak minds are so dreadfully afraid of being ever in the wrong.
Those who feel that they have resources, that they have means of
compensating for errors, have never this horror of being found in a
mistake.
In the spring of 1813 Mr., Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth visited London, where
they were much lionized. According to contemporaries it was the
daughter for whom the attentions were mainly meant, though she, of
course, deemed them intended for her father. Crabb Robinson said that
Miss Edgeworth gained the good will of every one during this visit. Not
so her father; his "cock-sureness," dictatorial and dogmatic manner gave
much offense in society.
They met every one worth meeting during their brief stay, and many
famous names glint across the pages of the one letter that has been
preserved treating of this London visit. Perhaps it was the only one
written, for she describes themselves as being, from morning till night,
in a whirl of gaiety and sight-seeing, "that how we got through the day
and night with our heads on our shoulders is a matter of astonishment to
me.... But I trust we have left London without acquiring any taste for
dissipation or catching the rage for finery and fine people." In this
one letter there are, unfortunately, none of those delightfully detailed
descriptions of persons and events that she gave from France. Among the
distinguished persons she met, Lord Byron is mentioned. Singularly
enough she dismisses him with just the last remark that one would have
expected concerning the poet, about whose good looks, at least, the
world was unanimous: "Of Lord Byron, I can only tell you that his
appearance is nothing that you would remark." He, on his part, was more
favorably impressed. He writes in his journal:--
I had been the lion of 1812. Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael with
_The Cossack_, towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the
succeeding year. I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a
clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk and restless.
He was seventy, but did not look fifty, no, nor forty-eight even. I
had seen poor Fitz-Patrick not very long before--a man of pleasure,
wit and eloquence, all things. He tottered, but still talked like a
gentleman, though feebly; Edgeworth bounced about and talked loud
and long; but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly
old.
Byron then remarks that he heard Mr. Edgeworth boast of having put down
Dr. Parr, a boast which Byron took leave to think not true. He adds:--
For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement, vivacious and full
of life. He bids fair for a hundred years. He was not much admired
in London, and I remember a "ryghte merrie" and conceited jest
which was rife among the gallants of the day, viz.: a paper had
been presented for the _recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage_, to
which all men had been called to subscribe; whereupon Thomas Moore,
of profane and poetical memory, did propose that a similar paper
should be _sub_scribed and _circum_scribed for the recall of Mr.
Edgeworth to Ireland. The fact was, everybody cared more about
_her_. She was a nice little unassuming "Jeanie Deans" looking
body, as we Scotch say, and if not handsome, certainly not
ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself. One would
never have guessed she could write her name; whereas her father
talked, not as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing
else was worth writing.
To turn from them to their works, I admire them; but they excite no
feeling and they leave no love, except for some Irish steward or
postilion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is
profound, and may be useful.
To the Edgeworths' regret they left London before the arrival of Madame
de Stael, for whom all the world was eagerly looking. The poet Rogers,
noted for malicious sayings, asserted at a dinner-party that this was
not accident, but design; that Madame de Stael would not arrive till
Miss Edgeworth had gone. "Madame de Stael would not like two stars
shining at the same time." Fortunately, for once, he was reproved; for
it happened that, unknown to him, Madame de Stael's son was of the
company, who indignantly repelled the insinuation that his mother could
be capable of such meanness.
As always, Miss Edgeworth was glad to get home again:--
The brilliant panorama of London is over, and I have enjoyed more
pleasure and have had more amusement, infinitely more than I
expected, and received more attention, more kindness, than I could
have thought it possible would be shown to me; I have enjoyed the
delight of seeing my father esteemed and honored by the best judges
in England; I have felt the pleasure of seeing my true friend and
mother--for she has been a mother to me--appreciated in the best
society; and now, with the fullness of content, I return home,
loving my own friends and my own mode of life preferably to all
others, after comparison with all that is fine and gay, and rich
and rare.
* * * * *
I feel that I return with fresh pleasure to literary work from
having been so long idle, and I have a famishing appetite for
reading. All that we saw in London I am sure I enjoyed, while it
was passing, as much as possible; but I should be sorry to live in
that whirling vortex, and I find my taste and conviction confirmed
on my return to my natural friends and my dear home.
Seeing _Patronage_ through the press, and writing the continuations of
_Frank_, _Rosamond_, and _Harry and Lucy_, were Miss Edgeworth's
immediate occupations on her return.
Early in 1814 Mr. Edgeworth showed the first infirmities of age, which
resulted in a long and painful illness. During its course Miss
Edgeworth's letters were only bulletins of his health. The anxiety the
family had so long felt concerning Lovell Edgeworth, on whom, on Mr.
Edgeworth's death, all his duties would devolve, and who was still a
prisoner, was heightened by this event. It was, therefore, an increased
joy when, upon the entrance of the Allies into Paris, after a forcible
detention of eleven years, Lovell Edgeworth was at last released and
able to hasten home. The pleasure of seeing him helped to restore his
father's health; but it was evident that Mr. Edgeworth's constitution
had received a shock, and he himself never swerved from the opinion that
his existence might be prolonged a year, or even two, but that permanent
recovery was out of all question. This did not depress him. As before,
he continued to be actively employed, interested in all new things, in
all the life about him, and repeatedly exclaimed, "How I enjoy my
existence!" "He did not for his own sake desire length of life," says
his daughter, "but it was his prayer that his mind might not decay
before his body." He assured his friends that as far as this might be
allowed to depend on his own watchful care over his understanding and
his temper, he would preserve himself through the trials of sickness and
suffering to the last, such as they could continue to respect and love.
This assurance he faithfully redeemed, by dint of a self-control and a
regard for the comfort of others that cannot be too much commended, and
which of itself alone would win pardon for many of his irritating
faults.
_Waverley_ had just appeared, and every one was reading and discussing
it. Scott, who had always been an ardent admirer of Miss Edgeworth, and
who said in after-years that he should in all likelihood never have
thought of a Scotch novel had he not read Maria Edgeworth's exquisite
pieces of Irish character, had desired his publisher to send her a copy
on its first appearance, inscribed, "From the Author." She had, however,
not yet received this copy when late one night, after having finished
hearing the story read aloud to her family, in all the first fervor of
her admiration, she sat down to write to the unknown author. Mrs.
Edgeworth, who had been the reader, relates that as she closed the
volume Mr. Edgeworth exclaimed, "_Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus_," and with
these words Miss Edgeworth began her long and ardently-appreciative
letter to the nameless novelist. All Miss Edgeworth's ready, generous,
truly Irish enthusiasm breaks forth in this epistle, which is too
laudatory, too much written _a la volee_ to be truly critical. But Miss
Edgeworth never was critical when her feelings came into play, or were
allowed their course unchecked. She narrates to Scott how the story was
read aloud, how when ended they all felt depressed to think that they
must return to the flat realities of life, and how little disposed they
were to read the "Postscript, which should have been a Preface." While
she was writing her letter Mrs. Edgeworth opened the book again and
noticed this chapter.
"Well, let us hear it," said my father. Mrs. Edgeworth read on. Oh!
my dear sir, how much pleasure would my father, my mother, my whole
family, as well as myself, have lost if we had not read to the last
page! And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly--we had been so
completely absorbed, that every thought of ourselves, of our own
authorship, was far, far away. I thank you for the honor you have
done us and for the pleasure you have given us, great in proportion
to the opinion we had formed of the work we had just perused, and,
believe me, every opinion I have in this letter expressed was
formed before any individual in the family had peeped to the end of
the book, or knew how much we owed you.
Your obliged and grateful
MARIA EDGEWORTH.
To this letter Ballantyne replied; thus, even towards Miss Edgeworth,
Scott kept up his anonymity. A little later she tells a friend: "Scott
says upon his honor that he had nothing to do with _Guy Mannering_,
though he had a little to do, he says, with _Waverley_."
The following winter was spent by the family at Dublin, for the sake of
first-class medical advice for Mr. Edgeworth. That indefatigable,
active-minded old man meantime, though far from well, made experiments
on wheel carriages and published a report. There was much gaiety and
some interesting society to enliven the winter, but nothing worthy of
note is recorded by Miss Edgeworth. Anxiety on account of her beloved
father was uppermost in her mind, yet she continued to write, and was
busy upon some plays and upon preparing a third edition of _Patronage_.
In this third edition she made some important alterations, changing the
_denouement_ to gratify remonstrances that had reached her. She did not
like this alteration, and doubted the propriety of making it after a
work had gone through two editions. Her father, however, approved, and
the public was more satisfied. There was certainly much that was
unnatural in the previous course of the tale, in which the newly-married
wife refuses to go abroad with her adored husband, but lets him go alone
and remains with her father, who, it is true, was in grief, but who had
another daughter to console him. This might be Edgeworthian, but it was
not human nature; and the incident gave universal offense.
Every new book of value found its way to Edgeworthstown, and was eagerly
read and discussed by the family. Miss Austen was soon an established
favorite, while Mrs. Inchbald had long been valued. An occasional
correspondence was maintained with her. Writing of the _Simple Story_,
Miss Edgeworth says:--
By the force that is necessary to repress feelings we judge of the
intensity of the feeling, and you always contrive to give us by
intelligible but simple signs the measure of this force. Writers of
inferior genius waste their words in describing feeling, in making
those who pretend to be agitated by passion describe the effects of
that passion and talk of the _rending of their hearts_, etc.--a
gross blunder, as gross as any Irish blunder; for the heart cannot
feel and describe its own feelings at the same moment. It is
"_being like a bird in two places at once_." ... Did you really
draw the characters from life, or did you invent them? You excel, I
think, peculiarly, in avo
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