XVIMARIA EDGEWORTH
Itwill be impossible, in the short limits of these pages, to give anything like a full account of the long life of Maria Edgeworth. She lived for nearly eighty-three years, from 1st January 1767 to 22d May 1849; and through her own and her father’s friends she was brought into touch with nearly all the leading men and women connected with the stirring political and literary events of that period. What this implies will be best realised if we consider that her lifetime comprised the whole period of the French Revolution, the War of Independence in the United States, the long wars of England with Napoleon, the landing of the French in Ireland (her native country), the passing of the Act of Union between England and Ireland, Catholic Emancipation, the Abolition of Slavery in the British Dominions, the passing of the first Reform Bill, the Irish Famine of 1847, and the outbreak of revolutionary socialism on the Continent in 1848. These are some of the most burning of the political events of which she was a witness; the literary and social history of the same period is hardly less remarkable. She lived in the centre of a world made brilliant by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Burns, Keats, Scott, and Jane Austen. She knew Mrs. Fry, Wilberforce, and Sydney Smith, as representing some of the most important of the social movements of her time; among her friends in the scientific world were Ricardo, the political economist, Darwin, the naturalist, whose fame has been overshadowed by that of his grandson, the great Charles Darwin of our own times, Sir Humphry Davy, the Herschels, Mrs. Somerville, and James Mill. She knew Mrs. Siddons, and heard her recite in her own house the part of Queen Katherine in the play ofHenry the Eighth. She was the intimate friend, and connection by marriage, of “Kitty Pakenham,” the first Duchess of Wellington, wife of “the Great Duke.” She lived to see the old stage coaches supplanted by our modern railways; she was the interested eye-witness of the gradual introduction of the steam-engine into all departments of industry, a change which Sir Walter Scott said he looked on “half proud, half sad, half angry, and half pleased.” She might well feel, as old age approached, that she had “warmed both hands at the fire of life.” No life could have been fuller than hers of every sort of interest and activity. She said in a letter to a friend, written after a dangerous illness: “When I felt it was more than probable that I should not recover, with a pulse above 120, and at the entrance of my seventy-sixth year, I was not alarmed. I felt ready to rise tranquil from the banquet of life, where I had been a happy guest. I confidently relied on the goodness of my Creator” (Study of Maria Edgeworth, by Grace A. Oliver, p. 521).
Maria Edgeworth’s family was one of English origin, which had settled in Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Edgeworths intermarried into Irish, Welsh, and English families, but always maintained strong Irish sympathies.
There were many remarkable men and women in the Edgeworth family before the birth of our heroine, but space forbids the mention of more than one, her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose name and fame are intimately associated with those of his daughter. Mr. Edgeworth was a most extraordinary man; at one moment one admires him, at another one laughs at him, but one must always be astonished by him. “To put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes” would have been a congenial task to him. He made clocks, built bridges, raised spires, invented telegraphs, manufactured balloons, ink, and soap, constructed locks on his bedroom doors of such a complicated nature, that his guests were afraid to shut their doors lest they never should be able to open them again.
When on a journey in France about 1770, he stayed at Lyons, and carried out a plan for diverting the Rhone from its course, thereby saving a large tract of country that had previously been inaccessible; for this service the city of Lyons rewarded him by a grant of land; this property, however, was confiscated a few years later during the Revolution.
He raised a corps of volunteer infantry in Ireland, to which Roman Catholics as well as Protestants were admitted, although at that time the sentiment of religious equality was regarded as akin to infidelity and disloyalty. He was born in England, and educated partly here and partly in Ireland; like most of the Edgeworths, he came of a mixed race, his mother being a Welsh woman of considerable literary acquirements and faculties; his first remarkable performance was a runaway marriage, which he contracted at the age of nineteen, with a Miss Elers, a lady of German origin, whom he appears rather to have disliked than otherwise. A runaway marriage with a girl whom he really loved would have been too commonplace a proceeding in those days for this eccentric young gentleman. Speaking of this lady, Mr. Edgeworth wrote: “My wife was prudent, domestic, and affectionate, but she was not of a cheerful temper. She lamented about trifles; and the lamenting of a female, with whom we live, does not render home delightful.” It is not recorded if Mrs. Edgeworth found the lamenting of the male with whom she lived any more delightful, nor indeed is it evident that her husband devoted much of his overflowing energy to lamentation. As he did not find his home delightful, he spent very little time in it, and was not long before he found pleasant society elsewhere.
One can never think of Mr. Edgeworth apart from his extraordinary domestic history. He had four wives, one after another, in rapid succession, and twenty-two children. There were four children, of whom Maria was one, by the first marriage with the “lamenting female.” The eldest of these, born when his father was under twenty, was brought up on the principles advocated by Rousseau, which may perhaps be summarised as never forcing a child to do anything that he does not wish to do. One experiment of this kind appears to have sufficed for the family; the other twenty-one children, or such of them as survived infancy, were treated according to other theories. Indeed, it seems to have been part of Maria’s education that she was to undertake, for a part of every day, some study or occupation that was uncongenial to her. Mr. Edgeworth’s theories of education seem to have been almost as numerous as his family; a story is told in the book already quoted, of the visit of a gentleman to Edgeworthstown House in Ireland; on rejoining the ladies after dinner, the guest was imprudent enough to exclaim on the beauty of the golden hair of one of the younger girls. Mr. Edgeworth instantly took his daughter by the hand, walked across the room, opened a drawer, held her head over it, and with a large pair of scissors cut off all her hair close to her head. “As the golden ringlets fell into the drawer, this extraordinary father said, ‘Charlotte, what do you say?’ She answered, ‘Thank you, father.’ Turning to his guests, he remarked, ‘I will not allow a daughter of mine to be vain.’”
Among the friendships that had a powerful influence on Mr. Edgeworth’s character must be mentioned that with Mr. Day, the author of a book which is still well known,Sandford and Merton. Mr. Day was an even more extraordinary man than Mr. Edgeworth. He entirely set at naught all the usual habits of society; we are told that he “seldom combed his raven locks.” He professed to think love had been the greatest curse to mankind, and announced in season and out of season his determination never to marry. It appears that the assistance of a great many ladies was needed to help him for a time to keep his word. He made offers of marriage to Margaret Edgeworth, his friend’s sister, to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd (who became later the second and third wives of Mr. Edgeworth); and failing to induce any of these ladies to accept him, he adopted two orphan girls from the Foundling with the object of educating one of them to such a pitch of perfection that she should be fit to be his wife. In order to foster the quality of “fortitude in females,” he used to drop hot sealing-wax on their bare arms, and fire off pistols, charged with powder only, at their petticoats. One of the two little girls could never entirely overcome the tendency to make use of some vehement expression of pain or alarm under these circumstances. This Mr. Day considered a fatal disqualification for ever promoting her to be his wife. The other, to whom the romantic name of Sabrina Sydney had been given, was more promising, and at one time it seemed as if the perilous honour of being Mrs. Day would be hers. However, she was saved by her disobedience to his injunctions against wearing a particular kind of sleeve and handkerchief which were then in fashion. Upon this piece of self-will, we are told that “he at once and decidedly gave her up.”
Mr. Day’s proposals to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd, two beautiful sisters with whom he and Mr. Edgeworth were brought much in contact at Lichfield, have been already mentioned. Mr. Day pretended to despise beauty and to condemn love; but Honora’s beauty so far overcame his prejudices that he at least professed love for her. His offer of marriage, however, was more like an ultimatum of war than an expression of affection. He sent her a huge packet, in which he detailed all the conditions he should expect her to fulfil if she married him. One of these was entire seclusion from all society but his own. She replied that she “would not admit the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions: she did not feel that seclusion from society was indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to secure domestic happiness. And she declined leaving her mode of life for any ‘dark and untried system.’” Mr. Day was deeply wounded, but it was his vanity that suffered rather than his heart; for in three weeks he made a similar overture to Honora’s sister, Elizabeth. Now, however, the tables were turned. Whether the sisters conspired together to punish him is not known; but Elizabeth imposed conditions on her lover before she would consent to receive his attentions; she declared she could never marry a man who could neither fence, dance, nor ride, and had none of the accomplishments of a gentleman. These were the very qualities Mr. Day had chiefly exercised his philosophy in deriding and denouncing. “How could he,” cried Miss Elizabeth, with cruel logic, “with propriety abuse and ridicule talents in which he appeared deficient?” Mr. Day therefore repaired to France with Mr. Edgeworth in order to acquire those polite accomplishments of which it had been the pride of his heart to know nothing. Poor Mr. Day!
How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string; fold music’s wing:Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.
How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string; fold music’s wing:Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.
How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string; fold music’s wing:Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music’s wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.
When he came back from France, cruel Elizabeth laughed in his face, and said she had liked him best as he was before. Notwithstanding all these unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Day found a wife at length. She was a lady of large fortune, which, of course, he “despised” and appropriated. She conformed to all her husband’s whims, and honestly believed him to be the best and most distinguished of men. “That’s what a man wants in a wife mostly,” as Mrs. Poyser says; “one who’d pretend she didn’t know which end she stood uppermost till her husband told her.” Mr. Day fell a victim at last to one of his numerous theories. He disapproved of the professional method of breaking in colts, and undertook to train one upon an improved plan of his own. The animal plunged violently and threw him; he had concussion of the brain, and died a few minutes after his fall. Poor Mrs. Day was so inconsolable that she took to her bed, and died two years later. She must have been a woman of the type of Milton’s Eve: “Herself, though fairest, unsupported flower.” When her prop was gone, she drooped and died.
During Mr. Edgeworth’s residence at Lyons his first wife, Maria’s mother, died, and in a few months he married the beautiful Honora Sneyd. The social circle at Lichfield, in which Honora had lived before her marriage, contained many distinguished persons, among them Dr. Darwin, and Miss Anna Seward, the poetess. Honora herself had been engaged, or partly engaged, to Major André, the unfortunate officer whose execution as a spy by the Americans, during the War of Independence, caused such deep indignation in England. Her marriage to Mr. Edgeworth in 1773, and her death in 1780, took place before the melancholy end of Major André’s life. The association of Honora’s name with that of Major André is mentioned here as an illustration of the way in which the Edgeworth family were connected, in some form or another, with many of the most interesting events of the times in which they lived. Another such incident is to be found in the fact that the Abbé Edgeworth, a relative who had become a Roman Catholic priest, and had lived many years in France, attended Louis XVI upon the scaffold, and received his last words.
Of the charm and goodness of the beautiful Honora there can be no doubt. She won all hearts. Her little step-daughter, Maria, loved her dearly, and admired her as much as she loved her. She remembered, in after years, standing at her step-mother’s dressing-table and looking up at her with a sudden thought, “How beautiful!” The second Mrs. Edgeworth became, under her husband’s tuition, a very good mechanic; and together they wrote a little book for children, calledHarry and Lucy. Very few books for children had at that time been written, so that they were very early in a field which has since found so many labourers. Mrs. Honora discerned Maria’s remarkable qualities of mind. When the latter was only twelve years old her step-mother wrote to her expressing the pleasure she felt in being able to treat the young girl “as her equal in every respect but age.” Mr. Edgeworth, too, fully appreciated and studiously cultivated Maria’s gifts, and encouraged her in every way to treat him with openness and familiarity. This conduct was a very great contrast with the extreme stiffness and formality which then prevailed generally between parents and children. It was near this time, but a little later, that the well-known writer, William Godwin, was reproached by his mother with his too great formality in addressing her; he had been accustomed to speak and write to her as “Madam,” and she says in one of her letters to him that “Hon’d Mother” “would be full as agreeable.” Therefore the terms of friendly familiarity and equality between Maria and her parents were the more remarkable. The happiness of Mr. Edgeworth’s second marriage was unclouded, except by the symptoms of consumption in Honora, which warned them that an inevitable parting was at hand. She died in May 1780, when Maria was thirteen years old. By his dead wife’s side, Mr. Edgeworth wrote to Maria impressing upon her all the hopes that he and her step-mother had formed for her future. Very soon after he wrote again and bade her write a short story on the subject of generosity; “It must be taken,” he wrote, “from History or Romance, and must be sent the sennight after you receive this; and I beg that you will take some pains about it.” The story, when finished, was submitted to the judgment of Mr. William Sneyd, Honora’s brother, who said of it, “An excellent story, and extremely well written; but where is the generosity?”—a saying which afterwards became a household word with the Edgeworths.
When Honora was dying she had solemnly begged her husband and her sister Elizabeth to marry each other after her own death. Such marriages at that time were not illegal, and eight months after Honora’s death her sister and Mr. Edgeworth were married in St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn. Not long after this the first really important event of Maria’s life took place, when she went with her father and the rest of his family to take up her residence in her Irish home. At the impressionable age of fifteen, after having lived long enough in England to judge of the differences between the two countries, she was introduced to an intimate acquaintance with rural life in Ireland. Her father employed no agent for the management of his property, but invited and expected Maria to help him in all his business. In this way she acquired a thorough insight into the charm, the weakness and the strength, the humour and the melancholy of the Irish character.
From 1782, when Mr. Edgeworth and his family returned to live at their Irish home, dates not only Maria Edgeworth’s close observation of Irish character and customs, but also the very painstaking literary training which she began to receive from her father. Up to this time Maria had been much at school; owing to the delicate health of her first step-mother, it was considered best that her education should be mainly carried on elsewhere than at home. Now, however, Mr. Edgeworth divided his time between the management of his estates and the education of his children, and to Maria’s literary education in particular he devoted himself with singular zeal and assiduity. She was continually practised by him in systematic observing and writing; she was instructed to prepare stories in outline. “None of your drapery,” her father would say; “I can imagine all that. Let me see the bare skeleton.” At this stage her compositions would be altered, revised, and amended by him, and then returned to her for completion.
There is no doubt whatever of the immense pains which Mr. Edgeworth bestowed upon Maria’s literary training; and Maria herself felt that she owed everything to him. It may, however, very well be doubted whether his influence upon her was good from the literary point of view. He gave her method and system, and he cultivated her natural faculties for observation; but there was something very mechanical and pedantic in his mind—an affectation, a want of humour, and a want of spontaneity: she, when left to herself, was content with grouping the facts of life and nature as she saw them around her, without trying to be more instructive than they are.Castle Rackrent, which is the best of her Irish stories, was entirely her own, and bears no traces of her father’s hand. This is the only one of her tales of which she did not draw out a preliminary sketch or framework for her father’s criticism. She says herself of this story, “A curious fact, that where I least aimed at drawing characters I succeeded best. As far as I have heard, the characters inCastle Rackrentwere, in their day, considered as better classes of Irish characters than any I ever drew; they cost me no trouble, and were made by noreceipt, or thought of philosophical classification; there was literally not a correction, not an alteration, made in the first writing, no copy, and, as I recollect, no interlineation; it went to the press just as it was written. Other stories I have corrected with the greatest care, and remodelled and re-written.” If she had given the world more work of this kind, and less of the kind produced under her father’s methods, her name would to-day occupy a higher place than it does in the hierarchy of literature.
Maria Edgeworth may be said to have invented the modern novel, which gives the traits, the speech, the manners, and the thoughts of a peasantry instead of moving only among the upper ten thousand. Sir Walter Scott, with his usual frankness and generosity, stated in his preface to the Waverley Novels that what really started him in his career as a novelist was the desire to do for Scotland and the Scottish peasantry what Miss Edgeworth had done for Ireland and the Irish peasantry. “I felt,” he said, “that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto, and to tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and indulgence for their foibles.” Another of the leading writers of this century has acknowledged his indebtedness to Miss Edgeworth. The great Russian novelist, Ivan Tourgenieff, told a friend that when he was quite young he was unacquainted with the English language, but he used to hear his elder brother reading out to his friends translations of Miss Edgeworth’s Irish stories, and the hope rose in his mind that one day he would be able to do for Russia and her people what Miss Edgeworth had done for Ireland.
Readers of the life of Maria Edgeworth find plenty of evidence of the extremely disturbed state of Ireland during the ten or twelve years which immediately preceded the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Reports of midnight outrages by armed and disguised bands of assassins were frequent; unpopular people were hooted and pelted by day, and sometimes murdered by night; country houses were provided with shutters so contrived as to make it possible to open a cross-fire upon these murderous bands in case of necessity. The “Thrashers” and the “Whitetooths” were the names then assumed by those marauders who in later times have been known as Whiteboys and Moonlighters. The state of Ireland, politically and socially, became so critical that many people began to feel that almost any change must be for the better. Added to all the other elements of confusion, there was, about 1798, the almost daily expectation of the French invasion. England and France were at war, and it was believed by our enemies that if they could once effect a landing in Ireland the people of that island were so ready for rebellion that the landing of the French would be in itself almost enough to place the whole country at their disposal. In this expectation they were, fortunately, very much deceived. A graphic description of the French invasion, and its utter failure to accomplish its purpose, has been given by Miss Edgeworth. Her family had, indeed, a very close acquaintance with the rebels and the invaders. The county in which Edgeworthstown was situated was in actual insurrection, and when the French landed at Killala, in county Mayo, they marched immediately upon Longford, which was in close proximity to Edgeworthstown.
Mr. Edgeworth sent to the nearest garrison for military protection for his household. He also found the majority of the troop of infantry which he had organised faithful to him; but it soon became evident, in spite of this and of the personal fidelity of his servants and tenants, that the house must be abandoned, and that the whole family must take refuge in the town of Longford. There is something rather amusing as well as touching in Maria’s womanly regrets at leaving her new paint and paper to the mercy of the rebels and the French. “My father,” she wrote, “has made our little rooms so nice for us; they are all fresh painted and papered. O rebels! O French! spare them! We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves.” After the family and household had made good their departure from Edgeworthstown, Mr. Edgeworth remembered that he had left, on the table of his study, a list of the names of the men serving in his corps, on whose fidelity he could depend. If this list fell into the hands of the enemy, the men whose names were upon it would probably be selected for bitter and cruel vengeance. “It would serve,” wrote Miss Edgeworth, “to point out their houses for pillage and their families for destruction. My father turned his horse instantly, and galloped back. The time of his absence appeared immeasurably long, but he returned safely, after having destroyed the dangerous paper.” Even if Mr. Edgeworth did spoil Maria’s romances, he must be forgiven for the sake of this act of unselfish gallantry. When the family arrived in safety at Longford, dangers began to arise from another source. It was discovered in the course of a few days that Edgeworthstown House had been left by the rebels entirely uninjured. The corps of infantry which Mr. Edgeworth had brought with him into Longford consisted partly of Catholics. Mr. Edgeworth entertained and defended with vigour a plan for the defence of the town different from that favoured by other persons in authority. All these circumstances were put together with the speed of wild-fire, and created in the minds of the ultra-Protestants of Longford the conviction that Mr. Edgeworth was in secret league with the rebels; this, they were convinced, was the reason why his house had been spared, why he had admitted Papists into any of the bonds of good fellowship; and his plan for the defence of the gaol and the garrison was, they believed, only a trick for making them over into the enemy’s hands. Two farthing candles, by the light of which Mr. Edgeworth had read the paper the previous evening, near the fortifications of the gaol, were speedily exaggerated into a statement that the gaol had been illuminated as a signal to the enemy. An armed mob assembled, fully determined to tear him to pieces. He escaped through the merest accident. Seeing him accompanied by English officers in uniform, his enemies thought he was being brought back a prisoner, and were for the moment satisfied. The incident is illustrative of the conflicting passions which, for so many years, have formed the great social and political difficulty in Ireland.
The rebels and their French allies were defeated at the battle of Ballynamuck, and the quiet family life at Edgeworthstown was resumed. All through the turmoil of wars and rumours of wars, the even tenor of Maria’s way was very little disturbed. “I am going on in the old way,” she wrote, “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.”
Maria and her father had published their joint book,Practical Education, in the very year (1798) of the exciting events just narrated. Elizabeth, the second step-mother, also had a hand in it; to her notes, we are told, may be traced the chapter on “Obedience.” In this chapter the original view is put forward that in order to form and firmly implant in little children the habit of obedience, their parents should be careful at first only to tell them to do what they like doing. The habit of unquestioning obedience thus formed will, it is thought, be sufficiently strong to bear the strain, when the time comes that the child is told to do things which it would rather not do. There is a considerable element of good sense in this method, as most people will agree who have tried it in the training and teaching of dogs. A much more doubtful theory put forward in the book is that children never should be in the society of servants. This appears to us, in these more democratic days, to savour very much of pride and conceit. It is quite true that parents cannot depute to a hired servant, however faithful, the responsibility of their own position. But to say that a child is on no account to speak to a servant, or to be spoken to by one, appears to us now as most unreasonable and mischievous. How valuable in bridging over the gulf that still separates class from class is the warm affection that often exists between children and their nurses! Many a nurse has vied with a mother in warm and self-sacrificing devotion for her little charges; and all this wholesome and healing affection would be lost if the plan advocated by the Edgeworths were carried out. It is satisfactory to hear that Mrs. Barbauld protested against this doctrine, and told Mr. Edgeworth that, besides the fact that it would foster pride and ingratitude, “one and twenty other good reasons could be alleged against it.” It may be hoped that Mr. Edgeworth acknowledged himself vanquished before this formidable battery opened fire.
One of the most delightful incidents of Miss Edgeworth’s later life was her friendship with Sir Walter Scott. When the first of the Waverley Novels appeared, the secret of its authorship had been so carefully kept that every one was in the dark on the subject. The publishers had sent a copy to Miss Edgeworth and her father. As soon as Mr. Edgeworth had finished reading it, he exclaimed, “Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus,”i.e.“either Scott or the Devil”; and Maria put these words at the top of the letter which she wrote thanking the publishers for the book. Scott was already known to the world by his poems, and to this must be attributed the ready wit of the good guess made by the Edgeworths; for up to this time neither father nor daughter had had the pleasure of meeting Scott. In 1823, however, they did meet, and the acquaintance soon ripened into a lifelong friendship. Scott acted as guide to Miss Edgeworth and her sisters in showing them the beauties and monuments of Edinburgh. They visited him at Abbotsford, and took a little tour together in the beautiful scenery of the Highlands. There are delightful descriptions in Miss Edgeworth’s letters of Scott and his wife; and we have a pretty little picture of Scott and Lady Scott driving out, he with his dog, Spicer, in his lap, and she with her dog, Ourisk, in hers.
When Maria arrived at Abbotsford, and was received by her host at his archway, she exclaimed, “Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream.” Two years later, Scott, accompanied by his daughter and other members of his family, paid a return visit to Edgeworthstown House. Lockhart, Scott’s biographer and son-in-law, was one of the party. In hisLife of Scotthe tells how on one occasion he himself let fall some remark that poets and novelists probably regarded the whole of human life simply as providing them with the materials for their art. “A soft and pensive shade came over Scott’s face as he said, ‘I fear you have some very young ideas in your head. Are you not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature, to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care, who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it? God help us! What a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but I assure you I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our true calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.’ Maria did not listen to this without some water in her eyes ... but she brushed her tears gaily aside, and said, ‘You see how it is. Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.’”
The delightful friendship between the two authors continued without interruption till Scott’s death in the autumn of 1832. The clouds that overshadowed his later years were bitterly lamented by Maria. She wrote of the “poignant anguish” she felt from the thought that such a life had been shortened by care and trouble. She declined, with one exception, to allow Scott’s letters to herself to be published. If they are still in existence, the reasons which caused her to withhold them no longer exist, and judging from all we know of Scott and of her, it would be a great gain to the public to be afforded the opportunity of reading them.
Those who have read this series of short biographies will find a great many of the subjects of these sketches among Miss Edgeworth’s friends. She gives a delightful description of Mrs. Fry, whom she once accompanied to Newgate. “She opened the Bible,” wrote Miss Edgeworth, “and read in the most sweetly solemn, sedate voice I ever heard, slowly and distinctly, without anything in the manner that would detract attention from the matter.” The Herschels and Mrs. Somerville were also numbered among her friends. People sometimes seem to think that women who can write books, and have learnt to understand the wonders of science, will probably cease to care for feminine nicety in dress. It is therefore very pleasant to find that Mrs. Somerville, the author ofThe Connection of the Physical Sciences, and Miss Edgeworth had a conference about a blue crêpe turban.
Maria Edgeworth’s life did not pass without the romance of love. She received an offer of marriage from a Swedish gentleman, while she was staying in Paris with her family in 1803. She returned his affection, but refused to marry him, sacrificing herself and him to what she believed to be her duty to her father and family. Her third and last step-mother wrote that for years “the unexpected mention of his name, or even that of Sweden, in a book or newspaper, always moved her so much that the words and lines in the page became a mass of confusion before her eyes, and her voice lost all power.” Her suitor, M. Edelcrantz, never married. At the altar of filial piety she sacrificed much.
Nothing is more charming, in the character of Maria Edgeworth, than the sweetness with which she put her own feelings on one side, and welcomed one after another, her numerous step-mothers. The third and last, a Miss Beaufort, was considerably younger than Maria. The marriage with Mrs. Edgeworth No. 4 took place about six months after the death of Mrs. Edgeworth No. 3. No wonder that even the inexhaustible patience of the good daughter was rather tried by this rapidity. She owns that when she first heard of the attachment, she did not wish for the marriage; but her will was in all respects resolutely turned towards whatever would promote her father’s happiness. She did not permit her regret to last, and she welcomed the bride not only with unaffected cordiality, but with sincerest friendship.
Another pleasant characteristic of Maria was the cheery way in which she recognised and bore with the fact that she was the only plain member of her family. There is a nice old sister inSilas Marnerwho says to some ladies who had not at all recognised their own want of beauty, “I don’t mind being ugly a bit, do you?” Maria was like this, except that she thought she possessed a pre-eminence of ugliness over all other competitors. “Nobody is ugly now,” she wrote in 1831, “but myself!” Impartial observers, however, state that the plainness of her features was redeemed by the sweetness and vivacity of her expression, and by the exquisite neatness of her tiny figure.
Many examples could be given of her practical good sense and benevolence. On receiving a legacy of some diamond ornaments, she sold them, and with the proceeds built a market-house for the village in Ireland where she lived. In 1826, nine years after her father’s death, she again undertook, this time for her brother, the management of the estates. She exerted herself with characteristic energy to alleviate the sufferings of her country during the terrible year of the Irish famine. She died very suddenly and painlessly, two years later, in the arms of her step-mother, on 22d May 1849, aged eighty-two. Macaulay considered her the second woman in Europe of her time, giving the first place to Madame de Staël. She does not seem to us now so great as this; but a variety of interests centre round her, and she well deserves to be remembered.