From Galway Sir Culling was obliged to take job horses, as he was warned that we were entering a country where post horses were not to be found, and were never even heard of. Dr. Veitch bid us not think of entering Connemara this night. "You will have to send after me soon, if you don't take care. You have no idea of the places you are going into, and that you may have to sleep in."
The next place we were to go to, and where Dr. Veitch advised us to sleep, was Outerard, a small town or village, where he told us was an inn, or an hotel, as even in these out-of-the-world regions it is now called. It was but fifteen miles, and this with four horses was not two hours' drive; and Sir Culling thought it would be sad waste of daylight to sleep at Outerard, for still he measured his expected rate of travelling by his Bath Road standard. Though we left Galway at three, we were not at Outerard till past seven, with our fine, fresh horses; and excellent horses they really were, and well harnessed too, with well-accoutred postillions in dark blue jackets and good hats and boots, all proper, and an ugly little dog running joyously along with the horses. Outerard, as well as we could see it, was a pretty mountain-scattered village, with a pond and trees, and a sort of terrace-road, with houses and gardens on one side, and a lower road with pond and houses on the other. There is a spa at Outerard to which bettermost sort of people come in the season; but this was not the season, and the place had that kind of desolate look, mixed withpretensionstoo, which a watering-place out of season always has.
When we came to the hotel, our hearts sank within us. Dusk as it was, there was light enough to guess, at first sight, that it would never do for sleeping—half covered with overgrown ivy, damp, forlorn, windows broken, shattered look all about it. With difficulty we got at the broken gate into the very small and dirty courtyard, where the four horses could hardly stand with the carriage. Out came such a master and such a maid! and such fumes of whiskey-punch and tobacco. Sir Culling got down from his barouche-seat, to look if the house was practicable; but soon returned, shaking his head, and telling us in French that it was quite impossible; and the master of the inn, with half threats, half laughter, assured us we should find no other place in Outerard. I inquired for the Priest's house. I was on the point of asking, "Has the Priest any family?" but recollected myself in time, and asked whether the Priest's house was large enough to hold us. "Not an atom of room to spare in it, ma'am." Then I inquired for the Chief of the Police, the Clergyman, or the Magistrate? "Not in it, neither, none; but the Chief of the Police's house is there on the top of the hill; but you will not get in."
We went there, however, and up the hill toiled, and to the door of a sort of spruce-looking lanthorn of a house, without tree or shrub near it. But still it might be good to sleep in; and, nothing daunted by the maid's prophecies and ominous voice, we determined to try our fate. Sir Culling got down and rubbed his hands; while, after his man's knocking at the door several times, no one came to open it, though through the large drawing-room window we saw figures gliding about. At last the door half opened by hands unseen, and Sir Culling, pushing it wholly open, went in; and we sat in the carriage, waiting as patiently as we could. The figures in black and white came to the window, and each had pocket-handkerchiefs in their hands or at their eyes. Sir Culling reappeared, ordered the horses to be turned about again; and when he had remounted his barouche-seat, which he did with all convenient speed, he informed us that a lady had died in this house a few days before, of cholera; that she had this day been buried; that under any other circumstances the master and mistress would have been happy to receive us, but now it was quite impossible, for our sake and their own. The damp, broken-windowed hole was preferable; so back we went. But as we went along thehighroad, down in thelowroad on the other side of the pond, through the duskiness we saw lights in several houses; and in front of one long house which looked whiter than the rest, we stopped at an opening in the road where was a path which led to the valley beneath, and Sir Culling, who proved in this our need an active knight, sallied down to adventure another trial; and in a few minutes after _im_merging into this mud castle, and emerging from it, he waved his arm over his head in sign of triumph, and made a sign to the postillions to turn down into the valley, which they did without overturning us; and to our satisfaction we found ourselves housed at Mrs. O'Flaherty's, who did not keep an inn, observe; her admitting us, observe, depended upon our clearly understanding that she did not so demean herself. But she in the season let her house as a boarding-house to the quality, who came to Outerard to drink the waters or to bathe. So, to oblige us poor travellers, without disgrace to the blood and high descent of the O'Flaherties, she took us in, as we were quality, and she turned her two sons out of their rooms and their beds for us; and most comfortably we were lodged. And we ate the John Doree we had brought with us, and I thought it not worth all the talking about it I had heard; and, for the first time in my days or nights, I this night tasted atoomblerof anti-Parliament whiskey,aliaspoteen, and water; and of all the detestable tastes that ever went into my mouth, or smells that ever went under my nose, I think this was the worst—literally smoke and fire spirit. Isabella observed that she had often drank Innishowon and water with dear Agnes and Joanna Baillie. There's no disputing about tastes; therefore I did not dispute, only set down the tumbler, and sip took never more; for I could as soon have drank the chimney smoking. The doors, just opening with a latch, received us into our bed-rooms, with good turf fires on the hearth, coved ceilings, and presses, and all like bed-rooms in an English farm-house more than an Irish: wonderful comfortable for Outerard, after fear of the cholera and the dead woman especially.
Next day, sun shining and a good breakfast, our spirit of travelling adventure up within us, we determined that, before proceeding on our main adventure into Connemara, we would make a little episode to see a wonderful cave in the neighbourhood. Our curiosity to see it had been excited by the story of the lady and the white trout inLover's Legends. It is called the Pigeon-hole; not the least like a pigeon-hole, but it is a subterraneous passage, where a stream flows which joins the waters of Lough Corrib and Lough Mask. Outerard is on the borders of Lough Corrib, and we devoted this day to boating across Lough Corrib, to see this famous cavern, which is on the opposite side of the lake, and also to see a certain ruined monastery. We passed over the lake, admiring its beauty and its many islands—little bits of islands, of which the boatmen tell there are three hundred and sixty-five; be the same more or less, one for every day in the year at least. We saw the ruins, which are very fine; but I have not time to say more about them. We crossed the churchyard and a field or two, and all was as flat, and bare, and stony as can be imagined; and as we were going and going farther from the shore of the lake, I wondered how and when we were to come to this cavern. The guide called me to stop, and I stopped; and well I did: I was on the brink of the Pigeon-hole—just like an unfenced entrance to a deep deep well. The guide went down before us, and was very welcome! Down and down and down steps almost perpendicular, and as much as my little legs could do to reach from one to the other; darker and darker, and there were forty of them I am sure, well counted—though certainly I never counted them, but was right glad when I felt my feet at the bottom, onterra firmaagain, even in darkness, and was told to look up, and that I had come down sixty feet and more. I looked up and saw glimmering light at the top, and as my eyes recovered, more and more light through the large fern leaves which hung over the opening at top, and the whole height above looked like the inside of a limekiln, magnified to gigantic dimensions, with lady-fern—it must be lady-fern, because of the fairies—and lichens, names unknown, hanging from its sides. The light of the sun now streaming in I saw plainly, and felt why the guide held me fast by the arm—I was on the brink of the very narrow dark stream of water, which flowed quite silently from one side of the cavern to the other! To that other side, my eye following the stream as it flowed, I now looked, and saw that the cavern opened under a high archway in the rock. How high that was, or how spacious, I had not yet light enough to discern. But now there appeared from the steps down which we had descended an old woman with a light in her hand. Our boy-guide hailed her by the name of Madgy Burke. She scrambled on a high jut of rock in the cavern; she had a bundle of straw under one arm, and a light flickering in the other hand, her grizzled locks streaming, her garments loose and tattered, all which became suddenly visible as she set fire to a great wisp of straw, and another and another she plucked from her bundle and lighted, and waved the light above and underneath. It was like a scene in a melodrama of Cavern and Witch—the best cavern scene I ever beheld. As she continued to throw down, from the height where she stood, the lighted bundles of straw, they fell on the surface of the dark stream below, and sailed down the current, under the arch of the cavern, lighting its roof at the vast opening, and looking like tiny fire-ships, one after another sailing on, and disappearing. We could not help watching each as it blazed, till it vanished. We looked till we were tired, then turned and clambered up the steps we had scrambled down, and found ourselves again in broad daylight, in upper air and on the flat field; and the illusion was over, and there stood, turned into a regular old Irish beggar-woman, the Witch of Outerard, and Madgy Burke stood confessed, and began to higgle with Sir Culling and to flatter the English quality for a sixpence more.
Meanwhile we were to cross Lough Corrib; and well for us that we had the prudence to declare, early in the morning, that we would not take a sail-boat, for a sail-boat is dangerous in the sudden squalls which rise in these mountain regions and on these lakes, very like the Swiss lakes for that matter. For instance, on the Lake de Lucerne, I have seen sunshine and glassy surface change in five minutes to storm and cloud so black and thick, that Mont Pilate himself could not be discerned through it more than if he never stood there in all his sublimity.
Our day had changed, and very rough was the lake; and the boatmen, to comfort us and no doubt amuse themselves, as we rose up and down on the billows, told us stories of boats that had been lost in these storms, and of young Mr. Brown last year, that was drowned in a boat within view of his brother standing on that island, which we were just then to pass. "And when so near he could almost have reached him, you'd have thought."
"And why didn't he, then?" said I.
"Oh, bless you, ma'am, he couldn't; for," said the boatman, dropping his oar, which I did not like at all, "for, mind you, ma'am, it was all done in the clap of one's hand," and he clapped his hands.
"Well, take up your oar," cried I; which he did, and rowed amain, and we cleared Brown's Island, and I have no more dangers, fancied or other, to tell you; and after two hours' hard rowing, which may give you the measure of the width of Lough Corrib at this place, we landed, and were right glad to eat Mrs. O'Flaherty's ready dinner, Lough Corrib trout—not the White Lady trout.
Sir Culling had intended to pursue his road this evening and reach Lough Corrib Lodge to sleep, but before we got the first mouthful of dinner into our mouths it was stone-dark, whatever kind of darkness that is, and we agreed on old George's excellent principle to leave it till "morning, ma'am, if you please."
So the morning came, and a fine morning still it was; and we set out, leaving Mrs. O'Flaherty curtseying and satisfied. I cannot make out any wonders, or anything like an adventure between Outerard and Corrib Lodge; only the road was rough and the country like the Isle of Anglesea, as if stones and fragments of rock had showered down on the earth and tracts of bog-heath such as England never saw and Scotland seldom sees, except in the Highlands. We were only about twice the time that Sir Culling had calculated on getting over this part of the road with our powerful Galway horses and steady drivers, and reaching Corrib Lodge Sir Culling said: "These roads are not so very bad, we shall get on, Miss Edgeworth, very well, you will see."
Corrib Lodge is a neat bleak-looking house, which Mr. Nimmo built for his own residence when he was overseer of the roads, now turned into an inn, kept by his Scotch servant, who used to come with him to Edgeworthstown, and he gave us bread and butter and milk, and moreover, hare-soup, such as the best London tavern might have envied. For observe, that hares abound in these parts, and there is no sin in killing them, and how the cook came to be so good I cannot tell you, but so it certainly was. Invigorated and sanguine, we were ready to get into the carriage again, purposing to reach Clifden this evening—it was now three o'clock; we had got through half our thirty-six miles; no doubt we could easily, Sir Culling argued, manage the other half before dark. But our wary Scotch host shook his head and observed, that if his late master Mr. Nimmo's road was but open so we might readily, but Mr. Nimmo's new road was not opened, and why, because it was not finished. Only one mile or so remained unfinished, and as that one mile of unmade unfinished road was impassable by man, boy, or Connemara pony, what availed the new road for our heavy carriage and four horses? There was no possibility ofgoing round, as I proposed; we must go the old road, if road it could be called, all bog and bog-holes, as our host explained to us: "It would be wonderful if we could get over it, for no carriage had ever passed, nor ever thought of attempting to pass, nothing but a common car these two years at least, except the Marquis of Anglesea and suite,andhis Excellency was on horseback." As for such a carriage as Sir Culling's, the like, as men and boys at the door told us, had never been seen in these parts.
Sir Culling stood a little daunted. We inquired—I particularly, how far it was to Ballinahinch Castle, where the Martins live, and which I knew was some miles on this side of Clifden. I went into Corrib Lodge and wrote with ink on a visiting ticket with "Miss Edgeworth" on it, my compliments, and Sir Culling and Lady Smith's, a petition for a night's hospitality, to use in case of our utmost need.
The Scotchman could not describe exactly how manybad stepsthere were, but he forewarned us that they were bad enough, and as he sometimes changed the wordsbad stepsintosloughs, our Galway postillions looked graver and graver, hoped they should get their horses over, but did not know; they had never been this road, never farther than Outerard, but they would do all that men and beasts could do.
The first bad step we came to was indeed a slough, but only a couple of yards wide across the road. The horses, the moment they set their feet upon it, sank up to their knees, and were whipped and spurred, and they struggled and floundered, and the carriage, as we inside passengers felt, sank and sank. Sir Culling was very brave and got down to help. The postillions leaped off, and bridles in hand gained theshore, and by dint of tugging, and whipping, and hallooing, and dragging of men and boys, who followed from Corrib Lodge, we were got out and were on the other side.
Farther on we might fare worse from what we could learn, so in some commotion we got out and said we would rather walk. And when we came to the next bad step, the horses, seeing it was a slough like the first, put back their ears and absolutely refused to set foot upon it, and they were, the postillions agreed, quite right; so they were taken off and left to look on, while by force of arms the carriage was to be got over by men and boys, who shouting, gathered from all sides, from mountain paths down which they poured, and from fields where they had been at work or loitering; at the sight of the strangers they flocked to help—such a carriage had never been seen before—to help common cars, or jaunting cars over these bad steps they had been used. "This heavy carriage! sure it was impossible, but sure they might do it." And they talked and screamed together in English and Irish equally unintelligible to us, and in spite of all remonstrance about breaking the pole—pole, and wheels, and axle, and body, they seized of the carriage, and standing and jumping from stone to stone, or any tuft of bog that could bear them, as their practised eyes saw; they, I cannot tell you how, dragged, pushed, andscreamedthe carriage over. And Sir Culling got over his way, and Lady Smith would not be carried, but leaping and assisted by men's arms and shouts, she got to the other side. And a great giant, of the name of Ulick Burke, took me up in his arms as he might a child or a doll, and proceeded to carry me over—while I, exceedingly frightened and exceedingly civil, and (as even in the moment of most danger I could not help thinking and laughing within me at the thought) very like Rory in his dream on the eagle's back, in his journey to the moon, I kept alternately flattering my giant, and praying—"Sir, sir, pray set me down; do let me down now, sir, pray."
"Be asy; bequite, can't you, dear, and I'll carry you over to the other side safely, all in good time," floundering as he went.
"Thank you, sir, thank you. Now, sir, now set me down, if you will be so very good, on the bank."
Just as we reached the bank he stumbled and sank knee-deep, but threw me, as he would a sack, to shore, and the moment I felt myself onterra firma, I got up and ran off, and never looked back, trusting that my giant knew his own business; and so he did, and all dirt and bog water, was beside me again in a trice. "Did not I carry you over well, my lady? Oh, it's I am used to it, and helped the Lord Anglesea when he was in it."
So as we walked on, while the horses were coming over, I don't know how, Ulick and a tribe of wild Connemara men and boys followed us, all talking at once, and telling us there were twenty or thirty such bad steps, one worse than another, farther and farther on. It was clear that we could not walk all the twelve miles, and the men and Sir Culling assuring us that they would get us safe over, and that we had better get into the carriage again, and in short that wemustget in, we submitted.
I confess, Pakenham, I was frightened nearly out of my wits. At the next trial Lady Culling Smith was wonderfully brave, and laughed when the carriage was hauled from side to side, so nearly upset, that how each time it escaped I could not tell; but at last, when down it sank, and all the men shouted and screamed, her courage fell, and she confessed afterwards she thought it was all over with us, and that we should never be got out of this bog-hole. Yet out we were got; but how? what with the noise, and what with the fright, far be it from me to tell you. But I know I was very angry with a boy for laughing in the midst of it: a little dare-devil of a fellow, as my giant Ulick called him; I could with pleasure have seen him ducked in bog water! but forgot my anger in the pleasure of safe landing, and now I vowed I could and would walk the whole ten miles farther, and would a thousand times rather.
My scattered senses and common sense returning, it now occurred to me that it would be desirable to avail myself of the card I had in my bag, and beg a night's lodging at our utmost need. It was still broad daylight, to be sure, and Sir Culling still hoped we should get on to Clifden before dark. But I did request he would despatch one of these gossoons to Ballinahinch Castle with my card immediately. It could do no harm I argued, and Lady Smith seconded me with, "Yes, dear Culling,do," and my dear giant Ulick backed me with, "Troth, you're right enough, ma'am. Troth, sir, it will be dark enough soon, and long enough before you're clean over them sloughs, farthest on beyant where we can engage to see you over. Sure, here's my own boy will run with the speed of light with the lady's card."
I put it into his hand with the promise of half a crown, and how he did take to his heels!
We walked on, and Ulick, who was a professional wit as well as a giant, told us the long-ago tale of Lord Anglesea's visit to Connemara, and how as he walked beside his horse this gentleman-lord, as he was, had axed him which of his legs he liked best.
Now Ulick knew right well that one was a cork leg, but he never let on, as he told us, and pretended the one leg was just the same as t'other, and he saw no differ in life, "which pleased my lord-liftenant greatly, and then his lordship fell to explaining to me why it was cork, and how he lost it in battle, which I knew before as well as he did, for I had larned all about it from our Mr. Martin, who was expecting him at the castle, but still I never let on, and handled the legs one side of the horse and t'other and asy found out, and tould him, touching the cork, 'sure this is the morehonourable.'"
Which observation surely deserved, and I hope obtained half a crown. Our way thus beguiled by Ulick's Irish wit, we did not for some time feel that we could not walk for ever. Lady Culling Smith complained of being stiff and tired, and we were compelled to the carriage again, and presently heavy dews of evening falling, we were advised to let down those fairy-board shutters I described to you, which was done with care and cost of nails. I did it at last, and oh! how I wished it up again when we were boxed up, and caged in without the power of seeing more than glimpses of our danger—glimpses heightening imagination, and, if we were to be overturned, all this glass to be broken into our eyes and ears.
Well! well! I will not wear your sympathy and patience eighteen times out, with the history of the eighteen sloughs we went, or were got, through at the imminent peril of our lives. Why the carriage was not broken to pieces I cannot tell, but an excellent strong carriage it was, thank Heaven, and the builder whoever he was.
I should have observed to you that while we yet could look about us, we had continually seen, to increase our sense of vexation, Nimmo's new road looking like a gravel walk running often parallel to our path of danger, and yet for want of being finished there it was, useless and most tantalising.
Before it grew quite dark, Sir Culling tapped at our dungeon window, and bid us look out at a beautiful place, a paradise in the wilds. "Look out? How?"—"Open the little window at your ear, and this just before you—push the bolt back."—"But I can't."
With the help of an ivory cutter lever, however, I did accomplish it, and saw indeed a beautiful place belonging, our giant guide told us, to Dean Mahon, well wooded and most striking in this desert.
It grew dark, and Sir Culling, very brave, walking beside the carriage, when we came to the next bad step, sank above his knees; how they dragged him out I could not see, and there were we in the carriage stuck fast in a slough, which, we were told, was the last but one before Ballinahinch Castle, when my eyes were blessed with a twinkling light in the distance—a boy with a lantern. And when, breathless, he panted up to the side of the carriage and thrust up lantern and note (we still in the slough), how glad I was to see him and it! and to hear him say, "Then Mr. Martin's very unaasy about yees—so he is."
"I am very glad of it—very glad indeed," said I. The note in a nicelady's hand from Mrs. Martin greeted us with the assurance that MissEdgeworth and her English friends should be welcome at BallinahinchCastle.
Then from our mob another shout! another heave! another drag, and another lift by the spokes of the wheels. Oh! if they had broken!——but they did not, and we were absolutely out of this slough. I spare you the next and last, and then we wound round theLake-roadin the dark, on the edge of Ballinahinch lake on Mr. Martin's new road, as our dear giant told us, and I thought we should never get to the house, but at last we saw a chimney on fire, at least myriads of sparks and spouts of flame, but before we reached it, it abated, and we came to the door without seeing what manner of house or castle it might be, till the hall door opened and a butler—half an angel he appeared to us—appeared at the door. But then in the midst of our impatience I was to let down and buckle up these fairy boards—at last swinging and slipping it was accomplished, and out we got, but with my foot still on the step we all called out to tell the butler we were afraid some chimney was on fire. Without deigning even to look up at the chimney, he smiled and motioned us the way we should go. He was as we saw at first view, and found afterwards, the most imperturbable of men.
And now that we are safely housed, and housed in a castle too, I will leave you, my dear Pakenham, for the present.
March 12.
What became of the chimney on fire, I cannot tell—the Imperturbable was probably right in never minding it; he was used to its ways of burning out, and being no more thought of.
He showed us into a drawing-room, where we saw by firelight a lady alone—Mrs. Martin, tall and thin, in deep mourning. Though by that light, but dimly visible, and by our eyesdazedas they were just coming out of the dark, but imperfectly seen, yet we could not doubt at first sight that she was a lady in the highest sense of the word, perfectly a gentlewoman. And her whole manner of receiving us, and the ease of her motions, and of her conversation, in a few moments convinced me that she must at some time of her life have been accustomed to live in the best society—the best society in Ireland; for it was evident from her accent that she was anative—high-life Dublin tone of about forty years ago. The curls on her forehead, mixed with gray, prematurely gray, like your mother's, much older than the rest of her person.
She put us at ease at once, by beginning to talk to us, as if she was well acquainted with my family—and so she was from William, who had prepossessed her in our favour, yet she did not then allude to him, though I could not but understand what she meant to convey—I liked her.
Then came in, still by firelight, from a door at the farther end of the room, a young lady, elegantly dressed in deep mourning. "My daughter—Lady Culling Smith—Miss Edgeworth:" slight figure, head held up and thrown back. She had the resolution to come to the very middle of the room and make a deliberate and profound curtsey, which a dancing-master of Paris would have approved; seated herself upon the sofa, and seemed as if she never intended to speak. Mrs. Martin showed us up to our rooms, begging us not to dress unless we liked it before dinner; and we did not like it, for we were very much tired, and it was now between eight and nine o'clock. Bedchambers spacious. Dinner, we were told, was ready whenever we pleased, and, well pleased, down we went: found Mr. Martin in the drawing-room—a large Connemara gentleman, white, massive face; a stoop forward in his neck, the consequence of a shot in the Peninsular War.
"Well! will you come to dinner? dinner's ready. Lady Culling Smith, take my arm; Sir Culling, Miss Edgeworth."
A fine large dining-room, and standing at the end of the table an odd-looking person, below the middle height, youngish, but the top and back of his head perfectly bald, like a bird's skull, and at each temple a thick bunch of carroty red curly hair, thick red whiskers and light blue eyes, very fair skin and carnation colour. He wore a long green coat, and some abominable coloured thing round his throat, and a look as if he could not look at you, and would. I wondered what was to become of this man, and he looked as if he wondered too. But Mr. Martin, turning abruptly, said, "M'Hugh! where are you, man? M'Hugh, sit down man, here!"
And M'Hugh sat down. I afterwards found he was an essential person in the family: M'Hugh here, M'Hugh there; very active, acute, and ready, and bashful, a daredevil kind of man, that would ride, and boat, and shoot in any weather, and would at any moment hazard his life to save a fellow-creature's. Miss Martin sat opposite to me, and with the light of branches of wax candles full upon her, I saw that she was very young, about seventeen, very fair, hair which might be called red by rivals and auburn by friends, her eyes blue-gray, prominent, like pictures I have seen by Leonardo da Vinci.
But Miss Martin must not make me forget the dinner, and such a dinner! Londonbon vivantsmight have blessed themselves! Venison such as Sir Culling declared could not be found in England, except from one or two immense parks of noblemen favoured above their peers; salmon, lobsters, oysters, game, all well cooked and well served, and well placed upon the table: nothing loaded, allingood taste, as well astothe taste; wines, such as I was not worthy of, but Sir Culling knew how to praise them; champagne, and all manner of French wines.
In spite of a very windy night, I slept admirably well, and wakened with great curiosity to see what manner of place we were in. From the front windows of my room, which was over the drawing-room, I looked down a sudden slope to the only trees that could be seen, far or near, and only on the tops of them. From the side window a magnificent but desolate prospect of an immense lake and bare mountains.
When I went down, and to the hall door at which we had entered the night before, I was surprised to see neither mountains, lake, nor river—all flat as a pancake—a wild, boundless sort of common, with showers of stones; no avenue or regular approach, no human habitation within view: and when I walked up the road and turned to look at the castle, nothing could be less like a castle. From the drawing I send you (who it was done by I will tell you by and by), you would imagine it a real castle, bosomed high in trees. Such flatterers as those portrait-painters of places are! And yet it is all true enough, if you see it from the right point of view. Much I wished to see more of the inhabitants of this castle, but we were to pursue our way to Clifden this day; and with these thoughts balancing in my mind ofwishto stay, andoughtto go, I went to breakfast—coffee, tea, hot rolls, ham, all luxuries.
Isabella did not make her appearance, but this I accounted for by her having been much tired. She had complained of rheumatic pains, but I had thought no more about them. Little was I aware of all that was to be. "L'homme propose: Dieu dispose." Lady Culling Smith at last appeared, hobbling, looking in torture, leaning on her husband's arm, and trying to smile on our hospitable hosts, all standing up to receive her. Never did I see a human creature in the course of one night so changed. When she was to sit down, it was impossible: she could not bend her knees, and fell back in Sir Culling's arms. He was excessively frightened. His large powerful host carried her upstairs, and she was put to bed by her thin, scared-looking, but excellent and helpful maid; and this was the beginning of an illness which lasted above three weeks. Little did we think, however, at the beginning how bad it would be. We thought it only rheumatism, and I wrote to Honora that we should be detained a few days longer—from day to day put off. Lady Culling Smith grew alarmingly ill. There was only one half-fledged doctor at Clifden: the Martins disliked him, but he was sent for, and a puppy he proved, thinking of nothing but his own shirt-buttons and fine curled hair. Isabella grew worse and worse—fainting-fits; and Mrs. and Miss Martin, both accustomed to prescribe for the country-people in want of all medical advice in these lone regions, went to their pharmacopoeias and medicine-chest, and prescribed various strong remedies, and ran up and down stairs, but could not settle what the patient's disease was, whether gout or rheumatism; and these required quite different treatment: hands and lips were swelled and inflamed, but not enough to say it was positively gout, then there was fear of drawing the gout to the stomach, and if it was not gout!—All was terror and confusion; and poor Sir Culling, excessively fond of Isabella, stood in tears beside her bed. He had sat up two nights with her, and was now seized with asthmatic spasms himself in his chest. It was one of the worst nights you can imagine, blowing a storm and raining cats and dogs. Mr. and Mrs. Martin and Sir Culling thought Lady Smith so dangerously ill that it was necessary to send a man on horseback thirty miles to Outerard for a physician: and who could be sent such a night? one of the Galway postillions on one of the post-horses (you will understand that we were obliged to keep these horses and postillions at Ballinahinch, as no other horses could be procured). The postillion was to beknocked up, and Sir Culling and Mr. Martin went to some den to waken him.
Meanwhile I was standing alone, very sorrowful, on the hearth in the great drawing-room, waiting to hear how it could be managed, when in came Mr. M'Hugh, and coming quite close up to me, said, "Them Galway boys will not know the way across the bogs as I should: I'd be at Outerard in half the time. I'll go, if they'll let me, and with all the pleasure in life."
"Such a night as this! Oh no, Mr. M'Hugh!"
"Oh yes; why not?" said he. And this good-hearted, wild creature would have gone that instant, if we would have let him!
However, we would not, and he gave instructions to the Galway boy how to keep clear of the sloughs and bog-holes; observing to me that "them stranger horses are good for little in Connemara—nothing like a Connemara pony for that!" As Ulick Burke said, "The ponies are such knowing little creatures, when they come to a slough they know they'd sink in, and their legs of no use to them, they lie down till the men that can stand drag them over with their legs kneeling under them."
The Galway boy got safe to Outerard, and next morning brought back Dr. Davis, a very clever, agreeable man, who had had a great deal of experience, having begun life as an army surgeon: at any rate, he was not thinking of himself, but of his patient. He thought Isabella dangerously ill—unsettled gout. I will not tire you with all the history of her illness, and all our terrors; but never would I have left home on this odd journey if I could have foreseen this illness. I cannot give you an idea of my loneliness of feeling, my utter helplessness, from the impossibility of having the advantage of the sympathy and sense of any of my own family. We had not, for one whole week, the comfort of even any one letter from any of our distant friends. We had expected to be by this time at Castlebar, and we had desired Honora to direct our letters there. Sir Culling with great spirit sent a Connemara messenger fifty miles to Castlebar for the letters, and when he came back he brought but one!
No mail-coach road comes near here: no man on horseback could undertake to carry the letters regularly. They are carried three times a week from Outerard to Clifden, thirty-six miles, by three gossoons, or more properly bog-trotters, and very hard work it is for them. One runs a day and a night, and then sleeps a day and a night, and then another takes his turn; and each of these boys has £15 a year. I remember seeing one of these postboys leaving Ballinahinch Castle, with his leather bag on his back, across the heath and across the bog, leaping every now and then, and running so fast! his bare, white legs thrown up among the brown heath. These postboys were persons of the greatest consequence to us: they brought us news from home, and to poor Lady Culling Smith accounts of her baby, and of her friends in England. We began to think we should never see any of them again.
I cannot with sufficient gratitude describe to you the hospitality and unvaried kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Martin during all these trials. Mr. Martin, rough man as he seemed outside, was all soft and tender within, and so very considerate for the English servants. Mrs. Martin told me that he said to her, "I am afraid that English man and maid must be very uncomfortable here—so many things to which they have been used, which we have not for them! Now we have no beer, you know, my dear, and English servants are always used to beer." So Mr. Martin gave them cider instead, and every day he took to each of them himself a glass of excellent port wine; and to Isabella, as gout-cordial, he gave Bronte, the finest, Sir Culling said, he ever tasted. And never all the time did Mr. and Mrs. Martin omit anything it was in their power to do to make us comfortable, and to relieve us from the dreadful feeling of being burthensome and horrible intruders! They did succeed in putting me completely at ease, as far as they were concerned. I do not think I could have got through all the anxiety I felt during Lady Culling Smith's illness, and away from all my own people, and waiting so shockingly long for letters, if it had not been for the kindness of Mrs. Martin, and the great fondness I soon felt for her. She is not literary; she is very religious—what would be called VERY GOOD, and yet she suited me, and I grew very fond of her, and she of me. Little things that I could feel better than describe inclined me to her, and our minds were open to one another from the first day. Once, towards the end, I believe, of the first week, when I began some sentence with an apology for some liberty I was taking, she put her hand upon my arm, and with a kind, reproachful look exclaimed, "Liberty! I thought we were past that long since: are not we?"
She told me that she had actually been brought up with a feeling of reverence for my father, and particularly for me, by a near relation of hers, old Mr. Kirwan, the President of the Royal Irish Academy, who was a great friend of my father's and puffer of me in early days. Then her acquaintance afterwards with Mr. Nimmo carried on the connection. She told me he showed her that copy ofHarry and Lucywhich you had in making the index, and showed her the bridge which he helped me over when Harry was building it. But what touched and won me first and most in Mrs. Martin was the manner in which she spoke of William—her true feeling for his character. "Whenever he could get me alone," she said, "he would talk to me of Honora or Mrs. Edgeworth and his aunt Mary and you."
Some of the expressions she repeated I could not but feel sure were his, and they were so affectionate towards me, I was much touched.Too besidesMrs. Martin made herself very agreeable by her quantity of anecdotes, and her knowledge of the people with whom she had lived in her youth, of whom she could, with great ability and admirable composed drollery, give the most characteristic traits.
Miss Martin—though few books beyond anEdinburghorQuarterly Reviewor two appeared in the sitting-room—has books in quantities in a closet in her own room, which is within her mother's; and "every morning," said Mrs. Martin, "she comes in to me while I am dressing, and pours out upon me an inundation of learning, fresh and fresh, all she has been reading for hours before I am up. Mary has read prodigiously."
I found Mary one of the most extraordinary persons I ever saw. Her acquirements are indeed prodigious: she has more knowledge of books, both scientific and learned, than any female creature I ever saw or heard of at her age—heraldry, metaphysics, painting and painters' lives, and tactics; she had a course of fortification from a French officer, and of engineering from Mr. Nimmo. She understands Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and I don't know how many modern languages. French she speaks perfectly, learned from the French officer who taught her fortification, M. Du Bois, who was one of Buonaparte's legion of honour, and when the Emperor wasousted, fled from France, and earned his bread at Ballinahinch by teaching French, which Miss Martin talks as if she had been a native, but not as if she had been in good Parisian society; with an odd mixture of aton de garnisonwhich might be expected from a pupil of one of Buonaparte's officers. She imbibed from him such an admiration, such an enthusiasm for Buonaparte, that she cannot bear a word said to his disparagement; and when Sir Culling sometimes offended in that way, Miss Martin's face and neck grew carnation colour, and down to the tips of her fingers she blushed with indignation.
Her father the while smiled and winked at me. The father as well as the mother dote upon her; and he has a softened way of always calling her "my child" that interested me for both. "My child, never mind; what signifies about Buonaparte?"
One morning we went with Miss Martin to see the fine green Connemara marble-quarries. Several of the common people gathered round while we were looking at the huge blocks: these people Miss Martin called her TAIL. Sir Culling wished to obtain an answer to a question from some of these people, which he desired Miss Martin to ask for him, being conscious that, in his English tone, it would be unintelligible. When the question had been put and answered, Sir Culling objected: "But, Miss Martin, you did not put the question exactly as I requested you to state it."
"No," said she, with colour raised and head thrown back, "No, because I knew how to put it so that people could understand it. _Je sais mon métier de reine."
This trait gives you an idea of her character and manner, and of the astonishment of Sir Culling at her want of sympathy with his really liberal and philanthropic views for Ireland, while she is full of her tail, her father's fifty-miles-long avenue, and Aeschylus and Euripides, in which she is admirably well read. Do think of a girl of seventeen, in the wilds of Connemara, intimately acquainted with all the beauties of Aeschylus and Euripides, and having them as part of her daily thoughts!
There are immense caves on this coast which were thefree-traders'resort, and would have been worth any money to Sir Walter. "Quite a scene and a country for him," as Miss Martin one day observed to me; "don't you think your friend Sir Walter Scott would have liked our people and our country?"
It is not exactly a feudal state, but thetailof a feudal state. Dick Martin, father of the present man, was not only lord of all he surveyed, but lord of all the lives of the people: now the laws of the land have come in, and rival proprietors have sprung up in rival castles. Hundreds would still, I am sure, start out of their bogs for Mr. Martin, but he is calledMister, and the prestige is over. The people in Connemara were all very quiet and submissive till somerefugee Terry-altstook asylum in these bog and mountain fastnesses. They spread their principles, and soon the clan combined against their chief, and formed a plan of seizing Ballinahinch Castle, and driving him and all the Protestant gentry out of the country. Mr. Martin is a man of desperate courage, some skill as an officer, andprodigiousbodily strength, which altogether stood him in stead in time of great danger. I cannot tell you the whole long story, but I will mention one anecdote which will show you how like the stories in Walter Scott are the scenes that have been lately passing in Connemara. Mr. Martin summoned one of his own followers, who had he knew joined the Terry-alts, to give up a gun lent to him in days of trust and favour: no answer to the summons. A second, a third summons: no effect. Mr. Martin then warned the man that if he did not produce the gun at the next sessions he would come and seize it. The man appeared at the house where Mr. Martin holds his sessions—about the size of Lovell's schoolroom, and always fuller than it can hold: Mr. Martin espied from his end of the room his friend with the gun, a powerfully strong man, who held his way on, and stood full before him.
"You sent for my gun, your honour, did you?"
"I did—three times; it is well you have brought it at last; give it to me."
The man kneeled down on one knee, and putting the gun across the other knee, broke it asunder, and throwing the pieces to Mr. Martin, cried, "There it is for you. I swore that was the only way you should ever have it, dead or alive. You have warned me, and now I warn you; take care of yourself."
He strode out of the crowd. But he was afterwards convicted of Terry-alt practices and transported. Now all is perfectly quiet, and Mr. Martin goes on doing justice in his own peculiar fashion every week. When the noise, heat, and crowd in his sessions court become beyond all bearing, he roars with his stentorian voice to clear the court; and if that be not done forthwith, he with his own two Herculean arms seizes the loudest two disputants, knocks their heads together, thrusts them bawling as they go out of the door and flings them asunder.
In his own house there never was a more gentle, hospitable, good-natured man, I must say again and again, or else I should be a very ungrateful woman.
Miss Martin has three ponies, which she has brought every day to the great Wyatt window of the library, where she feeds them with potatoes. One of them is very passionate; and once the potato being withheld a moment too long at the hall door he fell into a rage, pushed in at the door after her, and she ran for her life, got upstairs and was safe.
I asked what he would have done if he had come up to her?
"Set his two feet on my shoulders, thrown me down, and trampled upon me."
The other day the smith hurt his foot in shoeing him, and up he reared, and up jumped the smith on the raised part of his forge—the pony jumped after him, and if the smith had not scrambled behind his bellows, "would have killed him to be sure."
After hearing this I declined riding this pony, though Miss Martin pressed me much, and assured me he was as quiet as a lamb—provided I would never strike him or look cross. Once she got me up on his back, but I looked so miserable, she took me down again. She described to me her nursing of one of these ponies; "he used to stand with his head over my shoulder while I rubbed his nose for an hour together; but I suppose I must throw off these Bedouin habits before I go to London."
They are now spending the season in town. I had an opportunity of seeing her perfect freedom from coquetry in company with a Mr. Smith—no relation of Sir Culling's—a very handsome fine gentleman who came here unexpectedly.
All this time poor Isabella has been left by me in torture in her bed. At the end of three weeks she was pronounced out of danger, and in spite of the kind remonstrances of our hospitable hosts, not tired of the sick or the well, on a very wet odious day away we went. As there are no inns or place where an invalid could pass the night, I wrote to beg a night's lodging at Renvyle, Mr. Blake's. He and Mrs. Blake, who wroteLetters from the Irish Highlands, were not at home, in Galway on a visit, but they answered most politely that they begged me to consider their house as my own, and wrote to their agent who was at Renvyle to receive us.
Captain Bushby, of the Water Guard—married to a niece of Joanna Baillie's—was very kind in accompanying us on our first day's journey. "I must see yousafe out," said he. "Safe out" is the common elision for safe out of Connemara. And really it was no easy matter to get us safe out; but I spare you a repetition of sloughs; we safely reached Renvyle, where the agent received us in a most comfortable well-furnished, well-carpeted, well-lighted library, filled with books—excellent dining-room beyond, and here Lady Smith had a day's rest, without which she could not have proceeded, and well for her she had such a comfortable resting-place.
Next day we got intoJoyce's Country, and had hot potatoes and cold milk, and Renvyle cold fowl at The Lodge, as it is styled, of Big Jacky Joyce—one of the descendants of the ancient proprietors, and quite an original Irish character. He had heard my name often, he said, from Mr. Nimmo, and knew I was a writing lady, and a friend to Ireland, and he was civil to me, and I was civil to him, and after eyeing Sir Culling and Lady Smith, and thinking, I saw, that she was affecting to be languishing, and then perceiving that she was really weak and ill, he became cordial to the whole party, and entertained us for two hours, which we were obliged to wait for the going out of the tide before we could cross the sands. Here was an arm of the sea, across which Mr. Nimmo had been employed to build a bridge, and against Big Jack Joyce's advice, he would build it where Jack prophesied it would be swept away in the winter, and twice the bridge was built, and twice it was swept away, and still Nimmo said it was the fault of the masons; the embankment and his theory could not be wrong, and a third time he built the bridge, and there we saw the ruins of it on the sands—all the embankments swept away and all we had for it was to be dragged over the sand by men—the horses taken off. We were pushed down into a gully-hole five feet deep, and thence pulled up again; how it was I cannot tell you, for I shut my eyes and resigned myself, gave up my soul and was much surprised to find it in my body at the end of the operation: Big Jacky Joyce and his merry men having somehow managed it.
There was an end of our perils by gullies, sloughs, and bog-holes. We now got on Mr. Nimmo's and Mr. Killalla's really good roads, and now our four horses began to tell, and that night we reached Westport, and in consequence of Mrs. Martin's introduction to her friend Lord Sligo were received by him and Lady Sligo most courteously.
Westport is a beautiful place, with a town, a port, industrious people all happy, and made so by the sense and energy of a good landlord and a good agent. We regretted that we could stay only this night and the next morning to breakfast; it was so delightful and extraordinary to us again to see trees and shrubberies, and to find ourselves again in the midst of flowers from green-house and conservatory. Isabella said she was so delighted, she could hardly forbear, with her crippled, gouty hands, embracing every tree she met. Lord Sligo, himself a martyr to the gout, and with a son at Eton just then attacked with gout, had great compassion for her: he and all his family high-bred and cordial.
The next morning we pursued our journey, and at the next stage came upon a real mail-coach road, where we had post-horses again, and dismissed our Galway horses. This night brought us to Lough Glyn, where Mr. Strickland received us very kindly, and we had the joy of finding letters waiting for us from home; but we found that the cholera had been for the last ten days killing the poor people at Edgeworthstown—Condy Keegan's son-in-law, M'Glaughlin the carpenter, and a great many more. How dreadfully anxious Honora must have been with the charge of baby, and this cholera close to our gates!
The last day's journey was the longest of all, from the suspense, though all was smooth upon the road. When we saw the lights in the windows at home, you may guess how our hearts went pit-a-pat. We found all WELL; and glad we all were to meet again, and to have Isabella safe with her child: not in her arms, poor crippled creature—it was not possible for her to hold the infant; she could but just hobble about, and was a quarter of an hour going upstairs. Aunt Mary and Honora, after all the warnings my letters had given, were surprised and shocked at the first sight of her. For ten days after her arrival she was unable to travel, impatient as they both were to be at home again. They did reach it, baby and all, safely at last, and you may imagine how relieved we were when we heard of her being safe with her own family again, and with London physicians: five months since then and she is not yet quite re-established. We feel now how very serious her illness was.
But now that it is all over, and I can balance pains and pleasures, I declare that, upon the whole, I had more pleasure than pain from this journey; the perils of the road were far overbalanced by the diversion of seeing the people, and the seeing so many to me perfectly new characters and modes of living. The anxiety of Isabella's illness, terrible as it was, and the fear of being ill myself and a burthen upon their hands, and even the horrid sense of remoteness and impossibility of communication with my own friends, were altogether overbalanced by the extraordinary kindness, and tenderness, and generous hospitality of the Martins. It will do my heart good all the days of my life to have experienced such kindness, and to have seen so much good in human nature as I saw with them—red M'Hugh included. I am sure I have a friend in Mrs. Martin: it is an extraordinary odd feeling to have made a friend at sixty-six years of age! You, my dear young Pakenham, can't understand this; but you will live, I hope, to understand it, and perhaps to say, "Now I begin to comprehend what Maria, poor old soul! meant by thatoddfeeling at the end of her Connemara journey."
When we were regretting to Lord Sligo that we had missed seeing so many persons and places on our tour whom we had at first setting out made it our object to see—Clifden, the Barony of Erris, and the wonderful Major Bingham—Lord Sligo comforted us by saying, "Depend upon it, you have seen more really of Connemara than any strangers who have ever travelled through it, exactly because you remained in one place and in one family, where you had time to see the habits of the people, and to see them nearly and familiarly, and without their being shown off, or thinking of showing themselves off to you."
March 29.
I have been so busy at rents and odious accounts, that I have never been able to go on to you. Your mother returned home a few days ago, after seven months' absence! You may guess how happy we were to have her again, and how we have been talking and hearing. Lucy bore the parting with her wonderfully well; indeed, she was anxious that her mother should return to us.
Young Walter—now Sir Walter—Scott has been quartered at Longford, and is now going to Dublin: he dined here on Saturday, and was just the same as when we saw him in 1825. Sophy and her three children round her must have surprised him not a little. [Footnote: Mrs. Fox, as Sophy Edgeworth, had been with her sister at Abbotsford in 1823.] It is a pity Maxwell was not in the group. Little fair-haired Willy, nothing daunted by the nearly seven-feet-high major in full uniform, marched up to him and patted his knee, and in return the major patted his head. His soft Scotch voice, and often the kind and playful turns in his conversation, reminded me both pleasurably and painfully of his father. Sophy wished that her children should hear the band of the regiment, and he promised that he would halt at Tuite's gate, as aselectparty with the band were to go by Castle Pollard; and this morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw it was snowing so bitterly, I gave up all hopes of our being able to take the children to hear the band; but between seven, when I wakened, and half after nine, the appointed hour, many changes of the sky took place, and at the right moment the sun shone out, the clouds blew over the beech-trees, and Sophy was drawn in Willy Waller's little carriage, with him in her lap; Honora, Mary Anne, Charlotte, and I accompanying. We had to wait some time, and went into what you would call Tuite's house, but it is now Jem Newman's; and there was his nice little wife, with her mouth full of the last potato she had eaten for breakfast; and she put away the half-full potato basket, and the boy with his can of milk retreated from the stool by the fire, and she welcomed us with Irish heart's welcome in lip and eye; and the children were delighted watching the pig and the chickens feeding at the door.
At last the music was heard, and very pretty it was, and mother and children were happy; and Sir Walter stopped on his fine gray horse, and said, "You see, I have kept my word," and then galloped off. A sergeant then came up to me with a slip of paper in his hand, saying, "Can you readwrite?" I said, I believed I could, and made out for him the route to Castle Pollard: the sound of the music died away, and we returned to breakfast. "Sire, il n'y a de circonstance où on ne prend pas de déjeuner," as the man said to Buonaparte.
You will have seen in the newspapers the court-martial about Lord Brudenell and the 15th Hussars: Lord Forbes, in giving me an account of the matter, said, "Walter Scott, by his conduct, and the way in which he gave his testimony, covered himself with glory,"—told the truth like a man and a gentleman.
You may have also seen mentioned the murder of Captain Skyring, of theAetna, of which Henry Beddoes was second lieutenant, off the coast of Africa. He wrote a few lines to Fanny after the catastrophe; happily for him he was kept by some duty on board. It was imprudent of Captain Skyring to attempt to land, and take observations, without having his ship near enough to defend him. The natives, all with arms, came round him, and began by stealing everything they could lay their hands on. Captain Skyring drew a circle round his circle, forbidding the thieves to pass it; but they passed it, and one was seizing the instrument in his hand, when the captain fired and killed the man; and then they all fell upon him, stabbed him with their pikes and knives, stripped the body, and left it with seventeen wounds. Our people afterwards got it back. We know no more as yet, but that Captain Beaufort was extremely shocked and grieved.
I have no domestic occurrence to tell you, except that a robin, who for several seasons has frequented this house, and Lucy's room particularly, has this spring grown so familiar, that he began to build his nest in Lucy's old bonnet, laid a great heap of leaves in it, which we used to see him bringing in his bill, the leaves often as large as his body. Yesterday morning Betty the housemaid said to your mother, "Ma'am, when I opened the hall door this morning, the robin flew in over my head, and knowing his way wherever he wanted to go through the doors, just as if he was master of the house, ma'am! And he sits down before a door, andlooksto have it opened for him." Dear little, impudent fellow! This packet concludes my chronicle of Connemara.
ToC.S. EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN,March 14, 1834.
Having now done with business I may turn to a little pleasure; a great deal you have given me, my dear Sneyd, by your friend Mr. Smedley's approbation ofHelen. His polite playful allusion to the names of the horses, which names at this moment I forget, reminds me of a similar touch of the Duchess of Wellington in describing one of the Duke's battles, she quoted from theKnapsack, "Let the sugar basin be my master."
I have written to Fanny about Lady Charlotte Fitzgerald's death. I was very much shocked at it: I loved her; she was one of my earliest friends—"Leaf by leaf drops away."
ToMISS RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN,March 22, 1834.
With all my heart I congratulate you on being in possession of your cottage. [Footnote: Dunmoe Cottage, at the end of the Black Castle demesne, about two miles from the house.] Harriet Butler told us how happy the people of Black Castle and Navan were, when they heard you were coming to live amongst them again. You are now as busy as possible arranging your things and considering how all and each of your friends will like what you do, and I am—very conceited—sure that you often think of Maria among the number, and that you have even already thought of a footstool for her. Emmeline has, by the bye, invented and executed, and given to my mother, the most ingenious footstool I ever saw, which folds up and can be put into a work-bag. She has also sent the nicest most agreeable presents to the little Foxes—a kaleidoscope, a little watering-pot, and a pair of little tin scales with weights; they set about directly weighing everything that could be put into them, ending with sugar-plums and sugar-candy.
We have been much amused withThe Kuzzilbashand byBubbles from theBrunnen, by Captain Head.
ToMISS RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN,July 29, 1834.
I cannot, my dear Lady of Dunmoe, tell when I can be with you; go I will before autumn runs away with all your leaves, but I am afraid I must let autumn turn them of a sober hue, though I will not let it go to the sear and yellow. In plain prose I am tied down now by rents and business.
We have been dining at Mrs. Blackall's, and there met her pretty sister, Mrs. Johnstone, and very intelligent Captain Johnstone, a Berkshire man from near Hare Hatch, and had a very agreeable day, and much conversation on books and authors, and found that theDiary of an EnnuyéeandFemale Characters of Shakespeare, both very clever books, are by a lady who was governess to Mrs. Blackall and her sisters. Mrs. Rolle, her mother, read theDiary of an Ennuyée, and wondered when she saw "Mr. and Mrs. R.," and all the places and people they had seen abroad, till she came to the name of Laura, and some lines to her by which she discovered that the author must be their former governess, Miss Murphy, now married to a very clever lawyer. [Footnote: Mrs. Jameson.] All the woes and heart-breakings are mere fable in theDiary. Her last book,Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, I like; there is a great deal of thought and feeling in it.
* * * * *
Miss Edgeworth'sHelenwould never have been finished but for the encouragement shown by her sister Harriet, and her interest in the story. It is more of a "novel" than any of its predecessors, has more imagination, and its interest centres more around one person. Its object is to show how many of the troubles of social life arise from want of absolute truthfulness. Its principle is depicted in the explanation of one of its characters: "I wish that the wordfibwas out of the English language, andwhite liedrummed after it. Things by their right names, and we should all do much better. Truth must be told, whether agreeable or not."
Helenwas well received by the public, but Miss Edgeworth had great diffidence about it. To Dr. Holland she wrote:
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I am very glad that you have been pleased withHelen—far above my expectations! and I thank you for that warmth of kindness with which you enter into all the details of the characters and plan of the story. Nothing but regard for the author could have made you give so much importance to my tale. It has always been my fault to let the moral I had in view appear too soon and too clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, notwithstanding some pains which I certainlythoughtI took to correct it, should still abide by me.
ToMRS. STARK. [Footnote 1: Who had sent Miss Edgeworth a long criticism from her cousin, Colonel Matthew Stewart (son of Dugald Stewart), on herHelen.]
EDGEWORTHSTOWN,Sept. 6, 1834.
Some of my friends, knowing the timidity, not to say cowardice, of my nature, have feared that I should bedauntedby Colonel Stewart's most just observations upon the defects and deficiencies of my past manner and principles of novel-writing; but, on the contrary, I, who know myself better, feel that,in spiteof my timidity, I am, instead of being daunted, encouraged by such criticism. Such a writer and such a noble mind as Colonel Stewart's having bestowed so much thought and time upon me and my fictions, raises both them and myself in my own opinion far more than could the largest "draught of unqualified praise" [Footnote: Quoted from Mr. Croker, who said that nothing ever satisfied an author, butlarge draughts of unqualified praise.] from any common critic. From feeling that he does justice in many points to the past, I rely upon his prophecies as to the future, and I feel my ambition strongly excited by his belief that I CAN, and his prognostic that I shall do better hereafter. Boileau says, "Trust a critic who puts his finger at once upon what you know to be your infirm part." I had often thought and said to myself some of those things which Colonel Stewart has written, but never so strongly expressed, so fully brought home: my own rod of feathers did not do my business. I had often and often a suspicion that my manner was too Dutch, too minute; and very, very often, and warmly, admired the bold, grand style of the master hand and master genius. IknowI feel how muchmore is to be done, ought to bedone, by suggestion than by delineation, by creative fancy than by facsimile copying,—how much more by skilful selection and fresh and consistent combination—than can be effected by the most acute observation of individuals, or diligent accumulation of particulars.
But where I have erred or fallen short of what it is thought I might have done, it has not been from "drawing from the life, or from individuals, or from putting together actions or sayings noted in commonplace books from observation or hearsay in society." I have seldom or ever drawn any one character—certainly not any ridiculous or faulty character, from any individual. Wherever, in writing, a real character rose to my view, from memory or resemblance, it has always been hurtful to me, because, to avoid that resemblance, I was tempted by cowardice or compelled by conscience to throw in differences, which often ended in making my character inconsistent, unreal.
At the hazard of talking too much of myself, which people usually do when once they begin, I must tell my penetrating critic exactly the facts, as far as I know them, about myhabits of composition. He will at least see, by my throwing open my mind thus, that he has not made me afraid of him, but has won my confidence, and made me look for his future sympathy and assistance. I have no "vast magazine of a commonplace book." In my whole life, since I began to write, which is now, I am concerned to state, upwards of forty years, I have had only about half a dozen little note-books, strangely and irregularly kept, sometimes with only words of reference to some book, or fact I could not bring accurately to mind. At first I was much urged by my father to note down remarkable traits of character or incidents, which he thought might be introduced in stories; and he often blamed that idleness or laziness, as he thought it in me, which resisted his urgency. But I was averse to noting down, because I was conscious that it did better for me to keep the things in my head, if they suited my purpose; and if they did not, they would only encumber me. I knew that, when I wrote down, I put the thing out of my care, out of my head; and that, though it might be put by very safe, I should not know where to look for it; that the labour of looking over a note-book would never do when I was in the warmth and pleasure of inventing; that I should never recollect the facts or ideas at the right time, if I did not put them up in my own way in my own head: that is, if I felt with hope or pleasure "that thought or that fact will be useful to me in such a character or story, of which I have now a first idea, the same fact or thought would recur, I knew, when I wanted it, in right order for invention." In short, as Colonel Stewart guessed, the process of combination, generalisation, invention, was carried on always in my head best. Wherever I brought inbodilyunaltered, as I have sometimes done, facts from real life, or sayings, or recorded observations of my own, I have almost always found them objected to by good critics as unsuited to the character, or in some wayde trop. Sometimes, when the first idea of a character was taken from life from some ORIGINAL, and the characteristic facts noted down, or even noted only in my head, I have found it necessary entirely to alter these, not only from propriety, to avoid individual resemblance, but from the sense that the character would be only an EXCEPTION to general feeling and experience, not a rule. In short, exactly what Colonel Stewart says about "the conical hills" being the worst subjects for painters. As an instance I may mention King Corny, who is, I believe, considered more of a fancy piece, more as aromanticcharacter than my usual common-life Dutch figures: thefirst ideaof him was taken from the facts I heard of an oddity, a man, I believe, like no other, who lived in a remote part of Ireland, an ingenious despot in his own family, who blasted out of the rock on which his house was built half a kitchen, while he and family and guests were living in the house; who was so passionate, that children, grown-up sons, servants and all, ran out of the house at once when he fell into a passion with his own tangled hair; a man who used, in his impatience and rages, to call at the head of the kitchen stairs to his servants, "Drop whatever you have in your hand, and come here and be d——d!" He was generous and kind-hearted, but despotic, and conceited to the most ludicrous degree: for instance, he thought he could work gobelin tapestry and play on the harp or mandolin better than any one living.
One after another, in working out King Corny, from the first wrong hint I was obliged to give up every fact, except that he propped up the roof of his house and built downwards, and to generalise all; to make him a man of expedients, of ingenious substitutes, such as any clever Irishman in middle life is used to. I was obliged to retain, but soften, the despotism, and exalt the generosity, to make it a character that would interest. Not one word I ever heard said by the living man, or had ever heard repeated of his saying, except "Drop what you have," etc., went into my King Corny's mouth—would not have suited him. I was obliged to make him according to the general standard of wit and acuteness, shrewd humour and sarcasm, of that class ofunreadnatural geniuses, an overmatch for Sir Ulick, who is of a more cultivated class of acute and roguish Irish gentlemen. Colonel Stewart sees from this how far he has guessed rightly as to several points, but I think I have always aimed more at making my characters representatives of classes than he conceives. It is plain that I have not attained my aim.
I never could use notes in writing Dialogues; it would have been as impossible to me to get in the prepared good things at the right moment in the warmth of writing conversation, as it would be to lug them in in real conversation, perhaps more so—for I could not write dialogues at all without being at the time fully impressed with the characters, imagining myself each speaker, and that too fully engrosses the imagination to leave time for consulting note-books; the whole fairy vision would melt away, and the warmth and the pleasure of invention be gone. I might often, while writing, recollect from books or life what would suit, and often from note-book, but then I could not stop to look, and often quoted therefore inaccurately. I have a quick recollective memory and retentive for the sort of things I particularly want; they will recur to me at the moment I want them years and years after they have lain dormant, but alas! my memory is inaccurate, has hold of the object only by one side—the side or face that struck my imagination, and if I want more afterwards I do not know even where to look for it. I mention this because Dugald Stewart once was curious to know what sort of memory I had, whether recollective or retentive.
I understand what Colonel Stewart so admirably says about parable, apologue, and fables being general truths and morals which cannot be conveyed or depended upon equally when we come to modern novels, where Lady B. or Lord D. are not universal characters like Fox or Goose. I acknowledge that even a perfectly true character absolutely taken as a fac-simile from real life would not be interesting in a fiction, might not be believed, and could not be useful. The value of these odd characters depends, I acknowledge, upon their being actually known to be true. In history, extraordinary characters always interest us with all their inconsistencies, feeling we thus add to our actual knowledge of human nature. In fiction we have not thisconviction, and therefore not this sort or source of pleasure even if ever so well done; if it be quite a new inconsistency we feel doubtful and averse; but we submit when we knowit istrue: we say, "don't therefore tell me it is not in human nature."
I am not sure that I agree with Colonel Stewart about particular morals to stories, but this point might lead to long and intricate discussion.
I feel and admire all he says so eloquently, I am sure from his own heart, touching the advantage of raising the standard of our moral ambition; and the higher this standard can be raised by works of fiction the better. I feel and understand how many poets and novelists have raised in the mind that sort of enthusiasm which exalts and purifies the soul. Happy and gifted with heaven's best gift must be the poet, the inventor of any sort of fiction that can raise this enthusiasm. I recollect Mrs. Barbauld's lines describing—
Generous youth that feedsOn pictured tales of vast heroic deeds.