Though her life was so short, Honora Edgeworth seems to have made the
deepest impression on all those she came across. Over little Maria she
had the greatest influence. There is a pretty description of the child
standing lost in wondering admiration of her stepmother's beauty, as she
watched her soon after her marriage dressing at her toilet-table. Little
Maria's feeling for her stepmother was very deep and real, and the
influence of those few years lasted for a lifetime. Her own exquisite
carefulness she always ascribed to it, and to this example may also be
attributed her habits of order and self-government, her life of reason
and deliberate judgment.
The seven years of Honora's married life seem to have been very peaceful
and happy. She shared her husband's pursuits, and wished for nothing
outside her own home. She began with him to write those little books
which were afterwards published. It is just a century ago since she and
Mr. Edgeworth planned the early histories of Harry and Lucy and Frank;
while Mr. Day began his 'Sandford and Merton,' which at first was
intended to appear at the same time, though eventually the third part
was not published till 1789.
As a girl of seventeen Honora Sneyd had once been threatened with
consumption. After seven years of married life the cruel malady again
declared itself; and though Dr. Darwin did all that human resource could
do, and though every tender care surrounded her, the poor young lady
rapidly sank. There is a sad, prim, most affecting letter, addressed to
little Maria by the dying woman shortly before the end; and then comes
that one written by the father, which is to tell her that all is over.
If Mr. Edgeworth was certainly unfortunate in losing again and again the
happiness of his home, he was more fortunate than most people in being
able to rally from his grief. He does not appear to have been unfaithful
in feeling. Years after, Edgeworth, writing to console Mrs. Day upon her
husband's death, speaks in the most touching way of all he had suffered
when Honora died, and of the struggle he had made to regain his hold of
life. This letter is in curious contrast to that one written at the
time, as he sits by poor Honora's deathbed; it reads strangely cold and
irrelevant in these days when people are not ashamed of feeling or of
describing what they feel. 'Continue, my dear daughter'--he writes to
Maria, who was then thirteen years old--'the desire which you feel of
becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a
character, with such an understanding as yours, necessarily ensue; but
true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation
of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection, and from being
thoroughly convinced of what experience in general teaches too late,
that to be happy we must be good.'
'Such a letter, written at such a time,' says the kind biographer, 'made
the impression it was intended to convey; and the wish to act up to the
high opinion her father had formed of her character became an exciting
and controlling power over the whole of Maria's future life.' On her
deathbed, Honora urged her husband to marry again, and assured him that
the woman to suit him was her sister Elizabeth. Her influence was so
great upon them both that, although Elizabeth was attached to some one
else, and Mr. Edgeworth believed her to be little suited to himself,
they were presently engaged and married, not without many difficulties.
The result proved how rightly Honora had judged.
It was to her father that Maria owed the suggestion of her first start
in literature. Immediately after Honora's death he tells her to write a
tale about the length of a 'Spectator,' on the subject of generosity.
'It must be taken from history or romance, must be sent the day
se'nnight after you receive this; and I beg you will take some pains
about it.' A young gentleman from Oxford was also set to work to try his
powers on the same subject, and Mr. William Sneyd, at Lichfield, was to
be judge between the two performances. He gave his verdict for Maria:
'An excellent story and very well written: but where's the generosity?'
This, we are told, became a sort of proverb in the Edgeworth family.
The little girl meanwhile had been sent to school to a certain Mrs.
Lataffiere, where she was taught to use her fingers, to write a lovely
delicate hand, to work white satin waistcoats for her papa. She was then
removed to a fashionable establishment in Upper Wimpole Street, where,
says her stepmother, 'she underwent all the usual tortures of
backboards, iron collars, and dumb-bells, with the unusual one of being
hung by the neck to draw out the muscles and increase the growth,--a
signal failure in her case.' (Miss Edgeworth was always a very tiny
person.) There is a description given of Maria at this school of hers of
the little maiden absorbed in her book with all the other children at
play, while she sits in her favourite place in front of a carved oak
cabinet, quite unconscious of the presence of the romping girls all
about her.
Hers was a very interesting character as it appears in the
Memoirs--sincere, intelligent, self-contained, and yet dependent;
methodical, observant. Sometimes as one reads of her in early life one
is reminded of some of the personal characteristics of the writer who
perhaps of all writers least resembles Miss Edgeworth in her art--of
Charlotte Brontë, whose books are essentially of the modern and
passionate school, but whose strangely mixed character seemed rather to
belong to the orderly and neatly ruled existence of Queen Charlotte's
reign. People's lives as they really are don't perhaps vary very much,
but people's lives as they seem to be assuredly change with the fashions.
Miss Edgeworth and Miss Brontë were both Irishwomen, who have often,
with all their outcome, the timidity which arises from quick and
sensitive feeling. But the likeness does not go very deep. Maria,
whose diffidence and timidity were personal, but who had a firm and
unalterable belief in family traditions, may have been saved from some
danger of prejudice and limitation by a most fortunate though trying
illness which affected her eyesight, and which caused her to be removed
from her school with its monstrous elegancies to the care of Mr. Day,
that kindest and sternest of friends.
This philosopher in love had been bitterly mortified when the lively
Elizabeth Sneyd, instead of welcoming his return, could not conceal her
laughter at his uncouth elegancies, and confessed that, on the whole,
she had liked him better as he was before. He forswore Lichfield and
marriage, and went abroad to forget. He turned his thoughts to politics;
he wrote pamphlets on public subjects and letters upon slavery. His poem
of the 'Dying Negro' had been very much admired. Miss Hannah More speaks
of it in her Memoirs. The subject of slavery was much before people's
minds, and Day's influence had not a little to do with the rising
indignation.
Among Day's readers and admirers was one person who was destined to have
a most important influence upon his life. By a strange chance his
extraordinary ideal was destined to be realised; and a young lady, good,
accomplished, rich, devoted, who had read his books, and sympathised
with his generous dreams, was ready not only to consent to his strange
conditions, but to give him her whole heart and find her best happiness
in his society and in carrying out his experiments and fancies. She was
Miss Esther Milnes, of Yorkshire, an heiress; and though at first Day
hesitated and could not believe in the reality of her feeling, her
constancy and singleness of mind were not to be resisted, and they were
married at Bath in 1778. We hear of Mr. and Mrs. Day spending the first
winter of their married life at Hampstead, and of Mrs. Day, thickly
shodden, walking with him in a snowstorm on the common, and ascribing
her renewed vigour to her husband's Spartan advice.
Day and his wife eventually established themselves at Anningsley, near
Chobham. He had insisted upon settling her fortune upon herself, but
Mrs. Day assisted him in every way, and sympathised in his many schemes
and benevolent ventures. When he neglected to make a window to the
dressing-room he built for her, we hear of her uncomplainingly lighting
her candles; to please him she worked as a servant in the house, and all
their large means were bestowed in philanthropic and charitable schemes.
Mr. Edgeworth quotes his friend's reproof to Mrs. Day, who was fond of
music: 'Shall we beguile the time with the strains of a lute while our
fellow-creatures are starving?' 'I am out of pocket every year about
300_l._ by the farm I keep,' Day writes his to his friend Edgeworth.
'The soil I have taken in hand, I am convinced, is one of the most
completely barren in England.' He then goes on to explain his reasons
for what he is about. 'It enables me to employ the poor, and the result
of all my speculations about humanity is that the only way of benefiting
mankind is to give them employment and make them earn their money.'
There is a pretty description of the worthy couple in their home
dispensing help and benefits all round about, draining, planting,
teaching, doctoring--nothing came amiss to them. Their chief friend and
neighbour was Samuel Cobbett, who understood their plans, and
sympathised in their efforts, which, naturally enough, were viewed with
doubt and mistrust by most of the people round about. It was at
Anningsley that Mr. Day finished 'Sandford and Merton,' begun many years
before. His death was very sudden, and was brought about by one of his
own benevolent theories. He used to maintain that kindness alone could
tame animals; and he was killed by a fall from a favourite colt which he
was breaking in. Mrs. Day never recovered the shock. She lived two years
hidden in her home, absolutely inconsolable, and then died and was laid
by her husband's side in the churchyard at Wargrave by the river.
It was to the care of these worthy people that little Maria was sent
when she was ill, and she was doctored by them both physically and
morally. 'Bishop Berkeley's tar-water was still considered a specific
for all complaints,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'Mr. Day thought it would be
of use to Maria's inflamed eyes, and he used to bring a large tumbler
full of it to her every morning. She dreaded his "Now, Miss Maria, drink
this." But there was, in spite of his stern voice, something of pity and
sympathy in his countenance. His excellent library was open to her, and
he directed her studies. His severe reasoning and uncompromising truth
of mind awakened all her powers, and the questions he put to her and the
working out of the answers, the necessity of perfect accuracy in all her
words, suited the natural truth of her mind; and though such strictness
was not agreeable, she even then perceived its advantage, and in after
life was grateful for it.'