'Calais after a rough passage; Brussels, flat country, tiled houses,
trees and ditches, the window shutters turned out to the street;
fishwives' legs, Dunkirk, and the people looking like wooden toys set in
motion; Bruges and its mingled spires, shipping, and windmills.' These
notes of travel read as if Miss Edgeworth had been writing down only
yesterday a pleasant list of the things which are to be seen two hours
off, to-day no less plainly than a century ago. She jots it all down
from her corner in the postchaise, where she is propped up with a
father, brother, stepmother, and sister for travelling companions, and
a new book to beguile the way. She is charmed with her new book. It is
the story of 'Mademoiselle de Clermont,' by Madame de Genlis, and only
just out. The Edgeworths (with many other English people) rejoiced in
the long-looked-for millennium, which had been signed only the previous
autumn, and they now came abroad to bask in the sunshine of the Continent,
which had been so long denied to our mist-bound islanders. We hear of
the enthusiastic and somewhat premature joy with which this peace was
received by all ranks of people. Not only did the English rush over to
France; foreigners crossed to England, and one of them, an old friend of
Mr. Edgeworth's, had already reached Edgeworthtown, and inspired its
enterprising master with a desire to see those places and things once
more which he heard described. Mr. Edgeworth was anxious also to show
his young wife the treasures in the Louvre, and to help her to develop
her taste for art. He had had many troubles of late, lost friends and
children by death and by marriage. One can imagine that the change must
have been welcome to them all. Besides Maria and Lovell, his eldest
son, he took with him a lovely young daughter, Charlotte Edgeworth, the
daughter of Elizabeth Sneyd. They travelled by Belgium, stopping on
their way at Bruges, at Ghent, and visiting pictures and churches along
the road, as travellers still like to do. Mrs. Edgeworth was, as we have
said, the artistic member of the party. We do not know what modern
rhapsodists would say to Miss Edgeworth's very subdued criticisms and
descriptions of feeling on this occasion. 'It is extremely agreeable to
me,' she writes, 'to see paintings with those who have excellent taste
and no affectation.' And this remark might perhaps be thought even more
to the point now than in the pre-æsthetic age in which it was innocently
made. The travellers are finally landed in Paris in a magnificent hotel
in a fine square, 'formerly Place Louis-Quinze, afterwards Place de la
Révolution, now Place de la Concorde.' And Place de la Concorde it
remains, wars and revolutions notwithstanding, whether lighted by the
flames of the desperate Commune or by the peaceful sunsets which stream
their evening glory across the blood-stained stones.
The Edgeworths did not come as strangers to Paris; they brought letters
and introductions with them, and bygone associations and friendships
which had only now to be resumed. The well-known Abbé Morellet, their
old acquaintance, 'answered for them,' says Miss Edgeworth, and besides
all this Mr Edgeworth's name was well known in scientific circles.
Bréguet, Montgolfier, and others all made him welcome. Lord Henry
Petty, as Maria's friend Lord Lansdowne was then called, was in Paris,
and Rogers the poet, and Kosciusko, cured of his wounds. For the first
time they now made the acquaintance of M. Dumont, a lifelong friend and
correspondent. There were many others--the Delesserts, of the French
Protestant faction, Madame Suard, to whom the romantic Thomas Day had
paid court some thirty years before, and Madame Campan, and Madame
Récamier, and Madame de Rémusat, and Madame de Houdetot, now seventy-two
years of age, but Rousseau's Julie still, and Camille Jordan, and the
Chevalier Edelcrantz, from the Court of the King of Sweden.
The names alone of the Edgeworths' entertainers represent a delightful
and interesting section of the history of the time. One can imagine
that besides all these pleasant and talkative persons the Faubourg
Saint-Germain itself threw open its great swinging doors to the
relations of the Abbé Edgeworth who risked his life to stand by his
master upon the scaffold and to speak those noble warm-hearted words,
the last that Louis ever heard. One can picture the family party as
it must have appeared with its pleasant British looks--the agreeable
'ruddy-faced' father, the gentle Mrs. Edgeworth, who is somewhere
described by her stepdaughter as so orderly, so clean, so freshly
dressed, the child of fifteen, only too beautiful and delicately
lovely, and last of all Maria herself, the nice little unassuming,
Jeannie-Deans-looking body Lord Byron described, small, homely, perhaps,
but with her gift of French, of charming intercourse, her fresh laurels
of authorship (for 'Belinda' was lately published), her bright animation,
her cultivated mind and power of interesting all those in her company,
to say nothing of her own kindling interest in every one and every thing
round about her.
Her keen delights and vivid descriptions of all these new things, faces,
voices, ideas, are all to be read in some long and most charming letters
to Ireland, which also contain the account of a most eventful crisis
which this Paris journey brought about. The letter is dated March 1803,
and it concludes as follows:--
Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will
surprise you as much as it surprised me--by the coming of M.
Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman whom we have mentioned to you, of
superior understanding and mild manners. He came to offer me his
hand and heart! My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his
attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not
had time to have formed any judgment except that I think nothing
could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to
live in Sweden.
Maria Edgeworth was now about thirty years of age, at a time of life
when people are apt to realise perhaps almost more deeply than in early
youth the influence of feeling, its importance, and strange power over
events. Hitherto there are no records in her memoirs of any sentimental
episodes, but it does not follow that a young lady has not had her own
phase of experience because she does not write it out at length to her
various aunts and correspondents. Miss Edgeworth was not a sentimental
person. She was warmly devoted to her own family, and she seems to have
had a strong idea of her own want of beauty; perhaps her admiration for
her lovely young sisters may have caused this feeling to be exaggerated
by her. But no romantic, lovely heroine could have inspired a deeper or
more touching admiration than this one which M. Edelcrantz felt for his
English friend; the mild and superior Swede seems to have been
thoroughly in earnest.
So indeed was Miss Edgeworth, but she was not carried away by the
natural impulse of the moment. She realised the many difficulties and
dangers of the unknown; she looked to the future; she turned to her own
home, and with an affection all the more felt because of the trial
to which it was now exposed. The many lessons of self-control and
self-restraint which she had learnt returned with instinctive force.
Sometimes it happens that people miss what is perhaps the best for
the sake of the next best, and we see convenience and old habit and
expediency, and a hundred small and insignificant circumstances,
gathering like some avalanche to divide hearts that might give and
receive very much from each. But sentiment is not the only thing in
life. Other duties, ties, and realities there are; and it is difficult
to judge for others in such matters. Sincerity of heart and truth to
themselves are pretty sure in the end to lead people in the right
direction for their own and for other people's happiness. Only, in the
experience of many women there is the danger that fixed ideas, and other
people's opinion, and the force of custom may limit lives which might
have been complete in greater things, though perhaps less perfect in the
lesser. People in the abstract are sincere enough in wishing fulness of
experience and of happiness to those dearest and nearest to them; but we
are only human beings, and when the time comes and the horrible necessity
for parting approaches, our courage goes, our hearts fail, and we think
we are preaching reason and good sense while it is only a most natural
instinct which leads us to cling to that to which we are used and to
those we love.
Mr. Edgeworth did not attempt to influence Maria. Mrs. Edgeworth
evidently had some misgivings, and certainly much sympathy for the
Chevalier and for her friend and stepdaughter. She says:--
Maria was mistaken as to her own feelings. She refused M.
Edelcrantz, but she felt much more for him than esteem and
admiration; she was extremely in love with him. Mr. Edgeworth left
her to decide for herself; but she saw too plainly what it would
be to us to lose her and what she would feel at parting with us.
She decided rightly for her own future happiness and for that of
her family, but she suffered much at the time and long afterwards.
While we were at Paris I remember that in a shop, where Charlotte
and I were making purchases, Maria sat apart absorbed in thought,
and so deep in reverie that when her father came in and stood
opposite to her she did not see him till he spoke to her, when she
started and burst into tears.... I do not think she repented of
her refusal or regretted her decision. She was well aware that she
could not have made M. Edelcrantz happy, that she would not have
suited his position at the Court of Stockholm, and that her want
of beauty might have diminished his attachment. It was perhaps
better she should think so, for it calmed her mind; but from what
I saw of M. Edelcrantz I think he was a man capable of really
valuing her. I believe he was much attached to her, and deeply
mortified at her refusal. He continued to reside in Sweden after
the abdication of his master, and was always distinguished for his
high character and great abilities. He never married. He was,
except for his very fine eyes, remarkably plain.
So ends the romance of the romancer. There are, however, many
happinesses in life, as there are many troubles.
Mrs. Edgeworth tells us that after her stepdaughter's return to
Edgeworthtown she occupied herself with various literary works,
correcting some of her former MSS. for the press, and writing 'Madame de
Fleury,' 'Emilie de Coulanges,' and 'Leonora.' But the high-flown and
romantic style did suit her gift, and she wrote best when her genuine
interest and unaffected glances shone with bright understanding sympathy
upon her immediate surroundings. When we are told that 'Leonora' was
written in the style the Chevalier Edelcrantz preferred, and that the
idea of what he would think of it was present to Maria in every page, we
begin to realise that for us at all events it was a most fortunate thing
that she decided as she did. It would have been a loss indeed to the
world if this kindling and delightful spirit of hers had been choked by
the polite thorns, fictions, and platitudes of an artificial, courtly
life and by the well-ordered narrowness of a limited standard. She never
heard what the Chevalier thought of the book; she never knew that he
ever read it even. It is a satisfaction to hear that he married no one
else, and while she sat writing and not forgetting in the pleasant
library at home, one can imagine the romantic Chevalier in his distant
Court faithful to the sudden and romantic devotion by which he is now
remembered. Romantic and chivalrous friendship seems to belong to his
country and to his countrymen.