One of the prettiest and most sympathetic incidents in Maria Edgeworth's
life was a subsequent expedition to Abbotsford and the pleasure she gave
to its master. They first met in Edinburgh, and her short account
conjures up the whole scene before us:--
Ten o'clock struck as I read this note. We were tired, we were not
fit to be seen, but I thought it right to accept Walter Scott's
cordial invitation, sent for a hackney coach, and just as we were,
without dressing, we went. As the coach stopped we saw the hall
lighted, and the moment the door opened heard the joyous sounds
of loud singing. Three servants' 'The Miss Edgeworths!' sounded
from hall to landing-place, and as I paused for a moment in the
anteroom I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice--'The
Miss Edgeworths _come_!' The room was lighted by only one globe
lamp; a circle were singing loud and beating time: all stopped in
an instant.
Is not this picture complete? Scott himself she describes as 'full of
genius without the slightest effort at expression, delightfully natural,
more lame but not so unwieldy as she expected.' Lady Scott she goes on
to sketch in some half-dozen words--'French, large dark eyes, civil and
good-natured.'
When we wakened the next morning the whole scene of the preceding
night seemed like a dream [she continues]; however at twelve came
the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott at the Parliament
House, who came out of the Courts with joyous face, as if he had
nothing on earth to do or to think of but to show us Edinburgh.
In her quick, discriminating way she looks round and notes them all one
by one.
Mr. Lockhart is reserved and silent, but he appears to have much
sensibility under this reserve. Mrs. Lockhart is very pleasing--a
slight, elegant figure and graceful simplicity of manner, perfectly
natural. There is something most winning in her affectionate manner
to her father. He dotes upon her.
A serious illness intervened for poor Maria before she and her devoted
young nurses could reach Abbotsford itself. There she began to recover,
and Lady Scott watched over her and prescribed for her with the most
tender care and kindness. 'Lady Scott felt the attention and respect
Maria showed to her, perceiving that she valued her and treated her as a
friend,' says Mrs. Edgeworth; 'not, as too many of Sir Walter's guests
did, with neglect.' This is Miss Edgeworth's description of the
Abbotsford family life:--
It is quite delightful to see Scott and his family in the country;
breakfast, dinner, supper, the same flow of kindness, fondness,
and genius, far, far surpassing his works, his letters, and all my
hopes and imagination. His Castle of Abbotsford is magnificent,
but I forget it in thinking of him.
The return visit, when Scotland visited Ireland, was no less successful.
Mrs. Edgeworth writes:--
Maria and my daughter Harriet accompanied Sir Walter and Miss Scott, Mr.
Lockhart, and Captain and Mrs. Scott to Killarney. They travelled in an
open calèche of Sir Walter's....
Sir Walter was, like Maria, never put out by discomforts on a journey,
but always ready to make the best of everything and to find amusement in
every incident. He was delighted with Maria's eagerness for everybody's
comfort, and diverted himself with her admiration of a green
baize-covered door at the inn at Killarney. 'Miss Edgeworth, you are so
mightily pleased with that door, I think you will carry it away with you
to Edgeworthtown.'
Miss Edgeworth's friendships were certainly very remarkable, and comprise
almost all the interesting people of her day in France as well as in
England.[3] She was liked, trusted, surrounded, and she appears to have
had the art of winning to her all the great men. We know the Duke of
Wellington addressed verses to her; there are pleasant intimations of
her acquaintance with Sir James Mackintosh, Romilly, Moore, and Rogers,
and that most delightful of human beings, Sydney Smith, whom she
thoroughly appreciated and admired. Describing her brother Frank, she
says, somewhere, 'I am much inclined to think that he has a natural
genius for happiness; in other words, as Sydney Smith would say, _great
hereditary constitutional joy_.' 'To attempt to Boswell Sydney Smith's
conversation would be to outboswell Boswell,' she writes in another
letter home; but in Lady Holland's memoir of her father there is a
pleasant little account of Miss Edgeworth herself, 'delightful, clever,
and sensible,' listening to Sydney Smith. She seems to have gone the
round of his parish with him while he scolded, doctored, joked his poor
people according to their needs.
Footnote 3: A touching illustration of her abiding influence is to be
found cited in an article in the _Daily News_ of September 7, 1883,
published as these proofs are going to press, by 'One Who Knew' Ivan
Turguéneff, that great Russian whom we might almost claim if love and
admiration gave one a right to count citizenship with the great men of
our time. An elder brother of his knew Miss Edgeworth, perhaps at
Abbotsford, for he visited Walter Scott there, or at Coppet with Madame
de Staël. This man, wise and cultivated in all European literature,
'came to the conclusion that Maria Edgeworth had struck on a vein from
which most of the great novelists of the future would exclusively work.
She took the world as she found it, and selected from it the materials
that she thought would be interesting to write about, in a clear and
natural style. It was Ivan Turguéneff himself who told me this, says the
writer of the article, and he modestly said that he was an unconscious
disciple of Miss Edgeworth in setting out on his literary career. He had
not the advantage of knowing English; but as a youth he used to hear his
brother translate to visitors at his country house in the Uralian Hills
passages from _Irish Tales and Sketches_, which he thought superior to
her three-volume novels. Turguéneff also said to me, "It is possible, nay
probable, that if Maria Edgeworth had not written about the poor Irish
of the co. Longford and the squires and squirees, that it would not have
occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the
classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing out the
beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their extreme
simplicity and to the distinction with which she treated the simple ones
of the earth."'
'During her visit she saw much of my father,' says Lady Holland; 'and
her talents as well as her thorough knowledge and love of Ireland made
her conversation peculiarly agreeable to him.' On her side Maria writes
warmly desiring that some Irish bishopric might be forced upon Sydney
Smith, which 'his own sense of natural charity and humanity would forbid
him refuse.... In the twinkling of an eye--such an eye as his--he would
see all our manifold grievances up and down the country. One word, one
_bon mot_ of his, would do more for us, I guess, than ----'s four
hundred pages and all the like with which we have been bored.'
The two knew how to make good company for one another; the
quiet-Jeanie-Deans body could listen as well as give out. We are told
that it was not so much that she said brilliant things, but that a
general perfume of wit ran through her conversation, and she most
certainly had the gift of appreciating the good things of others.
Whether in that 'scene of simplicity, truth, and nature' a London rout,
or in some quiet Hampstead parlour talking to an old friend, or in her
own home among books and relations and interests of every sort, Miss
Edgeworth seems to have been constantly the same, with presence of mind
and presence of heart too, ready to respond to everything. I think her
warmth of heart shines even brighter than her wit at times. 'I could not
bear the idea that you suspected me of being so weak, so vain, so
senseless,' she once wrote to Mrs. Barbauld, 'as to have my head turned
by a little fashionable flattery.' If her head was not turned it must
have been because her spirit was stout enough to withstand the world's
almost irresistible influence.
Not only the great men but the women too are among her friends. She
writes prettily of Mrs. Somerville, with her smiling eyes and pink
colour, her soft voice, strong, well-bred Scotch accent, timid, not
disqualifying timid, but naturally modest. 'While her head is among the
stars her feet are firm upon the earth.' She is 'delighted' with a
criticism of Madame de Staël's upon herself, in a letter to M. Dumont.
'Vraiment elle était digne de l'enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans
votre triste utilité.' It is difficult to understand why this should
have given Miss Edgeworth so much pleasure; and here finally is a little
vision conjured up for us of her meeting with Mrs. Fry among her
prisoners:--
Little doors, and thick doors, and doors of all sorts were
unbolted and unlocked, and on we went through dreary but clean
passages till we came to a room where rows of empty benches
fronted us, a table on which lay a large Bible. Several ladies and
gentlemen entered, took their seats on benches at either side of
the table in silence. Enter Mrs. Fry in a drab-coloured silk cloak
and a plain, borderless Quaker cap, a most benevolent countenance,
calm, benign. 'I must make an inquiry. Is Maria Edgeworth here?'
And when I went forward she bade me come and sit beside her. Her
first smile as she looked upon me I can never forget. The
prisoners came in in an orderly manner and ranged themselves upon
the benches.