A Tragedy, in Two Acts.
Catiline (in love with Aurelia) Francis.
Cato (father of Aurelia) Pakenham.
Cicero (in love with Aurelia) Harriet.
Caesar Moilliet.
Aurelia (daughter of Cato) Sophy.
Julia (wife to Cato) Fanny.
We found Lucy on her sofa, with her feet towards the green-house; a
half-circle of chairs for the audience, with their backs touching the
wardrobe--candlestick-footlights, well shaded with square sofa-cushions
standing on end.
Prologue spoken by Harriet; curtain drew back, and Catiline and Aurelia
appeared. Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's _Antiquities_, out of
an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw,
though made up no mortal can tell how, like one of your own doings, dear
aunt, with a crown of ilex leaves. Aurelia was perfectly draped in my
French crimson shawl; she looked extremely classical and pretty, and her
voice was so sweet, and her looks alternately so indignant to Catiline
and so soft when she spoke of the man she loved, that I do not wonder
Catiline was so desperately enamoured.
Pakenham was wonderful: he had received no instructions. They had
determined to leave him to himself, and see what would come of it. He
had brought down an old wig from the garret, and Catiline and Cato could
not settle which it became best or worst; so Catiline wore his ilex
crown, and Pakenham a scarlet cap and black velvet cloak, his eyebrows
and chin darkened, a most solemn, stern countenance, a roll of white
paper in his hand, the figure immovable, as if cut in stone: the soul of
Cato seemed to have got into him. I never heard any actor speak better,
nor did I ever see a part better sustained; it seemed as if one saw Cato
through a diminishing glass. In one scene he interrupts Cicero, who is
going off into a fine simile--"Enough: the tale." He said these three
words so well, with such severity of tone, and such a piercing look,
that I see and hear him still. His voice was as firm as a man's, and his
self-possession absolute. He had his part so perfectly, that he was as
independent of the prompter as of all the rest of the world.
Moilliet recited and played his part of Caesar wondrous well. You may
think how well Pakenham and all of them must have acted, when we could
stand the ridicule of Pakenham's Cato opposite to Moilliet's Caesar. One
of James Moilliet's eyes would have contained all the eyes of Cato,
Catiline, and Cicero. Fanny, as Julia, was beautiful.
BLACK CASTLE, _Dec. 6, 1822_.
How do you all do, my dear friends, after last night's hurricane?
[Footnote: Numbers of the finest trees were blown down. The staircase
skylight was blown away, and the lead which surrounded it rolled up as
neatly as if just out of the plumber's: roofs were torn off and cabins
blown down.] Have any trees been blown away? Has the spire stood? Is
Madgy Woods alive? How many roofs of houses in the town have been blown
away, and how many hundred slates and panes of glass must be replaced?
The glass dome over the staircase at Ardbraccan has been blown away; two
of the saloon windows blown in. The servants in this house sat up all
night; I slept soundly. My aunt, roused at an unwonted hour from her bed
this morning, stood at the foot of mine while I was yet dreaming; and
she avers that when she told me that eight trees and the great green
gates were blown down, that I sat up in my bed, and, opening one eye,
answered, "Is it in the newspaper, ma'am?" When I came out to breakfast,
the first object I beheld was the uprooted elms lying prostrate opposite
the breakfast-room windows; and Mr. Fitzherbert says more than a hundred
are blown down in the uplands.
Now I have done with the hurricane, I must tell you a dream of Bess's:
she thought she went to call upon a lady, and found her reading a pious
tract called "The Penitent Poodle!"
_To_ MRS. O'BEIRNE.
BLACK CASTLE, _Jan. 15, 1823_.
We are delighted with _Peveril_, though there is too much of the dwarfs
and the elfie. Scott cannot deny himself one of these spirits in some
shape or other; I hope that we shall find that this elfin page, who has
the power of shrinking or expanding, as it seems, to suit the occasion,
is made really necessary to the story. I think the dwarf more allowable
and better drawn than the page, true to history, and consistent; but
Finella is sometimes handsome enough to make duke and king ready to be
in love with her, and sometimes an odious little fury, clenching her
hands, and to be lifted up or down stairs out of the hero's way. The
indistinctness about her is not that indistinctness which belongs to the
sublime, but that which arises from unsteadiness in the painter's hand
when he sketched the figure. He touched and retouched at different
times, without having, as it seems, a determined idea himself of what he
would make her; nor had he settled whether she should bring with her
"airs from heaven," or blasts from that place which is never named to
ears polite.
* * * * *
In May 1823 Miss Edgeworth took her half-sisters Harriet and Sophy to
Scotland. It was a very happy time to her, chiefly because there she
made an acquaintance with Sir Walter Scott, which soon ripened into an
intimate and lasting friendship. He had already admired her stories,
which he spoke of as "a sort of _essence_ of common sense."
* * * * *
MARIA _to_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
KINNEIL, _June 2, 1823_.
I wish you were here with us. We arrived between nine and ten last
night. The sea-shore approaching Kinneil House is exactly the idea I had
of the road to Glenthorn Castle; the hissing sound of the wheels and
all, and at last the postillion stopped where one road sloped directly
down into the Frith of Forth, and another turned abruptly up hill. He
said, "This is a-going into the water; I ha' come the wrong way." And up
the narrow road up the hill he went and turned the carriage, and down
again, and back the road we had come some little distance, and splash
across to a road on the opposite side, and then by the oddest back way
that seemed to be leading us into the stables, till at last we saw the
door of the real house, an old but white-washed castle-mansion. A
short-faced old butler in black came out of a sort of sentry-box back
door to receive us, and through odd passages and staircases we reached
the drawing-room, where we found fire and candles, and Mrs. Stewart and
a young tall man; Mrs. Stewart, just as you saw her at Bowood, received
Harriet and Sophy in her arms, spoke of their dear mother and of Honora,
and seated us on the sofa, and told Sophy to open a letter from Fanny,
which she put into her hand, and "feel herself at home," which indeed we
did. The tall young man was no hindrance to this feeling; an intimate
friend, a Mr. Jackson, who has been staying with Mr. Stewart as his
companion ever since his illness.
We passed through numerous ante-chambers, nooks, and halls--broad white
stone corner staircase, winding with low-arched roof. Our two rooms open
into one another--mine large, with four black doors, one locked and two
opening into closets, and back stairs, and if you mount to another
story, all the rooms are waste garrets. Mrs. Stewart told us this
morning that there were plenty of ghosts at our service belonging to
Kinneil House. One in particular, Lady Lilyburn, who is often seen all
in white, as a ghost should be, and with white wings, fluttering on the
top of the castle, from whence she leaps into the sea--a prodigious leap
of three or four hundred yards, nothing for a well-bred ghost. At other
times she wears boots, and stumps up and down stairs in them, and across
passages, and through bedchambers, frightening ladies' maids and others.
We have not heard her _yet_.
When we looked out of our windows this morning we saw fine views, and in
the shrubbery near the house some of the largest lilacs I ever saw in
rich flower. From another window, half a mile length of avenue with
gates through which we should by rights have approached the front of the
house. But all this time I have not said one word of what I had intended
to be the subject of this: Lanark and Mr. Owen's school. I am called
down to Lady Anna Maria Elliot; [Footnote: Afterwards Countess Russell.]
my mother may remember her in former days--she is said to be like Die
Vernon.
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.