Very good inn at Callander, and another at Loch Katrine--both raised by
the genius of Scott as surely and almost as quickly as the slave of the
lamp raises the palace of Aladdin. We spent one day and part of another
at Callander and Loch Katrine, and yesterday went to, and slept at,
Killin, along a very beautiful, fine, wild, romantic road. At Killin
took a very pretty walk before tea, of about two miles and a half, and
back again, to see a waterfall, which fully answered our expectations:
you see, I am very strong. I had taken another walk in the morning to
see the Bridge of Brackland, another beautiful waterfall, with a
six-inch bridge over a chasm of rocks, which looked as if they had been
built together to imitate nature.
We are reading _Reginald Dalton_, and like it very much, the second
volume especially, which will be very useful, I think, and is very
interesting. I am sure Mr. Lockhart describes his own wife's singing
when he describes Ellen's.
We hope to reach King's House to-night, and at Inverness we hope to find
letters from home. We are all well and happy, and this I am sure is the
most agreeable thing I can end with.
To MISS RUXTON.
INVERNESS, BENNET'S HOTEL, _July 3, 1823_.
I sent a shabby note to my aunt some days ago, merely to tell her that
we had seen Roslin; and Sophy wrote from Fort William of our visit to
Fern Tower: good house, fine place; Sir David Baird a fine old soldier,
without an arm, but with a heart and a head: warm temper, as eager about
every object, great or small, as a boy of fifteen. He swallows me,
though an authoress, wonderful well.
Our Highland tour has afforded me and my companions great pleasure;
Sophy has enjoyed it thoroughly. William has had a number of objects in
his own line to interest him. From Fort William, which is close to Ben
Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, we went to see a natural or
artificial curiosity called the Parallel Roads. On each side of a valley
called Glenroy, through which the river Roy runs, there appear several
lines of terraces at different heights, corresponding to each other on
each side of the valley at the same height. These terrace-roads are not
quite horizontal; they slope a little from the mountains. The learned
are at this moment fighting, in writing, much about these roads. Some
will have it that, in the days of Fingal, the Fingalians made them for
hunting-roads, to lie in ambush and shoot the deer from these long
lines. Others suppose that the roads were made by the subsiding of a
lake, which at different periods sank in this valley, and at last made
its way out. The roads, however made, are well worth seeing. We had a
most agreeable guide, not a professed guide, but a Highlander of the
Macintosh clan, an enthusiast for the beauties of his own country, and,
like the Swiss Chamouni guides, quite a well-informed and, moreover, a
fine-looking man, with an air of active, graceful independence; of whom
it might be said or sung, "_He's clever in his walking._" He spoke
English correctly, but as a foreign language, with _book_ choice of
expressions; no colloquial or vulgar phrases. He often seemed to take
time to translate his thoughts from the Gaelic into English. He knew
Scott's works, _Rob Roy_ especially, and knew all the theories about the
Parallel Roads, and explained them sensibly; and gave us accounts of the
old family feuds between his own Macintosh clan and the Macdonalds,
pointing to places where battles were fought, with a zeal which proved
the feudal spirit still lives in its ashes. When he found we were Irish,
he turned to me, and all reserve vanishing from his countenance, with
brightening eyes he said, as he laid his hand on his breast, "And you
are Irish! Now I know that, I would do ten times as much for you if I
could than when I thought you were Southerns or English. We think the
Irish have, like ourselves, more spirit." He talked of Ossian, and said
the English could not give the _force_ of the original Gaelic. He sang a
Gaelic song for us, to a tune like "St. Patrick's Day in the Morning."
He called St. Patrick Phaedrig, by which name I did not recognise him;
and our Highlander exclaimed, "Don't you know your own saint?" Sophy
sang the tune for him, with which he was charmed; and when he heard
William call her Sophy, he said to himself, "Sophia Western."
The next day we took a beautiful walk to the territory and near the
residence of Lochiel, through a wood where groups of clansmen and
clanswomen were barking trees that had been cut down; and the faggoting
and piling the bark was as picturesque as heart could wish.
This day's journey was through fine wild Highland scenery, where rocks
and fragments of rocks were tumbled upon each other, as if by giants in
a passion, and now and then by giants playing at bowls with huge round
bowls. These roads--some of them for which we "lift up our eyes and
bless Marshal Wade," and some made by Telford, the vast superiority in
the laying out of which William has had the pleasure of pointing out to
his sisters--beautifully wind over hill and through valley, by the sides
of streams and lakes. We saw the eight locks joining together on the
Caledonian Canal, called Neptune's Stairs; and at another place on the
canal William, who had been asleep, _instinctively_ wakened just in time
to see a dredging machine at work: we stopped the carriage, and walked
down to look at it: took a boat and rowed round the vessel, and went on
board and saw the machinery. A steam-engine works an endless chain of
buckets round and round upon a platform with rollers. The buckets have
steel mouthpieces, some with quite sharp projecting lips, which cut into
the sand and gravelly bottom, and scoop up what fills each bucket. At
the bottom of each are cullender holes, through which the water drains
off as the buckets go on and pass over the platform and empty themselves
on an inclined plane, down which the contents fall into a boat, which
rows away when full, and deposits the contents wherever wanted. If you
ever looked at a book at Edgeworthstown called _Machines Approuvés_, you
would have the image of this machine. It brought my father's drawings of
the Rhone machine before my eyes.
The whole day's drive was delightful--mountains behind mountains as far
as the eye could reach, in every shade, from darkest to palest
Indian-ink cloud colour; an ocean of mountains, with perpetually
changing foreground of rocks, sometimes bare as ever they were born,
sometimes wooded better than ever the hand of mortal taste clothed a
mountain in reality or in picture, with oak, aspen, and the beautiful
pendant birch.
At Fort Augustus the house was painting, and the beds looked wretched;
but all was made plausible with the help of fires and fair words, and we
slept as well, or better, than kings and queens. As to any real
inconvenience at Highland inns, we have met with none; always good fish,
good eggs, good butter, and good humour.
Next day we had another delightful drive: saw the Fall of Foyers: fine
scrambling up and down to a rock, and on this rock such huge tumbledown
stones, like Druids' temples, half-fallen, half-suspended. The breath
was almost taken away and head dizzy looking at them above and the depth
below; one could hardly believe we stood safe. Yet here we are safe and
sound at Inverness, the Capital of the North, as Scott calls it. This
Bennet's Hotel, where we are lodged, is as good as any in London or
Edinburgh, and cleaner than almost any I ever was in, with a waiter the
perfection of intelligence. We are going to see a place called the
Dream, the name translated from the Gaelic.
I forgot to tell you that, when at Edinburgh, we went to see Sir James
and Lady Foulis's friends, the Jardines, who were also friends of
Henry's. They are in a very pretty house, Laverock Bank, a few miles
from Edinburgh. We "felicity hunters" have found more felicity than such
hunters usually meet with.
_To_ MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.
KINROSS, _July 23, 1823_.
I left off in my yesterday's letter to my mother just as we were
changing horses at Dunkeld, at six o'clock in the evening, to go on to
Perth; but I had in that note arrived prematurely at Dunkeld, and had
not time to fill up the history of our day. Be pleased, therefore, to go
back to Moulinan, and see us eat luncheon; for, in spite of Mr. Grant's
contempt of these _bon-vivant_ details, habit will not allow me to
depart from my Swiss, Parisian, and English practice of giving the bill
of fare.
First course, cold: two roast chickens, better never were; a ham, finer
never seen, even at my mother's luncheons; pickled salmon, and cold
boiled round.
Second course, hot: a large dish of little trout from the river; new
potatoes, and, as I had professed to be unable to venture on new
potatoes, a dish of mashed potatoes for me; fresh greens, with toast
over, and poached eggs.
Then, a custard pudding, a gooseberry tart, and plenty of Highland
cream--_highly_ superior to Lowland--and butter, ditto.
And for all this how much did we pay? Six shillings.
Our drive in evening sunshine from Moulinan to Dunkeld was delightful,
along the banks, no longer of the dear little, sparkling, foaming,
fretting Garry, but of the broad, majestic, quiet, dark bottle-green
coloured Tay; the road a perfect gravel walk; the bank, all the way down
between us and the river, copsewood, with now and then a clump of fine
tall larch, or a single ash or oak, with spreading branches showing the
water beneath; the mountain side chiefly oak and alder, a tree which I
scarcely knew till Sophy _mentioned_ it to me; sometimes the wood broken
with glades of fern, heath, and young _stubble_ oaks, all the way up to
white rocks on the summit; the young shoots of these stubble oaks tinted
with pink, so as to have in the evening sun the appearance of autumn
rich tints; and between these oaks and the green fern and broom a giant
race of foxglove, which I verily believe, from the root to the spike,
would measure four good feet, all rich in bells of brightest crimson, so
bright that they crimsoned the whole bank.
All these ten miles of wooded road run, I understand, through the
territory of the Duke of Athol. Now I see his possessions, I am sure I
do not wonder the lady left her lack-gold lover in the lurch for
"Athol's duke." Along the whole road he has raised a footpath,
beautifully gravelled. Oh! how I wish our walks had one inch off the
surface of this footpath, or that the African magician, or the English
equally potent magician of steam, could convey to my mother's _elbow_ in
the Dingle one yard of one bank of the gravel which here wastes its
pebbles on the mountain side! How in a trice she would summon round her
her choice spirits, Briny Duffy, Micky Mulheeran, and Mackin, and how
they would with shovel and loy fall to!
Through the wood at continual openings we saw glimpses of beautiful
paths or gravelled walks, which this munificent duke has made through
his woods for the accommodation of the public. I forgive him for being
like an over-ripe Orleans plum, and for not saying a word, good or bad,
the day we met him at Mr. Morrit's.
At Dunkeld, alas! we bade adieu to the dear Highlands. I have not time
now to tell you of Killiecrankie and Dundee's Stone.
Arrived at Perth at nine o'clock: tea, with silver urn and silver
candlesticks, and all luxurious: cold chicken, ham, and marmalade
inclusive.
The drive from Perth this morning to Kinross is beautiful, but in a more
civilised and less romantic way than our Highland scenery. We are now
within view of Lochleven, Queen Mary's island.
During this morning's drive, Sophy sang "In April, when primroses blow"
most charmingly. Her singing was much admired in Edinburgh by Sir Walter
Scott, etc., but still more at Mrs. Macpherson's. One day, she sang
several of Moore's melodies, and some Scotch songs. Mrs. Macpherson, who
is excessively fond of music, was so charmed, she told me afterwards she
never heard a voice she thought so sweet and clear, and unaffected. She
rejoiced to hear it without music, or any accompaniment that could drown
it, or spoil its distinct simplicity. She observed what a charm there is
in her distinct pronunciation of the words, in her just emphasis, and in
her never forgetting the words, or keeping you in any anxiety for her,
or requiring to be pressed. "How delightful," said she, "to have such an
accomplishment, such a power to please always with her, without
requiring instruments, or music-books, or any preparation." I was afraid
her singing of Scotch might not suit the Scotch, and she never ventured
it till we were at Mrs. Macpherson's, who was quite charmed with it.
Indeed, her soft voice is very different from the screeching some
songstresses make, with vast execution. I am particularly full of the
pleasure of Sophy's singing at present, because I felt so much delight
from it when I was just recovering from my illness. I did not think it
was in the nature of my body or soul to feel so much pleasure from
singing or music; but the fact is as I tell you. After three nights of
pulse at ninety-six and delirium, in which I one night saw the arches of
Roslin Chapel, with roses of such brilliant light crowning them that I
shut my eyes to avoid the blaze; and another night was haunted with the
words "a soldier [Footnote: Miss Edgeworth had been reading Stewart's
_History of Highland Regiments_ the day before she was taken ill with an
attack of erysipelas.] of the forty-second has lost his portmanteau,"
and continual marching and countermarching, and rummaging of Highland
officers and privates in search of it, and an officer laughing at me and
saying, "Don't you know this is a common Highland saying, A soldier of
the forty-second has lost his portmanteau? It means"--but he never could
or would tell me what it meant, when another officer said, "Madam, there
is a Lowland saying to match it"; and this also I could never hear.
Another night the words of a song called the "Banks of Aberfeldy"
crossed my imagination, and a fat, rubicund man stood before me,
continually telling me that he was "John Aberfeldy, the happy." I cannot
tell you how this John Aberfeldy tormented me. After these three
horrible nights, when I awoke with my tongue so parched I could not
speak till a spoonful of lemon-juice was inserted, I asked Sophy to
sing, and she directly sang, "Dear harp of my country." I never shall
forget the sort of pleasure; it soothed, it "rapt my" _willing_ not my
"_imprisoned_ soul in elysium," and I was so happy to feel I could again
follow a rational chain of ideas, and comprehend the words of the
beautiful poetry, to which music added such a charm and force. She sang,
"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," and "Farewell, but
whenever you welcome the hour," and "Oh, Nanny, wilt thou gang wi' me?"
and "Vive Henri Quatre!" which I love for the sake of Mrs. Henry
Hamilton, and for the sake of Lady Longford's saying to me, with a
mother's pride and joy in her enthusiastic eyes, "My Caroline will sing
to me at any time, in any inn, or anywhere." I am sure I may say the
same of my sister Sophy, who will sing for me at an inn by my sick bed,
and with more power of voice than all the stimulus of company and
flattery can draw from other young ladies. I never wish to hear a fine
singer; I always agree with Dr. Johnson in wishing that the difficulties
had been impossibilities, with all their falsettos and tortures of
affectation to which they put themselves. How I hate them, and all the
aimings at true Italian pronunciation and true Italian manner, which
after all is, nine times out of ten, quite erroneous, and such as the
Italians themselves would laugh at, or most probably no more comprehend
than I did De Leuze repeating the "Botanic Garden": I was just going to
ask what language it was, when my mother, good at need, saved me from
the irreparable blunder by whispering, "It is English." The words were,
I believe, all right, but the accents were all thrown wrong. As Lady
Spencer said, "It is wonderful that foreigners never _by accident_
throw the accents right." Milton says:
For eloquence the soul, song moves the sense;
but if he had heard Moore's poetry sung by Sophy, he would have
acknowledged that song moved not only the sense, but the soul.
I have dilated upon this to you, my dear Lucy, because you have at times
felt the same about Sophy's singing. During my illness, day and night,
whenever pain and delirium allowed me rational thought, you and your
admirable patience recurred to my mind. I said to myself, "How can she
bear it so well, and in her young days, the spring-time of life? how
admirable is her resignation and cheerfulness! never a cross word, or
cross look, or impatient gesture, and for four years; when I, with all
my strength of experience and added philosophy from education, moan and
groan aloud, and can scarce bear ten days' illness, with two really
angel sisters to nurse me, and watch my 'asking eye'!" You have at least
the reward of my perfect esteem and admiration, after comparison with
myself, the only true standard by which I can estimate your worth.
* * * * *
Miss Edgeworth and her sisters spent a most happy fortnight with Sir
Walter Scott and his family. "Never," writes his son-in-law, "did I see
a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first
arrived there: never can I forget her look and accent when she was
received by him at his archway, and exclaimed: 'Everything about you is
exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream!'"
Sir Walter delighted in Miss Sophy Edgeworth's singing, especially of
Moore's Irish melodies. "Moore's the man for songs," he said. "Campbell
can write an ode, and I can make a ballad; but Moore beats us all at a
song." Sir Walter was then at the height of his fame and "in the glory
of his prime," surrounded by his family; both his sons were at home, and
his daughter Anne; and he had then staying with him his nephew, "Little
Walter." Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart were living at Chiefswood, but they were
continually at Abbotsford, or some of the party were continually at
Chiefswood; and Sir Walter's joyous manner and life of mind, his looks
of fond pride in his children, the pleasantness of his easy manners, the
gay walks, the evening conversations, and the drives in the sociable,
enchanted Miss Edgeworth. In these drives the flow of story, poetry,
wit, and wisdom never ceased; Sir Walter sitting with his dog Spicer on
his lap, and Lady Scott with her dog Ourisk on her lap.
Lady Scott one day expressed her surprise that Scott and Miss Edgeworth
had not met when the latter was in Edinburgh in 1803. "Why," said Sir
Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my dear, Miss
Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not grown at
all." [Footnote: _Life of George Ticknor_.]
* * * * *
MARIA _to_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
ABBOTSFORD, _July 31, 1823_.
I take a pen merely to say that I will not write! I have so much to say,
that I dare not trust myself, as I am still so far from strong, I must
not venture to play tricks with that health which it cost my dear, kind
nurses so much to preserve. I am as careful of myself as any creature
can be without becoming an absolute, selfish egotist. Lady Scott is
really so watchful and careful of me, that even when my own family
guardian angels are not on either or both sides of me, I can do no
wrong, and can come to no harm.
It is quite delightful to see Scott in 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.
_To_ MR. RUXTON.
ABBOTSFORD, _Aug. 9, 1823_.
I remember that you requested one of our party to write a few lines from
Abbotsford. I think I mentioned to my aunt or Sophy the impression which
I first experienced from Sir Walter Scott's great simplicity of manner,
joined to his wonderful superiority of intellect. This impression has
been strengthened by all I have seen of him since. In living with him in
the country, I have particularly liked his behaviour towards his variety
of guests, of all ranks, who come to his hospitable castle. Many of
these are artists, painters, architects, mechanists, antiquarians,
people who look up to him for patronage--none of them permitted to be
hangers on or parasites; his manners perfectly kind and courteous, yet
such as to command respect; and I never heard any one attempt to flatter
him. I never saw an author less of an author in his habits. This I early
observed, but have been the more struck with it the longer I have been
with him. He has, indeed, such variety of occupations, that he has not
time to think of his own works: how he has time to write them is the
wonder. You would like him for his love of trees; a great part of his
time out of doors is taken up in pruning his trees. I have within this
hour heard a gentleman say to him, "You have had a good deal of
experience in planting, Sir Walter; do you advise much thinning, or
not?"--"I should advise much thinning, but little at a time. If you thin
much at a time, you let in the wind, and hurt your trees."
I hope to show you a sketch of Abbotsford Sophy has made--better than
any description. Besides the Abbey of Melrose, we have seen many
interesting places in this neighbourhood. To-day we have been a
delightful drive through Ettrick Forest, and to the ruins of Newark--the
hall of Newark, where the ladies bent their necks of snow to hear the
Lay of the Last Minstrel. Though great part of Ettrick Forest was cut
down years ago, yet much of it has grown up again to respectable height,
and many most beautiful oak, ash, and alder trees remain. We had a happy
walk by the river, and after refreshing ourselves with a luncheon in a
summer-house beautifully situated, we went to look at the ruins of
Newark. It was a pity that this fine old building was let to go to ruin,
which it has done only within the last seventy years. The late Duke and
Duchess of Buccleuch, to whom it belonged, had in their youth lived
abroad, and were so ignorant about their own estate in Scotland, that
when they first came to live here they supposed there were no trees, and
no wood they thought could be had, and brought with them, among other
things, a barrel full of skewers for the cook.
It is very agreeable to observe how many friends of long standing Scott
has in this neighbourhood: they have been here, and we have been at
their houses: very good houses, and the style of living excellent.
Except one Prussian prince and one Swiss baron, no grand foreign
visitors have been here; indeed, this house is in such a state of
painting and papering, and carpenters finishing new rooms and chasing
the inhabitants out of the old, that it was impossible to have much
company.
Sir Walter's eldest son was here for some days--now gone back to
Sandhurst; he is excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary,
but he has sense and honourable principle, and is very grateful to those
who were kind to him in Ireland. His younger brother, Charles, who is
now at home, has more easy manners, is more conversible, and has more of
his father's literary taste. I am sorry to say we are to leave
Abbotsford the day after to-morrow; but the longer we stay the more
sorry we shall feel to go. We had intended to have paid a visit to Lady
Selkirk at St. Mary's Isle, but this would be a hundred miles out of our
way, and I have no time for it, which I regret, as I liked very much the
little I saw of Lady Selkirk in London.
* * * * *
After visits at Glasgow and Dalwharran, Miss Edgeworth and her sisters
returned to Ireland.
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Nov. 20, 1823_.
It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day
longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or landing. You ask
what I am doing: nothing, but reading and idling, and paving a gutter
and yard to Honora's pig-stye, and school-house. What have I been
reading? The "Siege of Valencia," by Mrs. Hemans, which is an hour too
long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry I have read for
years. I have read Quin's letters from Spain, entertaining; the review
of it in the _Quarterly_ is by Blanco White. Dr. Holland's letters
continue to be as full of information and interest as ever, though he is
a married man. Tell Sophy that the subject of electricity and
electro-magnetism is every day affording new facts, and all the
philosophers on the Continent are busy about it. Sir Humphry Davy had a
narrow escape of breaking his neck by a fall down stairs, but he is not
hurt, _tout an contraire_. I had a letter, written in very good English,
the other day from M. de Staël; he is now in London, and tells me the
French and the Holy Alliance are tyrannising sadly at Geneva, and have
ordered all the Italian patriots who had taken refuge there to decamp.
There is one of these, Count Somebody or other, whose name I cannot
persuade myself to get up to look for, whom M. de Staël wishes I would
take by the hand in London, and what I am to do with him when I have him
by the hand I don't know.
I had a letter from Walter Scott, who has been delighted with the
history of Caraboo, [Footnote: Caraboo is alluded to in _St. Roman's
Well_, published in the autumn of this year. Sir Walter had never heard
of her till Miss Edgeworth told her history to him at Abbotsford.] which
I sent to him: a pamphlet published at the time. He says that nobody
with a reasonable head could attempt to calculate the extent of popular
credulity, and observes that she, like all the great cheats who have
imposed upon mankind, was touched with insanity, half knave, half mad,
at last the dupe of her own acting of enthusiasm.
Prince Hohenlohe and the pamphlets, pro and con, occupy us much.
Crampton's second edition of his I think excellent. Some very curious
facts have been brought out of the effect of the imagination upon the
bodily health. And while Scott is writing novels to entertain the world,
and the philosophers in France trying experiments on electro-magnetism,
Davy tumbling down stairs, and Denham and Co. in Africa looking for the
Niger, here is all London rushing out to look at the cottage in which a
swindler lived who murdered another swindler, and buying bits of the
sack in which the dead body was put! Have your newspapers given what we
have had in the _Morning Chronicle_? views of Roberts's cottage and the
pond with Thurtell and Hunt dragging the body out of it? Shakespear
understood John Bull right well, and always gave him plenty of murders
and dead bodies. I am glad there are no Irishmen in this base as well as
savage gang.
_To_ MISS RUXTON.
PAKENHAM HALL, _Jan. 21_.
We, my mother, Lovell, Fanny, and I, came here yesterday, glad to see
Lord Longford surrounded by his friends in old Pakenham Hall hospitable
style,--he always cordial, unaffected, and agreeable. The house has been
completely new-modelled, chimneys taken down from top to bottom, rooms
turned about from lengthways to broad-ways, thrown into one another, and
out of one another, and the result is that there is a comfortable
excellent drawing-room, dining-room, and library, and the bedchambers
are admirable. Mrs. Smyth, of Gaybrook, and her daughter are here, and
Mr. Knox; and I have been so lucky as to be seated next to him at dinner
yesterday, and at breakfast this morning; he is very agreeable when he
speaks, and when he is silent it is "silence that speaks."
Lady Longford [Footnote: Georgiana, daughter of the first Earl
Beauchamp.] has been very attentive to us. She has the finest and most
happy open-faced children I ever saw--not the least troublesome, yet
perfectly free and at their case with the company and with their
parents.
A box will be left in Dublin for you on Monday morning. There is no
telling you how happy I have been getting ready and packing and fussing
about the said box for you, flying about the house from the library to
the garret. And all for what? When Sophy, whom I beg to be the unpacker,
opens it, you will see a certain dabbed-up crooked pasteboard tray in
which are four frills for you: I hemmed every inch of them myself, to
give them the only value they could have in your eyes.
_To_ MRS. BANNATYNE.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Feb. 16, 1824_.
My dear Mr. and Mrs. Bannatyne--my dear Mrs. Starke and Miss Bannatyne,
and Andrew and Dugald, and all of you kind friends, put your heads close
together to hear a piece of intelligence which will, I know, rejoice
your kind hearts.
_Our_ dear Sophy and _your_ dear Sophy is going to be married to a
person whom her mother, and every one of her own family completely
approve, who has been tenderly attached to her for some time, whose
principles, understanding, manners, and honourable manly character are
such as to deserve such a wife as I may proudly say he will have in
Sophy. His birth, family connections, and fortune are all such as we
could wish. The gentleman is a cousin of our own Captain Barry Fox; he
is an officer, but will probably leave the army, and settle in his own
country; we hope within reach of us. He has been so kind and considerate
about poor Lucy, so anxious not to deprive her too suddenly of her
beloved, and best of nurses, that he has endeared himself the more to us
all.
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 18, 1824_.
The indissoluble knot is tied! What an awful ceremony it is! What an
awful deed! How can parents bear to be at the weddings of their children
where it is not a marriage of their own free choice? and how can a woman
herself pronounce that solemn vow when she is marrying for money, or for
grandeur, or from any earthly motive but the pure heart?--a purer heart
than my sister Sophy's I do believe never approached the altar, nor was
the hand ever given more entirely with the free heart. There was no one
at the wedding but our own family, Mr. Fox, Francis Fox, and William
Beaufort. We six ladies went in the carriage immediately after breakfast
to the church, where the gentlemen were waiting for us. The churchyard,
and church of course, crowded with the poor people of the village, but
as we drove out of our own lawn into Mr. Keating's, there was as little
annoyance from starers as possible. William Beaufort married them, as
had been Sophy's particular wish. The sun shone out with a bright
promise at the moment her marriage was completed. Barry handed her into
his chaise, the most commodious, prettiest, and plainest carriage I ever
saw, and away they drove.
_To_ MRS. O'BEIRNE. [Footnote: The Bishop of Meath died in 1823; and
Mrs. O'Beirne and her daughters went to reside in England.]
BLACK CASTLE, _July 6, 1824_.
In the little drawing-room at Black Castle, where we have been so often
happy together; in the little drawing-room to which you have so often
brought me to see my dear aunt, I now write to you, my dear friend, to
tell you how much I miss you. I feel a perpetual want of that part of my
happiness in this dear place which I owed to its neighbourhood to
another dear place to which I cannot now bear to go. Once, and but once,
in the two months I have been here have I been there; when the
indispensable civility of returning a formal visit required it, and then
I felt it to be as much, if not more, than I was able to do, with the
composure I felt to be proper. The sitting in that red drawing-room and
missing everything I had so loved--the saloon, the lawn--I really could
not speak, and heartily glad I was when I got away.
My plans of going to England this summer have been all broken up: you
know how, as you have heard of the death of my dear sister Anna,
[Footnote: Anna Edgeworth, Maria's whole sister, had married Dr. Beddoes
in 1794.] at Florence; the account of her loss reached me just when I
was joyfully expecting an answer to a letter full of projects which she
never lived to read. GOD'S will be done. We expect my nieces, Anna and
Mary, at Edgeworthstown as soon as they return from Italy.
_To_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _July 17, 1824_.
I hope this will find you at Cheltenham with Barry and Sophy, and Fanny;
my mother and Margaret set off this fine morning for Black Castle, and
Lucy is now in the dining-room, her bed aslant across the open middle
window, the grass plot new-mown, and a sweet smell of fresh hay. They
are drawing home the hay, and men are driving past the windows on empty
cars, or leading loaded ones. The roses are still in full blow on the
trellis. Aunt Bess sitting by Lucy talking of the beautiful thorns in
the Phoenix Park, and I am sitting on the other side of Lucy's bed by
the pillar.
Margaret Ruxton when here was eager to pay her compliments to Peggy
Tuite; her husband has written for her to go to him, and she is now
"torn almost in two between the wish to go to her husband and her
lothness to leave her old mother." She gave Margaret and me the history
of her losing and finding her wedding ring. "Sure I knew my luck would
change when I found my wedding ring that I lost four years ago--down in
the quarry. I went across the fields to feed the pig, and looked and
looked till I was tired, and then concluded I had given it to the pig
mixed up and that he had swallowed it for ever--it was a real gold ring.
But the men that was clearing out the _rubbage_ in the quarry found it
and adjourned to the public house to share the luck of it. My brother
got scent of it and went directly to inform the man that found it whose
the ring was, and demanded it; he wouldn't hear of giving it back, and
sold it to a pensioner there above; my brother set off with himself to
the priest and told all, and the priest summoned the man and the
pensioner, and my brother, and in the presence of an honest man, Mr.
Sweeny, warned the pensioner to restore the wedding ring, since my
brother could tell the tokens on it. 'It's the woman's wedding ring to
remind her of her conjugal duties, and it's sacrilege to take it.' But
the man that sold it was hardened, and the pensioner said he had paid
for it, and so says the priest to Keegan, that's the master of the
quarry men, 'Turn this man out of the work, he is a bad man and he will
corrupt the rest. And, Peggy Tuite, I advise you and your brother to go
straight to Major Bond and summon these men.'" Then she described the
trial, when Tuite "swore to the tokens where it had been crushed by a
stone, and the goldsmith's mark, and the Major held it between him and
the light and plainly noticed the crush and the battered marks, and
handing me the ring said, 'Peggy Tuite, this is your ring sure enough.'"
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _August 16, 1824_.
We have heard from Sophy Fox, who tells us that they have been delighted
with their journey to Aberystwith, especially the devil's bridge. Can
you tell me why the devil has so many bridges, sublime and beautiful, in
every country of the habitable world? Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées
to his Satanic majesty would be a place of great business, profit and
glory, and would require a man of first-rate abilities. Lucy has painted
a beautiful portrait of her bullfinch, picking at a bunch of white
currants--the currants would, I am sure, be picked by any live bird.
Tell me how you like _Haji Baba_.
_To_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _August 28, 1824_.
I am impatient to set my dear Aunt Mary's [Footnote: After the death of
her sister Charlotte in 1822, Mrs. Mary Sneyd resided occasionally with
her brother in England till 1828, when she returned finally to
Edgeworthstown, where she remained for the rest of her life, deeply
attached to all the family, but regarding her niece Honora as peculiarly
her own child.] mind free from the anxiety I am sure she feels about her
decision to stay in England this winter; whatever disappointment and
regret I felt was mitigated by her beautifully kind and tender note.
Your entertaining account of the archery meeting at Lord Bagot's came
yesterday evening. What a magnificent entertainment, and in what good
taste! It was a delightful house for a _fête champêtre_.
The Roman Catholic Bishop, M'Gaurin, held a confirmation the day before
yesterday, and dined here on a God-send haunch of venison. Same day Mr.
Hunter arrived, and Mr. Butler came with young Mr. Hamilton, an
"admirable Crichton" of eighteen; a real prodigy of talents, who Dr.
Brinkley says may be a second Newton--quite gentle and simple. Mr. and
Mrs. Napier arrived on Wednesday, and spent two most agreeable days with
us; he is an extremely well-informed man, and both are perfectly
well-bred. Mr. Butler and Mr. Hamilton suited them delightfully. Mr.
Butler and Mr. Napier found they were both Oxford men, and took to each
other directly. Mr. Napier's conversation is quite superior and easy.
Those two days put me in mind of former times. Hunter is very happy here
in spite of his cockney prejudices; he says _Harry and Lucy_ must be
ready by October.
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.
_Jan. 1, 1825_.
A happy new year to you, my dearest aunt,--to you to whom I now look as
much as I can to any one now living, for the rays of pleasure that I
expect to gild my bright evening of life. As we advance in life we
become more curious, more fastidious in gilding and gilders; we find to
our cost that all that glitters is not gold, and your everyday bungling
carvers and gilders will not do. Our _evening-gilders_ must be more
skilful than those who flashed and daubed away in the morning of life,
and gilt with any tinsel, the weather-cock for the morning sun.
You may perceive, my dear aunt, by my having got so finely to the
weather-cock, and the rising sun, that I am out of the hands of all my
dear apothecaries, and playing away again with a superfluity of life.
(N.B. I am surprisingly prudent.) Honora's cough has almost subsided,
and Lucy can sit upright the greater part of the day. "GOD bless the
mark!" as Molly Bristow would say, if she heard me, "don't be bragging."
_Jan. 6_.
I have to give you the most cheering accounts of Honora and Lucy. Honora
is now on the sofa opposite to me, working with her candle beside her on
a bracket--my new year's gift to the sofas, a mahogany bracket on each
side of the chimney-piece to fold up or down, and large enough to hold a
candlestick and a teacup or work-box. Mary Beddoes and I are on the sofa
next the door; Honora and Anna on the other, and somebody sitting in the
middle talking by turns to each sofa. Who can that be? Not Harriet, for
tea is over and she has seceded to Lucy's room--not my mother, nor
William, nor Mrs. Beaufort, nor Louisa, for the carriage has carried
them away some hours ago, poor souls, and full-dressed bodies, to dine
at Ardagh. But who can this Unknown be? A gentleman it must be to
constitute the happiness of two sofas of ladies.
My nephew, Henry Beddoes! and the joy of ladies he certainly will be,
not merely of aunts and sisters, but of all who can engage or be engaged
by prepossessing manners and appearance, and the promise of all that is
amiable and intelligent. I am delighted with him, and he would charm
you.
Lady Bathurst has done me another good turn for Fanny Stewart, that is,
for her husband; there was a charming letter from Fanny Stewart a few
days ago. I send for your amusement the famous little _Valoe_ in its
elegantissimo binding, and Lady Bathurst's letter about it,
elegantissima also. You remember, I hope, the story of its publication,
written by a governess of the Duchess of Beaufort's, assisted by all the
conclave of quality young-lady-governesses, with little traits of
character of their pupils. The authoress sent it to the Duchess of
Beaufort, asking permission to publish and dedicate it to her Grace. The
Duchess never read it, and returned it to the Governess with a
compliment, and, "publish it by all means, and dedicate it to me." Out
came the publication; and though each young lady was flattered, yet all
quarrelled with the mode of compliment, and in many there was a little
touch of blame, which moved their or their mothers' anger, and with one
accord they attacked the Duchess of Beaufort for her permission to
publish, and the edition was all bought up in a vast hurry.
In a few days I trust--you know I am a great truster--that you will
receive a packet franked by Lord Bathurst, containing only a little
pocket-book--_Friendships Offering, for_ 1825, dizened out; I fear you
will think it too fine for your taste, but there is in it, as you will
find, the old "Mental Thermometer," which was once a favourite of yours.
You will wonder how it came there--simply thus. Last autumn came by the
coach a parcel containing just such a book as this for last year, and a
letter from Mr. Lupton Relfe--a foreigner settled in London--and he
prayed in most polite bookseller strain that I would look over my
portfolio for some trifle for this book for 1825. I might have looked
over "my portfolio" till doomsday, as I have not an unpublished scrap,
except "Take for Granted." [Footnote: "Take for Granted" was an idea
which Maria never worked out into a story, though she had made many
notes for it.] But I recollected the "Mental Thermometer," and that it
had never been _out_, except in the _Irish Farmer's Journal_--not known
in England. So I routed in the garret under pyramids of old newspapers,
with my mother's prognostics, that I never should find it, and loud
prophecies that I should catch my death, which I did not, but dirty and
dusty, and cobwebby, I came forth after two hours' grovelling with my
object in my hand! Cut it out, added a few lines of new end to it, and
packed it off to Lupton Relfe, telling him that it was an old thing
written when I was sixteen. Weeks elapsed, and I heard no more, when
there came a letter exuberant in gratitude, and sending a parcel
containing six copies of the new Memorandum book, and a most beautiful
twelfth edition of Scott's _Poetical Works_, bound in the most elegant
manner, and with most beautifully engraved frontispieces and vignettes,
and a £5 note. I was quite ashamed--but I have done all I could for him
by giving the _Friendship's Offerings_ to all the fine people I could
think of. The set of Scott's Works made a nice New Year's gift for
Harriet; she had seen this edition at Edinburgh and particularly wished
for it. The £5 I have sent to Harriet Beaufort to be laid out in books
for Fanny Stewart. Little did I think the poor old "Thermometer" would
give me so much pleasure.
Here comes the carriage rolling round. I feel guilty; what will my
mother say to me, so long a letter at this time of night?--Yours
affectionately in all the haste of guilt, conscience-stricken: that is,
found out.
No--all safe, all innocent--because _not found out.