In the flats of the featureless county of Longford stands the large and
handsome but unpretentious house of Edgeworthstown. The scenery here has
few natural attractions, but the loving care of several generations has
gradually beautified the surroundings of the house, and few homes have
been more valued or more the centre round which a large family circle
has gathered in unusual sympathy and love. In his _Memoirs_, Mr.
Edgeworth tells us how his family, which had given a name to Edgeworth,
now Edgeware, near London, came to settle in Ireland more than three
hundred years ago. Roger Edgeworth, a monk, having taken advantage of
the religious changes under Henry VIII., had married and left two sons,
who, about 1583, established themselves in Ireland. Of these, Edward,
the elder, became Bishop of Down and Connor, and died without children;
but the younger, Francis, became the founder of the family of
Edgeworthstown. Always intensely Protestant, often intensely
extravagant, each generation of the Edgeworth family afterwards had its
own picturesque story, till Richard Edgeworth repaired the broken
fortunes of his house, partly by success as a lawyer, partly by his
marriage, in 1732, with Jane Lovell, daughter of a Welsh judge.
Their eldest son, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, was born in 1744, and
educated in his boyhood at Drogheda School and Dublin University.
Strong, handsome, clever, ingenious, and devoted to sports of every
kind, he was a general favourite. But his high spirits often led him
into scrapes. The most serious of these occurred during the festivities
attendant on his eldest sister's marriage with Mr. Fox of Fox Hall, at
which he played at being married to a young lady who was present, by one
of the guests dressed up in a white cloak, with a door-key for a ring.
This foolish escapade would not deserve the faintest notice, if it had
not been seriously treated as an actual marriage by a writer in the
_Quarterly Review._
In 1761 Richard Edgeworth was removed from Dublin to Corpus Christi
College at Oxford. There he arrived, regretting the gaieties of Dublin,
and anxious to make the most of any little excitements which his new
life could offer. Amongst the introductions he brought with him was one
to Mr. Paul Elers, who, himself of German extraction, had made a
romantic marriage with Miss Hungerford, the heiress of Black Bourton in
Oxfordshire. Mr. Elers honourably warned Mr. Edgeworth, who was an old
friend of his, that he had four daughters who were very pretty, and that
his friend had better be careful, as their small fortunes would scarcely
fit one of them to be the wife of his son. But the elder Mr. Edgeworth
took no notice--Richard was constantly at Black Bourton; and in 1763,
being then only nineteen, he fled with Miss Anna Maria Elers to Gretna
Green, where they were married. Great as was Mr. Edgeworth's
displeasure, he wisely afterwards had the young couple remarried by
license.
The union turned out unhappily. "I soon felt the inconveniences of an
early and hasty marriage," wrote the bridegroom; "but, though I heartily
repented my folly, I determined to bear with firmness and temper the
evil which I had brought on myself." His eldest child, Richard, was born
before he was twenty; his second, Maria, when he was twenty-four. Though
he became master of Edgeworthstown by the death of his father in 1769,
he for some years lived chiefly at Hare Hatch, near Maidenhead. Here he
already began to distract his attention from an ungenial home by the
endless plans for progress in agriculture and industry, and the
disinterested schemes for the good of Ireland, which always continued to
be the chief occupation of his life. It was his inventive genius which
led to his paying a long visit to Lichfield to see Dr. Darwin. There he
lingered long in pleasant intimacy with the doctor and his wife, with
Mr. Wedgwood, Miss Anna Seward--"the Swan of Lichfield"--and still more,
with the eccentric Thomas Day, author of _Sandford and Merton_, who
became his most intimate friend, and who wished to marry his favourite
sister Margaret, though she could not make up her mind to accept him,
and eventually became the wife of Mr. Ruxton of Black Castle. With Mrs.
Seward and her daughters lived at that time--partly for educational
purposes--Honora Sneyd, a beautiful and gifted girl, who had rejected
the addresses of the afterwards famous Major André, and who now also
refused those of Mr. Day. "In Honora Sneyd," wrote Mr. Edgeworth, "I saw
for the first time in my life a woman that equalled the picture of
perfection existing in my imagination. And then my not being happy at
home exposed me to the danger of being too happy elsewhere." When he
began to feel as if the sunshine of his life emanated from his
friendship with Miss Sneyd, he was certain flight was the only safety.
So leaving Mrs. Edgeworth and her little girls with her mother, he made
his escape to France, only taking with him his boy, whom he determined
to educate according to the system of Rousseau. Then, for two years, he
remained at Lyons, employing his inventive and mechanical powers in
building bridges.
Meantime, the early childhood of Maria Edgeworth, who was born, 1st
January 1767, in the house of her grandfather, Mr. Elers, at Black
Bourton, was spent almost entirely with relations in Oxfordshire, or
with her maternal great-aunts, the Misses Blake, in Great Russell Street
in London. It was in their house that her neglected and unloved
mother--always a kind and excellent, though a very sad woman--died after
her confinement of a third daughter (Anna) in 1773. On hearing of what
he considered to be his release, Mr. Edgeworth hurried back at once to
England, and, before four months were over, he was married to Miss
Honora Sneyd, whose assent to so hasty a marriage would scarcely prepare
those who were unacquainted with her for the noble, simple, and faithful
way in which she ever fulfilled the duties of a wife and stepmother. The
son of the first marriage, Richard Edgeworth, went, by his own choice,
to sea, but the three little girls, Maria, Emmeline, and Anna, returned
with their father and stepmother to Edgeworthstown, where they had a
childhood of unclouded happiness.
In 1775 Maria Edgeworth, being then eight years old, was sent to a
school at Derby, kept by Mrs. Lataffiere, to whom she always felt much
indebted, though her stepmother, then in very failing health, continued
to take part in her education by letter.
MRS. HONORA EDGEWORTH _to_ MARIA.