Long may you feel impatient to hear from your friends, my dear Sophy,
and long may you express your impatience as agreeably. I have a great
deal bottled, or rather bundled up for you. Though I most earnestly wish
that my father was in that situation [Footnote: M.P. for the County of
Longford.] which Sir T. Fetherstone now graces, and though my father had
done me the honour to let me copy his Election letters for him, I am not
the least infected with the electioneering rage. Whilst the Election
lasted we saw him only a few minutes in the course of the day, then
indeed he entertained us to our hearts' content; now his mind seems
relieved from a disagreeable load, and we have more of his company.
You do not mention Madame Roland, therefore I am not sure whether you
have read her; if you have only read her in the translation which talks
of her Uncle Bimont's dying of a "fit of the gout _translated_ to his
chest," you have done her injustice. We think some of her memoirs
beautifully written, and like Rousseau: she was a great woman and died
heroically, but I don't think she became more amiable, and certainly not
more happy by meddling with politics; _for_--her head is cut off, and
her husband has shot himself. I think if I had been Mons. Roland I
should not have shot myself for her sake, and I question whether he
would not have left undrawn the trigger if he could have seen all she
intended to say of him to posterity: she has painted him as a harsh,
stiff, pedantic man, to whom she devoted herself from a sense of duty;
her own superiority, and his infinite obligations to her, she has taken
sufficient pains to blazon forth to the world. I do not like all this,
and her duty work, and her full-length portrait _of_ herself _by_
herself. The foolish and haughty Madame de Boismorrel, who sat upon the
sofa, and asked her if she ever wore feathers, was probably one of the
remote causes of the French Revolution: for Madame Roland's Republican
spirit seems to have retained a long and lively remembrance of this
aristocratic visit.
As soon as the blind bookseller [Footnote: A pedlar who travelled
through the country, and sometimes picked up at sales curious books new
and old.] can find them for us, we shall read Miss Williams's _Letters._
I am glad we both prefer the same parts in Dr. Aikin's _Letters_: I
liked that on the choice of a wife, but I beg to except the word
_helper_, which is used so often and is associated with a helper in the
stables. Lovell dined with Mr. Aikin at Mr. Stewart's, at Edinburgh, and
has seen the Comte d'Artois, who he says has rather a silly face,
especially when it smiles. Sneyd is delighted with the four volumes of
_Evenings at Home_, which we have just got, and has pitched upon the
best stories, which he does not, like M. Dalambert, spoil in the
reading--"Perseverance against Fortune," "The Price of a Victory," and
"Capriole." We were reading an account of the pinna the other day, and
very much regretted that your pinna's brown silk tuft had been eaten by
the mice--what will they not eat?--they have eaten my thimble case! I am
sorry to say that, from these last accounts of the pinna and his cancer
friend, Dr. Darwin's beautiful description is more poetic than accurate.
The cancer is neither watchman nor market-woman to the pinna, nor yet
his friend: he has free ingress to his house, it is true, and is often
found there, but he does not visit on equal terms, or on a friendly
footing, for the moment the pinna gets him in he shuts the door and eats
him; or if he is not hungry, kills the poor shrimp and keeps him in the
house till the next day's dinner. I am sorry Dr. Darwin's story is not
true.
_Saturday Night._
I do not know whether you ever heard of a Mr. Pallas, who lives at
Grouse Hall. He lately received information that a certain Defender was
to be found in a lone house, which was described to him; he took a party
of men with him in the night, and got to the house very early in the
morning: it was scarcely light. The soldiers searched the house, but no
man was to be found. Mr. Pallas ordered them to search again, for that
he was certain the man was there: they searched again, in vain. They
gave up the point, and were preparing to mount their horses when one man
who had stayed a little behind his companions, saw something moving at
the end of the garden behind the house: he looked again, and beheld a
man's arm come out of the ground. He ran towards the spot and called his
companions, but the arm had disappeared; they searched, but nothing was
to be seen, and though the soldier persisted in his story he was not
believed. "Come," said one of the party, "don't waste your time here
looking for an apparition among these cabbage-stalks, come back once
more to the house." They went to the house, and there stood the man they
were in search of, in the middle of the kitchen.
Upon examination, it was found that a secret passage had been practised
from the kitchen to the garden, opening under an old meal chest with a
false bottom, which he could push up and down at pleasure. He had
returned one moment too soon.
I beg, dear Sophy, that you will not call my little stories by the
sublime title of "my works," I shall else be ashamed when the little
mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and bound the same size as
_Evenings at Home_, but I am afraid you will dislike the title; my
father had sent _The Parent's Friend_, [Footnote: Mr. Edgeworth had
wished the book to bear this title.] but Mr. Johnson has degraded it
into _The Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from
association with an old book of arithmetic called _The Tutor's
Assistant._
* * * * *
This was the first appearance of _The Parent's Assistant_, in one small
volume, with the "Purple Jar," which afterwards formed part of
_Rosamond._
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. RUXTON.
1796.
We heard from Lovell [Footnote: Gone to London with Mr. Edgeworth's
telegraphic invention.] last post. He had reached London, and waited
immediately on Colonel Brownrigg, who was extremely civil, and said he
would present him any day he pleased to the Duke of York. He was
delighted with the telegraphic prospect in his journey: from Nettlebed
to Long Compton, a distance of fifty miles, he saw plainly. He was
afraid that the motion of the stage would have been too violent to agree
with his model telegraph--"his pretty, delicate little telly," as Lovell
calls it. He therefore indulged her all the way with a seat in a
post-chaise, "which I bestowed upon her with pleasure, because I am
convinced that, when she comes to stand in the world upon ground of her
own, she will be an honour to her guardian, her parents, and her
country."
* * * * *
Miss Edgeworth now began to write some of the stories which were
afterwards published under the title of _Moral Tales_, but which she at
first intended as a sequel to _The Parent's Assistant_; and she began to
think of writing _Irish Bulls._
* * * * *
_To_ MISS SOPHY RUXTON.