Nothing worthy of note occurred on our journey to Pakenham Hall, where
we found to our surprise dear Lady Longford and Lord Longford, who had
come an hour before on one of his flying visits, and a whole tribe of
merry laughing children, Stewarts and Hamiltons. Lady Longford showed us
a picture of Lady Wellington and her children; they are beautiful, and
she says very like--Lady Wellington is not like: it is absurd to attempt
to draw Lady Wellington's face; she has no _face_, it is all
countenance. My father and Lady Elizabeth played at cribbage, and I was
looking on: they counted so quickly fifteen two, fifteen four, that I
was never able to keep up with them, and made a sorry figure. Worse
again at some genealogies and intermarriages, which Lady Elizabeth
undertook to explain to me, till at last she threw her arms flat down on
each side in indignant despair, and exclaimed, "Well! you are the
stupidest creature alive!"
When Lord Longford came in I escaped from cribbage and heard many
entertaining things: one was of his meeting a man in the mail coach, who
looked as if he was gouty, and seemed as if he could not stir without
great difficulty, and never without the assistance of a companion, who
never moved an inch from him. At last Lord Longford discovered that this
_gentleman's_ gouty overalls covered _fetters_; that he was a malefactor
in irons, and his companion a Bow Street officer, who treated his
prisoner with the greatest politeness. "Give me leave, sir--excuse
me--one on your arm and one on mine, and then we are sure we can't leave
one another."
A worse travelling companion this than the bear, whom Lord Longford
found one morning in the coach when day dawned, opposite to him--the
gentleman in the fur cloak, as he had all night supposed him to be!
* * * * *
A second series of _Tales of Fashionable Life_ appeared in 1812. Of
these "The Absentee" was a masterpiece, and contains one scene which
Macaulay declared to be the best thing written of its kind since the
opening of the twenty-second book of the _Odyssey._ Yet Mrs. Edgeworth
tells that the greater part of "The Absentee" was "written under the
torture of the toothache; it was only by keeping her mouth full of some
strong lotion that Maria could allay the pain, and yet, though in this
state of suffering, she never wrote with more spirit and rapidity." Mr.
Edgeworth advised the conclusion to be a Letter from Larry, the
postillion: he wrote one, and she wrote another; he much preferred hers,
which is the admirable finale to "The Absentee."
* * * * *
MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MISS MARGARET RUXTON.