In his seventy-first year Edgeworth had a dangerous illness, and
though he seemed to recover from it for a time, he never regained
his former strength. One great privation was that, from the failure
of his sight, he became dependent on others to read and write for
him. But his cheerful fortitude did not fail, though he felt that
his days were numbered. He had promised to try some private
experiments for the Dublin Society, and with the help of his son
William he carried out a set of experiments on wheel carriages in
April 1815 and in May 1816.
Almost his last literary effort was to dictate some pages which he
contributed to his daughter Maria's novel Ormond, and he delighted
in having the proofsheets read to him and in correcting them. Mrs.
Ritchie has given some touching details of his last days in her
Introduction to a new edition of Ormond.
Maria writes:--'The whole of Moriaty's history, and his escape from
prison, were dictated without any alteration, or hesitation of a
word, to Honora and me. This history Mr. Edgeworth heard from the
actual hero of it, Michael Dunne, whom he chanced to meet in the
town of Navan, where he was living respectably. He kept a shop where
Mr. Edgeworth went to purchase some boards, and observing something
very remarkable about the man's countenance, he questioned him as
they were looking at the lumber in his yard, and Dunne readily told
his tale almost in the very words used by Moriaty. . . . Mr.
Edgeworth also wrote the meeting between Moriaty and his wife when
he jumps out of the carriage the moment he hears her voice.'
Edgeworth kept his intellectual faculties to the last. 'To the last
they continued clear, vigorous, energetic; and to the last were
exerted in doing good, and in fulfilling every duty, public and
private. . . .
'In the closing hours of his life his bodily sufferings subsided,
and in the most serene and happy state, he said, before he sank to
that sleep from which he never wakened:
'"I die with the soft feeling of gratitude to my friends and
submission to the God who made me."'
He died the 13th of June 1817.
It may be thought to be an easy task to make an abridgment of a
biography, but in some ways it is almost as difficult as it is for
the sketcher to choose what he will put into his picture and yet
preserve a due proportion and give a faithful idea of the whole
scene before him. I have tried to give such portions of the Memoirs
as will present the many-sided character of R. L. Edgeworth in
relation to his scientific, literary, and educational work, and in
relation to his position as a landlord, a father, and a friend. He
was a singular instance of great mental activity with little
ambition; of a genial nature in his own family circle and among his
friends, he withdrew from the multitude, and refused to lower his
standard of cultivated intercourse in order to win favour with
coarser natures. He is chiefly remembered now as an educational
reformer and as the guide of Maria Edgeworth in the earlier stages
of her literary career. What she achieved was in great part due to
her father's judicious training and encouragement.
A little more ambition and the spur of poverty might have made
Edgeworth better known as an inventor of useful machines: it is
curious to remark how nearly he invented the bicycle. He saw the
advantage that light railways would be to Ireland, but the breath of
mechanical life, steam, as a power, he did not foresee.
He might have written a book on 'The Domestic Life,' so fully had
he mastered the secrets of a happy home. He was naturally
passionate, but had trained himself to be on his guard against his
temper, and was always anxious to improve and to correct any bad
habit or fault: even in old age he was constantly on the watch lest
bodily infirmities should lead to moral deterioration. He was not
too proud to own when he had made mistakes, but used the experience
he had gained, and carefully studied his own character and the
circumstances which had been most beneficial in forming it. He
controlled his expenses as prudently as his temper, and would not
allow his inventive faculties to lead him into unjustifiable
outlays. His daughter mentions that 'when he was a youth of
nineteen, an old gentleman, who saw him passing by his window, said
of him, judging by the liveliness of his manner and appearance,
"There goes a young fellow who will in a few years dissipate all the
fortune his prudent father has been nursing for him his whole life."
'The prophecy was, by a kind neighbour, repeated to him, and, as I
have heard him say, it made such an impression as tended
considerably to prevent its own accomplishment.
'He acquired the habit of calculating and forming estimates most
accurately. He not only estimated what every object of fancy and
taste would cost, but he accustomed himself to consider what the
actual enjoyment of the indulgence would be. ... He upon all
occasions carefully separated the idea of the pleasure of possession
from that of contemplating any object of taste.'
She also mentions that 'he observed, that the happiness that people
derive from the cultivation of their understandings is not in
proportion to the talents and capacities of the individual, but is
compounded of the united measure of these, and of the use made of
them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and
other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these
in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by
indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in
disappointment, and excites too often the powerful passions of envy
and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their
spirits and their life in deploring that they were not born with
more abilities. But though so many lament the want of talents, few
actually derive as much happiness as they might from the share of
understanding which they possess. My father never wasted his time in
deploring the want of that which he could by exertion acquire. Nor
did he suffer fame in any pursuit to be his first object.'
We feel that we are in the moral atmosphere of Paley and Butler when
she adds:--'Far beyond the pleasures of celebrity, or praise in any
form, he classed self-approbation and benevolence: these he thought
the most secure sources of satisfaction in this world.' This is the
spirit of the Eighteenth Century, the clear cold tone of the moral
philosopher, not the enthusiastic impulse of the fervid theologian,
of Pusey, Keble, or Newman. One star does indeed differ from another
in glory, but all give brilliance to our firmament and raise our
thoughts from earth.
Such a life as Richard Edgeworth's seems to me to be more
instructive than even that excellent moral guide-book written by Sir
John Lubbock, The Uses of Life, because abstract maxims take less
hold of uncultivated or unanalytical minds than the portrait of a
man of flesh and blood. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress reaches many
hearts which are unmoved by an ordinary sermon, and Edgeworth's life
was indeed a progress, a constant striving not only to improve
himself but to help others onward in the right way. He showed what a
good landlord could do in Ireland, and what a good father can do in
binding a family in happy union.