IRISH AND MORAL TALES.
In 1800 was published anonymously a small book called _Castle Rackrent_.
It professed to be a Hibernian tale, taken from facts and from the
manners of the Irish squires before the year 1782. It proved to be a
most entertaining, witty history of the fortunes of an Irish estate,
told professedly by an illiterate, partial old steward, who recounted
the story of the Rackrent family in his vernacular with the full
confidence that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit and Sir
Condy were as interesting to all the world as they were to himself.
_Honest_ Thaby, as this curious but characteristic specimen of Irish
good humor, fidelity and wrong-headedness was pleased to call himself,
having no conception of the true application of this epithet, had
certainly shown literary perception, or rather his creator for him. For
this was no other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood confessed upon the
title-page of the second edition that was clamorously demanded within a
few months of issue. The confession was wrung from her because some one
had not only asserted that he was the author, but had actually taken the
trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures, as if
it were his original manuscript. It was in this work that Miss Edgeworth
first struck her own peculiar vein, and had she never written anything
but _Castle Rackrent_ her fame could not have died. It is a page torn
from the national history of Ireland, inimitable, perennially
delightful, equally humorous and pathetic, holding up with shrewd wit
and keen perception, mingled with sympathetic indulgence, the follies
and vices that have caused, and in a modified degree still cause, no
small proportion of the social miseries that have afflicted and still
afflict that unhappy land.
Here are portrayed a series of Irish landlords with their odd
discrepancies and striking individualities, alternately drunken,
litigious, pugilistic, slovenly and densely ignorant; or else easy,
extravagant and good-natured to the point of vice; all, however, of one
mind in being profoundly indifferent to their own or their tenants'
welfare. The sharp contrasts of the magnificent and paltry that
characterized their state of living, with the mixed confidence in a
special Providence and their own good luck that distinguished their
muddle-headed mode of thought, is forcibly held up to view. No
conclusions are drawn; the narrative, which never flags or drags, is
rattled off with spirit, the abundant anecdotes are poured forth with
true Irish exuberance, while the humor of the story arises in great
measure from the sublime unconsciousness of the story-teller to the wit,
naivete or absurdity of his remarks. We are held spell-bound, we laugh
and weep in a breath, we are almost over-persuaded by loyal old Thady to
pardon the errors of the family, "one of the most ancient in the
kingdom, related to the kings of Ireland, but that was before my time."
If there was an ulterior end in view in this story beyond that of
recording national characteristics which she had had peculiarly good
opportunities for observing, and which she here reproduced from the life
with broad, full strokes, Miss Edgeworth has masked it so happily that
it does not obtrude itself. The society and manners of the Irish are
painted as equally provoking and endearing. The book is an epitome of
the Irish character, "fighting like devils for conciliation, and hating
one another for the love of God." Never did laughter and tears, sympathy
and repugnance, lie more closely together than in this tale. It is
curious to read the author's prefatory apology when there are still
alive, in every exasperated form, the very conditions she thinks belong
to a state of things rapidly passing away, "owing to the probable loss
of Irish identity after the union with England." The supposed "obsolete
prejudices and animosities of race" are unhappily still extant. Perhaps
it is partly this fact that makes Miss Edgeworth's Irish tales so fresh
to this day. But only in part; on their own account alone they are
delightful, and _Castle Rackrent_ even more than the rest.
We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss Edgeworth wrote _Castle
Rackrent_ unassisted by her father, and judging how infinitely superior
in spontaneity, flexibility, and nervousness of style, force, pith and
boldness, it is to those of her writings with which he meddled, it is
forcibly impressed upon us that Mr. Edgeworth's literary tinkering of
his daughter's works was far from being to their advantage. Her next
published book was her first attempt to deal with the novel proper. In
_Belinda_ she strove to delineate the follies and hollowness of
fashionable life. The heroine is rather a lifeless puppet; but the more
truly prominent figure, Lady Delacour, is drawn with power and keen
intuition. A woman of gay and frivolous antecedents, striving to rise
into a higher atmosphere under the ennobling influences of a pure
friendship, and finding the task a difficult one, was no easy character
to draw or to sustain. Had Lady Delacour died heroically, as Miss
Edgeworth had planned, and as the whole course of the story leads the
reader to expect, the book would have been a success. But to allow her
to recover, to cause her to evolve a reformed character after a type
psychologically impossible to one of her temperament, weakened the force
of the foregoing pages and rendered them untrue. Again, it is on Miss
Edgeworth's spoken testimony to Mrs. Barbauld that we learn that she
meant to make Lady Delacour die, but that it was her father who
suggested the alteration; and since it was a part of the Edgeworthian
creed to believe in such simple and sudden reformations, she accepted
his counsel, to the artistic injury of her tale. It was Mr. Edgeworth,
too, who wrote and interpolated the worthless and high-flown Virginia
episode, in which Clarence Harvey takes to the freak of wife-training
after the pattern of Mr. Day. This incident is quite out of keeping with
the character of Clarence, who is depicted a wooden dandy, but not a
romantic fool. These changes, willingly submitted to by Miss Edgeworth,
who had the most unbounded belief in her father's superior wisdom on all
points whatsoever, also mark his idiosyncracy, for Mr. Edgeworth was a
most rare and curious compound of utilitarianism and wild romance.
It is almost possible, in Miss Edgeworth's works, to venture to point
out the passages that have been tampered with and those where she has
been allowed free play. Thus there are portions of _Belinda_ in which
she is as much at her best as in _Castle Rackrent_, or other of her
masterpieces. Who but she could have penned the lively description given
by Sir Philip Baddeley of the fetes at Frogmore? How exquisitely is this
ill-natured fool made to paint himself, how truthful is the picture,
free from any taint of exaggeration! Sir Philip's endeavor to disgust
Belinda with Clarence Harvey, his manner of attempting it, and his final
proposal, is a very masterpiece of caustic humor.
_Belinda_ was no favorite with Miss Edgeworth. Writing to Mrs. Barbauld
some years later, she says:--
Belinda is but an uninteresting personage after all.... I was not
either in _Belinda_ or _Leonora_ sufficiently aware that the
_goodness_ of a heroine interests only in proportion to the perils
and trials to which it is exposed.
And again, after revising it for republication, she says:--
I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or
stone, Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces; really
I have not the heart or the patience to _correct_ her. As the
hackney coachman said, "Mend _you_! Better make a new one."
Miss Edgeworth was therefore capable of self-criticism. Indeed, at no
time did she set even a due value on her own work, still less an
exaggerated one. To the day of her death she sincerely believed that all
the honor and glory she had reaped belonged of right to her father
alone. But there was yet another reason why Miss Edgeworth never liked
_Belinda_. She was staying at Black Castle when the first printed copy
reached her. Before her aunt saw it she contrived to tear out the
title-pages of the three volumes, and Mrs. Ruxton thus read it without
the least suspicion as to its authorship. She was much delighted, and
insisted on reading out to her niece passage after passage. Miss
Edgeworth pretended to be deeply interested in some book she was herself
reading, and when Mrs. Ruxton exclaimed, "Is not that admirably
written?" replied, "Admirably read, I think." "It may not be so very
good," added Mrs. Ruxton, "but it shows just the sort of knowledge of
high life which people have who live in the world." But in vain she
appealed to Miss Edgeworth for sympathy, until, provoked by her faint
acquiescence, Mrs. Ruxton at last accused her of being envious. "I am
sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a rival
author." This remark made Miss Edgeworth burst into tears and show her
aunt the title-pages of the book. But Mrs. Ruxton was not pleased; she
never wholly liked _Belinda_ afterwards, and Miss Edgeworth had always a
painful recollection that her aunt had suspected her of the meanness of
envy.
In 1802 was published the _Essay on Irish Bulls_, bearing on its
title-page the names of father and daughter. Its title appears to have
misled even the Irish: at least it is related that an Irish gentleman,
secretary to an agricultural society, who was much interested in
improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent for it, expecting to find a
work on live stock. We have Miss Edgeworth's own account of the genesis
of the book:--
The first design of the essay was my father's: under the semblance
of attack, he wished to show the English public the eloquence, wit
and talents of the lower classes of people in Ireland. Working
zealously upon the ideas which he suggested, sometimes what was
spoken by him was afterwards written by me; or when I wrote my
first thoughts, they were corrected and improved by him; so that no
book was ever written more completely in partnership. On this, as
on most subjects, whether light or serious, when we wrote together,
it would now be difficult, almost impossible, to recollect which
thoughts originally were his and which were mine. All passages in
which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions must be his
exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant of the learned
languages. The notes on the Dublin shoe-black's metaphorical
language I recollect are chiefly his.
I have heard him tell that story with all the natural,
indescribable Irish tones and gestures, of which written language
can give but a faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish,
because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of
nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit
of the people, without condescending to produce effect by
caricature. He knew not only their comic talents, but their powers
of pathos; and often when he had just heard from them some pathetic
complaint, he has repeated it to me while the impression was fresh.
In the chapter on wit and eloquence in _Irish Bulls_ there is a
speech of a poor freeholder to a candidate who asked for his vote;
this speech was made to my father when he was canvassing the county
of Longford. It was repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I
wrote it down instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a
word.
The complaint of a poor widow against her landlord, and his reply, were
quoted by Campbell in his _Lectures on Eloquence_, as happy specimens,
under the conviction that they were fictitious. Miss Edgeworth assures
us that they are "unembellished facts," that her father was the
magistrate before whom the complaint and defense were made, and that she
wrote down the speeches word for word as he repeated them to her. This
_Essay on Irish Bulls_, though a somewhat rambling and discursive
composition, is a readable one, full of good stories, pathetic and
humorous. Besides giving critical and apt illustrations, the authors did
justice to the better traits of the Irish character. It was an earnest
vindication of the national intellect from the charge of habitual
blundering, showing how blundering is common to all countries, and is no
more Irish than Persian. They further proved that most so-called bulls
are no bulls at all, but often a poetic license, a heart-spoken
effusion, and that thus the offense became a grace beyond the reach of
art.
_Moral Tales_ also saw the light in 1801. They too were written to
illustrate _Practical Education_, but aimed at readers of a more
advanced age than the children's tales; in fact, both here and elsewhere
Miss Edgeworth strove to do on a larger scale what was achieved by the
ancient form of parable, to make an attractive medium for the
instruction and conviction of minds. It was a fancy of hers, and perhaps
a characteristic of her age, when female authorship was held in somewhat
doubtful repute, that she invariably insisted on appearing before the
public under cover of her father's name. He therefore wrote for _Moral
Tales_, as afterwards for all her works, one of his ludicrously
bombastic prefaces, which, whatever they may have done in his own time,
would certainly to-day be the most effective means of repelling readers.
The stories are six in number: _Forester_, _The Prussian Vase_, _The
Good Aunt_, _Angelina_, _The Good French Governess_, and _Mademoiselle
Panache_. Of these the plots are for the most part poorly contrived, the
narrative hammered out _invita Minerva_, and, owing to their aim,
nothing capricious or accidental is permitted. Too obviously they are
the mature fruits of purpose and reflection, not happy effusions of the
fancy, and hence also not always successful. Sometimes the fault lay
with the subject that afforded too little scope, sometimes the moral
striven after did not admit of the embellishments requisite for a work
of amusement. One thing, however, is certain: that Miss Edgeworth
honestly endeavored to combine entertainment with instruction, and that,
taken as a whole, she succeeded. She did not shelter herself behind the
saying that _Il est permis d'ennuyer en moralites d'ici jusqu'a
Constantinople_. But it is the key to her writings, to their excellences
and their defects, that the duty of a moral teacher was always uppermost
in her mind. Her aim was not to display her own talents, but to make her
readers substantially better and happier, to show how easy and
agreeable to practice are high principles. Again and again she insists,
with irrefragable force, that it is the ordinary and attainable
qualities of life rather than the lofty and heroic ones on which our
substantial happiness depends, an insistance new in the domain of
fiction, which as a rule preaches other doctrines. With this end in view
she had necessarily to sacrifice some freedom and grace of invention to
illustrate her moral aphorisms, her salutary truths, and she yielded to
the temptation to exaggerate in order to make her work more impressive.
Her _Moral Tales_ are a series of climaces of instances, an enlargement
of La Bruyere's idea, a method allowable to creations of fancy, but not
quite justifiable when applied to the probable. Moreover, it was a
feature of the eighteenth century, to which in many respects Miss
Edgeworth belonged, that its tales and novels were not analytic.
Psychology based upon biology was as yet unknown, or in so empirical a
stage as to be remote from practical application. The writers of those
days depict their characters not as the complex bundles of good and bad
qualities and potentialities that even the veriest scribbler paints them
to-day, but as sharply good or bad, so that one flaw of character, one
vice, one folly, was made to be the origin of all their disasters. It
is, of course, always dangerous when the author plays the part of
Providence, and can twist the narrative to suit the moral; but this
censure applies to all moral tales, by no matter whom. Miss Edgeworth
strove to civilize and instruct by the rehearsal of a tale, and if we
all, from the perversity of human nature, rather revolt against being
talked to for our good, it must ever be added in her praise that she
generally allures us and makes us listen to her maxims of right living.
Her self-imposed task was neither humble nor easy, but one that required
judgment, patience and much knowledge of the world; her moral
wholesomeness cannot be rated too highly or be too much commended. If
she ascribed too large a share of morality to the head instead of the
heart, this was the result of the doctrines with which her father had
imbued her.
The most successful of the _Moral Tales_ is beyond question _Angelina_.
Its moral is not obtrusive, its fable is well constructed, the tale is
told with point, spirit, gentle but incisive satire. The sentimental
young lady, a female Don Quixote, roaming the world in search of an
unknown friend whose acquaintance she has made solely through the medium
of her writings, is a genus that is not extinct. Never has Miss
Edgeworth been happier than here, when she combats her heroine's errors,
not by serious arguments, but with the shafts of ridicule. The tale is a
gem. _Forester_, on the other hand, for which Mr. Edgeworth claims that
it is a male version of the same character, does not strike us in that
light, nor is it as perfect in conception or execution. The character of
the eccentric youth who scorns the common forms of civilized society,
and is filled with visionary schemes of benevolence and happiness, was
based, it would seem, upon that of Mr. Day, and, as a portrait, was
doubtless a happy one. But the hero fails to interest, his aberrations
are simply foolish, the means whereby he is redeemed too mechanical and
crude, the whole both too detailed and too much condensed to hold our
attention or to seem probable. _The Good French Governess_ embodies the
Edgeworthian mode of giving lessons, which was to make them pleasures,
not tasks, to the pupils; maxims now universally recognized and
practiced, but new in the days when for little children there were no
pleasant roads to learning in the shape of _kindergaerten_. _The Good
Aunt_ insists upon the necessity of home example and instruction, the
lack of which no school training can supply. It is the weakest of all
the tales, and verges dangerously upon the namby-pamby. _Mademoiselle
Panache_, according to Mr. Edgeworth, is "a sketch of the necessary
consequences of imprudently trusting the happiness of a daughter to the
care of those who can teach nothing but accomplishments;" but which,
according to most readers, will be pronounced the melancholy result of
an ignorance that could mistake an illiterate French milliner for an
accomplished French governess. It is unjust to lay the results of the
tuition of such a personage to the charge of that favorite
scape-goat--the frivolity of the French nation. _The Prussian Vase_, a
tale, again according to Mr. Edgeworth, "designed principally for young
gentlemen who are intended for the bar," is a pretty but apocryphal
anecdote attributed to Frederic the Great, of a nature impossible to the
mental bias of that enlightened despot. It is, moreover, an eulogium of
the English mode of trial by jury.
Taken as a whole, these tales may be said to enforce the doctrine that
unhappiness is more often the result of defects of character than of
external circumstances. Like all Miss Edgeworth's writings, they found
instant favor and were translated into French and German. With no desire
to detract from their merits, we cannot avoid the inference that this
circumstance points to a great lack of contemporary foreign fiction of a
pure and attractive kind.