Whatever one may think of Mr. Edgeworth’s literary manipulations and of
his influence upon his daughter’s writings, one cannot but respect the
sincere and cordial understanding which bound these two people together,
and realise the added interest in life, in its machinery and evolutions,
which Maria owed to her father’s active intelligence. Her own gift, I
think, must have been one for perceiving through the minds of others,
and for realising the value of what they in turn reflected; one is
struck again and again by the odd mixture of intuition, and of absolute
matter of fact which one finds in her writings.
It is difficult to realise, when one reads the memoirs of human beings
who loved and hated, and laughed and scolded, and wanted things and did
without them, very much as we do ourselves, that though they thought as
we do and felt as we do (only, as I have said, with greater vehemence),
they didn’t LOOK like us at all; and Mr. Edgeworth, the father of
Maria Edgeworth, the ‘gay gallant,’ the impetuous, ingenious, energetic
gentleman, sat writing with powdered hair and a queue, with tights and
buckles, bolt upright in a stiff chair, while his family, also bequeued
and becurled and bekerchiefed, were gathered round him in a group,
composedly attentive to his explanations, as he points to the roll
upon the table, or reads from his many MSS. and notebooks, for their
edification.
To have four wives and twenty-two children, to have invented so many
machines, engines, and curricles, steeples and telegraph posts, is more
than commonly falls to the lot of one ordinary man, but such we know was
Mr. Edgeworth’s history told by his own lips.
I received by chance an old newspaper the other day, dated the 23rd July
1779. It is called the LONDON PACKET, and its news, told with long s’s
and pretty curly italics, thrills one even now as one looks over the
four short pages. The leading article is entitled ‘Striking Instance
of the PERFIDY of France.’ It is true the grievance goes back to Louis
XIV., but the leader is written with plenty of spirit and present
indignation. Then comes news from America and the lists of New
Councillors elected:
‘Artemus Ward, Francis Dana, Oliver Prescott, Samuel Baker, while a very
suitable sermon on the occasion is preached by the Rev. Mr. Stillman
of Boston.’ How familiar the names all sound! Then the thanks of the
Members of Congress are given to ‘General Lee, Colonel Moultrie, and the
officers and soldiers under their command who on the 28th of June last
Repulsed with so much Valour the attack that was made that day on the
State of South Carolina by the fleet and army of his Britannic Majesty.’
There is an irresistible spirit of old-world pigtail decorum and dash
about it all. We read of our ‘grand fleet’ waiting at Corunna for the
Spanish; of 80,000 men on the coast of Brittany supposed to be ready for
an invasion of England; of the Prince of Conde playing at cards, with
Northumberland House itself for stakes (Northumberland House which he is
INTENDING to take). We read the list of Lottery Prizes, of the £1000 and
£500 tickets; of the pressing want of seamen for His Majesty’s Navy,
and how the gentlemen of Ireland are subscribers to a bounty fund. Then
comes the narrative of James Caton of Bristol, who writes to complain
that while transacting his business on the Bristol Exchange he is
violently seized by a pressgang, with oaths and imprecations. Mr. Farr,
attempting to speak to him, is told by the Lieutenant that if he does
not keep off he will be shot with a pistol. Mr. Caton is violently
carried off, locked up in a horrible stinking room, prevented from
seeing his friends; after a day or two he is forced on board a tender,
where Mr. Tripp, a midshipman, behaves with humanity, but the Captain
and Lieutenant outvie each other in brutality; Captain Hamilton behaving
as an ‘enraged partisan.’ Poor Mr. Caton is released at last by the
exertions of Mr. Edmund Burke, of Mr. Farr, and another devoted friend,
who travel post-haste to London to obtain a Habeas Corpus, so that he
is able to write indignantly and safe from his own home to the LONDON
PACKET to describe his providential escape. The little sheet gives one
a vivid impression of that daily life in 1779, when Miss Edgeworth
must have been a little girl of twelve years old, at school at Mrs.
Lataffiere’s, and learning to write in her beautiful handwriting. It
was a time of great events. The world is fighting, armies marching and
counter-marching, and countries rapidly changing hands. Miss Seward is
inditing her elegant descriptions for the use of her admiring circle.
But already the circle is dwindling! Mr. Day has parted from Sabrina.
The well-known episodes of Lichfield gaieties and love-makings are over.
Poor Major Andre has been exiled from England and rejected by Honora.
The beautiful Honora, whose “blending charms of mind and person”
are celebrated by one adoring lover after another, has married Mr.
Edgeworth. She has known happiness, and the devoted affection of an
adoring husband, and the admiring love of her little step-daughter, all
this had been hers; and now all this is coming to an end, and the poor
lady lying on her death-bed imploring her husband to marry her sister
Elizabeth. Accordingly Mr. Edgeworth married Elizabeth Sneyd in 1780,
which was also the year of poor Andre’s death.
There is a little oval picture at the National Gallery in Dublin, the
photograph of a sketch at Edgeworthstown House, which gives one a very
good impression of the family as it must have appeared in the reigns of
King George and the third Mrs. Edgeworth. The father in his powder and
frills sits at the table with intelligent, well-informed finger showing
some place upon a map. He is an agreeable-looking youngish man; Mrs.
Edgeworth, his third wife, is looking over his shoulder; she has marked
features, beautiful eyes, she holds a child upon her knee, and one can
see the likeness in her to her step-daughter Honora, who stands just
behind her and leans against the chair. A large globe appropriately
stands in the background. The grown-up ladies alternate with small
children. Miss Edgeworth herself, sitting opposite to her father, is
the most prominent figure in the group. She wears a broad leghorn hat,
a frizzed coiffure, and folded kerchief; she has a sprightly, somewhat
French appearance, with a marked nose of the RETROUSSE order. I had
so often heard that she was plain that to see this fashionable and
agreeable figure was a pleasant surprise.
Miss Edgeworth seems to be about four-and-twenty in the sketch; she
was born in 1767; she must have been eleven in 1778, when Mr. Edgeworth
finally came over to Ireland to settle on his own estate, and among
his own people. He had been obliged some years before to leave
Edgeworthstown on account of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth’s health; he now
returned in patriarchal fashion with Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth, his third
wife, with his children by his first, second, and third marriages,
and with two sisters-in-law who had made their home in his family. For
thirty-five years he continued to live on in the pretty old home which
he now adapted to his large family, and which, notwithstanding Miss
Edgeworth’s objections, would have seemed so well fitted for its various
requirements. The daughter’s description of his life there, of his
work among his tenants, of his paternal and spirited rule, is vivid and
interesting. When the present owner of Edgeworthstown talked to us of
his grandfather, one felt that, with all his eccentricities, he must
have been a man of a far-seeing mind and observation. Mr. Erroles
Edgeworth said that he was himself still reaping the benefit of his
grandfather’s admirable organisation and arrangements on the estate,
and that when people all around met with endless difficulties and
complications, he had scarcely known any. Would that there had been more
Mr. Edgeworths in Ireland!
Whatever business he had to do, his daughter tells us, was done in the
midst of his family. Maria copied his letters of business and helped
him to receive his rents. ‘On most Irish estates,’ says Miss Edgeworth,
‘there is, or there was, a personage commonly called a driver,--a person
who drives and impounds cattle for rent and arrears.’ The drivers are,
alas! from time to time too necessary in collecting Irish rents. Mr.
Edgeworth desired that none of his tenants should pay rent to any
one but himself; thus taking away subordinate interference, he became
individually acquainted with his tenantry. He also made himself
acquainted with the different value of land on his estate. In every
case where the tenant had improved the land his claim to preference over
every new proposer was admitted. The mere plea, ‘I have been on
your Honour’s estate so many years,’ was disregarded. ‘Nor was it
advantageous that each son,’ says Miss Edgeworth, ‘of the original
tenant should live on his subdivided little potato garden without
further exertion of mind or body.’ Further on she continues: ‘Not being
in want of ready money, my father was not obliged to let his land to the
highest bidder. He could afford to have good tenants.’ In the old leases
claims of duty-fowl, of duty-work, of man or beast had been inserted.
Mr. Edgeworth was one of the first to abolish them. The only clause he
continued in every lease was the alienation fine, which was to protect
the landlord and to prevent a set of middlemen from taking land at a
reasonable rent, and letting it immediately at the highest possible
price. His indulgence as to the time he allowed for the payment of
rent was unusually great, but beyond the half year the tenants knew his
strictness so well, that they rarely ventured to go into arrears, and
never did so with impunity. ‘To his character as a good landlord,’
she continues, ‘was added that he was a real gentleman; this phrase
comprises a good deal in the opinion of the lower Irish.’ There is one
very curious paragraph in which Miss Edgeworth describes how her father
knew how to make use of the tenants’ prejudices, putting forward his
wishes rather than his convictions. ‘It would be impossible for me,’
says his daughter, ‘without ostentation to give any of the proofs I
might record of my father’s liberality. Long after they were forgotten
by himself, they were remembered by the warm-hearted people among whom
he lived.’
Mr. Edgeworth was one of those people born to get their own way. Every
one seems to have felt the influence of his strong character. It was not
only with his family and his friends that he held his own--the tenants
and the poor people rallied to his command. To be sure, it sounds like
some old Irish legend to be told that Mr. Edgeworth had so loud a voice
that it could be heard a mile off, and that his steward, who lived in a
lodge at that distance from the house, could hear him calling from the
drawing-room window, and would come up for orders.
In 1778, says Miss Edgeworth retrospectively, when England was
despatching her armies all over the world, she had no troops to spare
for the defence of Ireland then threatened with a French invasion; and
the principal nobility and gentry embodied themselves volunteers for the
defence of the country. The Duke of Leinster and Lord Charlemont were
at the head of the ‘corps which in perfect order and good discipline
rendered their country respectable.’ The friends of Ireland, profiting
by England’s growing consideration for the sister country, now obtained
for her great benefits for which they had long been striving, and
Mr. Grattan moved an address to the throne asserting the legislative
independence of Ireland. The address passed the House, and, as his
daughter tells us, Mr. Edgeworth immediately published a pamphlet.
Miss Edgeworth continues as follows, describing his excellent course
of action: ‘My father honestly and unostentatiously used his utmost
endeavours to obliterate all that could tend to perpetuate ill-will in
the country. Among the lower classes in his neighbourhood he endeavoured
to discourage that spirit of recrimination and retaliation which the
lower Irish are too prone to cherish. They are such acute observers that
there is no deceiving them as to the state of the real feeling of their
superiors. They know the signs of what passes within with more certainty
than any physiognomist, and it was soon seen by all those who had
any connection with him that my father was sincere in his disdain of
vengeance.’ Further on, describing his political feelings, she says that
on the subject of the Union in parliamentary phrase he had not then been
able to make up his mind. She describes with some pride his first speech
in the Irish House at two o’clock in the morning, when the wearied
members were scarcely awake to hear it, and when some of the
outstretched members were aroused by their neighbours to listen to
him! ‘When people perceived that it was not a set speech,’ says Miss
Edgeworth, ‘they became interested.’ He stated his doubts just as they
had occurred as he threw them by turn into each scale. After giving many
reasons in favour of what appeared to be the advantages of the Union,
he unexpectedly gave his vote against it, because he said he had been
convinced by what he had heard one night, that the Union was decidedly
against the wishes of the majority of men of sense and property in
the nation. He added (and surely Mr. Edgeworth’s opinion should go for
something still) that if he should be convinced that the opinions of the
country changed, his vote would be in its favour.
His biographer tells us that Mr. Edgeworth was much complimented on his
speech by BOTH sides, by those for whom he voted, and also by those who
found that the best arguments on the other side of the question had
been undoubtedly made by him. It is a somewhat complicated statement
and state of feeling to follow; to the faithful daughter nothing is
impossible where her father is concerned. This vote, I believe, cost Mr.
Edgeworth his peerage. ‘When it was known that he had voted against the
Union he became suddenly the idol of those who would previously have
stoned him,’ says his devoted biographer. It must not, however, be
forgotten that Mr. Edgeworth had refused an offer of £3000 for his seat
for two or three weeks, during that momentous period when every vote was
of importance. Mr. Pitt, they say, spent over £2,000,000 in carrying the
measure which he deemed so necessary.