As a rule people’s books appeal first to one’s imagination, and then
after a time, if the books are good books and alive, not stuffed
dummies and reproductions, one begins to divine the writers themselves,
hidden away in their pages, and wrapped up in their hot-press sheets of
paper; and so it happened by chance that a printed letter once written
by Maria Edgeworth to Mrs. Barbauld set the present reader wondering
about these two familiar names, and trying to realise the human beings
which they each represented. Since those days Miss Edgeworth has become
a personage more vivid and interesting than any of her characters, more
familiar even than ‘Simple Susan’ or ‘Rosamond of the Purple Jar.’ She
has seemed little by little to grow into a friend, as the writer has
learnt to know her more and more intimately, has visited the home of
that home-loving woman, has held in her hands the delightful Family
Memoirs,{1} has seen the horizons, so to speak, of Maria Edgeworth’s
long life. Several histories of Miss Edgeworth have been lately
published in England. Miss Zimmern and Miss Oliver in America have each
written, and the present writer has written, and various memoirs and
letters have appeared in different magazines and papers with allusions
and descriptions all more or less interesting. One can but admire the
spirit which animated that whole existence; the cheerful, kindly,
multiplied interest Maria Edgeworth took in the world outside, as well
as in the wellbeing of all those around her. Generations, changes, new
families, new experiences, none of these overwhelmed her. She seemed to
move in a crowd, a cheerful, orderly crowd, keeping in tune and heart
with its thousand claims; with strength and calmness of mind to bear
multiplied sorrows and a variety of care with courage, and an
ever-reviving gift of spirited interest. Her history is almost unique
in its curious relationships; its changes of step-mothers, its warm
family ties, its grasp of certain facts which belong to all time rather
than to the hour itself. Miss Edgeworth lived for over eighty years,
busy, beneficent, modest, and intelligent to the last. When she died
she was mourned as unmarried women of eighty are not often mourned.
{1} Now published and edited by Mr. Hare (Nov. 1894).
The present owner of Edgeworthstown told us that he could just remember
her, lying dead upon her bed, and her face upon the pillow, and the
sorrowful tears of the household; and how he and the other little
children were carried off by a weeping aunt into the woods, to comfort
and distract them on the funeral day. He also told us of an incident
prior to this event which should not be overlooked. How he himself,
being caught red-handed, at the age of four or thereabouts, with his
hands in a box of sugar-plums, had immediately confessed the awful fact
that he had been about to eat them, and he was brought then and there
before his Aunt Maria for sentence. She at once decided that he had
behaved Nobly in speaking the truth, and that he must be rewarded
in kind for his praiseworthy conduct, and be allowed to keep the
sugar-plums!
This little story after half a century certainly gives one pleasure
still to recall, and proves, I think, that cakes may be enjoyed long
after they have been eaten, and also that there is a great deal to be
said for justice with lollipops in the scale. But what would Rosamond’s
parents have thought of such a decision? One shudders to think of their
disapproval, or of that of dear impossible Mr. Thomas Day, with his
trials and experiments of melted sealing-wax upon little girls’ bare
arms, and his glasses of tar-water so inflexibly administered. Miss
Edgeworth, who suffered from her eyes, recalls how Mr. Day used to bring
the dose, the horrible tar-water, every morning with a ‘Drink this,
Miss Maria!’ and how she dared not resist, though she thought she saw
something of kindness and pity beneath all his apparent severity.
Severity was the order of those times. The reign of sugar-plums had
scarcely begun. It was not, as now, only ignorance and fanaticism that
encouraged the giving of pain, it was the universal custom. People
were still hanged for stealing, women were still burnt--so we have
been assured--in St. Stephen’s Green; though, it is true, they were
considerately strangled first. Children were bullied and tortured with
the kindest intentions; even Maria Edgeworth at her fashionable school
was stretched in a sort of machine to make her grow; Mr. Day, as we
know, to please the lady of his affections, passed eight hours a day
in the stocks in order to turn out his knock-knees. One feels that a
generation of ladies and gentlemen who submitted to such inflictions
surely belonged to a race of heroes and heroines, and that, if the times
were difficult and trying, the people also were stronger to endure them,
and must have been much better fitted with nerves than we are.
Miss Edgeworth’s life has been so often told that I will not attempt to
recapitulate the story at any length. She well deserved her reputation.
Her thoughts were good, her English was good, her stories had the charm
of sincerity, and her audience of children was a genuine audience, less
likely to be carried away by fashion than more advanced critics might
be. There is a curious matter-of-fact element in all she wrote, combined
with extraordinary quickness and cleverness; and it must be remembered,
in trying to measure her place in literature, that in her day the whole
great school of English philosophical romance was in its cradle; George
Eliot was not in existence; my father was born in the year in which THE
ABSENTEE was published. Sir Walter Scott has told us that it was Miss
Edgeworth’s writing which first suggested to him the idea of writing
about Scotland and its national life. Tourgenieff in the same way says
that it was after reading her books on Ireland that he began to write
of his own country and of Russian peasants as he did. Miss Edgeworth was
the creator of her own special world of fiction, though the active Mr.
Edgeworth crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s, interpolated, expurgated,
to his own and Maria’s satisfaction. She was essentially a modest woman;
she gratefully accepted his criticism and emendations. Mr. Clark Russell
quotes Sydney Smith, who declared that Mr. Edgeworth must have written
or burst. ‘A discharge of ink was an evacuation absolutely necessary
to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion.’ The only wonder is that,
considering all they went through, his daughter’s stories survived to
tell their tale, and to tell it so well, with directness and conviction,
that best of salt in any literary work. A letter Maria wrote to her
cousin will be remembered. ‘I beg, dear Sophy,’ she says, ‘that you will
not call my stories by the sublime name of my works; I shall else be
ashamed when the little mouse comes forth.’
Maria’s correspondence is delightful, and conveys us right away into
that bygone age. The figures rapidly move across her scene, talking and
unconsciously describing themselves as they go; you see them all through
the eyes of the observant little lady. She did not go very deep; she
seems to me to have made kindly acquaintance with some, to have admired
others with artless enthusiasm. I don’t think she troubled herself much
about complication of feeling; she liked people to make repartees, or
to invent machines, to pay their bills, and to do their duty in a
commonplace and cheerfully stoical fashion. But then Maria Edgeworth
certainly did not belong to our modern schools, sipping the emetic
goblet to give flavour to daily events, nor to that still more alarming
and spreading clique of DEGENERES who insist upon administering such
doses to others to relieve the tedium of the road of life.
Perhaps we in our time scarcely do justice to Miss Edgeworth’s
extraordinary cleverness and brightness of apprehension. There is more
fun than humour in her work, and those were the days of good rollicking
jokes and laughter. Details change so quickly that it is almost
impossible to grasp entirely the aims and intentions of a whole set of
people just a little different from ourselves in every single thing; who
held their heads differently, who pointed their toes differently, who
addressed each other in a language just a little unlike our own. The
very meanings of the words shift from one generation to another, and
we are perhaps more really in harmony with our great-great-grandfathers
than with the more immediate generations.
Her society was charming, so every one agrees; and her acquaintance with
all the most remarkable men of her time must not be forgotten, nor the
genuine regard with which she inspired all who came across her path.
‘In external appearance she is quite the fairy of our nursery tale, the
WHIPPETY STOURIE, if you remember such a sprite, who came flying through
the window to work all sorts of marvels,’ writes Sir Walter. ‘I will
never believe but what she has a wand in her pocket, and pulls it out
to conjure a little before she begins those very striking pictures of
manners.’
Among others Sir William Hamilton has left a pleasing description of
Miss Edgeworth. ‘If you would study and admire her as she deserves,
you must see her at home,’ says he, ‘and hear her talk. She knows an
infinite number of anecdotes about interesting places and persons, which
she tells extremely well, and never except when they arise naturally
out of the subject. . . . To crown her merits, she seemed to take a
prodigious fancy to me, and promised to be at home, and made me promise
to be at Edgeworthstown for a fortnight some time next vacation.’ We owe
to him also an amusing sketch of some other collateral members of the
family; the fine animated old lady, who immediately gets him to explain
the reason why a concave mirror inverts while a convex mirror leaves
them erect; the young ladies, one of whom was particularly anxious to
persuade him that the roundness of the planets was produced by friction,
perhaps by their being shaken together like marbles in a bag.
There is also an interesting letter from Sir W. Hamilton at
Edgeworthstown on 23rd September 1829. Wordsworth is also staying there.
‘After some persuasion Francis and I succeed in engaging Mr. Wordsworth
in many very interesting conversations. Miss Edgeworth has had for some
time a very serious illness, but she was able to join us for dinner
the day that I arrived, and she exhibited in her conversations with Mr.
Wordsworth a good deal of her usual brilliancy; she also engaged
Mr. Marshall in some long conversations upon Ireland, and even Mr.
Marshall’s son, whose talent for silence seems to be so very profound,
was thawed a little on Monday evening, and discussed after tea the
formation of the solar system. Miss Edgeworth tells me that she is at
last employed in writing for the public after a long interval, but does
not expect to have her work soon ready for publication.’{2}
{2} There is a curious criticism of Miss Edgeworth by Robert Hall,
the great preacher, which should not be passed over. ‘As to her
style,’ he says, ‘she is simple and elegant, content to convey her
thoughts in their most plain and natural form, that is indeed the
perfection of style. . . . In point of tendency,’ he continues, ‘I
should class her books among the most irreligious I ever read. . . .
She does not attack religion nor inveigh against it, but makes it
appear unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue without it. . . . No
works ever produced so bad an effect on my own mind as hers.’
Besides Wordsworth and Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Marshall, we
presently come to Sir John Herschell. ‘I saw your admirable friend Miss
Edgeworth lately in town,’ he writes to Hamilton; ‘she is a most warm
admirer of yours, and praise such as hers is what any man might be proud
of.’ Later on Miss Edgeworth, corresponding with Sir W. Hamilton, tells
him she is ill and forbidden to write, or even to think. This is what
she thinks of THINKING: ‘I am glad to see that the severe sciences do
not destroy the energy and grace of the imagination, but only chasten it
and impart their philosophical influence.’
V
Certain events are remembered and mourned for generations, so there are
others, happy and interesting in themselves, which must continue to give
satisfaction long after they are over, and long after those concerned in
them have passed away. And certainly among things pleasant to remember
is the story of Sir Walter Scott’s visit to Ireland in July 1825, when
he received so warm a greeting from the country and spent those happy
hours with Miss Edgeworth at Edgeworthstown. Fortunately for us,
Lockhart was one of the party. Anne Scott, and Walter the soldier, and
Jane Scott the bride, were also travelling in Sir Walter’s train. The
reception which Ireland gave Sir Walter was a warm-hearted ovation. ‘It
would be endless to enumerate the distinguished persons who, morning
after morning, crowded to his levee in St. Stephen’s Green,’ says
Lockhart, and he quotes an old saying of Sir Robert Peel’s, ‘that Sir
Walter’s reception in the High Street of Edinburgh in 1822 was the first
thing that gave him (Peel) a notion of the electric shock of a nation’s
gratitude.’ ‘I doubt if even that scene surpassed what I myself
witnessed,’ continues the biographer, ‘when Sir Walter returned down
Dame Street after inspecting the Castle of Dublin.’
From ovations to friendship it was Sir Walter’s inclination to turn. On
the 1st August he came to Edgeworthstown, accompanied by his family. ‘We
remained there for several days, making excursions to Loch Oel, etc. Mr.
Lovell Edgeworth had his classical mansion filled every evening with
a succession of distinguished friends. Here, above all, we had
the opportunity of seeing in what universal respect and comfort a
gentleman’s family may live in that country, provided only they live
there habitually and do their duty. . . . Here we found neither mud
hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all
about. . . . Here too we pleased ourselves with recognising some of the
sweetest features in Goldsmith’s picture of “Sweet Auburn! loveliest
village of the plain.”’ Oliver Goldsmith received his education at this
very school of Edgeworthstown, and Pallas More, the little hamlet where
the author of THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD first saw the light, is still, as
it was then, the property of the Edgeworths.
So Scott came to visit his little friend, and the giant was cheered
and made welcome by her charming hospitality. It was a last gleam of
sunshine in that noble life. We instinctively feel how happy they all
were in each other’s good company. We can almost overhear some of their
talk, as they walk together under the shade of the trees of the park.
One can imagine him laughing in his delightful hearty way, half joking,
half caressing. Lockhart had used some phrase (it is Lockhart who tells
us the story) which conveyed the impression that he suspects poets and
novelists of looking at life and at the world chiefly as materials for
art. ‘A soft and pensive shade came over Scott’s face. “I fear you have
some very young ideas in your head,” he says. “God help us, what a poor
world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books
enough, and observed and conversed with enough eminent minds in my time,
but I assure you I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor
uneducated men and women, exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle
heroism, or speaking their simple thoughts, than I ever met with out
of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our
real calling unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as
moonshine compared with the education of the heart,”’ said the great
teacher. ‘Maria did not listen to this without some water in
her eyes,--her tears are always ready when a generous string is
touched,--but she brushed them gaily aside, and said, “You see how it
is: Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people should
learn to treat him like a great lord; Sir Walter writes his in order
that he might be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.”’
Years and years afterwards Edward Fitzgerald stayed at Edgeworthstown,
and he also carries us there in one of his letters. He had been at
college with Mr. Frank Edgeworth, who had succeeded to the estate, and
had now in 1828 come to stay with him. The host had been called away,
but the guest describes his many hostesses: ‘Edgeworth’s mother, aged
seventy-four; his sister, the great Maria, aged seventy-two; and another
cousin or something. All these people were pleasant and kind, the house
pleasant, the grounds ditto, a good library, so here I am quite at home,
but surely must go to England soon.’ One can imagine Fitzgerald sitting
in the library with his back to the window and writing his letters
and reading his thirty-two sets of novels, while the rain is steadily
pouring outside, and the Great Authoress (so he writes her down) as busy
as a bee sitting by chattering and making a catalogue of her books. ‘We
talk about Walter Scott, whom she adores, and are merry all day long,’
he says. ‘When I began this letter I thought I had something to say, but
I believe the truth was I had nothing to do.’
Two years later Mr. Fitzgerald is again there and writing to Frederick
Tennyson: ‘I set sail from Dublin to-morrow night, bearing the heartfelt
regrets of all the people of Ireland with me.’ Then comes a flash of his
kind searching lantern: ‘I had a pleasant week with Edgeworth. He farms
and is a justice, and goes to sleep on the sofa of evenings. At odd
moments he looks into Spinoza and Petrarch. People respect him very much
in these parts.’ Edward Fitzgerald seems to have had a great regard for
his host; the more he knows him the more he cares for him; he describes
him ‘firing away about the odes of Pindar.’ They fired noble broadsides
those men of the early Victorian times, and when we listen we still seem
to hear their echoes rolling into the far distance. Mr. Fitzgerald
ends his letter with a foreboding too soon to be realised: ‘Old Miss
Edgeworth is wearing away. She has a capital bright soul, which even now
shines quite youthfully through her faded carcase.’ It was in May 1849
that Maria Edgeworth went to her rest. She died almost suddenly, with no
long suffering, in the arms of her faithful friend and step-mother.