The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 by Maria Edgeworth

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My dear Mrs. Ticknor, I know you particularly liked Honora, and that you
will be interested in hearing all these particulars, though it seems
impertinent to detail them across the Atlantic to one who will, I fear,
never see any one of the persons I have mentioned. Yet affections such
as yours keep warm very long and at a great distance.

I feel that I have got into a snug little corner in both your hearts,
and that you will excuse a great deal from me, therefore I go on without
scruple drawing upon your sympathy, and you will not protest my draft.

You saw how devoted Honora was to her aunt, Mrs. Mary Sneyd, whom you
liked so much; and you will easily imagine what a struggle there has
been in Honora's mind before she would consent to a marriage with even
such a man as Captain Beaufort, when it must separate her from her aunt.
Captain Beaufort himself felt this so much that he would never have
pressed it. He once thought that she might be prevailed upon to
accompany them to London, and to live with them. But Mrs. Mary Sneyd
could not bear to leave Mrs. Edgeworth, and this place which she has
made her heart's home. She decided Captain Beaufort and her niece to
make her happy by completing their union, and letting her feel that she
did not prevent the felicity of the two persons she loves best now in
the world. She remains with us.

The marriage is to take place next Tuesday or Thursday, and my Aunt Mary
will go to church with her niece and give her away. I must tell you a
little characteristic trait of this aunt, the least selfish of all human
beings. She has been practising getting up early in the morning, which
she has not done for two years--has never got up for breakfast. But she
has trained herself to rising at the hour at which she must rise on the
wedding day, and has walked up and down her own room the distance she
must walk up and down the aisle of the church, to ensure her being
accustomed to the exertion, and able to accomplish it easily. This she
did for a long time without our knowing it, till Honora found it out.
Mrs. Mary Sneyd is quite well and in excellent spirits.

A younger sister of mine, Lucy, of whom you have heard us speak as an
invalid, who was at Clifton with that dear Sophy whom we have lost, is
now recovered, and has returned home to take Honora's place with her
Aunt Mary; and Aunt Mary likes to have her, and Lucy feels this a great
motive to her to overcome a number of nervous feelings which formed part
of her illness. A regular course of occupations and duties, and feeling
herself essential to the happiness and the holding together of a family
she so loves, will be the best strengthening medicine for her. She
arrived at home last night. My sister Fanny and her husband, Lestock
Wilson, are with us. My sister has much improved in health: she is now
able to walk without pain, and bore her long journey and voyage here
wonderfully. I have always regretted, and always shall regret, that this
sister Fanny of mine had not the pleasure of becoming acquainted with
you. You really must revisit England. My sister Harriet Butler, and Mr.
Butler, and the three dear little Foxes, are all round me at this
instant. Barry Fox, their father, will be with us in a few days, and
Captain Beaufort returns from London on Monday. You see what a large and
happy family we are!

Mr. Butler will perform the happy, awful ceremony. How people who do not
love can even dare to marry, to approach the altar to pronounce that
solemn vow, I cannot conceive.

My thoughts are so engrossed by this subject that I absolutely cannot
tell you of anything else. You must tell me of everything that interests
you, else I shall not forgive myself for my egotism.

_To_ MISS MARGARET RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Nov. 8, 1838_.

You are the first person I write to upon returning from church after the
accomplishment of Honora and Captain Beaufort's marriage. Captain
Beaufort was affected more than any man I ever saw in the same
circumstances, yet in the most manly manner. Aunt Mary went to church,
as she had intended: they had both received her blessing, kneeling as to
a mother, the evening before in her own room. Lestock and Barry were at
the church door, to hand her up the aisle. Old Mr. Keating was there,
excellent, warm-hearted man; and Mr. Butler performed the ceremony. The
bride and bridegroom went off from the church door, and are, I suppose,
by this time, five o'clock, at Trim.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Aug. 25, 1839_.

You will, I am sure, give me credit for having so well and pleasantly
performed our visits--Rosa, Lucy, and Francis with me--to the Pakenhams
and Pollards. Francis found Mr. Pollard very agreeable, and was charmed
with Mrs. Pollard's manners and conversation. We called on Mrs. Dease on
our return, and walked in her garden, in which, in all my seventy years,
I never walked before, and saw huge bunches of crimson Indian pinks,
some of which are now in my garden, and well doing there.

In the morning, before we went to Kinturk, came a note from a gentleman
at the _White Hart_, Edgeworthstown, waiting for an answer: an American
medical professor, Dr. Gibson. It was very unlucky that I was engaged to
go out--irrevocably settled: however, I sat two hours and a half with
Dr. Gibson, and very clever and agreeable I found him.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

TRIM, _Nov. 1, 1840_.

I am _perfect_, dearest mother, so no more about it, and thank you from
my heart and every component part of my precious self for all the care
and successful care you have taken of me, your old petted nursling.
Thank you and Mrs. Mitchell for the potted meat luncheon, and Mr. Tuite
for his grapes,--Mary Anne and Charlotte had some. I was less tired than
I could have expected when I reached Trim, and there was Mr. Butler on
the steps ready to welcome us, and candles and firelight in the
drawing-room so cheerful. I slept like a sleeping top. Harriet read out
_Ferdinand and Isabella_, which, with all its chivalresque interest, I
do like very much. I am sure Rosa's [Footnote: Mrs. Francis Edgeworth.]
Spanish interest in the book will grow by that it feeds upon, and I am
very glad that she who has such fresh genuine pleasure in literature
should have this book, which is so beautifully written, because it is so
well felt by the author. Poor kind man. I will write to Mr. Ticknor as
soon as I come to Finis.

The birds got home well; but travelling, Harriet tells me, does not
agree with them, because they cannot stick upon their perch, and it is a
perpetual struggle between cling and jolt.

_Nov. 10_.

I enclose a note of Miss Crampton's and two notes of Lady Normanby's. I
never read more unaffected, affectionate, wife-like letters. How
gratifying they must be to Crampton, and it raises one's opinion of Lord
Normanby himself to find he can so attach a woman and a wife.

The _History of a Flirt_, which Harriet is reading to me, is rather
entertaining but not interesting--a new and ingenious idea of a flirt,
who is not looking for establishment or match-making, and therefore her
disinterestedness charms all the lords and gentlemen who have been used
to match-making mothers and young-lady-hunters for titles, and under
favour of this disinterestedness her insolence and faithlessness is
passed over, while all the time she is in love with a captain with "soft
Venetian eyes," as Mrs. Thrale used to say of Piozzi.

_Nov. 16_.

The ear-comforter or earwig is beautiful and comfortable, and is, I
hear, as becoming to me as was the Chancellor's wig to Francis Forbes
when he acted _Of Age To-morrow_. I am acting of age to-day, and very
gay, and perhaps may arrive at years of discretion at eighty, if I live
so long. I certainly wish to live till next month that I may see you all
at home again. You know the classic distich, which my father pointed out
and translated for me, which was over the entrance door of the Cross
Keys inn, near Beighterton:

If you are told you will die to-morrow you smile:
If you are told you will die a month hence you will sigh.

I do not know where this may be in a book, but I know it is in human
nature.

_To_ MR. TICKNOR.

TRIM, _Nov. 19, 1840_.

... I am afraid to invite you to come and see us again, lest you should
be disenchanted, and we should lose the delightful gratification we
enjoy in your glamour of friendship. Aunt Mary, however, is really all
you think and saw her; and in her good years still a proof, as you
describe her--and a remarkable proof--of the power of mind over time,
suffering, and infirmities, and an example of Christian virtues, making
old age lovely and interesting.

Your prayer, that she might have health and strength to enjoy the
gathering of friends round her has been granted. Honora and her husband,
and Fanny and her husband, have been with us all this summer for months;
and we have enjoyed ourselves as much as your kind heart could wish.
Especially "that beautiful specimen of a highly cultivated gentlewoman,"
as you so well called Mrs. Edgeworth, has been blest with the sight of
all her children round her, all her living daughters and their husbands,
and her grandchildren. Francis will settle at home, and be a good
country gentleman and his own agent, to Mrs. Edgeworth's and all our
inexpressible comfort and support, also for the good of the county, as a
resident landlord and magistrate _much_ needed. As _he_ is at home I can
be spared from the rent-receiving business, etc., and leaving him with
his mother, Aunt Mary, and Lucy, I can indulge myself by accepting an
often-urged invitation from my two sisters, Fanny and Honora, to spend
some months with them in London. I have chosen to go at this quiet time
of year, as I particularly wish not to encounter the bustle and
dissipation and lionising of London. For though I am such a minnikin
lion now, and so old, literally without teeth or claws, still there be,
that might rattle at the grate to make me get up and come out, and stand
up to play tricks for them, and this I am not able or inclined to do. I
am afraid I should growl; I never could be as good-natured as Sir Walter
Scott used to be, when rattled for and made to "come out and stand on
his hind legs," as he used to describe it, and then go quietly to sleep
again.

I shall use my privilege of seventy-two--rising seventy-three--and shall
keep in my comfortable den; I will not go out. "Nobody asked you,
ma'am," to play lion, may perhaps be said or sung to me, and I shall not
be sorry nor mortified by not being asked to exhibit, but heartily happy
to be with my sisters and their family and family friends--_all_ for
which I go--knowing my own mind very well I speak the plain truth. I
shall return to Edgeworthstown before the London _season_, as it is
called, commences, i.e. by the end of March, or at the very beginning of
April.

This is all I have, for the present, to tell you of my dear self, or of
our family doings or plannings.

... I do not know whether I was most interested, dear Mrs. Ticknor, in
your picture of your domestic life and happy house and home, or in the
view you gave me of your public festivity and celebration of your
American day of days--your national festival in honour of your
Declaration of Independence. It was never, I suppose, more joyously,
innocently, and advantageously held than on the day you describe so
delightfully with the accuracy of an eye-witness. I think I too have
seen all this, and thank you for showing it to me. It is a picture that
will never leave the memory of my heart. I only wish that we could ever
hope to have in Ireland any occasion or possibility of such happy and
peaceable meetings, with united sympathy and for the keeping alive a
feeling of national patriotism. No such point of union can be found,
alas! in Ireland; no subject upon which sects and parties could coalesce
for an hour, or join in rejoicing or feeling for their country! Father
Matthews, one might have hoped, considering the good he has effected for
all Ireland, and considering his own unimpeachable character and his
great liberality, admitting all sects and all parties to take his pledge
and share his benevolent efforts, _might_ have formed a central point
round which all might gather. But no such hope! for I am just now
assured his very Christian charity and liberality are complained of by
his Catholic brethren, priests and laity, who now begin to abuse him for
giving the pledge to _Protestants_, and say, "What good our fastings,
our temperance, our being of the true faith, if Father Matthews treat
_heretics all as one_, as Catholics themselves! and would have them
saved in this world and the next too! Then I would not doubt but at the
last he'd _turn tail_! aye, turn Protestant himself _entirely_."

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Dec. 26_.

While Francis is _pro_-ing and con-ing with Fanny about alterations in
his house at Clewer, I may go on with my scribbling, and tell you that
Honora luncheoned here, and then off we went to Mrs. Debrizey's, Mrs.
Darwin's, Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgewood, Mrs. Guillemard, and Mrs. Marcet--at
Mrs. Edward Romilly's.

Mrs. Darwin is the youngest daughter of Jos. Wedgewood, and is worthy of
both father and mother; affectionate, and unaffected, and--young as she
is, full of old times, she has her mother's radiantly cheerful
countenance, even now, debarred from all London gaieties and all gaiety
but that of her own mind by close attendance on her sick husband.

Mrs. Marcet was ill in bed, but Mr. and Mrs. Edward Romilly were
pleasing and willing to be pleased, and he talked over his father's
_Memoirs_ candidly and sensibly, and like a good son and a man of sense.

"I had like to have forgotten "--strange expression! can Mr. Butler
explain it? _I had like to have_ forgotten and must tell Aunt Mary about
Mrs. Lister calling.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

_January 2, 1841_.

Thank you for your birthday good wishes. How many birthdays have brought
me the same never-failing kindness.

A very pleasant meeting we had yesterday at your brother's. [Footnote:
Recently married to Honora Edgeworth.] Honora, dear Honora, was so nice
and kind, nobody but ourselves. At second course appeared the essential
trifle, [Footnote: A trifle always appeared on Maria Edgeworth's
birthday, because once on New Year's Day when a trifle had been ordered
and the dish was placed on the table there was found under the flowers,
not cake and cream, but a little story Maria had written, "A Trifle."
The young folk had a real trifle afterwards.] and, trifle as it was, it
was quite delightful to me with Honora's smile.

Did you ever taste figs stuffed with almonds? I hope you never may taste
them! very bad, I assure you, but how the almonds got in puzzled me; all
tight and closed as the outer skin looks without ridge or joining.

Did you ever taste Imperial Tokay? Your brother gave me some of the best
ever tasted, I am told; and what do you think I said?

"Why, this cannot be Tokay!"

"Did you ever taste Tokay before?" said he.

"O yes, very often; but this is not Tokay."

"Be pleased to tell us what it is then," quoth Lestock.

"I don't know; but not Tokay, or a different sort from what I ever
tasted, for that was sour and always drunk in green glasses."

Suddenly I recollected that I meant _Hock_!

Do you recollect the history of the Irishman, who declared that he had
seen anchovies growing on the walls at Gibraltar? Challenged a gentleman
for doubting him, met, and fired, and hit his man, and when the man who
was hit, sprang up as he received the shot, and the second
observed--"How he capers!"

"By the powers! It was capers I meant 'stead of anchovies."

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Jan. 10, 1841_.

_À propos du pluie, à propos du beau temps_--I think of you and ten
thousand times a week. ("I hate exaggeration.") I wish for you when I am
in want of some unremembered or _disremembered_ name. I do love that
Irish verb disremember, and I conjugate it daily from the infinitive to
the preterpluperfect. Last week I preterpluperfectly disremembered when
talking to Morris of Fortunio's gifted men, whether the legs of him who
outrunneth the hare were tied with green or red? Parties run high for
green and for red--please to settle the question.

Fanny has been reading to me Darwin's _Voyage_; delightful it is.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Jan. 13, 1841_.

Most agreeable dinner here yesterday; the _convives_ were: Dr.
Lushington, Mr. Andrews; Mrs. Andrews at the last sent a regret--ill in
bed with a headache. Honora came in her stead. Mr. Macintosh and Miss
Carr; Dr. Lushington beside Fanny, and carving remarkably well and most
entertaining and agreeable; he raised the heart's laugh frequently, and
the head's by fresh, not old-faded-London-diner-out bon-mots, anecdotes,
and facts worth knowing, all with the assistance of Mr. Andrews, so
remarkably agreeable and gentlemanly a gentleman; they played into each
other's hands and mine delightfully, and Fanny's, and Honora's, and the
ball came to everybody pat, in turn. The ball did I say? Boomerang I
should have said, for it came back always nicely to the thrower.

I must tell you an anecdote I heard yesterday from Mr. Kenyon, brother
of Lord Kenyon's, a saying of Mrs. Brooke, sister of Baron Garrow, who,
notwithstanding his bullying manner in court, was a man easily swayed in
private, always influenced by the last thing said by the last person in
his company--all which was compressed by Mrs. Brooke into: "With my
brother _presence is power_."

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _Feb. 24, 1841_.

My ultimate intention and best hope for my own selfish satisfaction is
to go with you and Mr. Butler to that poor _uncentred_ [Footnote: Mrs.
Mary Sneyd died at the age of ninety, on the 10th of February 1841.]
desolate home at Edgeworthstown.

What an inexpressible comfort that you were with your mother, Lucy, and
Honora, and my dear lost aunt to the last.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

_March 14, 1841_.

Here I am, like a Sybarite, but with luxuries such as a Sybarite or
Sybaritess never dreamed of: a cup of good coffee and some dry toast and
butter, a good coal fire on my right, a light window on my left,
dressing-table opposite, with large looking-glass, which reflects, not
my face, which for good reasons of my own I never wish to see, but a
beautiful green lawn and cedars of Lebanon; and on my mantelpiece stand
jars of Nankin china, and shells from--Ocean knows where. And where do
you think I am? At Heathfield Lodge, Croydon, the seat of Gerard
Ralstone, Esq.; and met here at a large dinner yesterday Mr. Napier, and
he comes for me to-morrow, and takes me to Forest Hill. At this dinner
were two celebrated American gentlemen--Mr. Sparkes, who wrote
Washington's _Life_; and Mr. Clisson, a man of fortune, and benevolently
enthusiastic about colonisation in Liberia.

After luncheon I saw march by to church a whole regiment of youths from
Addiscombe, which is near here.

But now I must retrograde to tell you, as I have a few minutes more than
I expected, of a visit I had an hour before I set out, from a man fresh
from Africa--a Scotchman by birth, a missionary by vocation, who had
been twenty years abroad, almost all that time in Africa: sent to the
Hottentots in the first place, and he converted many. They were taught
to sow and to reap, and the women to _sew_ in the other way, all by this
indefatigable Mr. Moffatt; and they taught him on their part how to do
the CLUCK, and Mr. Moffatt did it for me. It is indescribable and
inimitable. It is not so loud as a hen's cluck to her chickens, but more
quick and abrupt.

He said that when he was ordered to return home, he felt it as a
sentence of banishment. "I had lived so long in Africa, I felt it my
home, and I had almost forgotten how to speak English. I almost dreaded
to be among white faces again."

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET.

Mr. Napier brought me here by half after twelve.

I had a delightful drive with him in his little pony phaeton from
Croydon to Forest Hill. Mr. and Mrs. Napier are more and more
delightful to me in conversation and manners the more I see of them. A
brother, Captain Napier, very conversable, and full of humour; he has a
charming daughter, and has been in all parts of the world, and loves
Ireland and the Irish.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, _April 1841_.

I must tell you now of my visit to Warfield Lodge. Henrietta and Wren
met me at the station, and all the way, when they spoke, it seemed as if
I had parted from them but yesterday. When I saw Miss O'Beirne, there
was, opposite to me, that fine, full-coloured, full of life, speaking
picture of Mrs. O'Beirne. The place is as pretty as ever, and it was
impossible for the most hospitable luxury to do more for me, and with
the most minute recollective attention to all my olden-times habits and
ways. I would not for anything that could be given or done for me, not
have paid this visit.

One evening Miss O'Beirne invited some friends I was particularly glad
to see--three daughters of my dear Sir John Malcolm, all very fine young
women, with fine souls, and vast energy and benevolence, worthy of him.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Sept. 27_.

I send you some Spanish books which I bought, with one eye upon you and
one upon Rosa. I sat up till past one o'clock a few nights ago, and
caught cold, looking through the whole of _Hudibras_, for what at last
could not be found in it, though I still am confident it is there--

Murder is lawful made by the excess.

In the middle of my hunt my mind misgave me that it was in the _Fable of
the Bees_, and I went through it line by line, and for my pains can
swear it is not there. It is wonderful that, at seventy-four, I can be
so ardent in the chase, certainly not for the worth of the game, nor yet
for the triumph of finding; for I care not whether I am the person to
find it or not, so it is found. Pray find it for me.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 10, 1842_.

We have been much entertained and interested in Macaulay's "Life of
Hastings," in the _Edinburgh_; but some of it is too gaudily written,
and mean gaudiness, unsuited to the subject--such as the dresses of the
people at Westminster Hall; and I think Macaulay's indignation against
Gleig for his adulation of Hastings, and his not feeling indignation
against his crimes, is sometimes noble, and sometimes mean and
vituperative.

_To_ MRS. BEAUFORT.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 12_.

Mr. Creed, my dear good Mr. Creed, has been most kind in taking into his
employment one of the young Gerrards who behaved so gallantly in
recovering their father's arms from robbers. The poor people are seldom
rewarded when they do right, yet surely, in the government of human
creatures, Hope and Reward are strong and elevating powers, while Fear
and Punishment can at best only restrain from crime. Hope can produce
the finest and most permanent springs of action.

We have not been able to go on with our reading for some days. The more
I live I see more and more the misery of uncultivated minds, and the
happiness of the cultivated, when they can keep themselves free from
literary and scientific jealousies and party spirit.

_To_ MRS. R. BUTLER.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 1842_.

I am surprised to find how much more history interests me now than when
I was young, and how much more I am now interested in the same events
recorded, and their causes and consequences shown, in this History of
the French Revolution, and in all the History of Europe during the last
quarter of a century, than I was when the news came fresh and fresh in
the newspapers. I do not think I had sense enough to take in the
relations and proportions of the events. It was like moving a magnifying
glass over the parts of a beetle, and not taking in the whole.

_To_ MISS MARGARET RUXTON, _then residing at_ HYÈRES.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _April 16, 1842_.

It seems such an immense time since I have heard from you, so now I sit
down to earn a letter.

And first I have to tell you that, on the 14th, between the hours of
eleven and twelve, a new cousin of yours was brought into this world, a
monstrous large boy: Rosa doing well: house very full, [Footnote: All
the family had assembled to meet Pakenham Edgeworth on his return, on
leave, from India.] but all as quiet as mice. We breakfast in the study,
to keep all noise from Rosa in the plume room.

It is time to tell you that Pakenham is here, and Fanny, and Honora, and
Harriet, and Mary Anne, and Charlotte; and we are as happy as ever we can
be. Pakenham's tastes are all domestic, yet he has the most perfect
knowledge of business, great penetration of eye, and cool, self-possessed
manners, like one used to judgment and command, yet not proud of doing
either. He has brought with him such proofs of his industry as are quite
astonishing; such collections of drawings, both botanical and sketches of
country. How he found time to do all this, and spend six hours per day at
Cucherry--all as one as sessions--and to write his journal of every day
for eleven years, I really cannot comprehend; but so it is.

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