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

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The next day we took a beautiful walk to the territory and near the
residence of Lochiel, through a wood where groups of clansmen and
clanswomen were barking trees that had been cut down; and the faggoting
and piling the bark was as picturesque as heart could wish.

This day's journey was through fine wild Highland scenery, where rocks
and fragments of rocks were tumbled upon each other, as if by giants in
a passion, and now and then by giants playing at bowls with huge round
bowls. These roads--some of them for which we "lift up our eyes and
bless Marshal Wade," and some made by Telford, the vast superiority in
the laying out of which William has had the pleasure of pointing out to
his sisters--beautifully wind over hill and through valley, by the sides
of streams and lakes. We saw the eight locks joining together on the
Caledonian Canal, called Neptune's Stairs; and at another place on the
canal William, who had been asleep, _instinctively_ wakened just in time
to see a dredging machine at work: we stopped the carriage, and walked
down to look at it: took a boat and rowed round the vessel, and went on
board and saw the machinery. A steam-engine works an endless chain of
buckets round and round upon a platform with rollers. The buckets have
steel mouthpieces, some with quite sharp projecting lips, which cut into
the sand and gravelly bottom, and scoop up what fills each bucket. At
the bottom of each are cullender holes, through which the water drains
off as the buckets go on and pass over the platform and empty themselves
on an inclined plane, down which the contents fall into a boat, which
rows away when full, and deposits the contents wherever wanted. If you
ever looked at a book at Edgeworthstown called _Machines Approuvés_, you
would have the image of this machine. It brought my father's drawings of
the Rhone machine before my eyes.

The whole day's drive was delightful--mountains behind mountains as far
as the eye could reach, in every shade, from darkest to palest
Indian-ink cloud colour; an ocean of mountains, with perpetually
changing foreground of rocks, sometimes bare as ever they were born,
sometimes wooded better than ever the hand of mortal taste clothed a
mountain in reality or in picture, with oak, aspen, and the beautiful
pendant birch.

At Fort Augustus the house was painting, and the beds looked wretched;
but all was made plausible with the help of fires and fair words, and we
slept as well, or better, than kings and queens. As to any real
inconvenience at Highland inns, we have met with none; always good fish,
good eggs, good butter, and good humour.

Next day we had another delightful drive: saw the Fall of Foyers: fine
scrambling up and down to a rock, and on this rock such huge tumbledown
stones, like Druids' temples, half-fallen, half-suspended. The breath
was almost taken away and head dizzy looking at them above and the depth
below; one could hardly believe we stood safe. Yet here we are safe and
sound at Inverness, the Capital of the North, as Scott calls it. This
Bennet's Hotel, where we are lodged, is as good as any in London or
Edinburgh, and cleaner than almost any I ever was in, with a waiter the
perfection of intelligence. We are going to see a place called the
Dream, the name translated from the Gaelic.

I forgot to tell you that, when at Edinburgh, we went to see Sir James
and Lady Foulis's friends, the Jardines, who were also friends of
Henry's. They are in a very pretty house, Laverock Bank, a few miles
from Edinburgh. We "felicity hunters" have found more felicity than such
hunters usually meet with.

_To_ MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.

KINROSS, _July 23, 1823_.

I left off in my yesterday's letter to my mother just as we were
changing horses at Dunkeld, at six o'clock in the evening, to go on to
Perth; but I had in that note arrived prematurely at Dunkeld, and had
not time to fill up the history of our day. Be pleased, therefore, to go
back to Moulinan, and see us eat luncheon; for, in spite of Mr. Grant's
contempt of these _bon-vivant_ details, habit will not allow me to
depart from my Swiss, Parisian, and English practice of giving the bill
of fare.

First course, cold: two roast chickens, better never were; a ham, finer
never seen, even at my mother's luncheons; pickled salmon, and cold
boiled round.

Second course, hot: a large dish of little trout from the river; new
potatoes, and, as I had professed to be unable to venture on new
potatoes, a dish of mashed potatoes for me; fresh greens, with toast
over, and poached eggs.

Then, a custard pudding, a gooseberry tart, and plenty of Highland
cream--_highly_ superior to Lowland--and butter, ditto.

And for all this how much did we pay? Six shillings.

Our drive in evening sunshine from Moulinan to Dunkeld was delightful,
along the banks, no longer of the dear little, sparkling, foaming,
fretting Garry, but of the broad, majestic, quiet, dark bottle-green
coloured Tay; the road a perfect gravel walk; the bank, all the way down
between us and the river, copsewood, with now and then a clump of fine
tall larch, or a single ash or oak, with spreading branches showing the
water beneath; the mountain side chiefly oak and alder, a tree which I
scarcely knew till Sophy _mentioned_ it to me; sometimes the wood broken
with glades of fern, heath, and young _stubble_ oaks, all the way up to
white rocks on the summit; the young shoots of these stubble oaks tinted
with pink, so as to have in the evening sun the appearance of autumn
rich tints; and between these oaks and the green fern and broom a giant
race of foxglove, which I verily believe, from the root to the spike,
would measure four good feet, all rich in bells of brightest crimson, so
bright that they crimsoned the whole bank.

All these ten miles of wooded road run, I understand, through the
territory of the Duke of Athol. Now I see his possessions, I am sure I
do not wonder the lady left her lack-gold lover in the lurch for
"Athol's duke." Along the whole road he has raised a footpath,
beautifully gravelled. Oh! how I wish our walks had one inch off the
surface of this footpath, or that the African magician, or the English
equally potent magician of steam, could convey to my mother's _elbow_ in
the Dingle one yard of one bank of the gravel which here wastes its
pebbles on the mountain side! How in a trice she would summon round her
her choice spirits, Briny Duffy, Micky Mulheeran, and Mackin, and how
they would with shovel and loy fall to!

Through the wood at continual openings we saw glimpses of beautiful
paths or gravelled walks, which this munificent duke has made through
his woods for the accommodation of the public. I forgive him for being
like an over-ripe Orleans plum, and for not saying a word, good or bad,
the day we met him at Mr. Morrit's.

At Dunkeld, alas! we bade adieu to the dear Highlands. I have not time
now to tell you of Killiecrankie and Dundee's Stone.

Arrived at Perth at nine o'clock: tea, with silver urn and silver
candlesticks, and all luxurious: cold chicken, ham, and marmalade
inclusive.

The drive from Perth this morning to Kinross is beautiful, but in a more
civilised and less romantic way than our Highland scenery. We are now
within view of Lochleven, Queen Mary's island.

During this morning's drive, Sophy sang "In April, when primroses blow"
most charmingly. Her singing was much admired in Edinburgh by Sir Walter
Scott, etc., but still more at Mrs. Macpherson's. One day, she sang
several of Moore's melodies, and some Scotch songs. Mrs. Macpherson, who
is excessively fond of music, was so charmed, she told me afterwards she
never heard a voice she thought so sweet and clear, and unaffected. She
rejoiced to hear it without music, or any accompaniment that could drown
it, or spoil its distinct simplicity. She observed what a charm there is
in her distinct pronunciation of the words, in her just emphasis, and in
her never forgetting the words, or keeping you in any anxiety for her,
or requiring to be pressed. "How delightful," said she, "to have such an
accomplishment, such a power to please always with her, without
requiring instruments, or music-books, or any preparation." I was afraid
her singing of Scotch might not suit the Scotch, and she never ventured
it till we were at Mrs. Macpherson's, who was quite charmed with it.
Indeed, her soft voice is very different from the screeching some
songstresses make, with vast execution. I am particularly full of the
pleasure of Sophy's singing at present, because I felt so much delight
from it when I was just recovering from my illness. I did not think it
was in the nature of my body or soul to feel so much pleasure from
singing or music; but the fact is as I tell you. After three nights of
pulse at ninety-six and delirium, in which I one night saw the arches of
Roslin Chapel, with roses of such brilliant light crowning them that I
shut my eyes to avoid the blaze; and another night was haunted with the
words "a soldier [Footnote: Miss Edgeworth had been reading Stewart's
_History of Highland Regiments_ the day before she was taken ill with an
attack of erysipelas.] of the forty-second has lost his portmanteau,"
and continual marching and countermarching, and rummaging of Highland
officers and privates in search of it, and an officer laughing at me and
saying, "Don't you know this is a common Highland saying, A soldier of
the forty-second has lost his portmanteau? It means"--but he never could
or would tell me what it meant, when another officer said, "Madam, there
is a Lowland saying to match it"; and this also I could never hear.
Another night the words of a song called the "Banks of Aberfeldy"
crossed my imagination, and a fat, rubicund man stood before me,
continually telling me that he was "John Aberfeldy, the happy." I cannot
tell you how this John Aberfeldy tormented me. After these three
horrible nights, when I awoke with my tongue so parched I could not
speak till a spoonful of lemon-juice was inserted, I asked Sophy to
sing, and she directly sang, "Dear harp of my country." I never shall
forget the sort of pleasure; it soothed, it "rapt my" _willing_ not my
"_imprisoned_ soul in elysium," and I was so happy to feel I could again
follow a rational chain of ideas, and comprehend the words of the
beautiful poetry, to which music added such a charm and force. She sang,
"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," and "Farewell, but
whenever you welcome the hour," and "Oh, Nanny, wilt thou gang wi' me?"
and "Vive Henri Quatre!" which I love for the sake of Mrs. Henry
Hamilton, and for the sake of Lady Longford's saying to me, with a
mother's pride and joy in her enthusiastic eyes, "My Caroline will sing
to me at any time, in any inn, or anywhere." I am sure I may say the
same of my sister Sophy, who will sing for me at an inn by my sick bed,
and with more power of voice than all the stimulus of company and
flattery can draw from other young ladies. I never wish to hear a fine
singer; I always agree with Dr. Johnson in wishing that the difficulties
had been impossibilities, with all their falsettos and tortures of
affectation to which they put themselves. How I hate them, and all the
aimings at true Italian pronunciation and true Italian manner, which
after all is, nine times out of ten, quite erroneous, and such as the
Italians themselves would laugh at, or most probably no more comprehend
than I did De Leuze repeating the "Botanic Garden": I was just going to
ask what language it was, when my mother, good at need, saved me from
the irreparable blunder by whispering, "It is English." The words were,
I believe, all right, but the accents were all thrown wrong. As Lady
Spencer said, "It is wonderful that foreigners never _by accident_
throw the accents right." Milton says:

For eloquence the soul, song moves the sense;

but if he had heard Moore's poetry sung by Sophy, he would have
acknowledged that song moved not only the sense, but the soul.

I have dilated upon this to you, my dear Lucy, because you have at times
felt the same about Sophy's singing. During my illness, day and night,
whenever pain and delirium allowed me rational thought, you and your
admirable patience recurred to my mind. I said to myself, "How can she
bear it so well, and in her young days, the spring-time of life? how
admirable is her resignation and cheerfulness! never a cross word, or
cross look, or impatient gesture, and for four years; when I, with all
my strength of experience and added philosophy from education, moan and
groan aloud, and can scarce bear ten days' illness, with two really
angel sisters to nurse me, and watch my 'asking eye'!" You have at least
the reward of my perfect esteem and admiration, after comparison with
myself, the only true standard by which I can estimate your worth.

* * * * *

Miss Edgeworth and her sisters spent a most happy fortnight with Sir
Walter Scott and his family. "Never," writes his son-in-law, "did I see
a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first
arrived there: never can I forget her look and accent when she was
received by him at his archway, and exclaimed: 'Everything about you is
exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream!'"

Sir Walter delighted in Miss Sophy Edgeworth's singing, especially of
Moore's Irish melodies. "Moore's the man for songs," he said. "Campbell
can write an ode, and I can make a ballad; but Moore beats us all at a
song." Sir Walter was then at the height of his fame and "in the glory
of his prime," surrounded by his family; both his sons were at home, and
his daughter Anne; and he had then staying with him his nephew, "Little
Walter." Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart were living at Chiefswood, but they were
continually at Abbotsford, or some of the party were continually at
Chiefswood; and Sir Walter's joyous manner and life of mind, his looks
of fond pride in his children, the pleasantness of his easy manners, the
gay walks, the evening conversations, and the drives in the sociable,
enchanted Miss Edgeworth. In these drives the flow of story, poetry,
wit, and wisdom never ceased; Sir Walter sitting with his dog Spicer on
his lap, and Lady Scott with her dog Ourisk on her lap.

Lady Scott one day expressed her surprise that Scott and Miss Edgeworth
had not met when the latter was in Edinburgh in 1803. "Why," said Sir
Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my dear, Miss
Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not grown at
all." [Footnote: _Life of George Ticknor_.]

* * * * *

MARIA _to_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.

ABBOTSFORD, _July 31, 1823_.

I take a pen merely to say that I will not write! I have so much to say,
that I dare not trust myself, as I am still so far from strong, I must
not venture to play tricks with that health which it cost my dear, kind
nurses so much to preserve. I am as careful of myself as any creature
can be without becoming an absolute, selfish egotist. Lady Scott is
really so watchful and careful of me, that even when my own family
guardian angels are not on either or both sides of me, I can do no
wrong, and can come to no harm.

It is quite delightful to see Scott in his family in the country:
breakfast, dinner, supper, the same flow of kindness, fondness, and
genius, far, far surpassing his works, his letters, and all my hopes and
imagination. His castle of Abbotsford is magnificent, but I forget it in
thinking of him.

_To_ MR. RUXTON.

ABBOTSFORD, _Aug. 9, 1823_.

I remember that you requested one of our party to write a few lines from
Abbotsford. I think I mentioned to my aunt or Sophy the impression which
I first experienced from Sir Walter Scott's great simplicity of manner,
joined to his wonderful superiority of intellect. This impression has
been strengthened by all I have seen of him since. In living with him in
the country, I have particularly liked his behaviour towards his variety
of guests, of all ranks, who come to his hospitable castle. Many of
these are artists, painters, architects, mechanists, antiquarians,
people who look up to him for patronage--none of them permitted to be
hangers on or parasites; his manners perfectly kind and courteous, yet
such as to command respect; and I never heard any one attempt to flatter
him. I never saw an author less of an author in his habits. This I early
observed, but have been the more struck with it the longer I have been
with him. He has, indeed, such variety of occupations, that he has not
time to think of his own works: how he has time to write them is the
wonder. You would like him for his love of trees; a great part of his
time out of doors is taken up in pruning his trees. I have within this
hour heard a gentleman say to him, "You have had a good deal of
experience in planting, Sir Walter; do you advise much thinning, or
not?"--"I should advise much thinning, but little at a time. If you thin
much at a time, you let in the wind, and hurt your trees."

I hope to show you a sketch of Abbotsford Sophy has made--better than
any description. Besides the Abbey of Melrose, we have seen many
interesting places in this neighbourhood. To-day we have been a
delightful drive through Ettrick Forest, and to the ruins of Newark--the
hall of Newark, where the ladies bent their necks of snow to hear the
Lay of the Last Minstrel. Though great part of Ettrick Forest was cut
down years ago, yet much of it has grown up again to respectable height,
and many most beautiful oak, ash, and alder trees remain. We had a happy
walk by the river, and after refreshing ourselves with a luncheon in a
summer-house beautifully situated, we went to look at the ruins of
Newark. It was a pity that this fine old building was let to go to ruin,
which it has done only within the last seventy years. The late Duke and
Duchess of Buccleuch, to whom it belonged, had in their youth lived
abroad, and were so ignorant about their own estate in Scotland, that
when they first came to live here they supposed there were no trees, and
no wood they thought could be had, and brought with them, among other
things, a barrel full of skewers for the cook.

It is very agreeable to observe how many friends of long standing Scott
has in this neighbourhood: they have been here, and we have been at
their houses: very good houses, and the style of living excellent.
Except one Prussian prince and one Swiss baron, no grand foreign
visitors have been here; indeed, this house is in such a state of
painting and papering, and carpenters finishing new rooms and chasing
the inhabitants out of the old, that it was impossible to have much
company.

Sir Walter's eldest son was here for some days--now gone back to
Sandhurst; he is excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary,
but he has sense and honourable principle, and is very grateful to those
who were kind to him in Ireland. His younger brother, Charles, who is
now at home, has more easy manners, is more conversible, and has more of
his father's literary taste. I am sorry to say we are to leave
Abbotsford the day after to-morrow; but the longer we stay the more
sorry we shall feel to go. We had intended to have paid a visit to Lady
Selkirk at St. Mary's Isle, but this would be a hundred miles out of our
way, and I have no time for it, which I regret, as I liked very much the
little I saw of Lady Selkirk in London.

* * * * *

After visits at Glasgow and Dalwharran, Miss Edgeworth and her sisters
returned to Ireland.

* * * * *

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Nov. 20, 1823_.

It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day
longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or landing. You ask
what I am doing: nothing, but reading and idling, and paving a gutter
and yard to Honora's pig-stye, and school-house. What have I been
reading? The "Siege of Valencia," by Mrs. Hemans, which is an hour too
long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry I have read for
years. I have read Quin's letters from Spain, entertaining; the review
of it in the _Quarterly_ is by Blanco White. Dr. Holland's letters
continue to be as full of information and interest as ever, though he is
a married man. Tell Sophy that the subject of electricity and
electro-magnetism is every day affording new facts, and all the
philosophers on the Continent are busy about it. Sir Humphry Davy had a
narrow escape of breaking his neck by a fall down stairs, but he is not
hurt, _tout an contraire_. I had a letter, written in very good English,
the other day from M. de Staël; he is now in London, and tells me the
French and the Holy Alliance are tyrannising sadly at Geneva, and have
ordered all the Italian patriots who had taken refuge there to decamp.
There is one of these, Count Somebody or other, whose name I cannot
persuade myself to get up to look for, whom M. de Staël wishes I would
take by the hand in London, and what I am to do with him when I have him
by the hand I don't know.

I had a letter from Walter Scott, who has been delighted with the
history of Caraboo, [Footnote: Caraboo is alluded to in _St. Roman's
Well_, published in the autumn of this year. Sir Walter had never heard
of her till Miss Edgeworth told her history to him at Abbotsford.] which
I sent to him: a pamphlet published at the time. He says that nobody
with a reasonable head could attempt to calculate the extent of popular
credulity, and observes that she, like all the great cheats who have
imposed upon mankind, was touched with insanity, half knave, half mad,
at last the dupe of her own acting of enthusiasm.

Prince Hohenlohe and the pamphlets, pro and con, occupy us much.
Crampton's second edition of his I think excellent. Some very curious
facts have been brought out of the effect of the imagination upon the
bodily health. And while Scott is writing novels to entertain the world,
and the philosophers in France trying experiments on electro-magnetism,
Davy tumbling down stairs, and Denham and Co. in Africa looking for the
Niger, here is all London rushing out to look at the cottage in which a
swindler lived who murdered another swindler, and buying bits of the
sack in which the dead body was put! Have your newspapers given what we
have had in the _Morning Chronicle_? views of Roberts's cottage and the
pond with Thurtell and Hunt dragging the body out of it? Shakespear
understood John Bull right well, and always gave him plenty of murders
and dead bodies. I am glad there are no Irishmen in this base as well as
savage gang.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

PAKENHAM HALL, _Jan. 21_.

We, my mother, Lovell, Fanny, and I, came here yesterday, glad to see
Lord Longford surrounded by his friends in old Pakenham Hall hospitable
style,--he always cordial, unaffected, and agreeable. The house has been
completely new-modelled, chimneys taken down from top to bottom, rooms
turned about from lengthways to broad-ways, thrown into one another, and
out of one another, and the result is that there is a comfortable
excellent drawing-room, dining-room, and library, and the bedchambers
are admirable. Mrs. Smyth, of Gaybrook, and her daughter are here, and
Mr. Knox; and I have been so lucky as to be seated next to him at dinner
yesterday, and at breakfast this morning; he is very agreeable when he
speaks, and when he is silent it is "silence that speaks."

Lady Longford [Footnote: Georgiana, daughter of the first Earl
Beauchamp.] has been very attentive to us. She has the finest and most
happy open-faced children I ever saw--not the least troublesome, yet
perfectly free and at their case with the company and with their
parents.

A box will be left in Dublin for you on Monday morning. There is no
telling you how happy I have been getting ready and packing and fussing
about the said box for you, flying about the house from the library to
the garret. And all for what? When Sophy, whom I beg to be the unpacker,
opens it, you will see a certain dabbed-up crooked pasteboard tray in
which are four frills for you: I hemmed every inch of them myself, to
give them the only value they could have in your eyes.

_To_ MRS. BANNATYNE.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Feb. 16, 1824_.

My dear Mr. and Mrs. Bannatyne--my dear Mrs. Starke and Miss Bannatyne,
and Andrew and Dugald, and all of you kind friends, put your heads close
together to hear a piece of intelligence which will, I know, rejoice
your kind hearts.

_Our_ dear Sophy and _your_ dear Sophy is going to be married to a
person whom her mother, and every one of her own family completely
approve, who has been tenderly attached to her for some time, whose
principles, understanding, manners, and honourable manly character are
such as to deserve such a wife as I may proudly say he will have in
Sophy. His birth, family connections, and fortune are all such as we
could wish. The gentleman is a cousin of our own Captain Barry Fox; he
is an officer, but will probably leave the army, and settle in his own
country; we hope within reach of us. He has been so kind and considerate
about poor Lucy, so anxious not to deprive her too suddenly of her
beloved, and best of nurses, that he has endeared himself the more to us
all.

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