Maria Edgeworth. Helen Zimmern

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СКАЧАТЬ and then when we meet face to face, and voucher to voucher, it shall be truly seen whose letter-writing account stands fullest and fairest in the world. Till then "we'll leave it all to your honor's honor." But why does my dear aunt write, "I can have but little more time to spend with my brother in my life," as if she was an old woman of one hundred and ninety-nine and upwards? I remember the day I left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect, that "you had one foot in the grave;" and though I saw you standing before me in perfect health, sound wind and limb, I had the weakness to feel frightened, and never to think of examining where your feet really were. But in the month of May we hope to find them safe in your shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out, and that all the black clouds in the political horizon will be dispersed, and that "freemen" will, by that time, eat their puddings and hold their tongues. Anna and I stayed one week with Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were very thoroughly occupied all the time with seeing and—I won't say with being seen; for though we were at three balls, I do not believe any one saw us. The upper rooms we thought very splendid and the play-houses pretty, but not so good as the theatre at Bristol. We walked all over Bath with my father, and liked it extremely: he showed us the house where he was born.

      The day of retribution was indeed nearer at hand than she anticipated. In the autumn of 1793 the news of Irish disturbances grew so alarming that Mr. Edgeworth thought it his duty to return immediately. The caravan was therefore once more transported to Edgeworthstown.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      WOMANHOOD.

      On their return the Edgeworths at first inclined to think that the English papers had exaggerated the Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a condition of permanent discontent, they were relieved to find that though there were alarms of outrages committed by "Hearts of Oak Boys" and "Defenders," though there were nightly marauders about Edgeworthstown, though Mr. Edgeworth had been threatened with assassination, still, all things considered, "things in their neighborhood were tolerably quiet." In this matter as in others, of course, the basis of comparison alone constitutes the value of the inference deduced. In any case the family resumed their quiet course of existence; Mr. Edgeworth busy with the invention of a telegraph, Miss Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little ones, visiting and being visited by her Aunt Ruxton. In the evenings the family gathered round the fireside and the father read aloud. Late in 1793 Miss Edgeworth writes:—

      This evening my father has been reading out Gay's Trivia, to our great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you and Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us. If you have Trivia, and if you have time, will you humor your niece so far as to look at it? I had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved to read the same book with them at the same hour, than to look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. "Ah! that is because my dear niece has no taste and no eyes." But I assure you I am learning the use of my eyes main fast, and make no doubt, please Heaven I live to be sixty, to see as well as my neighbors. I am scratching away very hard at the Freeman Family.[3]

      That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by the current sentimentalism of the period, the above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest letters evince her practical, straightforward common sense. Romance had no place in her nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her Letters to Literary Ladies. She wrote to her cousin:—

      Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after Letters to Literary Ladies. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can be expected, nor are they likely to mend at present; when they are fit to be seen—if that happy time ever arrives—their first visit shall be to Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of crooked marks of papa's critical indignation, besides various abusive marginal notes, which I would not have you see for half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole crown as pure as King Hiero's.

      The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were going on prosperously side by side with those of war; the disturbances, of which Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, having become sufficiently serious to require military intervention.

      In 1795 the Letters to Literary Ladies were published. Considering the time when the work was written it showed much independence and advance of thought, though to-day it would be stigmatized as somewhat retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea in favor of female education, repeating arguments that of late years have been well worn, and of which the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom of according education to women, no longer stands in need. The book is interesting to-day merely as another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter were advanced in thought. They could not be brought to the common opinion then prevalent that ignorance was a woman's safeguard, that taste for literature was calculated to lead to ill conduct, though even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as Mr. Day indorsed Sir Anthony Absolute's dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition should consist in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous combinations.

      Not even the honors of first authorship could cause Miss Edgeworth's private letters, then any more than afterwards, to be occupied with herself. "I beg, dear Sophy," she writes to her cousin, "that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of 'my works;' I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth." It is the affairs of others, the things that it will please or amuse her correspondents to hear, that she writes about. The tone is always good-humored and kindly.

      Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was disturbed by the insurgents. She writes, January, 1796:—

      You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county of Meath was the seat of war, must know that we emulate your courage; and I assure you, in your own words, "that whilst our terrified neighbors see nightly visions of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows unbarred." I must observe, though, that it is only those doors and windows that have neither bolts nor bars that we leave unbarred, and these are more at present than we wish even for the reputation of our valor. All that I crave for my own part is that if I am to have my throat cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with charcoal. I shall look at every person that comes here very closely, to see if there be any marks of charcoal upon their visages. Old wrinkled offenders, I should suppose, would never be able to wash out their stains, but in others a very clean face will, in my mind, be a strong symptom of guilt—clean hands proof positive, and clean nails ought to hang a man.

      In 1796 appeared the first volume of the Parent's Assistant. It is agreeable to learn from a letter of hers that she was not responsible for this clumsy title:—

      My father had sent the Parent's Friend, but Mr. Johnson has degraded it into Parent's Assistant, which I dislike particularly from association with an old book of arithmetic called the Tutor's Assistant.

      The book was so successful that the publisher expressed a wish for more volumes, to be brought out with illustrations. Miss Beaufort, the daughter of a neighboring clergyman, was entrusted with the artistic commission, which led to an intimacy between the families. Meanwhile Miss Edgeworth, stimulated by success, continued to write new stories, and to correct and revise old ones. The Moral Tales were conceived at this time, and the idea of writing on Irish Bulls had occurred to her. She was also busy upon Practical Education. At the same time Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's health, that had long been precarious, gave way, and in November, 1797, to the sorrow of all the circle, she fell a victim to consumption. As before, Mr. Edgeworth was soon consoled. It was in the direction of Miss Beaufort that he turned his eyes. There must certainly have been something attractive in this man, now past fifty, three times a widower, with a numerous family by different wives, that could induce a young girl to regard him as a wooer. Miss Edgeworth frankly owns that when she first knew of this attachment she did not wish for the marriage. But her father, with his persuasive СКАЧАТЬ