The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 16

MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Nov. 16. 1828_.

Thank you, thank you for the roses; the yellow Scotch and Knight's dark red, and the ever-blowing, came quite fresh, and just at the moment I wanted them, when I had taken to my garden, after finis.h.i.+ng my gutters.

Lady Hartland told me that the common people call the _rose des quatre saisons_, the quarter session rose.

Have you read the _Recollections of Hyacinth O'Gara_? It is a little sixpenny book; I venture to say you would like it; I wish I was reading it to you. I am much pleased with Napier's _History of the Peninsular War_. The Spanish character and all that influenced it, accidentally and permanently, is admirably drawn. There is the evidence of truth in the work. Heber is charming, but I haven't read him! People often say "charming" of books they have not read; but I have read extracts in two reviews, and have the pleasure of the book on the table before me.

I have not a sc.r.a.p of news for you, except that an a.s.s and a calf walked over my flower-beds, and that I did not kill either of them. If the a.s.s had not provoked me to this degree, I was in imminent danger of growing too fond of him, as I never could meet him drawing loads without stopping to pat him, till clouds of dust rose from his thick hide. But now, I will take no more notice of him--for a week!

_To_ MISS RUXTON

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Jan. 1, 1829_.

f.a.n.n.y Edgeworth is now f.a.n.n.y Wilson; [Footnote: Frances Maria, eldest daughter of the fourth Mrs. Edgeworth, married Lestock P. Wilson, Esq., of London.] I can hardly believe it! She is gone! I feel it, and long must feel it, with anguish, selfish anguish. But she will be happy--of that I have the most firm, delightful conviction; and therefore all that I cannot help now feeling is, I know, only _surface_ feeling, and will soon pa.s.s away. The more I have seen and known of Lestock, the more I like him and love him, and am convinced I shall always love him, whose every word and look bears the stamp and value of sincerity.

Both their voices p.r.o.nounced the words of the marriage vow with perfect clearness and decision. Mr. Butler performed the ceremony with great feeling and simplicity. I will tell my dearest aunt and you all the little circ.u.mstances; at present they are all in confusion, great and small, near and distant, and I am sick at heart in the midst of it all with the shameful, weak, selfish, uppermost sorrow of parting with this darling child.

_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.

BLOOMFIELD, _Jan. 19, 1829_.

An immense concourse of people, cavalcade and carriages innumerable, pa.s.sed by here to-day. We saw it, and you will see it all in the newspapers. Banners with _Const.i.tutional Agitation_ printed in black, _M_obility and n.o.bility in black, c.r.a.pe hatbands, etc. Lord Anglesea's two little sons riding between two officers, in the midst of the hurricane mob, struck me most. One of the boys, a little midge, seemed to stick on the horse by accident, or by mere dint of fearlessness: the officer put his arm round him once, and set him up, the boy's head looking another way, and the horse keeping on his way, through such noise, and struggling, and waves mult.i.tudinous of mob.

There is an entertaining article in the _Quarterly Review_ on _The Subaltern_. I do not like that on Madame de Genlis--coa.r.s.e, and over-doing the object by prejudice and virulence. The review of Scott's Prefaces is ungrounded and confused--how different from his own writing!

But there is an article worth all the rest put together, on Scientific Inst.i.tutions, written in such a mild, really philosophical spirit, such a pure, GREAT MAN'S desire to do good; I cannot but wish and hope it might prove to be Captain Beaufort's. If you have not read it, never rest till you do.

_To_ CAPTAIN BASIL HALL.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 12, 1829_.

... If I could, as you say, flatter myself that Sir Walter Scott was in any degree influenced to write and publish his novels from seeing my sketches of Irish character, I should indeed triumph in the "thought of having been the proximate cause of such happiness to millions."

In what admirable taste Sir Walter Scott's introduction [Footnote: To the new edition of _Waverley_.] is written! No man ever contrived to speak so delightfully of himself, so as to gratify public curiosity, and yet to avoid all appearance of egotism,--to let the public into his mind, into all that is most interesting and most useful to posterity to know of his history, and yet to avoid all improper, all impertinent, all superfluous disclosures.

Children's questions are often simply _sublime_: the question your three-years-old asked was of these--"Who sanded the seash.o.r.e?"

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 29, 1829_.

I cannot forbear writing specially to you, as I know you will feel so much about Captain Beaufort's appointment to the Hydrographers.h.i.+p; I wish poor William had been permitted the pleasure of hearing of it.

[Footnote: William Edgeworth had died of consumption on 7th May after a two months' illness.] It would have given him pleasure even on his dying bed, n.o.ble, generous creature as he was; he would have rejoiced for his friend, and have felt that merit is sometimes rewarded in this world.

This appointment is, in every respect, all that Captain Beaufort wished for himself, and all that his friends can desire for him. As one of the first people in the Admiralty said, "Beaufort is the only man in England fit for the place."

Very touching letters have come to us from people whom we scarcely knew, whom William had attached so much; and many whom he had employed speak of him as the kindest of masters, and as a benefactor whose memory will be ever revered.

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Sept. 27, 1829_.

I am now able, with the consent of all my dear guardians, to write with my own hand to a.s.sure you that I am quite well.

I enjoyed the s.n.a.t.c.hes I was able to have of Wordsworth's conversation, and I think I had quite as much as was good for me. He has a good philosophical bust, a long, thin, gaunt face, much wrinkled and weatherbeaten: of the Curwen style of figure and face, but with a more cheerful and benevolent expression.

While confined to my sofa and forbidden my pen, I have been reading a good deal: 1st, _Cinq Mars_, a French novel, with which I think you would be charmed, because I am; 2nd, _The Collegians_, in which there is much genius and strong drawing of human nature, but not elegant: terrible pictures of the pa.s.sions, and horrible, breathless interest, especially in the third volume, which never flags till the last huddled twenty pages. My guardians turn their eyes reproachfully upon me. Mr.

William Hamilton has been with us since the day before Wordsworth came, and we continue to like him.

_May 3, 1830_.

It is very happy for your little niece that you have so much the habit of expressing to her your kind feelings; I really think that if my thoughts and feelings were shut up completely within me, I should burst in a week, like a steam-engine without a snifting-clack, now called by the grander name of a safety-valve.

You want to know what I am doing and thinking of: of ditches, drains, and sewers; of dragging quicks from one hedge and sticking them down into another, at the imminent peril of their green lives; of two houses to let, one tenant promised from the Isle of Man, and another from the Irish Survey; of two bull-finches, each in his cage on the table--one who would sing if he could, and the other who could sing, I am told, if he would. Then I am thinking for three hours a day of _Helen_, to what purpose I dare not say. At night we read Dr. Madden's _Travels to Constantinople_ and elsewhere, in which there are most curious facts: admirable letter about the plague; a new mode of treatment, curing seventy-five in a hundred; and a family living in a mummy vault, and selling mummies. You must read it.

My peony tree is the most beautiful thing on earth. Poor dear Lord Oriel gave it me. His own is dead, and he is dead; but love for him lives in me still.

Sir Stamford Raffles is one of the finest characters I ever read of, and _did_ more than is almost credible. I have been amused with _The Armenians_, [Footnote: A novel by Macfarlane.]--amused with its pictures of Greek, Armenian, and Turkish life, and interested in its very romantic story.

_July 19_.

If there should not be any insuperable objection to it on your part, I will do myself the pleasure of being in your arms the first week in August, that I may be some time with you before I take my departure for England for the winter.

The people about us are now in great distress, having neither work nor food; and we are going to buy meal to distribute at half-price. Meal was twenty-three s.h.i.+llings a hundred, and potatoes sevenpence a stone, last market-day at Granard. Three weeks longer must the people be supported till new food comes from the earth.

This is the last letter Maria Edgeworth addressed to her aunt. She paid her intended visit to her in August, but had left her before her last illness began. Mrs. Ruxton died on the 1st of November, while Maria was in London with her sister f.a.n.n.y--Mrs. Lestock Wilson. The loss of her aunt was the greatest Miss Edgeworth had sustained since the death of her father. She had ever been the object of exceeding love, one with whom every thought and feeling was shared, one of her greatest sources of happiness.

MARIA _to_ MISS RUXTON.

69 WELBECK STREET, LONDON.

_Dec. 8, 1830_.

All my friends have been kind in writing to me accounts of you, my dear Sophy. You and Margaret are quite right to spend the winter at Black Castle; and the pain you must endure in breaking through all the old a.s.sociations and deep remembrances will, I trust, be repaid, both in the sense of doing right and in the affection of numbers attached to you.

I spent a fortnight with Sneyd very happily, in spite of mobs and incendiaries. Brandfold is a very pretty place, and to me a very pleasant house. The library, the princ.i.p.al room, has a trellis along the whole front, with 'spagnolette windows opening into it, and a pretty conservatory at the end, with another gla.s.s door opening into it. The views seen between the arches of the trellis beautiful; flower-knots in the gra.s.s, with stocks, hydrangeas, and crimson and pale China roses in profuse blow. Sneyd enjoys everything about him so much, it is quite delightful to see him in his home. You have heard from Honora of the sense and steadiness with which he resisted the mob at Goudhurst.