The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume II Part 23

The man kneeled down on one knee, and putting the gun across the other knee, broke it asunder, and throwing the pieces to Mr. Martin, cried, "There it is for you. I swore that was the only way you should ever have it, dead or alive. You have warned me, and now I warn you; take care of yourself."

He strode out of the crowd. But he was afterwards convicted of Terry-alt practices and transported. Now all is perfectly quiet, and Mr. Martin goes on doing justice in his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on every week. When the noise, heat, and crowd in his sessions court become beyond all bearing, he roars with his stentorian voice to clear the court; and if that be not done forthwith, he with his own two Herculean arms seizes the loudest two disputants, knocks their heads together, thrusts them bawling as they go out of the door and flings them asunder.

In his own house there never was a more gentle, hospitable, good-natured man, I must say again and again, or else I should be a very ungrateful woman.

Miss Martin has three ponies, which she has brought every day to the great Wyatt window of the library, where she feeds them with potatoes.

One of them is very pa.s.sionate; and once the potato being withheld a moment too long at the hall door he fell into a rage, pushed in at the door after her, and she ran for her life, got upstairs and was safe.

I asked what he would have done if he had come up to her?

"Set his two feet on my shoulders, thrown me down, and trampled upon me."

The other day the smith hurt his foot in shoeing him, and up he reared, and up jumped the smith on the raised part of his forge--the pony jumped after him, and if the smith had not scrambled behind his bellows, "would have killed him to be sure."

After hearing this I declined riding this pony, though Miss Martin pressed me much, and a.s.sured me he was as quiet as a lamb--provided I would never strike him or look cross. Once she got me up on his back, but I looked so miserable, she took me down again. She described to me her nursing of one of these ponies; "he used to stand with his head over my shoulder while I rubbed his nose for an hour together; but I suppose I must throw off these Bedouin habits before I go to London."

They are now spending the season in town. I had an opportunity of seeing her perfect freedom from coquetry in company with a Mr. Smith--no relation of Sir Culling's--a very handsome fine gentleman who came here unexpectedly.

All this time poor Isabella has been left by me in torture in her bed.

At the end of three weeks she was p.r.o.nounced out of danger, and in spite of the kind remonstrances of our hospitable hosts, not tired of the sick or the well, on a very wet odious day away we went. As there are no inns or place where an invalid could pa.s.s the night, I wrote to beg a night's lodging at Renvyle, Mr. Blake's. He and Mrs. Blake, who wrote _Letters from the Irish Highlands_, were not at home, in Galway on a visit, but they answered most politely that they begged me to consider their house as my own, and wrote to their agent who was at Renvyle to receive us.

Captain Bushby, of the Water Guard--married to a niece of Joanna Baillie's--was very kind in accompanying us on our first day's journey.

"I must see you _safe out_," said he. "Safe out" is the common elision for safe out of Connemara. And really it was no easy matter to get us safe out; but I spare you a repet.i.tion of sloughs; we safely reached Renvyle, where the agent received us in a most comfortable well-furnished, well-carpeted, well-lighted library, filled with books--excellent dining-room beyond, and here Lady Smith had a day's rest, without which she could not have proceeded, and well for her she had such a comfortable resting-place.

Next day we got into _Joyce's Country_, and had hot potatoes and cold milk, and Renvyle cold fowl at The Lodge, as it is styled, of Big Jacky Joyce--one of the descendants of the ancient proprietors, and quite an original Irish character. He had heard my name often, he said, from Mr.

Nimmo, and knew I was a writing lady, and a friend to Ireland, and he was civil to me, and I was civil to him, and after eyeing Sir Culling and Lady Smith, and thinking, I saw, that she was affecting to be languis.h.i.+ng, and then perceiving that she was really weak and ill, he became cordial to the whole party, and entertained us for two hours, which we were obliged to wait for the going out of the tide before we could cross the sands. Here was an arm of the sea, across which Mr.

Nimmo had been employed to build a bridge, and against Big Jack Joyce's advice, he would build it where Jack prophesied it would be swept away in the winter, and twice the bridge was built, and twice it was swept away, and still Nimmo said it was the fault of the masons; the embankment and his theory could not be wrong, and a third time he built the bridge, and there we saw the ruins of it on the sands--all the embankments swept away and all we had for it was to be dragged over the sand by men--the horses taken off. We were pushed down into a gully-hole five feet deep, and thence pulled up again; how it was I cannot tell you, for I shut my eyes and resigned myself, gave up my soul and was much surprised to find it in my body at the end of the operation: Big Jacky Joyce and his merry men having somehow managed it.

There was an end of our perils by gullies, sloughs, and bog-holes. We now got on Mr. Nimmo's and Mr. Killalla's really good roads, and now our four horses began to tell, and that night we reached Westport, and in consequence of Mrs. Martin's introduction to her friend Lord Sligo were received by him and Lady Sligo most courteously.

Westport is a beautiful place, with a town, a port, industrious people all happy, and made so by the sense and energy of a good landlord and a good agent. We regretted that we could stay only this night and the next morning to breakfast; it was so delightful and extraordinary to us again to see trees and shrubberies, and to find ourselves again in the midst of flowers from green-house and conservatory. Isabella said she was so delighted, she could hardly forbear, with her crippled, gouty hands, embracing every tree she met. Lord Sligo, himself a martyr to the gout, and with a son at Eton just then attacked with gout, had great compa.s.sion for her: he and all his family high-bred and cordial.

The next morning we pursued our journey, and at the next stage came upon a real mail-coach road, where we had post-horses again, and dismissed our Galway horses. This night brought us to Lough Glyn, where Mr.

Strickland received us very kindly, and we had the joy of finding letters waiting for us from home; but we found that the cholera had been for the last ten days killing the poor people at Edgeworthstown--Condy Keegan's son-in-law, M'Glaughlin the carpenter, and a great many more.

How dreadfully anxious Honora must have been with the charge of baby, and this cholera close to our gates!

The last day's journey was the longest of all, from the suspense, though all was smooth upon the road. When we saw the lights in the windows at home, you may guess how our hearts went pit-a-pat. We found all WELL; and glad we all were to meet again, and to have Isabella safe with her child: not in her arms, poor crippled creature--it was not possible for her to hold the infant; she could but just hobble about, and was a quarter of an hour going upstairs. Aunt Mary and Honora, after all the warnings my letters had given, were surprised and shocked at the first sight of her. For ten days after her arrival she was unable to travel, impatient as they both were to be at home again. They did reach it, baby and all, safely at last, and you may imagine how relieved we were when we heard of her being safe with her own family again, and with London physicians: five months since then and she is not yet quite re-established. We feel now how very serious her illness was.

But now that it is all over, and I can balance pains and pleasures, I declare that, upon the whole, I had more pleasure than pain from this journey; the perils of the road were far overbalanced by the diversion of seeing the people, and the seeing so many to me perfectly new characters and modes of living. The anxiety of Isabella's illness, terrible as it was, and the fear of being ill myself and a burthen upon their hands, and even the horrid sense of remoteness and impossibility of communication with my own friends, were altogether overbalanced by the extraordinary kindness, and tenderness, and generous hospitality of the Martins. It will do my heart good all the days of my life to have experienced such kindness, and to have seen so much good in human nature as I saw with them--red M'Hugh included. I am sure I have a friend in Mrs. Martin: it is an extraordinary odd feeling to have made a friend at sixty-six years of age! You, my dear young Pakenham, can't understand this; but you will live, I hope, to understand it, and perhaps to say, "Now I begin to comprehend what Maria, poor old soul! meant by that _odd_ feeling at the end of her Connemara journey."

When we were regretting to Lord Sligo that we had missed seeing so many persons and places on our tour whom we had at first setting out made it our object to see--Clifden, the Barony of Erris, and the wonderful Major Bingham--Lord Sligo comforted us by saying, "Depend upon it, you have seen more really of Connemara than any strangers who have ever travelled through it, exactly because you remained in one place and in one family, where you had time to see the habits of the people, and to see them nearly and familiarly, and without their being shown off, or thinking of showing themselves off to you."

_March 29_.

I have been so busy at rents and odious accounts, that I have never been able to go on to you. Your mother returned home a few days ago, after seven months' absence! You may guess how happy we were to have her again, and how we have been talking and hearing. Lucy bore the parting with her wonderfully well; indeed, she was anxious that her mother should return to us.

Young Walter--now Sir Walter--Scott has been quartered at Longford, and is now going to Dublin: he dined here on Sat.u.r.day, and was just the same as when we saw him in 1825. Sophy and her three children round her must have surprised him not a little. [Footnote: Mrs. Fox, as Sophy Edgeworth, had been with her sister at Abbotsford in 1823.] It is a pity Maxwell was not in the group. Little fair-haired w.i.l.l.y, nothing daunted by the nearly seven-feet-high major in full uniform, marched up to him and patted his knee, and in return the major patted his head. His soft Scotch voice, and often the kind and playful turns in his conversation, reminded me both pleasurably and painfully of his father. Sophy wished that her children should hear the band of the regiment, and he promised that he would halt at Tuite's gate, as a _select_ party with the band were to go by Castle Pollard; and this morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw it was snowing so bitterly, I gave up all hopes of our being able to take the children to hear the band; but between seven, when I wakened, and half after nine, the appointed hour, many changes of the sky took place, and at the right moment the sun shone out, the clouds blew over the beech-trees, and Sophy was drawn in w.i.l.l.y Waller's little carriage, with him in her lap; Honora, Mary Anne, Charlotte, and I accompanying.

We had to wait some time, and went into what you would call Tuite's house, but it is now Jem Newman's; and there was his nice little wife, with her mouth full of the last potato she had eaten for breakfast; and she put away the half-full potato basket, and the boy with his can of milk retreated from the stool by the fire, and she welcomed us with Irish heart's welcome in lip and eye; and the children were delighted watching the pig and the chickens feeding at the door.

At last the music was heard, and very pretty it was, and mother and children were happy; and Sir Walter stopped on his fine gray horse, and said, "You see, I have kept my word," and then galloped off. A sergeant then came up to me with a slip of paper in his hand, saying, "Can you read _write?_" I said, I believed I could, and made out for him the route to Castle Pollard: the sound of the music died away, and we returned to breakfast. "Sire, il n'y a de circonstance ou on ne prend pas de dejeuner," as the man said to Buonaparte.

You will have seen in the newspapers the court-martial about Lord Brudenell and the 15th Hussars: Lord Forbes, in giving me an account of the matter, said, "Walter Scott, by his conduct, and the way in which he gave his testimony, covered himself with glory,"--told the truth like a man and a gentleman.

You may have also seen mentioned the murder of Captain Skyring, of the _Aetna_, of which Henry Beddoes was second lieutenant, off the coast of Africa. He wrote a few lines to f.a.n.n.y after the catastrophe; happily for him he was kept by some duty on board. It was imprudent of Captain Skyring to attempt to land, and take observations, without having his s.h.i.+p near enough to defend him. The natives, all with arms, came round him, and began by stealing everything they could lay their hands on.

Captain Skyring drew a circle round his circle, forbidding the thieves to pa.s.s it; but they pa.s.sed it, and one was seizing the instrument in his hand, when the captain fired and killed the man; and then they all fell upon him, stabbed him with their pikes and knives, stripped the body, and left it with seventeen wounds. Our people afterwards got it back. We know no more as yet, but that Captain Beaufort was extremely shocked and grieved.

I have no domestic occurrence to tell you, except that a robin, who for several seasons has frequented this house, and Lucy's room particularly, has this spring grown so familiar, that he began to build his nest in Lucy's old bonnet, laid a great heap of leaves in it, which we used to see him bringing in his bill, the leaves often as large as his body.

Yesterday morning Betty the housemaid said to your mother, "Ma'am, when I opened the hall door this morning, the robin flew in over my head, and knowing his way wherever he wanted to go through the doors, just as if he was master of the house, ma'am! And he sits down before a door, and _looks_ to have it opened for him." Dear little, impudent fellow! This packet concludes my chronicle of Connemara.

_To_ C.S. EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 14, 1834_.

Having now done with business I may turn to a little pleasure; a great deal you have given me, my dear Sneyd, by your friend Mr. Smedley's approbation of _Helen_. His polite playful allusion to the names of the horses, which names at this moment I forget, reminds me of a similar touch of the d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington in describing one of the Duke's battles, she quoted from the _Knapsack_, "Let the sugar basin be my master."

I have written to f.a.n.n.y about Lady Charlotte Fitzgerald's death. I was very much shocked at it: I loved her; she was one of my earliest friends--"Leaf by leaf drops away."

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 22, 1834_.

With all my heart I congratulate you on being in possession of your cottage. [Footnote: Dunmoe Cottage, at the end of the Black Castle demesne, about two miles from the house.] Harriet Butler told us how happy the people of Black Castle and Navan were, when they heard you were coming to live amongst them again. You are now as busy as possible arranging your things and considering how all and each of your friends will like what you do, and I am--very conceited--sure that you often think of Maria among the number, and that you have even already thought of a footstool for her. Emmeline has, by the bye, invented and executed, and given to my mother, the most ingenious footstool I ever saw, which folds up and can be put into a work-bag. She has also sent the nicest most agreeable presents to the little Foxes--a kaleidoscope, a little watering-pot, and a pair of little tin scales with weights; they set about directly weighing everything that could be put into them, ending with sugar-plums and sugar-candy.

We have been much amused with _The Kuzzilbash_ and by _Bubbles from the Brunnen_, by Captain Head.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _July 29, 1834_.

I cannot, my dear Lady of Dunmoe, tell when I can be with you; go I will before autumn runs away with all your leaves, but I am afraid I must let autumn turn them of a sober hue, though I will not let it go to the sear and yellow. In plain prose I am tied down now by rents and business.

We have been dining at Mrs. Blackall's, and there met her pretty sister, Mrs. Johnstone, and very intelligent Captain Johnstone, a Berks.h.i.+re man from near Hare Hatch, and had a very agreeable day, and much conversation on books and authors, and found that the _Diary of an Ennuyee_ and _Female Characters of Shakespeare_, both very clever books, are by a lady who was governess to Mrs. Blackall and her sisters. Mrs.

Rolle, her mother, read the _Diary of an Ennuyee_, and wondered when she saw "Mr. and Mrs. R.," and all the places and people they had seen abroad, till she came to the name of Laura, and some lines to her by which she discovered that the author must be their former governess, Miss Murphy, now married to a very clever lawyer. [Footnote: Mrs.

Jameson.] All the woes and heart-breakings are mere fable in the _Diary_. Her last book, _Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad_, I like; there is a great deal of thought and feeling in it.

Miss Edgeworth's _Helen_ would never have been finished but for the encouragement shown by her sister Harriet, and her interest in the story. It is more of a "novel" than any of its predecessors, has more imagination, and its interest centres more around one person. Its object is to show how many of the troubles of social life arise from want of absolute truthfulness. Its principle is depicted in the explanation of one of its characters: "I wish that the word _fib_ was out of the English language, and _white lie_ drummed after it. Things by their right names, and we should all do much better. Truth must be told, whether agreeable or not."

_Helen_ was well received by the public, but Miss Edgeworth had great diffidence about it. To Dr. Holland she wrote:

I am very glad that you have been pleased with _Helen_--far above my expectations! and I thank you for that warmth of kindness with which you enter into all the details of the characters and plan of the story.

Nothing but regard for the author could have made you give so much importance to my tale. It has always been my fault to let the moral I had in view appear too soon and too clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, notwithstanding some pains which I certainly _thought_ I took to correct it, should still abide by me.