NO study of Maria Edgeworth, however slight, could possibly pretend to completeness without a somewhat careful survey of her father. The admirers of her admirable gifts are apt, with hardly an exception, to bear a somewhat heated grudge against the memory of this too consciously edifying Richard Lovell Edgeworth. They are wont to consider that the author of Miss Edgeworth's being was also too frequently the author of the least satisfactory portions of her books. Even when not actually guiding her pen–a piece of parental presumption of which he was perfectly capable–in spirit he hovered over it, and that a desire for the paternal approbation was with her the first and strongest of all incentives there can be no question. Wherever, in her case, the didactic impulse is seen to distinctly overpower the creative one; wherever we find Utility lauded to the skies as the only guide of an otherwise foundering humanity; above all, wherever we find an enormous emphasis laid upon the necessity at all times and places of a due subordination of the feminine to the masculine judgment,–there we may feel sure that we are upon his track, and that such sentiments were uttered primarily with a view to the approbation of the domestic critic. [Page 19]
Like the rest of our race–wise, witty, or the reverse–Richard Lovell Edgeworth was emphatically the child of his forebears; indeed he seems in certain respects to have been even more directly traceable to them than is usually the case. With regard to the causes which induced the Edgeworth family to settle originally in Ireland, little appears to be accurately known. There is a vague report of a monk–one Roger Edgeworth–who is asserted to have broken his vows and married for love, but we find no mention of him in Mr. Edgeworth's own memoir, which is our principal source of information with regard to the family. The year 1583 is the date fixed upon for their arrival in Ireland, before which time they are said to have been settled at Edgeware, in Middlesex, which is even declared to have been once called Edgeworth, though the data for any such connection appear to be entirely apocryphal. The first Irish Edgeworth who emerges clearly into sight is Edward Edgeworth, Bishop of Down and Connor, who, dying without children in the year 1593, left his fortune to his brother Francis, at one time a clerk of the Hanaper, and the direct ancestor of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, consequently of his daughter Maria. This Francis Edgeworth married the daughter of a Sir Edmond Tuite, owner of a place called Sonna, in the county of Westmeath. She is described by her descendant as "beautiful, and of an ancient family," and he further relates that having been obliged on some occasion to give place at church to a neighbour, upon her return home she indignantly pressed her husband to take out a baronet's patent, thereby insuring against such ignominies in the future. This he declined to do, declaring, with commendable [Page 20] prudence, such patents to be "more onerous than honourable." She thereupon announced her intention of going no more to church, and he, in a tone which brings the connubial conversations of Castle Rackrent strongly before our mind, retorted that "she might stay, or go wherever she pleased." The permission so given she accepted, more literally apparently than it was meant, and quitting, not alone her husband, but Ireland, she betook herself to the English court, where she became attached in some capacity to the Queen, Henrietta Maria, whom she afterwards accompanied to France. After the queen's death, she returned, we are informed, to Ireland, having in the meantime become a Roman Catholic, and disregarding the claims of her family, she there "laid out a very large fortune in founding a religious house in Dublin."
So runs the account in Mr. Edgeworth's own autobiography, which occupies the first volume of his daughter's memoir of him. It is clear, however, that this part of the family history must be taken with a considerable amount of reserve, since in the very next paragraph the writer of it assures us that the son of this lady, Captain John Edgeworth, was with his wife and infant heir settled in the Castle of Cranallagh, in county Longford, in the year 1641. That in the same year, he being at a distance upon military duty, the rebels rose, attacked the castle, set fire to it at night, dragged the unfortunate lady out, "literally naked"; that the castle was plundered, and would have been entirely destroyed but that–here the mystery comes in–the rebels were persuaded to extinguish the fire from "reverence for the picture of Jane Edgeworth, which was painted upon the wainscot, with a cross [Page 21] hanging from her neck, and a rosary in her hands: Being a Catholic, and having founded a religious house, she was considered a saint."
A more confusing piece of family history surely never was printed. How Mrs. Jane Edgeworth could possibly have been regarded as a saint in Ireland, in the year 1641, on account of having established a religious house in Dublin, which we are expressly told was not founded till after Queen Henrietta's death, an event that occurred twenty-eight years later, is an unfathomable mystery. The only way of explaining that mystery seems to be to suppose that the family records had got hopelessly mixed, and that, when he came to write his own memoirs, Mr. Edgeworth trusted–as he well might–to that Cimmerian darkness as regards Ireland and Irish history, which probably prevailed all but universally in his day, and has only been very partially dissipated in ours.
Leaving this portion of his record as too hopelessly tangled to unravel, we pass on to the study of his own and his family's later history.
With regard to the unfortunate infant heir of the castle, a series of terrific adventures is recorded upon that same fateful night. Indeed if the Edgeworth family annals come now and then a little short in the matter of mere bald accuracy, they more than make up for that defect by their supply of graphic and alluring detail. Take the following instance as a sample:–
"One of the rebels seized the child by the leg, and was in the act of swinging him round to dash his brains out against the corner of the castle wall, when an Irish servant, of the lowest order, stopped his hand, claiming the right of killing the little heretic himself, and swearing that a sudden death [Page 22] would be too good for him; that he would plunge him up to the throat in a boghole, and leave him for the crows to pick his eyes out. Snatching the child from his comrade, he ran off with it to a neighbouring bog, and thrust it into the mud; but, when the rebels had retired, this man, who had only pretended to join them, went back to the bog for the boy, preserved his life, and, contriving to hide him in a pannier under eggs and chickens, carried him actually through the midst of the rebel camp safely back to Dublin !"
The expedient of hiding a child in a pannier, which is afterwards filled up with eggs and chickens, and carried through a camp of hungry rebels, does not somehow appeal to the mind as quite the safest that could have been devised. However, the child escaped, which is the main point of the story, and in due course came to have other, if hardly equally perilous, adventures. Not so his mother. Whether from the shock, or from some other cause, the poor lady did not long survive that disastrous night. She died shortly afterwards in England, where she and her husband, Captain Edgeworth, were then living, and upon her death he determined to return to Ireland. What happened to him on his homeward journey must again be told in his descendant's words:–
"On his way thither, he stopped a day at Chester, it being Christmas Day. He went to the Cathedral, and there he was struck with the sight of a lady, who had a full-blown rose in her bosom. This lady was Mrs. Bridgman, widow of Sir Edward Bridgman, brother to Sir Orlando Bridgman, the Lord Keeper. As she was coming out of church, the rose fell at Captain Edgeworth's feet. The lady was handsome–so was the captain. He took up the rose, and presented it with so much grace to Mrs. Bridgman, that in consequence they became acquainted, and were soon after married. They came over to Ireland." [Page 23]
It is easy to imagine the gratification which Mr. Edgeworth must have felt in having possessed at least one ancestor so entirely worthy of himself. The whole scene–the newly made widower, the lady, the gallant captain, the full-blown rose, the grace of the action; finally–marriage, and a journey to Ireland. There is something about it positively prophetic! By her previous marriage this lady had an only daughter, an heiress, whereas Captain Edgeworth had, as has been said, one son. Though brought up in the closest connection, the young people were of course no relation to one another. They fell in love, but the young lady's mother being averse to the marriage, and the laws against running away with heiresses serious, the matter had to be arranged by the bride taking her bridegroom to church mounted behind, instead of before, her on the horse;–an anecdote with regard to which we can only say, that a law that could be evaded by so infantile an expedient was a law which thoroughly deserved to be evaded.
And here we are confronted by yet another rather surprising little fragment of family history. The son of this couple was Mr. Edgeworth's own grandfather, consequently he might be expected to know something definite about him. In his memoir, however, he assures us that the child was born "before the joint ages of his father and mother amounted to thirty-one years," an assertion which is enough to take a harmless biographer's breath away! Assuming, as one naturally would do, that the age of the youthful father could hardly have been less than seventeen or eighteen years, that of the mother sinks to a figure that is positively portentous ! Upon referring the matter, [Page 24] however, to an authority outside that of the memoir, it has been recently ascertained, not without relief, that by an unwritten family tradition the ages of both parents have been fixed at fifteen years and six months. Even so, the incident is unusual.
The marriage, thus merrily begun, seems to have gone on pretty much as might have been expected from its start. The extravagance of the young couple was phenomenal, even for a not very economical age–that of Charles the Second. As an instance of it, the gentleman on one occasion parted with "the ground-plot of a house in Dublin to buy a crowned hat with feathers, which was then the mode." The lady, in addition to her extravagance, had a lively temper, and was in the habit of twitting her husband with the fortune which she had brought him. Although a believer in ghosts and goblins, she on one occasion exhibited remarkable courage, if the account given of the affair is accurate. Here it is in her descendant's words:–
"While she was living at Lissard, she was, on some sudden alarm, obliged to go at night to a garret at the top of the house for some gunpowder, which was kept there in a barrel. She was followed upstairs by an ignorant servant girl, who carried a bit of candle without a candlestick between her fingers. When Lady Edgeworth had taken what gunpowder she wanted, had locked the door, and was halfway downstairs again, she observed that the girl had not her candle, and asked what she had done with it; the girl recollected and answered that she had left it 'stuck in the barrel of black salt.' Lady Edgeworth bid her stand still, and instantly returned by herself to the room where the gunpowder was; found the candle as the girl had described; put her hand carefully underneath it, carried it safely out; and when she got to the bottom of the stairs, dropped on her knees, and thanked God for their deliverance." [Page 25]
The last sentence has a familiar ring, but the anecdote is fresh and exciting enough. Whether open barrels of gunpowder, ready for any one who liked to dip into, were common objects in the attics of even Irish country houses a couple of centuries ago, may be questioned. How the lady and her maid got downstairs in the dark, without remembering they had left the candle behind them, is another note of interrogation–but this is mere belated captiousness! The eldest son of this heroine, Francis Edgeworth, was known, we learn, as "Protestant Frank," and raised a regiment in his youth for King William, a service for which the family were never paid. He also married a succession of wives, which seems to have been by this time quite an established family habit; and was rather noted as a gambler, on one occasion going so far as to stake the diamond earrings which his wife–one, that is to say, of his wives–was at the moment wearing, and which she had to take out of her ears for the purpose.
Coming down to the period of Mr. Edgeworth himself and of his father, we find ourselves in much tamer days. Of the latter, not so much as a single anecdote is recorded; while of the former, though of course the hero of the record, the most salient early event we hear of him is that in a fit of infantine rage he one day flung a red-hot smoothing-iron across the nursery table at his elder brother, an incident chiefly important from the fact that it served as the text of an excellent sermon preached to him by his mother upon the dangers of impetuosity. Owing to his brother's early death–an event quite disconnected, let me hasten to say, from the red-hot smoothing-iron–she showed [Page 26] unnecessary anxiety, he tells us, about his own health, which was perfectly good, and it was only with infinite precautions that he was even allowed to take his accustomed morning airing, mounted on horseback behind the family coachman. On the other hand, she displayed great discrimination, in his opinion, with regard to the disciplining of his mind, early implanting in it those lessons of utilitarianism which it was his pride and satisfaction to pass on afterwards to his own daughter, and through her to whole generations of Harrys and Lucys, Richards and Marias, as yet unborn.
He was first sent to a school at Warwick, from which he was transferred to one at Drogheda, where he was as much mocked at, he tells us, for his English accent as he had previously been at Warwick for his Irish brogue; from which school, upon attaining the age of seventeen, he was despatched to Trinity College, Dublin. Here it is evident that his health was under no peril from too severe a course of study, since he expressly informs us that "it was not the fashion in those days to plague fellow-commoners with lectures." Possibly it may have been on account of this considerate custom that his father presently transferred him to Corpus Christi, Oxford, placing him under some sort of tutelage with an old friend of his own, Mr. Elers, then living at Black Bourton, a gentleman who–a very important point–was the father of several daughters!
It was due to this arrangement that the first, and much the least successful, of Mr. Edgeworth's many marriages came to pass. What the rights and wrongs of that story were it is, as I have already said, impossible at this date to ascertain, and, since we are [Page 27] unable to hear both sides, we must be content to accept the only articulate one. That, like many another man before and since, young Mr. Edgeworth went further than he had intended is plain, and we must at least give him credit for having carried the affair to its legitimate conclusion. The young people eloped in correct romantic fashion, in a post chaise, and were married at Gretna Green. This is his own account of the matter–an eminently characteristic one:–
"Before I went to Bath, one of the young ladies at Black Bourton had attracted my attention; I had paid my court to her, and I felt myself entangled so completely, that I could not find any honourable means of extrication. I have not to reproach myself with any deceit, or suppression of the truth. On my return to Black Bourton, I did not conceal the altered state of my mind, but having engaged the affections of the young lady, I married while I was still a youth at college. I resolved to meet the disagreeable consequences of such a step with fortitude, and without being dispirited by the loss of the society to which I had been accustomed."
It is a relief to the sympathetic reader to find that the deprivation, confronted with so heroic a fortitude, was anything but an eternal one ! Not long after his marriage, Mr. Edgeworth made his appearance at Lichfield without his wife, and there took his place amid a circle of distinguished and erudite persons, whose sayings and doings have been considerably reported. The two chief stars just then in that social firmament formed a marked and an agreeable contrast to one another. One of them was Doctor Darwin, already alluded to in the last chapter, a savant who contrived to impart science through the medium of [Page 28] poetry, but whose botany and zoology were apt to be a bide warped by his favourite theories. The other was Miss Anna Seward, known locally as "The Swan of Lichfield," the authoress of several volumes of "elegant" verse, who, with her father, a canon of Lichfield, and her cousin, Miss Honora Sneyd, was at that time residing at the Palace' it is not very clear why, but presumably in the absence of its bishop.
Like other rival stars in other social firmaments, these two of Lichfield evidently did not waste much time in admiration for one another, and various anecdotes are told of the occasions when their conflicting claims came into rather sharp collision. In addition to these, the major luminaries of the place, there was a whole galaxy of minor ones, and, high in this secondary rank, we find our disciplinarian with the long black locks, Mr. Day. At the time of Mr. Edgeworth's arrival at Lichfield that erratic friend of his was engaged in what was perhaps the most remarkable of all his experiments in matrimony, that, namely, of "breeding up"–so the graceful phrase of the day ran–a couple of young girls, whom he had selected himself from a foundling hospital, with a view to finally marrying whichever of the two might prove to be the most worthy of that exalted privilege. Already one of them–Lucretia–had been discarded; but the second, Sabrina–names, it need hardly be said, of Mr. Day's own bestowing–was still on trial, although her prospects of happiness were being seriously menaced by the apparition of Miss Sneyd, whose steps were followed by a whole bevy of admiring suitors.
To readers of our belated age, the most interesting of these suitors will always be Major André, the [Page 29] ill-fated victim of the American war of Independence, whose devotion to the fair Honora seems to have been as persistent as it was ill-requited. In place of labouring to repeat an oft-told tale, let me here indulge in a brief extract of the scene, by a pen which has never touched any subject of the kind without embellishing it:–"As one reads the old letters and memoirs, the echoes of laughter reach us. One can almost see the young folks all coming together out of the Cathedral close, where so much of their time was passed, the beautiful Honora, surrounded by friends and adorers, chaperoned by the graceful muse her senior, also much admired, and made much of . . . . So they passed on, happy and contented in each other's company, Honora in the midst, beautiful, stately, reserved; she too was one of those not destined to be old."
No, she was not destined to grow old; and either on that account, or owing to some more subtle attraction, even the broad comedy of Mr. Day's love-making, even Mr. Edgeworth's elaborate comments upon that love-making, fail to dissipate a certain impression of charm which hovers still about her name. That by all romantic precedent, the lover of her choice ought to have been, neither Mr. Day, whom she rejected, nor yet Mr. Edgeworth, whom she married, but Major André, will be clear to every reader of sentiment. Unfortunately such matters are, as he is aware, governed by no reasonable or ascertainable laws. Moreover, as between the man she married, and the man whom we consider that she ought to have married, we must remember that we are looking at both of them to-day in a monstrously unfair light. In the one case we see Major André in all the halo of an early and a tragic [Page 30] death, a death so tragic that even the driest, the most hostile, of historians melts a little when he comes to speak of it. On the other hand, we mentally behold the excellent Mr. Edgeworth throned for another fifty years as the very type of the prosperous moralist; "giving his little senate laws," and crowned with a crown of indisputably well-deserved self-esteem. In the year 1770 all this was entirely different. The "young and gay philosopher," as his friends affectionately called him, was then only twenty-six years of age. As for his fascination, a short while before this date, he tells us himself that it was found absolutely necessary by his hostess to take an opportunity of publicly drinking Mrs. Edgeworth's health, in order to dissipate any unwarrantable hopes which might have arisen on his account. At what precise period he fell in love with Honora Sneyd, and how far, at this early stage of their acquaintance, she reciprocated that sentiment, we do not know, and in his own memoirs he is, for once, too discreet to inform us. All we know for certain is that it was upon the earnest expostulations of his austere-minded friend and quondam rival, Mr. Day, that he shortly afterwards left Lichfield, the two friends betaking themselves together to France, Mr. Edgeworth having under his charge his eldest child, and at that time only son, Richard, who was being brought up upon the strictest principles of the school of Rousseau.
