OF Mr. Edgeworth's life in France a great deal is told in the memoir of him, but a great deal need not upon that account be repeated here. Everywhere, we are assured, he was enormously successful; everywhere he was courted, invited, and requested to prolong his stay. A lengthened account is given of his engineering feats in endeavouring to divert the course of the river Rhone, an attempt which seems unfortunately to have come to sudden grief during a wholly unlooked-for flood. To a modern reader the most entertaining part of his experiences will, perhaps, be found to be his meeting in Paris with Rousseau, whom he was anxious to consult upon the education of Richard Edgeworth, the younger. With the assistance of his own report, we can still picture to ourselves the luckless little lad being solemnly led up and introduced by his father, the "young and gay" philosopher, to the elder and more famous one, who then and there marched him off for a walk, by way of testing his character and general capabilities. It is impossible to read without a smile of the eminently unphilosophic wrath expressed by the sage, because each time that a handsome horse or vehicle passed them on their walk, his temporary [Page 32] charge–a child of seven–invariably cried out, "That's an English horse !" "I am quite sure that's an English carriage !"–a view which he solemnly pronounced to be due to a sadly early "propensity to party prejudice," an explanation of the matter which, strange to say, the boy's father unhesitatingly and admiringly adopted.
The stay of the party in Paris was, however, a short one. It was at Lyons that all three settled down to remain for some time, and it was there that Mr. Day's calisthenic purgatory was so gallantly undergone. At Lyons Mr. Edgeworth was joined for a short time by his wife, but the French society which she found there did not, it is intimated, suit her, a fact which we can readily believe. She returned in any case to England for her expected confinement, and there, in Great Russell Street, as already stated, she died. When this event occurred, Mr. Edgeworth was still in France, but the news of it sent him flying back to England. How far relief was mingled with a certain amount of compunction we do not know, and are not told. All that we know for certain is that he was met by the faithful Day, who had preceded him to England by some months, and who now came a distance of several hundred miles expressly to tell him that Honora Sneyd, "although surrounded with lovers, was still her own mistress."
Upon this pregnant hint, Mr. Edgeworth at once acted. He hastened to Lichfield, where, by a most singular chance, he and Miss Sneyd met the very day of his arrival, at the house of Doctor Darwin. There was apparently no more hesitation upon her side than upon his own, and the result was that within [Page 33] four months of his wife's death, in August 1773, they were married, by special licence, in the Ladies' Choir of the Cathedral of that town. What happened to the ci-devant pupil of Rousseau at this juncture of the family affairs we have no information. One very interesting point with regard to him Mr. Edgeworth, with his customary frankness, does reveal to us, which is that, as the result of these various experiments, the boy contracted so marked a loathing for education of every sort, that it was found impossible to induce him to learn anything, or even to remain at a school. It was a relief therefore to all concerned when he exhibited a willingness to go to sea. From the sea, to which he was then and there sent, he apparently drifted to America, where–to finish his adventures–he in due course of time married, and after a single visit to his family at Clifton, returned to America and died there; the only one of Mr. Edgeworth's many children to whom Edgeworthstown seems never at any time to have been a home.
The three little girls, on the other hand, were at once sent for from Great Russell Street, and seem to have received from Mrs. Honora Edgeworth the fullest motherly care, if also an occasional touch of that motherly austerity which was then regarded, not merely as becoming, but indispensable. That Mr. Edgeworth was sincerely devoted to his new wife, and that his second marriage was, unlike its predecessor, a thoroughly successful one, there can be no question. When, not many years later, the seeds of consumption, checked for a time, once more began to reveal themselves in the poor young woman, her husband at once left Ireland, and took her first to [Page 34] Lichfield, to consult their friend Dr. Darwin, afterwards to a succession of temporary homes, in hopes that a drier climate, if it did not effect a cure, might at least cause some delay in the course of the disease.
Few efforts, perhaps, are more puzzling in this rather puzzling world than the effort to judge dispassionately of the strength of an emotion, when that emotion is expressed in language the reverse of anything we could ourselves even imagine using under similar circumstances. That, in spite of this hindrance, in spite of his elaborate rhetoric and stilted utterances, we are able to perceive that Mr. Edgeworth was genuinely fond of his wife, and genuinely sorry to lose her, must be set down to his credit. There are even one or two incidents recorded in his autobiography–such as the dropping of the wedding-ring from off her thin finger, and its falling with a light sound to the ground–which are quite the sort of incident which a man under the circumstances might note, and might afterwards recall. On the other hand, what are we to say with regard to the following letter, written to his daughter Maria, while he was actually sitting beside the poor young woman's dead body? Mr. Hare, in the Life and Letters, describes it as "a very touching letter." "Touching," like "elegant," "poetic," "gentlemanlike," and some other words, seems to mean absolutely different things to different minds. The only fair course, therefore, seems to be to give the letter itself, and to leave it to be judged. Here it is:–
"MY DEAR DAUGHTER,–At six o'clock on Thursday morning your excellent mother expired in my arms. She now lies dead beside me, and I know I am doing what would give her [Page 35] pleasure, if she were capable of feeling anything, by writing to you at this time to fix her excellent image in your mind.
"As you grow older and become acquainted with more of my friends, you will hear from every mouth the most exalted character of your incomparable mother. You will be convinced by your own reflections on her conduct, that she fulfilled the part of a mother towards you and towards your sisters, without partiality towards her own, or servile indulgence towards mine. Her heart, conscious of rectitude, was above the fear of raising suspicions to her disadvantage in the mind of your father, or in the minds of your relations . . . .
"Continue, my dear daughter, the desire which you feel of becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character with such an understanding as yours necessarily ensue; but true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection and from being thoroughly convinced of what experience teaches, in general too late, that to be happy we must be Good.
"God bless you, and make you ambitious of that valuable praise which the amiable character of your dear mother forces from the virtuous and the wise. My writing to you in my present situation will, my dearest daughter, be remembered by you as the strongest proof of the love of your approving and affectionate father,
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH."
What is one to say? Are such sentiments indeed touching ? Is it even conceivable that a man should sit down under similar circumstances to write such a letter ?–to indite, I ought to say, so truly monumental an epistle ? There seems no course open to us but to hold up our hands in amazement, and to pass on to the next little incident in this strange, eventful history. That incident was the marriage of the sorrowing widower to the sister of the wife he had just lost–an arrangement which, he is careful to [Page 36] assure us, had been earnestly pressed upon him by the latter herself.
A feeling of wonder, not unmixed with awe, is apt to steal over the mind of a modern reader as he studies these remarkable self-revelations on the part of a half-forgotten moralist. We of to-day are wont to accuse ourselves–perhaps one another–of a tendency to lay everything bare before an undiscriminating public; to, as it has been more picturesquely worded–"sell our souls for pence; just God, how few!" Yet even to-day, would it be so very easy to find a gentleman who would be candid enough to publish to the world that the lady whom he had decided to marry was upon the whole, of all her sisters, the one least pleasing to his taste, and that he himself is, he is aware, equally little attractive to her, but that they have made up their minds to marry, because the lamented sister of the one, and wife of the other, had advised that step ? Such, in precise terms, is the explanation afforded to the public by Mr. Edgeworth, and the most remarkable part of the affair is, that the marriage so arranged seems to have been an unqualified success, if anything more successful than had been the preceding one. That, apart altogether from the sentimental side of the affair, there was also a legal one to be considered, is a fact which does not seem to have troubled any one, although the law as regards the marriage of a deceased wife's sister being the same then as now, one would have thought some little difficulty might have arisen on that score, especially with a landed property to be inherited. One clergyman, upon an explanation of the circumstances, seems to have shown some [Page 37] little hesitation, and the marriage had in consequence to be for a while delayed. It came off, however, shortly afterwards, and, by way of a small crowning touch of oddity, upon Christmas Day, of all days in the year, at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, "in the presence," so Mr. Edgeworth is careful to tell us, "of my first wife's brother, Mr. Elers, his lady, and Mr. Day."
That Mr. Day–the rejected suitor of both these Miss Sneyds–should have been present on that auspicious occasion seems to be only natural, and appropriate to the character of the whole proceeding. The friendship between him and Mr. Edgeworth had not, unfortunately, very much longer to run, the poor disciplinarian meeting his death a few years later, under what were at least singularly appropriate circumstances for a disciplinarian, namely, by his being flung from a young horse, which it was his innocent belief that he alone could subdue. Mr. Edgeworth brings his own record to an abrupt end in the middle of a sentence, about the time of his third marriage, and it was left to his daughter Maria to continue the history of the family, beginning with their arrival at Edgeworthstown, an event which took place in the summer of the year 1782.
Unlike the first arrival, this second descent of the family upon its ancestral home proved to be an event of no temporary or provisional character. On the contrary, Mr. Edgeworth arrived on this occasion preceded or accompanied, in true patriarchal fashion, by menservants and by maidservants, by a brand-new wife, by two quite separate sets of children by two previous wives, and–a detail which even the patriarchs [Page 38] themselves do not seem to have found necessary–his circle was further enlarged by two unmarried sisters of his late and of his present wife, two Miss Sneyds, who from that time forward until after his own death, thirty-five years later, were to find their permanent home under his roof.
Such a circumstance may be taken, I think, unhesitatingly as a testimony of the amiability of all concerned, and not least for that of the master of the house himself. In sober truth, Mr. Edgeworth was precisely one of those men whose qualities show their best and most glowing side to the devotees inside their own family, and only become perceptibly spotted with absurdity when confronted by the gaze of a colder and a more critical outside circle. An autocrat he was, and had every intention of being. Wives, sisters-in-law, daughters, tenants, and the like, were all regarded by him as so many satellites, revolving gently, as by a law of nature, around the pedestal upon which he stood alone, in a graceful or commanding attitude. This point conceded, everything else, however, went delightfully, and a more benevolent embodiment of the principle of autocracy has perhaps never flourished since that institution was introduced upon a much-ruled planet.
It was the very benevolence of this autocratic standpoint which made it impossible for him to believe that any one belonging to him–especially a mere daughter, a member of the less important half of his enormous brood–could fail to be the better for carrying on her little pursuits under his direct eye, and subject in every detail to his approval or disapproval. That he was in essentials one of the best-intentioned of fathers is [Page 39] certain, yet few bad, few merely indifferent fathers, have inflicted upon a gifted son or daughter worse injuries, from an intellectual point of view, than he did. He not merely accentuated, he actually lifted into the light of a solemn duty, what was by nature the most serious of Maria Edgeworth's mental failings–a lack, namely, of imagination, one which under his fostering care grew and swelled, until it amounted to something very like a kindly and tolerant contempt for everything which that word conveys.
This, far more than any actual interference with the text of her books, is what arouses the wrath of her admirers, and constitutes the least forgivable of his misdoings as a father. Everything else–even the amazing prefaces, which were, after all, removable, and have, I believe, disappeared from all the later editions; even the deification of the great goddess Utility, and the chanting, in season and out of season, of her arid and scraggy perfections; even the "Fe Fo Fum" objurgations, hurled like brickbats at poor "Puss-in-Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk"–all these, and any number of similar peccadilloes, might have been forgiven, if only he would have consented, in the good old nursery phrase, "to keep hisself to hisself." It was his inability apparently to do so which constituted the worst of his indiscretions, and which brings upon him the wrath of the few–for few, I fear, they must nowadays be reckoned–who cherish towards Maria Edgeworth herself something approaching to a genuine enthusiasm.
The harm undoubtedly came chiefly from the mere superabundance of his energy and activity. To such a degree did these qualities overflow in him, that what- [Page 40] ever was being said or done, above all whatever was being written, it was absolutely indispensable that he should be in the thick of it, if not as principal, at least as arbitrator and general overseer. "Edgeworth must write, or he would burst! " was said of him by a contemporary. No one would have desired so painful a domestic catastrophe, and all that could have been wished is that it might have been able to be suggested to him by some prudent bystander that he should write his own books in his own dignified fashion, and should allow his daughter to carry out her own little ideas in such a manner, and with such aims, as benevolent nature might suggest.
Whenever, even for a time, she escaped from his influence, any discriminating eye can perceive the difference at once. We have Mrs. Barbauld's positive assurance that Castle Rackrent was written entirely without his advice or supervision, and even without such an assurance, its intrinsic qualities would have convinced us of the fact. A still clearer case is afforded by the letters. Those written familiarly–especially those addressed by Miss Edgeworth to her aunt or to her cousin, Sophy Ruxton–letters written obviously at top-speed, and without a thought of preservation, far less of publication,–are, to my mind, amongst the best of their kind we possess, perhaps the very best merely descriptive letters ever written by a woman in English. On the other hand, the moment she had anything to write which seemed to require consideration–anything which for some reason clogged her pen–it is curious to note how instantly, as if under compulsion, she reverted to the elaborately complimentary style, to the brobdingnagian phraseology of her father's [Page 41] best and most superior Johnsonese. Having already afforded the reader an opportunity of studying one letter of Hr. Edgeworth's, I feel certain that he must desire to see another. The following–written a few days after the foregoing letter to his daughter–will serve to show how the same domestic affliction would be treated by a dignified moralist when addressing the outside world. It occurs in an unpublished letter from Mr. Wedgwood to Dr. Darwin, which I have been kindly allowed to use, and the allusion to Mr. Edgeworth runs as follows:–
"Upon Tuesday I had a letter from Mr. Edgeworth, addressed to W. and B., 1 which he begins by saying–'One circumstance, and only one, in our connection is disagreeable to me, which is that I am restrained from having things of Etrurian manufacture, because I am not treated in two different characters, as a stranger and a friend. Let me address this letter to the firm of W. and B., 1 to ask whether I can have twelve profiles of my dear Mrs. Edgeworth, done in white or pale blue, from a profile by Mrs. Harrington, and an excellent picture by Smart–I lost her Sunday–and you both know she is a real loss to,–your friend,
RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH.'"
Such a letter cannot fail to please ! The following extracts are from two other letters of Mr. Edgeworth, written about eleven years later. The "Mr. Ruxton" so ceremoniously addressed, it may be as well to explain, was the writer's brother-in-law:
R. L. Edgeworth to Mr. Ruxton.
"PRINCE'S BUILDINGS, CLIFTON.
"MY DEAR MR. RUXTON,–I am impatient to thank you for your great kindness to my young people, and for your [Page 42] sincere and friendly offers of assistance in their journey. I do assure you that there is nobody now in the world from whom I am more willing to receive obligations, or in whose prudence and activity I have more confidence. When life begins to move distinctly downwards, it gives me the greatest present pleasure, and the most certain hopes of future satisfaction, to perceive that the husband of my beloved sister becomes every day more united to me . . . .
"I thank you for the kind manner in which you informed us of the death of poor Thomas: my sister's letters had led us to expect it. Mrs. Day also died suddenly the twenty-first of last month, a few days after she left us. There does not, now that little Thomas is gone, exist even a person of the same name as Mr. Day. Our poor little boy enjoyed all the pleasures of which his short and infant existence was capable. From Sophy he had indulgence, attention, and amusement, and during his painful illness all the tenderness and care of your excellent wife. My compassion and solicitude for them was not less than for the child; but I hope that the remembrance of their own goodness will soon obliterate the painful impressions of his miserable end," etc. etc.
Poor little "Thomas Day" ! It is difficult to resist a momentary sensation of pity for so evidently unnecessary a little item, whose exit from a well-filled planet evoked such remarkably tepid demonstrations of regret on the part of his dignified and sonorous parent. That Mr. Edgeworth may have been wiser in the matter than the more sympathetic aunts and sisters is, however, conceivable. At all events, before condemning him, we must take into consideration the somewhat exceptional nature of his position, seeing that few of us are privileged to enter quite accurately into the sensations of a man who, if he has just lost one small son, has still the consciousness of being the happy father of some fourteen or fifteen [Page 44] living children. The views of the patriarchs have in this respect never been revealed in all their fulness, else we might find that even those unequalled fosterers of the primal affections were in the habit of accepting incidents of the kind when occurring in their own families, with something of the stoicism born of habit !
1 Firm of Westwood and Bentley, Etruria.
