WE have now reached what–at any rate to Irish readers–will always be a very interesting point in Maria Edgeworth's life, her arrival, namely, in Ireland in the year 1782, from which date, with the exception of a good many visits, one stay at Clifton, and two rather lengthened sojourns on the continent, she may be said to have practically never left it again.
Even those to whom the ground is fairly familiar will find a considerable difficulty in picturing accurately to themselves Irish social life as it existed towards the end of the eighteenth century. Three enormously important events–the Rebellion of '98, the Union, and the Famine–lie between it and us; all three of these having a marked, and all three in several respects a very disastrous, effect upon that social life. Of those three events the Famine was immeasurably the most revolutionary in its results. The Rebellion, although it wrote itself in blood and horror across a considerable part of the country, would in all probability not have had any very lengthened influence, but for the fact that the memory of it has ever since served as a political rallying-point. When once the panic aroused on one side, when once the bitter resentment which its suppression awoke on the other, [Page 45] had died down, matters would–in fact to a great degree did–resume their wonted course. The Union again, although a much more important event, chiefly affected the upper classes, and the well-to-do citizens of Dublin. It stands before us at the present date rather as a great political, than as a great natural landmark. In spite of the inevitable changes which such a shifting of the seat of government brought about; in spite of what may be called the unnatural increase of population which occurred in the next forty years; in spite of O'Connell and Catholic emancipation; in spite of everything and everybody, up to the time of the great Famine the broad features of Ireland, and of Irish social life, had remained unchanged. When, further on in this book, the reader arrives at the letters of Miss Edgeworth which describe the country of the Martins in Connemara–letters written not many years before that event–he will be able to judge how vast the chasm is which lies between what is there described, and anything which is even remotely conceivable as existing in Ireland at the present time. Compared to such patriarchal chieftains as the Martins of Ballinahinch, the Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown were, of course, small fry. Even there, however–in fact all over the country–the same social tone, the same general ideas of life prevailed. Once settled down in his ancestral dominions, Mr. Edgeworth found himself in what to him must have seemed the very appropriate position of a little local king. Like such a petty monarch he had his levées, his courtiers, his retainers,–more or less ragged:–like such an one he held his courts of justice, and distributed rewards and punish- [Page 46] ments–at any rate of a minor kind–pretty much according to his own ideas of justice or expediency.
Being, as has been seen, a despot, and a benevolent one, the arrangement worked admirably. Nothing can be more harmonious than the picture which comes before us, as we look back from our vantage-ground of over a hundred years, and see that large, variously assorted family party gathered together at Edgeworthstown, during the years which followed their arrival in 1782. Like the majority of Irish residences, the house itself belongs to that rather nondescript type of architecture which depends for its escape from absolute ugliness mainly upon the taste and intelligence of its immediate owners. A wilderness of neglected garden and shrubbery surrounded it at the date of their arrival, which became gradually subdued into order as time went on. In later years Maria Edgeworth was herself the chief gardener, and was, moreover, a keen and practical one, in days when the variety was very much rarer than it has since become. This, however, was long afterwards, and at the date I am speaking of she simply took her share in the various duties, large and small, which fell to the lot of the different members of so multifarious a group of people.
To a good many girls of her age, the mere size of that ever-growing family–whose numbers are to a biographer, I confess, baffling–would have been no small trial. Not so to Maria Edgeworth. Children were for her, all through her long life, not merely no trouble, but a stimulus, a rest, and an amusement. It was only the peremptory orders of her father and stepmother which hindered her from converting herself [Page 47] into the play-fellow, slave, and maid-of-all-work of her well-nigh countless younger brothers and sisters. One small boy (Henry by name) was made over from the first to her especial care, and retained until his death a particular niche in her large and loving heart. It was for his benefit, and for the benefit of those who came nearest to him in age, that her earliest children's tales were composed–a point to which I shall have to return presently.
It is a curious fact that from the first, and while she was still in years a mere school-girl, her father seems to have associated her with all his own work at Edgeworthstown. She rode her cob or pony "Dapple" beside him, when he went his rounds; she kept the accounts of the whole expenditure under his directions; she even seems to have acted for him as a sort of clerk or sub-agent. Thirty years later, the critic of the Quarterly, wishing to make himself particularly unpleasant, asserted roundly that she had been in the habit of hiding in her father's magistrates' room "for the purpose of taking notes of the peculiar manners or expressions of the litigants." If she did so, the sin would not have struck most of us as great, but there is no reason for supposing that she did anything of the kind. There are people–pace the Quarterly Reviewer–who are able to see, hear, and perceive, without hiding themselves for the purpose, or even listening behind keyholes !
That this early acquaintance with life at first-hand was of immense advantage to her as a novelist there can be no question. It freed her from that rather cramping atmosphere of minute preoccupations which is apt to surround very young girls. Further than [Page 48] this, it brought her into genuine, and not merely into artificial, relations with the tenants and the peasant class generally–a benefit which it is difficult to overestimate.
That she had sustained no slight loss in having spent the irrecoverable years of childhood and early youth in what were not the scenes she was destined to commemorate, I have already stated to be my opinion. This is a point upon which I am so clearly at variance with her previous biographers, that it evidently is one which admits of considerable divergence of opinion. Mr. Hare lays stress upon the great advantage Maria Edgeworth enjoyed in being able to study the country with what were comparatively mature eyes. "Maria was now," he says, "fifteen, and was old enough therefore to be interested in all the peculiarities of the Irish, as contrasted with the English character." In the earlier Life Miss Zimmern is even more emphatic:–"It was her [Maria's] good fortune and ours," she says, "that at an age when the mind is most impressionable she came into these novel scenes, in lieu of having lived in their midst from childhood, when it is unlikely that she would so well have seized their salient traits."
It may be so. The point is not in any case one upon which to dogmatise. To have had the right, so to speak, to a childhood in an Irish country home, and to have been–also, so to speak–defrauded of that right; to have had to spend the chief–it is hardly an exaggeration to say, the only years of true impressionability in Great Russell Street, in Derby, in Lichfield, and Upper Wimpole Street, seems to me, I will confess, for the early years of an Irish romancer, a state of affairs [Page 49] almost too regrettable to contemplate. If now and then, even in the best of Miss Edgeworth's books, a certain sense of unreality presents itself; if now and then a momentary haze of falsity seems to float between an Irish reader and the page, it is, I think, only fair that we should set down such passing slips largely to the fact that she came to the country which she is undertaking to describe almost as a grown-up woman.
That she lost no time when she did arrive is at least certain. Eyes and ears were alike employed, and to the best possible purpose. Long afterwards, in a letter to a correspondent, she entered to an unusual degree into an explanation of the method–or possibly absence of method–which enabled her to place herself at a point of view so extravagantly remote from her own as always to awaken astonishment that she should so nearly have attained it as she did. This is a point which had better, however, be reserved till we are considering her Irish books, especially the best of them, Castle Rackrent –the best Irish novel or story, in the present writer's opinion, which has as yet seen the light.
Nearly a dozen years were to pass after Miss Edgeworth's arrival at Edgeworthstown before she began, even tentatively, to try her hand at an Irish tale. Her first literary efforts were in quite a different direction, partly as her father's assistant–a sort of acolyte under him at the shrine of the great goddess Utility–partly on her own initiative, with the first of that long array of children's tales which, if far from constituting her chief claims to recognition as a writer, at least carried her fame at the date in which they were written further [Page 50] than it has always been the lot of even the highest achievements of genius to carry their creator's fame. Taking her writings categorically, we find the first of them–begun when she was little over sixteen years of age–to have been a translation of Madame de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore. This translation was never apparently finished, Mr. Holcroft, a novelist of that date, having been found to be engaged upon the same task, although, since we hear of its being presented by Mr. Edgeworth to the illustrious author of the original, it must have got into some more or less presentable form. The next of her writings–also undertaken at her father's orders–finally appeared under the title of Letters to Literary Ladies, and is a conscientious little bit of task-work, setting forth the advantages of a mild amount of cultivation as applied to the "female" mind. About the same time Mr. Edgeworth began the earlier chapters of what eventually grew into two substantial volumes as Practical Education, a work in which his daughter's share was avowedly that of assistant and collaborator only. By way of popularising the views therein expressed, and possibly as a relaxation from the labour it entailed, she began to amuse herself by writing down a succession of little children's stories, which were eventually collected under the formidable–to a child, the absolutely incomprehensible–title of The Parent's Assistant.
These tales, and the yet more elementary ones which were afterwards published as Early Lessons, were begun without any idea of publication, simply for the benefit, as has been said, of her particular charge "little Henry," and of such of the small brothers and sisters [Page 51] as came nearest to him in age. They were written out upon a schoolroom slate; were altered; were added to; were approved of, or summarily contemned, entirely according to the verdict of her short-petticoated judges. To say that the latter were safer critics than her redoubtable father is certainly not to assert too much! Moreover, that the stories themselves owe their really extraordinary vitality largely to this method of production we cannot doubt. They are stories for children, written, not from above, but from a level; from the point of view of those to whom they were addressed. If we take up one of these little fat volumes in its earliest and most attractive form, and try to conceive of it as proceeding directly from a child–a somewhat over-drilled and over-virtuous child, such as it was the tendency of that disciplinary age to produce–we shall readily perceive that, with its hard and fast distribution of rewards and punishments; its resolute hold upon concrete fact; its avoidance, not to say detestation, of anything approaching the abstract; it is precisely what such a Georgian or pre-Victorian child might–nay, certainly would–have written for itself, had its powers of composition been equal to such a task.
For–let cynics say what they will to the contrary–children unquestionably do prefer that the rewards and the punishments should go straight; that the nice kind boy should have his cakes and his pony; that the bad, cruel boy should be severely bitten, and have a sound whipping–if possible administered by themselves as Rhadamanthus. They even enjoy, perhaps as a variety, the sensation of being now and then good [Page 52] themselves. Certainly R. L. Stevenson thought so, and there could hardly be a better judge of children. If we open his Child's Garden of Verses, and turn to any of the rhymes which are put into the mouths of children, we shall find that the sentiments therein expressed are, with hardly an exception, of the most irreproachably virtuous cast.
At all events, and without prejudging the case as regards children in general, there can be no question that the Edgeworth children were not only remarkably virtuous themselves, but preferred that their youthful heroes and heroines should be virtuous also. "I do not think one tear per month is shed in this house," Mr. Edgeworth boasted in a letter to his friend Dr. Darwin. How far so desirable a state of things was entirely due to the admirable system inaugurated by himself, or how far kindly Nature had her share in it, we cannot now know, so the credit had better be divided between them. Turning from these children of fact, long since grown grey and vanished, to those more enduring children of fancy, who were the offspring, not of himself, but of his daughter Maria, personal experience points to the fact that it is the most infantile of them all that has retained the greatest vitality, and equally so whether beloved in the first instance, or the reverse. For personally–and in all these higher altitudes of literature, the personal attitude is admittedly the only one–I will confess to having throughout my own youth nourished a rooted antipathy to "Frank" ! From the moment in which some kindly voice began to read aloud the chronicle of his virtues, and while the page upon which those virtues were inscribed was still an undecipherable mystery, [Page 53] that antipathy began, and must, I imagine, have increased daily:–
"There was a little boy whose name was Frank. . . . When his father or mother said to him, 'Frank, shut the door,' he ran directly and shut the door. When they said to him, 'Frank, do not touch that knife,' he took his hands away from the knife, and did not touch it. He was an obedient little boy."
Even such recitations of his merits might, I think, have been endured, had it not been for his own eternal endorsement of them:–"Mamma, I am useful, I am of great use." "Papa, I never meddle with candles or fire when you or mamma are not in the room." "Mamma, I never touch anything that does not belong to me." "Mamma, I will always ask you about everything, because you can tell whether things are good for me or not."
The italics, it must be clearly understood, were in the voice, and will not be found upon the printed page, but the effect was such as I have described. And the worst of the matter was that, not alone obedience–never, after all, a particularly popular virtue–but even kindliness to animals, even common honesty, became equally unpopular when taken under the pragmatical shelter of Frank:–"Mamma, I am going to behave to this snail as I should wish to be behaved to myself if I were a snail." "Mamma, I was very honest, was I not, when I returned his nuts to him ?" "Mamma, I will always be honest about everything as well as about nuts." There were moments when it seemed hardly possible that any mother of spirit would not have risen up and slain such a boy !
On the other hand, Rosamund was always a much [Page 54] beloved little girl, and even her ghost–poor, dim little ghost !–is beloved still. She and Frank may be called the hero and heroine of these infant tales, although, to the best of my recollection, they never actually met in the course of them. In Rosamund's case, all that vehement wrath which had been previously aroused by Frank, was reserved for her unnatural parents. In the first of the series, we learn how poor little Rosamund was kept for a whole month by her mother in shoes which hurt her dreadfully, entirely too for moral, and not in the least for pecuniary reasons. The tale, as I have recently ascertained, is really quite a brief one, but in those days that I have been recalling, it seemed as if the woes and the endurance of Rosamund had been drawn out to the length of an entire Odyssey! If the reader will kindly study the following recital, and will then please to imagine it being listened to, or spelled out for itself, by a very small child, he will rapidly begin, I think, to realise it from the proper standpoint:–
"Every day her shoes grew worse and worse, till at last she could neither run, dance, jump, nor walk in them. Whenever Rosamund was called to see anything, she was pulling her shoes up at the heel, and was sure to be too late. Whenever her mother was going out to walk, she could not take Rosamund with her, for Rosamund had no soles to her shoes. At length, on the very last day of the month, it happened that her father proposed to take her with her brother to a glass-house, which she had long wished to see. She was very happy. But when she was quite ready, had her hat and gloves on, and was making haste downstairs to her brother and her father, who were waiting at the hall-door for her, the shoe dropped off. She put it on again in a hurry, but as she was going across the hall, her father turned round. 'Why, are [Page 55] you walking slipshod ? No one must walk slipshod with me ! Why, Rosamund,' said he, looking at her shoes with disgust, 'I thought that you were always neat ? Go, I cannot take you with me.'"
If at this climax of her sorrows poor Rosamund "retired and burst into tears," it is hardly to be wondered at; indeed, but for pure wrath, I suspect that the listener would have done so likewise! It was the abominable and the perfectly well understood hypocrisy of the whole affair which aroused such furious resentment, this business of the glass-house having evidently been concocted between the parents wholly with a view to the moral benefit to be derived. A little earlier in the same tale, we find the following conversation between Rosamund and her mother. The Purple Jar has arrived–that fatal Jar, which Rosamund had preferred to her new shoes, and this is what happens:–
"The moment it was set down upon the table, Rosamund ran up, with an exclamation of joy: 'I may have it now, mamma ?'
"'Yes, my dear, it is yours.' Rosamund poured the flowers from her lap upon the carpet, and seized the purple flower-pot.
"'Oh, dear mother !' cried she, as soon as she had taken off the top, 'but there's something dark in it; it smells very disagreeably; what is it? I didn't want this black stuff.'
"'Nor I neither, my dear.'
"'But what shall I do with it, mamma ?'
"'That I cannot tell.'
"'But it will be of no use to me, mamma?'
"'That I cannot help.'
"'But I must pour it out, and fill the flower-pot with water.'
"'That's as you please, my dear.' [Page 56]
"'Will you lend me a bowl to pour it into, mamma ?'
"'That was more than I promised you, my dear; but I will lend you a bowl.'"
The climax is soon reached, and poor Rosamund's despair and disappointment are known to us all ! In vain she now implores for a reversal of her rash choice, and for a bestowal upon her of the uninteresting but useful shoes. The maternal Minos is not to be appeased, and the appointed month of penance has duly to be endured:–
"'No, Rosamund, you must abide by your own choice; and now the best thing is, to bear your disappointment with good humour.'
"'I will bear it as well as I can,' said Rosamund, wiping her eyes; and she began slowly and sorrowfully to fill the vase with flowers."
Breathes there a child with soul so dead, that would not to itself have said–"I hate, I simply detest that mother of Rosamund!" That this was not the impression intended to be conveyed is, however, perfectly certain, which only shows how careful even the cleverest of us ought to be, especially if we cherish a hope of our little inventions reaching–as in this case–to a second, nay, even to a third and a fourth generation. In those remote days which I have been trying to recall, a good deal of the wrath evoked by the virtues of Frank, and by the woes of Rosamund, rebounded, I feel quite certain, upon the head of their creator. In more recent years it has been realised that, whereas Maria Edgeworth herself served as the model of the delinquent Rosamund, in the glorified Frank we are privileged to behold no less an incarnation [Page 57] than the youthful presentment of her illustrious papa–a view which certainly causes the matter to assume a somewhat different aspect.
Rosamund and Frank both reappear in the later stories, Frank always as the same embodiment of conscious virtue, Rosamund invariably in the same attitude of a rash but affectionate penitent. In the latest of the collected editions of our author's works, The Parent's Assistant, like the rest of the series, has had the great advantage of being edited by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, whose prefaces abound in the happiest touches. "Fairies," she observes, in one place, "are not much in Miss Edgeworth's line, but philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well, and appear at the nick of time, to distribute rewards, or to point a moral." Too true! neither the Edgeworth children themselves, in flesh and blood, nor their representatives in the stories, were ever allowed to have anything to do with fairies, and one only wonders how, under the circumstances, they contrived to hold up their heads, and to look as lively as they did. Lively, indeed, all Miss Edgeworth's heroes and heroines are, or they never would have retained their hold upon at least two generations of critical readers. Of the fairly long list of these heroes and heroines of hers, none are sprightlier or more alive than the very youngest of them. The little group of children in The Orphans; Jim and his Lightfoot; Lazy Lawrence; Maurice and Arthur, in Forgive and Forget; the other two boys in Waste not, Want not –all these look up in our faces with an aspect of credibility which I fail myself always to feel with the same certainty as regards [Page 58] the older personages–the Irish ones always excepted. As for Simple Susan, that small damsel sits–must, while literature lasts, continue to sit–upon the pedestal raised for her by the great and good Sir Walter. "When the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl," Sir Walter Scott wrote to a correspondent, "there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." And after such a tribute every later and lower panegyric sinks necessarily to the level of mere surplusage!
