IN the month of January 1800 we find Miss Edgeworth inquiring of her cousin how certain books are to be sent to her aunt Mrs. Ruxton, who at the time was from home. The letter ends–"We have begged Johnson to send you Castle Rackrent. I hope it has reached you? Do not mention to any one that it is ours. Have you seen Minor Morals by Mrs. Smith? There is in it a beautiful little botanical poem called the 'Calendar of Flora.'"
Minor Morals by Mrs. Smith seems to have been at least as important a work in Miss Edgeworth's estimation as Castle Rackrent. This letter to her cousin, though not otherwise noteworthy, is interesting as regards two points. One is the inclusion of her father as joint author with herself, even in the case of a book in the writing of which we know, as a matter of absolute certainty, that he had no part. The other is this very characteristic belittling of what other people are still prepared to regard as a work of some merit!
No view of Miss Edgeworth can be more erroneous than the one which supposes in her a desire to pose upon any self-raised pedestal. So far from this, I am inclined to think that–as in the case of another [Page 87] eminent woman-writer not long dead–she might have made a more enduring mark had she taken her own pretensions a trifle more seriously than she did. This point seems to be worth emphasising, singe there is a tendency to confound her in this respect with her father, and to place the stamp of pedagogic self-sufficiency alike on both. How little the daughter deserved the accusation the above letter alone shows, and as in that instance so in others, save where the adored parent was concerned, whose lightest emendation weighed more with her than the whole of those writings, which it is our present presumptuous opinion such emendations disfigure.
Turning to the book itself. Castle Rackrent stands upon an entirely different footing from any of Miss Edgeworth's other writings. In it alone we find her regarding life,–not from any utilitarian, ethical, or dogmatic standpoint,–but simply and solely objectively, as it strikes, and as it ought to strike, an artist. So far from any cut-and-dry code of morals being enforced in it, morals of every sort are even startlingly absent. To find a book in which an equally topsy-turvy view is presented, without so much as a hint of disapproval upon the part of the author, we should have to go back as far as to Defoe. Take it from whatever point of view we like–moral, philosophical, social, political–it seems to stand outside of the entire code, human or divine. It has been sometimes asserted that Miss Edgeworth was the parent and first inventor of that engine of instruction "The Novel with a Purpose," but if Castle Rackrent is a novel with a purpose, one would be glad to be told what that purpose precisely is ? [Page 88]
Admiration for the book's own singular merits is enhanced, moreover, I think, when we consider both the difficulty of the subject, and the antecedent improbability of any one in the position of its author being able to surmount them. "Honest Thady," although calling himself a steward, is in reality a peasant, with all the ideas and instincts of one; an eighteenth century peasant, one who has always lived, and whose forebears before him have always lived, under the same lords, and to whom therefore their little peculiarities have come to be as it were a law of nature, no more to be disputed than the over-frequency of wet days, or the inclemencies of the winter. All peasants are difficult and elusive creatures to portray, but perhaps an Irish peasant–alike by his good and by his bad qualities–is the most elusive and the most difficult upon the face of the earth. Any one who has ever tried to fling a net over him knows perfectly well in his or her own secret soul that the attempt has been a failure–at best that entire realms and regions of the subject have escaped observation. A whole world of forgotten beliefs, extinct traditions, lost ways of thought, obsolete observances, must be felt, known, understood, and realised, before we can even begin to perceive existence as we are expected to see it by such an one as Thady. Especially was this the case at that date with regard to certain mysterious institutions known as "masters"; beings born, in the old Irish phrase, to "reign over" the rest of the world, and as little expected to be trammelled by the ordinary rules of right and wrong as any Olympian deities. An ingenious friend of the present writer not long since remarked that the only parallel for the ways of Sir [Page 89] Condy and his predecessors which is to be found in literature is that of the equally admired and respected Noor ad Deen of the Arabian Nights. This worthy, it may be remembered, gives away his father's houses and lands to any one who happens to take a fancy to them, and being upon one occasion somewhat pressed for debt, he sells his wife–with her entire approval–in the market-place. Finally, he meets with her again; they escape together; and, being rather hungry, he is so overcome with gratitude to a fisherman who has given him a couple of fishes, that he not only forces him to accept of all his remaining gold, but of his wife into the bargain, this time without that lady's consent or approval.
To what extent the parallel can be said to hold good I leave to more discriminating minds! Certainly, to our sober notions, the code of honour and morals, as we see them through Thady's eyes, is to the full as mysterious as any Eastern one could be. How Miss Edgeworth–daughter of an irreproachable father, one who never got drunk, even when common politeness might have required him to do so–managed to, so to speak, "get behind" such a standpoint, will always remain a puzzle. Fortunately, as regards the actual production of the book, we are not left entirely to our own unassisted guesses, since we have its author's account of the matter, one written many years later in response to an appeal for enlightenment from a correspondent. Although printed, this account has also never, I think, been published before:–
"EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Sept. 6, 1834.
". . . The only character drawn from the life in Castle Rackrent is 'Thady' himself, the teller of the story. [Page 90] He was an old steward (not very old, though, at that time; I added to his age, to allow him time for the generations of the family). I heard him when I first came to Ireland, and his dialect struck me, and his character; and I became so acquainted with it, that I could think and speak in it without effort; so that when, for mere amusement, without any idea of publishing, I began to write a family history as Thady would tell it, he seemed to stand beside me and dictate; and I wrote as fast as my pen could go. The characters are all imaginary. Of course they must have been compounded of persons I had seen, or incidents I had heard, but how compounded I do not know; not by 'long forethought,' for I had never thought of them till I began to write, and had made no sort of plan, sketch, or framework. There is a fact, mentioned in a note, of Lady Cathcart having been shut up by her husband, Mr. M'Guire, in a house in this neighbourhood. So much I knew, but the characters are totally different from what I had heard. Indeed, the real people had been so long dead, that little was known of them. Mr. M'Guire had no resemblance, at all events, to my Sir Kit, and I knew nothing of Lady Cathcart but that she was fond of money, and would not give up her diamonds. Sir Condy's history was added two years afterwards: it was not drawn from life, but the good-natured and indolent extravagance was suggested by a relation of mine long since dead. All the incidents are pure invention; the duty work, and duty fowl, facts. "
Further than this we cannot get. The book grew–as most of the good books the world possesses have [Page 91] probably grown–by a process peculiar to itself, a process not to be fully explained by its author, and still less therefore by any one else. One fact, at least, is clear to our satisfaction, namely, that it came into existence by a process the exact opposite of all Mr. Edgeworth's theories as to the methods which conduce to the production of superior literature. So subversive is it of these, so wholly independent and revolutionary, that some wonder arises that he did not–upon his return from those duties which had so fortunately detained him during its inception–order the cancelling, or the complete remodelling, of anything so heterodox. Had he done so, we cannot doubt that it would have been condemned by its creator without a qualm. Happily he abstained; Castle Rackrent survived, and Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy have remained to be the amusement and the bewilderment of three generations of appreciative readers.
That a book which stole upon the world in so quiet and anonymous a fashion should have at once made its mark, is a fact creditable, I think, to the literary perceptions of that day. By the following year a new edition had been urgently called for, and this time "By Maria Edgeworth" appeared upon the title-page. "Its success," Mrs. Edgeworth writes in her Memoir, "had been so triumphant that some one–I heard his name at the time but do not remember it, and it is better forgotten–not only asserted that he was the author, but actually took the trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures, as if it was his original MS." A year later, writing from Paris the same lady tells her correspondent that "Castle Rackrent has been translated into German, and we saw [Page 92] in a French book an extract from it, giving the wake, the confinement of Lady Cathcart, and Thady sweeping the stairs with his wig, as common and usual occurrences in that extraordinary kingdom."
Considering this exceptional and quite unlooked for success, it seems curious that Miss Edgeworth should never again have tried her hand at a story in the same vein. Certainly she never did so. Her other Irish books, The Absentee, Ennui, Ormond, are all of them excellent stories, but as a transcript direct from life, unaltered in the telling, unshackled by any theory, unhampered by moralising, Castle Rackrent stands alone. Of her numerous other writings, the ones which seem to stand nearest to it, alike for freedom and originality, are her familiar letters, for which I have already expressed my own extreme admiration. Out of various still unprinted ones belonging to this date I have selected the following three. The first is entirely taken up, as will be seen, with the description of a house in which she was then staying, the dilapidation of which almost exceeds credibility. It will be recognised by readers of Ormond as having been afterwards utilised as the home of "King Condy":–
"CHANTINÉE, July 3rd, 1808.
"I must reserve the amusement of describing the humours of Chantinée till we meet, for folios of paper would not give you an adequate idea of their infinite variety. The house in which I now enjoy myself has stood, certainly, in spite of fate, and of all the efforts of man to throw it down or blow it up. Tell William, and try if you can to make him believe it, that, after this house was built, the owner quarried and blasted the [Page 93] rocks underneath it, till he made a kitchen twenty feet square and various subterranean offices. A gentleman who was breakfasting with him at the time this blasting underneath them was going on, heard one of the explosions, and starting, Mr. Corry quietly said, 'It is only the blasting in the kitchen, finish your breakfast.' But the visitor, not being so well trained as Charles the Twelfth's secretary, ran out of the house. After all this was accomplished, and the house, contrary to the prophecies of all who saw, or heard of it, still standing, the owner set to work at the roof, which he fancied was too low. You may judge of the size and weight of the said roof when I tell you that it covers a hall 42 feet long–two oblong rooms at each end of the hall 33 and 35 long, by above 20 broad, and an oval room at the back of the hall seven and twenty by four and twenty. Undaunted by the ponderous magnitude of the 'undertaking' this intrepid architect cut all the rafters of the roof clean off from the walls on all sides, propped it in the middle, and fairly raised it altogether by men and levers, to the height he wanted; there it stood propped in air till he built the walls up to it, pieced the rafters and completed it to his satisfaction ! But alas, he slated it so ill, or so neglected to slate it at all, that, in rainy weather, torrents of water pour in, and in winter it is scarcely habitable, by man or brute. The walls and coved ceilings of the fine rooms, and all the really beautiful cornices, are so stained and spoiled with damp, that it is lamentable and provoking to behold them. In the drawing-room (I hope you have firm confidence in my truth, or you will now certainly think I am fabling) there is a fuchsia sixteen feet high, trained to a dead [Page 94] stem of alder which is planted in its tub. The fuchsia is six feet broad and as thick as the matted honey-suckle on the garden wall; and you may shake it as you would a sheet of honey-suckle that you were pulling down. Geraniums 13 and 14 feet high all round the bow-window of this room. Some in rich blossom, others ragged, and wild, or as Mr. C. says, in déshabille. He sacrifices the neatness of the room, to be sure, to his vegetable loves; for he waters them every morning with soap-suds, which stream about in uncontrolled meanders."
The next letter is to the faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Billamore (familiarly Kitty), whose acquaintance the reader made in the last chapter, and to whose charity towards the wife of one of the rebels the family owed it that Edgeworthstown was not then pillaged, or possibly burnt. When this letter was written Mrs. Billamore was upon a visit at Black Castle, and Miss Edgeworth is posting her up in the doings of the family since her departure:–
"EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Wednesday [no other date ].
"MY DEAR GOOD MRS. BILLAMORE,–I write as I promised you I would, to tell you how all your children do, and how all is going on in your absence. In one word the children are all well –and my father pretty well, and all going on well. Therefore enjoy yourself completely at dear Black Castle. I hope you have been well, and I need not ask you whether you are happy. I know it is impossible for any one so nearly connected with this family as you are to be anything but delighted at Black Castle.
"I turned a pig away yesterday from your tree, [Page 95] where he was routing with all his snout, and Prince was so cowardly that he did not dare to pull him by the ears, he only barked round and round him, and the pig, despising him for a poltroon as he was, went on eating quietly–so I roared out of my window:
"'Is there anybody alive in the back yard ?'
"'Yes Ma'am, Pat.'
"'Then run and drive the pig away that is routing at Mrs. Billamore's tree.'
"It was raining very hard, and Pat in his yellow waistcoat, which you know he is scruplesome about wetting, but he ran out instantly, and cursed and stoned the pig, and when the pig ran and squeaked, Prince grew wondrous brave, and chased him through the gate in triumph.
"My mother gathered a bushel of roses out of your garden yesterday, and ornamented the library with them. Fanny and Sophy desire me to tell you that they do the fruit for dessert every day and Honora generally, so how it is I don't know. All I know is we have plenty of everything, and that is a wonder in these hard times, and Mrs. Billamore away!
"John Langan says that Mistress Bell'more will be fit to be tied when she hears that the master has gone and given Pat Carroll four guineas a hundred for the butter, instead of three pound five for which Mrs. Bell'more bargained for it. But Kitty, my dear, if you had seen how happy Pat Carroll looked when he came to pay his rent and my father allowed him that unexpected price! His long chin became two inches shorter, and though he looked before as if he had never smiled since he was created, he then smiled without power to help it, and went away with as [Page 96] sunshiny a face as ever you saw, carroll ing his Honor's praises for the best landlord in the three counties.
"We heard of Sneyd's landing safely. My mother heard from Cork, all well. Adieu, my dear good Kitty.–I am your truly affectionate
MARIA EDGEWORTH."
How many people, one wonders, would have taken the trouble to write such a letter, even to the most faithful of housekeepers ? Better even than this, the best of all Miss Edgeworth's letters of that date, is, I am inclined to think, the following one to her cousin Sophy Ruxton, concerning the loss of a certain Float, or raft, upon which the Edgeworth family and their visitors were in the habit of crossing the little river Inny, into what had been christened "The Yellow Dwarf's Country," a region lying between Edgeworthstown and Pakenham Hall, on the way to Black Castle. Here the point lies, in the impossibility of ascertaining what did befall the Float, one report of the disaster superseding the last–"as fast as the figure of a dragon in the clouds on a windy day." Individuals pass, incidents vary, politics change, but Ireland itself never changes !
"EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 26, 1805.
"Give my love to my uncle and Margaret, and tell them I hear the Float is sunk. It is well we were not upon it! The story of the sinking has been told to me in half a dozen ways, and the report changes as fast as the figure of a dragon in the clouds on a windy day. First it was 'an ass laden with Spanish dollars belonging to one Tierney, of Drogheda, that sank it entirely, only the man caught by the rope and was [Page 97] saved.' Then it was 'Nine cars loaded with yarn, please your honour, coming to the fair, and Tierney of Drogheda along with them, and they all went down, only Tierney himself and the horses swam ashore.' Then five minutes afterwards we hear that 'The yarn was saved, and nothing in life went down but the Float itself, though all the men, and cars, and yarn were upon it!' To gain any more correct information at this hour (ten) of the night, and on such a night, would be beyond the power of any 'of woman born': for at this hour of a fair day–
"'Men, asses, dollars, yarn, in gay confusion fall,
And one oblivious stream of whisky covers all.'"
