WHAT is likely to be the final position of Miss Edgeworth as a writer, especially as a writer of Irish books ? That is a question which sooner or later must confront her biographers; it appears to be high time, therefore, to enter a little more fully into an account of those three books of hers which are, after Castle Rackrent –in my judgment some way after it–her chief contributions to literature, and her chief claim consequently to an abiding position as author.
It happens that the words "Irish books," "Irish writers," are just now surrounded by a certain amount of ambiguity. It seems safer, therefore, to explain that by the latter phrase is meant in the present instance writers of Irish nationality who have written in the English language. To discuss at large, and with becoming seriousness, whether that language is or is not likely to be the one in which the genius of Ireland will in future reveal itself, would be irrelevant, and possibly disputatious. Looking at the matter then solely from an English-speaking point of view, I find myself confronted by another and a larger problem, the problem of how it happens that the literature of a country, whose sons and daughters are notoriously keen-witted and imaginative, should still [Page 128] be comparatively so meagre? To find a satisfactory answer to that problem, as to most of those propounded to us by the scornful Sphinx, would take some time, since, before even beginning upon it, it would be necessary that the ground should be first cleared by a good deal of preliminary investigation. Swift, Burke, Sheridan, Goldsmith–to take the eighteenth century only–are a quartette of names of which any literature in the world might be proud. With the partial exception of the first-named it happens that only the smallest portion of the writings of any of these four have any marked connection with Ireland, consequently that peculiar and very endearing link, which usually more or less unites a writer with the soil from which he springs, is in all four cases regrettably absent. Why it is so, and how it has chanced, that, save in a few instances, Ireland herself has had so little of the attention of her best sons, is another question, or another branch of the same question. Considerations of geography, of history, of religion, all are entangled in it; the relations of two conflicting, and not very sympathetic races, and the further consideration of how far one such race may have a stunting and a deteriorating influence upon another–these, and various other points, would have to be gone over and debated, more or less in detail.
Want of space–as well as other considerations–forbid the interpolation of any similar discussions at the present moment. Turning back to the more immediate matter in hand, I find that before entering upon an examination of the three books whose names stand at the head of this chapter, it will be necessary to bestow a certain amount of attention upon [Page 129] one or two earlier books of Miss Edgeworth, which have been somewhat unceremoniously passed over. Of these, the Moral Tales was published as far back as the year 1801, and was heralded and introduced to the world by a preface from the pen of Mr. Edgeworth, one in which the obvious is explained, and the evident is made clear, with all his usual elaborate and pitiless exactitude. As regards the book itself, all that one can say of it is that it is as little dull as any work of fiction can hope to be of which edification is the main, it is hardly too much to say, the sole reason for its existence. Personally, my favourite amongst the stories it contains is "Angelina, or l'amie inconnue," a tale which relates, with many sparks of humour, the adventures of a sentimental young lady in pursuit of an unknown friend and correspondent, whom she goes forth to seek in a romantic situation amid the mountains of North Wales, but unhappily discovers at Bristol, and in a condition of–semi-intoxication! The other stories seem to me to be most of them upon a duller plane, and the chief impression produced by a re-perusal of them is one of no little perplexity that a pen which had only just left off from writing Castle Rackrent should have been able to turn–to all appearances with equal satisfaction–to the production of Forester, or of The Prussian Vase.
After the "Moral" came the "Popular" tales, which are even more obviously and avowedly educational. "The Young," "The Middle Classes," "The Aristocracy," appears to have been the primitive form of classification adopted, and to each of these three classes a certain number of fables, each with their due admixture of morals, had to be directed. As regards the tales [Page 130] themselves, they are at once so simple, and so well known, that elaborate analysis would in their case be the merest superfluity. Whenever Ireland, or even a wandering Irishman, steps upon the stage–as in The Limerick Gloves –they seem to me at once to gain in vigour and actuality–but that may be pure prejudice! In any case, I fail to see any adequate reason for delaying over their contemplation, and therefore pass on to the Fashionable Tales, the first series of which was begun not long after the return of Miss Edgeworth from Paris, namely, in the summer of the year 1803.
This series contained as its longest story Ennui, which being in the main Irish, I have set aside to discuss separately. The rest of the volumes were filled in the first edition by the four following tales–The Dun, Manoeuvring, Mme. de Fleury, and Almeria. Here again the impression conveyed is that they are, from a literary point of view, so emphatically below Miss Edgeworth at her best, that they may safely be left to be summarised in the words of the parental preface. From that conscientious editorial summary we learn that The Dun is intended by its author to be–"a lesson against the common folly of believing that a debtor is able by a few cant phrases to alter the nature of right and wrong." Manoeuvring is–"a vice to which the little great have recourse to show their second-rate abilities "; while in Almeria the author, we are assured, proposes to give us–"a view of the consequences which usually follow the substitution of the gifts of fortune in the place of merit, and shows the meanness of those who imitate manners and haunt company above their station in society." "Difference of rank," Mr. Edgeworth continues impressively, "is a [Page 131] continual incitement to laudable emulation; but those who consider the being admitted into circles of fashion as the summit of human bliss and elevation, will here find how grievously such frivolous ambition may be disappointed and chastised."
After so judicious and so thoroughly exhaustive a summary as this, the reader will perhaps hardly feel that it is requisite for his peace of mind to know very much more ! It is only common justice to Miss Edgeworth, however, to add that the tales are one and all of them written with that liveliness and vigour which rarely, even at the worst, forsook her pen. There is one scene especially, towards the end of Almeria,–the scene in which a wealthy and fashionable "Miss" (Almeria herself) encounters a high-minded but unfashionable duchess–which has always seemed to the present writer to promise a large amount of entertainment to its readers. Unhappily, the desire to chastise the poor votary of fashion, in accordance with the spirit of the preface, has proved too strong for the natural humours of the situation. The rich, but reprehensibly fashionable, "Miss" retires abashed and humiliated–although in her own coach–leaving all the honours of war to the high-minded but unfashionable duchess, who departs shortly afterwards in triumph–apparently upon her feet !
The second set of the Fashionable Tales finally included The Absentee, which is, next to Castle Rackrent, the best story, in the opinion of most critics, that Miss Edgeworth ever wrote. Its inclusion was, as will shortly be seen, of the nature of an afterthought, the series, as originally projected, having been almost exclusively English. As regards two of the stories [Page 132] contained in it–Vivian and The Modern Griselda –I do not find it easy to discover anything very favourable to say. This applies more especially to Vivian, a painfully ponderous tale, the moral of which turns upon the disadvantage under which a hero labours who is incapable under any circumstances of saying "No." The third of these shorter stories–Émilie de Coulanges –stands upon a very different level, and is perhaps the best non-Irish story that its author ever penned. The heroine, it is true, is of the usual flawless type, as is also apparently the hero, who only appears in a somewhat unconvincing fashion at the last moment. On the other hand, the two mothers–his and Émilie's–are a pair of admirably conceived contrasts. The volatile Countess–unsobered even under the very shadow of the guillotine–is as lifelike a creation as has ever fluttered through the pages of a novel, while Mrs. Somers–hospitable, strenuous, well-meaning, generous, the possessor of many virtues and of one failing–huffiness–is a person with whom most of us have at one time or other made acquaintance. While fully admitting the good points of this and several of the other shorter stories, I still find it difficult to believe that any devout reader of Miss Edgeworth can fail to regret that she should have expended so much of her time upon what was for her–I will not assert for every one –distinctly the wrong side of the Channel. I therefore pass on to those three books of hers which are more particularly the objects of my own interest, and proceed now to examine them a little in detail.
Taking them, not chronologically, but in their order of merit, the first place will be almost universally [Page 133] assigned to The Absentee. While personally ranking it, as I have said, considerably below its forerunner Castle Rackrent, it is impossible for any critic to fail to realise that it is in truth an excellent tale, full of wit and humour, full of point, pith, and knowledge of the world, of nearly, in short, though not perhaps of all, the qualities which go towards the production of that as yet unrealised desideratum–the ideal novel. Every one, it is to be hoped, has read or heard of Lord Macaulay's solemn declaration that the scene in which Lord Colambre discovers himself to his father's tenants, and discomfits the demon agent, has had no parallel in literature since the opening of the twenty-second book of the Odyssey! Humbler admirers might hardly perhaps have risen unaided to quite such lofty heights of panegyric as these. Still, when the vast, the almost immeasurable difference, between a new and a merely old novel has been discounted, the result can hardly fail to redound to the permanent distinction of its author.
The fashion in which the book originated has a certain interest in itself, and shows that Miss Edgeworth, like most people who have ever written novels, had now and then turned an eye to the more immediate profits and glories of the stage. She never actually attained those glories; indeed in this, as in most other respects, she took an unusually clear, no less than an unusually modest, view of her own capacities. The first mention of The Absentee will be found in a letter to her unfailing correspondent, Mrs. Ruxton:–"I have written a little play for our present large juvenile audience,"–this was written in November 1811–"not for them to act, but to hear. I read it out last night, [Page 134] and it was liked. The scene is in Ireland, and the title The Absentee. When will you let me read it to you ? I would rather read it to you up in a garret than to the most brilliant audience in Christendom."
With this play, as read to him by its author, Mr. Edgeworth was, it appears, so enchanted that he insisted–strongly against the advice of its writer–upon sending it off at once to Sheridan, and endeavouring, under his protection, to let it try its fate upon the London boards. Remonstrance was vain. The affectionate parental despot must and would have his own way. The play accordingly was despatched to Sheridan within a few hours of its being written. "It was copied," Mrs. Edgeworth tells us in her Memoir, "in a single night. We all sat round the library table, and, each taking a portion, it was completed by twelve o'clock, in eight different handwritings."
In spite of the enjoyment of having to decipher eight different handwritings at a sitting, the manager proved obdurate ! In her next letter Miss Edgeworth writes as follows:–"Sheridan has answered, as I foresaw he must, that in the present state of this country the Lord Chamberlain would not licence The Absentee. Besides, there would be a difficulty in finding actors for so many Irish characters. I like him all the better for being so entirely of my opinion."
If she "liked him all the better" for refusing her play, one can only say that she differed from the great majority of playwrights or would-be playwrights. That Sheridan's verdict was final even Mr. Edgeworth was forced in any case to admit. Messrs. Johnson, the publishers, had been clamouring for a fresh series of the Tales from Fashionable Life, and it was decided, [Page 135] therefore, to throw over Patronage,–another undeniably ponderous effort, which had grown up under her father's auspices–and to add The Absentee to the rest of the stories already collecting for that series.
Turning for information to Mrs. Edgeworth's Memoir of her stepdaughter, we find her writing as follows:–
"The idea of Irish absentees living in London had originally formed part of Patronage, where a Lord and Lady Tipperary appeared as patients of Dr. Percy's. Patronage had been intended to have formed part of a second series of Fashionable Tales, along with Vivian and Émilie de Coulanges, but finding it impossible to finish it in two volumes, and Mr. Miles (Johnson's successor) being anxious to publish the second set of Tales from Fashionable Life early in the ensuing year, Mr. Edgeworth advised Maria to lay aside Patronage for the present, and taking out of it the Irish absentees, make a story that would fill the volume and a half wanted for the series. She was pleased with the idea, wrote a sketch of the story, of which her father approved, changed the name of Tipperary to Clonbrony, and now set to work at The Absentee."
In this manner the book grew, and the haste at which it had to be produced was not perhaps as disadvantageous to it as to most works of art, seeing that the very fact of such haste precluded the eternal readjustments, interpolations, moral disquisitions, and so forth, which it was the peculiar function of her Editor in Chief to supply. Although enlivened by Lady Clonbrony's aspirations after London society, the first volume of The Absentee does not differ greatly from some of Miss Edgeworth's other "fashionable tales." The real interest of the story only begins when the hero, Lord Colambre, setting forth upon his travels, undertakes to explore what were for him as yet terræ incognitæ –his father's estates, namely, in Ireland. [Page 136] The theory that Miss Edgeworth had gained, rather than lost, by her own acquaintance with that country having been so long postponed, is one which I have myself already disputed. At the same time, honesty forces the avowal that the idea of an Ireland visited for the first time in mature years by an Irishman or half-Irishman, was evidently one which had stamped itself strongly upon her consciousness, and so far the opposite theory gains support. Not only in The Absentee, but also in the earlier story, Ennui, we find the same situation occurring, although the details in each case vary not a little. In the last-named book the hero is an opulent nobleman–rather has the semblance of being one, for, as a matter of fact, we know that he was "changed at nurse." Apart from his Irish possessions, Lord Glenthorn was the proprietor of sundry estates in England, also of a London house, and of all else appropriate to the sort of person apt to be rhetorically described as "a belted Earl." He had been married to an heiress, and had found a speedy occasion to divorce her–retaining apparently her possessions. He had squandered a couple of fortunes of his own at the gaming-table, where the scale of his operations may be judged by his remarking upon his own good fortune in having upon one particular night only lost "a mere trifle, ten thousand pounds." As the natural, or at all events as the moral, result of these feats, he was consumed by the painful malady which gives its name to the book, and it was in the hope of dissipating the anguish occasioned by it that he suddenly decided upon keeping a promise made to his old Irish nurse (in reality his mother), and setting forth to visit his ancestral possessions in Ireland. [Page 137]
As became a person of his importance, he of course travelled in his own coach, with his own horses, and his own coachman to drive them. He had neglected, however, to supply a second coach and more horses for his retainers, and the result was that they were forced . . . But Lord Glenthorn shall here explain matters for himself:–
"My own man (an Englishman) and my cook (a Frenchman) followed in a hackney chaise; I cared not how, so that they kept up with me; the rest was their affair. At night, my gentleman complained bitterly of the Irish post carriages, and besought me to let him follow at an easier rate the next day, but to this I could by no means consent, for how could I exist without my own man and my French cook? In the morning, just as I was ready to set off, and had thrown myself back in the carriage, my Englishman and Frenchman came to the door, both in so great a rage, that the one was inarticulate and the other unintelligible. At length the object of their indignation spoke for itself. From the inn yard came a hackney chaise, in a most deplorable crazy state; the body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forwards, one door swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the harness: wretched little dog-tired creatures, that looked as if they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives . . . .
"In an indignant voice I called to the landlord, 'I hope these are not the horses–I hope this is not the chaise, intended for my servants ?'
"The innkeeper, and the pauper who was preparing to officiate as postillion, both in the same instant exclaimed, 'Sorrow better chaise in the county!'
"'Sorrow !' said I; 'what do you mean by sorrow ?'
"'That there's no better, plase your honour, can be seen. We have two more, to be sure; but one has no top, and the [Page 138] other no bottom. Any way, there's no better can be seen than this same.'
"'And these horses!' cried I; 'why, this horse is so lame he can hardly stand.'
"'Oh, plase your honour, tho' he can't stand, he'll go fast enough. He has a great deal of the rogue in him, plase your honour. He's always that way at first setting out.'
". . . I could not avoid smiling, but my gentleman, maintaining his angry gravity, declared, in a sullen tone, that he would be cursed if he went with such horses; and the Frenchman, with abundance of gesticulation, made a prodigious chattering, which no mortal understood.
"'Then I 'll tell you what you 'll do,' said Paddy; 'you 'll take four, as becomes gentlemen of your quality, and you 'll see how we 'll powder along.'
"And straight he put the knuckle of his fore-finger in his mouth, and whistled shrill and strong; and, in a moment, a whistle somewhere out in the fields answered him.
"I protested against these proceedings, but in vain; before the first pair of horses were fastened to the chaise, up came a little boy with the others fresh from the plough. They were quick enough in putting these to; yet how they managed it with their tackle, I know not. 'Now we're fixed handsomely,' said Paddy.
"'But this chaise will break down the first mile.'
"'Is it this chaise, plase your honour? I 'll engage it will go the world's end. The universe wouldn't break it down now; sure it was mended but last night . . . .'
"At last, by dint of whipping, the four horses were compelled to set off in a lame gallop; but they stopped short at a hill near the end of the town, whilst a shouting troop of ragged boys followed, and pushed them fairly to the top. Half an hour afterwards, as we were putting on our drag-chain to go down another steep hill–to my utter astonishment, Paddy, with his horses in full gallop, came rattling and chehupping past us. My people called to warn him that he had no drag; but still he cried 'Never fear!' and shaking the long reins, and stamping with his foot, on he went thundering down the hill. My Englishmen were aghast. [Page 139]
"'The turn yonder below, at the bottom of the hill, is as sharp and ugly as ever I see,' said my postillion, after a moment's stupefied silence. 'He will break their necks, as sure as my name is John.'
"Quite the contrary: when we had dragged and undragged, and came up with Paddy, we found him safe on his legs, mending some of his tackle very quietly.
"'If that had broke as you were going down the steep hill,' said I, 'it would have been all over with you, Paddy.'
"'That 's true, plase your honour: but it never happened me going down hill–nor never will, by the blessing of God, if I've any luck.'"
The Absentee is in like manner taken up with expounding the effect likely to have been produced upon an intelligent stranger by the Ireland of that day. Unlike the more imposing progress of his predecessor, Lord Colambre's first visit to his father's estates is made in very humble guise. He travels "incog.," as we might suppose some heir-apparent to visit the Kingdom which he hopes to inherit. His first night is spent under the roof of a neighbouring agent, one of Miss Edgeworth's painfully immaculate characters, but in this case justifiably so, seeing that he has to serve as a contrast to all the other agents of the book. The second night Lord Colambre sleeps in a cabin belonging to the widow O'Neill, the mother of one of his father's tenants, who has recently been cheated out of her poor rights by the demoniacal "St. Denis," and was destined to be further cheated out of them under his own eyes upon the following day. Here the best specimen short enough for quotation is perhaps the letter of the local car-driver Larry Brady, to his brother in London, which forms a sort of postscript to the book. Larry is urging his brother to return home to Clonbrony, [Page 140] seeing that the all-potent "masther" is once more installed there, and that the Millennium is evidently just about to begin!
"Ogh, it's I driv' 'em well; and we all got to the great gate of the park before sunset, and as fine an evening as ever you see; with the sun shining on the tops of the trees, as the ladies noticed; the leaves changed, but not dropped, though so late in the season. I believe the leaves knew what they were about, and kept on, on purpose to welcome them. And the birds were singing, and I stopped whistling, that they might hear them, but sorrow bit could they hear when they got to the park gate, for there was such a crowd, and such a shout as you never see–and they had the horses off every carriage entirely, and drew 'em home, with blessings, through the park. And God bless 'em ! when they got out, they didn't go shut themselves up in the great drawing-room, but went straight out to the tirrass, to satisfy the eyes and hearts that followed them.
". . . After a turn or two upon the tirrass, my Lord Colambre quit his mother's arm for a minute, and he come to the edge of the slope, and looked down and through the crowd for some one.
"'Is it the widow O'Neill, my lord ?' says I; 'she's yonder, with the spectacles on her nose, betwixt her son and daughter, as usual.'
"Then my lord beckoned, and they did not know which of the tree would stir; and then he gave tree beckons with his own finger, and they all tree came fast enough to the bottom of the slope forenent my lord; and he went down and helped the widow up (Oh, he's the true jantleman), and brought 'em all tree up on the tirrass, to my lady and Miss Nugent; and I was close up after, that I might hear, which wasn't manners, but I couldn't help it. So what he said I don't well know, for I could not get near enough, after all. But I saw my lady smile very kind, and take the widow O'Neill by the hand, and then my Lord Colambre 'troduced Grace to Miss Nugent, and there was the word 'namesake,' and something about a check curtain, but, whatever it was, they was all [Page 141] greatly pleased. Then my Lord Colambre turned and looked for Brian, who had fell back, and took him with some commendation to my lord his father. And my old lord the master said–which I didn't know till after–that they should have their house and farm at the ould rent; and at the surprise, the widow dropped down dead; and there was a cry as for ten berrings. ' Be qui'te,' says I, 'she's only kilt for joy.' And I went and lift her up, for her son had no more strength that minute than the child new-born; and Grace trembled like a leaf, as white as the sheet, but not long, for the mother came to, and was as well as ever, when I brought some water, which Miss Nugent handed to her with her own hand."
These, alas, are all the extracts which the scale of this book will admit of, and I must only hope that they may send its readers flying to their shelves in search of more. To assume that Miss Edgeworth's books, even her Irish books, are intimately known to the reading public of to-day, would, I fear, be rash; but to assert that they ought to be known is assuredly not so: indeed for Irish readers their value may be said to have increased rather than diminished by the lapse of time. In fiction, as in poetry, we all to a great degree find what we bring, and there is a great deal of uncommonly pregnant matter for reflection to be found in these century-old books. Under their guidance we seem to be gazing down a long and remarkably steep incline, the lowest portion of which has only been attained in our own day. The position of an Irish landlord a century ago was extraordinarily different, it must be remembered, from the position of his equals and contemporaries across the Channel. It was a position which had come down to him from early days, the holders of which had indeed changed–changed often both in race and in creed–[Page 142] but who still substantially represented their predecessors, and stood in much the same sort of relationship to those around them. The old Irish proverb, "Spend me, and defend me," expresses pretty clearly what that relationship was, or, rather, what it had originally been intended to be. That it was a wholesome or a dignified relationship, especially at so late a date as we are considering, it would be rash to assert, although this much may be said in its favour, that it allowed more of the personal, and consequently of the human, element, than has always been found in more self-respecting ties.
The real fatality, the underlying curse of the whole system, lay in its exceptional liability to abuse. Whenever the enormous powers–traditional even more than legal–of an owner came to be delegated, there, without doubt, abuses grew to be the rule rather than the exception. By no one have the vices of the system been exposed with a more vigorous hand, or the lash laid more unsparingly upon the right shoulders, than by Miss Edgeworth herself, daughter and descendant of Irish landlords though she was. But that the limits of quotation have already been somewhat recklessly exceeded, I should be tempted to turn back here to Castle Rackrent, seeing that in it alone, of all Miss Edgeworth's books, do we find those qualities of brevity, force, and effectiveness which are the most essential of all for a successful quotation. In the three books under consideration, the treatment is, perhaps inevitably, at once looser, less superficially humorous, yet in reality less cogent, and even less tragical, than the peculiar concentration and brevity of her earlier story made possible. They are also, to a greater or less degree, [Page 143] infected with that conscientious desire after a particularly irritating form of edification, of which, amongst all Miss Edgeworth's books, Castle Rackrent alone stands absolutely free.
In the latest of her Irish stories–Ormond –we meet with what are perhaps the two best and most lifelike character-pictures which our author ever drew. Even the hero is in this case more of a possible young man, and less of a mere peg to hang edifying sentiments upon, than is common with her, or with perhaps the majority of novelists. The two great personages, however, of the book are of course "King Condy," the good-hearted, despotic, claret-drinking sovereign of the Black Islands, and his relative and rival in the affections of the hero, Sir Ulick O'Shane. In the first-named we have a figure which may fairly be placed alongside of the Antiquary, or of the Baron of Bradwardine. Like them he belonged to a nearly extinct type, a type which even at the time it was painted was already vanishing from the stage, and in another dozen years or so would have become an impossibility. His kinsman, and special aversion, the scheming, wheedling politician, Sir Ulick, is also an admirable portrait, and is depicted with more subtlety than was usual with Miss Edgeworth. Here the difficulty in abstaining from quotation is less, seeing that it would be difficult to find any extract short enough not to be spoilt by condensation. I therefore content myself with the following excellent little bit of rhymed epigram, descriptive of Sir Ulick's methods of vindicating his patriotism:–
"To serve in Parliament the nation,
Sir Ulick read his recantation:
At first he joined the patriot throng,
But soon perceiving he was wrong,
He ratted to the courtier tribe,
Bought by a title and a bribe;
But how that new-found friend to bind
With any oath–of any kind–
Disturb'd the premier's wary mind.
Upon his faith.–'Upon his word.'
Oh that, my friend, is too absurd.
'Upon his honour.'–Quite a jest.
'Upon his conscience.'–No such test.
'By all he has on earth.'–'Tis gone.
'By all his hopes of heav'n.'–They 're none.
'How then secure him in our pay,
He can't be trusted for a day?'
How?–When you want the fellow's throat,
Pay by the job,–you have his vote."
For Miss Edgeworth herself Ormond had always a peculiar though a very melancholy interest, from the fact of its having been written during the concluding months of her father's life–indeed the printing had to be pushed forward, so that it might reach Edgeworthstown while he was still alive, and able to enjoy the satisfaction of having it read to him by its author.
Such small gibes as the mention of his name have now and then irresistibly called forth, sink naturally to decent silence as one stands before the closing scene of what was in all essentials so respectworthy a life. The picture of the old patriarch upon his seventy-first birthday, surrounded for the last time by his well-nigh countless children and other relations, occupying all the chairs in the room, and sitting about on stools at his feet, has been preserved for us by Maria Edgeworth herself. It will be found in a letter to her cousin Sophy Ruxton:–[Page 145]
"He could not dine with us, but after dinner he sent for us all into the library. He sat in the armchair, by the fire, my mother in the opposite armchair, Pakenham in the chair behind her, Francis on a stool at her feet, Maria beside them; William next; Lucy, Sneyd, on the sofa behind the fire, as when you were here; Honora, Fanny, Harriet, and Sophy; my aunts next to my father, and Lovell between them and the sofa. He was much pleased at Lovell and Sneyd coming down for this day."
A fortnight later, upon June 13, 1817, Mr. Edgeworth died. What the loss of him meant to his own family was succinctly expressed by his widow in the memoir of her stepdaughter–"The rest of that year was a blank."
