IT was in May 1823 that Miss Edgeworth again set forth from Edgeworthstown, taking with her this time Harriet, and the third of her young half-sisters, Sophy. Scotland, not the Continent, was on this occasion the bourne of their pilgrimage, and above and beyond everything else in Scotland, Abbotsford and its owner. Nor had their feet been many days upon Scottish soil before that encounter took place. It was characteristic of both authors–highly creditable, I add, to the Irish one–that nothing, not that most primitive of feminine necessities, the necessity of appearing respectably clad before a distinguished circle of strangers, was able to delay the meeting even for a few hours. Miss Edgeworth tells her correspondents how it all happened. She and her sisters had barely reached their Edinburgh lodgings, unpacked, or begun to unpack, before she received a note from Sir Walter himself. An arrangement had previously been made by which they were to dine first with their old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Alison, and the note was simply to confirm that arrangement, and further, to invite them to dine with the Scotts upon the Sunday following at five, upon which occasion, or upon the next day, Monday, "one or two of the Northern lights" had [Page 163] been especially invited, Sir Walter tells her, to meet them. The letter ended–"Respectfully yours," but the real gist of it lay in the postscript, which went on to relate that the Laird of Staffa, and certain of his clansmen, were coming to sing Highland boat-songs that very evening:–"and if you will come, as the Irish should to the Scotch, without any ceremony, you will hear what is perhaps more curious than mellifluous. The man returns to the Isles tomorrow. There are no strangers with us; no party; none but our own family, and two old friends."
"Ten o'clock struck," writes Miss Edgeworth, "as I read this note. We were tired; we were not fit to be seen, but . . . I sent for a hackney coach, and just as we were, without dressing, we went. As the coach stopped, we saw the hall lighted, and the moment the door opened, heard the joyous sounds of loud singing. Three servants–'The Miss Edgeworths!' sounded from hall to landing-place; and as I paused for a moment in the ante-room, I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice–'The Miss Edgeworths?–come! '"
In this manner the eventful meeting took place, and the friendship between these two–great man and little lady–seems to have grown to its full height literally at their first hand-clasp. It was already, it must be remembered, a pretty old and intimate one, so far as correspondence can be said to create intimacy. Now all unnecessary preliminaries were waived, and the acquaintanceship became friendship almost in a single evening:–
"My first impression was that he (Sir Walter) was neither so large or so heavy as I had been led to expect from descriptions, prints, busts, and pictures. He is more lame, on the other hand, than I expected, but not unwieldy." [Page 164]
The Gaelic singing is next described by Miss Edgeworth at some length, after which followed supper:–
"As I sat beside him, I could not believe that he was a stranger, and I quite forgot that he was a great man."
So ended that momentous first evening, and–
"When we wakened in the morning, the whole scene of the preceding night seemed like a dream! However, at twelve came the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott at the Parliament House, who came out of the Courts with a joyous face, as if he had nothing on earth to do, or to think of, but to show us Edinburgh."
For the other side of the same story we should have to turn to the pages of Lockhart, or to Scott's own familiar letters. In one of these he describes at some length the effect produced upon Edinburgh the critical by the "lioness," as he calls her, adding on his own account, that he found her "full of fun and spirit; a little slight figure, very active, very good-humoured, and full of enthusiasm." For the benefit of those to whom Miss Edgeworth exists only as the painstaking but prosaic instructress of youth, it may be well to emphasise the fact that Scott's admiration for her was no temporary bit of amiability, born of good-nature, but the genuine conviction of his whole literary life. The continual allusions to her writings which occur in his private letters, no less than the unstinted praise lavished upon them in print, all show upon how high a pedestal he placed her as an author. When, to this impersonal homage, personal acquaintanceship was added, it is clear that his previous disposition in her favour soon ripened into something warmer and even friendlier. He found the woman, in [Page 165] short–as all her aquaintance did find her–not only as well worth knowing as her books, but very much more so. There was about the little Irish "lioness" a play of humour, a total absence of the attitude of the preacher, or the moralist, which might not have been predicted from the study of her "works" alone. She "sat lightly," as we nowadays put it, to life in general, including–more particularly including–her own pretensions as an authoress.
This lightness of touch is just one of the points in which these two writers, major and minor, show an unmistakable touch of kinship. It has been seen how mockingly Miss Edgeworth repelled the very idea that any of her own efforts could be expected to detain for more than a moment the attention of serious folk. In the case of Sir Walter Scott it is more difficult to realise the same point of view, recalling the well-nigh abject admiration of which he was in his own lifetime the subject. That he did hold it, is none the less fairly certain. Romance–the thing itself, the eternal, the adorable–was from boyhood very bone of his bone, very flesh of his flesh; but romance, in the sense of his own printed books, seems never to have been for Scott the foremost, or even one of the more important elements of existence. Abbotsford and its adornments; his own and his heirs' position as county magnates of the secondary class; his multifarious obligations as a good friend, a good neighbour, a good Tory, and a good Scotsman–these, and a host of similar matters, stood far higher in his estimation than did ever his own books, or his own position as an author.
Meanwhile Sunday came in due course, and with it arrived the three Miss Edgeworths–the younger ones [Page 166] presumably in muslin frocks and sandals–to dine with Sir Walter and Lady Scott . . . . "I sat beside Scott, and I dare not even attempt to think of any of the anecdotes he told, or the fragments of poetry he repeated, lest I should be tempted to write them down for you, and should never end this letter," Maria writes to her aunt. "Quentin Durward," she adds, "was lying on the drawing-room table, and Mrs. Skene took it up and said, 'This is really too barefaced.' A few days before that, Sir Walter, pointing to the hospital built by Heriot, had remarked, with a twinkle in his eye, 'That was built by one Heriot, you know, the jeweller in Charles the Second's time.'" The secret of secrets was thus, we see, ostensibly kept up, though little or no mystery remained around it by this time for anybody.
The next event in the programme seems to have been a visit to Roslin Castle, to which they were escorted by the Romancer in person. "It is about seven miles from Edinburgh, and I wished it had been twice as far." "How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes," Miss Edgeworth adds, "I cannot conceive. He appears to have nothing to think of but to be amusing." Yet this was the summer of 1823, only two years, therefore, before the great collapse.
Previous to their leaving Edgeworthstown it had been arranged that this visit to Scotland was to include one to the Highlands. Thither, shortly afterwards, the sisters accordingly departed, being joined on the way by their engineer brother, William, for whom–not mountains, lakes, or poets–but the dredging operations upon the Caledonian Canal were the main attraction. They spent a day much to their satisfaction at [Page 167] Fern Tower, with Sir David and Lady Baird–"a fine old soldier, without an arm, but with a heart and a head . . . . He swallows me, though an authoress, wonderfully well," writes Miss Edgeworth She caught a bad cold on the way to Inverness, which turned to erysipelas, and alarmed her sisters. They found a good doctor, however, at Forres, and a good inn, and after a while she got better, and they were able to start again. Like scores of faithful travellers who have followed in their footsteps, they walked the heather with Marmion, Waverley, or Rob Roy, as the case might be, in their hands. By the month of August they were back again in Edinburgh, within easy reach of the progenitor of these heroes, and now came the crowning joy of Miss Edgeworth's trip–perhaps of her life–a fortnight at Abbotsford.
The weather had been very wet during their trip to the Highlands, but it mended magically as they reached their destination, and the whole party rejoiced at the summer having at last appeared. "My daughter Sophy"–this is an extract from the Edgeworth family record–"mentioned the Irish tune, 'You've brought the Summer with you,' and repeated the first line of Moore's words adapted to it. 'How pretty!' said Sir Walter. 'Moore's the man for songs; Campbell can write an ode, and I can make a ballad, but Moore beats us all at a song.'"
In this fashion the visit began, and for an enchanted fortnight so it continued. Even Lockhart–by no means the man for violent or heady enthusiasms–grows quite lyrical when he comes to describe that halcyon fortnight. "August 1823," he writes, "was one of the happiest in Scott's life. Never did I see [Page 168] a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth arrived there. Never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by him at his archway, and exclaimed: 'Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream !' . . . Day after day, as long as she could remain, her host had always some new plan of gaiety. One day there was fishing on the Cauldshields Loch, and a dinner on the heathy bank. Another, the whole party feasted by Thomas the Rhymer's waterfall in the glen; and the stone on which 'Maria' sat that day was ever afterwards called 'Edgeworth's Stone.' . . . Thus a fortnight was passed–and then the vision closed. Miss Edgeworth never saw Abbotsford again."
If the cold and critical Lockhart could break forth into such a strain as this, little wonder if the pens of more impressionable people fairly brimmed over and sputtered with delight and excitement! The letters which record this visit from the Edgeworth side have, however, all been published, whereas there are several dealing with Sir Walter's visit to Edgeworthstown which have not yet seen the light. It seems better, therefore, to pass on, and resist the temptation to linger any longer over these Scottish experiences. It was upon the twelfth of August that the three sisters left Abbotsford, and, after a short visit to some friends near Glasgow, they returned to Ireland.
A letter from Sir Walter Scott, bearing the date of the 22nd of September, seems to show that Miss Edgeworth was by that time at Edgeworthstown. "I conclude," he writes, "that you are now settled quietly at home, and looking back on recollections of mountains [Page 169] and valleys, of pipes and clans and cousins, masons and carpenters, and puppy-dogs, and all the confusion of Abbotsford, as one does on the recollections of a dream. We shall not easily forget the vision of having seen you, . . . and your kind indulgence for all our humours, sober and fantastic, rough or smooth."
Exactly two years later, in the same month of August, only in the year 1825, followed the return visit. Captain Scott, Sir Walter's eldest son, was settled for the moment with his well-dowered bride in Dublin, where the regiment to which he belonged was then quartered. It was the wish to see this young couple which took Sir Walter in the first instance to Ireland, but that the visit to Edgeworthstown had from the beginning filled a considerable place in his plans is clear. The following letters, descriptive of that visit, are not by Maria Edgeworth, but by one of her younger sisters. They are, however, so vivid, and so full of fresh detail, as to seem well worth rescuing from oblivion. The "Mr. Crampton" mentioned, it may be well to explain, was the well-known Dublin physician, still better known afterwards as Sir Philip Crampton. He is described by Lockhart as having upon this occasion "equally gratified both the novelists by breaking the toils of his great practice in order to witness their meeting upon his native shore."
"EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Saturday, July 30, 1825.
"We were all happily dressed and in the library before half-past six, when a German barouche drove to the door containing Sir Walter, Miss Scott, and Mr. Crampton, apologising for the remainder of the party, [Page 170] who would come in the evening, Captain Scott being detained by some military duty. The first sight was all dust, their coats, hair, and eyebrows all powdered over, Miss Scott's black hair quite white. The first surprise I felt about Sir Walter was–'how very lame he is.' . . .
"There was a little conversation about County of Wicklow beauties, with which they were very much pleased, before dinner, and at dinner a good deal of talk of various kinds. Mr. Jephson, Mr. Crampton, Sir Walter, and Maria were the chief speakers, but I confess I did not hear much, for Sir Walter speaks low, and till one becomes used to his tone it is difficult to understand him; besides, my attention was somewhat divided by Miss Scott, who sat at our end of the table, and who was very conversible. She is a fine-looking, black-eyed, bright, happy-looking girl. Just as the ladies left the dining-room, the school band was heard at a distance, and as it approached playing a gay tune, it excited Miss Scott's and Crampton's spirits of dancing so much that they flew out on the grass-plot, and made Harriet join them in a reel. The boys at a distance were playing leap-frog; Sir Walter stood benevolently looking on. As the light was by this time more from the clear moon than from any remains of daylight, it did look very picturesque and gay, and it was late before we could come in from the dewy air. We then all assembled in the library. Sir Walter sat down near Aunt Mary, so that she could hear his voice, and he and Mr. Jephson and Maria talked of Dr. Johnson and Boswell, of whom Sir Walter told some good stories; and then somehow or other there was a sudden turn to the subject of mad dogs and hydrophobia; [Page 171] some doubts of the reality of the disease being uttered by Sir Walter, Mr. Crampton told some very interesting facts of cases where hydrophobia had been brought on when the imagination could have had no influence, and mentioned a fact which I do not remember ever hearing before, that the disease breaks out spontaneously in man, and that it is in reality a contagious disease to which wolves, foxes, cats, dogs, and men are subject. While this conversation was still going on, the remainder of the party, Captain and Mrs. Scott and Mr. Lockhart arrived, three very pretty (!) people. Mrs. Scott pretty, but unfashioned, and very silent. Captain Scott very handsome and tall, and much less shy than I expected. He seems to have a great deal of humour in a quiet way of his own. Mr. Lockhart handsome and clever-looking, but much less tremendous than I expected. They stood and talked and eat a little supper, and by degrees all were housed in bed.
"This morning has been chiefly spent in sitting keeping ourselves as cool as possible, with the thermometer nearly 80 in the library, where Mr. Crampton, Mr. Jephson, and Sir Walter have been telling anecdotes à l'envie, l'un de l'autre. It would be vain, even if I could do them justice in the telling, to attempt to repeat them, as the tone of voice, manner, and countenance would be still wanting. Sir Walter gave us a very pleasing account of Marshal Macdonald, not at all like a soldier in looks, slight and delicate in appearance, but his conduct seems to have been much more steady than any of the other generals. When Napoleon went to Elba, at the restoration of the Bourbons he swore allegiance to Lewis; when Buonaparte [Page 172] reappeared, and all hurried to return to him, Macdonald was steady to the King and followed him,–upon hearing which Buonaparte exclaimed, 'That's like Macdonald, always the last to forsake his friends.' Ney accused Macdonald of ingratitude for not abiding by Buonaparte, to which he answered, 'Ney, it is not for you to teach me what is honour or duty.'"
This fragment of conversation strikes one as having undergone a certain amount of blunting in the course of reporting. The following description of Scott's personal appearance is, on the other hand, excellent, the writer having been herself a competent artist. The original manuscript letter is decorated with various little pencil sketches of the illustrious guest, full of character, and unmistakable as likenesses:–
"The first print I ever saw of Sir Walter–the one with his dog–is like him, I think, but the others represent him as much younger than he is now, and without the sort of roughness mixed with polish, which appears to me to be one of the great characteristics of his appearance. He is now very grey, and at first looked to me uncommonly grave, but the humour in his eyebrow soon showed itself, and when he listens to what amuses him, or when he is telling one of his favourite anecdotes, his countenance is quite delightful, and–except when standing or walking, when his lameness appears so much more than I had been prepared for–his attitudes are all picturesque from their peculiar ease. I wished very much to take a sketch of him, but, when I could have done so without his suspecting me, his daughter was too near for me to venture." [Page 173]
Venture, however, the writer did, as I can personally vouch, although the sketches made were only of the thumbnail order. Upon the all-engrossing subject of the authorship of the novels, some mystification seems to have been still kept up, although between Miss Edgeworth and Sir Walter it had evidently long been tacitly dropped. Her sister Honora's report of the matter runs as follows:–
"Once in speaking of a masquerade, Sir Walter said that one man was dressed as Ivanhoe. This was the only direct mention I heard him make of his works, but those who know him better say that he is continually making allusions to them, and his conversation is so very like them, that if one had doubts before, one could not after listening to him. I was much amused with a little dialogue which passed between Mr. Jephson, Maria, and Sir Walter, when each came so near without actually touching the tender point. It began very far off about Wilkes and his character, and Burke, several anecdotes of whom were told by Mr. Jephson; from thence the transition was easy to Junius's letters, which Mr. Jephson said he had read over lately, and was surprised to find how inferior they now appeared to him from what he had thought them formerly. Then, most naturally, the well-kept secret of their author was talked of. The idea of Sir Philip Francis being the author, Sir Walter said, was so well supported by Mr. Jeffrey in one of the Edinburgh Reviews, that he was convinced by the facts there stated, till, some time afterwards, in talking of it to Jeffrey, he said, 'I was perfectly convinced of his being the man when I wrote that review, but since, facts have come out which make one doubt.' Mr. Jephson said that he had heard no one ventured to [Page 174] ask the straightforward question; 'indeed,' added he, 'there are some questions which no man has any right to ask, and the refusal to answer which truly, cannot be imputed to any one as a crime.' 'Yes,' said Maria, 'there are many cases in which it is scarcely possible to answer truly–if you are trusted by another, for instance.' 'To be sure,' said Sir Walter Scott; 'suppose a robber took your money from your pocket, and then asked if you had any more about you, and that you had £100 in your bosom, are you bound to tell him so ? No; every man has a right to judge what questions he should or should not answer.'""Sunday, July 31, 1826.
"It takes a long time to tell badly on paper what is told in a minute so well by the 'taleteller,' as Sir Walter calls himself. Dinner went off well, at least I think so, for the fates were so kind as to place me beside Sir Walter, who did not seem to consider me beneath his notice, but bestowed upon me a great deal of his conversation. It happened to turn a good deal upon trials and executions. He says he never saw any one on trial conduct himself with such perfect composure as Thistlewood; he watched him the whole time, and never saw his eye quail for a moment. After dinner my mother accomplished what she had been waiting for all the evening. She took Sir Walter to Lucy for about a quarter of an hour, and he was very kind, and spoke just enough to show his manner, and to delight her more with him than even our descriptions could have done. He made his adieux at night to all of us who were not to see him next morning, and we all [Page 175] retired very late. They were to set out at seven, but it was eight before they were off, and Maria and Harriet actually went with them, a fact which I did not believe would take place till I saw them in the carriages. Captain and Mrs. Scott had a chaise; Maria started with Mrs. Scott, Harriet with Sir Walter and Miss Scott, in his German barouche. To complete their good fortune the weather changed from the great heat and bright sun, to a cooler atmosphere and greyer sky, softened by a few showers the night before, and has not yet broken up with torrents of rain, as I feared it would, whenever a change took place. If the farmers will forgive me for wishing it, I must wish that the rain may still remain suspended over our heads for one week till they have seen Killarney, but to-day is very threatening, and I cannot but fear."
For what happened after they left Edgeworthstown, we have again to fall back upon Lockhart. In his Life of Scott the visit to Edgeworthstown will be found fully reported from his own point of view; he next goes on:–"Miss Edgeworth, her sister Harriet, and her brother William, were easily persuaded to join our party for the rest of our Irish travels. We had lingered a week at Edgeworthstown, and were now anxious to make the best of our way towards the Lakes of Killarney; but posting was not to be very rapidly accomplished in those regions by so large a company as had now collected, and we were more agreeably delayed by the hospitalities of Miss Edgeworth's old friends, and several of Sir Walter's new ones."
Hospitality may have its drawbacks, and Lockhart [Page 176] was not the man to minimise them ! "Irish country houses," he remarks, "appear to have been constructed upon the principle of the Peri Banou's tent. They seemed all to have room not only for the lion and lioness, and their respective tails, but for all in the neighbourhood who could be held worthy to inspect them at feeding-time." As the party advanced south the poverty of the country began to grow more and more apparent, until even Sir Walter found himself constrained to admit that the state of affairs was not quite so roseate as it had seemed when, writing from Edgeworthstown a week earlier, he had declared that, "in sober sadness, to talk of the misery of Ireland is to speak of the illness of a malade imaginaire. Well she is not, but she is rapidly becoming so." From Lockhart's account it is evident that even this most rooted of optimists was forced by degrees to accept the evidence of his own senses. "As we moved deeper into the country," his son-in-law writes, "there was a melancholy in his countenance, and, despite himself, in the tone of his voice, which I for one could not mistake." Fortunately, as rarely fails to be the case in Ireland, there was no lack of humorous incidents to break in upon and qualify this gloom. At one house, where they had been advised to seek for hospitality, they found upon their arrival that the master of it had died only the day before. To the inn, to which they had thereupon hastily retired, they were followed by a note from the sorrowing widow, confirming the sad intelligence, and adding that–"Mrs. – the more regrets it, since it will prevent her from having the honour to see Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth !" [Page 177]
A few days earlier, at Limerick, a poetical encounter took place which is thus described by Lockhart:–
"Amidst the ringing of all the bells, in honour of our advent, there was ushered in a brother-poet, who must needs pay his personal respects to the author of Marmion. He was a scarecrow figure–attired much in the fashion of the strugglers –by name O'Kelly; and he had produced on the spur of the occasion this modest parody of Dryden's famous epigram:–
'Three poets of three different nations born,
The United Kingdom in this age adorn;
Byron of England, Scott of Scotia's blood,
And Erin's pride–O'Kelly, great and good.'
"Sir Walter's five shillings were at once forthcoming; and the bard, in order that Miss Edgeworth might display equal generosity, pointed out, in a little volume of his works (for which, moreover, we had all to subscribe) this pregnant couplet:–
'Scott, Morgan, Edgeworth, Byron, prop of Greece,
Are characters whose fame not soon will cease.'"
To incidents of the road like these Sir Walter and Miss Edgeworth were always ready to do full justice ! If Lockhart liked to play the cynic, and to wish himself elsewhere, that was not at all the point of view of the "lion" or the "lioness." At the inn at which they stayed in Killarney–in those days a very modest hostelry–Miss Edgeworth found such a number of matters to admire, that Sir Walter himself began to mock at her for her enthusiasm. Of a certain green baize door which had awakened her admiration–"Miss Edgeworth," he is reported to have said, "you are so mightily pleased with that door that I think you will carry it away with you to Edgeworthstown"–mild [Page 178] little jests, hardly worth recording, yet which appeal to us, somehow, under the circumstances, as wiser and wittier sayings might hardly do. The chief drawback to their enjoyment was that they were forced to race through all the sights at headlong speed, for Sir Walter had engaged to meet Canning at Windermere, and Captain Scott's leave of absence was running to an end. At Killarney they did happily find time to row round the lakes, as we know from the fact that the boatman who rowed them on that occasion told Lord Macaulay, twenty years later, that his having done so had actually made up to him for "missing a hanging," which took place upon the same day. At Cork, to which they drove across the hills, a reception awaited Sir Walter which rivalled in uproarious acclamation the one which had greeted his arrival in Ireland. Finally the whole party returned in hot haste to Dublin, where a farewell dinner took place at Captain and Mrs. Scott's house, one at which no less than six Edgeworths–four sisters and two brothers–were present.
It chanced to be Sir Walter Scott's birthday–his last happy one, we mentally add–and after dinner all present drank his health enthusiastically, though "with more feeling than gaiety," as the Edgeworth family papers appropriately record. Then followed the farewells–deeply regretful ones, upon one side, at any rate. The Edgeworths returned to Edgeworthstown; Sir Walter sailed for Holyhead, hastening on from there to Windermere, where Canning, Wordsworth, and himself all met at the house of a Mr. Bolton. Thence home to Abbotsford, where Lockhart informs us that "without an hour's delay Sir Walter returned to his [Page 179] usual habits of life." So matters went on, apparently prosperously, for another three or four months, when two little scenes took place, which may also be found recorded in the pages of Lockhart. The first of these was when he rode over himself one day to Abbotsford, bringing with him the news that Constable's London banker had "thrown up his books." The next was twelve hours later, when, in the cold grey of the following morning, looking out of his bedroom window, he saw "the Sheriff," as he called his father-in-law, in the act of dismounting at his door, and, hurrying downstairs, ascertained that he had in the interval taken a night journey to Polton, in order personally to see and to confer with Constable. It was the beginning of the end. Although at the time Scott made light of the affair, and although his own diary–begun about the same date–is almost unaccountably reticent on this subject, the sense of impending doom–of gallant, ceaseless, hopeless struggle–never again lifts till the end is reached. Looked back at across those concluding years, these sunshiny days in Ireland, this visit to Edgeworthstown, these various light-hearted jests and jaunts, stand out with a vividness, a sense of enjoyment and serenity, which they might not otherwise claim.
