The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume I Part 14

'Ennui' et 'Manoeuvring' ont eu un succes marque, il a ete tres vif.

Nous avons trouve un grand nombre des dialogues du meilleur comique, c'est a dire ceux ou les personnages se developpent sans le vouloir, et sont plaisants sans songer a l'etre. Il y a des scenes charmantes dans 'Madame de Fleury.' Ne craignez pas les difficultes, c'est la ou vous brillez."

_To_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.

_Nov 30._

We have had a bevy of wits here--Mr. Chenevix, Mr. Henry Hamilton, Leslie Foster, and his particular friend Mr. Fitzgerald. Somebody asked if Miss White [Footnote: The then well-known Miss Lydia White, for many years a central figure in London literary society.] was a bluestocking.

"Oh yes, she is; I can't tell you how blue. What is bluer than blue?"--"_Morbleu_," exclaimed Lord Norbury. Miss White herself comes next week.

_Dec. 11._

Among other things Miss White entertained my father with was a method of drawing the human figure, and putting it into any att.i.tude you please: she had just learned it from Lady Charleville--or rather not learned it.

A whole day was spent in drawing circles all over the human figure, and I saw various skeletons in chains, and I was told the intersections of these were to show where the centres of gravity were to be; but my gravity could not stand the sight of these ineffectual conjuring tricks, and my father was out of patience himself. He seized a sheet of paper and wrote to Lady Charleville, and she answered in one of the most polite letters I ever read, inviting him to go to Charleville Forest, and he will go and see these magical incantations performed by the enchantress herself.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

_December 1809._

I have spent five delightful days at Sonna and Pakenham Hall. Mrs.

Tuite's kindness and Mr. Chenevix's various anecdotes, French and Spanish, delighted us at Sonna; and you know the various charms both for the head and heart at Pakenham Hall.

I have just been reading, for the fourth time, I believe, _The Simple Story_, which I intended this time to read as a critic, that I might write to Mrs. Inchbald about it; but I was so carried away by it that I was totally incapable of thinking of Mrs. Inchbald or anything but Miss Milner and Doriforth, who appeared to me real persons whom I saw and heard, and who had such power to interest me, that I cried my eyes almost out before I came to the end of the story: I think it the most pathetic and the most powerfully interesting tale I ever read. I was obliged to go from it to correct _Belinda_ for Mrs. Barbauld, who is going to insert it in her collection of novels, with a preface; and I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or stone Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces: and really, I have not the heart or the patience to _correct_ her. As the hackney coachman said, "Mend _you!_ better make a new one."

_To_ MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Jan. 1810._

I have had a very flattering and grateful letter from Lydia White; she has sent me a comedy of Kelly's--_A Word to the Wise._ She says the _Heiress_ is taken from it. Just about the same time I had a letter from Mrs. Apreece: [Footnote: Afterwards Lady Davy.] she is at Edinburgh, and seems charmed with all the wits there; and, as I hear from Mr. Holland, [Footnote: Afterwards Sir Henry Holland.] the young physician who was here last summer, she is much admired by them. Mrs. Hamilton and she like one another particularly; they can never cross, for no two human beings are, body and mind, form and substance, more unlike. We thought Mr. Holland, when he was here, a young man of abilities--his letter has fully justified this opinion: it has excited my father's enthusiastic admiration. He says Walter Scott is going to publish a new poem; I do not augur well of the t.i.tle, _The Lady of the Lake._ I hope this lady will not disgrace him. Mr. Stewart has not recovered, nor ever will recover, the loss of his son: Mr. Holland says the conclusion of his lectures this season was most pathetic and impressive--"placing before the view of his auditors a series of eight-and-thirty years, in which he had zealously devoted himself to the duties of his office; and giving the impression that this year would be the period of his public life."

I have had a most agreeable letter from my darling old Mrs. Clifford; she sent me a curiosity--a worked muslin cap, which cost sixpence, done in tambour st.i.tch, by a steam-engine. Mrs. Clifford tells me that Mrs.

Hannah More was lately at Dawlish, and excited more curiosity there, and engrossed more attention, than any of the distinguished personages who were there, not excepting the Prince of Orange. The gentleman from whom she drew _Caelebs_ was there, but most of those who saw him did him the justice to declare that he was a much more agreeable man than Caelebs. If you have any curiosity to know his name, I can tell you that--young Mr.

Harford, of Blaise Castle.

_Feb. 1810._

My father has just had a letter from your good friend Sir Rupert George, who desires to be affectionately remembered to you and my uncle. His letter is in answer to one my father wrote to him about his clear and honourable evidence on this Walcheren business. Sir Rupert says: "I must confess I feel vain in receiving commendations from such a quarter. The situation in which I was placed was perfectly new to me, and I had no rule for the government of my conduct but the one which has, I trust, governed all my actions through life--to speak the truth, and fear not.

Allow me on this occasion to repeat to you an expression of the late Mrs. Delany's to me a few years before she died: 'The Georges, I knew, would always prosper, from their integrity of conduct. Don't call this flattery: I am too old to flatter any one, particularly a grand-nephew; and to convince you of my sincerity, I will add--for which, perhaps, you will not thank me--that there is not an ounce of wit in the whole family.'"

"Oh how my sister would like to see this letter of Sir Rupert's!" said my father; and straightway he told, very much to Sophy and Lucy's edification, the history of his dividing with sister Peg the first peach he ever had in his life.

_March 2._

Have you any commands to Iceland? My young friend Mr. Holland proposes going there from Edinburgh in April. Sir George Mackenzie is the chief mover of the expedition.

This epigram or epitaph was written by Lord I-don't-know-who, upon _Doctor_ Addington--Pitt's Addington--in old French:

Cy dessous reposant Le sieur Addington git: Politique soi-disant, Medecin malgre lui.

_March 19._

The other day we had a visit from a Mrs. Coffy--no relation, she says, to your Mrs. Coffy. She looked exactly like one of the pictures of the old London Cries. She came to tell us that she had been at Verdun, and had seen Lovell. From her description of the place and of him, we had no doubt she had actually seen him. She came over to Ireland to prove that some man who is a prisoner at Verdun, and who is a life in a lease, is not dead, but "all alive, ho!" and my father certified for her that he believed she had been there. She knew nothing of Lovell but that he was well, and fat, and a very merry gentleman two years ago. She had been taken by a French privateer as she was going to see her sons in Jersey, and left Verdun at a quarter of an hour's notice, as the women were allowed to come home, and she had not time to tell this to Lovell, or get a letter from him to his friends. She was, as Kitty said, "a comical body," but very entertaining, and acted a woman chopping bread and selling _un liv'--deux liv'--trois liv'--Ah, bon, bon_, as well as Molly Coffy [Footnote: Mrs. Molly Coffy, for fifty years Mrs. Ruxton's housekeeper.] herself acted the elephant. She was children's maid to Mr.

Estwick, and Mr. Estwick is, my father says, son to a Mr. Estwick who used to be your partner and admirer at Bath in former times!!

_To_ C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _April 1810._

I do not like Lord Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong, and worthy of Pope and _The Dunciad._ But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the "paralytic muse" of the man who had been his guardian, and is his relation, and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither a great nor good mind; and I feel dislike and disgust for his Lords.h.i.+p.

_To_ MISS RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 1810._

Now I have to announce the safe arrival of my aunts and Honora in good looks and good spirits. My father went to Dublin to meet them. I am sorry he did not see the Count de Salis, [Footnote: The Count de Salis, just then going to be married to Miss Foster, daughter of Mr.

Edgeworth's old friend and schoolfellow, the Bishop of Clogher.] but he was much pleased with Harriet Foster, which I am glad of; for I love her.

To MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _June 21, 1810._

When shall we two meet again? This is a question which occurs to me much oftener than even you think, and it always comes into my mind when I am in any society I peculiarly like, or when I am reading any book particularly suited to my taste and feelings; and now it comes _a propos_ to the Bishop of Meath and Mrs. O'Beirne and _The Lady of the Lake._ By great good fortune, and by the good-nature of Lady Charlotte Rawdon, we had _The Lady of the Lake_ to read just when the O'Beirnes were with us. A most delightful reading we had; my father, the Bishop, and Mr. Jephson reading it aloud alternately. It is a charming poem: a most interesting story, generous, finely-drawn characters, and in many parts the finest poetry. But for an old prepossession--an unconquerable prepossession--in favour of the old minstrel, I think I should prefer this to either the _Lay_ or _Marmion._ Our pleasure in reading it was increased by the sympathy and enthusiasm of the guests.

Have you read, or tried to read, Mademoiselle de l'Espina.s.se's three volumes of Letters? and have you read Madame du Deffand? [Footnote: The blind friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole.] Some of the letters in her collection are very entertaining; those of the d.u.c.h.esse de Choiseul, the Comte de Broglie, Sir James Macdonald, and a few of Madame du Deffand's: the others are full of _fade_ compliments and tiresome trifling, but altogether curious as a picture of that profligate, heartless, brilliant, and _ennuyed_ society. There is in these letters, I think, a stronger picture of _ennui_ than in Alfieri's _Life._ Was his pa.s.sion for the Countess of Albany, or for horses, or for pure Tuscan, the strongest? or did not he love NOTORIETY better than all three?

_Sept._ 1810.

Sir Thomas and Lady Ackland spent a day here: he is nephew to my friend Mrs. Charles h.o.a.re. He says he is twenty-three, but he looks like eighteen.

To MISS RUXTON.

_Oct. 1810._

We have had a visit from Captain Pakenham, the Admiral's son, this week: I like him. I was particularly pleased with his respectful manner to my father. He has some of his father's quickness of repartee, but with his _own_ manner--no affectation of his father's style. We were talking of a Mrs. ----. "What," said I, "is she alive still? The last time I saw her she seemed as if she had lived that one day longer by particular desire."--"I am sure, then," said Captain Pakenham, in a slow, gentle voice,--"I am sure, then, I cannot tell at _whose desire._"

I have been hard at work at Mrs. Leadbeater: I fear my notes are rubbish.