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diff --git a/old/30435.txt b/old/30435.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f2a299a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30435.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5909 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Sibyls, by +Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Book of Sibyls + Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen + +Author: Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie) + +Release Date: November 9, 2009 [EBook #30435] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF SIBYLS *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + +A BOOK OF SIBYLS + + + MRS BARBAULD MISS EDGEWORTH + + MRS OPIE MISS AUSTEN + + +BY + +MISS THACKERAY +(MRS RICHMOND RITCHIE) + + +LONDON +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE +1883 + +[_All rights reserved_] + +[_Reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine_] + + + + +_TO_ + +_MRS OLIPHANT_ + +_My little record would not seem to me in any way complete without your +name, dear Sibyl of our own, and as I write it here, I am grateful to +know that to mine and me it is not only the name of a Sibyl with deep +visions, but of a friend to us all._ +_A. T. R._ + + + + +PREFACE. + + +Not long ago, a party of friends were sitting at luncheon in a suburb +of London, when one of them happened to make some reference to Maple +Grove and Selina, and to ask in what county of England Maple Grove was +situated. Everybody immediately had a theory. Only one of the company (a +French gentleman, not well acquainted with English) did not recognise +the allusion. A lady sitting by the master of the house (she will, I +hope, forgive me for quoting her words, for no one else has a better +right to speak them) said, 'What a curious sign it is of Jane Austen's +increasing popularity! Here are five out of six people sitting round a +table, nearly a hundred years after her death, who all recognise at once +a chance allusion to an obscure character in one of her books.' + +It seemed impossible to leave out Jane Austen's dear household name +from a volume which concerned women writing in the early part of this +century, and although the essay which is called by her name has already +been reprinted, it is added with some alteration in its place with the +others. + +Putting together this little book has been a great pleasure and interest +to the compiler, and she wishes once more to thank those who have so +kindly sheltered her during her work, and lent her books and papers +and letters concerning the four writers whose works and manner of being +she has attempted to describe; and she wishes specially to express +her thanks to the Baron and Baroness VON HUeGEL, to the ladies of Miss +Edgeworth's family, to Mr. HARRISON, of the London Library, to the Miss +REIDS, of Hampstead, to Mrs. FIELD and her daughters, of Squire's Mount, +Hampstead, to Lady BUXTON, Mrs. BROOKFIELD, Miss ALDERSON, and Miss +SHIRREFF. + + + + + CONTENTS. + PAGE + + MRS. BARBAULD [1743-1825] 1 + MARIA EDGEWORTH [1767-1849] 51 + MRS. OPIE [1769-1853] 149 + JANE AUSTEN [1775-1817] 197 + + + + +A BOOK OF SIBYLS. + + + + +_MRS. BARBAULD._ + + 1743-1825. + + 'I've heard of the lady, and good words went with her name.' + _Measure for Measure._ + + +I. + +'The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with whose works I +became acquainted--before those of any other author, male or female--when +I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for +children.' So says Hazlitt in his lectures on living poets. He goes on +to call her a very pretty poetess, strewing flowers of poesy as she +goes. + +The writer must needs, from the same point of view as Hazlitt, look upon +Mrs. Barbauld with a special interest, having also first learnt to read +out of her little yellow books, of which the syllables rise up one by +one again with a remembrance of the hand patiently pointing to each in +turn; all this recalled and revived after a lifetime by the sight of a +rusty iron gateway, behind which Mrs. Barbauld once lived, of some old +letters closely covered with a wavery writing, of a wide prospect that +she once delighted to look upon. Mrs. Barbauld, who loved to share her +pleasures, used to bring her friends to see the great view from the +Hampstead hill-top, and thus records their impressions:-- + +'I dragged Mrs. A. up as I did you, my dear, to our Prospect Walk, from +whence we have so extensive a view. + +'Yes,' said she, 'it is a very fine view indeed for a flat country.' + +'While, on the other hand, Mrs. B. gave us such a dismal account of the +precipices, mountains, and deserts she encountered, that you would have +thought she had been on the wildest part of the Alps.' + +The old Hampstead highroad, starting from the plain, winds its way +resolutely up the steep, and brings you past red-brick houses and +walled-in gardens to this noble outlook; to the heath, with its fresh, +inspiriting breezes, its lovely distances of far-off waters and gorsy +hollows. At whatever season, at whatever hour you come, you are pretty +sure to find one or two votaries--poets like Mrs. Barbauld, or commonplace +people such as her friends--watching before this great altar of nature; +whether by early morning rays, or in the blazing sunset, or when the +evening veils and mists with stars come falling, while the lights of +London shine far away in the valley. Years after Mrs. Barbauld wrote, +one man, pre-eminent amongst poets, used to stand upon this hill-top, +and lo! as Turner gazed, a whole generation gazed with him. For him +Italy gleamed from behind the crimson stems of the fir-trees; the spirit +of loveliest mythology floated upon the clouds, upon the many changing +tints of the plains; and, as the painter watched the lights upon the +distant hills, they sank into his soul, and he painted them down for us, +and poured his dreams into our awakening hearts. + +He was one of that race of giants, mighty men of humble heart, who have +looked from Hampstead and Highgate Hills. Here Wordsworth trod; here +sang Keats's nightingale; here mused Coleridge; and here came Carlyle, +only yesterday, tramping wearily, in search of some sign of his old +companions. Here, too, stood kind Walter Scott, under the elms of the +Judges' Walk, and perhaps Joanna Baillie was by his side, coming out +from her pretty old house beyond the trees. Besides all these, were a +whole company of lesser stars following and surrounding the brighter +planets--muses, memoirs, critics, poets, nymphs, authoresses--coming to +drink tea and to admire the pleasant suburban beauties of this modern +Parnassus. A record of many of their names is still to be found, +appropriately enough, in the catalogue of the little Hampstead library +which still exists, which was founded at a time when the very hands +that wrote the books may have placed the old volumes upon the shelves. +Present readers can study them at their leisure, to the clanking of the +horses' feet in the courtyard outside, and the splashing of buckets. +A few newspapers lie on the table--stray sheets of to-day that have +fluttered up the hill, bringing news of this bustling now into a past +serenity. The librarian sits stitching quietly in a window. An old lady +comes in to read the news; but she has forgotten her spectacles, and +soon goes away. Here, instead of asking for 'Vice Versa,' or Ouida's +last novel, you instinctively mention 'Plays of the Passions,' Miss +Burney's 'Evelina,' or some such novels; and Mrs. Barbauld's works are +also in their place. When I asked for them, two pretty old Quaker +volumes were put into my hands, with shabby grey bindings, with fine +paper and broad margins, such as Mr. Ruskin would approve. Of all +the inhabitants of this bookshelf Mrs. Barbauld is one of the most +appropriate. It is but a few minutes' walk from the library in Heath +Street to the old corner house in Church Row where she lived for a time, +near a hundred years ago, and all round about are the scenes of much of +her life, of her friendships and interests. Here lived her friends and +neighbours; here to Church Row came her pupils and admirers, and, later +still, to the pretty old house on Rosslyn Hill. As for Church Row, as +most people know, it is an avenue of Dutch red-faced houses, leading +demurely to the old church tower, that stands guarding its graves in the +flowery churchyard. As we came up the quiet place, the sweet windy drone +of the organ swelled across the blossoms of the spring, which were +lighting up every shabby corner and hillside garden. Through this +pleasant confusion of past and present, of spring-time scattering +blossoms upon the graves, of old ivy walks and iron bars imprisoning +past memories, with fragrant fumes of lilac and of elder, one could +picture to oneself, as in a waking dream, two figures advancing from the +corner house with the ivy walls--distinct, sedate--passing under the old +doorway. I could almost see the lady, carefully dressed in many fine +muslin folds and frills with hooped silk skirts, indeed, but slight +and graceful in her quick advance, with blue eyes, with delicate sharp +features, and a dazzling skin. As for the gentleman, I pictured him a +dapper figure, with dark eyes, dressed in black, as befitted a minister +even of dissenting views. The lady came forward, looking amused by my +scrutiny, somewhat shy I thought--was she going to speak? And by the +same token it seemed to me the gentleman was about to interrupt her. But +Margaret, my young companion, laughed and opened an umbrella, or a cock +crew, or some door banged, and the fleeting visions of fancy +disappeared. + +Many well-authenticated ghost stories describe the apparition of bygone +persons, and lo! when the figure vanishes, a letter is left behind! Some +such experience seemed to be mine when, on my return, I found a packet +of letters on the hall table--letters not addressed to me, but to some +unknown Miss Belsham, and signed and sealed by Mrs. Barbauld's hand. +They had been sent for me to read by the kindness of some ladies now +living at Hampstead, who afterwards showed me the portrait of the lady, +who began the world as Miss Betsy Belsham and who ended her career as +Mrs. Kenrick. It is an oval miniature, belonging to the times of powder +and of puff, representing not a handsome, but an animated countenance, +with laughter and spirit in the expression; the mouth is large, the eyes +are dark, the nose is short. This was the _confidante_ of Mrs. Barbauld's +early days, the faithful friend of her latter sorrows. The letters, kept +by 'Betsy' with faithful conscientious care for many years, give the +story of a whole lifetime with unconscious fidelity. The gaiety of +youth, its impatience, its exuberance, and sometimes bad taste; the +wider, quieter feelings of later life; the courage of sorrowful times; +long friendship deepening the tender and faithful memories of age, when +there is so little left to say, so much to feel--all these things are +there. + + +II. + +Mrs. Barbauld was a schoolmistress, and a schoolmaster's wife and +daughter. Her father was Dr. John Aikin, D.D.; her mother was Miss Jane +Jennings, of a good Northamptonshire family--scholastic also. Dr. Aikin +brought his wife home to Knibworth, in Leicestershire, where he opened a +school which became very successful in time. Mrs. Barbauld, their eldest +child, was born here in 1743, and was christened Anna Laetitia, after +some lady of high degree belonging to her mother's family. Two or three +years later came a son. It was a quiet home, deep hidden in the secluded +rural place; and the little household lived its own tranquil life far +away from the storms and battles and great events that were stirring +the world. Dr. Aikin kept school; Mrs. Aikin ruled her household with +capacity, and not without some sternness, according to the custom of the +time. It appears that late in life the good lady was distressed by the +backwardness of her grandchildren at four or five years old. 'I once, +indeed, knew a little girl,' so wrote Mrs. Aikin of her daughter, 'who +was as eager to learn as her instructor could be to teach her, and who +at two years old could read sentences and little stories, in her _wise_ +book, roundly and without spelling, and in half a year or more could +read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe +I never shall.' It was fortunate that no great harm came of this premature +forcing, although it is difficult to say what its absence might not +have done for Mrs. Barbauld. One can fancy the little assiduous girl, +industrious, impulsive, interested in everything--in all life and +all nature--drinking in, on every side, learning, eagerly wondering, +listening to all around with bright and ready wit. There is a pretty +little story told by Mrs. Ellis in her book about Mrs. Barbauld, how +one day, when Dr. Aikin and a friend 'were conversing on the passions,' +the Doctor observes that joy cannot have place in a state of perfect +felicity, since it supposes an accession of happiness. + +'I think you are mistaken, papa,' says a little voice from the opposite +side of the table. + +'Why so, my child?' says the Doctor. + +'Because in the chapter I read to you this morning, in the Testament, it +is said that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth +than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance."' + +Besides her English Testament and her early reading, the little girl was +taught by her mother to do as little daughters did in those days, to +obey a somewhat austere rule, to drop curtsies in the right place, to +make beds, to preserve fruits. The father, after demur, but surely +not without some paternal pride in her proficiency, taught the child +Latin and French and Italian, and something of Greek, and gave her an +acquaintance with English literature. One can imagine little Nancy with +her fair head bending over her lessons, or, when playing time had come, +perhaps a little lonely and listening to the distant voices of the +schoolboys at their games. The mother, fearing she might acquire rough +and boisterous manners, strictly forbade any communication with the +schoolboys. Sometimes in after days, speaking of these early times and +of the constraint of many bygone rules and regulations, Mrs. Barbauld +used to attribute to this early formal training something of the +hesitation and shyness which troubled her and never entirely wore off. +She does not seem to have been in any great harmony with her mother. One +could imagine a fanciful and high-spirited child, timid and dutiful, +and yet strong-willed, secretly rebelling against the rigid order of her +home, and feeling lonely for want of liberty and companionship. It was +true she had birds and beasts and plants for her playfellows, but she +was of a gregarious and sociable nature, and she was unconsciously +longing for something more, and perhaps feeling a want in her early +life which no silent company can supply. + +She was about fifteen when a great event took place. Her father was +appointed classical tutor to the Warrington Academy, and thither +the little family removed. We read that the Warrington Academy was a +Dissenting college started by very eminent and periwigged personages, +whose silhouettes Mrs. Barbauld herself afterwards cut out in +sticking-plaster, and whose names are to this day remembered and held in +just esteem. They were people of simple living and high thinking, they +belonged to a class holding then a higher place than now in the world's +esteem, that of Dissenting ministers. The Dissenting ministers were +fairly well paid and faithfully followed by their congregations. The +college was started under the auspices of distinguished members of the +community, Lord Willoughby of Parham, the last Presbyterian lord, being +patron. Among the masters were to be found the well-known names of Dr. +Doddridge; of Gilbert Wakefield, the reformer and uncompromising martyr; +of Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, the Hebrew scholar; of Dr. Priestley, the +chemical analyst and patriot, and enterprising theologian, who left +England and settled in America for conscience and liberty's sake. + +Many other people, neither students nor professors, used to come to +Warrington, and chief among them in later years good John Howard with +MSS. for his friend Dr. Aikin to correct for the press. Now for the +first time Mrs. Barbauld (Miss Aikin she was then) saw something of real +life, of men and manners. It was not likely that she looked back with +any lingering regret to Knibworth, or would have willingly returned +thither. A story in one of her memoirs gives an amusing picture of the +manners of a young country lady of that day. Mr. Haines, a rich farmer +from Knibworth, who had been greatly struck by Miss Aikin, followed her +to Warrington, and 'obtained a private audience of her father and begged +his consent to be allowed to make her his wife.' The father answered +'that his daughter was there walking in the garden, and he might go +and ask her himself.' 'With what grace the farmer pleaded his cause I +know not,' says her biographer and niece. 'Out of all patience at his +unwelcome importunities, my aunt ran nimbly up a tree which grew by the +garden wall, and let herself down into the lane beyond.' + +The next few years must have been perhaps the happiest of Mrs. Barbauld's +life. Once when it was nearly over she said to her niece, Mrs. Le +Breton, from whose interesting account I have been quoting, that she had +never been placed in a situation which really suited her. As one reads +her sketches and poems, one is struck by some sense of this detracting +influence of which she complains: there is a certain incompleteness and +slightness which speaks of intermittent work, of interrupted trains of +thought. At the same time there is a natural buoyant quality in much of +her writing which seems like a pleasant landscape view seen through the +bars of a window. There may be wider prospects, but her eyes are bright, +and this peep of nature is undoubtedly delightful. + + +III. + +The letters to Miss Belsham begin somewhere about 1768. The young lady +has been paying a visit to Miss Aikin at Warrington, and is interested +in everyone and everything belonging to the place. Miss Aikin is no less +eager to describe than Miss Belsham to listen, and accordingly a whole +stream of characters and details of gossip and descriptions in faded +ink come flowing across their pages, together with many expressions of +affection and interest. 'My dear Betsy, I love you for discarding the +word Miss from your vocabulary,' so the packet begins, and it continues +in the same strain of pleasant girlish chatter, alternating with the +history of many bygone festivities, and stories of friends, neighbours, +of beaux and partners; of the latter genus, and of Miss Aikin's efforts +to make herself agreeable, here is a sample:--'I talked to him, smiled +upon him, gave him my fan to play with,' says the lively young lady. +'Nothing would do; he was grave as a philosopher. I tried to raise +a conversation: "'Twas fine weather for dancing." He agreed to my +observation. "We had a tolerable set this time." Neither did he contradict +that. Then we were both silent--stupid mortal thought I! but unreasonable +as he appeared to the advances that I made him, there was one object in +the room, a sparkling object which seemed to attract all his attention, +on which he seemed to gaze with transport, and which indeed he hardly +took his eyes off the whole time.... The object that I mean was his +shoebuckle.' + +One could imagine Miss Elizabeth Bennett writing in some such strain to +her friend Miss Charlotte Lucas after one of the evenings at Bingley's +hospitable mansion. And yet Miss Aikin is more impulsive, more romantic +than Elizabeth. 'Wherever you are, fly letter on the wings of the wind,' +she cries, 'and tell my dear Betsy what?--only that I love her dearly.' + +Miss Nancy Aikin (she seems to have been Nancy in these letters, and to +have assumed the more dignified Laetitia upon her marriage) pours out +her lively heart, laughs, jokes, interests herself in the sentimental +affairs of the whole neighbourhood as well as in her own. Perhaps few +young ladies now-a-days would write to their _confidantes_ with the +announcement that for some time past a young sprig had been teasing them +to have him. This, however, is among Miss Nancy's confidences. She also +writes poems and _jeux d'esprit_, and receives poetry in return from +Betsy, who calls herself Camilla, and pays her friend many compliments, +for Miss Aikin in her reply quotes the well-known lines:-- + + Who for another's brow entwines the bays, + And where she well might rival stoops to Praise. + +Miss Aikin by this time has attained to all the dignity of a full-blown +authoress, and is publishing a successful book of poems in conjunction +with her brother, which little book created much attention at the time. +One day the Muse thus apostrophises Betsy: 'Shall we ever see her +amongst us again?' says my sister (Mrs. Aikin). My brother (saucy +fellow) says, 'I want to see this girl, I think (stroking his chin as he +walks backwards and forwards in the room with great gravity). I think we +should admire one another.' + +'When you come among us,' continues the warm-hearted friend, 'we shall +set the bells a-ringing, bid adieu to care and gravity, and sing "O be +joyful."' And finally, after some apologies for her remiss correspondence, +'I left my brother writing to you instead of Patty, poor soul. Well, it +is a clever thing too, to have a husband to write one's letters for one. +If I had one I would be a much better correspondent to you. I would +order him to write every week.' + +And, indeed, Mrs. Barbauld was as good as her word, and did not forget +the resolutions made by Miss Aikin in 1773. In 1774 comes some eventful +news: 'I should have written to you sooner had it not been for the +uncertainty and suspense in which for a long time I have been involved; +and since my lot has been fixed for many busy engagements which have +left me few moments of leisure. They hurry me out of my life. It is +hardly a month that I have certainly known I should fix on Norfolk, and +now next Thursday they say I am to be finally, irrevocably married. Pity +me, dear Betsy; for on the day I fancy when you will read this letter, +will the event take place which is to make so great an era in my life. I +feel depressed, and my courage almost fails me. Yet upon the whole I +have the greatest reason to think I shall be happy. I shall possess the +entire affection of a worthy man, whom my father and mother now entirely +and heartily approve. The people where we are going, though strangers, +have behaved with the greatest zeal and affection; and I think we have +a fair prospect of being useful and living comfortably in that state of +middling life to which I have been accustomed, and which I love.' + +And then comes a word which must interest all who have ever cared and +felt grateful admiration for the works of one devoted human being and +true Christian hero. Speaking of her father's friend, John Howard, she +says with an almost audible sigh: 'It was too late, as you say, or I +believe I should have been in love with Mr. Howard. Seriously, I looked +upon him with that sort of reverence and love which one should have for +a guardian angel. God bless him and preserve his health for the health's +sake of thousands. And now farewell,' she writes in conclusion: 'I shall +write to you no more under this name; but under any name, in every +situation, at any distance of time or place, I shall love you equally +and be always affectionately yours, tho' _not_ always, A. AIKIN.' + + * * * * * + +Poor lady! The future held, indeed, many a sad and unsuspected hour for +her, many a cruel pang, many a dark and heavy season, that must have +seemed intolerably weary to one of her sprightly and yet somewhat +indolent nature, more easily accepting evil than devising escape from +it. But it also held many blessings of constancy, friendship, kindly +deeds, and useful doings. She had not devotion to give such as that of +the good Howard whom she revered, but the equable help and sympathy for +others of an open-minded and kindly woman was hers. Her marriage would +seem to have been brought about by a romantic fancy rather than by a +tender affection. Mr. Barbauld's mind had been once unhinged; his +protestations were passionate and somewhat dramatic. We are told that +when she was warned by a friend, she only said, 'But surely, if I throw +him over, he will become crazy again;' and from a high-minded sense of +pity, she was faithful, and married him against the wish of her brother +and parents, and not without some misgivings herself. He was a man +perfectly sincere and honourable; but, from his nervous want of +equilibrium, subject all his life to frantic outbursts of ill-temper. +Nobody ever knew what his wife had to endure in secret; her calm and +restrained manner must have effectually hidden the constant anxiety of +her life; nor had she children to warm her heart, and brighten up her +monotonous existence. Little Charles, of the Reading-book, who is bid to +come hither, who counted so nicely, who stroked the pussy cat, and who +deserved to listen to the delightful stories he was told, was not her +own son but her brother's child. When he was born, she wrote to entreat +that he might be given over to her for her own, imploring her brother to +spare him to her, in a pretty and pathetic letter. This was a mother +yearning for a child, not a schoolmistress asking for a pupil, though +perhaps in after times the two were somewhat combined in her. There is a +pretty little description of Charles making great progress in 'climbing +trees and talking nonsense:' 'I have the honour to tell you that our +Charles is the sweetest boy in the world. He is perfectly naturalised in +his new situation; and if I should make any blunders in my letter, I +must beg you to impute it to his standing by me and chattering all the +time.' And how pleasant a record exists of Charles's chatter in that +most charming little book written for him and for the babies of babies +to come! There is a sweet instructive grace in it and appreciation of +childhood which cannot fail to strike those who have to do with children +and with Mrs. Barbauld's books for them: children themselves, those best +critics of all, delight in it. + +'Where's Charles?' says a little scholar every morning to the writer of +these few notes. + + +IV. + +Soon after the marriage, there had been some thought of a college for +young ladies, of which Mrs. Barbauld was to be the principal; but she +shrank from the idea, and in a letter to Mrs. Montagu she objects to +the scheme of higher education for women away from their natural homes. +'I should have little hope of cultivating a love of knowledge in a young +lady of fifteen who came to me ignorant and uncultivated. It is too late +then to begin to learn. The empire of the passions is coming on. Those +attachments begin to be formed which influence the happiness of future +life. The care of a mother alone can give suitable attention to this +important period.' It is true that the rigidness of her own home had not +prevented her from making a hasty and unsuitable marriage. But it is not +this which is weighing on her mind. 'Perhaps you may think,' she says, +'that having myself stepped out of the bounds of female reserve in +becoming an author, it is with an ill grace that I offer these +statements.' + +Her arguments seem to have been thought conclusive in those days, and +the young ladies' college was finally transmuted into a school for +little boys at Palgrave, in Norfolk, and thither the worthy couple +transported themselves. + +One of the letters to Miss Belsham is thus dated:--'_The 14th of July, +in the village of Palgrave (the pleasantest village in all England), at +ten o'clock, all alone in my great parlour, Mr. Barbauld being studying +a sermon, do I begin a letter to my dear Betsy._' + +When she first married, and travelled into Norfolk to keep school at +Palgrave, nothing could have seemed more tranquil, more contented, more +matter-of-fact than her life as it appears from her letters. Dreams, and +fancies, and gay illusions and excitements have made way for the +somewhat disappointing realisation of Mr. Barbauld with his neatly +turned and friendly postscripts--a husband, polite, devoted, it is +true, but somewhat disappointing all the same. The next few years +seem like years in a hive--storing honey for the future, and putting +away--industrious, punctual, monotonous. There are children's lessons to +be heard, and school-treats to be devised. She sets them to act plays +and cuts out paper collars for Henry IV.; she always takes a class of +babies entirely her own. (One of these babies, who always loved her, +became Lord Chancellor Denman; most of the others took less brilliant, +but equally respectable places, in after life.) She has also household +matters and correspondence not to be neglected. In the holidays, they +make excursions to Norwich, to London, and revisit their old haunts at +Warrington. In one of her early letters, soon after her marriage, she +describes her return to Warrington. + +'Dr. Enfield's face,' she declares, 'is grown half a foot longer since I +saw him, with studying mathematics, and for want of a game of romps; for +there are positively none now at Warrington but grave matrons. I who +have but half assumed the character, was ashamed of the levity of my +behaviour.' + +It says well indeed for the natural brightness of the lady's disposition +that with sixteen boarders and a satisfactory usher to look after, she +should be prepared for a game of romps with Dr. Enfield. + +On another occasion, in 1777, she takes little Charles away with her. +'He has indeed been an excellent traveller,' she says; 'and though, like +his great ancestor, some natural tears he shed, like him, too, he wiped +them soon. He had a long sound sleep last night, and has been very busy +to-day hunting the puss and the chickens. And now, my dear brother and +sister, let me again thank you for this precious gift, the value of which +we are both more and more sensible of as we become better acquainted with +his sweet disposition and winning manners.' + +She winds up this letter with a postscript:-- + +'Everybody here asks, "Pray, is Dr. Dodd really to be executed?" as if +we knew the more for having been at Warrington.' + +Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld's brother, the father of little Charles and of +Lucy Aikin, whose name is well known in literature, was himself a man of +great parts, industry, and ability, working hard to support his family. +He alternated between medicine and literature all his life. When his +health failed he gave up medicine, and settled at Stoke Newington, and +busied himself with periodic literature; meanwhile, whatever his own +pursuits may have been, he never ceased to take an interest in his +sister's work and to encourage her in every way. + +It is noteworthy that few of Mrs. Barbauld's earlier productions +equalled what she wrote at the very end of her life. She seems to have +been one of those who ripen with age, growing wider in spirit with +increasing years. Perhaps, too, she may have been influenced by the +change of manners, the reaction against formalism, which was growing up +as her own days were ending. Prim she may have been in manner, but she +was not a formalist by nature; and even at eighty was ready to learn to +submit to accept the new gospel that Wordsworth and his disciples had +given to the world, and to shake off the stiffness of early training. + +It is idle to speculate on what might have been if things had happened +otherwise; if the daily stress of anxiety and perplexity which haunted +her home had been removed--difficulties and anxieties which may well +have absorbed all the spare energy and interest that under happier +circumstances might have added to the treasury of English literature. +But if it were only for one ode written when the distracting cares of +over seventy years were ending, when nothing remained to her but the +essence of a long past, and the inspirations of a still glowing, still +hopeful, and most tender spirit, if it were only for the ode called +'Life,' which has brought a sense of ease and comfort to so many, Mrs. +Barbauld has indeed deserved well of her country-people and should be +held in remembrance by them. + +Her literary works are, after all, not very voluminous. She is best +known by her hymns for children and her early lessons, than which +nothing more childlike has ever been devised; and we can agree with her +brother, Dr. Aikin, when he says that it requires true genius to enter +so completely into a child's mind. + +After their first volume of verse, the brother and sister had published +a second in prose, called 'Miscellaneous Pieces,' about which there is +an amusing little anecdote in Rogers's 'Memoirs.' Fox met Dr. Aikin at +dinner. + +'"I am greatly pleased with your 'Miscellaneous Pieces,'" said Fox. +Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire," continued Fox, "your essay +'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.'" + +'"That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's." + +'"I like much," returned Fox, "your essay 'On Monastic Institutions.'" + +'"That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's." + +'Fox thought it best to say no more about the book.' + +These essays were followed by various of the visions and Eastern pieces +then so much in vogue; also by political verses and pamphlets, which +seemed to have made a great sensation at the time. But Mrs. Barbauld's +turn was on the whole more for domestic than for literary life, although +literary people always seem to have had a great interest for her. + +During one Christmas which they spent in London, the worthy couple go +to see Mrs. Siddons; and Mrs. Chapone introduces Mrs. Barbauld to Miss +Burney. 'A very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young lady,' +says Mrs. Barbauld, who is always kind in her descriptions. Mrs. +Barbauld's one complaint in London is of the fatigue from hairdressers, +and the bewildering hurry of the great city, where she had, notwithstanding +her quiet country life, many ties, and friendships, and acquaintances. +Her poem on 'Corsica' had brought her into some relations with Boswell; +she also knew Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Here is her description of the +'Great Bear:'-- + +'I do not mean that one which shines in the sky over your head; but the +Bear that shines in London--a great rough, surly animal. His Christian +name is Dr. Johnson. 'Tis a singular creature; but if you stroke him he +will not bite, and though he growls sometimes he is not ill-humoured.' + +Johnson describes Mrs. Barbauld as suckling fools and chronicling small +beer. There was not much sympathy between the two. Characters such as +Johnson's harmonise best with the enthusiastic and easily influenced. +Mrs. Barbauld did not belong to this class; she trusted to her own +judgment, rarely tried to influence others, and took a matter-of-fact +rather than a passionate view of life. She is as severe to him in her +criticism as he was in his judgment of her: they neither of them did the +other justice. 'A Christian and a man-about-town, a philosopher, and a +bigot acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more miserable +through fear of death.' So she writes of him, and all this was true; but +how much more was also true of the great and hypochondriacal old man! +Some years afterwards, when she had been reading Boswell's long-expected +'Life of Johnson,' she wrote of the book:--'It is like going to Ranelagh; +you meet all your acquaintances; but it is a base and mean thing to +bring thus every idle word into judgment.' In our own day we too have +our Boswell and our Johnson to arouse discussion and indignation. + +'Have you seen Boswell's "Life of Johnson?" He calls it a Flemish +portrait, and so it is--two quartos of a man's conversation and petty +habits. Then the treachery and meanness of watching a man for years +in order to set down every unguarded and idle word he uttered, is +inconceivable. Yet with all this one cannot help reading a good deal +of it.' This is addressed to the faithful Betsy, who was also keeping +school by that time, and assuming brevet rank in consequence. + +Mrs. Barbauld might well complain of the fatigue from hairdressers in +London. In one of her letters to her friend she thus describes a lady's +dress of the period:-- + +'Do you know how to dress yourself in Dublin? If you do not, I will tell +you. Your waist must be the circumference of two oranges, no more. You +must erect a structure on your head gradually ascending to a foot high, +exclusive of feathers, and stretching to a penthouse of most horrible +projection behind, the breadth from wing to wing considerably broader +than your shoulder, and as many different things in your cap as in +Noah's ark. Verily, I never did see such monsters as the heads now in +vogue. I am a monster, too, but a moderate one.' + +She must have been glad to get back to her home, to her daily work, to +Charles, climbing his trees and talking his nonsense. + +In the winter of 1784 her mother died at Palgrave. It was Christmas +week; the old lady had come travelling four days through the snow in a +postchaise with her maid and her little grandchildren, while her son +rode on horseback. But the cold and the fatigue of the journey, and the +discomfort of the inns, proved too much for Mrs. Aikin, who reached her +daughter's house only to die. Just that time three years before Mrs. +Barbauld had lost her father, whom she dearly loved. There is a striking +letter from the widowed mother to her daughter recording the event. It +is almost Spartan in its calmness, but nevertheless deeply touching. Now +she, too, was at rest, and after Mrs. Aikin's death a cloud of sadness +and depression seems to have fallen upon the household. Mr. Barbauld was +ailing; he was suffering from a nervous irritability which occasionally +quite unfitted him for his work as a schoolmaster. Already his wife must +have had many things to bear, and very much to try her courage and +cheerfulness; and now her health was also failing. It was in 1775 that +they gave up the academy, which, on the whole, had greatly flourished. +It had been established eleven years; they were both of them in need of +rest and change. Nevertheless, it was not without reluctance that they +brought themselves to leave their home at Palgrave. A successor was +found only too quickly for Mrs. Barbauld's wishes; they handed over +their pupils to his care, and went abroad for a year's sunshine and +distraction. + + +V. + +What a contrast to prim, starched scholastic life at Palgrave must have +been the smiling world, and the land flowing with oil and wine, in which +they found themselves basking! The vintage was so abundant that year +that the country people could not find vessels to contain it. 'The roads +covered with teams of casks, empty or full according as they were going +out or returning, and drawn by oxen whose strong necks seemed to be +bowed unwillingly under the yoke. Men, women, and children were abroad; +some cutting with a short sickle the bunches of grapes, some breaking +them with a wooden instrument, some carrying them on their backs from +the gatherers to those who pressed the juice; and, as in our harvest, +the gleaners followed.' + +From the vintage they travel to the Alps, 'a sight so majestic, so +totally different from anything I had seen before, that I am ready to +sing _nunc dimittis_,' she writes. They travel back by the south of +France and reach Paris in June, where the case of the Diamond Necklace +is being tried. Then they return to England, waiting a day at Boulogne +for a vessel, but crossing from thence in less than four hours. How +pretty is her description of England as it strikes them after their +absence! 'And not without pleasing emotion did we view again the green +swelling hills covered with large sheep, and the winding road bordered +with the hawthorn hedge, and the English vine twirled round the tall +poles, and the broad Medway covered with vessels, and at last the gentle +yet majestic Thames.' + +There were Dissenters at Hampstead in those days, as there are still, +and it was a call from a little Unitarian congregation on the hillside +who invited Mr. Barbauld to become their minister, which decided the +worthy couple to retire to this pleasant suburb. The place seemed +promising enough; they were within reach of Mrs. Barbauld's brother, Dr. +Aikin, now settled in London, and to whom she was tenderly attached. +There were congenial people settled all about. On the high hill-top were +pleasant old houses to live in. There was occupation for him and +literary interest for her. + +They are a sociable and friendly pair, hospitable, glad to welcome their +friends, and the acquaintance, and critics, and the former pupils who +come toiling up the hill to visit them. Rogers comes to dinner 'at half +after three.' They have another poet for a neighbour, Miss Joanna +Baillie; they are made welcome by all, and in their turn make others +welcome; they do acts of social charity and kindness wherever they see +the occasion. They have a young Spanish gentleman to board who conceals +a taste for 'seguars.' They also go up to town from time to time. On +one occasion Mr. Barbauld repairs to London to choose a wedding present +for Miss Belsham, who is about to be married to Mr. Kenrick, a widower +with daughters. He chose two slim Wedgwood pots of some late classic +model, which still stand, after many dangers, safely on either side of +Mrs. Kenrick's portrait in Miss Reid's drawing-room at Hampstead. +Wedgwood must have been a personal friend: he has modelled a lovely head +of Mrs. Barbauld, simple and nymph-like. + +Hampstead was no further from London in those days than it is now, and +they seem to have kept up a constant communication with their friends +and relations in the great city. They go to the play occasionally. 'I +have not indeed seen Mrs. Siddons often, but I think I never saw her to +more advantage,' she writes. 'It is not, however, seeing a play, it is +only seeing one character, for they have nobody to act with her.' + +Another expedition is to Westminster Hall, where Warren Hastings was +then being tried for his life. + +'The trial has attracted the notice of most people who are within reach +of it. I have been, and was very much struck with all the apparatus and +pomp of justice, with the splendour of the assembly which contained +everything distinguished in the nation, with the grand idea that the +equity of the English was to pursue crimes committed at the other side +of the globe, and oppressions exercised towards the poor Indians who had +come to plead their cause; but all these fine ideas vanish and fade away +as one observes the progress of the cause, and sees it fall into the +summer amusements, and take the place of a rehearsal of music or an +evening at Vauxhall.' + +Mrs. Barbauld was a Liberal in feeling and conviction; she was never +afraid to speak her mind, and when the French Revolution first began, +she, in common with many others, hoped that it was but the dawning of +happier times. She was always keen about public events; she wrote an +address on the opposition to the repeal of the Test Act in 1791, and she +published her poem to Wilberforce on the rejection of his great bill for +abolishing slavery:-- + + Friends of the friendless, hail, ye generous band! + +she cries, in warm enthusiasm for the devoted cause. + +Horace Walpole nicknamed her Deborah, called her the Virago Barbauld, +and speaks of her with utter rudeness and intolerant spite. But whether +or not Horace Walpole approved, it is certain that Mrs. Barbauld +possessed to a full and generous degree a quality which is now less +common than it was in her day. + +Not very many years ago I was struck on one occasion when a noble old +lady, now gone to her rest, exclaimed in my hearing that people of this +generation had all sorts of merits and charitable intentions, but that +there was one thing she missed which had certainly existed in her youth, +and which no longer seemed to be of the same account: that public spirit +which used to animate the young as well as the old. + +It is possible that philanthropy, and the love of the beautiful, and the +gratuitous diffusion of wall-papers may be the modern rendering of the +good old-fashioned sentiment. Mrs. Barbauld lived in very stirring days, +when private people shared in the excitements and catastrophes of public +affairs. To her the fortunes of England, its loyalty, its success, were +a part of her daily bread. By her early associations she belonged to a +party representing opposition, and for that very reason she was the more +keenly struck by the differences of the conduct of affairs and the +opinions of those she trusted. Her friend Dr. Priestley had emigrated to +America for his convictions' sake; Howard was giving his noble life for +his work; Wakefield had gone to prison. Now the very questions are +forgotten for which they struggled and suffered, or the answers have +come while the questions are forgotten, in this their future which is +our present, and to which some unborn historian may point back with a +moral finger. + +Dr. Aikin, whose estimate of his sister was very different from Horace +Walpole's, occasionally reproached her for not writing more constantly. +He wrote a copy of verses on this theme:-- + + Thus speaks the Muse, and bends her brows severe: + Did I, Laetitia, lend my choicest lays, + And crown thy youthful head with freshest bays, + That all the expectance of thy full-grown year, + Should lie inert and fruitless? O revere + Those sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, + Whose potent charm the enraptured soul can raise + Far from the vapours of this earthly sphere, + Seize, seize the lyre, resume the lofty strain. + +She seems to have willingly left the lyre for Dr. Aikin's use. A few +hymns, some graceful odes, and stanzas, and _jeux d'esprit_, a certain +number of well-written and original essays, and several political +pamphlets, represent the best of her work. Her more ambitious poems +are those by which she is the least remembered. It was at Hampstead +that Mrs. Barbauld wrote her contributions to her brother's volume of +'Evenings at Home,' among which the transmigrations of Indur may be +quoted as a model of style and delightful matter. One of the best of her +_jeux d'esprit_ is the 'Groans of the Tankard,' which was written in +early days, with much spirit and real humour. It begins with a classic +incantation, and then goes on:-- + + 'Twas at the solemn silent noontide hour + When hunger rages with despotic power, + When the lean student quits his Hebrew roots + For the gross nourishment of English fruits, + And throws unfinished airy systems by + For solid pudding and substantial pie. + +The tankard now, + + Replenished to the brink, + With the cool beverage blue-eyed maidens drink, + +but, accustomed to very different libations, is endowed with voice and +utters its bitter reproaches:-- + + Unblest the day, and luckless was the hour + Which doomed me to a Presbyterian's power, + Fated to serve a Puritanic race, + Whose slender meal is shorter than their grace. + + +VI. + +Thumbkin, of fairy celebrity, used to mark his way by flinging crumbs of +bread and scattering stones as he went along; and in like manner authors +trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and +articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones, +sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93 Mrs. Barbauld must have been +occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the +time. A pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins +of the Government and Sins of the People,' show in what direction her +thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of +literary work and interest. She seems to have turned to Akenside and +Collins, and each had an essay to himself. These were followed by +certain selections from the _Spectator_, _Tatler_, &c., preceded by one +of those admirable essays for which she is really remarkable. She also +published a memoir of Richardson prefixed to his correspondence. Sir +James Mackintosh, writing at a later and sadder time of her life, says +of her observations on the moral of Clarissa that they are as fine a +piece of mitigated and rational stoicism as our language can boast of. + +In 1802 another congregation seems to have made signs from Stoke +Newington, and Mrs. Barbauld persuaded her husband to leave his flock at +Hampstead and to buy a house near her brother's at Stoke Newington. This +was her last migration, and here she remained until her death in 1825. +One of her letters to Mrs. Kenrick gives a description of what might +have been a happy home:--'We have a pretty little back parlour that +looks into our little spot of a garden,' she says, 'and catches every +gleam of sunshine. We have pulled down the ivy, except what covers the +coach-house We have planted a vine and a passion-flower, with abundance +of jessamine against the window, and we have scattered roses and +honeysuckle all over the garden. You may smile at me for parading so +over my house and domains.' In May she writes a pleasant letter, in good +spirits, comparing her correspondence with her friend to the flower of +an aloe, which sleeps for a hundred years, and on a sudden pushes out +when least expected. 'But take notice, the life is in the aloe all the +while, and sorry should I be if the life were not in our friendship all +the while, though it so rarely diffuses itself over a sheet of paper.' + +She seems to have been no less sociable and friendly at Stoke Newington +than at Hampstead. People used to come up to see her from London. Her +letters, quiet and intimate as they are, give glimpses of most of the +literary people of the day, not in memoirs then, but alive and drinking +tea at one another's houses, or walking all the way to Stoke Newington +to pay their respects to the old lady. + +Charles Lamb used to talk of his two _bald_ authoresses, Mrs. Barbauld +being one and Mrs. Inchbald being the other. Crabb Robinson and Rogers +were two faithful links with the outer world. 'Crabb Robinson corresponds +with Madame de Stael, is quite intimate,' she writes, 'has received +I don't know how many letters,' she adds, not without some slight +amusement. Miss Lucy Aikin tells a pretty story of Scott meeting Mrs. +Barbauld at dinner, and telling her that it was to her that he owed his +poetic gift. Some translations of Buerger by Mr. Taylor, of Norwich, +which she had read out at Edinburgh, had struck him so much that they +had determined him to try his own powers in that line. + +She often had inmates under her roof. One of them was a beautiful and +charming young girl, the daughter of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh, whose +early death is recorded in her mother's life. Besides company at home, +Mrs. Barbauld went to visit her friends from time to time--the Estlins +at Bristol, the Edgeworths, whose acquaintance Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld +made about this time, and who seem to have been invaluable friends, +bringing as they did a bright new element of interest and cheerful +friendship into her sad and dimming life. A man must have extraordinarily +good spirits to embark upon four matrimonial ventures as Mr. Edgeworth +did; and as for Miss Edgeworth, appreciative, effusive, and warm-hearted, +she seems to have more than returned Mrs. Barbauld's sympathy. + +Miss Lucy Aikin, Dr. Aikin's daughter, was now also making her own mark +in the literary world, and had inherited the bright intelligence and +interest for which her family was so remarkable. Much of Miss Aikin's +work is more sustained than her aunt's desultory productions, but it +lacks that touch of nature which has preserved Mrs. Barbauld's memory +where more important people are forgotten. + +Our authoress seems to have had a natural affection for sister +authoresses. Hannah More and Mrs. Montague were both her friends, so +were Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Chapone in a different degree; she must +have known Mrs. Opie; she loved Joanna Baillie. The latter is described +by her as the young lady at Hampstead who came to Mr. Barbauld's meeting +with as demure a face as if she had never written a line. And Miss Aikin, +in her memoirs, describes in Johnsonian language how the two Miss +Baillies came to call one morning upon Mrs. Barbauld:--'My aunt +immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and +gave utterance to her admiration with the generous delight in the +manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her.' But it seems +that Miss Baillie sat, nothing moved, and did not betray herself. Mrs. +Barbauld herself gives a pretty description of the sisters in their +home, in that old house on Windmill Hill, which stands untouched, with +its green windows looking out upon so much of sky and heath and sun, +with the wainscoted parlours where Walter Scott used to come, and the +low wooden staircase leading to the old rooms above. It is in one of her +letters to Mrs. Kenrick that Mrs. Barbauld gives a pleasant glimpse of +the poetess Walter Scott admired. 'I have not been abroad since I was at +Norwich, except a day or two at Hampstead with the Miss Baillies. One +should be, as I was, beneath their roof to know all their merit. Their +house is one of the best ordered I know. They have all manner of +attentions for their friends, and not only Miss B., but Joanna, is as +clever in furnishing a room or in arranging a party as in writing plays, +of which, by the way, she has a volume ready for the press, but she will +not give it to the public till next winter. The subject is to be the +passion of fear. I do not know what sort of a hero that passion can +afford!' Fear was, indeed, a passion alien to her nature, and she did +not know the meaning of the word. + +Mrs. Barbauld's description of Hannah More and her sisters living on +their special hill-top was written after Mr. Barbauld's death, and +thirty years after Miss More's verses which are quoted by Mrs. Ellis in +her excellent memoir of Mrs. Barbauld:-- + + Nor, Barbauld, shall my glowing heart refuse + A tribute to thy virtues or thy muse; + This humble merit shall at least be mine, + The poet's chaplet for thy brows to twine; + My verse thy talents to the world shall teach, + And praise the graces it despairs to reach. + +Then, after philosophically questioning the power of genius to confer +true happiness, she concludes:-- + + Can all the boasted powers of wit and song + Of life one pang remove, one hour prolong? + Fallacious hope which daily truths deride-- + For you, alas! have wept and Garrick died. + +Meanwhile, whatever genius might not be able to achieve, the five Miss +Mores had been living on peacefully together in the very comfortable +cottage which had been raised and thatched by the poetess's earnings. + +'Barley Wood is equally the seat of taste and hospitality,' says Mrs. +Barbauld to a friend. + +'Nothing could be more friendly than their reception,' she writes to her +brother, 'and nothing more charming than their situation. An extensive +view over the Mendip Hills is in front of their house, with a pretty +view of Wrington. Their home--cottage, because it is thatched--stands on +the declivity of a rising ground, which they have planted and made quite +a little paradise. The five sisters, all good old maids, have lived +together these fifty years. Hannah More is a good deal broken, but +possesses fully her powers of conversation, and her vivacity. We +exchanged riddles like the wise men of old; I was given to understand +she was writing something.' + +There is another allusion to Mrs. Hannah More in a sensible letter from +Mrs. Barbauld, written to Miss Edgeworth about this time, declining to +join in an alarming enterprise suggested by the vivacious Mr. Edgeworth, +'a _Feminiad_, a literary paper to be entirely contributed to by ladies, +and where all articles are to be accepted.' 'There is no bond of union,' +Mrs. Barbauld says, 'among literary women any more than among literary +men; different sentiments and connections separate them much more than +the joint interest of their sex would unite them. Mrs. Hannah More would +not write along with you or me, and we should possibly hesitate at +joining Miss Hays or--if she were living--Mrs. Godwin.' Then she +suggests the names of Miss Baillie, Mrs. Opie, her own niece Miss Lucy +Aikin, and Mr. S. Rogers, who would not, she thinks, be averse to +joining the scheme. + + +VII. + +How strangely unnatural it seems when Fate's heavy hand falls upon quiet +and common-place lives, changing the tranquil routine of every day into +the solemnities and excitements of terror and tragedy! It was after +their removal to Stoke Newington that the saddest of all blows fell +upon this true-hearted woman. Her husband's hypochondria deepened and +changed, and the attacks became so serious that her brother and his +family urged her anxiously to leave him to other care than her own. It +was no longer safe for poor Mr. Barbauld to remain alone with his wife, +and her life, says Mrs. Le Breton, was more than once in peril. But, at +first, she would not hear of leaving him; although on more than one +occasion she had to fly for protection to her brother close by. + +There is something very touching in the patient fidelity with which Mrs. +Barbauld tried to soothe the later sad disastrous years of her husband's +life. She must have been a woman of singular nerve and courage to endure +as she did the excitement and cruel aberrations of her once gentle and +devoted companion. She only gave in after long resistance. + +'An alienation from me has taken possession of his mind,' she says, in a +letter to Mrs. Kenrick; 'my presence seems to irritate him, and I must +resign myself to a separation from him who has been for thirty years the +partner of my heart, my faithful friend, my inseparable companion.' With +her habitual reticence, she dwells no more on that painful topic, but +goes on to make plans for them both, asks her old friend to come and +cheer her in her loneliness; and the faithful Betsy, now a widow with +grown-up step-children, ill herself, troubled by deafness and other +infirmities, responds with a warm heart, and promises to come, bringing +the comfort with her of old companionship and familiar sympathy. There +is something very affecting in the loyalty of the two aged women +stretching out their hands to each other across a whole lifetime. After +her visit Mrs. Barbauld writes again:-- + +'He is now at Norwich, and I hear very favourable accounts of his health +and spirits; he seems to enjoy himself very much amongst his old friends +there, and converses among them with his usual animation. There are no +symptoms of violence or of depression; so far is favourable; but this +cruel alienation from me, in which my brother is included, still remains +deep-rooted, and whether he will ever change in this point Heaven only +knows. The medical men fear he will not: if so, my dear friend, what +remains for me but to resign myself to the will of Heaven, and to think +with pleasure that every day brings me nearer a period which naturally +cannot be very far off, and at which this as well as every temporal +affliction must terminate? + +'"Anything but this!" is the cry of weak mortals when afflicted; and +sometimes I own I am inclined to make it mine; but I will check myself.' + +But while she was hoping still, a fresh outbreak of the malady occurred. +He, poor soul, weary of his existence, put an end to his sufferings: he +was found lifeless in the New River. Lucy Aikin quotes a Dirge found +among her aunt's papers after her death:-- + + Pure Spirit, O where art thou now? + O whisper to my soul, + O let some soothening thought of thee + This bitter grief control. + + 'Tis not for thee the tears I shed, + Thy sufferings now are o'er. + The sea is calm, the tempest past, + On that eternal shore. + + No more the storms that wrecked thy peace + Shall tear that gentle breast, + Nor summer's rage, nor winter's cold + That poor, poor frame molest. + + * * * * * + + Farewell! With honour, peace, and love, + Be that dear memory blest, + Thou hast no tears for me to shed, + When I too am at rest. + + +But her time of rest was not yet come, and she lived for seventeen years +after her husband. She was very brave, she did not turn from the +sympathy of her friends, she endured her loneliness with courage, she +worked to distract her mind. Here is a touching letter addressed to Mrs. +Taylor, of Norwich, in which she says:--'A thousand thanks for your kind +letter, still more for the very short visit that preceded it. Though +short--too short--it has left indelible impressions on my mind. My +heart has truly had communion with yours; your sympathy has been balm to +it; and I feel that there is _now_ no one on earth to whom I could pour +out that heart more readily.... I am now sitting alone again, and feel +like a person who has been sitting by a cheerful fire, not sensible at +the time of the temperature of the air; but the fire removed, he finds +the season is still winter. Day after day passes, and I do not know what +to do with my time; my mind has no energy nor power of application.' + +How much she felt her loneliness appears again and again from one +passage and another. Then she struggled against discouragement; she +took to her pen again. To Mrs. Kenrick she writes:--'I intend to pay my +letter debts; not much troubling my head whether I have anything to say +or not; yet to you my heart has always something to say: it always +recognises you as among the dearest of its friends; and while it feels +that new impressions are made with difficulty and early effaced, +retains, and ever will retain, I trust beyond this world, those of our +early and long-tried affection.' + +She set to work again, trying to forget her heavy trials. It was during +the first years of her widowhood that she published her edition of the +British novelists in some fifty volumes. There is an opening chapter to +this edition upon novels and novel-writing, which is an admirable and +most interesting essay upon fiction, beginning from the very earliest +times. + +In 1811 she wrote her poem on the King's illness, and also the longer +poem which provoked such indignant comments at the time. It describes +Britain's rise and luxury, warns her of the dangers of her unbounded +ambition and unjustifiable wars:-- + + Arts, arms, and wealth destroy the fruits they bring; + Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring. + +Her ingenuous youth from Ontario's shore who visits the ruins of London +is one of the many claimants to the honour of having suggested Lord +Macaulay's celebrated New Zealander:-- + + Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet + Each splendid square and still untrodden street, + Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, + The broken stairs with perilous step shall climb, + Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, + By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound, + And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey + Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way. + +It is impossible not to admire the poem, though it is stilted and not to +the present taste. The description of Britain as it now is and as it +once was is very ingenious:-- + + Where once Bonduca whirled the scythed car, + And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war, + Light forms beneath transparent muslin float, + And tutor'd voices swell the artful note; + Light-leaved acacias, and the shady plane, + And spreading cedars grace the woodland reign. + +The poem is forgotten now, though it was scouted at the time and +violently attacked, Southey himself falling upon the poor old lady, and +devouring her, spectacles and all. She felt these attacks very much, and +could not be consoled, though Miss Edgeworth wrote a warm-hearted letter +of indignant sympathy. But Mrs. Barbauld had something in her too genuine +to be crushed, even by sarcastic criticism. She published no more, but +it was after her poem of '1811' that she wrote the beautiful ode by +which she is best known and best remembered,--the ode that Wordsworth +used to repeat and say he envied, that Tennyson has called 'sweet +verses,' of which the lines ring their tender hopeful chime like sweet +church bells on a summer evening. + +Madame d'Arblay, in her old age, told Crabb Robinson that every night +she said the verses over to herself as she went to her rest. To the +writer they are almost sacred. The hand that patiently pointed out to +her, one by one, the syllables of Mrs. Barbauld's hymns for children, +that tended our childhood, as it had tended our father's, marked these +verses one night, when it blessed us for the last time. + + Life, we've been long together, + Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; + 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; + Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh or tear, + Then steal away, give little warning, + Choose thine own time. + Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime, + Bid me 'Good morning.' + +Mrs. Barbauld was over seventy when she wrote this ode. A poem, called +'Octogenary Reflections,' is also very touching:-- + + Say ye, who through this round of eighty years + Have proved its joys and sorrows, hopes and fears; + Say what is life, ye veterans who have trod, + Step following steps, its flowery thorny road? + Enough of good to kindle strong desire; + Enough of ill to damp the rising fire; + Enough of love and fancy, joy and hope, + To fan desire and give the passions scope; + Enough of disappointment, sorrow, pain, + To seal the wise man's sentence--'All is vain.' + +There is another fragment of hers in which she likens herself to a +schoolboy left of all the train, who hears no sound of wheels to bear +him to his father's bosom home. 'Thus I look to the hour when I shall +follow those that are at rest before me.' And then at last the time came +for which she longed. Her brother died, her faithful Mrs. Kenrick died, +and Mrs. Taylor, whom she loved most of all. She had consented to give +up her solitary home to spend the remaining years of her life in the +home of her adopted son Charles, now married, and a father; but it was +while she was on a little visit to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Aikin, that +the summons came, very swiftly and peacefully, as she sat in her chair +one day. Her nephew transcribed these, the last lines she ever wrote:-- + +'Who are you?' + +'Do you not know me? have you not expected me?' + +'Whither do you carry me?' + +'Come with me and you shall know.' + +'The way is dark.' + +'It is well trodden.' + +'Yes, in the forward track.' + +'Come along.' + +'Oh! shall I there see my beloved ones? Will they welcome me, and will +they know me? Oh, tell me, tell me; thou canst tell me.' + +'Yes, but thou must come first.' + +'Stop a little; keep thy hand off till thou hast told me.' + +'I never wait.' + +'Oh! shall I see the warm sun again in my cold grave?' + +'Nothing is there that can feel the sun.' + +'Oh, where then?' + +'Come, I say.' + +One may acknowledge the great progress which people have made since Mrs. +Barbauld's day in the practice of writing prose and poetry, in the art +of expressing upon paper the thoughts which are in most people's minds. +It is (to use a friend's simile) like playing upon the piano--everybody +now learns to play upon the piano, and it is certain that the modest +performances of the ladies of Mrs. Barbauld's time would scarcely meet +with the attention now, which they then received. But all the same, the +stock of true feeling, of real poetry, is not increased by the increased +volubility of our pens; and so when something comes to us that is real, +that is complete in pathos or in wisdom, we still acknowledge the gift, +and are grateful for it. + + + + +_MISS EDGEWORTH._ + + 1767-1849. + + 'Exceeding wise, fairspoken, and persuading.'--_Hen. VIII._ + +EARLY DAYS. + + +I. + +Few authoresses in these days can have enjoyed the ovations and +attentions which seem to have been considered the due of many of the +ladies distinguished at the end of the last century and the beginning of +this one. To read the accounts of the receptions and compliments which +fell to their lot may well fill later and lesser luminaries with envy. +Crowds opened to admit them, banquets spread themselves out before them, +lights were lighted up and flowers were scattered at their feet. Dukes, +editors, prime ministers, waited their convenience on their staircases; +whole theatres rose up _en masse_ to greet the gifted creatures of this +and that immortal tragedy. The authoresses themselves, to do them justice, +seem to have been very little dazzled by all this excitement. Hannah +More contentedly retires with her maiden sisters to the Parnassus on +the Mendip Hills, where they sew and chat and make tea, and teach the +village children. Dear Joanna Baillie, modest and beloved, lives on to +peaceful age in her pretty old house at Hampstead, looking through +tree-tops and sunshine and clouds towards distant London. 'Out there +where all the storms are,' I heard the children saying yesterday as +they watched the overhanging gloom of smoke which, veils the city of +metropolitan thunders and lightning. Maria Edgeworth's apparitions as +a literary lioness in the rush of London and of Paris society were but +interludes in her existence, and her real life was one of constant +exertion and industry spent far away in an Irish home among her own +kindred and occupations and interests. We may realise what these were +when we read that Mr. Edgeworth had no less than four wives, who all +left children, and that Maria was the eldest daughter of the whole +family. Besides this, we must also remember that the father whom she +idolised was himself a man of extraordinary powers, brilliant in +conversation (so I have been told), full of animation, of interest, of +plans for his country, his family, for education and literature, for +mechanics and scientific discoveries; that he was a gentleman widely +connected, hospitably inclined, with a large estate and many tenants to +overlook, with correspondence and acquaintances all over the world; and +besides all this, with various schemes in his brain, to be eventually +realised by others of which velocipedes, tramways, and telegraphs were +but a few of the items. + +One could imagine that under these circumstances the hurry and +excitement of London life must have sometimes seemed tranquillity itself +compared with the many and absorbing interests of such a family. What +these interests were may be gathered from the pages of a very interesting +memoir from which the writer of this essay has been allowed to quote. It +is a book privately printed and written for the use of her children by +the widow of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and is a record, among other +things, of a faithful and most touching friendship between Maria and her +father's wife--'a friendship lasting for over fifty years, and unbroken +by a single cloud of difference or mistrust.' Mrs. Edgeworth, who was +Miss Beaufort before her marriage, and about the same age as Miss +Edgeworth, unconsciously reveals her own most charming and unselfish +nature as she tells her stepdaughter's story. + +When the writer looks back upon her own childhood, it seems to her that +she lived in company with a delightful host of little playmates, bright, +busy, clever children, whose cheerful presence remains more vividly in +her mind than that of many of the real little boys and girls who used to +appear and disappear disconnectedly as children do in childhood, when +friendship and companionship depend almost entirely upon the convenience +of grown-up people. Now and again came little cousins or friends to +share our games, but day by day, constant and unchanging, ever to be +relied upon, smiled our most lovable and friendly companions--simple +Susan, lame Jervas, Talbot, the dear Little Merchants, Jem the widow's +son with his arms round old Lightfoot's neck, the generous Ben, with his +whipcord and his useful proverb of 'waste not, want not'--all of these +were there in the window corner waiting our pleasure. After Parents' +Assistant, to which familiar words we attached no meaning whatever, came +Popular Tales in big brown volumes off a shelf in the lumber-room of an +apartment in an old house in Paris, and as we opened the books, lo! +creation widened to our view. England, Ireland, America, Turkey, +the mines of Golconda, the streets of Bagdad, thieves, travellers, +governesses, natural philosophy, and fashionable life, were all laid +under contribution, and brought interest and adventure to our humdrum +nursery corner. All Mr. Edgeworth's varied teaching and experience, all +his daughter's genius of observation, came to interest and delight our +play-time, and that of a thousand other little children in different +parts of the world. People justly praise Miss Edgeworth's admirable +stories and novels, but from prejudice and early association these +beloved childish histories seem unequalled still, and it is chiefly as +a writer for children that we venture to consider her here. Some of the +stories are indeed little idylls in their way. Walter Scott, who best +knew how to write for the young so as to charm grandfathers as well as +Hugh Littlejohn, Esq., and all the grandchildren, is said to have wiped +his kind eyes as he put down 'Simple Susan.' A child's book, says a +reviewer of those days defining in the 'Quarterly Review,' should be +'not merely less dry, less difficult, than a book for grown-up people; +but more rich in interest, more true to nature, more exquisite in art, +more abundant in every quality that replies to childhood's keener +and fresher perception.' Children like facts, they like short vivid +sentences that tell the story: as they listen intently, so they read; +every word has its value for them. It has been a real surprise to the +writer to find, on re-reading some of these descriptions of scenery and +adventure which she had not looked at since her childhood, that the +details which she had imagined spread over much space are contained in a +few sentences at the beginning of a page. These sentences, however, show +the true art of the writer. + +It would be difficult to imagine anything better suited to the mind +of a very young person than these pleasant stories, so complete in +themselves, so interesting, so varied. The description of Jervas's +escape from the mine where the miners had plotted his destruction, +almost rises to poetry in its simple diction. Lame Jervas has warned his +master of the miners' plot, and showed him the vein of ore which they +have concealed. The miners have sworn vengeance against him, and his +life is in danger. His master helps him to get away, and comes into the +room before daybreak, bidding him rise and put on the clothes which he +has brought. 'I followed him out of the house before anybody else was +awake, and he took me across the fields towards the high road. At this +place we waited till we heard the tinkling of the bells of a team of +horses. "Here comes the waggon," said he, "in which you are to go. So +fare you well, Jervas. I shall hear how you go on; and I only hope you +will serve your next master, whoever he may be, as faithfully as you +have served me." "I shall never find so good a master," was all I could +say for the soul of me; I was quite overcome by his goodness and sorrow +at parting with him, as I then thought, for ever.' The description of +the journey is very pretty. 'The morning clouds began to clear away; I +could see my master at some distance, and I kept looking after him as +the waggon went on slowly, and he walked fast away over the fields.' +Then the sun begins to rise. The waggoner goes on whistling, but lame +Jervas, to whom the rising sun was a spectacle wholly surprising, +starts up, exclaiming in wonder and admiration. The waggoner bursts into +a loud laugh. 'Lud a marcy,' says he, 'to hear un' and look at un' a +body would think the oaf had never seen the sun rise afore;' upon which +Jervas remembers that he is still in Cornwall, and must not betray +himself, and prudently hides behind some parcels, only just in time, for +they meet a party of miners, and he hears his enemies' voice hailing the +waggoner. All the rest of the day he sits within, and amuses himself by +listening to the bells of the team, which jingle continually. 'On our +second day's journey, however, I ventured out of my hiding-place. I +walked with the waggoner up and down the hills, enjoying the fresh air, +the singing of the birds, and the delightful smell of the honeysuckles +and the dog-roses in the hedges. All the wild flowers and even the weeds +on the banks by the wayside were to me matters of wonder and admiration. +At almost every step I paused to observe something that was new to me, +and I could not help feeling surprised at the insensibility of my +fellow-traveller, who plodded along, and seldom interrupted his +whistling except to cry 'Gee, Blackbird, aw woa,' or 'How now, Smiler?' +Then Jervas is lost in admiration before a plant 'whose stem was about +two feet high, and which had a round shining purple beautiful flower,' +and the waggoner with a look of scorn exclaims, 'Help thee, lad, dost +not thou know 'tis a common thistle?' After this he looks upon Jervas as +very nearly an idiot. 'In truth I believe I was a droll figure, for my +hat was stuck full of weeds and of all sorts of wild flowers, and both +my coat and waistcoat pockets were stuffed out with pebbles and +funguses.' Then comes Plymouth Harbour: Jervas ventures to ask some +questions about the vessels, to which the waggoner answers 'They be +nothing in life but the boats and ships, man;' so he turned away and +went on chewing a straw, and seemed not a whit more moved to admiration +than he had been at the sight of the thistle. 'I conceived a high +admiration of a man who had seen so much that he could admire nothing,' +says Jervas, with a touch of real humour. + +Another most charming little idyll is that of Simple Susan, who was a +real maiden living in the neighbourhood of Edgeworthstown. The story +seems to have been mislaid for a time in the stirring events of the +first Irish rebellion, and overlooked, like some little daisy by a +battlefield. Few among us will not have shared Mr. Edgeworth's partiality +for the charming little tale. The children fling their garlands and tie +up their violets. Susan bakes her cottage loaves and gathers marigolds +for broth, and tends her mother to the distant tune of Philip's pipe +coming across the fields. As we read the story again it seems as if +we could almost scent the fragrance of the primroses and the double +violets, and hear the music sounding above the children's voices, and +the bleatings of the lamb, so simply and delightfully is the whole story +constructed. Among all Miss Edgeworth's characters few are more familiar +to the world than that of Susan's pretty pet lamb. + + +II. + +No sketch of Maria Edgeworth's life, however slight, would be complete +without a few words about certain persons coming a generation before her +(and belonging still to the age of periwigs), who were her father's +associates and her own earliest friends. Notwithstanding all that has +been said of Mr. Edgeworth's bewildering versatility of nature, he seems +to have been singularly faithful in his friendships. He might take up +new ties, but he clung pertinaciously to those which had once existed. +His daughter inherited that same steadiness of affection. In his life of +Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, Mr. Charles Darwin, writing of these +very people, has said, 'There is, perhaps, no safer test of a man's real +character than that of his long-continued friendship with good and +able men.' He then goes on to quote an instance of a long-continued +affection and intimacy only broken by death between a certain set of +distinguished friends, giving the names of Keir, Day, Small, Boulton, +Watt, Wedgwood, and Darwin, and adding to them the names of Edgeworth +himself and of the Galtons. + +Mr. Edgeworth first came to Lichfield to make Dr. Darwin's acquaintance. +His second visit was to his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and +Merton,' who had taken a house in the valley of Stow, and who invited +him one Christmas on a visit. 'About the year 1765,' says Miss Seward, +'came to Lichfield, from the neighbourhood of Reading, the young and gay +philosopher, Mr. Edgeworth; a man of fortune, and recently married to a +Miss Elers, of Oxfordshire. The fame of Dr. Darwin's various talents +allured Mr. E. to the city they graced.' And the lady goes on to describe +Mr. Edgeworth himself:--'Scarcely two-and-twenty, with an exterior yet +more juvenile, having mathematic science, mechanic ingenuity, and a +competent portion of classical learning, with the possession of the +modern languages.... He danced, he fenced, he winged his arrows with +more than philosophic skill,' continues the lady, herself a person of no +little celebrity in her time and place. Mr. Edgeworth, in his Memoirs, +pays a respectful tribute to Miss Seward's charms, to her agreeable +conversation, her beauty, her flowing tresses, her sprightliness and +address. Such moderate expressions fail, however, to do justice to this +lady's powers, to her enthusiasm, her poetry, her partisanship. The +portrait prefixed to her letters is that of a dignified person with an +oval face and dark eyes, the thick brown tresses are twined with pearls, +her graceful figure is robed in the softest furs and draperies of the +period. In her very first letter she thus poetically describes her +surroundings:--'The autumnal glory of this day puts to shame the summer's +sullenness. I sit writing upon this dear green terrace, feeding at +intervals my little golden-breasted songsters. The embosomed vale of +Stow glows sunny through the Claude-Lorraine tint which is spread over +the scene like the blue mist over a plum.' + +In this Claude-Lorraine-plum-tinted valley stood the house which Mr. Day +had taken, and where Mr. Edgeworth had come on an eventful visit. Miss +Seward herself lived with her parents in the Bishop's palace at Lichfield. +There was also a younger sister, 'Miss Sally,' who died as a girl, and +another very beautiful young lady their friend, by name Honora Sneyd, +placed under Mrs. Seward's care. She was the heroine of Major Andre's +unhappy romance. He too lived at Lichfield with his mother, and his +hopeless love gives a tragic reality to this by-gone holiday of youth +and merry-making. As one reads the old letters and memoirs the echoes +of laughter reach us. One can almost see the young folks all coming +together out of the Cathedral Close, where so much of their time was +passed; the beautiful Honora, surrounded by friends and adorers, +chaperoned by the graceful Muse her senior, also much admired, and much +made of. Thomas Day is perhaps striding after them in silence with keen +critical glances; his long black locks flow unpowdered down his back. In +contrast to him comes his brilliant and dressy companion, Mr. Edgeworth, +who talks so agreeably. I can imagine little Sabrina, Day's adopted +foundling, of whom so many stories have been told, following shyly at +her guardian's side in her simple dress and childish beauty, and Andre's +young handsome face turned towards Miss Sneyd. So they pass on happy and +contented in each other's company, Honora in the midst, beautiful, +stately, reserved: she too was one of those not destined to be old. + +Miss Seward seems to have loved this friend with a very sincere and +admiring affection, and to have bitterly mourned her early death. Her +letters abound in apostrophes to the lost Honora. But perhaps the poor +Muse expected almost too much from friendship, too much from life. +She expected, as we all do at times, that her friends should be not +themselves but her, that they should lead not their lives but her own. +So much at least one may gather from the various phases of her style +and correspondence, and her complaints of Honora's estrangement and +subsequent coldness. Perhaps, also, Miss Seward's many vagaries and +sentiments may have frozen Honora's sympathies. Miss Seward was all +asterisks and notes of exclamation. Honora seems to have forced feeling +down to its most scrupulous expression. She never lived to be softened +by experience, to suit herself to others by degrees: with great love she +also inspired awe and a sort of surprise. One can imagine her pointing +the moral of the purple jar, as it was told long afterwards by her +stepdaughter, then a little girl playing at her own mother's knee in her +nursery by the river. + +People in the days of shilling postage were better correspondents than +they are now when we have to be content with pennyworths of news and of +affectionate intercourse. Their descriptions and many details bring all +the chief characters vividly before us, and carry us into the hearts and +the pocket-books of the little society at Lichfield as it then was. The +town must have been an agreeable sojourn in those days for people of +some pretension and small performance. The inhabitants of Lichfield seem +actually to have read each other's verses, and having done so to have +taken the trouble to sit down and write out their raptures. They were a +pleasant lively company living round about the old cathedral towers, +meeting in the Close or the adjacent gardens or the hospitable Palace +itself. Here the company would sip tea, talk mild literature of their +own and good criticism at second hand, quoting Dr. Johnson to one +another with the familiarity of townsfolk. From Erasmus Darwin, too, +they must have gained something of vigour and originality. + +With all her absurdities Miss Seward had some real critical power and +appreciation; and some of her lines are very pretty.[1] An 'Ode to the +Sun' is only what might have been expected from this Lichfield Corinne. +Her best known productions are an 'Elegy on Captain Cook,' a 'Monody on +Major Andre,' whom she had known from her early youth; and there is a +poem, 'Louisa,' of which she herself speaks very highly. But even more +than her poetry did she pique herself upon her epistolary correspondence. +It must have been well worth while writing letters when they were not +only prized by the writer and the recipients, but commented on by their +friends in after years. 'Court Dewes, Esq.,' writes, after five years, +for copies of Miss Seward's epistles to Miss Rogers and Miss Weston, of +which the latter begins:--'Soothing and welcome to me, dear Sophia, is +the regret you express for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we +have recently passed together in this ancient and embowered mansion! I +had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which +you vanished. How prone are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the +friendly coercion of employment at the very instant in which it is +clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy!' Then +follows a sprightly attack before which Johnson may have quailed indeed. +'Is the Fe-fa-fum of literature that snuffs afar the fame of his brother +authors, and thirsts for its destruction, to be allowed to gallop +unmolested over the fields of criticism? A few pebbles from the +well-springs of truth and eloquence are all that is wanted to bring the +might of his envy low.' This celebrated letter, which may stand as +a specimen of the whole six volumes, concludes with the following +apostrophe:--'Virtuous friendship, how pure, how sacred are thy +delights! Sophia, thy mind is capable of tasting them in all their +poignance: against how many of life's incidents may that capacity be +considered as a counterpoise!' + + Footnote 1: In a notice of Miss Seward in the _Annual Register_, just + after her death in 1809, the writer, who seems to have known her, + says:--'Conscious of ability, she freely displayed herself in a manner + equally remote from annoyance and affectation.... Her errors arose from + a glowing imagination joined to an excessive sensibility, cherished + instead of repressed by early habits. It is understood that she has left + the whole of her works to Mr. Scott, the northern poet, with a view to + their publication with her life and posthumous pieces.' + +There were constant rubs, which are not to be wondered at, between Miss +Seward and Dr. Darwin, who, though a poet, was also a singularly witty, +downright man, outspoken and humorous. The lady admires his genius, +bitterly resents his sarcasms; of his celebrated work, the 'Botanic +Garden,' she says, 'It is a string of poetic brilliants, and they are of +the first water, but the eye will be apt to want the intersticial black +velvet to give effect to their lustre.' In later days, notwithstanding +her 'elegant language,' as Mr. Charles Darwin calls it, she said several +spiteful things of her old friend, but they seem more prompted by +private pique than malice. + +If Miss Seward was the Minerva and Dr. Darwin the Jupiter of the +Lichfield society, its philosopher was Thomas Day, of whom Miss Seward's +description is so good that I cannot help one more quotation:-- + +'Powder and fine clothes were at that time the appendages of gentlemen; +Mr. Day wore not either. He was tall and stooped in the shoulders, full +made but not corpulent, and in his meditative and melancholy air a +degree of awkwardness and dignity were blended.' She then compares +him with his guest, Mr. Edgeworth. 'Less graceful, less amusing, less +brilliant than Mr. E., but more highly imaginative, more classical, and +a deeper reasoner; strict integrity, energetic friendship, open-handed +generosity, and diffusive charity, greatly overbalanced on the side of +virtue, the tincture of misanthropic gloom and proud contempt of common +life society.' Wright, of Derby, painted a full-length picture of Mr. +Day in 1770. 'Mr. Day looks upward enthusiastically, meditating on +the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand ... a flash of +lightning plays in his hair and illuminates the contents of the volume.' +'Dr. Darwin,' adds Miss Seward, 'sat to Mr. Wright about the same +period--_that_ was a simply contemplative portrait of the most perfect +resemblance.' + + +III. + +Maria must have been three years old this eventful Christmas time when +her father, leaving his wife in Berkshire, came to stay with Mr. Day at +Lichfield, and first made the acquaintance of Miss Seward and her poetic +circle. Mr. Day, who had once already been disappointed in love, and +whose romantic scheme of adopting his foundlings and of educating one of +them to be his wife, has often been described, had brought one of the +maidens to the house he had taken at Lichfield. This was Sabrina, as he +had called her. Lucretia, having been found troublesome, had been sent +off with a dowry to be apprenticed to a milliner. Sabrina was a charming +little girl of thirteen; everybody liked her, especially the friendly +ladies at the Palace, who received her with constant kindness, as they +did Mr. Day himself and his visitor. What Miss Seward thought of Sabrina's +education I do not know. The poor child was to be taught to despise +luxury, to ignore fear, to be superior to pain. She appears, however, to +have been very fond of her benefactor, but to have constantly provoked +him by starting and screaming whenever he fired uncharged pistols at +her skirts, or dropped hot melted sealing-wax on her bare arms. She +is described as lovely and artless, not fond of books, incapable of +understanding scientific problems, or of keeping the imaginary and +terrible secrets with which her guardian used to try her nerves. I do +not know when it first occurred to him that Honora Sneyd was all that +his dreams could have imagined. One day he left Sabrina under many +restrictions, and returning unexpectedly found her wearing some garment +or handkerchief of which he did not approve, and discarded her on the +spot and for ever. Poor Sabrina was evidently not meant to mate and soar +with philosophical eagles. After this episode, she too was despatched, +to board with an old lady, in peace for a time, let us hope, and in +tranquil mediocrity. + +Mr. Edgeworth approved of this arrangement; he had never considered that +Sabrina was suited to his friend. But being taken in due time to call at +the Palace, he was charmed with Miss Seward, and still more by all he +saw of Honora; comparing her, alas! in his mind 'with all other women, +and secretly acknowledging her superiority.' At first, he says, Miss +Seward's brilliance overshadowed Honora, but very soon her merits grew +upon the bystanders. + +Mr. Edgeworth carefully concealed his feelings except from his host, who +was beginning himself to contemplate a marriage with Miss Sneyd. Mr. +Day presently proposed formally in writing for the hand of the lovely +Honora, and Mr. Edgeworth was to take the packet and to bring back the +answer; and being married himself, and out of the running, he appears to +have been unselfishly anxious for his friend's success. In the packet +Mr. Day had written down the conditions to which he should expect his +wife to subscribe. She would have to begin at once by giving up all +luxuries, amenities, and intercourse with the world, and promise to +continue to seclude herself entirely in his company. Miss Sneyd does not +seem to have kept Mr. Edgeworth waiting long while she wrote her answer +decidedly saying that she could not admit the unqualified control of a +husband over all her actions, nor the necessity for 'seclusion from +society to preserve female virtue.' Finding that Honora absolutely +refused to change her way of life, Mr. Day went into a fever, for which +Dr. Darwin bled him. Nor did he recover until another Miss Sneyd, +Elizabeth by name, made her appearance in the Close. + +Mr. Edgeworth, who was of a lively and active disposition, had +introduced archery among the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and he +describes a fine summer evening's entertainment passed in agreeable +sports, followed by dancing and music, in the course of which Honora's +sister, Miss Elizabeth, appeared for the first time on the Lichfield +scene, and immediately joined in the country dance. There is a vivid +description of the two sisters in Mr. Edgeworth's memoirs, of the +beautiful and distinguished Honora, loving science, serious, eager, +reserved; of the more lovely but less graceful Elizabeth, with less of +energy, more of humour and of social gifts than her sister. Elizabeth +Sneyd was, says Edgeworth, struck by Day's eloquence, by his unbounded +generosity, by his scorn of wealth. His educating a young girl for his +wife seemed to her romantic and extraordinary; and she seems to have +thought it possible to yield to the evident admiration she had aroused +in him. But, whether in fun or in seriousness, she represented to him +that he could not with justice decry accomplishments and graces that he +had not acquired. She wished him to go abroad for a time to study to +perfect himself in all that was wanting; on her own part she promised +not to go to Bath, London, or any public place of amusement until his +return, and to read certain books which he recommended. + +Meanwhile Mr. Edgeworth had made no secret of his own feeling for Honora +to Mr. Day, 'who with all the eloquence of virtue and of friendship' +urged him to fly, to accompany him abroad, and to shun dangers he could +not hope to overcome. Edgeworth consented to this proposal, and the two +friends started for Paris, visiting Rousseau on their way. They spent +the winter at Lyons, as it was a place where excellent masters of all +sorts were to be found; and here Mr. Day, with excess of zeal-- + + put himself (says his friend) to every species of torture, + ordinary and extraordinary, to compel his Antigallican limbs, in + spite of their natural rigidity, to dance and fence, and manage + the _great horse_. To perform his promise to Miss E. Sneyd + honourably, he gave up seven or eight hours of the day to these + exercises, for which he had not the slightest taste, and for + which, except horsemanship, he manifested the most sovereign + contempt. It was astonishing to behold the energy with which he + persevered in these pursuits. I have seen him stand between two + boards which reached from the ground higher than his knees: these + boards were adjusted with screws so as barely to permit him to + bend his knees, and to rise up and sink down. By these means Mr. + Huise proposed to force Mr. Day's knees outwards; but screwing was + in vain. He succeeded in torturing his patient; but original + formation and inveterate habit resisted all his endeavours at + personal improvement. I could not help pitying my philosophic + friend, pent up in durance vile for hours together, with his feet + in the stocks, a book in his hand, and contempt in his heart. + +Mr. Edgeworth meanwhile lodged himself 'in excellent and agreeable +apartments,' and occupied himself with engineering. He is certainly +curiously outspoken in his memoirs; and explains that the first Mrs. +Edgeworth, Maria's mother, with many merits, was of a complaining +disposition, and did not make him so happy at home as a woman of a more +lively temper might have succeeded in doing. He was tempted, he said, to +look for happiness elsewhere than in his home. Perhaps domestic affairs +may have been complicated by a warm-hearted but troublesome little son, +who at Day's suggestion had been brought up upon the Rousseau system, +and was in consequence quite unmanageable, and a worry to everybody. +Poor Mrs. Edgeworth's complainings were not to last very long. She +joined her husband at Lyons, and after a time, having a dread of +lying-in abroad, returned home to die in her confinement, leaving four +little children. Maria could remember being taken into her mother's room +to see her for the last time. + +Mr. Edgeworth hurried back to England, and was met by his friend Thomas +Day, who had preceded him, and whose own suit does not seem to have +prospered meanwhile. But though notwithstanding all his efforts Thomas +Day had not been fortunate in securing Elizabeth Sneyd's affections, he +could still feel for his friend. His first words were to tell Edgeworth +that Honora was still free, more beautiful than ever; while Virtue and +Honour commanded it, he had done all he could to divide them; now he +wished to be the first to promote their meeting. The meeting resulted in +an engagement, and Mr. Edgeworth and Miss Sneyd were married within four +months by the benevolent old canon in the Lady Chapel of Lichfield +Cathedral. + +Mrs. Seward wept; Miss Seward, 'notwithstanding some imaginary +dissatisfaction about a bridesmaid,' was really glad of the marriage, we +are told; and the young couple immediately went over to Ireland. + + +IV. + +Though her life was so short, Honora Edgeworth seems to have made the +deepest impression on all those she came across. Over little Maria she +had the greatest influence. There is a pretty description of the child +standing lost in wondering admiration of her stepmother's beauty, as she +watched her soon after her marriage dressing at her toilet-table. Little +Maria's feeling for her stepmother was very deep and real, and the +influence of those few years lasted for a lifetime. Her own exquisite +carefulness she always ascribed to it, and to this example may also be +attributed her habits of order and self-government, her life of reason +and deliberate judgment. + +The seven years of Honora's married life seem to have been very peaceful +and happy. She shared her husband's pursuits, and wished for nothing +outside her own home. She began with him to write those little books +which were afterwards published. It is just a century ago since she and +Mr. Edgeworth planned the early histories of Harry and Lucy and Frank; +while Mr. Day began his 'Sandford and Merton,' which at first was +intended to appear at the same time, though eventually the third part +was not published till 1789. + +As a girl of seventeen Honora Sneyd had once been threatened with +consumption. After seven years of married life the cruel malady again +declared itself; and though Dr. Darwin did all that human resource could +do, and though every tender care surrounded her, the poor young lady +rapidly sank. There is a sad, prim, most affecting letter, addressed to +little Maria by the dying woman shortly before the end; and then comes +that one written by the father, which is to tell her that all is over. + +If Mr. Edgeworth was certainly unfortunate in losing again and again the +happiness of his home, he was more fortunate than most people in being +able to rally from his grief. He does not appear to have been unfaithful +in feeling. Years after, Edgeworth, writing to console Mrs. Day upon her +husband's death, speaks in the most touching way of all he had suffered +when Honora died, and of the struggle he had made to regain his hold of +life. This letter is in curious contrast to that one written at the +time, as he sits by poor Honora's deathbed; it reads strangely cold and +irrelevant in these days when people are not ashamed of feeling or of +describing what they feel. 'Continue, my dear daughter'--he writes to +Maria, who was then thirteen years old--'the desire which you feel of +becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a +character, with such an understanding as yours, necessarily ensue; but +true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation +of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection, and from being +thoroughly convinced of what experience in general teaches too late, +that to be happy we must be good.' + +'Such a letter, written at such a time,' says the kind biographer, 'made +the impression it was intended to convey; and the wish to act up to the +high opinion her father had formed of her character became an exciting +and controlling power over the whole of Maria's future life.' On her +deathbed, Honora urged her husband to marry again, and assured him that +the woman to suit him was her sister Elizabeth. Her influence was so +great upon them both that, although Elizabeth was attached to some one +else, and Mr. Edgeworth believed her to be little suited to himself, +they were presently engaged and married, not without many difficulties. +The result proved how rightly Honora had judged. + +It was to her father that Maria owed the suggestion of her first start +in literature. Immediately after Honora's death he tells her to write a +tale about the length of a 'Spectator,' on the subject of generosity. +'It must be taken from history or romance, must be sent the day +se'nnight after you receive this; and I beg you will take some pains +about it.' A young gentleman from Oxford was also set to work to try his +powers on the same subject, and Mr. William Sneyd, at Lichfield, was to +be judge between the two performances. He gave his verdict for Maria: +'An excellent story and very well written: but where's the generosity?' +This, we are told, became a sort of proverb in the Edgeworth family. + +The little girl meanwhile had been sent to school to a certain Mrs. +Lataffiere, where she was taught to use her fingers, to write a lovely +delicate hand, to work white satin waistcoats for her papa. She was then +removed to a fashionable establishment in Upper Wimpole Street, where, +says her stepmother, 'she underwent all the usual tortures of +backboards, iron collars, and dumb-bells, with the unusual one of being +hung by the neck to draw out the muscles and increase the growth,--a +signal failure in her case.' (Miss Edgeworth was always a very tiny +person.) There is a description given of Maria at this school of hers of +the little maiden absorbed in her book with all the other children at +play, while she sits in her favourite place in front of a carved oak +cabinet, quite unconscious of the presence of the romping girls all +about her. + +Hers was a very interesting character as it appears in the +Memoirs--sincere, intelligent, self-contained, and yet dependent; +methodical, observant. Sometimes as one reads of her in early life one +is reminded of some of the personal characteristics of the writer who +perhaps of all writers least resembles Miss Edgeworth in her art--of +Charlotte Bronte, whose books are essentially of the modern and +passionate school, but whose strangely mixed character seemed rather to +belong to the orderly and neatly ruled existence of Queen Charlotte's +reign. People's lives as they really are don't perhaps vary very much, +but people's lives as they seem to be assuredly change with the fashions. +Miss Edgeworth and Miss Bronte were both Irishwomen, who have often, +with all their outcome, the timidity which arises from quick and +sensitive feeling. But the likeness does not go very deep. Maria, +whose diffidence and timidity were personal, but who had a firm and +unalterable belief in family traditions, may have been saved from some +danger of prejudice and limitation by a most fortunate though trying +illness which affected her eyesight, and which caused her to be removed +from her school with its monstrous elegancies to the care of Mr. Day, +that kindest and sternest of friends. + +This philosopher in love had been bitterly mortified when the lively +Elizabeth Sneyd, instead of welcoming his return, could not conceal her +laughter at his uncouth elegancies, and confessed that, on the whole, +she had liked him better as he was before. He forswore Lichfield and +marriage, and went abroad to forget. He turned his thoughts to politics; +he wrote pamphlets on public subjects and letters upon slavery. His poem +of the 'Dying Negro' had been very much admired. Miss Hannah More speaks +of it in her Memoirs. The subject of slavery was much before people's +minds, and Day's influence had not a little to do with the rising +indignation. + +Among Day's readers and admirers was one person who was destined to have +a most important influence upon his life. By a strange chance his +extraordinary ideal was destined to be realised; and a young lady, good, +accomplished, rich, devoted, who had read his books, and sympathised +with his generous dreams, was ready not only to consent to his strange +conditions, but to give him her whole heart and find her best happiness +in his society and in carrying out his experiments and fancies. She was +Miss Esther Milnes, of Yorkshire, an heiress; and though at first Day +hesitated and could not believe in the reality of her feeling, her +constancy and singleness of mind were not to be resisted, and they were +married at Bath in 1778. We hear of Mr. and Mrs. Day spending the first +winter of their married life at Hampstead, and of Mrs. Day, thickly +shodden, walking with him in a snowstorm on the common, and ascribing +her renewed vigour to her husband's Spartan advice. + +Day and his wife eventually established themselves at Anningsley, near +Chobham. He had insisted upon settling her fortune upon herself, but +Mrs. Day assisted him in every way, and sympathised in his many schemes +and benevolent ventures. When he neglected to make a window to the +dressing-room he built for her, we hear of her uncomplainingly lighting +her candles; to please him she worked as a servant in the house, and all +their large means were bestowed in philanthropic and charitable schemes. +Mr. Edgeworth quotes his friend's reproof to Mrs. Day, who was fond of +music: 'Shall we beguile the time with the strains of a lute while our +fellow-creatures are starving?' 'I am out of pocket every year about +300_l._ by the farm I keep,' Day writes his to his friend Edgeworth. +'The soil I have taken in hand, I am convinced, is one of the most +completely barren in England.' He then goes on to explain his reasons +for what he is about. 'It enables me to employ the poor, and the result +of all my speculations about humanity is that the only way of benefiting +mankind is to give them employment and make them earn their money.' +There is a pretty description of the worthy couple in their home +dispensing help and benefits all round about, draining, planting, +teaching, doctoring--nothing came amiss to them. Their chief friend and +neighbour was Samuel Cobbett, who understood their plans, and +sympathised in their efforts, which, naturally enough, were viewed with +doubt and mistrust by most of the people round about. It was at +Anningsley that Mr. Day finished 'Sandford and Merton,' begun many years +before. His death was very sudden, and was brought about by one of his +own benevolent theories. He used to maintain that kindness alone could +tame animals; and he was killed by a fall from a favourite colt which he +was breaking in. Mrs. Day never recovered the shock. She lived two years +hidden in her home, absolutely inconsolable, and then died and was laid +by her husband's side in the churchyard at Wargrave by the river. + +It was to the care of these worthy people that little Maria was sent +when she was ill, and she was doctored by them both physically and +morally. 'Bishop Berkeley's tar-water was still considered a specific +for all complaints,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'Mr. Day thought it would be +of use to Maria's inflamed eyes, and he used to bring a large tumbler +full of it to her every morning. She dreaded his "Now, Miss Maria, drink +this." But there was, in spite of his stern voice, something of pity and +sympathy in his countenance. His excellent library was open to her, and +he directed her studies. His severe reasoning and uncompromising truth +of mind awakened all her powers, and the questions he put to her and the +working out of the answers, the necessity of perfect accuracy in all her +words, suited the natural truth of her mind; and though such strictness +was not agreeable, she even then perceived its advantage, and in after +life was grateful for it.' + + +V. + +We have seen how Miss Elizabeth Sneyd, who could not make up her mind to +marry Mr. Day notwithstanding all he had gone through for her sake, had +eventually consented to become Mr. Edgeworth's third wife. With this +stepmother for many years to come Maria lived in an affectionate +intimacy, only to be exceeded by that most faithful companionship which +existed for fifty years between her and the lady from whose memoirs I +quote. + +It was about 1782 that Maria went home to live at Edgeworthtown with +her father and his wife, with the many young brothers and sisters. The +family was a large one, and already consisted of her own sisters, of +Honora the daughter of Mrs. Honora, and Lovell her son. To these +succeeded many others of the third generation; and two sisters of Mrs. +Edgeworth's, who also made their home at Edgeworthtown. + + Maria had once before been there, "very young, but she was now old + enough to be struck with the difference then so striking between + Ireland and England." The tones and looks, the melancholy and the + gaiety of the people, were so new and extraordinary to her that + the delineations she long afterwards made of Irish character + probably owe their life and truth to the impression made on her + mind at this time as a stranger. Though it was June when they + landed, there was snow on the roses she ran out to gather, and she + felt altogether in a new and unfamiliar country. + +She herself describes the feelings of the master of a family returning +to an Irish home:-- + + Wherever he turned his eyes, in or out of his home, damp + dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, + finishing--all were wanting. The backyard and even the front + lawn round the windows of the house were filled with loungers, + followers, and petitioners; tenants, undertenants, drivers, + sub-agent and agent were to have audience; and they all had + grievances and secret informations, accusations, reciprocations, + and quarrels each under each interminable. + +Her account of her father's dealings with them is admirable:-- + + I was with him constantly, and I was amused and interested in + seeing how he made his way through their complaints, petitions, + and grievances with decision and despatch, he all the time in good + humour with the people and they delighted with him, though he + often rated them roundly when they stood before him perverse in + litigation, helpless in procrastination, detected in cunning or + convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character almost as soon + as he understood theirs. + +Mr. Edgeworth had in a very remarkable degree that power of ruling and +administering which is one of the rarest of gifts. He seems to have +shown great firmness and good sense in his conduct in the troubled times +in which he lived. He saw to his own affairs, administered justice, put +down middlemen as far as possible, reorganised the letting out of the +estate. Unlike many of his neighbours, he was careful not to sacrifice +the future to present ease of mind and of pocket. He put down rack-rents +and bribes of every sort, and did his best to establish things upon a +firm and lasting basis. + +But if it was not possible even for Mr. Edgeworth to make such things +all they should have been outside the house, the sketch given of the +family life at home is very pleasant. The father lives in perfect +confidence with his children, admitting them to his confidence, +interesting them in his experiments, spending his days with them, +consulting them. There are no reservations; he does his business in the +great sitting-room, surrounded by his family. I have heard it described +as a large ground-floor room, with windows to the garden and with two +columns supporting the further end, by one of which Maria's writing-desk +used to be placed--a desk which her father had devised for her, which +used to be drawn out to the fireside when she worked. Does not Mr. +Edgeworth also mention in one of his letters a picture of Thomas Day +hanging over a sofa against the wall? Books in plenty there were, +we may be sure, and perhaps models of ingenious machines and different +appliances for scientific work. Sir Henry Holland and Mr. Ticknor give a +curious description of Mr. Edgeworth's many ingenious inventions. There +were strange locks to the rooms and telegraphic despatches to the +kitchen; clocks at the one side of the house were wound up by simply +opening certain doors at the other end. It has been remarked that all +Miss Edgeworth's heroes had a smattering of science. Several of her +brothers inherited her father's turn for it. We hear of them raising +steeples and establishing telegraphs in partnership with him. Maria +shared of the family labours and used to help her father in the business +connected with the estate, to assist him, also, to keep the accounts. +She had a special turn for accounts, and she was pleased with her +exquisitely neat columns and by the accuracy with which her figures fell +into their proper places. Long after her father's death this knowledge +and experience enabled her to manage the estate for her eldest stepbrother, +Mr. Lovell Edgeworth. She was able, at a time of great national +difficulty and anxious crisis, to meet a storm in which many a larger +fortune was wrecked. + +But in 1782 she was a young girl only beginning life. Storms were not +yet, and she was putting out her wings in the sunshine. Her father set +her to translate 'Adele et Theodore,' by Madame de Genlis (she had a +great facility for languages, and her French was really remarkable). +Holcroft's version of the book, however, appeared, and the Edgeworth +translation was never completed. Mr. Day wrote a letter to congratulate +Mr. Edgeworth on the occasion. It seemed horrible to Mr. Day that a +woman should appear in print. + +It is possible that the Edgeworth family was no exception to the rule by +which large and clever and animated families are apt to live in a +certain atmosphere of their own. But, notwithstanding this strong family +bias, few people can have seen more of the world, felt its temper more +justly, or appreciated more fully the interesting varieties of people to +be found in it than Maria Edgeworth. Within easy reach of Edgeworthtown +were different agreeable and cultivated houses. There was Pakenham Hall +with Lord Longford for its master; one of its daughters was the future +Duchess of Wellington, 'who was always Kitty Pakenham for her old +friends.' There at Castle Forbes also lived, I take it, more than one +of the well-bred and delightful persons, out of 'Patronage,' and the +'Absentee,' who may, in real life, have borne the names of Lady Moira +and Lady Granard. Besides, there were cousins and relations without +number--Foxes, Ruxtons, marriages and intermarriages; and when the time +came for occasional absences and expeditions from home, the circles seem +to have spread incalculably in every direction. The Edgeworths appear to +have been a genuinely sociable clan, interested in others and certainly +interesting to them. + + +VI. + +The first letter given in the Memoirs from Maria to her favourite aunt +Ruxton is a very sad one, which tells of the early death of her sister +Honora, a beautiful girl of fifteen, the only daughter of Mrs. Honora +Edgeworth, who died of consumption, as her mother had died. This letter, +written in the dry phraseology of the time, is nevertheless full of +feeling, above all for her father who was, as Maria says elsewhere, +ever since she could think or feel, the first object and motive of her +mind. + +Mrs. Edgeworth describes her sister-in-law as follows:-- + + Mrs. Ruxton resembled her brother in the wit and vivacity of her + mind and strong affections; her grace and charm of manner were + such that a gentleman once said of her; 'If I were to see Mrs. + Ruxton in rags as a beggar woman sitting on the doorstep, I should + say "Madam" to her.' 'To write to her Aunt Ruxton was, as long as + she lived, Maria's greatest pleasure while away from her,' says + Mrs. Edgeworth, 'and to be with her was a happiness she enjoyed + with never flagging and supreme delight. Blackcastle was within a + few hours' drive of Edgeworthtown, and to go to Blackcastle was + the holiday of her life.' + +Mrs. Edgeworth tells a story of Maria once staying at Blackcastle and +tearing out the title page of 'Belinda,' so that her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, +read the book without any suspicion of the author. She was so delighted +with it that she insisted on Maria listening to page after page, +exclaiming 'Is not that admirably written?' 'Admirably read, I think,' +said Maria; until her aunt, quite provoked by her faint acquiescence, +says, 'I am sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a +rival author;' at which poor Maria burst into tears, and Mrs. Ruxton +could never bear the book mentioned afterwards. + +It was with Mrs. Ruxton that a little boy, born just after the death +of the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' was left on the occasion of +the departure of the Edgeworth family for Clifton, in 1792, where Mr. +Edgeworth spent a couple of years for the health of one of his sons. In +July the poor little brother dies in Ireland. 'There does not, now that +little Thomas is gone, exist even a person of the same name as Mr. Day,' +says Mr. Edgeworth, who concludes his letter philosophically, as the +father of twenty children may be allowed to do, by expressing a hope +that to his nurses, Mrs. Ruxton and her daughter, 'the remembrance of +their own goodness will soon obliterate the painful impression of his +miserable end.' During their stay at Clifton Richard Edgeworth, the +eldest son, who had been brought up upon Rousseau's system, and who +seems to have found the Old World too restricted a sphere for his +energies, after going to sea and disappearing for some years, suddenly +paid them a visit from South Carolina, where he had settled and married. +The young man was gladly welcomed by them all. He had been long separated +from home, and he eventually died very young in America; but his sister +always clung to him with fond affection, and when he left them to return +home she seems to have felt his departure very much. 'Last Saturday my +poor brother Richard took leave of us to return to America. He has gone +up to London with my father and mother, and is to sail from thence. We +could not part from him without great pain and regret, for he made us +all extremely fond of him.' + +Notwithstanding these melancholy events, Maria Edgeworth seems to have +led a happy busy life all this time among her friends, her relations, +her many interests, her many fancies and facts, making much of the +children, of whom she writes pleasant descriptions to her aunt. +'Charlotte is very engaging and promises to be handsome. Sneyd is, and +promises everything. Henry will, I think, through life always do more +than he promises. Little Honora is a sprightly blue-eyed child at nurse +with a woman who is the picture of health and simplicity. Lovell is +perfectly well. Doctor Darwin has paid him very handsome compliments on +his lines on the Barbarini Vase in the first part of the "Botanic +Garden."' + +Mr. Edgeworth, however, found the time long at Clifton, though, as +usual, he at once improved his opportunities, paid visits to his friends +in London and elsewhere, and renewed many former intimacies and +correspondences. + +Maria also paid a visit to London, but the time had not come for her to +enjoy society, and the extreme shyness of which Mrs. Edgeworth speaks +made it pain to her to be in society in those early days. 'Since I have +been away from home,' she writes, 'I have missed the society of my +father, mother, and sisters more than I can express, and more than +beforehand I could have thought possible. I long to see them all again. +Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand what an +aching void is perfectly.' Very soon we hear of her at home again, +'scratching away at the Freeman family.' Mr. Edgeworth is reading aloud +Gay's 'Trivia' among other things, which she recommends to her aunt. 'I +had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved to read the same +books with them at the same hour than to look at the moon like +Rousseau's famous lovers.' There is another book, a new book for the +children, mentioned about this time, 'Evenings at Home,' which they all +admire immensely. + +Miss Edgeworth was now about twenty-six, at an age when a woman's powers +have fully ripened; a change comes over her style; there is a fulness of +description in her letters and a security of expression which show +maturity. Her habit of writing was now established, and she describes +the constant interest her father took and his share in all she did. Some +of the slighter stories she first wrote upon a slate and read out to her +brothers and sisters; others she sketched for her father's approval, and +arranged and altered as he suggested. The letters for literary ladies +were with the publishers by this time, and these were followed by +various stories and early lessons, portions of 'Parents' Assistant,' +and of popular tales, all of which were sent out in packets and lent +from one member of the family to another before finally reaching Mr. +Johnson, the publisher's, hands. Maria Edgeworth in some of her letters +from Clifton alludes with some indignation to the story of Mrs. Hannah +More's ungrateful _protegee_ Lactilla, the literary milkwoman, whose +poems Hannah More was at such pains to bring before the world, and for +whom, with her kind preface and warm commendations and subscription +list, she was able to obtain the large sum of 500_l._ The ungrateful +Lactilla, who had been starving when Mrs. More found her out, seems to +have lost her head in this sudden prosperity, and to have accused her +benefactress of wishing to steal a portion of the money. Maria Edgeworth +must have been also interested in some family marriages which took place +about this time. Her own sister Anna became engaged to Dr. Beddoes, of +Clifton, whose name appears as prescribing for the authors of various +memoirs of that day. He is 'a man of ability, of a great name in the +scientific world,' says Mr. Edgeworth, who favoured the Doctor's +'declared passion,' as a proposal was then called, and the marriage +accordingly took place on their return to Ireland. Emmeline, another +sister, was soon after married to Mr. King, a surgeon, also living at +Bristol, and Maria was now left the only remaining daughter of the +first marriage, to be good aunt, sister, friend to all the younger +members of the party. She was all this, but she herself expressly states +that her father would never allow her to be turned into a nursery drudge; +her share of the family was limited to one special little boy. Meanwhile +her pen-and-ink children are growing up, and starting out in the world +on their own merits. + +'I beg, dear Sophy,' she writes to her cousin, 'that you will not call +my little stories by the sublime name of my works; I shall else be +ashamed when the little mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and +bound the same size as 'Evenings at Home,' but I am afraid you will +dislike the title. My father had sent the 'Parents' Friend,' but Mr. +Johnson has degraded it into 'Parents' Assistant.' + +In 1797, says Miss Beaufort, who was to be so soon more intimately +connected with the Edgeworth family, Johnson wished to publish more +volumes of the 'Parents' Assistant' on fine paper, with prints, and Mrs. +Ruxton asked me to make some designs for them. These designs seem to +have given great satisfaction to the Edgeworth party, and especially to +a little boy called William, Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest boy, who grew up +to be a fine young man, but who died young of the cruel family complaint. +Mrs. Edgeworth's health was also failing all this time--'Though she +makes epigrams she is far from well,' says Maria; but they, none of them +seem seriously alarmed. Mr. Edgeworth, in the intervals of politics, is +absorbed in a telegraph, which, with the help of his sons, he is trying +to establish. It is one which will act by night as well as by day. + +It was a time of change and stir for Ireland, disaffection growing and +put down for a time by the soldiers; armed bands going about 'defending' +the country and breaking its windows. In 1794 threats of a French +invasion had alarmed everybody, and now again in 1796 came rumours of +every description, and Mr. Edgeworth was very much disappointed that his +proposal for establishing a telegraph across the water to England was +rejected by Government. He also writes to Dr. Darwin that he had offered +himself as a candidate for the county, and been obliged to relinquish +at the last moment; but these minor disappointments were lost in the +trouble which fell upon the household in the following year--the death +of the mother of the family, who sank rapidly and died of consumption in +1797. + + +VII. + +When Mr. Edgeworth himself died (not, as we may be sure, without many +active post-mortem wishes and directions) he left his entertaining +Memoirs half finished, and he desired his daughter Maria in the most +emphatic way to complete them, and to publish them without changing +or altering anything that he had written. People reading them were +surprised by the contents; many blamed Miss Edgeworth for making them +public, not knowing how solemn and binding these dying commands of her +father's had been, says Mrs. Leadbeater, writing at the time to Mrs. +Trench. Many severe and wounding reviews appeared, and this may have +influenced Miss Edgeworth in her own objection to having her Memoirs +published by her family. + +Mr. Edgeworth's life was most extraordinary, comprising in fact three or +four lives in the place of that one usually allowed to most people, some +of us having to be moderately content with a half or three-quarters of +existence. But his versatility of mind was no less remarkable than his +tenacity of purpose and strength of affection, though some measure of +sentiment must have certainly been wanting, and his fourth marriage +must have taken most people by surprise. The writer once expressed her +surprise at the extraordinary influence that Mr. Edgeworth seems to have +had over women and over the many members of his family who continued to +reside in his home after all the various changes which had taken place +there. Lady S---- to whom she spoke is one who has seen more of life +than most of us, who has for years past carried help to the far-away +and mysterious East, but whose natural place is at home in the more +prosperous and unattainable West End. This lady said, 'You do not in the +least understand what my Uncle Edgeworth was. I never knew anything +like him. Brilliant, full of energy and charm, he was something quite +extraordinary and irresistible. If you had known him you would not have +wondered at anything.' + + 'I had in the spring of that year (1797) paid my first visit to + Edgeworthtown with my mother and sister,' writes Miss Beaufort, + afterwards Mrs. Edgeworth, the author of the Memoirs. 'My father + had long before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth + at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of + Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time. + His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr. + Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear + friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 + several times, and at last offered me his hand, which I accepted.' + +Maria, who was at first very much opposed to the match, would not have +been herself the most devoted and faithful of daughters if she had not +eventually agreed to her father's wishes, and, as daughters do, come by +degrees to feel with him and to see with his eyes. The influence of a +father over a daughter where real sympathy exists is one of the very +deepest and strongest that can be imagined. Miss Beaufort herself seems +also to have had some special attraction for Maria. She was about her +own age. She must have been a person of singularly sweet character and +gentle liberality of mind. 'You will come into a new family, but you +will not come as a stranger, dear Miss Beaufort,' writes generous Maria. +'You will not lead a new life, but only continue to lead the life you +have been used to in your own happy cultivated family.' And her +stepmother in a few feeling words describes all that Maria was to her +from the very first when she came as a bride to the home where the +sisters and the children of the lately lost wife were all assembled to +meet her. + +It gives an unpleasant thrill to read of the newly-married lady coming +along to her home in a postchaise, and seeing something odd on the +side of the road. 'Look to the other side; don't look at it,' says Mr. +Edgeworth; and when they had passed he tells his bride that it was the +body of a man hung by the rebels between the shafts of a car. + +The family at Edgeworthtown consisted of two ladies, sisters of the late +Mrs. Edgeworth, who made it their home, and of Maria, the last of the +first family. Lovell, now the eldest son, was away; but there were also +four daughters and three sons at home. + + All agreed in making me feel at once at home and part of the + family; all received me with the most unaffected cordiality; but + from Maria it was something more. She more than fulfilled the + promise of her letter; she made me at once her most intimate + friend, and in every trifle of the day treated me with the most + generous confidence. + +Those times were even more serious than they are now; we hear of Mr. +Bond, the High Sheriff, paying 'a pale visit' to Edgeworthtown. 'I am +going on in the old way, writing stories,' says Maria Edgeworth, writing +in 1798. 'I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with my hands +before me would not make any one of us one degree safer.... Simple +Susan went to Foxhall a few days ago for Lady Anne to carry her to +England.'... 'My father has made our little rooms so nice for us,' she +continues; 'they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh! rebels, oh! +French spare them. We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see +everybody as happy as ourselves.' + +On August 29 we find from Miss Edgeworth's letter to her cousin that +the French have got to Castlebar. 'The Lord-Lieutenant is now at +Athlone, and it is supposed it will be their next object of attack. My +father's corps of yeomanry are extremely attached to him and seem fully +in earnest; but, alas! by some strange negligence, their arms have not +yet arrived from Dublin.... We, who are so near the scene of action, +cannot by any means discover what _number_ of the French actually +landed; some say 800, some 1,800, some 18,000.' + +The family had a narrow escape that day, for two officers, who were in +charge of some ammunition, offered to take them under their protection +as far as Longford. Mr. Edgeworth most fortunately detained them. 'Half +an hour afterwards, as we were quietly sitting in the portico, we heard, +as we thought close to us, the report of a pistol or a clap of thunder +which shook the house. The officer soon after returned almost speechless; +he could hardly explain what had happened. The ammunition cart, +containing nearly three barrels of gunpowder, took fire, and burnt +half-way on the road to Longford. The man who drove the cart was blown +to atoms. Nothing of him could be found. Two of the horses were killed; +others were blown to pieces, and their limbs scattered to a distance. +The head and body of a man were found a hundred and twenty yards from +the spot.... If we had gone with this ammunition cart, we must have +been killed. An hour or two afterwards we were obliged to fly from +Edgeworthtown. The pikemen, 300 in number, were within a mile of the +town; my mother and Charlotte and I rode; passed the trunk of the dead +man, bloody limbs of horses, and two dead horses, by the help of men +who pulled on our steeds--all safely lodged now in Mrs. Fallon's inn.' +'Before we had reached the place where the cart had been blown up,' says +Mrs. Edgeworth, 'Mr. Edgeworth suddenly recollected that he had left on +the table in his study a list of the yeomanry corps which he feared +might endanger the poor fellows and their families if it fell into the +hands of the rebels. He galloped back for it. It was at the hazard of +his life; but the rebels had not yet appeared. He burned the paper, and +rejoined us safely.' The Memoirs give a most interesting and spirited +account of the next few days. The rebels spared Mr. Edgeworth's house, +although they broke into it. After a time the family were told that all +was safe for their return, and the account of their coming home, as it +is given in the second volume of Mr. Edgeworth's life by his daughter, +is a model of style and admirable description. + +In 1799 Mr. Edgeworth came into Parliament for the borough of St. +Johnstown. He was a Unionist by conviction, but he did not think the +times were yet ripe for the Union, and he therefore voted against it. +In some of his letters to Dr. Darwin written at this time, he says that +he was offered 3,000 guineas for his seat for the few remaining weeks of +the session, which, needless to say, he refused, not thinking it well, +as he says, '_to quarrel with myself_.' He also adds that Maria continues +writing for children under the persuasion that she cannot be more +serviceably employed; and he sends (with his usual perspicuity) +affectionate messages to the Doctor's 'good amiable lady and _his giant +brood_.' But this long friendly correspondence was coming to an end. The +Doctor's letters, so quietly humorous and to the point, Mr. Edgeworth's +answers with all their characteristic and lively variety, were nearly at +an end. + +It was in 1800 that Maria had achieved her great success, and published +'Castle Rackrent,' a book--not for children this time--which made +everybody talk who read, and those read who had only talked before. This +work was published anonymously, and so great was its reputation that +some one was at the pains to copy out the whole of the story with +erasures and different signs of authenticity, and assume the authorship. + +One very distinctive mark of Maria Edgeworth's mind is the honest +candour and genuine critical faculty which is hers. Her appreciation of +her own work and that of others is unaffected and really discriminating, +whether it is 'Corinne' or a simple story which she is reading, or +Scott's new novel the 'Pirate,' or one of her own manuscripts which she +estimates justly and reasonably. 'I have read "Corinne" with my father, +and I like it better than he does. In one word, I am dazzled by the +genius, provoked by the absurdities, and in admiration of the taste and +critical judgment of Italian literature displayed throughout the whole +work: but I will not dilate upon it in a letter. I could talk for three +hours to you and my aunt.' + +Elsewhere she speaks with the warmest admiration of a 'Simple Story.' +Jane Austen's books were not yet published; but another writer, for whom +Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter had a very great regard and admiration, +was Mrs. Barbauld, who in all the heavy trials and sorrows of her later +life found no little help and comfort in the friendship and constancy of +Maria Edgeworth. Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld, upon Mr. Edgeworth's invitation, +paid him a visit at Clifton, where he was again staying in 1799, and +where the last Mrs. Edgeworth's eldest child was born. There is a little +anecdote of domestic life at this time in the Memoirs which gives +one a glimpse, not of an authoress, but of a very sympathising and +impressionable person. 'Maria took her little sister to bring down to +her father, but when she had descended a few steps a panic seized her, +and she was afraid to go either backwards or forwards. She sat down on +the stairs afraid she should drop the child, afraid that its head would +come off, and afraid that her father would find her sitting there and +laugh at her, till seeing the footman passing she called "Samuel" in a +terrified voice, and made him walk before her backwards down the stairs +till she safely reached the sitting-room.' For all these younger +children Maria seems to have had a most tender and motherly regard, as +indeed for all her young brothers and sisters of the different families. +Many of them were the heroines of her various stories, and few heroines +are more charming than some of Miss Edgeworth's. Rosamund is said by +some to have been Maria herself, impulsive, warm-hearted, timid, and yet +full of spirit and animation. + +In his last letter to Mr. Edgeworth Dr. Darwin writes kindly of the +authoress, and sends her a message. The letter is dated April 17, 1802. +'I am glad to find you still amuse yourself with mechanism in spite of +the troubles of Ireland;' and the Doctor goes on to ask his friend to +come and pay a visit to the Priory, and describes the pleasant house +with the garden, the ponds full of fish, the deep umbrageous valley, +with the talkative stream running down it, and Derby tower in the +distance. The letter, so kind, so playful in its tone, was never +finished. Dr. Darwin was writing as he was seized with what seemed a +fainting fit, and he died within an hour. Miss Edgeworth writes of the +shock her father felt when the sad news reached him; a shock, she says, +which must in some degree be experienced by every person who reads this +letter of Dr. Darwin's. + +No wonder this generous outspoken man was esteemed in his own time. To +us, in ours, it has been given still more to know the noble son of 'that +giant brood,' whose name will be loved and held in honour as long as +people live to honour nobleness, simplicity, and genius; those things +which give life to life itself. + + +VIII. + +'Calais after a rough passage; Brussels, flat country, tiled houses, +trees and ditches, the window shutters turned out to the street; +fishwives' legs, Dunkirk, and the people looking like wooden toys set in +motion; Bruges and its mingled spires, shipping, and windmills.' These +notes of travel read as if Miss Edgeworth had been writing down only +yesterday a pleasant list of the things which are to be seen two hours +off, to-day no less plainly than a century ago. She jots it all down +from her corner in the postchaise, where she is propped up with a +father, brother, stepmother, and sister for travelling companions, and +a new book to beguile the way. She is charmed with her new book. It is +the story of 'Mademoiselle de Clermont,' by Madame de Genlis, and only +just out. The Edgeworths (with many other English people) rejoiced in +the long-looked-for millennium, which had been signed only the previous +autumn, and they now came abroad to bask in the sunshine of the Continent, +which had been so long denied to our mist-bound islanders. We hear of +the enthusiastic and somewhat premature joy with which this peace was +received by all ranks of people. Not only did the English rush over to +France; foreigners crossed to England, and one of them, an old friend of +Mr. Edgeworth's, had already reached Edgeworthtown, and inspired its +enterprising master with a desire to see those places and things once +more which he heard described. Mr. Edgeworth was anxious also to show +his young wife the treasures in the Louvre, and to help her to develop +her taste for art. He had had many troubles of late, lost friends and +children by death and by marriage. One can imagine that the change must +have been welcome to them all. Besides Maria and Lovell, his eldest +son, he took with him a lovely young daughter, Charlotte Edgeworth, the +daughter of Elizabeth Sneyd. They travelled by Belgium, stopping on +their way at Bruges, at Ghent, and visiting pictures and churches along +the road, as travellers still like to do. Mrs. Edgeworth was, as we have +said, the artistic member of the party. We do not know what modern +rhapsodists would say to Miss Edgeworth's very subdued criticisms and +descriptions of feeling on this occasion. 'It is extremely agreeable to +me,' she writes, 'to see paintings with those who have excellent taste +and no affectation.' And this remark might perhaps be thought even more +to the point now than in the pre-aesthetic age in which it was innocently +made. The travellers are finally landed in Paris in a magnificent hotel +in a fine square, 'formerly Place Louis-Quinze, afterwards Place de la +Revolution, now Place de la Concorde.' And Place de la Concorde it +remains, wars and revolutions notwithstanding, whether lighted by the +flames of the desperate Commune or by the peaceful sunsets which stream +their evening glory across the blood-stained stones. + +The Edgeworths did not come as strangers to Paris; they brought letters +and introductions with them, and bygone associations and friendships +which had only now to be resumed. The well-known Abbe Morellet, their +old acquaintance, 'answered for them,' says Miss Edgeworth, and besides +all this Mr Edgeworth's name was well known in scientific circles. +Breguet, Montgolfier, and others all made him welcome. Lord Henry +Petty, as Maria's friend Lord Lansdowne was then called, was in Paris, +and Rogers the poet, and Kosciusko, cured of his wounds. For the first +time they now made the acquaintance of M. Dumont, a lifelong friend and +correspondent. There were many others--the Delesserts, of the French +Protestant faction, Madame Suard, to whom the romantic Thomas Day had +paid court some thirty years before, and Madame Campan, and Madame +Recamier, and Madame de Remusat, and Madame de Houdetot, now seventy-two +years of age, but Rousseau's Julie still, and Camille Jordan, and the +Chevalier Edelcrantz, from the Court of the King of Sweden. + +The names alone of the Edgeworths' entertainers represent a delightful +and interesting section of the history of the time. One can imagine +that besides all these pleasant and talkative persons the Faubourg +Saint-Germain itself threw open its great swinging doors to the +relations of the Abbe Edgeworth who risked his life to stand by his +master upon the scaffold and to speak those noble warm-hearted words, +the last that Louis ever heard. One can picture the family party as +it must have appeared with its pleasant British looks--the agreeable +'ruddy-faced' father, the gentle Mrs. Edgeworth, who is somewhere +described by her stepdaughter as so orderly, so clean, so freshly +dressed, the child of fifteen, only too beautiful and delicately +lovely, and last of all Maria herself, the nice little unassuming, +Jeannie-Deans-looking body Lord Byron described, small, homely, perhaps, +but with her gift of French, of charming intercourse, her fresh laurels +of authorship (for 'Belinda' was lately published), her bright animation, +her cultivated mind and power of interesting all those in her company, +to say nothing of her own kindling interest in every one and every thing +round about her. + +Her keen delights and vivid descriptions of all these new things, faces, +voices, ideas, are all to be read in some long and most charming letters +to Ireland, which also contain the account of a most eventful crisis +which this Paris journey brought about. The letter is dated March 1803, +and it concludes as follows:-- + + Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will + surprise you as much as it surprised me--by the coming of M. + Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman whom we have mentioned to you, of + superior understanding and mild manners. He came to offer me his + hand and heart! My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his + attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not + had time to have formed any judgment except that I think nothing + could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to + live in Sweden. + +Maria Edgeworth was now about thirty years of age, at a time of life +when people are apt to realise perhaps almost more deeply than in early +youth the influence of feeling, its importance, and strange power over +events. Hitherto there are no records in her memoirs of any sentimental +episodes, but it does not follow that a young lady has not had her own +phase of experience because she does not write it out at length to her +various aunts and correspondents. Miss Edgeworth was not a sentimental +person. She was warmly devoted to her own family, and she seems to have +had a strong idea of her own want of beauty; perhaps her admiration for +her lovely young sisters may have caused this feeling to be exaggerated +by her. But no romantic, lovely heroine could have inspired a deeper or +more touching admiration than this one which M. Edelcrantz felt for his +English friend; the mild and superior Swede seems to have been +thoroughly in earnest. + +So indeed was Miss Edgeworth, but she was not carried away by the +natural impulse of the moment. She realised the many difficulties and +dangers of the unknown; she looked to the future; she turned to her own +home, and with an affection all the more felt because of the trial +to which it was now exposed. The many lessons of self-control and +self-restraint which she had learnt returned with instinctive force. +Sometimes it happens that people miss what is perhaps the best for +the sake of the next best, and we see convenience and old habit and +expediency, and a hundred small and insignificant circumstances, +gathering like some avalanche to divide hearts that might give and +receive very much from each. But sentiment is not the only thing in +life. Other duties, ties, and realities there are; and it is difficult +to judge for others in such matters. Sincerity of heart and truth to +themselves are pretty sure in the end to lead people in the right +direction for their own and for other people's happiness. Only, in the +experience of many women there is the danger that fixed ideas, and other +people's opinion, and the force of custom may limit lives which might +have been complete in greater things, though perhaps less perfect in the +lesser. People in the abstract are sincere enough in wishing fulness of +experience and of happiness to those dearest and nearest to them; but we +are only human beings, and when the time comes and the horrible necessity +for parting approaches, our courage goes, our hearts fail, and we think +we are preaching reason and good sense while it is only a most natural +instinct which leads us to cling to that to which we are used and to +those we love. + +Mr. Edgeworth did not attempt to influence Maria. Mrs. Edgeworth +evidently had some misgivings, and certainly much sympathy for the +Chevalier and for her friend and stepdaughter. She says:-- + + Maria was mistaken as to her own feelings. She refused M. + Edelcrantz, but she felt much more for him than esteem and + admiration; she was extremely in love with him. Mr. Edgeworth left + her to decide for herself; but she saw too plainly what it would + be to us to lose her and what she would feel at parting with us. + She decided rightly for her own future happiness and for that of + her family, but she suffered much at the time and long afterwards. + While we were at Paris I remember that in a shop, where Charlotte + and I were making purchases, Maria sat apart absorbed in thought, + and so deep in reverie that when her father came in and stood + opposite to her she did not see him till he spoke to her, when she + started and burst into tears.... I do not think she repented of + her refusal or regretted her decision. She was well aware that she + could not have made M. Edelcrantz happy, that she would not have + suited his position at the Court of Stockholm, and that her want + of beauty might have diminished his attachment. It was perhaps + better she should think so, for it calmed her mind; but from what + I saw of M. Edelcrantz I think he was a man capable of really + valuing her. I believe he was much attached to her, and deeply + mortified at her refusal. He continued to reside in Sweden after + the abdication of his master, and was always distinguished for his + high character and great abilities. He never married. He was, + except for his very fine eyes, remarkably plain. + +So ends the romance of the romancer. There are, however, many +happinesses in life, as there are many troubles. + +Mrs. Edgeworth tells us that after her stepdaughter's return to +Edgeworthtown she occupied herself with various literary works, +correcting some of her former MSS. for the press, and writing 'Madame de +Fleury,' 'Emilie de Coulanges,' and 'Leonora.' But the high-flown and +romantic style did suit her gift, and she wrote best when her genuine +interest and unaffected glances shone with bright understanding sympathy +upon her immediate surroundings. When we are told that 'Leonora' was +written in the style the Chevalier Edelcrantz preferred, and that the +idea of what he would think of it was present to Maria in every page, we +begin to realise that for us at all events it was a most fortunate thing +that she decided as she did. It would have been a loss indeed to the +world if this kindling and delightful spirit of hers had been choked by +the polite thorns, fictions, and platitudes of an artificial, courtly +life and by the well-ordered narrowness of a limited standard. She never +heard what the Chevalier thought of the book; she never knew that he +ever read it even. It is a satisfaction to hear that he married no one +else, and while she sat writing and not forgetting in the pleasant +library at home, one can imagine the romantic Chevalier in his distant +Court faithful to the sudden and romantic devotion by which he is now +remembered. Romantic and chivalrous friendship seems to belong to his +country and to his countrymen. + + +IX. + +There are one or two other episodes less sentimental than this one +recorded of this visit to Paris, not the least interesting of these +being the account given of a call upon Madame de Genlis. The younger +author from her own standpoint having resolutely turned away from the +voice of the charmer for the sake of that which she is convinced to be +duty and good sense, now somewhat sternly takes the measure of her elder +sister, who has failed in the struggle, who is alone and friendless, and +who has made her fate. + +The story is too long to quote at full length. An isolated page without +its setting loses very much; the previous description of the darkness +and uncertainty through which Maria and her father go wandering, and +asking their way in vain, adds immensely to the sense of the gloom and +isolation which are hiding the close of a long and brilliant career. At +last, after wandering for a long time seeking for Madame de Genlis, the +travellers compel a reluctant porter to show them the staircase in the +Arsenal, where she is living, and to point out the door before he goes +off with the light. + +They wait in darkness. The account of what happens when the door is +opened is so interesting that I cannot refrain from quoting it at +length:-- + + After ringing the bell we presently heard doors open and little + footsteps approaching nigh. The door was opened by a girl of about + Honora's size, holding an ill set-up, wavering candle in her hand, + the light of which fell full upon her face and figure. Her face + was remarkably intelligent--dark sparkling eyes, dark hair curled + in the most fashionable long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and + cheeks. She parted the ringlets to take a full view of us. The + dress of her figure by no means suited the head and elegance of + her attitude. What her nether weeds might be we could not + distinctly see, but they seemed a coarse short petticoat like what + Molly Bristow's children would wear. After surveying us and + hearing our name was Edgeworth she smiled graciously and bid us + follow her, saying, 'Maman est chez elle.' She led the way with + the grace of a young lady who has been taught to dance across two + ante-chambers, miserable-looking; but, miserable or not, no home + in Paris can be without them. The girl, or young lady, for we were + still in doubt which to think her, led into a small room in which + the candles were so well screened by a green tin screen that we + could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black who + rose from her chair by the fireside; as the door opened a great + puff of smoke came from the huge fireplace at the same moment. She + came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could + through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, + writing-desks and inkstands, and birdcages, and a harp. She did + not speak, and as her back was now turned to both fire and candle + I could not see her face or anything but the outline of her form + and her attitude. Her form was the remains of a fine form, her + attitude that of a woman used to a better drawing-room. + + I being foremost, and she silent, was compelled to speak to the + figure in darkness. 'Madame de Genlis nous a fait l'honneur de + nous mander qu'elle voulait bien nous permettre de lui rendre + visite,' said I, or words to that effect, to which she replied by + taking my hand and saying something in which 'charmee' was the + most intelligible word. While she spoke she looked over my + shoulder at my father, whose bow, I presume, told her he was a + gentleman, for she spoke to him immediately as if she wished to + please and seated us in _fauteuils_ near the fire. + + I then had a full view of her face--figure very thin and + melancholy dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips, + two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. + Grier might wear--altogether in appearance of fallen fortunes, + worn-out health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me + there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had + been taught to expect. She seemed to me to be alive only to + literary quarrels and jealousies. The muscles of her face as she + spoke, or as my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily + expressed hatred and anger.... She is now, you know, _devote + acharnee_.... Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to + being attacked that she has defence and apologies ready prepared. + She spoke of Madame de Stael's 'Delphine' with detestation.... + Forgive me, my dear Aunt Mary; you begged me to see her with + favourable eyes, and I went, after seeing her 'Rosiere de + Salency,' with the most favourable disposition, but I could not + like her.... And from time to time I saw, or thought I saw, + through the gloom of her countenance a gleam of coquetry. But my + father judges of her much more favourably than I do. She evidently + took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person + over whose mind he could gain great ascendency. + +The 'young and gay philosopher' at fifty is not unchanged since we knew +him first. Maria adds a postscript: + + I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl who showed + us in is a girl whom she is educating. 'Elle m'appelle maman, mais + elle n'est pas ma fille.' The manner in which this little girl + spoke to Madame de Genlis and looked at her appeared to me more in + her favour than anything else. I went to look at what the child + was writing; she was translating Darwin's _Zoonomia_. + +Every description one reads by Miss Edgeworth of actual things and +people makes one wish that she had written more of them. This one is the +more interesting from the contrast of the two women, both so remarkable +and coming to so different a result in their experience of life. + +This eventful visit to Paris is brought to an eventful termination by +several gendarmes, who appear early one morning in Mr. Edgeworth's +bedroom with orders that he is to get up and to leave Paris immediately. +Mr. Edgeworth had been accused of being brother to the Abbe de Fermont. +When the mitigated circumstances of his being only a first cousin were +put forward by Lord Whitworth, the English Ambassador, the Edgeworths +received permission to return from the suburb to which they had retired; +but private news hurried their departure, and they were only in time to +escape the general blockade and detention of English prisoners. After +little more than a year of peace, once more war was declared on May 20, +1803. Lovell, the eldest son, who was absent at the time and travelling +from Switzerland, was not able to escape in time; nor for twelve years +to come was the young man able to return to his own home and family. + + +X. + +'Belinda,' 'Castle Rackrent,' the 'Parents' Assistant,' the 'Essays on +Practical Education,' had all made their mark. The new series of popular +tales was also welcomed. There were other books on the way; Miss Edgeworth +had several MSS. in hand in various stages, stories to correct for the +press. There was also a long novel, first begun by her father and taken +up and carried on by her. The 'Essays on Practical Education,' which +were first published in 1798, continued to be read. M. Pictet had +translated the book into French the year before; a third edition was +published some ten years later, in 1811, in the preface of which the +authors say, 'It is due to the public to state that twelve years' +additional experience in a numerous family, and careful attention to the +results of other modes of education, have given the authors no reason to +retract what they have advanced in these volumes.' + +In Mr. Edgeworth's Memoirs, however, his daughter states that he +modified his opinions in one or two particulars; allowing more and +more liberty to the children, and at the same time conceding greater +importance to the habit of early though mechanical efforts of memory. +The essays seem in every way in advance of their time; many of the hints +contained in them most certainly apply to the little children of to-day +no less than to their small grandparents. A lady whose own name is high +in the annals of education was telling me that she had been greatly +struck by the resemblance between the Edgeworth system and that of +Froebel's Kindergarten method, which is now gaining more and more ground +in people's estimation, the object of both being not so much to cram +instruction into early youth as to draw out each child's powers of +observation and attention. + +The first series of tales of fashionable life came out in 1809, and +contained among other stories 'Ennui,' one of the most remarkable of +Miss Edgeworth's works. The second series included the 'Absentee,' that +delightful story of which the lesson should be impressed upon us even +more than in the year 1812. The 'Absentee' was at first only an episode +in the longer novel of 'Patronage;' but the public was impatient, so +were the publishers, and fortunately for every one the 'Absentee' was +printed as a separate tale. + +'Patronage' had been begun by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his wife, who was +recovering from illness; it was originally called the 'Fortunes of the +Freeman Family,' and it is a history with a moral. Morals were more +in fashion then than they are now, but this one is obvious without +any commentary upon it. It is tolerably certain that clever, industrious, +well-conducted people will succeed, where idle, scheming, and untrustworthy +persons will eventually fail to get on, even with powerful friends to +back them. But the novel has yet to be written that will prove that, +where merits are more equal, a little patronage is not of a great deal +of use, or that people's positions in life are exactly proportioned to +their merit. Mrs. Barbauld's pretty essay on the 'Inconsistency of Human +Expectations' contains the best possible answer to the problem of what +people's deserts should be. Let us hope that personal advancement is +only one of the many things people try for in life, and that there are +other prizes as well worth having. Miss Edgeworth herself somewhere +speaks with warm admiration of this very essay. Of the novel itself she +says (writing to Mrs. Barbauld), 'It is so vast a subject that it +flounders about in my hands and quite overpowers me.' + +It is in this same letter that Miss Edgeworth mentions another +circumstance which interested her at this time, and which was one of +those events occurring now and again which do equal credit to all +concerned. + + I have written a preface and notes [she says]--for I too would be + an editor--for a little book which a very worthy countrywoman of + mine is going to publish: Mrs. Leadbeater, granddaughter to + Burke's first preceptor. She is poor. She has behaved most + handsomely about some letters of Burke's to her grandfather and + herself. It would have been advantageous to her to publish them; + but, as Mrs. Burke[2]--Heaven knows why--objected, she desisted. + +Mrs. Leadbeater was an Irish Quaker lady whose simple and spirited +annals of Ballitore delighted Carlyle in his later days, and whose +'Cottage Dialogues' greatly struck Mr. Edgeworth at the time; and the +kind Edgeworths, finding her quite unused to public transactions, +exerted themselves in every way to help her. Mr. Edgeworth took the +MSS. out of the hands of an Irish publisher, and, says Maria, 'our +excellent friend's worthy successor in St. Paul's Churchyard has, on +our recommendation, agreed to publish it for her.' Mr. Edgeworth's own +letter to Mrs. Leadbeater gives the history of his good-natured offices +and their satisfactory results. + + Footnote 2: Mrs. Burke, hearing more of the circumstances, afterwards + sent permission; but Mrs. Leadbeater being a Quakeress, and having once + _promised_ not to publish, could not take it upon herself to break her + covenant. + + From R. L. Edgeworth, July 5, 1810. + + Miss Edgeworth desires me as a man of business to write to Mrs. + Leadbeater relative to the publication of 'Cottage Dialogues.' + Miss Edgeworth has written an advertisement, and will, with Mrs. + Leadbeater's permission, write notes for an English edition. The + scheme which I propose is of two parts--to sell the English + copyright to the house of Johnson in London, where we dispose of + our own works, and to publish a very large and cheap edition for + Ireland for schools.... I can probably introduce the book into + many places. Our family takes 300 copies, Lady Longford 50, Dr. + Beaufort 20, &c.... I think Johnson & Co. will give 50_l._ for the + English copyright. + +After the transaction Mr. Edgeworth wrote to the publishers as +follows:-- + + May 31, 1811: Edgeworthtown. + My sixty-eighth birthday. + + My dear Gentlemen,--I have just heard your letter to Mrs. + Leadbeater read by one who dropped tears of pleasure from a sense + of your generous and handsome conduct. I take great pleasure in + speaking of you to the rest of the world as you deserve, and I + cannot refrain from expressing to yourselves the genuine esteem + that I feel for you. I know that this direct praise is scarcely + allowable, but my advanced age and my close connection with you + must be my excuse.--Yours sincerely, + R. L. E. + +Tears seem equivalent to something more than the estimated value of Mrs. +Leadbeater's labours. The charming and well-known Mrs. Trench who was +also Mary Leadbeater's friend, writes warmly praising the notes. 'Miss +Edgeworth's notes on your Dialogues have as much spirit and originality +as if she had never before explored the mine which many thought she had +exhausted.' + +All these are pleasant specimens of the Edgeworth correspondence, which, +however (following the course of most correspondence), does not seem to +have been always equally agreeable. There are some letters (among others +which I have been allowed to see) written by Maria about this time to an +unfortunate young man who seems to have annoyed her greatly by his +excited importunities. + + I thank you [she says] for your friendly zeal in defence of my + powers of pathos and sublimity; but I think it carries you much + too far when it leads you to imagine that I refrain, from + principle or virtue, from displaying powers that I really do not + possess. I assure you that I am not in the least capable of + writing a dithyrambic ode, or any other kind of ode. + + +One is reminded by this suggestion of Jane Austen also declining to +write 'an historical novel illustrative of the august House of Coburg.' + +The young man himself seems to have had some wild aspirations after +authorship, but to have feared criticism. + + The advantage of the art of printing [says his friendly Minerva] + is that the mistakes of individuals in reasoning and writing will + be corrected in time by the public, so that the cause of truth + cannot suffer; and I presume you are too much of a philosopher to + mind the trifling mortification that the detection of a mistake + might occasion. You know that some sensible person has observed + that acknowledging a mistake is saying, only in other words, that + we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday. + +He seems at last to have passed the bounds of reasonable correspondence, +and she writes as follows:-- + + Your last letter, dated in June, was many months before it reached + me. In answer to all your reproaches at my silence I can only + assure you that it was not caused by any change in my opinions or + good wishes; but I do not carry on what is called a regular + correspondence with anybody except with one or two of my very + nearest relations; and it is best to tell the plain truth that my + father particularly dislikes my writing letters, so I write as few + as I possibly can. + + +XI. + +While Maria Edgeworth was at work in her Irish home, successfully +producing her admirable delineations, another woman, born some eight +years later, and living in the quiet Hampshire village where the elm +trees spread so greenly, was also at work, also writing books that +were destined to influence many a generation, but which were meanwhile +waiting unknown, unnoticed. Do we not all know the story of the brown +paper parcel lying unopened for years on the publisher's shelf and +containing Henry Tilney and all his capes, Catherine Morland and all +her romance, and the great John Thorpe himself, uttering those valuable +literary criticisms which Lord Macaulay, writing to his little sisters +at home, used to quote to them? 'Oh, Lord!' says John Thorpe, 'I never +read novels; I have other things to do.' + +A friend reminds us of Miss Austen's own indignant outburst. 'Only a +novel! only "Cecilia," or "Camilla," or "Belinda;" or, in short, only +some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, the +most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its +varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to +the world in the best-chosen language.' If the great historian, who +loved novels himself, had not assured us that we owe Miss Austen and +Miss Edgeworth to the early influence of the author of 'Evelina,' one +might grudge 'Belinda' to such company as that of 'Cecilia' and +'Camilla.' + +'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Northanger Abbey' were published about the +same time as 'Patronage' and 'Tales of Fashionable Life.' Their two +authors illustrate, curiously enough, the difference between the national +characteristics of English and Irish--the breadth, the versatility, the +innate wit and gaiety of an Irish mind; the comparative narrowness of +range of an English nature; where, however, we are more likely to get +humour and its never-failing charm. Long afterwards Jane Austen sent one +of her novels to Miss Edgeworth, who appreciated it indeed, as such a +mind as hers could not fail to do, but it was with no such enthusiasm +as that which she felt for other more ambitious works, with more of +incident, power, knowledge of the world, in the place of that one subtle +quality of humour which for some persons outweighs almost every other. +Something, some indefinite sentiment, tells people where they amalgamate +and with whom they are intellectually akin; and by some such process of +criticism the writer feels that in this little memoir of Miss Edgeworth +she has but sketched the outer likeness of this remarkable woman's life +and genius; and that she has scarcely done justice to very much in Miss +Edgeworth, which so many of the foremost men of her day could +appreciate--a power, a versatility, an interest in subjects for their +own sakes, not for the sakes of those who are interested in them, which +was essentially hers. + +It is always characteristic to watch a writer's progress in the +estimation of critics and reviewers. In 1809 Miss Edgeworth is +moderately and respectfully noticed. 'As a writer of novels and tales +she has a marked peculiarity, that of venturing to dispense common sense +to her readers and to bring them within the precincts of real life. +Without excluding love from her pages she knows how to assign to it its +true limits.' In 1812 the reviewer, more used to hear the author's +praises on all sides, now starts from a higher key, and, as far as truth +to nature and delineation of character are concerned, does not allow a +rival except 'Don Quixote' and 'Gil Blas.' The following criticism is +just and more to the point:-- + + To this power of masterly and minute delineation of character Miss + Edgeworth adds another which has rarely been combined with the + former, that of interweaving the peculiarities of her persons with + the conduct of her piece, and making them, without forgetting + for a moment their personal consistency, conduce to the general + lesson.... Her virtue and vice, though copied exactly from nature, + lead with perfect ease to a moral conclusion, and are finally + punished or rewarded by means which (rare as a retribution in this + world is) appear for the most part neither inconsistent nor + unnatural. + +Then follows a review of 'Vivian' and of the 'Absentee,' which is +perhaps the most admirable of her works. We may all remember how +Macaulay once pronounced that the scene in the 'Absentee' where Lord +Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry was the best thing of the +sort since the opening of the twenty-second book of the 'Odyssey.' + +An article by Lord Dudley, which is still to be quoted, appeared in the +'Quarterly Review' in 1814. What he says of her works applies no less to +Miss Edgeworth's own life than to the principles which she inculcates. + + The old rule was for heroes and heroines to fall suddenly and + irretrievably in love. If they fell in love with the right person + so much the better; if not, it could not be helped, and the novel + ended unhappily. And, above all, it was held quite irregular for + the most reasonable people to make any use whatever of their + reason on the most important occasion of their lives. Miss + Edgeworth has presumed to treat this mighty power with far less + reverence. She has analysed it and found it does not consist of + one simple element, but that several common ingredients enter into + its composition--habit, esteem, a belief of some corresponding + sentiment and of suitableness in the character and circumstances + of the party. She has pronounced that reason, timely and vigorously + applied, is almost a specific, and, following up this bold empirical + line of practice, she has actually produced cases of the entire + cure of persons who had laboured under its operation. Her favourite + qualities are prudence, firmness, temper, and that active, vigilant + good sense which, without checking the course of our kind + affections, exercises its influence at every moment and surveys + deliberately the motives and consequences of every action. Utility + is her object, reason and experience her means. + + +XII. + +This review of Lord Dudley's must have come out after a visit from the +Edgeworth family to London in 1813, which seems to have been a most +brilliant and amusing campaign. 'I know the homage that was paid you,' +wrote Mrs. Barbauld, speaking of the event, 'and I exulted in it for +your sake and for my sex's sake.' Miss Edgeworth was at the height of +her popularity, in good spirits and good health. Mr. Edgeworth was +seventy, but he looked years younger, and was still in undiminished +health and vigour. The party was welcomed, feted, sought after +everywhere. Except that they miss seeing Madame d'Arblay and leave +London before the arrival of Madame de Stael, they seem to have come in +for everything that was brilliant, fashionable, and entertaining. They +breakfast with poets, they sup with marquises, they call upon duchesses +and scientific men. Maria's old friend the Duchess of Wellington is not +less her friend than she was in County Longford. Every one likes them +and comes knocking at their lodging-house door, while Maria upstairs is +writing a letter, standing at a chest of drawers. 'Miss Edgeworth is +delightful,' says Tom Moore, 'not from display, but from repose and +unaffectedness, the least pretending person.' Even Lord Byron writes +warmly of the authoress whose company is so grateful, and who goes her +simple, pleasant way cheerful and bringing kind cheer, and making +friends with the children as well as with the elders. Many of these +children in their lives fully justified her interest, children whom we +in turn have known and looked up to as distinguished greyheaded men. + +Some one asked Miss Edgeworth how she came to understand children as she +did, what charm she used to win them. 'I don't know,' she said kindly; +'I lie down and let them crawl over me.' She was greatly pleased on one +occasion when at a crowded party a little girl suddenly started forth, +looked at her hard, and said, 'I like simple Susan best,' and rushed +away overwhelmed at her own audacity. The same lady who was present on +this occasion asked her a question which we must all be grateful to have +solved for us--how it happened that the respective places of Laura and +Rosamond came to be transposed in 'Patronage,' Laura having been the +wiser elder sister in the 'Purple Jar,' and appearing suddenly as the +younger in the novel. Miss Edgeworth laughed and said that Laura had +been so preternaturally wise and thoughtful as a child, she could never +have kept her up to the mark, and so she thought it best to change the +character altogether. + +During one of her visits to London Miss Edgeworth went to dine at the +house of Mr. Marshall; and his daughter, Lady Monteagle, tells a little +story which gives an impression, and a kind one, of the celebrated +guest. Everything had been prepared in her honour, the lights lighted, +the viands were cooked. Dinner was announced, and some important person +was brought forward to hand Miss Edgeworth down, when it was discovered +that she had vanished. For a moment the company and the dinner were all +at a standstill. She was a small person, but diligent search was made. +Miss Edgeworth had last been seen with the children of the house, and +she was eventually found in the back kitchen, escorted by the said +children, who, having confided their private affairs to her sympathetic +ear, had finally invited her to come with them and see some rabbits +which they were rearing down below. A lady who used to live at Clifton +as a little girl, and to be sometimes prescribed for by Dr. King, was +once brought up as a child to Miss Edgeworth, and she told me how very +much puzzled she felt when the bright old lady, taking her by the +hand, said, 'Well, my dear, how do you do, and how is my excellent +brother-in-law?' One can imagine what a vague sort of being an +'excellent brother-in-law' would seem to a very young child. + +We read in Miss Edgeworth's memoir of her father that Mr. Edgeworth +recovered from his serious illness in 1814 to enjoy a few more years of +life among his friends, his children, and his experiments. His good +humour and good spirits were undiminished, and he used to quote an old +friend's praise of 'the privileges and convenience of old age.' He was +past seventy, but he seems to have continued his own education to the +end of life. 'Without affecting to be young, he exerted himself to +prevent any of his faculties from sinking into the indolent state which +portends their decay,' and his daughter says that he went on learning to +the last, correcting his faults and practising his memory by various +devices, so that it even improved with age. + +In one of his last letters to Mrs. Beaufort, his wife's mother, he +speaks with no little paternal pleasure of his home and his children: +'Such excellent principles, such just views of human life and manners, +such cultivated understandings, such charming tempers make a little +Paradise about me;' while with regard to his daughter's works he adds +concerning the book which was about to appear, 'If Maria's tales fail +with the public, you will hear of my hanging myself.' + +Mr. Edgeworth died in the summer of 1817, at home, surrounded by his +family, grateful, as he says, to Providence for allowing his body to +perish before his mind. + + During the melancholy months which succeeded her father's death + Maria hardly wrote any letters; her sight was in a most alarming + state. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a + knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up + at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote 'Ormond.' She + was now unable to use them without pain.... Edgeworthtown now + belonged to Lovell, the eldest surviving brother, but he wished it + to continue the home of the family. Maria set to work to complete + her father's memoirs and to fulfil his last wish. + +It was not without great hesitation and anxiety that she determined to +finish writing her father's Life. There is a touching appeal in a letter +to her aunt Ruxton. 'I felt the happiness of my life was at stake. +Even if all the rest of the world had praised it and you had been +dissatisfied, how miserable should I have been!' And there is another +sentence written at Bowood, very sad and full of remembrance: 'I feel as +if I had lived a hundred years and was left alive after everybody else.' +The book came out, and many things were said about it, not all praise. +The 'Quarterly' was so spiteful and intolerant that it seemed almost +personal in its violence. It certainly would have been a great loss to +the world had this curious and interesting memoir never been published, +but at the time the absence of certain phrases and expressions of +opinions which Mr. Edgeworth had never specially professed seemed +greatly to offend the reviewers. + +The worst of these attacks Miss Edgeworth never read, and the task +finished, the sad months over, the poor eyes recovered, she crossed to +England. + + +XIII. + +One is glad to hear of her away and at Bowood reviving in good company, +in all senses of the word. Her old friend Lord Henry Petty, now Lord +Lansdowne, was still her friend and full of kindness. Outside the house +spread a green deer-park to rest her tired eyes, within were pleasant +and delightful companions to cheer her soul. Sir Samuel Romilly was +there, of whom she speaks with affectionate admiration, as she does of +her kind host and hostess. 'I much enjoy the sight of Lady Lansdowne's +happiness with her husband and her children. Beauty, fortune, cultivated +society all united--in short, everything that the most reasonable or +unreasonable could wish. She is so amiable and desirous to make others +happy.' + +Miss Edgeworth's power of making other people see things as she does +is very remarkable in all these letters; with a little imagination one +could almost feel as if one might be able to travel back into the +pleasant society in which she lived. When she goes abroad soon after +with her two younger sisters (Fanny, the baby whose head so nearly came +off in her arms, and Harriet, who have both grown up by this time +to be pretty and elegant young ladies), the sisters are made welcome +everywhere. In Paris, as in London, troops of acquaintance came forward +to receive 'Madame Maria et mesdemoiselles ses soeurs,' as they used +to be announced. Most of their old friends were there still; only the +children had grown up and were now new friends to be greeted. It is a +confusion of names in visionary succession, comprising English people no +less than French. Miss Edgeworth notes it all with a sure hand and true +pen; it is as one of the sketch-books of a great painter, where whole +pictures are indicated in a few just lines. Here is a peep at the +Abbaye aux Bois in 1820:-- + + We went to Madame Recamier in her convent, l'Abbaye aux Bois, up + seventy-eight steps. All came in with asthma. Elegant room; she as + elegant as ever. Matthieu de Montmorenci, the ex-Queen of Sweden, + Madame de Boigne, a charming woman, and Madame la Marechale + de ----, a battered beauty, smelling of garlic and screeching in + vain to pass as a wit.... Madame Recamier has no more taken the + veil than I have, and is as little likely to do it. She is quite + beautiful; she dresses herself and her little room with elegant + simplicity, and lives in a convent only because it is cheap and + respectable. + +One sees it all, the convent, the company, the last refrain of former +triumphs, the faithful romantic Matthieu de Montmorenci, and above all +the poor Marechale, who will screech for ever in her garlic. Let us turn +the page, we find another picture from these not long past days:-- + + Breakfast at Camille Jordan's; it was half-past twelve before the + company assembled, and we had an hour's delightful conversation + with Camille Jordan and his wife in her spotless white muslin and + little cap, sitting at her husband's feet as he lay on the sofa; + as clean, as nice, as fresh, as thoughtless of herself as my + mother. At this breakfast we saw three of the most distinguished + of that party who call themselves 'les Doctrinaires' and say they + are more attached to measures than to men. + +Here is another portrait of a portrait and its painter:-- + + Princess Potemkin is a Russian, but she has all the grace, + softness, winning manner of the Polish ladies. Oval face, pale, + with the finest, softest, most expressive chestnut dark eyes. She + has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly, a mixture of + the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is + sentimental without affectation. Madame le Brun is painting her + picture. Madame le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well + as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures, for though + they are speaking she speaks. + +Another visit the sisters paid, which will interest the readers of +Madame de la Rochejaquelin's memoirs of the war in the Vendee:-- + +In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found +Madame de la Rochejaquelin on the sofa; her two daughters at work, one +spinning with a distaff, the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a fat +woman with a broad, round, fair face and a most benevolent expression, +her hair cut short and perfectly grey as seen under her cap; the rest of +the face much too young for such grey locks; and though her face and +bundled form all squashed on to a sofa did not at first promise much of +gentility, you could not hear her speak or hear her for three minutes +without perceiving that she was well-born and well-bred. + +Madame de la Rochejaquelin seems to have confided in Miss Edgeworth. + + 'I am always sorry when any stranger sees me, _parce que je sais + que je detruis toute illusion. Je sais que je devrais avoir l'air + d'une heroine._' She is much better than a heroine; she is + benevolence and truth itself. + +We must not forget the scientific world where Madame Maria was no less +at home than in fashionable literary cliques. The sisters saw something +of Cuvier at Paris; in Switzerland they travelled with the Aragos. They +were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet, +where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame +Auguste de Stael and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one +of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other +influences there are almost stronger than human ones. 'I did not +conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the +beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The +first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life--a +new idea, a new feeling standing alone in the mind.' Miss Edgeworth +presently comes down from her mountain heights and, full of interest, +throws herself into the talk of her friends at Coppet and Geneva, from +which she quotes as it occurs to her. Here is Rocca's indignant speech +to Lord Byron, who was abusing the stupidity of the Genevese. 'Eh! +milord, pourquoi venir vous fourrer parmi ces honnetes gens?' There is +Arago's curious anecdote of Napoleon, who sent for him after the battle +of Waterloo, offering him a large sum of money to accompany him to +America. The Emperor had formed a project for founding a scientific +colony in the New World. Arago was so indignant with him for abandoning +his troops that he would have nothing to say to the plan. A far more +touching story is Dr. Marcet's account of Josephine. 'Poor Josephine! Do +you remember Dr. Marcet's telling us that when he breakfasted with her +she said, pointing to her flowers, "These are my subjects. I try to make +them happy"?' + +Among other expeditions they made a pilgrimage to the home of the +author of a work for which Miss Edgeworth seems to have entertained a +mysterious enthusiasm. The novel was called 'Caroline de Lichfield,' and +was so much admired at the time that Miss Seward mentions a gentleman +who wrote from abroad to propose for the hand of the authoress, and who, +more fortunate than the poor Chevalier Edelcrantz, was not refused by +the lady. Perhaps some similarity of experience may have led Maria +Edgeworth to wish for her acquaintance. Happily the time was past for +Miss Edgeworth to look back; her life was now shaped and moulded in +its own groove; the consideration, the variety, the difficulties of +unmarried life were hers, its agreeable change, its monotony of feeling +and of unselfish happiness, compared with the necessary regularity, the +more personal felicity, the less liberal interests of the married. Her +life seems to have been full to overflowing of practical occupation +and consideration for others. What changing scenes and colours, what a +number of voices, what a crowd of outstretched hands, what interesting +processions of people pass across her path! There is something of her +father's optimism and simplicity of nature in her unceasing brightness +and activity, in her resolutions to improve as time goes on. Her young +brothers and sisters grow to be men and women; with her sisters' +marriages new interests touch her warm heart. Between her and the +brothers of the younger generation who did not turn to her as a sort +of mother there may have been too great a difference of age for that +companionship to continue which often exists between a child and a +grown-up person. So at least one is led to believe was the case as +regards one of them, mentioned in a memoir which has recently appeared. +But to her sisters she could be friend, protector, chaperon, sympathising +companion, and elder sister to the end of her days. We hear of them all +at Bowood again on their way back to Ireland, and then we find them all +at home settling down to the old life, 'Maria reading Sevigne,' of whom +she never tires. + + +XIV. + +One of the prettiest and most sympathetic incidents in Maria Edgeworth's +life was a subsequent expedition to Abbotsford and the pleasure she gave +to its master. They first met in Edinburgh, and her short account +conjures up the whole scene before us:-- + + Ten o'clock struck as I read this note. We were tired, we were not + fit to be seen, but I thought it right to accept Walter Scott's + cordial invitation, 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 + anteroom I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's voice--'The + Miss Edgeworths _come_!' The room was lighted by only one globe + lamp; a circle were singing loud and beating time: all stopped in + an instant. + +Is not this picture complete? Scott himself she describes as 'full of +genius without the slightest effort at expression, delightfully natural, +more lame but not so unwieldy as she expected.' Lady Scott she goes on +to sketch in some half-dozen words--'French, large dark eyes, civil and +good-natured.' + + When we wakened the next morning the whole scene of the preceding + night seemed like a dream [she continues]; however at twelve came + the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott at the Parliament + House, who came out of the Courts with joyous face, as if he had + nothing on earth to do or to think of but to show us Edinburgh. + +In her quick, discriminating way she looks round and notes them all one +by one. + + Mr. Lockhart is reserved and silent, but he appears to have much + sensibility under this reserve. Mrs. Lockhart is very pleasing--a + slight, elegant figure and graceful simplicity of manner, perfectly + natural. There is something most winning in her affectionate manner + to her father. He dotes upon her. + +A serious illness intervened for poor Maria before she and her devoted +young nurses could reach Abbotsford itself. There she began to recover, +and Lady Scott watched over her and prescribed for her with the most +tender care and kindness. 'Lady Scott felt the attention and respect +Maria showed to her, perceiving that she valued her and treated her as a +friend,' says Mrs. Edgeworth; 'not, as too many of Sir Walter's guests +did, with neglect.' This is Miss Edgeworth's description of the +Abbotsford family life:-- + + It is quite delightful to see Scott and his family in the country; + breakfast, dinner, supper, the same flow of kindness, fondness, + and genius, far, far surpassing his works, his letters, and all my + hopes and imagination. His Castle of Abbotsford is magnificent, + but I forget it in thinking of him. + +The return visit, when Scotland visited Ireland, was no less successful. +Mrs. Edgeworth writes:-- + +Maria and my daughter Harriet accompanied Sir Walter and Miss Scott, Mr. +Lockhart, and Captain and Mrs. Scott to Killarney. They travelled in an +open caleche of Sir Walter's.... + +Sir Walter was, like Maria, never put out by discomforts on a journey, +but always ready to make the best of everything and to find amusement in +every incident. He was delighted with Maria's eagerness for everybody's +comfort, and diverted himself with her admiration of a green +baize-covered door at the inn at Killarney. 'Miss Edgeworth, you are so +mightily pleased with that door, I think you will carry it away with you +to Edgeworthtown.' + +Miss Edgeworth's friendships were certainly very remarkable, and comprise +almost all the interesting people of her day in France as well as in +England.[3] She was liked, trusted, surrounded, and she appears to have +had the art of winning to her all the great men. We know the Duke of +Wellington addressed verses to her; there are pleasant intimations of +her acquaintance with Sir James Mackintosh, Romilly, Moore, and Rogers, +and that most delightful of human beings, Sydney Smith, whom she +thoroughly appreciated and admired. Describing her brother Frank, she +says, somewhere, 'I am much inclined to think that he has a natural +genius for happiness; in other words, as Sydney Smith would say, _great +hereditary constitutional joy_.' 'To attempt to Boswell Sydney Smith's +conversation would be to outboswell Boswell,' she writes in another +letter home; but in Lady Holland's memoir of her father there is a +pleasant little account of Miss Edgeworth herself, 'delightful, clever, +and sensible,' listening to Sydney Smith. She seems to have gone the +round of his parish with him while he scolded, doctored, joked his poor +people according to their needs. + + Footnote 3: A touching illustration of her abiding influence is to be + found cited in an article in the _Daily News_ of September 7, 1883, + published as these proofs are going to press, by 'One Who Knew' Ivan + Turgueneff, that great Russian whom we might almost claim if love and + admiration gave one a right to count citizenship with the great men of + our time. An elder brother of his knew Miss Edgeworth, perhaps at + Abbotsford, for he visited Walter Scott there, or at Coppet with Madame + de Stael. This man, wise and cultivated in all European literature, + 'came to the conclusion that Maria Edgeworth had struck on a vein from + which most of the great novelists of the future would exclusively work. + She took the world as she found it, and selected from it the materials + that she thought would be interesting to write about, in a clear and + natural style. It was Ivan Turgueneff himself who told me this, says the + writer of the article, and he modestly said that he was an unconscious + disciple of Miss Edgeworth in setting out on his literary career. He had + not the advantage of knowing English; but as a youth he used to hear his + brother translate to visitors at his country house in the Uralian Hills + passages from _Irish Tales and Sketches_, which he thought superior to + her three-volume novels. Turgueneff also said to me, "It is possible, nay + probable, that if Maria Edgeworth had not written about the poor Irish + of the co. Longford and the squires and squirees, that it would not have + occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the + classes parallel to them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing out the + beauties of her unambitious works, to call attention to their extreme + simplicity and to the distinction with which she treated the simple ones + of the earth."' + +'During her visit she saw much of my father,' says Lady Holland; 'and +her talents as well as her thorough knowledge and love of Ireland made +her conversation peculiarly agreeable to him.' On her side Maria writes +warmly desiring that some Irish bishopric might be forced upon Sydney +Smith, which 'his own sense of natural charity and humanity would forbid +him refuse.... In the twinkling of an eye--such an eye as his--he would +see all our manifold grievances up and down the country. One word, one +_bon mot_ of his, would do more for us, I guess, than ----'s four +hundred pages and all the like with which we have been bored.' + +The two knew how to make good company for one another; the +quiet-Jeanie-Deans body could listen as well as give out. We are told +that it was not so much that she said brilliant things, but that a +general perfume of wit ran through her conversation, and she most +certainly had the gift of appreciating the good things of others. +Whether in that 'scene of simplicity, truth, and nature' a London rout, +or in some quiet Hampstead parlour talking to an old friend, or in her +own home among books and relations and interests of every sort, Miss +Edgeworth seems to have been constantly the same, with presence of mind +and presence of heart too, ready to respond to everything. I think her +warmth of heart shines even brighter than her wit at times. 'I could not +bear the idea that you suspected me of being so weak, so vain, so +senseless,' she once wrote to Mrs. Barbauld, 'as to have my head turned +by a little fashionable flattery.' If her head was not turned it must +have been because her spirit was stout enough to withstand the world's +almost irresistible influence. + +Not only the great men but the women too are among her friends. She +writes prettily of Mrs. Somerville, with her smiling eyes and pink +colour, her soft voice, strong, well-bred Scotch accent, timid, not +disqualifying timid, but naturally modest. 'While her head is among the +stars her feet are firm upon the earth.' She is 'delighted' with a +criticism of Madame de Stael's upon herself, in a letter to M. Dumont. +'Vraiment elle etait digne de l'enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans +votre triste utilite.' It is difficult to understand why this should +have given Miss Edgeworth so much pleasure; and here finally is a little +vision conjured up for us of her meeting with Mrs. Fry among her +prisoners:-- + + Little doors, and thick doors, and doors of all sorts were + unbolted and unlocked, and on we went through dreary but clean + passages till we came to a room where rows of empty benches + fronted us, a table on which lay a large Bible. Several ladies and + gentlemen entered, took their seats on benches at either side of + the table in silence. Enter Mrs. Fry in a drab-coloured silk cloak + and a plain, borderless Quaker cap, a most benevolent countenance, + calm, benign. 'I must make an inquiry. Is Maria Edgeworth here?' + And when I went forward she bade me come and sit beside her. Her + first smile as she looked upon me I can never forget. The + prisoners came in in an orderly manner and ranged themselves upon + the benches. + + +XV. + +'In this my sixtieth year, to commence in a few days,' says Miss +Edgeworth, writing to her cousin Margaret Ruxton, 'I am resolved to make +great progress.' 'Rosamond at sixty,' says Miss Ruxton, touched and +amused. Her resolutions were not idle. + +'The universal difficulties of the money market in the year 1826 were +felt by us,' says Mrs. Edgeworth in her memoir, 'and Maria, who since +her father's death had given up rent-receiving, now resumed it; +undertook the management of her brother Lovell's affairs, which she +conducted with consummate skill and perseverance, and weathered the +storm that swamped so many in this financial crisis.' We also hear of an +opportune windfall in the shape of some valuable diamonds, which an old +lady, a distant relation, left in her will to Miss Edgeworth, who sold +them and built a market-house for Edgeworthtown with the proceeds. + + _April_ 8, 1827.--I am quite well and in high good humour and good + spirits, in consequence of having received the whole of Lovell's + half-year's rents in full, with pleasure to the tenants and without + the least fatigue or anxiety to myself. + +It was about this time her novel of 'Helen' was written, the last of her +books, the only one that her father had not revised. There is a vivid +account given by one of her brothers of the family assembled in the +library to hear the manuscript read out, of their anxiety and their +pleasure as they realised how good it was, how spirited, how well equal +to her standard. Tickner, in his account of Miss Edgeworth, says that +the talk of Lady Davenant in 'Helen' is very like Miss Edgeworth's own +manner. His visit to Edgeworthtown was not long after the publication of +the book. His description, if only for her mention of her father, is +worth quoting:-- + + As we drove to the door Miss Edgeworth came out to meet us, a + small, short, spare body of about sixty-seven, with extremely + frank and kind manners, but who always looks straight into your + face with a pair of mild deep grey eyes whenever she speaks to + you. With characteristic directness she did not take us into the + library until she had told us that we should find there Mrs. + Alison, of Edinburgh, and her aunt, Miss Sneyd, a person very old + and infirm, and that the only other persons constituting the + family were Mrs. Edgeworth, Miss Honora Edgeworth, and Dr. Alison, + a physician.... Miss Edgeworth's conversation was always ready, as + full of vivacity and variety as I can imagine.... She was disposed + to defend everybody, even Lady Morgan, as far as she could. And + in her intercourse with her family she was quite delightful, + referring constantly to Mrs. Edgeworth, who seems to be the + authority in all matters of fact, and most kindly repeating + jokes to her infirm aunt, Miss Sneyd, who cannot hear them, + and who seems to have for her the most unbounded affection and + admiration.... About herself as an author she seems to have no + reserve or secrets. She spoke with great kindness and pleasure + of a letter I brought to her from Mr. Peabody, explaining some + passage in his review of 'Helen' which had troubled her from its + allusion to her father. 'But,' she added, 'no one can know what + I owe to my father. He advised and directed me in everything. I + never could have done anything without him. There are things I + cannot be mistaken about, though other people can. I know them.' + As she said this the tears stood in her eyes, and her whole person + was moved.... It was, therefore, something of a trial to talk so + brilliantly and variously as she did from nine in the morning to + past eleven at night. + +She was unfeignedly glad to see good company. Here is her account of +another visitor:-- + + _Sept_. 26.--The day before yesterday we were amusing ourselves by + telling who among literary and scientific people we should wish + to come here next. Francis said Coleridge; I said Herschell. + Yesterday morning, as I was returning from my morning walk at + half-past eight, I saw a bonnetless maid in the walk, with a + letter in her hand, in search of me. When I opened the letter I + found it was from Mr. Herschell, and that he was waiting for an + answer at Mr. Briggs's inn. I have seldom been so agreeably + surprised, and now that he is gone and that he has spent + twenty-four hours here, if the fairy were to ask me the question + again I should still more eagerly say, 'Mr. Herschell, ma'am, if + you please.' + +She still came over to England from time to time, visiting at her +sisters' houses. Honora was now Lady Beaufort; another sister, Fanny, +the object of her closest and most tender affection, was Mrs. Lestock +Wilson. Age brought no change in her mode of life. Time passes with +tranquil steps, for her not hasting unduly. 'I am perfect,' she writes +at the age of seventy-three to her stepmother of seventy-two, 'so no +more about it, and thank you from my heart and every component part of +my precious self for all the care, and successful care, you have taken +of me, your old petted nurseling.' + +Alas! it is sad to realise that quite late in life fresh sorrows fell +upon this warm-hearted woman. Troubles gather; young sisters fade away +in their beauty and happiness. But in sad times and good times the old +home is still unchanged, and remains for those that are left to turn to +for shelter, for help, and consolation. To the very last Miss Edgeworth +kept up her reading, her correspondence, her energy. All along we have +heard of her active habits--out in the early morning in her garden, +coming in to the nine o'clock breakfast with her hands full of roses, +sitting by and talking and reading her letters while the others ate. Her +last letter to her old friend Sir Henry Holland was after reading the +first volume of Lord Macaulay's History. Sir Henry took the letter to +Lord Macaulay, who was so much struck by its discrimination that he +asked leave to keep it. + +She was now eighty-two years of age, and we find her laughing kindly +at the anxiety of her sister and brother-in-law, who had heard of her +climbing a ladder to wind up an old clock at Edgeworthtown. 'I am +heartily obliged and delighted by your being such a goose and Richard +such a gander,' she says 'as to be frightened out of your wits by my +climbing a ladder to take off the top of the clock.' She had not felt +that there was anything to fear as once again she set the time that was +so nearly at an end for her. Her share of life's hours had been well +spent and well enjoyed; with a peaceful and steady hand and tranquil +heart she might mark the dial for others whose hours were still to come. + +Mrs. Edgeworth's own words tell all that remains to be told. + + It was on the morning of May 22, 1849, that she was taken suddenly + ill with pain in the region of the heart, and after a few hours + breathed her last in my arms. She had always wished to die + quickly, at home, and that I should be with her. All her wishes + were fulfilled. She was gone, and nothing like her again can we + see in this world. + + + + +_MRS OPIE._ + + 1769-1853. + + 'Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to + gentleness.'--_As You Like It_. + + +I. + +It is not very long since some articles appeared in the 'Cornhill +Magazine' which were begun under the influence of certain ancient +bookshelves with so pleasant a flavour of the old world that it seemed +at the time as if yesterday not to-day was the all-important hour, and +one gladly submitted to the subtle charm of the past--its silent veils, +its quiet incantations of dust and healing cobweb. The phase is but a +passing one with most of us, and we must soon feel that to dwell at +length upon each one of the pretty old fancies and folios of the writers +and explorers who were born towards the end of the last century would be +an impossible affectation; and yet a postscript seems wanting to the +sketches which have already appeared of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss +Edgeworth, and the names of their contemporaries should not be quite +passed over. + +In a hundred charming types and prints and portraits we recognise the +well-known names as they used to appear in the garb of life. Grand +ladies in broad loops and feathers, or graceful and charming as nymphs +in muslin folds, with hanging clouds of hair; or again, in modest +coiffes such as dear Jane Austen loved and wore even in her youth. +Hannah More only took to coiffes and wimples in later life; in early +days she was fond of splendour, and, as we read, had herself painted in +emerald earrings. How many others besides her are there to admire! Who +does not know the prim, sweet, amply frilled portraits of Mrs. Trimmer +and Joanna Baillie? Only yesterday a friend showed me a sprightly, +dark-eyed miniature of Felicia Hemans. Perhaps most beautiful among all +her sister muses smiles the lovely head of Amelia Opie, as she was +represented by her husband with luxuriant chestnut hair piled up Romney +fashion in careless loops, with the radiant yet dreaming eyes which are +an inheritance for some members of her family. + +The authoresses of that day had the pre-eminence in looks, in gracious +dress and bearing; but they were rather literary women than anything +else, and had but little in common with the noble and brilliant writers +who were to follow them in our own more natural and outspoken times; +whose wise, sweet, passionate voices are already passing away into the +distance; of whom so few remain to us.[4] The secret of being real is no +very profound one, and yet how rare it is, how long it was before the +readers and writers of this century found it out! It is like the secret +of singing in perfect tune, or of playing the violin as Joachim can play +upon it. In literature, as in music, there is at times a certain +indescribable tone of absolute reality which carries the reader away and +for the moment absorbs him into the mind of the writer. Some +metempsychosis takes place. It is no longer a man or a woman turning the +pages of a book, it is a human being suddenly absorbed by the book +itself, living the very life which it records, breathing the spirit and +soul of the writer. Such books are events, not books to us, new +conditions of existence, new selves suddenly revealed through the +experience of other more vivid personalities than our own. The actual +experience of other lives is not for us, but this link of simple reality +of feeling is one all independent of events; it is like the miracle of +the loaves and fishes repeated and multiplied--one man comes with his +fishes and lo! the multitude is filled. + + Footnote 4: And yet as I write I remember one indeed who is among us, + whose portrait a Reynolds or an Opie might have been glad to paint for + the generations who will love her works. + +But this simple discovery, that of reality, that of speaking from the +heart, was one of the last to be made by women. In France Madame de +Sevigne and Madame de La Fayette were not afraid to be themselves, but +in England the majority of authoresses kept their readers carefully at +pen's length, and seemed for the most part to be so conscious of their +surprising achievements in the way of literature as never to forget for +a single instant that they were in print. With the exception of Jane +Austen and Maria Edgeworth, the women writers of the early part of this +century were, as I have just said, rather literary women than actual +creators of literature. It is still a mystery how they attained to their +great successes. Frances Burney charms great Burke and mighty Johnson +and wise Macaulay in later times. Mrs. Opie draws compliments from +Mackintosh, and compliments from the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, and Sydney +Smith, and above all tears from Walter Scott. + +Perhaps many of the flattering things addressed to Mrs. Opie may have +said not less for her own charm and sweetness of nature than for the +merit of her unassuming productions; she must have been a bright, merry, +and fascinating person, and compliments were certainly more in her line +than the tributes of tears which she records. + +The authoresses of heroines are often more interesting than the heroines +themselves, and Amelia Opie was certainly no exception to this somewhat +general statement. A pleasant, sprightly authoress, beaming bright +glances on her friends, confident, intelligent, full of interest in +life, carried along in turn by one and by another influence, she comes +before us a young and charming figure, with all the spires of Norwich +for a background, and the sound of its bells, and the stir of its +assizes, as she issues from her peaceful home in her father's tranquil +old house, where the good physician lives widowed, tending his poor and +his sick, and devotedly spoiling his only child. + + +II. + +Amelia Opie was born in 1769 in the old city of Norwich, within reach of +the invigorating breezes of the great North Sea. Her youth must have +been somewhat solitary; she was the only child of a kind and cultivated +physician, Doctor James Alderson, whose younger brother, a barrister, +also living in Norwich, became the father of Baron Alderson. Her mother +died in her early youth. From her father, however, little Amelia seems +to have had the love and indulgence of over half a century, a tender and +admiring love which she returned with all her heart's devotion. She was +the pride and darling of his home, and throughout her long life her +father's approbation was the one chief motive of her existence. Spoiling +is a vexed question, but as a rule people get so much stern justice from +all the rest of the world that it seems well that their parents should +love and comfort them in youth for the many disgraces and difficulties +yet to come. + +Her mother is described as a delicate, high-minded woman, 'somewhat of a +disciplinarian,' says Mrs. Opie's excellent biographer, Miss Brightwell, +but she died too soon to carry her theories into practice. Miss Brightwell +suggests that 'Mrs. Opie might have been more demure and decorous had +her mother lived, but perhaps less charming.' There are some verses +addressed to her mother in Mrs. Opie's papers in which it must be +confessed that the remembrance of her admonition plays a most important +part-- + + Hark! clearer still thy voice I hear. + Again reproof in accents mild, + Seems whispering in my conscious ear, + +and so on. + +Some of Mrs. Alderson's attempts at discipline seemed unusual and +experimental; the little girl was timid, afraid of black people, of +black beetles, and of human skeletons. She was given the skeleton to +play with, and the beetles to hold in her hand. One feels more sympathy +with the way in which she was gently reconciled to the poor negro with +the frightening black face--by being told the story of his wrongs. But +with the poor mother's untimely death all this maternal supervision +came to an end. 'Amelia, your mother is gone; may you never have reason +to blush when you remember her!' her father said as he clasped his +little orphan to his heart; and all her life long Amelia remembered +those words. + +There is a pretty reminiscence of her childhood from a beginning of the +memoir which was never written:--'One of my earliest recollections is of +gazing on the bright blue sky as I lay in my little bed before my hour +of rising came, listening with delighted attention to the ringing of a +peal of bells. I had heard that heaven was beyond those blue skies, and +I had been taught that _there_ was the home of the good, and I fancied +that those sweet bells were ringing in heaven.' The bells were ringing +for the Norwich Assizes, which played an important part in our little +heroine's life, and which must have been associated with many of her +early memories. + +The little girl seems to have been allowed more liberty than is usually +given to children. 'As soon as I was old enough to enjoy a procession,' +she says, 'I was taken to see the Judges come in. Youthful pages in +pretty dresses ran by the side of the High Sheriff's carriage, in which +the Judges sat, while the coaches drove slowly and with a solemnity +becoming the high and awful office of those whom they contained.... With +reverence ever did I behold the Judges' wigs, the scarlet robes they +wore, and even the white wand of the Sheriff.' + +There is a description which in after years might have made a pretty +picture for her husband's pencil of the little maiden wandering into the +court one day, and called by a kind old Judge to sit beside him upon the +bench. She goes on to recount how next day she was there again; and when +some attendant of the court wanted her to leave the place, saying not +unnaturally, 'Go, Miss, this is no place for you; be advised,' the Judge +again interfered, and ordered the enterprising little girl to be brought +to her old place upon the cushion by his side. The story gives one a +curious impression of a child's life and education. She seems to have +come and gone alone, capable, intelligent, unabashed, interested in all +the events and humours of the place. + +Children have among other things a very vivid sense of citizenship +and public spirit, somewhat put out in later life by the rush of +personal feeling, but in childhood the personal events are so few and +so irresponsible that public affairs become an actual part of life and +of experience. While their elders are still discussing the news and +weighing its importance, it is already a part of the children's life. +Little Amelia Alderson must have been a happy child, free, affectionate, +independent; grateful, as a child should be, towards those who befriended +her. One of her teachers was a French dancing-master called Christian, +for whom she had a warm regard. She relates that long afterwards she +came with her husband and a friend to visit the Dutch church at Norwich. +'The two gentlemen were engaged in looking round and making their +observations, and I, finding myself somewhat cold, began to hop and +dance upon the spot where I stood, when my eyes chanced to fall upon +the pavement below, and I started at beholding the well-known name of +Christian graved upon the slab; I stopped in dismay, shocked to find +that I had actually been dancing upon the grave of my old master--he who +first taught me to dance.' + + +III. + +After her mother's death, Amelia Alderson, who was barely fifteen at the +time, began to take her place in society. She kept her father's house, +received his friends, made his home bright with her presence. The lawyers +came round in due season: Sir James Mackintosh came, the town was full +of life, of talk, of music, and poetry, and prejudice. + +Harriet Martineau, in her memoir of Mrs. Opie, gives a delightful and +humorous account of the Norwich of that day--rivalling Lichfield and its +literary coterie, only with less sentimentality and some additional +peculiarities of its own. One can almost see the Tory gentlemen, as Miss +Martineau describes them, setting a watch upon the Cathedral, lest the +Dissenters should burn it as a beacon for Boney; whereas good Bishop +Bathurst, with more faith in human nature, goes on resolutely touching +his hat to the leading Nonconformists. 'The French taught in schools,' +says Miss Martineau, 'was found to be unintelligible when the peace +at length arrived, taught as it was by an aged powdered Monsieur +and an elderly flowered Madame, who had taught their pupils' Norfolk +pronunciation. But it was beginning to be known,' she continues, 'that +there was such a language as German, and in due time there was a young +man who had actually been in Germany, and was translating "Nathan the +Wise." When William Taylor became eminent as almost the only German +scholar in England, old Norwich was very proud and grew, to say the +truth, excessively conceited. She was (and she might be) proud of her +Sayers, she boasted of her intellectual supper-parties, and finally +called herself the "Athens of England."' + +In this wholesome, cheerful Athens, blown by the invigorating Northern +breezes, little Amelia bloomed and developed into a lovely and happy +girl. She was fortunate, indeed, in her friends. One near at hand must +have been an invaluable adviser for a motherless, impressionable girl. +Mrs. John Taylor was so loved that she is still remembered. Mrs. Barbauld +prized and valued her affection beyond all others. 'I know the value +of your letters,' says Sir James Mackintosh, writing from Bombay; +'they rouse my mind on subjects which interest us in common--children, +literature, and life. I ought to be made permanently better by +contemplating a mind like yours.' And he still has Mrs. Taylor in +his mind when he concludes with a little disquisition on the contrast +between the barren sensibility, the indolent folly of some, the useful +kindness of others, 'the industrious benevolence which requires a +vigorous understanding and a decisive character.' + +Some of Mrs. Opie's family have shown me a photograph of her in her +Quaker dress, in old age, dim, and changed, and sunken, from which it is +very difficult to realise all the brightness, and life, and animation +which must have belonged to the earlier part of her life. The delightful +portrait of her engraved in the 'Mirror' shows the animated beaming +countenance, the soft expressive eyes, the abundant auburn waves of +hair, of which we read. The picture is more like some charming allegorical +being than a real live young lady--some Belinda of the 'Rape of the +Lock' (and one would as soon have expected Belinda to turn Quakeress). +Music, poetry, dancing, elves, graces and flirtations, cupids, seem to +attend her steps. She delights in admiration, friendship, companionship, +and gaiety, and yet with it all we realise a warm-hearted sincerity, and +appreciation of good and high-minded things, a truth of feeling passing +out of the realms of fancy altogether into one of the best realities of +life. She had a thousand links with life: she was musical, artistic; she +was literary; she had a certain amount of social influence; she had a +voice, a harp, a charming person, mind and manner. Admiring monarchs in +later days applauded her performance; devoted subjects were her friends +and correspondents, and her sphere in due time extended beyond the +approving Norwich-Athenian coterie of old friends who had known her from +her childhood, to London itself, where she seems to have been made +welcome by many, and to have captivated more than her share of victims. + +In some letters of hers written to Mrs. Taylor and quoted by her +biographer we get glimpses of some of these early experiences. The +bright and happy excitable girl comes up from Norwich to London to be +made more happy still, and more satisfied with the delight of life as +it unfolds. Besides her fancy for lawyers, literary people had a great +attraction for Amelia, and Godwin seems to have played an important part +in her earlier experience. A saying of Mrs. Inchbald's is quoted by +her on her return home as to the report of the world being that Mr. +Holcroft was in love with Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Inchbald with Mr. Godwin, +Mr. Godwin with Miss Alderson, and Miss Alderson with Mr. Holcroft! + +The following account of Somers Town, and a philosopher's costume in +those days, is written to her father in 1794:-- + + After a most delightful ride through some of the richest country I + ever beheld, we arrived about one o'clock at the philosopher's + house; we found him with his hair _bien poudre_, and in a pair of + new sharp-toed red morocco slippers, not to mention his green coat + and crimson under-waistcoat. + +From Godwin's by the city they come to Marlborough Street, and find Mrs. +Siddons nursing her little baby, and as handsome and charming as ever. +They see Charles Kemble there, and they wind up their day by calling on +Mrs. Inchbald in her pleasant lodgings, with two hundred pounds just +come in from Sheridan for a farce of sixty pages. Godwin's attentions +seem to have amused and pleased the fair, merry Amelia, who is not a +little proud of her arch influence over various rugged and apparently +inaccessible persons. Mrs. Inchbald seems to have been as jealous of +Miss Alderson at the time as she afterwards was of Mary Wollstonecraft. +'Will you give me nothing to keep for your sake?' says Godwin, parting +from Amelia. 'Not even your slipper? I had it once in my possession.' +'This was true,' adds Miss Amelia; 'my shoe had come off and he picked +it up and put it in his pocket.' Elsewhere she tells her friend Mrs. +Taylor that Mr. Holcroft would like to come forward, but that he had no +chance. + +That some one person had a chance, and a very good one, is plain enough +from the context of a letter, but there is nothing in Mrs. Opie's life +to show why fate was contrary in this, while yielding so bountiful a +share of all other good things to the happy country girl. + +Among other people, she seems to have charmed various French refugees, +one of whom was the Duc d'Aiguillon, come over to England with some +seven thousand others, waiting here for happier times, and hiding their +sorrows among our friendly mists. Godwin was married when Miss Alderson +revisited her London friends and admirers in 1797--an eventful visit, +when she met Opie for the first time. + +The account of their first meeting is amusingly given in Miss +Brightwell's memoirs. It was at an evening party. Some of those present +were eagerly expecting the arrival of Miss Alderson, but the evening was +wearing away and still she did not appear; 'at length the door was flung +open, and she entered bright and smiling, dressed in a robe of blue, her +neck and arms bare, and on her head a small bonnet placed in somewhat +coquettish style sideways and surmounted by a plume of three white +feathers. Her beautiful hair hung in waving tresses over her shoulders; +her face was kindling with pleasure at the sight of her old friends, and +her whole appearance was animated and glowing. At the time she came in +Mr. Opie was sitting on a sofa beside Mr. F., who had been saying from +time to time, 'Amelia is coming; Amelia will surely come. Why is she not +here?' and whose eyes were turned in her direction. He was interrupted +by his companion eagerly exclaiming, 'Who is that--who is that?' and +hastily rising Opie pressed forward to be introduced to the fair object +whose sudden appearance had so impressed him.' With all her love of +excitement, of change, of variety, one cannot but feel, as I have said, +that there was also in Amelia Alderson's cheerful life a vein of deep +and very serious feeling, and the bracing influence of the upright and +high-minded people among whom she had been brought up did not count for +nothing in her nature. She could show her genuine respect for what was +generous and good and true, even though she did not always find strength +to carry out the dream of an excitable and warm-hearted nature. + + +IV. + +There is something very interesting in the impression one receives of +the 'Inspired Peasant,' as Alan Cunningham calls John Opie--the man +who did not paint to live so much as live to paint. He was a simple, +high-minded Cornishman, whose natural directness and honesty were +unspoiled by favour, unembittered by failure. Opie's gift, like some +deep-rooted seed living buried in arid soil, ever aspired upwards towards +the light. His ideal was high; his performance fell far short of his +life-long dream, and he knew it. But his heart never turned from its +life's aim, and he loved beauty and Art with that true and unfailing +devotion which makes a man great, even though his achievements do not +show all he should have been. + +The old village carpenter, his father, who meant him to succeed to +the business, was often angry, and loudly railed at the boy when good +white-washed walls and clean boards were spoiled by scrawls of +lamp-black and charcoal. John worked in the shop and obeyed his father, +but when his day's task was over he turned again to his darling +pursuits. At twelve years old he had mastered Euclid, and could also +rival 'Mark Oaks,' the village phenomenon, in painting a butterfly; by +the time John was sixteen he could earn as much as 7_s._ 6_d._ for a +portrait. It was in this year that there came to Truro an accomplished +and various man Dr. Wolcott--sometimes a parson, sometimes a doctor of +medicine, sometimes as Peter Pindar, a critic and literary man. This +gentleman was interested by young Opie and his performances, and +he asked him on one occasion how he liked painting. 'Better than +bread-and-butter,' says the boy. Wolcott finally brought his _protege_ +to London, where the Doctor's influence and Opie's own undoubted merit +brought him success; and to Opie's own amazement he suddenly found +himself the fashion. His street was crowded with carriages; long +processions of ladies and gentlemen came to sit to him; he was able to +furnish a house 'in Orange Court, by Leicester Fields;' he was beginning +to put by money when, as suddenly as he had been taken up, he was +forgotten again. The carriages drove off in some other direction, and +Opie found himself abandoned by the odd, fanciful world of fashions, +which would not be fashions if they did not change day by day. It might +have proved a heart-breaking phase of life for a man whose aim had been +less single. But Opie was of too generous a nature to value popularity +beyond achievement. He seems to have borne this freak of fortune with +great equanimity, and when he was sometimes overwhelmed, it was not by +the praise or dispraise of others, but by his own consciousness of +failure, of inadequate performance. Troubles even more serious than loss +of patronage and employment befell him later. He had married, unhappily +for himself, a beautiful, unworthy woman, whose picture he has painted +many times. She was a faithless as well as a weak and erring wife, +and finally abandoned him. When Opie was free to marry again he was +thirty-six, a serious, downright man of undoubted power and influence, +of sincerity and tenderness of feeling, of rugged and unusual manners. +He had not many friends, nor did he wish for many, but those who knew +him valued him at his worth. His second wife showed what was in her by +her appreciation of his noble qualities, though one can hardly realise a +greater contrast than that of these two, so unlike in character, in +training, and disposition. They were married in London, at Marylebone +Church, in that dismal year of '98, which is still remembered. Opie +loved his wife deeply and passionately; he did not charm her, though she +charmed him, but for his qualities she had true respect and admiration. + + +V. + +Opie must be forgiven if he was one-idead, if he erred from too +much zeal. All his wife's bright gaiety of nature, her love for her +fellow-creatures, her interest in the world, her many-sidedness, this +uncompromising husband would gladly have kept for himself. For him his +wife and his home were the whole world; his Art was his whole life. + +The young couple settled down in London after their marriage, where, +notwithstanding fogs and smoke and dull monotony of brick and smut, so +many beautiful things are created; where Turner's rainbow lights were +first reflected, where Tennyson's 'Princess' sprang from the fog. It +was a modest and quiet installation, but among the pretty things which +Amelia brought to brighten her new home we read of blue feathers and +gold gauze bonnets, tiaras, and spencers, scarlet ribbons, buff net, and +cambric flounces, all of which give one a pleasant impression of her +intention to amuse herself, and to enjoy the society of her fellows, and +to bring her own pleasant contributions to their enjoyment. + +Opie sat working at his easel, painting portraits to earn money for his +wife's use and comfort, and encouraging her to write, for he had faith +in work. He himself would never intermit his work for a single day. He +would have gladly kept her always in his sight. 'If I would stay at home +for ever, I believe my husband would be merry from morning to night--a +lover more than a husband,' Amelia writes to Mrs. Taylor. He seemed to +have some feeling that time for him was not to be long--that life was +passing quickly by, almost too quickly to give him time to realise his +new home happiness, to give him strength to grasp his work. He was no +rapid painter, instinctively feeling his light and colour and action, +and seizing the moment's suggestion, but anxious, laborious, and +involved in that sad struggle in which some people pass their lives, for +ever disappointed. Opie's portraits seem to have been superior to his +compositions, which were well painted, 'but unimaginative and +commonplace,' says a painter of our own time, whose own work quickens +with that mysterious soul which some pictures (as indeed some human +beings) seem to be entirely without. + +'During the nine years that I was his wife,' says Mrs. Opie, 'I never +saw him satisfied with any one of his productions. Often, very often, he +has entered my sitting-room, and, throwing himself down in an agony of +despondence upon the sofa, exclaimed, "I shall never be a painter!"' + +He was a wise and feeling critic, however great his shortcomings as a +painter may have been. His lectures are admirable; full of real thought +and good judgment. Sir James Mackintosh places them beyond Reynolds's in +some ways. + +'If there were no difficulties every one would be a painter,' says Opie, +and he goes on to point out what a painter's object should be--'the +discovery or conception of perfect ideas of things; nature in its +purest and most essential form rising from the species to the genus, the +highest and ultimate exertion of human genius.' For him it was no +grievance that a painter's life should be one long and serious effort. +'If you are wanting to yourselves, rule may be multiplied upon rule and +precept upon precept in vain.' Some of his remarks might be thought +still to apply in many cases, no less than they did a hundred years ago, +when he complained of those green-sick lovers of chalk, brick-dust, +charcoal and old tapestry, who are so ready to decry the merits of +colouring and to set it down as a kind of superfluity. It is curious to +contrast Opie's style in literature with that of his wife, who belongs +to the entirely past generation which she reflected, whereas he wrote +from his own original impressions, saying those things which struck him +as forcibly then as they strike us now. 'Father and Daughter' was Mrs. +Opie's first acknowledged book. It was published in 1801, and the author +writes modestly of all her apprehensions. 'Mr. Opie has no patience with +me; he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others and +underrate myself.' The book was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of +one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. +Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. +Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several poems +and verses which were much admired. There was an impromptu to Sir James +Mackintosh, which brought a long letter in return, and one of her songs +was quoted by Sydney Smith in a lecture at the Royal Institution. Mrs. +Opie was present, and she used to tell in after times 'how unexpectedly +the compliment came upon her, and how she shrunk down upon her seat in +order to screen herself from observation.' + +The lines are indeed charming:-- + + Go, youth, beloved in distant glades, + New friends, new hopes, new joys to find, + Yet sometimes deign 'midst fairer maids + To think on her thou leav'st behind. + Thy love, thy fate, dear youth to share + Must never be my happy lot; + But thou may'st grant this humble prayer, + Forget me not, forget me not. + + Yet should the thought of my distress + Too painful to thy feelings be, + Heed not the wish I now express, + Nor ever deign to think of me; + But oh! if grief thy steps attend, + If want, if sickness be thy lot, + And thou require a soothing friend, + Forget me not, forget me not. + + +VI. + +The little household was a modest one, but we read of a certain amount +of friendly hospitality. Country neighbours from Norfolk appear upon the +scene; we find Northcote dining and praising the toasted cheese. Mrs. +Opie's heart never for an instant ceased to warm to her old friends and +companions. She writes an amusing account to Mrs. Taylor of her London +home, her interests and visitors, 'her happy and delightful life.' She +worked, she amused herself, she received her friends at home and went to +look for them abroad. Among other visits, Mrs. Opie speaks of one to an +old friend who has 'grown plump,' and of a second to 'Betsy Fry' who, +notwithstanding her comfortable home and prosperous circumstances, has +grown lean. It would be difficult to recognise under this familiar +cognomen and description the noble and dignified woman whose name and +work are still remembered with affectionate respect and wonder by a not +less hard-working, but less convinced and convincing generation. This +friendship was of great moment to Amelia Opie in after days, at a +time when her heart was low and her life very sad and solitary; but +meanwhile, as I have said, there were happy times for her; youth and +youthful spirits and faithful companionship were all hers, and troubles +had not yet come. + +One day Mrs. Opie gives a characteristic account of a visit from Mrs. +Taylor's two sons. '"John," said I, "will you take a letter from me to +your mother?" "Certainly," replied John, "for then I shall be sure of +being welcome." "Fy," returned I. "Mr. Courtier, you know you want +nothing to add to the heartiness of the welcome you will receive at +home." "No, indeed," said Richard, "and if Mrs. Opie sends her letter by +you it will be one way of making it less valued and attended to than it +would otherwise be." To the truth of this speech I subscribed and wrote +not. I have heard in later days a pretty description of the simple home +in which all these handsome, cultivated, and remarkable young people +grew up round their noble-minded mother.' One of Mrs. John Taylor's +daughters became Mrs. Reeve, the mother of Mr. Henry Reeve, another was +Mrs. Austin, the mother of Lady Duff Gordon. + +Those lean kine we read of in the Bible are not peculiar to Egypt and to +the days of Joseph and his brethren. The unwelcome creatures are apt to +make their appearance in many a country and many a household, and in +default of their natural food to devour all sorts of long-cherished +fancies, hopes, and schemes. Some time after his marriage, Opie +suddenly, and for no reason, found himself without employment, and the +severest trial they experienced during their married life, says his +wife, was during this period of anxiety. She, however, cheered him +womanfully, would not acknowledge her own dismay, and Opie, gloomy and +desponding though he was, continued to paint as regularly as before. +Presently orders began to flow in again, and did not cease until his +death. + + +VII. + +Their affairs being once more prosperous, a long-hoped-for dream became +a reality, and they started on an expedition to Paris, a solemn event in +those days and not lightly to be passed over by a biographer. One long +war was ended, another had not yet begun. The Continent was a promised +land, fondly dreamt of though unknown. 'At last in Paris; at last in the +city which she had so longed to see!' Mrs. Opie's description of her +arrival reads a comment upon history. As they drive into the town, +everywhere chalked up upon the walls and the houses are inscriptions +concerning 'L'Indivisibilite de la Republique.' How many subsequent +writings upon the wall did Mrs. Opie live to see! The English party find +rooms at a hotel facing the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine, +that token of order and tranquillity, was then perpetually standing. +The young wife's feelings may be imagined when within an hour of their +arrival Opie, who had rushed off straight to the Louvre, returned with a +face of consternation to say that they must leave Paris at once. The +Louvre was shut; and, moreover, the whiteness of everything, the houses, +the ground they stood on, all dazzled and blinded him. He was a lost man +if he remained! By some happy interposition they succeed in getting +admission to the Louvre, and as the painter wonders and admires his +nervous terrors leave him. The picture left by Miss Edgeworth of Paris +Society in the early years of the century is more brilliant, but not +more interesting than Mrs. Opie's reminiscences of the fleeting scene, +gaining so much in brilliancy from the shadows all round about. There is +the shadow of the ghastly guillotine upon the Place de la Concorde, the +shadows of wars but lately over and yet to come, the echo in the air of +arms and discord; meanwhile a brilliant, agreeable, flashing Paris +streams with sunlight, is piled with treasures and trophies of victory, +and crowded with well-known characters. We read of Kosciusko's nut-brown +wig concealing his honourable scars; Massena's earrings flash in the +sun; one can picture it all, and the animated inrush of tourists, and +the eager life stirring round about the walls of the old Louvre. + +It was at this time that they saw Talma perform, and years after, in her +little rooms in Lady's Field at Norwich, Mrs. Opie, in her Quaker dress, +used to give an imitation of the great actor and utter a deep 'Cain, +Cain, where art thou?' To which Cain replies in sepulchral tones. + +We get among other things an interesting glimpse of Fox standing in the +Louvre Gallery opposite the picture of St. Jerome by Domenichino, a +picture which, as it is said, he enthusiastically admired. Opie, who +happened to be introduced to him, then and there dissented from this +opinion. 'You must be a better judge on such points than I am,' says +Fox; and Mrs. Opie proudly writes of the two passing on together +discussing and comparing the pictures. She describes them next standing +before the 'Transfiguration' of Raphael. The Louvre in those days must +have been for a painter a wonder palace indeed. The 'Venus de' Medici' +was on her way; it was a time of miracles, as Fox said. Meanwhile Mrs. +Opie hears someone saying that the First Consul is on his way from the +Senate, and she hurries to a window to look out. 'Bonaparte seems very +fond of state and show for a Republican,' says Mrs. Fox. Fox himself +half turns to the window, then looks back to the pictures again. As for +Opie, one may be sure his attention never wandered for one instant. + +They saw the First Consul more than once. The Pacificator, as he was +then called, was at the height of his popularity; on one occasion +they met Fox with his wife on his arm crossing the Carrousel to the +Tuileries, where they are also admitted to a ground-floor room, from +whence they look upon a marble staircase and see several officers +ascending, 'one of whom, with a helmet which seemed entirely of gold, +was Eugene de Beauharnais. A few minutes afterwards,' she says, 'there +was a rush of officers down the stairs, and among them I saw a short +pale man with his hat in his hand, who, as I thought, resembled Lord +Erskine in profile....' This of course is Bonaparte, unadorned amidst +all this studied splendour, and wearing only a little tricoloured +cockade. Maria Cosway, the painter, who was also in Paris at the time, +took them to call at the house of Madame Bonaparte _mere_, where they +were received by 'a blooming, courteous ecclesiastic, powdered and with +purple stockings and gold buckles, and a costly crucifix. This is +Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Bonaparte. It is said that when Fox was +introduced to the First Consul he was warmly welcomed by him, and was +made to listen to a grand harangue upon the advantages of peace, to +which he answered scarcely a word; though he was charmed to talk with +Madame Bonaparte, and to discuss with her the flowers of which she was +so fond.' The Opies met Fox again in England some years after, when he +sat to Opie for one of his finest portraits. It is now at Holker, and +there is a characteristic description of poor Opie, made nervous by the +criticism of the many friends, and Fox, impatient but encouraging, and +again whispering, 'Don't attend to them; you must know best.' + + +VIII. + +'Adeline Mowbray; or, Mother and Daughter,' was published by Mrs. Opie +after this visit to the Continent. It is a melancholy and curious +story, which seems to have been partly suggested by that of poor Mary +Wollstonecraft, whose prejudices the heroine shares and expiates by a +fate hardly less pathetic than that of Mary herself. The book reminds +one of a very touching letter from Godwin's wife to Amelia Alderson, +written a few weeks before her death, in which she speaks of her +'contempt for the forms of a world she should have bade a long +good-night to had she not been a mother.' Justice has at length been +done to this mistaken but noble and devoted woman, and her story has +lately been written from a wider point of view than Mrs. Opie's, though +she indeed was no ungenerous advocate. Her novel seems to have given +satisfaction; 'a beautiful story, the most natural in its pathos of any +fictitious narrative in the language,' says the 'Edinburgh,' writing +with more leniency than authors now expect. Another reviewer, speaking +with discriminating criticism, says of Mrs. Opie: 'She does not reason +well, but she has, like most accomplished women, the talent of perceiving +truth without the process of reasoning. Her language is often inaccurate, +but it is always graceful and harmonious. She can do nothing well that +requires to be done with formality; to make amends, however, she +represents admirably everything that is amiable, generous, and gentle.' + +Adeline Mowbray dies of a broken heart, with the following somewhat +discursive farewell to her child: 'There are two ways in which a mother +can be of use to her daughter; the one is by instilling into her mind +virtuous principles, and by setting her a virtuous example, the other is +by being to her, in her own person, an awful warning!' + + * * * * * + +One or two of Opie's letters to his wife are given in the memoir. They +ring with truth and tender feeling. The two went to Norwich together on +one occasion, when Opie painted Dr. Sayers, the scholar, who, in return +for his portrait, applied an elegant Greek distich to the painter. Mrs. +Opie remained with her father, and her husband soon returned to his +studio in London. When she delayed, he wrote to complain. 'My dearest +Life, I cannot be sorry that you do not stay longer, though, as I said, +on your father's account, I would consent to it. Pray, Love, forgive +me, and make yourself easy. I did not suspect, till my last letter was +posted, that it might be too strong. I had been counting almost the +hours till your arrival for some time. As to coming down again I cannot +think of it, for though I could perhaps better spare the time at present +from painting than I could at any part of the last month, I find I must +now go hard to work to finish my lectures, as the law says they must be +delivered the second year after the election.' + +The Academy had appointed Opie Professor of Painting in the place of +Fuseli, and he was now trying his hand at a new form of composition, and +not without well-deserved success. But the strain was too great for +this eager mind. Opie painted all day; of an evening he worked at his +lectures on painting. From September to February he allowed himself no +rest. He was not a man who worked with ease; all he did cost him much +effort and struggle. After delivering his first lecture, he complained +that he could not sleep. It had been a great success; his colleagues +had complimented him, and accompanied him to his house. He was able to +complete the course, but immediately afterwards he sickened. No one +could discover what was amiss; the languor and fever increased day by +day. + +His wife nursed him devotedly, and a favourite sister of his came to +help her. Afterwards it was of consolation to the widow to remember that +no hired nurse had been by his bedside, and that they had been able to +do everything for him themselves. One thing troubled him as he lay +dying; it was the thought of a picture which he had not been able to +complete in time for the exhibition. A friend and former pupil finished +it, and brought it to his bedside. He said with a smile, 'Take it away, +it will do now.' + +To the last he imagined that he was painting upon this picture, and he +moved his arms as though he were at work. His illness was inflammation +of the brain. He was only forty-five when he died, and he was buried in +St. Paul's, and laid by Sir Joshua, his great master. + +The portrait of Opie, as it is engraved in Alan Cunningham's Life, is +that of a simple, noble-looking man, with a good thoughtful face and a +fine head. Northcote, Nollekens, Horne Tooke, all his friends spoke +warmly of him. 'A man of powerful understanding and ready apprehension,' +says one. 'Mr. Opie crowds more wisdom into a few words than almost +anybody I ever saw,' says another. 'I do not say that he was always +right,' says Northcote; 'but he always put your thoughts into a new +track that was worth following.' Some two years after his death the +lectures which had cost so much were published, with a memoir by Mrs. +Opie. Sir James Mackintosh has written one of his delightful criticisms +upon the book:-- + + The cultivation of every science and the practice of every art are + in fact a species of action, and require ardent zeal and unshaken + courage.... Originality can hardly exist without vigour of + character.... The discoverer or inventor may indeed be most + eminently wanting in decision in the general concerns of life, but + he must possess it in those pursuits in which he is successful. + Opie is a remarkable instance of the natural union of these + superior qualities, both of which he possesses in a high + degree.... He is inferior in elegance to Sir Joshua, but he is + superior in strength; he strikes more, though he charms less.... + Opie is by turns an advocate, a controvertist, a panegyrist, a + critic; Sir Joshua more uniformly fixes his mind on general and + permanent principles, and certainly approaches more nearly to the + elevation and tranquillity which seem to characterise the + philosophic teacher of an elegant art. + + +IX. + +Mrs. Opie went back, soon after her husband's death, to Norwich, to her +early home, her father's house; nor was she a widow indeed while she +still had this tender love and protection. + +That which strikes one most as one reads the accounts of Mrs. Opie +is the artlessness and perfect simplicity of her nature. The deepest +feeling of her life was her tender love for her father, and if she +remained younger than most women do, it may have been partly from the +great blessing which was hers so long, that of a father's home. Time +passed, and by degrees she resumed her old life, and came out and about +among her friends. Sorrow does not change a nature, it expresses certain +qualities which have been there all along. + +So Mrs. Opie came up to London once more, and welcomed and was made +welcome by many interesting people. Lord Erskine is her friend always; +she visits Madame de Stael; she is constantly in company with Sydney +Smith, the ever-welcome as she calls him. Lord Byron, Sheridan, Lord +Dudley, all appear upon her scene. There is a pretty story of her +singing her best to Lady Sarah Napier, old, blind, and saddened, but +still happy in that she had her sons to guide and to protect her steps. +Among her many entertainments, Mrs. Opie amusingly describes a dinner at +Sir James Mackintosh's, to which most of the guests had been asked at +different hours, varying from six to half-past seven, when Baron +William von Humboldt arrives. He writes to her next day, calling her +Mademoiselle Opie, 'no doubt from my juvenile appearance,' she adds, +writing to her father. It is indeed remarkable to read of her spirits +long after middle life, her interest and capacity for amusement. She +pays 4_l._ for a ticket to a ball given to the Duke of Wellington; she +describes this and many other masquerades and gaieties, and the blue +ball, and the pink ball, and the twenty-seven carriages at her door, and +her sight of the Emperor of Russia in her hotel. When the rest of the +ladies crowd round, eager to touch his clothes, Mrs. Opie, carried away +by the general craze, encircles his wrist with her finger and thumb. +Apart from these passing fancies, she is in delightful society. + +Baron Alderson, her cousin and friend, was always kind and affectionate +to her. The pretty little story is well known of his taking her home in +her Quaker dress in the Judges' state-coach at Norwich, saying, 'Come, +Brother Opie,' as he offered her his arm to lead her to the carriage. +She used to stay at his house in London, and almost the last visit she +ever paid was to him. + +One of the most interesting of her descriptions is that of her meeting +with Sir Walter Scott and with Wordsworth at a breakfast in Mount +Street, and of Sir Walter's delightful talk and animated stories. One +can imagine him laughing and describing a Cockney's terrors in the +Highlands, when the whole hunt goes galloping down the crags, as is +their North-country fashion. 'The gifted man,' says Mrs. Opie, with her +old-fashioned adjectives, 'condescended to speak to me of my "Father and +Daughter." He then went on faithfully to praise his old friend Joanna +Baillie and her tragedies, and to describe a tragedy he once thought of +writing himself. He should have had no love in it. His hero should have +been the uncle of his heroine, a sort of misanthrope, with only one +affection in his heart, love for his niece, like a solitary gleam of +sunshine lighting the dark tower of some ruined and lonely dwelling.' + +'It might perhaps be a weakness,' says the Friend, long after recalling +this event, 'but I must confess how greatly I was pleased at the time.' +No wonder she was pleased that the great wizard should have liked her +novel. + +It would be impossible to attempt a serious critique of Mrs. Opie's +stories. They are artless, graceful, written with an innocent good faith +which disarms criticism. That Southey, Sydney Smith, and Mackintosh +should also have read them and praised them may, as I have said, prove +as much for the personal charm of the writer, and her warm sunshine of +pleasant companionship, as for the books themselves. They seem to have +run through many editions, and to have received no little encouragement. +Morality and sensation alternate in her pages. Monsters abound there. +They hire young men to act base parts, to hold villainous conversations +which the husbands are intended to overhear. They plot and scheme to +ruin the fair fame and domestic happiness of the charming heroines, but +they are justly punished, and their plots are defeated. One villain, on +his way to an appointment with a married woman, receives so severe a +blow upon the head from her brother, that he dies in agonies of fruitless +remorse. Another, who incautiously boasts aloud his deep-laid scheme +against Constantia's reputation in the dark recesses of a stage-coach, +is unexpectedly seized by the arm. A stranger in the corner, whom he had +not noticed, was no other than the baronet whom Constantia has loved all +along. The dawn breaks in brightly, shining on the stranger's face: +baffled, disgraced, the wicked schemer leaves the coach at the very next +stage, and Constantia's happiness is ensured by a brilliant marriage +with the man she loves. 'Lucy is the dark sky,' cries another lovely +heroine, 'but you, my lord, and my smiling children, these are the +rainbow that illumines it; and who would look at the gloom that see the +many tinted Iris? not I, indeed.' 'Valentine's Eve,' from which this is +quoted, was published after John Opie's death. So was a novel called +'Temper,' and the 'Tales of Real Life.' Mrs. Opie, however, gave up +writing novels when she joined the Society of Friends. + +For some years past, Mrs. Opie had been thrown more and more in the +company of a very noble and remarkable race of men and women living +quietly in their beautiful homes in the neighbourhood of Norwich, but +of an influence daily growing--handsome people, prosperous, generous, +with a sort of natural Priesthood belonging to them. Scorning to live +for themselves alone, the Gurneys were the dispensers and originators of +a hundred useful and benevolent enterprises in Norwich and elsewhere. +They were Quakers, and merchants, and bankers. How much of their strength +lay in their wealth and prosperity, how much in their enthusiasm, their +high spirits, voluntarily curbed, their natural instinct both to lead +and to protect, it would be idle to discuss. It is always difficult for +people who believe in the all-importance of the present to judge of +others, whose firm creed is that the present is nothing as compared to +the future. Chief among this remarkable family was Elizabeth Gurney, +the wife of Josiah Fry, the mother of many children, and the good angel, +indeed, of the unhappy captives of those barbarous days, prisoners, to +whose utter gloom and misery she brought some rays of hope. There are +few figures more striking than that of the noble Quaker lady starting on +her generous mission, comforting the children, easing the chains of the +captives. No domineering Jellyby, but a motherly, deep-hearted woman; +shy, and yet from her very timidity gaining an influence, which less +sensitive natures often fail to win. One likes to imagine the dignified +sweet face coming in--the comforting Friend in the quiet garb of the +Quaker woman standing at the gates of those terrible places, bidding the +despairing prisoners be of good hope. + +Elizabeth Fry's whole life was a mission of love and help to others; her +brothers and her many relations heartily joined and assisted her in many +plans and efforts. + +For Joseph John Gurney, the head of the Norwich family, Mrs. Opie is +said to have had a feeling amounting to more than friendship. Be this as +it may, it is no wonder that so warm-hearted and impressionable a woman +should have been influenced by the calm goodness of the friends with +whom she was now thrown. It is evident enough, nor does she attempt to +conceal the fact, that the admiration and interest she feels for John +Joseph Gurney are very deep motive powers. There comes a time in most +lives, especially in the lives of women, when all the habits and +certainties of youth have passed away, when life has to be built up +again upon the foundations indeed of the past, the friendships, the +memories, the habits of early life, but with new places and things to +absorb and to interest, new hearts to love. And one day people wake up +to find that the friends of their choice have become their home. People +are stranded perhaps seeking their share in life's allowance, and +suddenly they come upon something, with all the charm which belongs to +deliberate choice, as well as that of natural affinity. How well one +can realise the extraordinary comfort that Amelia Opie must have found +in the kind friends and neighbours with whom she was now thrown! Her +father was a very old man, dying slowly by inches. Her own life of +struggle, animation, intelligence, was over, as she imagined, for ever. +No wonder if for a time she was carried away, if she forgot her own +nature, her own imperative necessities, in sympathy with this new +revelation. Here was a new existence, here was a Living Church ready to +draw her within its saving walls. John Joseph Gurney must have been a +man of extraordinary personal influence. For a long time past he had +been writing to her seriously. At last, to the surprise of the world, +though not without long deliberation and her father's full approval, she +joined the Society of Friends, put on their dress, and adopted their +peculiar phraseology. People were surprised at the time, but I think it +would have been still more surprising if she had not joined them. J. J. +Gurney, in one of his letters, somewhat magnificently describes Mrs. +Opie as offering up her many talents and accomplishments a brilliant +sacrifice to her new-found persuasions. 'Illustrations of Lying,' +moral anecdotes on the borderland of imagination, are all that she is +henceforth allowed. 'I am bound in a degree not to invent a story, +because when I became a Friend it was required of me not to do so,' she +writes to Miss Mitford, who had asked her to contribute to an annual. +Miss Mitford's description of Mrs. Opie, 'Quakerised all over, and +calling Mr. Haydon 'Friend Benjamin,' is amusing enough; and so also +is the account of the visiting card she had printed after she became +a Quaker, with 'Amelia Opie,' without any prefix, as is the Quaker +way; also, as is not their way, with a wreath of embossed pink roses +surrounding the name. There is an account of Mrs. Opie published in the +'Edinburgh Review,' in a delightful article entitled the 'Worthies of +Norwich,' which brings one almost into her very presence. + + Amelia Opie at the end of the last century and Amelia Opie in the + garb and with the speech of a member of the Society of Friends + sounds like two separate personages, but no one who recollects the + gay little songs which at seventy she used to sing with lively + gesture, the fragments of drama to which, with the zest of an + innate actress, she occasionally treated her young friends, or the + elaborate faultlessness of her appearance--the shining folds and + long train of her pale satin draperies, the high, transparent cap, + the crisp fichu crossed over the breast, which set off to + advantage the charming little plump figure with its rounded + lines--could fail to recognise the same characteristics which + sparkled about the wearer of the pink calico domino in which she + frolicked incognito 'till she was tired' at a ball given by the + Duke of Wellington in 1814, or of the eight blue feathers which + crowned the waving tresses of her flaxen hair as a bride. + +Doctor Alderson died in October 1825, and Mrs. Opie was left alone. She +was very forlorn when her father died. She had no close ties to carry +her on peacefully from middle age to the end of life. The great break +had come; she was miserable, and, as mourners do, she falls upon herself +and beats her breast. All through these sad years her friends at Northrepps +and at Earlham were her chief help and consolation. As time passed her +deep sorrow was calmed, when peaceful memories had succeeded to the keen +anguish of her good old father's loss. She must have suffered deeply; +she tried hard to be brave, but her courage failed her at times: she +tried hard to do her duty; and her kindness and charity were unfailing, +for she was herself still, although so unhappy. Her journals are +pathetic in their humility and self-reproaches for imaginary omissions. +She is lonely; out of heart, out of hope. 'I am so dissatisfied with +myself that I hardly dare ask or expect a blessing upon my labours,' she +says; and long lists of kind and fatiguing offices, of visits to sick +people and poor people, to workhouses and prisons, are interspersed with +expressions of self-blame. + + * * * * * + +The writer can remember as a child speculating as she watched the +straight-cut figure of a Quaker lady standing in the deep window of an +old mansion that overlooked the Luxembourg Gardens at Paris, with all +their perfume and blooming scent of lilac and sweet echoes of children, +while the quiet figure stood looking down upon it all from--to a +child--such an immeasurable distance. As one grows older one becomes +more used to garbs of different fashions and cut, and one can believe in +present sunlight and the scent of flowering trees and the happy sound of +children's voices going straight to living hearts beneath their several +disguises, and Mrs. Opie, notwithstanding her Quaker dress, loved bright +colours and gay sunlight. She was one of those who gladly made life +happy for others, who naturally turned to bright and happy things +herself. When at last she began to recover from the blow which had +fallen so heavily upon her she went from Norwich to the Lakes and Fells +for refreshment, and then to Cornwall, and among its green seas and +softly clothed cliffs she found good friends (as most people do who go +to that kind and hospitable county), and her husband's relations, who +welcomed her kindly. As she recovered by degrees she began to see +something of her old companions. She went to London to attend the May +meetings of the Society, and I heard an anecdote not long ago which must +have occurred on some one of these later visits there. + +One day when some people were sitting at breakfast at Samuel Rogers's, +and talking as people do who belong to the agreeable classes, the +conversation happened to turn upon the affection of a father for his +only child, when an elderly lady who had been sitting at the table, and +who was remarkable for her Quaker dress, her frills and spotless folds, +her calm and striking appearance, started up suddenly, burst into a +passion of tears, and had to be led sobbing out of the room. She did not +return, and the lady who remembers the incident, herself a young bride +at the time, told me it made all the more impression upon her at the +time because she was told that the Quaker lady was Mrs. Opie. My friend +was just beginning her life. Mrs. Opie must have been ending hers. +It is not often that women, when youth is long past, shed sudden and +passionate tears of mere emotion, nor perhaps would a Quaker, trained +from early childhood to calm moods and calm expressions, have been so +suddenly overpoweringly affected; but Mrs. Opie was no born daughter of +the community, she was excitable and impulsive to the last. I have heard +a lady who knew her well describe her, late in life, laughing heartily +and impetuously thrusting a somewhat starched-up Friend into a deep +arm-chair exclaiming, 'I will hurl thee into the bottomless pit.' + + +X. + + At sight of thee, O Tricolor, + I seem to feel youth's hours return, + The loved, the lost! + +So writes Mrs. Opie at the age of sixty, reviving, delighting, as she +catches sight of her beloved Paris once more, and breathes its clear +and life-giving air, and looks out across its gardens and glittering +gables and spires, and again meets her French acquaintances, and throws +herself into their arms and into their interests with all her old warmth +and excitability. The little grey bonnet only gives certain incongruous +piquancy to her pleasant, kind-hearted exuberance. She returns to +England, but far-away echoes reach her soon of changes and revolutions +concerning all the people for whom her regard is so warm. In August, +1830, came the news of a new revolution--'The Chamber of Deputies +dissolved for ever; the liberty of the press abolished; king, ministers, +court, and ambassadors flying from Paris to Vincennes; cannon planted +against the city; 5,000 people killed, and the Rue de Rivoli running +with blood.' No wonder such rumours stirred and overwhelmed the staunch +but excitable lady. 'You will readily believe how anxious, interested, +and excited I feel,' she says; and then she goes on to speak of +Lafayette, 'miraculously preserved through two revolutions, and in +chains and in a dungeon, now the leading mind in another conflict, and +lifting not only an armed but a restraining hand in a third revolution.' + +Her heart was with her French friends and intimates, and though she kept +silence she was not the less determined to follow its leading, and, +without announcing her intention, she started off from Norwich and, +after travelling without intermission, once more arrived in her beloved +city. But what was become of the Revolution? 'Paris seemed as bright and +peaceful as I had seen it thirteen months ago! The people, the busy +people passing to and fro, and soldiers, omnibuses, cabriolets, citadenes, +carts, horsemen hurrying along the Rue de Rivoli, while foot passengers +were crossing the gardens, or loungers were sitting on its benches to +enjoy the beauty of the May-November.' She describes two men crossing +the Place Royale singing a national song, the result of the +Revolution:-- + + Pour briser leurs masses profondes, + Qui conduit nos drapeaux sanglants, + C'est la Liberte de deux mondes, + C'est Lafayette en cheveux blancs. + +Mrs. Opie was full of enthusiasm for noble Lafayette surveying his court +of turbulent intrigue and shifting politics; for Cuvier in his own +realm, among more tranquil laws, less mutable decrees. She should have +been born a Frenchwoman, to play a real and brilliant part among all +these scenes and people, instead of only looking on. Something stirred +in her veins too eager and bubbling for an Englishwoman's scant share +of life and outward events. No wonder that her friends at Norwich were +anxious, and urged her to return. They heard of her living in the midst +of excitement, of admiration, and with persons of a different religion +and way of thinking to themselves. Their warning admonitions carried +their weight; that little Quaker bonnet which she took so much care of +was a talisman, drawing the most friendly of Friends away from the place +of her adoption. But she came back unchanged to her home, to her quiet +associations; she had lost none of her spirits, none, of her cheerful +interest in her natural surroundings. As life burnt on her kind soul +seemed to shine more and more brightly. Every one came to see her, to +be cheered and warmed by her genial spirit. She loved flowers, of which +her room was full. She had a sort of passion for prisms, says her +biographer; she had several set in a frame and mounted like a screen, +and the colour flew about the little room. She kept up a great +correspondence; she was never tired of writing, though the letters on +other people's business were apt to prove a serious burden at times. +But she lives on only to be of use. 'Take care of indulging in little +selfishnesses,' she writes in her diary; 'learn to consider others +in trifles: the mind so disciplined will find it easier to fulfil +the greater duties, and the character will not exhibit that trying +inconsistency which one sees in great and often in pious persons.' Her +health fails, but not her courage. She goes up to London for the last +time to her cousin's house. She is interested in all the people she +meets, in their wants and necessities, in the events of the time. She +returns home, contented with all; with the house which she feels so +'desirable to die in,' with her window through which she can view the +woods and rising ground of Thorpe. 'My prisms to-day are quite in their +glory,' she writes; 'the atmosphere must be very clear, for the radiance +is brighter than ever I saw it before;' and then she wonders whether the +mansions in heaven will be draped in such brightness; and so to the last +the gentle, bright, _rainbow_ lady remained surrounded by kind and +smiling faces, by pictures, by flowers, and with the light of her +favourite prismatic colours shining round about the couch on which she +lay. + + + + +_JANE AUSTEN._ + + 1775-1817. + + 'A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes + originaux. Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre + les hommes.'--PASCAL. + + +'I did not know that you were a studier of character,' says Bingley to +Elizabeth. 'It must be an amusing study.' + +'Yes, but intricate characters are the most amusing. They have at least +that advantage.' + +'The country,' said Darcy, 'can in general supply but few subjects for +such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and +unvarying society.' + +'But people themselves alter so much,' Elizabeth answers, 'that there is +something new to be observed in them for ever.' + +'Yes, indeed,' cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by Darcy's manner of +mentioning a country neighbourhood; 'I assure you that we have quite as +much of _that_ going on in the country as in town.' + +'Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a moment, +turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had gained a +complete victory over him, continued her triumph.' + +These people belong to a whole world of familiar acquaintances, who are, +notwithstanding their old-fashioned dresses and quaint expressions, more +alive to us than a great many of the people among whom we live. We +know so much more about them to begin with. Notwithstanding a certain +reticence and self-control which seems to belong to their age, and with +all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies and +gentlemen in 'Pride and Prejudice' and its companion novels seem like +living people out of our own acquaintance transported bodily into a +bygone age, represented in the half-dozen books that contain Jane +Austen's works. Dear books! bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in +which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores +are enchanting. + +Could we but study our own bores as Miss Austen must have studied hers +in her country village, what a delightful world this might be!--a world +of Norris's economical great walkers, with dining-room tables to dispose +of; of Lady Bertrams on sofas, with their placid 'Do not act anything +improper, my dears; Sir Thomas would not like it;' of Bennets, Goddards, +Bates's; of Mr. Collins's; of Rushbrooks, with two-and-forty speeches +apiece--a world of Mrs. Eltons.... Inimitable woman! she must be alive +at this very moment, if we but knew where to find her, her basket on her +arm, her nods and all-importance, with Maple Grove and the Sucklings in +the background. She would be much excited were she aware how she is +esteemed by a late Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is well acquainted +with Maple Grove and Selina too. It might console her for Mr. Knightly's +shabby marriage. + +All these people nearly start out of the pages, so natural and +unaffected are they, and yet they never lived except in the imagination +of one lady with bright eyes, who sat down some seventy years ago to an +old mahogany desk in a quiet country parlour, and evoked them for us. +One seems to see the picture of the unknown friend who has charmed us so +long--charmed away dull hours, created neighbours and companions for +us in lonely places, conferring happiness and harmless mirth upon +generations to come. One can picture her as she sits erect, with her +long and graceful figure, her full round face, her bright eyes cast +down,--Jane Austen, 'the woman of whom England is justly proud'--whose +method generous Macaulay has placed near Shakespeare. She is writing +in secret, putting away her work when visitors come in, unconscious, +modest, hidden at home in heart, as she was in her sweet and womanly +life, with the wisdom of the serpent indeed and the harmlessness of a +dove. + +Some one said just now that many people seem to be so proud of seeing +a joke at all, that they impress it upon you until you are perfectly +wearied by it. Jane Austen was not of these; her humour flows gentle and +spontaneous; it is no elaborate mechanism nor artificial fountain, but +a bright natural stream, rippling and trickling over every stone and +sparkling in the sunshine. We should be surprised now-a-days to hear a +young lady announce herself as a studier of character. From her quiet +home in the country lane this one reads to us a real page from the +absorbing pathetic humorous book of human nature--a book that we can +most of us understand when it is translated into plain English; but +of which the quaint and illegible characters are often difficult to +decipher for ourselves. It is a study which, with all respect for Darcy's +opinion, must require something of country-like calm and concentration +and freedom of mind. It is difficult, for instance, for a too impulsive +student not to attribute something of his own moods to his specimens +instead of dispassionately contemplating them from a critical distance. + +Besides the natural fun and wit and life of her characters, 'all +perfectly discriminated,' as Macaulay says, Jane Austen has the gift of +telling a story in a way that has never been surpassed. She rules her +places, times, characters, and marshals them with unerring precision. +In her special gift for organisation she seems almost unequalled. Her +picnics are models for all future and past picnics; her combinations of +feelings, of conversation, of gentlemen and ladies, are so natural and +lifelike that reading to criticise is impossible to some of us--the +scene carries us away, and we forget to look for the art by which it is +recorded. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves +so vividly and naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary +scenes, we seem not only to read them, but to live them, to see the +people coming and going: the gentlemen courteous and in top-boots, the +ladies demure and piquant; we can almost hear them talking to one +another. No retrospects; no abrupt flights; as in real life days and +events follow one another. Last Tuesday does not suddenly start into +existence all out of place; nor does 1790 appear upon the scene when we +are well on in '21. Countries and continents do not fly from hero to +hero, nor do long and divergent adventures happen to unimportant members +of the company. With Jane Austen days, hours, minutes succeed each other +like clockwork, one central figure is always present on the scene, that +figure is always prepared for company. Miss Edwards's curl-papers are +almost the only approach to dishabille in her stories. There are +postchaises in readiness to convey the characters from Bath or Lyme to +Uppercross, to Fullerton, from Gracechurch Street to Meryton, as their +business takes them. Mr. Knightly rides from Brunswick Square to +Hartfield, by a road that Miss Austen herself must have travelled in the +curricle with her brother, driving to London on a summer's day. It was +a wet ride for Mr. Knightly, followed by that never-to-be-forgotten +afternoon in the shrubbery, when the wind had changed into a softer +quarter, the clouds were carried off, and Emma, walking in the sunshine, +with spirits freshened and thoughts a little relieved, and thinking of +Mr. Knightly as sixteen miles away, meets him at the garden door; and +everybody, I think, must be the happier, for the happiness and certainty +that one half-hour gave to Emma and her 'indifferent' lover. + +There is a little extract from one of Miss Austen's letters to a niece, +which shows that all this successful organisation was not brought about +by chance alone, but came from careful workmanship. + +'Your aunt C.,' she says, 'does not like desultory novels, and is rather +fearful that yours will be too much so--that there will be too frequent +a change from one set of people to another, and that circumstances will +be sometimes introduced of apparent consequence, which will lead to +nothing. It will not be so great an objection to me. I allow much more +latitude than she does, and think nature and spirit cover many sins of a +wandering story....' + +But, though the sins of a wandering story may be covered, the virtues of +a well-told one make themselves felt unconsciously, and without an +effort. Some books and people are delightful, we can scarce tell why; +they are not so clever as others that weary and fatigue us. It is a +certain effort to read a story, however touching, that is disconnected +and badly related. It is like an ill-drawn picture, of which the +colouring is good. Jane Austen possessed both gifts of colour and of +drawing. She could see human nature as it was; with near-sighted eyes, +it is true; but having seen, she could combine her picture by her art, +and colour it from life. How delightful the people are who play at +cards, and pay their addresses to one another, and sup, and discuss each +other's affairs! Take Mr. Bennet's reception of his sons-in-law. Take +Sir Walter Elliot compassionating the navy and Admiral Baldwin--'nine +grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top--a wretched +example of what a seafaring life can do, for men who are exposed to +every climate and weather until they are not fit to be seen. It is a +pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral +Baldwin's age....' Or shall we quote the scene of Fanny Price's return +when she comes to visit her family at Portsmouth; in all daughterly +agitation and excitement, and the brother's and father's and sister's +reception of her.... 'A stare or two at Fanny was all the voluntary +notice that her brother bestowed, but he made no objection to her kissing +him, though still entirely engaged in detailing further particulars of +the "Thrush's" going out of harbour, in which he had a strong right of +interest, being about to commence his career of seamanship in her at +this very time. After the mother and daughter have received her, Fanny's +seafaring father comes in, and does not notice her at first in his +excitement. "Captain Walsh thinks you will certainly have a cruise to +the westward with the 'Elephant' by ---- I wish you may. But old Scholey +was saying just now that he thought you would be sent first to the +'Texel.' Well, well, we are ready whatever happens. But by ---- you lost +a fine sight by not being here in the morning to see the 'Thrush' go out +of harbour. I would not have been out of the way for a thousand pounds. +Old Scholey ran in at breakfast time to say she had slipped her moorings +and was coming out. I jumped up and made but two steps to the platform. +If ever there was a perfect beauty afloat she is one; and there she lies +at Spithead, and anybody in England would take her for an +eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform for two hours this afternoon +looking at her. She lies close to the 'Endymion,' between her and the +'Cleopatra,' just to the eastward of the sheer hulk."' + +'"Ha!" cried William, "_that's_ just where I should have put her myself. +It's the best berth in Spithead. But here is my sister, sir; here is +Fanny, turning and leading her forward--it is so dark you do not see +her."' + +'With an acknowledgment that he had quite forgot her, Mr. Price now +received his daughter, and having given her a cordial hug and observed +that she was grown into a woman and he supposed would be wanting a +husband soon, seemed very much inclined to forget her again.' + +How admirably it is all told! how we hear them all talking! + +From her own brothers Jane Austen learned her accurate knowledge of +ships and seafaring things, from her own observation she must have +gathered her delightful droll science of men and women and their ways +and various destinations. Who will not recognise Mrs. Norris in that +master-touch by which she removes the curtain to save Sir Thomas's +feelings, that curtain which had been prepared for the private +theatricals he so greatly disapproved of? Mrs. Norris thoughtfully +carries it off to her cottage, where she happened to be particularly in +want of green baize. + + +II. + +The charm of friends of pen-and-ink is their unchangeableness. We go to +them when we want them. We know where to seek them; we know what to +expect from them. They are never preoccupied; they are always 'at home;' +they never turn their backs nor walk away as people do in real life, nor +let their houses and leave the neighbourhood, and disappear for weeks +together; they are never taken up with strange people, nor suddenly +absorbed into some more genteel society, or by some nearer fancy. Even +the most volatile among them is to be counted upon. We may have +neglected them, and yet when we meet again there are the familiar old +friends, and we seem to find our own old selves again in their company. +For us time has, perhaps, passed away; feelings have swept by, leaving +interests and recollections in their place; but at all ages there must +be days that belong to our youth, hours that will recur so long as men +forbear and women remember, and life itself exists. Perhaps the most +fashionable marriage on the _tapis_ no longer excites us very much, but +the sentiment of an Emma or an Anne Elliot comes home to some of us as +vividly as ever. It is something to have such old friends who are so +young. An Emma, blooming, without a wrinkle or a grey hair, after +twenty years' acquaintance; an Elizabeth Bennet, sprightly and charming +ever.... + +In the 'Roundabout Papers' there is a passage about the pen-and-ink +friends my father loved:-- + +'They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North." What +if some writer should appear who can write so _enchantingly_ that he +shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents? What +if Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now +(though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe +were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose +Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? +Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless +swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle +Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the +Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger +de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La +Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully +towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, +I think I should not be very much frightened....' + +Are not such friends as these, and others unnamed here, but who will +come unannounced to join the goodly company, creations that, like some +people, do actually make part of our existence, and make us the better +for theirs? To express some vague feelings is to stamp them. Have we any +one of us a friend in a Knight of La Mancha, a Colonel Newcome, a Sir +Roger de Coverley? They live for us even though they may have never +lived. They are, and do actually make part of our lives, one of the best +and noblest parts. To love them is like a direct communication with the +great and generous minds that conceived them. + + * * * * * + +It is difficult, reading the novels of succeeding generations, to +determine how much each book reflects of the time in which it was +written; how much of its character depends upon the mind and the mood of +the writer. The greatest minds, the most original, have the least stamp +of the age, the most of that dominant natural reality which belongs to +all great minds. We know how a landscape changes as the day goes on, +and how the scene brightens and gains in beauty as the shadows begin to +lengthen. The clearest eyes must see by the light of their own hour. +Jane Austen's literary hour must have been a midday hour: bright, +unsuggestive, with objects standing clear, without much shadow or +elaborate artistic effect. Our own age is more essentially an age of +strained emotion, little remains to us of starch, or powder, or courtly +reserve. What we have lost in calm, in happiness, in tranquillity, we +have gained in emphasis. Our danger is now, not of expressing and +feeling too little, but of expressing more than we feel. + +The living writers of to-day lead us into distant realms and worlds +undreamt of in the placid and easily contented gigot age. Our characters +travel by rail and are no longer confined to postchaises. There is +certainly a wide difference between Miss Austen's heroines and, let us +say, a Maggie Tulliver. One would be curious to know whether, between +the human beings who read Jane Austen's books to-day and those who read +them fifty years ago, there is as great a contrast. One reason may be, +perhaps, that characters in novels are certainly more intimate with us +and on less ceremonious terms than in Jane Austen's days, when heroines +never gave up a certain gentle self-respect and humour and hardness of +heart in which some modern types are a little wanting. Whatever happens +they could for the most part speak of quietly and without bitterness. +Love with them does not mean a passion so much as an interest, deep, +silent, not quite incompatible with a secondary flirtation. Marianne +Dashwood's tears are evidently meant to be dried. Jane Bennet smiles, +sighs and makes excuses for Bingley's neglect. Emma passes one +disagreeable morning making up her mind to the unnatural alliance +between Mr. Knightly and Harriet Smith. It was the spirit of the age, +and, perhaps, one not to be unenvied. It was not that Jane Austen +herself was incapable of understanding a deeper feeling. In the last +written page of her last written book, there is an expression of the +deepest and truest experience. Annie Elliot's talk with Captain Benfield +is the touching utterance of a good woman's feelings. They are speaking +of men and of women's affections. 'You are always labouring and +toiling,' she says, 'exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, +country, friends, all united; neither time nor life to be called your +own. It would be too hard, indeed (with a faltering voice), if a woman's +feelings were to be added to all this.' + +Further on she says, eagerly: 'I hope I do justice to all that is +felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should +undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. +I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment +and constancy were known only by woman. No! I believe you capable of +everything good and great in your married lives. I believe you equal +to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance so long +as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you have an object; +I mean while the woman you love lives and lives for you. _All the +privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you +need not court it) is that of loving longest when existence or when hope +is gone._' + +She could not immediately have uttered another sentence--her heart was +too full, her breath too much oppressed. + +Dear Anne Elliot!--sweet, impulsive, womanly, tender-hearted--one can +almost hear her voice, pleading the cause of all true women. In those +days when, perhaps, people's nerves were stronger than they are now, +sentiment may have existed in a less degree, or have been more ruled by +judgment, it may have been calmer and more matter-of-fact; and yet Jane +Austen, at the very end of her life, wrote thus. Her words seem to ring +in our ears after they have been spoken. Anne Elliot must have been Jane +Austen herself, speaking for the last time. There is something so true, +so womanly about her, that it is impossible not to love her most of all. +She is the bright-eyed heroine of the earlier novels, matured, softened, +cultivated, to whom fidelity has brought only greater depth and +sweetness instead of bitterness and pain. + +What a difficult thing it would be to sit down and try to enumerate the +different influences by which our lives have been affected--influences +of other lives, of art, of nature, of place and circumstance,--of +beautiful sights passing before our eyes, or painful ones: seasons +following in their course--hills rising on our horizons--scenes of ruin +and desolation--crowded thoroughfares--sounds in our ears, jarring or +harmonious--the voices of friends, calling, warning, encouraging--of +preachers preaching--of people in the street below, complaining, and +asking our pity! What long processions of human beings are passing +before us! What trains of thought go sweeping through our brains! Man +seems a strange and ill-kept record of many and bewildering experiences. +Looking at oneself--not as oneself, but as an abstract human being--one +is lost in wonder at the vast complexities which have been brought to +bear upon it; lost in wonder, and in disappointment perhaps, at the +discordant result of so great a harmony. Only we know that the whole +diapason is beyond our grasp: one man cannot hear the note of the +grasshoppers, another is deaf when the cannon sounds. Waiting among +these many echoes and mysteries of every kind, and light and darkness, +and life and death, we seize a note or two of the great symphony, and +try to sing; and because these notes happen to jar, we think all is +discordant hopelessness. Then come pressing onward in the crowd of +life, voices with some of the notes that are wanting to our own +part--voices tuned to the same key as our own, or to an accordant one; +making harmony for us as they pass us by. Perhaps this is in life the +happiest of all experience, and to few of us there exists any more +complete ideal. + +And so now and then in our lives, when we learn to love a sweet and +noble character, we all feel happier and better for the goodness and +charity which is not ours, and yet which seems to belong to us while +we are near it. Just as some people and states of mind affect us +uncomfortably, so we seem to be true to ourselves with a truthful +person, generous-minded with a generous nature; life seems less +disappointing and self-seeking when we think of the just and sweet and +unselfish spirits, moving untroubled among dinning and distracting +influences. These are our friends in the best and noblest sense. We are +the happier for their existence,--it is so much gain to us. They may +have lived at some distant time, we may never have met face to face, or +we may have known them and been blessed by their love; but their light +shines from afar, their life is for us and with us in its generous +example; their song is for our ears, and we hear it and love it still, +though the singer may be lying dead. + + +III. + +A little book, written by one of Jane Austen's nephews, tells with a +touching directness and simplicity the story of this good and gifted +woman, whose name has long been a household word among us, but of whose +history nothing was known until this little volume appeared. It is but +the story of a country lady, of quiet days following quiet days of +seasons in their course of common events; and yet the history is deeply +interesting to those who loved the writer of whom it is written; and as +we turn from the story of Jane Austen's life to her books again, we feel +more than ever that she, too, was one of those true friends who belong +to us inalienably--simple, wise, contented, living in others, one of +those whom we seem to have a right to love. Such people belong to all +humankind by the very right of their wide and generous sympathies, of +their gentle wisdom and loveableness. Jane Austen's life, as it is told +by Mr. Austen Legh, is very touching, sweet, and peaceful. It is a +country landscape, where the cattle are grazing, the boughs of the great +elm-tree rocking in the wind: sometimes, as we read, they come falling +with a crash into the sweep; birds are flying about the old house, +homely in its simple rule. The rafters cross the whitewashed ceilings, +the beams project into the room below. We can see it all: the parlour +with the horsehair sofa, the scant, quaint furniture, the old-fashioned +garden outside, with its flowers and vegetables combined, and along the +south side of the garden the green terrace sloping away. + +There is a pretty description of the sisters' devotion to one another +(when Cassandra went to school little Jane accompanied her, the sisters +could not be parted), of the family party, of the old place, 'where +there are hedgerows winding, with green shady footpaths within the +copse; where the earliest primroses and hyacinths are found.' There +is the wood-walk, with its rustic seats, leading to the meadows; the +church-walk leading to the church, 'which is far from the hum of the +village, and within sight of no habitation, except a glimpse of the grey +manor-house through its circling screen of sycamores. Sweet violets, +both purple and white, grow in abundance beneath its south wall. Large +elms protrude their rough branches, old hawthorns shed their blossoms +over the graves, and the hollow yew-tree must be at least coeval with +the church.' + +One may read the account of Catherine Morland's home with new interest, +from the hint which is given of its likeness to the old house at +Steventon, where dwelt the unknown friend whose voice we seem to hear +at last, and whose face we seem to recognise, her bright eyes and brown +curly hair, her quick and graceful figure. One can picture the children +who are playing at the door of the old parsonage, and calling for Aunt +Jane. One can imagine her pretty ways with them, her sympathy for the +active, their games and imaginations. There is Cassandra. She is older +than her sister, more critical, more beautiful, more reserved. There is +the mother of the family, with her keen wit and clear mind; the handsome +father--'the handsome proctor,' as he was called; the five brothers, +driving up the lane. Tranquil summer passes by, the winter days go by; +the young lady still sits writing at the old mahogany desk, and smiling, +perhaps, at her own fancies, and hiding them away with her papers at the +sound of coming steps. Now, the modest papers, printed and reprinted, +lie in every hand, the fancies disport themselves at their will in the +wisest brains and the most foolish. + +It must have been at Steventon--Jane Austen's earliest home--that Mr. +Collins first made his appearance (Lady Catherine not objecting, as we +know, to his occasional absence on a Sunday, provided another clergyman +was engaged to do the duty of the day), and here, conversing with Miss +Jane, that he must have made many of his profoundest observations upon +human nature; remarking, among other things, that resignation is never +so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its +value in our estimation, and propounding his celebrated theory about the +usual practice of elegant females. It must have been here, too, that poor +Mrs. Bennet declared, with some justice, that once estates are entailed, +one can never tell how they will go; here, too, that Mrs. Allen's sprigged +muslin and John Thorpe's rodomontades were woven; that his gig was built, +'curricle-hung lamps, seat, trunk, sword-case, splashboard, silver +moulding, all, you see, complete. The ironwork as good as new, or +better. He asked fifty guineas.... I closed with him directly, threw +down the money, and the carriage was mine.' + +'And I am sure,' said Catherine, 'I know so little of such things, that +I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.' + +'Neither the one nor the other,' says John Thorpe. + +Mrs. Palmer was also born at Steventon--that good-humoured lady in +'Sense and Sensibility,' who thinks it so ridiculous that her husband +never hears her when she speaks to him. We are told that Marianne and +Ellinor have been supposed to represent Cassandra and Jane Austen; but +Mr. Austen Legh says that he can trace no resemblance. Jane Austen is +not twenty when this book is written, and only twenty-one when 'Pride +and Prejudice' is first devised. + +Cousins presently come on the scene, and amongst them the romantic +figure of a young, widowed Comtesse de Feuillade, flying from the +Revolution to her uncle's home. She is described as a clever and +accomplished woman, interested in her young cousins, teaching them +French (both Jane and Cassandra knew French), helping in their various +schemes, in their theatricals in the barn. She eventually marries her +cousin, Henry Austen. The simple family annals are not without their +romance; but there is a cruel one for poor Cassandra, whose lover dies +abroad, and his death saddens the whole family-party. Jane, too, +'receives the addresses' (do such things as addresses exist nowadays?) +'of a gentleman possessed of good character and fortune, and of +everything, in short, except the subtle power of touching her heart.' +One cannot help wondering whether this was a Henry Crawford or an Elton +or a Mr. Elliot, or had Jane already seen the person that even Cassandra +thought good enough for her sister? + +Here, too, is another sorrowful story. The sisters' fate (there is a sad +coincidence and similarity in it) was to be undivided; their life, their +experience was the same. Some one without a name takes leave of Jane one +day, promising to come back. He never comes back: long afterwards they +hear of his death. The story seems even sadder than Cassandra's in its +silence and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty are death in life +to some people.... + +There is little trace of such a tragedy in Jane Austen's books--not one +morbid word is to be found, not one vain regret. Hers was not a nature +to fall crushed by the overthrow of one phase of her manifold life. She +seems to have had a natural genius for life, if I may so speak; too +vivid and genuinely unselfish to fail her in her need. She could gather +every flower, every brightness along her road. Good spirit, content, all +the interests of a happy and observant nature were hers. Her gentle +humour and wit and interest cannot have failed. + +It is impossible to calculate the difference of the grasp by which one +or another human being realises existence and the things relating to it, +nor how much more vivid life seems to some than to others. Jane Austen, +while her existence lasted, realised it, and made the best use of the +gifts that were hers. Yet, when her life was ending, then it was given +to her to understand the change that was at hand; as willingly as she +had lived, she died. Some people seem scarcely to rise up to their own +work, to their own ideal. Jane Austen's life, as it is told by her +nephew, is beyond her work, which only contained one phase of that +sweet and wise nature--the creative, observant, outward phase. For her +home, for her sister, for her friends, she kept the depth and tenderness +of her bright and gentle sympathy. She is described as busy with her +neat and clever fingers sewing for the poor, working fanciful keepsakes +for her friends. There is the cup and ball that she never failed to +catch; the spillikens lie in an even ring where she had thrown them; +there are her letters, straightly and neatly folded, and fitting +smoothly in their creases. There is something sweet, orderly, and +consistent in her character and all her tastes--in her fondness for +Crabbe and Cowper, in her little joke that she ought to be a Mrs. +Crabbe. She sings of an evening old ballads to old-fashioned tunes with +a low sweet voice. + +Further on we have a glimpse of Jane and her sister in their mobcaps, +young still, but dressed soberly beyond their years. One can imagine +'Aunt Jane,' with her brother's children round her knee, telling her +delightful stories or listening to theirs, with never-failing sympathy. +One can fancy Cassandra, who does not like desultory novels, more +prudent and more reserved, and somewhat less of a playfellow, looking +down upon the group with elder sister's eyes. + +Here is an extract from a letter written at Steventon in 1800:-- + +'I have two messages: let me get rid of them, and then my paper will be +my own. Mary fully intended writing by Mr. Charles's frank, and only +happened entirely to forget it, but will write soon; and my father +wishes Edward to send him a memorandum of the price of hops. + + '_Sunday Evening._ +'We have had a dreadful storm of wind in the forepart of the day, which +has done a great deal of mischief among our trees. I was sitting alone +in the drawing-room when an odd kind of crash startled me. In a moment +afterwards it was repeated. I then went to the window. I reached it just +in time to see the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the +sweep!!! + +'The other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which +was nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sank among +our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce-fir, breaking +off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of +several branches in its fall. This is not all: the maple bearing the +weathercock was broken in two, and what I regret more than all the rest +is, that all the three elms that grew in Hall's Meadow, and gave such +ornament to it, are gone.' + +A certain Mrs. Stent comes into one of these letters 'ejaculating some +wonder about the cocks and hens.' Mrs. Stent seems to have tried their +patience, and will be known henceforward as having bored Jane Austen. + +They leave Steventon when Jane is about twenty-five years of age and go +to Bath, from whence a couple of pleasant letters are given us. Jane is +writing to her sister. She has visited Miss A., who, like all other +young ladies, is considerably genteeler than her parents. She is +heartily glad that Cassandra speaks so comfortably of her health and +looks: could travelling fifty miles produce such an immediate change? +'You were looking poorly when you were here, and everybody seemed +sensible of it.' Is there any charm in a hack postchaise? But if there +were, Mrs. Craven's carriage might have undone it all. Then Mrs. Stent +appears again. 'Poor Mrs. Stent, it has been her lot to be always in the +way; but we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs. +Stents ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody.' +Elsewhere she writes, upon Mrs. ----'s mentioning that she had sent the +'Rejected Addresses' to Mr. H., 'I began talking to her a little about +them, and expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, +"Oh dear, yes, very much; very droll indeed; the opening of the house +and the striking up of the fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who +shall say?' + +But there is no malice in Jane Austen. Hers is the charity of all clear +minds, it is only the muddled who are intolerant. All who love Emma and +Mr. Knightly must remember the touching little scene in which he +reproves her for her thoughtless impatience of poor Miss Bates's +volubility. + +'You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from +a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless +spirits and in the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her.... +This is not pleasant to you, Emma, and it is very far from pleasant to +me, but I must, I will, I will tell you truths while I am satisfied with +proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that +you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do me +now.' + +'While they talked they were advancing towards the carriage: it was +ready, and before she could speak again he had handed her in. He had +misinterpreted the feeling which kept her face averted and her tongue +motionless.' Mr. Knightly's little sermon, in its old-fashioned English, +is as applicable now as it was when it was spoken. We know that he was +an especial favourite with Jane Austen. + + +IV. + +Mr. Austen died at Bath, and his family removed to Southampton. In 1811, +Mrs. Austen, her daughters, and her niece, settled finally at Chawton, +a house belonging to Jane's brother, Mr. Knight (he was adopted by an +uncle, whose name he took), and from Chawton all her literary work was +given to the world. 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' were +already written; but in the next five years, from thirty-five to forty, +she set to work seriously, and wrote 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma,' and +'Persuasion.' Any one who has written a book will know what an amount of +labour this represents.... One can picture to oneself the little family +scene which Jane describes to Cassandra. 'Pride and Prejudice' just come +down in a parcel from town; the unsuspicious Miss B. to dinner; and Jane +and her mother setting to in the evening and reading aloud half the +first volume of a new novel sent down by the brother. Unsuspicious Miss +B. is delighted. Jane complains of her mother's too rapid way of getting +on; 'though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot +speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however,' she says, 'I am quite +vain enough and well-satisfied enough.' This is her own criticism of +'Pride and Prejudice':--'The work is rather too light, and bright, and +sparkling. It wants shade. It wants to be stretched out here and there +with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn +specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story--an essay +on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the "History of Bonaparte."' + +And so Jane Austen lives quietly working at her labour of love, +interested in her 'own darling children's' success; 'the light of the +home,' one of the real living children says afterwards, speaking in the +days when she was no longer there. She goes to London once or twice. +Once she lives for some months in Hans Place, nursing a brother through +an illness. Here it was that she received some little compliments and +messages from the Prince Regent, to whom she dedicated 'Emma.' He thanks +her and acknowledges the handsome volumes, and she laughs and tells her +publisher that at all events his share of the offering is appreciated, +whatever hers may be! We are also favoured with some valuable suggestions +from Mr. Clarke, the Royal librarian, respecting a very remarkable +clergyman. He is anxious that Miss Austen should delineate one who +'should pass his time between the metropolis and the country, something +like Beattie's minstrel, entirely engaged in literature, and no man's +enemy but his own.' Failing to impress this character upon the authoress, +he makes a fresh suggestion, and proposes that she should write a +romance illustrative of the august house of Coburg. 'It would be +interesting,' he says, 'and very properly dedicated to Prince Leopold.' + +To which the authoress replies: 'I could no more write a romance than an +epic poem. I could not seriously sit down to write a romance under any +other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me +to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, +I am sure I should be hung before the first chapter.' + +There is a delightful collection of friends' suggestions which she has +put together, but which is too long to be quoted here. She calls it, +'Plan of a Novel, as suggested by various Friends.' + +All this time, while her fame is slowly growing, life passes in the same +way as in the old cottage at Chawton. Aunt Jane, with her young face and +her mob-cap, makes play-houses for the children, helps them to dress up, +invents imaginary conversations for them, supposing that they are all +grown up, the day after a ball. One can imagine how delightful a game +that must have seemed to the little girls. She built her nest, did this +good woman, happily weaving it out of shreds, and ends, and scraps of +daily duty, patiently put together; and it was from this nest that she +sang the song, bright and brilliant, with quaint thrills and unexpected +cadences, that reaches us even here through near a century. The lesson +her life seems to teach us is this: Don't let us despise our nests--life +is as much made of minutes as of years; let us complete the daily +duties; let us patiently gather the twigs and the little scraps of moss, +of dried grass together, and see the result!--a whole, completed and +coherent, beautiful even without the song. + +We come too soon to the story of her death. And yet did it come too +soon? A sweet life is not the sweeter for being long. Jane Austen lived +years enough to fulfil her mission. She lived long enough to write six +books that were masterpieces in their way--to make a world the happier +for her industry. + +One cannot read the story of her latter days, of her patience, her +sweetness, and gratitude, without emotion. There is family trouble, we +are not told of what nature. She falls ill. Her nieces find her in her +dressing-gown, like an invalid, in an arm-chair in her bedroom; but she +gets up and greets them, and, pointing to seats which had been arranged +for them by the fire, says: 'There is a chair for the married lady, and +a little stool for you, Caroline.' But she is too weak to talk, and +Cassandra takes them away. + +At last they persuade her to go to Winchester, to a well-known doctor +there. + +'It distressed me,' she says, in one of her last, dying letters, 'to see +Uncle Henry and William Knight, who kindly attended us, riding in the +rain almost the whole way. We expect a visit from them to-morrow, and +hope they will stay the night; and on Thursday, which is a confirmation +and a holiday, we hope to get Charles out to breakfast. We have had but +one visit from _him_, poor fellow, as he is in the sick room.... God +bless you, dear E.; if ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed +as I have been....' + +But nursing does not cure her, nor can the doctor save her to them all, +and she sinks from day to day. To the end she is full of concern for +others. + +'As for my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse has +not been made ill by her exertions,' she writes. 'As to what I owe her, +and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I +can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.' + +One can hardly read this last sentence with dry eyes. It is her parting +blessing and farewell to those she had blessed all her life by her +presence and her love--that love which is beyond death; and of which the +benediction remains, not only spoken in words, but by the ever-present +signs and the tokens of those lifetimes which do not end for us as long +as we ourselves exist. + +They asked her when she was near her end if there was anything she +wanted. + +'Nothing but death,' she said. Those were her last words. She died on +the 18th of July, 1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where +she lies not unremembered. + + +LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., +NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET + + + + +TRANSCRIBER's NOTE + +Two instances of Bryon for _Byron_ have been corrected. The following +additional changes have been made: + + A. I. R. (in dedication) A. _T._ R. + + her sad and dimning life her sad and _dimming_ life + + it was to her father hat it was to her father _that_ + + who invited Mrs. Barbauld to who invited _Mr._ Barbauld + become their minister become their minister + + He was interrupted by her He was interrupted by _his_ + companion companion + + Mrs. Opie's description of her Mrs. Opie's description of her + arrival reads a comment upon arrival reads _like_ a comment + history. upon history. + + + + +MISS THACKERAY'S WORKS. + +A New and Uniform Edition; each Volume Illustrated with a Vignette +Title-page drawn by ARTHUR HUGHES, and Engraved by J. COOPER. + +Large crown 8vo. 6_s._ + + 1. OLD KENSINGTON. + 2. THE VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF. + 3. FIVE OLD FRIENDS AND A YOUNG PRINCE. + 4. TO ESTHER; and other Sketches. + 5. BLUEBEARD'S KEYS; and other Stories. + 6. THE STORY OF ELIZABETH; TWO HOURS; FROM AN ISLAND. + 7. TOILERS AND SPINSTERS; and other Essays. + 8. MISS ANGEL; FULHAM LAWN. + 9. MISS WILLIAMSON'S DIVAGATIONS. + + +NEW AND UNIFORM EDITION OF MRS. GASKELL'S NOVELS AND TALES. + +In Seven Volumes, each containing Four Illustrations. + +_Price 3s. 6d. each, bound in cloth; or in Sets of Seven Volumes, +handsomely bound in half-morocco, price L2. 10s._ + +CONTENTS OF THE VOLUMES:-- + + VOL. I. WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. + VOL. II. NORTH AND SOUTH. + VOL. III. SYLVIA'S LOVERS. + + VOL. IV. CRANFORD. + Company Manners--The Well of Pen-Morpha--The Heart of John + Middleton--Traits and Stories of the Huguenots--Six Weeks at + Heppenheim--The Squire's Story--Libbie Marsh's Three Eras--Curious if + True--The Moorland Cottage--The Sexton's Hero--Disappearances--Right at + Last--The Manchester Marriage--Lois the Witch--The Crooked Branch. + + VOL. V. MARY BARTON. + Cousin Phillis--My French Master--The Old Nurse's Story--Bessy's + Troubles at Home--Christmas Storms and Sunshine. + + VOL. VI. RUTH. + The Grey Woman--Morton Hall--Mr. Harrison's Confessions--Hand and Heart. + + VOL. VII. LIZZIE LEIGH. + A Dark Night's Work--Round the Sofa--My Lady Ludlow--An Accursed + Race--The Doom of the Griffiths--Half a Lifetime Ago--The Poor + Clare--The Half-Brothers. + + +ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS OF POPULAR WORKS + +Handsomely bound in cloth gilt, each volume containing Four Illustrations. + +Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ + + THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. + FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. + THE CLAVERINGS. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. + TRANSFORMATION: a Romance. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. + ROMANTIC TALES. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.' + DOMESTIC STORIES. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.' + NO NAME. By WILKIE COLLINS. + ARMADALE. By WILKIE COLLINS. + AFTER DARK. By WILKIE COLLINS. + MAUD TALBOT. By HOLME LEE. + THE MOORS AND THE FENS. By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. + WITHIN THE PRECINCTS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT. + CARITA. By Mrs. OLIPHANT. + FOR PERCIVAL. By MARGARET VELEY. + +London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place. + + +SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S ANNOUNCEMENTS, + +_NEW WORK by LIEUT.-COL. R. L. PLAYFAIR._ + +The SCOURGE of CHRISTENDOM: Annals of British Relations with Algiers +prior to the French Conquest. With Illustrations of Ancient Algiers from +1578 to 1824. By Lieut.-Col. R. L. PLAYFAIR, H.B.M.'s Consul at Algiers. +Demy 8vo. + +_NEW WORK by JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS._ + +SHAKSPERE'S PREDECESSORS in the ENGLISH DRAMA. +By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, Author of 'The Renaissance in Italy' &c. Demy +8vo. + +The MATTHEW ARNOLD BIRTHDAY BOOK. +Arranged by his Daughter, ELEANOR ARNOLD. +Handsomely printed and bound in cloth, gilt edges. With Photograph. +Small 4to. 10_s._ 6_d._ + +_NEW VOLUME by MISS THACKERAY (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)._ + +A BOOK of SIBYLS: MRS. BARBAULD--MISS EDGEWORTH--MRS. OPIE--MISS AUSTEN. +By Miss THACKERAY (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie). +Essays reprinted from the 'Cornhill Magazine.' +Large crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ + +MERV: a Story of Adventures and Captivity. +Epitomised from 'The Merv Oasis.' +By EDMUND O'DONOVAN, Special Correspondent of the _Daily News_. +With a Portrait. Crown 8vo. 6_s._ + +MEMOIRS of LIFE and WORK. By CHARLES J. B. WILLIAMS, M.D., F.R.S., +Physician Extraordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. +With Original Portraits. 8vo. + +The FIRST BOOK of EUCLID MADE EASY for BEGINNERS. +Arranged from 'The Elements of Euclid,' by ROBERT SIMSON, M.D. +By WILLIAM HOWARD. With Unlettered Diagrams with Coloured Lines. +Crown 8vo. + +_NEW EDITION of HARE'S 'CITIES of NORTHERN and CENTRAL ITALY.'_ + +CITIES of CENTRAL ITALY. With Illustrations. 2 vols. crown 8vo. + +CITIES of NORTHERN ITALY. With Illustrations. 2 vols. crown 8vo. +By AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE, Author of 'Cities of Southern Italy and +Sicily' &c. + +_NEW AND REVISED EDITION in ONE VOLUME._ + +MEMORIES of OLD FRIENDS. Being Extracts from the +Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, of Penjerrick, Cornwall, from 1835 +to 1871, to which are added Fourteen Original Letters from J. S. Mill, +never before published. Edited by HORACE N. PYM. With Portrait. Crown +8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ + +_POPULAR EDITION, ABRIDGED, with a NEW PREFACE._ + +LITERATURE and DOGMA. An Essay towards a Better Comprehension of the Bible. +By MATTHEW ARNOLD. Crown 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ + +The LIFE of LORD LAWRENCE. By R. BOSWORTH SMITH, M.A., +late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, Assistant Master at Harrow +School, Author of 'Mohammed and Mohammedanism,' 'Carthage and the +Carthaginians,' &c. Fifth Edition, 2 vols. 8vo. with 2 Portraits and 2 +Maps, 36_s._ + +ANATOMY for ARTISTS. By JOHN MARSHALL, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., +Professor of Anatomy, Royal Academy of Arts; late Lecturer on Anatomy at +the Government School of Design, South Kensington; Professor of Surgery +in University College. Illustrated by 220 Original Drawings on Wood by +J. S. Cuthbert, engraved by George Nicholls & Co. Second Edition. 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