CATILINE,
A Tragedy, in Two Acts.
Catiline (in love with Aurelia) Francis.
Cato (father of Aurelia) Pakenham.
Cicero (in love with Aurelia) Harriet.
Caesar Moilliet.
Aurelia (daughter of Cato) Sophy.
Julia (wife to Cato) Fanny.
We found Lucy on her sofa, with her feet towards the green-house; a half-circle of chairs for the audience, with their backs touching the wardrobe—candlestick-footlights, well shaded with square sofa-cushions standing on end.
Prologue spoken by Harriet; curtain drew back, and Catiline and Aurelia appeared. Fanny had dressed Francis, from Kennet's Antiquities, out of an old rag-chest, and a more complete little Roman figure I never saw, though made up no mortal can tell how, like one of your own doings, dear aunt, with a crown of ilex leaves. Aurelia was perfectly draped in my French crimson shawl; she looked extremely classical and pretty, and her voice was so sweet, and her looks alternately so indignant to Catiline and so soft when she spoke of the man she loved, that I do not wonder Catiline was so desperately enamoured.
Pakenham was wonderful: he had received no instructions. They had determined to leave him to himself, and see what would come of it. He had brought down an old wig from the garret, and Catiline and Cato could not settle which it became best or worst; so Catiline wore his ilex crown, and Pakenham a scarlet cap and black velvet cloak, his eyebrows and chin darkened, a most solemn, stern countenance, a roll of white paper in his hand, the figure immovable, as if cut in stone: the soul of Cato seemed to have got into him. I never heard any actor speak better, nor did I ever see a part better sustained; it seemed as if one saw Cato through a diminishing glass. In one scene he interrupts Cicero, who is going off into a fine simile—"Enough: the tale." He said these three words so well, with such severity of tone, and such a piercing look, that I see and hear him still. His voice was as firm as a man's, and his self-possession absolute. He had his part so perfectly, that he was as independent of the prompter as of all the rest of the world.
Moilliet recited and played his part of Caesar wondrous well. You may think how well Pakenham and all of them must have acted, when we could stand the ridicule of Pakenham's Cato opposite to Moilliet's Caesar. One of James Moilliet's eyes would have contained all the eyes of Cato, Catiline, and Cicero. Fanny, as Julia, was beautiful.
BLACK CASTLE, Dec. 6, 1822.
How do you all do, my dear friends, after last night's hurricane? [Footnote: Numbers of the finest trees were blown down. The staircase skylight was blown away, and the lead which surrounded it rolled up as neatly as if just out of the plumber's: roofs were torn off and cabins blown down.] Have any trees been blown away? Has the spire stood? Is Madgy Woods alive? How many roofs of houses in the town have been blown away, and how many hundred slates and panes of glass must be replaced? The glass dome over the staircase at Ardbraccan has been blown away; two of the saloon windows blown in. The servants in this house sat up all night; I slept soundly. My aunt, roused at an unwonted hour from her bed this morning, stood at the foot of mine while I was yet dreaming; and she avers that when she told me that eight trees and the great green gates were blown down, that I sat up in my bed, and, opening one eye, answered, "Is it in the newspaper, ma'am?" When I came out to breakfast, the first object I beheld was the uprooted elms lying prostrate opposite the breakfast-room windows; and Mr. Fitzherbert says more than a hundred are blown down in the uplands.
Now I have done with the hurricane, I must tell you a dream of Bess's: she thought she went to call upon a lady, and found her reading a pious tract called "The Penitent Poodle!"
To MRS. O'BEIRNE.
BLACK CASTLE, Jan. 15, 1823.
We are delighted with Peveril, though there is too much of the dwarfs and the elfie. Scott cannot deny himself one of these spirits in some shape or other; I hope that we shall find that this elfin page, who has the power of shrinking or expanding, as it seems, to suit the occasion, is made really necessary to the story. I think the dwarf more allowable and better drawn than the page, true to history, and consistent; but Finella is sometimes handsome enough to make duke and king ready to be in love with her, and sometimes an odious little fury, clenching her hands, and to be lifted up or down stairs out of the hero's way. The indistinctness about her is not that indistinctness which belongs to the sublime, but that which arises from unsteadiness in the painter's hand when he sketched the figure. He touched and retouched at different times, without having, as it seems, a determined idea himself of what he would make her; nor had he settled whether she should bring with her "airs from heaven," or blasts from that place which is never named to ears polite.
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In May 1823 Miss Edgeworth took her half-sisters Harriet and Sophy to Scotland. It was a very happy time to her, chiefly because there she made an acquaintance with Sir Walter Scott, which soon ripened into an intimate and lasting friendship. He had already admired her stories, which he spoke of as "a sort of essence of common sense."
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MARIA to MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
KINNEIL, June 2, 1823.
I wish you were here with us. We arrived between nine and ten last night. The sea-shore approaching Kinneil House is exactly the idea I had of the road to Glenthorn Castle; the hissing sound of the wheels and all, and at last the postillion stopped where one road sloped directly down into the Frith of Forth, and another turned abruptly up hill. He said, "This is a-going into the water; I ha' come the wrong way." And up the narrow road up the hill he went and turned the carriage, and down again, and back the road we had come some little distance, and splash across to a road on the opposite side, and then by the oddest back way that seemed to be leading us into the stables, till at last we saw the door of the real house, an old but white-washed castle-mansion. A short-faced old butler in black came out of a sort of sentry-box back door to receive us, and through odd passages and staircases we reached the drawing-room, where we found fire and candles, and Mrs. Stewart and a young tall man; Mrs. Stewart, just as you saw her at Bowood, received Harriet and Sophy in her arms, spoke of their dear mother and of Honora, and seated us on the sofa, and told Sophy to open a letter from Fanny, which she put into her hand, and "feel herself at home," which indeed we did. The tall young man was no hindrance to this feeling; an intimate friend, a Mr. Jackson, who has been staying with Mr. Stewart as his companion ever since his illness.
We passed through numerous ante-chambers, nooks, and halls—broad white stone corner staircase, winding with low-arched roof. Our two rooms open into one another—mine large, with four black doors, one locked and two opening into closets, and back stairs, and if you mount to another story, all the rooms are waste garrets. Mrs. Stewart told us this morning that there were plenty of ghosts at our service belonging to Kinneil House. One in particular, Lady Lilyburn, who is often seen all in white, as a ghost should be, and with white wings, fluttering on the top of the castle, from whence she leaps into the sea—a prodigious leap of three or four hundred yards, nothing for a well-bred ghost. At other times she wears boots, and stumps up and down stairs in them, and across passages, and through bedchambers, frightening ladies' maids and others. We have not heard her yet.
When we looked out of our windows this morning we saw fine views, and in the shrubbery near the house some of the largest lilacs I ever saw in rich flower. From another window, half a mile length of avenue with gates through which we should by rights have approached the front of the house. But all this time I have not said one word of what I had intended to be the subject of this: Lanark and Mr. Owen's school. I am called down to Lady Anna Maria Elliot; [Footnote: Afterwards Countess Russell.] my mother may remember her in former days—she is said to be like Die Vernon.
To MRS. RUXTON.
EDINBURGH, 32 ABERCROMBY PLACE,
June 8, 1823.
You have had our history up to Kinneil House. Mr. and Miss Stewart accompanied us some miles on our road to show us the palace of Linlithgow—very interesting to see, but not to describe. The drive from Linlithgow to Edinburgh is nothing extraordinary, but the road approaching the city is grand, and the first view of the castle and "mine own romantic town" delighted my companions; the day was fine and they were sitting outside on the barouche seat—a seat which you, my dear aunt, would not have envied them with all their fine prospects. By this approach to Edinburgh there are no suburbs; you drive at once through magnificent broad streets and fine squares. All the houses are of stone, darker than the Ardbraccan stone, and of a kind that is little injured by weather or time. Margaret Alison [Footnote: Margaret, daughter of Dr. James Gregory, married to William Pulteney Alison, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh.] had taken lodgings for us in Abercromby Place—finely built, with hanging shrubbery garden, and the house as delightful as the situation. As soon as we had unpacked and arranged our things the evening of our arrival, we walked, about ten minutes' distance from us, to our dear old friends, the Alisons. We found them shawled and bonneted, just coming to see us. Mr. Alison and Sir Walter Scott had settled that we should dine the first day after our arrival with Mr. Alison, which was just what we wished; but on our return home we found a note from Sir Walter: