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.