“The epigram I quoted in ‘The Knight’ was repeated to me at least twenty years back by a singularly agreeable and gifted conversationalist, the late Wm. Gouldersby, my brother’s predecessor in the Rectory of Tullamore. I was only a boy when I heard it, and need not say how strong was the impression made that has endured to the present.
“Your kindness—like all real kindnesses—emboldens, and I would, if I dared, ask your permission to say something of my next story,—I mean, of one that I intend to write at a future day. As I have already confessed to my inability to construct a plot and continue all the tortuous difficulties and surprises of a well-imagined tale, the most I could inflict upon you would be a meagre outline of my object, and the purpose for which my narrative is constructed: so much—if I had your permission—I should certainly like [to do].
“The post-mortem recollections you are good enough to notice in ‘O’Leary’ were little else than a transcript of my own feeling during recovery from the only severe illness I ever had. [They] have so much of truth about them that they were actually present to my mind day after day.
“I have little doubt that volition, powerfully exerted under the pressure of religious fervour and faith, is the secret agency of those miraculous cures whose occasional authenticity is beyond question.
“My present task is writing a little volume of Tyrol sketches—partly to illustrate some of the national proverbs of that simple people. We have been living amongst them now for above a year, and hourly growing more and more attracted to their unaffected kindliness and sincerity. The little tales I am endeavouring to shape out have the veracity of real scenes and real people in their favour, so far as I can convey them, but are quite devoid of all high interest. But if you will allow me, whenever they appear, to send you a copy, it will give me sincere gratification.
“I will not trespass on the goodness which has already given me such heartfelt pleasure by asking you to write to me. I will only say that I have never felt at the same time so proud and so happy as when reading those [letters] you have sent me, and that I thank you again and again for the happiness in which I write myself.”
To Miss Edgeworth.
“Riedenburg, Bregenz, Lac De Constance, Jan. 28, 1847.
“Dear Madam,—Your letter is now before me, and although I can fancy how tired you are of my gratitude, I am never weary of telling you how much I feel your kindness. As a manager returns thanks for the dramatis persona of his corps, I beg to repeat mine for Miss Darcy, Daly, Freney, and Co.,* who, I beseech you to believe, have derived any spirit of life they possess from the genial breath of your encouragements. Like the ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme,’ who spoke prose without knowing, I find I really had a story to tell, and, however late came the knowledge, your criticism set me about seeing how best to do it.
* Characters in ‘The Knight of Gwynne.’—E. D.