Readers of the life of Maria Edgeworth find plenty of evidence of the extremely disturbed state of Ireland during the ten or twelve years which immediately preceded the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Reports of midnight outrages by armed and disguised bands of assassins were frequent; unpopular people were hooted and pelted by day, and sometimes murdered by night; country houses were provided with shutters so contrived as to make it possible to open a cross-fire upon these murderous bands in case of necessity. The “Thrashers” and the “Whitetooths” were the names then assumed by those marauders who in later times have been known as Whiteboys and Moonlighters. The state of Ireland, politically and socially, became so critical that many people began to feel that almost any change must be for the better. Added to all the other elements of confusion, there was, about 1798, the almost daily expectation of the French invasion. England and France were at war, and it was believed by our enemies that if they could once effect a landing in Ireland the people of that island were so ready for rebellion that the landing of the French would be in itself almost enough to place the whole country at their disposal. In this expectation they were, fortunately, very much deceived. A graphic description of the French invasion, and its utter failure to accomplish its purpose, has been given by Miss Edgeworth. Her family had, indeed, a very close acquaintance with the rebels and the invaders. The county in which Edgeworthstown was situated was in actual insurrection, and when the French landed at Killala, in county Mayo, they marched immediately upon Longford, which was in close proximity to Edgeworthstown.
Mr. Edgeworth sent to the nearest garrison for military protection for his household. He also found the majority of the troop of infantry which he had organised faithful to him; but it soon became evident, in spite of this and of the personal fidelity of his servants and tenants, that the house must be abandoned, and that the whole family must take refuge in the town of Longford. There is something rather amusing as well as touching in Maria’s womanly regrets at leaving her new paint and paper to the mercy of the rebels and the French. “My father,” she wrote, “has made our little rooms so nice for us; they are all fresh painted and papered. O rebels! O French! spare them! We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves.” After the family and household had made good their departure from Edgeworthstown, Mr. Edgeworth remembered that he had left, on the table of his study, a list of the names of the men serving in his corps, on whose fidelity he could depend. If this list fell into the hands of the enemy, the men whose names were upon it would probably be selected for bitter and cruel vengeance. “It would serve,” wrote Miss Edgeworth, “to point out their houses for pillage and their families for destruction. My father turned his horse instantly, and galloped back. The time of his absence appeared immeasurably long, but he returned safely, after having destroyed the dangerous paper.” Even if Mr. Edgeworth did spoil Maria’s romances, he must be forgiven for the sake of this act of unselfish gallantry. When the family arrived in safety at Longford, dangers began to arise from another source. It was discovered in the course of a few days that Edgeworthstown House had been left by the rebels entirely uninjured. The corps of infantry which Mr. Edgeworth had brought with him into Longford consisted partly of Catholics. Mr. Edgeworth entertained and defended with vigour a plan for the defence of the town different from that favoured by other persons in authority. All these circumstances were put together with the speed of wild-fire, and created in the minds of the ultra-Protestants of Longford the conviction that Mr. Edgeworth was in secret league with the rebels; this, they were convinced, was the reason why his house had been spared, why he had admitted Papists into any of the bonds of good fellowship; and his plan for the defence of the gaol and the garrison was, they believed, only a trick for making them over into the enemy’s hands. Two farthing candles, by the light of which Mr. Edgeworth had read the paper the previous evening, near the fortifications of the gaol, were speedily exaggerated into a statement that the gaol had been illuminated as a signal to the enemy. An armed mob assembled, fully determined to tear him to pieces. He escaped through the merest accident. Seeing him accompanied by English officers in uniform, his enemies thought he was being brought back a prisoner, and were for the moment satisfied. The incident is illustrative of the conflicting passions which, for so many years, have formed the great social and political difficulty in Ireland.
The rebels and their French allies were defeated at the battle of Ballynamuck, and the quiet family life at Edgeworthstown was resumed. All through the turmoil of wars and rumours of wars, the even tenor of Maria’s way was very little disturbed. “I am going on in the old way,” she wrote, “writing stories. I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with my hands before me would not make any of us one degree safer.”
Maria and her father had published their joint book, Practical Education, in the very year (1798) of the exciting events just narrated. Elizabeth, the second step-mother, also had a hand in it; to her notes, we are told, may be traced the chapter on “Obedience.” In this chapter the original view is put forward that in order to form and firmly implant in little children the habit of obedience, their parents should be careful at first only to tell them to do what they like doing. The habit of unquestioning obedience thus formed will, it is thought, be sufficiently strong to bear the strain, when the time comes that the child is told to do things which it would rather not do. There is a considerable element of good sense in this method, as most people will agree who have tried it in the training and teaching of dogs. A much more doubtful theory put forward in the book is that children never should be in the society of servants. This appears to us, in these more democratic days, to savour very much of pride and conceit. It is quite true that parents cannot depute to a hired servant, however faithful, the responsibility of their own position. But to say that a child is on no account to speak to a servant, or to be spoken to by one, appears to us now as most unreasonable and mischievous. How valuable in bridging over the gulf that still separates class from class is the warm affection that often exists between children and their nurses! Many a nurse has vied with a mother in warm and self-sacrificing devotion for her little charges; and all this wholesome and healing affection would be lost if the plan advocated by the Edgeworths were carried out. It is satisfactory to hear that Mrs. Barbauld protested against this doctrine, and told Mr. Edgeworth that, besides the fact that it would foster pride and ingratitude, “one and twenty other good reasons could be alleged against it.” It may be hoped that Mr. Edgeworth acknowledged himself vanquished before this formidable battery opened fire.
One of the most delightful incidents of Miss Edgeworth’s later life was her friendship with Sir Walter Scott. When the first of the Waverley Novels appeared, the secret of its authorship had been so carefully kept that every one was in the dark on the subject. The publishers had sent a copy to Miss Edgeworth and her father. As soon as Mr. Edgeworth had finished reading it, he exclaimed, “Aut Scotus, aut Diabolus,” i.e. “either Scott or the Devil”; and Maria put these words at the top of the letter which she wrote thanking the publishers for the book. Scott was already known to the world by his poems, and to this must be attributed the ready wit of the good guess made by the Edgeworths; for up to this time neither father nor daughter had had the pleasure of meeting Scott. In 1823, however, they did meet, and the acquaintance soon ripened into a lifelong friendship. Scott acted as guide to Miss Edgeworth and her sisters in showing them the beauties and monuments of Edinburgh. They visited him at Abbotsford, and took a little tour together in the beautiful scenery of the Highlands. There are delightful descriptions in Miss Edgeworth’s letters of Scott and his wife; and we have a pretty little picture of Scott and Lady Scott driving out, he with his dog, Spicer, in his lap, and she with her dog, Ourisk, in hers.
When Maria arrived at Abbotsford, and was received by her host at his archway, she exclaimed, “Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream.” Two years later, Scott, accompanied by his daughter and other members of his family, paid a return visit to Edgeworthstown House. Lockhart, Scott’s biographer and son-in-law, was one of the party. In his Life of Scott he tells how on one occasion he himself let fall some remark that poets and novelists probably regarded the whole of human life simply as providing them with the materials for their art. “A soft and pensive shade came over Scott’s face as he said, ‘I fear you have some very young ideas in your head. Are you not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature, to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care, who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it? God help us! What a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but I assure you I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel and respect our true calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart.’ Maria did not listen to this without some water in her eyes ... but she brushed her tears gaily aside, and said, ‘You see how it is. Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.’”
The delightful friendship between the two authors continued without interruption till Scott’s death in the autumn of 1832. The clouds that overshadowed his later years were bitterly lamented by Maria. She wrote of the “poignant anguish” she felt from the thought that such a life had been shortened by care and trouble. She declined, with one exception, to allow Scott’s letters to herself to be published. If they are still in existence, the reasons which caused her to withhold them no longer exist, and judging from all we know of Scott and of her, it would be a great gain to the public to be afforded the opportunity of reading them.
Those who have read this series of short biographies will find a great many of the subjects of these sketches among Miss Edgeworth’s friends. She gives a delightful description of Mrs. Fry, whom she once accompanied to Newgate. “She opened the Bible,” wrote Miss Edgeworth, “and read in the most sweetly solemn, sedate voice I ever heard, slowly and distinctly, without anything in the manner that would detract attention from the matter.” The Herschels and Mrs. Somerville were also numbered among her friends. People sometimes seem to think that women who can write books, and have learnt to understand the wonders of science, will probably cease to care for feminine nicety in dress. It is therefore very pleasant to find that Mrs. Somerville, the author of The Connection of the Physical Sciences, and Miss Edgeworth had a conference about a blue crêpe turban.
Maria Edgeworth’s life did not pass without the romance of love. She received an offer of marriage from a Swedish gentleman, while she was staying in Paris with her family in 1803. She returned his affection, but refused to marry him, sacrificing herself and him to what she believed to be her duty to her father and family. Her third and last step-mother wrote that for years “the unexpected mention of his name, or even that of Sweden, in a book or newspaper, always moved her so much that the words and lines in the page became a mass of confusion before her eyes, and her voice lost all power.” Her suitor, M. Edelcrantz, never married. At the altar of filial piety she sacrificed much.
Nothing is more charming, in the character of Maria Edgeworth, than the sweetness with which she put her own feelings on one side, and welcomed one after another, her numerous step-mothers. The third and last, a Miss Beaufort, was considerably younger than Maria. The marriage with Mrs. Edgeworth No. 4 took place about six months after the death of Mrs. Edgeworth No. 3. No wonder that even the inexhaustible patience of the good daughter was rather tried by this rapidity. She owns that when she first heard of the attachment, she did not wish for the marriage; but her will was in all respects resolutely turned towards whatever would promote her father’s happiness. She did not permit her regret to last, and she welcomed the bride not only with unaffected cordiality, but with sincerest friendship.