At Edgeworthstown, her ideas were brought into wholesome touch with reality. The life was almost adventurous after those quiet years in Oxfordshire and London. Her father gave her a real share in managing the estate and she was soon acquainted with many sides of Irish character; but all her affections and interests were centred in the family, and in this lay the secret of her power as a writer of children’s books.
Mr. Edgeworth had brought up his eldest boy upon Rousseau’s exact plan, a more unfortunate experiment than Mr. Day’s; for this child of Nature would neither teach himself nor learn from others; but his brothers and sisters gained more than he lost by it: the system was modified for them, and Emile’s solitary employments found a place among the cheerful occupations of a big family.
The children were so happy and so busy that Mr. Edgeworth could say in a letter to Dr. Darwin:
“I do not think one tear per month is shed in this house, nor the voice of reproof heard, nor the hand of restraint felt”.
He encouraged Maria to record their educational adventures, and her own translation of Adèle et Théodore[149] may have suggested the idea of a book. The two volumes of Practical Education, published in 1798, with the names of Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth on the title page, mark the beginning of the long partnership which she called “the joy and pride of my life”.
What her books might have been without her father’s influence may be conjectured from what they are; this is truer of the children’s books than of the novels. She had no need of theory. Clear intelligence, warm and ready sympathies, carried her straight to the centres of childish thought. A little brother, Henry, had been her especial charge, and from him she learned what might have escaped her in the general business of the family.
She scribbled her first stories on a slate, read them to the children and altered them to suit their taste. Those they liked best were printed in 1796 at Mr. Edgeworth’s suggestion,[150] and when the little outside public called for more, fresh stories were produced on the same co-operative plan and published in the six volumes of 1800.
“The stories are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home,” wrote Miss Edgeworth to her cousin (Feb. 27, 1796), “but I am afraid you will dislike the title; my father had sent The Parent’s Friend, but Mr. Johnson has degraded it into The Parent’s Assistant, which I dislike particularly from association with an old book of Arithmetic called The Tutor’s Assistant.”
There is Geometry, if not Arithmetic, in the book. The pattern is symmetrical: the tales are constructed to fit the morals; but the Edgeworths recognised the chief faults of didactic books for children, and made the first definite attempt to deal with them.
“To prevent the precepts of morality from tiring the ear and the mind”, says Mr. Edgeworth in the preface, “it was necessary to make the stories in which they are introduced in some measure dramatic; to keep alive hope and fear and curiosity by some degree of intricacy.”