Emma and Helen Temple,[155] drawn without reference to a System, and left to develop each in her own way, would pass for sedate and early types of “Sense and Sensibility”; it pleased Miss Edgeworth the better that she could allow a measure of sense to Sensibility.
She has many variants of these types: the wise sister and playful brother; the well-informed brother with a thoughtless sister, the wise or thoughtless one with a foolish or a prudential family. Not one of them is quite like any other. Nobody could mistake Laura, Rosamond’s good sister[156] for the equally sensible Sophy, sister to Frederick and Marianne.[157]
Rosamond, with her filigree basket, would have repeated the lesson of Charlotte and the watch, but unlike Charlotte, she made the useless thing as a birthday present for somebody else. The worst that can be said of Miss Edgeworth’s young people is that they sometimes (from the very reasonableness of their up-bringing) assume an attitude of “civil contempt” towards ordinary folk. They understand too soon the dangers that arise in education from a bad servant or a silly governess, and are too fond of arguments and encyclopædias. These are annoying traits in otherwise natural and pleasant persons, for although they are prigs in matters of knowledge or conscience, they have a very sound sense of values and can even be merry when it is not unreasonable to laugh.
Sir Walter Scott said that Miss Edgeworth was “best in the little touches.”[158] Children always find this out. They love the robin that sings in the Cathedral, the child that shared her bread and milk with the pig, the “little breathless girl” who ran back to thank Simple Susan for the double cowslips and violets, crying, “Kiss me quick, for I shall be left behind.”
The smallest parts are played in character, in spite of the didactic purpose and the clock-work plot. This story of “Simple Susan” is not unlike a Kilner pastoral; but the colours are fresher, the lines more definite.
“When the little girl parts with her lamb” said Scott, “and the little boy brings it back to her, there is nothing for it but just to put down the book and cry.”
But perhaps his great love of children made him read more pathos into the story than is actually there. Few readers cry over these tales. They reflect the temper of the Edgeworth family.
Early Lessons[159] records the schooling of these children. Maria had scarcely discovered “the warmth and pleasure of invention” when her father recalled her to the Schoolroom. She set about straightening her bright intricate patterns to make reading books for the little ones, much as Dr. Primrose’s daughters cut up their trains into Sunday waistcoats for Dick and Bill.
To turn from the Parent’s Assistant to Early Lessons is to agree with Byron that there ought to have been a Society for the Suppression of Mr. Edgeworth.
And yet there is something to be said for these chosen and deliberate little scenes. Acquaintance prospers where there is no plot-interest to engross attention. The “little boy whose name was Frank” steps as naturally into the story as he would into a familiar room. He is so obviously a real little boy that it is even possible to believe in his virtues: