Maria Edgeworth

by Helen Zimmern

Belinda was no favorite with Miss Edgeworth. Writing to Mrs. Barbauld some years later, she says:—

Belinda is but an uninteresting personage after all.... I was not either in Belinda or Leonora sufficiently aware that the goodness of a heroine interests only in proportion to the perils and trials to which it is exposed.

And again, after revising it for republication, she says:—

I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of that stick or stone, Belinda, that I could have torn the pages to pieces; really I have not the heart or the patience to correct her. As the hackney coachman said, "Mend you! Better make a new one."

Miss Edgeworth was therefore capable of self-criticism. Indeed, at no time did she set even a due value on her own work, still less an exaggerated one. To the day of her death she sincerely believed that all the honor and glory she had reaped belonged of right to her father alone. But there was yet another reason why Miss Edgeworth never liked Belinda. She was staying at Black Castle when the first printed copy reached her. Before her aunt saw it she contrived to tear out the title-pages of the three volumes, and Mrs. Ruxton thus read it without the least suspicion as to its authorship. She was much delighted, and insisted on reading out to her niece passage after passage. Miss Edgeworth pretended to be deeply interested in some book she was herself reading, and when Mrs. Ruxton exclaimed, "Is not that admirably written?" replied, "Admirably read, I think." "It may not be so very good," added Mrs. Ruxton, "but it shows just the sort of knowledge of high life which people have who live in the world." But in vain she appealed to Miss Edgeworth for sympathy, until, provoked by her faint acquiescence, Mrs. Ruxton at last accused her of being envious. "I am sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a rival author." This remark made Miss Edgeworth burst into tears and show her aunt the title-pages of the book. But Mrs. Ruxton was not pleased; she never wholly liked Belinda afterwards, and Miss Edgeworth had always a painful recollection that her aunt had suspected her of the meanness of envy.

In 1802 was published the Essay on Irish Bulls, bearing on its title-page the names of father and daughter. Its title appears to have misled even the Irish: at least it is related that an Irish gentleman, secretary to an agricultural society, who was much interested in improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent for it, expecting to find a work on live stock. We have Miss Edgeworth's own account of the genesis of the book:—

The first design of the essay was my father's: under the semblance of attack, he wished to show the English public the eloquence, wit and talents of the lower classes of people in Ireland. Working zealously upon the ideas which he suggested, sometimes what was spoken by him was afterwards written by me; or when I wrote my first thoughts, they were corrected and improved by him; so that no book was ever written more completely in partnership. On this, as on most subjects, whether light or serious, when we wrote together, it would now be difficult, almost impossible, to recollect which thoughts originally were his and which were mine. All passages in which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions must be his exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant of the learned languages. The notes on the Dublin shoe-black's metaphorical language I recollect are chiefly his.

I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, indescribable Irish tones and gestures, of which written language can give but a faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people, without condescending to produce effect by caricature. He knew not only their comic talents, but their powers of pathos; and often when he had just heard from them some pathetic complaint, he has repeated it to me while the impression was fresh. In the chapter on wit and eloquence in Irish Bulls there is a speech of a poor freeholder to a candidate who asked for his vote; this speech was made to my father when he was canvassing the county of Longford. It was repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it down instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a word.

The complaint of a poor widow against her landlord, and his reply, were quoted by Campbell in his Lectures on Eloquence, as happy specimens, under the conviction that they were fictitious. Miss Edgeworth assures us that they are "unembellished facts," that her father was the magistrate before whom the complaint and defense were made, and that she wrote down the speeches word for word as he repeated them to her. This Essay on Irish Bulls, though a somewhat rambling and discursive composition, is a readable one, full of good stories, pathetic and humorous. Besides giving critical and apt illustrations, the authors did justice to the better traits of the Irish character. It was an earnest vindication of the national intellect from the charge of habitual blundering, showing how blundering is common to all countries, and is no more Irish than Persian. They further proved that most so-called bulls are no bulls at all, but often a poetic license, a heart-spoken effusion, and that thus the offense became a grace beyond the reach of art.

Moral Tales also saw the light in 1801. They too were written to illustrate Practical Education, but aimed at readers of a more advanced age than the children's tales; in fact, both here and elsewhere Miss Edgeworth strove to do on a larger scale what was achieved by the ancient form of parable, to make an attractive medium for the instruction and conviction of minds. It was a fancy of hers, and perhaps a characteristic of her age, when female authorship was held in somewhat doubtful repute, that she invariably insisted on appearing before the public under cover of her father's name. He therefore wrote for Moral Tales, as afterwards for all her works, one of his ludicrously bombastic prefaces, which, whatever they may have done in his own time, would certainly to-day be the most effective means of repelling readers. The stories are six in number: Forester, The Prussian Vase, The Good Aunt, Angelina, The Good French Governess, and Mademoiselle Panache. Of these the plots are for the most part poorly contrived, the narrative hammered out invita Minerva, and, owing to their aim, nothing capricious or accidental is permitted. Too obviously they are the mature fruits of purpose and reflection, not happy effusions of the fancy, and hence also not always successful. Sometimes the fault lay with the subject that afforded too little scope, sometimes the moral striven after did not admit of the embellishments requisite for a work of amusement. One thing, however, is certain: that Miss Edgeworth honestly endeavored to combine entertainment with instruction, and that, taken as a whole, she succeeded. She did not shelter herself behind the saying that Il est permis d'ennuyer en moralités d'ici jusqu'à Constantinople. But it is the key to her writings, to their excellences and their defects, that the duty of a moral teacher was always uppermost in her mind. Her aim was not to display her own talents, but to make her readers substantially better and happier, to show how easy and agreeable to practice are high principles. Again and again she insists, with irrefragable force, that it is the ordinary and attainable qualities of life rather than the lofty and heroic ones on which our substantial happiness depends, an insistance new in the domain of fiction, which as a rule preaches other doctrines. With this end in view she had necessarily to sacrifice some freedom and grace of invention to illustrate her moral aphorisms, her salutary truths, and she yielded to the temptation to exaggerate in order to make her work more impressive. Her Moral Tales are a series of climaces of instances, an enlargement of La Bruyère's idea, a method allowable to creations of fancy, but not quite justifiable when applied to the probable. Moreover, it was a feature of the eighteenth century, to which in many respects Miss Edgeworth belonged, that its tales and novels were not analytic. Psychology based upon biology was as yet unknown, or in so empirical a stage as to be remote from practical application. The writers of those days depict their characters not as the complex bundles of good and bad qualities and potentialities that even the veriest scribbler paints them to-day, but as sharply good or bad, so that one flaw of character, one vice, one folly, was made to be the origin of all their disasters. It is, of course, always dangerous when the author plays the part of Providence, and can twist the narrative to suit the moral; but this censure applies to all moral tales, by no matter whom. Miss Edgeworth strove to civilize and instruct by the rehearsal of a tale, and if we all, from the perversity of human nature, rather revolt against being talked to for our good, it must ever be added in her praise that she generally allures us and makes us listen to her maxims of right living. Her self-imposed task was neither humble nor easy, but one that required judgment, patience and much knowledge of the world; her moral wholesomeness cannot be rated too highly or be too much commended. If she ascribed too large a share of morality to the head instead of the heart, this was the result of the doctrines with which her father had imbued her.