Sir Walter delights the heart of every creature who sees, hears and knows him. He is most benignant as well as most entertaining; the noblest and the gentlest of lions, and his face, especially the lower part of it, is excessively like a lion; he and Mr. Crampton and Mr. Jephson were delighted together. The school band after dinner by moonlight playing Scotch tunes, and the boys at leap-frog, delighted Sir Walter. Next day we went to the school for a very short time and saw a little of everything, and a most favorable impression was left. It being Saturday, religious instruction was going on when we went in. Catholics with their priests in one room; Protestants with Mr. Keating in the other. More delightful conversation I have seldom in my life heard than we have been blessed with these three days. What a touch of sorrow must mix with the pleasures of all who have had great losses. Lovell, my mother and I, at twelve o'clock at night, joined in exclaiming, "How delightful! O! that he had lived to see and hear this!"
Of the details of this visit, Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, has furnished an account. He draws attention to the curious coincidence that Goldsmith and Maria Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and knowledge of Irish character from the same district, Pallesmore being indeed the property of the Edgeworths.
After a week's stay Sir Walter and his friends departed to visit Killarney; and Miss Edgeworth, her sister Harriet and brother William were easily persuaded to be of the party. The journey was a delightful one to all concerned; and though a few little mishaps occurred, such as the difficulties of finding post-horses to convey so large a party, everything was turned to enjoyment. Sir Walter and Miss Edgeworth shared this faculty of looking on the bright side of the necessary discomforts of a journey, and extracting amusement from every incident—a faculty for want of which so many travellers fail to enjoy themselves. They charmed all with whom they came in contact, down to the very boatman who rowed them on the lake of Killarney, and who, rowing Lord Macaulay twenty years afterwards, told him that the circumstance had made him amends for missing a hanging that day! On Sir Walter Scott's birthday a large gathering of the clans Edgeworth and Scott took place at Dublin. "Sir Walter's health was drunk with more feeling than gaiety," and on that same evening he and Miss Edgeworth parted, never to meet again.
CHAPTER XIII.
1826 TO 1834.
It was in 1825 that the second part of Harry and Lucy was published, completing the labors planned for Miss Edgeworth by her father. The good reception it met with caused her to contemplate writing some more short tales, but she missed the guiding friend that had so long directed her. A story called Taken for Granted had long been on the stocks. Though never finished, she was occupied with it for some time, and began to see clearly where her difficulties lay.
Your observations about the difficulties of Taken for Granted are excellent; I "take for granted" I shall be able to conquer them. If only one instance were taken, the whole story must turn upon that, and be constructed to bear on one point; and that pointing to the moral would not appear natural. As Sir Walter said to me in reply to my observing, "It is difficult to introduce the moral without displeasing the reader": "The rats won't go into the trap if they smell the hand of the rat-catcher."
The opening of the year 1826 was one of general financial depression. This was, of course, felt yet more acutely in Ireland, where money affairs are never too flourishing. Even the estate of Edgeworthstown, that had as yet safely weathered all storms, was affected, and it was in consequence of this that, at her brother Lovell's desire, Miss Edgeworth once more resumed the rent-receiving and general management, which since her father's death she had abandoned. With consummate skill and energy she managed so that her family escaped the flood that swamped so many. For Miss Edgeworth had keen business faculties, though, except in the matter of the estate, they had never been called into play. Her stepmother tells how—
"The great difficulty was paying everybody when rents were not to be had; but Maria, resolutely avoiding the expense and annoyance of employing a solicitor, undertook the whole, borrowing money in small sums, paying off encumbrances, and repaying the borrowed money as the times improved; thus enabling her brother to keep the land which so many proprietors were then obliged to sell. While never distressing the tenants, she at last brought the whole business to a triumphant conclusion."
Yet at no time was Miss Edgeworth absorbed in one thing only; her wide and universal interests could not slumber. Thus, with all the work of a large estate on her hands, she still found time to read extensively. The letters published by Sir Walter Scott under the pseudonym of Sir Malachy Malagrowther had just appeared. They interested her strangely.