Among the many advanced movements that Mr. Edgeworth had advocated was the cause of Catholic emancipation. In such public measures as her father had felt an interest, Miss Edgeworth felt one too; and it was a great joy to her that not only she, but her father's sister, had lived to see this measure carried. It is amusing to learn that it was a grievance of O'Connell's against Miss Edgeworth that she never directly espoused this cause by means of her pen. This was, in real fact, a compliment, as showing what a power her writings had become.
In the summer, the "reaper whose name is Death" reappeared amidst that united family, carrying off this time the able engineer, William Edgeworth, who also succumbed to the fatal family malady. It was a shock and a grief to his devoted sister, who sorrowed the more when she saw her juniors go before her, and the grief told on her own health. She was ailing until autumn, often confined to the sofa and forbidden her pen, though, happily for her, neither her needle nor her books. Her idle fancy began once more to weave romances, and she planned the story of Helen and made some notes for it. Contrary to her previous custom, she did not draw up a complete sketch, as she had done while writing under her father's guidance. She jotted down the rough outlines, and trusted to spontaneous promptings to fill in the details. But she was not even certain at all whether she should attempt to write it; and although encouraged by the success of Harry and Lucy, she was nervous about grappling with higher work, deprived of the guide who had been her life-long stay.
For years she had rejected all suggestions to turn her attention once more to novel-writing, and but for the encouragement of her sister Harriet (Mrs. Butler), Helen would probably never have seen the light. It was first seriously thought of in 1830, but proceeded slowly. Life brought more interruptions to her than it had done in youth—family events, visits of kindness and pleasure, absorbed much time. Then, too, she was greatly engrossed by her agency business, to which all else was made to defer. She was punctual, we are told, not only to the day, but to the hour, of her payments; and her exertions to have the rents paid and the money ready for these payments were unvarying. She herself looked after the repairs, the letting of the village houses, the drains, gutters and pathways, the employment of the poor,—in short, all the hundred and one duties that devolve upon the steward of landed property. It was considered by her family that all this exertion was in no wise too much for her; that, on the contrary, it was good for her health, inducing her to walk out and take more exercise than she would have done without an object in view. Even the very drudgery of accounts and letters of business, says her stepmother, "though at times almost too much for her bodily strength, invigorated her mind; and she went from the rent-book to her little desk and the manuscript of Helen with renewed vigor. She never wrote fiction with more life and spirit than when she had been for some time completely occupied with the hard realities of life."
Nevertheless, Helen progressed slowly, and was several times in danger of being thrust aside. She wrote to her sister:—
My dear Harriet, can you conceive yourself to be an old lamp at the point of extinction, and dreading the smell you would make at going out, and the execrations which in your dying flickerings you might hear? And then you can conceive the sudden starting up again of the flame when fresh oil is poured into the lamp. And can you conceive what that poor lamp would feel returning to light and life? So felt I when I had read your letter on reading what I sent to you of Helen. You have given me new life and spirit to go on with her. I would have gone on from principle, and the desire to do what my father advised—to finish whatever I began; but now I feel all the difference between working for a dead or a live horse.
To the day of her death Miss Edgeworth never became the prudent, staid, self-contained person we should imagine her from her books, did we possess them only as guides to her character. Rosamond remained as generously impulsive as ever. On one occasion she writes to Mrs. Ruxton:—
It is very happy for your little niece that you have so much the habit of expressing to her your kind feelings. I really think that if my thoughts and feelings were shut up completely within me, I should burst in a week, like a steam engine without a snifting-clack, now called by the grander name of a safety-valve. You want to know what I am doing and thinking of: of ditches, drains and sewers, of dragging quicks from one hedge and sticking them down into another, at the imminent peril of their green lives; of two houses to let, one tenant promised from the Isle of Man, another from the Irish Survey; of two bullfinches, each in his cage on the table—one who would sing if he could, and the other who could sing, I am told, if he would. Then I am thinking for three hours a day of Helen, to what purpose I dare not say.
Before the year 1830 was ended Miss Edgeworth had lost this aunt, whom she had loved so long and fondly. It was the severing of a life-long friendship, the heaviest blow that had befallen her since her father's death. She was in London when the event took place, and it was some comfort to her to find herself so kindly welcomed by those whom she had liked best in years gone by. She says sadly:—
It is always gratifying to find old friends the same after long absence, but it has been particularly so to me now, when not only the leaves of the pleasures of life fall naturally in its winter, but when the great branches on whom happiness depended are gone.
During this visit she kept out of all large parties, but renewed many old ties. One of the things she enjoyed most was a children's party at Mrs. Lockhart's. She was in her element among the young ones. "If Mrs. Lockhart had invented forever she could not have found what would please me more." This London visit extended over some months:—