Mr. Edgeworth died on the 13th of June, in his seventy-second year. He had been—by his different wives—the father of twenty-two children, of whom thirteen survived him. The only son of his second marriage, Lovell Edgeworth, succeeded to Edgeworthstown, but persuaded his stepmother and his numerous brothers and sisters still to regard it as a home.
To enable the reader to understand the relationships of the large family circle, it may be well to give the children of Mr. Edgeworth.
1st marriage with Anna Maria Elers.
Richard, b. 1765; d. s.p. 1796.
Maria, b. 1767; d. unmarried, 1849.
Emmeline married, 1802, John King, Esq.
Anna, married, 1794, Dr. Beddoes.
2nd marriage with Honora Sneyd.
Lovell, b. 1776; d. unmarried, 1841.
Honora, d. unmarried, 1790.
3rd marriage with Elizabeth Sneyd.
Henry, b. 1782; d. unmarried, 1813.
Charles Sneyd, b. 1786; d .s.p. 1864.
William, b. 1788; d. 1792.
Thomas Day, b. 1789; d. 1792.
William, b. 1794; d. s.p. 1829.
Elizabeth, d. 1800.
Caroline, d. 1807.
Sophia, d. 1785.
Honora, married, 1831, Admiral Sir J. Beaufort, and died,
his widow, 1858.
4th marriage with Frances Anna Beaufort.
Francis Beaufort, b. 1809; married, 1831, Rosa Florentina Eroles,
and had four sons and a daughter. The second son, Antonio Eroles,
eventually succeeded his uncle Sneyd at Edgeworthstown.
Michael Pakenham, b. 1812; married, 1846, Christina Macpherson,
and had issue.
Frances Maria (Fanny), married, 1829, Lestock P. Wilson, Esq.,
and died, 1848.
Harriet, married, 1826, Rev. Richard Butler, afterwards Dean of
Clonmacnoise.
Sophia, married, 1824, Barry Fox, Esq. and d. 1837.
Lucy Jane, married, 1843, Rev. T.R. Robinson, D.D.
During the months which succeeded her father's death, Maria wrote scarcely any letters; her sight caused great anxiety. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote Ormond; and she was now unable to use them without pain.
In October she went to Black Castle, and remained there till January 1818, having the strength of mind to abstain almost entirely from reading and writing.
It required all Maria Edgeworth's inherited activity of mind, and all her acquired command over herself, to keep up the spirits of her family on their return to Edgeworthstown: from which the master-mind was gone, and where the light was quenched. But, notwithstanding all the depression she felt, she set to work immediately at what she now felt to be her first duty—the fulfilment of her father's wish that she should complete the Memoirs of his life, which he had himself begun. Yet her eyes were still so weak that she seldom allowed herself what had been her greatest relaxation—writing letters to her friends.
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