To LADY BEAUFORT.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 8, 1847.
Most heartily do I rejoice that we may hope that you may be able to come; I do not say come with Fanny, for that might hurry and hazard you, but in the days of harvest home, if harvest home does ever come again to our poor country, and you will rejoice with us in the brightened day.
I cannot answer your Admiral's question as to the number of deaths caused by the famine. I believe that no one can form a just estimate. In different districts the estimates and assertions are widely different, and the priests keep no registry. Mr. Tuite, who was here yesterday, told us that in the House of Commons the contradictory statements of the Irish members astonished and grieved him, as he knew the bad effect it would have in diminishing their credit with the English. Two hundred and fifty thousand is the report of the Police up to April. Mr. Tuite thought a third more deaths than usual had been in his neighbourhood. My mother and Mr. Powell say that the increase of deaths above ordinary times has not in this parish been as much as one-third.
To MRS. R. BUTLER.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 19, 1847.
The fever, or whatever it is, has been, Lucy says, dreadful about Armagh; many gentlemen have it; one who exerted himself much for the poor—was distributing meal, saw a poor girl so weak, she could not hold her apron stretched out for it; he went and held it for her—she was in the fever; he went home, felt ill, had the fever, and died.
June 7.
What magnificent convolvulus! we had not one blown for Fanny's birthday. Do not trouble yourself about my cough or cold, for I am doing, and shall do, very well; and I would have had twenty times the cough for the really exquisite pleasure I have received from Sir Henry Marsh's letter: no such generous offer was ever made with more politeness and good taste. In the midst of all that may go wrong in the world there is really much good, and so much that is honourable to our human nature.
When Margaret is with you, if she likes to see Orlandino in his present déshabillé, she is welcome. [Footnote: This story was the first of a series edited by William Chambers. It was practically "a temperance story." Speaking in it of the influence of Father Matthews, Miss Edgeworth says: "Since the time of the Crusades, never has one single voice awakened such moral energies; never was the call of one man so universally, so promptly, so long obeyed. Never, since the world began, were countless multitudes so influenced and so successfully diverted by one mind to one peaceful purpose. Never were nobler ends by nobler means attained.">[