EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 18, 1824.
The indissoluble knot is tied! What an awful ceremony it is! What an awful deed! How can parents bear to be at the weddings of their children where it is not a marriage of their own free choice? and how can a woman herself pronounce that solemn vow when she is marrying for money, or for grandeur, or from any earthly motive but the pure heart?—a purer heart than my sister Sophy's I do believe never approached the altar, nor was the hand ever given more entirely with the free heart. There was no one at the wedding but our own family, Mr. Fox, Francis Fox, and William Beaufort. We six ladies went in the carriage immediately after breakfast to the church, where the gentlemen were waiting for us. The churchyard, and church of course, crowded with the poor people of the village, but as we drove out of our own lawn into Mr. Keating's, there was as little annoyance from starers as possible. William Beaufort married them, as had been Sophy's particular wish. The sun shone out with a bright promise at the moment her marriage was completed. Barry handed her into his chaise, the most commodious, prettiest, and plainest carriage I ever saw, and away they drove.
To MRS. O'BEIRNE. [Footnote: The Bishop of Meath died in 1823; and Mrs. O'Beirne and her daughters went to reside in England.]
BLACK CASTLE, July 6, 1824.
In the little drawing-room at Black Castle, where we have been so often happy together; in the little drawing-room to which you have so often brought me to see my dear aunt, I now write to you, my dear friend, to tell you how much I miss you. I feel a perpetual want of that part of my happiness in this dear place which I owed to its neighbourhood to another dear place to which I cannot now bear to go. Once, and but once, in the two months I have been here have I been there; when the indispensable civility of returning a formal visit required it, and then I felt it to be as much, if not more, than I was able to do, with the composure I felt to be proper. The sitting in that red drawing-room and missing everything I had so loved—the saloon, the lawn—I really could not speak, and heartily glad I was when I got away.
My plans of going to England this summer have been all broken up: you know how, as you have heard of the death of my dear sister Anna, [Footnote: Anna Edgeworth, Maria's whole sister, had married Dr. Beddoes in 1794.] at Florence; the account of her loss reached me just when I was joyfully expecting an answer to a letter full of projects which she never lived to read. GOD'S will be done. We expect my nieces, Anna and Mary, at Edgeworthstown as soon as they return from Italy.
To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, July 17, 1824.
I hope this will find you at Cheltenham with Barry and Sophy, and Fanny; my mother and Margaret set off this fine morning for Black Castle, and Lucy is now in the dining-room, her bed aslant across the open middle window, the grass plot new-mown, and a sweet smell of fresh hay. They are drawing home the hay, and men are driving past the windows on empty cars, or leading loaded ones. The roses are still in full blow on the trellis. Aunt Bess sitting by Lucy talking of the beautiful thorns in the Phoenix Park, and I am sitting on the other side of Lucy's bed by the pillar.
Margaret Ruxton when here was eager to pay her compliments to Peggy Tuite; her husband has written for her to go to him, and she is now "torn almost in two between the wish to go to her husband and her lothness to leave her old mother." She gave Margaret and me the history of her losing and finding her wedding ring. "Sure I knew my luck would change when I found my wedding ring that I lost four years ago—down in the quarry. I went across the fields to feed the pig, and looked and looked till I was tired, and then concluded I had given it to the pig mixed up and that he had swallowed it for ever—it was a real gold ring. But the men that was clearing out the rubbage in the quarry found it and adjourned to the public house to share the luck of it. My brother got scent of it and went directly to inform the man that found it whose the ring was, and demanded it; he wouldn't hear of giving it back, and sold it to a pensioner there above; my brother set off with himself to the priest and told all, and the priest summoned the man and the pensioner, and my brother, and in the presence of an honest man, Mr. Sweeny, warned the pensioner to restore the wedding ring, since my brother could tell the tokens on it. 'It's the woman's wedding ring to remind her of her conjugal duties, and it's sacrilege to take it.' But the man that sold it was hardened, and the pensioner said he had paid for it, and so says the priest to Keegan, that's the master of the quarry men, 'Turn this man out of the work, he is a bad man and he will corrupt the rest. And, Peggy Tuite, I advise you and your brother to go straight to Major Bond and summon these men.'" Then she described the trial, when Tuite "swore to the tokens where it had been crushed by a stone, and the goldsmith's mark, and the Major held it between him and the light and plainly noticed the crush and the battered marks, and handing me the ring said, 'Peggy Tuite, this is your ring sure enough.'"