I have never seen Miss Edgeworth, which I do not very much regret, having invariably been disappointed whenever I have greatly admired a book, on being introduced to its author. This may partly be my own fault, but I believe it is so common a feeling that those to whom admiration gives pleasure, ought rather to wish to retain their idea of a favourite writer than to exchange it for reality. You might say this was ‘sour grapes,’ if I did not also acknowledge that, if an opportunity offered of making acquaintance with a person so distinguished, and of such eminent talents, as Miss Edgeworth, I should certainly embrace it; so my little theory will never deprive me of any positive pleasure, and only serve to save me from unavailing wishes.
(Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 26.)—You will be pleased at knowing we are all well; and that I, who for many, many years, have never seen the country, but when visiting at other peoples’ houses, and of course under some constraint, feel a childish delight at watching the first crocuses, snowdrops, and the gradual unfolding of the honeysuckles and other creepers. My children are equally entertained, and find a great difference between the liberty and variety of a garden, and the formal pacing up and down town flags, ever either damp or dusty. Indeed, as to education, being in the country lops off half the difficulties which attend it in town.
TO THE SAME.
London, May 1, 1811.
The letter on the strenuous idleness of those who devote their whole leisure to needlework, I imagine to be Mr. Lefanu’s. Am I right? My grandfather was more averse from this employment than even the writer of that letter, and could never bear to see a needle in my hands. Your friend does not go so far, and argues not against the use of the needle, but the abuse of it. I think he is right. But in general I own myself a friend to what we females call work. It fills up the interstices of time, if I may use the expression. It accords with most of the indoor employments of men, who, if they care for us at all, do not much like to see us engaged in anything which abstracts us too much from them. It lessens the ennui of hearing children read the same story five hundred times. It can be brought into the sick room without diminishing our attention to an invalid, while it seems to release the sufferer from any obligation of conversing with us. It is a sort of composer, a calmant peculiarly useful, I believe, to the delicate and irritable spirits of women. Those who can use the pen so well as the friend whom I have the pleasure of addressing, are, I think, entitled to lay aside the ‘shining store,’ but they are so few as to be considered merely as exceptions.
I am glad you like Mrs. Carter’s Letters. I know they are heavy, yet I do like them, and read them with great pleasure, and am angry when I hear them called dull, which has happened to me very often. I love the turn of her mind; and though she may be a little tedious, it is to me like the tediousness of a friend. If you have a mind for brilliancy and flippancy, and some sense and wit, mixed up with a certain hardness and insensibility and vanity very unpleasing in a youthful female, turn to Mrs. Montagu’s Letters. They are vastly more entertaining for once reading, but you do not love the writer half so well, nor am I sure you would be so apt to return to the volume. Besides, there are a few great truths which Mrs. Carter places in so many lights, and impresses so strongly, that I think her Letters are highly useful in a moral view, and an excellent book for the library of a young girl.