“They [the girls] have good reason to expect from these pictures of life, that if they are very good and very pious, and very busy in doing grown-up work, when they reach the mature age of sixteen or so, some young gentleman, who has been in love with them all along, will declare himself at the very nick of time; and they may then look to find themselves, all the struggles of life over, reposing a weary head on his stalwart shoulder.... Mothers, never in great favour with novelists, are sinking deeper and deeper in their black books,—there is a positive jealousy of their influence; while the father in the religious tale, as opposed to the moral and sentimental, is commonly either a scamp or nowhere. The heroine has, so to say, to do her work single-handed.”
What is true of these young people is therefore likewise true of their grown-up associates. They have definite personalities, and they are either monstrosities of excellence or demons of vice and temper. But here also a careful distinction was preserved. Mr. Lucas says in his “Old-Fashioned Tales”:
“The parents who can do no wrong are very numerous; but they are, it should be pointed out, usually the parents of the central child. There are very often parents and relations of other and subsidiary children whose undesirable habits are exceedingly valuable by way of contrast.”
Despite the fact that there is so much to condemn in this genre of writing, Miss Edgeworth was endowed with that sober sense and inexhaustible power of invention claimed for her by critics of the period. Her care for detail, her exhibition of small actions that mark the manners of all people in different walks of life, were distinguishing features of her skill.
With her father Miss Edgeworth laboured on other things besides the “Practical Education”; while the two were preparing the essay on “Irish Bulls,” published in 1802, she plainly states that the first design was due to him, and that in her own share she was sedulously following the ideas suggested by him. Throughout her autobiographical data she offers us many glimpses of that family unity which existed—whether from voluntary desire or because of the domineering grip of Edgeworth, is not stated. She was continuously solicitous for his welfare, not through any forced sense of duty, but because of her desire to give pleasure in small ways; she found it agreeable to sit of an evening doing needle work, while Edgeworth “read out” Pope’s Homer. In the course of such hours she first became acquainted with Scott’s “Lady of the Lake” and “Waverley.”
The friendship between Miss Edgeworth and Scott was deep and cordial; one was not without abiding influence on the other. She describes with graphic pen the first sound of his voice at Abbotsford; and the biographer has no more agreeable material to work upon than her fortnight spent as a guest of the novelist, and his return visit to Edgeworthtown in 1825.
For a man whose avowed detestation of women was well known to every one, Thomas Day (1748–1789) succeeded in leading a life of romantic variety. Yet he was not a person of strong passion; in fact, was more inclined to brooding melancholy. His intimacy with the Edgeworth family began when he met Richard Lovell at Oxford; and it was when he saw the training of Émile applied to his friend’s son that his mind was seized with the idea of carrying out a similar scheme himself. He held a great contempt for dress; and his numerous vagaries regarding the conduct and duties of a wife were so pronounced that it is most likely they came between himself and Maria Edgeworth, with whom it is thought there was some romantic understanding.
Unlike Edgeworth, Day had no child to experiment upon. So he set about “breeding up” two girls, away from conflicting influences, and according to nature. One was obtained from an orphan asylum, and was known as Sabrina Sidney; the other, called Lucretia, was taken from a Foundling Hospital. In order to give a moral tone to the situation, these girls were bound out to Edgeworth, who was a married man. Not many knew that Day had hastened with both of the damsels to Avignon. Here he began to educate them with the intention of training one for his future wife.
Events did not progress smoothly, however; the girls quarrelled as saints would have quarrelled under the circumstances, and they occupied their time by falling out of boats and having smallpox. What their schooling consisted of may be imagined from the fragment of a letter written by Sabrina to Mr. Edgeworth:
“I hope I shall have more sense against I come to England—I know how to make a circle and an equilateral triangle—I know the cause of day and night, winter and summer.”