The fourth wife of Mr. Edgeworth was our hostess, and performed her part charmingly. She must have been very pretty, for, though short, fat, and forty, her appearance was very agreeable. Miss Edgeworth was shorter still, and carried herself very upright, with a dapper figure and quick movements. She was the remains of a blonde, with light eyes and hair; she was now gray, but wore a dark frisette, whilst the gray hair showed through her cap behind. She was so plain that she was never willing to sit for her portrait, and that is the reason why the public has never been made acquainted with her personal appearance.
In conversation we found her delightful. She was full of anecdotes about remarkable people, and often spoke from her personal knowledge of them. Her memory, too, was stored with valuable information, and her manner of narrating was so animated that it was difficult to realize her age. In telling an anecdote of Mirabeau, she stepped out before us, and, extending her arm, spoke a sentence of his in the impassioned manner of a French orator, and did it so admirably that it was quite thrilling.
She told us two speeches of Madame de Staël which are worth remembering. Madame Necker was a harsh mother, and always found a great deal of fault with her daughter; but her husband knew his child's merits, and liked her to have her own way. One day a gentleman entered the room, just as Madame Necker flourished out of it, after reprimanding her daughter, who stood abashed in the middle of the room, with tears on her face. He endeavored to console her by saying that she must not mind her mother's reproofs, as long as her father was satisfied with her, and he told her how much M. Necker admired her. To this the girl replied, "Mon père pense à mon bonheur présent, ma mère songe à mon avenir." I talked with Miss Edgeworth of a work on Progressive Education by Madame Necker de Saussure; she thought it dull and tedious, and said that Madame de Staël had a great admiration of that cousin, and said of her, "Elle a tous les talens qu' on me suppose, et toutes les vertus qui me manquent."
Miss Edgeworth and all her family took the part of the English Government in their treatment of the Irish, and had no sympathy for the wrongs and sufferings of their countrymen. Bigoted Episcopalians, they would grant no rights to the Roman Catholics, and this made them very unpopular in their own neighborhood.
They had been instrumental in establishing a free school for the sons of poor Protestant clergymen in the town which bordered on their grounds, and they took us to see it. It was market-day, so the main street was full of the lower order of Irish, with their horses and carts, asses and panniers, tables and stands full of eatables and articles of clothing. Sometimes the cart or car served as a counter on which to display their goods. The women in bright-colored cotton gowns and white caps with full double borders, made a very gay appearance. As we all passed through the crowd to the school-house, the enmity of the Papists to Protestant landholders was but too evident.
Though Mrs. Edgeworth had been the Lady Bountiful of the village for many years, there were no bows or smirks for her and her friends, no making way before her, no touching of hats or pleasant looks. A sullen expression and a dogged immovability were on every side of us. Mr. Butler, who had but just arrived in Edgeworthtown, was as much struck with it as we were, and it quite excited him. He remarked upon it as a want of manners in the people, and called them uncivilized; but there was more in it than that. It spoke to us Americans of the long train of oppressive measures under which the Irish had groaned for years; of the Protestant clergy paid by rates levied on the Roman Catholics, and of the tyranny exercised by Protestant landholders. Twenty-nine years have passed since I stood in that Irish crowd, and much has been done to improve their condition; all the political disabilities then complained of by the Papists have been removed, oppressive laws have been done away with, emigration has relieved the land of its surplus population; and were it not for the designs of the Romish Church to wrest the island from the dominion of a Protestant power, that country might now be prosperous and happy.
When we visited Miss Edgeworth, she had published her last work, "Helen," and was writing another to be called "Taking for Granted," but I never heard of its being published. She told me that she meant to show the mischief of taking things for granted, and acting upon them as if they were known facts; and she begged me to send her any instances of the evil consequences of "taking for granted" which fell under my observation.