Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 119

MARIA to MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.

DUBLIN, April 10, 1820.

In my letter to my mother of the 8th I forgot&mdash;no, I had not time to say that we had a restive mare at Dunshaughlin, who paid me for all I ever wrote about Irish posting, and put me in the most horrible and reasonable apprehension that she would have broken my aunt's carriage to pieces against the corner of a wall. The crowd of people that assembled, the shouts, the "never fears," the scolding of the landlord and postillions, and the group surveying the scene, was beyond anything I could or can paint. The stage coach drove to the door in the midst of it, and ladies and bandboxes stopped, and all stood to gaze.

There was also a professional fool in his ass cart with two dogs, one a white little curly dog, who sat upon the ass's head behind his ears, and another a black shaggy mongrel, with longish ears, who sat up in a begging attitude on the hinder part of the ass, and whom the fool-knave had been tutoring with a broken crutch, as he sat in his covered cart. Fanny made a drawing of him, and he and his dogs sat for a fivepenny, which I honestly gave him for his and his dogs' tricks.

Steamboats had only begun to ply between Dublin and Holyhead in 1819, and Maria Edgeworth's first experience of a steamboat was in crossing now to Holyhead. She disliked the jigging motion, which she said was like the shake felt in a carriage when a pig is scratching himself against the hind wheel while waiting at an Irish inn door.