Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 19

To MISS S. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 27, 1796.

Long may you feel impatient to hear from your friends, my dear Sophy, and long may you express your impatience as agreeably. I have a great deal bottled, or rather bundled up for you. Though I most earnestly wish that my father was in that situation which Sir T. Fetherstone now graces, and though my father had done me the honour to let me copy his Election letters for him, I am not the least infected with the electioneering rage. Whilst the Election lasted we saw him only a few minutes in the course of the day, then indeed he entertained us to our hearts' content; now his mind seems relieved from a disagreeable load, and we have more of his company.

You do not mention Madame Roland, therefore I am not sure whether you have read her; if you have only read her in the translation which talks of her Uncle Bimont's dying of a "fit of the gout translated to his chest," you have done her injustice. We think some of her memoirs beautifully written, and like Rousseau: she was a great woman and died heroically, but I don't think she became more amiable, and certainly not more happy by meddling with politics; for&mdash;her head is cut off, and her husband has shot himself. I think if I had been Mons. Roland I should not have shot myself for her sake, and I question whether he would not have left undrawn the trigger if he could have seen all she intended to say of him to posterity: she has painted him as a harsh, stiff, pedantic man, to whom she devoted herself from a sense of duty; her own superiority, and his infinite obligations to her, she has taken sufficient pains to blazon forth to the world. I do not like all this, and her duty work, and her full-length portrait of herself by herself. The foolish and haughty Madame de Boismorrel, who sat upon the sofa, and asked her if she ever wore feathers, was probably one of the remote causes of the French Revolution: for Madame Roland's Republican spirit seems to have retained a long and lively remembrance of this aristocratic visit.

As soon as the blind bookseller can find them for us, we shall read Miss Williams's Letters. I am glad we both prefer the same parts in Dr. Aikin's Letters: I liked that on the choice of a wife, but I beg to except the word helper, which is used so often and is associated with a helper in the stables. Lovell dined with Mr. Aikin at Mr. Stewart's, at Edinburgh, and has seen the Comte d'Artois, who he says has rather a silly face, especially when it smiles. Sneyd is delighted with the four volumes of Evenings at Home, which we have just got, and has pitched upon the best stories, which he does not, like M. Dalambert, spoil in the reading&mdash;"Perseverance against Fortune," "The Price of a Victory," and "Capriole." We were reading an account of the pinna the other day, and very much regretted that your pinna's brown silk tuft had been eaten by the mice&mdash;what will they not eat?&mdash;they have eaten my thimble case! I am sorry to say that, from these last accounts of the pinna and his cancer friend, Dr. Darwin's beautiful description is more poetic than accurate. The cancer is neither watchman nor market-woman to the pinna, nor yet his friend: he has free ingress to his house, it is true, and is often found there, but he does not visit on equal terms, or on a friendly footing, for the moment the pinna gets him in he shuts the door and eats him; or if he is not hungry, kills the poor shrimp and keeps him in the house till the next day's dinner. I am sorry Dr. Darwin's story is not true.

Saturday Night.

I do not know whether you ever heard of a Mr. Pallas, who lives at Grouse Hall. He lately received information that a certain Defender was to be found in a lone house, which was described to him; he took a party of men with him in the night, and got to the house very early in the morning: it was scarcely light. The soldiers searched the house, but no man was to be found. Mr. Pallas ordered them to search again, for that he was certain the man was there: they searched again, in vain. They gave up the point, and were preparing to mount their horses when one man who had stayed a little behind his companions, saw something moving at the end of the garden behind the house: he looked again, and beheld a man's arm come out of the ground. He ran towards the spot and called his companions, but the arm had disappeared; they searched, but nothing was to be seen, and though the soldier persisted in his story he was not believed. "Come," said one of the party, "don't waste your time here looking for an apparition among these cabbage-stalks, come back once more to the house." They went to the house, and there stood the man they were in search of, in the middle of the kitchen.

Upon examination, it was found that a secret passage had been practised from the kitchen to the garden, opening under an old meal chest with a false bottom, which he could push up and down at pleasure. He had returned one moment too soon.

I beg, dear Sophy, that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of "my works," I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home, but I am afraid you will dislike the title; my father had sent The Parent's Friend, but Mr. Johnson has degraded it into The Parent's Assistant, which I dislike particularly, from association with an old book of arithmetic called The Tutor's Assistant.

This was the first appearance of The Parent's Assistant, in one small volume, with the "Purple Jar," which afterwards formed part of Rosamond.