Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 49

To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH (the second sister in the family of the name).

GLASGOW, April 4, 1803.

I have not forgotten my promise to write to you, and I think I can give you pleasure by telling you that Henry is getting better every day, and that we have all been extremely happy in the company of several of his friends in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He has made these friends by his own good qualities, and good conduct, and we hear them speak of him with the greatest esteem and affection. This morning Dr. Birkbeck, one of Henry's friends, took us to see several curious machines, in a house where he gives lectures on mechanical and chemical subjects. He is going to give a lecture on purpose for children, and he says he took the idea for doing so from Practical Education. He opened a drawer and showed to me a little perspective machine he had made from the print of my father's; and we were also very much surprised to sec in one of his rooms a large globe of silk, swelled out and lighted by a lamp withinside, so that when the room was darkened we could plainly see the map of the world painted on it, as suggested in Practical Education. My father mentioned to this gentleman my Aunt Charlotte's invention of painting the stars on the inside of an umbrella: he was much pleased with it, and I think he will make such an umbrella.... Tell Sneyd that we saw at Edinburgh his old friend the Irish giant. I suppose he remembers seeing him at Bristol? he is so tall that he can with ease lean his arm on the top of the room door. I stood beside him, and the top of my head did not reach to his hip. My father laid his hand withinside of the giant's hand, and it looked as small as little Harriet's would in John Langan's. This poor giant looks very sallow and unhealthy, and seemed not to like to sit or stand all day for people to look at him.

After the return of the family to Edgeworthstown, Miss Edgeworth at once began to occupy herself with preparing for the press Popular Tales, which were published this year. She also began Emilie de Coulanges, Madame de Fleury, and Ennui, and wrote Leonora with the romantic purpose already mentioned.

In 1804 she found time to write Griselda, which she amused herself with at odd moments in her own room without telling her father what she was about. When finished, she sent it to Johnson, who had the good-nature, at her request, to print a title-page for a single copy without her name to it: he then sent it over to Mr. Edgeworth as a new novel just come out. Mr. Edgeworth read it with surprise and admiration. He could not believe Maria could have had the actual time to write it, and yet it was so like her style; he at last exclaimed, "It must be Anna's. Anna has written this to please me. It is by some one we are interested in, Mary was so anxious I should read it." Miss Sneyd was in the secret, and had several times put it before him on the table: at last she told him it was Maria's. He was amused at the trick, and delighted at having admired the book without knowing its author.