Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 53

To HENRY EDGEWORTH, AT EDINBURGH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 1805.

It gives me the most sincere pleasure to see your letters to my father written just as if you were talking to a favourite friend of your own age, and with that manly simplicity characteristic of your mind and manner from the time you were able to speak. There is something in this perfect openness and in the courage of daring to be always yourself, which attaches more than I can express, more than all the Chesterfieldian arts and graces that ever were practised.

The worked sleeves are for Mrs. Stewart, and you are to offer them to her,&mdash;nobody can say I do not know how to choose my ambassadors well! If Mrs. Stewart should begin to say, "O! it is a pity Miss Edgeworth should spend her time at such work!" please to interrupt her speech, though that is very rude, and tell her that I like work very much, and that I have only done this at odd times, after breakfast you know, when my father reads out Pope's Homer, or when there are long sittings, when it is much more agreeable to move one's fingers than to have to sit with hands crossed or clasped immovably. I by no means accede to the doctrine that ladies cannot attend to anything else when they are working: besides, it is contrary, is not it, to all the theories of Zoonomia? Does not Dr. Darwin show that certain habitual motions go on without interrupting trains of thought? And do not common sense and experience, whom I respect even above Dr. Darwin, show the same thing?