Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 71

To MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 1809.

Indeed you are quite right in thinking that the expressions of affection from my uncle and you are more delightful to me than all the compliments or admiration in the world could be. It is no new thing for me to be happy at Black Castle, but I think I was particularly happy there this last time. You both made me feel that I added to the pleasures of your fireside, which after all, old-fashioned or not, are the best of all pleasures. How I did laugh! and how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others. I have often wondered how my ideas flow or ebb without the influence of my will; sometimes when I am with those I love, flowing faster than tongue can utter, and sometimes ebbing, ebbing, till nought but sand and sludge are left.

We have been much entertained with Le petit Carilloneur. I would send it to you, only it is a society book; but I do send by a carman two volumes of Alfieri's Life and Kirwan's Essay on Happiness, and the Drogheda edition of Parent's Assistant, which, with your leave, I present to your servant Richard.

The Grinding Organ went off on Friday night better than I could have expected, and seemed to please the spectators. Mrs. Pakenham brought four children, and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson two sons, Mr. and Mrs. Keating two daughters, which, with the Beauforts, Molly, George, and the rest of the servants, formed the whole audience. I am sure you would have enjoyed the pleasure the Bristows showed on seeing and hearing Mary Bristow perform her part, which she did with perfect propriety. Sophy and Fanny were excellent, but as they were doomed to be the good children, they had not ample room and verge enough to display powers equal to the little termagant heroine of the night. William in his Old Man (to use the newspaper style) was correct and natural. Mr. Edgeworth as the English Farmer evinced much knowledge of true English character and humour. Miss Edgeworth as the Widow Ross, "a cursed scold," was quite at home. It is to be regretted that the Widow Ross has no voice, as a song in character was of course expected; the Farmer certainly gave "a fair challenge to a fair lady." His Daniel Cooper was given in an excellent style, and was loudly encored.

April 28.

The Primate was very agreeable during the two days he spent here. My father travelled with him from Dublin to Ardbraccan, and this reputed silent man never ceased talking and telling entertaining anecdotes till the carriage stopped at the steps at Ardbraccan. This I could hardly credit till I myself heard his Grace burst forth in conversation. The truth of his character gives such value to everything he says, even to his humorous stories. He has two things in his character which I think seldom meet&mdash;a strong taste for humour, and strong feelings of indignation. In his eye you may often see alternately the secret laughing expression of humour, and the sudden open flash of indignation. He is a man of the warmest feelings, with the coldest exterior I ever saw&mdash;a master mind. I could not but be charmed with him, because I saw that he thoroughly appreciated my father.

Tales of Fashionable Life were published in June 1809, and greatly added to the celebrity of their authoress. "Almeria" is the best, and full of admirable pictures of character. In all, the object is to depict the vapid and useless existence of those who live only for society. Sometimes the moralising becomes tiresome. "Vraiment Miss Edgeworth est digne de l'enthousiasme, mais elle se perd dans votre triste utilité," said Madame de Staël to M. Dumont when she had read the Tales. In that age of romantic fiction an attempt to depict life as it really was took the reading world by surprise.

"As a writer of tales and novels," wrote Lord Dudley in the Quarterly Review, "Miss Edgeworth has a very marked peculiarity. It is that of venturing to dispense common sense to her readers, and to bring them within the precincts of real life and natural feeling. She presents them with no incredible adventures or inconceivable sentiments, no hyperbolical representations of uncommon characters, or monstrous exhibitions of exaggerated passion. Without excluding love from her pages, she knows how to assign to it its just limits. She neither degrades the sentiment from its true dignity, nor lifts it to a burlesque elevation. It takes its proper place among the passions. Her heroes and heroines, if such they may be called, are never miraculously good, nor detestably wicked. They are such men and women as we see and converse with every day of our lives, with the same proportional mixture in them of what is right and what is wrong, of what is great and what is little."

Lord Jeffrey, writing in the Edinburgh Review, said: "The writings of Miss Edgeworth exhibit so singular an union of sober sense and inexhaustible invention, so minute a knowledge of all that distinguishes manners, or touches on happiness in every condition of human fortune, and so just an estimate both of the real sources of enjoyment, and of the illusions by which they are so often obstructed, that we should separate her from the ordinary manufacturers of novels, and speak of her Tales as works of more serious importance than much of the true history and solemn philosophy that comes daily under our inspection.... It is impossible, I think, to read ten pages in any of her writings without feeling, not only that the whole, but that every part of them, was intended to do good."