Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 60

To MRS. RUXTON.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 4, 1827.

I went with Pakenham to meet my mother at Castle Pollard, and we had such a nice long talk in the carriage coming back, our tongues never intermitting one single second, I believe. I am glad you liked my graceful gentleman-like bear, and his graceful gentleman-like Italian leader. We have had a succession of actors and actresses, as I may call them, personating beggars, all at the last gasp of distress; so perfect, too, was one Englishwoman that she set at defiance all the combined ingenuity of the Library in cross-questioning her, and after writing a long letter for her to a Rev. Mr. Strainer, of Athlone, I was quite at a loss to decide whether she was a cheat or not, when one of the Longford police officers chanced to dine with us, I mentioned her, and out came the truth; she had imposed on him and every one at Longford, and had borrowed a child to pass for her own. We sent for our distressed lady, who was very "sick and weak with a huge blister on her chest," and low voice and delicate motions. Oh! if you had seen her when the police officer came into the room and charged her with the borrowed child. Her countenance, voice, and motions all at once changed; her voice went up at once to scold-pitch, and turning round on her chair she faced the chief; but words in writing cannot do justice to the scene. I must act it for you.

We are now reading the Voyage of the "Blonde" to the Sandwich Islands, with the remains of the King and the Queen. Pray get this book, it will delight you. Of the Blonde, you know the present Lord Byron is commander&mdash;the name strikes the ear continually&mdash;new fame, new associations; reverting, too, to the old Commodore Byron's sort of fame. How curious, how fleeting "this life in other's breath!"

A little box of curiosities from my most amiable American Jewess my mother presented to me this morning at the breakfast table: I was in an ecstasy, but shortlived was my joy, for I was thunderstruck the next instant by my mother's catching my arm and stopping my hand with the vehement exclamation, "Stop, stop, child, you don't know what you are doing."&mdash;"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't&mdash;what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool&mdash;no one can wish his existence prolonged.


 * The painful family of death
 * More hideous than their queen.

April 8.

I am quite well and in high good-humour and good spirits in consequence of having received the whole of Lovell's half-year's rents in full, with pleasure to the tenants, and without the least fatigue or anxiety to myself.

We are reading the second part of Vivian Grey, which we like better than the first. There is a scene of gamesters and swindlers wonderfully well done. I know who wrote Almack's. Lady de Ros tells me it is by Mrs. Purvis, sister to Lady Blessington; this accounts for both the knowledge of high, and the habits of low, life which appear in the book. "Poor dear Almack's," Lady de Ros says, is not what it was&mdash;when people were poor in London, and there were few private balls, Almack's was all in all. Her sailor son is going to publish a Journal of a Tour, including the United States and Niagara.