Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/153

Rh she was forced to use her own vision, and while busy with the memoirs she allowed herself little of what was now her greatest relaxation, writing letters to her friends:

Bear up and struggle as she would, bitterly and painfully she missed the always kind and ready adviser, the sympathetic intellectual companion, who had stood by her side till now and aided her in every difficult task. She felt like "drifting over an unknown sea, without chart or compass." Nor were her spirits, or those of the family, raised by outward events. Wet seasons had induced famine and typhus-fever, and the tenants were suffering from disease and distress. Then, too, the family had their own private anxieties in the illness of William, Lovell, and Fanny. They were all more or less delicate; most of them had inherited consumptive tendencies, and many months rarely passed without Miss Edgeworth having to record cases of sickness in those about her. These illnesses always absorbed her whole attention, called forth all her kindliness and unselfishness. She was ever the ready willing nurse, the writer of bulletins to those away, the cheerer of long sad hours of suffering. They were weary months those early ones of 1818, and only in her affections did she find comfort. She writes: