Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/164

152 and expression of her thoughts with such Facility, and was so little attached to her own first views of the subject, that often a work was completely re-modelled by her while passing through the press. Her father disliked to Bee her make any formal preparation for writing when she was young, so that she used to write often on the corner of the chimney piece, or on a pasteboard held in her hand, and always in the room with others, for her father could not bear her to be out of the room, and this habit of writing without preparation she preserved ever afterwards. M. de Staël told me of a curious interview he had with Buonaparte when he was enraged with his mother, who had published remarks on his government — concluding with "Eh bien! vous avez raison aussi. Je concois qu'un fils doit toujours faire la defense de sa mère, mais enfin, si monsieur veut ecrire des libelles, il faut alter en Angleterre. Ou bien s'il cherche la gloire e'est en Angleterre qu'il faut aller. C'est l'Angleterre, ou la France—il n'y a que ces deux pays en Europe—dans le monde.

During her absence abroad Miss Edgeworth had revised the manuscript of the latter portion of Rosamond and sent it home to press. At the eleventh hour her publisher discovered that there was not enough material to complete two volumes, and urged her to supply more copy without delay. "I was a little provoked," she writes on first hearing the news, "but this feeling lasted but a moment, and my mind fixed on what is to be done. It is by no means necessary for me to be at home or in any particular place to invent or to write." Instantly she set to work, and, in the midst of ail the social attractions and distractions around her, she wrote the two additional chapters called The Bracelet of Memory and ''Blind Kate. ''

Late in October the Misses Edgeworth left Switzerland for Paris, visiting Lyons on their way. The town had a special interest for Miss Edgeworth because of her lather's early residence there. By the end of October they were once more settled at Paris in a floor to themselves with a valet de place and a femme de chambre.