Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/35

Rh at Clifton, and here Miss Edgeworth and her charges rejoined their parents. The conveying so large a party so long a journey in those days was no small undertaking for a young woman of twenty-four. The responsibility was terrible to her, though she afterwards dwelt only on the comic side. At one of the inns where they slept, the landlady's patience was so much tried by the number of little people getting out of the carriage, and the quantity of luggage, that she exclaimed, “Haven't you brought the kitchen grate too?”

At Clifton the Edgeworths resided for two years. Miss Edgeworth writes to her uncle Ruxton:—

In a later letter she says that they are not quite as happy here as at home, but have a great choice of books which they enjoy. While at Clifton the eldest son visited them. His Rousseau education had turned him out an ungovernable child of nature; he neither could nor would learn, so there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his inclinations, which happily led him towards nothing more mischievous than a sailor's life. At Clifton, too, they became acquainted with Dr. Beddoes, who soon after married Maria's sister Anna, and became the father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the poet of Death. A baby child also died within those two years, which thus embraced meetings, partings, courtships, much pleasant social intercourse, and