The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1

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_To_ MRS. MARY SNEYD.

LONDON, NEROT'S HOTEL, _Sept. 27, 1802._

We have been here about an hour, and next to the pleasure of washing
face and hands, which were all covered with red Woburn sand and
Dunstable chalk, and London dust, comes the pleasure of writing to you,
my dear good Aunt Mary. How glad I should be to give you any proof of
gratitude for the many large and little kindnesses you have shown to me.
There is no one in the world who can deserve to be thought of more at
all times, and in all situations, than you; for there is no one thinks
so much of others. As long as there is any one worth your loving upon
earth, you cannot be unhappy. I think you would have been very apt to
make the speech attributed to St. Theresa: "Le pauvre Diable! comme je
le plains! Il ne peut rien aimer. Ah! qu'il doit etre malheureux!"

But whilst I am talking sentiment you may be impatient for news. The
first and best news is, that my father is extremely well. Travelling, he
says, has done him a vast deal of good, and whoever looks at him
believes him. It would be well for all faces if they had that effect on
the spectators, or rather perhaps it would be ill for the credulous
spectators. Isabella of Aragon, _or_ Lord Chesterfield, or both, call a
good countenance the best letter of recommendation. Whenever Nature
gives false letters of recommendation, she swindles in the most
abominable manner. Where she refuses them where they are best deserved,
she only gives additional motive for exertion (_vide_ Socrates or his
bust).[Footnote: An alabaster bust of Socrates, which stood on the
chimney-piece in the drawing-room at Black Castle.] And after all,
Nature is forced out of her letters of recommendation sooner or later.
You know that it is said by Lavater, that the _muscles_ of Socrates'
countenance are beautiful, and these became so by the play given to them
by the good passions, etc. etc. etc.

Charlotte tells me she carried you in her last as far as Loughborough
and Castle Donnington, will you be so good to go on to Leicester with
me? But before we set out for Leicester, I should like to take you to
Castle Donnington, "the magnificent seat of the Earl of Moira." But then
how can I do that, when I did not go there myself? Oh! I can describe
after a description as well as my betters have done before me in prose
and verse, and a description of my father's is better than the reality
seen with my own eyes. The first approach to Donnington disappointed
him; he looked round and saw neither castle, nor park, nor anything to
admire till he came to the top of a hill, when in the valley below
suddenly appeared the turrets of a castle, surpassing all he had
conceived of light and magnificent in architecture: a real castle! not a
modern, bungling imitation. The inside was suitable in grandeur to the
outside; hall, staircase, antechambers; the library fitted up entirely
with books in plain handsome mahogany bookcases, not a frippery
ornament, everything grand, but not gaudy; marble tables, books upon the
tables; nothing littered, but sufficient signs of living and occupied
beings. At the upper end of the room sat two ladies copying music: a
gentleman walking about with a book in his hand: neither Lord Moira nor
Lady Charlotte Rawdon in the room. The gentleman, Mr. Sedley, not having
an instinct like Mademoiselle Panache for a gentleman, did not, till
Lord Moira entered the room and received my father with open arms, feel
sure that he was worthy of more than monosyllable civility. Lord Moira
took the utmost pains to show my father that he was pleased with his
visit, said he must have the pleasure of showing him over the house
himself, and finished by giving him a letter to the Princess Joseph de
Monaco, who is now at Paris. She was Mrs. Doyle. He also sent to Mrs.
Edgeworth the very finest grapes I ever beheld. I wished the moment I
saw them, my dear aunt, that you had a bunch of them.

We proceeded to Leicester. Handsome town, good shops: walked whilst
dinner was getting ready to a circulating library. My father asked for
_Belinda, Bulls_, etc., found they were in good repute--_Castle
Rackrent_ in better--the others often borrowed, but _Castle Rackrent_
often bought. The bookseller, an open-hearted man, begged us to look at
a book of poems just published by a Leicester lady, a Miss Watts. I
recollected to have seen some years ago a specimen of this lady's
proposed translation of Tasso, which my father had highly admired. He
told the bookseller that we would pay our respects to Miss Watts, if it
would be agreeable to her. When we had dined, we set out with our
enthusiastic bookseller. We were shown by the light of a lanthorn along
a very narrow passage between high walls, to the door of a
decent-looking house: a maid-servant, candle in hand, received us. "Be
pleased, ladies, to walk upstairs." A neatish room, nothing
extraordinary in it except the inhabitants. Mrs. Watts, a tall,
black-eyed, prim, dragon-looking woman in the background. Miss Watts, a
tall young lady in white, fresh colour, fair thin oval face, rather
pretty. The moment Mrs. Edgeworth entered, Miss Watts, mistaking her for
the authoress, darted forward with arms, long thin arms, outstretched to
their utmost swing, "OH, WHAT AN HONOUR THIS IS!!" each word and
syllable rising in tone till the last reached a scream. Instead of
embracing my mother, as her first action threatened, she started back to
the farthest end of the room, which was not light enough to show her
attitude distinctly, but it seemed to be intended to express the
receding of awestruck admiration--stopped by the wall. Charlotte and I
passed by unnoticed, and seated ourselves by the old lady's desire: she
after many twistings of her wrists, elbows, and neck, all of which
appeared to be dislocated, fixed herself in her armchair, resting her
hands on the black mahogany _splayed_ elbows. Her person was no sooner
at rest than her eyes and all her features began to move in all
directions. She looked like a nervous and suspicious person electrified.
She seemed to be the acting partner in this house to watch over her
treasure of a daughter, to supply her with worldly wisdom, to look upon
her as a phoenix, and--scold her. Miss Watts was all ecstasy and lifting
up of hands and eyes, speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical
tone with which a puppet-master supplies his puppets. I all the time sat
like a mouse. My father asked, "Which of those ladies, madam, do you
think is your sister authoress?"--"I am no physiognomist"--in a
screech--"but I do imagine that to be the lady," bowing as she sat
almost to the ground, and pointing to Mrs. Edgeworth. "No, guess
again."--"Then that must be _she_" bowing to Charlotte. "No."--"Then
this lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal I was, for she
had never seen me till this instant. To make me some amends, she now
drew her chair close to me, and began to pour forth praises: "Lady
Delacour, O! Letters for Literary Ladies, O!"

Now for the pathetic part. This poor girl sold a novel in four volumes
for ten guineas to Lane. My father is afraid, though she has
considerable talents, to recommend her to Johnson, lest she should not
_answer._ Poor girl, what a pity she had no friend to direct her
talents; how much she made me feel the value of mine!

_To_ MISS SOPHY RUXTON.

BRUSSELS, _Oct. 15, 1802._

After admiring on the ramparts of Calais the Poissardes with their
picturesque nets, ugly faces, and beautiful legs, we set out for
Gravelines, with whips clacking in a manner which you certainly cannot
forget. The stillness and desolation of Gravelines was like the city in
the Arabian Tales where every one is turned into stone. Fortifications
constructed by the famous Vauban, lunes, and demi-lunes, and curtains,
all which did not prevent the French from trotting through it.

We left Gravelines with an equipage at which Sobriety herself could not
have forborne to laugh: to our London coach were fastened by long rope
traces six Flemish horses of different heights, but each large and
clumsy enough to draw an English waggon. The nose of the foremost horse
was thirty-five feet from the body of the coach, their hoofs all shaggy,
their manes all uncombed, and their tails long enough to please Sir
Charles Grandison himself. These beasts were totally disencumbered of
every sort of harness except one strap which fastened the saddle on
their backs; and high, high upon their backs, sat perfectly
perpendicular, long-waisted postillions in jack-boots, with pipes in
their mouths. The country appeared one vast flat common, without hedges,
or ditches, or trees, tiled farmhouses of equal size and similar form at
even distances. All that the power of monotony can do to put a traveller
to sleep is here tried; but the rattling and jolting on the paved roads
set Morpheus and monotony both at defiance. To comfort ourselves we had
a most entertaining _Voyage dans les Pays Bas par M. Breton_ to read,
and the charming story of Mademoiselle de Clermont in Madame de Genlis's
_Petits Romans._ I never read a more pathetic and finely written tale.

Dunkirk is an ugly, bustling town. Strange-looking _charettes_, driven
by thin men in cocked hats,--the window-shutters turned out to the
streets and painted by way of signs with various commodities. A variety
of things, among them little shifts, petticoats, and corsets, were
fairly spread upon the ground on the bridges and in the streets. The
famous basin, about which there have been such disputes, is little
worth. Voltaire wonders at the English and French waging war "for a few
acres of snow"; he might with equal propriety have laughed at them for
fighting about a _slop-basin._ The _pont-tournant_ is well worth seeing,
and for those who have strong legs and who have breakfasted, it is worth
while to climb the two hundred and sixty-four steps of the tower. Whilst
we were climbing the town clock struck, and the whole tower vibrated,
and the vibration communicated itself to our ears and heads in a most
sublime and disagreeable manner.

At Dunkirk we entered what was formerly called L'ancien Brabant, and all
things and all persons began to look like Dutch prints and Dutch toys,
especially the women with their drop earrings, and their necklaces like
the labels of decanters, their long-waisted, long-flapped jackets of one
colour, and stiff petticoats of another. Even when moving the people all
looked like wooden toys set in motion by strings--the strings in
Flanders must be of gold: the Flemings seem to be all a money-making,
money-loving people: they are fast recovering their activity after the
Revolution.

The road to Bruges, fifty feet broad, solidly paved in the middle,
seems, like all French and Flemish roads, to have been laid out by some
inflexible mathematician: they are always right lines, the shortest
possible between two points. The rows of trees on each side of these
never-ending avenues are of the ugliest sort and figure possible: tall
poplars stripped almost to the top, as you would strip a pen, and
pollarded willows: the giant poplar and the dwarf willow placed side by
side alternately, knight and squire. The postillions have badges like
the badges of charity schools, strapped round their arms; these are
numbered and registered, and if they behave ill, a complaint may be
lodged against them by merely writing their names on the register, which
excludes them from a pension, to which they would be entitled if they
behaved well for a certain number of years. The post-houses are often
lone, wretched places, one into which I peeped, a _grenier_, like that
described by Smollett, in which the murdered body is concealed. At
another post-house we met with a woman calling herself a _servante_, to
whom we took not only an aversion, but a horror; Charlotte said that she
should be afraid, not of that woman's cutting her throat, but that she
would take a mallet and strike her head flat at one blow. Do you
remember the woman in _Caleb Williams_, when he wakens and sees her
standing over him with an uplifted hatchet? Our _servante_ might have
stood for this picture.

Bruges is a very old, desolate-looking town, which seems to have felt in
common with its fellow-towns the effects of the Revolution. As we were
charged very high at the Hotel d'Angleterre, at Dunkirk, my father
determined to go to the Hotel de Commerce at Bruges, an old strange
house which had been a monastery: the man chamber-maid led us through
gallery after gallery, up stairs and down stairs, turning all manner of
ways, with a bunch of keys in his hand, each key ticketed with a pewter
ticket. There were twenty-eight bed-chambers: thank heaven we did not
see them all! I never shall forget the feeling I had when the door of
the room was thrown open in which we were to sleep. It was so large and
so dark, that I could scarcely see the low bed in a recess in the wall,
covered with a dark brown quilt. I am sure Mrs. Radcliffe might have
kept her heroine wandering about this room for six good pages. When we
meet I will tell Margaret of the night Charlotte and I spent in this
room, and the footsteps we heard overhead--just a room and just a night
to suit her taste.

In the morning we went to see the Central School; it is in what was an
old monastery, and the church belonging to it is filled with pictures
collected from all the suppressed convents, monasteries, and churches.
Buonaparte has lately restored some of their pictures to the churches,
but those by Rubens and Raphael are at Paris. In the cabinet of natural
history there is the skeleton and the skin of a man who was guillotined,
as fine white leather as ever you saw. The preparations for these Ecoles
Centrales are all too vast and ostentatious: the people are just
beginning to send their children to them. Government finds them too
expensive, and their number is to be diminished. The librarian of this
Ecole Centrale at Bruges is an Englishman, or rather a Jamaica man, of
the name of Edwards. Brian Edwards was his great friend, and he was well
acquainted with Johnson the bookseller, and Dr. Aikin, and Mr. and Mrs.
Barbauld. Mr. Edwards and his son had often met Lovell at Johnson's, and
spoke of him quite with affection. The two sons spent the evening with
us, and they and their father accompanied us next morning part of our
way to Ghent. We went by the canal barque, as elegant as any
pleasure-boat I ever was in. My father entertained the Edwards with the
history of his physiognomical guesses in a stage-coach. The eldest son
piques himself upon telling character from handwriting. He was positive
that mine could not be the hand of a woman, and then he came off by
saying it was the writing of a _manly_ character! We had an extremely
fine day, and the receding prospect of Bruges, with its mingled spires,
shipping, and windmills, the tops of their giant vanes moving above the
trees, gave a pleasing example of a Flemish landscape, recalling the
pictures of Teniers and the prints of Le Bas. We had good and agreeable
company on board our barque, the Mayor of Bruges and his lady; her
friend, a woman of good family; and an old Baron Triste, of a
sixteen-quartering family. At the name of Mayor of Bruges, you probably
represent to yourself a fat, heavy, formal, self-sufficient
mortal--_tout au contraire_: our Mayor was a thin gentleman, of easy
manners, literature, and amusing conversation: Madame, a beautiful
Provinciale. M. Lerret, the Mayor, found us out to be the Edgeworths
described by M. Pictet in the _Journal Britannique._ Since we came to
France we have found M. Pictet's account very useful, for at every
public library, and in every Ecole Centrale, the _Journal Britannique_
is taken, and we have consequently received many civilities. It was
Sunday, and when we arrived at Ghent, all the middling people of the
town in their holiday clothes were assembled on the banks of the canal
according to custom to see the barque arrive: they made the scene very
cheerful. The old Baron de Triste, though he had not dined, and though
he had, as he said of himself, "un faim de diable," stayed to battle our
coach and trunks through an army of custom-house officers. We stayed two
days at Ghent, and saw pictures and churches without number. Here were
some fine pictures by that Crayer of whom Rubens said, "Crayer! personne
ne te surpassera!" Do not be afraid, my dear Sophy, I am not going to
overwhelm you with pictures, nor to talk of what I don't understand; but
it is extremely agreeable to me to see paintings with those who have
excellent taste and no affectation. At the Ecole Centrale was a smart
little librarian, to whom we were obliged for getting the doors of the
cathedral opened to us _at night_: we went in by moonlight, the
appearance was sublime; lights burning on the altar veiled from sight,
and our own monstrous shadows cast on the pillars, added to the effect.
The verger took one of the tall candles to light us to some monuments in
white marble of exquisite sculpture. There were no pictures, but the
walls were painted in the manner of the Speaker's room at the Temple,
and by the master who taught De Gray. This kind of painting seems to
suit churches, and to harmonise well with sculpture and statues.

My dear friend, I have not room to say half I intended, but let me make
what resolutions I please, I never can get all I want to say to you into
a letter.

_To_ MISS CHARLOTTE SNEYD.

CHANTILLY, _Oct. 29, 1802._

I last night sent a folio sheet to Sophy, giving the history of
ourselves as far as Brussels, where we spent four days very much to our
satisfaction: it is full of fine buildings, charming public walks, the
country about it beautiful. In the Place Royale are two excellent
hotels, Hotel d'Angleterre and Hotel de Flandres, to which we went, and
found that Mr. Chenevix and Mr. Knox were in the other.

My father thought it would be advantageous to us to see inferior
pictures before seeing those of the best masters, that we might have
some points of comparison; and upon the same principle we went to two
provincial theatres at Dunkirk and Brussels: but unluckily, I mean
unluckily for our _principles_, we saw at Brussels two of the best Paris
actors, M. and Madame Talma. The play was Racine's _Andromaque_
(imitated in England as the _Distressed Mother_). Madame Talma played
Andromaque, and her husband Orestes: both exquisitely well. I had no
idea of fine acting till I saw them, and my father, who had seen
Garrick, and Mrs. Siddons, and Yates, and Le Kain, says he never saw
anything superior to Madame Talma. We read the play in the morning, an
excellent precaution, otherwise the novelty of the French mode of
declamation would have set my comprehension at defiance. There was a
ranting Hermione, who had a string too tight round her waist, which made
her bosom heave like the bellows of a bagpipe whenever she worked with
her clasped hands against her heart to pump out something like passion.
There was also a wretched Pyrrhus, and an old Phoenix, whose gray wig I
expected every moment to fall off.

Next to this beautiful tragedy, the thing that interested and amused me
most at Brussels were the dogs: not lap-dogs, but the dogs that draw
carts and heavy hampers. Every day I beheld numbers of these
_traineaux_, often four, harnessed abreast, and driven like horses. I
remember in particular seeing a man standing upright on one of these
little carriages, and behind him two large hampers full of mussels, the
whole drawn by four dogs. And another day I saw a boy of about ten years
old driving four dogs harnessed to a little carriage; he crossed our
carriage as we were going down a street called La Montagne de la Cour,
without fearing our four Flemish horses. La Montagne de la Cour is a
very grand name, and you may perhaps imagine that it means a MOUNTAIN,
but be it known to you, my dear aunt, that in Le Pays Bas, as well as in
the County of Longford, they make mountains of molehills. The whole road
from Calais to Ghent is as flat and as straight as the road to Longford.
We never knew when we came to what the innkeeper and postillions call
mountains, except by the postillions getting off their horses with great
deliberation and making them go a snail's walk--a snail's gallop would
be much too fast. Now it is no easy thing for a French postillion to
walk himself when he is in his boots: these boots are each as large and
as stiff as a wooden churn, and when the man in his boots attempts to
walk, he is more helpless than a child in a go-cart: he waddles on,
dragging his boots after him in a way that would make a pig laugh. As
Lord Granard says, "A pig can whistle, though he has a bad mouth for
it," [Footnote: A long argument on genius and education, between Lady
Moira and Mr. Edgeworth, had been ended by Lord Granard wittily saying,
"A pig may be made to whistle, but he has a bad mouth for it."] I
presume that _by a parity of reasoning_ a pig may laugh. But I must not
talk any more nonsense.

We left Brussels last Sunday (you are looking in your pocket-book, dear
Aunt Mary, for the day of the month; I see you looking). The first place
of any note we went to was Valenciennes, where we saw houses and
churches in ruins, the effect of English wars and French revolutions.
Though Valenciennes lace is very pretty we bought none, recollecting
that though Coventry is famous for ribbons, and Tewkesbury for
stockings, yet only the worst ribbons, and the worst stockings are to be
had at Coventry and Tewkesbury. Besides, we are not expert at counting
Flemish money, which is quite different from French, and puzzling enough
to drive the seven sages of Greece mad. Even the natives cannot count it
without rubbing their foreheads, and counting in their hands, and
repeating _c'a fait, cela fait._ For my part I fairly gave the point up,
and resolved to be cheated rather than go distracted. But indeed the
Flemish are not cheats, as far as I have seen of them. They would go to
the utmost borders of honesty for a couronne de Brabant, or a
demi-couronne, or a double escalin, or a single escalin, or a plaquet,
or a livre, or a sous, or a liard, or for any the vilest denomination of
their absurd coin, yet I do not believe they would go beyond the bounds
of honesty with any but an English Milor: they are privileged dupes. A
maid at the hotel at Dunkirk said to me, "Ah! Madame, nous autres nous
aimons bien de voir rouler les Anglais." Yes, because they think the
English roll in gold.

Now we will go to Cambray, famous for its cambric and its archbishop.
Buonaparte had so much respect for the memory of Fenelon, that he fixed
the seat of the present Archbishopric at Cambray instead of at Lille, as
had been proposed. We saw Fenelon's head here, preserved in a church.
But to return from archbishops to cambrics. Our hostess at Cambray was a
dealer in cambrics, and in her bale of _baptistes_ she seemed literally
to have her being. She was, in spite of cambric and Valenciennes
lace--of which she had a dirty superfluity on her cap lined with
pink--the very ugliest of the female species I had ever beheld. We were
made amends for her by a most agreeable family who kept the inn at Roye:
their ancestors had kept this inn for a hundred and fifty years; the
present landlord and his wife are about sixty-eight and sixty, and their
daughter, about twenty, of a slight figure, vast vivacity in her mind
and in all her motions; she does almost all the business of the house,
and seems to love _papa et maman_ better than anything in the world,
except talking. My father formed a hundred good wishes for her: first,
when he heard her tell a story, she used such admirable variety of
action, that he wished her on the stage: then when she waited at supper,
with all the nimbleness and dexterity of a female harlequin, he wished
that she was married to Jack Langan, that she might keep the new inn at
Edgeworthstown: but his last and best wish for her was that she should
be waiting-maid to you and Aunt Mary. He thought she would please you
both particularly: for my part, I thought she would talk a great deal
too much for you. However, her father and mother would not part with her
for Pitt's diamond.

We saw to-day the residence of the Prince de Conde, and of a long line
of princes famous for virtue and talents--the celebrated palace of
Chantilly, made still more interesting to us by having just read the
beautiful tale by Madame de Genlis, "Mademoiselle de Clermont;" it would
delight my dear Aunt Mary, it is to be had in the first volume of the
_Petits Romans_, and those are to be found by Darcy, if he be not drunk,
at Archer's, Dublin. After going for an hour and a half through thick,
dark forest, in which Virginia might have lived secure from sight of
mortal man, we came into open day and open country, and from the top of
a hill beheld a mass of magnificent building, shaded by wood. I imagined
this was the palace, but I was told that these buildings were only the
stables of Chantilly. The Palace, alas! is no more! it was pulled down
by the Revolutionists. The stables were saved by a petition from the War
Minister, stating that they would make stabling for troops, and to
this use they are now applied. As we drove down the hill we saw the
melancholy remains of the Palace: only the white arches on which it was
built, covered with crumbled stone and mortar. We walked to look at the
riding-house, built by the Prince de Conde, a princely edifice! Whilst
we were looking at it, we heard a flute played near us, and we were told
that the young man who played it was one of the poor Prince de Conde's
chasseurs. The person who showed the ruins to us was a melancholy-
looking man, who had been employed his whole life to show the
gardens and Palace of Chantilly: he is about sixty, and had saved some
hundred pounds in the Prince's service. He now shows their ruins, and
tells where the Prince and Princess once slept, and where there _were_
fine statues, and charming walks.

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