Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Final years
On the 4th of February 1848, after a very short illness, Mrs. Lestock Wilson—Fanny Edgeworth—died. Maria survived her little more than a year. She bore the shock without apparent injury to her health, and she continued to employ herself with her usual benevolent interest and sympathy in all the business and pleasures of her family and friends; but strongly as she was attached to all her brothers and sisters, Fanny had been the dearest object of her love and admiration. To her friend Mrs. S.C. Hall, who wrote to her as usual on 1st January (1849), which was her birthday, she answered, "You must not delay long in finding your way to Edgeworthstown if you mean to see me again. Remember, you have just congratulated me on my eighty-second birthday." In the spring she spent some weeks at Trim, where her sister Lucy and Dr. Robinson were with her. She seemed unusually agitated and depressed in taking leave of her sister Harriet and Mr. Butler, but said as she went away, "At Whitsuntide I shall return."
Only a few weeks before her death Miss Edgeworth wrote: *** Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life. *** In her last letter to her sister, Honora Beaufort, she enclosed the lines: ***
- Ireland, with all thy faults, thy follies too,
- I love thee still: still with a candid eye must view
- Thy wit, too quick, still blundering into sense
- Thy reckless humour: sad improvidence,
- And even what sober judges follies call,
- I, looking at the Heart, forget them all!
MARIA E. May 1849. *** On the morning of the 22nd of May Miss Edgeworth drove out, apparently in her usual health. On her return she was suddenly seized with pain of the heart, and in a few hours breathed her last in the arms of her devoted stepmother and friend.[1]
Mrs. Edgeworth writes: *** Maria had always wished that her friends should be spared the anguish of seeing her suffer in protracted illness; she had always wished to die at home, and that I should be with her—both her wishes were fulfilled.
Extremely small of stature, her figure continued slight, and all her movements singularly alert to the last. No one ever conversed with her for five minutes without forgetting the plainness of her features in the vivacity, benevolence, and genius expressed in her countenance.[2]
Particularly neat in her dress and in all her ways, she had everything belonging to her arranged in the most perfect order—habits of order early impressed upon her mind by Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, which, with her methodical way of doing business, enabled her to get through a surprising amount of multifarious work in the course of every day.
She wrote almost always in the library, undisturbed by the noise of the large family about her, and for many years on a little desk her father had made for her, and on which two years before his death he inscribed the following words:
"On this humble desk were written all the numerous works of my daughter, Maria Edgeworth, in the common sitting-room of my family. In these works, which were chiefly written to please me, she has never attacked the personal character of any human being or interfered with the opinions of any sect or party, religious or political; while endeavouring to inform and instruct others, she improved and amused her own mind and gratified her heart, which I do believe is better than her head.
"R.L.E."
She used afterwards a writing-desk which had been her father's, but when at home it was always placed on a little table of his construction, which is in my possession, and to which she had attached many ingenious contrivances—a bracket for her candlestick, a fire-screen, and places for her papers. This little table being on castors, she could move it from the sofa by the fire to the window, or into a recess behind the pillars of the library, where she generally sat in summer time. She wrote on folio sheets of paper, which she sewed together in chapters.
To facilitate the calculation of the MS. for printing, and to secure each page containing nearly the same amount of writing, she used to prick the margin of her paper at equal distances, and her father made a little machine set with points by which she could pierce several sheets at once. A full sketch of the story she was about to write was always required by her father before she began it, and though often much changed in its progress, the foundation and purpose remained as originally planned. She rose, as I have said, early, and after taking a cup of coffee and reading her letters, walked out till breakfast-time, a meal she always enjoyed especially (though she scarcely ate anything); she delighted to read out and talk over her letters of the day, and listened a little to the newspapers, but she was no politician. She came into the breakfast-room in summer time with her hands full of roses, and always had some work or knitting to do while others ate. She generally sat down at her desk soon after breakfast and wrote till luncheon-time,—her chief meal in the day,—after which she did some needlework, often unwillingly, when eager about her letters or MSS., but obediently, as she had found writing directly after eating bad for her. Sometimes in the afternoon she drove out, always sitting with her back to the horses, and when quite at ease about them exceedingly enjoyed a short drive in an open carriage, not caring and often not knowing which road she went, talking and laughing all the time. She usually wrote all the rest of her afternoon, and in her latter years lay down and slept for an hour after dinner, coming down to tea and afterwards reading out herself, or working and listening to the reading out of some of the family. Her extreme enjoyment of a book made these evening hours delightful to her and to all her family. If her attention was turned to anything else, she always desired the reader to stop till she was able to attend, and even from the most apparently dull compositions she extracted knowledge or amusement. She often lingered after the usual bed-time to talk over what she had heard, full of bright or deep and solid observations, and gay anecdotes à propos to the work or its author.
She had amazing power of control over her feelings when occasion demanded, but in general her tears or her smiles were called forth by every turn of joy and sorrow among those she lived with. When she met in a stranger a kindred mind, her conversation upon every subject poured forth, was brilliant with wit and eloquence and a gaiety of heart which gave life to all she thought and said. But the charms of society never altered her taste for domestic life; she was consistent from the beginning to the end. Though so exceedingly enjoying the intercourse of all the great minds she had known, she more enjoyed her domestic life with her nearest relations, when her spirits never flagged, and her wit and wisdom, which were never for show, were called forth by every little incident of the day. When my daughters were with Maria at Paris, they described to me the readiness with which she would return from the company of the greatest philosophers and wits of the day to superintend her young sisters' dress, or arrange some party of pleasure for them. "We often wonder what her admirers would say, after all the profound remarks and brilliant witticisms they have listened to, if they heard all her delightful nonsense with us." Much as she was gratified by her "success" in the society of her celebrated contemporaries, she never varied in her love for Home. *** Her whole life, of eighty-three years, had been an aspiration after good.