Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 1/Letter 101

by Maria Edgeworth

To MRS. RUXTON.

October 16.

I send you a letter of Joanna Baillie's; her simple style is so different from the fine or the gossip style.

Did you ever hear this epigram, a translation from Martial?

Their utmost power the gods have shown,

In turning Niobe to stone:

But man's superior power you see,

Who turns a stone to Niobe.

Here is an epigram quite to my taste, elegant and witty, without ill-nature or satire.

Barry Fox has come home with his regiment,^[1] and is very gentlemanlike.

January 10, 1816.

The authoress of Pride and Prejudice has been so good as to send to me a new novel just published, Emma. We are reading France in 1814 and 1815, by young Alison and Mr. Tytler: the first volume good. We are also reading a book which delights us all, though it is on a subject which you will think little likely to be interesting to us, and on which we had little or no previous knowledge. I bought it on Mr. Brinkley's recommendation, and have not repented—Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. It is admirably written, with such perfect clearness as to be intelligible to the meanest, and satisfactory to the highest capacity.

I have enlarged my plan of plays, which are not now to be for young people merely, but rather Popular Plays,^[2] for the same class as Popular Tales. Excuse huddling things together. Mrs. O'Beirne, of Newry, who has been here, told us a curious story. A man near Granard robbed a farmer of thirty guineas, and hid them in a hole in the church wall. He was hurried out of the country by some accident before he could take off his treasure, and wrote to the man he had robbed and told him where he had hid the money: "Since it can be of no use to me you may as well have it." The owner of the money set to work grouting under the church wall, and many of the good people of Granard were seized with Mr. Hill's fear there was a plot to undermine the church, and a great piece of work about it.

March 21.

I send a letter of Mrs. O'Beirne's, telling of Archdeacon de Lacy's ^[3] marrying Madame de Staël's daughter to the Duc de Broglie! My father is pretty well to-day, and has been looking at a fine bed of crocuses in full blow in my garden, and is now gone out in the carriage, and I must have a scene ready for him on his return.

I have been ever since you were here mending up the little plays; cobbling work, which takes a great deal of time, and makes no show. *** It was in January 1816 that Maria Edgeworth received a letter from Miss Rachael Mordecai, of Richmond, Virginia, gently reproaching her with having so often made Jews ridiculous in her writings, and asking her to give a story with a good Jew. This was the origin of Harrington, and the commencement of a correspondence with Miss Mordecai, and of a friendship with her family.

Footnotes

1. Captain Fox had been serving in Canada. On Buonaparte's return from Elba, his regiment, the 97th, was summoned home. When the transport entered Plymouth harbour, and the officers were told that Buonaparte was in the vessel they had just sailed past, they thought it an absurd jest.
2. Published in 1817, in one volume, containing "Love and Law."
3. It happened that when Albertine de Staël was to be married to M. de Broglie, at Florence, the only Protestant clergyman to be had was Archdeacon de Lacy, son-in-law to Mrs. Moutray, the friend of Nelson and Collingwood.