(April 1780), recommending her husband to marry her sister Elizabeth; and they were actually married on Christmas Day, 1780.
In 1782 Edgeworth returned to Ireland, determined to improve his estate, educate his seven children, and ameliorate the condition of the tenants. Up to this point Edgeworth has told his own story in his Memoirs. The rest of his life is written by his daughter, who opens with a lengthy panegyric on her father as a model landlord (Memoirs, ii. 12-36). In 1785 he was associated with others in founding the Royal Irish Academy; and, during the two succeeding years, mechanics and agriculture occupied most of his time. In October 1789 his friend Day was killed by a fall from his horse, and this trial was soon followed by the loss of his daughter Honora, who had just reached her fifteenth year. In 1792 the health of one of Edgeworth’s sons took him to Clifton, where he remained with his family for about two years, returning in 1794 to Edgeworthstown. Ireland was, at that time, harassed by internal disturbances, and threats of a French invasion, and Edgeworth offered to establish telegraphic communication of his own invention throughout the country. This offer was declined. A full account of the matter is given in Edgeworth’s Letter to Lord Charlemont on the Telegraph; and his apparatus is explained in an “Essay on the art of Conveying Swift and Secret Intelligence,” published in the sixth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. In the autumn of 1797 the third Mrs Edgeworth died.
Practical Education (1798) was written in collaboration with his daughter Maria, and embodied the experience of the authors in dealing with children. “So commenced,” says Miss Edgeworth, “that literary partnership which, for so many years, was the pride and joy of my life” (Memoirs, ii. 170). This book, generally regarded as old-fashioned, has a real value in the history of education. Mr Edgeworth’s interest in the subject had been inspired by the study of Rousseau and by his friendship with Thomas Day. But he went beyond Rousseau, who developed his theories from his own ingenious mind and related an imaginary process. The Edgeworths brought a scientific method to their work. The second Mrs Edgeworth (Honora Sneyd) began the collection of actual examples of conversations between the children and their elders. This was continued patiently by the writers of the book; and their reasonings were thus founded on an accurate record of childish methods of thought. They deprecated especially any measures that interrupted the child’s own chain of reasoning. The chapters on special subjects of study, chronology, geometry, &c., were written by Richard Lovell Edgeworth; those on toys, on rewards and punishments, on temper, &c., by his daughter.[1]
In 1798 Edgeworth married Miss Beaufort, and was elected M.P. for the borough of St John’s Town, Longford. The same year, too, saw a hostile landing of the French and a formidable rebellion; and for a short time the Edgeworths took refuge in Longford. The winter of 1802 they spent in Paris. In 1804 the government accepted his telegraphic apparatus, but the installation was left incomplete when the fear of invasion was past. In 1802 appeared the Essay on Irish Bulls by Mr and Miss Edgeworth; and in 1806 Edgeworth was elected a member of the board of commissioners to inquire into Irish education. From 1807 till 1809 much of his time was spent on mechanical experiments and in writing the story of his life. In 1808 appeared Professional Education, and in 1813 his Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages. He died on the 13th of June 1817, and was buried in the family vault in Edgeworthstown churchyard.
Many of Edgeworth’s works were suggested by his zeal for the education of his own children. Such were Poetry Explained for Young People (1802), Readings in Poetry (1816), A Rational Primer (unpublished), and the parts of Early Lessons contributed by him. His speeches in the Irish parliament have also been published; and numerous essays, mostly on scientific subjects, have appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, the Monthly Magazine and Nicholson’s Journal. The story of his early life, told by himself, is fully as entertaining as the continuation by Maria, as it contains less dissertation and more incident. One of his daughters by his first marriage, Anna Maria, married Dr Beddoes and became the mother of T. L. Beddoes, the poet.
See Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq., begun by himself and concluded by his daughter, Maria Edgeworth (2 vols., 1820, 3rd and revised ed. 1844). A selection from this, giving an optimistic view of him, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1896), was edited by Mrs Lionel Tollemache.
EDGEWORTH DE FIRMONT, HENRY ESSEX (1745–1807), last confessor to Louis XVI., was the son of Robert Edgeworth, rector of Edgeworthstown in Ireland, his mother being a granddaughter of Archbishop Ussher. When he was three years old his father became a Roman Catholic, resigned his living and emigrated to Toulouse, where the boy was brought up by the Jesuits. In 1769, after his father’s death, he went to Paris to be trained for the priesthood. On taking orders he assumed the additional surname of de Firmont, from the family estate of Firmount near Edgeworthstown. Though originally studying with a view to becoming a missionary, he decided to remain in Paris, devoting himself especially to the Irish and English Roman Catholics. In 1791 he became confessor to the princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., and earned the respect even of the sans-culottes by his courage and devotion. By Madame Elizabeth he was recommended to the king when his trial was impending; and after Louis’ condemnation to death he was able to obtain permission to celebrate mass for him and attend him on the scaffold, where he recommended the king to allow his hands to be tied, with the words: “Sire, in this new outrage I see only the last trait of resemblance between your Majesty and the God who will be your reward.” It is said that at the moment of the execution, the confessor uttered the celebrated words: “Son of St Louis, ascend to heaven.” But it is certain that the phrase was never spoken. The abbé himself does not quote it, either in his memoirs or in a letter written in 1796 to his brother, in which he describes the death of the king. Moreover, Edgeworth declared to several persons who asked him about it, that the words were not his. In spite of the danger he now ran, Edgeworth refused to leave France so long as he could be of any service to Madame Elizabeth, with whom he still managed to correspond. At length, in 1795, his mother having meanwhile died in prison, where his sister was also confined, he succeeded in escaping to England, carrying with him Elizabeth’s last message to her brother, the future King Charles X. whom he found in Edinburgh. He afterwards went with some papers to Monsieur (Louis XVIII.) at Blankenburg in Brunswick, by whom he was induced to accompany him to Mittau, where, on the 22nd of May 1807, he died of a fever contracted while attending some French prisoners.
Edgeworth’s Memories, edited by C. S. Edgeworth, were first published in English (London, 1815), and a French translation (really the letters and some miscellaneous notes, &c.) was published in Paris in 1816. A translation of the Lettres de l’abbé Edgeworth avec des mémoires sur sa vie was published by Madame Elizabeth de Bow in Paris in 1818, and Letters from the Abbé Edgeworth to his Friends, with Memoirs of his Life, edited by T. B. England, in London in 1818. See J. B. A. Hanet-Cléry, Journal de ce qui s’est passé, &c. (Paris, 1825); A. H. du D. de Beauchesne, Vie de Madame Elisabeth (Paris, 1869); J. C. D. de Lacretelle, Précis historique de la Révolution française (Paris, 1801–1806).
EDGREN-LEFFLER, ANNE CHARLOTTE, duchess of Cajanello (1849–1892), Swedish author, daughter of the mathematician Prof. C. O. Leffler, was born on the 1st of October 1849. Her first volume of stories appeared in 1869, but the first to which she attached her name was Ur Lifvet (“From Life,” 1882), a series of realistic sketches of the upper circles of Swedish society, followed by three other collections with the same title. Her earliest plays, Skådespelerskan (“The Actress,” 1873), and its successors, were produced anonymously in Stockholm, but in 1883 her reputation was established by the success of Sanna Kvinnor (“True Women”), and En Räddande engel (“An Angel
- ↑ For an appreciation of the two Edgeworths from the teacher’s point of view, see Prof. L. C. Miall in the Journal of Education (August 1, 1894).
