Maria Edgeworth's Letters From Ireland

I. March 1776 - May 1798

Maria Edgeworth always claimed the rackety Irish squires of her famous novel, Castle Rackrent, were pure invention, but it is tempting to draw parallels with early generations of Edgeworths in Ireland. Two Edgeworth brothers had come to Ireland in the 1580s as part of a wave of late Elizabethan 'adventurers'. Both prospered - one, Edward, became a bishop; the other Francis, Maria's great-great-grandfather, became Chief Clerk to the Crown in Dublin. In 1619 James I awarded Francis 600 acres of land in Co. Longford, confiscated from a Catholic landowner, and Francis married a neighbouring heiress, Jane Tuite. But their descendants rapidly acquired all the traditional habits of the Anglo-Irish squire - hard drinking and gambling and extravagant hospitality, compounded in the Edgeworths' case by frequent absences at court in London. Near-bankruptcy was twice staved off by marriage to a rich widow. Maria's grandfather Richard Edgeworth, who chronicled the family history in The Black Book of Edgeworthstown, was the first to return to prudent ways, brought up by a sober Pakenham uncle. A shrewd lawyer, he fought off rival claimants to the estate and built up his rent roll, though with scant regard for his wretched tenants. He also married a clever well-educated woman, Jane Lovell, from Wales. Between them they carefully supervised their children's education. Richard Lovell, Maria's father, the only surviving son, was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, aged just sixteen, but quickly removed when it was clear he had joined a wild hard-drinking set. Instead he was enrolled at Oxford to study law.

Unfortunately, Richard Edgeworth had introduced his son to an old legal acquaintance, Paul Elers, who lived within easy riding distance of Oxford. Richard Lovell, who was highly attractive to women, proceeded to flirt with (and possibly seduce) one of Elers' pretty daughters, Anna Maria.

Anna Maria Elers, Maria's mother. She had eloped with Richard Lovell Edgeworth aged seventeen.

Aged nineteen, he eloped with her to Gretna Green and almost immediately regretted it. Anna Maria was domesticated and prudent but barely literate. Richard was clever, restless and enthralled by Enlightenment ideas. He also had a distinct talent for mechanical invention. Soon after Maria, his second child, was born in 1768, he was introduced to the brilliant circle of writers, inventors and manufacturers headed by Dr Erasmus Darwin at Lichfield, which later formed the so-called Lunar Society (they met regularly at the full moon). At Dr Darwin's house, he met the beautiful intellectual eighteen-year-old Honora Sneyd, daughter of a local landowner, and fell passionately in love with her.

Unable to offer Honora marriage, he fled to France, taking his first child, Dick, with him and leaving his wife in England with two small girls. When Anna Maria died giving birth to a third daughter, Edgeworth almost immediately returned and declared his love to Honora. She accepted him and Maria found herself with a new stepmother at the age of five. Unlike poor Anna Maria, Honora shared fully in Richard's intellectual interests and together they set out to plan a new system for children's education - Richard Lovell Edgeworth had been an enthusiast for Rousseau's system of 'natural' education and had already tried it out on Dick with disastrous results: Dick, left to roam free without shoes or instruction until the age of seven, had proved quite ungovernable and finally had to be sent away to sea to serve under the Edgeworths' cousin, Captain Lord Longford. (He ran away from his ship and soon after emigrated to America.)

The beautiful Honora Sneyd, painted by Romney before her marriage.

In 1775 Richard Lovell Edgeworth brought his children, now three small daughters and an infant son by Honora, back to the family estate at Edgeworthstown in Co. Longford. His father had died three years before and it was clear the place was going to rack and ruin under an agent's care. He threw himself into reclaiming it, remodelling house and gardens, clearing ditches, planting and draining. 'He has 40 men constantly employed and thinks of nothing but his duty,' wrote Honora admiringly. She and Richard were wholly absorbed in each other. Six-year-old Maria, largely ignored, remembered later her unhappiness, and trampling on the garden frames in the walled garden and the delightful sound of breaking glass.

But Honora was already showing symptoms of consumption, and the damp Irish climate was seen as a danger. In 1777 Richard Lovell Edgeworth brought her and the children back to England, and Maria was packed off to a boarding school at Derby, run by a Mrs Lataffiere. Maria's earliest surviving letter, written from school in careful copperplate to her stepmother, shows her pathetically eager for approval.

Maria (aged eight) to Mrs Honora Edgeworth

Derby, 30 March 1776

Dear Mamma,

It is with the greatest pleasure I write to you as I flatter myself it will make you happy to hear from me. I hope you and dear Papa are well. School now seems agreeable to me. I have begun French and dancing and intend to make [great - crossed out] improvement in everything I learn. I know it will give you great satisfaction to know I am a good girl. My cousin Clay sends her love; mine to my father and sisters who I hope are well. Pray give my duty to papa, and accept the same from, dear Mamma - your dutiful daughter.

Some of her stepmother's chilling responses to Maria survive, which cannot have given much comfort, and her father's are hardly better.

Northchurch, 5 February 1778

Dear Maria,

Your father and I begin to think it long since we heard from you and beg you will write to us to inform us how you have gone on since your Father saw you at Derby. I hope Mr and Mrs Lataffiere will authorise you to inform us that your behaviour has merited their esteem [?] and that you have endeavoured to improve yourself in everything which you have an opportunity of learning - your being taught to dance may enable you to alter your common method of holding yourself if you pay attention to it & I must say you wanted improvement in this respect very much when you were here .

Great Berkhamsted, Herts, 1778

My dear Maria,

I have delayed answering your letter that some time might elapse to put your resolution of perseverance to a trial. I hope most sincerely that your answer to this will be accompanied with such an account from Mrs Lataffiere as will confirm me in my hopes of your becoming an amiable girl, a character which is of all others most desirable - With a benevolent heart, complying temper and obliging manners, I should make no doubt that by your mother's assistance you might become a very excellent and highly improved woman - Your person, my dear Maria, will be exactly in the middle ground between beauty and plainness - handsome enough to be upon a level with the generality of your sex, if accompanied by gentleness, Reserve & real good sense - Plain enough to be contemptible if unattended with the good qualities of the head and heart - These you have in your own power to attain and your behaviour this summer gave me hopes that your Ambition is excited towards the true perfection of the female character - . What the French call Pretension can never please in any English woman - Perfect beauty cannot make it agreeable to people of sense & good taste; anything short of that species of personal perfection becomes the object of criticism to your sex if . placed too forward in a female . - Adieu, my Dr daughter, (write) to me in English and believe me to be your affectionate father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth.

[Postscript by Honora]

I cannot add anything, my dear Maria, to the advice of such a father as you are blessed with, except my most earnest wishes that you may be everything he approves & then I am sure your character will be such as (were you a stranger to me) would make me want you for the Friend of your affect. Mother, Honora Edgeworth.

You asked me many times to let you write to me; I am always glad to hear from you when you have inclination to write, but I wish you never to consider it a task.

By 1778 Honora's consumption had been confirmed, and she and Edgeworth were desperately moving from one location in England to another in search of any treatment that might delay her death.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth to Maria

Sheffield, 2 November 1779

My dear Maria,

I am very sorry that I cannot give such an account as will please you of your mother's health. She still continues in a very dangerous situation but has her usual cheerfulness and serenity - Your last (letter) appeared to me more en fille d'école than your former letters. Indeed it is impossible to write without having something to say; at least it ought to be impossible. I send you part of an Arabian fable which I beg...