Читать книгу Irish Memories - Ross Martin - Страница 15

“One in whose gentle bosom I

Can pour my inmost heart of woes,

Like the care-burthened honey-fly

That hides his murmurs in the rose.”

* * * * *

I have said that it was an interesting time to be alive in, this junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That the Chief’s sympathies were, as I have already mentioned, with the men on the losing side is very well known. In one of the early letters to his wife, he speaks of having had “a very prosperous circuit,” and says his business was “pretty general, not confin’d to friends or United Irishmen, tho these latter have been no bad friends to me either.” He did not defend their methods, but he stood by his friends, and to the end of his life he stood by his opinions.

In a letter written by Mrs. Bushe to their son Charles, at Castlehaven, after the death of the Chief (that is to say, forty-three years, at least, after the Act of Union), she speaks of the chaotic state of the country, and the ruin caused by the arbitrary and ill-considered enforcement of the recent Poor Law legislation. “Useless however to complain. England has the might which supersedes the right, and we are punished now for our own folly in consenting to the Union! Just what your Father predicted—‘when Ireland gives up the rights that she has, what right has she then to complain?’—How true this little squib of the poor dear C——” (Chief). “Happy for him he did not live to see the ruin he predicted!”

The following account of a visit to Edgeworthstown forms part of a letter, written at Omagh and dated Monday, August 16th, 1810. It is from Chief Justice Bushe to his wife; the beginning portion of the letter is printed in the Appendix I. (page 332).

“I am not surpriz’d that you ask about Edgeworthstown, and I can only tell you that every thing which Smyly has often said to us in praise of it is true and unexaggerated. Society in that house is certainly on the best plan I have ever met with. Edgeworth is a very clever fellow of much talent, and tho not deeply inform’d on any subject, is highly (which is consistent with being superficially) so in all. He talks a great deal and very pleasantly and loves to exhibit and perhaps obtrude what he wou’d be so justifiably vain of (his daughter and her works) if you did not trace that pride to his predominant Egotism, and see that he admires her because she is his child, and her works because they are his Grand Children. Mrs. Edgeworth is uncommonly agreeable and has been and not long ago very pretty. She is a perfect Scholar, and at the same time a good Mother and housewife. She is an excellent painter, like yourself, and like you has been oblig’d by producing Originals to give up Copying: She is you know a 5th or 6th Wife and her last child was his 22d. Two Miss Sneyds, amiable old maids, live with him. They are sisters of one of his wives, a beautiful and celebrated Honoria Sneyd, mention’d in Miss Seward’s Monody on Major André and known by her misfortune in having been betroth’d to that poor fellow. They are Litchfield people of the old literary set of the Garricks Dr. Johnson Miss Seward &c. &c. There are many young Edgeworths male and female all of promise and talent and all living round the same table with this set among whom I have not yet mention’d Miss Edgeworth, because I consider you as already knowing her from her works. In such a Society you may suppose Conversation must be good, but I was not prepared to find it so easy. It is the only set of the kind I ever met with in which you are neither led nor driven, but actually fall, and that imperceptibly, into literary topics, and I attribute it to this that in that house literature is not a treat for Company upon Invitation days, but is actually the daily bread of the family. Miss Edgeworth is for nothing more remarkable than for the total absence of vanity. She seems to have studied her father’s foibles for two purposes, to avoid them and never to appear to see them, and what does not always happen, her want of affectation is unaffected. She is as well bred and as well dress’d and as easy and as much like other people as if she was not a celebrated author. No pretensions, not a bit of blue stocking is to be discover’d. In the Conversation she neither advances or keeps back, but mixes naturally and cheerfully in it, and tho in the number of words she says less than anyone yet the excellence of her remarks and the unpremeditated point which she gives them makes you recollect her to have talk’d more than others. I was struck by a little felicity of hers the night I was there. Shakespear was talk’d of as he always is, and I mentioned what you have lately heard me speak of as a literary discovery and curiosity, that he has borrow’d the Character of Cardinal Wolsey from Campion, the old Chronicler of Ireland. This was new to them and Edgeworth began one of his rattles—

“‘Well Sir, and has the minute, and the laborious, and the indefatigable, and the prying, and the investigating Malone found this out?’

“Miss Edgeworth said, almost under her breath,

“‘It was too large for him to see!’

“Is not that good Epigram? I think it is. Edgeworth gave her the advantage of taking her into France with his Wife and others of his family during the short peace, and they were persons to improve such an opportunity. Miss Edgeworth’s Madame Fleury, in the Fashionable Tales is form’d on a true story which she learn’d there. You will think this no description unless you know what her figure is, and face &c. &c. I think her very good looking and can suppose that she was once pretty. Imagine Miss Wilmot at about 43 years old for such I suppose Miss E. to be, with all the Intelligence of her Countenance perhaps encreas’d and the Sensibility preserv’d but somewhat reduc’d, the figure very smart and neat as it must be if like Miss W’s but some of its beautiful redundancies retir’d upon a peace Establishment.

“Such is Miss Edgeworth but take her for all in all, there is nothing like her to be seen, or rather to be known, for it is impossible to be an hour in her Company without recognizing her Talent, benevolence and worth.

“An interesting anecdote occurs to me that Edgeworth told us and forc’d her to produce the proof of.

“Old Johnson of St. Paul’s Churchyard London has always been her bookseller and purchas’d her Works at first experimentally and latterly liberally. He died a few months ago and rather suddenly and a few hours before his death he sent for his nephew to whom he bequeath’d his property and who succeeded him in his business and told him that he felt he had done Miss E. injustice in only giving her £450 for Fashionable Tales and desir’d him to give her £450 more. He died that day and the next the Nephew sent her an account of the Transaction and the £450. This story only requires to be told by Miss E. I read the original letter.

“Adieu beloved Nan. I have scribbled very much but since I left town I have no other opportunity of chatting to you.

“Ever your

C. K. B.”