Castle Rackrent | Page 4

sad couple of
people out of a hospital, compatriots of our own, who had been settled
ten years in Ireland, and were longing to be away. The poor things were
past consolation, dull, despairing, ingrained English, sick and suffering
and yearning for Brixton, just as other aliens long for their native hills
and moors. We travelled along together all that spring morning by the
blossoming hedges, and triumphal arches of flowering May; the hills
were very far away, but the lovely lights and scents were all about and

made our journey charming. Maynooth was a fragrant vision as we
flew past, of vast gardens wall-enclosed, of stately buildings. The
whole line of railway was sweet with the May flowers, and with the
pungent and refreshing scent of the turf- bogs. The air was so clear and
so limpid that we could see for miles, and short-sighted eyes needed no
glasses to admire with. Here and there a turf cabin, now and then a lake
placidly reflecting the sky. The country seemed given over to silence,
the light sped unheeded across the delicate browns and greens of the
bog-fields; or lay on the sweet wonderful green of the meadows. One
dazzling field we saw full of dancing circles of little fairy pigs with
curly tails. Everything was homelike but NOT England, there was
something of France, something of Italy in the sky; in the fanciful tints
upon the land and sea, in the vastness of the picture, in the happy
sadness and calm content which is so difficult to describe or to account
for. Finally we reached our journey's end. It gave one a real emotion to
see EDGEWORTHSTOWN written up on the board before us, and to
realise that we were following in the steps of those giants who had
passed before us. The master of Edgeworthstown kindly met us and
drove us to his home through the outlying village, shaded with its
sycamores, underneath which pretty cows were browsing the grass. We
passed the Roman Catholic Church, the great iron crucifix standing in
the churchyard. Then the horses turned in at the gate of the park, and
there rose the old home, so exactly like what one expected it, that I felt
as if I had been there before in some other phase of existence.
It is certainly a tradition in the family to welcome travellers! I thought
of the various memoirs I had read, of the travellers arriving from the
North and the South and the West; of Scott and Lockhart, of Pictet, of
the Ticknors, of the many visitants who had come up in turn; whether it
is the year 14, or the year 94, the hospitable doors open kindly to admit
them. There were the French windows reaching to the ground, through
which Maria used to pass on her way to gather her roses; there was the
porch where Walter Scott had stood; there grew the quaint
old-fashioned bushes with the great pink peonies in flower, by those
railings which still divide the park from the meadows beyond; there
spread the branches of the century-old trees. Only last winter they told
us the storms came and swept away a grove of Beeches that were

known in all the country round, but how much of shade, of flower, still
remain! The noble Hawthorn of stately growth, the pine-trees (there
should be NAMES for trees, as there are for rocks or ancient
strongholds). Mr. Edgeworth showed us the oak from Jerusalem, the
grove of cypress and sycamore where the beautiful depths of ground
ivy are floating upon the DEBRIS, and soften the gnarled roots, while
they flood the rising banks with green.
Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth brought us into the house. The ways go
upstairs and downstairs, by winding passages and side gates; a pretty
domed staircase starts from the central hall, where stands that old
clock-case which Maria wound up when she was over eighty years old.
To the right and to the left along the passages were rooms opening
from one into another. I could imagine Sir Walter's kind eyes looking
upon the scene, and Wordsworth coming down the stairs, and their
friendly entertainer making all happy, and all welcome in turn; and
their hostess, the widowed Mrs. Edgeworth, responding and
sympathising with each. We saw the corner by the fire where Maria
wrote; we saw her table with its pretty curves standing in its place in
the deep casements. Miss Edgeworth's own room is a tiny little room
above looking out on the back garden. This little closet opens from a
larger one, and then by a narrow flight of stairs leads to a suite of
ground- floor chambers, following one from another, lined with
bookcases and looking on the gardens. What a strange fellow-feeling
with the