Castle Rackrent | Page 8

brutality; Captain
Hamilton behaving as an 'enraged partisan.' Poor Mr. Caton is released
at last by the exertions of Mr. Edmund Burke, of Mr. Farr, and another
devoted friend, who travel post-haste to London to obtain a Habeas
Corpus, so that he is able to write indignantly and safe from his own
home to the LONDON PACKET to describe his providential escape.
The little sheet gives one a vivid impression of that daily life in 1779,
when Miss Edgeworth must have been a little girl of twelve years old,
at school at Mrs. Lataffiere's, and learning to write in her beautiful
handwriting. It was a time of great events. The world is fighting, armies
marching and counter-marching, and countries rapidly changing hands.
Miss Seward is inditing her elegant descriptions for the use of her
admiring circle. But already the circle is dwindling! Mr. Day has parted
from Sabrina. The well-known episodes of Lichfield gaieties and
love-makings are over. Poor Major Andre has been exiled from

England and rejected by Honora. The beautiful Honora, whose
"blending charms of mind and person" are celebrated by one adoring
lover after another, has married Mr. Edgeworth. She has known
happiness, and the devoted affection of an adoring husband, and the
admiring love of her little step-daughter, all this had been hers; and
now all this is coming to an end, and the poor lady lying on her
death-bed imploring her husband to marry her sister Elizabeth.
Accordingly Mr. Edgeworth married Elizabeth Sneyd in 1780, which
was also the year of poor Andre's death.
There is a little oval picture at the National Gallery in Dublin, the
photograph of a sketch at Edgeworthstown House, which gives one a
very good impression of the family as it must have appeared in the
reigns of King George and the third Mrs. Edgeworth. The father in his
powder and frills sits at the table with intelligent, well-informed finger
showing some place upon a map. He is an agreeable-looking youngish
man; Mrs. Edgeworth, his third wife, is looking over his shoulder; she
has marked features, beautiful eyes, she holds a child upon her knee,
and one can see the likeness in her to her step-daughter Honora, who
stands just behind her and leans against the chair. A large globe
appropriately stands in the background. The grown-up ladies alternate
with small children. Miss Edgeworth herself, sitting opposite to her
father, is the most prominent figure in the group. She wears a broad
leghorn hat, a frizzed coiffure, and folded kerchief; she has a sprightly,
somewhat French appearance, with a marked nose of the RETROUSSE
order. I had so often heard that she was plain that to see this fashionable
and agreeable figure was a pleasant surprise.
Miss Edgeworth seems to be about four-and-twenty in the sketch; she
was born in 1767; she must have been eleven in 1778, when Mr.
Edgeworth finally came over to Ireland to settle on his own estate, and
among his own people. He had been obliged some years before to leave
Edgeworthstown on account of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health; he
now returned in patriarchal fashion with Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth, his
third wife, with his children by his first, second, and third marriages,
and with two sisters-in- law who had made their home in his family.
For thirty-five years he continued to live on in the pretty old home

which he now adapted to his large family, and which, notwithstanding
Miss Edgeworth's objections, would have seemed so well fitted for its
various requirements. The daughter's description of his life there, of his
work among his tenants, of his paternal and spirited rule, is vivid and
interesting. When the present owner of Edgeworthstown talked to us of
his grandfather, one felt that, with all his eccentricities, he must have
been a man of a far- seeing mind and observation. Mr. Erroles
Edgeworth said that he was himself still reaping the benefit of his
grandfather's admirable organisation and arrangements on the estate,
and that when people all around met with endless difficulties and
complications, he had scarcely known any. Would that there had been
more Mr. Edgeworths in Ireland!
Whatever business he had to do, his daughter tells us, was done in the
midst of his family. Maria copied his letters of business and helped him
to receive his rents. 'On most Irish estates,' says Miss Edgeworth, 'there
is, or there was, a personage commonly called a driver,--a person who
drives and impounds cattle for rent and arrears.' The drivers are, alas!
from time to time too necessary in collecting Irish rents. Mr.
Edgeworth desired that none of his tenants should pay rent to any one
but himself; thus taking away subordinate interference, he became
individually acquainted with his tenantry. He also made himself
acquainted with the different value of