Richard Lovell Edgeworth | Page 5

his parents; but a few days after his arrival his mother, who had long been an invalid, felt that her end was approaching, and calling him to her bedside, told him, with a sort of pleasure, that she felt she should die before night. She added: 'If there is a state of just retribution in another world, I must be happy, for I have suffered during the greatest part of my life, and I know that I did not deserve it by my thoughts or actions.'
Her dying advice to him was,'"My son, learn how to say No." She warned me further of an error into which, from the vivacity of my temper, I was most likely to fall. "Your inventive faculty," said she, "will lead you eagerly into new plans; and you may be dazzled by some new scheme before you have finished, or fairly tried what you had begun. Resolve to finish; never procrastinate."'
CHAPTER 2
It was in 1765, while stopping at Chester and examining a mechanical exhibition there, that Edgeworth first heard of Dr. Darwin, who had lately invented a carriage which could turn in a small compass without danger of upsetting. Richard on hearing this determined to try his hand on coach building, and had a handsome phaeton constructed upon the same principle; this he showed in London to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and mentioned that he owed the original idea to Dr. Darwin. He then wrote to the latter describing the reception of his invention, and was invited to his house. The doctor was out when he arrived at Lichfield, but Mrs. Darwin received him, and after some conversation on books and prints asked him to drink tea. He discovered later that Dr. Darwin had imagined him to be a coachmaker, but that Mrs. Darwin had found out the mistake. 'When supper was nearly finished, a loud rapping at the door announced the doctor. There was a bustle in the hall, which made Mrs. Darwin get up and go to the door. Upon her exclaiming that they were bringing in a dead man, I went to the hall: I saw some persons, directed by one whom I guessed to be Dr. Darwin, carrying a man, who appeared motionless. "He is not dead," said Dr. Darwin. "He is only dead drunk. I found him," continued the doctor, "nearly suffocated in a ditch; I had him lifted into my carriage, and brought hither, that we might take care of him to-night." Candles came, and what was the surprise of the doctor and of Mrs. Darwin to find that the person whom he had saved was Mrs. Darwin's brother! who, for the first time in his life, as I was assured, had been intoxicated in this manner, and who would undoubtedly have perished had it not been for Dr. Darwin's humanity.
'During this scene I had time to survey my new friend, Dr. Darwin. He was a large man, fat, and rather clumsy; but intelligence and benevolence were painted in his countenance. He had a considerable impediment in his speech, a defect which is in general painful to others; but the doctor repaid his auditors so well for making them wait for his wit or his knowledge, that he seldom found them impatient.'
At Lichfield he met Mr. Bolton of Snow Hill, Birmingham, who asked him to his house, and showed him over the principal manufactories of Birmingham, where he further improved his knowledge of practical mechanics. His time was now principally devoted to inventions; he received a silver medal in 1768 from the Society of Arts for a perambulator, as he calls it, an instrument for measuring land. This is a curious instance of the changed use of a word, as we now associate perambulators with babies. In 1769 he received the Society's gold medal for various machines, and about this time produced what might have been the forerunner of the bicycle, 'a huge hollow wheel made very light, withinside of which, in a barrel of six feet diameter, a man should walk. Whilst he stepped thirty inches, the circumference of the large wheel, or rather wheels, would revolve five feet on the ground; and as the machine was to roll on planks, and on a plane somewhat inclined, when once the vis inertia of the machine should be overcome, it would carry on the man within it as fast as he could possibly walk. ... It was not finished; I had not yet furnished it with the means of stopping or moderating its motion. A young lad got into it, his companions launched it on a path which led gently down hill towards a very steep chalk-pit. This pit was at such a distance as to be out of their thoughts when they set the wheel in