Richard Lovell Edgeworth | Page 7

combinations are formed, of four figures each, which refer to a
dictionary of words. By night, white lights are used.'
Dr. Darwin in reply says: 'The telegraph you described, I dare say,
would answer the purpose. It would be like a giant wielding his long
arms and talking with his fingers: and those long arms might be
covered with lamps in the night.'
It is curious now to read Mr. Edgeworth's words: 'I will venture to
predict that it will at some future period be generally practised, not only
in these islands, but that it will in time become a means of
communication between the most distant parts of the world, wherever
arts and sciences have civilised mankind.'
It was some years later, in 1794, when Ireland was in a disturbed state,
and threatened by a French invasion, that Edgeworth laid his scheme
for telegraphs before the Government, and offered to keep open
communication between Dublin and Cork if the Government would
pay the expense. He made a trial between two hills fifteen miles apart,
and a message was sent and an answer received in five minutes. The
Government paid little attention to his offer, and finally refused it. Two
months later the French were on the Irish coasts, and great confusion
and distress was occasioned by the want of accurate news. 'The troops
were harassed with contradictory orders and forced marches for want of
intelligence, and from that indecision, which must always be the
consequence of insufficient information. Many days were spent in
terror, and in fruitless wishes for an English fleet. ... At last Ireland was
providentially saved by the change of the wind, which prevented the
enemy from effecting a landing on her coast.'
Another of Edgeworth's inventions was a one-wheeled carriage adapted
to go over narrow roads; it was made fast by shafts to the horse's sides,
and was furnished with two weights or counterpoises that hung below
the shafts. In this carriage he travelled to Birmingham and astonished

the country folk on the way.
I must now give a sketch of Edgeworth's matrimonial adventures. They
began after a strange fashion, when, at fifteen, he and some young
companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of the
party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry Richard
to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door key as a
ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the marriage service.
When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage he was so alarmed
that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a divorce for his son in the
ecclesiastical court.
It was while visiting Dr. Darwin at Lichfield that Edgeworth made
some friendships which influenced his whole life. At the Bishop's
Palace, where Canon Seward lived, he first met Miss Honora Sneyd,
who was brought up as a daughter by Mrs. Seward. He was much
struck by her beauty and by her mental gifts, and says: 'Now for the
first time in my life, I saw a woman that equalled the picture of
perfection which existed in my imagination. I had long suffered much
from the want of that cheerfulness in a wife, without which marriage
could not be agreeable to a man with such a temper as mine. I had
borne this evil, I believe, with patience; but my not being happy at
home exposed me to the danger of being too happy elsewhere.' He
describes in another place his first wife as 'prudent, domestic, and
affectionate; but she was not of a cheerful temper. She lamented about
trifles; and the lamenting of a female with whom we live does not
render home delightful.'
His friend, Mr. Day,* was also intimate at the Palace, but did not
admire Honora at that time (1770) as much as Edgeworth did. Mr. Day
thought 'she danced too well; she had too much an air of fashion in her
dress and manners; and her arms were not sufficiently round and white
to please him.'
* The author of Sandford and Merton.
He was at this time much preoccupied with an orphan, Sabrina Sydney,
whom he had taken from the Foundling Hospital, and whom he was

educating with the idea of marrying her ultimately. Honora, on the
other hand, had received the addresses of Mr. Andre, afterwards Major
Andre, who was shot as a spy during the American War. But want of
fortune caused the parents on both sides to discourage this attachment,
and it was broken off.
It was in 1771 that Mr. Day, having placed Sabrina at a
boarding-school, became conscious of Honora's attractions, and began
to think of marrying her. 'He wrote me one of the most eloquent letters
I ever read,' says Edgeworth, 'to point out to