Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Read online

  The Complete Novels of

  MARIA EDGEWORTH

  (1768-1849)

  Contents

  The Novels

  CASTLE RACKRENT

  BELINDA

  THE MODERN GRISELDA

  LEONORA

  PATRONAGE

  HARRINGTON

  ORMOND

  HELEN

  ORLANDINO

  The Shorter Fiction

  THE PARENT’S ASSISTANT

  HARRY AND LUCY: BEING THE FIRST PART OF EARLY LESSONS

  MORAL TALES

  POPULAR TALES

  TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE

  FRANK: A SEQUEL OF EARLY LESSONS

  GARRY OWEN; OR, THE SNOW-WOMAN, AND OTHER STORIES

  THE LITTLE DOG TRUSTY; THE ORANGE MAN; AND THE CHERRY ORCHARD

  THE MOST UNFORTUNATE DAY OF MY LIFE AND OTHER STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Plays

  COMIC DRAMAS IN THREE ACTS

  The Letters

  THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF MARIA EDGEWORTH

  The Non-Fiction

  PRACTICAL EDUCATION

  ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS

  AN ESSAY ON THE NOBLE SCIENCE OF SELF-JUSTIFICATION

  The Biographies

  RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH: A SELECTION FROM HIS MEMOIRS

  MARIA EDGEWORTH by Helen Zimmern

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2013

  Version 1

  The Complete Novels of

  MARIA EDGEWORTH

  By Delphi Classics, 2013

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2013.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  Parts Edition Now Available!

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  The Novels

  Edgeworth’s birthplace — the village of Black Bourton in Oxfordshire

  Edgeworth as a young woman

  CASTLE RACKRENT

  Castle Rackrent is Maria Edgeworth’s first novel and is still considered to be one of her finest works. It was first published anonymously in 1800 and is one of the very few novels that Edgeworth produced that was not edited by her father. It is a short work that relates the life and fortunes of the last four heirs to the Rackrent estate, told by their ostensibly devoted servant, Thady Quirk. The book tackles the subject of incompetent Anglo-Irish landlords in the 18th century before the Act of Union in 1800. The tale is actually set prior to the Constitution of 1782, which is a term used to describe a series of legal changes that released the Irish Parliament from some of the incredibly restrictive measures imposed by Norman, and then British rulers. Edgeworth satirises the arrogance, dissipation and complacency of the four landlords and exposes elements of the class structure in Ireland that were determined by the English. The book is considered one of the earliest historical novels and Edgeworth and her family feared that the work might offend and displease those who were enthusiastic about, and dedicated to, the Act of Union. Edgeworth decided to limit this potential controversy by adding an introduction, glossary and footnote by an English voice, which proves highly interesting in interpreting the intentions of both the narrator and the novelist.

  While all four of Castle Rackrent’s landlords are reckless and irresponsible, they do vary in other characteristics; Sir Kit is a particularly cruel and unpleasant man who abuses and imprisons his wife, while squandering the family’s wealth by gambling. One of the most interesting features of Castle Rackrent is the narration by Thady Quirk, who serves as an early example of the unreliable narrator. Thady has simultaneously been viewed as a naive and simpleminded fool or a cunning villain that contrives to help his son inherit the estate. Neither reading is complete; nor do these interpretations consider the interplay between Thady’s narration and the explanatory English voice of the introduction, glossary and footnotes. The use of this second editorial voice helps to focus attention on Thady’s narration and asks the reader to engage with the text and consider, not only if the old servant has a role in the outcome the story, but whether there is truth in how he is relaying the events.

  The title page of an early edition

  CONTENTS

  NOTES ON ‘CASTLE RACKRENT’

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  CASTLE RACKRENT

  MONDAY MORNING

  CONTINUATION OF THE MEMOIRS OF THE RACKRENT FAMILY

  HISTORY OF SIR CONOLLY RACKRENT

  GLOSSARY

  Demonstration of Edgeworth’s work as part of an Irish tradition

  INTRODUCTION

  I

  The story of the Edgeworth Family, if it were properly told, should be as long as the ARABIAN NIGHTS themselves; the thousand and one cheerful intelligent members of the circle, the amusing friends and relations, the charming surroundings, the cheerful hospitable home, all go to make up an almost unique history of a county family of great parts and no little character. The Edgeworths were people of good means and position, and their rental, we are told, amounted to nearly L3000 a year. At one time there was some talk of a peerage for Mr. Edgeworth, but he was considered too independent for a peerage.

  The family tradition seems to have been unconventional and spirited always. There are records still extant in the present Mr. Edgeworth’s possession, — papers of most wonderful vitality for parchment, — where you may read passionate remonstrances and adjurations from great-grandfathers to great-great-grandfathers, and where great-great-grandmothers rush into the discussion with vehement spelling and remonstrance, and make matters no better by their interference. I never read more passionately eloquent letters and appeals. There are also records of a pleasanter nature; merrymakings, and festive preparations, and 12s. 6d. for a pair of silk stockings for Miss Margaret Edgeworth to dance in, carefully entered into the family budget. All the people whose portraits are hanging up, beruffled, dignified, calm, and periwigged, on the old walls of Edgeworthstown certainly had extraordinarily strong impressions, and gave eloquent expression to them. I don’t think people could feel quite so strongly now about their own affairs as they did then; there are so many printed emotions, so many public events, that private details cannot seem quite as important. Edgeworths of those days were farther away from the world than they are now, dwelling in the plains of Longford, which as yet were not crossed by iron rails. The family seems to have made little of distances, and to have ridden and posted to and fro from Dublin to Edgeworthstown in storm and sunshine.

>   II

  When Messrs. Macmillan asked me to write a preface to this new edition of Miss Edgeworth’s stories I thought I should like to see the place where she had lived so long and where she had written so much, and so it happened that being in Ireland early this year, my daughter and I found ourselves driving up to Broadstone Station one morning in time for the early train to Edgeworthstown. As we got out of our cab we asked the driver what the fare should be. ‘Sure the fare is half a crown,’ said he, ‘and if you wish to give me more, I could keep it for myself!’

  The train was starting and we bought our papers to beguile the road. ‘Will you have a Home Rule paper or one of them others?’ said the newsboy, with such a droll emphasis that we couldn’t help laughing. ‘Give me one of each,’ said I; then he laughed, as no English newsboy would have done. . . . We went along in the car with a 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 past it gave one to stand staring at the old books, with their paper backs and old-fashioned covers, at the gray boards, which were the liveries of literature in those early days; at the first editions, with their inscriptions in the author’s handwriting, or in Maria’s pretty caligraphy. There was the PIRATE in its original volumes, and Mackintosh’s MEMOIRS, and Mrs. Barbauld’s ESSAYS, and Descartes’s ESSAYS, that Arthur Hallam liked to read; Hallam’s CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, and Rogers’s POEMS, were there all inscribed and dedicated. Not less interesting were the piles of Magazines that had been sent from America. I never knew before how many Magazines existed even those early days; we took some down at hazard and read names, dates, and initials. . . . Storied urn and monumental bust do not bring back the past as do the books which belong to it. Storied urns are in churches and stone niches, far removed from the lives of which they speak; books seem a part of our daily life, and are like the sound of a voice just outside the door. Here they were, as they had been read by her, stored away by her hands, and still safely preserved, bringing back the past with, as it were, a cheerful encouraging greeting to the present. Other relics there are of course, but, as I say, none which touch one so vividly. There is her silver ink-stand, the little table her father left her on which she wrote (it had belonged to his mother before him). There is also a curious trophy — a table which was sent to her from Edinburgh, ornamented by promiscuous views of Italy, curiously inappropriate to her genius; but not so the inscription, which is quoted from Sir Walter Scott’s Preface to his Collected Edition, and which may as well be quoted here: ‘WITHOUT BEING SO PRESUMPTUOUS AS TO HOPE TO EMULATE THE RICH HUMOUR, THE PATHETIC TENDERNESS, AND ADMIRABLE TRUTH WHICH PERVADE THE WORKS OF MY ACCOMPLISHED FRIEND,’ Sir Walter wrote, I FELT THAT SOMETHING MIGHT BE ATTEMPTED FOR MY OWN COUNTRY OF THE SAME KIND AS THAT WHICH MISS EDGEWORTH SO FORTUNATELY ACHIEVED FOR IRELAND.’

  In the MEMOIRS of Miss Edgeworth there is a pretty account of her sudden burst of feeling when this passage so unexpected, and so deeply felt by her, was read out by one of her sisters, at a time when Maria lay weak and recovering from illness in Edgeworthstown.

  Our host took us that day, among other pleasant things, for a marvellous and delightful flight on a jaunting car, to see something of the country. We sped through storms and sunshine, by open moors and fields, and then by villages and little churches, by farms where the pigs were standing at the doors to be fed, by pretty trim cottages. The lights came and went; as the mist lifted we could see the exquisite colours, the green, the dazzling sweet lights on the meadows, playing upon the meadow-sweet and elder bushes; at last we came to the lovely glades of Carriglass. It seemed to me that we had reached an enchanted forest amid this green sweet tangle of ivy, of flowering summer trees, of immemorial oaks and sycamores.

  A squirrel was darting up the branches of a beautiful spreading beech-tree, a whole army of rabbits were flashing with silver tails into the brushwood; swallows, blackbirds, peacock-butterflies, dragonflies on the wing, a mighty sylvan life was roaming in this lovely orderly wilderness.

  The great
Irish kitchen garden, belonging to the house, with its seven miles of wall, was also not unlike a part of a fairy tale. Its owner, Mr. Lefroy, told me that Miss Edgeworth had been constantly there. She was a great friend of Judge Lefroy. As a boy he remembered her driving up to the house and running up through the great drawing-room doors to greet the Judge.

  Miss Edgeworth certainly lived in a fair surrounding, and, with Sophia Western, must have gone along the way of life heralded by sweetest things, by the song of birds, by the gold radiance of the buttercups, by the varied shadows of those beautiful trees under which the cows gently tread the grass. English does not seem exactly the language in which to write of Ireland, with its sylvan wonders of natural beauty. Madame de Sevigne’s descriptions of her woods came to my mind. It is not a place which delights one by its actual sensual beauty, as Italy does; it is not as in England, where a thousand associations link one to every scene and aspect — Ireland seems to me to contain some unique and most impersonal charm, which is quite unwritable.

  All that evening we sat talking with our hosts round the fire (for it was cold enough for a fire), and I remembered that in Miss Edgeworth’s MEMOIRS it was described how the snow lay upon the ground and upon the land, when the family came home in June to take possession of Edgeworthstown.

  As I put out my candle in the spacious guest-chamber I wondered which of its past inhabitants I should wish to see standing in the middle of the room. I must confess that the thought of the beautiful Honora filled me with alarm, and if Miss Seward had walked in in her pearls and satin robe I should have fled for my life. As I lay there experimentalising upon my own emotions I found that after all, natural simple people do not frighten one whether dead or alive. The thought of them is ever welcome; it is the artificial people who are sometimes one thing, sometimes another, and who form themselves on the weaknesses and fancies of those among whom they live, who are really terrifying.