Ormond. A tale ... Illustrated by C. Schloesser. With an introduction by Anne Thackeray Ritchie

Introduction

BY ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE SLontfon MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1 895 All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION.

While Waterloo was being fought, while Napoleon was sail ing from Plymouth 1 a captive, while Europe was changing hands, the party at Edgeworthstown was leading its usual studious and social life, and corresponding and visiting, receiving guests and relations. We hear of letters from Joanna Baillie, ' so different from the fine or gossip style.' ' The authoress of Pride and Prejudice has been so good ' as to send a new novel called Emma ; Miss Edgeworth is also reading Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, ' written with such perfect clearness as to be intelligible to the meanest capacity,' says the sanguine lady. In July 1816 Maria writes to her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, that ' Mr. Strutt and his son 2 have within these few minutes arrived. He wrote only yesterday that being at Liverpool he would not be so near Ireland without getting to Edgeworthstown. ...

I hope my father may be able to enjoy their company ; but he was very ill all last night and this morning.' Mr. Edge worth's health was breaking rapidly. He had rallied on his eldest son's return from his long captivity, but illness had again attacked him. Ormond -vias not published until 181 7. It was written 1 Sir Charles Eastlake as a boy was there at that time, and painted the fallen monarch as he stood on the quarter-deck of the Bellerophon. The picture is now in the possession of Lord Rosebery. 2 Afterwards the first Lord Belper. ORMOND during Mr. Edgeworth's last illness under special circumstances, but it is one of the most spontaneous of his daughter's books. In a letter to a correspondent in after years, Miss Edge worth, writing about Ormond, dwells upon the advantage of mental over written notes. ' The process of combination, generalisation, are best carried on in the head,' she says. ' As an instance,' she continues, ' I may mention King Corny, who is, I believe, considered more of a fancy piece than my usual common-life Dutch figures.

The first idea of him was taken from the facts I heard of an oddity who lived in a remote part of Ireland, an ingenious despot in his own family, who blasted out of the rock on which his house was built half a kitchen, while he and his family were living in the house. He was so passionate that children, grown-up sons, servants and all, ran out of the house when he fell into a passion with his own tangled hair ; a man who used in liis impatience and rages to call at the head of the kitchen stairs to his servants, "Drop whatever you have in your hand, and come here and be damned." He was generous and kind - hearted, but despotic and conceited to the most ludicrous degree. He thought he could work Gobelin tapestry and play the harp better than any one living. ... In working out King Corny from the first wrong hint I was obliged, one after another, to give up every fact. ...

I had to make him, according to the general standard of wit and acuteness, shrewd humour, and sarcasm of that class of unread natural geniuses, an over-match for Sir Ulick, who is of the more cultivated class of acute and roguish Irish gentlemen.' The printer hurried on the printing for Mr. Edgeworth to see the volume completed on his birthday. This gave him the greatest satisfaction, and he lived to write a preface to it.

INTRODUCTION.

'In my seventy-fourth year,' he says, 'I had the satisfaction of seeing another work of my daughter's brought before the public ; this was more than I could have expected, from my advanced age and declining health.' The following touching extracts from Mrs. Edgeworth's history speak for themselves, and tell the story of Ormond's production very simply and vividly : — ' On February 1 6th Maria read out to her father the first chapter of Ormond in the carriage going to Pakenham Hall to see Lord Longford's bride. It was the last visit that Mr. Edgeworth paid anywhere. He had expressed a wish to Maria that she should write a story as a companion to Harrington, and in all her anguish of mind at his state of health, she, by a wonderful effort of affection and genius, produced those gay and brilliant pages, some of the gayest and most brilliant she ever composed.

The interest and delight which her father, ill as he was, took in this begin ning encouraged her to go on, and she completed the story. The admirable characters of King Corny and Sir Ulick O'Shane, and all those wonderful scenes of wit, humour, and feeling, were written in agony of anxiety, with trembling hand and tearful eye. As she finished chapter after chapter she read them out, the whole family assembling in her father's room to listen to them. Her father enjoyed these readings so exceedingly as to reward her for the effort she made.' ' May 7,1, 1817. — This day, so anxiously expected, has arrived (Maria writes) — the only birthday of my father's for many many years which has not brought unmixed feelings of pleasure. He had had a terrible night, but when I went into his room and stood at the foot of his bed, his voice was strong and cheerful as usual.

I put into his hand the 160 printed pages of Ormond which kind- X ORMOND hearted Hunter had successfully managed to get ready for this day. How my dear father, in the midst of such sufferings, and in such an exhausted state of body, can take so much pleasure in such things, is astonishing. Oh, my dear Sophy, what must be the fund of warm affection from which this springs ! and what infinite, exquisite pleasure to me ! " Call Sneyd directly," he said, and swallowed some stirabout, and said he felt renovated. Sneyd was seated at the foot of his bed. " Now, Maria, dip anywhere, read on." I began, " King Corny recovered. . . ." Then he said, " I must tell Sneyd the story up to this." And most eloquently, most beautifully did he tell the story. No mortal could ever have guessed that he was an invalid, if they had only heard him speak. ' Just as I had here stopped writing my father came out of his room, looking wretchedly, but ordered the carriage, and said he would go to Longford to see Mr. Fallon about materials for William's Bridge.

He took with him his three sons, and " Maria to read Ormond" — great delight to me. He was much pleased, and this wonderful father of mine drove all the way to Longford : forced our way through the tumult of the most crowded market I ever saw — his voice heard clear all the way down the street — stayed half an hour in the carriage on the bridge talking to Mr. Fallon ; and we were not home till half-past six. He could not dine with us, but after dinner he sent for us all into the library. He sat in the arm-chair by the fire, my mother in the opposite arm-chair, Pakenham behind her, Francis on a stool at her feet, Maria beside them, William next, Lucy, Sneyd, on the sofa opposite the fire Honora, Fanny, Harriet, and Sophy ; my aunts next to my father, and Lovel between them and the sofa.' So it was that the 160 first pages of Ormond were read to

INTRODUCTION.

the assembled family. In the preface to Ormond Mr. Edgeworth takes leave of the world with cheerful self possession. Though Mr. Edgeworth was failing rapidly, he kept up his interest in this world to the very last. Mr. Hare quotes his exclamation, ' How I do enjoy my exist ence!' Would that this were a more common saying among human beings. Mr. Frederick Strutt has kindly let me see several letters written by Mr. Edgeworth on his sick-bed. They are written to the Mr. Strutt of those days in weak and straggling char acters, but the spirit of them is courageous to the end. There are calculations, suggestions for machinery, for various improvements. Strength fails, but the cheerful spirit still lights up the hour ; the sick man does not dwell upon his own infirmities, he is preoccupied by the life around him, by thoughts of his friends and children.

The laws of life and matter still interest him as their echoes reach his sick-bed. The kindly old stoic is never so sympathetic as now, gallantly facing pain and the inevitable. ' The natural and happy con fidence reposed in me by my daughter puts it in my power to assure the public that she does not write negligently,' he says. ' I can assert that twice as many pages were written for these volumes as are now printed. . . . Public critics have found several faults with Miss Edgeworth's former works. She takes this opportunity of returning them sincere thanks for the candid and lenient manner in which they are pointed out. ... I bid you farewell for ever,' says the old man, in conclusion, and signs his name for the last time on 31st May 1817. On the 13th of June he died. ' The rest of that year was a blank,' writes his widow.

Miss Edgeworth was about fifty years old at the time of her father's death. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a knife ; she had overworked them, all the ORMOND previous winter sitting up at night and struggling against her grief as she wrote Ormond ; she was now unable to use them without pain. After Mr. Edgeworth's death Mr. Lovel Edgeworth became the head of the family ; he was the only son of Honora. The home was not broken up. By his request the step -mother, brothers and sisters re mained there, and Maria continued to act as agent for the estate ; we all know with what ability and success she dis charged this office. In a letter to her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, Miss Edgeworth gives a few more facts concerning Ormond : ' The following parts of Ormond were, as well as I can recollect, written for me by my dear father in his last illness.

The death of King Corny (I am not sure of the pages, and do not like to look for them, but I know it is from the time of the return from shooting to the end of that chapter when Ormond loses the best friend he had in the world). The whole of Moriarty's history and his escape from prison was dictated without any alteration or hesitation of a word to Honora and me. This history Mr. Edgeworth heard from the actual hero of it, Michael Dunne, whom he chanced to meet in the town of Navan, where he was living respectably. He kept a shop where Mr. Edgeworth went to purchase some boards, and observing something very remarkable about the man's countenance, he questioned him as they were looking at the lumber in his yard, and Dunne readily told his tale almost in the very words used by Moriarty. . . .

Mr. Edge worth also wrote the meeting between Moriarty and his wife when he jumps out of the carriage the moment he hears her voice. ' My father corrected the whole by having it read to him many many times ; often working at it in his bed for hours together. Once at the end for six hours in the intervals of sickness and exquisite pain.'

INTRODUCTION.

Nobody can fail to be struck by the spirit and direct ness of the opening chapters of Ormond. The character of the scheming Sir Ulick is sketched by a master-hand. The self-reproach and simple warm-hearted passion of Harry Ormond is admirably told with intuitive perception, and the ways of the people are indicated with a sympathetic, vexed, and yet amused tolerance only possible, I think, to an Irish pen. When the keys of the gate are sent for (on the locking or unlocking of which so much of the story depends), Dempsey, an Irishman half drunk, forgets to see to it or to say anything about it. Stone, an Englishman, goes directly to obey his lady's commands, from which the subsequent mischief ensues. Take Moriarty, wounded by Harry Ormond and trying hard to recover. 'True for ye,' says the patient, ' I'll do my best surely; I'd live through all, if possible, for Ormond's sake, let alone my mudther's, or shister's, or my own ; 'twould be too bad, after all the trouble he got these two nights, to be dying at last, and hanting him, may be, whether I would or no.' 1 There is an interesting criticism upon Maria Edgeworth by Miss Zimmern, concerning the complex shifting natures so admirably delineated by her. ' How she, with her simple, direct character, came to comprehend them so fully is almost a marvel,' Miss Zimmern writes, and yet to the present writer it seems that this is only what was to be expected from a woman with the clear perception of Maria Edgeworth.

She had clear-sightedness, she had warm affection, she had Irish pride of race, a strong sense of justice. But she had little sensibility; with very few exceptions, other people were other people to her. She loved them, she worked for them, 1 King Corny, of celebrated memory, the ruler of Black Island, is a very romantic and distinctive figure in Ormond. It is to him that Harry turns, when he is selfishly abandoned by Sir Ulick, with so much pathos. ORMOND turned to them with confidence and interest, found life a blank without some of those she loved around her ; but all the time she looked at them through her keen bright eyes, and one is constantly reminded of this cheerful aloofedness, this reserve and reticence. One likes her best when she lets herself go as much as her admirable bringing up will allow. ' My dearest aunt and friend,' she writes a few months after her father's death, 'friend of my youth and age, beloved sister of my father, how many titles you have to my affection and gratitude, and how delightful it is to me to feel them all !

I find my spirits sink beyond my utmost effort to support them when I leave you ; they rise involuntarily when I am near you, and recall the dear trains of old associations and the multitudes of ideas I used to have with him who is gone for ever.' An aunt of these days might be a little puzzled if she received a letter couched in such language, but the real seeling breaks through the formality, and Mrs. Ruxton was one of the people Maria always loved beyond all others. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ' " What ! no music, no dancing at Castle Hermitage to-night " ' . . . . . .

Frontispiece • she Widow Scraggs ' ..... 4 ' If Lady O'Shane would show more spirit ' . . .9 He would sit motionless and stupefied ' . . .20 As he rose from his knees, he was surprised to see Lady Annaly standing beside him ' . . . . .31 ' Ormond and gossoon ' . . . . .36 ' Father Jos ' . . . . . • .40 '"Harry, 'tis I. Look up, my own boy, and say you forgive me"' . . . • ■ • -44 ' " To get the advantage of a dancing-master " ' . -49 ' " Over a bowl of punch " ' . . . . .50 ' King Corny ' ...... 52 "'A person may speak besides the clergy"' . . -55 ' Moriarty Carroll was always out hunting or shooting with him ' . 70 ' Nor did he ever stop till he came to the end of the volume ' . 72 ' I^ggy Sheridan ' . . ■ • • -75 ' Trivate negotiation with the parents ' ... 78 ' Dora '....-•• 86 SS 97 ' Mademoiselle O'Faley ' ' " I've seen him higgling with the poor child " ' Where Harry stood motionless ' ORMOND PAGE ' He had the air of a foreign officer ' ' Dr. Cambray ' 134 159 i66 ' The post-boy ' ' Miss Darrell ' ' Lady Millicent ' ' Florence Annaly ' 192 200 217 ' " Peggy Carroll that is " ' Wreckers ' 228 234 ' They had looked out maps and prints ' ' Mrs. M'Crule ' . . . 237 241 ' Saw a boy, who looked very melancholy ' ' Crossed in a storm ' . 26o 273 ' The abbe called to pay his compliments ' 278 ' Connal took the light, and reviewed Ormond from head to foot' ' Madame de Connal ' ..... 280 282 ' Mademoiselle O'Faley carried him off to show him her apartments ' . 291 ' Mademoiselle Montigny ' 3°5 ' " I went cautiously down to the bottom " ' ' A clerk put out his head ' 320 323 '• Groups of people, of all ranks, talking of Sir Ulick O'Shane's bankruptcy ' 329 ' Lady Annaly '

Chapter I

' What ! no music, no dancing at Castle Hermitage to-night ; and all the ladies sitting in a formal circle, petrifying into perfect statues,' cried Sir Ulick O'Shane, as he entered the drawing-room, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, accompanied by what he called his rear-guard, veterans of the old school of good fellows, who at those times in Ireland, times long since past, deemed it essential to health, happiness, and manly character, to swallow, and show themselves able to stand after swallowing, a certain number of bottles of claret per day or night. ' Now then,' continued Sir Ulick, ' of all the figures in nature or art, the formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation, and, to me, the most formidable ; all my faculties are spell-bound — here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk that dare not move so much as its head or its eyes, and can't, for the life of it, take to its legs.' A titter ran round that part of the circle where the young ladies sat — Sir Ulick was a favourite with them, and they rejoiced when he came among them ; because, as they observed, 'he ahvays said something pleasant, or set something pleasant a-going.' 'Lady O'Shane, for mercy's sake, let us have no more of these permanent sittings at Castle Hermitage, my dear ' ' Sir Ulick, I am sure I should be very glad if it were possible,' replied Lady O'Shane, ' to have no more per?nanent sittings at Castle Hermitage, but when gentlemen are at their bottle, I really don't know what the ladies can do but sit in a circle.' 'Can't they dance in a circle, or any way — or have not they an elegant resource in their music ? there's many here B I 3S ORMOND who, to my knowledge, can caper as well as they modulate,' said Sir Ulick, 'to say nothing of cards for those that like them.' ' Lady Annaly does not like cards,' said Lady O'Shane, ' and I could not ask any of these young ladies to waste their breath, and their execution, singing and playing before the gentlemen came out.' ' These young ladies would not, I'm sure, do us old fellows the honour of waiting for us ; and the young beaux deserted to your tea-table a long hour ago — so why you have not been dancing is a mystery beyond my comprehension.' 'Tea or coffee, Sir Ulick O'Shane, for the third time of asking ? ' cried a sharp female voice from the remote tea table. ' Wouldn't you swear to that being the voice of a presby terian ?' whispered Sir Ulick, over his shoulder, to the curate : then aloud he replied to the lady, ' Miss Black, you are three times too obliging.

Neither tea nor coffee I'll take from you to-night, I thank you kindly.' ' Fortunate for yourself, sir — for both are as cold as stones, — and no wonder ! ' said Miss Black. ' No wonder ! ' echoed Lady O'Shane, looking at her watch, and sending forth an ostentatious sigh. ' What o'clock is it by your ladyship ? ' asked Miss Black. ' I have a notion it's tremendously late.' ' No matter — we are not pinned to hours in this house, Miss Black,' said Sir Ulick, walking up to the tea-table, and giving her a look, which said as plainly as look could say, ' You had better be quiet.' Lady O'Shane followed her husband, and putting her arm within his, began to say something in a fondling tone, and in a most conciliatory manner she went on talking to him for some moments. He looked absent, and replied coldly. ' I'll take a cup of coffee from you now, Miss Black,' said *he, drawing away his arm from his wife, who looked much mortified. ' We are too long, Lady O'Shane,' added he, ' standing here like lovers, talking to no one but ourselves — awkward in company ! ' 'like lovers' — the sound pleased poor Lady O'Shane's ear, and she smiled for the first time this night.

Lady O'Shane ORMOND was perhaps the last woman in the room whom a stranger would have guessed to be Sir Ulick's wife. He was a fine, gallant, off-hand looking Irishman, with some thing of dash in his tone and air, which at first view might lead a common observer to pronounce him to be vulgar ; but at five minutes after sight, a good judge of men and manners would have discovered in him the power of assuming whatever manner he chose, from the audacity of the callous profligate to the deference of the accomplished courtier — the capability of adapting his conversation to his company and his views, whether his object were ' to set the senseless table in a roar,' or to insinuate himself into the delicate female heart. Of this latter power, his age had diminished, but not destroyed the influence.

The fame of former conquests still operated in his favour, though he had long since passed his splendid meridian of gallantry. While Sir Ulick is drinking his cup of cold coffee, we may look back a little into his family history. To go no further than his legitimate loves, he had successively won three wives, who had each, in their turn, been desperately enamoured. The first he loved, and married imprudently, for love, at seven teen. The second he admired, and married prudently, for ambition, at thirty. The third he hated, but married from necessity, for money, at five-and-forty. The first wife, Miss Annaly, after ten years' martyrdom of the heart, sunk, childless, a victim, it was said, to love and jealousy. The second wife, Lady Theodosia, struggled stoutly for power, backed by strong and high connexions ; having, moreover, the advantage of being a mother, and mother of an only son and heir, the representative of a father in whom ambition had, by this time, become the ruling passion ; the Lady Theodosia stood her ground, wrangling and wrestling through a fourteen years' wed lock, till at last, to Sir Ulick's great relief, not to say joy, her ladyship was carried off by a bad fever, or a worse apothecary.

His present lady, formerly Mrs. Scraggs, a London widow, of very large fortune, happened to see Sir Ulick when he went to present some address, or settle some point between the English and Irish Government : he was in deep mourning at the time, and the widow pitied him very much. But she was not the sort of woman he would ever have suspected could like him — she was a strict pattern lady, severe on the times, and ORMOND not unfrequently lecturing young men gratis. Now Sir Ulick O'Shane was a sinner, how then could he please a saint ? He did, however — but the saint did not please him — though she set to work for the good of his soul, and in her own person relaxed, to please his taste, even to the wearing of rouge and pearl-powder, and false hair, and false eyebrows, and all the The Widow Scraggs. falsifications which the setters up could furnish.

But after she had purchased all of youth which age can purchase for money, it would not do. The Widow Scraggs might, with her ' lack lustre ' eyes, have speculated for ever in vain upon Sir Ulick, but that, fortunately for her passion, at one and the same time the Irish Ministry were turned out, and an Irish canal burst Sir Ulick losing his place by the change of Ministry, and one ORMOND half of his fortune by the canal, in which it had been sunk, and having spent in schemes and splendid living more than the other half, now, in desperate misery, laid hold of the Widow Scraggs. After a nine days' courtship she became a bride — and she and her plum in the stocks — but not her messuage, house and lands, in Kent, became the property of Sir Ulick O'Shane. But ' love was then lord of all ' with her, she was now to accompany Sir Ulick to Ireland.

Late in life she was carried to a new country, and set down among a people whom she had all her previous days been taught to hold in contempt or aversion ; she dreaded Irish disturbances much, and Irish dirt more ; she was persuaded that nothing could be right, good, or genteel, that was not English. Her habits and tastes were immutably fixed. Her experience had been confined to London life, and in proportion as her sphere of observation had been contracted, her disposition was in tolerant. She made no allowance for the difference of opinion, customs, and situation, much less for the faults or foibles of people who were to her strangers and foreigners. Her ladyship was therefore little likely to please or be pleased in her new situation, — her husband was the only individual, the only thing, animate or inanimate, that she liked in Ireland, — and while she was desperately in love with an Irishman, she dis liked Ireland and the Irish : — even the Irish talents and virtues, their wit, humour, generosity of character, and freedom of manner, were lost upon her, — her country neighbours were repelled by her air of taciturn self-sufficiency ; and she, for her part, declared she would have been satisfied to have lived alone at Castle Hermitage with Sir Ulick.

But Sir Ulick had no notion of living alone with her, or for anybody. His habits were all social and convivial — he loved show and company : he had been all his life in the habit of entertaining all ranks of people at Castle Hermitage, from His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant and the Commander-in-Chief for the time being, to Tim the gauger, and honest Tom Kelly the stalko. He talked of the necessity of keeping up a neighbourhood, and maintaining his interest in the county, as the first duties of man. Ostensibly Sir Ulick had no motive in all this, but the hospitable wish of seeing Castle Hermitage one continued scene of festivity ; but, under this good fellowship and apparent thoughtlessness and profusion, there was, what some thought ORMOND he inherited from his mother, a Scotchwoman, an eye to his own interest, and a keen view to the improvement of his fortune and the advancement of his family.

With these habits and views it was little likely that he should yield to the romantic, jealous, or economic tastes of his new lady — a bride ten years older than himself! Lady O'Shane was, soon after her arrival in Ireland, compelled to see her house as full of company as it could possibly hold ; and her ladyship was condemned eternally to do the honours to successive troops of friends, of whom she knew nothing, and of whom she disliked all she saw or heard. Her dear Sir Ulick was, or seemed, so engrossed by the business of pleasure, so taken up with his guests, that but a few minutes in the day could she ever obtain of his company. She saw herself surrounded by the young, the fair, and the gay, to whom Sir Ulick devoted his assiduous and gallant attentions ; and though his age, and his being a married man, seemed to preclude, in the opinion of the cool or indifferent spectator, all idea of any real cause for jealousy, yet it was not so with poor Lady O'Shane's magnifying imagination.

The demon of jealousy tortured her ; and to enhance her sufferings she was obliged to conceal them, lest they should become subjects of private mockery or public derision. It is the peculiar misfortune or punishment of misplaced, and yet more of unreasonable passions, that in their distresses they obtain no sympathy — and while the passion is in all its consequences tragic to the sufferer, in all its exhibitions it is ludicrous to the spectator. Lady O'Shane could not be young, and would not be old ; so without the charms of youth, or the dignity of age, she could neither inspire love, nor command respect. Nor could she find fit occupation or amusement, or solace or refuge, in any combination of company, or class of society. Unluckily as her judgment, never discriminating, was now blinded by jealousy, the two persons, of all his family connexions, upon whom she pitched as the peculiar objects of her fear and hatred, were precisely those who were most disposed to pity and befriend her — to serve her in private with Sir Ulick, and to treat her with deference in public.