MARIA to M. PAKENHAM EDGEWORTH, ESQ.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN,
Valentine's Day, 1834.
The herons this day (according to their custom as Sophy tells me) sat
all in a row in the horse park in solemn deliberation upon their own
affairs: the opening of their budget I suppose. They have much upon
their hands this session, and there must be a battle soon, on which the
fate of the empire must depend; magpies and scarecrows abound, and such
clouds of starlings darkened the air for many minutes opposite the
library window, settling at last upon the three great beech trees, that
Sophy and I would have given a crown imperial you had been by, dear
Pakenham, to see them.
You ended your Journal and the announcement of your appointment to
Amballa with exulting in the new kingdoms of flowers you would have to
subdue, and with the hope that your mother would write to Lady Pakenham
for her delightful letter to her son. You will have heard long before
this reaches you, my dear, that Lady Pakenham is no more; she died last
autumn. I wish that this news could have reached that kind heart of
hers. Honora and I went the very day we received your journal to
Coolure, to thank Admiral Pakenham; he met us on the steps in a tapestry
nightcap. He has grown very old, and has had several strokes of palsy, but none have touched his heart. When Honora read to him the whole passage out of your journal and your own warm expressions of pleasure and gratitude, life and joy lighted in his dear old eyes. Honora only changed the words, "dear Lady Pakenham" into the "dear Pakenhams of Coolure." He asked, "Who wrote?" and looked very earnestly in my eyes. I was afraid to say Lady Pakenham, and I answered, "You know," and pressed his hand. He did know, passed his hand over his eyes and said, "Like her: she was a good woman."
February 19.
I yesterday found in my writing-desk a copy I had made of the letter
Lord Carrington wrote to me in answer to mine announcing your former
Futtehgur appointment; and now that it can go free I enclose it. I like
an expression of Lord Mahon's about him in a note I lately received from
him. "My grandfather is in excellent health, and I cannot offer you a
better wish than that you may at eighty-one possess the same activity, the same quickness of intellect, the same gushing, warm-hearted benevolence which distinguishes him." Gushing benevolence: I like that expression.
Sophy despatched a letter for you last week, in which I am sure she told
you all domestic occurrences. Barry has bought Annaghmore in the King's
County: an excellent house; and Sophy and Barry and all the children are
to stay with us till Sophy's health—very delicate—is strengthened, and
till they have furnished what rooms they mean to inhabit at Annamore; this looks better than with the gh, but Sophy stickles for the old Irish spelling.
Molly and Hetty, and Crofton and child, are all flourishing; poor old
George is declining as gently and comfortably as can be. When we go to
see him, his eyes light up and his mouth crinkles into smiles, and he, as well as Molly, never fails to ask for Master Pakenham. Though Helen cannot reach you for a year, Fanny has desired Bentley to send you a copy before it is published. I should tell you beforehand that there is no humour in it, and no Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction—realities are too strong, party passions too violent to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The people would only break the glass, and curse the fool who held the mirror up to nature—distorted nature, in a fever. We are in too perilous a case to laugh, humour would be out of season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the danger is past, as the man in the sonnet says,
We may look back on the hardest part and laugh.
Then I shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter Scott once said
to me, "Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets forward so well in
other countries, is so miserable in his own." A very difficult question: I fear above my power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen, and look, and read.