The Absentee

In August 1811, we are told, she wrote a little play about landlords
and tenants for the children of her sister, Mrs. Beddoes. Mr. Edgeworth
tried to get the play produced on the London boards. Writing to her
aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, Maria says, 'Sheridan has answered as I foresaw he
must, that in the present state of this country the Lord Chamberlain
would not license THE ABSENTEE; besides there would be a difficulty in
finding actors for so many Irish characters.' The little drama was then
turned into a story, by Mr. Edgeworth's advice. Patronage was laid aside
for the moment, and THE ABSENTEE appeared in its place in the second
part of TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. We all know Lord Macaulay's verdict
upon this favourite story of his, the last scene of which he specially
admired and compared to the ODYSSEY.
(Lord Macaulay was not the only
notable admirer of THE ABSENTEE. The present writer remembers hearing
Professor Ruskin on one occasion break out in praise and admiration of
the book. 'You can learn more by reading it of Irish politics,' he said,
'than from a thousand columns out of blue-books.')
Mrs. Edgeworth tells
us that much of it was written while Maria was suffering a misery of
toothache.

Miss Edgeworth's own letters all about this time are much more concerned
with sociabilities than with literature. We read of a pleasant dance at
Mrs. Burke's; of philosophers at sport in Connemara; of cribbage, and
company, and country houses, and Lord Longford's merry anecdotes during
her visit to him. Miss Edgeworth, who scarcely mentions her own works,
seems much interested at this time in a book called MARY AND HER CAT,
which she is reading with some of the children.

Little scraps of news (I cannot resist quoting one or two of them) come
in oddly mixed with these personal records of work and family talk.
'There is news of the Empress (Marie Louise), who is liked not at all
by the Parisians; she is too haughty, and sits back in her carriage when
she goes through the streets. 'Of Josephine, who is living very happily,
amusing herself with her gardens and her shrubberies.' This ci-devant
Empress and Kennedy and Co., the seedsmen, are in partnership, says Miss
Edgeworth. And then among the lists of all the grand people Maria meets
in London in 1813 (Madame de Stael is mentioned as expected), she gives
an interesting account of an actual visitor, Peggy Langan, who was
grand-daughter to Thady in CASTLE RACKRENT. Peggy went to England with
Mrs. Beddoes, and was for thirty years in the service of Mrs. Haldimand
we are told, and was own sister to Simple Susan.

The story of THE ABSENTEE is a very simple one, and concerns Irish
landlords living in England, who ignore their natural duties and station
in life, and whose chief ambition is to take their place in the
English fashionable world. The grand English ladies are talking of Lady
Clonbrony.

'"If you knew all she endures to look, speak, move, breathe like an
Englishwoman, you would pity her,"' said Lady Langdale.

'"Yes, and you CAWNT conceive the PEENS she TEEKES to talk of the
TEEBLES and CHEERS, and to thank Q, and, with so much TEESTE, to speak
pure English,"' said Mrs. Dareville.

'"Pure cockney, you mean," said Lady Langdale.'

Lord Colambre, the son of the lady in question, here walks across the
room, not wishing to listen to any more strictures upon his mother.
He is the very most charming of walking gentlemen, and when stung by
conscience he goes off to Ireland, disguised in a big cloak, to visit
his father's tenantry and to judge for himself of the state of affairs,
all our sympathies go with him. On his way he stops at Tusculum,
scarcely less well known than its classical namesake. He is entertained
by Mrs. Raffarty, that esthetical lady who is determined to have a
little 'taste' of everything at Tusculum. She leads the way into a
little conservatory, and a little pinery, and a little grapery, and a
little aviary, and a little pheasantry, and a little dairy for show, and
a little cottage for ditto, with a grotto full of shells, and a little
hermitage full of earwigs, and a little ruin full of looking-glass, to
enlarge and multiply the effect of the Gothic.... But you could only
put your head in, because it was just fresh painted, and though there
had been a fire ordered in the ruin all night, it had only smoked.

'As they proceeded and walked through the grounds, from which Mrs.
Raffarty, though she had done her best, could not take that which nature
had given, she pointed out to my lord "a happy moving termination,"
consisting of a Chinese bridge, with a fisherman leaning over the rails.
On a sudden, the fisherman was seen to tumble over the bridge into the
water. The gentlemen ran to extricate the poor fellow, while they heard
Mrs. Raffarty bawling to his lordship to beg he would never mind, and
not trouble himself.

'When they arrived at the bridge, they saw the man hanging from part
of the bridge, and apparently struggling in the water; but when they
attempted to pull him up, they found it was only a stuffed figure which
had been pulled into the stream by a real fish, which had seized hold of
the bait.'

The dinner-party is too long to quote, but it is written in Miss
Edgeworth's most racy and delightful vein of fun.

One more little fact should not be omitted in any mention of THE
ABSENTEE. One of the heroines is Miss Broadhurst, the heiress. The
Edgeworth family were much interested, soon after the book appeared, to
hear that a real living Miss Broadhurst, an heiress, had appeared upon
the scenes, and was, moreover, engaged to be married to Sneyd Edgeworth,
one of the eldest sons of the family. In the story, says Mrs. Edgeworth,
Miss Broadhurst selects from her lovers one who 'unites worth and wit,'
and then she goes on to quote an old epigram of Mr. Edgeworth's on
himself, which concluded with,'There's an Edge to his wit and there's
worth in his heart.'

Mr. Edgeworth, who was as usual busy building church spires for himself
and other people, abandoned his engineering for a time to criticise his
daughter's story, and he advised that the conclusion of THE ABSENTEE
should be a letter from Larry the postilion. 'He wrote one, she wrote
another,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'He much preferred hers, which is the
admirable finale of THE ABSENTEE.' And just about this time Lord Ross is
applied to, to frank the Edgeworth manuscripts.

'I cannot by any form of words express how delighted I am that you are
none of you angry with me,' writes modest Maria to her cousin, Miss
Ruxton, 'and that my uncle and aunt are pleased with what they have read
of THE ABSENTEE. I long to hear whether their favour continues to the
end, and extends to the catastrophe, that dangerous rock upon which poor
authors are wrecked.'

'Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?' said Lady Langdale
to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the
crush-room of the opera house.

'Oh yes! everybody's to be there, I hear,' replied Mrs. Dareville. 'Your
ladyship, of course?'

'Why, I don't know—if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a
point with me, that I believe I must look in upon her for a few minutes.
They are going to a prodigious expense on this occasion. Soho tells
me the reception rooms are all to be new furnished, and in the most
magnificent style.'

'At what a famous rate those Clonbronies are dashing on,' said Colonel
Heathcock. 'Up to anything.'

'Who are they?—these Clonbronies, that one hears of so much of late'
said her Grace of Torcaster. 'Irish absentees I know. But how do they
support all this enormous expense?'

'The son WILL have a prodigiously fine estate when some Mr. Quin dies,'
said Mrs. Dareville.

'Yes, everybody who comes from Ireland WILL have a fine estate when
somebody dies,' said her grace. 'But what have they at present?'

'Twenty thousand a year, they say,' replied Mrs. Dareville.

'Ten thousand, I believe,' cried Lady Langdale. 'Make it a rule, you
know, to believe only half the world says.'

'Ten thousand, have they?—possibly,' said her grace. 'I know nothing
about them—have no acquaintance among the Irish. Torcaster knows
something of Lady Clonbrony; she has fastened herself, by some means,
upon him: but I charge him not to COMMIT me. Positively, I could not for
anybody—and much less for that sort of person—extend the circle of my
acquaintance.'

'Now that is so cruel of your grace,' said Mrs. Dareville, laughing,
'when poor Lady Clonbrony works so hard, and pays so high, to get into
certain circles.'

'If you knew all she endures, to look, speak, move, breathe like an
Englishwoman, you would pity her,' said Lady Langdale.

'Yes, and you CAWNT conceive the PEENS she TEEKES to talk of the TEEBLES
and CHEERS, and to thank Q, and, with so much TEESTE, to speak pure
English,' said Mrs. Dareville.

'Pure cockney, you mean,' said Lady Langdale.

'But why does Lady Clonbrony want to pass for English?' said the
duchess.

'Oh! because she is not quite Irish. BRED AND BORN—only bred, not
born,' said Mrs. Dareville. 'And she could not be five minutes in your
grace's company before she would tell you, that she was HENGLISH, born
in HOXFORDSHIRE.'

'She must be a vastly amusing personage. I should like to meet her,
if one could see and hear her incog.,' said the duchess. 'And Lord
Clonbrony, what is he?'

'Nothing, nobody,' said Mrs. Dareville; 'one never even hears of him.'

'A tribe of daughters, too, I suppose?'

'No, no,' said Lady Langdale, 'daughters would be past all endurance.'

'There's a cousin, though, a Grace Nugent,' said Mrs. Dareville, 'that
Lady Clonbrony has with her.'

'Best part of her, too,' said Colonel Heathcock; 'd-d fine girl!—never
saw her look better than at the opera to-night!'

'Fine COMPLEXION! as Lady Clonbrony says, when she means a high colour,'
said Lady Langdale.

'Grace Nugent is not a lady's beauty,' said Mrs. Dareville. 'Has she any
fortune, colonel?'

"Pon honour, don't know,' said the colonel.

'There's a son, somewhere, is not there?' said Lady Langdale.

'Don't know, 'pon honour,' replied the colonel.

'Yes—at Cambridge—not of age yet,' said Mrs. Dareville. 'Bless me!
here is Lady Clonbrony come back. I thought she was gone half an hour
ago!'

'Mamma,' whispered one of Lady Langdale's daughters, leaning between her
mother and Mrs. Dareville, 'who is that gentleman that passed us just
now?'

'Which way?'

'Towards the door. There now, mamma, you can see him. He is speaking to
Lady Clonbrony—to Miss Nugent. Now Lady Clonbrony is introducing him to
Miss Broadhurst.'