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With one of the books mentioned by the Monthly Review — Evenings at Home –Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards format, to associate herself. “The stories,” she says in a letter to her cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, “are printed and bound the same size as Evenings at Home, and I am afraid you will dislike the title.” Her father had sent the book to press as the Parent’s Friend, a name no doubt suggested by the Ami des Enfants of Berquin; but “Mr. Johnson [the publisher],” continues Miss Edgeworth, “has degraded it into The Parent’s Assistant, which I dislike particularly, from association with an old book of arithmetic called The Tutor’s Assistant.” The ground of objection is not very formidable; but the Parent’s Assistant is certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author’s letters we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was greatly interested in education,–or, as he would have termed it, practical education,–and long before this date, as early, indeed, as May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a London school, to write him a tale about the length of a Spectator; upon the topic of “Generosity,” to be taken from history or romance. This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge to whom it was submitted,–in competition with a rival production by a young gentleman from Oxford,–to be an excellent story, and extremely well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat damaging inquiry,–“But where’s the Generosity?” The question cannot be answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained “a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his horse.” This was a defect from which she must have speedily freed herself, since her style, as her first reviewer allowed, is conspicuously direct and clear. Accuracy in speaking and writing had, indeed, been early impressed upon her. Her father’s doctrinaire ally and co-disciplinarian, Mr. Thomas Day, later the author of Sandford and Merton, and apparently the first person of whom it is affirmed that “he talked like a book,” had been indefatigable in bringing this home to his young friend, when she visited him in her London school-days. Not content alone to dose her copiously with Bishop Berkeley’s Tar Water–the chosen beverage of Young and Richardson–he was unwearied in ministering to her understanding. “His severe reasoning and uncompromising love of truth awakened her powers, and the questions he put to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her answers, suited the bent of her mind. Though such strictness was not always agreeable, she even then perceived its advantages, and in after life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day.”[1]

[Note:

1: Maria Edgeworth, by Helen Zimmern, 1888, p. 13.]

The training she underwent from the inexorable Mr, Day was continued by her father when she quitted school, and moved with her family to the parental seat at Edgeworthstown in Ireland. Mr. Edgeworth, whose principles were as rigorous as those of his friend, devoted himself early to initiating her into business habits. He taught her to copy letters, to keep accounts, to receive rents, and, in short, to act as his agent and factotum. She frequently accompanied him in the many disputes and difficulties which arose with his Irish tenantry; and, apart from the insight which this must have afforded her into the character and idiosyncrasies of the people, she no doubt very early acquired that exact knowledge of leases and legacies and dishonest factors which is a noticeable feature even of her children’s books.[23] It is some time, however, before we hear of any successor to “Generosity”; but, in 1782, her father, with a view to provide her with an occupation for her leisure, proposed to her to prepare a translation of the Adele et Theodore of Madame de Genlis, those letters upon education by which that gentle and multifarious moralist acquired–to use her own words–at once “the suffrages of the public, and the irreconcilable hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their partisans.” At first there had been no definite thought of print in Mr, Edgeworth’s mind. But as the work progressed, the idea gathered strength; and he began to prepare his daughter’s manuscript for the press. Then, unhappily, when the first volume was finished, Holcroft’s complete translation appeared, and made the labour needless. Yet it was not without profit. It had been excellent practice in aiding Miss Edgeworth’s faculty of expression, and increasing her vocabulary–to say nothing of the influence which the portraiture of individuals and the satire of reigning follies which are the secondary characteristics of Madame de Genlis’s most well-known work, may have had on her own subsequent efforts as a novelist. Meanwhile her mentor, Mr. Day, was delighted at the interruption of her task. He possessed, to the full, that rooted antipathy to feminine authorship of which we find so many traces in Miss Burney’s novels and elsewhere; and he wrote to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on having escaped the disgrace of having a translating daughter. At this time, as already stated, he himself had not become the author of Sandford and Merton, which, as a matter of fact, owed its inception to the Edgeworths, being at first simply intended as a short story to be inserted in the Harry and Lucy Mr. Edgeworth wrote in conjunction with his second wife, Honora Sneyd. As regards the question of publication, both Maria and her father, although sensible of Mr. Day’s prejudices, appear to have deferred to his arguments. Nor were these even lost to the public, for we are informed that, in Miss Edgeworth’s first book, ten years later, the Letters to Literary Ladies, she employed and embodied much that he had advanced. But for the present, she continued to write–though solely for her private amusement–essays, little stories, and dramatic sketches. One of these last must have been “Old Poz,” a pleasant study of a country justice and a gazza ladra, which appeared in Part II. of the first issue of the Parent’s Assistant, and which, we are told, was acted by the Edgeworth children in a little theatre erected in the dining-room for the purpose. According to her sisters, it was Miss Edgeworth’s practice first to write her stories on a slate, and then to read them out. If they were approved, she transcribed them fairly. “Her writing for children”–says one of her biographers–“was a natural outgrowth of a practical study of their wants and fancies; and her constant care of the younger children gave her exactly the opportunity required to observe the development of mind incident to the age and capacity of several little brothers and sisters.” According to her own account, her first critic was her father. “Whenever I thought of writing anything, I always told him [my father] my first rough plans; and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.–‘ Sketch that, and shew it to me.‘–These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected–‘I don’t want any of your painting–none of your drapery!–I can imagine all that–let me see the bare skeleton.'”