Richard Lovell Edgeworth: A Selection From His Memoirs. Maria Edgeworth
when the great match in question was to be run.'
The wager was however given up when Edgeworth told Lord March that he did not depend upon the fleetness or strength of horses to carry the desired intelligence.
His friend, Sir Francis Delaval, immediately put up under his directions an apparatus between his house and part of Piccadilly. He adds: 'I also set up a night telegraph between a house which Sir Francis Delaval occupied at Hampstead, and one to which I had access in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. This nocturnal telegraph answered well, but was too expensive for common use.' Later on he writes to Dr. Darwin:
'I have been employed for two months in experiments upon a telegraph of my own invention. By day, at eighteen or twenty miles distance, I show, by four pointers, isosceles triangles, twenty feet high, on four imaginary circles, eight imaginary points, which correspond with the figures 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, so that seven thousand different combinations are formed, of four figures each, which refer to a dictionary of words. By night, white lights are used.'
Dr. Darwin in reply says: 'The telegraph you described, I dare say, would answer the purpose. It would be like a giant wielding his long arms and talking with his fingers: and those long arms might be covered with lamps in the night.'
It is curious now to read Mr. Edgeworth's words: 'I will venture to predict that it will at some future period be generally practised, not only in these islands, but that it will in time become a means of communication between the most distant parts of the world, wherever arts and sciences have civilised mankind.'
It was some years later, in 1794, when Ireland was in a disturbed state, and threatened by a French invasion, that Edgeworth laid his scheme for telegraphs before the Government, and offered to keep open communication between Dublin and Cork if the Government would pay the expense. He made a trial between two hills fifteen miles apart, and a message was sent and an answer received in five minutes. The Government paid little attention to his offer, and finally refused it. Two months later the French were on the Irish coasts, and great confusion and distress was occasioned by the want of accurate news. 'The troops were harassed with contradictory orders and forced marches for want of intelligence, and from that indecision, which must always be the consequence of insufficient information. Many days were spent in terror, and in fruitless wishes for an English fleet. … At last Ireland was providentially saved by the change of the wind, which prevented the enemy from effecting a landing on her coast.'
Another of Edgeworth's inventions was a one-wheeled carriage adapted to go over narrow roads; it was made fast by shafts to the horse's sides, and was furnished with two weights or counterpoises that hung below the shafts. In this carriage he travelled to Birmingham and astonished the country folk on the way.
I must now give a sketch of Edgeworth's matrimonial adventures. They began after a strange fashion, when, at fifteen, he and some young companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of the party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry Richard to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door key as a ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the marriage service. When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage he was so alarmed that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a divorce for his son in the ecclesiastical court.
It was while visiting Dr. Darwin at Lichfield that Edgeworth made some friendships which influenced his whole life. At the Bishop's Palace, where Canon Seward lived, he first met Miss Honora Sneyd, who was brought up as a daughter by Mrs. Seward. He was much struck by her beauty and by her mental gifts, and says: 'Now for the first time in my life, I saw a woman that equalled the picture of perfection which existed in my imagination. I had long suffered much from the want of that cheerfulness in a wife, without which marriage could not be agreeable to a man with such a temper as mine. I had borne this evil, I believe, with patience; but my not being happy at home exposed me to the danger of being too happy elsewhere.' He describes in another place his first wife as 'prudent, domestic, and affectionate; but she was not of a cheerful temper. She lamented about trifles; and the lamenting of a female with whom we live does not render home delightful.'
His friend, Mr. Day,* was also intimate at the Palace, but did not admire Honora at that time (1770) as much as Edgeworth did. Mr. Day thought 'she danced too well; she had too much an air of fashion in her dress and manners; and her arms were not sufficiently round and white to please him.'
* The author of Sandford and Merton.
He was at this time much preoccupied with an orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had taken from the Foundling Hospital, and whom he was educating with the idea of marrying her ultimately. Honora, on the other hand, had received the addresses of Mr. Andre, afterwards Major Andre, who was shot as a spy during the American War. But want of fortune caused the parents on both sides to discourage this attachment, and it was broken off.
It was in 1771 that Mr. Day, having placed Sabrina at a boarding-school, became conscious of Honora's attractions, and began to think of marrying her. 'He wrote me one of the most eloquent letters I ever read,' says Edgeworth, 'to point out to me the folly and meanness of indulging a hopeless passion for any woman, let her merit be what it might; declaring at the same time that he "never would marry so as to divide himself from his chosen friend. Tell me," said he, "have you sufficient strength of mind totally to subdue love that cannot be indulged with peace, or honour, or virtue?"
'I answered that nothing but trial could make me acquainted with the influence which reason might have over my feelings; that I would go with my family to Lichfield, where I could be in the company of the dangerous object; and that I would faithfully acquaint him with all my thoughts and feelings. We went to Lichfield, and stayed there for some time with Mr. Day. I saw him continually in company with Honora Sneyd. I saw that he was received with approbation, and that he looked forward to marrying her at no very distant period. When I saw this, I can affirm with truth that I felt pleasure, and even exultation. I looked to the happiness of two people for whom I had the most perfect esteem, without the intervention of a single sentiment or feeling that could make me suspect I should ever repent having been instrumental to their union.'
Later on Mr. Day wrote a long letter to Honora, describing his scheme of life (which was very peculiar), and his admiration for her, and asking whether she could return his affections and be willing to lead the secluded life which was his ideal. This letter he gave to Edgeworth to deliver. 'I took the packet; my friend requested that I would go to the Palace and deliver it myself. I went, and I delivered it with real satisfaction to Honora. She desired me to come next morning for an answer. … I gave the answer to Mr. Day, and left him to peruse it by himself. When I returned, I found him actually in a fever. The letter contained an excellent answer to his arguments in favour of the rights of men, and a clear, dispassionate view of the rights of women.
'Miss Honora Sneyd would not admit the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions. She did not feel that seclusion from society was indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to secure domestic happiness. Upon terms of reasonable equality she supposed that mutual confidence might best subsist. She said that, as Mr. Day had decidedly declared his determination to live in perfect seclusion from what is usually called the world, it was fit she should decidedly declare that she would not change her present mode of life, with which she had no reason to be dissatisfied, for any dark and untried system that could be proposed to her. … One restraint, which had acted long and steadily upon my feelings, was now removed; my friend was no longer attached to Miss Honora Sneyd. My former admiration of her returned with unabated ardour. … This admiration was unknown to everybody but Mr. Day; … he represented to me the danger, the criminality of such an attachment; I knew that there is but one certain method of escaping such dangers—flight. I resolved to go abroad.'
CHAPTER 3
Mr. Day and Edgeworth went to France, and the latter spent nearly two years at Lyons, where his wife joined him. Here he found interest and occupation in some engineering works by which the course of the Rhone was to be diverted and some land gained to enlarge the city, which lies hemmed