The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1Edgeworth, Maria
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The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1
Edgeworth, Maria
Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849; Novelists, Irish -- 19th century -- Biography
To save myself trouble, I send a list of the visits we made just as my
mother marked them on the card by which we steered. GOD knows how I
should steer without her. The crosses mark the three places where we
were let in. Lady Milbanke is very agreeable, and has a charming
well-informed daughter. Mrs. Weddell is a perfectly well-bred, most
agreeable old lady, sister to Lady Rockingham, who lived in the Sir
Joshua Reynolds set: tells anecdotes of Burke, Fox, and
Windham--magnificent house--fine pictures. We spoke of having just seen
the exhibition of Sir Joshua Reynolds's pictures. "Perhaps if you are
fond of paintings you would take the trouble of walking into the next
room, and I will show you what gives me a particular interest in Sir
Joshua Reynolds's pictures." Large folding-doors opened--large room full
of admirable copies from Sir Joshua Reynolds in crayons, done by Mrs.
Weddell herself. My mother says they are quite astonishing. Her
conversation, as good as her painting, passed through many books lightly
with touch-and-go ease. I mentioned a curious anecdote of Madame
d'Arblay: that when she landed at Portsmouth, a few months ago, and saw
on a plate at Admiral Foley's a head of Lord Nelson, and the word
Trafalgar, she asked what Trafalgar meant! She actually, as Lady Spencer
told me, who had the anecdote from Dr. Charles Burney, did not know that
the English had been victorious, or that Lord Nelson was dead! This is
the mixed effect of the recluse life she led, and of the care taken in
France to keep the people ignorant of certain events. I mentioned a
similar instance in Thiebault's _Memoirs_, of the Chevalier Mason,
living at Potsdam, and not knowing anything of the Seven Years' War.
Then Mrs. Weddell went through Thiebault and Madame de Bareith's
_Memoirs_, and asked if I had ever happened to meet with an odd
entertaining book, Madame de Baviere's _Memoirs._ How little I thought,
my dear Aunt Ruxton, when you gave me that book, that it would stand me
_in stead_ at Mrs. Weddell's--we talked it over and had a great deal of
laughing and diversion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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