7 best short stories by Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth, August Nemo

• Publisher: Tacet Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783968583266
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women Authors Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe.The critic August Nemo selected seven short stories that show the best of this author's work: - The Grateful Negro - The Prussian Vase - The Good Aunt - The Good French Governess - The Orphans - The False Key - Tarlton

The Good French Governess

AMONG THE SUFFERERS during the bloody reign of Robespierre, was Mad. de Rosier, a lady of good family, excellent understanding, and most amiable character. Her husband, and her only son, a promising young man of about fourteen, were dragged to the horrid prison of the Conciergerie, and their names, soon afterward, appeared in the list of those who fell a sacrifice to the tyrant’s cruelty. By the assistance of a faithful domestic, Mad. de Rosier, who was destined to be the next victim, escaped from France, and took refuge in England — England! — that generous country, which, in favour of the unfortunate, forgets her national prejudices, and to whom, in their utmost need, even her “natural enemies” fly for protection. English travellers have sometimes been accused of forgetting the civilities which they receive in foreign countries; but their conduct towards the French emigrants has sufficiently demonstrated the injustice of this reproach.

Mad. de Rosier had reason to be pleased by the delicacy of several families of distinction in London, who offered her their services under the name of gratitude; but she was incapable of encroaching upon the kindness of her friends. Misfortune had not extinguished the energy of her mind, and she still possessed the power of maintaining herself honourably by her own exertions. Her character and her abilities being well known, she easily procured recommendations as a preceptress. Many ladies anxiously desired to engage such a governess for their children, but Mrs. Harcourt had the good fortune to obtain the preference.

Mrs. Harcourt was a widow, who had been a very fine woman, and continued to be a very fine lady; she had good abilities, but, as she lived in a constant round of dissipation, she had not time to cultivate her understanding, or to attend to the education of her family; and she had satisfied her conscience by procuring for her daughters a fashionable governess and expensive masters. The governess whose place Mad. de Rosier was now to supply, had quitted her pupils, to go abroad with a lady of quality, and Mrs. Harcourt knew enough of the world to bear her loss without emotion; — she, however, stayed at home one whole evening, to receive Mad. de Rosier, and to introduce her to her pupils. Mrs. Harcourt had three daughters and a son — Isabella, Matilda, Favoretta, and Herbert. Isabella was about fourteen; her countenance was intelligent, but rather too expressive of confidence in her own capacity, for she had, from her infancy, been taught to believe that she was a genius. Her memory had been too much cultivated; she had learned languages with facility, and had been taught to set a very high value upon her knowledge of history and chronology. Her temper had been hurt by flattery, yet she was capable of feeling all the generous passions.

Matilda was a year younger than Isabella; she was handsome, but her countenance, at first view, gave the idea of hopeless indolence; she did not learn the French and Italian irregular verbs by rote as expeditiously as her sister, and her impatient preceptress pronounced, with an irrevocable nod, that Miss Matilda was no genius. The phrase was quickly caught by her masters, so that Matilda, undervalued even by her sister, lost all confidence in herself, and with the hope of success, lost the wish for exertion. Her attention gradually turned to dress and personal accomplishments; not that she was vain of her beauty, but she had more hopes of pleasing by the graces of her person than of her mind. The timid, anxious blush, which Mad. De Rosier observed to vary in Matilda’s countenance, when she spoke to those for whom she felt affection, convinced this lady that, if Matilda were no genius, it must have been the fault of her education. On sensibility, all that is called genius, perhaps, originally depends: those who are capable of feeling a strong degree of pain and pleasure may surely be excited to great and persevering exertion, by calling the proper motives into action.

Favoretta, the youngest daughter, was about six years old. At this age, the habits that constitute character are not formed, and it is, therefore, absurd to speak of the character of a child six years old. Favoretta had been, from her birth, the plaything of her mother and of her mother’s waiting-maid. She was always produced, when Mrs. Harcourt had company, to be admired and caressed by the fashionable circle; her ringlets and her lively nonsense were the never-failing means of attracting attention from visitors. In the drawing-room, Favoretta, consequently, was happy, always in high spirits, and the picture of good humour; but, change the scene, and Favoretta no longer appeared the same person: when alone, she was idle and spiritless; when with her maid or with her brother and sisters, pettish and capricious. Her usual play-fellow was Herbert, but their plays regularly ended in quarrels — quarrels in which both parties were commonly in the wrong, though the whole of the blame necessarily fell upon Herbert, for Herbert was neither caressing nor caressed. Mrs. Grace, the waiting-maid, pronounced him to be the plague of her life, and prophesied evil of him, because, as she averred, if she combed his hair a hundred times a day, it would never be fit to be seen; besides this, she declared “there was no managing to keep him out of mischief,” and he was so “thick-headed at his book,” that Mrs. Grace, on whom the task of teaching him his alphabet had, during the negligent reign of the late governess, devolved, affirmed that he never would learn to read like any other young gentleman. Whether the zeal of Mrs. Grace for his literary progress were of service to his understanding, may be doubted; there could be no doubt of its effect upon his temper; a sullen gloom overspread Herbert’s countenance, whenever the shrill call of “Come and say your task, Master Herbert!” was heard; and the continual use of the imperative mood —“Let that alone, do, Master Herbert!”—“Don’t make a racket, Master Herbert!”—“Do hold your tongue and sit still where I bid you, Master Herbert!” operated so powerfully upon this young gentleman, that, at eight years old, he partly fulfilled his tormentor’s prophecies, for he became a little surly rebel, who took pleasure in doing exactly the contrary to every thing that he was desired to do, and who took pride in opposing his powers of endurance to the force of punishment. His situation was scarcely more agreeable in the drawing-room than in the nursery, for his mother usually announced him to the company by the appropriate appellation of Roughhead; and Herbert Roughhead being assailed, at his entrance into the room, by a variety of petty reproaches and maternal witticisms upon his uncouth appearance, became bashful and awkward, averse from polite society, and prone to the less fastidious company of servants in the stable and the kitchen. Mrs. Harcourt absolutely forbade his intercourse with the postilions, though she did not think it necessary to be so strict in her injunctions as to the butler and footman; because, argued she, “children will get to the servants when one’s from home, and it is best that they should be with such of them as one can trust. Now Stephen is quite a person one can entirely depend upon, and he has been so long in the family, the children are quite used to him, and safe with him.”

How many mothers have a Stephen, on whom they can entirely depend!

Mrs. Harcourt, with politeness, which in this instance supplied the place of good sense, invested Mad. de Rosier with full powers, as the preceptress of her children, except as to their religious education; she stipulated that Catholic tenets should not be instilled into them. To this Mad. de Rosier replied —“that children usually follow the religion of their parents, and that proselytes seldom do honour to their conversion; that were she, on the other hand, to attempt to promote her pupils’ belief in the religion of their country, her utmost powers could add nothing to the force of public religious instruction, and to the arguments of those books which are necessarily put into the hands of every well-educated person.”

With these opinions, Mad. de Rosier readily promised to abstain from all direct or indirect interference in the religious instruction of her pupils. Mrs. Harcourt then introduced her to them as “a friend, in whom she had entire confidence, and whom she hoped and believed they would make it their study to please.”

Whilst the ceremonies of the introduction were going on, Herbert kept himself aloof, and, with his whip suspended over the stick on which he was riding, eyed Mad. de Rosier with no friendly aspect: however, when she held out her hand to him, and when he heard the encouraging tone of her voice, he approached, held his whip fast in his right hand, but very cordially gave the lady his left to shake.

“Are you to be my governess?” said he: “you won’t give me very long tasks, will you?”

“Favoretta, my dear, what has detained you so long?” cried Mrs. Harcourt, as the door opened, and as Favoretta, with her hair in nice order, was ushered into the room by Mrs. Grace. The little girl ran up to Mad. de Rosier, and, with the most caressing freedom, cried —

“Will you love me? I have not my red shoes on to-day!”

Whilst Mad. de Rosier assured Favoretta that the want of the red shoes would not diminish her merit, Matilda whispered to Isabella —“Mourning is very becoming to her, though she is not fair;” and Isabella, with a look of absence, replied —“But she speaks English amazingly well for a French woman.”

Mad. de Rosier did speak English remarkably well; she had spent some years in England, in her early youth, and, perhaps, the effect of her conversation was heightened by an air of foreign novelty. As she was not hackneyed in the common language of conversation, her ideas were expressed in select and accurate terms, so that her thoughts appeared original, as well as just.

Isabella, who was fond of talents, and yet fonder of novelty, was charmed, the first evening, with her new friend, more especially as she perceived that her abilities had not escaped Mad. de Rosier. She displayed all her little treasures of literature, but was surprised to observe that, though every shining thing she said was taken notice of, nothing dazzled the eyes of her judge; gradually her desire to talk subsided, and she felt some curiosity to hear. She experienced the new pleasure of conversing with a person whom she perceived to be her superior in understanding, and whose superiority she could admire, without any mixture of envy.

“Then,” said she, pausing, one day, after having successfully enumerated the dates of the reigns of all the English kings, “I suppose you have something in French, like our Gray’s Memoria Technica, or else you never could have such a prodigious quantity of dates in your head. Had you as much knowledge of chronology and history, when you were of my age, as — as —”

“As you have?” said Mad. de Rosier: “I do not know whether I had at your age, but I can assure you that I have not now.”

“Nay,” replied Isabella, with an incredulous smile, “but you only say that from modesty.”

“From vanity, more likely.”

“Vanity! impossible — you don’t understand me.”

“Pardon me, but you do not understand me.”

“A person,” cried Isabella, “can’t, surely, be vain — what we, in English, call vain — of not remembering any thing.”

“Is it, then, impossible that a person should be what you, in English, call vain, of not remembering what is useless? I dare say you can tell me the name of that wise man who prayed for the art of forgetting.”

“No, indeed, I don’t know his name; I never heard of him before: was he a Grecian, or a Roman, or an Englishman? can’t you recollect his name? what does it begin with?”

“I do not wish either for your sake or my own, to remember the name; let us content ourselves with the wise man’s sense, whether he were a Grecian, a Roman, or an Englishman: even the first letter of his name might be left among the useless things — might it not?”

“But,” replied Isabella, a little piqued, “I do not know what you call useless.”

“Those of which you can make no use,” said Mad. de Rosier, with simplicity.

“You don’t mean, though, all the names, and dates, and kings, and Roman emperors, and all the remarkable events that I have learned by heart?”

“It is useful, I allow,” replied Mad. de Rosier, “to know by heart the names of the English kings and Roman emperors, and to remember the dates of their reigns, otherwise we should be obliged, whenever we wanted them, to search in the books in which they are to be found, and that wastes time.”

“Wastes time — yes; but what’s worse,” said Isabella, “a person looks so awkward and foolish in company, who does not know these things — things that every body knows.”

“And that every body is supposed to know,” added Mad. de Rosier.

“That never struck me before,” said Isabella, ingenuously; “I only remembered these things to repeat in conversation.”

Here Mad. de Rosier, pleased to observe that her pupil had caught an idea that was new to her, dropped the conversation, and left Isabella to apply what had passed. Active and ingenious young people should have much left to their own intelligent exertions, and to their own candour.

Matilda, the second daughter, was at first pleased with Mad. de Rosier, because she looked well in mourning; and afterwards she became interested for her, from hearing the history of her misfortunes, of which Mad. de Rosier, one evening, gave her a simple, pathetic account. Matilda was particularly touched by the account of the early death of this lady’s beautiful and accomplished daughter; she dwelt upon every circumstance, and, with anxious curiosity, asked a variety of questions.

“I think I can form a perfect idea of her now,” said Matilda, after she had inquired concerning the colour of her hair, of her eyes, her complexion, her height, her voice, her manners, and her dress —“I think I have a perfect idea of her now!”

“Oh no!” said Mad. de Rosier, with a sigh, “you cannot form a perfect idea of my Rosalie from any of these things; she was handsome and graceful; but it was not her person — it was her mind,” said the mother, with a faltering voice: her voice had, till this instant, been steady and composed.

“I beg your pardon — I will ask you no more questions,” said Matilda.

“My love,” said Mad. de Rosier, “ask me as many as you please — I like to think of her—— I may now speak of her without vanity — her character would have pleased you.”

“I am sure it would,” said Matilda: “do you think she would have liked me or Isabella the best?”

“She would have liked each of you for your different good qualities, I think: she would not have made her love an object of competition, or the cause of jealousy between two sisters; she could make herself sufficiently beloved, without stooping to any such mean arts. She had two friends who loved her tenderly; they knew that she was perfectly sincere, and that she would not flatter either of them — you know that is only childish affection which is without esteem. Rosalie was esteemed autant qu’aimée.”

“How I should have liked such a friend! but I am afraid she would have been so much my superior, she would have despised me — Isabella would have had all her conversation, because she knows so much, and I know nothing!”

“If you know that you know nothing,” said Mad. de Rosier, with an encouraging smile, “you know as much as the wisest of men. When the oracle pronounced Socrates to be the wisest of men, he explained it by observing, ‘that he knew himself to be ignorant, whilst other men,’ said he, ‘believing that they know every thing, are not likely to improve.’”

“Then you think I am likely to improve?” said Matilda, with a look of doubtful hope.

“Certainly,” said Mad. de Rosier: “if you exert yourself, you may be any thing you please.”

“Not any thing I please, for I should please to be as clever, and as good, and as amiable, and as estimable, too, as your Rosalie — bu...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• The Author
• The Grateful Negro
• The Prussian Vase
• The Good Aunt
• The Good French Governess
• About the Publisher
• Colophon