



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger







THE ABSENTEE

by Maria Edgeworth


     [Footnotes have been inserted in the text in square ("[]")<br />     brackets, close to the point where they were originally.<br /><br />     Characters printed in italics in the original text have been<br />     written in capital letters in this etext.<br /><br />     The British Pound Sterling symbol has been written 'L'.]<br />



CONTENTS



NOTES ON 'THE ABSENTEE'

THE ABSENTEE



CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII



NOTES ON '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.'



THE ABSENTEE



CHAPTER I

 '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.'

'I see him now,' said Lady Langdale, examining him through her glass; 'a very gentlemanlike-looking young man, indeed.'

'Not an Irishman, I am sure, by his manner,' said her grace.

'Heathcock!' said Lady Langdale, 'who is Miss Broadhurst talking to?'

'Eh! now really--'pon honour--don't know,' replied Heathcock.

'And yet he certainly looks like somebody one certainly should know,' pursued Lady Langdale, 'though I don't recollect seeing him anywhere before.'

'Really now!' was all the satisfaction she could gain from the insensible, immovable colonel. However, her ladyship, after sending a whisper along the line, gained the desired information, that the young gentleman was Lord Colambre, son, only son, of Lord and Lady Clonbrony--that he was just come from Cambridge--that he was not yet of age--that he would be of age within a year--that he would then, after the death of somebody, come into possession of a fine estate, by the mother's side 'and therefore, Cat'rine, my dear,' said she, turning round to the daughter, who had first pointed him out, 'you understand, we should never talk about other people's affairs.'

'No, mamma, never. I hope to goodness, mamma, Lord Colambre did not hear what you and Mrs. Dareville were saying!'

'How could he, child? He was quite at the other end of the world.'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am, he was at my elbow, close behind us; but I never thought about him till I heard somebody say, "My lord--"'

'Good heavens! I hope he didn't hear.'

'But, for my part, I said nothing,' cried Lady Langdale.

'And for my part, I said nothing but what everybody knows!' cried Mrs. Dareville.

'And for my part, I am guilty only of hearing,' said the duchess. 'Do, pray, Colonel Heathcock, have the goodness to see what my people are about, and what chance we have of getting away to-night.'

'The Duchess of Torcaster's carriage stops the way!'--a joyful sound to Colonel Heathcock and to her grace, and not less agreeable, at this instant, to Lady Langdale, who, the moment she was disembarrassed of the duchess, pressed through the crowd to Lady Clonbrony, and, addressing her with smiles and complacency, was 'charmed to have a little moment to speak to her--could NOT sooner get through the crowd--would certainly do herself the honour to be at her ladyship's gala on Wednesday.' While Lady Langdale spoke, she never seemed to see or think of anybody but Lady Clonbrony, though, all the time, she was intent upon every motion of Lord Colambre, and, whilst she was obliged to listen with a face of sympathy to a long complaint of Lady Clonbrony's, about Mr. Soho's want of taste in ottomans, she was vexed to perceive that his lordship showed no desire to be introduced to her, or to her daughters; but, on the contrary, was standing talking to Miss Nugent. His mother, at the end of her speech, looked round for Colambre called him twice before he heard--introduced him to Lady Langdale, and to Lady Cat'rine, and Lady Anne--, and to Mrs. Dareville; to all of whom he bowed with an air of proud coldness, which gave them reason to regret that their remarks upon his mother and his family had not been made SOTTO VOCE.

'Lady Langdale's carriage stops the way!' Lord Colambre made no offer of his services, notwithstanding a look from his mother. Incapable of the meanness of voluntarily listening to a conversation not intended for him to hear, he had, however, been compelled, by the pressure of the crowd, to remain a few minutes stationary, where he could not avoid hearing the remarks of the fashionable friends. Disdaining dissimulation, he made no attempt to conceal his displeasure. Perhaps his vexation was increased by his consciousness that there was some mixture of truth in their sarcasms. He was sensible that his mother, in some points--her manners, for instance--was oblivious to ridicule and satire. In Lady Clonbrony's address there was a mixture of constraint, affectation, and indecision, unusual in a person of her birth, rank, and knowledge of the world. A natural and unnatural manner seemed struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she articulated--a naturally free, familiar, good-natured, precipitate, Irish manner, had been schooled, and schooled late in life, into a sober, cold, still, stiff deportment, which she mistook for English. A strong, Hibernian accent, she had, with infinite difficulty, changed into an English tone. Mistaking reverse of wrong for right, she caricatured the English pronunciation; and the extraordinary precision of her London phraseology betrayed her not to be a Londoner, as the man, who strove to pass for an Athenian, was detected by his Attic dialect. Not aware of her real danger, Lady Clonbrony was, on the opposite side, in continual apprehension, every time she opened her lips, lest some treacherous A or E, some strong R, some puzzling aspirate, or non-aspirate, some unguarded note, interrogative or expostulatory, should betray her to be an Irishwoman. Mrs. Dareville had, in her mimickry, perhaps a little exaggerated as to the TEEBLES and CHEERS, but still the general likeness of the representation of Lady Clonbrony was strong enough to strike and vex her son. He had now, for the first time, an opportunity of judging of the estimation in which his mother and his family were held by certain leaders of the ton, of whom, in her letters, she had spoken so much, and into whose society, or rather into whose parties, she had been admitted. He saw that the renegade cowardice, with which she denied, abjured, and reviled