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The Parent's Assistant Stories for Children By: Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) |
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[Illustration: 'I thought I saw ' poor Franklin began. P. 61.]
THE
PARENT'S ASSISTANT
or, Stories for Children BY
MARIA EDGEWORTH
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
ILLUSTRATED
BY
CHRIS HAMMOND
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1903 First printed with Illustrations by Chris Hammond 1897.
Illustrated Pocket Classics 1903.
INTRODUCTION
Once when the present writer was a very little girl she suffered for a
short time from some inflammation of the eyes, which prevented her from
reading, or amusing herself in any way. Her father, who had just then
returned from the East, in order to help her to pass the weary hours
began telling her the story of the 'Forty Thieves,' and when he had
finished, and had boiled down the wicked thieves in oil, and when she
asked him to tell it all over again, he said that he would try and find
something else to amuse her, and looking about the room he took up a
volume of the Parent's Assistant which was lying on the table, and
began to read aloud the story of the 'Little Merchants.' The story
lasted two mornings, and an odd, confused impression still remains in
the listener's mind to this day of Naples, Vesuvius, pink and white
sugar plums of a darkened room, of a lonely country house in Belgium,
of a sloping garden full of flowers outside the shutters, of the back of
a big sofa covered with yellow velvet, and of her father's voice reading
on and on. When she visited Naples in after days she found herself
looking about unconsciously for her early playfellows. Not only Francisco and Piedro, but all those various members of the
Edgeworth family who play their parts in fancy names and dresses in
Miss Edgeworth's stories, became her daily familiar companions from that
day forth. Many of the stories in the Parent's Assistant were written in a time
when wars and rumours of wars were in the air; these quiet scenes of
village life were devised to the sound of clarions. Rebels were marching
and countermarching; volunteers were assembling; husbandmen, throwing
away their spades, were arming and turning into soldiers; the French
were landing in Ireland. 'I cannot be a Captain of Dragoons,' writes
Miss Edgeworth, 'and it would not make any of us one degree safer if I
were sitting with my hands before me.' So she quietly goes on with her
stories. One or two of them were written at Clifton, and very early in
her career an illustrated edition had been suggested by the publishers.
A young Irish neighbour, with a taste for the fine arts, was asked to
make the drawings to these stories, and it was this lady, Miss Beaufort,
the daughter of the Rector of Colon, who afterwards became the fourth
Mrs. Edgeworth. Not long after his third wife's death in 1797, Mr.
Edgeworth wrote a letter to Dr. Darwin at Lichfield, in which he gives
him various items of family news. He writes of portraits (Dr. Darwin,
Mr. Thomas Day, and Mr. Edgeworth, had all sat for their portraits); he
writes of Upas trees, of frozen frogs, of farming and rack rents; of
pipes for hot houses to be heated by stable dung, of speaking machines,
and finally in a postscript he announces the fact of his being engaged
to be married for the fourth time, 'to a young lady of small fortune and
large accomplishments, much youth, some beauty, more sense, uncommon
talents, more uncommon temper, liked by my family, loved by me.' These were stormy times for Ireland: a few days after the letter was
written, a conspiracy was discovered in Dublin, and the city was under
arms. Mr. Edgeworth set out immediately to join the Beauforts, who were
there. The true hearted daughter now admires her father for urging on
the marriage. 'Instead of delaying, as some would have advised, my
father urged for an immediate day. He brought his bride home through a
part of the country in actual insurrection.' There is a grim story of the new married pair on their way to
Edgeworthstown passing the suspended corpse of a man hanging between the
shafts of a cart... Continue reading book >>
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