The house where novelist Maria Edgeworth spent most of her life is not what it was, but her memory still lives on in what is now a nursing home run by the Sisters of Mercy in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford. The surrounding countryside, so crucial to her writing is, however, little changed. Even now, it is hard to tame the sunken and soggy midlands soil, though there is beauty amid the bleakness, a sense of defiance in the timelessness.
Maria Edgeworth was born in the Oxfordshire village of Black Bourton in 1767, the second-eldest of Richard Lovell Edgeworth's 22 children - by four wives. She was brought to Ireland at the age of 13, where her father was not merely a landlord but an inventor of some note, credited with developing a turnip-splicer, a velocipede, a land-measuring perambulator and a telegraph system, as well as installing a heating system in nearby Tullynally Castle. Edgeworth became involved in the management of her father's lands and also in educating the younger siblings. In 1795, she compiled Letters for Literary Ladies. Her first novel, Castle Rackrent, was published anonymously in 1800 and she continued to write for most of her life, until her death in 1847. The former Edgeworth house, now called Our Lady's Manor, was built in the 1720s and occupied by family-members until 1935. It was opened as a nursing home in 1947 and is at the entrance to the town, approached by a tarmacadam driveway. The house looks out over sweeping parkland and has been extended at the back. It has Georgian columns to the front but the exterior has been painted white and covered in pebbledashing to give it a unified, but hopelessly modern appearance.
Inside, most period features have been obliterated. The library to the front was where the Edgeworth family traditionally gathered for readings, sketching and academic pursuits - the room being like a workroom. It
is much-partitioned today but the front part still features bookshelves and cupboards full of Edgeworth family memorabilia. The small room upstairs, where Edgeworth wrote and slept, is still used as a bedroom and the house continues to be as full of people as it was in the writer's day, when assorted household members even spread into the attic.
Maria Edgeworth is buried in the family vault at the nearby St John's Church of Ireland. The church would once have been on an exposed, grassy hillock, but a modern housing estate now nudges at its fine walls. The vault was quite grand for its time and is made of granite stone and surrounded by a wrought-iron railing. Inside the stone church are memorial tablets in honour of many Edgeworths - one mentions Admiral Beaufort who devised the scale to measure wind force. A sister of Oscar Wilde, Isolda, is also buried here, although there is no trace of the headstone which is thought to have been demolished. She died in 1867 while visiting an aunt, who was married to the then rector, the Rev G. Noble. The old schoolhouse, at the opposite end of the village to the family home also retains memories of the Edgeworths, whose philanthropy extended to providing basic education for local children. The schoolhouse has one main room off a small hallway, with wooden floorboards throughout. The building has been renovated under a Community Development Scheme with duplicates of Edgeworth family portraits hung on the bright yellow walls. An information chalet occupies a corner of the small front garden and is open all year round.
The Maria Edgeworth weekend will be opened on March 30th by John McGahern at the Park House Hotel, Edgeworthstown, Co Longford. The Edgeworth lecture will be given on Sunday, April 1st by Dr Patricia Coughlan, NUI Cork, entitled "Maria Edgeworth's Helen and Women's Fiction in the Early 19th Century". Creative writing workshops, a bookfair, readings and musical interludes are among the other events. Information from the Edgeworth Literary Society, Old Schoolhouse, Edgeworthstown, Co Longford. Tel: 043-71801. E-mail: edgelocdev@eircom.net