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.