, Dr. Darwin or Mr. Wedgwood; now flirting with the fair
Anna. He must have posed as a bachelor, for he relates how, on one
occasion, when paying compliments to Miss Seward, Mrs. Darwin took the
opportunity of drinking "Mrs. Edgeworth's health," a name that caused
manifest surprise to the object of his affections. Here, too, he became
imbued with the educational theories of Rousseau, which clung to him, in
a modified degree, throughout his life, and according to which, in their
most pronounced form, he educated his eldest son. Here, further, at the
age of twenty-six, he met the woman he was to love most deeply. From the
moment he saw Miss Honora Sneyd, Mr. Edgeworth became enamored, and in
his attentions to her he does not seem to have borne in mind the fact
that he was a married man.

"I am not a man of prejudices," he complacently wrote in later life; "I
have had four wives.[1] The second and third were sisters, and I was in
love with the second in the life-time of the first."

The man who could make this public statement, and who could, moreover,
leave to his daughter the task of publishing the record of his
ill-assorted union with the woman who was her mother, was certainly one
in whom good taste and good feeling were not preeminent. The birth of
this daughter, who was destined to be his companion and friend, is an
event he does not even note in his memoirs, which are more occupied with
his affection for Miss Sneyd, from whose fascinations he at last felt it
would be prudent to break away. He left England for a lengthened stay in
France, taking with him his son, whose Rousseau education was to be
continued, and accompanied by Mr. Day, who, to please Miss Elizabeth
Sneyd, was about to put himself through a course of dancing and
deportment, with a view to winning her consent to a marriage if he could
succeed in taming his savage limbs and ideas into proper social
decorum. The death of his wife recalled Mr. Edgeworth to England. With
all possible speed he hastened to Lichfield, proposed to Honora Sneyd,
was accepted, and married her within four months of his wife's demise.
Mr. Edgeworth, the elder, had died some time previously; the son was
now, therefore, master of Edgeworthstown. Immediately after his marriage
he set out for Ireland, taking with him his bride and four little
children. From that date forward a new era in his life commenced. It was
not to run any longer in a separate course from that of his family.