ce he became intimate with the
family of Mr. Elers, a gentleman of German descent, who resided at Black
Bourton, and was father to several pretty girls. Mr. Elers had
previously warned the elder Edgeworth against introducing into his home
circle the gay and gallant Richard, remarking that he could give his
daughters no fortunes that would make them suitable matches for this
young gentleman. Mr. Edgeworth, however, turned a deaf ear to the
warning, and the result was that the collegian became so intimate at the
house, and in time so entangled by the court he had paid to one of the
daughters, that, although he had meanwhile seen women he liked better,
he could not honorably extricate himself. In later life he playfully
said: "Nothing but a lady ever did turn me aside from my duty." He
certainly was all his days peculiarly susceptible to female charms, and,
had opportunity been afforded him, might have rivalled Henry VIII. in
the number of his wives. This second marriage gave as little
satisfaction to his father as the first, but the elder Edgeworth wisely
recognized the fact that he was himself not wholly blameless in the
matter. He, therefore, a few months after the ceremony had been
performed at Gretna Green, gave his consent to a formal re-marriage by
license. Thus, before he was twenty, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was a
husband and a father. The marriage entered upon so hastily proved
unfortunate; the pair were totally unsuited to one another; and though
Mrs. Edgeworth appears to have been a worthy woman, to judge from the
few and somewhat ungenerous allusions her husband makes to her in his
biography, they did not sympathize intellectually--a point he might have
discovered before marriage. The consequence was that he sought sympathy
and pleasure elsewhere. He divided his time between Ireland, London and
Lichfield. The latter city was the centre of a somewhat prim,
self-conscious, exclusive literary coterie, in which Dr. Darwin, the
singer of the _Botanic Garden_, Miss Anna Seward, the "Swan of
Lichfield," and the eccentric wife-trainer, Thomas Day, the author of
_Sanford and Merton_, were conspicuous figures. They were most of them
still in their youthful hey-day, unknown to fame, and, as yet, scarcely
aspiring towards it. Here, in this, to him, congenial circle of eager
and ardent young spirits, Richard Lovell Edgeworth loved to disport
himself; now finding a sympathetic observer of his mechanical inventions
in Mr. Watt