Maria Edgeworth

Letters from England, 1813-1844

Ed. Christina Colvin. Clarendon Press, 1971.

2 Nov. 1830...Lestock took me last Sunday to the Zoological gardens...I was properly surprised by the new town that has been built in the Regent's park - and indignant at plaister statues and horrid useless domes and pediments crowded with mock sculpture figures which damp and smoke must destroy in a season or two. The Zoological gardens charmed me - very fine day

The Irish novelist was on a visit to London and staying with her sister and brother-in-law, Lestock Wilson. Though best known for her tales of 'dignified peasantry and country life' she had earlier displayed a taste for gothic horror: in a novel written when she was a schoolgirl the villain wore a mask made from the skin of a dead man's face. This ghoulish streak seems to have re-surfaced on her visit to the Zoo, where 'eagles and vultures struck my imagination most...'

The otter fished for live fish thrown into his pool and bit off the head of one the instant caught and played with it horribly as a cat with mouse and granched it bones and blood till I was sick looking and yet could not move my eyes - like the girl looking at the murder thro the cranny in the wainscoat