St. Lucia, April 15. 1851.
Minor Notes.
_Lord Edward Fitzgerald's Mother._--A highly respectable woman, recently
living in my service, and who was born and bred in the household of the
late Duke of Leinster, told me that, when she was a child, she was much
about the person of "the old Duchess;" and that she had often seen the
bloody handkerchief that was taken off Lord Edward Fitzgerald, after he
had been shot at his capture. This relic of her unfortunate son the
venerable and noble lady always wore stitched inside her dress. The
peerage states that she was a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, was
married in 1746-7, and bore seventeen children. As the arrest of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald was not until 1798, she must have been full seventy
years old when she thus mourned; reminding one in the sternness of her
grief of the "Ladye of Branksome."