itself in the kindly foreign air; in that and in her growing happiness
her husband began to reap the moral reward he had so hardly won.
Abruptly, and not without alarm, the English in Sicily were driven
homewards by the descent of the French on those shores. Captain and
Mrs. Sturgeon hurried aboard a crowded transport bound for Portsmouth.
The poor lady had great excitement and considerable hardship to
undergo, and in the course of that most luckless voyage was prematurely
born her only child. The deep-seated sadness of her soul, as if
unjustly alienated from her, returned in all its fulness after his
death. She settled with her husband at Hythe in Kent, and there she
made haste to die. The laburnums were coming into blossom when she
entered upon her eternity, six-and-twenty years old. She had a meek
request to make of her father, who was oftentimes as near to her new
home as London: it was that she might be buried in a garden grave at
the Priory, where the sister who died in childhood had been laid.
One need have no very romantic imagination to guess that the remote
green spot bordering the lawn (a natural trysting-place screened by
great trees that grow near the little grave), was dear to her also
for another’s sake, for some old association with him who loved her
in his hunted youth. For his own reasons, Mr. Curran, approached on
the subject, saw fit to refuse. During the first week of May, 1808,
Sir Charles Napier thus wrote his mother: “I rode over to Hythe this
morning to see poor Sturgeon, who has lost his little wife at last,
the betrothed of Emmet. Young Curran is here: his sister was gone
before his arrival. They are going to take the body to Ireland.” It
was Richard Curran, faithful in every human relationship, who went on
to his brother-in-law. The bereaved two brought Sarah home to her own
country, to the tomb in Newmarket of the grandmother of whom she had
been fond, and for whom she was named: Sarah Philpot. The headstone
was prepared, and seen by some local antiquary, and remembered; but
it disappeared before it was placed. Emmet’s love sleeps, like Emmet,
without an epitaph.
The letter which Richard Curran wrote to “M.” about his dead sister was
printed by her twenty-three years after. In it was enclosed a fragment
of Sarah’s own:—
“RADISH’S HOTEL, ST. JAMES’S STREET,
“LONDON, _May 8, 1808_.
“MY DEAR MADAM: I know how heartily you’ll participate
in the feelings with which I announce to you the
death of your poor friend, my lamented Sarah. I would
willingly spare myself this distressing office; but
I cannot expose one whom she so loved to the risk of
stumbling inadvertently in a public paper on a piece
of intelligence so affecting.... I wish also to convey
to you a testimony that her thoughts never strayed from
you, and that to the hour of her death you were the
object of her affection. The enclosed unfinished letter
is the last she ever wrote. In it you will find a very
mitigated statement of her sufferings. I can anticipate
the satisfaction you will derive from the strong sense
of religious impressions which marks her letters; and
I at the same time congratulate and thank you for
having cultivated in her the seeds of that consoling
confidence which cheered her departing moments, and
stripped death, if not of its anguish, yet of its
greatest horrors. The hopes held out by her physicians
were, alas! more humane than well-grounded: she expired
at half-past five, on the morning of the 5th inst.,
of a rapid decline. To describe my sorrow would be
but to write her eulogy. You know all the various
qualities with which she was so eminently gifted, and
the consequent pangs I must feel at so abrupt and
calamitous a dispensation. I am now on my way, with her
afflicted widower, accompanying her remains, which she
wished to lie in her native land. I enclose you a lock
of her hair; it was cut off after her death. Adieu,
my dear madam. I make no apology for this melancholy
intrusion, and I beg to assure you that one in whose
acquirements and disposition she found so much that was
kindred to her own, can never cease to be an object of
most respectful esteem and attachment to a brother that
loved her as I did.—I remain, your obliged friend and
humble servant, RICHARD CURRAN.”
_To_ MRS. HENRY W——.
[_Enclosure._]
“MY DEAR M——: I suppose you do not know of my arrival
from Sicily, or I should have heard from you. I must
be very brief in my detail of the events which have
proved so fatal to me, and which followed our departure
from that country. A most dreadful and perilous
passage occasioning me many frights, I was, on our
entrance into the Channel, prematurely delivered of a
boy, without any assistance save that of one of the
soldiers’ wives, the only woman on board except myself.
The storm being so high that no boat could stand out
at sea, I was in imminent danger till twelve next
day, when at the risk of his life a physician came
on board from one of the other ships, and relieved
me. The storm continued, and I got a brain fever,
which, however, passed off. To be short: on landing
at Portsmouth, the precious creature for whom I had
suffered so much God took to Himself. The inexpressible
anguish I felt at this event, preying on me, has
occasioned the decay of my health. For the last month
the contest between life and death has seemed doubtful;
but this day, having called in a very clever man here,
he seems not to think me in danger. My disorder is a
total derangement of the nervous system, and its most
dreadful effects I find in the attack on my mind and
spirits. I suffer misery you cannot conceive. I am
often seized with icy perspirations, trembling, and
that indescribable horror which you must know, if you
have ever had the fever. Write instantly to me. Alas,
I want everything to soothe my mind. O my friend!
would to Heaven you were with me: nothing so much as
the presence of a dear female friend would tend to my
recovery. But in England you know how I am situated:
not one I know intimately. To make up for this, my
beloved husband is everything to me. His conduct,
throughout all my troubles, surpasses all praise.
Write to me, dear M——, and tell me how to bear all
these things. I have, truly speaking, cast all my
care on the Lord; but ah, how our weak natures fail;
every day, every hour, I may say. On board the ship,
when all seemed adverse to hope, it is strange how an
overstrained trust in certain words of our Saviour gave
me such perfect faith in His help, that although my
baby was visibly pining away, I never doubted his life
for a moment. ‘He who gathers the lambs in His arms,’
I thought, would look down on mine, if I had faith in
Him. This has often troubled me since——”
Richard Curran, who took pains to send that broken letter to a woman
who valued it above fine gold, was always a good brother. Concerning
his dear Sarah he had to be reticent, too, in reticent company. A lady
who knew W. Henry Curran long and well, heard him mention his youngest
sister only once. They were searching for something in a garret, when
an exquisite picture standing laced with cobwebs, the picture of a girl
about eighteen, caught her eye. “My sister Sarah, by Romney,” Henry
said shortly, seeing that he had to say something. “Family pride had
been deeply hurt by the publicity attached to poor Sarah’s unfortunate
love-episode.” The Romney, sold by auction when Henry Curran died, is
now the property of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby; it has been beautifully
engraved for Miss Frances A. Gerard’s _Some Fair Hibernians_, 1897.
The delicately powdered hair, the low frilled dress with the line of
black velvet about the neck, the gracious shoulders, the purely Irish
mouth and eyes, half-scornful of life, half-resigned to it, which never
knew illusion, and can never know abiding joy—-these are most tenderly
painted, and remain among the things one does not forget. The last word
of this haunting personality shall be loyal “M.’s”:—
“In person Mrs. Sturgeon was about the ordinary size, her hair and eyes
black. Her complexion was fairer than is usual with black hair, and
was a little freckled. Her eyes were large, soft, and brilliant, and
capable of the greatest variety of expression. Her aspect in general
indicated reflection, and pensive abstraction from the scene around
her. Her wit was keen and playful, but chastised [_sic_]; although no
one had a quicker perception of humour or ridicule. Her musical talents
were of the first order: she sang with exquisite taste. I think I never
heard so harmonious a voice.”
As for Captain Henry Sturgeon, he only betook himself anew to his
post. His more active military career was now to begin. Throughout
the Peninsular War he served as Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and later
as Colonel of South Guides on the Duke of Wellington’s staff; and
Wellington’s despatches ring again and again with his commended name.
Riding across a vineyard during the fight near Vie Begorre, on a
March morning of 1814, in the sixth year of his widowerhood, and the
thirty-second of his age, he was shot dead in the saddle. He never
had his dues in a profession where official recognition was then not
stinted; and perhaps he cared little that it was so. _The Dictionary
of National Biography_, which does not mention his all-significant
marriage, yet quotes from _The War in the Peninsula_ what is said of
Henry Sturgeon: “Skilled to excellence in almost every branch of war,
and possessing a variety of accomplishments, he used his gifts so
gently for himself and so usefully for the service that envy offered
no bar to admiration, and the whole army felt painfully mortified that
his merits were passed unnoticed.” This is one comrade’s glowing praise
of another. Has it gone unguessed, the cause of the neglect at home of
one of the most brilliant and devoted officers of his generation? Can
the cause be hidden from those who have scrutinised the Government
of that day, with its spites, its partisanships, its incapacity for
distant outlooks, its severance from ideals? This Englishman, whatever
his eminence of courage and skill might be, had been the husband of
Emmet’s sweetheart; and Emmet was an Irish rebel and felon. The young
soldier had probably weighed well what he was inheriting, before his
marriage, and found all that endurable enough, until he died. In a
world where earthly accidents wither away at a breath, and men of like
temper see each other as they are, Henry Sturgeon must have smiled from
the blood-wet Spanish grass straight into Robert Emmet’s eyes.
One likes the unexpected epilogue, as one likes the mournful play. It
is all satisfactory: “nothing but well and fair, and what may quiet
us,” in the odd pattern of the plot. Emmet lives in it, and outlives.
It is the compensation of a lot cast in a planet where even our own
honourable action has a trick of turning hostile and smearing us,
that there is something in the best of us which cannot be smeared.
Robert Emmet’s large soul has, like a magician, pieced together his
broken body, the symbol of his broken, mistimed, and because mistimed,
unhallowed effort. But only his own soul has done it, and by a power
within, shaking herself clear of censure. Mr. Henry Curran devotes
to him a reticent paragraph obliquely affectionate. “He met his fate
with unostentatious fortitude; and although few could ever think of
justifying his projects or regretting their failure, yet his youth, his
talents, the great respectability of his connections, and the evident
delusion of which he was the victim, have excited more general sympathy
for his unfortunate end, and more forbearance towards his memory,
than are usually extended to the errors or sufferings of political
offenders.” At the end of a hundred years, the feelings which may
temperately be described as sympathy and forbearance do survive, ranged
on the side of this political offender; but is it to be thought for
a moment that five-and-twenty years of life, intellectuality, social
standing, above all the capacity for being fooled (adorable as that may
sometimes be), are alone able to commend any man to the remembrance of
posterity? No: to dominate a moral distance there must be moral height.
Emmet was magnanimous. The word was nobly applied to him by Lord
Hardwicke, the head of the Government which hanged and beheaded him.
Now to be magnanimous is not to possess a definite grace or virtue:
magnanimity, like a sense of humour, is a spirit, a solvent merely; to
exercise it in any one emergency is to show greatness equal to all.
Robert Emmet said that he had received, immediately on his return from
France, official invitations from conspirators in high quarters at
home: the “first men in the land” were those who “invited him over.” Of
his truthfulness there was but one opinion. Said Curran, who loved him
little: “I would have believed the word of Emmet as soon as the oath of
any other man I ever knew.” The Attorney-General at the trial referred
to the prisoner as “a gentleman to whom the rebellion may be traced,
as the origin, life, and soul of it.” This was Emmet’s reply, when,
after nightfall, his turn came to speak: “My lords, let me here observe
that I am not the head and lifeblood of this rebellion. When I came to
Ireland I found the business ripe for execution: I was asked to join
in it.” And again: “I have been charged with that importance in the
efforts to emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of
the combination of Irishmen, or, as it has been expressed, the life and
soul of this conspiracy. You do me honour overmuch. You have given to
the subaltern all the credit of the superior.” He turned half-smiling
to the presiding judge. “There are men concerned in this conspiracy
who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conception
of yourself, my lord.” At the final moment of his life Emmet stood
motionless with a handkerchief in his hand, the fall of which was to be
the signal for the cart to be drawn away. To the usual “Are you ready,
sir?” he twice answered “No.” As it was, another and obeyed signal
was impatiently given before he had dropped the handkerchief. Why did
he hesitate? Was he perhaps expecting these concealed associates,
his leaders and long-silent abettors, to reprieve or rescue him? So
romantic a fancy, implying so much belief in human generosity, was only
too natural to Robert Emmet. Many thinking heads, even under coronets,
had been hot for reform in that unfavourable hour; there were many who
desired the removal of religious disabilities, popular representation
in Parliament, death to the vile system of local laws under which one
witness, and only one witness, was sufficient to convict a man of high
treason. Reform being disallowed, they declared themselves eloquently
as ready to be driven to armed resistance against England: that is,
towards total divorce and reconstruction. To poor Emmet alone, the
thing so unavoidable which was good enough to long for and to talk
about, was the thing good enough to do. The “first in the land” kept
their heads; and in death as in life he kept their secret. There is a
great unwritten chapter of perfidy behind his lonely ineffectual blow
struck for national freedom. Anyone who has studied well these events
of 1803, and weighed well the astonishing confidential information
about the historical papers at Dublin Castle, which was given not long
ago to Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York, by Sir Bernard Burke, and
incorporated in _The Emmet Family_, can hardly doubt that revelations
on that subject are yet to come which will lengthen the story of Mr.
Pitt, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Under-Secretary Marsden, and their dealings
with Ireland. And English gold and English terrorism had too truly won
their way at last with Emmet’s humble colleagues at home.
There are minor instances of Emmet’s magnanimity no less striking
in their way. “We are all Protestants!” he said in a delighted and
congratulatory spirit to Russell, implicated with him; he could not
forget how much more heavily suspicion would bear upon those others
yet shackled by the penal laws. To this beautiful inborn openness of
mind was due his allusion before Lord Norbury (a judge as well-hated as
Jeffreys, and for much the same reasons), to “that tyranny of which you
are only the intermediate minister.” From his cell, within a few hours
of the end, he sent a manly letter of thanks to the Chief Secretary, in
which he addresses him thus:—
“SIR: Had I been permitted to proceed with my
vindication, it was my intention not only to have
acknowledged the delicacy with which (I feel with
gratitude) I have been personally treated, but also
to have done the most public justice to the mildness
of the present Administration in this country; and
at the same time to have acquitted them, as far as
rested with me, of any charge of remissness in not
having previously detected a conspiracy, which, from
its closeness, I know it was impossible to have done.
I confess that I should have preferred this mode if it
had been permitted, as it would thereby have enabled me
to clear myself from an imputation under which I might
in consequence lie, and to have stated why such an
Administration did not prevent, but (under the peculiar
situation of this country) perhaps rather accelerated
my determination to make some effort for the overthrow
of a Government of which I do not think equally highly.
However, as I have been deprived of that opportunity,
I think it right now to make an acknowledgment which
justice requires from me as a man, and which I do not
feel to be in the least derogatory from my decided
principles as an Irishman.—I have the honour to be,
sir, with the greatest respect, your most obedient
humble servant,
“ROBT. EMMET.”
(Hard. MS. 35,742, f. 196.)
The Lord Lieutenant makes a comment on this, in that letter to his
brother, the Home Secretary, from which much has already been cited:—
“I enclose copies of two letters which he wrote this morning [September
20, 1803]. One of the acts of kindness to which he particularly refers,
in his letter to Mr. Wickham, was his being removed from the cell at
Newgate, in which he had been placed after the sentence, to his former
apartment at Kilmainham, as had been originally intended. He had
alluded to this in his conversation with the clergymen, and admitted
that the general conduct of those who administered the Government was
likely to conciliate the people, though he did not approve the form of
the Government and the British connection, both of which he had been
desirous to overthrow.”
In regard to this forwarded letter, the Home Secretary utters his
congratulatory mind, and gives his opinion of our hero:—
“At the same time that one cannot but deplore the wicked malignity and
wonder at the enthusiastic wildness which appears to have actuated the
conduct of this miserable man, one cannot but admire the judgment,
the temper, and delicacy which appear to have been manifested in
the conduct of your Excellency’s Government towards this person,
and all concerned or in any manner connected with him. I cannot but
take advantage of this occasion to express the satisfaction I feel
in observing that the justice, moderation, and mildness of your
Excellency’s Government have extorted even from a condemned traitor the
same sentiments of respect and reverence which we have been accustomed
to hear from the loyal part of the community.”
It does not seem to have been revealed to the Hon. Charles Yorke,
that what “extorted” Emmet’s assurances was his own extreme, almost
fantastic, chivalry; and that those assurances set off deeply by
contrast, as he vehemently meant they should do, his abhorrence of the
underlying system of which Lord Hardwicke’s conduct was merely the
agreeable accident. Lord Hardwicke, at least, had understood.
Even one intelligent modern has fallen foul of Emmet’s unusually
scrupulous care in such matters, and of his attitude of regal courtesy,
like that of the battling foes on Crécy field: such a care and such
an attitude indicate, it is thought, “weakness of character!” What it
really indicates is a diplomacy so high that if generally practised
it might render human intercourse very difficult. We cannot all be as
Apollo Musagetes, daring to employ nothing but the amenities, the major
force, in a universe inured to cheap thunderbolts. As Thoreau shrewdly
says: “The gods can never afford to have a man in the world who is
privy to any of their secrets. They cannot have a spy here: they will
at once send him packing!”
A postulate of true magnanimity is modesty. Emmet’s was unique. It
is the testimony of John Patten, who was well aware of his kinsman’s
immense self-reliance, that “Robert had not one particle of vanity in
his composition. He was the most free from conceit of any man I ever
knew. You might live with him for years ... and never discover that he
thought about himself at all. He was vain neither of his person nor of
his mind.” La Comtesse d’Haussonville cannot refrain, in her graceful
memoir, from contrasting him with another excellent youth of genius,
André Chénier, who very properly expressed his pang of self-pity
in face of the guillotine. “_Et pourtant_,” he cried, striking his
forehead with that gesture of Gallic candour which is so odd to us
and so winning: “_et pourtant il y avait quelque chose ici_!” _Il y
avait quelque chose ici_ in Emmet too, although it was not great lyric
poetry. He had almost every other capacity. The Rev. Archibald Douglas,
in his old age, when Robert Emmet had been nearly forty years in his
grave, summed up his conviction about him to Dr. R. R. Madden: “So
gifted a creature does not appear once in a thousand years.”
We have no portrait of Emmet which antedates his trial. Three artists
in good repute sketched him, that day, on bits of waste paper or else
on the backs of envelopes, and did it surreptitiously for dread of
prohibition: these were Comerford, Brocas, and James Petrie. The
two first, viewing Emmet in profile, gained better results than the
third; yet Petrie’s drawing serves as the basis of the only well-known
engraved pictures. It was Petrie, moreover, who was allowed to take the
death-mask of Robert Emmet. The good material accumulated was put to no
very memorable use. The Petrie Emmet is somewhat heavy and glowering,
and distinctly wry-necked. It is meant, in fact, to be impressive; and
the note of artificiality disqualifies it as a true representation of
its subject, a man of shynesses and simplicities. Comerford, on the
other hand, and Brocas, as effectively, have given us a face to look at
which one instinctively believes in. It is stamped with concentration
and resolve, but has in it something serene and gentle and sweet, and
it harmonises with all we can learn of Emmet’s physical appearance from
the printed page. He was about five feet seven inches in height, wiry,
slender, erect, healthy, full of endurance, quick of movement. His dark
eyes were small and rather deep-set, and sparkling with expression;
his nose was straight and thin, his mouth delicately chiselled. He had
the powerful chin and jaw-bone never absent from the bodily semblance
of a strong-willed personality. The fine pendulous hair bespoke the
enthusiast, but it was not worn long save over the forehead, which was
noticeably broad and high. What gave a faun-like idiosyncrasy to the
whole countenance was the slight upward curve of the perfect eyebrows
at the inner edge. If we are to accept Brocas as our best authority
(though his hand at work has somehow captured a momentary scorn not
seen by Comerford), this idiosyncrasy had in it no touch of frowning
severity such as was foreign, according to all report, to Emmet, but
added rather a final whimsical attraction to a sad young face which a
child or a dog would readily love. As Anne Devlin said once of “Miss
Sarah’s,” it was “not handsome, but more than handsome.” The one face
it resembles is the Giotto Dante.