From the French recent papers we learn that Arthur O'Connor, one of the
prominent actors in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, has just closed his
prolonged life at his residence, the Château de Bignon, near Nemours (Seine
et Marne) in France. When, in 1834, by permission of the government of Lord
Grey, he and his accomplished wife were in this city (Cork), with the view
of disposing of his inherited and not confiscated property, in order to
invest the produce in France, I was almost in daily intercourse with them;
and, from my recollection of the lady's father, the Marquis de Condorcet, a
distinguished mathematician, but better known as the biographer and ardent
propagator of Voltaire's infidel principles, as well as the zealous
partisan of the Revolution, though finally its victim, I was always a
welcome visitor. O'Connor, whom Bonaparte had raised to the rank of General
of Division, equivalent to that of General in full in our service, being
next to the degree of Marshal, told me that the disunion and personal
altercations of the Irish Legion engaged in the service of the then
republican France had deservedly and utterly estranged and disgusted the
French successive rulers, particularly Napoleon, in whose triumphs they
consequently were not allowed to participate as a national body. The
rancorous duel between two officers, McSweeny and Corbet, both from Cork,
had made a deep impression on the great soldier, and the Legion was
disbanded. Having inquired from O'Connor whether he did not intend to
publish the events of his variegated life, he told me that he was preparing
the narrative; but, on mentioning to his wife that he had made this
acknowledgment, she immediately called on me with an earnest request that I
would dissuade him from doing so. She did not explain her motive, and I
only promised to avoid the future renewal of the subject in our
conversations. As yet, whatever preparations he may have made, the press
has not been resorted to; though, if in existence, as may be presumed, the
work, or its materials, will not, most probably, be suffered to remain in
closed and mysterious secrecy. The Memoirs, for so he entitled it, cannot
fail to be most interesting; for he was a man of truth, and incapable of
misrepresentation, though, of course, liable to misconception, in his
recital of events; nor can it be denied, that a history, in any degree
worthy of the theme--that is, of the Irish Rebellion, is still
unpublished.[1] Whatever objection may have prevented the publication
during his life, none, I should suppose and hope, can now be urged after
his death, which, singularly enough, in an article devoted to him in the
_Biographie Universelle_, I find as having occurred so long since as 1830.
His son, too, is there represented as the husband of his own mother! the
writer, with other confusions of facts, having mistaken Arthur for his
elder brother, Roger O'Connor, father of the present eccentric Feargus,
M.P. It is thus, too, that the great vocalist Braham is in the same
voluminous repository stated to have died of the cholera in August, 1830,
though, several years subsequently, I saw him in hale flesh and blood; but
the compilation, valuable, it must be admitted, in French biography, teems
with ludicrous blunders on English lives, which, in the new edition now in
state of preparation, will, I hope, be corrected. Even the articles of
Newton, though by Biot, and of Shakspeare and Byron by Villemain, are not
much to their credit, particularly the latter, in which the national
prejudices prominently emerge.
O'Connor, after having for sixteen years occupied apartments in the house
of an eminent bookseller and printer, Monsieur Renouard, in the Rue de
Tournan, leading to the Luxembourg, and the only street that I remember,
now sixty years since, had a flagged footpath in that, at present,
embellished metropolis, purchased his late residence, the Château de
Bignon, with the proceeds of his paternal estates sold here, as previously
stated, in 1834. The purchase was made from the heirs of Mirabeau, who was
born in that mansion, and not in Provence, as generally supposed, because
that southern province was the family's original seat. The great orator's
father, distinguished, _per antiphrasim_, as "l'Ami des hommes," for he was
the most unamiable of men, had acquired and removed to the castle so
called, in order to approach the royal court of Versailles. The renowned
son's bursts of eloquence still, I may say, resound in my ears, dazzling
and entrancing my judgment, as Lord Chatham is reported similarly to have
affected his hearers. Yet my old friend Vergniaux's genuine oratory and
reasoning power struck me as far superior; and I can well believe that
Chatham's son's were to those of his father, which his contemporary, Hume,
no incompetent judge, and doubtless his {580} hearer, by no means exalts,
though the effects on his parliamentary audience appear to have been so
extraordinary. "At present," writes Hume (Essay xiii.), "there are above
half-a-dozen speakers in the two houses, who, in the judgment of the
public, have reached very nearly the same pitch of eloquence, and no man
pretends to give any one a preference over the next. This seems to me a
certain proof that none of them have attained much beyond mediocrity in
this art." Hume's _Essays_ first appeared in 1742, when the elder Pitt was,
indeed, young in parliament; but he survived till 1776, during which
interval Chatham's fame reached its culminating point. Yet, in all the
ensuing editions, the author never thought it necessary to modify his
depreciation of British eloquence.
O'Connor, it is said, published his father-in-law Condorcet's _collective_
works; but whether the edition of 1804 in 21 volumes is meant, I cannot
determine, though I know no other; nor does this contain his mathematical
writings. While outlawed in 1793 with the Girondist faction, he evaded,
from October to March, 1794, the revolutionary search, when he poisoned
himself, unwilling, he said, in some verses addressed to his wife, the
sister of Marshal Grouchy, further to participate in the horrors of the
period, though he had been most instrumental in preparing the way for them.
He chose, however, the better side, in his conception, of the proposed
alternative or dilemma:
"Ils m'ont dit: Choisis d'être oppresseur ou victime;
J'embrassai le malheur, et leur laissai le crime."
Madame O'Connor, a child of five years old at her father's death, had a
very faint recollection of him; but I perfectly remember him, with his
ardent look, and, while still young, a grey head,--"a volcano covered with
snow," as was observed of him. O'Connor's only child, a mild gentlemanly
young man, but certainly not the inheritor of his parent's talents,
predeceased him, so that no descendant, either of Condorcet or O'Connor,
now survives.
J. R. (of Cork).
[Footnote 1: Indeed, the general history of the kingdom is still a sad
desideratum, and, in the impassioned dissensions of the people, not likely
to be adequately supplied.]
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