WOMEN OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
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[Illustration:
PAMELA
The Wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald
]
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WOMEN OF
’NINETY-EIGHT
BY MRS. THOMAS CONCANNON, M.A.
Author of “The Life of St. Columba,” “A Garden of Girls,” “The Sorrow of
Lycadoon,” Etc.
[Illustration]
M. H. GILL AND SON :: LTD.
50 UPPER O’CONNELL STREET, DUBLIN
1919
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRINTED AND BOUND
[Illustration]
BY
M. H. GILL & SON, LTD.
DUBLIN
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In Memory
OF
All the Dead Women
AND
In Homage
TO
All the Living Women
WHO HAVE GIVEN
Their Dear Ones
TO
Ireland
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
THE MOTHERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT 3
_The Mother of the Emmets_ 6
_The Mother of Lord Edward Fitzgerald_ 28
_The Mother of the Sheareses_ 53
_The Mother of the Teelings_ 68
THE WIVES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT:
_The Wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone_ 103
_The Wife of Thomas Addis Emmet_ 146
_The Wife of Samuel Neilson_ 165
_The Wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald_ 186
THE SISTER OF HENRY JOY MCCRACKEN 215
SOME OTHER SISTERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT:
_Mary Anne Emmet_ 243
_Mary Tone_ 247
_Lady Lucy Fitzgerald_ 249
_Julia Sheares_ 253
_Miss Byrne_ 257
_Miss Teeling_ 259
_Miss Hazlett_ 259
SARAH CURRAN AND ANNE DEVLIN 267
SOME OTHER ROMANCES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT 297
SOME OBSCURE HEROINES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT 311
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INTRODUCTION
Alas! how sad by Shannon’s flood,
The blush of morning sun appears!
To men who gave for us their blood,
Ah! what can women give but tears!
—DRENNAN: _Lament of the Women after the Battle_.
“THEY tell a beautiful and poetical story about the croppies’ graves in
Wexford. Many of them carried in their coat pockets wheat seed gathered
in the fields to satisfy their hunger. When they were buried in their
shallow graves the seed sprouted and pushed its way up to the light, and
the peasants, seeing the patches of waving grain here and there by field
or wayside, knew that there a poor croppy slumbered. Was not the waving
grain an emblem that the blood they shed for Ireland would yet nurture
the harvest of Freedom?”
Twenty years ago, when in the pages of the _Shan Van Vocht_, that moving
and lovely tale was told to the faithful few whom the centenary of
’Ninety-Eight had rallied around the croppies’ graves, it needed a
poet’s vision, a patriot’s heart, to see in
“The grain that was fed on the dust of the dead”
a promise of the mighty harvest of freedom. To-day, we look around us,
and, lo!—even to the blindest and coldest of us—the fields are white.
Ere we go forth to the reaping, shall we not consider with ourselves
what culture the buried seeds of freedom received to ensure a yield so
rich? It is not alone the blood of the men who died for Ireland that has
nurtured the harvest of her freedom. The seed has been abundantly
watered by the tears of heartbroken women: mothers and wives,
sweethearts and sisters, daughters and comrades. Some of these grieving
women I have tried, in the following pages, to make better known to
their country-women of to-day, whose joy has been purchased, in such
large part, by their sorrow.
And not with their tears alone did our sisters of ’Ninety-Eight sprinkle
the red furrows of that tragic seed-time. In many a forgotten grave,
from Antrim to Wexford, lies the dust of the women who died victims of
the brutality of the yeomanry and military, let loose on the country to
goad its manhood into a rising. Beneath the unmarked site of many a
vanished cabin lie the charred bones of countless women who were burnt
to death when the drunken soldiery fired their homes. Among the outrages
tabulated by Cloney as having been perpetrated by the military in the
county of Wexford alone, we find record of seven young women violated
and murdered near Ballaghkeene by the Homperg Dragoons, after the
retreat from Vinegar Hill; of four women shot after the flight from
Wexford; and of three women bayonetted in Enniscorthy; of nine women and
six children slain by the yeomanry between Vinegar Hill and Gorey, on
the high road; of three women shot by the yeomanry in the village of
Aughrim; of four women murdered by “the supplementary yeomen” between
Gorey and Arklow.
Anne Devlin was not the only woman of those times who bore to the day of
her death on her tender skin the cicatrized marks of the wounds
inflicted by the bayonets of the soldiers in the design of extorting
from her information. Some of the atrocities suffered by women had not
even the excuse of any purpose—save that of satisfying a monstrous lust
of cruelty. A dreadful case is that of Mrs. O’Neill, whose son, a
clerical student, had been taken up and confined in New Geneva barracks,
preparatory to being shipped off to work in the salt-mines of the King
of Prussia. The poor woman had come all the way from Antrim, a distance
of one hundred and fifty miles, to take a last farewell of him. When she
reached her destination she was refused access to him, and only
succeeded in seeing him after she had bribed his guards. Unfortunately,
she yielded to the violence of her grief when the time to leave him
came, and the anguished cries of the poor mother betrayed her forbidden
presence in her boy’s cell. She was torn from his arms, hurried into the
presence of the colonel, and by him delivered to the tender mercies of
the soldiers, who dragged her into the courtyard, and proceeded to toss
her in a blanket. When the savage pastime of the soldiers ceased, a few
rags were thrown to the unfortunate woman; she crawled to a neighbouring
cabin, and there she died.
Those who are best entitled to speak of the causes of the Rising of
’Ninety-Eight are singularly unanimous in their exposition of them.
During Thomas Addis Emmet’s examination before the Secret Committee of
the House of Lords (August 10th, 1798) he stated in reply to Lord
Clare’s query as to what caused the late insurrection: “the free
quarters, the house-burnings, the tortures, the military executions in
the counties of Kildare, Carlow and Wicklow.” Mary McCracken used to
quote her brother, Henry Joy’s opinion that “if it had not been for the
free quarters and the flogging, there would have been no rebellion after
all, for it is not easy to get the people to turn out of their
comfortable homes, if they _have_ any comfort in them.” It was the sight
of his burning chapel and the blazing homesteads of his flock which
turned Father John Murphy from a man of peace into the intrepid leader
of fighting men. When his people fled to him in the woods from the
flames of their farmhouses and the outrages of the yeomanry, he told
them that “they had better die courageously in the field than be
butchered in their houses; that, for his own part, if he had any brave
men to join him, he was resolved to sell his life dearly and prove to
these cruel monsters that they should not continue their murders and
devastations with impunity.”
The same motives which urged the priest to become the soldier animated
many of the women. Better, it seemed to them, to die fighting side by
side with their men in the field than to be violated and butchered in
their houses. And so we find among the Women of ’Ninety-Eight more than
one Irish Joan of Arc. There was Molly Weston who fought at Tara, Betsy
Grey at Ballynahinch, Mary Doyle at New Ross and many a brave woman who
died fighting on Vinegar Hill.
Another _rôle_ filled by the Women of ’Ninety-Eight was that of
inspiring their men to patriotic action, aiding them by their counsels,
putting their women’s wit at the service of the patriots as messengers
and intelligence officers. Charles H. Teeling informs us that “the
enthusiasm of the females exceeded the ardour of the men; in many of the
higher circles, and in all the rustic festivities, _that_ youth met a
cold and forbidding reception from the partner of his choice, who,
either from apathy or timidity, had not yet subscribed to the test of
union.” “A green velvet stock, or a silk robe with a shamrock device,
were the emblems of national feeling; and the former was not
unfrequently presented to the youthful patriot by the fair daughter of
Erin, as the pledge of a more tender regard.” We see Pamela and Lady
Lucy Fitzgerald shedding the bright influence of their beauty over the
circle of patriotic and romantic young Irishmen whom Lord Edward
gathered around him in Kildare Lodge. Numerous women were so deep in the
secrets of the United Irishmen that it was considered necessary for them
to take the oath. Of these, the most notable, Miss Moore, will receive
more extended notice in subsequent pages of this book. Among others we
find mention of Mrs. Risk, whose husband having fallen a victim to his
patriotic principles in ’Ninety-Eight, devoted herself and all she had
in the world to the Cause for which he died. It was to her house in
Sandymount that Lord Edward was to have been removed the night of the
day on which he was arrested. We subsequently find her visiting the
prisoners at Fort George and carrying back messages from them to their
friends in Ireland. Rose McGladdery, wife of William McCracken, was “a
sworn United man,” and did good service to the cause for which her
husband was imprisoned and for which her brother-in-law, Harry, died, as
she passed out and in of Kilmainham jail to visit her captive husband.
It is very probable that Mrs. Oliver Bond was also “a sworn United man.”
Her name lives in their records for a clever device by which she enabled
the State prisoners of 1796 to keep in touch with the outside world. The
story is told by Charles Teeling, who was one of them:
“On that great festival, which is respected in every quarter of the
Christian world, this excellent lady, having addressed a polite message
to the first authority of the prison, requested through him to furnish a
dish for the table of the prisoners of State.... This dish was
accompanied by one of smaller dimensions, but of similar appearance,
which was presented to the good lady, the governor’s spouse. Never did
the governor or his gentle rib partake of a dish more agreeable to their
palates. It was a pasty of exquisite flavour, and seasoned by no
parsimonious hand. Dainties of this kind were novel to the captives, but
still more novel the design; choice, indeed, were the materials of which
our dish was composed, and most acceptable to those for whose
entertainment it was prepared. With the full permission of the governor,
the pie was placed on our table, the turnkey received his Christmas-box,
smiled as he turned the money in his hand, and retired. Under cover of
the encrustment, which was artfully, but with apparent simplicity,
arranged, the dish was filled with writing materials, foreign and
domestic newspapers, communications with friends.” Writing his
recollections thirty years later, Charles Teeling recalls, in all their
vivid freshness, the sensations to which this discovery gave birth, and
the happiness which the poor prisoners felt when they were thus made
acquainted with the true sentiments of their fellow-countrymen in their
regard.
One more pious duty the Women of ’Ninety-Eight took upon themselves, and
that was to guard the memory of the fallen, and to keep bright their
names. Again and again, Dr. Madden has found occasion to pay tribute to
the faithful women to whom his researches owe so much. “With few
exceptions,” he writes, “the materials collected for the memoirs of the
United Irishmen would in all probability have perished, had they not
fallen into the hands of women, who clung to the memories of their
departed friends with feelings of attachment commensurate with the
calamities which had overtaken the objects of their affection or regard.
It would seem that in man’s adversity, when his fellow-men fall away
from his sinking fortunes, or detach their thoughts from his maltreated
memory, there is a steadfastness in the nature of woman’s love, a
fidelity in her friendship, which gives to the misfortunes of her
kindred a new claim to her solicitude for everything that concerns their
interests or their fame.” Very touching instances are those of Mary
McCracken, the daughters of Samuel Neilson, the daughter of Dr.
MacNevin.
* * * * *
Finally, it is not to be forgotten that to a woman of ’Ninety-Eight we
are indebted for the first and, when all is said, perhaps, the best—the
most authentic, and vivid and enlightening—story of the Rising which
takes its name from that year. Charles Hamilton Teeling’s “Personal
Narrative,” published in 1828, three years before Moore’s “Life of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald,” was dedicated by the author in words, as touching as
they are noble, to “My wife and my children at whose request solely, it
has been undertaken.... Respected and beloved, they are entitled to this
mark of my remembrance, the only inheritance which the enemies of my
country have left me to bequeathe.” We are allowed to catch, in the
final page of the “Narrative,” a fleeting whisper of the romance of
Charles H. Teeling and Catherine Carolan. We know that when the
Insurrection was suppressed, young Charles Teeling, for true love’s
sake, preferred to take anew the outlaw’s track on the mountain rather
than to seek safety beyond the seas. We would fain know a little more of
the girl who won her place side by side with “the Little Black Rose” in
that most knightly and constant heart. We sense in her story one of the
most tender, and sweet, and pure of the romances of ’Ninety-Eight.
* * * * *
I cannot but feel proud of the fact that, in writing this book, I have
received the constant help of two of the grandsons of Charles Teeling,
and Catherine Carolan: Charles T. Waters, Esq., B.L., and Charles H.
Teeling, Esq., K.C. I wish I could acknowledge adequately, the
obligations under which I have been put by their kindness in lending me
the precious Teeling letters in their possession, and allowing me to use
them as I desired. I have been privileged also to consult Mr. Waters
constantly in many doubts and difficulties, to draw on his knowledge of
the period, to use his library, and to call on his help in a thousand
ways which it would be impossible to enumerate.
I am also under an obligation to F. J. Bigger, Esq., Belfast, and Denis
Carolan Rushe, Monaghan (another kinsman of Catherine Carolan) for their
patient answering of my many questions concerning a period on which they
are among the greatest of living authorities.
To Mrs. Patrick Semple, LL.D., and her sister, Mrs. MacCarthy, I owe
most warm thanks for their help in making extracts from books otherwise
inaccessible to me, and to Professor Mrs. Macken for the trouble she
took to procure certain books for me. I am also indebted to George
Taaffe, Esq., of Smarmore Castle, Ardee, for information furnished me
from the Taaffe family papers.
HELENA CONCANNON.
Lios na Mara,
Salthill, Galway,
_September, 1918_.
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THE MOTHERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
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THE
MOTHERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
“Hush, O Mother, and be not sorrowful,
The women of My keening are yet unborn, little Mother.”
—_The Keening of Mary._
TRULY it was of the Mothers of Ireland that Mary’s Son was thinking,
when from the Tree of His Passion He comforted His own Mother with
prophecy of the “keeners” yet unborn who, through the centuries, were to
bear her company in her anguish, and weep with her for her sorrow and
His most bitter death.
That knowledge—with so much else—we owe to the teaching of Padraic Mac
Piarais. He gave us the first part of the lesson when he gathered us
with him into the cottage of Mary Clancy, in Iar Chonnacht,[1] and bade
us listen to her “keening” with Mary for her dying, crucified Son, and
shuddering at the instruments of His Passion, and shedding floods of
tears at the thought of His gaping wounds. He made us realise what “a
precious thing it is for the world that in the homes of Ireland there
are still men and women who can shed tears for the sorrows of Mary and
her Son.” But did the teacher, himself, know then at what a price had
been won for the mothers of the Gael their “terrible and splendid
trust”? Or was it only revealed to him in the blinding flash of the
illumination which showed him that his own mother’s soul must be pierced
by the same sword which transfixed Mary’s? Certain it is that we had to
wait for the completion of the lesson, begun in Mary Clancy’s cottage,
till that most holy and solemn night when, as he waited, like King
Cellach in his prison cell, for “his love, the morning fair”—and the
flame-like gift it was to bring him—he wrote for his mother the
exquisite prayer, with which he would have her, on the morrow, lay his
own broken body in Mary’s outstretched arms. Then was it made plain to
us that the mothers of Ireland have won the right to stand thus close to
Mary, beneath the Cross, and to claim as their hereditary office, the
task to minister to her in her desolation, because they, above all the
other women of the world, have so often “seen their first-born sons go
forth,” even like Mary’s, “to die amid the scorn of men—For whom they
died.”
Footnote 1:
“Caoineadh Mhuire” (The Keening of Mary) was taken down by P. H.
Pearse from the singing of Mary Clancy in Moycullen, and first
published by him in the _Claidheamh Soluis_, October 24th, 1904.
Thus the Desolate Mother, even in a world which has so largely forgotten
the sorrows of her and of her Son, has always found, and will find, in
the homes of Ireland, her faithful company of keeners. And who shall say
that their ministering is less grateful to her, because while they weep
for her Son, they are weeping for their own, and the voice they raise in
woe is that of Rachel, who will not be comforted?
These poor mothers of our Irish martyrs! These poor Rachels! There is
something in their grief which makes it a thing apart. Wives, and
sisters, and sweethearts, who have given their dear ones to Ireland have
felt, even in their most anguished hour, something of that exaltation
which makes “the hard service _they_ take, who help the Poor Old Woman,”
a yoke more sweet and precious than any liberty. Like the men, of whose
sufferings it was their splendid privilege to partake, the women who
have shared their husband’s prison cell, like Jane Emmet, or who have
walked with their brothers, even to the foot of the scaffold, like Mary
Anne McCracken, or who have found death by their lover’s side on the
battlefield, like Betsy Gray, “think themselves well paid.” But not even
Ireland could pay the mother of the Emmets, or the mother of the
Shearses, or heal the hidden wound that bled until her death-night in
the heart of Bartholomew Teeling’s mother, or comfort Lord Edward’s poor
mother when the roses of each recurring June were redly tragic with the
memory of his blood-stained prison deathbed, and its sunshine was
darkened by the memory of her boy’s agony. For the greatness of their
sorrow, then, shall we not place them first, these broken-hearted
mothers, in our tale of the “Women of ’Ninety-Eight”?
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The Mother of the Emmets
ELIZABETH MASON EMMET—(1740-1803)[2]
“My life was he,
My death his taking.”
—_Lament of Mothers of Bethlehem._
Footnote 2:
Authorities: Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Third Series, Second Ed.
(London and Dublin, 1860); Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet’s “The Emmet Family”
(New York, 1898); J. J. Reynolds’s “Footprints of Emmet” (Dublin,
1903); Smith’s “County and City of Cork,” edited by Day and Copinger
(Cork, 1893).
“ON Tuesday, September 20th (1803), the day of the execution of Robert
Emmet, he was visited at ten o’clock in the morning, by Mr. Leonard
McNally, the barrister, who, on entering the room where Emmet had the
indulgence of remaining all that morning in the company of the Rev. Dr.
Gamble, the ordinary of Newgate, found him reading the litany of the
service of the Church of England. Permission was given to him to retire
with McNally into an adjoining room, and on entering it, his first
enquiry was after his mother, whose health had been in a declining
state, and had wholly broken down under the recent afflictions which had
fallen on her. McNally, hesitating to answer the enquiry, Robert Emmet
repeated the question, ‘How is my mother?’ McNally, without replying
directly, said, ‘I know, Robert, you would like to see your mother.’ The
answer was, ‘Oh! what would I not give to see her?’ McNally, pointing
upwards, said, ‘Then, Robert, you will see her this day!’ and then gave
him an account of his mother’s death, which had taken place some days
previously. Emmet made no reply; he stood motionless and silent for some
moments, and said, ‘It is better so.’ He was evidently struggling hard
with his feelings, and endeavouring to suppress them. He made no further
allusion to the subject but by expressing ‘a confident hope that he and
his mother would meet in heaven.’”[3]
Footnote 3:
Madden, _op. cit._ p. 461. Madden’s account of this touching incident
was furnished him by John Patten, brother of Mrs. Thos. Addis Emmet,
and the devoted friend of the whole Emmet family, who was a prisoner
in Kilmainham at the time of Robert Emmet’s trial and execution.
I have known one woman who, having been able to read, with dry eyes, the
melting tale of Sarah Curran’s “Broken Heart,” and to listen, without a
sob, to the voice of Sarah’s young lover, so soon to be stilled for
ever, pleading from the brink of “the cold and silent grave,” for the
last charity of the world’s silence, broke into a passion of weeping as
the tragedy, which was Robert Emmet’s life-story, swept through every
stage of gathering pathos to the almost intolerable poignancy of its
climax—the picture, conjured up by Madden, of the mother who lay dead,
of a broken heart, in her widowed home in Donnybrook, while her
last-born son, her Benjamin, stood in the dock in Green Street on trial
for his life.
And yet is there not comfort to be found in the thought that the
mother’s loving spirit was liberated in time from the prison of the
suffering flesh, to be made free of all the places out of which her
boy’s anguish called to her? If, as was Robert Emmet’s fond hope, “the
dear shade of his venerated father” looked down upon him, where he stood
in the dock, ready to die for the principles which that father had first
taught him, surely the soul of the mother was not far away. Surely it
bore him company during the long nerve-wrecking, exhausting hours of the
trial,[4] giving him the refreshment which the brutality of his captors
and judges denied; surely it was close at hand when his poor body, on
which the fetters of death were so soon to be laid, had to submit for
the last time to the more galling fetters of the abominable gaoler of
Newgate. Could we bear to think of what Robert Emmet was made to suffer
during his last night on earth, if the conviction that his mother’s
spirit hovered near him, did not bring us comfort? Brought to Newgate
from Green Street about eleven o’clock at night, he was heavily ironed
by Gregg, the gaoler, and placed in one of the condemned cells. About an
hour after midnight an order came from the Secretary at the Castle that
the prisoner must be at once conveyed to Kilmainham. What a journey was
that through the darkness of the autumn night! What a journey back from
Kilmainham to Thomas Street the next day, when through the seething
crowds, the carriage which bore the young martyr to the place of his
execution moved in the midst of its strong guard of horse and foot! Even
his enemies, looking upon him, were fain to confess that never had they
seen a man go forth “to die like this”—with such “unostentatious
fortitude,” such marvellous absence of all signs of fear, such a
conviction of the glory of dying “for Ireland.” Did the dear Lord make
it easy for him “to die like this,” by permitting his mother to leave
her place in heaven for a time to be with her boy in the supreme hours?
Footnote 4:
The trial of Robert Emmet lasted from 9.30 _a.m._ until 10.30 _p.m._
During “these thirteen hours of mortal anxiety, of exertion, of
attention, constantly engaged, he had no interval of repose, no
refreshment.”
* * * * *
Set side by side two pictures. One is that drawn, in such tragic
intensity of black and white, by Madden, of a woman of sixty-three, who
having drained to the dregs the cup of life’s sorrows, lay down in the
home of her widowhood, from which all her children save one were absent,
to die of the malady, for which science has found no cure: a broken
heart. Nine months earlier her husband had been taken from her and now
she, “like the mother of the Shearses, was hurried to her grave by the
calamity which had fallen on her youngest son; who, it was vainly hoped,
was to have occupied one of the vacant places in the house, and in the
heart of his afflicted parents. Vainly had they looked up to Thomas
Addis Emmet to supply that place which had been left a void by the death
of their eldest and most gifted son, Christopher Temple Emmet. And when
Thomas Addis was taken away from them and banished, to whom had they to
look but to the younger son; and of that last life-hope of theirs they
might have spoken with the feelings which animated the Lacedemonian
mother, when one of her sons had fallen fighting for his country, and
looking on the last of them then living she said ‘_Ejus locum expleat
frater_.’ And that son was taken from them, incarcerated for four years,
and doomed to civil death. Thomas Addis Emmet was then a proscribed man
in exile. The father had sunk under the trial, although he was a man of
courage and equanimity of mind; but the mother’s last hope in her
youngest son sustained in some degree her broken strength and spirit;
and that one hope was dashed down never to rise again, when her
favourite child, the prop of her old age, was taken from her, and the
terrible idea of his frightful fate became her one fixed thought—from
the instant the dreadful tidings of his apprehension reached her till
the approaching term of the crowning catastrophe, when, in mercy to her,
she was taken away from her great misery.”
“Orangemen of Ireland ... these are your triumphs; the desolation of the
home of an aged, virtuous couple—the ruin in which all belonging to them
were involved, the ignominious death of their youngest and gifted
child.”[5]
Footnote 5:
Madden, _op. cit._ pp. 463-464.
The other picture is one we paint for ourselves of a fair young girl,
very slim and graceful in her riding habit, with a charming face,
usually a little too serious for its twenty summers, showing now a
dainty flush of excitement under the piquant riding hood, and clear
eyes, usually somewhat too grave for their youth, shining now with an
unwonted light. For background a stately eighteenth-century country
seat, set in a landscape of exquisite beauty—(What need to describe the
entrancing loveliness of woodland, lake and mountain, when it is
sufficiently summed up by the magic word, Killarney?) Over it all a sky
aflush with the colours of the summer dawn! The haze of summer over the
bird-filled, fragrant woods, that sway lightly to the breezes of the
virginal new day!
So we picture for ourselves Elizabeth Mason on that summer morning of
the year 1760 when she set forth, a charming and accomplished girl of
twenty, from the home of her father, James Mason, Esq., of Ballydowney,
Killarney, for the memorable visit to Cork, which was to prove an event
of such transcendent importance in her life.
We guess something of the hopes and dreams, which lay in James and
Catherine Mason’s mind when they yielded to the desires of their son,
James (who was a successful business man in Cork), and allowed their
only daughter, Elizabeth, to accompany him, on his return to Cork from
one of his visits home, for “a season” in the gay, little Southern
Capital. Among the country gentlemen of the neighbourhood there was
small likelihood of finding a suitable _parti_ for their beautiful girl.
Arthur O’Neill’s description of Lord Kenmare’s “Milesian Assembly,”
which took place in this identical year,[6] seems to point to a society
around Killarney of hard-riding, hard-drinking, jolly squires with few
of whom Elizabeth’s cultured and thoughtful mind would have enough in
common for the prospects of a very happy marriage. Amid the young
professional and business men in Cork, with their more intellectual
interests, the wider knowledge of life which their close and frequent
intercourse with the Continent fostered, their greater accessibility to
new ideas, she was, as her prudent, loving parents probably realised,
much more likely to find a husband calculated to make her happy.
Extraordinarily gifted by nature, her education had been such as to
foster her birthgifts. Her great-grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of
New York, who in his book, “The Emmet Family,” has done us the great
service of making us acquainted with the _choses intimes_ of his
illustrious stock, has published many of her letters, and they bear out
Dr. Madden’s verdict on her “as an amiable, exemplary, high-minded lady,
whose understanding was as vigorous as her maternal feelings were strong
and ardent.” In another place Madden speaks of her “noble disposition
and vigorous understanding,” and in conversation with Dr. Thos. Addis
Emmet in 1880 he stated that he considered that she, her husband, her
three sons, Christopher Temple, Thomas Addis, Robert, and her daughter,
Mary Anne (wife of Robert Holmes) “were the most talented family in
every respect he had ever known of.” It was felt, indeed, and not alone
by those who hold that “all distinguished men inherit their
characteristics rather from the mother than from the father,” that the
extraordinary brilliancy of the three sons of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet was
largely an inheritance from their mother. And it is impossible to read
her letters, with their exquisite precision and felicity of phrase,
their ease, and candour and absence of all straining after effect, their
expression of a philosophy of life, the noblest, and soundest (because
founded on the truest Christian principles) without feeling that they
have been penned by a woman rarely gifted in heart and mind.
Footnote 6:
Mrs. Milligan Fox’s “Annals of the Irish Harpers,” p. 147. It was on
this occasion that Arthur O’Neill, in reply to an apologetic remark of
Lord Kenmare’s concerning the place that the blind harper had found
near the foot of the table, made the famous assertion: “Where an
O’Neill sits, _there_ is the head of the table.”
With these rare gifts of heart and mind, and in all the freshness, and
charm, and beauty of her twenty summers, Miss Elizabeth Mason made
something of a sensation when she appeared in Cork society. She had
numerous relatives in the pleasant little city by the Lee, and each and
every one of them was determined that their beautiful visitor should
have “a good time.” So once or twice a week some kindly matron would
call at James Mason’s house, and carry off his sister to the concerts
and “assemblies” which were regular bi-weekly events in the Assembly
House near Hamond’s Marsh. Or a party of young people would beg her to
join them for a boating excursion on the river, or “a promenade” on the
Mall where the _beau monde_ loved to display its gay silk and satins,
its feathers and furbelows; or on the Bowling Green, where it took the
air under the quaintly cut trees, and listened to the band discoursing
sweet music for its delectation; or in Mr. Edward Webber’s gardens near
the Mardyke where it ate strawberries and cream, and all the other
delectable fruits of the earth, each in its proper season. In the
evenings there were theatre-parties, or “drums” at the Assembly House,
or in the hospitable and elegant homes of some of Cork’s merchant
princes, whose culture was not surpassed by their wealth. Here while the
young folk danced their minuets and country-dances, their elders played
cards; but both young and old were ready to leave dancing floor, and
card table, to take part in the delightful concerts of “Italic airs,”
which made one visitor to Cork imagine “the god of music had taken a
large stride from the Continent, over England to this island,” and
attribute “the humane and gentle disposition of the inhabitants, in some
measure, to the refinement of this divine art.” At supper one heard
supremely good conversation, for the men of Cork were, according to the
same witness, “well versed in public affairs,” fond of news and
politics, and diligent readers of the newest French and English books,
and the periodicals of the day—and their pretty partners made a
charmingly appreciative audience while the men talked over the foreign
and domestic news they had found in the Dublin and London newspapers,
which the two coffee-houses near the Exchange supplied for their
customers.[7]
Footnote 7:
Smith’s “County and City of Cork,” I., 388.
It began to be noticed by the observant matrons, who chaperoned these
delightful gatherings, that one brilliant talker seemed particularly
anxious to observe the effect his conversation made on clever Elizabeth
Mason, and how persistently he sought her out as a partner in ball and
supper rooms, or at pic-nic or promenade, whenever his professional
occupations allowed him to take part in these functions. They noticed,
with approval, that Elizabeth was not indifferent to the attentions of
the rising young physician, Dr. Robert Emmet,[8] who having studied
medicine and taken his degree with great _éclat_ at one of the most
famous medical schools in Europe, that of the University of
Montpelier,[9] had taken up practice in Cork some years previously.
Footnote 8:
Born in Tipperary in 1729, he was just thirty-one years old at the
date of his marriage.
Footnote 9:
His great-grandson, Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet of New York, himself a
distinguished specialist, records the publication of a book by Dr.
Robert Emmet, in 1753, on some of the diseases of women. It was
originally published in Latin and was afterwards translated into
French, with two editions printed in Paris (_op. cit._ p. 47).
In due course the good-natured gossips of Cork learned that Dr. Emmet
had sent proposals, through James Mason, jun., to Mr. and Mrs. James
Mason of Ballydowney, for the hand of their daughter, Elizabeth, and
that the parents, having satisfied themselves, after due enquiry, that
the connection was a suitable one, had given their consent to the
marriage. Dr. Emmet was the son of a physician, Dr. Christopher Emmet,
in Tipperary, and in addition to his professional earnings had inherited
a considerable fortune from his father. Through his mother, Rebecca
Temple, he was connected with one of the most aristocratic families in
England. Satisfactory marriage settlements were speedily arranged, and
preparations were pushed on for the wedding, which took place in Cork on
November 16th, 1760.
Dr. Madden informs us, on the authority of Elizabeth Mason’s nephew, Mr.
J. St. John Mason, that the doctor built a large house for his bride in
George’s Street. It seems probable that the _ménage_ included from the
beginning the doctor’s widowed mother, Mrs. Rebecca Temple Emmet, and
his widowed and childless sister-in-law, Mrs. Grace Russell Emmet,
relict of his brother Thomas, who died in 1754. At all events these two
ladies died under the doctor’s roof, after the family had moved to
Dublin; the elder in 1774, the younger in 1788. A bequest of the latter
to her “dear sister-in-law” of a gold watch, and ample legacies to the
children seem to betoken that Elizabeth Emmet had the secret of gaining
the hearts of her husband’s kin, and that as mistress of a large and
wealthy household she knew how to make all who sat by her hearth, or
gathered round her table, happy.
She was soon busy in her nursery. In 1761, her first-born son,
Christopher Temple Emmet, made his entry into it. The boy was destined,
like Cuchullin, to “a great name and a short life.” He was only
twenty-eight when he died, but he had already impressed his
contemporaries as one of the most brilliant men of his time. Grattan,
who disliked the Emmets intensely (because they had the courage of their
convictions, and he, in spite of his fiery rhetoric, was all for
compromise and security), has left on record his opinion of Temple
Emmet, and it is worth quoting at length:—
“Temple Emmet, before he came to the Bar, knew more law than any of the
judges on the bench; and if he had been placed on one side, and the
whole bench opposed to him, he could have been examined against them,
and would have surpassed them all; he would have answered better both in
law and divinity than any judge or any bishop in the land. He had a
wonderful memory—he recollected everything—it stuck to him with singular
tenacity. He showed this in his early youth, and on one occasion he gave
a strong instance of it. There existed at that time in Dublin College,
an institution called the Historical Society; there were subjects
selected for discussion, and prior to the debate there was an
examination in history. On one occasion the books happened to be
mislaid, and it was thought no examination could have taken place; but
Emmet, whose turn it was to be in the chair, and who had read the
course, recollected the entire, and examined in every part of it, and
with surprising ability.”[10]
Footnote 10:
Grattan’s “Life and Times.” By Henry Grattan, the younger. IV. 356.
In reading the records of eighteenth-century families, we are equally
astonished at the size of them, and the small proportion of their
members to survive infancy. Dr. and Mrs. Emmet had seventeen children in
seventeen years, and of these there only grew to manhood and womanhood
three sons, Christopher Temple, Thomas Addis (born 1764), Robert (born
1778), and one daughter, Mary Anne (born 1773). Of the other thirteen,
there remained only their names in Aunt Grace’s family bible, followed
by the pitiable record, “died young.”
One circumstance moves us strangely: four little Robert Emmets (the
first born in 1771, the others in 1774, 1776, 1777) came, and finding
the burden of life too heavy, laid it quickly down, until _he_ came, the
fifth, the destined one, who was to take it up and carry it, until his
hero-fate bade him lay it down—for Ireland.
Perhaps the little graves that multiplied so fast in the Cork cemetery
made that city a depressing place for Elizabeth Emmet; or perhaps her
husband was attracted to Dublin, by the promises of professional
advancement offered by the appointment to the Viceroyalty of his
kinsman, the Marquis of Buckingham. At all events it is a matter of
history that Dr. and Mrs. Emmet came to Dublin in 1771 and took up their
residence in Molesworth Street.[11] Here a number of their children were
born, including Mary Anne (1773) and Robert (1778).
Footnote 11:
The identification of the house is of much interest, as it was that in
which Robert Emmet was born. A writer in _Georgian Society Record_
(IV. 94) states that it is now numbered 22, and forms portion of
Kilworth House.
In this same year, 1771, Dr. Emmet was appointed State Physician, and
owing to his character and capacity, was soon in possession also, of a
large private practice. He was a charming, genial man, and a great
favourite with his patients. His wife’s nephew, St. John Mason,
described him to Dr. Madden as “a man of easy and gentlemanly manners,
remarkable for vivacity and pleasantry, but free from coarseness or that
exaggeration of expression in moments of hilarity called grimace. He
possessed humour but not of a caustic nature. In discourse he was fluent
and happy in the choice of words, and in the use of classical
quotations. He was remarkably punctual and precise in business and
professional affairs.” By his professional skill and business prudence
Dr. Emmet amassed a considerable fortune, and lived in a manner
commensurate with it, entertaining much good company, and taking a
leading part in the brilliant society of the day.
After the birth of their youngest child, Robert, in 1778, the Emmets
moved from their house in Molesworth Street, to a splendid new mansion
in Stephen’s Green. Those were the days of the Volunteers, and Ireland,
stirred to the depths by the example of America’s struggle for freedom,
was gathering her forces to make the same demand, which America had
already secured—and to back it by the same arguments. Less fortunate
than America—or less wisely and nobly led—Ireland did not force the
question to the decision of the field of battle, but accepted in full
settlement of her claim a something which only Grattan and his friends,
blinded by their own verbal fire-works, could have mistaken for liberty.
Dr. Robert Emmet was one of those who saw, from the beginning, the
inadequacy of the Settlement of 1782; and there is no doubt but that it
was from him that his sons learned that political creed—the doctrine of
“Absolute Independence”—for which one of them was to suffer the “white
martyrdom” of exile, and the other the “red martyrdom” of blood. Grattan
and Curran and others of their ilk who could never forgive those who had
the pluck and honesty to draw their logical conclusion from the premises
which they themselves had instituted, have tried to discredit Dr. Emmet
by throwing ridicule on him. Grattan’s son quotes his father as saying
that “Dr. Emmet had his pill and his plan, and he mixed so much politics
with his prescription, that he would kill the patient who took the one,
and ruin the country that listened to the other.” And Curran loved to
raise a laugh among his friends—Sir Jonah Barrington and other
high-minded gentlemen—by “taking off” the Doctor administering “their
morning draught” to his sons. “Well, Temple, what would you do for your
country? Addis, would you kill your brother for your country? Would you
kill your sister for your country? Would you kill me?” We can listen
with equanimity to the bitter epigrams of Grattan, or the monkey-like
buffoonery of Curran when we remember what his own sons thought of Dr.
Emmet: “Dear shade of my venerated father,” cried Robert as he stood in
the dock facing his iniquitous judges and accusers, “look down on your
suffering son, and see has he for one moment deviated from those moral
and patriotic principles which you so early instilled into his youthful
mind, and for which he has now to offer up his life.” And Thomas Addis
Emmet, writing to his mother from Brussels, on the receipt of the news
of his father’s death (December, 1802), has drawn for his own, and his
mother’s consolation, a noble portrait of him whom they had lost: “The
first comfort you can know must spring up from within yourself, from
your reflection and religion, from your recalling to memory that my
father’s active and vigorous mind was always occupied in doing good to
others. That his seventy-five years were unostentatiously but
inestimably filled with perpetual services to his fellow-creatures. That
although he was tried, and that severely, with some of those calamities
from which we cannot be exempt, yet he enjoyed an uncommon portion of
tranquillity and happiness, for, by his firmness and understanding, he
was enabled to bear like a man the visitations of external misfortunes,
and from within no troubled conscience or compunction of self-reproach
ever disturbed his peace.”
The years from 1778 to 1789 were, doubtless, the happiest years in
Elizabeth Emmet’s life. The elder boys, Christopher Temple and
Thomas Addis, were at the University, and a mother even less tender
than she, could not but be filled with pride and happiness at the
brilliant records they were making for themselves. In one of these
years there arrived from America kinsfolk of her husband’s, Sir John
and Robert Temple, and the latter’s family, and in the hospitable
eighteenth-century manner which its big houses and generous style of
living fostered, they became inmates of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet’s house.
The tie which bound the Emmets to the Temples was strengthened, when
in 1784 Christopher Temple Emmet married his cousin, Miss Anne
Western Temple, daughter of Robert. He had been called to the Bar a
short time previously and was in extensive practice. I have already
quoted Grattan’s opinion of his gifts. Even more significant was the
testimony—spoken of all places in the world—in the very Court
wherein Christopher’s youngest brother was awaiting the
death-sentence—and by the lips that were so soon to pronounce it,
the cruel lips of “Hanging Judge” Norbury. “You had an eldest
brother whom death snatched away, and who when living was one of the
greatest ornaments of the Bar. The laws of his country were the
study of his youth, and the study of his maturer years was to
cultivate and support them.” With Christopher marked out, by the
judgment of all the competent men of his time for high advancement;
with a charming and amiable new daughter added to her household in
the shape of Christopher’s wife; with her second son, Thomas Addis,
winning all sorts of distinctions for himself in the University of
Edinburgh, whither he had gone to study medicine; with Mary Anne,
growing into lovely womanhood, and showing a strength of character
and a breadth of intellect, which stamped her as a true Emmet; with
young Robert, earning praise from his masters and regard from his
comrades; with the spectacle of her husband’s delight in all this to
double her own—Elizabeth Emmet might well count herself, for one
golden moment at least, that rare thing: a perfectly happy woman.
Alas! Alas! how short the moment to which we may cry with Faust, “tarry
awhile, thou art so fair.” Very speedily, Elizabeth Emmet’s “fair
moment” passed. In February, 1789, her son, Christopher Temple, went
“circuit” in Munster—and one day to those who waited his return in the
pleasant home in Stephen’s Green there came the tragic news of his death
from smallpox. The blow was too severe for Christopher’s young wife. She
died a few months after her husband, leaving their little daughter,
Kitty, to the care of her grandparents. Elizabeth Emmet had to live
on—to face the sorrows that yet awaited her.
At the desire of Dr. Emmet, the second son, Thomas Addis, anxious “to
fill” as far as in him lay, “the place of his brother,” turned aside
from the profession of medicine, in which he had already graduated, and
took up that of law. He was called to the Bar in 1790. In 1791, he
married Miss Jane Patten, daughter of Rev. John Patten of Clonmel, his
choice of a bride giving the greatest satisfaction to his father and
mother.
At first the young couple lived with the old Doctor and his wife, as
part of the one household; but as the little grandchildren began to fill
the nursery, it was found desirable to provide separate establishments.
The Doctor, with this end in view, divided his house in Stephen’s Green,
West, into two portions. It stood (and still stands, divided as the
Doctor left it into two residences) at the corner of Lamb’s Lane and
Stephen’s Green, West,[12] and the Doctor kept the corner portion for
himself and assigned the inner to his son’s family. Thomas Addis Emmet
had, also, as we know from Tone’s “Autobiography,” “a charming villa” at
Rathfarnham, and doubtless the whole family were made welcome in it,
whenever the call of the countryside overbid the attractions of the
town, in the years previous to Dr. Emmet’s purchase of Casino—the
country residence where he spent his last years.
Footnote 12:
Mr. Reynolds identifies them as 124 and 125 Stephen’s Green, West. In
Dr. Emmet’s time the house was numbered 109.