Costello of Tuam tells me that his great-grandmother was taught Latin by
a man working on her father’s farm—a disguised friar. The scribes put
aside their copying for a time to form the little maidens’ hands to the
delicate Italian script which was the admiration of the time. The
wandering harper, who honoured their father’s house with a visit, could
sometimes be induced to give the daughters of the family a course of
lessons on his sweet instrument. Arthur O’Neill tells us of teaching the
harp to two young ladies in Longford, Miss Farrell and Miss Plunkett.
“Miss Farrell played handsomely; Miss Plunkett middling.”[37] Most of
the old Catholic families had members settled abroad, and intercourse
with the Continent was therefore so close and intimate that the outlook
of the Irish at home was far less insular than it is at present.
Occasionally uncles and cousins, who had won fame as soldiers in foreign
services, came home to visit their people, and as they liked to have
their nephews and nieces able to converse with them in French, or
Spanish, or German, as the case might be, the little ones were
stimulated to learn as much as they could in expectation of their
kinsmen’s coming. Little Mary Ann McCracken had to learn her French from
an old weaver, but little Mary Taaffe and her sisters had all around
them priests, who had studied abroad, and were only too anxious to keep
up their practice of foreign languages by speaking them with their
little parishioners. And so when the Taaffe uncle who had fought at
Fontenoy, or his son, who witnessed the dispersal of the Brigade, came
home to Ireland, their fastidious ears were not tortured by the halting
French or vile accents of their young kinswomen. In many a country
house, as in that of the O’Connors of Belanagare, were living ladies,
like Madame O’Rorke, Charles O’Connor’s grandmother, widows of
distinguished Irish officers in the French, or Spanish or Imperial
service, who had spent their youth in the most brilliant circle in
Europe, had been the friends and _confidantes_ of Queens, and who now
took delight in forming their little grandchildren and nieces to the
exquisite manners and gracious bearing which, in their own case, had won
the admiration of the most polished society on the Continent. In other
houses were other ladies who under the secular garb which the
necessities of the time imposed on them, carried out as well as they
could, in their kinsmen’s homes, the religious rule of life to which
they had bound themselves in their suppressed convents. When the
convents were closed, and the nuns scattered, those who, instead of
going abroad, found refuge with their relatives and friends, devoted
themselves largely to the education of the little girls of the
household. They trained them to their own exquisite skill in needlework,
they taught them something of the art of healing, and above all they
filled their minds with sweet and lovely images through their stories of
the girl saints who had been their own unseen but constant companions in
cell, and garden, and church; they turned them steadily to the imitation
of the virtues by which the Elizabeths, the Cecilias, the Catherines,
the Agneses had won their place as hand-maidens of the Heavenly Queen.
Footnote 37:
“Annals of Irish Harpers,” p. 179.
There is no story more beautiful in our national annals than the
story—yet untold in its completeness—of the Irish nuns during the ages
of persecution. We see them avail themselves of the slightest lull in
the storm to found their convents, and carry out the _Magnum Opus_ to
which they had vowed their life. The days of the Confederation of
Kilkenny saw the foundation of the Dominican Convent at Galway,[38] the
days of James II saw its restoration, and the establishment of the
Benedictines in Dublin. To such institutions the Catholic gentry sent
their daughters to be educated, and we have only to turn to the pages of
O’Heyne[39] to learn what manner of women these were who had the
training of their young compatriots.
Footnote 38:
O’Heyne states that the convent was established at the end of the
reign of James I. but it was only in 1644 that the church was built
and a house arranged in conventural style. The foundation was
confirmed by Rinuccini in 1647.
Footnote 39:
Admirably edited by Rev. Ambrose Coleman, O.P., who has contributed an
Appendix full of the most valuable historical information (Dundalk,
1902).
We see the heroic and saintly Prioress of the Dominican Nuns in Galway,
Juliana Nolan, “a woman of heroic fortitude in bearing every kind of
adversity, and very firm in observance and the gaining of virtues”; her
successor, Mary Lynch, who taught school in Spain before her return to
Galway, “a most religious woman and of great capacity for ruling and
instructing”; and above all Mary O’Halloran, than whom, O’Heyne
declares, he had never known a woman of stronger intellect. “She had a
more accurate acquaintance with the Spanish tongue than the Spaniards
themselves, and was well versed in sacred and profane history.”
It was not alone the young girls of the “Tribes” or the chieftainly
families of the West who were sent to the Convent in Galway to be
trained by the women we have described. Even right across the country
from Drogheda pupils came to them. One of these, Catherine Plunkett,
daughter of Thomas Plunkett, of Drogheda, and a relation of the martyred
Archbishop, Oliver Plunkett, passed from the school room, at an early
age, to the novitiate and received her religious training under Mary
Lynch. “She shared in all the vicissitudes of that Community, who were
several times compelled by religious persecution to quit their convent.
Some sought shelter in the homes of their relations or friends, whilst
not a few experienced the utmost vigours of poverty. Father Hugh
O’Callaghan, who was Prior Provincial of the Dominicans from 1709 to
1718, having during the course of his Visitation, found the Sisters in
this lamentable condition, and without any hope of their being permitted
to return to their Convent, obtained for them from the Archbishop of
Dublin, Most Rev. Dr. Edmund Byrne, permission to settle in his diocese;
accordingly in March, 1717, eight of them (of whom Catherine Plunkett
was one) arrived in the Metropolis and took up their abode first in
Fisher’s Lane, from which they soon afterwards removed to the ancient
Benedictine Convent, Chancel Row (now North Brunswick Street).”[40]
Footnote 40:
Memoir of Mother M. Catherine Plunkett, compiled from the Archives of
Sienna Convent, Drogheda, very kindly furnished me by Mother Prioress
and Community.
After a little time, Catherine Plunkett obtained the permission of her
Superiors to go to Belgium, where she was received into the Convent of
the English Dominican Sisters, called the _Spillikens_, from its
proximity to a pin factory. Here she remained about three years until at
the urgent request of the Primate Hugh MacMahon, she was recalled in
1721, by the Provincial, Dr. Stephen MacEgan, to found a convent in her
native town of Drogheda.
It reads like a chapter of the _Fioretti_—the record of the early days
of Catherine Plunkett’s foundation in Drogheda. The first home of the
nuns was a little mud cabin on the Meath side of the Boyne. Long before
day broke over the shining sands and thin line of Eastern sea, the
Dominican Father who ministered to their spiritual wants, used to row
himself over in a little boat to say Mass and give them holy Communion.
Dressed in secular garb, with their real character known only to a few
discreet friends, the ladies from Brussels obtained, without much
difficulty, leave from the Protestant Primate to open a school, and the
Drogheda merchants were very glad to send their daughters to them.
Later, they moved to a house in Dyer Street, and opened a boarding
school, and an establishment for lady boarders. All the _noblesse_ of
the Pale, the Plunketts, the Bellews, the Balfes, the Dillons, the
O’Reillys, the Drakes, the Fortescues, the Taaffes are represented among
the first pupils—and it is not at all unlikely that our heroine, Mary
Taaffe, received her education in this Dyer Street Convent, which
welcomed so many of her kinswomen. The nuns of Sienna very kindly
searched their old account books for her name, but unfortunately the
books were missing for the years 1762 to 1765, which are the very years
when we might expect to find her there—if we are right in assuming that
she was born about 1753.[41]
Footnote 41:
The date has only been arrived at by inference. She was married in
1771, and we know from her grandson’s narrative that she was
considered to have married early, say about eighteen. Her mother died
in 1753, which set a posterior limit to her conjectured birth year.
So while it is not improbable that Catherine Plunkett’s Convent in
Drogheda had the credit of the education which produced so charming a
result, we cannot attain any certainty in the matter. Nor do we know
much about Mary Taaffe’s childhood. Her father, Mr. George Taaffe,
representative of that branch of the Taaffes who held the Earldom of
Carlingford under the Stuarts, lived in Ardee on the remnant of the
ancestral estates which was all the family’s devotion to the “Lost
Cause” of the Stuarts had left them, and within sight of the ancestral
castle of Smarmore, which his son was to purchase back for the family.
His young wife, Elizabeth Keappock, died in 1753 at the early age of
thirty, leaving him with one son, John, and four daughters. Of these,
one married Terence Kiernan; another, a member of the Scurly family, a
third, Alice, James Lynch of Drogheda. John, the only son, was twice
married, first to Anne Plunkett of Portmarnock, and after her death in
1786 to Catherine Taaffe.
The ease with which Mr. George Taaffe got his girls married (an ease
which anxious parents of the present day might well envy) to young men
who in respect of fortune and family were among the most eligible
_partis_ in the Pale, suggests that the Taaffe girls were very
attractive. Doubtless their father’s house, when his four charming
daughters still graced it, was an extremely pleasant place; and it is
not to be wondered at that the girls’ clever young kinsman, Mr. Luke
Teeling, found himself often taking in Ardee[42] on his journeys between
his father’s place near Balbriggan and the establishment of the linen
merchant in Lisburn with whom he was serving his apprenticeship.
Footnote 42:
It would be quite in his way if we are justified in assuming that the
route taken by Thomas Molyneux in 1707 was the ordinary one.
As is so often the case with serious-minded young men, there was a
strong, if hidden, vein of romance in Luke Teeling’s nature, and he soon
discovered that he had lost his heart irrevocably, to his pretty cousin,
Mary. She was young, hardly more than a child at the time, and her
father was loth to part with his little maid so soon; but he recognised
the sterling qualities of her suitor and gave his consent to an
engagement, which terminated in the marriage of the young couple at
Ardee on April 6th, 1771.
There had been an old connection between the Taaffes and the Teelings,
and we learn from Bartholomew Teeling’s Memoir of his uncle that Luke
Teeling’s mother was of the house of Taaffe. After the record of the
marriage of Luke and Mary (still kept at Smarmore Castle) the words are
inserted, “obtenta dispensatione in consanguinitate.”
Like the Taaffes, the Teelings had suffered much during the long wars
which devastated Ireland in the seventeenth century, and of the broad
acres which their forefathers had held in Meath for over five hundred
years there remained after the “Third Breaking” of Aughrim, in the
pathetic phrase of one of the family’s present-day representatives,
little more than “the semi-circular arched vault in the churchyard of
Rathkenny.” But even before Father Teeling, who came back from his
College on the Continent about the beginning of the eighteenth century,
to endure the life of suffering, and labour, and peril of a missionary
priest in Ireland under the Penal Régime, was gathered to his fathers in
that vault, the fortunes of the family were already in the ascent. In
truth there was something in the Teelings which forced them to the front
in whatever walk of life they might choose for themselves, whether as
soldiers, like the old knightly Teelings of the Middle Ages, whose names
survive in many an ancient deed of gift to religious houses; or
churchmen, like Father Ignatius Teeling, S. J., or scholars like
Theobald Teeling, the correspondent of Justus Lipsius, and that other
Teeling, who has been described by Archbishop Peter Talbot as “_urbis et
orbis miraculum_.”[43] And this something—call it personality, force of
character, or what you will—was peculiarly evident in Bartholomew
Teeling whom we find settled in the neighbourhood of Balbriggan about
the middle of the eighteenth century.
Footnote 43:
These particulars concerning the Teeling family are taken from an
excellent article in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ (October, 1905), by a
writer signing himself “Albi Norman.”
It was in the days when Balbriggan, under the fostering care of its
landlord, Baron Hamilton, of Hampton Hall,[44] was developing from a
miserable little fishing hamlet into a prosperous trading town. With the
assistance of a small grant from the Irish Parliament, the Baron built
the pier, in the sixties of the eighteenth century, and thus fostered a
lively carrying trade with Wales. Ships of two hundred tons could unload
in the new harbour, and such craft crowded the quay, unloading cargoes
of slates, coal and culm, as well as rock salt and bark, and carrying
back corn and cattle. In 1780 the Baron established extensive cotton
works here, for the promotion of which parliament granted the sum of
£1,250, but this manufacture was subsequently almost abandoned for that
of hosiery.[45] When Arthur Young visited Ireland in 1776, he spent a
few days with the Baron, and we learn from him[46] much of the latter’s
improvements; of the one hundred and fifty acres of mountain land he
reclaimed; of the agricultural methods he adopted, and of their
financial results; of the local fishing industry and how he worked it.
It seems the Baron had boat-building works, and out of these came his
fleet of “23 boats each carrying seven men, who were not paid wages, but
divided the produce of the fishery. The vessel took one share, and the
hands one each, which amounts on an average to 16s. a week. A boat costs
from £130 to £200, fitted out ready for the fishery; they make their own
nets.”
Footnote 44:
He was M.P. for Belfast, Solicitor General and Baron of the Exchequer
(D’Alton’s “History of County Dublin,” p. 477).
Footnote 45:
D’Alton, _op. cit._, p. 468.
Footnote 46:
“Tour in Ireland,” Vol. I.
With the agricultural experiments of the Baron, and his industrial and
trading enterprises, Bartholomew Teeling was closely identified. He held
the lands in Walshetown, Gardiner’s Hill, Kilbrickstown, etc., and some
family documents, which I have been privileged to examine, have
reference to business transactions with Baron Hamilton, which would seem
to indicate that Bartholomew Teeling helped to finance the Baron’s
schemes.
At all events Bartholomew prospered, and when he died the provisions he
was able to make for his sons and the education he gave them, show that
he had accumulated a comfortable fortune. He was married twice, it would
appear, his first wife being of the Taaffe family, and his second a Miss
Grace. By these he had a numerous family of sons. In addition to Luke,
the eldest son, we find mention in the family papers of Christopher, a
well-known doctor in Dublin; James, who seems to have remained in his
father’s place near Balbriggan and combined manufacturing and farming;
Joseph, and Robert, afterwards merchants in Dublin; and Bartholomew.
There was also a Patrick, but if he was one of these brothers, he must
have died soon, as his name early falls out of the family record.
Luke had been early apprenticed to the linen trade—and that fact in
itself indicates that his father was a man of means. For in the
endeavour to keep the trade “exclusive,” a high fee was charged, and a
fairly long apprenticeship insisted on.
After the repeal of the Edict of Nantes many French Protestant refugees
settled in Ireland. Some of these were highly skilled in the linen
manufacture and a settlement of them under Louis Crommelin in Lisburn, a
town on the Marquis of Hertford’s estate, made that place a thriving
centre of the industry. After Luke Teeling had completed his
apprenticeship, he stayed on in Lisburn, got a lease from the Marquis of
Hertford, and started a bleachyard of his own; and he was so successful,
that Mr. George Taaffe needed to have no misgiving about the future when
he gave his beloved daughter to him.
The early years of the married life of Luke and Mary Teeling were years
of unclouded happiness. A little Elizabeth, called perhaps after the
mother Mary Teeling had never known, came to them the following year.
She was followed by a goodly train of brothers and sisters: Bartholomew,
George, Charles, Luke and John were the boys. The girls, in addition to
Elizabeth, were Mary, Alice (called after Alice Taaffe who had married
James Lynch, of Drogheda), and Millicent.
Fortunate families, like fortunate nations, “have no history,” and there
is little to record of Mary Teeling during the years when her boys and
girls were growing up. In 1782 her husband acquired the lease of some
building ground on Church Hill and built a residence for his family in
keeping with his wealth and position; and a decade and a half of happy
years passed swiftly under its dignified roof. The large family party
which gathered permanently round the Teelings’ board was seldom without
a reinforcement of guests: business correspondents like Mr. Sam Wall, of
Worcester, or merchants from Dublin and Belfast, were sure of a hearty
welcome there. Old Mr. George Taaffe loved to come from Ardee, and spend
a month or two with his beloved grandchildren. Aunt “Ally” Lynch from
Drogheda, and kind Uncle James were frequent visitors. The elder boys,
Bartle and George and Charles, who were attending Mr. Saumarez
Dubourdieu’s famous classical school in the town, had frequent
permission to bring home their schoolfellows to dinner or supper, and
Mrs. Teeling’s “parties” were voted the most delightful in Lisburn. As
the boys grew older other guests were much in evidence—young officers
from the camp at Blaris-Moor with whom the Teeling lads fenced, or went
fishing or shooting, or rode to hounds, liked to be asked when the day’s
sport was over to accompany them to the hospitable mansion on Church
Hill, where a pleasant supper and a dance would wind up many a
delightful evening. The Teelings were noted horsemen—an hereditary
trait. The writer in _The Gentlemen’s Magazine_, having quoted the
younger Bartholomew Teeling’s description of his father and uncles as
“the best horsemen and the most accomplished swordsmen in the province,”
tells us that the Teelings “were proverbial for their love of small,
perfectly shaped, high-bred horses,” and refers to stories, still
current in the County of Meath, of the incredibly short time in which
they used to ride from their home to Dublin, on their beautiful little
horses.
“White with green facings their retainers did wear
And the young cavaliers were beloved of the fair.”[47]
Footnote 47:
Luke Teeling was looked on as a remarkably good judge of a horse, and
I find among the family papers not a few in which his friends seek his
advice on that all important subject.
The young men were born soldiers, and more than one effort was made by
officers and others of the highest rank to induce them to enter the
English army. The Marquis of Hertford, dining one day with Mr. Teeling,
promised his influence to get Charles into the Guards, and pledged his
powerful support towards his advancement. Luke Teeling replied that, as
far as he was concerned, his son was free to accept the flattering
offer—but to the surprise of the Marquis, it was declined by Charles
himself.
In truth, the boy, who though younger in years than Bartholomew or
George, had ripened earlier than they, had turned his thoughts in a
direction not very likely to end in a Commission in the English Army.
While Bartle still dallied in the pleasant ways of youth, and George was
away in Dublin,[48] Charles was thrown largely into his father’s
company, and imbibed the political views which the circumstances of the
time forced on a man of Mr. Teeling’s logical and just mind. Though it
is not said in so many words, we gather that Bartle and his father did
not quite understand each other. The younger Bartle tells us that his
namesake “scarcely brooked the restraint which the stoical and somewhat
severe principles of his father imposed upon him; but to his mother,
whose idol he was, and to his sisters, he was warmly and tenderly
attached. There was no youthful adventure too daring or even extravagant
for him; but nothing which inflicted pain, or which trifled with human
misery ever had his countenance.” He was fond of books, too, a diligent
student of the Classics, and a devotee of Shakespeare and perhaps these
tastes helped to keep him for a longer time than his brother a sojourner
in those regions of the Ideal where the call of the Real resoundeth not.
The day was to come, indeed, and speedily, too, when the cry of his
suffering country was to ring as loudly in Bartle’s ear as it had long
rung in that of Charles. And how he was to answer it all men know.
Footnote 48:
They were both apprenticed in the linen trade. Bartle with his father,
and George with the MacDonnells in Dublin.
In 1790 Mr. Teeling gave very active support to the parliamentary
candidature of Hon. Robert Stewart—afterwards Lord Castlereagh—who stood
in the Reform interest against the Downshire _clique_. Being a Catholic,
Mr. Teeling had no vote himself, but he spared neither his money nor his
personal exertions in favour of one who advocated so eloquently the
causes dear to Mr. Teeling’s heart: Catholic Emancipation and
Parliamentary Reform. The Teeling boys were enthusiastic admirers of the
young candidate, who indeed had been the idol of every patriotic heart
in the north since the day he rode—a lad of thirteen—at the head of a
company of boy Volunteers in the Review in Belfast, and made men think
of Cuchullin and the boy troop of Emain Macha, by the martial skill and
daring of their exploits. We know from Charles’s own assurance that the
tenderest ties bound him to his father: “He was to me,” he says, in one
of the most moving passages of his narrative, “not only the affectionate
parent, but also the companion and friend.” And doubtless, in the long
rides which father and son delighted to take in each other’s company,
Charles imbibed his father’s political opinions and learned to feel the
wrongs which the Catholics of Ireland were suffering as intolerable.