an attempt to unite the Catholics and Dissenters. He accordingly sat
down and wrote a pamphlet,[59] over the signature of a “Northern Whig,”
in which he sought “to convince the Dissenters that they and the
Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy; that the
depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the
divisions existing between them, and that, consequently, to assert the
independence of their country, and their own individual liberties, it
was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire
strength of the whole nation, and to form for the future but one
people.”[60]
Footnote 59:
“Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.”
Footnote 60:
“Autobiography,” p. 50.
The pamphlet had an immense success and its results a very decisive
influence on the Tones’ fortunes. On the one hand, the Catholics, who
under the capable leadership of John Keogh, were developing a new
“forward” policy, sought out this champion of theirs and loaded him with
attentions. Through John Keogh, Tone made the acquaintance of the
principal Catholic leaders in Dublin, Richard MacCormick, John Sweetman,
Edward Byrne, Thomas Braughall. During the winter of 1791 the Catholic
leaders, who were for the most part men of great wealth, got into the
fashion of giving splendid dinners to their political friends, and Tone
was invariably a guest at these functions. Eventually he was offered,
through the influence of Keogh, the position of assistant secretary to
the Catholic Committee, with a salary of £200 a year. In those days one
could live very comfortably on £200 a year, and poor Matilda Tone, who
must have known many an anxious moment up to this, must have looked on
it as affluence. Tone earned his salary well; and the astonishing
success of the Catholic Convention was largely due to his energy and
splendid power of organisation. In his efforts on behalf of the
Catholics, and in his fidelity to their cause, Tone was greatly
stimulated by his wife’s sympathy. He pays her, in this connection, one
of the noblest compliments a wife ever received: “In these sentiments I
was encouraged and confirmed by the incomparable spirit of my wife, to
whose patient suffering under adversity, for we had often been reduced,
and were now well accustomed to difficulties, I know not how to render
justice. Women, in general, I am sorry to say, are mercenary, and,
especially if they have children, they are ready to make all sacrifices
to their establishment. But my dearest love had bolder and juster views.
On every occasion of my life I consulted her; we had no secrets one from
the other, and I unvaryingly found her think and act with energy and
courage, combined with the greatest courage and discretion. If ever I
succeed in life or arrive at anything like station or eminence I shall
consider it as due to her counsels and her example.”[61]
Footnote 61:
“Autobiography,” p. 66.
The pamphlet had made an equally favourable impression on the Dissenters
of the North, and especially on the advanced thinkers of Belfast. Its
author was elected an honorary member of the first “or green” company of
the Belfast Volunteers (an honour never before accorded to any one
except Henry Flood) and invited to spend a few days in Belfast to make
the personal acquaintance of the republican leaders there. He set off
for the North about the beginning of October, accompanied by his friend
Russell, who had left the army and happened to be in Dublin on his
private affairs.
Of this trip Tone kept for his wife’s amusement a diary, a practice
which he continued, when he was absent from her, to the end of his life.
He and she were diligent readers of Swift, and he invokes the memory of
Swift and Stella when he writes to tell her of all the news he has
“journalised” for her, and which he looks forward to reading over with
her when he gets home. He has christened his friend, Russell, “P.P. or
Clerk of this Parish”—another reminiscence of Swift,[62] and he promises
his wife she will be much amused by said P.P.’s “exploits in my journal,
which is a thousand times wittier than Swift’s, as in justice it ought,
for it is written for the amusement of one a thousand times more amiable
than Stella.”
Footnote 62:
In the “Memoirs of the Clerk of the Parish,” Swift parodied Bishop
Burton’s “History of His Own Times.”
Little, perhaps, did this dear lady, “a thousand times more amiable than
Stella,” think, as her charming face dimpled over her husband’s
ludicrous account of his own and his friend’s adventures, that she was
reading one of the most important chapters in Irish history. For the
business afoot in Belfast—the aim and object of Tone’s and Russell’s
embassy was nothing less than the establishment of the United
Irishmen—the union of Irish Catholics, Irish Protestants and Irish
Dissenters under the common name of Irish _men_ against the common
enemy. But perhaps she did, for nobody can have known better than she
what a serious aim, what strength of will and tenacity of purpose, what
a steel-like grip of principles and logical fidelity to their
consequences lay under the light surface of her husband’s wit and
drollery. The best minds in Ireland were the quickest to grasp Tone’s
greatness and genius: Thomas Addis Emmet, John Keogh, Plunkett—to take
three, out of three very different types. The best minds in France
showed, afterwards, a like readiness of appreciation: Carnot, the
Organiser of Victory, and General Hoche.
One thing, however, it is certain, Matilda Tone never dreamed of: the
way in which the Journal’s family jokes—bad, if you like, as family
jokes always are, except to the “family” itself, to whom they seem
irresistibly funny—were to be interpreted against the diarist and his
friend. It was one of the favourite jests of the merry little party of
holiday-makers at Irishtown to represent “Tom” Russell, who was dignity
and solemnity itself, something like a Spanish Don, in his courtesy and
punctilio,[63] as a desperate character, a regular Jonah Barrington type
of “Irishman.” It tickled their sense of the ludicrous, something in the
same way as when they found Tone setting his dignified friend to cook
the dinner in his “fine suit of laced regimentals.” “If you do not know
who P.P. was, the joke will be lost on you,” writes Tone _à propos_ to
the incidents in which solemn “P.P.” is made to figure as a regular
“hell of a fellow.”
Footnote 63:
We have, among a host of other witnesses on this point, Charles
Hamilton Teeling, himself a man of the finest courtesy, most
fastidious sense of honour and highest breeding. When Lord
Castlereagh, on the day of his own arrest, informed him that Russell
was also among those arrested, Charles exclaimed: “Russell! then the
soul of honour is captive.” (“Personal Narrative,” p. 19). He tells
further on how Russell, when the prisoners were brought to Judge
Boyd’s house for their committment, was pained by Neilson’s levity.
“No man regarded etiquette and the punctilios of politeness more. He
looked solemn, stroked up his fine black hair, and with a sweetness of
countenance peculiarly his own, and in a gently modulated but
sufficiently audible tone of voice he begged of his friend Neilson to
respect the dignity of the Bench.” Russell was a deeply religious
character, with that combined humility, consciousness of his own
weakness, and striving after perfection which is the foundation of
saintliness. There is nothing nobler, more touching, or more edifying
in our history than the story of how he went to his death.
Unfortunately, later readers of the Journal, not knowing “P.P.,” nor the
incorrigible practical joker who was his friend, have missed the point
of the jokes and have taken the Journal’s accusations of excessive
drinking and other peccadilloes as literal transcripts of facts. I do
not here merely speak of Froude, who treats the Journal with his usual
absence of all honesty in handling documents, detaches all the
references to hard drinking, omits, _as a matter of course_, all
reference to the fact that this Journal was written by Tone for his
wife’s amusement, and on the strength of the diarist’s jokes against
himself and his friend, makes out Russell and Tone as a pair of
“ne’er-do-wells,” who, on a drunken spree, set out “to measure swords
against the British Empire.”[64] We expect nothing better from Froude;
but it is disconcerting to find Lecky and Barry O’Brien equally misled
by Tone’s flippancy.
Footnote 64:
Froude, “English in Ireland,” III., 19.
* * * * *
We pass over a year or two, during which Tone was fully occupied by his
work for the Catholic Committee, and the organisation of the first
branches of the United Irishmen, and come to the year 1795, which was to
be a turning point in his own life and in that of his dear ones—the
beloved wife, their little nine-year-old daughter, and the two small
sons, William, now aged four, and three-year-old Frank.
Tone was spending a pleasant musical evening with a friend of his in
Merrion Square, when a servant was introduced bearing a letter which he
had strict orders to deliver only into Mr. Tone’s hands. The latter read
the letter and then said quietly to his friend, “Phil, we must finish
this duet; I must go when it is done.” It transpired afterwards that the
letter had come from Tone’s good friend of the old Temple days in
London, Hon. George Knox, Lord Northland’s son, and its purport was to
warn Tone that the Government had information of his connection with
Jackson, the emissary of the French Government, and that it would be
advisable for him to get out of the country as quickly as possible.
We know, now (what poor Tone went to his grave without suspecting) that
the horrible treachery of Cockayne, the spy who had been set by Pitt to
lead Jackson to destruction, was being outmatched by the treachery of
Leonard MacNally, who had spared no trouble to implicate Tone and others
with Jackson. Urged on by MacNally, though, as it appears, against his
own instincts, Tone drew up a paper on the state of Ireland, “the
inference from which was, that circumstances in Ireland were favourable
to a French invasion.” Of this paper MacNally obtained possession, and
there is no doubt at all that through him it fell into the hands of
Government.
The friendship of two persons, with considerable influence in Government
circles, saved Tone. These were George Knox—and of all persons in the
world—Marcus Beresford! Through the powerful machinery which they were
able to put in motion Tone escaped the consequences of his indiscretion,
on the condition that he should leave the country.
He determined to go to America. But he had no intention of remaining
there. Before he left Dublin, Russell and he walked out to see Thomas
Addis Emmet in his charming villa at Rathfarnham. The master of the
house showed his guests “a little study of an elliptical shape which he
said he would consecrate to their meetings, if ever they lived to see
their country emancipated.” Even in that solemn moment, Tone could not
resist the temptation to rally poor Russell, who was doubtless looking
more solemn than usual, in his grief at the near parting. But, though
Emmet entered into the spirit of the jest, they all felt as much as
Russell the seriousness of the moment, and it was a very thoughtful trio
who walked back to town together, listening to Tone’s plans. Both
Russell and Emmet agreed with the latter that his promise to Government
was fulfilled by his going into exile. As to his future conduct after
his landing in America he had given no guarantee. His intention was
“immediately on his arrival in Philadelphia to wait on the French
Minister, to detail to him fully, the situation of affairs in Ireland,
to endeavour to obtain a recommendation to the French Government, and if
he succeeded so far, to leave his family in America, and to set off
instantly for Paris, and apply in the name of his country for the
assistance of France in order to assert Ireland’s independence.”[65] The
three friends were standing in a little triangular field while this
conversation took place, and when they had shaken hands over the
resolution that was implied in it, Emmet pointed out that “it was in one
exactly like it in Switzerland, William Tell and his associates planned
the downfall of the tyranny of Austria.”
Footnote 65:
“Autobiography,” p. 212.
When public excitement was at its height in consequence of Jackson’s
trial and his tragic death in the dock, Tone, unwilling to incriminate
any of his friends, abstained from paying any visits. But his friends
sought him out, and for the short time Mrs. Tone and he were in Dublin
after that they were never an instant alone. John Keogh and Richard
MacCormick were among the kindest and most assiduous. Tone told these
men of his plans, and received from them the most emphatic assurances of
their approval.
On May the 20th, 1795, the Tones left Dublin. Matilda Tone and her
children were never to see that city again, and Theobald was to enter it
again only in the irons of the arch-enemy.
Mary Tone, who was devotedly attached to her beautiful sister-in-law and
her charming children, made up her mind to leave Ireland with Theobald’s
family. Her departure left old Peter Tone and his wife very desolate, as
all their other children, William, Matthew, and Arthur were far away.
The grief of the old couple was the hardest thing the emigrants had to
endure. With his little property of 600 books, and £700 in money,
Theobald felt himself sufficiently equipped “to make good”—and Matilda
was not the woman to weaken his courage with any undue display of her
own feelings. “We kept our spirits admirably. The great attention
manifested to us, the conviction that we were suffering in the best of
causes, the hurry attending so great a change, and perhaps a little
vanity in showing ourselves superior to fortune, supported us under what
was certainly a trial of the severest kind.”
The attentions of the kind friends in Dublin, great as they were, were
far surpassed by those they found awaiting them in Belfast. The
MacCrackens, the Simmses, the Neilsons, Dr. MacDonnell, and a host of
others vied with each other in getting up entertainments for them;
parties and excursions were the order of the day. Tone tells us of some
of these in his Journal. He remembers particularly two days passed on
Cave Hill. On the first, Russell, Neilson, Simms, MacCracken, and he
climbed to McArt’s fort and took a solemn obligation never to desist in
their efforts until they had subverted the authority of England, over
their country, and asserted their independence. Another day they had a
pic-nic in the Deer Park, for which the Belfast ladies, Mary Anne and
Margaret MacCracken, Mrs. Neilson, Miss Simms, etc., exerted all their
culinary talents; another day, even more delicious yet, was spent in a
pic-nic party to beautiful Ram’s Island in Lough Neagh. After their
return to town there were suppers and dances and a little music in these
friends’ houses. Many, many years after, Mary Anne MacCracken, then a
very old woman, told Dr. Madden of what she felt when she heard little
Maria Tone sing in her clear voice, to the air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn,”
her father’s spirited words: “When Rome by dividing had conquered the
world.”
The last evening of their stay came all too quickly. They were spending
it at the MacCracken’s home, of which Bunting was an inmate. The talk
turned, as it was bound to do among such ardent lovers of music, as
these were, on Bunting’s collection of Irish Melodies which was well on
its way to completion, and Bunting was asked to play some air from it.
He chose that called “The Parting of Friends,” and as the poignant grief
of the old air sought out all their hearts, Matilda Tone’s fortitude,
for the first time, gave way. She burst into tears and left the room.
The next morning they went aboard the _Cincinnatus_, accompanied by
their kind friends who had come to take the last farewell of them. When
Matilda Tone went down to see her quarters she found the little
state-room her husband had taken for his family full of the good things
these friends had provided for their comfort: sea-stores, wine, porter
and spirits, fresh provisions, sweetmeats, and so on. The foresight of
Dr. MacDonnell had also provided a small medicine chest with written
directions. This was to be of the greatest service, not for the Tones
alone, but for their unfortunate fellow-passengers during the trying
weeks ahead of them.
A voyage across the Atlantic in those days, in a small sailing vessel of
230 tons, was a most horrible experience. There were three hundred
passengers on board this boat and they were “crowded to a degree not to
be conceived by those who had never been aboard a passenger ship.” “The
slaves who are carried from Africa,” Tone writes, “have much more room
allowed them than the miserable emigrants who pass from Ireland to
America.” The captains were out to make as much money as possible and
they loaded their vessels with as little care for the accommodation of
their passengers as of any other lumber aboard. The Tones had a small
state-room eight feet by six. In this Tone fitted up three berths. One
was occupied by Matilda and little Frank; the second by the two Maries;
the third by Tone himself and the elder boy William. Tone took on
himself the “policing” of the ship, and tried to introduce some
cleanliness. Moreover, with the aid of Dr. MacDonnell’s medicine chest
and “written directions,” he doctored the passengers—his prescriptions
drawing also on his own sea-stores, and the wines and spirits provided
by his Belfast friends. He had the satisfaction of landing all his
patients safe and sound; and his own family, wonderfully fortunate, had
not known one hour’s sickness.
But strait quarters, overcrowding and all the other horrors we have
described did not exhaust the sufferings endured by Irish emigrants in
the eighteenth century. “About the 20th July ... we were stopped by
three British frigates, the _Thetis_, Captain Lord Cochrane; the
_Hussar_, Captain Rose, and the _Esperance_, Captain Wood, who boarded
us, and after treating us with the greatest insolence, both officers and
sailors, they _pressed_ every one of our hands, save one, and near fifty
of my unfortunate fellow-passengers, who were most of them flying to
America to avoid the tyranny of a bad government at home, and who thus,
most unexpectedly, fell under the severest tyranny, one of them at least
which exists. As I was in a jacket and trousers, one of the lieutenants
ordered me into the boat, as a fit man to serve the king, and it was
only the screams of my wife and sister which induced him to desist. It
would have been a pretty termination to my adventure if I had been
pressed and sent on board a man-of-war. The insolence of these tyrants,
as well to myself as to my poor fellow-passengers, in whose fate a
fellowship in misfortune had interested me, I have not since forgotten,
and I never will.”[66]
Footnote 66:
“Autobiography,” p. 217.
With such gracious sway did great Britannia “rule the waves” in the good
old days!
On August the 1st the Tones landed in Wilmington, their voyage having
lasted from June the 13th. They found the principal tavern of the place
kept by an Irishman, Captain O’Byrne O’Flynn, a veteran of the American
War of Independence. Here they rested for a few days, and made a useful
and agreeable acquaintance in the person of General Humpton, an old
Englishman, of the best type (“a beautiful, hale, stout old man of near
seventy, perfectly the soldier and the gentleman”) who had fought on the
American side in the late war. He took a great liking to Tone, and his
charming wife, and sister and pretty children, and showed himself very
eager to serve them.
The Tones left Wilmington, as soon as the ladies and children had
recruited from the fatigue of the sea-voyage and reached Philadelphia on
August the 8th. Here Tone met two old friends—Hamilton Rowan and Dr.
Reynolds, both of whom had, like himself, got into trouble with the
Irish Government over the “_affaire Jackson_.” They had a great time
telling each other their adventures since they had last met in Hamilton
Rowan’s cell in Newgate fourteen months previously. Reynolds and Rowan
were athirst for news from Ireland, and eagerly listened to all Tone had
to tell them.
Tone lost no time in approaching the French Minister, Adet, in
Philadelphia. Bearing a letter of introduction from Rowan, he waited the
very day after his arrival on Adet, and signified in as clear a way as
was possible under the circumstances (“_he_ spoke English very
imperfectly, and I French a great deal worse”) the desires of himself
and his friends in Ireland for French aid to shake off the English yoke.
Adet requested him to draw up a memorial, and promised to transmit this
to his Government. He also promised to use his influence to procure the
enlargement of Matthew Tone, who was a prisoner at Guise. But this was
as far as he would go.
Poor Tone, much disheartened by the Minister’s attitude, found little
ground for hope that the French Government would pay any attention to
his memorial. It seemed to him that the only result of his exertions was
the satisfaction of having discharged his conscience to his country. But
as for anything being likely to come of them, he could see no prospects
at all.
This being so, he bent his mind to making some provision for his family.
Living in Philadelphia being enormously dear, he moved his family to
Donningstown, near General Humpton’s place, and leaving them there under
the General’s kind supervision, he roamed the country in search of a
suitable farm. After some disappointments he found one about two miles
from Princeton. He took a small house in that town, furnished it
frugally and decently, moved his family into it, and having fitted up
his study, determined to settle down, as contentedly as he could, to the
life of an American farmer.
Then suddenly all was changed. One day Matilda came into the little
study, where her husband dreamed his time away, waiting for the legal
formalities attending the purchase of his plantation to be completed,
and in her hand was a bundle of letters from Ireland. John Keogh had
written; Tom Russell had written; the two Simmses had written—and each
of them in the same strain, telling Tone that the public mind in Ireland
was advancing towards republicanism faster than even he could believe,
and pressing him in the strongest manner to fulfil the engagement he had
made with them at his departure, and to move heaven and earth to force
his way to the French Government in order to supplicate their
assistance. Wm. Simms, at the end of a most friendly and affectionate
letter, desired Tone to draw upon him for £200 sterling.
Tone immediately handed the letters to his wife and sister and desired
their opinion which he foresaw would be that he should immediately, if
possible, set out for France. “My wife, especially, whose courage and
whose zeal for my honour and interests were not in the least abated by
all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her
or our children stand for a moment in the way of my engagements to our
friends and my duty to my country, adding, that she would answer for our
family during my absence, and that the same Providence which had so
often, as it were, miraculously preserved us would, she was confident,
not desert us now. My sister joined her in those entreaties, and it may
well be supposed I required no great supplication to induce me to make
one more attempt in a cause to which I had been so long devoted.”