certificates and documents required by law, for making an
application to the legislature; or, indeed, before my mother was
able to attend to it. Nor did she know one member of the Council
of five hundred, to present them to when they were ready. In
reading this speech of Lucien, she felt that he was the person
she ought to address. My father had been known to his brother,
when he commanded the army of England; and he was one of the
representatives. She immediately wrote a note to him, to know
when she might have the honour of waiting upon him on particular
business? He answered that his public duties left only the hours
of ten in the morning or seven in the evening, unemployed; but
that at either of these, he would be happy to receive her. In
consequence, next morning, taking with her, her children, her
papers and the report of his speech, she called upon him and
presented to him that speech as her letter of introduction. He
was highly touched and flattered. She gave him all her papers
and showed him her children. He was much moved, and said he knew
the story well, and had been deeply affected by it, which
sentiment he only shared in common with every one who had heard
of it; that it was the duty of the French legislature to provide
for the family of Tone honourably; and thanked her for the
distinction conferred upon him, by choosing him to report on the
case. My mother mentioned the difficulties she lay under, an
unconnected stranger, scarcely understanding the language. He
stopped her by requesting her to take no more trouble; that he
would charge himself with it entirely, and get the permission of
the executive which would be necessary; and if he wanted any
particulars from her, would write to her for them. Nothing could
be more delicate or generous than his whole manner.
“Next morning, Madame Lucien Buonaparte called upon my mother,
and introduced herself.... An acquaintance commenced which only
terminated at her death a few months afterwards.
“The report of Lucien Buonaparte was still delayed for some
time. He had some papers to collect to prove my father’s
services. Carnot was in banishment; Hoche was dead; poor
Kilmaine, who ever since my father’s death had expressed a warm
interest in our fate, was dying. In the ravings of fever he
would insist on putting horses to his carriage, and driving with
us to the Directory and council of five hundred, to reproach
them with their delays in providing for the widow and children
of Tone. General Simon ... gave the necessary attestations. The
permission of the Directory was obtained; but Lucien, in order
to produce a greater effect, still delayed till the period of
his own Presidency....
“On the 9th of Brumaire, only nine days before the revolution
which put an end to the Directory and placed his brother at the
head of affairs, Lucien, then president of the council of five
hundred, pronounced at length a beautiful speech, which may be
called the funeral oration of my father. At the close of which a
committee was immediately appointed, to report on the subject of
a pension and permanent provision for the widow and family of
General Tone.”
We will interrupt William Tone’s narrative, for a moment, in
order to reproduce, in part, Lucien Buonaparte’s oration, and to
show the reverence the name of Tone inspired in France, and the
enthusiasm the lofty spirit and heroism, the conjugal and
maternal devotion of Matilda aroused in generous Gallic breasts.
“Representatives of the People,—I rise to call your attention to
the widow and children of a man whose memory is dear and
venerable to Ireland and to France—the Adjutant-General Theobald
Wolfe Tone, founder of the United Irish Society, who, betrayed
and taken in the expedition to Ireland, perished in Dublin,
murdered by the illegal sentence of a court-martial.
“Wolfe Tone only breathed for the liberty of his country. After
attempting every means to break the chains of British oppression
at home, he was invited by our Government to France, where from
the beginning of the fifth year of the Republic, he bore arms
under our colours. His talent and his courage announced him as
the future Washington of Ireland; his arm, whilst assisting in
our battles, was preparing to fight for his own country....
“It is precisely one year ago to the very day of the month that
a court-martial was assembled in Dublin to try a general officer
in the service of our Republic. Let us examine the papers of
that day.” [Here the orator read the account of the trial and
defence of General Tone. He then resumed.]
“You have heard the last word of this illustrious martyr of
liberty. What could I add to them? You see him, dressed in your
own uniform, in the presence of this murderous tribunal, in the
midst of this awe-struck and affected assembly. You hear him
exclaim: ‘After such sacrifices in the cause of liberty it is no
great effort, at this day, to add the sacrifice of my life. I
have courted poverty; I have left a beloved wife unprotected,
and children whom I adored, fatherless.’ Pardon him, if he
forgot, in those last moments that you were to be the fathers
and protectors of his Matilda and his children.
“Sentenced amidst the tears and groans of his country, Wolfe
Tone would not leave to her tyrants the satisfaction of seeing
him expire by a death which the prejudices of the world call
ignominious.... The day will yet, doubtless, come, when, in that
same city of Dublin, and on the spot where the satellites of
Britain were rearing that scaffold where they expected to wreak
their vengeance on Theobald the free people of Ireland will
erect a trophy to his memory, and celebrate, yearly, on the
anniversary of his trial, the festival of their union, around
his funeral monument. For the first time this anniversary is now
celebrated within these walls. Shade of a hero! I offer to thee,
in our name, the homage of our deep, of our universal emotion.
“A few words more—on the widow of Theobald, on his children.
Calamity would have overwhelmed a weaker soul. The death of her
husband was not the only one she had to deplore. His brother was
condemned to the same fate, and perished on the scaffold.
“If the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to
rouse your feelings, I might mention the independent spirit and
firmness of that noble woman, who, on the tomb of her husband
and of his brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the
deliverance of Ireland. I would attempt to give you an idea of
that Irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the
expression of her grief. Such were those women of Sparta, who on
the return of their countrymen from battle when, with anxious
looks, they ran over the ranks, and missed amongst them their
sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed: ‘He died
for his country; he died for the republic.’”
* * * * *
Strangely enough, the revolution which placed Napoleon in power as First
Consul, instead of helping the fortunes of Matilda Tone and her
children, had an adverse effect on them. Lucien broke with his brother,
as soon as he saw the true direction of the latter’s aims, and in
consequence a cause to which he lent his support had little chance of
finding favour with the First Consul. For the next five years Tone’s
widow and orphans might have died of starvation had it not been for the
generosity of Mr. Wilson, of Dullatur. “He was,” says William Tone, “to
my mother a brother, an admirer and a friend; he managed her slender
funds; and when sickness and death hovered over our little family, he
was our sole support.” Lucien Buonaparte also did what he could out of
his personal resources—and Theobald’s brother, William, who had cut a
way for himself with his sword in India, sent his sister-in-law and
nephews and niece a generous draft. He would have provided for them had
not his death prevented the accomplishment of his plans.
The arrival of some of the Fort George prisoners in France, including
Tom Russell, Thomas Addis Emmet, and Dr. MacNevin—all Tone’s dear
friends—reminded Napoleon of the existence of Tone’s wife and children.
As if in answer to Emmet’s reproachful question: “how could they trust
that government when they saw the widow of Tone unprovided for?”
Napoleon (who was anxious to use the Irish in his new war with England
and was organising his Irish Brigade) granted Matilda a pension of 1,200
livres, and 400 to each of her three children until their twentieth
year. In this same year a subscription was got up for the family in
Ireland—to which John Keogh and the Earl of Moira, among others of
Tone’s old friends, ostentatiously refused to subscribe.
So starvation was kept off a little longer. But the privations of the
preceding years had told heavily on poor Maria Tone, now a beautiful
girl of sixteen. In 1804, her mother had the great grief of losing her
through consumption.
In 1806 poor little Frank died—and now no one was left to console his
mother but William.
Mother and son were all in all to each other. As he moved from the
Lyceum to the Imperial Cavalry School of Saint Germains, she moved her
lodgings at the same time to be near him. All his academic successes
were valued by him only in so far as they gave pleasure to his mother.
In the essay with which, in leaving the Lyceum, he competed for the
“Prize of the Institute,” he pays a noble and touching tribute to all he
owes to her, to all she has done for him. On her part, her thoughts were
occupied entirely by his advancement and his interests. For his sake she
surmounted her natural timidity, and sought out an interview with the
Emperor, in order to recommend her son to his favour.
Young Tone served under the Imperial Colours during three campaigns. On
the fall of Napoleon he resigned his commission, and in the following
year, passed over to America.
Before he left Paris he induced his mother to accept the offer of
marriage made her by their faithful friend and benefactor of so many
years, Mr. Wilson, of Dullatur. On August the 19th, 1816, they were
married in the chapel of the British Ambassador at Paris; and shortly
after set sail, _via_ Scotland, for America.
Mr. Wilson bought an estate at Georgetown, near Washington, and here
there was always a home for William when the duties of his military
career allowed it—for he had been appointed to a captaincy in the United
States Army. In 1825 he married the daughter of William Sampson, and
after retiring from the army, his wife and he took up their abode with
his mother in Georgetown. Mr. Wilson had died a little before.
Alas! Sorrow had not yet done with Matilda Tone, on October the 10th,
1828, she lost her son.
We know little of her for the twenty-one years of life that still
remained to her. We learn from Madden that every year her
daughter-in-law and grand-daughter paid her a visit; and we know that up
to extreme old age she retained that strength and energy of mind, that
vigour of intellect, that passionate devotion to the husband of her
youth which had characterised her in the long ago. A letter she wrote to
the _Truth-Teller_, on the appearance of the first edition of Madden’s
_United Irishmen_ (1842) gives evidence of this.
She died in Georgetown on March 18th, 1849.
Shall the day ever come when Ireland a Nation, remembering this woman
and all she suffered for her, shall claim her remains from America, and
lay them to rest in the place where her husband lies lonely: in his
green grave in Bodenstown Churchyard?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wife of Thomas Addis Emmet
JANE EMMET, _née_ PATTEN (1771-1846)[70]
“And the track of my true love’s feet is the track that my heart
would follow.”—_Old Irish Love Song._
Footnote 70:
_Authorities_: Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Third Series, Second
Edition); Dr. T. A. Emmet’s “Emmet Family.”
SO exquisitely has the story of “the Broken Heart” been told, to such
haunting strains of melodious sorrow has it been sung, that the whole
world has wept over the tragic loves of Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran,
But even in Ireland, it is rare to find anyone familiar with the romance
of Thomas Addis Emmet; and—to our shame be it told!—the heroic devotion
and self-sacrifice of his wife, Jane Emmet, which ought to be a
household tale, a constant inspiration to our womanhood, is less known
than the tale of some alien queen—Philippa or another. What’s Philippa
to us, or we to Philippa? Or why should the heroism of our own women be
forgotten, while our voices swell the chorus that praises the heroism of
the stranger?
We have already learned in our memoir of Elizabeth Emmet, that her son,
Thomas Addis, shortly after having been called to the Bar, married, in
1791, Miss Jane Patten, the twenty-year-old daughter of Rev. John
Patten, of Annerville (near Clonmel), and his wife Margaret Colville.
After Rev. Mr. Patten’s death in 1787, his widow, with her children,
Jane and John, came to live in Dublin where her brother, Mr. Colville
was a wealthy merchant, and in this city Thomas Addis Emmet met Miss
Patten. It is probable enough that the intimacy between the
families—which was very affectionate—was of longer standing; for both
the Colvilles and the Emmets were Tipperary folk.
In a letter to his daughter Elizabeth, written on the eve of the
latter’s marriage to Mr. Le Roy, Thomas Addis Emmet recalls the
happiness it gave him when, as a young husband, he witnessed the
tenderness with which his father and mother took to their hearts, as a
veritable new daughter, the bride he had brought home to them: “To this
day,” he writes (and “this day” was forty years after the event to which
his memory goes back) “I remember I never loved your Mother so much, or
looked at her with so much delight, as when I saw from my father’s and
mother’s actions that they cherished her as their own daughter.”
The tender little phrase throws a pleasing light on the relations that
existed between the two _ménages_, which shared between them Dr. Emmet’s
fine mansion on Stephen’s Green. Shortly after his son’s marriage the
doctor divided his house (No. 109 Stephen’s Green, West) into two
separate dwellings, keeping the corner house for himself, and assigning
the other to the young couple. In this inner house Jane Emmet’s elder
children, Robert (September 8th, 1792), Margaret (September 21st, 1793),
Elizabeth (December 4th, 1794), John Patten (April 8th, 1796), Thomas
Addis (May 29th, 1797) were born.
During the years when her nursery was thus rapidly filling, Jane Emmet’s
husband was making his mark at the Bar. He was engaged as counsel (with
Hon. Simon Butler and Leonard MacNally) in the celebrated case of Napper
Tandy against the Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Chancellor and some members
of the privy council, who had signed a proclamation offering a reward
for the apprehension of Tandy. The object of the whole proceedings on
the part of Tandy’s advisers was “to contest the validity of the Lord
Lieutenant’s patent, as having been granted under the great seal of
England, instead of that of the Chancellor of Ireland.” In the course of
Emmet’s address he caused a sensation by boldly asserting that there had
been “no legal viceroy in Ireland for the last ten years, and not only
the counsel for Lord Westmoreland will not deny that fact, but they will
not dare to let his patent come under a train of legal investigation.”
Other notable cases in which Emmet was engaged included the trial at
Tralee in 1793 of Lieutenant Carr who had shot a Mr. O’Connell in a
duel, and the trial of a Mr. O’Driscoll, at Cork assizes in the same
year, on a charge of seditious libel. In this case Emmet was associated
with the Sheareses and Leonard MacNally. So successful was he, according
to his cousin, St. John Mason’s statement to Dr. Madden, that the first
year of his practice he realised £700.
In 1795 he took the oath of the _United Irishmen_ under very sensational
circumstances, thus detailed by Madden: “A case occurred before Prime
Serjeant Fitzgerald, in which a conviction was obtained on a charge of
administering the United Irishmen’s oath, then a capital offence. Emmet
appeared for the prisoners on a motion in arrest of judgment. He took up
the pleadings in which the words of the oath were recited, and he read
them in a very deliberate manner, and with all the gravity of a man who
felt that he was binding his soul by the obligations of a solemn oath.
‘I, Thomas Addis Emmet, in the presence of God, do pledge myself to my
country that I will use all my abilities and influence in the attainment
of an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in
parliament; and as a means and absolute and immediate necessity in the
establishment of this chief good of Ireland, I will endeavour, as much
as lies in my ability, to forward a brotherhood of affection, an
identity of interests, a communion of rights and an union of power,
among Irishmen of all religious persuasions, without which, every reform
in parliament must be partial, not national, inadequate to the wants,
delusive to the wishes, and insufficient to the freedom and happiness of
this country.’
“Having read the text, and defended its obligations with a power of
reasoning and a display of legal knowledge, in reference to the subject
of the distinction between legal and illegal oaths, which the counsel
for the prosecution described as producing an extraordinary impression,
he said:
“‘My lords, here in the presence of this legal court, this crowded
auditory, in the presence of the Being that sees, and witnesses, and
directs this judicial tribunal—here, my lords, I, myself, in the
presence of God, declare I take the oath.’ He then took the book, kissed
it, and sat down. No steps were taken by the court against the
newly-sworn United Irishman; the amazement of its functionaries left
them in no fit state of mind either for remonstrance or reproval. The
prisoners received a very lenient sentence.”
Though Emmet took the oath thus publicly, he was not publicly identified
with the United Irishmen until a period considerably later. He was
rarely engaged as their counsel in the trials of 1797 and 1798—acting
rather as chamber lawyer to their committees. He became a member of the
directory in 1797 after the arrest of Arthur O’Connor.
But long before that date he had worked for the objects for which the
United Irishmen were founded, Reform and Emancipation; and he had been
associated, in the closest manner with their founder. He was a member of
the political club which Tone formed in the winter of 1790, and Tone
found him a man completely after his own heart: “of a great and
comprehensive mind, of the warmest and sincerest affection for his
friends, and of a steady adherence to his principles, to which he has
sacrificed much, as I know, and would, I am sure, if necessary,
sacrifice his life. His opinions and mine square exactly.”
In the autumn of 1792 when Tone was working strenuously for the Catholic
cause, Emmet gave him invaluable help. His pen was ever ready to assist
Tone’s in preparing replies on the Catholic side to the bigotry of the
Grand Juries, or drawing up addresses in which the Catholic position was
admirably stated. But he did all this work in the shade, so to speak,
neither seeking nor desiring any reward for it.
We have already learned from Tone how fully Emmet entered into the
scheme for enlisting French aid towards Irish independence, which Tone
carried with him on his departure for America in the early summer of
1795. The “charming villa” which Emmet occupied then at Rathfarnham and
“the little study of an elliptical form” which he was building at the
bottom of his lawn, and the “little triangular field” on the way between
Rathfarnham and Dublin became, from the meeting of the three friends,
Emmet and Russell and Tone, and the solemn pledge wherewith they bound
themselves to each other, among the “holy places” of Irish history.
On March 12th, 1798, Government which had already been long in complete
possession of the plans of the United Irishmen, through the treachery of
Thomas Reynolds and others, and had allowed them to develop as suited
its own purposes, suddenly swooped down on the leaders. The arrest of
the country deputies at the house of Oliver Bond was followed the same
day by the apprehension of Emmet, Dr. MacNevin, Jackson (Bond’s
father-in-law) and John Sweetman at their several abodes.
Jane Emmet had just tucked her little ones into their cots and given
them their good-night kiss, when Alderman Carletown and his escort of
soldiers invaded the quiet house in Stephen’s Green to carry off her
children’s father. The loud knocking at the door, the peremptory demand
for admission “in the king’s name” which heralded the entrance of those
unbidden guests heralded also the closing of the peaceful happy years of
Jane Emmet’s young wifehood and maternity. A new life was opening up
before her, full of sorrows, and hardships and privations, and the
gently nurtured lady was to discover in the reserves of her character
the unsuspected materials of a heroine.
The call which roused the heroine in her was brutal enough. In the
search which the soldiers immediately instituted all through the house
in quest of documents the nursery was not spared. The children were
roughly roused from their sleep, and we may judge of the impression
produced in them by the fact that as long as they lived they never
forgot it. Thomas Addis Emmet, jun., was only a year-old baby when his
father was arrested; he was an old man when Dr. Madden knew him, but he
remembered, as if it had been but yesterday, how, waking suddenly, he
saw a number of soldiers standing at the window with fixed bayonets
presented at him and the little brother who was his bed fellow. Nor was
this the only occasion on which the nursery was invaded by the gallant
yeomanry. John Patten Emmet told his son, the present Dr. Thomas Addis
Emmet, that after his father’s arrest, the house was frequently searched
by the military for the seal of the United Irishmen. During one of these
searches he and his little brothers were wakened by a bright light in
the nursery, and became greatly frightened on seeing a soldier stand
guard within the door. “As soon as the man saw the child was awake, with
the instinct of a brute he pointed his musket at him as if about to
shoot. The children naturally got under the bed-clothing as quickly as
possible, and in their terror did not dare to move, being more dead than
alive, until the soldiers had left the house and their grandmother could
come to them.”[71]
Footnote 71:
“The Emmet Family,” pp. 64-65. The seal, which was designed by Robert
Emmet, and is still in the possession of the Emmet family, was carried
by Mrs. T. A. Emmet on her person during the whole time Government was
in search of it.
The poor grandmother had to take for the frightened children the place
of both father and mother. The father after being brought to the Castle,
was committed to Newgate where about twenty of the other leaders were
confined. Here his wife managed to gain admission to him—“by stealth,”
and “against the most positive orders,” as Lord Castlereagh told Lady
Louisa Connolly when, a couple of months later, she sought permission
for Pamela to see Lord Edward. “The cell in which Thomas Addis Emmet was
confined,” we learn from Dr. Madden, was about twelve feet square. Jane
Emmet managed to secrete herself in this wretched abode for some days,
one of the turnkeys who had charge of Emmet’s cell being privy to her
concealment. Her husband shared his scanty allowance with her; and there
a lady, bred in the lap of luxury, accustomed to all the accommodations
that are possessed by one in her sphere in life, used to all the
comforts of a happy home, familiarised to the affectionate care and kind
attentions of an amiable family, daily blessed with the smiling faces of
her dear children—“one who had slept with full content about her bed,
and never waked but to a joyful morning”—shared the dungeon of her
husband: its gloom, its dreary walls, its narrow limits, its dismal
aspect—things and subjects for contemplation which her imagination a few
weeks before would have sickened at the thought of—were now endured as
if they affected her not; her husband was there, and everything else in
this world, except her fears for his safety and for separation from him,
were forgotten; her acts said to him:
“Thou to me
Art all things under heaven, all places thou.”