husband’s cell. She was immediately ordered to quit the place; but to
the astonishment of the officers of the prison who were not accustomed
to have their orders disobeyed, she told them ‘_her mind was made up_’
to remain with her husband, and she would not leave the prison. The
gaoler, whom Emmet speaks of as a man of unfeeling and ruffianly
deportment, stood _awestricken_ before a feeble, helpless creature whom
he had only to order one of his myrmidons to tear from the arms of her
husband, and his bidding would have been obeyed. The power of a
brave-spirited woman is seldom put forth that it does not triumph....
The gaoler retired; and Emmet was given to understand that the man had
orders from his superiors not to employ force, but the first time that
Mrs. Emmet left the prison she was not to be permitted to return. No
such opportunity for her exclusion was afforded by that lady. She
continued to share her husband’s captivity for many months. But once in
that time she left the prison and then only to visit her sick child,
when she appealed to the wife of the gaoler ‘as the mother of a family’
to take pity on her wretchedness, struggling as she was between her duty
to her husband and the yearnings of nature towards her sick child.... It
cheers one to find that this appeal was not made in vain. At midnight
this woman conducted Mrs. Emmet through the apartments of the gaoler to
the street. The following night, after remaining with her child at the
house of Dr. Emmet during the day, she returned to the gaol, gained
admittance by the same means, and “was on the point of entering her
husband’s cell when one of the keepers discovered her; but too late to
exclude her from prison. From that time she availed herself no more of
the same facility for leaving or entering prison. During her absence her
room had been visited by one of the keepers, a not infrequent
occurrence; the curtains had been drawn round the bed, some bundles of
clothing placed under the coverlid, and the keeper was requested to
tread lightly, as Mrs. Emmet was suffering from headache. Shortly after
this occurrence Emmet and MacNevin were removed to Kilmainham, and Mrs.
Emmet found means to gain access to her husband, and the authorities
connived at her sojourn in his dungeon.”[72]
Footnote 72:
Madden’s “United Irishmen” (Second Edition), Third Series, pp. 51-53.
Madden learned these particulars from Jane Emmet’s children in
America, and her brother John Patten.
In October, 1798, Jane Emmet’s sixth child, Christopher, was born, and
it seems probable that having returned to her home for the occasion, it
was not considered prudent for her to go back to the hardships of
Kilmainham. Moreover, ever since the State Prisoners had, in order to
save effusion of blood, entered into terms with Government in July,
1798, it was expected that Emmet and his fellow-prisoners would soon be
allowed to go to America. Rufus King, however, the resident minister of
the United States in London, interfered to prevent the execution of
these designs—and one more “scrap of paper” was torn into fragments.
Instead of being set at liberty and allowed to emigrate to the United
States, in accordance with Government’s formal pledge, the Irish State
Prisoners were kept in gaol for no less than four years longer.
On March 18th, 1799, the prisoners were notified to prepare for
embarkation to an unknown destination the following morning. When the
news reached the Emmet household Mary Anne Emmet, acting with that
spirit which showed her the true sister of Thomas Addis and Robert,
hastened to the Castle and obtained an interview with Lord Cornwallis.
The viceroy was touched by her pleading, and assured her that no harm
should come to her brother, but he would give her no information as to
“the place of security” whither Government’s apprehension of a foreign
invasion impelled them to send the State Prisoners. With the scanty
comfort conveyed in Cornwallis’s promise that her brother’s treatment,
as well as that of his companions, should be all his friends and theirs
could desire, Mary Anne Emmet returned to her parents. She was allowed
to visit her brother for a short time in Kilmainham that evening to take
the farewell of him which was destined to be her last.
In another place we shall learn something of the adventures of the
twenty State prisoners who sailed from Dublin Bay on March the 19th and
reached their destination, Fort George, in the extreme north of
Scotland, on April 9th, 1799, and of their life in that fortress during
the years of their confinement in it.
As may be expected, Jane Emmet made every effort to obtain permission to
join her husband in Fort George, and her hopes of success were
stimulated by the fact that others of the State prisoners, especially
Roger O’Connor, were allowed to have their families with them. The Irish
Government, however—in other words, Lord Castlereagh—put every obstacle
in her way, and it was only when she made personal application to the
Duke of Portland that she obtained the consent she sought. In August,
1800, escorted by her brother, John Patten, and accompanied by her three
elder children, Robert, Margaret and Elizabeth, she arrived in Fort
George. She left her three younger children, John Patten, Thomas Addis
and baby Christopher, in the charge of their grandfather and
grandmother, Dr. and Mrs. Emmet, at Casino, Milltown.
The son of one of the little boys thus left behind has culled for us
from the family correspondence the letters written by old Mrs. Emmet to
her son and daughter-in-law in Fort George, and though the regrettable
loss of the letters of Thomas Addis to his parents and those of Jane
Emmet to her mother, Mrs. Patten, leaves the correspondence incomplete,
nevertheless sufficient remains to help us to make a connected story.
It was not her husband only whom the arrival at Fort George of Mrs.
Emmet and her charming children made happy. All the prisoners were
delightfully excited by the event, and every man of them became their
devoted slave from the beginning. Each one was anxious to lend a hand in
the education of the children. Dr. MacNevin, whose Continental education
had rendered him an accomplished linguist, taught them French; Hudson
and Cormick gave them music lessons. When little William Neilson joined
the children some months later, Fort George became a regular academy.
Thomas Addis Emmet, himself, was the head-master, and his mother
jokingly refers to Jane as his usher—but all the prisoners were eager to
secure a post in the school—Dr. Dixon, M. Dowdall, Tennant. There were
charming theatrical entertainments, too, wherein the children acted, and
concerts at which Robert Emmet and William Neilson displayed their skill
on the flute. Samuel Neilson’s letters to his wife never omit a
reference to Mrs. Emmet and her “delightful children.” It was probably
Mrs. Emmet who suggested to him to send for his little son, and when the
boy arrived she mothered him exactly like one of her own children. Once
the lad fell ill, and Mrs. Emmet’s attentions to him won the fervent
gratitude of the poor father: “her kindness went beyond what could
possibly be expected. Fruits, sweetmeats, jellies—everything she could
think of were sent, and her own personal attendance and advice were
superadded.”
The Governor of the Fort, the chivalrous old Scottish nobleman and
soldier, Colonel Stuart, was won over by the sweet womanliness, and the
maternal and conjugal devotion of Mrs. Emmet. Very shortly after her
arrival he signified to her husband that, for the sake of her health, to
which proper exercise was necessary, he would take it upon himself to
allow her husband to accompany her on walks outside the enclosure of the
fortress. When Roger O’Connor and his wife and family left Fort George,
the Governor turned over their suite of rooms to Mrs. Emmet. Once a fire
broke out at night. The Governor was called up, and on ascertaining that
no danger was to be apprehended, he instantly ran to Emmet’s apartment
to remove his apprehension for himself and his family; and the next day
the following note was addressed to Emmet:
“The lieutenant-governor’s compliments to Mr. Emmet. He hopes Mrs. Emmet
suffered no inconvenience from the alarm of fire which was given last
night. As the idea of being locked in may occasion a disagreeable
sensation to a lady’s mind, in case of any sudden occurrence (though the
lieutenant-governor flatters himself that none in future will arise), he
will give directions that the passage door leading to Mr. Emmet’s
apartments shall not in future be locked, being convinced Mr. Emmet
would make no improper use of all the doors being left open.”
The letters which came from Casino were eagerly welcomed by Jane Emmet
and her husband, telling, as they did, so much that they longed to know
of the little ones left behind. John is Grandmother Patten’s favourite,
and when he goes to visit her he comes back the proud possessor of “new
clothes and a great number of Buttons.” “He felt very visibly the
importance he had acquired by his visit to town, for as soon as he
returned he desired John Delany should be brought in to play with him,
as his grandmamma had always a boy on purpose to play with him.” John’s
slowness, to which there are frequent allusions in the letters, seems to
have caused a little anxiety to his father, so his grandmother is eager
to do him justice. “He does not, I assure you, want either observation
or intellect, he has great natural justice and a very open good-natured
temper.” We learn from his grandfather that he is at “a crown and a
quarter school, where he tells me he makes great proficiency, four or
five lessons a day in his A, B, C, but as yet he does not couple them
very accurately. John, however, is a very well-disposed, well-tempered
child, and if he does not mount into the Empyrean galaxy, he will always
keep the Milky Way of life, and never tread on thorns.” On another
occasion John is at his grandmother’s elbow while she is writing to
father and mother and he expressly desires her to tell them that “he is
a very good boy; that he has gotten a new spelling book from his
grandmamma Patten, and that he will take care and get his lessons well.”
All this Grandmamma Emmet is sure “he has sincere intentions of
performing, tho’ I must confess that in his old spelling-book he is not
very brilliant. He, however, I am told, performs the part of an usher in
the school, and acquits himself with great propriety.... John, I think,
is much better at school, it helps to enliven him and in some measure
open his ideas; he does not learn any bad habits, and he is very fond of
it; at home he would be apt to grow sluggish.” As John had not completed
his _fifth_ year at the time these letters were written, we need not
share too acutely his absent father’s anxiety about him—especially as
_we_ from our point of vantage, some six score years later, discern in
John one of the most brilliant men of his time. When he died—in the
prime of his manhood, at the age of forty-six, his colleagues of the
University of Virginia, where he was Professor of Chemistry and Materia
Medica, paid tribute to him as “the inventive and learned, the ingenuous
and high-souled John Patten Emmet, one of the earliest supports and one
of the brightest ornaments of this University.”
If it is curious to find the future distinguished scientist causing
anxiety to his father for the slow opening of his intellect, it is still
more curious to find his little brother Tom causing him anxiety because
some incident related by his grandparents seemed to indicate in the tiny
boy a selfish disposition. So concerned was the father at some trait of
childish prudence related by the grandparents for his amusement that he
had thoughts of taking little Tom to Fort George to educate him under
his own eyes. Grandmother Emmet has to assure him that what Mary Anne
and she said “imported nothing more than to convey to you an idea of the
strength of his intellect, for surely you did not suppose that the
disposition of a child, not four years old, would do more than to divert
you instead of giving you sincere alarm. The share of understanding
which he promises to have will be fully sufficient to overcome his
little childish dispositions, and without severity he will do what is
right by only pointing it out to him.” How groundless were his father’s
fears—and how well justified his grandmother’s confidence, the life of
Thomas Addis Emmet, junior, sufficiently proves. His nephew and
namesake, recalling the happy days he and the other young people of his
generation spent in Mr. Emmet’s lovely home, Mount Vernon, New York,
tells us that it would not be possible to find a more genial, kindly and
charitable couple than Mr. and Mrs. Emmet. “The term charitable could be
applied to him in every sense, as it was difficult for him even to
suspect a bad motive, and he frequently suffered for his faith in
others. Later in life Mr. Emmet became embarrassed on account of the
frequent assistance he had rendered supposed friends and from placing
too much reliance on their promises.”
It is plain that of the three children confided to their care the
favourite of Grandfather and Grandmother Emmet is the youngest, little
Christopher Temple. In this delightful little boy whom everybody in
kitchen and parlour idolises, is there given back to them the brilliant
son they had lost by a premature death? The grandfather clearly thinks
so: “Little Temple, should he live for the germs to open, blossom and
ripen into fruit, will equal, I think, his namesake uncle.” His
grandmother is afraid her partiality for him will be reckoned as due to
his name: “I assure you he is as great a favourite with everyone in the
family as with me.” “This little Brat is, to be sure, the chief
favourite through the house; we, however, do not spoil him, and I assure
you that I fondle him less than the others. Mary Anne caresses him more
than I do, but at the same time treats him with steadiness; in the
kitchen he would be commander-in-chief if we did not prevent it. He is
quite a miniature of our dear little Robert, especially when he holds up
his hands and says he won’t be bold any more.” Pictures like that of the
dear little grandson occur in the grandmother’s letters again and again:
now we see him at table, “fighting in dumb show for his share in his
grandfather’s claret,” now sturdily claiming his place in his elder
brother’s games, now climbing on chairs and prating enough for two, now
riding on Mr. Holmes’s back, and asking to be taken on grandmother’s. “I
told him that my back was old, but in a little time I offered to take
him, he would not, he replied in a tone of great tenderness, ‘because
you have a pain.’ The next night I again asked him if he would come on
my back, and he at once said he would if I had not a pain.”
Poor little Temple! Like his namesake uncle he was destined to live but
a short life. He died of yellow fever, at sea, at the age of
twenty-four, being a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.
It was at Fort George that Jane Emmet’s seventh child, a little girl
called Jane Erin, was born. Some months after her birth the State
prisoners were released,[73] and dispatched on the Government frigate
the _Ariadne_, to Cuxhaven, the port for Hamburg. At Hamburg the
prisoners separated, some to go to America, others to Paris, others to
Holland, and Dr. MacNevin to Dresden. The Emmets first settled at
Brussels where Thomas Addis devoted himself to the education of his
children. At Brussels he heard of his father’s death, and was visited by
his brother Robert.
Footnote 73:
After peace was signed at Amiens in March, 1802. Their imprisonment
was changed for banishment.
We know that it was not brotherly affection alone, deep and true as this
was, that brought Robert Emmet to Brussels at this juncture. The fact
was that all men saw that the peace between England and France was a
very “sick” peace indeed, and liable to expire at any moment. The United
Irishmen, whose organisation had survived the disasters of ’98, were
waiting their chance of a rupture between the two countries to shake off
the yoke of England, which the Union had made more intolerable. They had
encouragement from some of the most influential men in Ireland. Though
not enamoured of France, which they rightly considered had treated them
most scandalously,[74] they were ready to bargain for French aid “on
conditions.” France, on the other hand, was willing to make these terms,
her only interest in Ireland being to get in a blow at England through
her.
Footnote 74:
Thomas Addis Emmet told Colonel Dalton who had been sent to open up
negotiations with him on behalf of the French Government in May, 1803,
that “France had lost the confidence of Ireland, and the treatment the
Irish had received in France, ever since the peace ... had excited
even an aversion.” It is well known that Emmet described Bonaparte “as
the worst enemy Ireland ever had.” So much for French friendship for
Ireland, about which certain people would have us so enthusiastic!
It is not the place to tell here how once more France failed Ireland;
how Robert Emmet was suffered to go to his death without a finger being
raised to save him; how the Irishmen, who had enlisted in an Irish
legion in the service of France, on the distinct promise that Augereau
was to command a great expedition to Ireland, were wantonly deceived.
In the autumn of 1804, Thomas Addis Emmet, whose clear eyes even
Bonaparte could not long deceive, shook the dust of France from his feet
and set sail with his wife and the children who had shared their
imprisonment and exile, for New York.
On November the 11th, 1804, Jane Emmet first set foot on American soil
on which forty-two years of her life were yet to be spent, and in which
she was to find a grave. Her health, which had suffered much during her
sojourn in Fort George, and through the agitations and anxieties which
attended her life in Brussels and Paris, improved. Her husband whose
reputation and talents had secured for him the most distinguished
reception at the hands of the noblest men in America, made his way
rapidly at the American Bar. The little children from whom she had been
separated so long: John, and Tom, and Temple, were restored to her. The
little band of seven was subsequently reinforced by two new arrivals:
Mary Anne, born in New York in March, 1805, and William Colville, born
in the same city in April, 1807.
The family correspondence, published by her grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis
Emmet, gives us a delightful picture of the home-life of Jane Emmet
during these years. She saw her husband honoured among the noblest of
the land. She saw her children grow up about her, her girls beautiful
and accomplished and altogether charming: her sons clever and
successful, heirs to their father’s unstained integrity, as to his
commanding abilities. The family had a summer residence on the old
Middle Road, New York, and a winter abode in town—but the “Middle Road”
was so attractive that the whole year was not infrequently passed there.
All sorts of frolics enlivened their stay there, fancy dress balls and
musical entertainments not to speak of practical jokes, in which the
humour of the family took intense delight. As the sons and daughters got
married, the new daughters, and sons thus added served but to widen the
charming family circle, not to break it up.
In November, 1827, Jane Emmet had the supreme grief of losing her
husband—a grief which was shared by all America—which “paid his love by
reverencing his genius.”
Jane Emmet survived her husband nineteen years, dying at the house of
her son-in-law on November 10th, 1846.
The noble words of Dr. Madden are the fittest tribute to her memory:
“The widow of Thomas Addis Emmet survived her husband nineteen years.
She had shared in his sorrows and his sufferings—had been his companion
in prisonment in Kilmainham gaol, and in captivity in Fort George—not
for days, or weeks, or months, but for years. She had accompanied him in
exile to the Continent and to the land of his adoption, and there she
shared in his honours and the felicity of his later years.
“The woman who encountered so many privations and trials as she had
done—who had been accustomed to all the enjoyments of a happy home, and
‘Had slept with full content about _her_ bed,
And never waked but to a joyful morning.’
When deprived of all ordinary comforts, of the commonest appliances of
these to the humblest state of life, during the imprisonment of her
husband in Dublin; and was subjected necessarily to many restraints
during the dreary imprisonments at Fort George—seemed ever to those who
were the companions of her husband’s captivity as ‘one who, in suffering
all things, suffered nothing.’ She fulfilled with heroic fortitude the
duties of a devoted wife towards her husband in all his trials in his
own country; was the joy and comfort of his life in a foreign land,
where the exiled patriot, honoured and revered, in course of time rose
to the first distinction in his profession; she died far away from her
native land—but her memory should not be forgotten in Ireland.
“This excellent woman, full of years, rich in virtue, surrounded by
affectionate children—prosperous, happily circumstanced, dutiful and
loving children to her, worthy of their inheritance of a great name, and
of the honour that descended to them from the revered memory of her
truly noble husband—thus terminated in a foreign land a long career,
chequered by many trials, over which a virtuous woman’s self-sacrificing
devotion, the courage and constancy of a faithful wife, the force of a
mother’s love eventually prevailed. The portrait of this lady is in the
possession of Mr. John Patten.[75] The time may come when this
intimation may be of some avail. Ireland has its Cornelias, its
Portias—matrons worthy of association in our thoughts with Cato’s
daughter, the mother of the children who were the jewels of her
heart—with the wife of Russell, of Lavalette—but Ireland has no national
gallery for the pictures and busts of her illustrious children—no
literature for a record of the ‘noble deeds of women’ of her own land.”
Footnote 75:
Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet informs us that “nothing is now known of this
portrait.” The two portraits reproduced in his own book were by her
daughter Elizabeth, Mrs. Le Roy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Wife of Samuel Neilson
ANNE NEILSON _née_ _Bryson_ (1763-1811)[76]
“I love you the more, Love, because of their hate.”
—ETHNA CARBERY.
Footnote 76:
_Authorities_: Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Fourth Series, Second
Edition.
NO woman, of all those whose stories we are recalling to the memory of a
people in danger of forgetting them, has suffered so much as Mrs.
Neilson. Not alone had she to see her happy home broken up, the ease and
comfort to which she had been accustomed both in her father’s and her
husband’s house, taken from her, her children deprived of their father
and herself of a helpmate, the turning away from her necessities of
former friends—but worse than all this she had to endure the intolerable
pain of knowing that the reward her husband had won even from his own
countrymen, even from those for whose sake he had sacrificed his all—was
to be branded as a traitor, and to have his name whispered from mouth to
mouth as that of one who had betrayed Lord Edward, and sold the secrets
of his associates to Government to purchase his own safety.
It is with hearts very full, then, that we turn to the appealing and
lonely figure of this “dear dead woman,” and standing in spirit by her
grave in Newtownbreda Cemetery we frame passionate prayers that she may
know her sufferings have not been in vain.
Anne Bryson was born in Belfast in 1763. Her father, William Bryson, was
a wealthy and highly esteemed merchant of that town, and his daughter
had all the educational and social advantages which an assured position,
a refined home and considerable means could give her. In 1785, when she
had reached her twenty-second year, she married Samuel Neilson, the son
of a dissenting minister, of Ballyroney in Co. Down. Neilson had been
resident in Belfast for some time, having been at an early age
apprenticed to his brother John, a woollen-draper—and doubtless the
young people had often met at the social functions which enlivened
Belfast at this period, and of which Mrs. McTier’s letters to her
brother, Dr. Drennan, give us the most delightful glimpses.[77]
Footnote 77:
Published in Young’s “Historical Notices of Old Belfast,” p. 169, _et
seq._
After their marriage the young couple set up in business for themselves,
and Samuel Neilson’s great ability commanded an immediate success. His
establishment, called “The Irish Woollen Warehouse,” became, we are
informed, “the most extensive and respectable house in that line in
Belfast.” Before he had been seven years in business he had amassed a
considerable fortune, being reckoned in 1792 as worth about £8,000—which
would be equivalent to nearly £20,000 in our days.