days, that he might give his friends an account of all the later
events in which he had taken a part. About five _p.m._ he was
ordered to the place of execution, the old market-house, the
ground of which had been given to the town by his great great
grandfather. I took his arm, and we walked together to the place
of execution, where I was told it was the general’s orders that
I should leave him, which I peremptorily refused. Harry begged I
would go. Clasping my hands around him (I did not weep till
then) I said I could bear anything but leaving him. Three times
he kissed me, and entreated I would go; and looking round to
recognise some friend to put me in charge of, he beckoned to a
Mr. Boyd, and said, ‘He will take charge of you.’ Mr. Boyd
stepped forward; and fearing any further refusal would disturb
the last moments of my dearest brother, I suffered myself to be
led away.... A Mr. Armstrong, a friend of our family, came
forward and took me from Mr. Boyd, and conducted me home. I
immediately sent a message to Dr. McDonnell and Mr. McCluney,
our apothecary, to come directly to our house. The latter came,
and Dr. McDonnell sent his brother, Alexander, a skilful
surgeon. The body was given up to his family unmutilated; so far
our entreaties and those of our friends prevailed.
“From the moment I parted with Harry, the idea which occurred to
me in the morning that it might be possible to restore
animation, took full possession of my mind, and that hope buoyed
up my strength, and supported me at the moment of parting with
him. Every effort that art could devise was made, and at one
time hopes of success were entertained, but the favourable
symptoms disappeared, and the attempt was at length given up. I
was present when the medical men entered the room where the body
was laid, and then retired and joined the rest of the family,
awaiting the result with indescribable anxiety. My heart sank
within me when we were told all hope was over, and that a
message had been brought from the General that the funeral must
take place immediately, or that the body would be taken from us.
Preparations were made for immediate burial. I learned that no
relative of his was likely to attend his funeral. I could not
bear to think that no member of his family should accompany his
remains, so I set out to follow them to the grave.
“A kind-hearted man, an enthusiast in the cause for which poor
Harry died, drew my arm within his, but my brother John soon
followed, and took his place. I heard the sound of the first
shovelful of earth that was thrown on the coffin, and I remember
little else of what passed on that sad occasion. I was told
afterwards that poor Harry stood when I left him at the place of
execution, and watched me until I was out of sight; that he then
attempted to speak to the people, but that the noise of the
trampling of the horses was so great that it was impossible he
should be heard; that he then resigned himself to his fate, and
the multitude who were present at that moment uttered cries
which seemed more like one loud and long-continued shriek than
the expression of grief or terror on similar occasions. He was
buried in the old churchyard where St. George’s church now
stands, and close to the corner of the school-house, where the
door is.”
* * * * *
A weaker nature than Mary McCracken’s would have surely broken down
after the strain of those tragic hours. But she came forth from them,
only with fresh ardour to serve God, and country and friends.
Early in the new century she received a pitiable account of the state of
destitution to which poor Russell’s sister, Margaret, had been reduced.
He himself after his arrest in September, 1796, had been kept until
March, 1799, in Kilmainham, whence he was conveyed with the other State
prisoners to Fort George. More than three years’ internment in Fort
George was followed by deportation to the Continent in 1802. During
these years Miss Russell had been deprived of his support, and she was
in a pitiable condition. Mary Anne McCracken got up a subscription for
her among Russell’s friends in Belfast, but there were a great many
claims on their resources just at that time and the response to her
appeal was not very gratifying. Her charity nearly cost her dear; for a
person who saw the list of subscribers reported to Government that she
was raising money for arms.
The autumn of 1803 marked the close of Mary McCracken’s pathetic
romance. In October of that year Russell, who had come over from France,
in the early summer to assist Robert Emmet, and who had undertaken, with
the faithful Jamie Hope, to rouse the North to a new stand for freedom,
was taken prisoner in Dublin, and carried back in chains to Downpatrick
to be tried for his life. Once more Mary McCracken, stifling the pain of
her wounded heart, made superhuman efforts to save her doomed friend.
During the weeks when he was in hiding she and her sister had already
visited him, and provided him with funds for his journey to Dublin. When
he was taken, the two sisters pledged their credit to the last penny, to
raise the necessary money for his defence. It was Mary’s earnest desire
to go to Downpatrick to be present at the trial, and only the
representations of her family prevented her. On the eve of the trial she
received a letter from Russell. It was all the reward her faithful heart
obtained for the years of silent love it had lavished on the writer—but
perhaps those words of farewell from the condemned cell in Downpatrick
seemed to her better worth treasuring than the love letters of happier
women.
It is to Mary McCracken that we owe the record of Russell’s most noble
and touching “Speech from the Dock.” For she and her sister sent Hughes,
a clerk of their brother John’s, to take notes in court of his address.
And when the scaffold had done its work, and the gallant form lay
mangled in its shadow, it was she who gave it, in the sacred soil of
Downpatrick, the tomb, where with the “Three Wonder Working Saints of
Erin,” Patrick, Brigid and Columcille, it awaits the Resurrection:
“The grave of Russell.”
* * * * *
Among the witnesses at the Russell trial there figured prominently a
certain Patrick Lynch, and the mention of his name will serve as an
introduction to our account of some of the various interests with which
Mary McCracken filled her life. There still remained the long span of
sixty-three years, before she was summoned to join the dear ones, to
whose love the years of her youth had been dedicated. These sixty-three
years were full of service to the country for which _they_ had given
their lives.
We have already mentioned that Edward Bunting was, for some forty years,
an inmate of the McCracken household. It was under their roof that his
celebrated collections of “Ancient Irish Music” were made, and all the
McCrackens, but especially Mary, took the very keenest interest in the
work. In 1802, Patrick Lynch, a native Irish speaker (who had given
lessons in the language to Russell during the latter’s sojourn in
Belfast in the early ’Nineties), was sent by Bunting on a tour to
Connacht to collect airs. Of his progress he writes (during Bunting’s
absence in London) detailed reports to John McCracken and “Miss
Mary”—and it is clear from these letters that they were as much
interested in the mission as Bunting himself.[88]
Footnote 88:
See “Annals of the Irish Harpers,” _passim_.
In 1803, John McCracken, Senior, died, and in 1814 Mrs. McCracken and
her son, William, were both called to their reward. Shortly after their
mother’s death the McCracken sisters gave up business and went to live
with their brother Frank (who had remained a bachelor) in Donegal
Street. The talent of Miss Margaret McCracken for housekeeping left Mary
with a great many free hours on her hands—and these she devoted to
active works of charity. The picture her grandniece has left us of her
avocations is a true one for many years of her life. Her mornings were
spent in out-of-door occupations—collecting for some charity, attending
meetings, or visiting the poor in their homes, or the poor children in
the Lancastrian School. Of the charitable institutions in which she took
an active interest her grandniece mentions an industrial school for
girls, established in the Famine year; the Belfast Ladies’ Clothing
Society; the Destitute Sick Society; an anti-slavery society, and an
association to prevent the employment of climbing-boys in chimney
sweeping. In the afternoon she rested, and her evenings were largely
devoted to letter-writing (for she had a large correspondence) or to
that social intercourse in which, even to extreme old age, her genial
spirit delighted.
Of her personality her grandniece gives some very attractive glimpses:
“In personal habits she was scrupulously clean, but indifferent about
her dress, unwilling to spend money on it, and giving it little thought.
“She liked to read the newspapers, and always spent some time in doing
so, but for other reading she had little leisure. When she did read a
novel or hear one read, it was to others as great a treat as the book to
hear her comments, how she entered into the story, and discussed the
characters with such thorough enjoyment, such child-like feeling of
reality. In her later years she used to relate anecdotes of family and
local incidents, and reminiscences of her youthful days; these told in
her lively and pleasant manner, were listened to with pleasure.
Sometimes, but more rarely, and usually when she had only one hearer,
she would speak of the graver and sadder events in which she had been
concerned, but evidently with such sorrowful remembrance that a listener
had not the heart to urge her to continue the theme, intensely
interesting though it might be.
“She was accustomed to say that people ought not to pride themselves on
their ancestors, and should not be valued for what their forefathers had
been or done, but only for what they themselves are, and would quote the
lines on the moon—
‘I with borrowed lustre shine,
What you see is none of mine.’
Nevertheless, she took most unmistakable pride and pleasure in some of
the doings of her ancestors. The way in which she used to relate
anything which gave evidence of a generous and unselfish description was
not to be forgotten by those who heard her.
“She had naturally a quick and hasty temper, though evidence of this was
rarely seen; but even when at an advanced age, if a helpless person were
wronged, or an animal cruelly treated, it was startling to see how her
eye would flash, and to hear her hot, indignant words.
“Her decay was very gradual. She was compelled by degrees to give up her
accustomed occupations, till at last she was confined to the house. Walk
for walking’s sake she would not. As she became unable for other work
she took up the occupation of knitting. Her sight was wonderfully good;
her hearing was so much impaired as to prevent her taking part in
ordinary conversation; but she was always able to converse with one
person comfortably for both. She delighted in seeing a large party round
the table, and when a laugh went round, she with beaming face and happy
smile would join in the mirth, and sometimes say—‘Well, I don’t know
what you are laughing at, but I like to see you enjoying yourselves.’
“In the autumn of 1865 she had an attack of bronchitis from which she
recovered, but mind and body had become weak. She faded peacefully and
gently away, apparently contented and happy, without weariness or pain,
until, after some hours of unconsciousness, she breathed her last on
July the 26th (the feast of her own namesake, Saint Ann), 1866, having
completed her ninety-sixth year on the 8th of the month.”
* * * * *
Within our own time pious and reverent hands have laid the remains of
Henry Joy McCracken in the grave of his devoted sister. And what Mary
McCracken did for Russell, has been done in turn for herself by a
patriotic townsman.[89] Beneath the slab he has laid upon the grave in
Old Clifton Cemetery brother and sister, once more re-united, await the
Resurrection. “In death they are not divided.”
Footnote 89:
F. J. Bigger, Esq.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME OTHER SISTERS OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Other Sisters of ’Ninety-Eight
“O fair-haired Donough, dear little brother,
Well do I know what has taken you from me.”
—_Lament for Fair-Haired Donough._
MARY MCCRACKEN is not the only sister whose name is coupled with her
brother’s in “the glorious pride and sorrow” of ’Ninety-Eight. We have
already, in the preceding memoirs, met other heroic sisters and we shall
now give a somewhat further account of some of these.
MARY ANNE EMMET
Mary Anne Emmet, sister of Thomas Addis and Robert, was worthy, both in
character and brains, of her family. Born in 1773 she showed herself
from her earliest years dowered with her full share of the remarkable
Emmet intellect. She was carefully educated, mostly by her father, and
acquired a knowledge of Classics of which many a University Don might
well be vain. She was a vigorous writer; and her grand-nephew, Dr.
Thomas Addis Emmet, tells us that he has in his possession several
political pamphlets from her pen. “These clearly show that she must have
possessed a profound knowledge of political economy, a familiarity with
history and the body politic, gained only after careful reading and to
an extent few public men of her day possessed.” Her most celebrated
pamphlet was “An Address to the People of Ireland, showing them why they
ought to submit to an Union.” Its method of _advocating_ an Union is, as
Dr. Madden points out, sufficiently indicated by its title:
“Of comfort no man speak;
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”
—_Shakespeare._
Such scorn as is poured from it in the new-born “patriotism” of the
Beresfords, the Fosters, the Whaleys, the Saurins, the Verekers, who had
already alienated every right through which an Irishman could call
himself a free man! “You are called on to oppose this Union, to preserve
your rights. Now I ask the men who call on you what rights you have to
support? I ask parliament what right _they_ have not wrested from you?
They adjure you to support the constitution. Alas! for that
constitution, originally a shadow, now embodied a substance of
corruption. You are called on to resist—_what_? Not _oppression_, it has
been _protected_. Not _injustice_, it has been _legalised_. Not
_cruelty_, it has been _indemnified_.... Is it for the _Convention_, the
_Insurrection_, the _Indemnity Acts_, that you are to resist the
annihilation of the parliament that passed them? While these Bills stand
recorded on their Journals parliament ought to know that the country
cannot dread their extinction. And if the minister of England wishes to
use any argument but military force for the accomplishment of this
measure, let him present that statute-book to the people, and ask
them—‘Why should you wish the duration of this parliament? do you not
feel that I am omnipotent in it? are not my mandates written here in
blood?...’
“I shall not dwell more on the advantages than I have done on the
justice of this measure. I do not believe that one advantage will result
from it, or from any other convention between Ireland and Great Britain
which the English minister proposes, and which the English mercantile
interest approves of: no convention or community of interests ever will
be equitably conducted where both parties are not equally able to assert
their own rights, and to resist the innovations or injustice of the
other.... _I know that our part of the treaty will be signed and most
strictly performed, and that the English part of it will be filled up
how and when it suits the interests of the minister._”
When the order came from the Castle to the State prisoners in Kilmainham
on March 18th, 1799, instructing them to be ready for embarkation the
following morning, Mary Anne Emmet, “at a late hour the same evening, on
hearing of the order, proceeded immediately to the Castle, and demanded
an interview with the viceroy for the purpose of ascertaining the fate
that was destined for her brother. She presented herself to the viceroy
with the spirit that seemed to be characteristic of her race. Lord
Cornwallis was moved even to tears at the earnestness of her
supplication, the anxiety exhibited in her looks, the strength of
feeling, the energy of character displayed in the effort she had made.
He treated her with kindness, and assured her that ‘no harm should occur
to her brother.’... Miss Emmet returned to her family, and the
intelligence she brought, little as it was, relieved the minds of her
parents of much of their alarm.”[90]
Footnote 90:
Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Third Series (Second Edition). p. 91.
Sometime in 1799 she married Robert Holmes, a rising barrister. The
young couple took up their residence with old Dr. and Mrs. Emmet, first
in Stephen’s Green, and later in Casino; and the correspondence of her
mother with Thomas Addis in Fort George, makes frequent mention of Mary
Anne. In a letter dated April 10th, Elizabeth Emmet informs her son of
the comfort she and her husband found in “Mary Anne’s happiness in
consequence of having married a very worthy man, of whom she is very
fond, and he equally so of her. She has grown so stout that scarcely a
day passes without her walking to town, about town, and out again. The
pleasure of her husband’s company has, I believe, wrought this change,
and her health is greatly benefitted by the exertion.” In July, 1800,
her first baby, a little boy, was born, but the many and great anxieties
its mother had undergone before its birth told on it, and it only lived
one week. Poor Mary Anne was long in recovering, and perhaps her mother
did not make sufficient allowance for the drain made on her delicate
constitution by the intensity of her feelings. The indolence, the
disinclination to make any exertion except on a great occasion of which
her mother frequently complained, were due to physical weakness, and of
this her mother did not seem to take account. “Mary Anne is very much
better, but you know of old that she has one complaint of which I have
no hope she will be cured: indolence has still, and always will have,
domination over her, except when exertion becomes necessary; then,
indeed, no person can exceed her in efforts. I wish, however, for her
own sake that her exertions were brought more into the practice of every
day, and not reserved for great occasions. She has a very strong mind,
and I think it would operate more upon the body if more frequently
called forth.”
* * * * *
Six days after the outbreak of Robert Emmet’s Insurrection, Robert
Holmes, who had been in England on business, and knew nothing of his
brother-in-law’s plans, was arrested in the streets of Dublin, on his
way home. About the same time John Patten, Jane Emmet’s brother, was
arrested, and the wildest rumours of Robert’s fate were brought to the
ladies of the Emmet family, who were now in residence at Donnybrook. The
anxiety proved too much for Elizabeth Emmet, and while her youngest son
lay in prison awaiting his tragic destiny, she died in her daughter’s
arms.
Think of what Mary Anne Holmes had to endure during those terrible
weeks. One brother was in exile, another in the prison from which the
only egress was up the steps to the scaffold; her husband a prisoner
with an uncertain fate. Truly “the strong mind” had heavy drains on it
when she followed her mother’s coffin to the churchyard of St. Peter’s
in Aungier Street, whither Dr. Emmet’s had only a little time preceded
it. Small wonder that the end of her sad story came with tragic
swiftness, and in tragic circumstances.
Mr. Holmes was kept for a whole year a prisoner in Dublin Castle, and
then suddenly released. He walked directly home. “In response to his
ring his wife unfortunately opened the door, only to drop dead into his
arms from the suddenness of the shock and the excess of her joy at
seeing him. It is said that Mr. Holmes never recovered from the shock he
thus received, and to the day of his death he was seldom seen to
smile.”[91] He lived to be a very old man—to see the men of ’48 stand in
the same dock as the men of ’98 and ’03—and for the same crime. In his
eightieth year he acted as counsel for Duffy in the _Nation_ prosecution
of 1846; in his eighty-second year he defended John Mitchel. “We thought
we heard the blood of Emmet crying aloud from the ground,” said Mitchel,
of the great speech made by Holmes on the former occasion. But in the
ears of the old man, himself, as he made his immortal indictment of
England, there was ringing the voice of his dead love—the woman whom
England’s cruelty had murdered in his very arms two-and-forty years
before!
Footnote 91:
“The Emmet Family,” p. 54. The circumstances of Mary Anne Holmes’s
death were communicated to Dr. T. A. Emmet by Sir Bernard Burke.
MARY TONE
Of Mary Tone, the sister of Theobald Wolfe Tone, we have already spoken
at some length in the Memoir of her sister-in-law. Her brother has
described her for us in his _Autobiography_: “My sister, whose name is
Mary, is a fine young woman; she has all the peculiarity of our
disposition with all the delicacy of her own sex. If she were a man, she
would be exactly like one of us [_i.e._ her brothers, whose ‘portraits’
he has just sketched], and, as it is, being brought up amongst boys, for
we never had but one more sister, who died a child, she has contracted a
masculine habit of thinking, without, however, in any degree, derogating
from that feminine softness of manner which is suited to her sex and
age.”
When Tone and his wife and family were obliged to leave Ireland for
America, Mary Tone accompanied them, sharing the dangers and hardships
of the journey, and the anxieties and deprivations of life in an unknown
land. When the summons came for Theobald to leave them, and start off on
his hazardous mission to France, Mary Tone joined her sister-in-law in
urging him to answer the call. When the moment of parting came her
firmness and courage were as great as Matilda’s: “We had neither tears
nor lamentations, but on the contrary, the most ardent hope and the most
steady resolution.”
On the voyage across the Atlantic which she made with Matilda Tone and
her children towards the end of 1796, in order to rejoin Theobald, Mary
Tone made the acquaintance of a young Swiss merchant named Giacque, who,
though “just beginning the world with little or no property, thought
proper to fall in love with her.” The first letter Tone received from
his wife after their arrival in Hamburg, was accompanied, we learn from
the _Autobiography_, by one from Giacque “informing me of his situation
and circumstances, of his love for my sister, and hers for him, and
praying my consent. There was an air of candour and honesty in his
letter which gave me a good opinion of him, nor did I consider myself at
liberty to stand in the way of her happiness, which my wife mentioned to
me was deeply interested. I wrote therefore, giving my full consent to
the marriage, and trust in God they may be as happy as I wish them. It
is certainly a hazardous step in favour of a man whom I do not know;
but, as she is passionately fond of him, and he of her, as he perfectly
knows her situation, and has by no means endeavoured to disguise or
exaggerate his own, I am in hopes they may do well.”
After their marriage, the Giacques appear to have continued to live with
Mrs. Tone and her children, first at Hamburg, and afterwards at Paris.
After the death of Theobald, Mary and her husband went to St. Domingo;
and, according to her nephew, she met her death there, of yellow fever,
contracted through nursing a sick friend, who had been abandoned by her
family and servants. Another account, quoted by Madden, states that she
and her husband were killed by the negroes in the insurrection of that
island, about the year 1799. At all events she shared the tragic fate of
her immediate family—Theobald, William, Matthew, and Arthur—none of whom
reached thirty-six years of age.
LADY LUCY FITZGERALD