very active share in the charities the Cork ladies exercised towards the
sufferers of ’98—but her father was an ardent sympathiser with “the
Cause,” and Lord Edward Fitzgerald was concealed, on one occasion, at
their house. Perhaps it was in memory of this—or perhaps it was because
she felt what I have tried to express: that the Sisterhood Mary
Aikenhead founded, proceeded so largely from ’Ninety-Eight and all it
stood for—that Lady Lucy Fitzgerald (or as she then was, Lady Lucy
Foley) left at her death, a generous legacy to the Sisters of Charity.
One cannot help thinking that the list of the first companions of Mary
Aikenhead must have sounded to Lady Lucy like a roll-call of names made
immortal in the ranks of the United Irishmen. There were Teelings,
Sweetmans, Clinches, O’Reillys, Bellews, and many others.
Mrs. Coleman (Mother Mary de Chantal) was born amid the troubles that
preceded ’98. “Her father, a gentleman farmer in Meath or Louth, ... was
suspected of disaffection. On the very night his little daughter was to
come into the world, the house was surrounded by a troop of armed men,
whose heavy footsteps, presently heard on the stairs, gave the alarm to
the inmates, who hurried away ‘the poor mistress’ under cover of the
darkness to an uninhabited hut sometimes used by the herd. She gave up
all for lost, and resigned herself to die, knowing well that no human
assistance awaited her in the hour of her utmost need. Her piety was
sincere, her faith was strong, and she had an ardent devotion to the
Blessed Virgin. As her husband forced open the door and led her into the
dark hut, she heard a voice distinctly say: ‘Do not fear, Mary, I will
protect you and your child’; while at the same time a bright light
filled the place. Then and there under its influence the child was
born.”
So, too, we may say, in the darkness of Ireland’s Agony in
’Ninety-Eight, illumined miraculously by the Faith and Hope and Charity
of Ireland’s womanhood, there was born the great Congregation to which
that little child was destined to belong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SARAH CURRAN AND ANNE DEVLIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sarah Curran and Anne Devlin
“The rose left her cheek, the brave eyes grew dim,
She drained the bitter cup of sorrow to the brim—
When that sad September noon saw your young heart low,
And the dawn of Ireland shrouded in a bleak cloud of woe.
“I had died for you gladly, my courage never quailed,
When their swords pierced my bosom, their wild threats assailed;
Nor did their prison torture win from me a single tear—
_That_ memory of grief and pain would die if you were here.”
—Ethna Carbery: _Anne Devlin’s Lament for Emmet_.
SHALL we not join together the two women, whom love for Robert Emmet has
dowered with a common immortality, and whom a common agony of loss has
bound, one to the other, in the eternal sisterhood of sorrow? So best
shall our love and pity reach them both—the fragile girl who died of a
broken heart for _his_ sake, and the strong girl whose brave heart
faced—for _his_ sake likewise—tortures that were worse than death. And
let it not weaken our sympathy with Sarah Curran to remember that the
sentimental generation which wept for her (in the rose-tinted shades of
its Whig drawing-rooms, the while Tommy Moore set her sorrows to the
sweetest and saddest of music) _allowed Anne Devlin to die of
starvation_.
SARAH CURRAN
In thinking of Sarah Curran we paraphrase unconsciously the pitiful
lines of one of our Irish poets and say of her:
“There was a _maid_ whom Sorrow named his friend,
And _she_ of her high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps.”
From her earliest years sorrow had walked with her as friend with
friend; and the sadness of her death was but in keeping with the sadness
of her birth, of her disposition, of her home-life, of her love story.
We know from the confidences of John Philpot Curran’s most intimate
friends that the brilliant gaiety of his convivial hours alternated with
fits of the blackest depression. His friend, Charles Phillips, writes of
him: “It was with him as it is with every person whose spirits are apt
to be occasionally excited—the depression is at intervals in exact
proportion.... He was naturally sensitive—domestic misfortunes rendered
his home unhappy—he flew for a kind of refuge into public life; and the
political ruin of his country, leaving him without an object of private
enjoyment or of patriotic hope, flung him upon his own heart-devouring
reflections.... It was a deplorable thing to see him, in the decline of
life, when visited by this constitutional melancholy. I have not
unfrequently accompanied him in his walks upon such occasions, almost at
the hour of midnight. He had gardens attached to the Priory, of which he
was particularly fond; and into these gardens, when so affected, no
matter at what hour, he used to ramble. It was then almost impossible to
divert his mind from themes of sadness. The gloom of his own thoughts
discoloured everything, and from calamity to calamity he would wander
on—seeing in the future nothing for hope, and in the past nothing but
disappointment.”
The home of such a man cannot have been a very happy one for his
children; and the sufferings imposed on his family by Curran’s attacks
of _melancholia_ must have been aggravated in the case of his youngest
daughter Sarah, who inherited, with her father’s genius and her father’s
artistic and musical sensibility, more than her share of her father’s
disposition to sadness. In the large dark mournful eyes of her, which
had also come to her from her father, was mirrored the hereditary
sadness of her soul.
This hereditary sadness, fostered by an unhappy home-life, was further
strengthened by two events which darkened her childhood. The one was the
death of her favourite sister, Gertrude, who died at the age of twelve,
when Sarah herself was a girl of eleven. Gertrude was a musical prodigy,
and the whole family, and especially Sarah and her father, who were
passionately fond of music, worshipped her. Curran insisted on the dead
girl being buried in the Priory grounds, and she was laid to rest under
a large tree on the lawn, directly opposite the window of the children’s
nursery. “Under its shade they [_i.e._ Gertrude and Sarah] had often sat
together, pulled the first primroses at its roots, and watched in its
leaves the earliest verdure of the spring. Many an hour, for many a
year, did the sorrowful survivor take her silent stand at the melancholy
window, gazing on the well-known spot, which constituted all her little
world of joys and sorrows. To this circumstance she attributed the
tendency to melancholy which formed so marked a feature of her character
through life.”[97]
Footnote 97:
Quoted by Madden from article entitled “Some Passages in the History
of Sarah Curran,” in “Literary Souvenir” of 1831. The writer is
believed to have been a lady of the Crawford family, who were intimate
friends of Sarah and her people.
Two years after Gertrude’s death, a grief even more intolerable befel
our poor Sarah. She lost her mother, whose favourite daughter she
was—and it was worse than death which caused the separation. Sarah was
fourteen at the time—old enough to feel the shame, and to suffer the
agony of it in every fibre of her pure and noble nature. So overwhelmed
was she with grief that it was thought advisable for her to leave the
Priory for some time. She therefore accepted the offer of hospitality
made her by an early college friend of her father, Rev. Thomas Crawford,
of Lismore, and remained with his family “until better thoughts at home
led to her return to it.”
At what time she learned to know Robert Emmet we are not definitely
informed. The Emmets and the Currans were old acquaintances—if not
friends—and for a time at least Thomas Addis Emmet and John Philpot
Curran were neighbours in Rathfarnham. They must have often met,
likewise, in the law-courts. Richard Curran, Sarah’s eldest brother, was
a fellow-student of Robert Emmet’s at Trinity, and it was ostensibly to
see him, and to enjoy the witty conversation of his father that Robert
Emmet, after his return from Paris in 1802, paid his frequent visits to
the Priory. Curran loved to see youth around him, and made the young men
heartily welcome.
And all the time it was Sarah that drew the young patriot to the house
her presence glorified for him—Sarah with her pale and delicate
loveliness, the soft cloud of her black hair, the haunting sadness of
her great dark eyes, the exquisite voice of her that moved him to the
very depths of his soul, singing some of the tender old Irish airs he
loved so well! Sarah with her fatal dower of loveliness, and genius, and
music, and passion—and sorrow.
* * * * *
It is quite certain that after the failure of the Insurrection of July
23rd, 1803, Emmet could have escaped to America, had not he risked his
all for the sake of one last meeting with his love. He came back to an
old lodging of his at the house of Mrs. Palmer at Harold’s Cross, and
from this place he sent a letter through Anne Devlin to Sarah Curran.
A few days later, Government received information that Emmet was at Mrs.
Palmer’s. On August 25, Major Sirr rode out there and captured him,
bringing him back handcuffed, to Dublin Castle, whence he was committed
to Kilmainham Gaol on the charge of High Treason.
When he was arrested, two letters[98] in a lady’s hand-writing were
found in his possession. As these letters clearly showed that their
writer was fully acquainted with Emmet’s plans, the authorities were
most anxious to discover from whom they came. They half suspected that
they had been written by his sister, Mrs. Holmes, and that the language
of a love affair was adopted as a means of averting suspicion. Emmet, in
an agony of mind, lest the writer should be discovered, offered at his
Examination before the Privy Council to accept any consequences for
himself if the lady’s name should not appear.
Footnote 98:
MacDonagh: “Viceroy’s Post-Bag,” p. 342 _et seq._
Alas! it was his own mistaken trust in the turnkey of Kilmainham, George
Dunn, which put Government in possession of the knowledge they had
hitherto vainly sought. Dunn had been bribed by St. John Mason, Emmet’s
cousin, to facilitate his escape, but while pretending to fall in with
Mason’s plans he had in reality betrayed them to the Castle. Knowing
nothing of this, Emmet entrusted to George Dunn, a letter openly
addressed to “Miss Sarah Curran”—and this letter (which clearly
indicated her as the writer of the others) was, within an hour, in the
hands of the Chief Secretary.
Amid the other grim documents of the Home Office Secret Papers this love
letter of Emmet’s keeps strange company. It has been published, for the
first time, in “The Viceroy’s Post-Bag” (p. 358):—
“My dearest Love,
“I don’t know how to write to you. I never felt so oppressed in
my life as at the cruel injury I have done to you. I was seized
and searched with a pistol over me before I could destroy your
letters. They have been compared with those found before. I was
threatened with having them brought forward against me in Court.
I offered to plead guilty if they would suppress them. This was
refused. Information (without mentioning names) was required. I
refused, but offered since if I would be permitted to consult
others, and that they would consent to enter into any
accommodation of that nature to save the lives of those
condemned, that I would only require for my part of it to have
those letters suppressed, and that I would stand my trial. It
has been refused. My love, can you forgive me?
“I wanted to know whether anything had been done respecting the
person who wrote the letters, for I feared you might have been
arrested. They refused to tell me for a long time. At length,
when I said that it was but fair if they expected I should enter
into any accommodation that I should know for what I was to do
it, they then asked me whether bringing you into the room to me
would answer my purpose, upon which I got up and told them that
it might answer theirs better. I was sure you were arrested, and
I could not stand the idea of seeing you in that situation. When
I found, however, that this was not the case, I began to think
that they only meant to alarm me; but their refusal has only
come this moment and my fears are renewed. Not that they can do
anything to you even if they would be base enough to attempt it,
for they can have no proof who wrote them, nor did I let your
name escape me once, nor even acknowledge that they were written
directly to myself. But I fear they may suspect from the stile,
and from the hair, for they took the stock[99] from me, and I
have not been able to get it back from them, and that they may
think of bringing you forward.
Footnote 99:
Is this the black velvet stock with the lock of hair, marked
Miss C., attached to it which Madden says was sold at
Russborough’s auction in “the thirties”?
“I have written to your father to come to me to-morrow. Had you
not better speak to himself to-night. Destroy my letters that
there may be nothing against yourself, and deny having any
knowledge of me further than seeing me once or twice. For God’s
sake, write to me by the bearer one line to tell me how you are
in spirits. I have no anxiety, no care, about myself; but I am
terribly oppressed about you. My dearest love, I would with joy
lay down my life, but ought I to do more? Do not be alarmed;
they may try to frighten you, but they cannot do more. God bless
you, my dearest love.
“I must send this off at once; I have written it in the dark. My
dearest Sarah, forgive me.”
* * * * *
The next morning Major Sirr and a party of yeomanry presented themselves
at the Priory with warrants to search the house for papers, and arrest
Sarah Curran. The events of that morning are graphically described by
the Chief Secretary, Mr. Wickham, to the Home Secretary.
“_Secret_
“Dublin Castle, _Sept. 9, 1803_.
“My dear Sir,
“The writer of the letter found in Mr. Emmet’s pocket is
discovered. She proves to be Mr. Curran’s youngest daughter.
This discovery has given rise to some very unpleasant and
distressing scenes. It became indispensably necessary to search
the apartment of the lady for papers. She resided at her
father’s house in the country near Rathfarnham, within a short
distance of Butterfield Lane. Major Sirr was sent there this
morning with a letter addressed to Mr. Curran, of which I send a
copy inclosed. Unfortunately, Mr. Curran was not at home, and
still more unfortunately the young lady was not up, tho’ the
rest of the family (two other daughters and a son) were
assembled at breakfast, so that the Major entered the room where
she was still in bed. This circumstance occasioned a scene of
great confusion and distress, and was also productive of some
inconvenience, for whilst the Major and the other daughter were
giving assistance to Mr. Emmet’s correspondent—who was thrown
into violent convulsions—the eldest Miss Curran continued to
destroy some papers, the few scraps of which that were saved
were in Mr. Emmet’s hand-writing.
“I have the satisfaction to add that Mr. Curran is satisfied
that Government has acted throughout with great personal
delicacy towards him, and that on his part he has acted fairly
towards Government, and that he was unquestionably ignorant of
the connection between his daughter and Mr. Emmet.
“The Lord Lieutenant particularly requests that Miss Curran’s
name may not be mentioned. It is difficult that it should be
long concealed, but it is desirable that it should not be first
mentioned by any member of Government in either country.
“The Attorney-General, who has had the kindness to go himself to
Mr. Curran’s house at Rathfarnham, gives the most melancholy and
affecting account of the state in which he left the whole
family.”
* * * * *
Curran had been engaged by Emmet as his Counsel, but he immediately
threw up his brief. He had never liked the Emmets; but now when Robert’s
action had brought danger to his own family, and obstacles to his own
advancement, his feeling towards him—and towards his own daughter—became
a hatred, with elements of madness in it. Of his treatment of the latter
we shall speak later.
To the curt letter in which Curran announced to the prisoner his refusal
to act as his Counsel, Robert replied as follows:—
“I did not expect you to be my counsel: I nominated you because
not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. Had Mr.
——[100] been in town I did not even wish to have seen you, but
as he was not I wrote to you to come to me at once. I know that
I have done you very severe injury, much greater than I can
atone for with my life. That atonement I did offer to make
before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty if those documents
were suppressed. I offered more. I offered if I was permitted to
consult some persons, and if they would consent to an
accommodation for saving the lives of others, that I would only
require for my part of it the suppression of those documents,
and that I would abide the event of my own trial. This was also
rejected, and nothing but individual information (with the
exception of names) would be taken. My intention was not to
leave the suppression of these documents to possibility, but to
render it unnecessary for anyone to plead for me, by pleading
guilty to the charge myself.
Footnote 100:
Madden believes that the name indicated by the blank was that
of his brother-in-law, Robert Holmes. But it seems from other
references more likely to have been Councillor Burton—Curran’s
clerk.
“The circumstances that I am now going to mention I do not
state in my own justification. When I first addressed your
daughter I expected that in another week my own fate would be
decided. I knew that in case of success many others might look
on me differently from what they did at that moment, but I
speak with sincerity when I say that I never was anxious for
situation or distinction myself, and I did not wish to be
united to one who was. I spoke to your daughter neither
expecting, nor, in fact, under those circumstances, wishing,
that there should be a return of attachment, but wishing to
judge of her dispositions—to know how far they might not be
unfavourable or disengaged, and to know what foundation I
might afterwards have to count on. I received no encouragement
whatever. She told me she had no attachment for any person,
nor did she seem likely to have any that could make her wish
to quit you.
“I staid away till the time had elapsed when I found that the
event to which I have alluded was to be postponed indefinitely.
I returned by a kind of infatuation, thinking that to myself
only was I giving pleasure or pain. I perceived no progress of
attachment on her part, nor anything in her conduct to
distinguish me from a common acquaintance.
“Afterwards I had reason to suppose that discoveries were made,
and that I should be obliged to quit the Kingdom immediately;
and I came to make a renunciation of any approach to friendship
that might have been formed. On that very day she herself spoke
to me to discontinue my visits. I told her that it was my
intention, and I mentioned the reason. I then for the first time
found, when I was unfortunate, by the manner in which she was
affected, that there was a return of affection, and that it was
too late to retreat. My own apprehensions, also I found
afterwards were without cause, and I remained.
“There has been much culpability on my part in all this; but
there has also been a great deal of that misfortune which seems
uniformly to have accompanied me.
“That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event
has taken place was an additional breach of propriety, for which
I have suffered well. But I will candidly confess that I not
only do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I
consider it to have been unavoidable after what has passed; for
though I will not attempt to justify in the smallest degree my
former conduct, yet, when an attachment was once formed between
us—and a sincerer one never did exist—I feel that, peculiarly
circumstanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my
situation would neither have weaned her affections nor lessened
her anxiety; and looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived,
I hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing
of her anxiety above every other consideration. I would rather
have had the affections of your daughter in the back settlements
of America, than the first situation this country could afford
without them.
“I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my offence.
I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to know that
if I had that situation in my power at this moment I would
relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness. I know not
whether success would have blotted out the recollection of what
I have done. But I know that a man with the coldness of death on
him need not be made to feel any other coldness, and that he may
be spared any addition to the misery he feels, not for himself,
but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow.”
* * * * *
There were all the elements of the cad in John Philpot Curran’s
character, and these came to the surface after his return to his house
on September 9th, when he presented himself in the darkened chamber
where his daughter lay in her agony. After one terrible interview, he
refused to see her, or to speak to her, ever again.
He had perforce to shelter her for a little time longer under his
roof—for brain fever, followed by a temporary loss of reason, brought
her to death’s door. She was thus mercifully spared, as her friend said,
“the misery of travelling step by step, through the wilderness of woe
which Emmet’s trial and execution would have proved to her.”
On the night before his execution (while his love tossed in the delirium
of fever, and the sister who watched by her bed had her heart torn by
the way she called his name) Robert Emmet wrote two letters which are
eloquent of the thoughts of her which filled his heart until it ceased
to beat. One is addressed to her brother, Richard, who had found means
to send his friend a message of kindness, which might almost atone for
his father’s caddish cruelty:
“My dearest Richard,
“I find I have but a few hours to live; but if it was the last
moment, and that the power of utterance was leaving me, I would
thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous
expressions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was
anyone in the world in whose breast my death might be supposed
not to stifle every spark of resentment, it might be you. I have
deeply injured you—I have injured the happiness of a sister that
you love, and who was formed to give happiness to everyone about
her, instead of having her mind a prey to affliction. Oh!
Richard, I have no excuse to offer, but that I meant the
reverse. I intended as much happiness for Sarah as the most
ardent love could have given her. I never did tell you how much
I idolised her. It was not with a wild or unfounded passion, but
it was an attachment increasing every hour, from an admiration
of the purity of her mind and respect for her talents. I did
dwell in secret upon the prospect of our union. I did hope that
success, while it afforded the opportunity of our union, might
be a means of confirming an attachment which misfortune had
called forth. I did not look to honours for myself—praise I
would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have
wished to read in the glow of Sarah’s countenance that her
husband was respected.
“My love, Sarah! it was not thus that I thought to have requited
your affection. I did hope to be a prop round which your
affections might have clung, and which would never have been
shaken; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen
over a grave.
“This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to
sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink; but there
have been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk by
grief on her account that death would have been a refuge. God
bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave off
immediately.”
The second was addressed to Thomas Addis Emmet and his wife. It was
suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant’s orders, and found its final
destination in the Home Office Secret Papers, whence Mr. MacDonagh first
exhumed it:
“My dearest Tom and Jane,
“I am just going to do my last duty to my country. It can be
done as well on the scaffold as on the field. Do not give way to
any weak feeling on my account, but rather encourage proud ones
that I have possessed fortitude and tranquillity of mind to the
last.