you. May they be more fortunate than their uncle; but may they
preserve as pure and ardent an attachment to their country as he
has done. Give the watch to little Robert. He will not prize it
the less for having been in the possession of two Roberts before
him. I have one dying request to make to you. I was attached to
Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of your friend. I did hope
to have had her my companion for life. I did hope that she would
not only have constituted my happiness, but that her heart and
understanding would have made her one of Jane’s dearest friends.
I know that Jane would have loved her on my account and I feel
also that had they been acquainted she must have loved her on
her own. No one knew of the attachment until now, nor is it now
generally known, therefore do not speak of it to others. She is
living with her father and brother, but if these protectors
should fall off and that no other should replace them, treat her
as my wife and love her as a sister. God Almighty bless you all.
Give my love to all my friends.”
* * * * *
As soon as his daughter was able to travel, Curran drove her from his
house. She first found shelter with her kind friends the Crawfords, of
Lismore, and subsequently with a Quaker family called Penrose at
Woodhill, Cork, whose kindness to the broken-hearted, homeless girl
helped to restore her to some degree of strength. On one occasion,
during her stay with them, they persuaded her to go to a masked ball in
Cork. The “mask” selected for her was that of a wandering ballad-singer,
and in this character she sang, in the exquisite voice, which had so
often charmed her dead young lover, some of the beautiful, plaintive
Irish airs of Owenson.
A romantic young officer, Captain Sturgeon, lost his heart to the
singer—and when he heard her story his affections were but the more
deeply engaged. Himself, the offspring of a most romantic marriage,[101]
he found in the halo of poetry, with which Sarah’s sad love-story
invested her, but an added attraction. He, therefore, proposed for her
hand; and the Penroses who saw in this marriage, the one hope of their
friend’s future settlement, urged his suit with much ardour. At this
time consumption had declared itself in her fragile form, and the
doctors stated that residence in a warm climate was necessary to save
her life. Captain Sturgeon was ordered to Sicily in the winter of 1805,
and this fact seemed to Miss Curran’s friends, the Penroses, an
additional reason for urging her to accept his proposal.
Footnote 101:
His mother, Lady Harriet Wentworth, sister to the Marquis of
Rockingham, had married her footman.
At last she yielded to the united entreaties of her friends and gave her
hand to Captain Sturgeon, with his full knowledge that her heart was
buried in Emmet’s unknown grave.
In the spring of 1808 the English had to abandon Sicily, when Captain
Sturgeon and his wife returned to England in a crowded transport, in
very tempestuous weather. An unfinished letter of Sarah’s to one of her
friends, will tell in all the pathos of its simplicity the end of her
sorrowful story:
“Hythe, _April 17, 1808_.
“My dear M——, I suppose you do not know of my arrival from
Sicily, or I should have heard from you. I must be very brief in
the details of events which have been so fatal to me, and which
followed our departure from that country. A most dreadful and
perilous passage occasioned me many frights. I was, on our
entrance into the channel, prematurely delivered of a boy,
without any assistance, save that of one of the soldier’s wives,
the only woman on board but myself. The storm being so high that
no boat could stand out to sea, I was in imminent danger till
twelve the next day, when, at the risk of his life, a physician
came on board from one of the ships and relieved me. The storm
continued, and I got brain fever, which, however, passed off. To
be short, on landing at Portsmouth, the precious creature for
whom I suffered so much, God took to Himself. The inexpressible
anguish I felt at this event, preying on me, has occasioned the
delay of my health. For the last month the contest between life
and death has seemed doubtful; but this day having called in a
very clever man, he seems not to think me in danger. My disorder
is a total derangement of the nervous system, and its most
dreadful effects I find in an attack on my mind and spirits. _I
suffer misery you cannot conceive._ I am often seized with heavy
perspirations, trembling and that indescribable horror which you
must know if ever you had fever. Write instantly to me. Alas! I
want everything to soothe my mind, O my friend, would to heaven
you were with me! nothing so much as the presence of a dear
female friend would tend to my recovery. But in England you know
how I am situated—not one I know intimately. To make up for this
my beloved husband is everything to me; his conduct throughout
all my troubles surpasses all praise. Write to me, dear M., and
tell me how to bear all these things. I have, truly speaking,
cast all my care on the Lord; but oh! how our weak natures fail
every day, every hour I may say. _On board the ship, when all
seemed adverse to hope, it is strange how an overstrained trust
in certain words of our Saviour gave me such perfect faith in
His help, that, though my baby was visibly pining away, I never
doubted his life for a moment. ‘He who gathers the lambs in His
arms,’ I thought, would look on mine if I had faith in Him. This
has often troubled me since._”
* * * * *
Extract from _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1808: “May 5th, 1808, at Hythe,
in Kent, of a rapid decline, aged 26, Sarah, wife of Captain Henry
Sturgeon, youngest daughter of the Right Hon. J. P. Curran, Master of
the Rolls in Ireland.”
ANNE DEVLIN
In 1842 when Dr. Madden was engaged in his researches for his memoir of
Robert Emmet, he was directed to a certain old washerwoman, called
Campbell, then living in great poverty and obscurity in a stable-yard
off John’s Lane. This old woman, he was told, was the only one then
living, in all probability, who could give an authentic account of what
happened on the night of July the 23rd, 1803, after the flight of the
leaders and the rout of their followers.
How did she come to have this information? For the reason that she had
helped Rosie Hope to cook and keep house for Robert Emmet and his
companions in the establishment he had leased (in the name of Robert
Ellis) in Butterfield Lane, Rathfarnham, during the months of active
preparation for the Rising. Her father was a well-to-do dairyman, of the
neighbourhood, and both he and his sons, as well as their kinsmen,
Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow “outlaw,” and Arthur Devlin, were deep in
Robert Emmet’s plans. His daughter’s housewifely skill had been devoted
to the Cause in the same spirit as her male relatives’ soldier-service.
Her maiden name, which Dr. Madden’s informant had previously omitted to
mention, was—Anne Devlin.
Anne Devlin! Can anyone living to-day, with a drop of Irish blood in his
or her veins, hear that name without a great stirring of the heart? It
stands for a heroism, a fortitude, a devotion, a fidelity, a loyalty,
which even to have conceived, honours all human nature—and which to have
produced, ennobles Irish womanhood for all time. Anne Devlin! Amid the
great names of our race which thrill each Irish heart as with a trumpet
note, what name has power to move us as does that?
We owe it to Dr. Madden that the name means so much to us. Had he not
sought her out, and drawn her story from her lips, and raised her body
from its pauper burial place to lay it, in its rightful place amid the
noblest in Glasnevin, that name might have meant as little to us as it
did to the generation, which Dr. Madden’s appeal for her (in the first
edition of his “United Irishmen”) left unmoved, and which, during his
absence, from Ireland, left her to die of cold and hunger in a tenement
house, and be buried in a pauper’s grave.
* * * * *
“In the summer of 1843,” writes Dr. Madden, “accompanied by Anne
Devlin, I proceeded to Butterfield Lane, to ascertain the fact
of the existence or non-existence of the house in which Robert
Emmet had resided in 1803. For a length of time our search was
fruitless. The recollection of a locality at the expiration of
forty years is a very dim sort of reminiscence. There was no
house in the lane the exterior of which reminded my conductress
of her old scene of suffering. At length her eye caught an old
range of buildings at some distance, like the offices of a
farmhouse. This she at once recognised as part of the premises
of her father, and she was soon able to point out the well-known
fields around it, which had once been in her father’s
possession. The house, alongside of which we were standing, on
the right-hand side of the lane going from Rathfarnham road, she
said must be the house of Mr. Emmet, though the entrance was
entirely altered; however, the position of an adjoining house
left little doubt in her mind. We knocked at the door, and I
found the house was inhabited by a lady of my acquaintance, the
daughter of a Protestant clergyman, who had been, strange to
say, the college friend and most intimate acquaintance of Robert
Emmet, the late Dr. Hayden, of Rathcoole.
“The lady of the house, in whom I discovered an acquaintance,
left us in no doubt on the subject of the locality—we were in
the house that had been tenanted by Robert Emmet. The scene that
ensued is one more easily conceived than described. We were
conducted over the house—my aged companion at first in silence,
and then as if slowly awakening from a dream, rubbing her dim
eyes, and here and there pausing for some moments when she came
to some recognised spot. On the ground floor she pointed out a
small room, on the left-hand of the entrance—‘That’s the room
where Mr. Dowdall and Mr. Hamilton used to sleep.’ The entrance
has been changed from about the centre to the right-hand end;
the window of a small room there has been converted into the
door-way, and the room itself into the hall. ‘This,’ said Anne
Devlin, ‘was my room; I know it well—my mattress used to be in
that corner.’ There was one place, every corner and cranny of
which she seemed to have a familiar acquaintance with, and that
was the kitchen. On the upper floor, the principal bed-room at
the present time attracted her particular attention; she stood
for some time gazing into the room from the door-way; I asked
her whose room it had been. It was a good while before I got an
answer in words, but her trembling hands, and the few tears
which came from a deep source, and spoke of sorrow of an old
date, left no necessity to repeat that question—it was the room
of Robert Emmet.
“Another on the same floor was that of Russell. They slept on
mattresses on the floor—there was scarcely any furniture in the
house; they often went out after dark, seldom or never in the
day-time. They were always in good spirits, and Mr. Hamilton
used often to sing—he was a very good singer; Mr. Robert
sometimes hummed a tune, but he was no great singer, but he was
the best and kindest-hearted of all the persons she had ever
known; he was too good for many of those who were about him. Of
Russell she spoke in terms hardly less favourable than those in
which she expressed her opinions of Emmet.... At the rear of the
house, in the courtyard, she pointed out the spot where she had
undergone the punishment of half-hanging, and while she did so
there was no appearance of emotions, such at least as one might
expect recalled terror might produce, but there were very
evident manifestations of another kind, of as lively a
remembrance of the wrongs and outrages that had been inflicted
on her, as if they had been endured but the day before, and of
as keen a sense of those indignities and cruelties, as if her
cowardly assailants had been before her, and those withered
hands of hers had power to grapple with them.”
And then, amidst the very scenes which had been hallowed by Robert
Emmet’s presence and Anne Devlin’s sufferings Dr. Madden heard from her
lips the high, heroic tale once more.
* * * * *
“On July the 23rd at about eleven o’clock at night,” Anne Devlin
told Dr. Madden, “Robert Emmet, Nicholas Stafford, Michael
Quigley, Thomas Wylde, John Mahon, John Hevey, and the two
Perrotts from Naas came to the house at Butterfield Lane. She
first saw them outside of the house, in the yard; she was at
that moment sending off a man on horseback with ammunition in a
sack, and bottles filled with powder. She called out, ‘Who’s
there?’ Robert answered, ‘It’s me, Anne.’ She said, ‘Oh, bad
welcome to you, is the world lost by you, you cowards that you
are, to lead the people to destruction, and then to leave them.’
Robert Emmet said, ‘Don’t blame me, the fault is not mine.’ They
then came in; Quigley was present, but they did not upbraid him.
Emmet and the others told her afterwards that Quigley was the
cause of the failure....
“They stopped at Butterfield lane that night and next day, and
at night about ten o’clock, fled to the mountains, when they got
information that the house was to be searched. Her father, who
kept a dairy close by, got horses for three of them, and went
with them.
“Rose Hope, the wife of James Hope, had been there keeping the
house also. The reason of their stopping there that night was,
that Emmet expected Dwyer and the mountaineers down in the
morning by break of day, but Dwyer had not got Emmet’s previous
letter, and had heard of Emmet’s defeat only the next day, and
therefore did not come. Mr. Emmet and his companions first went
to Doyle’s in the mountains, and thence to the widow Bagenell’s.
Anne Devlin and Miss Wylde, the sister of Mrs. Mahon, two or
three days after, went up to the mountains in a jingle with
letters for them. They found Robert Emmet and his associates at
the Widow Bagenell’s, sitting on the side of the hill; some of
them were in their uniform, for they had no other clothes.
“Robert Emmet insisted on coming back with her and her
companion, he parted with them before they came to Rathfarnham,
but she knows not where he went that night, but in a day or two
after he sent her to take a letter to Miss Curran; he was then
staying at Mrs. Palmer’s, at Harold’s Cross.
“The day after ... a troop of yeomen came with a magistrate, and
searched the house. Every place was ransacked from top to
bottom. As for herself she was seized on when they first rushed
in, as if they were going to tear down the house. She was kept
below by three or four of the yeomen with their fixed bayonets
pointed at her, and so close to her body that she could feel
their points. When the others came down she was examined. She
said she knew nothing in the world about the gentlemen, except
that she was the servant maid; where they came from, where they
went to, she knew nothing about; and so long as her wages were
paid she cared to know nothing else about them.
“The magistrate pressed her to tell the truth—he threatened her
with death if she did not tell; she persisted in asserting her
total ignorance of _Mr. Ellis’s_ acts and movements, and of
those of the other gentlemen. At length the magistrate gave the
word to hang her, and she was dragged into the courtyard to be
executed. There was a common car there—they tilted up the shafts
and fixed a rope from the backband that goes across the shafts,
and while these preparations were making for her execution, the
yeomen kept her standing against the wall of the house, prodding
her with their bayonets in the arms and shoulders till she was
all covered with blood, and saying to her at every thrust of the
bayonet, ‘Will you confess now; will you tell now where is Mr.
Ellis?’ Her constant answer was, ‘I have nothing to tell, I will
tell nothing.’
“The rope was at length put about her neck; she was dragged to
the place where the car was converted into a gallows; she was
placed under it, and the end of the rope was passed over the
backband. The question was put to her for the last time, ‘Will
you confess where Mr. Ellis is?’ Her answer was, ‘You may murder
me, you villains, but not one word about him will you ever get
from me.’ She had just time to say, ‘The Lord Jesus have mercy
on my soul,’ when a tremendous shout was raised by the yeomen;
the rope was pulled by all of them except those who held down
the back part of the car, and in an instant she was suspended by
the neck. After she had been thus suspended for two or three
minutes her feet touched the ground, and a savage yell of
laughter recalled her to her senses. The rope round her neck was
loosened, and her life was spared—she was let off with
half-hanging. She was then sent to town, and brought before
Major Sirr.
“No sooner was she brought before Major Sirr, than he, in the
most civil and coaxing manner, endeavoured to prevail on her to
give information respecting Robert Emmet’s place of concealment.
The question continually put to her was, ‘Well, Anne, all we
want to know is, where did he go to from Butterfield lane?’ He
said he would undertake to obtain for her the sum (he did not
call it reward) of £500, which he added, ‘was a fine fortune for
a young woman,’ only to tell against persons who were not her
relations; that all the others had confessed the truth—which was
not true—and that they were sent home liberated, which was also
a lie.”
Dr. Madden said to her with pretended seriousness, “You took the
money, of course.” Her indignant answer, accompanied by a look
to which Dr. Madden felt only a painter could do justice—was “Me
take the money—the price of Mr. Robert’s blood! No; I spurned
the rascal’s offer.”
“The major went on coaxing, trying to persuade her to confess.
He said everything had been told him by one of her associates.
Nay, what’s more, he repeated word for word, what she had said
to Mr. Robert the night of the 23rd, when he came back to
Butterfield lane—‘Bad welcome to you, etc.’ One of the persons
present with him then must have undoubtedly been an informer.
After she had been some time in Kilmainham, Mr. Emmet was
arrested and sent to that prison. Dr. Trevor had frequently
talked to her about him, but she never ‘let on’ that she had any
acquaintance with him. At this time she was kept in solitary
confinement for refusing to give information. One day the doctor
came and spoke to her in a very good-natured way, and said she
must have some indulgence, she must be permitted to take
exercise in the yard. The turnkey was ordered to take her to the
yard, and he accordingly did so; but when the yard-door was
open, who should she see walking very fast up and down the yard,
but Mr. Robert. She thought she would have dropped. She saw the
faces of people watching her at a grated window that looked into
the yard, and her only dread was that Mr. Robert on recognising
her would speak to her; but she kept her face away, and walked
up and down on the other side; and when they had crossed one
another several times, at last they met at the end. She took
care, when his eyes met hers, to have a frown on her face, and
her finger raised to her lips. He passed on as if he had never
seen her—but he knew her well; and the half smile that came over
his face, and passed off in a moment, could hardly have been
observed except by one who knew every turn of his countenance.
The doctor’s plot failed, she was taken back to her cell, and
there was no more taking of air or exercise then for her.
“She was in Kilmainham, a close prisoner, when Robert Emmet was
executed. She was kept locked up in a solitary cell, and indeed
always, with a few exceptions, was kept so during her
confinement the first year. The day after his execution she was
taken from gaol to the Castle, to be examined, through Thomas
Street. The gaoler had given orders to stop the coach at the
scaffold where Robert Emmet was executed. It was stopped there,
and she was forced to look at his blood, which was still plain
enough to be seen sprinkled over the deal boards.
“At the latter end of her confinement, some gentlemen belonging
to the Castle had come to the gaol and seen her in her cell. She
told them her sad story, and it was told by them to the lord
lieutenant. From that time her treatment was altogether
different; she was not only allowed the range of the woman’s
ward, but was permitted to go outside the prison, and three or
four times, accompanied by her sister and Mrs. Dwyer and one of
the turnkeys, was taken to the Spa at Lucan for the benefit of
her health; for she was then crippled in her limbs, more dead
than alive, hardly able to move hand or foot.
“At length Mr. Pitt died; it was a joyful day for Ireland. The
prisons were thrown open where many an honest person had lain
since the month of July, 1803.”
* * * * *
Anne Devlin’s narrative to Dr. Madden did not exhaust the full tale of
her sufferings. There is no mention in it of the fact that the whole of
her family, except one sister and a brother who were mere children, had
been thrown into prison, and their property ruined. As there was no
place for the little brother to go he found refuge in his father’s cell
in gaol. But the consolation of his boy’s company was not left long to
old Brian Devlin. Some communication having been discovered between him
and his daughter, the latter was removed from the new to the old gaol.
Some time after, the boy, then sick of a fever, was taken in the night
from his father’s cell and made to walk the mile which separated the new
from the old gaol. Here he died in circumstances which were looked on as
very suspicious.
So atrocious was the treatment meted out to Anne Devlin by Dr. Trevor
that the other prisoners made special mention of it in a Memorial they
presented to Lord Hardwicke: “His treatment,” they stated, “of all, but
especially of one unfortunate State prisoner, a female, is shocking to
humanity, and exceeds credibility. He drives, through exasperation, the
mind to madness, of which instances have already occurred.”
Of what befel Anne Devlin when, broken in health and crippled in limb,
she was at length liberated from Kilmainham we have no record. We must
fill in for ourselves the main features of the forty years that elapsed
before Dr. Madden discovered her in the old washerwoman, married to a
poor labourer in “a stable yard” off John’s Lane. Poverty, sickness,
grinding toil, hunger often, and want of every kind: these were her
portion through those long years of misery.
She might have had a different portion. She might have said the one
little word her captors wanted her to say. She might have stretched out
her hands for their five hundred golden guineas, and walked forth that
moment a free woman. She might have seen her father’s fields restored to
him and his business flourishing; and she, herself, the well-dowered
daughter of the prosperous dairyman, would surely have found a
husband—not too squeamish about the origin of his wife’s fortune—to keep
her in comfort all the days of her life. She might have had all that
most men hold most dear—as the price of a single word.
She chose instead—what seemed certain death, and then torture of every
description, both corporal and mental, until in the vile prison cell,
the strong mind snapped, and the vigorous body broke. But the will,
faithful to the end, never faltered.
* * * * *
The end of her story is told in a letter published by Dr. Madden in the
_Nation_ of September 27th, 1851:—