Anne Devlin, which was in some small degree responded to—very,
very inadequately, however. Afterwards we lost sight of her
entirely. So it seems did others of her friends until it was too
late. But last week, a gentleman who always took the warmest
interest in this noble creature, was informed that she was still
living in a miserable garret of No. 2 Little Elbow Lane, a
squalid alley running from the Coombe to Pimlico. On this day
week he sought that wretched abode, but she had died two days
previously, and had been buried in Glasnevin on the preceding
day. A young woman with an ill-fed infant in her arms,
apparently steeped in poverty, but kindly-looking and
well-mannered, in whose room Anne Devlin had lodged, said: ‘The
poor creature, God help her, it was well for her she was dead.
There was a coffin got from the Society for her, and she was
buried the day before.’ To the enquiry, what complaint she had
died of, the answer was—‘She was old and weak indeed, but she
died mostly of want. She had a son, but he was not able to do
much for her, except now and then to pay her lodging, which was
fivepence a week. He lived away from her, and so did her
daughter, who was a poor widow, and was hard enough set to get a
living for herself. About ten or twelve days ago a gentleman
(she believed of the name of Meehan) called there, and gave the
old woman something. Only for this she would not have lived as
long as she did. _She was very badly off, not only for food, but
for bed-clothes. Nearly all the rags she had went at one time or
another, to get her a morsel of bread._’”[102]
Footnote 102:
Dr. Madden has with delicate reticence veiled his own charity
to Anne Devlin. It was during one of his absences abroad that
she was lost sight of immediately before her death. The
gentleman “of the name of Meehan” referred to in poor Anne’s
landlady’s statement was Rev. C. P. Meehan, the historian.
Father Meehan, Edward Kennedy (Miles Byrne’s half-brother),
and Dr. Madden—let us remember their three names with
gratitude, because out of their own scanty means, they tried
to save the Irish nation from the disgrace of allowing Anne
Devlin to die of hunger.
* * * * *
“It is a hard service they take, who help the Poor Old Woman....
But for all that they think themselves well paid.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME OTHER ROMANCES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Other Romances of ’Ninety-Eight
“A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love.”—_Yeats._
“LOVE and pain and death”—these, in the final analysis, are the
substructure of life, and when some great force tears apart the
concealing surface, the revelation which makes plain one of them,
discovers the inevitable comradeship of the others. So when the mighty
cataclysm of ’Ninety-Eight revealed the Pain and Death which are two of
the foundations of life, there was revealed also, with a clearness which
ordinary times know not, the third foundation, Love.
* * * * *
When we think of Betsy Grey, it is as the heroine of a very tender and
sorrowful love-story. She was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer called
Hans Grey, and was born near Granshaw, a few miles from Bangor, Co.
Down. Her mother died when she was young, and her father, anxious to
make up the loss as far as in him lay, sent his beautiful girl to one of
the best boarding schools of the time. She returned, a lovely,
high-spirited, clever, thoughtful girl, extremely well-educated and
accomplished, and ardently interested in the burning questions of the
day. Willie Boal, a young farmer of the district, speedily lost his
heart to his charming neighbour, and when he found that his patriotic
dreams for Ireland were shared by her, his love quickened and deepened.
Willie Boal and Betsy’s brother, George Grey, were sworn United Men, and
it is believed that Betsy, like so many other women of those times, had
also taken the test.
When the men of Down took the field in June, ’98, Betsy sought a place
in their embattled ranks. Father and brother and lover set themselves to
oppose her, and, as the best means of escaping her importunities, George
and Willie stole away to the muster at Ballynahinch, without letting her
know of their departure. When she discovered it, she went out into the
yard, yoked her mare to a cart, filled the latter, with bread, butter
and cheese, and gallantly set off unaccompanied. She arrived at the hill
of Ednavady on the night of June the 12th, and the next day took part in
the battle. The popular memory has preserved a vision of her, a
bright-faced, beautiful girl, dressed in green silk, mounted on her
gallant mare, and brandishing her burnished sword above her head, while
side by side with Munroe she led one victorious charge after another.
Unfortunately the success attained by the contingents on her side of the
field was not general, and the close of the battle saw the patriots
routed from the field.
Betsy, in company with her brother, and her sweetheart, gained a rough
tract of country, all broken with rocks and furze. Here they were
overtaken by a party of Annahilt yeomen, and all three ruthlessly
butchered.
The bodies lay there all day, but at nightfall, the wife of the farmer
on whose land the tragedy had occurred, stole out with her little
son—and kind and reverent hands laid Betsy with her brother and lover in
their grave “in the vale of Ballycreen,” which even to-day is a place of
patriotic pilgrimage.
* * * * *
Both Dr. Madden and W. J. Fitzpatrick make frequent mention of Miss
Moore (afterwards Mrs. MacCready), and often quote her authority for
some of the most interesting episodes they relate. She was the daughter
of James Moore, a wealthy merchant, with two large establishments in
Thomas Street. She was educated in a convent at Tours, France, and
before the outbreak of the French Revolution had made her return to
Ireland necessary, had acquired an unusual mastery of the French
language. In Dublin her beauty, set off by her French toilettes, and her
cleverness, set off by her French education, made something of a
sensation, and she had many suitors. The favoured one was Dr. MacNevin.
Madden says that it was she who administered the United Irishmen’s oath
to him, and in this connection he reveals her romance. “There can be now
no impropriety in stating that the attachment which subsisted between
MacNevin and Miss Moore was not solely a political one, and that there
was a very ardent desire on the part of the former to make the fair
Roland of her day, an Irishwoman legally _united_ to him.” Miss Moore
herself had taken the oath from John Cormick, of Thomas Street, and she
informed Dr. Madden that, to her own knowledge, several women were sworn
members of the Society.
She was often employed in bringing messages to the societies from Lord
Edward, and not unfrequently passed through the streets in Dr. Adrien’s
carriage, as a patient, with her arm bandaged and blood on her clothes.
Lord Edward was a great friend of her father’s, and stayed at their
house more than once, during the time he was in hiding, passing as her
French tutor.
About May the 16th, Lord Edward being then under their roof (while the
Government Proclamation offered £1,000 reward for his arrest), a
carpenter called Tuite happened to be doing some repairs in Dublin
Castle. He heard the Under-Secretary, Cooke, say that James Moore’s
house was to be searched, and he made an excuse to leave the Castle and
warn Mr. Moore. As the latter had not only Lord Edward—but a
commissariat for about 500 men on his premises—he thought the further he
could get away from Dublin the better; so he fled to the banks of the
Boyne, leaving his wife and daughter to provide for the
Commander-in-Chief. Miss Moore, who, of course, had no reason to
distrust Francis Magan, thought that there could be no safer place for
the fugitive than in Magan’s house on Usher’s Island. She accordingly
arranged with Magan for his reception there, and “for safety sake” it
was suggested by Magan that, instead of coming in by his front door, the
party accompanying Lord Edward were to seek admittance through his
stables in Island Street. On the evening determined on, Mrs. and Miss
Moore, accompanied by the latter’s “French tutor” (Lord Edward), and
escorted by Mr. Moore’s confidential clerk, Gallagher, and his friend,
Palmer (in reality Lord Edward’s bodyguard), set off for an evening
stroll. They were met by Major Sirr and his men, who had (as, of course,
we know now) got the word from Magan. A conflict ensued, in which Sirr
fell to the ground and Gallagher was wounded, but Lord Edward and Miss
Moore got off. She conveyed him to Murphy’s, the feather merchant’s, and
returned home satisfied of his safety for the present.
The next day Magan called on her, ostensibly to enquire why his expected
guest had not turned up, and professing the most genuine concern for
him. Miss Moore told him the whole story of their encounter of the night
before, and, still, of course, suspecting nothing, informed Magan that
Lord Edward was at Murphy’s. Magan at once communicated the tidings to
his employers—and that evening Lord Edward was taken up.
On one occasion during these troubled times, Dr. Gahan, the Augustinian,
was visiting the Moores. Miss Moore had accompanied him to the hall, and
was seeing him out when a great double knock came to the door. When it
was opened, a body of soldiers marched in. Dr. Gahan stood politely
aside to let them pass, but the brutes seized the poor old man and
suspended him by the _queue_ to a hook in the warehouse, while they
proceeded to search the house. Miss Moore cut him down, and then made
off as swiftly as she could to warn the Directory, who were holding a
meeting in James’s Gate. They escaped by a window opening into a
neighbouring tanyard. As she returned, a soldier saw her, called her a
vile name, and made a lunge at her with his bayonet. She stooped and
thus saved herself, but the bayonet cut her shoulder. At that moment a
shot rang out, and her assailant fell dead. A bullet from the gun of one
of the best snipers the United Irishmen had in their ranks, had laid him
low. Subsequently her father was arrested, and lodged in Birmingham
Tower in the Castle. Miss Moore gave £500 to the doctor attending the
prisoners to certify that her father was insane. Major Sirr was rather
sceptical as to James Moore’s insanity, but the latter acted his part so
convincingly that he was released.
Owing perhaps to the circumstance that the particulars of the lives of
Dr. MacNevin and Mrs. MacCready were furnished to Madden and Fitzpatrick
respectively, by a daughter in the one case, and a son in the other, no
mention of this romance of their early life occurs in either narrative.
We are left to conjecture the reasons why it ended as it did. On March
12th, 1798, Dr. MacNevin was arrested with the other leaders, and for
the next four years he was kept a prisoner, first in Dublin and
afterwards in Fort George. Did old James Moore, who, for all his
attachment to the Cause, had the bump of prudence and caution well
developed, take the opportunity of the doctor’s long exile to marry his
daughter to Mr. MacCready? That might well be. In 1810 Dr. MacNevin,
then in successful practice in America, married Mrs. Jane Margaret Tom,
widow of a New York merchant, and sister of his intimate friend, Mr.
Richard Riker.
* * * * *
Another heroine of a ’98 romance is Maria Steele, the “Stella” of John
Sheares’s love verses. It was from her that Dr. Madden learned much of
the information he has embodied in his memoir of the ill-fated brothers.
The question of using or withholding her name in connection with the sad
story was left by the lady to Dr. Madden’s own discretion. “Exercising,”
as he states, “that judgment to the best of my ability, and with all the
consideration that would be due to the feelings of that most estimable
lady were she living, and that I owe to her memory now that she is no
more, I give her name without reserve; because I feel in all sincerity
that the name of Maria Steele will be associated with that of John
Sheares, as that of Sarah Curran is with Robert Emmet’s; and that these
names will be remembered with tenderness and pity.”
It was in 1794 that John Sheares first became acquainted with Maria
Steele, the elder daughter of the deceased Sir R. Parker Steele. The
widowed Lady Steele and her girls were then living in Merrion Square,
not very far from the Baggot Street residence of the Sheareses. In the
early part of 1798 John Sheares made formal proposals to Lady Steele for
her daughter’s hand, but though Maria’s mother was very fond of the
young man, and he was on the most affectionate and familiar footing with
her, the impression she had gathered of his religious sentiments made
her refuse to entrust her child’s future to him. This decision is held
responsible for having thrown John more violently into politics, than
had hitherto been the case.
As for Maria’s own feelings there is no doubt but that they were deeply
engaged. Up to her latest hour she never mentioned his name “without
tenderness and sorrow”; she treasured the piteous little relics which
were associated with her brief romance. He had been lying for nearly
forty years in the tragic vaults of St. Michan’s, when she sketched the
portrait of him which adorns Madden’s pages. That picture is so lifelike
because love guided the artist’s hand. Mary McCracken’s portrait of
Thomas Russell, and Maria Steele’s of John Sheares, these two, are
painted under the same inspiration. I find infinite pathos in the lines
with which Maria, then an old woman, accompanied the copies of the
papers in her possession which she had promised to Dr. Madden: “I should
have sent the originals of these sad memorials to you had I suspected
that I could still feel as I felt while copying them. I thought age and
infirmity had made me a better philosopher. Three of these have never
been opened except when you saw them, for more than thirty-four years.”
The romance of Surgeon Lawless, the friend of John Sheares, and Miss
Evans does not, strictly speaking, belong to ’98. But it is connected
with it by sufficiently close ties to justify its inclusion here.
William Lawless, a distinguished Dublin surgeon, and a relative of Lord
Cloncurry’s, was a close friend of Lord Edward’s, and like the
Sheareses, whose neighbour and intimate he was, became very active in
the Cause after the arrest of the leaders at Bond’s on March 12th. On
the Saturday on which Lord Edward was arrested (May 19) Surgeon Lawless
received information at the College of Surgeons from his colleague,
Surgeon Dease, that he was about to be taken up. He accordingly made
arrangements to escape to France. He is said to have made his way on
board a vessel in the disguise of a butcher’s man carrying a side of
beef, and in this capacity met Major Sirr himself on the quays!
Arrived in France, he entered the Army and made a great career for
himself in the Napoleonic campaigns. Miles Byrne makes frequent mention
of him, and it is to Byrne we owe our knowledge of the pretty romance of
his marriage.
Among the Irish exiles then resident in Paris the family of Hampden
Evans[103] was very prominent. As Mr. Evans had a large fortune, and was
hospitality itself, he loved to gather his fellow-countrymen around him;
and among those who visited his house frequently was William Lawless.
With him Mary Evans fell in love; but so well did she keep her secret
that neither he nor any of her family suspected it, and he marched away
with his regiment without a word of affection on either side. Shortly
after came the news of the siege of Flushing by the English, with the
destruction of the Irish battalion defending it, and the death of its
Commander, William Lawless. “Mary Evans fell ill, and for more than six
weeks her life was despaired of.... Mrs. Tone being in the habit of
going to Mr. Hampden Evans’s house, and being on the most intimate terms
with his daughters, might have suspected something of Miss Evans’s
secret, but this secret was only divulged when she heard the man she
loved was no more. She then told her mother, saying life to her now was
not worth preserving, and wondering how Mrs. Tone could have survived
the death of her heroic husband....”
Footnote 103:
Hampden Evans was an exile of ’98.
But Commandant Lawless was not dead; and one day the gallant tale of how
he had saved, at Walcheren, the French colours and the Eagle entrusted
by the Emperor to the Irish Brigade, reached Paris. He had wrapped the
flag round his body, plunged into the waves, and swam to an open boat a
considerable distance from the shore; “then proudly exhibiting the
standard of France amid a shower of bullets from the beach he bore it
off in triumph.” For this exploit Lawless was named by the Emperor,
knight of the Legion of Honour, and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Irish
regiment, and the year after, full Colonel of it.
On receipt of the news, “Mr. Evans begged his friend, John Sweetman, to
come to the house to prepare his daughter by degrees to learn the joyful
news, lest a sudden communication of it might be injurious to her....
That evening at tea, Mr. Sweetman, as usual, was asked the news of the
day, Miss Evans lying on the sofa, and listening to the conversation. He
said that it was reported in some of the newspapers that officers
believed to have been killed at Flushing had escaped to Antwerp, their
names not being given. On the following day he was more explicit, and
then the conversation was turned to some other topic. The next evening
Sweetman came to tell them that a Lieutenant O’Reilly, of the Irish
regiment, was one of those who had arrived at Antwerp. ‘Then,’ said Miss
Evans, ‘perhaps Mr. Lawless is not dead.’ The whole family expressed
their opinion that as he and Lieutenant O’Reilly were great friends,
they probably escaped together.”
The rest of the charming story is soon told. The following day Mr.
Hampden Evans learned from John Sweetman that Commandant Lawless had
arrived in Paris, but was confined to bed with an attack of Flushing
fever. Mr. Evans lost no time in calling on him, and making him
acquainted with his daughter’s sentiments. Matters were soon arranged
for a speedy marriage, “and then Miss Evans was allowed to read all the
newspapers containing the orders of the day of the army at Antwerp,
giving an account of Commandant Lawless’s arrival there, with the
colours and eagle of the Irish regiment; of his brilliant conduct during
the siege of Flushing, his miraculous escape from thence, etc., etc.”
In those days among the Irish in France it was difficult to think of
Lawless without thinking of his bosom friend, John Tennant. These two
were true brothers-in-arms. “They were named captains the same day in
1803 at the organisation of the Irish Legion. In 1813, at Sonenberg, in
Silesia, when Lawless was colonel, commanding the Irish regiment,
Tennant was _chef de bataillon_. On August the 19th, 1813, Tennant was
killed in our hollow square, literally cut in two by a cannon ball, and
on August 21st, the second day after, Colonel Lawless, at the passage of
the Bober, at the town of Sonenberg, and in the presence of Napoleon,
had his leg shot off by a cannon ball. “It was my painful and melancholy
duty,” writes Miles Byrne, “to get the grenadiers to dig a grave for
poor Tennant, after we had retaken our position and beaten the enemy off
the field of battle.... Whilst the men were preparing the grave, Colonel
Lawless never ceased weeping, and indeed both the officers and men who
were present were much affected, and shed tears of sorrow over poor
Tennant’s grave.”
Poor Tennant’s romance had been of a less happy character than his
friend’s. In the early days of the _United Irishmen_ he had become
devotedly attached to the beautiful Miss Hazlett, the story of whose
early death has been already narrated in the chapter on the Sisters of
’Ninety-Eight. Writing of her thirty years after, Charles Teeling feels
the tears starting to his eyes at the memory of the “youth, innocence,
beauty” consigned thus untimely to the tomb.... Never shall I forget the
impression which this mournful event [_i.e._ the death of Miss Hazlett]
caused in the circle of our little commonwealth. The lovely subject of
our distress had been endeared to us all, not less by the sweetness of
her disposition than the fascinating powers of a cultivated mind. Her
brother’s happiness was the object of her most anxious concern, but the
benevolent feelings of her heart extended to every soul in distress.”
Charles Teeling, with a delicate reticence which is characteristic, has
merely hinted at his own romance, and said nothing of his brother’s. The
object of Charles’s devotion was Miss Catherine Carolan, daughter of Dr.
James Carolan, of Carrickmacross. The glimpses we get of the Carolans
are interesting, and make us long to know more of them. The celebrated
harper, Arthur O’Neill, tells us of a visit he paid to Dr. Carolan’s
hospitable house in Carrickmacross, when he was on his bardic rounds;
and Mr. Denis Carolan Rushe, the doctor’s descendant, has in his
possession a copy of a religious rule of life, drawn up for her own
observance by another daughter of the Doctor’s, a sister of Catherine’s.
These two facts indicate a household where all the best characteristics
of true Irish Catholic gentlefolk—their hospitality, their love for, and
generous patronage of art, their deep sense of religion—were carefully
cultivated.
Of Bartle Teeling’s devotion to Lady Lucy Fitzgerald, and of the ring
she gave him, we have already spoken elsewhere.
Mary Anne McCracken’s unreturned love for Thomas Russell is among the
most pathetic romances of ’Ninety-Eight. He may have loved another
better; but it is her name we join with his, when we stand in
Downpatrick, beside the tomb she made for him; and perhaps it is because
her love has written itself in them that the words she has chosen for
the inscription move us so strangely, in their austere simplicity:
“The Grave of Russell.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOME OBSCURE HEROINES OF ’NINETY-EIGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Obscure Heroines of ’Ninety-Eight
“All Ulster over, the weemen cried
For the stanin’ crops in the lan’.
Many a sweetheart an’ many a bride
Wud liefer ha’ gone till where _he_ died,
An’ murned her lone by her man.”—FLORENCE WILSON.
AFTER the defeat of the insurgent army at Antrim, the yeomen were let
loose in the country, and the most terrible outrages committed. Cannon
were trained on the houses situated in what is known as “the Scotch
quarter,” in Antrim town, and a shot having struck one of them, the
inmates of the neighbouring house, a man called Quin, and his lovely
sixteen-year-old daughter, made their escape from their home, and
crossing the garden, made towards Belmount. They were pursued by the
yeomen, shot dead, and buried where they fell. So shallow was the grave
made for them that for several days after, the long beautiful hair of
the girl, which was only partially covered, was seen waving in the wind.
The gentleman who related this incident to Dr. Madden noted that it
excited more sympathy among the poor people than many horrid barbarities
of the time. I think we can understand why it should be so. Even, at
this distance of time, one cannot think of the long golden hair of the
murdered girl, tossing in the wind above her shallow grave, without
being gripped by the sense of pity and tragedy in a most poignant
way—and feeling that here we have found the very heart of the sorrow of
’Ninety-Eight.
In the same way, it seems to me, that it is in the story of the more
obscure heroines that sentiment is most inherent. The stories of the
other women with which we have dealt have left us, after all, with an
overwhelming feeling of “the glorious pride” of ’Ninety-Eight. But for
the “sorrow” which also fills its name, we must go to the “short and
simple annals of the poor.”