Part 3
Alas! Alas! how short the moment to which we may cry with Faust, “tarry awhile, thou art so fair.” Very speedily, Elizabeth Emmet’s “fair moment” passed. In February, 1789, her son, Christopher Temple, went “circuit” in Munster—and one day to those who waited his return in the pleasant home in Stephen’s Green there came the tragic news of his death from smallpox. The blow was too severe for Christopher’s young wife. She died a few months after her husband, leaving their little daughter, Kitty, to the care of her grandparents. Elizabeth Emmet had to live on—to face the sorrows that yet awaited her.
At the desire of Dr. Emmet, the second son, Thomas Addis, anxious “to fill” as far as in him lay, “the place of his brother,” turned aside from the profession of medicine, in which he had already graduated, and took up that of law. He was called to the Bar in 1790. In 1791, he married Miss Jane Patten, daughter of Rev. John Patten of Clonmel, his choice of a bride giving the greatest satisfaction to his father and mother.
At first the young couple lived with the old Doctor and his wife, as part of the one household; but as the little grandchildren began to fill the nursery, it was found desirable to provide separate establishments. The Doctor, with this end in view, divided his house in Stephen’s Green, West, into two portions. It stood (and still stands, divided as the Doctor left it into two residences) at the corner of Lamb’s Lane and Stephen’s Green, West,[12] and the Doctor kept the corner portion for himself and assigned the inner to his son’s family. Thomas Addis Emmet had, also, as we know from Tone’s “Autobiography,” “a charming villa” at Rathfarnham, and doubtless the whole family were made welcome in it, whenever the call of the countryside overbid the attractions of the town, in the years previous to Dr. Emmet’s purchase of Casino—the country residence where he spent his last years.
Footnote 12:
Mr. Reynolds identifies them as 124 and 125 Stephen’s Green, West. In Dr. Emmet’s time the house was numbered 109.
The mention of Tone fitly introduces the years of Thomas Addis Emmet’s public life—his efforts for Catholic Emancipation, his connection with the United Irishmen. But, as we shall speak more fully of these years when we come to tell the story of Thomas Addis Emmet’s wife, we shall content ourselves here with a thought of the anxieties, which must have been the constant companions of a woman so clever and far-sighted as his mother. Where was all this leading to? Her son, himself with his clear grave eyes and resolute heart, knew perfectly well—like the majority of the leaders of the United Irishmen—that the course in which he was embarked was one which would, most probably, call for the sacrifice of all that men hold dear. Brilliant professional prospects; the elegance and comfort of a home adorned by a charming wife and a band of lovely children; property and position and the interest in a settled order of things which they bring with them; life itself—all these Thomas Addis Emmet saw himself called upon at any moment to renounce for the loyal service of Ireland. “It is a hard service they take,” indeed, “who serve the _Poor Old Woman_”! “But, for all that, they think themselves well paid.”
On March the 12th, 1798, when the Government, acting on the information of Thomas Reynolds, swooped down on the Leinster Directory of United Irishmen, assembled in Oliver Bond’s house, Emmet was arrested in his home in Stephen’s Green and committed to Newgate, from whence he was afterwards conveyed to Kilmainham. Of his wife’s heroic conduct on that occasion we shall have an inspiring tale to tell. While her daughter-in-law shared her husband’s imprisonment, Elizabeth Emmet found merciful occupation in the care of the five little grandchildren whom they had confided to her: Robert, Margaret, Elizabeth, John Patten, Thomas Addis.
In April, the authorities, alarmed by the spirit of patriotism which was manifesting itself among the students of Trinity College, ordered the “Visitation,” of which Moore gives an account in his “Memoirs.”
In anticipation of the verdict of Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon, Robert Emmet, who was looked on as the leader of the patriot youths, requested the Board of Fellows to take his name off the books of the college. During the wild excitement of the next few months: the bloody weeks of “the Rising” in May and June; the executions and court-martials of July; the French landing in August; the new executions which followed it, in September; the capture of Tone in October; his court-martial and death in November, all through the tragic calendar of the year 1798, Dr. Emmet and his wife Elizabeth had, at least, the comfort of their younger son’s constant presence with them.
In this year Dr. Emmet set the houses in Stephen’s Green, and took up his residence with his family (which now included his grandchildren) in a country house he had recently purchased for himself, Casino, Milltown. This historic house still stands, and Mr. Reynolds’s indications make it easy to locate: “at the corner of Bird Avenue on the eastern side of the Dundrum Road, midway between Milltown and Windy Arbour.”
Two events of much importance mark the following year (1799) in Elizabeth Emmet’s maternal calendar. The first was the removal of Thomas Addis and the other State prisoners to Fort George in the North of Scotland; the second was the marriage of her daughter, Mary Anne, to the distinguished barrister, Robert Holmes.
Early in 1800, Robert Emmet visited his brother in Fort George, passing from thence to the Continent where he remained until after the signing of the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
Later in the year, Jane Emmet made good the design which her conjugal affection had long inspired, and which no governmental rebuff could weaken—that of joining her husband in Fort George. She went there in July, escorted by her brother, John Patten, and accompanied by her three elder children, Robert, Margaret, and Elizabeth. With the grandparents at Casino were left John Patten, Thomas Addis, and a sturdy little chap called Christopher Emmet, who had joined the goodly company since we last made the enumeration of them.
During the years Thomas Addis and his wife spent in Fort George there was a constant interchange of letters between Casino and the grim northern keep in which the Irish State prisoners were so long interned. Sometimes the Casino news is conveyed by Dr. Emmet—whose letters remind us of St. John Mason’s description of his conversation; sometimes it is Mary Anne Holmes who holds the pen; sometimes it is Kitty, the orphan daughter of Christopher Temple and Anne Western Temple. But most frequently it is the mother and in these letters we get our best picture of the sort of woman Elizabeth Emmet was.[13] There are pleasant glimpses, too, of the home-life in Casino. We see the father, seeking solace for his anxieties in his labours in beautifying the house he fondly hoped was to be the home of his children, and his children’s children. The thirteen acres around Casino serve the purpose of Penelope’s web, and the loving wife finds comfort in watching the amusement he gets from his tree-planting and landscape gardening, his industry in gravelling the walks and raking them when they have been gravelled. Convinced that “the promises of hope are better than the gifts of fortune,” he has built a fine nursery ’gainst the happy day when all his grandchildren (and their parents) shall be gathered together under his patriarchal roof; and a certain cherry tree in full blossom makes him and his wife long to see Jane and her charming children gathered under it. The Doctor’s craze for transplanting trees which, to the rest of the family, seem to be perfectly well placed where they are, has grown into a family joke; but his wife is too well pleased to see the good effect the interest and occupation have on his health to protest now, as she was wont to do, even “tho’ from the earliness of the season and the age of the trees she despairs of ever seeing a leaf upon any of them.” “As we have a great demand for pea-rods,” she remarks jestingly, “they will not be useless.” She gathers up all the news she can about their friends, knowing how welcome such items are to exiles. Dr. Drennan, who has attended Mary Anne at the birth of her first-born baby, is happily “married to a very amiable, pretty young woman”; “he has waited to some good purpose.” We have a pretty etching of the author of the “Wake of William Orr,” and the famous “Orellana Letters,” “leaning over the cradle of his little heir, so anxious about it lest it should die.” Other friends, like Lady Anne Fitzgerald, Ally Spring, the Temples—and, above all, the Pattens and the Colvilles—find frequent mention. She does not hesitate to inculcate certain “musty precepts” as to health, which her knowledge of her son’s and her daughter-in-law’s dispositions seems to her to call for. Jane must refrain from “the great efforts of which she is so fond,” for “system is better than swiftness,” and though “we may admire the speed and power of a racehorse, a steady draft horse will in general be found as useful and much more durable.” Both Thomas Addis and Jane are fond, she knows, of heated rooms and late hours, and their prudent mother reminds them of the necessity of fresh air in their bed-chamber and living room, and preaches the doctrine of “early to bed and early to rise.”
Footnote 13:
They are published at length by Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet in his “Emmet Family” (pp. 71-101). They are models of grace and style, and one wishes they were in the hands of our women who have so largely lost the old-world accomplishment of letter-writing.
But what most people will think the most delightful thing in the letters are the pictures they give of the children. As has been already mentioned, the three elder were with their parents in Fort George, and almost all the State prisoners were lending a hand, each in his own speciality, to their education. The accounts of their progress interests their grandmother keenly, and she helps with comments on their dispositions as she had studied them. She is proud of Elizabeth’s beauty and goodness of disposition, of Margaret’s shrewdness of observation, and liberality and directness in dealing; but “the tenderness of Robert’s tones and the brightness of his countenance give him the advantage over all the other children whatever.” It is easy to see that Robert is his grandmother’s favourite, dear as all the children are to her. A letter from him gives her “great pleasure, for it is a true picture of his heart, overflowing with innocence, honesty, and good nature.” She begs for “minute accounts of the three children ...,” she and her husband “being glad to feed upon crumbs that fall from her son’s table.” In return she is almost as minute as her son and daughter-in-law could wish about the three from whom they are separated. She draws a funny little sketch of the “little fellow,” two-year-old Christopher Temple, “fighting hard in dumb show for his share in his grandfather’s claret,” and a little later on “engaging in his elder brother’s plays, and forcing himself into notice more than the others.” John is the other grandmother’s favourite, and Tom is pronounced by Ally Spring “the finest child you have,” but “the little fellow,” as Elizabeth always calls the baby namesake of her dead first-born, is of all the three confided to her care the nearest to her heart. We must, however, reserve further quotations from the letters, as far as they regard her grandchildren, until we come to discuss their education, at some length, in our memoir of their mother.
The letters paint the writer as a grave and somewhat reserved nature. She feels that she has not her husband’s “gracious manner,” which perhaps prevents her daughter-in-law judging of the strength of her love for her. She is inclined by nature to melancholy. “Solitude has through life stuck to me like an inner garment, and I find that it exceeds even those of the children of Israel; it is a habit that instead of wearing by time, grows stronger by constant use.” But she has the great anchors of Faith and Charity. She feels her blessings with a grateful heart, and wishes to discern and adore the healing hand which has been held out to her in the midst of trials and distresses, and without which her natural infirmities must have sunk under the scenes she has gone through. The most persistent note in this correspondence is that of deep and true religious feeling and, as we catch it, we seem to understand how it came about that in the midst of the corrupt society which was that of eighteenth century Dublin, this woman’s sons were kept chaste and undefiled—Moore’s tribute to the unspotted youth of Robert comes back to us, bringing with it unconscious tribute to the pure and exalting influence of Robert’s mother.
The letters end in 1802, when Thomas Addis Emmet was released from Fort George and awaited in Brussels certain developments which were to determine his future movements. Here the news of his father’s death reached him, and his own letter on that occasion to his mother, which I have already quoted, brought forth one from her which, apart from its intrinsic interest, must have ever borne in the eyes of her son a priceless value, for when he received it, the hand that had penned it was long mouldering into dust. It was addressed to the _Poste Restante_, New York, and only reached its addressee on his arrival in that city in November 11th, 1804.
In the interval the race of Emmet had been practically exterminated in the land for which they had given so much. The death of Elizabeth Emmet on September 9th, 1803, was followed by her youngest son’s execution a few weeks later. In 1804 Mary Anne Holmes died most tragically in the arms of her husband, newly liberated from prison. One guesses that the little children, John, and Tom, and Temple, were then taken care of by their Grandmother Patten, until an opportunity could be found of sending them across the Atlantic to their parents. They had gone with Grandmother Emmet, when she left Casino, after her husband’s death, to take up her residence in Blomfield, Donnybrook. And, no doubt, Mary Anne Holmes and poor cousin Kitty did what they could to care for them and comfort them. But if the pathos of the scene drawn by Madden of the death chamber of Elizabeth Emmet could have borne any heightening, doubtless he would have introduced in it the tiny figures of three little frightened, sable-clad boys, standing hand in hand for comfort, and weeping—though they knew it not—for the tragedy of the passing of their house from Irish soil.
The Mother of Lord Edward Fitzgerald
EMILIA MARY, DUCHESS OF LEINSTER (1731-1814)[14]
“And the flower I held brightest of all that grew in soil or shall ever grow Is rotting in the ground, and will spring no more to lift up my heart.” —_A Father’s Keen_, by Patrick O’Hegarty.
Footnote 14:
_Authorities_: Moore’s “Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald”; Campbell’s “Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald,” “Letters of Horace Walpole,” works of Mrs. Delaney, etc.
“GREATER love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”—(_John_ xv. 13). Ever since that June dawn, when its first sweet rays, stealing through the bars of the prison window in Newgate, fell on the form that lay rigid and still on the prison bed, we know what was “the greatest love” in Lord Edward’s life. For on that sad bed, still disordered from the tossings of his fever-racked limbs, still stained with his life-blood, there lay one _who had died for Ireland_.
By the supreme test, therefore, vouched for by the Supreme Lover, we know that the love of Ireland was Lord Edward’s “greatest love,” and that all other loves of his had to yield to its supremacy. But we can only measure the magnitude of his love for Ireland, if we have the measure of his other loves to set beside it. And so it falls out, that we have a particular need, if we would estimate Lord Edward aright, and would understand what he had to offer to Ireland, to know something of his other loves, and of those who inspired them. Above all we must know something of his extraordinary love for his mother.
His letters are full of it: “I am never so happy as when with you, dearest mother, you seem to make every distress lighter, and I bear everything better, and enjoy everything more when with you.” And again: “You cannot think how I feel to want you here. I dined and slept at Frescati the other day, Ogilvie and I, _tête-à-tête_. We talked a great deal of you. Though the place makes me melancholy, yet it gives one pleasant feelings. To be sure, the going to bed without wishing you a good night; the coming down in a morning, and not seeing you; the sauntering about in the fine sunshine, looking at your flowers and shrubs without you to lean upon one, was all very bad indeed. In settling my journey that evening, I determined to see you in my way, supposing you were even a thousand miles out of it.”
There is one letter to the “dearest of mothers,” in which he places his love for her above all else: “I assure you I miss you very, very much. I am not half so merry as I should be if you were here. I get tired of everything, and want to have you to go and talk to. _You are, after all, what I love best in the world._ I love you more than I think I do; but I will not give way to such thoughts, for it always makes me grave. I really made myself miserable for two days since I left you, by this sort of reflections; and in thinking over with myself what misfortunes I _could_ bear, I found there was one I _could not_; but God bless you.”
Was it Lord Edward’s surpassing love for his mother, that made her, on her side, single him out among all her children to lavish her tenderness on; or did she recognise in his great capacity for love a heritage from her own nature which drew this son closer to her than any other child she had ever borne? It is certain that of her numerous children—they counted twenty-one in all—Lord Edward was his mother’s favourite, and was accepted as such by the rest of the family. Mr. Gerald Campbell thinks her very frankness in avowing her preference for him prevented any jealousy among the others. Among the seventy or eighty letters of the Duchess to her daughters and others which Mr. Campbell examined before writing his charming book, “Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald,” there is hardly one, he tells us, “in which she does not express her exceeding love for him above all the rest.” He quotes: “Dear, dear Eddy! How constantly he is in my thoughts!” “In Edward nothing surprises me, dear angel; he has always loved me in an uncommon degree from childhood.” “I do not pretend to say that Dearest Angel Edward is not the first object: you have all been used to allow me that indulgence of partiality to him, and none of you, I believe, blame me for it, or see my excessive attachment to that Dear Angel with a jealous eye.” The truth is that Lord Edward had to an extraordinary degree, the gift, so often accorded as a birthright to persons with a great work to do in the world, of winning hearts. And probably his own brothers and sisters were as ready to succumb to his magnetism as the rest of the world.
It would not be surprising if Lord Edward inherited his power of winning hearts, as well as his capacity for love, from his fascinating mother, and she, in her turn, wielded it in virtue of her Stuart blood. For she was the great-granddaughter of Charles II and the beautiful Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. Of the numerous daughters of her father and mother, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, four grew to womanhood, and of these Lady Emilia Mary was the second. All four were famous for their great beauty and charm; and all four have played a notable part in history. Lady Caroline, who married Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was the mother of the brilliant statesman, Charles James Fox. Lady Louisa married Mr. Connolly, of Castletown. Lady Sarah, some years after the unfortunate termination of her first marriage with Sir Charles Bunbury, married Colonel Napier and became the mother of many distinguished soldier sons, including Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular Wars, and Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Scinde.
I do not know why the novelists who have found in the life romance of the four beautiful Lennox girls such a wealth of material should have passed over the love-story of their parents. It is, if possible, more romantic than any of them. The story is told by their grandson, Mr. Henry Napier, and published in the introduction to the “Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox” (pp. 85-87), his mother:
“My grandfather, the second Duke of Richmond, was one of the Lords of the Bedchamber to King George the Second, who then resided at Kensington Palace. He had been, as was the custom in those days, married while yet a boy to Lady Sarah Cadogan.... This marriage was made to cancel a gambling debt, the young people’s consent having been the last thing thought of; the Earl of March[15] was sent for from school, and the young lady from her nursery, a clergyman was in attendance, and they were told they were immediately to become man and wife! The young lady is not reported to have uttered a word; the gentleman exclaimed, ‘They surely are not going to marry me to that dowdy!’ The ceremony, however, took place; a postchaise was ready at the door, and Lord March was instantly packed off with his tutor to make the ‘_grand tour_,’ while his young wife was returned to the care of her mother, a Dutch woman, daughter of William Munster, Counsellor of Holland. After some years spent abroad Lord March returned, a well-educated handsome young man, but with no very agreeable recollections of his wife. Wherefore, instead of at once seeking his own home, he went directly to the Opera or Theatre, where he amused himself between the acts in examining the company. He had not long been occupied in this manner when a very young and beautiful woman more especially struck his fancy, and turning to a gentleman beside him he asked who she was. ‘You must be a stranger in London,’ replied the gentleman, ‘not to know the toast of the town, the beautiful Lady March.’ Agreeably surprised at this intelligence, Lord March proceeded to the box, announced himself, and claimed his bride—the very dowdy whom he had so scornfully rejected some years before, but with whom he afterwards lived so happily that she died of a broken heart within the year of his decease, which took place in Godalming, in Surrey, in August, 1750, when my mother was only five years and a few months old.”
Footnote 15:
The title borne by the hero of the story while his father, the first Duke of Richmond, was still alive.