The Wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald
PAMELA (1776?-1831)[79]
“Would God thou wert among the Gael!
Thou wouldst not then from day to day
Weep thus alone.”—MANGAN.
IT is not Romney, ravishing as his portrait of her is, nor Giroust, who in his Leçon de Harpe has painted her for us in all the virginal charm, and sweet, and fresh, and innocent loveliness of her early girlhood, nor Mieris, whose miniature of her shows an exquisite Diana, with little white buskined feet, as light and swift as the wind on which they seem to be borne—it is none of these that has given us the picture of Pamela we Irish people love best. It is as Lord Edward, himself, pictured her in a letter to his mother that we think of her most willingly—with her baby in her arms, the little son, the first-born, of whom the young husband and father was so proud: “I wish I could show the baby to you all—dear mother, how you would love it! Nothing is so delightful as to see it in its dear mother’s arms, with her sweet, pale, delicate face, and the pretty looks she gives it.” For the sake of the five years of perfect happiness she gave Lord Edward we, the Irish nation, to whom he has given so much, have taken “the dear little, pale, pretty wife” into our hearts for all time.
Poor Pamela! We have need to keep her place in our hearts very safe and warm; for the rest of the world has dealt pitilessly with her fame during life, and her memory after death—and fate has spared her no unkindness, no humiliation, from the shadows that surrounded her cradle to the sordid and macabres details of her incoffining.
As we read the sad story of Pamela, and contrast “what might have been” (“if the dear little, pale, pretty wife” had been suffered by destiny to ripen, in the sweet, and simple and wholesome atmosphere of Irish family life, to her gracious maturity, and lovely old age) with the sordid actuality, our love for Pamela becomes doubled with a great pity, and an infinite regret. We feel how right Madden was in ascribing what was unlovely in her to the education she received at the hands of Madame de Genlis, and the blame which some of her critics have lavished on her levity, her errors and her frailties we join with him in apportioning to those who failed in their duty towards her in the most critical and trying moment of her life.
Into the disputed question of the parentage of Pamela it is not our business to enter. Suffice it to say that in the common belief she was regarded as the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, the notorious Egalité, and Madame de Genlis, the Governess of the Orleans children. On the other hand, Madame de Genlis asserted that Pamela was the daughter of a poor English woman named Mary Simms, who had married a gentleman of good family called Seymour,[80] and fled with him, from the displeasure of his family, to Fogo in Newfoundland. Here their little daughter Nancy was born, and here shortly after the young husband died. His widow returned to England, and settled down in Christ Church, where the extraordinary beauty and fascination of her little girl attracted the attention of a Mr. Forth. Mr. Forth was accustomed to buy horses in England for his Grace of Orleans, but recently he had received another commission: to look out for a little English girl, to be educated with the Orleans children, and to speak English with them. Mary Simms was very poor, and her desire to keep her child with her was not strong enough to stand in the way of the brilliant provision thus promised her. Accordingly, Mr. Forth was soon able to announce to his royal patron that he was sending him “the handsomest mare and the prettiest little girl in all England.”
All we know with certainty of Pamela’s[81] “origin” is that at a very early age she made her appearance in the Convent of Bellechasse, whither Madame de Genlis had retired to devote herself to the education of the children of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, and that until her marriage with Lord Edward in December, 1792, she was the constant companion of the young princes and their sister, and shared that remarkable and original system of education, which Madame de Genlis—one of the most gifted educationists of France, the country of educationists—had devised for her pupils.
M. Emile Faguet has discovered in the pedagogy of Madame de Genlis the origin of all modern education—in its theories, its practices, its tendencies. “With some of its defects,” he admits, but “wanting most of these defects,” as he also claims: “an education, directed towards the true, as well as to the beautiful, paying much attention to history, modern languages, Realien, the study of the most important new discoveries, as well as the literary masterpieces of ancient and modern times.”
It seems to us, as we study this education in its results—that is to say in the character of the pupils who were formed by it—that some of the defects of our modern education were more inherent in Madame de Genlis’s system than M. Faguet is willing to admit. Lady Sarah Napier, with her shrewd woman’s wit, has perhaps formed a truer estimate of it. In a letter written to her friend, Lady Susan O’Brien, shortly after Lord Edward’s marriage to Pamela, she says: “Your account of M. Sillery (i.e. Madame de Genlis) and her élèves answers my idea of her, all pleasing to appearance, and nothing sound within her heart, whatever may be so in the young minds whom she can and does of course easily deceive. I hope we have got our lovely little niece time enough out of her care to have acquired all the perfections of her education, which are certainly great, as she has a very uncommon, clever, active mind and turns it to the most useful purposes, and I trust our pretty little Sylph (for she is not like other mortals) has not a tincture of all the double-dealing, cunning, false reasoning, and lies with which M. S. is forced to gloss over a very common ill-conduct, because she will set herself above others in virtue, and she happens to be no better than her neighbours.”
The great fault we seem to find in Madame de Genlis as an educationist is that she failed to make true religion the foundation of it. Though she insisted on devoting a large portion of her pupils’ time-table to the study of the Catechism, and reserved for herself, as the most important of her duties, their preparation for First Communion, and their religious instruction, she failed signally to make them realise that they were created and placed in this world for one end and aim only: “to know God, to love Him, and serve Him, and by that means to gain everlasting life.” The system of morality which she taught them was founded less on the knowledge and love and service of God than on that curious code of external ethics called Les Convenances. The strange thing about this was that she, herself, was an ardent, not to say a noisy, protagonist of religion, and enjoyed nothing more than a tilt with the Philosophes. But, somehow, one thinks of religion as an element a little fortuitous in the heterogeneous collection of ingredients which went to the making of her character—and when she failed to make it the foundation of her own conception of life, it is not to be wondered at that she failed equally in respect of her pupils. Louis Philippe and Madame Adélaïde were worse than indifferent in the matter of religion. And it is sufficient to say of Pamela that though she was reconciled to the Church before her death, and died, as one has reason to believe, truly penitent, she seems to have given up the practice of her religion immediately after her marriage with Lord Edward, without the slightest qualm of conscience.
“Les Convenances,” external appearances, it was these Madame de Genlis kept steadily in view in educating her pupils. The consequence was that she made them think of life as an act played on a stage for the benefit of spectators, whose applause determined the success of the actor, rather than a solemn business between God and each lonely human soul. To have their bodies trained to the highest degree of strength, and grace, agility and efficiency; to have their minds adorned with all useful and agreeable knowledge, to be adepts and connoisseurs of the fine arts: painting, and music, poetry and literature—this was the educational ideal she set before herself. If the hearts of her pupils withered a little under the neglect which they necessarily suffered—if the lessons of “love, and pain and death” were missing from this positive and modernist education, who can wonder that the results in poor Pamela’s case at least were disastrous?
Nevertheless, there were in Madame de Genlis’s system, as Lady Sarah Napier admits, sufficient “perfections” to make it worth our while to study it in a certain detail, in the hope of finding something in it to suit our own educational needs. The books in which she expounds her system (Adèle et Théodore, Leçons d’une Gouvernante, etc.) exercised a tremendous influence on a generation of parents much more interested in the education of their children than their present-day successors. We learn from Lady Sophia Fitzgerald that her mother, the Duchess of Leinster, admired “all the writings of Madame de Genlis to the greatest degree,” and was often bantered by Lord Edward (who little suspected in what a relation he was one day to stand to the educationist) over her engouement. (He, for his part, pronounced her Plans d’Education all perfect nonsense). Lady Sophia, herself, began to re-read Adèle et Théodore (which she had first read about eight or nine years previously) after her brother, Lord Edward, brought home Pamela as his bride. She pays a pretty compliment to Pamela while she makes a record of this intention of hers in her diary: “Knowing what a charming, engaging little creature Lady Edward is, I think I shall be more interested than ever, and give more attention to all she [i.e. Madame de Genlis] says upon Education.”
In 1777 Madame de Genlis, who had been attached since 1770 to the Court of the Duchess of Chartres, at the Palais Royal, as Lady in Waiting, was appointed Governess of the little twin Princesses, who had recently been born to the Duke and Duchess. She insisted on taking charge of them practically from their birth—contrary to the usual custom which left the care of baby princesses to a Sous-Gouvernante, and in order that she might develop unhampered the system of education which she had devised for them she stipulated that they should be removed from the Palais Royal, and a special pavilion built for them in the garden of the Convent of Bellechasse, on plans drawn up by herself.
In designing these plans the Countess kept steadily in view the destination of the pavilion as a place of education. Her first care was to secure the possibility of exercising her surveillance over the little princesses by day, and by night. A glass door separated her room from their nursery, and it was so arranged that even from her bed she could see what was going on in their room. The decorations of the place had all an educational aim. The walls of the Princesses’ room were adorned with frescoes, representing the seven kings of Rome and the emperors and empresses up to the time of Constantine, each with the date and name beneath it. Above the doors were depicted scenes taken also from Roman history. “Two large screens bore representations of the Kings of France, the hand screens depicted incidents taken from mythology.” The staircase was hung with maps. A long gallery was devoted to Grecian history, and certain other rooms were frescoed with scenes taken from the history of France.
Into this peaceable retreat Madame de Genlis was accompanied by her mother and her two daughters, Caroline and Pulchérie de Genlis, the completion of whose education she thus found an opportunity of directing, before their early marriages to the Marquis de La Woestine and the Viscount de Valence respectively.
In 1782 one of the little twin princesses died of smallpox, and in the same year Madame de Genlis was appointed “Governor” to the young princes, their brothers—the first woman to hold such a post of honour and responsibility.
From this moment Bellechasse became a regular academy. In addition to the three princes, the Duke de Valois (afterwards Louis Philippe, King of the French), the Duke de Montpensier, the small Duke de Beaujolais, and their sister Mlle. d’Orléans (afterwards known to history as Madame Adélaïde), the Countess had also, under her care her nephew, César de Crest, her niece, Henrietta de Sercey, and the two mysterious little girls, Pamela and Hermione. Of Hermione’s parentage nothing is known; but she was thought by some people to be a sister of Pamela.
The education given by Madame de Genlis in this academy has been chronicled by her in considerable detail in her Mèmoires, and in her celebrated pedagogical novel, Adèle et Théodore, and its spirit very finely analysed by her latest biographer, Jean Harmand. M. Harmand traces the main body of her educational doctrines to the great educationists of the seventeenth century, Fénélon and Madame de Maintenon, but finds them profoundly modified by the influence of Rousseau.
In order to have a free hand to carry them out Madame de Genlis got rid of the Princes’ tutor, M. de Bonnard, and substituted M. Lebrun, a former secretary of her husband. Their second master, M. l’Abbé Guyot, was allowed to remain, though he and the Countess were anything but kindred spirits.
The princes lived at the Palais Royal and came to Bellechasse every day at eleven. In the earlier portion of the day they had their religious instruction, and their Latin Course from the Abbé, and M. Lebrun was asked to keep a record of each morning’s work for the “Governor’s” information. The rest of the day Madame herself took charge, the masters being merely expected to dine with their pupils at two, and after supper at nine, to escort them back to the Palais Royal.
The Countess, according to herself, had her work cut out for her to correct the defects of the little boys’ previous education. They knew nothing at all, and the eldest, in particular, was wanting in application to an unheard-of degree. Their new teacher began by reading history for them. “M. le duc de Valois paid no attention, yawned, stretched himself and finally lay back on the sofa with his heels on the table.” The Countess put him “in penance” immediately. But the good sense of the little boy, which even at that period of his development, was easily appealed to, made him take it in good part. He was very much addicted to slang, and had some very peculiar foibles: he was in terror of dogs, and could not endure the smell of vinegar. The Countess succeeded in ridding him of these peculiarities.
Modern languages, taught on the direct method, were a strong point in the Bellechasse system. There was a German Valet de Chambre to speak German to the children; an Italian to speak Italian; an Englishman to help them to a conversational knowledge of English. It was ostensibly to speak English with Mademoiselle that Pamela, as we have seen, was added to the establishment.
The children’s father, who spared no money to carry out the “Governor’s” ideas, bought for them a country place, Saint Leu, and there they passed the summer each year. In the beautiful park the Countess had assigned to each the ground for a little garden, which they dug and planted for themselves—with the help of a German gardener, who gave his gardening instruction in German. During their afternoon walks nothing was spoken but English, and this was the language of the dinner table. At supper Italian was spoken.
A clever chemist and a good botanist, M. Alyon, was also engaged for Bellechasse. He accompanied the children on their walks, and gave them practical lessons in botany while under his direction they gathered the wayside flowers and plants. He gave them a course of Chemistry every summer at which the Countess delighted to assist.
For their training in the fine arts a Pole, named Merys, was employed, and under his presidency an “Academy” of industrious little artists met every evening in the Salon. At the request of the Countess, M. Merys painted a series of slides for an educational magic lantern. Each series furnished illustrations for a lecture on Scripture History, Ancient History, Roman History, and the History of China and Japan—and the youngsters took turns, once a week, in showing the magic lantern and giving a little lecture with the aid of it. Can anything be more modern and up-to-date?
In order to teach her pupils geography, Madame de Genlis invented for them a game in which they took the keenest delight. She made them dramatise, and act, all the celebrated voyages of discovery. Everybody in the establishment had a share in these representations. They used wooden horses for cavalcades, the river in the park stood for the sea and a fleet of pretty little boats took the place of ships. Their theatrical wardrobe was as complete as possible. The “voyages” they staged with the greatest success were those of Vasco da Gama, and Snelgrave. They had, moreover, a moveable theatre which was first housed in the large dining room, and on which they staged historical tableaux. M. Merys grouped the actors behind the curtains, and the spectators guessed what each tableau represented. A dozen tableaux were thus often staged in the course of one evening. The great painter, David, took the greatest delight in this amusement, and often grouped the little actors. After some time the Countess had a regular theatre built at Saint Leu and here all her own pieces were staged—as well as a series of tableaux vivants. One of these represented Psyche persecuted by Venus, and the rôles were taken by Caroline and Pulchérie de Genlis and Pamela—a ravishing little god of love. No wonder David in his enthusiasm pronounced the picture “le perfection du beau idéal.”
There were many who thought that the theatre played too great a rôle in the system of Bellechasse, and that the education given to the children was too theatrical. The Marquise de Laroche-Jaquelin relates in her Memoirs how, being taken one day, as a little girl, by her grandmother, for a private view of the new pictures in the Louvre, she saw there Madame de Genlis with all her élèves. The Marquise’s grandmother and the Countess were old friends, and their delight at meeting each other was mutual—and the little girl who had read so many of the Countess’s books for children, and acted in so many of her pieces was enchanted to see the author of them in the flesh. She thought the little princes, who were all dressed in the English fashion, with their hair in ringlets and unpowdered, very odd looking. While the royal children were viewing the pictures Madame de Genlis presented to her old friend her daughter Pulchérie—but said nothing of an exquisite looking little girl of about seven years, who was on her other side, until her friend enquired who she was. “Ah!” replied Madame de Genlis in a low tone, “it is a very touching and interesting story—which I must reserve for another occasion.” Then turning to the little girl she said, “Pamela, act Héloise.” Immediately Pamela took out her comb; her fine hair, without powder, fell in disorder upon her shoulders. She threw herself to the ground on her knees, raised her eyes to Heaven, as also one of her arms, and her whole figure expressed an ecstasy of passion.”
For days afterwards the Marquise’s grandmother entertained her friends with a humorous account of Madame de Genlis, and the sort of education she was giving her pupils.
Nevertheless, it is doubtful if any of those who made a joke of the Countess’s system, had an idea of how eminently practical it was in certain respects. During the winter season, which was passed at Paris, she aimed at utilising for her pupils every moment of their time—above all, that devoted to recreation. She had got a lathe installed in one of the ante-chambers, and at recreation time all her pupils, as well as herself, learned to turn it. She had them taught all the handicrafts that did not require much bodily force: leather-work, basket-making, the manufacture of bootlaces, ribbons, gauze, cardboard boxes, raised maps, artificial flowers, wire-netting, marbled paper, gilding, all sorts of hair work that it is possible to imagine, even to the making of wigs. The boys in addition were taught carpentry—and they succeeded so well in this that the two elder, quite unassisted, made a large wardrobe and a table with drawers in it for a poor woman of St. Leu in whom they were interested, and these articles are said to have been as well made as if they had come from the workshop of a first-class joiner. All their play-things had an educational scope—and all their walks and excursions had a similar end in view. At Paris they only went out to see the picture galleries (it was in one of these expeditions the future Marquise de Laroche-Jaquelin encountered them) or museums. They visited workshops and saw the various manufactures of Paris in different stages of their production. Previous to these excursions they read together the article in the Encyclopedia dealing with the particular manufacture they were going to inspect.
For the “corpus sanum” in which she wished the “mens sana” of each pupil to develop, Madame de Genlis had invented a whole system of gymnastics, which demanded an elaborate installation of pulleys, horizontal bars, etc. In addition she made her pupils walk with weighted shoes; carry graduated loads on their backs, or heads, or in their arms, etc. In addition dancing was taught with the greatest care, and the famous danseur of the Opera, d’Auberval, gave lessons to Mademoiselle, Pamela and Henrietta—whose dancing was something exquisite. They were also taught riding and swimming, and Madame, herself, one of the finest performers of her time, taught them the harp.
At a certain hour every evening the children assembled for their reading lesson. Each pupil read aloud for a quarter of an hour, Madame correcting their pronunciation when necessary, and making suitable comments on the subject matter which was always of an improving nature. At the end of the lesson the Countess read aloud for a few minutes herself, just to give the correct model.
When the children were a little older their “Governor” hired a box at the theatre for them, and thither they went about once a week to see the masterpieces of the French stage played by the greatest actors of the age.
Every Saturday the Princes and their sister held a reception at Bellechasse, so as to form them early to habits of polite conversation.
At the end of her account of her “academy,” Madame de Genlis sketches a series of portraits of her élèves. We are only interested in that of Pamela: “Pamela was loveliness itself; candour and sensibility were the chief traits of her character. She never told a falsehood, or employed the slightest deceit. She was a fascinating talker. Her chief fault was want of application. She had a very bad memory, and was thoughtless and impulsive. In person she was very active and light of foot. She ran like a wood nymph.”
It was part of the system of Bellechasse to interest its pupils in the great currents of thought which agitated the day. As early as 1786 the Countess had shown the popular and democratic direction she gave to the education of the princes of Orleans when the young Duke of Chartres, acting under her influence, destroyed the famous iron cage of Saint Michel.
When the States General met in May, 1789, Madame de Genlis threw open the salon of Bellechasse to some of the more noted deputies. Among the names of its habitués figure Barère and Brissot, Pétion, Tallyrand, Alexandre Lameth, and even Volney, Barneve, Alguié, the painter David—and Camille Desmoulins.
The outbreak of the Revolution found the young princes and their father on the popular side, and their choice has been traced to the influence of Madame de Genlis.
We get brief but very vivid glimpses of Pamela amid the gossip, enshrined in contemporary memoirs, which the Countess’s political action inspired. When the Duke of Orleans settled an annuity on her, she is said to have chosen Barère, then present at one of the Bellechasse Sunday receptions, as her guardian. She was seen, a striking figure on horseback, in riding habit and large black hat laden with black plumes, followed by two grooms in the Orleans livery of blue and red riding up and down between two lines of shrieking populace who proclaimed: “there’s the queen we want.” And on the day of the fall of the Bastille she was said to have been seen moving among the people all dressed in red, destined to draw all eyes to her.
It seems much more probable that she assisted at this historic spectacle with the rest of Madame de Genlis’s pupils from the terrace of the new gardens of Beaumarchais which the latter had put at their disposition.
The indignation of the Duchess of Orleans at the direction given to her children’s political education by their “Governor” led to the latter’s dismissal in 1791. But the separation from her teacher had such a disastrous effect on the health of Mademoiselle d’Orléans that Madame de Genlis had to be recalled.
In October, 1791, the Countess escorted Mademoiselle to England, accompanied by Pamela, Henriette de Sercey, and her little grand-daughter, Eglantine de Lawoestine. During this visit the Countess made the acquaintance of Sheridan, who had recently lost his beautiful wife. The resemblance of Pamela to his lost love (which is said to have later attracted Lord Edward) gained the heart of Sheridan, and he begged for her hand. His offer, it is said was accepted, and when the Duke of Orleans recalled his daughter to France, in order to avoid the penalties designed for “émigrés,” Pamela left England as the affianced bride of the distinguished dramatist.
But there was waiting in Paris another lover than Sheridan—and it was he, though they had never seen each other up to this, with whom Pamela’s lot was to be bound up.
One night at the theatre in Paris Lord Edward Fitzgerald saw in a loge grillée an exquisite looking girl. He made inquiries, and having learned her identity, had himself presented to Madame de Genlis and her beautiful charge. The following day Madame de Genlis and Pamela, acting on the instructions of the Duke of Orleans, set out for Flanders, with Mademoiselle d’Orléans. They were followed by that ardent and impetuous wooer, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
At Tournay Lord Edward made formal proposals for Pamela’s hand, and his suit was accepted, on the condition of him receiving his family’s consent to the marriage.
This consent the Duchess of Leinster, wise mother that she was, gave very readily, and within a fortnight, Lord Edward was back in London with his bride.
The “good family” gave the warmest of welcomes to its new member. The diary of Lady Sophia Fitzgerald records the impression made on them by “Eddy’s dear little wife.” “We all took a prodigious fancy to her, and I do hope and trust Dearest Edward has met with a woman that will fix him at last, and likely to make him happy the remainder of his life. Besides being very handsome she is uncommonly sensible and agreeable, very pretty, with the most engaging pleasing manner I ever saw, and very much accomplished. They spent a fortnight with us in London before they went to Ireland where they are now.” Lady Sarah Napier, who was to be Pamela’s true friend to the end, fell in love with her at first sight. “I never saw,” she wrote to Lady Susan O’Brien, “such a sweet little, engaging, bewitching creature as Ly. Edward is, and childish to a degree with the greatest sense. The upper part of her face is like poor Mrs. Sheridan, the lower part like my beloved child Louise; of course I am disposed to dote upon her. I am sure she is not vile Egalité’s child; it is impossible.”
That letter of Lady Sarah’s is dated from Celbridge, February, 1793, and showed that by that time Pamela and her husband had arrived in Ireland. Into the gay social round of the Irish capital, the beautiful French girl entered con brio. “Dublin has been very gay,” Lord Edward writes to his mother in April, 1793, “a great number of balls, of which the lady misses none. Dancing is a great passion with her; I wish you could see her dance, you would delight in it, she dances so with all her heart and soul. Everybody seems to like her, and behave civilly and kindly to her. There was a kind of something about visiting with Lady Leitrim, but it is all over now. We dined there on Sunday, and she was quite pleasant, and Pamela likes her very much.”
Unfortunately for Pamela’s happiness, her husband was wrong in thinking everybody seemed to like her. The ladies of the Ascendancy party hated her with all their hearts, and behaved with inconceivable rudeness to her. Her husband, ever since his return from Paris (whence the stories of his “revolutionary” doings had preceded him), had been a marked man for the “Old Gang,” and his bride’s supposed relationship to Egalité (who had recently been guilty of the infamy of voting for Louis XVI’s death) was not calculated to re-establish him with them. The vilest stories were set in circulation about poor Pamela. One lady is supposed to have seen her in the streets of Dublin “with a handkerchief on her neck spotted with Louis XVI’s blood; that some of her friends had sent from Paris.” When everybody else was in mourning for Louis, she is said to have worn red ribbons “which she said were couleur du sang des Aristocrats.”
On one occasion the whim took her to go to a ball, dressed all in black with nothing to relieve the sombre effect, except the pink upon her head. The Doblin Lidies, according to her sister-in-law, Lady Lucy, “stared her out of countenance” and sent her home in a rage to Eddy.
Her sisters-in-law, and specially Lady Sophia, were quick to see that it was jealousy of Pamela’s beauty and charm, her exquisite dancing, her French toilettes, her husband’s undisguised admiration—far more than their hatred of her and Lord Edward’s politics which made Dublin society so hostile to her. Other sections of Irish society worshipped her. We have a pretty picture of Lord Edward and her driving in a very high phaeton one day through College Green and Dame Street, amid the enthusiastic cheers of the multitude, who were raised to congenial heights of enthusiasm as much by her beauty as Lord Edward’s conspicuous green neck-cloth. Lord Edward’s boyish delight at the reception accorded them, and the impression produced by his bride’s beauty, was very delightful to witness.
Nor was it the populace alone whom Pamela won by her beauty. Lord Charlemont, whose authority in all matters of taste was regarded as second to none in Europe, was charmed by her. Jepham was with him one day in 1793 in Charlemont house, when Pamela and Lord Edward came to view its treasures, and he wrote to his uncle describing the visit. “She is elegant and engaging in the highest degree, and showed the most judicious taste in her remarks about the library and curiosities. The Dublin ladies wish to put her down. She promised Lord Charlemont with great good humour to assist him in keeping her husband in order.... She was dressed in a plain riding habit, and they came to the door in a curricle.”[82]
The attitude of the women of her class whom she met in society, probably spoiled her party-going for her, and doubtless she was eager enough, before long, to share with her husband the quiet country life, which he loved so well. After a few months in the Duchess of Leinster’s charming seaside residence, Frescati, Blackrock (where Pamela had plenty of opportunity, in conjunction with the enthusiastic gardener, who was her husband, to put into practice the gardening lore she had acquired at Saint Leu) the young couple settled in a lodge belonging to Mr. Connolly (husband of Lady Louisa Connolly, Lord Edward’s aunt), in Kildare. Lord Edward has left in a letter to his mother, dated June 23rd, 1794, a charming description of the place, which was to be the setting for their lives during the short years that were destined for them to spend together. In that little cottage a good deal of Irish history was to be made in the short space of four years. Let us then look in it as Lord Edward has painted it for us—for, alas! no trace of it now remains.
“After going up a little lane, and in at a close gate, you come on a little white house, with a small gravel court before it. You see but three small windows, the court surrounded by large old elms; one side of the house covered with shrubs, on the other side a tolerable large ash; upon the stairs going up to the house, two wicker cages, in which there are at this moment two thrushes, singing à gorge déployée. In coming into the house you find a small passage-hall very clean, the floor tiled; upon your left a small room; on the right, the staircase. In front you come into the parlour, a good room, with a bay window looking into the garden, which is a small green plot, surrounded by good trees, and in it three of the finest thorns I ever saw, and all the trees so placed that you may shade yourself from the sun all hours of the day; the bay window covered with honeysuckle, and up to the window some roses.
“Going upstairs you find another bay-room, the honeysuckle almost up to it, and a little room the same size as that below; this, with a kitchen or servants’ hall below, is the whole house. There is, on the left, in the courtyard another building which makes a kitchen; it is covered by trees, so as to look pretty; at the back of it there is a yard, which looks into a lane. On the side of the house opposite the grass-plot, there is ground enough for a flower-garden, communicating with the front garden by a little walk.
“The whole place is situated in a kind of rampart, of a circular form surrounded by a wall; which wall, towards the village, and lane is high, but covered with trees and shrubs—the trees old and large, giving a great deal of shade. Towards the country the wall is not higher than your knee, and this covered with bushes; from these open parts you have a view of a pretty cultivated country, till your eye is stopped by the Curragh. From our place there is a back way to these fields, so as to go out and walk without having to do with the town.
“This, dearest mother, is the spot as well as I can give it to you, but it don’t describe well; one must see it and feel it; it is all the little peeps and ideas that go with it that make the beauty of it to me. My dear wife dotes on it, and becomes it. She is busy in her little American jacket, planting sweet peas and mignonette. Her table and workbox, with the little one’s caps, are on the table. I wish my dearest mother was here, and the scene to me would be complete.”
The “little one,” portion of whose layette, with Pamela’s exquisite stitching, was then lying on the table, was born in Leinster House in October, 1794, and was christened Edward Fox Fitzgerald. While his wife and little son are gaining strength to travel, Lord Edward has been down at Kildare, two or three times, making all things “snug” for the delightful winter he promises himself there. He has laid in a generous provision of turf—two fine big clumps which look both “comfortable and pretty.” He has paled in his little flower garden before the hall door with a lath paling like the cottage, and filled it with roses and sweet briar, honeysuckle and Spanish broom. He has got his flower-beds all ready for their destined occupants. “The little fellow,” the proud father thinks, “will be a great addition to the party.” “I think,” he goes on, giving us a glimpse of his ideal of a happy life (and making us realise how hard a sacrifice his own fate demanded of him), “that when I am down there with Pam. and the child, of a blustery evening, with a good turf fire and a pleasant book, coming in, after seeing my poultry put up, my garden settled—flower-beds and plants covered for fear of frost—the place looking comfortable, and taken care of, I shall be as happy as possible; and sure I am I shall regret nothing but not being nearer my dearest mother, and her not being of our party.”
In 1796 Lord Edward became a “United Man,” and from that period the little cottage in Kildare was seldom without guests. Chief among these was Lord Edward’s parliamentary colleague, Arthur O’Connor, but Lady Lucy Fitzgerald who spent a considerable time with her brother and sister-in-law after their return from Hamburg in October, 1796, mentions many others: Jackson, Oliver Bond, MacNevin, Father Connolly—and the sinister figure of Hughes, who, unknown to them all, was a government spy.
The visit to Hamburg to which we have alluded, took place in May, 1796, and its supposed object was to give Pamela an opportunity of visiting Madame de Genlis, who was then living in Hamburg, as a guest of M. Matthiessen, who had married her niece, and Pamela’s schoolmate, Henrietta de Sercey. Lord Edward and Arthur O’Connor went really as agents of the United Irishmen to negotiate with the French Government for a French expedition to assist the Irish in freeing themselves from the yoke of England. The Matthiessens’ house in Hamburg became a centre of Irish political activities, and we learn from Froude and Fitzpatrick that the long unsuspected spy, Samuel Turner, got much of the information, for which he was pensioned by the English Government, by his frequentation of that house.
It was at Hamburg, Pamela’s second child, her little daughter, Pamela, was born. She had left her boy with his grandmother in London, and when Lord Edward’s business was done, and they were in the English capital again on their way home to Ireland, little Eddie was given to the Duchess “for her very own.”
Was his father clearing the decks for action? It would seem so. Two months after his return to Ireland the French were in Bantry Bay.
In February of 1797, Arthur O’Connor was arrested for his address to the Electors of Antrim, and was lodged in Newgate. From this time Lord Edward was indefatigable in his activities. He was one of those who believed—as did the greater number of the Northern leaders—that the time had come “to rise,” without waiting any longer for the French aid, which had been such a rotten crutch to them. But the Dublin leaders, influenced by the more cautious counsel of men like John Keogh and MacCormick, were dead against the attempt. The moment passed—and affairs hastened to their tragic end.
In February, 1798, Arthur O’Connor who had been liberated from his captivity in Birmingham Tower, Dublin Castle, after six months stay there, was again arrested with Father Quigley at Margate, on his way to France, on a political mission. Among O’Connor’s papers were found documents incriminating Lord Edward. But the Government were loth from his family and political connections to proceed against him. Even Lord Castlereagh entreated his aunt, Lady Louisa Connolly, to get him to leave the country, and much pressure was put on Pamela to influence him to seek safety in flight.
It was in vain. Lord Edward refused to desert his post; and whatever remained to be endured he would endure it even to the end.
We must leave him for a time, passing from hiding place to hiding place between the fatal March 12th when the other leaders were captured, until May the 19th, when he himself was run to earth at Murphy’s, while we turn to the poor little frightened wife, who with no kind friend near at hand to console her, lonely and desolate in a foreign land, with her little helpless child, must bear her woman’s burden, and go through her woman’s hour of mortal anguish all alone. After Lord Edward went “on his keeping” she found it desirable to leave Leinster House for a less conspicuous lodging in Denzille Street, whither she went with no other companion than her maid and Lord Edward’s black servant, the faithful Tony. Once or twice Lord Edward managed to see her. Once the maid, going into Lady Edward’s room, found him sitting in the firelight with her, and both of them weeping over little two-year-old Pamela who had been roused from her cot that her father might see her.
In April, Pamela’s third child, a little girl called Lucy, was born—prematurely, as Moore informs us, owing to a fright caused the poor mother by the risk run by her husband in order to see her again. It has been asserted, somewhere, that so high was the political feeling of the period that no doctor could be found to attend Lady Edward. For the honour of Ireland it is pleasing to be able to contradict this assertion, on the unassailable authority of Lady Sarah Napier. Lady Moira “mothered” the desolate creature, and saw that as far as nurse and doctor went, there was nothing to be desired.
When Pamela recovered, her kind friend took her to Moira House, and it was there the news of Lord Edward’s capture on May the 18th reached her.
Three days later, Government ordered Lady Edward to leave Ireland. The order, which it was not possible for her to disobey, caused her the most heartbreaking distress. But she was spared, then at least, the grief of knowing that Lord Edward’s wounds were fatal.
We know from Charles H. Teeling that she made her way into Newgate, in spite of Lord Castlereagh’s refusal—and we know that it was the same chivalrous, romantic boy who took on himself the perilous duty of escorting her. He had known Lady Edward in the happy days when the eager young band of patriots gathered in Kildare Lodge, and his brother, poor Bartle, saw in Lady Lucy (as so many have seen her in the loved form of some fair, living woman) the realisation of his dreams of Kathleen Ni Houlihan. The sense of chivalry and romance which was for so much in the heart of young Charles Teeling made the lad one of the most devoted knights whom Pamela’s fascination enlisted in her service. “Formed to charm every heart, and command every arm that had not been enlisted in the cause of Ireland”—it is thus, thirty years after, he remembers her. “Ireland was her constant theme, and Edward’s glory the darling object of her ambition. She entered into all his views; she had a noble and heroic soul, but the softer feelings of her sex would sometimes betray the anxiety with which she anticipated the approaching contest, and as hopes and fears alternately influenced her mind, she expressed them with all the sensibility characteristic of her country. In the most sweet and impressive tone of voice, rendered still more interesting by her foreign accent, and imperfect English, she would, with unaffected simplicity, implore us to protect her Edward. ‘You are all good Irish,’ she would say; ‘Irish are all good and brave, and Edward is Irish—your Edward and my Edward,’ while her dark brilliant eye, rivetted on the manly countenance of her lord, borrowed fresh lustre from the tear which she vainly endeavoured to conceal. These were to me some of the most interesting moments I have experienced, and memory still retraces them with a mingled feeling of pleasure and pain.”
It was the kind-hearted Duke of Richmond, the uncle of Lord Edward, who had the sad office of breaking to Pamela the news of her husband’s death in Newgate on June the 4th. “I went immediately to Harley Street,” he writes to Mr. Ogilvie, “and brought Lady Edward here (to Whitehall) trying to prepare her in the coach for the bad news, which I repeatedly said I dreaded by the next post. She, however, did not take my meaning. When she got here, we had Dr. Moseley present, and by degrees we broke to her the sad event. Her agonies of grief were very great, and violent hysterics soon came on. When the Duke of Leinster came in, she took him for Edward, and you may imagine how cruel a scene it was. But by degrees, though very slow ones, she grew more calm at times; and although she has had little sleep, and still less food, and has nervous spasms, yet I hope and trust her health is not materially affected.... She is as reasonable as possible, and shows great goodness of heart in the constant enquiries she is making about my sister, Lady Lucy, and Mrs. Lock.”[83]
After some months under the Duke of Richmond’s hospitable roof at Goodwood, it was decided, after a family consultation, that Pamela should join the Matthiesens at Hamburg. Leaving her son with the Duchess of Leinster, and baby Lucy with Lady Sophia at Thames Ditton, she set off with her little daughter Pamela and reached Hamburg on August 13th, 1798. The action of Government, in passing the posthumous Act of Attainder against her husband had left her penniless, and a small sum, to which each member of the Fitzgerald family was to contribute his or her mite was promised her by her people-in-law for her own and little Pamela’s support. This sum was, it would appear, not very punctually paid (the Duchess explained that at the time they could barely keep themselves), and, perhaps, it was owing to her financial embarrassment that Pamela took the unfortunate resolution of marrying Mr. Pitcairn, the American Consul at Hamburg. The marriage turned out unhappily, and the parties soon separated.
After that Pamela, leaving Hamburg, spent a year in Vienna. Finally she settled in France, first at Montaubon and afterwards in Paris, where she died in great poverty, but amidst the most consoling manifestations of Our Dear Lord’s tenderness, for this poor little wandering lamb of His flock, who after her straying, had come back to its sheltering fold.
The niece of Madame de Genlis, Madame Ducrest, then a struggling music teacher in Paris, to whom Pamela out of her own slender resources had found means to be kind, came to nurse the poor sick woman. Her first care, when she saw the danger, was to send for a holy priest, M. L’Abbé de la Madeleine. “He came. His zeal, his persuasive eloquence, the simple unction of his exhortations did far more for her peace of soul than we had dared to hope. He inspired our dear invalid with a true joy at quitting this world, where she had suffered so much.”
The numbered moments of her life passed rapidly and now the hour had come. Sister Ursula, the Sister of Charity, who shared with Madame Ducrest the office of nurse, began to recite the prayers for the departing soul. “The sufferer even then replied aloud: insensibly her voice became broken and feeble, and at length the words became unintelligible, though her lips still moved in prayer. Very soon her eyes, which were raised to Heaven, grew dull, her hands grasped convulsively the crucifix which she held, and in a few moments she was no more.”