Some Other Sisters of ’Ninety-Eight
“O fair-haired Donough, dear little brother,
Well do I know what has taken you from me.”
—Lament for Fair-Haired Donough.
MARY MCCRACKEN is not the only sister whose name is coupled with her brother’s in “the glorious pride and sorrow” of ’Ninety-Eight. We have already, in the preceding memoirs, met other heroic sisters and we shall now give a somewhat further account of some of these.
Mary Anne Emmet, sister of Thomas Addis and Robert, was worthy, both in character and brains, of her family. Born in 1773 she showed herself from her earliest years dowered with her full share of the remarkable Emmet intellect. She was carefully educated, mostly by her father, and acquired a knowledge of Classics of which many a University Don might well be vain. She was a vigorous writer; and her grand-nephew, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, tells us that he has in his possession several political pamphlets from her pen. “These clearly show that she must have possessed a profound knowledge of political economy, a familiarity with history and the body politic, gained only after careful reading and to an extent few public men of her day possessed.” Her most celebrated pamphlet was “An Address to the People of Ireland, showing them why they ought to submit to an Union.” Its method of advocating an Union is, as Dr. Madden points out, sufficiently indicated by its title:
“Of comfort no man speak;
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”
—Shakespeare.
Such scorn as is poured from it in the new-born “patriotism” of the Beresfords, the Fosters, the Whaleys, the Saurins, the Verekers, who had already alienated every right through which an Irishman could call himself a free man! “You are called on to oppose this Union, to preserve your rights. Now I ask the men who call on you what rights you have to support? I ask parliament what right they have not wrested from you? They adjure you to support the constitution. Alas! for that constitution, originally a shadow, now embodied a substance of corruption. You are called on to resist—what? Not oppression, it has been protected. Not injustice, it has been legalised. Not cruelty, it has been indemnified.... Is it for the Convention, the Insurrection, the Indemnity Acts, that you are to resist the annihilation of the parliament that passed them? While these Bills stand recorded on their Journals parliament ought to know that the country cannot dread their extinction. And if the minister of England wishes to use any argument but military force for the accomplishment of this measure, let him present that statute-book to the people, and ask them—‘Why should you wish the duration of this parliament? do you not feel that I am omnipotent in it? are not my mandates written here in blood?...’
“I shall not dwell more on the advantages than I have done on the justice of this measure. I do not believe that one advantage will result from it, or from any other convention between Ireland and Great Britain which the English minister proposes, and which the English mercantile interest approves of: no convention or community of interests ever will be equitably conducted where both parties are not equally able to assert their own rights, and to resist the innovations or injustice of the other.... I know that our part of the treaty will be signed and most strictly performed, and that the English part of it will be filled up how and when it suits the interests of the minister.”
When the order came from the Castle to the State prisoners in Kilmainham on March 18th, 1799, instructing them to be ready for embarkation the following morning, Mary Anne Emmet, “at a late hour the same evening, on hearing of the order, proceeded immediately to the Castle, and demanded an interview with the viceroy for the purpose of ascertaining the fate that was destined for her brother. She presented herself to the viceroy with the spirit that seemed to be characteristic of her race. Lord Cornwallis was moved even to tears at the earnestness of her supplication, the anxiety exhibited in her looks, the strength of feeling, the energy of character displayed in the effort she had made. He treated her with kindness, and assured her that ‘no harm should occur to her brother.’... Miss Emmet returned to her family, and the intelligence she brought, little as it was, relieved the minds of her parents of much of their alarm.”[90]
Sometime in 1799 she married Robert Holmes, a rising barrister. The young couple took up their residence with old Dr. and Mrs. Emmet, first in Stephen’s Green, and later in Casino; and the correspondence of her mother with Thomas Addis in Fort George, makes frequent mention of Mary Anne. In a letter dated April 10th, Elizabeth Emmet informs her son of the comfort she and her husband found in “Mary Anne’s happiness in consequence of having married a very worthy man, of whom she is very fond, and he equally so of her. She has grown so stout that scarcely a day passes without her walking to town, about town, and out again. The pleasure of her husband’s company has, I believe, wrought this change, and her health is greatly benefitted by the exertion.” In July, 1800, her first baby, a little boy, was born, but the many and great anxieties its mother had undergone before its birth told on it, and it only lived one week. Poor Mary Anne was long in recovering, and perhaps her mother did not make sufficient allowance for the drain made on her delicate constitution by the intensity of her feelings. The indolence, the disinclination to make any exertion except on a great occasion of which her mother frequently complained, were due to physical weakness, and of this her mother did not seem to take account. “Mary Anne is very much better, but you know of old that she has one complaint of which I have no hope she will be cured: indolence has still, and always will have, domination over her, except when exertion becomes necessary; then, indeed, no person can exceed her in efforts. I wish, however, for her own sake that her exertions were brought more into the practice of every day, and not reserved for great occasions. She has a very strong mind, and I think it would operate more upon the body if more frequently called forth.”
Six days after the outbreak of Robert Emmet’s Insurrection, Robert Holmes, who had been in England on business, and knew nothing of his brother-in-law’s plans, was arrested in the streets of Dublin, on his way home. About the same time John Patten, Jane Emmet’s brother, was arrested, and the wildest rumours of Robert’s fate were brought to the ladies of the Emmet family, who were now in residence at Donnybrook. The anxiety proved too much for Elizabeth Emmet, and while her youngest son lay in prison awaiting his tragic destiny, she died in her daughter’s arms.
Think of what Mary Anne Holmes had to endure during those terrible weeks. One brother was in exile, another in the prison from which the only egress was up the steps to the scaffold; her husband a prisoner with an uncertain fate. Truly “the strong mind” had heavy drains on it when she followed her mother’s coffin to the churchyard of St. Peter’s in Aungier Street, whither Dr. Emmet’s had only a little time preceded it. Small wonder that the end of her sad story came with tragic swiftness, and in tragic circumstances.
Mr. Holmes was kept for a whole year a prisoner in Dublin Castle, and then suddenly released. He walked directly home. “In response to his ring his wife unfortunately opened the door, only to drop dead into his arms from the suddenness of the shock and the excess of her joy at seeing him. It is said that Mr. Holmes never recovered from the shock he thus received, and to the day of his death he was seldom seen to smile.”[91] He lived to be a very old man—to see the men of ’48 stand in the same dock as the men of ’98 and ’03—and for the same crime. In his eightieth year he acted as counsel for Duffy in the Nation prosecution of 1846; in his eighty-second year he defended John Mitchel. “We thought we heard the blood of Emmet crying aloud from the ground,” said Mitchel, of the great speech made by Holmes on the former occasion. But in the ears of the old man, himself, as he made his immortal indictment of England, there was ringing the voice of his dead love—the woman whom England’s cruelty had murdered in his very arms two-and-forty years before!
Of Mary Tone, the sister of Theobald Wolfe Tone, we have already spoken at some length in the Memoir of her sister-in-law. Her brother has described her for us in his Autobiography: “My sister, whose name is Mary, is a fine young woman; she has all the peculiarity of our disposition with all the delicacy of her own sex. If she were a man, she would be exactly like one of us [i.e. her brothers, whose ‘portraits’ he has just sketched], and, as it is, being brought up amongst boys, for we never had but one more sister, who died a child, she has contracted a masculine habit of thinking, without, however, in any degree, derogating from that feminine softness of manner which is suited to her sex and age.”
When Tone and his wife and family were obliged to leave Ireland for America, Mary Tone accompanied them, sharing the dangers and hardships of the journey, and the anxieties and deprivations of life in an unknown land. When the summons came for Theobald to leave them, and start off on his hazardous mission to France, Mary Tone joined her sister-in-law in urging him to answer the call. When the moment of parting came her firmness and courage were as great as Matilda’s: “We had neither tears nor lamentations, but on the contrary, the most ardent hope and the most steady resolution.”
On the voyage across the Atlantic which she made with Matilda Tone and her children towards the end of 1796, in order to rejoin Theobald, Mary Tone made the acquaintance of a young Swiss merchant named Giacque, who, though “just beginning the world with little or no property, thought proper to fall in love with her.” The first letter Tone received from his wife after their arrival in Hamburg, was accompanied, we learn from the Autobiography, by one from Giacque “informing me of his situation and circumstances, of his love for my sister, and hers for him, and praying my consent. There was an air of candour and honesty in his letter which gave me a good opinion of him, nor did I consider myself at liberty to stand in the way of her happiness, which my wife mentioned to me was deeply interested. I wrote therefore, giving my full consent to the marriage, and trust in God they may be as happy as I wish them. It is certainly a hazardous step in favour of a man whom I do not know; but, as she is passionately fond of him, and he of her, as he perfectly knows her situation, and has by no means endeavoured to disguise or exaggerate his own, I am in hopes they may do well.”
After their marriage, the Giacques appear to have continued to live with Mrs. Tone and her children, first at Hamburg, and afterwards at Paris. After the death of Theobald, Mary and her husband went to St. Domingo; and, according to her nephew, she met her death there, of yellow fever, contracted through nursing a sick friend, who had been abandoned by her family and servants. Another account, quoted by Madden, states that she and her husband were killed by the negroes in the insurrection of that island, about the year 1799. At all events she shared the tragic fate of her immediate family—Theobald, William, Matthew, and Arthur—none of whom reached thirty-six years of age.
One of Lord Edward’s sisters, Lady Lucy Fitzgerald, was deep in the plans of the United Irishmen. Mr. Gerald Campbell describes her as “just Lord Edward dressed in woman’s clothes. She was to the full as patriotic as her brother, perhaps even more so—for she loved the cause because he loved it, whom she loved above all things: she was possessed like him of a strong sense of humour, so that she shared with him the family epithet ‘comical,’ she had a warm, loving susceptible Irish heart, and, in short, both in character and aims, was as like him as possible.”
She spent much time with Lord Edward and Pamela at Kildare Lodge, and her Journal, from which Mr. Campbell has published some extracts, gives us vivid glimpses of the habitués of that hospitable home. Among these, Arthur O’Connor figures prominently, and one cannot help feeling that Lady Lucy had a romantic interest in that most aristocratic of all “democrats.” The winter days were devoted to long walks on the Curragh, or if the weather prevented out-door excursions, to sticking pocket-books with emblems, or hearing Arthur O’Connor read “Julius Cæsar,” or Volney’s “Ruins”; the winter evenings were delightfully divided between dancing and singing patriotic songs. Once she records “a large patriotic dinner,” at which were present, “Dr. MacNevin, Connolly, Mr. Hughes (a Northern, and Edward says a very sensible man), a Mr. Jackson, an iron manufacturer, a Mr. Bond, a great merchant, one of the handsomest and most delightful men to all appearance that ever was, and a Presbyterian clergyman, called Barber, a venerable old man who had been forced by persecution to fly his Diocese where he had lived 30 years.”
Lady Lucy little suspected that the Northern Mr. Hughes, whom Edward considered so “sensible,” was a Government spy—any more than she suspected that all her own correspondence after her return to London was carefully watched by Government. The mysterious “friend” of her cousin, Lord Downshire (whom Fitzpatrick finally succeeded in identifying with Samuel Turner, of Lurgan), told his patron that the communications of the Irish in Hamburg (who were negotiating there for French aid), with their friends at home were established through the medium of Mme. Matthiesen (Pamela’s cousin, Henriette de Sercey), Lady Sarah and Pamela. The letters were sent by Madame Matthiesen from Hamburg, to Lady Lucy in London—and by Lady Lucy conveyed to Pamela. “All letters to or from Lady Lucy Fitzgerald,” wrote the spy to Lord Downshire, “ought to be inspected.” No doubt this advice was acted upon, and poor unsuspecting Lady Lucy’s correspondence received due attention.
One of the items of “Lucia’s” diary, quoted by Mr. Campbell, makes brief reference to “Two Northern gentlemen who dined with us.” One wonders if one of these could be Bartle Teeling. We know from his nephew’s memoir that in Lady Lucy that gallant and knightly heart had found its ideal. Once she gave him a ring with the words, “Erin go Bragh” inscribed on it, and this ring is still treasured in the Teeling family.
Some letters of Lady Lucy published by Mr. Campbell will give a more vivid idea of her ardent and impulsive nature than any elaborate description of her. The first is addressed to “The Irish Nation,” and the occasion seems to have been the threatening advent of the Union:
“Irishmen, Countrymen, it is Edward Fitzgerald’s sister who addresses you: it is a woman, but that woman is his sister: she would therefore die for you as he did. I don’t mean to remind you of what he did for you. ’Twas no more than his duty. Without ambition he resigned every blessing this world could afford, to be of use to you, his countrymen whom he loved better than himself, but in this he did no more than his duty; he was a Paddy and no more; he desired no other title than this. He never deserted you—will you desert yourselves? This was his only ambition, and will you ever forget yourselves? Will you forget this title, which it is still in your power to ennoble? Will you disgrace it? Will you make it the scoff of your triumphant Enemies, while ’tis in your power to raise it beyond all other glory to immortality? Yes, this is the moment, the precious moment which must either stamp with Infamy the name of Irishmen and denote you for ever wretched, enslaved to the power of England, or raise the Paddies to the consequence which they deserve and which England shall no longer withhold, to happiness, freedom, glory. These are but names as yet to you, my Countrymen. As yet you are strangers to the reality with the power in your hands to realise them. One noble struggle, and you will gain, you will enjoy them for ever.—Your devoted Country-woman—L. F.”
A second to Lady Bute, deals largely with Moore’s “Life of Lord Edward”:
“Did you read Mr. Moore’s Memoir of my loved Edward? If you did, you will have thought it strange perhaps to see it dedicated to Mrs. Beauclerck.[92] It was all her plan, arranged with Mr. Moore. They let me know of it when partly completed in case I had anything to communicate. Dear Lady Bute, you who know the depth of affection with which his memory is engraven on my heart! you can best judge how such a message must have struck me. I returned for answer I had nothing to say. A thousand motives made this intended publication by Mr. Moore appear to me utterly improper. I will own to you that the one which displeased me was the trifling ... with his memory, which so long has lain enshrined and sacred in the grateful breasts of the Irish people! to have it brought out from thence and his glorious name made the subject of English investigation—to serve Party purposes—for when were Englishmen ever just judges of Irish character?... Mr. Moore was in complete ignorance of my Brother’s views, and of his opinions, plans, and actions beyond what the newspapers of the day could furnish him with; and thus the delineation of his character as enlightened Statesman and Heroic Patriot is entirely missing in the publication....
“There are men in Ireland, men only Irish, to whom it belonged to tell his story if ever Ireland should be what my Brother meant it to be.... At the time when he was self-elected to free his country or die for Her, he met a soul, ‘twin to his own,’ because each breathed and loved alike and their object Ireland! Ireland, where each had first drawn breath—Ireland more great in her misfortunes, in her wrongs than the most favoured Country of the Earth,—Ireland, so true to God, to the early unchanged faith of the Gospel,—Ireland whom neither falsehood could entice nor interest bribe to apostacy, suffering through successive ages from the oppression of a Nation inferior to Herself in all but in one of the adventitious circumstances of fortune. It was the heart that felt all this as he himself did, and would have preferred death with the chance of redeeming these wrongs to a life of ease and security without that hope—it was that person who could have told how Edward once loved.”
Julia Sheares was another devoted “Sister of ’Ninety-Eight.” All that she was to her brothers is best told by the letter which John addressed to her from his prison cell on the eve of his trial:
“The troublesome scene of life, my ever dear Julia, is nearly closed, and the hand that now traces these lines will, in a day or two, be no longer capable of communicating, to a beloved and affectionate family, the sentiments of his heart. A painful task yet awaits me—I do not allude to my trial, nor to my execution. These, were it not for the consciousness I feel of the misery you will all suffer on my account, would be trivial in comparison with the pain I endure at addressing you for the last time. You have been kind to me, Julia, beyond example. Your solicitude for my welfare has been unremitting; nor did it leave you a moment’s happiness, as a wayward fate seems from the earliest moment of my life to have presided over my days. I will not now recapitulate the instances of a perverse destiny that seems to have marked me out as the instrument of destruction to all I loved.
“Robert and Christopher! I shall shortly join you, and learn for what wise purpose heaven thought fit to select me as your destroyer.[93] My mother, too! O God! my tender, my revered mother! I see her torn locks—her broken heart—her corpse! Heavenly Author of the universe, what have I done to deserve this misery?
“I must forbear these thoughts as much as possible or I must forbear to write. My time comes on the day after to-morrow, and the event is unequivocal. You must summon up all the resolution of your soul, my dear, dear Julia. If there be a chance of snatching my afflicted mother from the grave, that chance must arise from your exertions. My darling Sally,[94] too will aid you; she will for a while suspend her joy at the restoration of her husband to her arms—for of his escape I have no more doubt than I have of my own conviction and its consequences. All, all of you forget your individual griefs and joys, and unite to save that best of parents from the grave. Stand between her and despair. If she will speak of me, soothe her with every assurance calculated to carry conviction to her heart. Tell her that my death, though nominally ignominious, should not light up a blush in her face; that she knew me incapable of a dishonourable action or thought; that I died in full possession of the esteem of all those who knew me intimately; that justice will yet be done to my memory, and my fate be mentioned rather with pride than shame by my friends and relations. Yes, my dear sister, if I did not expect the arrival of this justice to my memory, I should be indeed afflicted at the nominal ignominy of my death, lest it may injure your welfare and wound the feelings of my family. But, above all things, tell her that at my own request I was attended in my latest moments by that excellent and pious man, Dr. Dobbin, and that my last prayer was offered up for her. While I feared for Harry’s life, hell itself could have no tortures for the guilty beyond what I endured.
“I picture you all, a helpless, unprotected group of females, left to the miseries of your own feelings and to the insults of a callous, insensible world. Sally, too, stripped of a husband on whom she so tenderly doats, and his children of their father, and all by my cursed intervention, by my residence with them. Yet, he even is my witness how assiduously I sought to keep aloof in any of my political concerns from him, and would have entirely succeeded in doing so if it had not been for the art of that villain, Armstrong, and Harry’s own incaution. My efforts, however, have kept him clear of any of those matters that have involved me in destruction. When Sally has got him back in her arms, and that I, who caused his danger and her unhappiness, shall be no more, she will cease to think of me with reproach. This I trust she will do; she ought—for she herself could never have done more for his salvation than I endeavoured to do. But the scene is changed—I am no longer that frantic thing I was while his danger appeared imminent. A calm sorrow for the sufferings that await you on my account, and a heartfelt regret at being obliged to quit your loved society for ever, has succeeded. Yet, all this will soon have an end; and with comfort I already anticipate the moment when your subsiding grief gives you back to the enjoyment of each other. Still, my dearest Julia, even when I shall be no more, your plagues on my account are not likely to cease. You remember—I am sure you do—your kind promise of protection to my poor, unfortunate little Louisa?[95] I make no doubt but her mother will give her up to your care without reluctance; yet, how to impose this new anxiety on you I know not. But of this I will say nothing; I know your heart, and never could resist the goodness with which it insisted on easing mine by burdening itself. What to recommend relative to her I cannot resolve. Harry did once desire me to take her into his house, but I had a thousand objections to that plan then, some of which still remain; one material one is, that she would soon learn from servants and others how different her situation there was from that of the other children, and her young mind would very early feel that chilling inferiority and degradation, that lead to a debasement of principle, and ultimately to mean and unworthy actions. No; a great many reasons concur to decide me against that measure. She should be put to some school where more care is taken of her health than education, and where the attention to morals consists in good, honest example. Apropos, she was at a Mrs. Duggan’s, at Bray, to whom I yet owe ten guineas for her, and which I request of my dear mother to pay for me, when convenient; I likewise owe a note of hand for about thirteen pounds or guineas to a man in Capel Street whom the Flemings know. I cannot mention the name of these friends without emotions of gratitude and tenderness not to be expressed. Never cease to assure them that I preserve the recollection of their goodness, though the instances of it are so many, and I shall feel it to the last moment. This debt they will be obliged to pay if not discharged by my mother, as they passed their word for it—you will therefore mention it to my poor afflicted mother. Great God! how have I stripped her and you; but I have stripped you of happiness, and should not talk of money....
“Good night, Julia; I am going to rest with a heart, thank God, free from the consciousness of intentional offence, and from any wish tainted with personal resentment. I seek my bed with pleasure, because in it I often fancy myself in the full possession of that domestic happiness which I always regarded as the first of human enjoyments. Pray heaven I dream of you all night....
“Adieu, Julia, my light is just out; the approach of darkness is like that of death, since both alike require I should say farewell for ever. Oh, my dear family, farewell for ever!”
Miles Byrne in his Memoirs makes frequent mention of a brave sister of his, and incidentally throws much light on the way the women of Wexford helped their men during these soul-testing times. When the atrocities of the Orange magistrates and the Ancient Britons had forced the men to the hills, the women undertook to act as intelligence officers and keep them informed of the progress of the preparations for the Rising. Miss Byrne was one of the most active of these fearless girls. On one occasion Miles returned to his mother’s house and found his sister alone in it, for their mother had gone to Gorey to try and get their step-brother Hugh, out of prison. “We arrived a little before daybreak. I approached the house with great precaution (lest there should be soldiers placed there), and I must add overwhelmed with anxiety, fearing to learn everything for the worst. However, finding all silent, I went at once and knocked. My poor sister came to the window, trembling and alarmed, until she saw it was I.... Before I had time to answer any questions my sister told me she hoped to have good news to tell me in the morning; that it was certain the people were rising in every direction, and had already defeated the troops. She could not then give me the details, but in an hour or two she was sure to be able to satisfy me in every particular.”
Miles and his companions concealed themselves in the fields until his sister could procure the tidings she expected. “When it was broad daylight we saw my sister running to look for us to give us the cheerful tidings with all the joyful enthusiasm so characteristic of a young Irish girl of eighteen. She told us that the troops had run away from Gorey, and that all the prisoners were at liberty to go where they pleased; but still the people, or the Insurgent army, as we must now call them, did not march that way, but were in great force in the neighbourhood of Camolin and Ferns. We instantly prepared to go and join them....
“It was only now I heard for the first time of all the barbarous murders that had been committed whilst I was away; the massacre of Carnew, the murder of poor Garrett Fennell, Darcy, and a list of others who had shared the same fate. My dear sister thought she could never tell me enough about all that had happened during my absence; how our horses were taken, and that three men mounted my mare and sprained her back, etc. But if I had not remarked a long scar on her neck she would not have mentioned anything about herself. A yeoman of the name of Wheatley, on the day that poor Hugh was arrested, threatened to cut her throat with his sabre if she did not instantly tell the place where I was hiding; the cowardly villain no doubt would have put his threat into execution had not some of his comrades interfered to prevent him.
“Being joined by a few of our former workmen and tenants’ sons, who heard I had returned, I prepared again to take leave of my sister, knowing that my dear mother would soon be home to keep her company. This time she saw me depart with joy and delight, for she had set her heart and soul on the success of our undertaking; her courage and spirit was surprising under such circumstances for a girl of her age, and she never despaired. I bid her farewell, and marched off with my faithful friends on the road to Camolin.”
Charles Teeling in his “Personal Narrative” pays tribute to “the heroic courage” of one of his own sisters. “She was my junior”—he was only in his eighteenth year himself—“and with the gentlest possessed the noblest soul; she has been the solace of her family in all subsequent afflictions, and seemed to have been given as a blessing by Heaven, to counterpoise the ills we were doomed to suffer.” When the first letters “from home” were delivered to the poor prisoners in Kilmainham he records the sensation he experienced on getting one from his father “which also bore the signature of the sister whom I loved.”
Another sister commemorated by Teeling is Miss Hazlett, the sister of Henry Hazlett, of Belfast. She had come to Dublin, with Henry’s little son, to comfort their brother by their visits to his prison. “It was impossible to exclude her visits from the prison, for, from the surly turnkey to the cold and impenetrable man of office, her voice acted as a talisman on the most obdurate heart. Her presence dispelled every gloom, as the cheering messenger of Heaven.” The little boy caught a contagious disease, and his beautiful young aunt, nursing him, contracted it also, and one day to the sorrowing prisoners in Kilmainham, who had all learned to love her, there came the news of her death. Her funeral from Dublin to the North was made a national demonstration. “The daughters of Erin strewed garlands in the way—thousands of youthful patriots surrounded the bier—and in the mournful procession of an hundred miles, every town and hamlet paid homage to the virtues of the dead.”
The tender and beautiful Irish usage extends the use of the words dearbrathair (brother), and deirbhshiur (sister) to other bonds than those of blood. And many of the gentle and pitying women who ministered to the sufferers of those times are truly deserving of the lovely title. The girls from the hotel in Newry who pressed forward under the very hoofs of the cavalry horses to bring refreshments to the carriages of the prisoners of ’96, Charles Teeling, Russell, Neilson, etc., were surely worthy of it. The women who forced their way into the prisons “with bread, and comfort, and grace” were worthy of it. The women whom Holt so frequently shows us at their works of mercy were worthy of it. On one occasion he came to a farmhouse whose only occupants were an old woman and her pretty daughter. “They brought me hot water to bathe my feet, and clean stockings and linen, and took my own and washed them. They then gave me oatcakes and butter-milk, which after I had eaten, they shewed me a comfortable bed, where I slept for several hours....” Finding that the news of his death had been reported to them, and caused them overwhelming sorrow, he informed them of his identity. Their joy at his safety, and their pride at having him for their guest was beyond all telling. Presently “twenty-four poor unfortunates came into the house, who were all desired to sit down, and oaten cakes were placed before them, and the young woman was busily employed in baking more cakes on the griddle; she afterwards told me they had been so employed for some days past.”
And talking of “Sisters” reminds us of the striking fact that it was in the prisons of the United Irishmen, our Irish Sisters of Charity had, in a certain sense, their origin. In the letters of Mr. Luke Teeling to his wife, we find frequent mention of a Miss Alicia Walsh, who came with her aunt, Ally Lynch, of Drogheda (Mrs. Teeling’s sister) to visit him in his prison at Carrickfergus. “Ally Walsh is an uncommonly fine girl,” he notes of her approvingly. Many a tongue was to echo Mr. Teeling’s praise in the after-days when “Ally Walsh,” the first companion of Mary Aikenhead, had become the celebrated Mother Catherine of the Gardiner Street Convent. To learn more of her I must refer my readers to Mrs. Atkinson’s “Mary Aikenhead.” I shall content myself here with borrowing Mrs. Atkinson’s account of her experiences in ’Ninety-Eight.
“During the rebellion of 1798, she went from prison to prison at much personal risk, to carry messages from friends, or to console the inmates who were the objects of her deepest sympathy. Some of her nearest and dearest relatives[96] suffered greatly, not only from the confiscation and unjust oppression, but also from barbarous bodily tortures which at that period were commonly inflicted at the will of a licentious soldiery. One of her friends, a young man of exemplary life, was stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and dragged through the streets of Drogheda, his inhuman executioners flogging him all the way, until at last he fainted under their hands, and was consigned to a prison cell. The first intimation his mother received of the occurrence that had taken place was a demand for old linen to dress her son’s back which was one hideous wound.
“In the family of a near neighbour at Naul, a circumstance occurred equally characteristic of the time. A young lady was engaged to be married to a gentleman, who having been connected with the insurgents in ’98, was obliged to fly from his home. He took refuge in the house of his intended brother-in-law, who had been forced to join a corps of yeomanry. The fugitive’s track was discovered, the yeomanry were called out, and he, having again taken to flight, was overtaken at a village near Dublin, and hanged from a post in the street by the young man from whose house he had just escaped and who dared not shirk the duty. The poor rebel’s mother never learned the fate that had befallen her son. She was persuaded that he had gone abroad; and up to her death she continued making shirts and knitting stockings, which were sent, as she supposed, in parcels to the refugee in a distant land.”
Mary Aikenhead, herself, was, perhaps, too young—only eleven—to have any very active share in the charities the Cork ladies exercised towards the sufferers of ’98—but her father was an ardent sympathiser with “the Cause,” and Lord Edward Fitzgerald was concealed, on one occasion, at their house. Perhaps it was in memory of this—or perhaps it was because she felt what I have tried to express: that the Sisterhood Mary Aikenhead founded, proceeded so largely from ’Ninety-Eight and all it stood for—that Lady Lucy Fitzgerald (or as she then was, Lady Lucy Foley) left at her death, a generous legacy to the Sisters of Charity. One cannot help thinking that the list of the first companions of Mary Aikenhead must have sounded to Lady Lucy like a roll-call of names made immortal in the ranks of the United Irishmen. There were Teelings, Sweetmans, Clinches, O’Reillys, Bellews, and many others.
Mrs. Coleman (Mother Mary de Chantal) was born amid the troubles that preceded ’98. “Her father, a gentleman farmer in Meath or Louth, ... was suspected of disaffection. On the very night his little daughter was to come into the world, the house was surrounded by a troop of armed men, whose heavy footsteps, presently heard on the stairs, gave the alarm to the inmates, who hurried away ‘the poor mistress’ under cover of the darkness to an uninhabited hut sometimes used by the herd. She gave up all for lost, and resigned herself to die, knowing well that no human assistance awaited her in the hour of her utmost need. Her piety was sincere, her faith was strong, and she had an ardent devotion to the Blessed Virgin. As her husband forced open the door and led her into the dark hut, she heard a voice distinctly say: ‘Do not fear, Mary, I will protect you and your child’; while at the same time a bright light filled the place. Then and there under its influence the child was born.”
So, too, we may say, in the darkness of Ireland’s Agony in ’Ninety-Eight, illumined miraculously by the Faith and Hope and Charity of Ireland’s womanhood, there was born the great Congregation to which that little child was destined to belong.