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