ELIZABETH MASON EMMET—(1740-1803)[2]
“My life was he,
My death his taking.”
—Lament of Mothers of Bethlehem.
“ON Tuesday, September 20th (1803), the day of the execution of Robert Emmet, he was visited at ten o’clock in the morning, by Mr. Leonard McNally, the barrister, who, on entering the room where Emmet had the indulgence of remaining all that morning in the company of the Rev. Dr. Gamble, the ordinary of Newgate, found him reading the litany of the service of the Church of England. Permission was given to him to retire with McNally into an adjoining room, and on entering it, his first enquiry was after his mother, whose health had been in a declining state, and had wholly broken down under the recent afflictions which had fallen on her. McNally, hesitating to answer the enquiry, Robert Emmet repeated the question, ‘How is my mother?’ McNally, without replying directly, said, ‘I know, Robert, you would like to see your mother.’ The answer was, ‘Oh! what would I not give to see her?’ McNally, pointing upwards, said, ‘Then, Robert, you will see her this day!’ and then gave him an account of his mother’s death, which had taken place some days previously. Emmet made no reply; he stood motionless and silent for some moments, and said, ‘It is better so.’ He was evidently struggling hard with his feelings, and endeavouring to suppress them. He made no further allusion to the subject but by expressing ‘a confident hope that he and his mother would meet in heaven.’”[3]
I have known one woman who, having been able to read, with dry eyes, the melting tale of Sarah Curran’s “Broken Heart,” and to listen, without a sob, to the voice of Sarah’s young lover, so soon to be stilled for ever, pleading from the brink of “the cold and silent grave,” for the last charity of the world’s silence, broke into a passion of weeping as the tragedy, which was Robert Emmet’s life-story, swept through every stage of gathering pathos to the almost intolerable poignancy of its climax—the picture, conjured up by Madden, of the mother who lay dead, of a broken heart, in her widowed home in Donnybrook, while her last-born son, her Benjamin, stood in the dock in Green Street on trial for his life.
And yet is there not comfort to be found in the thought that the mother’s loving spirit was liberated in time from the prison of the suffering flesh, to be made free of all the places out of which her boy’s anguish called to her? If, as was Robert Emmet’s fond hope, “the dear shade of his venerated father” looked down upon him, where he stood in the dock, ready to die for the principles which that father had first taught him, surely the soul of the mother was not far away. Surely it bore him company during the long nerve-wrecking, exhausting hours of the trial,[4] giving him the refreshment which the brutality of his captors and judges denied; surely it was close at hand when his poor body, on which the fetters of death were so soon to be laid, had to submit for the last time to the more galling fetters of the abominable gaoler of Newgate. Could we bear to think of what Robert Emmet was made to suffer during his last night on earth, if the conviction that his mother’s spirit hovered near him, did not bring us comfort? Brought to Newgate from Green Street about eleven o’clock at night, he was heavily ironed by Gregg, the gaoler, and placed in one of the condemned cells. About an hour after midnight an order came from the Secretary at the Castle that the prisoner must be at once conveyed to Kilmainham. What a journey was that through the darkness of the autumn night! What a journey back from Kilmainham to Thomas Street the next day, when through the seething crowds, the carriage which bore the young martyr to the place of his execution moved in the midst of its strong guard of horse and foot! Even his enemies, looking upon him, were fain to confess that never had they seen a man go forth “to die like this”—with such “unostentatious fortitude,” such marvellous absence of all signs of fear, such a conviction of the glory of dying “for Ireland.” Did the dear Lord make it easy for him “to die like this,” by permitting his mother to leave her place in heaven for a time to be with her boy in the supreme hours?
Set side by side two pictures. One is that drawn, in such tragic intensity of black and white, by Madden, of a woman of sixty-three, who having drained to the dregs the cup of life’s sorrows, lay down in the home of her widowhood, from which all her children save one were absent, to die of the malady, for which science has found no cure: a broken heart. Nine months earlier her husband had been taken from her and now she, “like the mother of the Shearses, was hurried to her grave by the calamity which had fallen on her youngest son; who, it was vainly hoped, was to have occupied one of the vacant places in the house, and in the heart of his afflicted parents. Vainly had they looked up to Thomas Addis Emmet to supply that place which had been left a void by the death of their eldest and most gifted son, Christopher Temple Emmet. And when Thomas Addis was taken away from them and banished, to whom had they to look but to the younger son; and of that last life-hope of theirs they might have spoken with the feelings which animated the Lacedemonian mother, when one of her sons had fallen fighting for his country, and looking on the last of them then living she said ‘Ejus locum expleat frater.’ And that son was taken from them, incarcerated for four years, and doomed to civil death. Thomas Addis Emmet was then a proscribed man in exile. The father had sunk under the trial, although he was a man of courage and equanimity of mind; but the mother’s last hope in her youngest son sustained in some degree her broken strength and spirit; and that one hope was dashed down never to rise again, when her favourite child, the prop of her old age, was taken from her, and the terrible idea of his frightful fate became her one fixed thought—from the instant the dreadful tidings of his apprehension reached her till the approaching term of the crowning catastrophe, when, in mercy to her, she was taken away from her great misery.”
“Orangemen of Ireland ... these are your triumphs; the desolation of the home of an aged, virtuous couple—the ruin in which all belonging to them were involved, the ignominious death of their youngest and gifted child.”[5]
The other picture is one we paint for ourselves of a fair young girl, very slim and graceful in her riding habit, with a charming face, usually a little too serious for its twenty summers, showing now a dainty flush of excitement under the piquant riding hood, and clear eyes, usually somewhat too grave for their youth, shining now with an unwonted light. For background a stately eighteenth-century country seat, set in a landscape of exquisite beauty—(What need to describe the entrancing loveliness of woodland, lake and mountain, when it is sufficiently summed up by the magic word, Killarney?) Over it all a sky aflush with the colours of the summer dawn! The haze of summer over the bird-filled, fragrant woods, that sway lightly to the breezes of the virginal new day!
So we picture for ourselves Elizabeth Mason on that summer morning of the year 1760 when she set forth, a charming and accomplished girl of twenty, from the home of her father, James Mason, Esq., of Ballydowney, Killarney, for the memorable visit to Cork, which was to prove an event of such transcendent importance in her life.
We guess something of the hopes and dreams, which lay in James and Catherine Mason’s mind when they yielded to the desires of their son, James (who was a successful business man in Cork), and allowed their only daughter, Elizabeth, to accompany him, on his return to Cork from one of his visits home, for “a season” in the gay, little Southern Capital. Among the country gentlemen of the neighbourhood there was small likelihood of finding a suitable parti for their beautiful girl. Arthur O’Neill’s description of Lord Kenmare’s “Milesian Assembly,” which took place in this identical year,[6] seems to point to a society around Killarney of hard-riding, hard-drinking, jolly squires with few of whom Elizabeth’s cultured and thoughtful mind would have enough in common for the prospects of a very happy marriage. Amid the young professional and business men in Cork, with their more intellectual interests, the wider knowledge of life which their close and frequent intercourse with the Continent fostered, their greater accessibility to new ideas, she was, as her prudent, loving parents probably realised, much more likely to find a husband calculated to make her happy. Extraordinarily gifted by nature, her education had been such as to foster her birthgifts. Her great-grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York, who in his book, “The Emmet Family,” has done us the great service of making us acquainted with the choses intimes of his illustrious stock, has published many of her letters, and they bear out Dr. Madden’s verdict on her “as an amiable, exemplary, high-minded lady, whose understanding was as vigorous as her maternal feelings were strong and ardent.” In another place Madden speaks of her “noble disposition and vigorous understanding,” and in conversation with Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet in 1880 he stated that he considered that she, her husband, her three sons, Christopher Temple, Thomas Addis, Robert, and her daughter, Mary Anne (wife of Robert Holmes) “were the most talented family in every respect he had ever known of.” It was felt, indeed, and not alone by those who hold that “all distinguished men inherit their characteristics rather from the mother than from the father,” that the extraordinary brilliancy of the three sons of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet was largely an inheritance from their mother. And it is impossible to read her letters, with their exquisite precision and felicity of phrase, their ease, and candour and absence of all straining after effect, their expression of a philosophy of life, the noblest, and soundest (because founded on the truest Christian principles) without feeling that they have been penned by a woman rarely gifted in heart and mind.
With these rare gifts of heart and mind, and in all the freshness, and charm, and beauty of her twenty summers, Miss Elizabeth Mason made something of a sensation when she appeared in Cork society. She had numerous relatives in the pleasant little city by the Lee, and each and every one of them was determined that their beautiful visitor should have “a good time.” So once or twice a week some kindly matron would call at James Mason’s house, and carry off his sister to the concerts and “assemblies” which were regular bi-weekly events in the Assembly House near Hamond’s Marsh. Or a party of young people would beg her to join them for a boating excursion on the river, or “a promenade” on the Mall where the beau monde loved to display its gay silk and satins, its feathers and furbelows; or on the Bowling Green, where it took the air under the quaintly cut trees, and listened to the band discoursing sweet music for its delectation; or in Mr. Edward Webber’s gardens near the Mardyke where it ate strawberries and cream, and all the other delectable fruits of the earth, each in its proper season. In the evenings there were theatre-parties, or “drums” at the Assembly House, or in the hospitable and elegant homes of some of Cork’s merchant princes, whose culture was not surpassed by their wealth. Here while the young folk danced their minuets and country-dances, their elders played cards; but both young and old were ready to leave dancing floor, and card table, to take part in the delightful concerts of “Italic airs,” which made one visitor to Cork imagine “the god of music had taken a large stride from the Continent, over England to this island,” and attribute “the humane and gentle disposition of the inhabitants, in some measure, to the refinement of this divine art.” At supper one heard supremely good conversation, for the men of Cork were, according to the same witness, “well versed in public affairs,” fond of news and politics, and diligent readers of the newest French and English books, and the periodicals of the day—and their pretty partners made a charmingly appreciative audience while the men talked over the foreign and domestic news they had found in the Dublin and London newspapers, which the two coffee-houses near the Exchange supplied for their customers.[7]
It began to be noticed by the observant matrons, who chaperoned these delightful gatherings, that one brilliant talker seemed particularly anxious to observe the effect his conversation made on clever Elizabeth Mason, and how persistently he sought her out as a partner in ball and supper rooms, or at pic-nic or promenade, whenever his professional occupations allowed him to take part in these functions. They noticed, with approval, that Elizabeth was not indifferent to the attentions of the rising young physician, Dr. Robert Emmet,[8] who having studied medicine and taken his degree with great éclat at one of the most famous medical schools in Europe, that of the University of Montpelier,[9] had taken up practice in Cork some years previously.
In due course the good-natured gossips of Cork learned that Dr. Emmet had sent proposals, through James Mason, jun., to Mr. and Mrs. James Mason of Ballydowney, for the hand of their daughter, Elizabeth, and that the parents, having satisfied themselves, after due enquiry, that the connection was a suitable one, had given their consent to the marriage. Dr. Emmet was the son of a physician, Dr. Christopher Emmet, in Tipperary, and in addition to his professional earnings had inherited a considerable fortune from his father. Through his mother, Rebecca Temple, he was connected with one of the most aristocratic families in England. Satisfactory marriage settlements were speedily arranged, and preparations were pushed on for the wedding, which took place in Cork on November 16th, 1760.
Dr. Madden informs us, on the authority of Elizabeth Mason’s nephew, Mr. J. St. John Mason, that the doctor built a large house for his bride in George’s Street. It seems probable that the ménage included from the beginning the doctor’s widowed mother, Mrs. Rebecca Temple Emmet, and his widowed and childless sister-in-law, Mrs. Grace Russell Emmet, relict of his brother Thomas, who died in 1754. At all events these two ladies died under the doctor’s roof, after the family had moved to Dublin; the elder in 1774, the younger in 1788. A bequest of the latter to her “dear sister-in-law” of a gold watch, and ample legacies to the children seem to betoken that Elizabeth Emmet had the secret of gaining the hearts of her husband’s kin, and that as mistress of a large and wealthy household she knew how to make all who sat by her hearth, or gathered round her table, happy.
She was soon busy in her nursery. In 1761, her first-born son, Christopher Temple Emmet, made his entry into it. The boy was destined, like Cuchullin, to “a great name and a short life.” He was only twenty-eight when he died, but he had already impressed his contemporaries as one of the most brilliant men of his time. Grattan, who disliked the Emmets intensely (because they had the courage of their convictions, and he, in spite of his fiery rhetoric, was all for compromise and security), has left on record his opinion of Temple Emmet, and it is worth quoting at length:—
“Temple Emmet, before he came to the Bar, knew more law than any of the judges on the bench; and if he had been placed on one side, and the whole bench opposed to him, he could have been examined against them, and would have surpassed them all; he would have answered better both in law and divinity than any judge or any bishop in the land. He had a wonderful memory—he recollected everything—it stuck to him with singular tenacity. He showed this in his early youth, and on one occasion he gave a strong instance of it. There existed at that time in Dublin College, an institution called the Historical Society; there were subjects selected for discussion, and prior to the debate there was an examination in history. On one occasion the books happened to be mislaid, and it was thought no examination could have taken place; but Emmet, whose turn it was to be in the chair, and who had read the course, recollected the entire, and examined in every part of it, and with surprising ability.”[10]
In reading the records of eighteenth-century families, we are equally astonished at the size of them, and the small proportion of their members to survive infancy. Dr. and Mrs. Emmet had seventeen children in seventeen years, and of these there only grew to manhood and womanhood three sons, Christopher Temple, Thomas Addis (born 1764), Robert (born 1778), and one daughter, Mary Anne (born 1773). Of the other thirteen, there remained only their names in Aunt Grace’s family bible, followed by the pitiable record, “died young.”
One circumstance moves us strangely: four little Robert Emmets (the first born in 1771, the others in 1774, 1776, 1777) came, and finding the burden of life too heavy, laid it quickly down, until he came, the fifth, the destined one, who was to take it up and carry it, until his hero-fate bade him lay it down—for Ireland.
Perhaps the little graves that multiplied so fast in the Cork cemetery made that city a depressing place for Elizabeth Emmet; or perhaps her husband was attracted to Dublin, by the promises of professional advancement offered by the appointment to the Viceroyalty of his kinsman, the Marquis of Buckingham. At all events it is a matter of history that Dr. and Mrs. Emmet came to Dublin in 1771 and took up their residence in Molesworth Street.[11] Here a number of their children were born, including Mary Anne (1773) and Robert (1778).
In this same year, 1771, Dr. Emmet was appointed State Physician, and owing to his character and capacity, was soon in possession also, of a large private practice. He was a charming, genial man, and a great favourite with his patients. His wife’s nephew, St. John Mason, described him to Dr. Madden as “a man of easy and gentlemanly manners, remarkable for vivacity and pleasantry, but free from coarseness or that exaggeration of expression in moments of hilarity called grimace. He possessed humour but not of a caustic nature. In discourse he was fluent and happy in the choice of words, and in the use of classical quotations. He was remarkably punctual and precise in business and professional affairs.” By his professional skill and business prudence Dr. Emmet amassed a considerable fortune, and lived in a manner commensurate with it, entertaining much good company, and taking a leading part in the brilliant society of the day.
After the birth of their youngest child, Robert, in 1778, the Emmets moved from their house in Molesworth Street, to a splendid new mansion in Stephen’s Green. Those were the days of the Volunteers, and Ireland, stirred to the depths by the example of America’s struggle for freedom, was gathering her forces to make the same demand, which America had already secured—and to back it by the same arguments. Less fortunate than America—or less wisely and nobly led—Ireland did not force the question to the decision of the field of battle, but accepted in full settlement of her claim a something which only Grattan and his friends, blinded by their own verbal fire-works, could have mistaken for liberty. Dr. Robert Emmet was one of those who saw, from the beginning, the inadequacy of the Settlement of 1782; and there is no doubt but that it was from him that his sons learned that political creed—the doctrine of “Absolute Independence”—for which one of them was to suffer the “white martyrdom” of exile, and the other the “red martyrdom” of blood. Grattan and Curran and others of their ilk who could never forgive those who had the pluck and honesty to draw their logical conclusion from the premises which they themselves had instituted, have tried to discredit Dr. Emmet by throwing ridicule on him. Grattan’s son quotes his father as saying that “Dr. Emmet had his pill and his plan, and he mixed so much politics with his prescription, that he would kill the patient who took the one, and ruin the country that listened to the other.” And Curran loved to raise a laugh among his friends—Sir Jonah Barrington and other high-minded gentlemen—by “taking off” the Doctor administering “their morning draught” to his sons. “Well, Temple, what would you do for your country? Addis, would you kill your brother for your country? Would you kill your sister for your country? Would you kill me?” We can listen with equanimity to the bitter epigrams of Grattan, or the monkey-like buffoonery of Curran when we remember what his own sons thought of Dr. Emmet: “Dear shade of my venerated father,” cried Robert as he stood in the dock facing his iniquitous judges and accusers, “look down on your suffering son, and see has he for one moment deviated from those moral and patriotic principles which you so early instilled into his youthful mind, and for which he has now to offer up his life.” And Thomas Addis Emmet, writing to his mother from Brussels, on the receipt of the news of his father’s death (December, 1802), has drawn for his own, and his mother’s consolation, a noble portrait of him whom they had lost: “The first comfort you can know must spring up from within yourself, from your reflection and religion, from your recalling to memory that my father’s active and vigorous mind was always occupied in doing good to others. That his seventy-five years were unostentatiously but inestimably filled with perpetual services to his fellow-creatures. That although he was tried, and that severely, with some of those calamities from which we cannot be exempt, yet he enjoyed an uncommon portion of tranquillity and happiness, for, by his firmness and understanding, he was enabled to bear like a man the visitations of external misfortunes, and from within no troubled conscience or compunction of self-reproach ever disturbed his peace.”
The years from 1778 to 1789 were, doubtless, the happiest years in Elizabeth Emmet’s life. The elder boys, Christopher Temple and Thomas Addis, were at the University, and a mother even less tender than she, could not but be filled with pride and happiness at the brilliant records they were making for themselves. In one of these years there arrived from America kinsfolk of her husband’s, Sir John and Robert Temple, and the latter’s family, and in the hospitable eighteenth-century manner which its big houses and generous style of living fostered, they became inmates of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet’s house. The tie which bound the Emmets to the Temples was strengthened, when in 1784 Christopher Temple Emmet married his cousin, Miss Anne Western Temple, daughter of Robert. He had been called to the Bar a short time previously and was in extensive practice. I have already quoted Grattan’s opinion of his gifts. Even more significant was the testimony—spoken of all places in the world—in the very Court wherein Christopher’s youngest brother was awaiting the death-sentence—and by the lips that were so soon to pronounce it, the cruel lips of “Hanging Judge” Norbury. “You had an eldest brother whom death snatched away, and who when living was one of the greatest ornaments of the Bar. The laws of his country were the study of his youth, and the study of his maturer years was to cultivate and support them.” With Christopher marked out, by the judgment of all the competent men of his time for high advancement; with a charming and amiable new daughter added to her household in the shape of Christopher’s wife; with her second son, Thomas Addis, winning all sorts of distinctions for himself in the University of Edinburgh, whither he had gone to study medicine; with Mary Anne, growing into lovely womanhood, and showing a strength of character and a breadth of intellect, which stamped her as a true Emmet; with young Robert, earning praise from his masters and regard from his comrades; with the spectacle of her husband’s delight in all this to double her own—Elizabeth Emmet might well count herself, for one golden moment at least, that rare thing: a perfectly happy woman.
Alas! Alas! how short the moment to which we may cry with Faust, “tarry awhile, thou art so fair.” Very speedily, Elizabeth Emmet’s “fair moment” passed. In February, 1789, her son, Christopher Temple, went “circuit” in Munster—and one day to those who waited his return in the pleasant home in Stephen’s Green there came the tragic news of his death from smallpox. The blow was too severe for Christopher’s young wife. She died a few months after her husband, leaving their little daughter, Kitty, to the care of her grandparents. Elizabeth Emmet had to live on—to face the sorrows that yet awaited her.
At the desire of Dr. Emmet, the second son, Thomas Addis, anxious “to fill” as far as in him lay, “the place of his brother,” turned aside from the profession of medicine, in which he had already graduated, and took up that of law. He was called to the Bar in 1790. In 1791, he married Miss Jane Patten, daughter of Rev. John Patten of Clonmel, his choice of a bride giving the greatest satisfaction to his father and mother.
At first the young couple lived with the old Doctor and his wife, as part of the one household; but as the little grandchildren began to fill the nursery, it was found desirable to provide separate establishments. The Doctor, with this end in view, divided his house in Stephen’s Green, West, into two portions. It stood (and still stands, divided as the Doctor left it into two residences) at the corner of Lamb’s Lane and Stephen’s Green, West,[12] and the Doctor kept the corner portion for himself and assigned the inner to his son’s family. Thomas Addis Emmet had, also, as we know from Tone’s “Autobiography,” “a charming villa” at Rathfarnham, and doubtless the whole family were made welcome in it, whenever the call of the countryside overbid the attractions of the town, in the years previous to Dr. Emmet’s purchase of Casino—the country residence where he spent his last years.
The mention of Tone fitly introduces the years of Thomas Addis Emmet’s public life—his efforts for Catholic Emancipation, his connection with the United Irishmen. But, as we shall speak more fully of these years when we come to tell the story of Thomas Addis Emmet’s wife, we shall content ourselves here with a thought of the anxieties, which must have been the constant companions of a woman so clever and far-sighted as his mother. Where was all this leading to? Her son, himself with his clear grave eyes and resolute heart, knew perfectly well—like the majority of the leaders of the United Irishmen—that the course in which he was embarked was one which would, most probably, call for the sacrifice of all that men hold dear. Brilliant professional prospects; the elegance and comfort of a home adorned by a charming wife and a band of lovely children; property and position and the interest in a settled order of things which they bring with them; life itself—all these Thomas Addis Emmet saw himself called upon at any moment to renounce for the loyal service of Ireland. “It is a hard service they take,” indeed, “who serve the Poor Old Woman”! “But, for all that, they think themselves well paid.”
On March the 12th, 1798, when the Government, acting on the information of Thomas Reynolds, swooped down on the Leinster Directory of United Irishmen, assembled in Oliver Bond’s house, Emmet was arrested in his home in Stephen’s Green and committed to Newgate, from whence he was afterwards conveyed to Kilmainham. Of his wife’s heroic conduct on that occasion we shall have an inspiring tale to tell. While her daughter-in-law shared her husband’s imprisonment, Elizabeth Emmet found merciful occupation in the care of the five little grandchildren whom they had confided to her: Robert, Margaret, Elizabeth, John Patten, Thomas Addis.
In April, the authorities, alarmed by the spirit of patriotism which was manifesting itself among the students of Trinity College, ordered the “Visitation,” of which Moore gives an account in his “Memoirs.”
In anticipation of the verdict of Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon, Robert Emmet, who was looked on as the leader of the patriot youths, requested the Board of Fellows to take his name off the books of the college. During the wild excitement of the next few months: the bloody weeks of “the Rising” in May and June; the executions and court-martials of July; the French landing in August; the new executions which followed it, in September; the capture of Tone in October; his court-martial and death in November, all through the tragic calendar of the year 1798, Dr. Emmet and his wife Elizabeth had, at least, the comfort of their younger son’s constant presence with them.
In this year Dr. Emmet set the houses in Stephen’s Green, and took up his residence with his family (which now included his grandchildren) in a country house he had recently purchased for himself, Casino, Milltown. This historic house still stands, and Mr. Reynolds’s indications make it easy to locate: “at the corner of Bird Avenue on the eastern side of the Dundrum Road, midway between Milltown and Windy Arbour.”
Two events of much importance mark the following year (1799) in Elizabeth Emmet’s maternal calendar. The first was the removal of Thomas Addis and the other State prisoners to Fort George in the North of Scotland; the second was the marriage of her daughter, Mary Anne, to the distinguished barrister, Robert Holmes.
Early in 1800, Robert Emmet visited his brother in Fort George, passing from thence to the Continent where he remained until after the signing of the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
Later in the year, Jane Emmet made good the design which her conjugal affection had long inspired, and which no governmental rebuff could weaken—that of joining her husband in Fort George. She went there in July, escorted by her brother, John Patten, and accompanied by her three elder children, Robert, Margaret, and Elizabeth. With the grandparents at Casino were left John Patten, Thomas Addis, and a sturdy little chap called Christopher Emmet, who had joined the goodly company since we last made the enumeration of them.
During the years Thomas Addis and his wife spent in Fort George there was a constant interchange of letters between Casino and the grim northern keep in which the Irish State prisoners were so long interned. Sometimes the Casino news is conveyed by Dr. Emmet—whose letters remind us of St. John Mason’s description of his conversation; sometimes it is Mary Anne Holmes who holds the pen; sometimes it is Kitty, the orphan daughter of Christopher Temple and Anne Western Temple. But most frequently it is the mother and in these letters we get our best picture of the sort of woman Elizabeth Emmet was.[13] There are pleasant glimpses, too, of the home-life in Casino. We see the father, seeking solace for his anxieties in his labours in beautifying the house he fondly hoped was to be the home of his children, and his children’s children. The thirteen acres around Casino serve the purpose of Penelope’s web, and the loving wife finds comfort in watching the amusement he gets from his tree-planting and landscape gardening, his industry in gravelling the walks and raking them when they have been gravelled. Convinced that “the promises of hope are better than the gifts of fortune,” he has built a fine nursery ’gainst the happy day when all his grandchildren (and their parents) shall be gathered together under his patriarchal roof; and a certain cherry tree in full blossom makes him and his wife long to see Jane and her charming children gathered under it. The Doctor’s craze for transplanting trees which, to the rest of the family, seem to be perfectly well placed where they are, has grown into a family joke; but his wife is too well pleased to see the good effect the interest and occupation have on his health to protest now, as she was wont to do, even “tho’ from the earliness of the season and the age of the trees she despairs of ever seeing a leaf upon any of them.” “As we have a great demand for pea-rods,” she remarks jestingly, “they will not be useless.” She gathers up all the news she can about their friends, knowing how welcome such items are to exiles. Dr. Drennan, who has attended Mary Anne at the birth of her first-born baby, is happily “married to a very amiable, pretty young woman”; “he has waited to some good purpose.” We have a pretty etching of the author of the “Wake of William Orr,” and the famous “Orellana Letters,” “leaning over the cradle of his little heir, so anxious about it lest it should die.” Other friends, like Lady Anne Fitzgerald, Ally Spring, the Temples—and, above all, the Pattens and the Colvilles—find frequent mention. She does not hesitate to inculcate certain “musty precepts” as to health, which her knowledge of her son’s and her daughter-in-law’s dispositions seems to her to call for. Jane must refrain from “the great efforts of which she is so fond,” for “system is better than swiftness,” and though “we may admire the speed and power of a racehorse, a steady draft horse will in general be found as useful and much more durable.” Both Thomas Addis and Jane are fond, she knows, of heated rooms and late hours, and their prudent mother reminds them of the necessity of fresh air in their bed-chamber and living room, and preaches the doctrine of “early to bed and early to rise.”
But what most people will think the most delightful thing in the letters are the pictures they give of the children. As has been already mentioned, the three elder were with their parents in Fort George, and almost all the State prisoners were lending a hand, each in his own speciality, to their education. The accounts of their progress interests their grandmother keenly, and she helps with comments on their dispositions as she had studied them. She is proud of Elizabeth’s beauty and goodness of disposition, of Margaret’s shrewdness of observation, and liberality and directness in dealing; but “the tenderness of Robert’s tones and the brightness of his countenance give him the advantage over all the other children whatever.” It is easy to see that Robert is his grandmother’s favourite, dear as all the children are to her. A letter from him gives her “great pleasure, for it is a true picture of his heart, overflowing with innocence, honesty, and good nature.” She begs for “minute accounts of the three children ...,” she and her husband “being glad to feed upon crumbs that fall from her son’s table.” In return she is almost as minute as her son and daughter-in-law could wish about the three from whom they are separated. She draws a funny little sketch of the “little fellow,” two-year-old Christopher Temple, “fighting hard in dumb show for his share in his grandfather’s claret,” and a little later on “engaging in his elder brother’s plays, and forcing himself into notice more than the others.” John is the other grandmother’s favourite, and Tom is pronounced by Ally Spring “the finest child you have,” but “the little fellow,” as Elizabeth always calls the baby namesake of her dead first-born, is of all the three confided to her care the nearest to her heart. We must, however, reserve further quotations from the letters, as far as they regard her grandchildren, until we come to discuss their education, at some length, in our memoir of their mother.
The letters paint the writer as a grave and somewhat reserved nature. She feels that she has not her husband’s “gracious manner,” which perhaps prevents her daughter-in-law judging of the strength of her love for her. She is inclined by nature to melancholy. “Solitude has through life stuck to me like an inner garment, and I find that it exceeds even those of the children of Israel; it is a habit that instead of wearing by time, grows stronger by constant use.” But she has the great anchors of Faith and Charity. She feels her blessings with a grateful heart, and wishes to discern and adore the healing hand which has been held out to her in the midst of trials and distresses, and without which her natural infirmities must have sunk under the scenes she has gone through. The most persistent note in this correspondence is that of deep and true religious feeling and, as we catch it, we seem to understand how it came about that in the midst of the corrupt society which was that of eighteenth century Dublin, this woman’s sons were kept chaste and undefiled—Moore’s tribute to the unspotted youth of Robert comes back to us, bringing with it unconscious tribute to the pure and exalting influence of Robert’s mother.
The letters end in 1802, when Thomas Addis Emmet was released from Fort George and awaited in Brussels certain developments which were to determine his future movements. Here the news of his father’s death reached him, and his own letter on that occasion to his mother, which I have already quoted, brought forth one from her which, apart from its intrinsic interest, must have ever borne in the eyes of her son a priceless value, for when he received it, the hand that had penned it was long mouldering into dust. It was addressed to the Poste Restante, New York, and only reached its addressee on his arrival in that city in November 11th, 1804.
In the interval the race of Emmet had been practically exterminated in the land for which they had given so much. The death of Elizabeth Emmet on September 9th, 1803, was followed by her youngest son’s execution a few weeks later. In 1804 Mary Anne Holmes died most tragically in the arms of her husband, newly liberated from prison. One guesses that the little children, John, and Tom, and Temple, were then taken care of by their Grandmother Patten, until an opportunity could be found of sending them across the Atlantic to their parents. They had gone with Grandmother Emmet, when she left Casino, after her husband’s death, to take up her residence in Blomfield, Donnybrook. And, no doubt, Mary Anne Holmes and poor cousin Kitty did what they could to care for them and comfort them. But if the pathos of the scene drawn by Madden of the death chamber of Elizabeth Emmet could have borne any heightening, doubtless he would have introduced in it the tiny figures of three little frightened, sable-clad boys, standing hand in hand for comfort, and weeping—though they knew it not—for the tragedy of the passing of their house from Irish soil.