Chapter III: Part 3

Richard Curran, who took pains to send that broken letter to a woman who valued it above fine gold, was always a good brother. Concerning his dear Sarah he had to be reticent, too, in reticent company. A lady who knew W. Henry Curran long and well, heard him mention his youngest sister only once. They were searching for something in a garret, when an exquisite picture standing laced with cobwebs, the picture of a girl about eighteen, caught her eye. “My sister Sarah, by Romney,” Henry said shortly, seeing that he had to say something. “Family pride had been deeply hurt by the publicity attached to poor Sarah’s unfortunate love-episode.” The Romney, sold by auction when Henry Curran died, is now the property of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby; it has been beautifully engraved for Miss Frances A. Gerard’s _Some Fair Hibernians_, 1897. The delicately powdered hair, the low frilled dress with the line of black velvet about the neck, the gracious shoulders, the purely Irish mouth and eyes, half-scornful of life, half-resigned to it, which never knew illusion, and can never know abiding joy—-these are most tenderly painted, and remain among the things one does not forget. The last word of this haunting personality shall be loyal “M.’s”:—

“In person Mrs. Sturgeon was about the ordinary size, her hair and eyes black. Her complexion was fairer than is usual with black hair, and was a little freckled. Her eyes were large, soft, and brilliant, and capable of the greatest variety of expression. Her aspect in general indicated reflection, and pensive abstraction from the scene around her. Her wit was keen and playful, but chastised [_sic_]; although no one had a quicker perception of humour or ridicule. Her musical talents were of the first order: she sang with exquisite taste. I think I never heard so harmonious a voice.”

As for Captain Henry Sturgeon, he only betook himself anew to his post. His more active military career was now to begin. Throughout the Peninsular War he served as Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and later as Colonel of South Guides on the Duke of Wellington’s staff; and Wellington’s despatches ring again and again with his commended name. Riding across a vineyard during the fight near Vie Begorre, on a March morning of 1814, in the sixth year of his widowerhood, and the thirty-second of his age, he was shot dead in the saddle. He never had his dues in a profession where official recognition was then not stinted; and perhaps he cared little that it was so. _The Dictionary of National Biography_, which does not mention his all-significant marriage, yet quotes from _The War in the Peninsula_ what is said of Henry Sturgeon: “Skilled to excellence in almost every branch of war, and possessing a variety of accomplishments, he used his gifts so gently for himself and so usefully for the service that envy offered no bar to admiration, and the whole army felt painfully mortified that his merits were passed unnoticed.” This is one comrade’s glowing praise of another. Has it gone unguessed, the cause of the neglect at home of one of the most brilliant and devoted officers of his generation? Can the cause be hidden from those who have scrutinised the Government of that day, with its spites, its partisanships, its incapacity for distant outlooks, its severance from ideals? This Englishman, whatever his eminence of courage and skill might be, had been the husband of Emmet’s sweetheart; and Emmet was an Irish rebel and felon. The young soldier had probably weighed well what he was inheriting, before his marriage, and found all that endurable enough, until he died. In a world where earthly accidents wither away at a breath, and men of like temper see each other as they are, Henry Sturgeon must have smiled from the blood-wet Spanish grass straight into Robert Emmet’s eyes.

One likes the unexpected epilogue, as one likes the mournful play. It is all satisfactory: “nothing but well and fair, and what may quiet us,” in the odd pattern of the plot. Emmet lives in it, and outlives. It is the compensation of a lot cast in a planet where even our own honourable action has a trick of turning hostile and smearing us, that there is something in the best of us which cannot be smeared. Robert Emmet’s large soul has, like a magician, pieced together his broken body, the symbol of his broken, mistimed, and because mistimed, unhallowed effort. But only his own soul has done it, and by a power within, shaking herself clear of censure. Mr. Henry Curran devotes to him a reticent paragraph obliquely affectionate. “He met his fate with unostentatious fortitude; and although few could ever think of justifying his projects or regretting their failure, yet his youth, his talents, the great respectability of his connections, and the evident delusion of which he was the victim, have excited more general sympathy for his unfortunate end, and more forbearance towards his memory, than are usually extended to the errors or sufferings of political offenders.” At the end of a hundred years, the feelings which may temperately be described as sympathy and forbearance do survive, ranged on the side of this political offender; but is it to be thought for a moment that five-and-twenty years of life, intellectuality, social standing, above all the capacity for being fooled (adorable as that may sometimes be), are alone able to commend any man to the remembrance of posterity? No: to dominate a moral distance there must be moral height. Emmet was magnanimous. The word was nobly applied to him by Lord Hardwicke, the head of the Government which hanged and beheaded him. Now to be magnanimous is not to possess a definite grace or virtue: magnanimity, like a sense of humour, is a spirit, a solvent merely; to exercise it in any one emergency is to show greatness equal to all. Robert Emmet said that he had received, immediately on his return from France, official invitations from conspirators in high quarters at home: the “first men in the land” were those who “invited him over.” Of his truthfulness there was but one opinion. Said Curran, who loved him little: “I would have believed the word of Emmet as soon as the oath of any other man I ever knew.” The Attorney-General at the trial referred to the prisoner as “a gentleman to whom the rebellion may be traced, as the origin, life, and soul of it.” This was Emmet’s reply, when, after nightfall, his turn came to speak: “My lords, let me here observe that I am not the head and lifeblood of this rebellion. When I came to Ireland I found the business ripe for execution: I was asked to join in it.” And again: “I have been charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as it has been expressed, the life and soul of this conspiracy. You do me honour overmuch. You have given to the subaltern all the credit of the superior.” He turned half-smiling to the presiding judge. “There are men concerned in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conception of yourself, my lord.” At the final moment of his life Emmet stood motionless with a handkerchief in his hand, the fall of which was to be the signal for the cart to be drawn away. To the usual “Are you ready, sir?” he twice answered “No.” As it was, another and obeyed signal was impatiently given before he had dropped the handkerchief. Why did he hesitate? Was he perhaps expecting these concealed associates, his leaders and long-silent abettors, to reprieve or rescue him? So romantic a fancy, implying so much belief in human generosity, was only too natural to Robert Emmet. Many thinking heads, even under coronets, had been hot for reform in that unfavourable hour; there were many who desired the removal of religious disabilities, popular representation in Parliament, death to the vile system of local laws under which one witness, and only one witness, was sufficient to convict a man of high treason. Reform being disallowed, they declared themselves eloquently as ready to be driven to armed resistance against England: that is, towards total divorce and reconstruction. To poor Emmet alone, the thing so unavoidable which was good enough to long for and to talk about, was the thing good enough to do. The “first in the land” kept their heads; and in death as in life he kept their secret. There is a great unwritten chapter of perfidy behind his lonely ineffectual blow struck for national freedom. Anyone who has studied well these events of 1803, and weighed well the astonishing confidential information about the historical papers at Dublin Castle, which was given not long ago to Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York, by Sir Bernard Burke, and incorporated in _The Emmet Family_, can hardly doubt that revelations on that subject are yet to come which will lengthen the story of Mr. Pitt, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Under-Secretary Marsden, and their dealings with Ireland. And English gold and English terrorism had too truly won their way at last with Emmet’s humble colleagues at home.

There are minor instances of Emmet’s magnanimity no less striking in their way. “We are all Protestants!” he said in a delighted and congratulatory spirit to Russell, implicated with him; he could not forget how much more heavily suspicion would bear upon those others yet shackled by the penal laws. To this beautiful inborn openness of mind was due his allusion before Lord Norbury (a judge as well-hated as Jeffreys, and for much the same reasons), to “that tyranny of which you are only the intermediate minister.” From his cell, within a few hours of the end, he sent a manly letter of thanks to the Chief Secretary, in which he addresses him thus:—

“SIR: Had I been permitted to proceed with my
vindication, it was my intention not only to have
acknowledged the delicacy with which (I feel with
gratitude) I have been personally treated, but also
to have done the most public justice to the mildness
of the present Administration in this country; and
at the same time to have acquitted them, as far as
rested with me, of any charge of remissness in not
having previously detected a conspiracy, which, from
its closeness, I know it was impossible to have done.
I confess that I should have preferred this mode if it
had been permitted, as it would thereby have enabled me
to clear myself from an imputation under which I might
in consequence lie, and to have stated why such an
Administration did not prevent, but (under the peculiar
situation of this country) perhaps rather accelerated
my determination to make some effort for the overthrow
of a Government of which I do not think equally highly.
However, as I have been deprived of that opportunity,
I think it right now to make an acknowledgment which
justice requires from me as a man, and which I do not
feel to be in the least derogatory from my decided
principles as an Irishman.—I have the honour to be,
sir, with the greatest respect, your most obedient
humble servant,

“ROBT. EMMET.”

(Hard. MS. 35,742, f. 196.)

The Lord Lieutenant makes a comment on this, in that letter to his brother, the Home Secretary, from which much has already been cited:—

“I enclose copies of two letters which he wrote this morning [September 20, 1803]. One of the acts of kindness to which he particularly refers, in his letter to Mr. Wickham, was his being removed from the cell at Newgate, in which he had been placed after the sentence, to his former apartment at Kilmainham, as had been originally intended. He had alluded to this in his conversation with the clergymen, and admitted that the general conduct of those who administered the Government was likely to conciliate the people, though he did not approve the form of the Government and the British connection, both of which he had been desirous to overthrow.”

In regard to this forwarded letter, the Home Secretary utters his congratulatory mind, and gives his opinion of our hero:—

“At the same time that one cannot but deplore the wicked malignity and wonder at the enthusiastic wildness which appears to have actuated the conduct of this miserable man, one cannot but admire the judgment, the temper, and delicacy which appear to have been manifested in the conduct of your Excellency’s Government towards this person, and all concerned or in any manner connected with him. I cannot but take advantage of this occasion to express the satisfaction I feel in observing that the justice, moderation, and mildness of your Excellency’s Government have extorted even from a condemned traitor the same sentiments of respect and reverence which we have been accustomed to hear from the loyal part of the community.”

It does not seem to have been revealed to the Hon. Charles Yorke, that what “extorted” Emmet’s assurances was his own extreme, almost fantastic, chivalry; and that those assurances set off deeply by contrast, as he vehemently meant they should do, his abhorrence of the underlying system of which Lord Hardwicke’s conduct was merely the agreeable accident. Lord Hardwicke, at least, had understood.

Even one intelligent modern has fallen foul of Emmet’s unusually scrupulous care in such matters, and of his attitude of regal courtesy, like that of the battling foes on Crécy field: such a care and such an attitude indicate, it is thought, “weakness of character!” What it really indicates is a diplomacy so high that if generally practised it might render human intercourse very difficult. We cannot all be as Apollo Musagetes, daring to employ nothing but the amenities, the major force, in a universe inured to cheap thunderbolts. As Thoreau shrewdly says: “The gods can never afford to have a man in the world who is privy to any of their secrets. They cannot have a spy here: they will at once send him packing!”

A postulate of true magnanimity is modesty. Emmet’s was unique. It is the testimony of John Patten, who was well aware of his kinsman’s immense self-reliance, that “Robert had not one particle of vanity in his composition. He was the most free from conceit of any man I ever knew. You might live with him for years ... and never discover that he thought about himself at all. He was vain neither of his person nor of his mind.” La Comtesse d’Haussonville cannot refrain, in her graceful memoir, from contrasting him with another excellent youth of genius, André Chénier, who very properly expressed his pang of self-pity in face of the guillotine. “_Et pourtant_,” he cried, striking his forehead with that gesture of Gallic candour which is so odd to us and so winning: “_et pourtant il y avait quelque chose ici_!” _Il y avait quelque chose ici_ in Emmet too, although it was not great lyric poetry. He had almost every other capacity. The Rev. Archibald Douglas, in his old age, when Robert Emmet had been nearly forty years in his grave, summed up his conviction about him to Dr. R. R. Madden: “So gifted a creature does not appear once in a thousand years.”

We have no portrait of Emmet which antedates his trial. Three artists in good repute sketched him, that day, on bits of waste paper or else on the backs of envelopes, and did it surreptitiously for dread of prohibition: these were Comerford, Brocas, and James Petrie. The two first, viewing Emmet in profile, gained better results than the third; yet Petrie’s drawing serves as the basis of the only well-known engraved pictures. It was Petrie, moreover, who was allowed to take the death-mask of Robert Emmet. The good material accumulated was put to no very memorable use. The Petrie Emmet is somewhat heavy and glowering, and distinctly wry-necked. It is meant, in fact, to be impressive; and the note of artificiality disqualifies it as a true representation of its subject, a man of shynesses and simplicities. Comerford, on the other hand, and Brocas, as effectively, have given us a face to look at which one instinctively believes in. It is stamped with concentration and resolve, but has in it something serene and gentle and sweet, and it harmonises with all we can learn of Emmet’s physical appearance from the printed page. He was about five feet seven inches in height, wiry, slender, erect, healthy, full of endurance, quick of movement. His dark eyes were small and rather deep-set, and sparkling with expression; his nose was straight and thin, his mouth delicately chiselled. He had the powerful chin and jaw-bone never absent from the bodily semblance of a strong-willed personality. The fine pendulous hair bespoke the enthusiast, but it was not worn long save over the forehead, which was noticeably broad and high. What gave a faun-like idiosyncrasy to the whole countenance was the slight upward curve of the perfect eyebrows at the inner edge. If we are to accept Brocas as our best authority (though his hand at work has somehow captured a momentary scorn not seen by Comerford), this idiosyncrasy had in it no touch of frowning severity such as was foreign, according to all report, to Emmet, but added rather a final whimsical attraction to a sad young face which a child or a dog would readily love. As Anne Devlin said once of “Miss Sarah’s,” it was “not handsome, but more than handsome.” The one face it resembles is the Giotto Dante.

Some critics on the spindle side will find it easier to forgive an unsuccessful patriot than an uninventive and unauthoritative lover. Emmet in hiding near the Priory, between the no-rising and the arrest, had his almost certain chances of escape; but he could not persuade the girl, born, like Hamlet, to a tragic inaction, to strike hands with him and make the dash for liberty. Habit sat too heavily on her defrauded spirit, and insufficient faith in herself kept her where she was. The secrecy of their relations seems to have hurt and weakened her. She could no more stand up then against her father’s displeasure than she could part long after with dejection and a sort of remorse, when the face of her outer world had beautifully, almost miraculously, changed. And Emmet loved her as she was, a day-lily on a drooping stem. To quarrel with them because no fleet-footed horse, as in a novel, pranced by night to Rathfarnham to bear them away together, is to quarrel with a perfected sequence. To mark the look of this Robert, hungry for the heroic, the look of this Sarah, mystical as twilight, is but to forecast casualties. Perhaps as every soul has a right to its own kind of welfare and happiness, so it has a right to its own kind of sorrow. The second alternative suits the innocent, although it shocks the moral sense of most persons far more than would the choice of error instead of truth. To be an Emmet at all meant to get into trouble for advanced ideals. To be a Curran meant to have a keen intelligence always besieged hard, and eventually overcome, by melancholia, as John Philpot Curran’s was at the end, as Richard Curran’s was in his prime. Emmet and the young creature of his adoration were hardly used; but Fate chose not ill for them. A _révolution manquée_ with an elopement; expatriation with a marriage certificate; a change of political front with the parental blessing—all look somehow equally incongruous and out of key with those sensitive faces elected, let us say, to better things. Their story, with all deductions which can be made, has already done something to deepen the sense of human love in the world, and to broaden the dream of human liberty. Perhaps either of those games may be considered as always worth the candle.

Rashness, and the immediate ruin consequent upon it, two things which men can taste, smell, handle, hear, and see, are not redeemed, in their opinion, by anything so unsubstantial as motive. History, a tissue of externals, cannot afford to take account of that. Hence it falls out that certain spirits are finally given over, with their illegitimate deeds in arm, to folk-lore and balladry. Of these are Charlotte Corday, and John Brown of Ossawatomie, and Robert Emmet. There is no need of exculpating them in the forum of the people, where they were never held to be at fault; and exculpation is a waste of words to the rest of us. We understand too well what social havoc these pure-eyed hot-hearted angels bring in their wake, when they condescend to interfere with our fixed affairs. They call into being in their own despite our most self-protective measures: measures, in short, which amount to an international coalition against the undesirable immigrant. Relentless inhospitality to such innovators, in every generation and in every clime, is the habit of this planet. Such as our affairs are, we do not seem to wish them made over into duplicates of those of the Kingdom of Heaven. The executed meddlers, however, often take on an unaccountable posthumous grace, and may even be approached upon anniversaries in a mood none other than that of affectionate congratulation. The anomaly of our own situation has passed with their death: though they never change, we grow up in time to be Posterity, and to see with them the ultimate correlations of things, in a region of intellectual space where nothing goes by its old name. To be unbiassed and Irish is to love Robert Emmet; to be generously English is to love him; to be American is to love him anyhow.

“Aristogeiton! here is for thy sword
A myrtle of Mount Vernon, plucked this day.”

THE END

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The name in the original MS. was probably Burrowes.

[2] The bracketed words are conjectures of the present writer. The MS. has suffered greatly from the damp, so as to be practically illegible in places.

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Transcriber’s Note: Page 84, “n” changed to “in” (in a very clever)