Mary Tone
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.