Sarah Curran
In thinking of Sarah Curran we paraphrase unconsciously the pitiful lines of one of our Irish poets and say of her:
“There was a maid whom Sorrow named his friend,
And she of her high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps.”
From her earliest years sorrow had walked with her as friend with friend; and the sadness of her death was but in keeping with the sadness of her birth, of her disposition, of her home-life, of her love story.
We know from the confidences of John Philpot Curran’s most intimate friends that the brilliant gaiety of his convivial hours alternated with fits of the blackest depression. His friend, Charles Phillips, writes of him: “It was with him as it is with every person whose spirits are apt to be occasionally excited—the depression is at intervals in exact proportion.... He was naturally sensitive—domestic misfortunes rendered his home unhappy—he flew for a kind of refuge into public life; and the political ruin of his country, leaving him without an object of private enjoyment or of patriotic hope, flung him upon his own heart-devouring reflections.... It was a deplorable thing to see him, in the decline of life, when visited by this constitutional melancholy. I have not unfrequently accompanied him in his walks upon such occasions, almost at the hour of midnight. He had gardens attached to the Priory, of which he was particularly fond; and into these gardens, when so affected, no matter at what hour, he used to ramble. It was then almost impossible to divert his mind from themes of sadness. The gloom of his own thoughts discoloured everything, and from calamity to calamity he would wander on—seeing in the future nothing for hope, and in the past nothing but disappointment.”
The home of such a man cannot have been a very happy one for his children; and the sufferings imposed on his family by Curran’s attacks of melancholia must have been aggravated in the case of his youngest daughter Sarah, who inherited, with her father’s genius and her father’s artistic and musical sensibility, more than her share of her father’s disposition to sadness. In the large dark mournful eyes of her, which had also come to her from her father, was mirrored the hereditary sadness of her soul.
This hereditary sadness, fostered by an unhappy home-life, was further strengthened by two events which darkened her childhood. The one was the death of her favourite sister, Gertrude, who died at the age of twelve, when Sarah herself was a girl of eleven. Gertrude was a musical prodigy, and the whole family, and especially Sarah and her father, who were passionately fond of music, worshipped her. Curran insisted on the dead girl being buried in the Priory grounds, and she was laid to rest under a large tree on the lawn, directly opposite the window of the children’s nursery. “Under its shade they [i.e. Gertrude and Sarah] had often sat together, pulled the first primroses at its roots, and watched in its leaves the earliest verdure of the spring. Many an hour, for many a year, did the sorrowful survivor take her silent stand at the melancholy window, gazing on the well-known spot, which constituted all her little world of joys and sorrows. To this circumstance she attributed the tendency to melancholy which formed so marked a feature of her character through life.”[[97]]
[97]. Quoted by Madden from article entitled “Some Passages in the History of Sarah Curran,” in “Literary Souvenir” of 1831. The writer is believed to have been a lady of the Crawford family, who were intimate friends of Sarah and her people.
Two years after Gertrude’s death, a grief even more intolerable befel our poor Sarah. She lost her mother, whose favourite daughter she was—and it was worse than death which caused the separation. Sarah was fourteen at the time—old enough to feel the shame, and to suffer the agony of it in every fibre of her pure and noble nature. So overwhelmed was she with grief that it was thought advisable for her to leave the Priory for some time. She therefore accepted the offer of hospitality made her by an early college friend of her father, Rev. Thomas Crawford, of Lismore, and remained with his family “until better thoughts at home led to her return to it.”
At what time she learned to know Robert Emmet we are not definitely informed. The Emmets and the Currans were old acquaintances—if not friends—and for a time at least Thomas Addis Emmet and John Philpot Curran were neighbours in Rathfarnham. They must have often met, likewise, in the law-courts. Richard Curran, Sarah’s eldest brother, was a fellow-student of Robert Emmet’s at Trinity, and it was ostensibly to see him, and to enjoy the witty conversation of his father that Robert Emmet, after his return from Paris in 1802, paid his frequent visits to the Priory. Curran loved to see youth around him, and made the young men heartily welcome.
And all the time it was Sarah that drew the young patriot to the house her presence glorified for him—Sarah with her pale and delicate loveliness, the soft cloud of her black hair, the haunting sadness of her great dark eyes, the exquisite voice of her that moved him to the very depths of his soul, singing some of the tender old Irish airs he loved so well! Sarah with her fatal dower of loveliness, and genius, and music, and passion—and sorrow.
It is quite certain that after the failure of the Insurrection of July 23rd, 1803, Emmet could have escaped to America, had not he risked his all for the sake of one last meeting with his love. He came back to an old lodging of his at the house of Mrs. Palmer at Harold’s Cross, and from this place he sent a letter through Anne Devlin to Sarah Curran.
A few days later, Government received information that Emmet was at Mrs. Palmer’s. On August 25, Major Sirr rode out there and captured him, bringing him back handcuffed, to Dublin Castle, whence he was committed to Kilmainham Gaol on the charge of High Treason.
When he was arrested, two letters[[98]] in a lady’s hand-writing were found in his possession. As these letters clearly showed that their writer was fully acquainted with Emmet’s plans, the authorities were most anxious to discover from whom they came. They half suspected that they had been written by his sister, Mrs. Holmes, and that the language of a love affair was adopted as a means of averting suspicion. Emmet, in an agony of mind, lest the writer should be discovered, offered at his Examination before the Privy Council to accept any consequences for himself if the lady’s name should not appear.
[98]. MacDonagh: “Viceroy’s Post-Bag,” p. 342 et seq.
Alas! it was his own mistaken trust in the turnkey of Kilmainham, George Dunn, which put Government in possession of the knowledge they had hitherto vainly sought. Dunn had been bribed by St. John Mason, Emmet’s cousin, to facilitate his escape, but while pretending to fall in with Mason’s plans he had in reality betrayed them to the Castle. Knowing nothing of this, Emmet entrusted to George Dunn, a letter openly addressed to “Miss Sarah Curran”—and this letter (which clearly indicated her as the writer of the others) was, within an hour, in the hands of the Chief Secretary.
Amid the other grim documents of the Home Office Secret Papers this love letter of Emmet’s keeps strange company. It has been published, for the first time, in “The Viceroy’s Post-Bag” (p. 358):—
“My dearest Love,
“I don’t know how to write to you. I never felt so oppressed in my life as at the cruel injury I have done to you. I was seized and searched with a pistol over me before I could destroy your letters. They have been compared with those found before. I was threatened with having them brought forward against me in Court. I offered to plead guilty if they would suppress them. This was refused. Information (without mentioning names) was required. I refused, but offered since if I would be permitted to consult others, and that they would consent to enter into any accommodation of that nature to save the lives of those condemned, that I would only require for my part of it to have those letters suppressed, and that I would stand my trial. It has been refused. My love, can you forgive me?
“I wanted to know whether anything had been done respecting the person who wrote the letters, for I feared you might have been arrested. They refused to tell me for a long time. At length, when I said that it was but fair if they expected I should enter into any accommodation that I should know for what I was to do it, they then asked me whether bringing you into the room to me would answer my purpose, upon which I got up and told them that it might answer theirs better. I was sure you were arrested, and I could not stand the idea of seeing you in that situation. When I found, however, that this was not the case, I began to think that they only meant to alarm me; but their refusal has only come this moment and my fears are renewed. Not that they can do anything to you even if they would be base enough to attempt it, for they can have no proof who wrote them, nor did I let your name escape me once, nor even acknowledge that they were written directly to myself. But I fear they may suspect from the stile, and from the hair, for they took the stock[[99]] from me, and I have not been able to get it back from them, and that they may think of bringing you forward.
[99]. Is this the black velvet stock with the lock of hair, marked Miss C., attached to it which Madden says was sold at Russborough’s auction in “the thirties”?
“I have written to your father to come to me to-morrow. Had you not better speak to himself to-night. Destroy my letters that there may be nothing against yourself, and deny having any knowledge of me further than seeing me once or twice. For God’s sake, write to me by the bearer one line to tell me how you are in spirits. I have no anxiety, no care, about myself; but I am terribly oppressed about you. My dearest love, I would with joy lay down my life, but ought I to do more? Do not be alarmed; they may try to frighten you, but they cannot do more. God bless you, my dearest love.
“I must send this off at once; I have written it in the dark. My dearest Sarah, forgive me.”
The next morning Major Sirr and a party of yeomanry presented themselves at the Priory with warrants to search the house for papers, and arrest Sarah Curran. The events of that morning are graphically described by the Chief Secretary, Mr. Wickham, to the Home Secretary.
“Secret
“Dublin Castle, Sept. 9, 1803.
“My dear Sir,
“The writer of the letter found in Mr. Emmet’s pocket is discovered. She proves to be Mr. Curran’s youngest daughter. This discovery has given rise to some very unpleasant and distressing scenes. It became indispensably necessary to search the apartment of the lady for papers. She resided at her father’s house in the country near Rathfarnham, within a short distance of Butterfield Lane. Major Sirr was sent there this morning with a letter addressed to Mr. Curran, of which I send a copy inclosed. Unfortunately, Mr. Curran was not at home, and still more unfortunately the young lady was not up, tho’ the rest of the family (two other daughters and a son) were assembled at breakfast, so that the Major entered the room where she was still in bed. This circumstance occasioned a scene of great confusion and distress, and was also productive of some inconvenience, for whilst the Major and the other daughter were giving assistance to Mr. Emmet’s correspondent—who was thrown into violent convulsions—the eldest Miss Curran continued to destroy some papers, the few scraps of which that were saved were in Mr. Emmet’s hand-writing.
“I have the satisfaction to add that Mr. Curran is satisfied that Government has acted throughout with great personal delicacy towards him, and that on his part he has acted fairly towards Government, and that he was unquestionably ignorant of the connection between his daughter and Mr. Emmet.
“The Lord Lieutenant particularly requests that Miss Curran’s name may not be mentioned. It is difficult that it should be long concealed, but it is desirable that it should not be first mentioned by any member of Government in either country.
“The Attorney-General, who has had the kindness to go himself to Mr. Curran’s house at Rathfarnham, gives the most melancholy and affecting account of the state in which he left the whole family.”
Curran had been engaged by Emmet as his Counsel, but he immediately threw up his brief. He had never liked the Emmets; but now when Robert’s action had brought danger to his own family, and obstacles to his own advancement, his feeling towards him—and towards his own daughter—became a hatred, with elements of madness in it. Of his treatment of the latter we shall speak later.
To the curt letter in which Curran announced to the prisoner his refusal to act as his Counsel, Robert replied as follows:—
“I did not expect you to be my counsel: I nominated you because not to have done so might have appeared remarkable. Had Mr. ——[[100]] been in town I did not even wish to have seen you, but as he was not I wrote to you to come to me at once. I know that I have done you very severe injury, much greater than I can atone for with my life. That atonement I did offer to make before the Privy Council, by pleading guilty if those documents were suppressed. I offered more. I offered if I was permitted to consult some persons, and if they would consent to an accommodation for saving the lives of others, that I would only require for my part of it the suppression of those documents, and that I would abide the event of my own trial. This was also rejected, and nothing but individual information (with the exception of names) would be taken. My intention was not to leave the suppression of these documents to possibility, but to render it unnecessary for anyone to plead for me, by pleading guilty to the charge myself.
[100]. Madden believes that the name indicated by the blank was that of his brother-in-law, Robert Holmes. But it seems from other references more likely to have been Councillor Burton—Curran’s clerk.
“The circumstances that I am now going to mention I do not state in my own justification. When I first addressed your daughter I expected that in another week my own fate would be decided. I knew that in case of success many others might look on me differently from what they did at that moment, but I speak with sincerity when I say that I never was anxious for situation or distinction myself, and I did not wish to be united to one who was. I spoke to your daughter neither expecting, nor, in fact, under those circumstances, wishing, that there should be a return of attachment, but wishing to judge of her dispositions—to know how far they might not be unfavourable or disengaged, and to know what foundation I might afterwards have to count on. I received no encouragement whatever. She told me she had no attachment for any person, nor did she seem likely to have any that could make her wish to quit you.
“I staid away till the time had elapsed when I found that the event to which I have alluded was to be postponed indefinitely. I returned by a kind of infatuation, thinking that to myself only was I giving pleasure or pain. I perceived no progress of attachment on her part, nor anything in her conduct to distinguish me from a common acquaintance.
“Afterwards I had reason to suppose that discoveries were made, and that I should be obliged to quit the Kingdom immediately; and I came to make a renunciation of any approach to friendship that might have been formed. On that very day she herself spoke to me to discontinue my visits. I told her that it was my intention, and I mentioned the reason. I then for the first time found, when I was unfortunate, by the manner in which she was affected, that there was a return of affection, and that it was too late to retreat. My own apprehensions, also I found afterwards were without cause, and I remained.
“There has been much culpability on my part in all this; but there has also been a great deal of that misfortune which seems uniformly to have accompanied me.
“That I have written to your daughter since an unfortunate event has taken place was an additional breach of propriety, for which I have suffered well. But I will candidly confess that I not only do not feel it to have been of the same extent, but that I consider it to have been unavoidable after what has passed; for though I will not attempt to justify in the smallest degree my former conduct, yet, when an attachment was once formed between us—and a sincerer one never did exist—I feel that, peculiarly circumstanced as I then was, to have left her uncertain of my situation would neither have weaned her affections nor lessened her anxiety; and looking upon her as one, whom, if I had lived, I hoped to have had my partner for life, I did hold the removing of her anxiety above every other consideration. I would rather have had the affections of your daughter in the back settlements of America, than the first situation this country could afford without them.
“I know not whether this will be any extenuation of my offence. I know not whether it will be any extenuation of it to know that if I had that situation in my power at this moment I would relinquish it to devote my life to her happiness. I know not whether success would have blotted out the recollection of what I have done. But I know that a man with the coldness of death on him need not be made to feel any other coldness, and that he may be spared any addition to the misery he feels, not for himself, but for those to whom he has left nothing but sorrow.”
There were all the elements of the cad in John Philpot Curran’s character, and these came to the surface after his return to his house on September 9th, when he presented himself in the darkened chamber where his daughter lay in her agony. After one terrible interview, he refused to see her, or to speak to her, ever again.
He had perforce to shelter her for a little time longer under his roof—for brain fever, followed by a temporary loss of reason, brought her to death’s door. She was thus mercifully spared, as her friend said, “the misery of travelling step by step, through the wilderness of woe which Emmet’s trial and execution would have proved to her.”
On the night before his execution (while his love tossed in the delirium of fever, and the sister who watched by her bed had her heart torn by the way she called his name) Robert Emmet wrote two letters which are eloquent of the thoughts of her which filled his heart until it ceased to beat. One is addressed to her brother, Richard, who had found means to send his friend a message of kindness, which might almost atone for his father’s caddish cruelty:
“My dearest Richard,
“I find I have but a few hours to live; but if it was the last moment, and that the power of utterance was leaving me, I would thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous expressions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was anyone in the world in whose breast my death might be supposed not to stifle every spark of resentment, it might be you. I have deeply injured you—I have injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and who was formed to give happiness to everyone about her, instead of having her mind a prey to affliction. Oh! Richard, I have no excuse to offer, but that I meant the reverse. I intended as much happiness for Sarah as the most ardent love could have given her. I never did tell you how much I idolised her. It was not with a wild or unfounded passion, but it was an attachment increasing every hour, from an admiration of the purity of her mind and respect for her talents. I did dwell in secret upon the prospect of our union. I did hope that success, while it afforded the opportunity of our union, might be a means of confirming an attachment which misfortune had called forth. I did not look to honours for myself—praise I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah’s countenance that her husband was respected.
“My love, Sarah! it was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. I did hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, and which would never have been shaken; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave.
“This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink; but there have been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk by grief on her account that death would have been a refuge. God bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave off immediately.”
The second was addressed to Thomas Addis Emmet and his wife. It was suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant’s orders, and found its final destination in the Home Office Secret Papers, whence Mr. MacDonagh first exhumed it:
“My dearest Tom and Jane,
“I am just going to do my last duty to my country. It can be done as well on the scaffold as on the field. Do not give way to any weak feeling on my account, but rather encourage proud ones that I have possessed fortitude and tranquillity of mind to the last.
“God bless you and the young hopes that are growing up about you. May they be more fortunate than their uncle; but may they preserve as pure and ardent an attachment to their country as he has done. Give the watch to little Robert. He will not prize it the less for having been in the possession of two Roberts before him. I have one dying request to make to you. I was attached to Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of your friend. I did hope to have had her my companion for life. I did hope that she would not only have constituted my happiness, but that her heart and understanding would have made her one of Jane’s dearest friends. I know that Jane would have loved her on my account and I feel also that had they been acquainted she must have loved her on her own. No one knew of the attachment until now, nor is it now generally known, therefore do not speak of it to others. She is living with her father and brother, but if these protectors should fall off and that no other should replace them, treat her as my wife and love her as a sister. God Almighty bless you all. Give my love to all my friends.”
As soon as his daughter was able to travel, Curran drove her from his house. She first found shelter with her kind friends the Crawfords, of Lismore, and subsequently with a Quaker family called Penrose at Woodhill, Cork, whose kindness to the broken-hearted, homeless girl helped to restore her to some degree of strength. On one occasion, during her stay with them, they persuaded her to go to a masked ball in Cork. The “mask” selected for her was that of a wandering ballad-singer, and in this character she sang, in the exquisite voice, which had so often charmed her dead young lover, some of the beautiful, plaintive Irish airs of Owenson.
A romantic young officer, Captain Sturgeon, lost his heart to the singer—and when he heard her story his affections were but the more deeply engaged. Himself, the offspring of a most romantic marriage,[[101]] he found in the halo of poetry, with which Sarah’s sad love-story invested her, but an added attraction. He, therefore, proposed for her hand; and the Penroses who saw in this marriage, the one hope of their friend’s future settlement, urged his suit with much ardour. At this time consumption had declared itself in her fragile form, and the doctors stated that residence in a warm climate was necessary to save her life. Captain Sturgeon was ordered to Sicily in the winter of 1805, and this fact seemed to Miss Curran’s friends, the Penroses, an additional reason for urging her to accept his proposal.
[101]. His mother, Lady Harriet Wentworth, sister to the Marquis of Rockingham, had married her footman.
At last she yielded to the united entreaties of her friends and gave her hand to Captain Sturgeon, with his full knowledge that her heart was buried in Emmet’s unknown grave.
In the spring of 1808 the English had to abandon Sicily, when Captain Sturgeon and his wife returned to England in a crowded transport, in very tempestuous weather. An unfinished letter of Sarah’s to one of her friends, will tell in all the pathos of its simplicity the end of her sorrowful story:
“Hythe, April 17, 1808.
“My dear M——, I suppose you do not know of my arrival from Sicily, or I should have heard from you. I must be very brief in the details of events which have been so fatal to me, and which followed our departure from that country. A most dreadful and perilous passage occasioned me many frights. I was, on our entrance into the channel, prematurely delivered of a boy, without any assistance, save that of one of the soldier’s wives, the only woman on board but myself. The storm being so high that no boat could stand out to sea, I was in imminent danger till twelve the next day, when, at the risk of his life, a physician came on board from one of the ships and relieved me. The storm continued, and I got brain fever, which, however, passed off. To be short, on landing at Portsmouth, the precious creature for whom I suffered so much, God took to Himself. The inexpressible anguish I felt at this event, preying on me, has occasioned the delay of my health. For the last month the contest between life and death has seemed doubtful; but this day having called in a very clever man, he seems not to think me in danger. My disorder is a total derangement of the nervous system, and its most dreadful effects I find in an attack on my mind and spirits. I suffer misery you cannot conceive. I am often seized with heavy perspirations, trembling and that indescribable horror which you must know if ever you had fever. Write instantly to me. Alas! I want everything to soothe my mind, O my friend, would to heaven you were with me! nothing so much as the presence of a dear female friend would tend to my recovery. But in England you know how I am situated—not one I know intimately. To make up for this my beloved husband is everything to me; his conduct throughout all my troubles surpasses all praise. Write to me, dear M., and tell me how to bear all these things. I have, truly speaking, cast all my care on the Lord; but oh! how our weak natures fail every day, every hour I may say. On board the ship, when all seemed adverse to hope, it is strange how an overstrained trust in certain words of our Saviour gave me such perfect faith in His help, that, though my baby was visibly pining away, I never doubted his life for a moment. ‘He who gathers the lambs in His arms,’ I thought, would look on mine if I had faith in Him. This has often troubled me since.”
Extract from Gentleman’s Magazine for 1808: “May 5th, 1808, at Hythe, in Kent, of a rapid decline, aged 26, Sarah, wife of Captain Henry Sturgeon, youngest daughter of the Right Hon. J. P. Curran, Master of the Rolls in Ireland.”