The Wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone
Matilda Tone née Witherington (1769-1849)[[53]]
“I thought, O my Love! you were so—
As the moon is, or sun on a fountain.
And I thought after that you were snow,
The cold snow on top of a mountain;
And I thought after that, you were more
Like God’s grace shining to find me,
Or the bright star of knowledge before,
And the star of knowledge behind me.”
—Hyde’s “Love Songs of Connacht.”
[53]. Authorities: “Autobiography of Wolfe Tone,” edited by R. Barry O’Brien; Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Second Series, Second Edition, 1848.
IT was where a man should always find the Ladye of his Dreams that Theobald Wolfe Tone found his sky-woman—above the crowded ways of life, and yet not so far above them but that a man might, by raising his eyes, see her leaning towards him, bending upon his path the star-like radiance of her beauty, or that by climbing to her, a man might reach her side.
On a certain day, early in the year 1785, young Tone, then in his twenty-second year, and a scholar of the University of Dublin, went out, as his custom was after commons, with a fellow student for a stroll in Grafton Street. They were on the way to Byrne’s, the bookseller’s—a favourite rendezvous of intellectual and political Dublin—when, happening to glance up, they saw leaning from the window of a house near Byrne’s, as once “the Blessed Damozel leaned out from the gold bar of Heaven”—an exquisite young girl.
It was a case of mutual love “at first sight.” The passionate adoration which the romantic young student of Trinity—with his head full of love poetry from his rehearsals for private theatricals, and dreams of military glory from his constant attendances at parades and field days in Phoenix Park—brought to the young loveliness of sixteen-year-old Matilda Witherington, was fully returned. Every day he passed her window and every day he found her there watching for his coming; and so it fell out that these two, who were to endure so much together, whose love-story was to be remembered, as long as Ireland keeps a place in her faithful heart for the constancy, and heroism and gallantry of her sons and daughters, had given their hearts irrevocably to each other before ever they knew the sound of each other’s voices.
He might be a dreamer, this slightly built, pock-marked young man with the keen eyes, and resolute, soldierly gait, who haunted Grafton Street so persistently through the spring and early summer of 1785. But he had an astonishingly practical turn for making his dreams come true. The time was to come when the dream of French aid for Ireland was to materialise through his instrumentality, in an expedition composed of fifteen thousand of the finest troops of the Republic, incomparably equipped, and commanded by one of the foremost generals in Europe. The secret of his success was that he always knew perfectly what he wanted, and having decided on the best road to reach his goal, walked it with that light but resolute soldier’s step of his, humming a gay tune, and allowing nothing to turn him aside. Having ascertained, now, that the house where his lady dwelt, and to which he desired an introduction, belonged to a rich old clergyman, called Fanning, and that the lady herself was the Rev. Mr. Fanning’s grandaughter, he contrived to make the acquaintance of her brother, and “as he played well on the violin, and I was myself a musical man, we grew intimate, the more so as it may well be supposed I neglected no fair means to recommend myself to him and the rest of the family with whom I soon grew a favourite. My affairs now advanced prosperously; my wife and I grew more passionately fond of each other; and in a short time I proposed to her to marry me without asking consent of any one, knowing well that it would be in vain to expect it; she accepted the proposal as frankly as I made it, and one beautiful morning in the month of July we ran off together and were married. I carried her out of town to Maynooth for a few days, and when the first éclat of passion had subsided, we were forgiven on all sides, and settled in lodgings near my wife’s grandfather.”
It non-plussed the Duke of Wellington at a later date, to think of Tone arriving in Paris “with a hundred guineas in his pocket, unknown and unrecommended,” and, by mere force of personality, obtaining from the French Government the wherewithal to overturn the British Government in Ireland. But I doubt if that achievement was any more remarkable in its own way than to find him, as we do now, winning the pearl of all women—and a happiness such as it is given to few mortals to taste—with nothing better to back up his suit than his flute—on which, we are given to understand, he was an indifferent, if enthusiastic performer!
For a time all went well with the young couple. The husband resumed for a short time his studies at the University, from which he graduated in February, 1786, and the girl-wife was happy not only in his love but in the restored favour of her relatives. “But,” as Tone himself says, “it was too good to last.” The Fannings and Witheringtons suddenly began to make themselves as disagreeable as possible, and to escape from them it was necessary for the young ménage to take refuge with old Mr. and Mrs. Tone, who were, for the moment, farming near Clane in Co. Kildare.
The Tones received their new daughter with open arms. Peter Tone, the father, idolised his clever eldest son, and if Matthew was the mother’s favourite, she, too, was proud of brilliant, fascinating Theobald. Mary Tone, the only girl of the family, lost her heart at once to her charming sister-in-law, and henceforth the bond that united them was only to grow closer with every danger and sorrow shared together through all the passing years. Unfortunately old Peter Tone’s finances were not in a very flourishing condition at this time—but, whatever was going, his son and his daughter-in-law were perfectly welcome to share.
It was in her father-in-law’s place at Clane that Matilda Tone’s first baby was born, a lovely little girl, whom they called Maria. Little Maria was but a few months old when her seventeen-year-old mother gave evidence of that marvellous courage and heroic devotion to her husband, which were so often to be displayed during her married life.
One October night a band of six robbers burst into the home of Peter Tone, armed with pistols and having their faces blackened. “Having tied the whole family, they proceeded to plunder and demolish every article they could find, even to the unprofitable villainy of breaking the china, looking-glasses, etc. At length, after two hours, a maid-servant whom they had tied negligently, having made her escape, they took the alarm, and fled with precipitation, leaving the house such a scene of horror and confusion as can hardly be imagined. With regard to myself, it is impossible to conceive what I suffered. As it was early in the night I happened to be in the courtyard, where I was seized and tied by the gang, who then proceeded to break into the house, leaving a ruffian sentinel over me, with a case of pistols cocked in his hand. In this situation I lay for two hours, and could hear distinctly the devastation which was going on within. I expected death every instant, and I can safely and with great truth declare that my apprehension for my wife had so totally absorbed the whole of my mind that my own existence was then the least of my concerns. When the villains, including my sentry, ran off, I scrambled to my feet with some difficulty, and made my way to a window where I called, but received no answer. My heart died within me. I proceeded to another and another, but still no answer. It was horrible. I set myself to gnaw the cords with which I was tied, in a transport of agony and rage, for I verily believed that my whole family lay murdered within, when I was relieved from my unspeakable terror and anguish by my wife’s voice, which I heard calling on my name at the end of the house. It seems that, as soon as the robbers fled, those within had untied each other with some difficulty, and made their escape through a back window; they had got a considerable distance from the house, before, in their fright, they recollected me, of whose fate they were utterly ignorant as I was of theirs. Under these circumstances, my wife had the courage to return alone, and, in the dark, to find me out, not knowing but she might again fall in to the hands of the enemy, from whom she had scarcely escaped, or that I might be lying a lifeless carcase at the threshold. I can imagine no greater act of courage; but of what is not a woman capable for him she truly loves? She cut the cords which bound me, and at length we joined the rest of the family at a little hamlet within half a mile of the house, where they had fled for shelter.”[[54]]
[54]. “Autobiography of Wolfe Tone,” pp. 14, 15.
It will easily be believed that during the rest of that dreary winter none of Peter Tone’s household—except perhaps Baby Maria—slept sound o’ nights. “I slept,” says Theobald, “continually with a case of pistols at my pillow, and a mouse could not stir that I was not on my feet and through the house from top to bottom. If any one knocked at the door after nightfall we flew to our arms, and in this manner, we kept a most painful garrison through the winter.”
Fear of external enemies was not the only trouble the little garrison suffered. Within there was an ever-growing poverty, an ever increasing load of financial troubles. Theobald could bear no longer to be a useless “mouth” in the hunger-besieged citadel of his father’s home—and so he scraped together in some way a little money and went off to London to keep his terms as a law student of the Middle Temple.
During the period of his absence in London (January, 1787, to December, 1788) Matilda Tone and her little girl remained with her father-in-law in Clane. Her husband tells us that she and little Maria were treated by his father with great affection. But the situation was very painful. Old Peter Tone’s affairs grew every day more involved, and the letters she got from her husband in London brought little comfort. She knew how he hated Law, and how unwillingly he drudged at the study of it. If, as was his habit in later years, he made her at this period the confidante of all his schemes and dreams, it is certain that she must have had many an anxious moment at the prospects they presented to her. Now it was a project for establishing a colony on a military plan, in one of Captain Cook’s newly-discovered islands in the South Sea. Fascinating as Captain Cook’s description of these islands might be, it was not to be expected that a young mother of eighteen could picture herself and her little one exiled to one of them from the fair hills of Ireland without dismay. But at least if that project materialised she should have her husband with her. Not so with the second project—conceived in a fit of black despondency when everything else seemed hopeless. It was to “list” as a soldier in the East India Company’s service: “to quit Europe for ever, and to leave my wife and child to the mercy of her family who might, I hoped, be kinder to her when I was removed.”[[55]] Brave as Matilda Tone was, it is not surprising to learn that her health broke down under the strain of her anxieties.
[55]. “Autobiography,” p. 19.
At length a friend, touched by the hapless condition of the young pair, made intercession for them with old Mr. Fanning. The grandfather was induced to give Matilda £500 of the dower he had promised her—and on the strength of this advance, Theobald returned to Ireland.
There was a joyful re-union in his father’s house at Blackhall on Christmas Day, 1788. Matilda’s wan countenance brightened into its old beauty when she had her husband by her side again, and the pride of the young father in his charming little daughter was a subject of great delight to her. Now the world was a delightful place once more.
They left Blackhall after New Year’s Day, 1789, and after a short stay with Mr. Fanning in Grafton Street, took up their residence in Clarendon Street. Theobald was soon after called to the Bar, and went circuit in Leinster. His success was surprising—especially to himself who considered that he knew exactly as much of law as he did of necromancy. “I was, modestly speaking,” he confesses in his pleasant way, “one of the most ignorant barristers in the Four Courts.” But it is plain that if he had cared to succeed he could have succeeded brilliantly.
As it was, he soon gave up law for politics—his first venture in which was a pamphlet in the interests of the Whig Club. This procured for him the favour of Grattan, Forbes and Ponsonby, and put a little profitable law business in his way. But the prospects which were held out to him of a seat in Parliament did not materialise; and very soon, Tone, whose opinions matured rapidly under an “intensive” method of political culture, found he had so far outgrown “Whig” principles that he could enter into no alliance with them. Briefly put, the points of difference were these: Tone held that “the influence of England was the radical vice of the Irish Government, and consequently that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous or happy until she was independent, and that independence was unobtainable whilst the connection with England existed.” Grattan and those who thought with him were attached to the connection with England, and considered that if certain grievances (which they could not see were inherent in the system) were removed, all would be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. In the illumination of his discovery Tone “began to look on the little politics of the Whig Club with great contempt: their peddling about petty grievances instead of going to the root of the evil,” and he rejoiced that with his poverty he had kept his independence and could develop his political creed without being bound by the tenets of the Whigs.
One afternoon Theobald brought home to dinner a new acquaintance whom he had met the previous day in the gallery of the House of Commons. Mrs. Tone was as much taken as her husband by the fascinating address of this tall soldierly man with the dark eyes, coal black silky hair, and olive complexion, whom Theobald introduced to her as Thomas Russell. Long afterwards these three who dined together then for the first time, remembering the date of their first re-union, felt inclined to keep its anniversary as a festival. As Tone, on the eve of the most momentous crisis of his life, the departure of the Bantry Bay expedition, sat in a quiet corner of Paris reviewing his past, he counted the day he made Russell’s acquaintance as one of the most fortunate in his life. He joins the name of the passionately loved wife with that of the beloved friend. “I frame no system of happiness for my future life on which the enjoyment of his society does not constitute a most distinguishing feature, and if I am ever inclined to murmur at the difficulties wherewith I have so long struggled, I think on the inestimable treasure I possess in the affection of my wife, and the friendship of Russell, and I acknowledge that all my labours and sufferings are overpaid. I may truly say, that, even at this hour when I am separated from both of them, and uncertain whether I may ever be so happy as to see them again, there is no action of my life, which has not a remote reference to their opinion which I equally prize. When I think I have acted well, and that I am likely to succeed in the important business wherein I am engaged, I say often to myself: ‘My dearest love and my friend Russell will be glad of this.’”[[56]]
[56]. “Autobiography,” p. 29.
A short time after they had made the acquaintance of Russell, the Tones went to spend the summer by the seaside at Irishtown, the doctor having prescribed sea-bathing as a cure for Mrs. Tone’s continued delicacy. Thither came Russell every day to visit them, and thither came also very frequently in his company Russell’s venerable father and his delightful brother, Captain John. Room was found, too, in “the little box of a house” for Mary Tone, and for William whenever he could spare a week from Matthew’s cotton factory at Prosperous. As Tone writes of these happy days he grows lyrical in his praise of them. “I recall with transport the happy days we spent during that period; the delicious dinners, in the preparation of which my wife, Russell and myself were all engaged; the afternoon walks, the discussions we had, as we lay stretched on the grass.... If I may judge we were none of us destitute of the humour indigenous in the soil of Ireland; ... add to this I was the only one who was not a poet, or at least a maker of verses, so that every day produced a ballad, or some poetical squib, which amused us after dinner; and as our conversation turned upon no ribaldry, or indecency, my wife and sister never left the table. These were delicious days. The rich and great, who sit down every day to the monotony of a splendid entertainment, can form no idea of the happiness of our frugal meal, nor of the infinite pleasure we found in taking each his part in the preparation and attendance. My wife was the centre and the soul of all. I scarcely knew which of us loved her best; her courteous manners, her never-failing cheerfulness, her affection for me and for our children, rendered her the object of our common admiration and delight. She loved Russell as well as I did. In short, a more interesting society of individuals, connected by purer motives, and animated by a more ardent attachment and friendship for each other, cannot be imagined.”[[57]]
[57]. “Autobiography,” pp. 29, 30.
During these long days of summer leisure and talk, Tone’s old project of a military colony in the South Sea was revived, and a memorial on the subject was drawn up by him and Russell and sent to the Duke of Richmond. Both the Duke and Lord Grenville, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, showed an interest in the scheme, and it is possible that it might have led to something had not the threatened wars between England and Spain been averted by “a kind of peace called a convention.”
Shortly after this disappointment Russell was appointed to an Ensigncy on full pay in the 64th Regiment of foot and sent to Belfast where his regiment was then quartered. The last day he dined at Irishtown he arrived in a “very fine suit of laced regimentals,” and was set by his irreverent friends to cook the dinner in this attire.
The Tones did not remain long in their seaside cottage after Russell’s departure for Belfast. They returned to town for the winter, and here their eldest son William was born.
The winter found Theobald pursuing his political studies and founding a political club, consisting of literary friends of his who had already attained eminence; they included Dr. Drennan, the poet; Whitley Stokes and John Stack, Fellows of Trinity College; Joseph Pollock, Peter Burrowes and Thomas Addis Emmet. In spite of the distinguished talents each member brought to the re-union, the Club was anything but a success and it was soon dissolved.
At this time all Ireland was in a ferment owing to the influence of the French Revolution. The partisans of a settled order of things, including Grattan and his Whig friends, had followed Edmund Burke in their opposition to the new principles on which the French had set out to remodel the world. But those in Ireland who felt themselves “an oppressed, insulted and plundered nation” were heart and soul with the French people in their struggle for freedom. “In a little time the French Revolution became the test of every man’s political creed, and the nation was fairly divided into two great parties, the Aristocrats and the Democrats.”
Tone, of course, was an ardent Democrat, and these views of his, being speedily known, injured beyond any possibility of repair his prospects of success at the Bar—but brought him into close touch with two bodies of men who were each in their own way, struggling to be free—and nerved by the fight in France “to do or die” for liberty. These were the Catholics of Ireland, and the Dissenters of the North.
Russell’s stay in Belfast had brought him into close touch with the leaders of advanced thought in the northern city, whose programme of freedom embraced freedom not for themselves only but for the Catholics still enslaved by the Penal Laws. On the occasion of some Volunteer celebration in Belfast a resolution in favour of Catholic Emancipation was to be put forward, and Russell undertook to get Tone to draw it up. The commission was willingly accepted, and though the resolution was eventually not put to the meeting in the form Tone had given it, the circumstance had the result of setting him thinking more seriously than he had yet done on the state of Ireland. “I soon formed my theory, and on that theory I have invariably acted ever since!”
What was that theory which was to give a new impetus to Irish nationality, which was to be upheld at the cost of so much bloodshed and suffering, which was to be a dogma as living and peremptory in 1916 as in 1798—and in defence of which Patrick Pearse and his men were to face the guns of General Maxwell, as proudly as Wolfe Tone took command of the battery of the Hoche, in the glorious fight she put up, one little vessel against a whole fleet, on an October morning one hundred and eighteen years earlier. Here it is in Wolfe Tone’s own words: “To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means.”[[58]]
[58]. “Autobiography,” pp. 50, 51. Pearse held “all Irish Nationalism to be explicit in these words. Davis was to make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor certain other things; Mitchel was to thunder the whole in words of apocalyptic wrath and splendour. But the Credo is here: ‘I believe in One Irish Nation and that Free.’”—(“Ghosts,” p. 16.)
Considering the Protestants hopeless, Tone first directed his efforts to an attempt to unite the Catholics and Dissenters. He accordingly sat down and wrote a pamphlet,[[59]] over the signature of a “Northern Whig,” in which he sought “to convince the Dissenters that they and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy; that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them, and that, consequently, to assert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties, it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation, and to form for the future but one people.”[[60]]
[59]. “Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.”
[60]. “Autobiography,” p. 50.
The pamphlet had an immense success and its results a very decisive influence on the Tones’ fortunes. On the one hand, the Catholics, who under the capable leadership of John Keogh, were developing a new “forward” policy, sought out this champion of theirs and loaded him with attentions. Through John Keogh, Tone made the acquaintance of the principal Catholic leaders in Dublin, Richard MacCormick, John Sweetman, Edward Byrne, Thomas Braughall. During the winter of 1791 the Catholic leaders, who were for the most part men of great wealth, got into the fashion of giving splendid dinners to their political friends, and Tone was invariably a guest at these functions. Eventually he was offered, through the influence of Keogh, the position of assistant secretary to the Catholic Committee, with a salary of £200 a year. In those days one could live very comfortably on £200 a year, and poor Matilda Tone, who must have known many an anxious moment up to this, must have looked on it as affluence. Tone earned his salary well; and the astonishing success of the Catholic Convention was largely due to his energy and splendid power of organisation. In his efforts on behalf of the Catholics, and in his fidelity to their cause, Tone was greatly stimulated by his wife’s sympathy. He pays her, in this connection, one of the noblest compliments a wife ever received: “In these sentiments I was encouraged and confirmed by the incomparable spirit of my wife, to whose patient suffering under adversity, for we had often been reduced, and were now well accustomed to difficulties, I know not how to render justice. Women, in general, I am sorry to say, are mercenary, and, especially if they have children, they are ready to make all sacrifices to their establishment. But my dearest love had bolder and juster views. On every occasion of my life I consulted her; we had no secrets one from the other, and I unvaryingly found her think and act with energy and courage, combined with the greatest courage and discretion. If ever I succeed in life or arrive at anything like station or eminence I shall consider it as due to her counsels and her example.”[[61]]
[61]. “Autobiography,” p. 66.
The pamphlet had made an equally favourable impression on the Dissenters of the North, and especially on the advanced thinkers of Belfast. Its author was elected an honorary member of the first “or green” company of the Belfast Volunteers (an honour never before accorded to any one except Henry Flood) and invited to spend a few days in Belfast to make the personal acquaintance of the republican leaders there. He set off for the North about the beginning of October, accompanied by his friend Russell, who had left the army and happened to be in Dublin on his private affairs.
Of this trip Tone kept for his wife’s amusement a diary, a practice which he continued, when he was absent from her, to the end of his life. He and she were diligent readers of Swift, and he invokes the memory of Swift and Stella when he writes to tell her of all the news he has “journalised” for her, and which he looks forward to reading over with her when he gets home. He has christened his friend, Russell, “P.P. or Clerk of this Parish”—another reminiscence of Swift,[[62]] and he promises his wife she will be much amused by said P.P.’s “exploits in my journal, which is a thousand times wittier than Swift’s, as in justice it ought, for it is written for the amusement of one a thousand times more amiable than Stella.”
[62]. In the “Memoirs of the Clerk of the Parish,” Swift parodied Bishop Burton’s “History of His Own Times.”
Little, perhaps, did this dear lady, “a thousand times more amiable than Stella,” think, as her charming face dimpled over her husband’s ludicrous account of his own and his friend’s adventures, that she was reading one of the most important chapters in Irish history. For the business afoot in Belfast—the aim and object of Tone’s and Russell’s embassy was nothing less than the establishment of the United Irishmen—the union of Irish Catholics, Irish Protestants and Irish Dissenters under the common name of Irish men against the common enemy. But perhaps she did, for nobody can have known better than she what a serious aim, what strength of will and tenacity of purpose, what a steel-like grip of principles and logical fidelity to their consequences lay under the light surface of her husband’s wit and drollery. The best minds in Ireland were the quickest to grasp Tone’s greatness and genius: Thomas Addis Emmet, John Keogh, Plunkett—to take three, out of three very different types. The best minds in France showed, afterwards, a like readiness of appreciation: Carnot, the Organiser of Victory, and General Hoche.
One thing, however, it is certain, Matilda Tone never dreamed of: the way in which the Journal’s family jokes—bad, if you like, as family jokes always are, except to the “family” itself, to whom they seem irresistibly funny—were to be interpreted against the diarist and his friend. It was one of the favourite jests of the merry little party of holiday-makers at Irishtown to represent “Tom” Russell, who was dignity and solemnity itself, something like a Spanish Don, in his courtesy and punctilio,[[63]] as a desperate character, a regular Jonah Barrington type of “Irishman.” It tickled their sense of the ludicrous, something in the same way as when they found Tone setting his dignified friend to cook the dinner in his “fine suit of laced regimentals.” “If you do not know who P.P. was, the joke will be lost on you,” writes Tone à propos to the incidents in which solemn “P.P.” is made to figure as a regular “hell of a fellow.”
[63]. We have, among a host of other witnesses on this point, Charles Hamilton Teeling, himself a man of the finest courtesy, most fastidious sense of honour and highest breeding. When Lord Castlereagh, on the day of his own arrest, informed him that Russell was also among those arrested, Charles exclaimed: “Russell! then the soul of honour is captive.” (“Personal Narrative,” p. 19). He tells further on how Russell, when the prisoners were brought to Judge Boyd’s house for their committment, was pained by Neilson’s levity. “No man regarded etiquette and the punctilios of politeness more. He looked solemn, stroked up his fine black hair, and with a sweetness of countenance peculiarly his own, and in a gently modulated but sufficiently audible tone of voice he begged of his friend Neilson to respect the dignity of the Bench.” Russell was a deeply religious character, with that combined humility, consciousness of his own weakness, and striving after perfection which is the foundation of saintliness. There is nothing nobler, more touching, or more edifying in our history than the story of how he went to his death.
Unfortunately, later readers of the Journal, not knowing “P.P.,” nor the incorrigible practical joker who was his friend, have missed the point of the jokes and have taken the Journal’s accusations of excessive drinking and other peccadilloes as literal transcripts of facts. I do not here merely speak of Froude, who treats the Journal with his usual absence of all honesty in handling documents, detaches all the references to hard drinking, omits, as a matter of course, all reference to the fact that this Journal was written by Tone for his wife’s amusement, and on the strength of the diarist’s jokes against himself and his friend, makes out Russell and Tone as a pair of “ne’er-do-wells,” who, on a drunken spree, set out “to measure swords against the British Empire.”[[64]] We expect nothing better from Froude; but it is disconcerting to find Lecky and Barry O’Brien equally misled by Tone’s flippancy.
[64]. Froude, “English in Ireland,” III., 19.
We pass over a year or two, during which Tone was fully occupied by his work for the Catholic Committee, and the organisation of the first branches of the United Irishmen, and come to the year 1795, which was to be a turning point in his own life and in that of his dear ones—the beloved wife, their little nine-year-old daughter, and the two small sons, William, now aged four, and three-year-old Frank.
Tone was spending a pleasant musical evening with a friend of his in Merrion Square, when a servant was introduced bearing a letter which he had strict orders to deliver only into Mr. Tone’s hands. The latter read the letter and then said quietly to his friend, “Phil, we must finish this duet; I must go when it is done.” It transpired afterwards that the letter had come from Tone’s good friend of the old Temple days in London, Hon. George Knox, Lord Northland’s son, and its purport was to warn Tone that the Government had information of his connection with Jackson, the emissary of the French Government, and that it would be advisable for him to get out of the country as quickly as possible.
We know, now (what poor Tone went to his grave without suspecting) that the horrible treachery of Cockayne, the spy who had been set by Pitt to lead Jackson to destruction, was being outmatched by the treachery of Leonard MacNally, who had spared no trouble to implicate Tone and others with Jackson. Urged on by MacNally, though, as it appears, against his own instincts, Tone drew up a paper on the state of Ireland, “the inference from which was, that circumstances in Ireland were favourable to a French invasion.” Of this paper MacNally obtained possession, and there is no doubt at all that through him it fell into the hands of Government.
The friendship of two persons, with considerable influence in Government circles, saved Tone. These were George Knox—and of all persons in the world—Marcus Beresford! Through the powerful machinery which they were able to put in motion Tone escaped the consequences of his indiscretion, on the condition that he should leave the country.
He determined to go to America. But he had no intention of remaining there. Before he left Dublin, Russell and he walked out to see Thomas Addis Emmet in his charming villa at Rathfarnham. The master of the house showed his guests “a little study of an elliptical shape which he said he would consecrate to their meetings, if ever they lived to see their country emancipated.” Even in that solemn moment, Tone could not resist the temptation to rally poor Russell, who was doubtless looking more solemn than usual, in his grief at the near parting. But, though Emmet entered into the spirit of the jest, they all felt as much as Russell the seriousness of the moment, and it was a very thoughtful trio who walked back to town together, listening to Tone’s plans. Both Russell and Emmet agreed with the latter that his promise to Government was fulfilled by his going into exile. As to his future conduct after his landing in America he had given no guarantee. His intention was “immediately on his arrival in Philadelphia to wait on the French Minister, to detail to him fully, the situation of affairs in Ireland, to endeavour to obtain a recommendation to the French Government, and if he succeeded so far, to leave his family in America, and to set off instantly for Paris, and apply in the name of his country for the assistance of France in order to assert Ireland’s independence.”[[65]] The three friends were standing in a little triangular field while this conversation took place, and when they had shaken hands over the resolution that was implied in it, Emmet pointed out that “it was in one exactly like it in Switzerland, William Tell and his associates planned the downfall of the tyranny of Austria.”
[65]. “Autobiography,” p. 212.
When public excitement was at its height in consequence of Jackson’s trial and his tragic death in the dock, Tone, unwilling to incriminate any of his friends, abstained from paying any visits. But his friends sought him out, and for the short time Mrs. Tone and he were in Dublin after that they were never an instant alone. John Keogh and Richard MacCormick were among the kindest and most assiduous. Tone told these men of his plans, and received from them the most emphatic assurances of their approval.
On May the 20th, 1795, the Tones left Dublin. Matilda Tone and her children were never to see that city again, and Theobald was to enter it again only in the irons of the arch-enemy.
Mary Tone, who was devotedly attached to her beautiful sister-in-law and her charming children, made up her mind to leave Ireland with Theobald’s family. Her departure left old Peter Tone and his wife very desolate, as all their other children, William, Matthew, and Arthur were far away. The grief of the old couple was the hardest thing the emigrants had to endure. With his little property of 600 books, and £700 in money, Theobald felt himself sufficiently equipped “to make good”—and Matilda was not the woman to weaken his courage with any undue display of her own feelings. “We kept our spirits admirably. The great attention manifested to us, the conviction that we were suffering in the best of causes, the hurry attending so great a change, and perhaps a little vanity in showing ourselves superior to fortune, supported us under what was certainly a trial of the severest kind.”
The attentions of the kind friends in Dublin, great as they were, were far surpassed by those they found awaiting them in Belfast. The MacCrackens, the Simmses, the Neilsons, Dr. MacDonnell, and a host of others vied with each other in getting up entertainments for them; parties and excursions were the order of the day. Tone tells us of some of these in his Journal. He remembers particularly two days passed on Cave Hill. On the first, Russell, Neilson, Simms, MacCracken, and he climbed to McArt’s fort and took a solemn obligation never to desist in their efforts until they had subverted the authority of England, over their country, and asserted their independence. Another day they had a pic-nic in the Deer Park, for which the Belfast ladies, Mary Anne and Margaret MacCracken, Mrs. Neilson, Miss Simms, etc., exerted all their culinary talents; another day, even more delicious yet, was spent in a pic-nic party to beautiful Ram’s Island in Lough Neagh. After their return to town there were suppers and dances and a little music in these friends’ houses. Many, many years after, Mary Anne MacCracken, then a very old woman, told Dr. Madden of what she felt when she heard little Maria Tone sing in her clear voice, to the air of “The Cruiskeen Lawn,” her father’s spirited words: “When Rome by dividing had conquered the world.”
The last evening of their stay came all too quickly. They were spending it at the MacCracken’s home, of which Bunting was an inmate. The talk turned, as it was bound to do among such ardent lovers of music, as these were, on Bunting’s collection of Irish Melodies which was well on its way to completion, and Bunting was asked to play some air from it.
He chose that called “The Parting of Friends,” and as the poignant grief of the old air sought out all their hearts, Matilda Tone’s fortitude, for the first time, gave way. She burst into tears and left the room.
The next morning they went aboard the Cincinnatus, accompanied by their kind friends who had come to take the last farewell of them. When Matilda Tone went down to see her quarters she found the little state-room her husband had taken for his family full of the good things these friends had provided for their comfort: sea-stores, wine, porter and spirits, fresh provisions, sweetmeats, and so on. The foresight of Dr. MacDonnell had also provided a small medicine chest with written directions. This was to be of the greatest service, not for the Tones alone, but for their unfortunate fellow-passengers during the trying weeks ahead of them.
A voyage across the Atlantic in those days, in a small sailing vessel of 230 tons, was a most horrible experience. There were three hundred passengers on board this boat and they were “crowded to a degree not to be conceived by those who had never been aboard a passenger ship.” “The slaves who are carried from Africa,” Tone writes, “have much more room allowed them than the miserable emigrants who pass from Ireland to America.” The captains were out to make as much money as possible and they loaded their vessels with as little care for the accommodation of their passengers as of any other lumber aboard. The Tones had a small state-room eight feet by six. In this Tone fitted up three berths. One was occupied by Matilda and little Frank; the second by the two Maries; the third by Tone himself and the elder boy William. Tone took on himself the “policing” of the ship, and tried to introduce some cleanliness. Moreover, with the aid of Dr. MacDonnell’s medicine chest and “written directions,” he doctored the passengers—his prescriptions drawing also on his own sea-stores, and the wines and spirits provided by his Belfast friends. He had the satisfaction of landing all his patients safe and sound; and his own family, wonderfully fortunate, had not known one hour’s sickness.
But strait quarters, overcrowding and all the other horrors we have described did not exhaust the sufferings endured by Irish emigrants in the eighteenth century. “About the 20th July ... we were stopped by three British frigates, the Thetis, Captain Lord Cochrane; the Hussar, Captain Rose, and the Esperance, Captain Wood, who boarded us, and after treating us with the greatest insolence, both officers and sailors, they pressed every one of our hands, save one, and near fifty of my unfortunate fellow-passengers, who were most of them flying to America to avoid the tyranny of a bad government at home, and who thus, most unexpectedly, fell under the severest tyranny, one of them at least which exists. As I was in a jacket and trousers, one of the lieutenants ordered me into the boat, as a fit man to serve the king, and it was only the screams of my wife and sister which induced him to desist. It would have been a pretty termination to my adventure if I had been pressed and sent on board a man-of-war. The insolence of these tyrants, as well to myself as to my poor fellow-passengers, in whose fate a fellowship in misfortune had interested me, I have not since forgotten, and I never will.”[[66]]
[66]. “Autobiography,” p. 217.
With such gracious sway did great Britannia “rule the waves” in the good old days!
On August the 1st the Tones landed in Wilmington, their voyage having lasted from June the 13th. They found the principal tavern of the place kept by an Irishman, Captain O’Byrne O’Flynn, a veteran of the American War of Independence. Here they rested for a few days, and made a useful and agreeable acquaintance in the person of General Humpton, an old Englishman, of the best type (“a beautiful, hale, stout old man of near seventy, perfectly the soldier and the gentleman”) who had fought on the American side in the late war. He took a great liking to Tone, and his charming wife, and sister and pretty children, and showed himself very eager to serve them.
The Tones left Wilmington, as soon as the ladies and children had recruited from the fatigue of the sea-voyage and reached Philadelphia on August the 8th. Here Tone met two old friends—Hamilton Rowan and Dr. Reynolds, both of whom had, like himself, got into trouble with the Irish Government over the “affaire Jackson.” They had a great time telling each other their adventures since they had last met in Hamilton Rowan’s cell in Newgate fourteen months previously. Reynolds and Rowan were athirst for news from Ireland, and eagerly listened to all Tone had to tell them.
Tone lost no time in approaching the French Minister, Adet, in Philadelphia. Bearing a letter of introduction from Rowan, he waited the very day after his arrival on Adet, and signified in as clear a way as was possible under the circumstances (“he spoke English very imperfectly, and I French a great deal worse”) the desires of himself and his friends in Ireland for French aid to shake off the English yoke. Adet requested him to draw up a memorial, and promised to transmit this to his Government. He also promised to use his influence to procure the enlargement of Matthew Tone, who was a prisoner at Guise. But this was as far as he would go.
Poor Tone, much disheartened by the Minister’s attitude, found little ground for hope that the French Government would pay any attention to his memorial. It seemed to him that the only result of his exertions was the satisfaction of having discharged his conscience to his country. But as for anything being likely to come of them, he could see no prospects at all.
This being so, he bent his mind to making some provision for his family. Living in Philadelphia being enormously dear, he moved his family to Donningstown, near General Humpton’s place, and leaving them there under the General’s kind supervision, he roamed the country in search of a suitable farm. After some disappointments he found one about two miles from Princeton. He took a small house in that town, furnished it frugally and decently, moved his family into it, and having fitted up his study, determined to settle down, as contentedly as he could, to the life of an American farmer.
Then suddenly all was changed. One day Matilda came into the little study, where her husband dreamed his time away, waiting for the legal formalities attending the purchase of his plantation to be completed, and in her hand was a bundle of letters from Ireland. John Keogh had written; Tom Russell had written; the two Simmses had written—and each of them in the same strain, telling Tone that the public mind in Ireland was advancing towards republicanism faster than even he could believe, and pressing him in the strongest manner to fulfil the engagement he had made with them at his departure, and to move heaven and earth to force his way to the French Government in order to supplicate their assistance. Wm. Simms, at the end of a most friendly and affectionate letter, desired Tone to draw upon him for £200 sterling.
Tone immediately handed the letters to his wife and sister and desired their opinion which he foresaw would be that he should immediately, if possible, set out for France. “My wife, especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honour and interests were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our children stand for a moment in the way of my engagements to our friends and my duty to my country, adding, that she would answer for our family during my absence, and that the same Providence which had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us would, she was confident, not desert us now. My sister joined her in those entreaties, and it may well be supposed I required no great supplication to induce me to make one more attempt in a cause to which I had been so long devoted.”
It was Tone’s way never to lose time about any business he might have on hand; and accordingly, the very next morning he set off from Princeton for Philadelphia to see Minister Adet. He now found Adet as eager to forward his design, as he had formerly found him lukewarm. The Minister promised him letters for the French Government recommending him in the strongest manner, and offered him money for his expenses. Tone gratefully accepted the letters but declined the monetary assistance. He next sent a messenger to Ireland in the person of the young brother, Arthur, who had in the meantime turned up at Princeton, and charged him to tell only Neilson, Simms and Russell in Belfast, and Keogh and MacCormick in Dublin, that he was sailing for France as soon as he could get a vessel. Everybody else in Ireland—especially his father and mother—was to be left under the impression that he was farming in Princeton. Tone then settled up his financial affairs; allowed himself one day’s holiday in Philadelphia with his old friends Reynolds, Hamilton Rowan and Napper Tandy (who had recently arrived there). By December the 13th—that is to say exactly within a fortnight from his departure—he was back in Princeton with Hamilton Rowan to take leave of his family.
He has given us a graphic account of the last night in the American home. “We supped together in high spirits, and Rowan retiring immediately after, my wife, sister and I sat together till very late, engaged in that kind of animated and enthusiastic conversation which our characters and the nature of the enterprise I was embarked in may be supposed to give rise to. The courage and firmness of the women supported me, and them, too, beyond my expectations; we had neither tears nor lamentations, but, on the contrary, the most ardent hope, and the most steady resolution. At length, at four the next morning, I embraced them for the last time, and we parted with a steadiness that astonished me.”
But Tone had not yet gauged the depths of his wife’s heroic devotion to him—and to Ireland. It was only when he had reached New York and was on the eve of embarkation—too late to have his determination weakened by any anxiety for her condition—that she told him of the little life that stirred beneath her heart.
We have but a scanty record of the life of Matilda and Mary Tone and the children during the months when Theobald (having landed at Havre de Grace on February 1st, 1796) was making his way by the mere force of his will and personality to the cabinets of the most powerful ministers in France. But our thoughts are turned to them constantly. We know how as Tone came home from interviews with De La Croix, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or the American Minister, Monroe, or Carnot, or Hoche, he was concerned above all for what his “dearest love” would think of how he had comported himself. “I mention these little circumstances because I know they will be interesting to her whom I prize above my life ten thousand times. There are about six persons in the world who will read these detached memorandums with pleasure; to every one else they would appear sad stuff. But they are only for the women of my family, for the boys if ever we meet again, and for my friend, P.P.” When he sees Lodoïska, wife of J. B. Loubet, and records her heroism when her husband was a fugitive from the vengeance of Robespierre, he wishes his dearest love could see her, too. “I think she would behave as well in similar circumstances. Her courage and her affection have been tried in some, very nearly as critical.” When in a fit of self-examination he seeks out his own motives, he finds it difficult to decide whether it is his country or his wife he must put first. “I hope (but I am not sure) my country is my first object, at least she is my second. If there be one before her, as I rather believe there is, it is my dearest life and love, the light of my eyes and spirit of my existence. I wish more than for anything on earth to place her in a splendid situation. There is none so elevated that she would not adorn, and that she does not deserve, and I believe that not I only, but every one who knows her, will agree as to that. Truth is truth! She is my first object. But would I sacrifice the interests of Ireland to her elevation? No, that I would not, and if I would, she would despise me, and if she were to despise me, I would go hang myself like Judas. Well there is no regulator for the human heart like the certainty of possessing the affections of an amiable woman, and, if so, what unspeakable good fortune is mine.”
He compares French women and English women in point of charm and attractiveness—and awards the palm to the French. But both of them must yield to Irish women. “Give me Ireland for women to make wives and mothers of.... The more I see of this wide world, the more I prize the inestimable blessing I possess in my wife’s affection, her virtues, her courage, her goodness of heart, her sweetness of temper, and besides she is very pretty, a circumstance which does not lessen her value in my eyes. What is she doing just now, and what would I give to be with her, and the little fanfans for half-an-hour.” But one would need a whole book for Tone’s charming love-making to his wife.
In May, 1796, Tone wrote to Matilda desiring her to come to France. She sold out their little property in America, turned the proceeds into louis d’or, and set off with Mary and the children. On the voyage they met two men who were to be intimately connected with their fate. One was a Scotchman, Mr. Wilson, of Dullatur; the other, a young Swiss merchant called Giacque. M. Giacque fell deeply in love with Mary Tone, and his love being returned, the first letter Theobald received from his wife, announcing their safe arrival in Hamburg, contained also a request for his consent to Mary’s marriage.
Tone received that letter after his return from the unfortunate expedition to Bantry Bay. The prospect of seeing his dear ones again consoled him for the terrible disappointment of the expedition. But alas! There was news in the letter which disturbed him deeply. Mrs. Tone’s health had suffered gravely from all she had undergone. For this reason her husband considered it unwise for her to undertake the journey from Hamburg in the depth of winter. He, therefore, instructed her to stay in Hamburg for the present, more especially as Mary and her husband were likely to set up house there, pending the arrangements he would be able to make for her.
To some of Matilda Tone’s letters written from Hamburg while her husband was serving under Hoche in the Army of Sambre et Meuse were attached postscripts from Maria. The first line he had ever seen of his little daughter’s writing moved Tone strangely, and there were tears in his eyes as he sat down to write her the following answer:
“Dearest Baby,—You are a darling little thing for writing to me, and I doat upon you, and when I read your pretty letter, it brought the tears into my eyes, I was so glad. I am delighted with the account you give me of your brothers; I think it is high time that William should begin to cultivate his understanding,[[67]] and therefore I beg you may teach him his letters, if he does not know them already, that he may be able to write to me by and by. I am not surprised that Frank is a bully, and I suppose he and I will have fifty battles when we meet. Has he got into a jacket and trousers yet? Tell your mamma from me, ‘we do defer it most shamefully, Mr. Shandy.’[[68]] I hope you will take great care of your poor mamma, who, I am afraid, is not well; but I need not say that, for I am sure you do, because you are a darling good child, and I love you more than all the world. Kiss your mamma and your two little brothers, for me, ten thousand times, and love me, as you promise, as long as you live.
“Your affectionate Fadoff,
J. Smith.”[[69]]
[67]. William had then reached the mature age of six, and Frank was a year younger.
[68]. One of the favourite games in the family circle was matching and identifying quotations. Tone’s Journal is full of them.
[69]. This was the name under which Tone served in the French army.
It was not until May 7th, 1797, that Tone and his family were re-united. He got leave of absence from his regiment, and wrote to them to meet him at Gröningen. He arrived here on May the 2nd and for the next five days he haunted the canal—“tormented with the most terrible apprehensions on account of the absence of my dearest love, about whom I hear nothing; walked out every day to the canal, two or three times a day to meet the boats coming from Nieuschans when she will arrive. No love! No love! I never was so unhappy in my life.... At last, this day (May 7th), in the evening, as I was taking my usual walk along the canal, I had the unspeakable satisfaction to see my dearest love and our little babies, my sister and her husband, all arrive safe and well; it is impossible to describe the pleasure I felt.”
A fortnight was spent very delightfully travelling through Holland and Belgium. After that Tone went to Germany, and Matilda and her charge proceeded to Paris under the escort of M. Giacque.
In the new home in Paris, to which Theobald returned as often as his military duties permitted, Matilda Tone devoted herself to the education of her children while the fateful months from the end of May, 1797, to the beginning of September, 1798, sped by. During that “crowded hour” of her husband’s glorious life much history was a-making; and now, as always, his wife performed her woman’s part: to watch and wait, and suffer and sacrifice herself to her husband’s—a splendidly tragic destiny—with incomparable and heroic devotion.
She had need of all her woman’s resources to comfort him as one after another his dearest hopes were blighted. There was first the death of Hoche; then the defeat of the Dutch fleet at Camperdown, and the consequent abandonment of the Dutch expedition to Ireland. Then there was the rise to supreme military power in France of Bonaparte, whom Thomas Addis Emmet later pronounced to be “the greatest enemy the Irish people ever had.”
When Bonaparte, on the eve of the Irish Insurrection, sailed to Egypt with the army which had been ostensibly collected for an attack on England through Ireland, Tone gave up all hope. It was in this frame of mind he joined Hardy’s expedition which sailed (in the wake of Humbert’s failure, and the fiasco of Napper Tandy’s descent on Rutland Island) from the Bay of Cameret on September 20th, 1798. William Tone relates that “at the period of this expedition he was hopeless of its success, and in the deepest despondency at the prospect of Irish affairs. Such was the wretched indiscretion of the [French] Government, that before his departure he read himself, in the Bien Informé, a Paris newspaper, a detailed account of the whole armament, where his own name was mentioned in full letters with the circumstance of his being on board the Hoche. There was therefore no hope of secrecy. He had all along deprecated the idea of these attempts on a small scale. But he had also declared repeatedly that if the Government sent only a corporal’s guard, he felt it his duty to go along with them.... His resolution was, however, deliberately and inflexibly taken, in case he fell into the hands of the enemy, never to suffer the indignity of a public execution.” Of this resolution of her husband’s, Matilda Tone was fully informed. For he spoke of it quite plainly in her presence on the occasion of a dinner-party given at their house in Paris a few days before the departure of the expedition.
And so she let him go from her—knowing full well that she would never see him again. How truly had he judged of her—and of himself—when he wrote the words: “She is my first object. But would I sacrifice the interest of Ireland to her elevation? No that I would not, and if I would, she would despise me, and if she were to despise me I would go hang myself like Judas.”
His body was lying under the green sod in Bodenstown Churchyard when his last message to her was delivered. How did she ever bear to read the lines he penned in his prison cell, when even now at this distance of time, we who knew him not at all can hardly see them for our tears?
“Provost Prison—Dublin Barracks,
“Le 20 Brumaire, an 7 (10 Nov.’98).
“Dearest Love,—The hour is at last come when we must part. As no words can express what I feel for you and our children, I shall not attempt it; complaint of any kind would be beneath your courage and mine; be assured I will die as I have lived, and that you will have no cause to blush for me.”
“I have written on your behalf to the French Government, to the Minister of Marine, to General Kilmaine and to Mr. Shee. With the latter I wish you especially to advise. In Ireland I have written to your brother Harry, and to those of my friends who are about to go into exile, and who, I am sure, will not abandon you.
“Adieu, dearest love: I find it impossible to finish this letter. Give my love to Mary; and above all things, remember that you are now the only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can give of your affection for me will be to preserve yourself for their education. God Almighty bless you all.
“Yours ever,
“T. W. Tone.”
“P.S.—I think you have found a friend in Wilson who will not desert you.”