Set side by side two pictures. One is that drawn, in such tragic intensity of black and white, by Madden, of a woman of sixty-three, who having drained to the dregs the cup of life’s sorrows, lay down in the home of her widowhood, from which all her children save one were absent, to die of the malady, for which science has found no cure: a broken heart. Nine months earlier her husband had been taken from her and now she, “like the mother of the Shearses, was hurried to her grave by the calamity which had fallen on her youngest son; who, it was vainly hoped, was to have occupied one of the vacant places in the house, and in the heart of his afflicted parents. Vainly had they looked up to Thomas Addis Emmet to supply that place which had been left a void by the death of their eldest and most gifted son, Christopher Temple Emmet. And when Thomas Addis was taken away from them and banished, to whom had they to look but to the younger son; and of that last life-hope of theirs they might have spoken with the feelings which animated the Lacedemonian mother, when one of her sons had fallen fighting for his country, and looking on the last of them then living she said ‘Ejus locum expleat frater.’ And that son was taken from them, incarcerated for four years, and doomed to civil death. Thomas Addis Emmet was then a proscribed man in exile. The father had sunk under the trial, although he was a man of courage and equanimity of mind; but the mother’s last hope in her youngest son sustained in some degree her broken strength and spirit; and that one hope was dashed down never to rise again, when her favourite child, the prop of her old age, was taken from her, and the terrible idea of his frightful fate became her one fixed thought—from the instant the dreadful tidings of his apprehension reached her till the approaching term of the crowning catastrophe, when, in mercy to her, she was taken away from her great misery.”
“Orangemen of Ireland ... these are your triumphs; the desolation of the home of an aged, virtuous couple—the ruin in which all belonging to them were involved, the ignominious death of their youngest and gifted child.”[[5]]
[5]. Madden, op. cit. pp. 463-464.
The other picture is one we paint for ourselves of a fair young girl, very slim and graceful in her riding habit, with a charming face, usually a little too serious for its twenty summers, showing now a dainty flush of excitement under the piquant riding hood, and clear eyes, usually somewhat too grave for their youth, shining now with an unwonted light. For background a stately eighteenth-century country seat, set in a landscape of exquisite beauty—(What need to describe the entrancing loveliness of woodland, lake and mountain, when it is sufficiently summed up by the magic word, Killarney?) Over it all a sky aflush with the colours of the summer dawn! The haze of summer over the bird-filled, fragrant woods, that sway lightly to the breezes of the virginal new day!
So we picture for ourselves Elizabeth Mason on that summer morning of the year 1760 when she set forth, a charming and accomplished girl of twenty, from the home of her father, James Mason, Esq., of Ballydowney, Killarney, for the memorable visit to Cork, which was to prove an event of such transcendent importance in her life.
We guess something of the hopes and dreams, which lay in James and Catherine Mason’s mind when they yielded to the desires of their son, James (who was a successful business man in Cork), and allowed their only daughter, Elizabeth, to accompany him, on his return to Cork from one of his visits home, for “a season” in the gay, little Southern Capital. Among the country gentlemen of the neighbourhood there was small likelihood of finding a suitable parti for their beautiful girl. Arthur O’Neill’s description of Lord Kenmare’s “Milesian Assembly,” which took place in this identical year,[[6]] seems to point to a society around Killarney of hard-riding, hard-drinking, jolly squires with few of whom Elizabeth’s cultured and thoughtful mind would have enough in common for the prospects of a very happy marriage. Amid the young professional and business men in Cork, with their more intellectual interests, the wider knowledge of life which their close and frequent intercourse with the Continent fostered, their greater accessibility to new ideas, she was, as her prudent, loving parents probably realised, much more likely to find a husband calculated to make her happy. Extraordinarily gifted by nature, her education had been such as to foster her birthgifts. Her great-grandson, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, of New York, who in his book, “The Emmet Family,” has done us the great service of making us acquainted with the choses intimes of his illustrious stock, has published many of her letters, and they bear out Dr. Madden’s verdict on her “as an amiable, exemplary, high-minded lady, whose understanding was as vigorous as her maternal feelings were strong and ardent.” In another place Madden speaks of her “noble disposition and vigorous understanding,” and in conversation with Dr. Thos. Addis Emmet in 1880 he stated that he considered that she, her husband, her three sons, Christopher Temple, Thomas Addis, Robert, and her daughter, Mary Anne (wife of Robert Holmes) “were the most talented family in every respect he had ever known of.” It was felt, indeed, and not alone by those who hold that “all distinguished men inherit their characteristics rather from the mother than from the father,” that the extraordinary brilliancy of the three sons of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet was largely an inheritance from their mother. And it is impossible to read her letters, with their exquisite precision and felicity of phrase, their ease, and candour and absence of all straining after effect, their expression of a philosophy of life, the noblest, and soundest (because founded on the truest Christian principles) without feeling that they have been penned by a woman rarely gifted in heart and mind.
[6]. Mrs. Milligan Fox’s “Annals of the Irish Harpers,” p. 147. It was on this occasion that Arthur O’Neill, in reply to an apologetic remark of Lord Kenmare’s concerning the place that the blind harper had found near the foot of the table, made the famous assertion: “Where an O’Neill sits, there is the head of the table.”
With these rare gifts of heart and mind, and in all the freshness, and charm, and beauty of her twenty summers, Miss Elizabeth Mason made something of a sensation when she appeared in Cork society. She had numerous relatives in the pleasant little city by the Lee, and each and every one of them was determined that their beautiful visitor should have “a good time.” So once or twice a week some kindly matron would call at James Mason’s house, and carry off his sister to the concerts and “assemblies” which were regular bi-weekly events in the Assembly House near Hamond’s Marsh. Or a party of young people would beg her to join them for a boating excursion on the river, or “a promenade” on the Mall where the beau monde loved to display its gay silk and satins, its feathers and furbelows; or on the Bowling Green, where it took the air under the quaintly cut trees, and listened to the band discoursing sweet music for its delectation; or in Mr. Edward Webber’s gardens near the Mardyke where it ate strawberries and cream, and all the other delectable fruits of the earth, each in its proper season. In the evenings there were theatre-parties, or “drums” at the Assembly House, or in the hospitable and elegant homes of some of Cork’s merchant princes, whose culture was not surpassed by their wealth. Here while the young folk danced their minuets and country-dances, their elders played cards; but both young and old were ready to leave dancing floor, and card table, to take part in the delightful concerts of “Italic airs,” which made one visitor to Cork imagine “the god of music had taken a large stride from the Continent, over England to this island,” and attribute “the humane and gentle disposition of the inhabitants, in some measure, to the refinement of this divine art.” At supper one heard supremely good conversation, for the men of Cork were, according to the same witness, “well versed in public affairs,” fond of news and politics, and diligent readers of the newest French and English books, and the periodicals of the day—and their pretty partners made a charmingly appreciative audience while the men talked over the foreign and domestic news they had found in the Dublin and London newspapers, which the two coffee-houses near the Exchange supplied for their customers.[[7]]
[7]. Smith’s “County and City of Cork,” I., 388.
It began to be noticed by the observant matrons, who chaperoned these delightful gatherings, that one brilliant talker seemed particularly anxious to observe the effect his conversation made on clever Elizabeth Mason, and how persistently he sought her out as a partner in ball and supper rooms, or at pic-nic or promenade, whenever his professional occupations allowed him to take part in these functions. They noticed, with approval, that Elizabeth was not indifferent to the attentions of the rising young physician, Dr. Robert Emmet,[[8]] who having studied medicine and taken his degree with great éclat at one of the most famous medical schools in Europe, that of the University of Montpelier,[[9]] had taken up practice in Cork some years previously.