Both Dr. Madden and W. J. Fitzpatrick make frequent mention of Miss Moore (afterwards Mrs. MacCready), and often quote her authority for some of the most interesting episodes they relate. She was the daughter of James Moore, a wealthy merchant, with two large establishments in Thomas Street. She was educated in a convent at Tours, France, and before the outbreak of the French Revolution had made her return to Ireland necessary, had acquired an unusual mastery of the French language. In Dublin her beauty, set off by her French toilettes, and her cleverness, set off by her French education, made something of a sensation, and she had many suitors. The favoured one was Dr. MacNevin. Madden says that it was she who administered the United Irishmen’s oath to him, and in this connection he reveals her romance. “There can be now no impropriety in stating that the attachment which subsisted between MacNevin and Miss Moore was not solely a political one, and that there was a very ardent desire on the part of the former to make the fair Roland of her day, an Irishwoman legally united to him.” Miss Moore herself had taken the oath from John Cormick, of Thomas Street, and she informed Dr. Madden that, to her own knowledge, several women were sworn members of the Society.
She was often employed in bringing messages to the societies from Lord Edward, and not unfrequently passed through the streets in Dr. Adrien’s carriage, as a patient, with her arm bandaged and blood on her clothes. Lord Edward was a great friend of her father’s, and stayed at their house more than once, during the time he was in hiding, passing as her French tutor.
About May the 16th, Lord Edward being then under their roof (while the Government Proclamation offered £1,000 reward for his arrest), a carpenter called Tuite happened to be doing some repairs in Dublin Castle. He heard the Under-Secretary, Cooke, say that James Moore’s house was to be searched, and he made an excuse to leave the Castle and warn Mr. Moore. As the latter had not only Lord Edward—but a commissariat for about 500 men on his premises—he thought the further he could get away from Dublin the better; so he fled to the banks of the Boyne, leaving his wife and daughter to provide for the Commander-in-Chief. Miss Moore, who, of course, had no reason to distrust Francis Magan, thought that there could be no safer place for the fugitive than in Magan’s house on Usher’s Island. She accordingly arranged with Magan for his reception there, and “for safety sake” it was suggested by Magan that, instead of coming in by his front door, the party accompanying Lord Edward were to seek admittance through his stables in Island Street. On the evening determined on, Mrs. and Miss Moore, accompanied by the latter’s “French tutor” (Lord Edward), and escorted by Mr. Moore’s confidential clerk, Gallagher, and his friend, Palmer (in reality Lord Edward’s bodyguard), set off for an evening stroll. They were met by Major Sirr and his men, who had (as, of course, we know now) got the word from Magan. A conflict ensued, in which Sirr fell to the ground and Gallagher was wounded, but Lord Edward and Miss Moore got off. She conveyed him to Murphy’s, the feather merchant’s, and returned home satisfied of his safety for the present.
The next day Magan called on her, ostensibly to enquire why his expected guest had not turned up, and professing the most genuine concern for him. Miss Moore told him the whole story of their encounter of the night before, and, still, of course, suspecting nothing, informed Magan that Lord Edward was at Murphy’s. Magan at once communicated the tidings to his employers—and that evening Lord Edward was taken up.
On one occasion during these troubled times, Dr. Gahan, the Augustinian, was visiting the Moores. Miss Moore had accompanied him to the hall, and was seeing him out when a great double knock came to the door. When it was opened, a body of soldiers marched in. Dr. Gahan stood politely aside to let them pass, but the brutes seized the poor old man and suspended him by the queue to a hook in the warehouse, while they proceeded to search the house. Miss Moore cut him down, and then made off as swiftly as she could to warn the Directory, who were holding a meeting in James’s Gate. They escaped by a window opening into a neighbouring tanyard. As she returned, a soldier saw her, called her a vile name, and made a lunge at her with his bayonet. She stooped and thus saved herself, but the bayonet cut her shoulder. At that moment a shot rang out, and her assailant fell dead. A bullet from the gun of one of the best snipers the United Irishmen had in their ranks, had laid him low. Subsequently her father was arrested, and lodged in Birmingham Tower in the Castle. Miss Moore gave £500 to the doctor attending the prisoners to certify that her father was insane. Major Sirr was rather sceptical as to James Moore’s insanity, but the latter acted his part so convincingly that he was released.
Owing perhaps to the circumstance that the particulars of the lives of Dr. MacNevin and Mrs. MacCready were furnished to Madden and Fitzpatrick respectively, by a daughter in the one case, and a son in the other, no mention of this romance of their early life occurs in either narrative. We are left to conjecture the reasons why it ended as it did. On March 12th, 1798, Dr. MacNevin was arrested with the other leaders, and for the next four years he was kept a prisoner, first in Dublin and afterwards in Fort George. Did old James Moore, who, for all his attachment to the Cause, had the bump of prudence and caution well developed, take the opportunity of the doctor’s long exile to marry his daughter to Mr. MacCready? That might well be. In 1810 Dr. MacNevin, then in successful practice in America, married Mrs. Jane Margaret Tom, widow of a New York merchant, and sister of his intimate friend, Mr. Richard Riker.
Another heroine of a ’98 romance is Maria Steele, the “Stella” of John Sheares’s love verses. It was from her that Dr. Madden learned much of the information he has embodied in his memoir of the ill-fated brothers. The question of using or withholding her name in connection with the sad story was left by the lady to Dr. Madden’s own discretion. “Exercising,” as he states, “that judgment to the best of my ability, and with all the consideration that would be due to the feelings of that most estimable lady were she living, and that I owe to her memory now that she is no more, I give her name without reserve; because I feel in all sincerity that the name of Maria Steele will be associated with that of John Sheares, as that of Sarah Curran is with Robert Emmet’s; and that these names will be remembered with tenderness and pity.”
It was in 1794 that John Sheares first became acquainted with Maria Steele, the elder daughter of the deceased Sir R. Parker Steele. The widowed Lady Steele and her girls were then living in Merrion Square, not very far from the Baggot Street residence of the Sheareses. In the early part of 1798 John Sheares made formal proposals to Lady Steele for her daughter’s hand, but though Maria’s mother was very fond of the young man, and he was on the most affectionate and familiar footing with her, the impression she had gathered of his religious sentiments made her refuse to entrust her child’s future to him. This decision is held responsible for having thrown John more violently into politics, than had hitherto been the case.
As for Maria’s own feelings there is no doubt but that they were deeply engaged. Up to her latest hour she never mentioned his name “without tenderness and sorrow”; she treasured the piteous little relics which were associated with her brief romance. He had been lying for nearly forty years in the tragic vaults of St. Michan’s, when she sketched the portrait of him which adorns Madden’s pages. That picture is so lifelike because love guided the artist’s hand. Mary McCracken’s portrait of Thomas Russell, and Maria Steele’s of John Sheares, these two, are painted under the same inspiration. I find infinite pathos in the lines with which Maria, then an old woman, accompanied the copies of the papers in her possession which she had promised to Dr. Madden: “I should have sent the originals of these sad memorials to you had I suspected that I could still feel as I felt while copying them. I thought age and infirmity had made me a better philosopher. Three of these have never been opened except when you saw them, for more than thirty-four years.”