The Mother of the Sheareses
Jane Anne Sheares, née Bettesworth (-1803)[[27]]
“Come to me, O Christ,
Take swiftly my soul
Alike with my sons.”
—Lament of Mothers of Bethlehem.
[27]. Authorities: Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Fourth Series, Second Edition.
ON Saturday, May 19th, 1798, Lord Edward, desperately wounded in the gallant fight he had put up—one man against the multitude of his assailants—was taken prisoner and lodged in Newgate. Wounded and alone he lay in his gloomy cell, and on his hard prison bed through the long hours of the hot May Sunday that followed, and none of those who loved him was near at hand to bring healing to his fevered body, or comfort to his tortured heart.
On that same May Sabbath, when, from every open space that the retreating country had left behind her, in her flight before the city’s advance, there came the smell of the lilac and hawthorn, the honeyed fragrance of lime trees and chestnut blossoms—“all the sweetness of the May”—a different scene was taking place in another part of the city. In a handsome house at the corner of Baggot Street and Pembroke Street, a dinner-party was in progress. The cuisine was irreproachable, the wine excellent, the conversation of a high order. The master of the house, a tall finely-built man of about forty-five, with something of the soldier in his bearing, sat at one end of the table. His countenance, usually somewhat stern and forbidding, owing to the haughty glance of his dark eyes, and the curious blood-red birth-mark which stained the lower part of his face, was softened now into geniality as his eyes swept the little circle of relatives and guests gathered around his hospitable board. His brother, a man of about thirty-two, of a singularly open and pleasing countenance, blue-eyed, clear-complexioned, with well-formed features and a clever mobile mouth, that showed, as the frequent smile parted it, a row of perfect teeth—sat opposite. An old lady—their mother—very stately and handsome in her rich dark dress and priceless lace, sat near her eldest son. Beside her was that son’s beautiful wife. On the opposite side of the table was the host’s sister, and beside her his daughter by an earlier marriage. By the side of the younger brother sat a tall man in the uniform of a Captain in the King’s County Militia.
Presently, dinner being ended, the ladies left the men of the party to their wine, and retired to the drawing-room. A knock at the front door, followed by the frou-frou of silks and the murmur of feminine voices in the hall, announced the advent of after-dinner visitors. At the proposal of the younger brother of the host, the political discussion which the three men had inaugurated over their port was postponed, and a dish of tea with the ladies in the drawing-room was suggested. The dark eyes of the master of the house were full of merriment, while he explained to the guest what the magnet was that drew John from his politics. As the voices floated past them in the hall there had been clearly discernible the silvery tones of their beautiful neighbour, Miss Maria Steele. “You should hear some of the poetry he addresses to his Stella, Captain Armstrong!” said the host in laughing tones.