“It was matter of astonishment how she contrived, after the severe trials she had met with, to push the badge of grief away from her, in the society of those she loved, and to enter into the sports of her grandchildren, as mirthful as the youngest of them. She was proud of her high birth, and used to recount to her grandchildren the bright deeds of her ancestors—the loyal efforts of the noble commander of the Irish forces; of the unhappy Charles; and the heroic defence of her castle, by the Lady Cathleen, against the ruthless Cromwell and his adventurers.
“But she scarcely ever touched upon the untimely fate of her own sons, slaughtered or scattered over the world. Once only did I hear her mention her gallant son, or allude to his dark fate, and then came a gush of anguish, which showed, indeed, the sources of her grief were far from being dried up, and, under a bright exterior, how much of heart-rending suffering she had put up within her bosom; but, as I have already said, she turned from her own woes to alleviate those of others, and to spread joy around.
“By rich and poor, she was admired and she was loved. I have been told, by those whom I myself saw adorn the most brilliant circles of the metropolis of the empire, that in childhood they were taught to regard her as a model of grace and excellence; and I speak a fact, which will be testified by thousands, when I say, that in the hearts of all the poor of the neighbourhood, in which she resided, her memory remains enshrined, and that children born since her death have been taught to love it, and in their dear petitions to give her name a place.”[[31]]
[31]. Extract from “Memoir of Bartholomew Teeling,” by his nephew, and namesake, in Madden’s “United Irishmen,” Third Series, Vol. I. (First Edition, 1846).
Is it true, as men say, that the woman by whose cradle the kind, gift-bearing fairies have laid that most rare and precious gift called “charm,” is immortally dowered? Mary Teeling was an old woman, and one who had drained to its dregs the cup of life’s bitterest sorrows—when (knowing it not) she sat for the portrait which her grandson has left us of her; and she had been many years in her grave, when it was finished and hung in its place in the gallery of portraits collected by Dr. Madden of the men and women who gave their all for Ireland in ’98. But from the canvas there comes forth, stealing into the heart of each of us, the same charm which, in her radiant girlhood, won the devotion of her stately young lover, and in her beautiful old age made captive his little grandson. Neither age had power to wither, nor death to destroy, the gift which was hers to draw all hearts under her sweet sway.
We would fain know something of the training and education which, fostering her innate charm, made the mother of Bartholomew and Charles Teeling such an exquisite type of the Irish Catholic gentlewoman. “A nation is what its women make its men”; and if we want boys in the Ireland of the future like the gallant boy, who on his noble grey charger galloped alone against the cannon of Park’s Hill, and saved the fortunes of the day at Carricknagat, or like that other gallant boy, his younger brother, who rode forth—a lad of seventeen—on a yet more perilous quest: to slay unaided the dragon of Orangeism, we must take care to provide “mothers of men” like her who bore these young heroes. And not alone for the men they will make, will Ireland need such women. She will want them for their own dear selves; and she will want them, whatever be her destiny—whether she is to enter at last on the reward of her long sorrows, or whether she must tread the roadway of thorns yet a little longer. If the future of our land is to be one of peace and prosperity she will need in her homes women to “look well to the paths of their house,” as Mary Teeling did in the days of her prosperity amid the elegance and comforts of the home in Lisburn which her husband’s wealth had enabled him to provide for his family, exercising the sweet and lovely rule of the mistress of a Catholic home, training her children to the noblest ideals of life and conduct, directing her servants with gentle authority, practising a gracious hospitality, “opening her hands to the needy, and stretching out her hands to the poor.” And if, on the other hand, the whole price is not paid yet, and the era of persecution is to open again—ah! then it is that Ireland will need her Mary Teelings to stand by their husbands’ side while “they suffer persecution for justice’ sake,” as she did by Luke Teeling’s during the long years of his martyrdom; keeping in the midst of all misfortunes, loss of home and children, of wealth and ease, the same exquisite sweetness of nature and charm of manner which made her in happier days the delight of her friends, “the pride and idol of her family.”
It has seemed worth while to go to some pains to discover, if possible, the details of an education which “in the dead vast and middle” of the Penal night, produced a type of womanhood, presenting nothing less than the “fine flower” of Catholic culture. “Who shall find a valiant woman?” Have we not found her—with every exquisite trait of her immortal prototype reproduced—in this dear Irish lady, whose radiant personality, and high-bred grace, no less than her sweetness, and saintliness, and charity, survive, through her grandson’s portrait of her, even the destruction of the tomb? “Far and from the uttermost coast would be the price of her,” whatever land produced her. If it were France during the age when the education of girls was considered a subject of sufficient importance for the grave debates of a King’s Council Chamber, or a brilliant treatise from a learned and saintly prelate’s pen;[[32]] or Italy, in the days when wealthy and powerful princes like those of Mantua co-operated with great teachers and scholars like Vittorino da Feltre in the foundation of the schools, where the Cecilia Gonzagas won their culture; or Germany in the years when illustrious humanists like Celtes and Reuchlin were proud of the share they had taken in forming the minds of women like Caritas Pirckheimer—if it were any of these lands or these ages that claimed the “price of her” it would be a matter of small wonder. But let us try to realise that it was Ireland in the middle of the eighteenth century, when education was, for Catholics, a thing banned and barred by statute. In other countries little Catholic boys and girls were enticed to their books by every loving and ingenious device. Great statesmen, great churchmen, great scholars gave their best thought to the subject of their education. In the Ireland into which little Mary Taaffe was born about 1753, “statesmen” also had given their thought to the subject of education for Catholic children—but the legislation which was the result amounted simply in Lecky’s famous phrase, to “universal, unqualified and unlimited proscription.”
[32]. Witness the interest of Louis XIV in Madame de Maintenon’s foundation of St. Cyr, and Fénélon’s treatise on “L’Education des Filles.”
Nevertheless Catholic parents managed to get their children educated, and the nation which its lawgivers doomed to ignorance and degradation produced, by some miracle, scholars like Charles O’Connor of Belanagare and high-bred, charming women like her whose life-story we are now studying. How was it accomplished? What a stirring and splendid chapter the full answer to that question would add to the history of human endeavour! How one longs for the coming of the long-delayed historian of the Irish people who shall tell, in all its fullness, the story of how they educated their children during the Penal Days.