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.