It was in her father-in-law’s place at Clane that Matilda Tone’s first baby was born, a lovely little girl, whom they called Maria. Little Maria was but a few months old when her seventeen-year-old mother gave evidence of that marvellous courage and heroic devotion to her husband, which were so often to be displayed during her married life.
One October night a band of six robbers burst into the home of Peter Tone, armed with pistols and having their faces blackened. “Having tied the whole family, they proceeded to plunder and demolish every article they could find, even to the unprofitable villainy of breaking the china, looking-glasses, etc. At length, after two hours, a maid-servant whom they had tied negligently, having made her escape, they took the alarm, and fled with precipitation, leaving the house such a scene of horror and confusion as can hardly be imagined. With regard to myself, it is impossible to conceive what I suffered. As it was early in the night I happened to be in the courtyard, where I was seized and tied by the gang, who then proceeded to break into the house, leaving a ruffian sentinel over me, with a case of pistols cocked in his hand. In this situation I lay for two hours, and could hear distinctly the devastation which was going on within. I expected death every instant, and I can safely and with great truth declare that my apprehension for my wife had so totally absorbed the whole of my mind that my own existence was then the least of my concerns. When the villains, including my sentry, ran off, I scrambled to my feet with some difficulty, and made my way to a window where I called, but received no answer. My heart died within me. I proceeded to another and another, but still no answer. It was horrible. I set myself to gnaw the cords with which I was tied, in a transport of agony and rage, for I verily believed that my whole family lay murdered within, when I was relieved from my unspeakable terror and anguish by my wife’s voice, which I heard calling on my name at the end of the house. It seems that, as soon as the robbers fled, those within had untied each other with some difficulty, and made their escape through a back window; they had got a considerable distance from the house, before, in their fright, they recollected me, of whose fate they were utterly ignorant as I was of theirs. Under these circumstances, my wife had the courage to return alone, and, in the dark, to find me out, not knowing but she might again fall in to the hands of the enemy, from whom she had scarcely escaped, or that I might be lying a lifeless carcase at the threshold. I can imagine no greater act of courage; but of what is not a woman capable for him she truly loves? She cut the cords which bound me, and at length we joined the rest of the family at a little hamlet within half a mile of the house, where they had fled for shelter.”[[54]]
[54]. “Autobiography of Wolfe Tone,” pp. 14, 15.
It will easily be believed that during the rest of that dreary winter none of Peter Tone’s household—except perhaps Baby Maria—slept sound o’ nights. “I slept,” says Theobald, “continually with a case of pistols at my pillow, and a mouse could not stir that I was not on my feet and through the house from top to bottom. If any one knocked at the door after nightfall we flew to our arms, and in this manner, we kept a most painful garrison through the winter.”
Fear of external enemies was not the only trouble the little garrison suffered. Within there was an ever-growing poverty, an ever increasing load of financial troubles. Theobald could bear no longer to be a useless “mouth” in the hunger-besieged citadel of his father’s home—and so he scraped together in some way a little money and went off to London to keep his terms as a law student of the Middle Temple.
During the period of his absence in London (January, 1787, to December, 1788) Matilda Tone and her little girl remained with her father-in-law in Clane. Her husband tells us that she and little Maria were treated by his father with great affection. But the situation was very painful. Old Peter Tone’s affairs grew every day more involved, and the letters she got from her husband in London brought little comfort. She knew how he hated Law, and how unwillingly he drudged at the study of it. If, as was his habit in later years, he made her at this period the confidante of all his schemes and dreams, it is certain that she must have had many an anxious moment at the prospects they presented to her. Now it was a project for establishing a colony on a military plan, in one of Captain Cook’s newly-discovered islands in the South Sea. Fascinating as Captain Cook’s description of these islands might be, it was not to be expected that a young mother of eighteen could picture herself and her little one exiled to one of them from the fair hills of Ireland without dismay. But at least if that project materialised she should have her husband with her. Not so with the second project—conceived in a fit of black despondency when everything else seemed hopeless. It was to “list” as a soldier in the East India Company’s service: “to quit Europe for ever, and to leave my wife and child to the mercy of her family who might, I hoped, be kinder to her when I was removed.”[[55]] Brave as Matilda Tone was, it is not surprising to learn that her health broke down under the strain of her anxieties.
[55]. “Autobiography,” p. 19.
At length a friend, touched by the hapless condition of the young pair, made intercession for them with old Mr. Fanning. The grandfather was induced to give Matilda £500 of the dower he had promised her—and on the strength of this advance, Theobald returned to Ireland.
There was a joyful re-union in his father’s house at Blackhall on Christmas Day, 1788. Matilda’s wan countenance brightened into its old beauty when she had her husband by her side again, and the pride of the young father in his charming little daughter was a subject of great delight to her. Now the world was a delightful place once more.
They left Blackhall after New Year’s Day, 1789, and after a short stay with Mr. Fanning in Grafton Street, took up their residence in Clarendon Street. Theobald was soon after called to the Bar, and went circuit in Leinster. His success was surprising—especially to himself who considered that he knew exactly as much of law as he did of necromancy. “I was, modestly speaking,” he confesses in his pleasant way, “one of the most ignorant barristers in the Four Courts.” But it is plain that if he had cared to succeed he could have succeeded brilliantly.