This hereditary sadness, fostered by an unhappy home-life, was further strengthened by two events which darkened her childhood. The one was the death of her favourite sister, Gertrude, who died at the age of twelve, when Sarah herself was a girl of eleven. Gertrude was a musical prodigy, and the whole family, and especially Sarah and her father, who were passionately fond of music, worshipped her. Curran insisted on the dead girl being buried in the Priory grounds, and she was laid to rest under a large tree on the lawn, directly opposite the window of the children’s nursery. “Under its shade they [i.e. Gertrude and Sarah] had often sat together, pulled the first primroses at its roots, and watched in its leaves the earliest verdure of the spring. Many an hour, for many a year, did the sorrowful survivor take her silent stand at the melancholy window, gazing on the well-known spot, which constituted all her little world of joys and sorrows. To this circumstance she attributed the tendency to melancholy which formed so marked a feature of her character through life.”[[97]]
[97]. Quoted by Madden from article entitled “Some Passages in the History of Sarah Curran,” in “Literary Souvenir” of 1831. The writer is believed to have been a lady of the Crawford family, who were intimate friends of Sarah and her people.
Two years after Gertrude’s death, a grief even more intolerable befel our poor Sarah. She lost her mother, whose favourite daughter she was—and it was worse than death which caused the separation. Sarah was fourteen at the time—old enough to feel the shame, and to suffer the agony of it in every fibre of her pure and noble nature. So overwhelmed was she with grief that it was thought advisable for her to leave the Priory for some time. She therefore accepted the offer of hospitality made her by an early college friend of her father, Rev. Thomas Crawford, of Lismore, and remained with his family “until better thoughts at home led to her return to it.”
At what time she learned to know Robert Emmet we are not definitely informed. The Emmets and the Currans were old acquaintances—if not friends—and for a time at least Thomas Addis Emmet and John Philpot Curran were neighbours in Rathfarnham. They must have often met, likewise, in the law-courts. Richard Curran, Sarah’s eldest brother, was a fellow-student of Robert Emmet’s at Trinity, and it was ostensibly to see him, and to enjoy the witty conversation of his father that Robert Emmet, after his return from Paris in 1802, paid his frequent visits to the Priory. Curran loved to see youth around him, and made the young men heartily welcome.
And all the time it was Sarah that drew the young patriot to the house her presence glorified for him—Sarah with her pale and delicate loveliness, the soft cloud of her black hair, the haunting sadness of her great dark eyes, the exquisite voice of her that moved him to the very depths of his soul, singing some of the tender old Irish airs he loved so well! Sarah with her fatal dower of loveliness, and genius, and music, and passion—and sorrow.
It is quite certain that after the failure of the Insurrection of July 23rd, 1803, Emmet could have escaped to America, had not he risked his all for the sake of one last meeting with his love. He came back to an old lodging of his at the house of Mrs. Palmer at Harold’s Cross, and from this place he sent a letter through Anne Devlin to Sarah Curran.
A few days later, Government received information that Emmet was at Mrs. Palmer’s. On August 25, Major Sirr rode out there and captured him, bringing him back handcuffed, to Dublin Castle, whence he was committed to Kilmainham Gaol on the charge of High Treason.
When he was arrested, two letters[[98]] in a lady’s hand-writing were found in his possession. As these letters clearly showed that their writer was fully acquainted with Emmet’s plans, the authorities were most anxious to discover from whom they came. They half suspected that they had been written by his sister, Mrs. Holmes, and that the language of a love affair was adopted as a means of averting suspicion. Emmet, in an agony of mind, lest the writer should be discovered, offered at his Examination before the Privy Council to accept any consequences for himself if the lady’s name should not appear.
[98]. MacDonagh: “Viceroy’s Post-Bag,” p. 342 et seq.