He had perforce to shelter her for a little time longer under his roof—for brain fever, followed by a temporary loss of reason, brought her to death’s door. She was thus mercifully spared, as her friend said, “the misery of travelling step by step, through the wilderness of woe which Emmet’s trial and execution would have proved to her.”
On the night before his execution (while his love tossed in the delirium of fever, and the sister who watched by her bed had her heart torn by the way she called his name) Robert Emmet wrote two letters which are eloquent of the thoughts of her which filled his heart until it ceased to beat. One is addressed to her brother, Richard, who had found means to send his friend a message of kindness, which might almost atone for his father’s caddish cruelty:
“My dearest Richard,
“I find I have but a few hours to live; but if it was the last moment, and that the power of utterance was leaving me, I would thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous expressions of affection and forgiveness to me. If there was anyone in the world in whose breast my death might be supposed not to stifle every spark of resentment, it might be you. I have deeply injured you—I have injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and who was formed to give happiness to everyone about her, instead of having her mind a prey to affliction. Oh! Richard, I have no excuse to offer, but that I meant the reverse. I intended as much happiness for Sarah as the most ardent love could have given her. I never did tell you how much I idolised her. It was not with a wild or unfounded passion, but it was an attachment increasing every hour, from an admiration of the purity of her mind and respect for her talents. I did dwell in secret upon the prospect of our union. I did hope that success, while it afforded the opportunity of our union, might be a means of confirming an attachment which misfortune had called forth. I did not look to honours for myself—praise I would have asked from the lips of no man; but I would have wished to read in the glow of Sarah’s countenance that her husband was respected.
“My love, Sarah! it was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. I did hope to be a prop round which your affections might have clung, and which would never have been shaken; but a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen over a grave.
“This is no time for affliction. I have had public motives to sustain my mind, and I have not suffered it to sink; but there have been moments in my imprisonment when my mind was so sunk by grief on her account that death would have been a refuge. God bless you, my dearest Richard. I am obliged to leave off immediately.”
The second was addressed to Thomas Addis Emmet and his wife. It was suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant’s orders, and found its final destination in the Home Office Secret Papers, whence Mr. MacDonagh first exhumed it:
“My dearest Tom and Jane,
“I am just going to do my last duty to my country. It can be done as well on the scaffold as on the field. Do not give way to any weak feeling on my account, but rather encourage proud ones that I have possessed fortitude and tranquillity of mind to the last.
“God bless you and the young hopes that are growing up about you. May they be more fortunate than their uncle; but may they preserve as pure and ardent an attachment to their country as he has done. Give the watch to little Robert. He will not prize it the less for having been in the possession of two Roberts before him. I have one dying request to make to you. I was attached to Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter of your friend. I did hope to have had her my companion for life. I did hope that she would not only have constituted my happiness, but that her heart and understanding would have made her one of Jane’s dearest friends. I know that Jane would have loved her on my account and I feel also that had they been acquainted she must have loved her on her own. No one knew of the attachment until now, nor is it now generally known, therefore do not speak of it to others. She is living with her father and brother, but if these protectors should fall off and that no other should replace them, treat her as my wife and love her as a sister. God Almighty bless you all. Give my love to all my friends.”