Anne Devlin
In 1842 when Dr. Madden was engaged in his researches for his memoir of Robert Emmet, he was directed to a certain old washerwoman, called Campbell, then living in great poverty and obscurity in a stable-yard off John’s Lane. This old woman, he was told, was the only one then living, in all probability, who could give an authentic account of what happened on the night of July the 23rd, 1803, after the flight of the leaders and the rout of their followers.
How did she come to have this information? For the reason that she had helped Rosie Hope to cook and keep house for Robert Emmet and his companions in the establishment he had leased (in the name of Robert Ellis) in Butterfield Lane, Rathfarnham, during the months of active preparation for the Rising. Her father was a well-to-do dairyman, of the neighbourhood, and both he and his sons, as well as their kinsmen, Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow “outlaw,” and Arthur Devlin, were deep in Robert Emmet’s plans. His daughter’s housewifely skill had been devoted to the Cause in the same spirit as her male relatives’ soldier-service. Her maiden name, which Dr. Madden’s informant had previously omitted to mention, was—Anne Devlin.
Anne Devlin! Can anyone living to-day, with a drop of Irish blood in his or her veins, hear that name without a great stirring of the heart? It stands for a heroism, a fortitude, a devotion, a fidelity, a loyalty, which even to have conceived, honours all human nature—and which to have produced, ennobles Irish womanhood for all time. Anne Devlin! Amid the great names of our race which thrill each Irish heart as with a trumpet note, what name has power to move us as does that?
We owe it to Dr. Madden that the name means so much to us. Had he not sought her out, and drawn her story from her lips, and raised her body from its pauper burial place to lay it, in its rightful place amid the noblest in Glasnevin, that name might have meant as little to us as it did to the generation, which Dr. Madden’s appeal for her (in the first edition of his “United Irishmen”) left unmoved, and which, during his absence, from Ireland, left her to die of cold and hunger in a tenement house, and be buried in a pauper’s grave.
“In the summer of 1843,” writes Dr. Madden, “accompanied by Anne Devlin, I proceeded to Butterfield Lane, to ascertain the fact of the existence or non-existence of the house in which Robert Emmet had resided in 1803. For a length of time our search was fruitless. The recollection of a locality at the expiration of forty years is a very dim sort of reminiscence. There was no house in the lane the exterior of which reminded my conductress of her old scene of suffering. At length her eye caught an old range of buildings at some distance, like the offices of a farmhouse. This she at once recognised as part of the premises of her father, and she was soon able to point out the well-known fields around it, which had once been in her father’s possession. The house, alongside of which we were standing, on the right-hand side of the lane going from Rathfarnham road, she said must be the house of Mr. Emmet, though the entrance was entirely altered; however, the position of an adjoining house left little doubt in her mind. We knocked at the door, and I found the house was inhabited by a lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of a Protestant clergyman, who had been, strange to say, the college friend and most intimate acquaintance of Robert Emmet, the late Dr. Hayden, of Rathcoole.
“The lady of the house, in whom I discovered an acquaintance, left us in no doubt on the subject of the locality—we were in the house that had been tenanted by Robert Emmet. The scene that ensued is one more easily conceived than described. We were conducted over the house—my aged companion at first in silence, and then as if slowly awakening from a dream, rubbing her dim eyes, and here and there pausing for some moments when she came to some recognised spot. On the ground floor she pointed out a small room, on the left-hand of the entrance—‘That’s the room where Mr. Dowdall and Mr. Hamilton used to sleep.’ The entrance has been changed from about the centre to the right-hand end; the window of a small room there has been converted into the door-way, and the room itself into the hall. ‘This,’ said Anne Devlin, ‘was my room; I know it well—my mattress used to be in that corner.’ There was one place, every corner and cranny of which she seemed to have a familiar acquaintance with, and that was the kitchen. On the upper floor, the principal bed-room at the present time attracted her particular attention; she stood for some time gazing into the room from the door-way; I asked her whose room it had been. It was a good while before I got an answer in words, but her trembling hands, and the few tears which came from a deep source, and spoke of sorrow of an old date, left no necessity to repeat that question—it was the room of Robert Emmet.
“Another on the same floor was that of Russell. They slept on mattresses on the floor—there was scarcely any furniture in the house; they often went out after dark, seldom or never in the day-time. They were always in good spirits, and Mr. Hamilton used often to sing—he was a very good singer; Mr. Robert sometimes hummed a tune, but he was no great singer, but he was the best and kindest-hearted of all the persons she had ever known; he was too good for many of those who were about him. Of Russell she spoke in terms hardly less favourable than those in which she expressed her opinions of Emmet.... At the rear of the house, in the courtyard, she pointed out the spot where she had undergone the punishment of half-hanging, and while she did so there was no appearance of emotions, such at least as one might expect recalled terror might produce, but there were very evident manifestations of another kind, of as lively a remembrance of the wrongs and outrages that had been inflicted on her, as if they had been endured but the day before, and of as keen a sense of those indignities and cruelties, as if her cowardly assailants had been before her, and those withered hands of hers had power to grapple with them.”
And then, amidst the very scenes which had been hallowed by Robert Emmet’s presence and Anne Devlin’s sufferings Dr. Madden heard from her lips the high, heroic tale once more.