I feel much obliged to J. H. M., who writes from Bath, and has directed my attention to Horace Walpole's "minute inquiry" respecting the "Old Countess of Desmond," as also to "Pennant's Tours," all which I have had opportunity of examining since I wrote to you last. The references do not incline me to alter one word of the opinion I have ventured as to the identity of this lady; on the contrary, with the utmost respect for his name and services to the cause of antiquarian research, I propose to show that Horace Walpole (whose interest in the question was, by his own confession, but incidental, and ancillary to his historic inquiries into the case of Richard III., and who had no direct data to go on) knew nothing of the matter, and was quite mistaken as to the individual.
Before I proceed on this daring undertaking, I beg to say, that an inspection of Pennant's print, called "The Old Countess of Desmond," satisfies me that it is not taken from a duplicate picture of that in possession of the Knight of Kerry: though there certainly is a resemblance in the faces of the two portraits, yet the differences are many and decisive. Pennant says that there are "four other pictures in Great Britain in the same dress, and without any difference of feature," besides that at Dupplin Castle, from which his print was copied; but that of the Knight of Kerry must be reckoned as a sixth portrait, taken at a much more advanced period of life: in it the wrinkles and features denote extreme old age. The head-dresses are markedly different, that of Pennant being a cloth hood lying back from the face in folds; in the Knight of Kerry's, the head-dress is more like a beaver bonnet standing forward from the head, and throwing the face somewhat into shade. In Pennant's, the cloak is plainly fastened by leathern strap, somewhat after the manner of a laced shoe; in the other, the fastening is a single button: but the difference most marked is this, that the persons originally sitting for these pictures, looked opposite ways, and, of course, presented different sides to the painter. So that, in Pennant's plate, the right side-face is forward; and in the other, the left: therefore, these pictures are markedly and manifestly neither the same, nor copies either of the other.
It does not concern us, in order to maintain the authority of our Irish picture, to follow up the question at issue between Pennant and Walpole but I may here observe, that either must be wrong in an important matter of fact. Walpole, in a note to his "Fugitive Pieces" (Lord Orford's Works, vol. i. p. 210-17.), writes thus: "Having by permission of the Lord Chamberlain obtained a copy of the picture at Windsor Castle, called The Countess of Desmond, I discovered that it is not her portrait; on the back is written in an old hand, 'The Mother of Rembrandt.'" He then proceeds to prove the identity of this picture with one given to King Charles I. by Sir Robert Car, "My Lord Ankrom" (after Duke of Roxburg), and set down in the Windsor Catalogue as "Portrait of an old woman, with a great scarf on her head, by Rembrandt." Pennant's note differs from this in an essential particular; he mentions this picture at Windsor Castle thus: "This was a present from Sir Robert Car, Earl of Roxburg, as is signified on the back; above it is written with a pen, 'REMBRANDT' (not a word of his mother), which must be a mistake, for Rembrandt was not fourteen years of age in 1614, at a time when it is certain (?) that the Countess was not living, and ... it does not appear that he ever visited England."
The discrepancy of these two accounts is obvious—if it "be written in an old hand, 'The Mother of Rembrandt,'" on the back of the picture, it seems strange that Pennant should omit the first three words; if they be not so written, it seems equally strange that Walpole should venture to add them. I presume the picture at Windsor is still extant; and probably some reader of "N. & Q." having access to it, will be so good as to settle the question of accuracy and veracity between two gentlemen, of whom one must be guilty of suppressio veri, or the other of suggestio falsi.
Horace Walpole, or his editor, must have corrected his "Fugitive Pieces" since the "Strawberry Hill edition," to which J. H. M. refers, was printed; for in the edition I have consulted, instead of saying "I can make no sense of the word noie," the meaning is correctly given in a foot-note to the inscription; and the passage given by J. H. M. is altogether omitted from the text.
I must now proceed in my bold attempt to show that Horace Walpole knew nothing of a matter, into which he made a "minute inquiry." This may seem presumptuous in a tyro towards one of the old masters of antiquarian lore and research; but I plead in apology the great advance of the science since Horace Walpole's days, and the greater plenty of materials for forming or correcting a judgement. It has been well said, that a single chapter of Mr. Charles Knight's Old England would full furnish and set up an antiquarian of the last century; and this is true, such and so many are the advantages for obtaining information, which we modern antiquaries possess over those who are gone before us; and lastly, to quote old Fuller's quaintness, I would say that "a dwarf on a giant's shoulders can see farther than he who carries him:" thus do I explain and excuse my attempt to impugn the conclusion of Horace Walpole.
Walpole's first conjectures applied to a Countess of Desmond, whose tomb is at Sligo in Ireland, and who was widow to that Gerald, the sixteenth earl, ingens rebellibus exemplar, who was outlawed, and killed in the wood of Glanagynty, in the county of Kerry, A.D. 1583. Walpole applied to an Irish correspondent for copies of the inscriptions on her tomb; but we need not follow or discuss the supposition of her identity with "the old Countess" further, for he himself abandons it, and writes to his Irish correspondent thus:—"The inscriptions you have sent me have not cleared away the difficulties relating to the Countess of Desmond; on the contrary, they make me doubt whether the lady interred at Sligo was the person reported to have lived to such an immense age."
Well might he doubt it, for in no one particular could they be identified: e.g. the lady buried at Sligo made her will in 1636, and survived to 1656,—a date long beyond the latest assigned for the demise of "the old Countess." Sir Walter Raleigh expressly says, "the old Countess had held her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond since the time of Edward IV.," a description which could not apply to the widow of a person who did not die until 1583, in the reign of Elizabeth. There are many other impossibilities in the case, discussed by Walpole, into which it is unnecessary to follow him.
Walpole then reverts to the issue of Thomas, the sixth Earl of Desmond, who was compelled to surrender his earldom, A.D. 1418, for making an "inferior marriage;" and conjectures that "the old Countess" might have been the wife of a grandson of his born 1452, or thereabouts, who would be, as Walpole states, "a titular earl:" but this absurd supposition is met by the fact of our "old Countess" enjoying a jointure from all the earls de facto in another line; a provision which the widow of an adverse claimant to the earldom could hardly have made good.
Walpole's last conjecture, following the suggestion of Smith's History of Cork, fixes on the widow of Thomas (the twelfth earl, according to the careful pedigree of Sir William Betham, though Smith erroneously calls him the thirteenth earl), and asserts the identity of the "old Countess" with a second wife, called "Catherine Fitzgerald of Dromana" (the Dacres branch of the Geraldines): for this assertion Smith, in a footnote, quotes "the Russel MSS.," and Walpole calls this "the most positive evidence we have." Of the MSS. referred to, I can find no further trace, and this "positive evidence" is weakened by the silence of Lodge's Peerage as to any second marriage of the earl in question, while, on the contrary, he gives many probabilities against it. Thomas (moyle, or bald), twelfth earl, succeeded to his nephew, James, the eleventh earl, in 1529, being then in extreme age, and died in five years after; he was the second brother of James, ninth earl, murdered in 1587—whose widow I affirm the old Countess to have been. Let us not lose sight of the fact, that the "old Countess," by general consent, was married in the reign of Edward IV., who died 1483. And I would ask, what probability is there that a younger brother would be already married to a second wife, in the lifetime of his elder brother, who is described as murdered "while flourishing in wealth and power at the age of twenty-nine years?" The supposition carries improbability on the face of it; none of the genealogies mention this second marriage at all; and Dr. Smith, whose county histories I have had particular occasion to examine, was, though a diligent collector of reports, no antiquarian authority to rely on. Above all, it is to be remembered, that Sir Walter Raleigh calls her "The old Countess of Desmond of INCHEQUIN:" this is in itself proof, all but positive, that the lady was an O'Bryen, for none other could have "part or lot" in the hereditary designation of that family: hence I have no hesitation in adhering to the conclusion, which, with slight correction of dates, I have adopted from accurate authorities, that "MARGARET O'BRIEN, WIFE OF JAMES, NINTH EARL OF DESMOND, WHO WAS MURDERED IN 1587, WAS THE GENUINE AND ONLY 'OLD COUNTESS.'" Upon the only point on which I venture to correct my authority, namely, as to the date of the earl's death, I find, on reference to an older authority than any to which we have hitherto referred, that my emendation is confirmed. In the Annals of the Four Masters, compiled from more ancient documents still, in the year 1636, I find, under the date 1487, the following: "The Earl of Desmond, James Fitzgerald, was treacherously killed by his own people at Rathgeola (Rathkeale, co. Limerick), at the instigation of his brother John."