But this was changing. Latin was increasingly seen as the language of empire and of war, Caesar on the march rather than Virgil at rest. With the expansion of the ambit of Latin came a new sense of self for the boys who learned it. The Napiers defined themselves not so much as members of a European aristocracy, as their aunts and uncles had done, but as servants of empire cast in the mould of classical heroes: literary still, but with a different literature.
The Napiers’ destinies were never in doubt. George Napier kept a portrait of Frederick the Great in his study to remind himself and his sons of the man he regarded as the greatest modern soldier before Napoleon. Their politics would be radical but monarchist: a cult of Fox and a demonology of Pitt held sway in the Napier household. Their private lives were to be governed by propriety and domesticity, free from the expense of illegitimate children and the bouts of venereal disease that dogged Emily’s sons.
Much of what Sarah and Napier demanded of their sons they achieved. Her five boys turned into three generals, one captain in the navy and only one barrister. In her old age, Sarah liked to spurn any credit for their success. She gave the laurels to her husband, saying, ‘as they rose out of infancy I left them to their father’s management and studied to become the friend not the tutoress of my sons.’ But she was disingenuous. Napier taught his sons military engineering, swordsmanship and a sense of duty and honour; Sarah watched over everything else. First and foremost she gave them a sense of life as literature, and a storehouse of literary references by which they interpreted their own feelings and actions. Her favourite texts, particularly Pope’s Homer, became their touchstones. William Napier whiled away time in quarters on the Spanish Peninsula by reciting chunks of the Iliad and astonished his fellow officers by his memory of ancient history, romances and chivalrous poetry. Before battles, Charles James Napier comforted himself with tales of the heroism of ancient heroes and he loved to describe his situation by quoting theirs. Literature served militarism. It cauterised the pain, squalor and boredom of the battlefield and dignified butchery with glorious precedents. William Napier absorbed his mother’s love of literature so well that he transcribed war into words, writing in several volumes and rolling prose a history of the Peninsular Campaign that, for his readers, elevated war into a work of art.
When her sons left home Sarah wrote to them constantly, alert to any slip in their standards of behaviour or even any slump in their deportment. They tried hard to be the sons she wanted. As they worked their way up the army hierarchies her image was never far from their minds. Charles James Napier who, as a young man had longed to leave the army, calling it a ‘trade in blood’, dreamed of his ‘beloved mother’ before he blew up the fort of Imamghar, in his campaign to capture the Indian province of Sind, a mission that earned him temporary opprobrium but secured his place in the heart of the nation and the history of empire. Much earlier he wrote to her saying simply, ‘we are what you have made us.’
The Napiers exaggerated to please their mother. Politics and social experience as well as family imperatives helped to shape their attitudes. All the Napier brothers felt themselves to be outsiders, not rich enough to hobnob with their social equals and not English enough to feel comfortable at Court or in Westminster. They were one step further away from money and the sources of political power than their parents, without substantial legacies or landed property. Moreover, their politics, learned on their parents’ laps and on visits to Fox at St Anne’s Hill, were made active and practical by their experience of the atrocities of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
PART TWO
1798, ‘fatal year’.
Emily’s note on a letter from Edward Fitzgerald.
The Napiers had not been back in Ireland long before Sarah began to notice that the people of middle rank and the poor who laboured in the fields around Celbridge were openly expressing disaffection with London and Dublin. Some justified their opposition by talking of Irish nationalism, others used the language of universal rights laid out so popularly by Tom Paine in The Rights of Man. Proselytizers in the north were successfully popularising, among Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, a radicalism that looked to Paine for ideas and France for their expression. Radical enthusiasm in Ireland had the same origins and engines as that on the mainland, but the mixture of a Protestant administration and a largely Catholic population gave nationalism and republicanism an added twist. When Napier returned from Londonderry at the end of 1794, he reported that dissension was rife in Belfast and the surrounding counties.
Everywhere the situation was confusing. Opposition to Dublin and Westminster was fractured; alliances were volatile. By 1795 people began to sense enemies all around, and individuals began to lead double lives. The respectable Belfast printer by day was a United Irishman at night, meeting with others in secret after 1794 and committed increasingly to armed rebellion. A Catholic silk merchant and United Irishman had yet another identity, that of government informer. A servant might bring his master a glass of wine on a silver tray and then, after hours, become a ‘Defender’ cutting down trees to make pike handles, forswearing allegiance to state and Protestants alike.
Enmities hardened in a worsening economic climate of rising taxes, falling land revenues and a decline in manufacturing. Reactionary Protestants disliked anyone who promised emancipation for Dissenters and Catholics and pledged themselves to Westminster as long as Westminster upheld Protestant dominance. Republican Protestants, both Dissenters and aristocrats, spoke of universal rights, secular republicanism and, eventually, freedom from Westminster. Forward-looking Roman Catholics hoped for emancipation: while denouncing Dublin they remained loyal to Westminster, believing that emancipation could emanate only from England. Other Catholics wanted a Roman Catholic state free from Protestants, and created for their pedigree a Gaelic past of Catholic kings, Gaelic songs and Irish jigs. They styled themselves ‘Defenders’ and formed a large underground network.
Even these identities were fluid. After 1794 the Catholic Defenders, who were nationalist and ‘Gaelic’, merged with the secular, republican, United Irishmen. Hybrids began to appear: Catholics who mistrusted Protestants but spoke the language of universal rights found in The Rights of Man; Protestants who subscribed to Paine but talked of Irish nationalism. United Irish leaders upheld cosmopolitan values and Gaelic trappings simultaneously. Arthur O’Connor was a secular Protestant barrister who, with ludicrous self aggrandisement and an eye to his Catholic followers, called himself ‘King of Connaught’. Edward Fitzgerald, Paine worshipper and Francophile, danced Irish jigs to the music of pipers, sang patriotic songs and celebrated St Patrick’s day. Concealed in a chest he kept a uniform to be worn on the first day of the Irish Republic. It was a crazy amalgam of the Gaelic and the French. The green suit was decorated with red braid. It had rose-coloured cuffs and a cape. Rounding off the ensemble was a giant red cap of liberty with a green rim and a large silk tassel bobbing at the top.
So as the political and economic crisis deepened, the fanciful and the macabre jostled side by side. Ordinary life went on but the sense of impending doom grew. Men and women, in streets and shops, taverns and fields, became worried about soldiers in billets and garrisons. The army and the militia, always a source of grievance, were increasingly objects of fear. Many of the elements of Pitt’s ‘Reign of Terror’, begun in 1794 to suppress radical activity throughout the kingdom, were soon apparent: the imprisonment of printers and journalists, the development of spy networks and loyalist informers and, eventually, the imprisonment of radicals for the utterance of so called ‘seditious words’ and the suspension of habeas corpus. Looking back, people identified 1795 as the point of no return, the year in which the prologue to the rebellion began.
Between 1795 and 1796, Defender and United Irish networks merged into one United Irish movement. Reactionary Protestants formed so called ‘Orange lodges’, groups pledged to uphold what they thought of as the Williamite settlement, which were largely impervious to United Irish
revolutionary politics. Reports of ‘Orange’ atrocities spread. Some Dublin Protestants threw in their lot with Westminster, others with more militant (but usually anti-Catholic) Protestants in Dublin Castle. Still others, like Thomas Conolly, vacillated, siding first with Westminster, then against it, clinging to the language of paternalism and economic justice, eschewing discussion of rights and earning nobody’s respect. ‘Patriot’ politicians like the Duke of Leinster were outpaced by events. Their opposition to Westminster now looked so pale as to seem like support, and they retreated from the fray disowned by former friends and enemies alike.
Relentlessly the nation pulled itself into the vortex. Government actions – making oath-taking a capital offence, pardoning repressive magistrates, and partially suspending habeas corpus at the end of 1796 – enraged radicals but were denounced by fierce loyalists as too weak. Opposition and sectarianism grew. There were rumours of French invasion plans and a gradual mobilisation of volunteers and militias. Rumour prompted action which fuelled rumour and prompted fear and interrogation. Was the secret-society member a government spy? Was the housekeeper loyal to her mistress, and was the mistress of the same mind as the master? Was the master the tool of Dublin Castle and was the Castle frustrating or co-operating with Westminster? Was Westminster a friend to loyal Catholics or secretly committed to Protestant ascendancy? In the maelstrom of fear and speculation, some individuals panicked; others took a hard line, stuck to it and lost their heads. As rebellion began the endless remaking that constituted the nation’s sense of itself was remorselessly speeded up. By the time the Act of Union was signed, a new nation had emerged, not only constitutionally but narratively as well, and it had a new martyrology to add to its myths of itself.
From 1795 onwards opposition groups began arming themselves. Pikes were the simplest weapons. Smiths forged the heads and parties of men went out at night to fell young trees for the handles. Other arms were commandeered by insurgents and piled in secret caches. In July, a hundred and fifty Defenders marched up to Sarah’s house in Celbridge. Their leaders fired shots at the upper windows and then demanded arms. Sarah was away and her housekeeper, armed with one of Napier’s pistols, refused them entry. The whole band then trudged disconsolately away. Louisa feared that Castletown, where Napier’s weapons were hurriedly secreted, would be the next target of the ‘rioters’ as she called them. Conolly and Napier, like Sarah, were away. Left alone, Louisa ruminated upon and then panicked about an attack on the house. She ordered every gun in Castletown to be primed and loaded and put the house into a ‘state of defence’. Then she went into Celbridge, driving the length of the main street from Castletown’s gates to Sarah’s house at the other end. She went down side streets and alleys and knocked on many doors. ‘I went myself to every house,’ she explained to her brother, ‘spoke to every poor person to explain the nature of this mischievous manner of proceeding, entreated them to desist and repose some confidence in two such friends as Mr. Conolly and myself, who never had nor would ever deceive them.’ But Louisa was already far from neutral. She wanted the people of Celbridge to commit themselves to her and as she went she made a list of those prepared to do so. ‘I have all their names down and of course shall be more likely to find out our strength if anything happens. The housekeepers seemed vastly pleased at this sort of association that I have set on foot and I think it can’t do any harm and may do good.’ Louisa’s list was bound to arouse the suspicion of those who already saw her in a double light, as both the apotheosis of liberal paternalism and a symbol of the repressive regime. Besides, a list compiled while Defenders melted away down the town’s alleys was meaningless. Those who might be loyal to the Conollys or the government feared reprisals if the Defenders knew it. Those who had no intention of staying loyal might sign for cover or refuse to sign in case they were accused of double-dealing by their colleagues.
In the end Louisa had no need to use her list. The Defenders disappeared with their rifles and pikes and hid themselves in their daily occupations. Sarah’s sons, who had enjoyed the military spectacle on their front lawn, returned to their schooling. At Castletown, Louisa put the arms away, prepared for the harvest and celebrated Emily Napier’s birthday. Beyond Carton, on his small estate of Kilrush, Lord Edward Fitzgerald settled down for the summer with his young wife Pamela. By this time, Lord Edward had left the Irish Parliament. He defiantly hung a portrait of Tom Paine over the mantelpiece in his sitting-room at Kilrush and began to associate with aristocratic radicals like Arthur O’Connor and United Irishmen like the Sheares brothers, all of whom had been in Paris in 1792.
As long as the United Irish was a legal organisation, Lord Edward could associate with United Irishmen without formally belonging to the movement. But the organisation was forced underground in 1794 and Lord Edward eventually followed, dampening family anxiety as best he could. He joined at the beginning of 1796 and by that summer was in Hamburg and Switzerland with O’Connor, pressing the French to send an invasion force to Ireland that would begin an Irish revolution.
From Hamburg and Switzerland Edward sent Emily in London a series of letters which concentrated on the old themes of their correspondence: his love for her, hers for him, and their enjoyment of literature and the natural world. But his description of Switzerland was vague, more a sop to government censors than to his mother, who knew her son’s views and probably the purpose of his mission too. ‘I had a very pleasant tour, am in raptures with Switzerland. I left my friend O’Connor in Switzerland taking another tour. There never were two persons who more thoroughly admired Switzerland than we did. He saw it with the Rousseau enthusiasm. He is as fond of Rousseau as I am, so you may conceive how we enjoyed our journey.’
This concoction, with its repetitions and flat descriptions was not enough to set Emily’s mind at rest. Lord Edward’s references to Rousseau, who had written a constitution for the republican Swiss, were a broad hint that he was deep in political activities. She began to expect bad news. Worry spoiled the pleasure of Lord Edward’s return from Hamburg and the company of his son ‘little Eddy’ whom Edward had given to his mother to look after. ‘My poor anxious mind is ever looking forward to some distress,’ Emily wrote to her daughter Lucy on 8 October 1796. After Lord Edward’s return from the Continent, Emily rarely wrote about Ireland to anyone, and referred to her son’s politics as ‘a certain subject’, something it was too painful, and unwise, to name. From 1792, Lord Edward must have known his letters would be opened by government officials and checked for seditious content. By the mid-1790s Emily and Sarah, too, suspected that they had a circle of readers wider than the family. Sarah continued to be hopelessly indiscreet, making no concessions to the officials reading her scribbled letters in the central Dublin Post Office. But she reminded Lucy Fitzgerald that opinions expressed in letters were not private matters; on the contrary, they were brought into the public domain by the zealous action of government censors.
Now that Lord Edward was committing treason by plotting the downfall of the government, Emily’s enjoyment of her son’s republicanism was at an end. She tried without success to talk him out of it. On 12 November she wrote to her daughter, who had joined Lord Edward at Kilrush (again without explicitly mentioning politics), ‘and so my sweet Lucy, you have had conversations with that angel Edward! I can easily believe you might say many things that might have an effect and do good, as it is a subject you have read a good deal about, considered well, and your own good strong judgment would assist you. I too have seen the dear precious drop fall down that dear cheek, but that is when the heart feels the distresses of others. To work upon those feelings only makes him feel wretched, but it does not remove the prejudice.’
Emily saw disaster ahead. Even as she hoped against hope that her son would abandon his revolutionary plans, she began to create a heroic version of him in her own mind, an image of her son that would withstand any battering it might receive if he were caught and unmasked. Creating a hero of her son prepared her for catacl
ysm. ‘I find my mind much less weak than I thought it would be,’ she wrote to Lucy a few weeks later, adding, ‘please tell Eddy so and press him to your heart for me.’
Throughout 1796 Lord Edward put a lighthearted face on to his radicalism, content that it should appear as patriotic posturing that would annoy rather than threaten the authorities. Lucy Fitzgerald, who described his capers in her diary, found meetings with radicals a source of sexual excitement and ‘democracy’ itself an aphrodisiac. While the United leaders planned rebellion, she nurtured an infatuation for Arthur O’Connor. ‘Dec 13. We had a dance in the evening. Our company was Cummins and the butcher’s daughters. I danced with Arthur [O’Connor]. We danced a great many Irish jigs. Ed. is a great hand at them.’ ‘Mar 23 [1797]. We had a visit from Mr. Henry and Mr. Leeson. They are both Democrats. I gave Mr. Henry a green cravat and Pamela Mr. Leeson, and we made them ride home in them.’ ‘Apl. 18. We went to town for a ball at Lady Clare’s I had my hair turned close up, was reckoned democratic, and was not danced with.’
As the months passed, political events dwarfed such gestures. After an abortive French naval expedition in December 1796 and outbreaks of violence across the country, Camden, the Lord Lieutenant, moved against the United Irish leadership. By June 1797 most of the Ulster leaders were behind bars. Papers stolen by informers in Ulster incriminated other leading radicals, Lord Edward Fitzgerald amongst them. Emily learned of this in London at the end of January 1797. The embarrassed government offered Lord Edward a discreet and safe passage out of the country soon afterwards, but he refused to take it.
Like many mothers, sisters and wives caught up in the rebellion, Emily could now only wait, scan the newspapers and long for her son’s safety. Despite having a brother in the British Cabinet and a son prominent in the Irish peerage, Emily was far away in London, cut off from Ireland both by distance and the censor’s pencil. Her helplessness made her fatalistic; after January 1797 she gave up hoping for the best and prepared to think of Edward as a martyr. She cherished little Eddy, who had stayed with her in London, as an image of his father, and she began a collection of relics. ‘Yes, that dear lock so lately growing on Eddy’s precious head is a very acceptable present,’ she wrote to her daughter Lucy. ‘I put it in my bosom, after dear little Eddy had kissed it a thousand times. “Papa’s hair, Eddy’s own Papa’s hair!” I really believe he understands it all, pretty love.’
Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740 - 1832 Page 40
