Ireland -- History -- Rebellion of 1798; Women -- Ireland -- Biography
although he was tried, and that severely, with some of those calamities
from which we cannot be exempt, yet he enjoyed an uncommon portion of
tranquillity and happiness, for, by his firmness and understanding, he
was enabled to bear like a man the visitations of external misfortunes,
and from within no troubled conscience or compunction of self-reproach
ever disturbed his peace.”
The years from 1778 to 1789 were, doubtless, the happiest years in
Elizabeth Emmet’s life. The elder boys, Christopher Temple and
Thomas Addis, were at the University, and a mother even less tender
than she, could not but be filled with pride and happiness at the
brilliant records they were making for themselves. In one of these
years there arrived from America kinsfolk of her husband’s, Sir John
and Robert Temple, and the latter’s family, and in the hospitable
eighteenth-century manner which its big houses and generous style of
living fostered, they became inmates of Dr. and Mrs. Emmet’s house.
The tie which bound the Emmets to the Temples was strengthened, when
in 1784 Christopher Temple Emmet married his cousin, Miss Anne
Western Temple, daughter of Robert. He had been called to the Bar a
short time previously and was in extensive practice. I have already
quoted Grattan’s opinion of his gifts. Even more significant was the
testimony—spoken of all places in the world—in the very Court
wherein Christopher’s youngest brother was awaiting the
death-sentence—and by the lips that were so soon to pronounce it,
the cruel lips of “Hanging Judge” Norbury. “You had an eldest
brother whom death snatched away, and who when living was one of the
greatest ornaments of the Bar. The laws of his country were the
study of his youth, and the study of his maturer years was to
cultivate and support them.” With Christopher marked out, by the
judgment of all the competent men of his time for high advancement;
with a charming and amiable new daughter added to her household in
the shape of Christopher’s wife; with her second son, Thomas Addis,
winning all sorts of distinctions for himself in the University of
Edinburgh, whither he had gone to study medicine; with Mary Anne,
growing into lovely womanhood, and showing a strength of character
and a breadth of intellect, which stamped her as a true Emmet; with
young Robert, earning praise from his masters and regard from his
comrades; with the spectacle of her husband’s delight in all this to
double her own—Elizabeth Emmet might well count herself, for one
golden moment at least, that rare thing: a perfectly happy woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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