Robert Emmet and Nineteenth-Century Irish America

No other Irish historical figure had so powerful and lasting an effect on the consciousness of Irish America in the nineteenth century as Robert Emmet. American culture provided a great variety of opportunities to engage ideas about Emmet, ranging from individual, solitary contemplation to experiences within the family to public, communal occasions. Alone, one could glean the essence of Emmet's sacrifice by reading his Speech from the Dock or a lyric poem about him. One could also find the larger story in one of the many available biographies. In the home, one could gaze upon the image of Emmet on the parlor wall. A solemn familial gesture was possible in the giving of Emmet's name to a child. In the wider world, one could belong to an organization named for Robert Emmet where parish, social, or Irish nationalist business was conducted. One could gather to bear witness to the speech and the story in dramatic form at a range of venues—from school halls to amateur theatricals to professional productions. And one could participate in formal observances celebrating the dates of Emmet's birth or death.

The power of Robert Emmet—or more accurately, the power of the idea of Robert Emmet—springs, of course, from his place in history as a figure of wholly admirable personal courage and as a hero of the struggle for Irish freedom from British rule. Nonetheless, Emmet's name and memory were also invoked and exploited for a range of less admirable aims and agendas. Irish-American uses and misuses of conceptions of Robert Emmet cropped up in oratory, poetry, narrative, the visual image, bestowal of the name on a person, place, or organization, dramatic performance, and ceremonial event. Late in the nineteenth century, healthy critical perspectives on Emmet as an exploited commodity emerged inside Irish-American culture. These, too, are part of the story of Robert Emmet in America.

An example of the Emmet ideal in Irish America near the end of its time of greatest vitality can be found in Edward McSorley's fine, neglected novel published in 1946, Our Own Kind. This noveldescribes the coming of age of the orphaned Willie McDermott, born (as was McSorley) in 1902, and being raised by his Irish immigrant grandparents in Providence, Rhode Island. A "chromo of Robert Emmet on the wall"¹ over the kitchen table is the lodestone for the relationship between the boy at age ten and his grandfather, Old Ned McDermott:

Bold Robert Emmet was their refuge, their well of courage. Dear Emmet standing there in the courtroom face to face with the British judges that condemned him to his death and ordered his noble head cut from his body and thrown to the dogs in the dirty Dublin streets to be devoured by them. They would stand beneath the picture and his grandfather would say, "Here, Will, now I'll read what Emmet said." Or perhaps the boy would seize the old man by the arm and beg him to read what Emmet said. Their arms would be around each other or the boy would stand in front of his grandfather while he read.

Sometimes they would read it together, the old man going slower so that the boy could keep pace with him. The old man's brown eyes would never waver an instant from the picture, although he might now and then shake a fist at the judges or perhaps, "when the grave opens to receive me," his voice would be lowered a trifle.

"When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not until then, let my epitaph be written," they would always read together. Each passionate word eternally damning the bewigged judges and especially [Willie's aunt] Nora for daring say [that his grandfather] could not read.

(OOK 7-8)

By the time Willie realizes that his grandfather has the speech by heart and is, in fact...