THE definitive Tone canon is finally complete. A project to publish the writings of the great United Irishman, begun 45 years ago during the bicentenary of his birth, has reached fruition with the appearance of volume 3 of The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone (Oxford University Press, £125). Brendan Ó Cathaoirwrites.
It is edited meticulously by R.B. McDowell, C.J. Woods and the late T.W. Moody; I hope the Arts Council will subsidise the production of a more affordable edition.
Probably our most elegant diarist, Tone was also a brilliant polemicist. The anodyne introduction does not really tell us why everything he wrote is worth publishing. Pearse (whom the editors do not cite) regarded the United Irishman as the greatest of all our political thinkers: "the greatest-hearted and the greatest-minded". Be that as it may, this is a work of monumental scholarship which supersedes abridged publications. Manuscripts preserved in Irish, British and French archives have been superbly annotated. The assiduous Dr Woods has traced nearly all the quotations that flowed from Tone's well-stocked mind.
The journals and the letters to Matilda Tone, who shared her husband's political ideals and literary enthusiasms, form the richest material. His letters exude charm and tenderness, and are filled with ardour and concern for her welfare and that of their three children. The diaries "are a faithful transcript of all that passes in my mind, my hopes and fears, my doubts and expectations".He describes his encounters (he met Napoleon three times), adventures and travels ("one must see everything"). He assures Matilda: "Nothing could sustain me in your absence but the conviction of the justice of that cause to which we have sacrificed and do daily sacrifice the greatest pleasure we are capable to enjoy, the happiness which we feel in each other's society."
Volume 3 opens in January 1797 with Tone's return to Paris after the ill-fated Bantry Bay expedition. It was ultimately the weather which prevented their success, he remarked. "Figure to yourself what I must have felt during the whole time we lay at anchor [ five days], within 500 yards of the shore and utterly unable to reach it."
The first diary entry begins: "Nil desperandum". Tone has not given up hope of liberating Ireland with assistance from revolutionary France. Travelling through the Netherlands to briefly rejoin Matilda and the children (who have returned to Europe from America), he reflects on why "our poor peasantry have no bees, which require so little expense. . .I made the same remark with regard to the orchards in Normandy when I first arrived in France; but he who can barely find potatoes for his family is little solicitous about apples; he whose constant beverage is water dreams of neither cider nor mead. Well, if we succeed, maybe we may put our poor countrymen on somewhat a better establishment."
Observing wild fowl on the canal banks, Tone wonders: "Shall I ever have a day's partridge shooting in Ireland again?" - with his imprisoned friend, Thomas Russell. In The Hague, he recalls visiting the parliaments of Ireland, Britain, the US, France and now the convention of France's Dutch ally: "Beyond all comparison the most shamelessly profligate and abandoned by all sense of virtue, principle or even common decency is the legislature of our own unfortunate country; the scoundrels. . ." (They would shortly consent to the dissolution of their assembly.)
By July 1797 an expeditionary force of 13,500 men was ready to sail from the Texel, but it remained stranded for 42 days. "Twice within nine months has England been saved by the wind," writes an exasperated Tone. The arrest of the Leinster committee of the United Irishmen - the following March - is "by far the most terrible blow the cause of liberty in Ireland has yet sustained. . .I feel my mind growing every hour more and more savage. . .There is now no medium."
The capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald makes him ill "with sheer rage and vexation, and I slept none scarcely last night". He is tormented further by the malevolence of émigré "cabals and faction".
Stranded in Le Havre on June 16th, with plans for another expedition to Ireland unravelling, Tone reminds himself that his motto is not to despair: "But if it were not for that, I know not what I should do today." To Matilda he adds: "The pain which I feel myself at these unfortunate tidings is extremely augmented by the impression it seems to have upon your spirits." Tone is caught up in the nobility of militarism ("my trade is war"). He is proud of having risen to the rank of adjutant-general in the French army.
He gave up only when captured in Lough Swilly, having "embarked for my native country in the delightful hope of raising from abject slavery three millions of my fellow-men". He accepted his fate in a spirit more pagan than Christian. (His brother Mathew, who had joined Humbert's expedition, was captured near Ballinamuck and hanged in Dublin on September 29th, 1798.)
At his court martial in November, Tone requested a soldier's death by firing squad. He considered himself a prisoner of war and had "a violent objection to being hanged as a traitor". Finding he was to be hanged, he cut his throat to elude the ignominy of a public execution.