Читать книгу The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866 - Mary McNeill - Страница 12

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Mary Ann McCracken is known to many as the devoted sister of Henry Joy McCracken, most famous of the Northern leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Few, however, are aware of the other activities of her long career and of the charm and forthrightness of her personality. Except for the short monograph included in Historical Notices of Old Belfast [1896] by R.M. Young, no story of her life has been written. Yet from contemporary sources and from her own letters and writings it is possible to get a complete picture of the sort of person she was, and of her varied and outstanding achievements during one of the most fascinating periods of Irish life.

In a great age of letter-writers Mary McCracken was herself a fluent correspondent, and the series of letters that passed between her and her two brothers while the latter were prisoners in Kilmainham Gaol throws a vivid light on their authors and on the history they helped to make. Only a small part of this correspondence has previously been published. At the end of her life another series of letters shows her as the friend and collaborator of Dr. R.R. Madden, author of The Lives of the United Irishmen. In the years between come her close association with Edward Bunting and the renaissance of Irish Harp Music; the successful muslin business that she established in conjunction with her sister; and her work for the women and girls in the Belfast Poor House, recorded in the Minute Book of the Ladies’ Committee of the Belfast Charitable Society of which, for a quarter of a century, Mary McCracken was Honorary Secretary. I am greatly indebted to Dr. R.W.M. Strain for unearthing this treasure and bringing it to my notice, and to the Belfast Charitable Society for permission to use it.

Any one of these activities would have marked Mary McCracken as an interesting and unusual woman. In 1792 her contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft, regarded with despair the fashionable young women of her day spending their time “going they scarcely care where for they cannot tell what.” Why, she asks in The Vindication of the Rights of Women, would they not study politics, enter business, or take up “the art of healing”? One such occupation per person would have satisfied that most progressive of eighteenth century writers; yet, as Mrs. Wollstonecraft was penning her words, there was in the growing town of Belfast a young woman of twenty-two who herself would achieve all three distinctions, for Mary Ann McCracken was already a student of politics, had already embarked on a business enterprise and was preparing herself to be a healer of physical and social ills.

For the historical and social background against which Mary’s life was lived I have drawn largely from contemporary sources. To all students of the period the correspondence, known as the Drennan Letters, between Dr. William Drennan in Dublin and his sister Mrs. McTier in Belfast, is an inexhaustible mine of information and delight. Both were deeply involved in the political affairs of the day. Mrs. McTier’s husband – Samuel – was President of the 1st Belfast Society of United Irishmen, and Dr. Drennan, eminent physician and author of the Test to which all United Irishmen subscribed, held office in one of the Dublin societies when, in 1794, he was charged with sedition and successfully defended by John Philpot Curran – “that marmoset of genius” – to use Drennan’s own description of the renowned counsellor.

While Historical Collections relating to the town of Belfast and Belfast Politics were published anonymously, it is known that they were compiled by Mary McCracken’s cousin, Henry Joy, junior. They, with the files of the Belfast News-Letter, the newspaper which his family founded and owned for many years, are invaluable sources of local information, as are, from another angle, the volumes of Wolfe Tone’s incomparable Journal. Dr. Madden’s Lives of the United Irishmen, though not actually contemporary, is based on information gathered from those who had been intimately connected with the Rebellion. It is in the Madden Papers, now in Trinity College, Dublin, that most of Mary McCracken’s letters are to be found.

Though it is true that Mary McCracken lived her life in Belfast and was deeply implicated in matters that, at a first glance, appear to be primarily of Irish interest, she was very definitely a product of two great movements, originating, the one in France and the other in Britain, viz. the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution; and there are few records of a single life that responded with such vigour to both these influences. In the first half of her life Mary is a glowing example of the Ulster middle-class liberalism that flourished in the short heyday of Belfast’s Georgian brilliance at the close of the eighteenth century. With the opening of the nineteenth century she sets herself to discover the only valid answer to the challenge about to be presented by the new industrial age. Her life is, therefore, of interest to students of these two distinctive eras.

In quoting from her own and other letters I have as far as possible retained the original spelling, punctuation, etc., adding only an additional comma and full-stop when otherwise the sense is difficult to discover on the first reading.

In the course of my investigations I have sought help and information from many individuals, some already known to me, others, till then, strangers. In all instances I have been struck by the sense of something akin to family pride that has been evoked by my queries, and which has brought an added pleasure to my work. To all who have ransacked their book-cases, their old letters and their memories, I am most grateful. In one instance only have I talked with someone who herself had known Mary Ann McCracken. Just a few weeks before her death in her 101st year Mrs. Adam Duffin, granddaughter of Dr. William Drennan, related to me how as a small child she had, with her grandmother, visited Miss McCracken. It is perhaps a reflection of Mary’s understanding of little children that Mrs. Duffin’s memories of that visit centred round exciting jelly in little glasses, enjoyed while her elders discussed matters that were no concern of hers.

I am much indebted to the Misses Duffin for permission to use their typescript copy of the Drennan Letters and to quote from them, and for much incidental help and encouragement.

To the following I express my thanks for permission to consult original documents and to quote from them: The Board of Trinity College, Dublin; Queen’s University of Belfast; the Keeper, State Paper Office, Dublin; the Deputy Keeper, Northern Ireland Public Record Office; the Governors, Linenhall Library, Belfast; Belfast Public Libraries; Belfast Museum and Art Gallery; Presbyterian Historical Society, Belfast; and the Belfast Charitable Society. I am indebted to members of Staff in these institutions for advice and help. Of these I must mention by name Mr. J.W. Vitty, Librarian of the Linenhall Library, the successor in office of one of the characters of my story. I am grateful to Mrs. R.M. Beath for permission to use letters in her possession, and to Dr. R.W.M. Strain for permission to quote from The History and Associations of the Belfast Charitable Society. Also to Dr. Constantia Maxwell; Messrs. John Murray & Co.; and the Talbot Press. I am indebted to the Belfast Museum, to the Belfast Charitable Society, and to Mr. H.C. Aitchison, of Blomfontein, South Africa.

It remains for me to thank Prof. T.W. Moody, Prof. J.E. Beckett, Dr. R.B. McDowell and Mr. John Hewitt for reading the manuscript and for much valuable help and advice, and Mr. A.H. George for reading the proofs. I alone am responsible for any errors that remain.

Belfast, 1959.