As a novelist who loves history, I’m always drawn to museums that present their collections as a way to tell engaging, emotional stories of the past. All historical players, large and small, were once real people, and sometimes it’s the smallest artifact - a child’s toy, an embroidered petticoat, a soldier’s battered cup - that provides the most vivid connections between the present and those who lived before us.
I’ve written many times about the Museum of the American Revolution, one of my favorite museums. It’s an institution that makes splendid use of this approach to historical storytelling in their their permanent collections and video presentations, and in their special exhibitions. Their current exhibition, Cost of Revolution: The Life and Death of an Irish Soldier (now through March 17, 2020), views two revolutions - the American Revolution of 1776 and the Irish Revolution of 1798 - through the life of an Irish gentleman, Richard Mansergh St. George (c1752-1798), who had the misfortune to be on the wrong side of both. If you’re in Philadelphia soon, I recommend it highly.
Although born to a life of privilege, Richard Mansergh St. George, right, chose to fight with the British in America, where he suffered a serious head wound that would haunt him the rest of his life. St. George is not remembered today for his military or political action. Nor was there any glory in his death. After aggressively seeking out and attacking the “rebels” he perceived among his tenants, those same tenants ambushed and murdered him in 1798. But St. George did leave a lasting legacy to tell his story: he was himself an artist of drawings and caricatures, and also a patron who commissioned works documenting his life and experiences from other artists. This rich visual evidence is brought together in the exhibition with portraits, documents, uniforms, and even a gunshot-riddled fence to tell St. George’s story, and the larger story of two revolutions.
There are other people beyond St. George represented in the exhibition. One of them is Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798), lower left. Lord Edward’s heritage was thoroughly aristocratic: his father was the 1st Duke of Leinster, his grandfather was the 2nd Duke of Richmond, and his great-great-grandfather was King Charles II. (Some of you may have encountered Lord Edward in Aristocrats, Stella Tillyard’s excellent biography of his mother and aunts, or in the popular British mini-series based on that book. His great-great-grandmother, Louise de Keroualle, was also the heroine of my historical novel The French Mistress.)
Like St. George, Lord Edward fought with the British army during the American Revolution, and was also seriously injured. Unlike St. George, however, Lord Edward returned from America with his sympathies no longer allied with his King, but with the common man. Turning to politics, his position and charismatic personality soon made him a leader of the United Irishmen and their rebellion. But eventually Lord Edward was betrayed by an informer. He was wounded while be arrested, and died from infection while imprisoned. The rebellion ultimately, and violently, was put down by the English, but Lord Edward became viewed as a martyr to the cause of Irish liberty - which made this silk ribbon (embroidered with the rallying cry “United by Friendship”), upper left , into a powerful revolutionary relic - with a terrible ironic twist.
According to the exhibition caption:
“United Irishman Leonard MacNally took this ribbon from the dead body of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. In 1819, MacNally presented it as an inspirational relic to Irish General John Devereux who recruited Irish soldiers for Simón Bolivar (the Venezuelan Revolutionary who fought against Spanish rule in South America). MacNally hoped Devereux’s ‘Irish Legion’ would fight to liberate ‘the oppressed inhabitants of South American and punish tyrants.’
“Despite pretending to be friends with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, MacNally helped get the popular Irish leader arrested in 1798. The truth surfaced after MacNally’s death in 1820.”
Above left: Ribbon, Ireland, c1798, © National Museum of Ireland.
Right: Richard Mansergh St. George, by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, 1790s, private collection.
Lower left: Lord Edward Fitzgerald, c1798 © National Museums NI Collection Ulster Museum.
Many thanks to Matthew Skic, Associate Curator, Museum of the American Revolution, for his assistance with this post.
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