One of the most intriguing pieces of theatrical memorabilia in Galway is the poster for two plays, Douglas and All the World’s a Stage, to be performed at Richard Martin’s theatre, Kirwan’s Lane, on Friday August 8 1783. The playbill shows the cast with included Martin himself, his wife Eliza (Elizabeth Vessey ) and Theobald Wolfe Tone, who would become Ireland’s famous revolutionary, associated with the French inspired 1798 rebellion.
At this moment Wolfe Tone was just 18 years of age, but he was totally besotted with Martin’s wife Eliza. He later wrote: ‘I fell in love with a woman who made me miserable for more than two years’.
Courting Martin’s wife was a risky business. Martin himself was described as a ‘short, thick-set energetic man, charming and entertaining, with a gift for mimicry. It was advisable, however, to be wary in his presence as he was familiarly known a ‘Hair-trigger-Dick’ by reason of his notorious skill with the duelling pistol.
Richard Martin, one of the most extraordinary of Galway characters, who would achieve lasting fame for his kindness to animals, was born on his father’s vast Connemara estate at Ballinahinch in 1754. Despite the estate being recklessly encumbered, Martin was schooled in England, and raised as a gentleman. At the age of 21 he sailed for America to witness the start of the American revolution. He returned to Ireland, became a member of parliament, and married the beautiful Elizabeth Vessey, whom he adored.
Elizabeth, or Eliza, came from a large estate at Holymount, Co Mayo. She was related to the Earl of Lucan, but her family was of modest means compared to her powerful cousins. Her dowry was a small, but useful, £5,000 per annum. The newly wedded Martins took up residence with Richard’s half-brothers, and their families at a crowded Dangan House, now Cunningham’s nursery. A young student from Trinity College was employed as a tutor for the children of the house. His name was Theobold Wolfe Tone.
A tight squeeze
Martin was an ambitious and a busy man frequently away from home. He was appointed a colonel of the Galway Volunteers, which was a local armed militia which drilled to the sound of fife and drum most Sunday afternoons. Ladies and families watched as men proudly showed off their thighs and calves in tight pantaloons, with jackets of scarlet, blue and black.
He was called to the Irish bar in 1781, and one year before his appearance in the play Douglas he was appointed High Sheriff of Galway.
Colonel Martin and his wife were not only the toast of the town and county, but were socialites and ardent theatre-goers in Dublin, where they owned a house. During parliamentary sessions, they attended the Viceroy’s levees and balls followed by buffet suppers at Dublin Castle. Martin frequently raised hoots of laughter by his excellent mimicry of many of the characters in the room, or when they had just stepped outside. Dublin was renowned for its after theatre parties, where revellers enjoyed gossip and late night suppers until dawn.
Naturally the Martins wanted Galway to mirror the Dublin social scene as much as possible. Before long, while truly bitten by their love of theatre, the Martins converted an old store into a theatre in Kirwan’s Lane, which was originally called Martin’s Mill Lane. We are told that as theatres go it was a bit on the small side. There was a simple stage without boxes or gallery, with a sloping pit which accommodated one hundred patrons. A contemporary visitor related: ‘each person sat perfectly at ease, without incommoding those behind, or being themselves inconvenienced by those who sat before them’. It was however a tight squeeze. Ladies were asked not to wear hoops, which could hide all sorts of shapes and sizes, and were a de rigueur appendage for every fashionable lady, but was not suitable in a confined space, as hoops could double the size of a dress.
‘Excelled Mrs Siddons’
Evidently the Kirwain Lane Theatre, and the generosity of the Martins, who often gave after-theatre suppers, not only attracted full houses but critics from Dublin. Following the play The Fair Penitent, by a Nicholas Rowe, which was famous in London as the leading lady, who was practically on stage during the entire performance, was played by the most idolised actress of the day, Mrs Sarah Siddons.
The performances of Mrs Martin, who played the Mrs Siddon’s role, drew forth the most extravagant praise from the critic of the Freeman’s Journal. He confessed that he had difficulty finding words adequate to praise her. ‘It would require her own pencil to depict the grace, the dignity, the eloquence of her attitude …it would require her own pen to describe the beauties of her performance.’
After the play Douglas, which was a tear-jerking Scottish melodrama, during which practically every character dies, the same critic was again lost for words to capture Mrs Martin’s ‘justness of her elocution, the marked propriety of her emphasis, or the uncommon grace of her attitudes.’
The performances were considered so remarkably good that the play was presented to His Grace Charles Manners, the 4th Duke of Rutland, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, during his official visit to the west. Afterwards the duke and his party were entertained to a sumptuous dinner at Dangan, where one of the guests, considered one of the foremost judges of taste, was heard to say: ‘Mrs Siddons excelled every other English actress, but Mrs Martin excelled Mrs Siddons, and every other woman in the world!’
‘Sacrificed a passion’
Poor Theobald did not have a chance. He wrote his own review of Douglas, saying that his taste for theatre had been spoilt because he would never see again that ‘genuine representation of that most moving of all objects: Beauty in distress’. He was indebted to Mrs Martin ‘for the highest pleasure I ever enjoyed’.
How much of Mrs Martin, however, he enjoyed physically, remains opaque. He later wrote about his affair confessing that he was unable ‘or indeed unwilling to conceal his passion for her’, ‘so that at length she became at least as much in love with me as I was with her, nor did she attempt to conceal it from me’.
But he is at pains to point out that despite their love continuing for two years without ever ‘a single instance over stepping the bonds of virtue, such was the purity of the extravagant affection I bore her.’*
Perhaps Martin suspected his wife’s affections for Wolfe Tone, but for whatever reason, they had a row and Wolfe Tone left the Dangan household forever. Martin allegedly asked him to swear an affidavit against two ruffians who had broken into his apartment, and Wolfe Tone refused.
‘But tho’ I was very young, and tho’ I adored his wife beyond all human beings, and knew well that my refusal was in effect a sentence of banishment from her presence for ever..I had the courage to persist in my refusal..
‘And thus at the age of 20 I sacrificed a passion of the most extravagant violence to what I considered my duty as a man of honour; an effort that cost me then very, very dear, and for which I now applaud my resolution. I have never seen Mrs Martin again.’
Next week: The Martins visit Paris to observe the revolution
NOTES: * Following Wolfe Tone’s death in November 19 1798, his widow Matilda and his son William, disheartened at the inaccurate biographies of her husband, finally published, in two large volumes, all his diaries, memoranda, letters, pamphlets and other documents, in ‘Life of Theobold Wolfe Tone, written by Himself and continued by his Son’ (published by Gales and Seaton, in Washington May 1826 ). The book became a best seller and immortalised Matilda’s husband. It is possible that by including Tone’s youthful romance with Mrs Martin, a little, gentle editing may have intervened.
Sources for this Diary include Humanity Dick by Shevawn Lynam, published by Hamish Hamilton 1975, and The Irish Stage in County Towns, by William Smith Clark, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1965.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
