Lord Edward Fitzgerald Pamela Madame De Genlis

"Q,** **er>j **%a, small grave slab in the believed, was the mother, Mfhile th +++**+,**> h+ **U)$ + *, , * ** , ;: picturesque little church- weight of opinion points to tbp D :%&! ::: :: yard of Kilmurry, and dtOrleans, Philippe Egalite, as thk fath $%**v?a. * &*tar+ he p :$ close to the northern side In her marriage certificate, however, h ">*A X** -1. + of the church, is a little name is entered as Sims, and she known link between the French Revol- described as being a native of Fogo ution, the disastrous Irish rebellion of Newfoundland. This information is h 1798 and the peace and idyllic grandeur by many historians to be incorrect, of Plassey. she was sent - some say smuggled - The grave contains the remains - now baby from France to England, no d long compounded with the clay - of a to avoid a scandal. The move may baby boy, through whose veins once have been made to avoid political coursed the royal blood of the Bourbons. complications. He was a grandson of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his beautiful French wife, Pamela. The inscription, now barely Madame de Genlis legible, reads: After Stephanie Felicite Ducrest de TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis, bette THE INFANT SON OF more simply known to history GUY CAMPBELL, BART. Madame de Genlis, was appointed to t AND PAMELA HIS WIFE household of the Duke of Orleans, DIED AT PLASSY lady-in-waiting, we are told that t FEB, 4TH 1828. Duke was charmed by her; so much For a short period in the 1820s, Lieut. that she became his mistress. Though S Col. Sir Guy Campbell, and his wife, was self-educated to a large extent, S Pamela, the elder daughter of the ill- proved a brilliant scholar and proli writer. A girl who acquired suc fated Lord Edward, lived at Plassey Lord Edward Fitzgerald. House. It is thought that Sir Guy may outstanding scholarship by informal have been stationed in the Limerick means was no mean choice as tutor to Garrison at the time. An infant son of the reputed daughter of Philippe Egalite, the children of the Duke (three princes couple died while they were there and Duke of Orleans, the fascinating story of and a princess), her own daughters by was buried at Kilmurry, which was only whose life opens in the France of Louis her early marriage when she was only a short distance from the house. XVI and Marie Antoinette, and ends, for seventeen, and the enigmatic Pamela. students of Irish history, in the Dublin of She took charge of the education and the United Irishmen. This historical upbringing of Prince Louis Philippe in Lord Edward Fitzgerald romance, with its love, drama and 1782, when he was eight years old. At Lord Edward Fitzgerald was the fifth son tragedy, contains all the ingredients of a that time, he was a sickly and pampered of the twentieth Earl of Kildare and first best-selling novel. child, but brought out the best in Duke of Leinster. He was a direct lineal Her parentage has always been Madame de Genlis as an educationalist descendant of Garret Og Fitzgerald, the wrapped in mystery. It is certain that she and physical culture instructor, for her last native ruler of Ireland, and, as was brought up by Madame de Genlis, charge developed into a well-educated commander-in-chief of the United who, many of her contemporaries job he was to assume as King of France Irishmen, in 1798, became an early victim of the treachery of his friends (He knew his enemies). He was arrested by the notorious Major Finn in a house, owned by a feather merchant named Murphy, in Thomas Street, Dublin. Though cornered in a bedroom, he fought bravely with only a small dagger for his defence. He succeeded in killing Captain Ryan and wounding Justice Swan before he was wounded by a shot from Major Sirr and overpowered. He died in Newgate Prison in the presence of his brother Henry, his aunt, Lady Louisa Connolly and the Lord Chancellor, John Fitzgibbon. The latter had driven Henry and Lady Louisa to the prison in his own coach, after they had been refused permission by the prison authorities to visit the dying Geraldine. Pamela ,k Lord Edward was married to the beautiful French girl, Pamela, the The shooting of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. property confiscated. The indifference of her in-laws to her sorry plight contributed much to her misfortune, and the realisation of the violent age into which she was born hardly made it any easier to accept the calamity. One biographer sums up the over-riding essence of this traumatic period into life: 'Someone had to be made a scapegoat for;; his (Lord Edward's) uncompromising defiance of the beneficent rule of England.' Back once more in France, where the great storm had blown itself out, Pamela faced the hopelessness of her shattered life by devoting herself to the care of her family. She re-married, but it was a drab anti-climax to her romantic ambitions. She kept Lord Edward's handkerchief close to her heart from the time of his death, and it was placed beside her in the coffin when she died, in 1831, at the age of 57. She was buried in the vast cemetery of Montmartre. The gravestone of John Campbell. after the revolution of 1830. He was After this calamity, we find Madame J.P. Leonard afterwards to boast that his teacher had de Genlis, still faithful to her charges, the made a man of him. Princess Adelaide and the Duke's natural While on a Continental tour in 1880, the daughters in the safety - but misery - of well-known Irish littkrateur, J.P. Leonard, London. She was almost penniless, but visited the cemetery and took possession Friends and Lovers carried on under great difficulties until of Pamela's remains, which were about to Louis Philippe was afterwards to confess the storm had abated in her native be thrown into the Fosse Commune, the that, at the age of sixteen, he had fallen country. lease of the grave having expired. madly in love with his teacher. This is Leonard had the remains brought back to not too surprising when one finds two of the churchyard of St. Nicholas, in the visiting specialist teachers, Adde Thames Ditton, outside London, and laid Mariotini, the Italian teacher, and the Pamela in France to rest with her elder daughter, Pamela drawing teacher, falling under her spell. (Lady Guy Campbell), and their The former openly declared his love for and England descendants, in the Campbell family plot. her and was dismissed, but the latter, It had been a tempestuous time for Part of the marble monument that though deeply affected, did not. Even the Pamela. She must have cut a romantic marked the grave in Montmartre, and great Talleyrand became a victim of her figure in the colour, glory and depravity which was damaged by a Prussian shell charms, and, apparehtly had his of the inflamatory period following the during the Siege of Paris, in 1870, was advances snubbed, for he once said of great Revolution, and the names of also brought to the little rustic graveyard her, in anger, no doubt, 'In order to avoid Danton, Miradeau, Talleyrand and other in Thames Ditton, where it can be seen to the scandal of flirting, she consents immortals were woven into the delicate this day. immediately'. He was afterwards to fabric of her early life. Of the descendants of Sir Guy and share her privations as refugees in While in England, her exotic beauty Pamela, George Wyndham, Chief London. These emotional incidents, qnd perfect refinement created its share Secretary for Ireland, was the most coupled with her earlier romances, of gossip in the 'best' circles. Burke and noteworthy of at least three score of their showed her to be an alluring and Pitt, Reynolds and Gainsborough are descendants whose careers have been charismatic woman. mentioned among her admirers. Richard recorded. At the outbreak of the Second Brinsley Sheridap, than at the height of World War, Ronald Campbell, df his fame, fell madly in love with her, but C.B.C.M.G., great-great grandson of Lord Death the Duke she jilted him for Lord Edward. They Edward and Pamela, was British Her loyalty to the Duke never wavered, were married in the Church of St. Minister in Belgrade. and even when such attachment and Quentin in the Grand Place of Tournai, The inscription on the memorial in support was likely to lead to her own when Louis Philippe, her reputed half- Thames Ditton records the re-interment execution she remained faithful to the brother and future King of France, was a there of the remains of Pamela, on 21 last. He had been arrested through the witness. The spot where they stood at the August, 1880, and the bursting of the machinations of a blood-thirsty Irishman, side altar in the church is still pointed Prussian shell on the original tomb. a police officer, Joseph Kavanagh, who out. The example set by G.P. Leonard was one of the 'September Assassins'. She was devastated by her husband's more than a hundred years ago should The arrest took place in April, 1793, at premature and violent death, and her not be forgotten by those of us who the Palais Royle. It is ironic that the anguish was aggravated by the taunts of admire his virtuous act. The little slab in Prince, who was shortly afterwards some of the Fitzgeralds that she, as a Kilmurry churchyard is not only a guillotined, was one of those who had daughter of revolution, was an important memorial to the infant grandson of voted for the death penalty for his influvence on Lord Edward's involkement ddward and Pamela ~itzgerald:it is a cousin, King Louis XVI.

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