Transnational Perspectives on Modern Irish History by Niall Whelehan

Author:Niall Whelehan [Whelehan, Niall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Ireland, Modern, General
ISBN: 9781317963219
Google: kGmvBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-03T01:24:36+00:00

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A ‘gentleman of varied attainments’, James Emerson Tennent was born James Emerson in 1804.15 The son of a Belfast merchant, he was, by birth— and, later, by inclination—an Episcopalian, but was nevertheless shaped by Presbyterian Belfast. Most notably, he received an early education at the Belfast Academy, run by the Rev. Dr William Bruce, minister of the prominent First Belfast Presbyterian church, and socialised with a close-knit group of Presbyterian youths, united by shared interests in romantic literature and political reform.16 From the Belfast Academy, Emerson proceeded, in 1821, to Trinity College Dublin. There, he signally failed to distinguish himself. Indeed, while Trinity was later to bestow an honorary doctorate upon him, he did not succeed in the first instance in taking a degree: initially neglecting his studies in favour of what he later termed ‘light reading’, he abandoned them entirely in 1824 and travelled to the Mediterranean with another young Belfast man, Robert James Tennent, in order to join the Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire.17 With the benefit of age, Emerson came to view his Greek expedition as ‘a fit of absurd folly’, but at the time he viewed it rather more seriously, arming himself, before his departure from Britain, with endorsements and letters of introduction from the London Greek Committee, and securing a contract to supply the Times with letters reporting on the course of the war.18 Notwithstanding these preparations, the expedition proved something of a disaster. The enthusiasm with which he had set out to ‘strike a blow for independence’ waned when he discovered that the Greek cause was being prosecuted by self-interested capitanis who cared little for the cause of liberty, and by the autumn of 1825 he had returned, chastened and disillusioned, to Britain.19

For the next several years, Emerson led a peripatetic existence. Initially focusing his attention on literature, he began writing and publishing with all the energy of a young man on the make, producing fiction (both short stories and a novel), poetry, travel writing and a major, two-volume History of Modern Greece (1830), before turning to law and shuttling between London and Dublin in order to keep the terms necessary to qualify for both the English and Irish bars.20 At the same time, he also pursued a flirtation with Letitia Tennent, daughter of the wealthy Belfast banker and founding member of the United Irishmen William Tennent, and cousin of his friend Robert James Tennent.21 Despite William Tennent’s reservations, the pair married in 1831, and it was as a result of this marriage that James Emerson became James Emerson Tennent, adding the additional name to his own after the death of his father-in-law in July 1832.22 At around the same time, Emerson Tennent received his call to the bar, but it was in politics, not law, that his future was to lie. Following the passage of the Reform Act, Belfast’s parliamentary franchise was extended and, in December 1832, in the first post-reform election, Emerson Tennent was returned, following a heated and controversial contest, as one of Belfast’s two members of parliament.

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