In his interesting biography of Eamon de Valera*, Diarmaid Ferriter reports that in December 2000 gardaí seized 24 love letters from de Valera to his young wife Sinéad, which were being advertised for auction by Mealy’s of Castlecomer. It was believed that the letters were stolen in the mid 1970s from the de Valera family home. The owners, who had bought them in England some years previously in an effort to ensure their return to Ireland, were unaware that they had been stolen.

De Valera wrote the letters between 1911 and 1920 from Mountjoy jail, Lincoln jail, from the US during his mission there from 1919-20, and five letters were written from Tawin island, off the east coast of Galway when he was director of the Gaelic League summer school during the summers 1911- 1913.

The letters were returned to the de Valera family, and as far as I remember, were considered too private to be published in full. But certain rather intimate passages did leak out. In them Dev, the young husband, often appears vulnerable and regretful about the impact of his absences. They include references to his acute physical longing for his wife; the desire to press her close to his body and heart; and the frustration caused by their separation.

The publicity surrounding the discovery of these letters caused quite a stir because they seemed to offer a previously unopened window into the private de Valera, who for many was the ‘epitome of joyless rectitude’. The journalist Cian Ó hEigeartaigh rather unfairly but memorably remarked: “Just when we were getting used to the idea that our parents had sex and enjoyed it, a further imaginative effort is called for.”

Lloyd George’s budget

But it’s not just idle curiosity that make these letters so interesting. It is intriguing to see the contrast between the private man and the public figure. In these early informative years we only get glimpses of this tall mathematics scholar gradually moving towards his passion for Ireland, and all things Irish, even prepared to lay down his life for his country. Yet, his initial study of the Irish language had to be coloured to some extent by the fact that among his teachers at the Gaelic League in Dublin, he was attracted to a young woman Sinéad Flanagan. She was about four years older than he, and a national school teacher. In the summer she and others went down to a Gaelic League collage at Tourmakeady ( Coláiste Chonnacht Thuar Mhic Éadaigh ), between the western shore of Lough Mask and the Partry mountains in County Mayo. In 1909, the year before they were married, Dev followed her down. Historians The Earl of Longford and TP O’Neill** tell us that one day Dev ‘Cycled from Tourmakeady to Spiddal, Co Galway, for the unveiling of a memorial plaque to Micheál Breathnach, the Irish teacher and writer. He was accompanied by Liam Ó Briain and Pádraig Ó Domhnalláin. They ran into a tremendous thunderstorm which drenched them to the skin. They called on an unofficial distiller in the district who gave them a drink of poteen and goat’s milk’ as an antidote to the chill which they were bound to catch. Later they returned to the house to take a bottle back to friends. At first the woman was reluctant to sell them the poteen. But she agreed at an inflated price. When Ó Domhnalláin protested, the woman blamed the recent Lloyd George’s budget for the price hike! No doubt the young men were amused.

Happy partnership

Dev and Sinéad’s marriage, which endured for almost 60 years, proved the happiest of partnerships. Longford and O’Neill say that ‘Through long years of trouble and struggle, the enduring patience and understanding of Mrs de Valera played an immense part in the life of her husband. She was a born teacher with a wonderful love for children and for her home. Her husband’s duties, in or out of office, were for him alone. She did not interfere. Her duties were to her family, and she did all in her power to free her husband from domestic anxieties. Although she had taken a leading part in Gaelic League activities before her marriage she always avoided the limelight. In her own unassuming way she played her part for Ireland far more effectively than those who were prominently before the public. The charm of her youth stayed with her through life, and was still captivating men who met her over fifty years after she married. The late President Kennedy’s gesture as he left Dublin Airport in 1963, when he had said farewell to all his Irish friends, was to give a special hug to Mrs de Valera. He showed that he too had come under her spell.’

Memories of Tawin

Dev and Sir Roger Casement were to meet for the first time during his second summer at Tawin. When Dev accepted his position as director of the Summer school in August 1911, he was concerned that his oral Irish was not good enough. But he need not have worried. That year he was accompanied by Sinéad and their infant son Vivion***. The following year he was on his own. Casement came out to see how the school was doing. We do not know what passed between these two men, both of whom would play a dramatic role in Ireland’s bid for freedom barely five years later. But Casement was obviously impressed. After leaving he sent Dev five pounds as a contribution towards prizes for a sports meeting which was to be held at the end of the course. In his letter he insisted ‘that all competitions be in Irish not English - the judgements in Irish - and so far as practicable the prizes of Irish make.’

After his execution at Pentonville prison on August 3 1916, Casement’s body was buried in quicklime. But in 1965 his remains was repatriated to Ireland. After an impressive State funeral, he was buried with full military honours in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. He had previously rested at Arbour Hill for five days, during which time an estimated half a million people filed past his coffin. Dev, still President of Ireland, the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, and in his mid-eighties, defied the advice of his doctors, and attended the ceremony at Glasnevin along with an estimated 30,000 people. I remember the photographs of Dev, wrapped in his dark cloak, standing over the grave, motionless, lost in thought. Memories must surely have brought him back to that August day when they met for the first time on Tawin Island, in Galway Bay, more than 50 years before.

NOTES

*In his Judging Dev (published by the Royal Irish Academy 2007 ) Diarmaid Ferriter set new standards in historical biography by including a profusion of actual documents, letters and many unseen photographs in an attractive layout, which allowed the reader to follow the author’s trail as he brought together the jigsaw pieces of Dev’s extraordinary life.

** Eamon de Valera, published by Gill and Macmillan, 1970.

*** Dev and Sinéad had seven children together: Vivion, Máirín, Eamonn, Brian, Ruairí, Emer, and Terry, the youngest born in 1922. Tragically Brian was killed in a horse-riding accident in 1936.