by Meda Ryan
15 Ibid., 20/9/1921.
16 Ibid.
17 Piaras Béaslaí, op. cit., p. 275, also T. Ryle Dwyer, Michael Collins and the Treaty, p. 46.
18 Piaras Béaslaí, op. cit., p. 275.
19 Michael to Kitty, 29/9/1921.
20 Frank Pakenham, Peace by Ordeal, pp. 87, 88.
21 Ibid.
22 de Valera to McGarrity, 27/12/1921, J. McGarrity papers, MS 17,440, NLI.
23 Florence O’Donoghue, No Other Law, p. 192; Meda Ryan, Liam Lynch: the Real Chief, p. 88.
Love Triangle
De Valera now instructed Harry Boland to go to America, and like a good soldier he obeyed. He had asked Kitty to follow him and marry him there. Down in Cork on 1 October, preparing for his trip across the Atlantic, he was feeling ‘just lonely and sad as the day itself, and God knows this is a real Cork day, raining soft and persistent!’ he wrote to Kitty.
‘I’m wondering if you are ever a wee bit lonely for me; and are you longing as I am for the day when we shall meet again? R.S.V.P.’ Harry didn’t know if he was making a mistake in leaving Kitty behind. He asked her to send a cable to the liner The Celtic just saying Yes ‘and if you are still in doubt, then for God’s sake try to make up your mind, and agree to come with me,’ he pleaded.1
Mick and he had spent the previous night chatting over a few drinks. Both were going away. They hoped the conference would bring peace, although they both feared war.
Mick saw Harry to his home at 2 am on the night prior to Harry’s departure for New York. ‘And as I had to catch the 7.35 am I bade him goodbye,’ Harry wrote to Kitty, ‘only to find him at Kingsbridge as fresh as a daisy to see me off. I need not say to you how much I love him, and I know he has a warm spot in his heart for me, and I feel sure no matter what manner our triangle may work out, he and I shall be always friends.’
‘All the time I shall carry you with me in my heart,’ he told her, and pleaded for a photo, ‘one that I can carry in my match or cigarette case. Have a good chat with Father Shanley, and do come back with him and marry me, after which we shall go to California for our honeymoon ... I bid you a fond farewell and, as I can not kiss you with my lips, I do so a million times with the lips of my heart.’ And he ended with, ‘Your devoted lover, Harry.’2
Next day he sent her a farewell note from Cobh before departure. He wished her ‘a very happy and pleasant time in Dublin next week’. Though knowing she would be meeting Mick, Harry begged her: ‘Write to me often and I shall be happy ... May God guard you and direct you. Say a wee prayer now and then for your wandering lover – Love without end. Harry’.3
As he set sail on 3 October, he sent her a ‘Goodbye, love’ telegram, then another as he passed Kerry and one from New York announcing that he had ‘arrived safe and well’ on 11 October.
Harry’s mother wrote to Kitty:
As Harry tells me you are engaged to be married to him, allow me to congratulate you ... a better son never lived than Harry ... you know the old saying ‘a good son makes a good husband’ ... I hope to meet you next time you are in town.4
Harry wrote to Kitty every day while crossing the Atlantic and on 14 October he asked her not to tell his colleagues of his ‘great hope’ that they would be married in America. Though they were unofficially engaged, Harry was still uncertain of her love because of her fondness for Mick.
Kitty was staying in Dublin with her sisters. Mick sent her a note asking her to come with him to the Shelbourne Park fête – a prisoners’ fundraising event. ‘I want no one else but just yourself. If you can come I’ll be at the Gresham at 8. If you can’t come, I shall understand.’5
Kitty went with him to the fête and afterwards she dropped him a note which ‘was a delight’ to him. ‘Am working almost asleep,’ he wrote on the night before his departure for London. ‘Can’t write any more. Am thinking of you, and in a nice nice way. Eyes are closed, or almost.’6
The next day he wrote a seven-page letter on Gresham Hotel notepaper and another page from his notebook to ‘My dear dear Kit’. It was to be his ‘last act’ before going to London for the negotiations. ‘Goodness knows I have a heavy heart this moment, but there is work to be done and I must not complain. The memory of the last few meetings – whatever comes – will be a pleasure and comfort to me ... I feel today that arrangements of ours may be made more binding – do you think so?’ He wondered if she had thought over the preliminary proposal which he had made.
He was glad she liked the present of a writing set which he gave her. They had made a pact that they would write to each other every few days and with a writing set she had no excuse: ‘If I write you to come to London you will, won’t you? ... One thing ... finally ... those few charming hours have placed on me while in London a restraint which I probably would not otherwise have felt. That is a good thing for me, and may be a good thing for our mission’.7He had hopes now of winning her.
That Sunday night, 9 October, he crossed to London, and on the Monday morning newspaper there was a story that Collins himself boasted that he got to London unnoticed. He wrote to Kitty, ‘I never said such a thing, Newspapermen are inventions of the devil’.8He got there unnoticed because, he said, ‘I adopted the same principle that enabled me to conceal my whereabouts so long in Ireland. I always watch the other fellow instead of letting him watch me. I make a point of keeping the other fellow on the run, instead of being on the run myself. That is the secret of success which I have learned during the past year or two’.9He used an assumed name and with a friend slipped unnoticed into a taxicab.
The Irish delegation, headed by Arthur Griffith, took two houses – at 22 Hans Place and at 15 Cadogan Gardens, where Mick stayed. The first meeting took place on 11 October. That morning he scribbled a note to Kitty: ‘Of all the times in God’s world, do you know when I’m writing this? Almost 4 o’clock in the morning.’10
When he got no response from Kitty he sent her a telegram. ‘Someone here very disappointed at not hearing ... ’11
Kitty had to untangle the web which she had woven. For the moment she continued to keep the two lovers on a string. She cabled a message to Harry in New York. Harry ‘was delighted’ with the cable, and said, ‘I am eagerly looking forward to next Monday’s mail to hear from you and praying that you will have written to say you are coming!’
He tried to impress on her the importance she had for him. ‘We [friends] were out tonight sightseeing and I was thinking how nice ’twould be if you were here. Life would be so pleasant in this wonderful land. So come along at once like an angel and we will be for ever happy.’12This letter from Harry was written on the same day that Mick and his comrades were attending the first meeting of the conference at 10 Downing Street.
Mick also wrote to Kitty and told her he lit ‘a very big’ candle for her after Mass. He had done the same the previous day. This morning he wrote: ‘I did a journey of five miles to my sister’s place for a letter from you – no letter. Honestly, I felt it terribly, but I do not believe that you have failed to write, and won’t believe it until I know.’
Kitty’s sister Helen and Paul McGovern were on their honeymoon, and Mick met them with other friends for dinner and a show afterwards. ‘I’d have given anything to have had you there. Alas!’ He said he even ‘kind of told Helen’ about his plans – that Kitty and he should have a life together. ‘I fancy they’d all be very pleased – What do you think?’ Briefly his thoughts turned to the negotiations. ‘Tough work before me.’13
A few days later Harry sent Kitty the speech he was to deliver in New York, ‘so that you may read it,’ he wrote. He wanted her to feel as if she were in the audience. Soon he would travel to Washington and then Chicago to deliver the speech. He wished she were there but expected he would not have too long to wait.
Mick also continued to write to Kitty. On 13 October he apologised for getting ‘into a state of great concern’ when he hadn’t received her letters. ‘I want you to know that you are in my mind, and I think of y
ou every moment I am free.’ He asked her to bear with his impatience. ‘You will often be called on to stand a lot from me. But then straightforwardness and understanding’ are needed.
He did not resent her ‘sermon ... I have often felt that it required someone like you to make me appreciate the thing properly ... Always write as you feel, to me at any rate. I’ll do the same to you’. In a footnote he wrote, ‘We must, I think, make that arrangement more binding, but just as you desire. I feel somehow that it will work out and work out well’.14
Across the Atlantic in New York, Harry had similar thoughts. He wrote that his principal base would be with the O’Mara family who had gone to the US to assist de Valera in 1920. ‘Of course I will be lonely until I know you are coming,’ Harry wrote, ‘and I will not give you an hour’s rest until you have landed here ... with fond love to you, sweetheart ... Your devoted lover, Harry.’15
That same morning Mick wrote to Kitty from London. He had just returned from Mass where he had lit a candle for Kitty. He takes her to task for her little ‘rebuke about someone else ... You are the one – never fear. How I wish I could see you now and have one of those lovely serious talks with you. They are the best ones, aren’t they?’ He told her that the previous day’s conference was ‘the hardest day yet from early morning until eight almost.’16
That night, after his long day’s work of negotiation, he took a short walk and sat down to reply to her ‘very lovable’ letters which he got at lunch time. He said he had read them ‘many times since’.
‘I do think I am quite certain of the relationship and I just loved the way you stated the case. So like you – I’m always thinking now that we shall get on better and better – what do you think?’ He left the letter unfinished. Next day he resumed it ‘at 4.15 in the afternoon after a fearful hard slogging day’. He was feeling tired ‘but happy also’ as he had caught up with his arrears of work. He assured Kitty he was wearing the tie which she sent him and said she could see it in the photo he was enclosing. He responded to her query about travelling to London – he would love to have her but warned her that she ‘wouldn’t get much attention’ because of his busy schedule.17
Harry sent ‘a hurried note’ from New York and told of the ‘wonderful welcome’ he got at Madison Square. But life wasn’t full without Kitty. He was due to leave for Washington but, he told Kitty, he had an intense longing for her. He was ‘thinking of you all the time and wishing you were with me. Hurry along and enjoy the great Indian Summer in this wonderful land. I prayed on your beads at Mass this morning for you, and I know you said a wee prayer for me. Write often ... Your devoted lover, Harry.’18
Mick wrote a long letter to Kitty on 16 October: ‘Was at two Masses today! One in my usual Oratory 8 o’c. The other an official one at Maiden Lane. Even at the official one I managed to come back and light a candle for you. Second one therefore, today.’
Mick was glad that he had found favour with Paul and her sister, Helen. ‘Every test passed is another milestone on the way to life-long happiness,’ he wrote.19
Harry, from New York, stressed to Kitty: ‘I will not go to California until you come, and as there is a pressing demand for me out there I put it up to you as a national question to come at once ... May God bless and guard you is the prayer of – your fond lover, Harry’.20
In London Mick wasn’t enamoured of the publicity he was getting – ‘all the praise and flattery that has been showered on me since I came here ... You will know I hope that they [journalists] leave me untouched just as their dispraise and their blame did. All the same to me’.21
Next day he again wrote to Kitty: ‘Just a line – only a line to wish you well and to let you know I am thinking of you Yesterday’s photograph has been published, I am told – Nervous Michael Collins’.22
Meanwhile Harry was writing to Kitty that he was ‘back on the job in great shape ... I have not dared to tell them [Seán Nunan and the boys] of my great hope, and I will spring your coming as a great surprise’.23
Because of Mick’s high profile Kitty wonders how life in London is for him – ‘Meet any nice girls that you liked? Did you kiss anybody since? I didn’t – didn’t get the chance (You know I’m only joking!) I too wish I could see you, to have one of those great little chats. They certainly are great’.
She tells him: ‘I’m a moody creature sometimes, but I don’t think you are ... You are just yourself when with me. I wonder if I’m always myself with you. Of course I do want to be’. She couldn’t be herself fully while she was stringing Harry along as well, but this she kept a secret from Mick. She told Mick she prayed for him at Mass and reminded him that the lighted candle was her idea.24Indeed, she was also praying for Harry, and praying for herself, about her decision.
Mick was in a jumpy mood in his next letter to Kitty. He said he had been ‘very cross’ when writing the previous letter. He tried ‘hard’ to forget her, ‘but it wouldn’t work out’. The reason he wanted to forget her was due to the ‘severe letter’ which she had written him; now he hoped she wouldn’t write ‘any more severe letters’. He agreed that without her he would never have thought of the candles, ‘I know that you have been of immense help to me’. Nor did he intentionally mean his letters to ‘fall short ... But life has to take in the serious things as well as the light things, and even though we may like sunshine always, it is not practical nor indeed – and remember this – is it desirable? And that’s that!’ he concluded.25
He was shouldering the burden of difficult negotiations and the problems of trying to ensure Kitty’s affections. The previous night he ‘escaped’ from everybody and went for a drive alone. ‘Rather funny – the great M. C. in lonely splendour. I am lonely actually and I suppose you won’t believe that, and that’s that.’26Kitty’s next letter did not bring him joy. He felt she was expecting too much of their relationship and certainly had a sense that she was creating difficulties not in order to make things work but to give herself an escape route:
Don’t be putting up too severe tests. Don’t attempt to walk before we have learned to crawl. That is a fatal mistake ... Do you know how your letter strikes me ... that you are trying to get out of it. I want it to work out and I promise to do my part of it. If it’s not possible, then God help us, but let us have a fair chance.27
If he was in jail and couldn’t write, he told her, he wouldn’t forget her, so why should he forget her now – not because he was far away! ‘If you only knew the difficulty I have in finding time, you’d know how unfair you were to talk of long letters. (Since I commenced this, I have had to deal with several business letters, a few callers and a few phone calls.)’ Though he felt she was angry with him, yet:
I would not change a word in your letter for I don’t like gramophone effects. I like people to say what they themselves think and mean ... If it [the relationship] can’t last through misfortune and trouble and difficulty and unpleasantness and age then it’s no use. In riches and beauty and pleasure it is so easy to be quite all right. That is no test though.28
The next day he gave her a flavour of his busy schedule:
Have been working all the morning and now I’m rushing for the Conference. Am keeping them late as usual, they say, and you say I’m neglectful and forgetful if I don’t write long letters and so I’m getting into trouble everywhere and that’s always my fate.29
By this time Kitty appeared to have decided which man she wanted. Mick – Mícheál as he now liked to call himself – asked Kitty some pointed questions, and she said she wasn’t displeased:
I know how you feel about the Harry business ... It is wise what you say about H. etc. I haven’t written yet [to Harry]. I don’t know exactly what to say. I wish you were here, it would be so much easier to discuss it ... I told H. I didn’t love him, and he was prepared to risk it with the idea that I might grow to love him, and I think I told you all the other little things before.
Kitty in this letter said she was being frank with Mick that it was her fa
ult and he shouldn’t blame himself in ‘the slightest’. ‘The agreement that we be absolutely frank is good and should keep all misunderstanding away.’30
In a further letter Kitty again mentions Harry. She wants the air cleared and says that the relationship between two people has to be right, love should be built on ‘a splendid foundation’. ‘I may be wrong,’ she told Mick, ‘but I think H. is capable of deeper affection (for me) than most men, but he also knows that I don’t love him ... This is a very personal letter, and I hope you will forgive me and understand ... I always wanted to make you feel happy, otherwise I would have kept away from you, knowing the danger.’31
We have no access to any further letters between Harry and Kitty, nor is there further mention of Harry in any of the letters between Mick and Kitty at this juncture, but she tells Mick that her feelings for him were much stronger than what she felt for Harry. ‘Yes, what you say is right, to be straight and understanding. I feel I always want to be straight with you.’
We do not know how Kitty dealt with Harry but it is obvious that she had decided the triangle was ended. By this stage Kitty is full of apologies to Mick; she says he misread her last letter:
You are everything to me, and surely you know it. Then why should I want to hurt you? ... I am sorry. Please forget it and remember that I am always thinking of you. You are never out of my heart ... It worries me and it is always worrying that you have so much to do. Is there no remedy?32
With his personal life as with his military and political life he insisted on clarity: ‘Please,’ he wrote to Kitty, ‘always say to me what you think, not what I’d like you to think. That’s the only way to get at a proper understanding, and if I don’t like what you say, then it’s my look-out’.33
