Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland

by Meda Ryan

  On 9 January 1922 the Dáil reassembled. Amid scenes of chaos, de Valera resigned as president of the Dáil.

  After a weary day Mick wrote ‘in awful haste’ to Kitty: ‘I’m absolutely fagged out and worn out and everything ... If you knew how the other side is “killing” me – God help me. We had to beat them again today’.3

  Next day, he wrote to Kitty he was ‘running back to the University for more talk – talk – talk. How I wish I could see you for a few minutes and if you only realised how I have missed hearing from you ... please do write. You can scarcely realise how I wish for you ... Your very own all right now!’4

  On the following day de Valera and his supporters left the Dáil in protest, Arthur Griffith was then elected president of Dáil Éireann (Second Dáil). He appointed his cabinet, among them Michael Collins as minister of finance.

  Later that night Mick reflected: ‘The whole business was awful and I feel exactly like you about it,’ responding to Kitty’s ‘wish it was over’ sigh. He knew she would see it in the papers. Right now ‘I am wishing to God I could be with you and had left it all. The tactics of the opposition were not very creditable at times ... ’5

  Only pro-Treaty deputies attended a meeting on 14 January 1922 to formally ratify the Treaty and to select a Provisional Government to run until 6 December 1922, unless the people should reject it at the polls. Michael Collins was elected chairman; Griffith had no post in this Provisional Government.

  (At this time there were – in coexistence – Dáil Éireann with Griffith as president with a cabinet, and the Provisional Government with Collins as chairman. Some ministers held posts both in the Dáil cabinet and in the Provisional Government.)

  One of the proudest moments for Mick Collins was on the morning of 16 January 1922, when he took over Dublin Castle from the British, the seat of British administration and its military headquarters in Ireland for over seven centuries. Mick had been down in Granard with Kitty for the weekend and due to a train strike he was twenty minutes late for the historic ceremony. As he awaited the start of a Provisional Government meeting, he penned a few lines to Kitty wanting to share the moment with her:

  I am as happy a man as there is in Ireland today ... Have just taken over Dublin Castle ... Otherwise I see all sorts of difficulties ahead, but never mind ... There is nobody like you, I find, and I wish I’d been nicer to you.6

  With no other social outlet, and few whom he could trust, he began to rely on Kitty. He took full responsibility for any misunderstanding there had been between them –’ ’Twas my fault,’ he wrote.

  He disliked getting the better of his friend Harry Boland in love – politics was another matter. He told Kitty that he ‘just said to him [Harry] that he had little chance in that quarter now’.7Harry accepted it with good grace and wrote to Kitty: ‘I want to congratulate you. M [Mick] told me of your engagement, and I wish you long life and happiness. – Ever yours, H. Boland’.8

  So the love triangle was now sorted out.

  Mick felt that at present there was much to be done for the country and he was in a hurry. He set up temporary headquarters of the Provisional Government in City Hall, then moved to a building in Merrion Street beside where Griffith had established Dáil Éireann headquarters. Collins was an important link between the two governments, which functioned in parallel. (Cosgrave, Duggan and Kevin O’Higgins were members of both ministries.)

  The division in the cabinet was repeated in the Army Council. At the February Cumann na mBan Convention, Mary MacSwiney spoke against the Treaty. She said the ‘women were the backbone of the nation,’ and she urged her peers to reaffirm their allegiance to the Republic. Jennie Wyse-Power, however, agreed with Michael Collins that ‘it seemed easier to get the Republic from a government working in Ireland by Irishmen than from an Ireland under British rule’.9Cumann na mBan rejected the Treaty, so a woman’s organisation in support of the Treaty took the name of Cumann na Saoirse (Society of Freedom).

  Collins, in a difficult situation as president of the militant IRB and its most dominant figure, sought to maintain unity in the hope that the constitution which was in preparation would help to satisfy the more extreme elements.

  Problems were mounting, with the IRA splintered and evacuated army barracks throughout the country being taken over, in some places, by pro-Treaty and in others by anti-Treaty military personnel. At first there was sporadic unrest, intimidation and coercion but gradually and with increasing militancy the floodgates opened.

  The country had begun to split and Mick Collins hated this. Mick knew that men like Brugha and Stack were motivated partly by old jealousy and resentment but now in a surprise move, Rory O’Connor, a friend of Mick’s and member of GHQ, began to organise opposition to the Treaty.

  Mick could see conflict looming when the IRA demanded that a convention should be held. He was torn between political demands and military claims. On 20 January he had to go to London to meet Sir James Craig, the northern prime minister. Already trouble had flared up in the north – talk of a Boundary Commission and the release of internees had caused Unionists to react violently. They attacked Catholic areas in Belfast; thirty people were killed in one night, and a stream of refugees was driven across the border.

  Kitty came to ‘Dunleary’ (Mick’s spelling) on 20 January to see him off on the mailboat. As he journeyed on the rough sea to his destination he wrote her a few lines on how ‘very vividly’ she was in his thoughts – ‘May it be always like this and any time we leave each other ... I’ll say a small prayer for you’. He had only two hours’ sleep in the Jermyn Court Hotel, then at 8.30 he went to the Laverys’ to speak to Sir John about the Sir Hugh Lane pictures. (Lady Gregory had written to Collins on 14 January 1922 about this collection coming to Ireland rather than staying in England – ‘Sir John Lavery says you are the man whose request will carry most weight with the London Government,’ she wrote.) Despite his heavy schedule and his many problems he broached the subject with advisers of the British government. He got a mixed reaction, but he promised Lady Gregory that he would pursue the matter.10

  There was a four-hour meeting of the Irish group with Craig concerning the boycott of Belfast goods. They reached ‘an agreement’ of which Mick told Kitty in his few brief lines on 21 January, with his ‘fondest love’.11Mick’s dislike for politicians comes through in a letter to his friend John O’Kane that night: ‘They will have me for what I am not. The more the rigmarole of my life continues to encompass politics the more uneasy I feel. I am a soldier ... ’12

  That night Hazel and John Lavery entertained both the British group and the Irish delegation which included Collins, Duggan and Kevin O’Higgins. Lady Juliet Duff who was there commented that: ‘three nicer men she’d never met,’ and found Collins ‘quite irresistible ... with a tremendous twinkle and sudden quick impulsive gestures’.13

  Collins was back in Dublin on 22 January and on 23 January he had a note delivered to Kitty, who was in town. He asked if he could meet her at 2 o’clock: ‘Will you come to the Dolphin [Hotel] and I’ll wait for you at the door, or will you say any better place where I can pick you up and bring you there?’

  A week later he again met Craig in Dublin. Feelings ran high when Craig made it clear that the north-east would not be part of the ‘new state’. Furthermore, a threat that some Volunteers who had been captured in the north could be hanged had Collins mentioning the subject of reprisals. He ignored the activities of MacEoin, Aiken and others who had carried out a series of raids in the north in retaliation for the killings of Catholics which had become a nightly occurrence in the north.

  According to the Craig-Collins agreement the Dáil cabinet on 24 January agreed to lift the boycott on Belfast goods. Immediately trade was resumed and some Catholic workers who had been dismissed from the shipyards were reinstated. However, conflict continued. A further meeting between the two men broke up in February. Up to March, Collins and Craig met a few times, but promises had little effect and viole
nce in the north-east against nationalists continued unabated. Craig did not help the situation when he publicly reinforced the north’s separate identity under the Government of Ireland Act.

  As well as the northern problem, Mick was trying to administer law and order in the rest of the country, and handling the transition from the British administration. More than anything he was personally distressed by the thought of the disloyalty of former comrades.

  A friend wrote from America and appealed to him not to break with de Valera and Harry Boland. Collins in his reply regretted that both men were ‘on the other side’ because, he wrote: ‘We are going forward ... surely no one will claim that we can possibly be worse off ...’ Speaking of Harry Boland he said: ‘... there is no need for me to tell you what I have thought of him in the past, and I need only to say that my feelings towards both the President and himself are still as cordial as they were’.14

  The taking over of army barracks countrywide continued, in some cases with violence between local IRA pro- and anti-Treaty factions. In Dublin pro-Treaty authorities ensured that evacuated barracks would remain loyal to whatever government would be elected, and Beggars Bush Barracks became headquarters of what was to become the uniformed National Army.

  By 29 January 1922, Collins expressed his disappointment to Kitty at the anti-Treaty stance of Sinn Féin clubs: ‘Tralee after the Auxies had gone, Galway the same. God help us from them. They’re beauties.’15

  He retained the loyalty of the Squad, as well as the majority of GHQ; but he bitterly regretted that in his own county of Cork, friends and colleagues such as Liam Deasy, Tom Barry, Liam Lynch, Seán Hyde, and his great friend Tom Hales opposed his views. Cathal Brugha and Liam Mellows, in keeping with their strong convictions, had begun to tour Ireland to meet Volunteer commands where they pledged them ‘to maintain the existing Republic’. They were sowing the seeds of revolt among impressionable young men.

  Mick wrote to Kitty: ‘I am really and truly having an awful time and am rapidly becoming quite desperate. Oh Lord, it’s honestly frightful’.16

  Notes

  1 Michael to Kitty, 3/1/1922.

  2 Ibid., 6/1/1922.

  3 Ibid., 9/1/1922.

  4 Ibid., 10/1/1922.

  5 Ibid., 11/1/1922.

  6 Ibid., 16/1/1922.

  7 Ibid., 6/1/1922.

  8 Harry Boland to Kitty, 10/1/1922.

  9 Irish Independent, 6/2/1922.

  10 Brother Allen Papers, O’Connell Schools.

  11 Michael to Kitty, 21/1/1922.

  12 Collins to O’Kane, 21/1/1922.

  13 Juliet Duff to Leonie Leslie q. Sinéad McCoole, op. cit., p. 85. (Date in footnote is given as 23 January although Collins was back in Dublin on 23 January)

  14 Collins Papers, NLI.

  15 Michael to Kitty, 29/1/1922.

  16 Ibid., 27/1/1922.

  Love, Turmoil, Crowded Schedule

  Since their official engagement at Christmas 1921, Mick had grown in his love for Kitty. He had given her an engagement ring, which she would sometimes call ‘a representative’, at other times ‘a reminder’ of him. Though circumstances prevented them from being together as often as they would have liked, they communicated their deep affection for one another in their letters. Mick’s letters, though more discreet and subdued than Kitty’s, nevertheless reveal his tender affection for her, his concern for her well-being and his anticipation of her becoming his wife.

  He seldom omitted to tell her how much he looked forward to her letters, as she did to his, and he let her know that his family approved of her. ‘Mary is in love with you,’ he wrote of his sister.

  Constantly they were in each other’s prayers. ‘Was at a Requiem Mass for the Holy Father today. Said a full rosary for you alone,’ he wrote on 31 January 1922.

  ‘Badgered all day since my return [from Granard] and am off to a meeting now,’ Mick wrote to Kitty on 3 February.

  Despite the split on the Treaty Collins was careful to allow continued support money for Sinéad de Valera and her family. On 3 February she returned to him a cheque for £50 because, she wrote, ‘Éamon is no longer President since last month’. She signed the letter, ‘Your friend always’.

  The next day the northern problem again hit him; he had a sudden call to London. In a note to Kitty he wrote, ‘The Craig business is serious, and if we don’t find some way of dealing with it, all the bravos [Dublinites] will get a great chance of distinguishing themselves once more ... I wish you were coming to London with me tonight ... Must do a million things by 7 o’clock,’ he wrote ‘in haste’.

  Next morning, an early breakfast in foggy London, ‘then Mass, then conferences for the whole day’.1These meetings accomplished little. ‘Things do not appear to be very promising,’ he told Kitty, but added, ‘perhaps it’s a question of being ‘the darkest hour before the dawn ... With fondest love.’2

  Though there was some agreement, and Collins and the group returned to Ireland that night, the situation on the ground in the north-east deteriorated.

  On 9 February Mick told Kitty he’d most likely get down on Saturday. ‘Honestly, Kit, you don’t know the rush. It’s awful. It was a good job you did not ask me if I enjoyed my time in London. It was heartbreaking simply. Fighting the English there. Fighting our own people here. It’s the very frozen limit.’

  On 10 February 1922, he had planned to visit her at the weekend. He had withdrawn sixty pounds to buy her a gold watch. Beforehand he wrote:

  ... – please dear dear Kit. When I meet you – and this much I’ll ask also – you’ll have to give me a couple of hours in the morning for work. Otherwise you’ll have all my time ... Several people clamouring for me. Do forgive this scraggy note. You don’t know how anxious I am to see you. I have a kind of feeling that I must go away with you – strain telling on me also. May God be with you.

  Kitty’s ‘fairy-like’ beauty was commented on by an ex-serviceman, Major Harris, who saw her at the hunt dance and at private dances in Westmeath; afterwards he wrote that ‘one of the prettiest pictures in the Express has been that of Miss Kitty Kiernan, the intended bride of the Financial Minister of the Irish Free State ... whose presence would grace the life of any man however highly placed, and whose inborn native beauty is portrayed in every outline of her life.’3

  But for Mick there was more to a woman than beauty. Being an avid reader himself, he introduced Kitty to Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s The Rubaiyat – he wanted it to be a topic of conversation at their next meeting.4

  By mid-February they were discussing a house in Greystones which he had set his sights on. He asked her to be patient and understanding of him, he doesn’t mind being ‘lectured to ... do not think too badly of me for all my headstrong ways and my bad temper, and my impatience at being given good advice’.5He had spent a day sick in bed. In her ‘good advice’ Kitty tells him to take life a little easier: ‘I don’t consider that you will really do Ireland or the people of Ireland any good by killing yourself working ... You are the one that, by living for Ireland, helps her’.6

  Just as he got her letter he was ‘rushing off to a meeting in the Mansion House’ but as it could last longer than anticipated, he wrote, ‘I am not chancing leaving writing you until afterwards’.7

  Kitty had hesitated during the weekend when Mick had ‘suggested’ a June wedding, so she said, ‘I went to chapel to-night to pray for you, and during that time thought that making the little sacrifices are no use if I couldn’t make the big one, and it’s June D.V. Now I don’t mean it’s really a sacrifice in that sense, but just putting it off until I’d be ready ... And so now I have proposed to you! Are you satisfied?’ She agreed she could take care of him and he would be all the better for it if they were married.8

  Collins agreed with de Valera to postpone elections for three months. Meanwhile the country became increasingly anarchic, although bloodshed was for the time being avoided.

  By mid-March Kitty had become of interest
to photo-journalists. They descended on Granard, and pictures of her in her ‘black evening dress’ were published widely. In the Sketch of 8 March, there are three photographs of ‘M. Collins’ fiancée, Miss Kitty Kiernan’ with Sir John Lavery’s portrait of Collins on the opposite page. Kitty resented some of the write-ups about herself and asked Michael ‘to compose a little piece. I will take an action against them if they continue to publish the rot they [The Irish Record] are writing,’ Kitty had written on 14 February. She resented the linking of herself and Lady Lavery in Michael’s affections.9

  There were times when Mick expressed his affection for Kitty very strongly – ‘I want to see you and that’s that. I do want to see you – Kitty Kiernan. I do badly. Just away from Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis for an hour’s interval’. His love for her had to be slotted in between the multitude of political and military demands on him. ‘Isn’t it nice to think of you in every free moment – oh! and in moments that are not free too? God be with you, my dear, dear Kitty.’10

  She had written to him about a problem she had had in finding one of her silk stockings. He responded: ‘I’d love to have seen you wandering around looking for a stocking – a single silk stocking’. In that letter of 10 March he told her, ‘I said a whole rosary for you last night’.11

  While Mick went about his gruelling task of countrywide pro-Treaty campaigning, liaising with various groups and endless meetings, Kitty was often off to a dance: ‘going to dance in the Gresham 17th [March]’. She had a dancing partner to take her ‘all to myself’ she wrote. ‘I suppose there will be talk of my dancing with him a lot but, when you don’t object, I hope they talk about something new for a change. I may see Harry too, but trust me.’