by Meda Ryan
Numerous meetings over the next few days proved very difficult for Collins and his colleagues in London. In ‘a hurried line’ to Kitty that night, Mick in desperation wrote: ‘Things are bad beyond words, and I am almost without hope of being able to do anything of permanent use. It’s really awful – to think of what I have to endure here owing to the way things are done by the opponents at home’.4
On 30 May when the draft constitution was discussed in London, the Irish delegation was told that if this form was persisted in, a break was inevitable as it was ‘a clear breach of the Treaty’. To bring the groups together in convivial surroundings Lady Lavery held a dinner party. The ‘evening passed pleasantly’ with ‘the two Churchills and their wives’ and the Irish delegation.5
Mick in a few lines to Kitty wrote, ‘The weather is awful here and everything is awful – I wish to God someone else was in the position and not I. But that’s that.’6
Life was becoming ever more difficult and he could see no solution; he felt as trapped as a rabbit in a snare. To add to his problems, newspaper journalists observed the moves of the Irish contingent and especially the arrival of the ‘notorious Michael Collins.’ He wrote to Kitty about it (29 May):
You ought to have seen some of the papers here yesterday – M. Collins in Downing St with his sweetheart. I can have all sorts of lovely libel actions.
The Laverys took me there in their car. Some of the correspondents recognised my friend but the story was too good! I must bring you back some of the papers to show you. Am writing this in the midst of a very worrying time. But I mustn’t make you worry. I wish you were here.7
Leon Ó Broin notes: ‘The Laverys had been photographed driving Collins to Downing Street. Some newspapers “played up” the picture of Collins with “his sweetheart”. The lady with Sir John was, however, Sir John’s wife Hazel’.8
Kitty, in a postscript to her letter of 30 May, wrote: ‘Don’t forget to keep papers about your sweetheart! It was extraordinary, wasn’t it? I’d like to see the papers. So don’t forget’.
Kitty knew of the value of Lady Lavery in Mick’s intelligence world. On 3 June, as well as sending her love, Kitty reminded him to bring the papers with him to Granard, ‘if you have them’.
His friend Lady Hazel Lavery would from now on be publicly linked romantically to him. She did nothing to dispel the rumour – in fact she encouraged it – and it was known within her intimate circle that she was attracted to Michael Collins. There has recently been some debate about the degree of romantic involvement between Collins and Lady Lavery and how much of it was the invention of Lady Lavery. A ‘fantasist’ was how Oliver Gogarty described her.9 Terence de Vere White in his biography of Kevin O’Higgins takes the same view of her.
After Collins’ death she showed Birkenhead letters that she said she had received from Michael, ‘and he noticed that the occasional romantic passages were interpolated in a woman’s handwriting valiantly, if unsuccessfully, disguised.’ It was, said Terence de Vere White, ‘all very odd, very unreal but not unpleasant, when one became accustomed to it and accepted the romantic convention’.10
Her husband accepted her lively imagination, and the ‘imaginary world’ which she built up to ‘dwell in’.11
There is no record of Collins or of Kitty Kiernan ever having expressed the opinion that Lady Hazel was a ‘fantasist’.
When Kitty was told the story of some ‘society woman’, she paid so little heed to it that she said she ‘forgot before this’ which was some weeks later, to tell him of ‘something’ she heard:
Please don’t misunderstand my motive. A girl friend told me that a man in Dublin told her that a girl friend of his heard from a society woman – don’t know if she’s a girl – in London that her only idea in life now is to get spending a night with Mick Collins. One night will do her, just for the notoriety of it.
No wonder the thought of it makes me almost ill. Isn’t England rotten? I hope Ireland won’t copy England in this respect, at least get so bad. Being a simple Irish girl, I could never get used to that kind of thing, I’m sure, tho’ it does seem funny, that London woman’s thought of ‘notoriety’ at your, mine and everybody else’s expense. I just thought I’d tell you what I heard. Now I’ll finish sweetheart.12
When rumours of Michael Collins’ link with Lady Hazel Lavery reached Ireland during these early days of June 1922, his opponents made full use of it. Cathal Brugha and Austin Stack found a new dimension had been added to Collins – with ‘his English Lady’. They asked Todd Andrews to get in touch with Liam Tobin and have the matter investigated. ‘It was well into June, when I was in a position to inform Brugha and Stack that definitely, it was only a rumour and that Collins’ real sweetheart was Kitty Kiernan,’ said Todd Andrews. ‘In fairness to Mick Collins he knew what he was doing, he enticed anyone – man or women – who was in a position of influence, or who would help him make inroads either into the Castle or the British Cabinet ... He would have been shot if there was any truth in the rumour that he was bedding Lady Lavery, and Brugha would not hesitate to have the order implemented.’13
In his autobiography, Sir John Lavery noted that Hazel had more male admirers than female when she first came to England, ‘but as the years passed and no scandal could be fastened on her in any way at any time, her women admirers ... increased’.14
Shortly after Collins’ death, on 22 August 1922, Hazel Lavery wrote to Emmet Dalton, but it was not until 15 November that Dalton responded, because her letter to him had been captured. It was retrieved when his brother Charlie Dalton, chief intelligence officer of the Treaty forces, found her letter ‘amongst the many other valuable documents’ on the captured Ernie O’Malley, who was an anti-Treatyite. ‘It is fairly clear,’ Dalton wrote to Hazel, ‘that some of the Irregulars captured it in a raid on the mails in Dublin ... they retained it and evidently placed some importance upon it as they marked it “valuable document”’.15One method of surveillance, also used by Collins, was to rifle mail. There is no doubt that Republicans continued to view Hazel’s letters as a source of internal information on government activities.
At this time – June 1922 – Hazel would continue to move in and out of Michael Collins’ life but he was unaware that his former close friend Harry Boland was spying on him through Hazel. An anonymous letter to Sir John Lavery claimed: ‘They have letters of hers [Hazel’s] which the late Harry Boland (RIP) secured ...’16
In recent years Michael Collins’ name has been linked romantically with another woman (in newspapers and more recent material like Mícheál Ó Cuinneagáin’s, On the Arm of Time). Speculation has arisen that Collins had an affair with Moya Llewelyn Davies, and it has been suggested that Collins was the father of her son Richard. I contacted her son Richard at his London office. Letters from him and a phone call confirmed that he was born (24 December 1912) before his mother met Collins. His ‘knowledge’ was that they were ‘great friends and colleagues’ and that she worked with ‘Michael Collins and other Irish people to gain independence from Britain for Ireland’. In a dictated letter typed by his secretary he ‘very much regrets’ that ‘he has no other information’ which would ‘help you as he would like to have been able to do so.’
Correspondence that I received from Robert Barton states: ‘I regret that I am unable to give you any assistance regarding the relationship to which you refer. I should guess that it had no authenticity.’ This gives the impression that he was unfamiliar with such speculation. Todd Andrews ‘never heard it mentioned’ and described it as ‘utter nonsense’. It ‘has to be pure speculation’. Andrews said that Moya was ‘invaluable’ to ‘all of us’ and did ‘so much work’ in the cause of ‘Irish freedom’.17
Notes
1 Reverend Frank Gibney, Passionist priest to a Cork nun, May 1922, q. Piaras Béaslaí, op cit., pp. V. II, 474.
2 Rex Taylor, op. cit., p. 184.
3 Michael to Kitty, 30/5/1922.
4 Ibid., 28/5/1922.
5 Terence de Vere White, p. 93.
6 Michael to Kitty, 31/5/1922.
7 Ibid.
8 Leon Ó Broin, In Great Haste, p. 181.
9 Ulick O’Connor, Sunday Independent, 15/9/1996.
10 Terence de Vere White, Kevin O’Higgins, p. 93.
11 Sir John Lavery, op. cit., p. 196.
12 Kitty to Michael, 15/7/1922.
13 Todd Andrews to author, 4/11/1983.
14 Sir John Lavery, op. cit., p. 197.
15 Emmet Dalton to Hazel Lavery, 15/11/1922, Lady Lavery Collection, q. McCoole, op. cit., p. 104.
16 Anonymous to Sir John Lavery, n. d. 1923, Lady Lavery Collection, q. McCoole, op. cit., p. 104.
17 Mícheál Ó Cuinneagáin, On the Arm of Time, p. 41 – for speculation. Correspondence from Richard Llewelyn-Davies, 10 Aug. 1974, 19 Sept. 1974 and telephone conversation, 26 Sept. 1974. Correspondence from Robert Barton, June 14 1974. Todd Andrews to author, 4/11/1983.
Women’s Allegiance Split by Civil War
At a conference on 1 June 1922, Lloyd George argued that the crown was ‘a mystic term’ which ‘simply stood for the power of the people’. Collins had another mystic term – the Republic – to contend with; he could see that failure to blot out the Crown element in the constitution had brought into sharp focus the possibility of civil war.1
Finally a deal was hammered out whereby the British parliament, while having reservations on the Pact, agreed that the Irish delegation should be free to pursue this course.
Collins arrived back in Ireland to an atmosphere of gloom. A meeting between Collins and de Valera in the Mansion House on 5 June resulted in a joint appeal for ‘Panel candidates in the interests of national unity’. Four days later both men appeared together on a Dublin platform.
Meanwhile, fighting along the border from Belleek to Pettigo persisted between the newly established Ulster Special Constabulary and the Republican Executive Army.
On 11 June Mick asked Kitty, who was in town, to come to see him. Next morning he was in his office early ‘to get a quiet minute or two ... You know I have a pretty bad week before me,’ he wrote.
The constitution still needed attention. He had acquired the help of Tim Healy, Crompton Llewelyn Davies (Moya’s husband), Hugh Kennedy, law officer, and James Douglas to draw up a blueprint with him, which he then submitted to the British cabinet. Mick had to go to London in a hurry on Monday evening 12 June. All next day he battled through a series of meetings in an attempt to broaden the scope of the constitution but failed to secure terms which he hoped would make it acceptable to the Republicans.
That Tuesday night, reeling in despair, he was on the boat back to Dublin. ‘I did not go to bed after coming off the boat this morning,’ he wrote to Kitty. Wednesday’s crowded meetings with cabinet colleagues left him only a few moments to send a wire to Kitty before heading to the railway station and boarding the train for Cork. At this Cork meeting Collins severely criticised Brugha’s behaviour for encouraging the army split. On the eve of election day (16 June) he again toured his Cork constituency. The constitution was published on 16 June, polling day. Throughout this month Collins was extremely busy. Dealing with constant trouble in the north-east, clashes between pro- and anti-Treaty forces, Provisional Government meetings and a huge amount of correspondence, plus having to meet so many people, consumed his summer days and nights.
The Provisional Government, with Collins as chairman, had decided that from 12 June there would be no further negotiations with their opponents, the Four Courts people, pending the formation of a new coalition, which would be further negotiated after the election.2
On 22 June Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, military adviser to the six county administration, was assassinated outside his London home. The results of the election were announced in the aftermath of this killing on 24 June 1922: 93 pro-Treaty seats and 35 anti-Treaty Sinn Féin seats. Although Michael Collins headed the poll in his own county of Cork, he had little to be jubilant about. The new Dáil was to assemble on 1 July, and Collins could only hope for some improvement in the situation.
The month of June had been so busy that most of Mick’s responses to Kitty’s letters were telegrams, sent from wherever he travelled. As he had no time to visit Granard, Kitty instead came to Greystones periodically. On 24 June he sent her a telegram: ‘Have finished with the counting at last. Wound up at about seven o’clock this morning. Am returning Dublin today. Will write or wire you when I get back. How are you?’
That night, another telegram: ‘Thanks for letter. I have returned safely and will write to you to-morrow’.
While he was in Granard on the Sunday the pair had a tiff, mainly due to Kitty’s ‘frightful misunderstandings’ of Mick’s inability to write her ‘the long long long’ letters as in the past. In London he had found the time, at the expense of sleep; more recently, sleep had become a luxury, often snatched while in transit.
Kitty realised she was her own ‘worst enemy’, so she promised that for his happiness as well as her own, henceforth she would try harder; ‘for I do realise,’ she wrote, ‘how unhappy I make things for you too’.
In her letter on the day after his visit to Granard she wrote of the desire that gripped her to elope:
I’d have stayed with you, I’d have wanted to. Last night was a real wedding night for you and me. Didn’t you feel that way too, but couldn’t put it into words? I wanted to run away with you. That must be the feeling with people who do run away like that. We had it last night. That was our night. Glad today for both you and me that I didn’t go.3
Mick, again without time to write ‘the long’ letter which Kitty loved, said that in Greystones he had ‘... the first real sleep for a week. Talk of being tired – and am still very tired ...’
Affairs of state called: ‘Must finish this – the usual thing! Everyone waiting, God help me – take this note for what it ought to be – about twelve pages long. God be with you, Kitty dear’.4
When Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot the whole of the British Empire was shocked. Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan of the IRA’s London battalion were arrested and later charged. The Dublin cabinet, including Collins and Griffith, condemned the killing.
The British ministers incorrectly blamed the Four Courts garrison for the killing. Rory O’Connor made a public statement that he and the Four Courts men had had nothing to do with it: ‘If we had, we would admit it’.
When Collins learned of the arrest of his friend Reggie Dunne and that of Joseph O’Sullivan, it created further complications for him. Although he condemned their action, he took full responsibility for their lives. In London, the event led to emergency cabinet meetings. Because the British associated the murders with the anti-Treatyites in the Four Courts, they put pressure on Collins to deal with them.
(Collins failed in his attempts to free Dunne and O’Sullivan. Their trial went ahead in the Old Bailey on 18 July. The men were found guilty and sentenced to death. In spite of Collins’ appeals for a reprieve they were hanged in Wandsworth prison, London, on 10 August, 1922.)5
Lloyd George was no longer prepared to permit ‘the ambiguous position of Rory O’Connor ... with his followers and his arsenal in open rebellion in the heart of Dublin in possession of the Courts of Justice ...’ So on behalf of ‘His Majesty’s Government’ he felt ‘entitled to ask’ Collins ‘formally to bring it to an end forthwith’. Furthermore, his government would be prepared to place at Collins’ disposal ‘the necessary pieces of artillery’ which might be required. Toleration of this conduct was seen as ‘rebellious defiance of the principles of the Treaty ... now supported by the declared will of the Irish people’.6
Matters were brought to a head by news that J. J. (Ginger) O’Connell, pro-Treaty deputy chief-of-staff, had been taken hostage by Four Courts Executive forces. He was held in order to secure the release of Leo Henderson, Executive forces, who had been arrested by pro-Treaty (Provisional Government) troops as he commandeered transport at
Ferguson’s Garage, for removal of supplies to the north.
On Wednesday 28 June, an ultimatum was delivered to the Four Courts garrison to surrender. That day, Mick wrote to Kitty: ‘I hope the thing won’t last much longer ... I do wish you’d come up for the weekend’.7 The ultimatum brought no response so two eighteen-pounder guns borrowed from the British army opened fire on the building. The Civil War had officially begun. By Friday 30 June, the Four Courts garrison had surrendered unconditionally and many anti-Treatyites were taken prisoners.
Michael Collins’ worst nightmare soon became real. His hope for the swift and speedy end to the occupation of the Four Courts and the resumption of normality dissipated. Lynch, Deasy and de Valera and a number of the Republican Executive headed south; the area south of a line stretching from Waterford to Limerick was to be held by the Republicans. Oscar Traynor took command in Dublin, where sporadic skirmishes caused much destruction.
Collins, who had done so much over the previous months to prevent a civil war, now realised he would have to be prepared to fight his friends openly. At a Provisional Government meeting on 30 June, chaired by Collins, ‘It was decided that the attack on other strongholds of the Irregulars should be vigorously continued ...’8 During the early days of July, anti-Treaty forces clashed with government forces countrywide, and it looked as though the government, the Treaty and all that Mick Collins had worked for were swiftly being eroded. Fighting had begun to spread, and like a cancer was eating into civilian life.
Throughout Dublin, Republicans had established themselves in other buildings, principally in hotels along O’Connell Street, including the Gresham. Meanwhile Maud Gonne had returned from Paris and in an effort at reconciliation had brought a group of women together. As they entered the Four Courts the garrison was due to surrender. The women then divided into two groups, one to meet Michael Collins, Griffith and Cosgrave, the other to meet the anti-Treaty side. Maud Gonne claimed that it would be on women that ‘the misery of the civil war would fall’. They had a ‘right to be heard’, she said. But Griffith, her long-standing friend, replied, ‘We are a government and we have to keep order’.9