Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland (16 page)

Since the beginning of April, seizures of cars, lorries, and attacks on pro-Treaty troops had become a regular occurrence. There were attempts at negotiation but these kept breaking down. While Churchill regarded Rory O'Connor and his men as mutineers and wanted either to ‘starve them out' or use militant action against them, Collins saw them as Irishmen and former colleagues.
23
He would not be pushed into reacting hastily. Moreover, he still viewed them as important allies needed to support fellow nationalists in the north.

When it became clear to the IRA that it was unlikely that any worthwhile gains would result from the Craig-Collins agreement, they stepped up plans for a northern offensive. Already Volunteer units had positioned themselves in the north, where they were in receipt of arms derived from two shipments.

Despite the division in the army and in political circles, Michael Collins agreed with Liam Lynch to the dispatch by secret means to the north of a large consignment of these arms to help northern Catholics, many of whom were the victims of sectarian killings. Cosgrave, Blythe and cabinet members were aware of the transaction.
24

Though Collins was playing with fire and risking the British reoccupation of the entire country, it was a gamble he was willing to take. To him this ambivalence was preferable to outright civil war.
25
Because retaliations grew more severe on Catholics after IRA raids and also because Craig was using the raids as an excuse for sectarian violence, it was decided to call off the northern offensive.

Collins continued to be reluctant to act against former comrades in the Four Courts, although it was becoming obvious that despite his best efforts the deteriorating situation was leading towards civil war. As meetings continued, he clung to the hope of halting all-out confrontation and, contrary to the wishes of Griffith and other cabinet members, decided to enter an agreement with de Valera, which became known as The Pact. This provided for a coalition panel in a national government where the anti-Treaty party would be represented in the cabinet in the ratio of four to five.

Collins argued, ‘It was a last effort on our part to avoid strife, to prevent the use of force by Irishmen against Irishmen'.
26

The Pact gave Collins a brief respite. There would be some evening time to visit old friends. While on the run he had often used Dr Oliver St John Gogarty's house in Ely Place. He would renew his friendship with this medical doctor who had on many an occasion ‘operated on wounded volunteers'.
27

He would also have more time for Kitty, who was ill. Her health had not been strong since the previous summer.

Since the beginning of May she had been spending some time resting in the Grand Hotel, Greystones; here Mick would call for a brief chat late in the evenings, whenever time allowed. They would talk and talk, both agreed on the value of the ‘long chats'.

The respite was short-lived. Soon Michael Collins was again summoned to London.

Kitty's demands and the lack of understanding she sometimes displayed in her letters put even more pressure on Mick. Though she was well aware how difficult it was for him, she was, in her impatient way, hoping he could put a speedy end to the conflict and meetings. ‘I had a list of your meetings in my mind from the night I last left Dublin,' she wrote. ‘Oh no, I'd never invite you to Granard on the eve of a big meeting so far away as Tralee where you must go the day before ... what fools Irishmen are to give up everything for their country.'
28

He had to write, ‘Sorry I can't possibly leave town owing to the situation here'. But, ‘I am very anxious to see you. It seems about a million years since we met and that's a long time ...' Two days later he would write again: ‘There will be no chance that I can go down tomorrow night as I have to leave on the morning train on Saturday for Tralee and Killarney. Then I won't be back until Monday evening. I've had every Sunday at it now since the Dublin meeting, and it's becoming wearying, but maybe we'll have a rest soon'.
29

By the end of April the name of Michael Collins could be found on morning papers not alone in Ireland but in England and America. In order to secure support for the Treaty and avoid civil war, it became necessary for him to increase his number of appearances at public meetings. This caused Kitty great anxiety; because of his long hours of standing on cold, windswept platforms he constantly suffered from colds. She repeatedly pressed him to get more sleep – she had noticed that on visits to Granard he would sometimes fall asleep, depriving her of his company. ‘I saw the
Sunday Independent
... about Saturday's meeting [in Cork],' she wrote on 25 April. ‘So I was “wondering” how you would do on Sunday or would yourself and Seán be shot!' By return he reassured her in a note sent via Gearóid O'Sullivan that he was well but lonely for her.

Her own health was far from good and some of her letters and his refer to this. However, by May she would be in Greystones taking that long-needed health rest. She would also be closer to her lover, who would visit her in the late evenings. Both of them longed for a normal life.

Partly from a habit of caution and partly because of lack of time, Mick rarely dealt with political issues in any depth when writing to Kitty but they discussed politics and problems when they met. He knew that she and her brother Larry still received visits from Harry Boland and he did not want to place her in a difficult situation. Kitty made reference to Harry in one of her letters: ‘ ... if he is not to be trusted', she wrote, ‘I wouldn't take much of that particular “thing” with him. Enough said! ... I want to talk to you again [about it].'
30

Kitty never failed to mention any of Harry's visits to Mick; it came as no surprise when in a letter of 26 April, she noted that ‘Dev is still at it. Last time H [Harry] was here he told me (in a burst of confidence) of Dev's dislike for you, because you were too anxious for power, that Dev liked Griffith, but Harry dislikes Griffith, and (of course) likes you, etc.' There was more but she would spare it for when next they would meet.
31

‘I knew that about de V. well. I have known it all along. That's what he says of everyone who opposes him. He has done it in America similarly. It's just typical of him,' Mick wrote in response to Kitty. ‘I wish to God I was rid of it all and was just with you and free from their scurrilities and their accusations and counter-accusations.'
32

In an interview with Hayden Talbot, Mick pointed out that while he himself could only take the facts as he found them, de Valera preached idealism: ‘He knows ... that the Republican ideal is as dear to us who support the Treaty as it is to himself ... He knows that we who oppose him will work to make Ireland strong enough to declare her Independence ...
33

On 27 April Mick was ‘just preparing to go to a Dáil meeting, and that's a prospect that doesn't appeal to me in the least. God help us all!' he wrote to Kitty, and he told her he had been ‘thinking of her all morning ... Are you not coming to town? Please do if you can at all as I want so badly to see you'.

Notes

The month of May was extremely difficult for Mick, and though he eventually succeeded in convincing people on both sides of the Treaty that the Pact was necessary, he had yet to convince the London government, which had already denounced it. In a letter to Churchill he explained his decision, but Churchill, being committed to the Treaty, was not convinced and summoned him to London. Armed with the draft constitution, Griffith, Duggan, Kevin O'Higgins and Hugh Kennedy went over on 25 May, and Mick was to travel next day.

But first he would attend to spiritual matters. The Reverend Frank Gibney was giving a Mission in a church in Greystones. Mick ‘was very busy in Dublin, worked and worried almost beyond endurance. He got to Greystones very late and very tired. It was the eve of his departure to London re the Pact. He got up next morning as early as 5.30 a.m., came to the church and made a glorious confession.'

After confession he said to Fr Gibney, ‘Father, say the Mass for Ireland!' Fr Gibney told his congregation that day: ‘You saw one of Ireland's hidden saints making no small sacrifice for the Master this morning'. About ‘an hour or so afterwards he crossed for London'.
1

With time to think on the
SS Cambria
he felt ‘more lonely' than ever for Kitty, as he anticipated the daunting task that lay ahead.

When Michael Collins arrived at Downing Street on the morning of 27 May, Lloyd George said the meeting would have to be postponed because Lord Birkenhead had a temperature. ‘I never heard it called that before,' shouted Collins with laughter, and dashed off to see Birkenhead.

At the door, Birkenhead's butler said his lordship was unwell. Collins brushed past him into the hall and called out. Birkenhead, on hearing Collins' voice, came to the landing in his dressing-gown with bottle in hand and called, ‘Come along up, Michael!'
2
On this occasion the two men had a frank discussion.

In a long letter to Kitty from London on 28 May he thanked her for her ‘wire' and poured his weary heart out:

Things are serious – far far more serious than any one at home thinks. In fact it is not too much to say that they are as serious as they were at the worst stage of the negotiations last year. And even while we are here there comes the news of two British soldiers being killed in Dublin and two ex-policemen in Boyle. Coming at such a time it is impossible to get away from the conclusion that they are done deliberately to make things more difficult for us in our task here. It is not very creditable to those who are responsible for the actions themselves but it is simply disastrous for the name of Ireland.
3

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”'.
15
One 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