De Valera's Irelands (7 page)

It was the prefect's duty to keep an eye on students' movements. Their prefect one year was James Burke, later author of the ‘Missionary Hymn'. Being a keen musician he once thought to slip out quietly to the Theatre Royal for the Halle Orchestra's visit. The word went round and all adjourned across the wall – all but one tall man among them who could easily be mistaken in the moonlight for Mr Burke, if he were only dressed in a soutane and biretta, and especially if the biretta were worn at the unmistakable Burke forward tilt. De Valera had no difficulty in convincing the dodgers on the way in that they were being spotted by their prefect, that they had been tricked and were all in for a fine at next session. Mr Burke was at a loss to explain why he was greeted on several occasions in the next few days by the students whistling the ‘Keelrow' as a protest against something mean. And Dev thought it wiser at this stage to sing dumb till the matter could be taken as a joke – until later years in fact!

Dev had a fund of such anecdotes which, though they help recreate the atmosphere of those days, would be devoid of any further significance were it not that they may help in some degree to understand how his own personality ticked, as it were, before he became deeply commit­ted to the national movement. One is left with the impression that whereas he was a good mixer and was readily accepted in all company, he was never immersed in the crowd, that he held himself consciously or other­wise in someway apart and was given to calculating many of his incur­sions. Sometimes that was influenced, it would appear, by the fact that he had less pocket money at his disposal than most of his associates and that he had to be more cautious in order to pay his way.

An anecdote helps illustrate this. Many contests the students indulg­ed in ended up in the loser having to stand a treat in Keegans. One such contest was a burst for the old ‘Castle' gate when it was locked. The last to hit the ground on the far side had to stand the treat. Dev was challeng­ed and the following evening was fixed by the three involved. In the meantime, Dev went along and examined the gate minutely sizing up what portion gave the best leverage on the way up. Needless to add he had not to foot the bill. Dev actually became an expert in climbing the present college gate when locked against his homecomings in later years. When his brother, Thomas Wheelright, visited him in the ‘Castle' in 1907, in order to impress junior, Dev successfully got over the gate in three moves carrying his bicycle on his shoulder. When he mentioned jokingly to his ‘Castle' dean in later years that he had been well prepared for pris­on life while in the ‘Castle' he may not have amused Fr Downey as he soon realised, but he was really referring to no more than his methods of getting in and out of institutions!

When his second class scholarship in mathematical science in the Royal University examination only netted him £15, to defray the ex­penses of his board and tuition at the ‘Castle' he volunteered to take part-time class in the college in order to make up the difference. He offered to take all the classes, hitherto taught by Patrick Kelly, later Sir Patrick, Chief of Police, Bombay, who had just qualified for the Indian civil service; but he was instead assigned two students who had failed their solicitor's preliminary examination and he had to coach them in all five subjects. They were successful this time and as a token of appreciation they pre­sented Dev with a ticket for the Welsh-Irish international match, 1902. He preserved this souvenir from his first students, Florie Green and Donegan, and it is now among his own souvenirs in the college archives.

He was also asked to stand in for other teachers during periods of absence, notably Johnnie Haugh for long years teacher of mathematics in Blackrock. A class of ‘chicks', as the youngest juniors were then called, liked to recall in later years their reactions to this youthful and rather over-gentlemanly stand-in for Mr Haugh, whose threats of dire punish­ment invariably ended up in a few ‘biffs' with a shoe lace. They, too, de­cided to collect to make him a present but when the wags in the ‘Castle' told him they were going to present him with a needle and a spool of thread he dropped a word to the class indicating that he was not in fa­vour of students making presentations to teachers. However he readily accepted the ebony walking stick they had in fact procured for him!

At the end of the school year in June he decided that the time had come to accept the first full time teaching post offered. The offer came from Rockwell where the teacher of mathematics, Robert Walker, want­ed to come to the ‘Castle' in order to study for his degree in mathematics. So Dev moved out of the ‘Castle' to Rockwell in September 1903, but he was back again at Blackrock from June to October 1904 studying for his BA examination. A snap taken of him during that period with Fr Botrel shows him dressed in knee breeches, already clearly recognisable as the tall distinctive figure that was to appear in so many historic moments for the next seventy years.

Due to his lack of time and tuition throughout that year de Valera secured only a pass degree in mathematical science. This was a big dis­appointment to him and was to militate against his chances of securing a first class post in the teaching profession or in the civil service. He had put away all idea of the Indian civil service, having first-hand evidence of the colonial mentality at its worst induced in one of his acquaintances after a few short years in India.

With his degree came de Valera's final break with the student life in the ‘Castle', though he was to return for a year and a half again as a lod­ger while teaching in Carysfort Training College. Those who wondered in later years at his repeated requests to have the ‘Castle' re-opened, as a hostel for students from all the colleges run by the Holy Ghost congreg­ation, had probably no idea of how deeply he felt about the sterling edu­cative value of the old ‘Castle' system. He was himself the last survivor of a whole generation moulded there since its inception in 1875, first as a training school for entrance into the civil service and then as a uni­versity college to prepare students to sit for the examinations conducted by the Royal University. Dev was also very conscious of the sizeable and sterling contribution made by so many of the products of the ‘Castle' to the formation of a native Irish administration, which took over smoothly and efficiently from the British in later years.

At the end of the school year June 1905, de Valera decided to resign his post in Rockwell, much to the regret of all there, and seek fortune nearer the centre of things as he had planned to continue his studies. The only post available was that of teacher in a Catholic school in Liverpool, with the prospect of attending the university there. He was so depressed however with the alien atmosphere in Liverpool that he returned im­mediately to Dublin where luckily he got a part-time post in Belvedere College, supplemented by classes in Clonliffe College and at Eccles Street.

At the end of the year he was contacted by Fr Baldwin, CSSp, whom he knew well at Rockwell to tell him that the superioress of Carysfort Training College (where he was now chaplain) was looking for a math­emat­ics teacher. Dev gladly accepted the post even though it was only for two hours each day. He soon applied to be allowed to board at the ‘Castle', which in the meantime had been greatly enlarged in the expect­ation of favourable developments in the sphere of higher education.

Dev spent some eighteen months in residence in the ‘Castle' going out to teach at Carysfort Training College and at St Mary's Rathmines, where his former dean of studies Fr O'Hanlon was the superior. He also gave grinds to individual students studying for university examina­tions. Among them was his former student Paddy, later Monsignor, Browne, who from de Valera's class in Rockwell got second place in Ire­land in mathematics in senior grade; and Cornelius Gregg of Blackrock, who beat Paddy for first place! Another of his students at this period was Dick Butler, past-pupil of Blackrock, who is reported to have similarly coached the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. Gregg, incidentally, who was later to be rated as one of the great minds of the British civil service, was highly valued by Churchill as chancellor of the exchequer, and later with his mathematical acumen, was invaluable in cipher-break­ing during the war. He was later knighted.

One feature of this period vouched for by Bishop Heffernan, then prefect in the Castle and a life-long friend of Dev, is worth recalling as Dev never denied it. His overcoat was used regularly by the Castle stu­dents and the girls in the Training College as their mail bag. All Dev had to do was to hang his coat in the same spot each day in both venues!

During this period, 1906–09, Dev took an active part in the Blackrock Club or ‘Castle' teams as they were still known. He had begun to play senior football while in Rockwell and was now chosen occasionally to play for the firsts, but more often for the Metropolitan side which he preferred and which he captained in 1908. His team was narrowly de­feated in the final. He served as secretary to the club for one year and helped at the running of the annual sports each year in the college. With regard to schools rugby at this time it is interesting to learn that the minutes of the schools' rugby committee record that E. de Valera was one of the two members present at the Gresham Hotel in October 1905 at the annual general meeting, representing Belvedere College; and that in the following year, October 1906, and again in 1908, he was one of the two who represented Blackrock. And in this connection it is worth mentioning that the first ever fixture between Blackrock and Belvedere took place in January 1907, shortly after de Valera moved into residence in the ‘Castle' after his first year teaching at Belvedere.

Fr Downey resigned as dean of the Castle in 1908 and a special func­tion and presentation was arranged by a number of his friends in­cluding de Valera. That was the signal for Dev to pull up his roots finally and move to outside accommodation, having spent most of his life from 1898 to 1908 in such close association with Blackrock, Rockwell and St Mary's. At a special reception given by him as President of Ireland in Áras an Úachtaráin in 1960 in connection with the college centenary, he paid a moving tribute to those formative years to which he admitted freely he owed so much. At the college centenary he and his classmate Cardinal d'Alton were obviously the central figures. Fifty years prev­iously they were also among the special guests at the golden jubilee cele­brations of the college although they are out at the edge of the photos then. But that was away back in 1910!

Next came 1916. The then Castle students, now reduced in numbers, mixed with the Sherwood Foresters as these consulted their obsolete maps looking for Williamstown Avenue, demolished in 1906, as a suit­able stopping place. They were on their way to face Commandant de Va­lera's men at Mount Street Bridge. When the fighting was over and it was learned that de Valera was among those condemned to death, Fr Dow­ney, then President of the college, contacted the attorney general, Sir James O'Connor, who happened to be a past student of the college, to pass on the word that de Valera was American-born. He passed the same message on to James McMahon, secretary of the GPO, another past pupil of the college.

Fr John T. Murphy, who was then provincial superior, wrote just after the Rising to inform the superior general in Paris on what had happened in Dublin. In his report he deplored the imprudence of the leaders of what he considered a misguided rebellion but paid tribute to their sense of honour and their Christian piety. He had of course known de Valera as a student and Thomas McDonagh as a prefect in Rockwell (1896–1901).

When de Valera was elected President of Dáil Éireann in 1919, it was decided that he should go to the United States as soon as possible in that capacity. Very shortly after his secret arrival, and before he made his first public appearance at the Waldorf Astoria, Fr William O'Donnell, CSSp, who knew him personally and was deeply involved in the Irish move­ment in the United States, arranged that he should visit the Holy Ghost community at Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, composed as it was of past Blackrock and Rockwell men known to the President. Realising that it was a historic occasion they improvised a battery of lamps to take a time-exposure photo of the group that night. Seated beside the youthful looking President is one of Blackrock's earliest students, Fr William Healy, CSSp. He it was who was responsible away back in 1865 for erecting the first (home made) green flag over the college, on St Patrick's Day 1865. He was described by his French director as ‘outre en politique, comme arch-Irlandais'. As he sports his Irish colours here again, for the last time as it transpired, one can imagine him saying that he could well sing his ‘Nunc demittis', now that Ireland seemed to be on the threshold of being a Nation once again.

After his return to Ireland, the residence provided for the President was at ‘Glenvar', just across the road from Clareville. It was in an out­house in Clareville that Eoin MacNeill's men were screening the inter­cepted mail-bags. In an effort to trace them down, a military cordon was thrown around the area. The college and Clareville were searched with no result, but de Valera was accidentally arrested at ‘Glenvar'. When his identity was confirmed at the Bridewell the news was flashed to London and the instructions from there were that he was to be released immedi­ately. He was released, much to his surprise, at Portobello Barracks. Hav­ing procured an old bicycle he cycled back to Blackrock. He ran in to his old friends Fr Larry Healy and Fr James Burke, who were amazed to see him again. As he ate a hasty meal they tried to puzzle out the reason for his sudden release. In the event of his being around on Sunday it was arranged that he and his secretary, Miss O'Connell, could have mass and dinner at the college. They both arrived and at dinner with Fr Downey and Fr Burke, de Valera produced an envelope with a special seal that had been handed to Miss O'Connell the previous day by Bishop Mul­hern on behalf of Lloyd George. The letter signalled the start of the Truce negotiations. That was Sunday 26 June 1921.