De Valera's Irelands (6 page)

Irish was being taught in the school by Tadhg Ó Donnchadh (Torna) but only to a handful of senior students for whom ‘Celtic', as it was call­ed, was a suitable subject for the combination most likely to win them the highest number of marks for a possible scholarship. What that class lacked in quantity it made up in quality: there was Thomas F. Rahilly the noted Irish scholar, Martin O'Mahony (later known as ‘Suig' to gene­rations of Irish students in Blackrock) and the well known Gaelic writer Seán-Phádraig Ó Conaire. There was no question of Dev attending these Irish classes even if he had some Irish.

He recalled other students in the ‘Castle' preparing for higher civil service examinations and studying Fr O'Gowney's
Irish Grammar
as a relaxation from time to time, but he did not seriously attempt to learn the language till years later when his friend and tutor Michael Smithwick, who taught Irish and mathematics at Blackrock, introduced him to the Gaelic League classes.

When de Valera reminisced about his life at ‘Rock it was really the years spent at the ‘Castle' that came most readily to mind. He spent three years in all there as a student: 1900–01 (matriculation, which was then a separate course from senior grade) and 1901–03 (first and second arts). He then spent two years teaching in Rockwell, between 1903–5, return­ing to the ‘Castle' at the end of the school year to prepare for the BA exami­nation. Then, late in 1906, while professor in Carysfort Training College, he returned to the newly extended ‘Castle' as a lodger for about a year and a half. As such, he was the last survivor of the old ‘Castle' days, and be­cause he made it as it were his home in those years, he was a store of anec­dotes, facts and comments providing much material for recreating a liv­ing picture of that institution that he so much loved and admired. Not that he was blind to its limitations. He more than most suffered from one limitation after 1900, namely the lack of competent staff to teach mathe­matics and science at a university level; and mathematics was his speci­ality. Before his arrival in the college in 1898 the dean warned the other students of the impending arrival of a ‘mathematical genius from Bru­ree' in order to stir up emulation.

When later Dev arrived in John Maguire's Greek class, the prime boys, knowing Maguire's often expressed contempt for mathematics, in­troduced de Valera as one for whom mathematics was the only subject worthy of his serious attention. Maguire ordered Dev to take out his mathematics exercise and dictated some sentences in Greek to be written across his mathematical notes in spite of Dev's protestations that he had a special exercise for Greek. ‘There now,' said Maguire, ‘you have at least one bit of Christianity in the midst of all that paganism.' Maguire did succeed in imparting a love of the Greek authors, especially the orators, and years later when de Valera was in the middle of a speech denoun­cing the Treaty in Killarney he was for a moment at a loss for words when he recognised his former Greek professor among his audience. He was conscious that he was using the yardstick of Demosthenes in judg­ing his performance. The only comment Maguire made afterwards was: ‘De Valera, I admire your oratory but disagree with your politics!'

In the ‘Castle' those studying for a university degree in mathematics or science and even those sitting for the civil service entrance examina­tions had often to depend on crash courses or grinds on a part of the syl­labus from a university lecturer who came along for a number of classes; then these students who could afford his fee coached other students for a lesser sum. Michael Smithwick for example, was among those coached by John Hooper, later director of statistics in the Free State government, and Smithwick in turn coached de Valera and others. They had their own teachers, of course: Johnny Haugh, the author of a famous arithmetic text and Fr Hugh O'Toole their science teacher; both were competent in their subject but lacking drive as teachers. In modern languages and the classics, ‘Castle' students were well served.

The students were lodged in houses acquired by the college along the old Williamstown Avenue. These houses they dignified by the high sounding names: ‘Grey's Inn', ‘Lincoln Inn' and the favourite more pro­sa­ically know as ‘Piggeries'. The ‘Piggeries' was favoured by the students because it was most remote from supervision. De Valera was assigned a room there, junior though he was, as being one of the more solid sort. The senior and tougher set sized up the situation. Dev woke up in the middle of the night there to find himself being lifted out of bed by four of those seniors who told him to keep quiet while they extracted twelve large bottles from beneath the floor and replaced them by twelve others. The ones replaced were full of wine bottled that evening by Brother John from a cask that had arrived from the college cellar. The empties were placed in their stead! Next day claret, mulled over the gaslights, was the treat for those ‘in the know'.

Apart from class and study hours, life in the ‘Castle' was to a great extent organised by the students themselves, under a benign dean, Fr Downey, and a prefect. They had their various societies for which they drafted the rules and enforced the penalties for misconduct. De Valera figured prominently in some of these societies. His first post was librarian and as such he was vested with the power of search when any of the regular magazines they contributed to disappeared from the reading room. He was not long in the job when he used this power on two sen­iors, rightfully suspected as it happened. He recovered the magazines but was almost ‘sent to Coventry' for his pains.

They had also a thriving Literary and Debating Society and we find de Valera's name in time on the organising committee, and his contribu­tions to the debates recorded in the minutes. On the subject ‘That the policy of free trade is preferable to protection' (13 February 1901), the minutes read: ‘Mr de Valera was in favour of a little of both.' More inter­esting perhaps was the stand he took on the motion ‘That a constitutional monarchy as a form of government is preferable to republicanism': ‘Mr de Valera maintained that constant elections disturb the nation and are not conducive to the prosperity of the people.' Another reason why he preferred constitutional monarchy was that ‘there is no rule so tyrannical as that of “them all”' (27 November 1901).

De Valera's major contribution to the Castle Literary and Debating Society was (significantly for a future chancellor of the NUI) a paper read by him (18 February 1903) on ‘The Irish University Question'. This was no mere academic subject. It was hotly debated at the time and the ‘Castle' students and staff felt the injustice of their position under the old Royal University where they had to sit for an examination set by those who taught in certain other colleges and then examined their own and all the other students as well. There were other grounds of complaint all out­lin­ed in this paper which took him weeks of research in the National Lib­rary and elsewhere, to prepare.

When I detailed the main points of the paper to him some years ago, I mentioned that he ruled out the Queen's Colleges as a practical solu­tion because they were condemned by the Catholic bishops. He laughed and said ‘Let it be put in my biography some day that I rejected some­thing because I had been told to do so by the Irish bishops!'

The solution he favoured was the foundation of a New University of Dublin with three constituent colleges, one for Catholics, one for Pres­byterians and Trinity College, all common matters such as examinations and exhibitions to be dealt with by a senate composed from all three colleges.

The practical relevance of the matters being discussed can be gaug­ed from the attendance of the staff with Fr John T. Murphy in the chair. The closely written twenty foolscap pages were preserved by de Valera and presented by him to the college, as was the copy of the bible he was presented with by the college President Fr Murphy, on securing first place in the test he set on the series of lectures he gave the ‘Castle' stu­dents on Apologetics and Christian Philosophy.

Consequent to a lecture given by Fr Murphy under the auspices of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, a branch of the Blackrock parish confe­rence was founded at the ‘Castle' in 1901. At first it would seem there was some reluctance on the part of the senior parish members of the con­ference to allow students to carry out the delicate work of visitation of homes in the locality, but their minds were soon put at ease. The first sec­retary to be appointed was E. de Valera and the following year he was the obvious choice as President, a post he held as long as he remained in the ‘Castle'. The students took their work seriously, most of all their Presi­­dent, as can be learned from the reports of that period (see, for example,
Blackrock College Annual 1936
).

One of the places de Valera recalled visiting the aged in those years was Linden Convalescent Home where he himself was to end his days, happy to be in such familiar surroundings. Less happy memories were connected with a visitation involving a house in Booterstown where it transpired that there was a case of smallpox. He felt obliged to have him­self immediately vaccinated resulting in his being very ill. As he was sit­ting on the roof of the old ‘Castle' where he had his room in the tower during his final year, he realised that he could not identify the fathers as they walked along the avenue. He dated the commencement of the de­terioration of his vision to that period, but he also realised that he had profited from the experiences gained through this intimate contact with the poor and the aged during these formative years of his life.

De Valera had asked specially to be allowed to use the mere lumber room in the old ‘Castle' tower in preference to a more comfortable room along Williamstown avenue, as he thought it would help him to study better. He was plagued by a tendency to fall off to sleep while reading. The change of room seemingly did not make much difference. Finally, he decided to climb a tree near the ‘Castle' in order to remain alert while studying, and indeed the most vivid image that some of the junior stu­dents of that period recalled when they spoke of Dev at Blackrock, was seeing him perched on that tree with a book in his hand. Incidentally, a snapshot of him at this period taken by an American boy, John Junker, shows him with a relaxed group of students some of whom are holding footballs; De Valera alone is holding a book with his fingers marking the pages as if ready to return to what was his priority.

De Valera in fact took little active part in football games at this period. He was interested in athletics but even here one got the impression that his main aim was to maintain physical fitness. He prepared seriously for the annual sports with almost the same approach as to solving a problem in mathematics. He weighed up the possibilities open to him knowing the other contenders in each event. Having opted for what he had the best chance of winning he sized up the most formidable challenger, planned to keep close behind till the moment when the final spurt was called for. But reality did not match the theory. On one occasion, he stopped to at­tend a casualty and forgot that it was a race. On another occasion, this time the two mile cycle race, he thought he had all planned to perfection following as he imagined the likely, and in fact the eventual winner, but his defective eyesight played a trick on him as two competitors wore the same colour singlet and he kept behind the wrong man losing almost a lap before he realised his plans had miscarried. The official photograph­er has left us a good record of the start of that race with Dev being aided by his friend Jim Sweeney who afterwards wore the green jersey for Ire­land. That same day Dev's tactics did work out as planned. He beat Pad­dy Cahill in the senior mile.

By now the image of de Valera to have emerged is the serious, aloof, austere figure that many have imagined him always to have been. That was certainly not Dev's idea of himself in those student days. Right up to the end he used to delight to relive the pranks and the escapades he took part in. One cannot easily imagine him gate-crashing a fashionable ball, but this indeed happened when both he and R. Manning stuck on false moustaches to give themselves the appearance of added years and res­pectability. Unfortunately for them the moustaches dropped due to the heat and they were summarily expelled. Raiding the Clareville orchard was a temptation he could not resist, though he found it was extremely difficult to see the apples at night, so he concentrated his attention on the Virginia plums instead.

Their outings on Sunday to Blackrock Park under the pretence of be­ing interested in the band were really an exercise in ‘dolly twigging'. Sensing that I was out of my depth at this stage he laughingly explained that the word meant ‘admiring the girls that were out to be admired!'

The most frequent breach of rule by the ‘Castle' students was going ‘over the wall', which being interpreted meant bunking out to Keegan's licensed premises which in those days, and indeed away back in 1798 (when a man called Kinshellagh was the proprietor) was very conveni­ently on the college side of the main road. Fr Murphy, as might be ex­pected from an ardent apostle of temperance, was mainly responsible for having this public house transferred to the opposite side of the road in 1904. Of course, there were delicacies even for the teetotaller to be had at Keegans, as snacks, pastries, etc., were served. Dev recalled clearly his very first bunking ‘over the wall'. He was introduced there by ‘Bugler' Dunne. The name recalled to his mind how much their nicknames and slang in those days were coloured by the Boer War, then in the news. Their favourite drink, ‘coffee with a shot of the hard stuff', was known as a Khaki. There was always an element of risk involved in ‘going over the wall', as if caught you were called out at the Monday night ‘session', and so much was deducted from the £5 deposit that each student had to lodge with the director as a guarantee of good conduct throughout the year.