Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied For Ireland (13 page)

Collins headed for Cadogan Gardens. He wanted to let the others tease it out. Later he returned to Hans Place. After a long wait the men came down the stairs. ‘All were silent, taut and serious as if walking in a funeral procession.'
24

Barton had caved in, and Duffy, not prepared for the responsibility of war, consented.

Through a thick fog the men with heavy hearts headed back to Downing Street. There they tried to squeeze some more concessions. After much discussion a few changes were agreed. It was half past two in the morning of 6 December when they consented and signed the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty.

Collins rose. ‘I may have signed my political death-warrant tonight,' said Birkenhead, turning to Collins.

‘I may have signed my actual death-warrant,' was Collins' prophetic utterance.
25

Notes

Outside Number 10 Downing Street journalists who had waited in the darkness and in the thick fog saw the delegates emerge. One approached Michael Collins as he swept past. ‘Have you anything to say?' he asked.

‘Not a word!' growled Collins. He looked tired and upset. Though it was approaching 3 o'clock he headed for Cromwell Place. He wanted to let the Laverys know the distress he felt.

Hazel Lavery saw the torment of the previous few days on his face as she opened the door. He looked ‘white and haggard'.
1
In her home he talked very little, Sir John noted. He had acted correctly, he felt; he had weighed it up but now he pondered the consequences.

He knew that back in Ireland there would be those who would welcome the relief, but he knew also that the Treaty fell short of the Republic which he and his comrades had fought so hard for and that this could bring dissent. The confusion which had permeated the recent Dublin cabinet meeting and the ire of Cathal Brugha haunted him.

Hazel Lavery drove him back to Cadogan Gardens. Though tired, he sat and poured his turmoil out on paper to his friend, John O'Kane:

Think – what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this – early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous – a bullet might just as well have done the job five years ago ... These signatures are the first real step for Ireland. If people will only remember that, the first real step.

It was past 5 pm when he flopped on the bed. Two hours later he got out for early Mass. ‘Didn't forget your candle' – ‘Need I say it!' he told Kitty, picking up the letter he had begun the previous morning – ‘what a day I had afterwards!' She was on his mind at this hour. He responded to her concern about their future together.' ... ‘Remember that if you ever express doubts I always have that in the back of my mind or indeed very much in the front of my mind.
And that's that
. When you know I think of it in this way don't you feel it gets rid of any necessity to answer your questions in detail?' Her ‘lifelong happiness' was important to him, just as his was to her, he argued. But at this remove, he wrote, sadly, ‘... my plans in regard to home are as yet uncertain.'

‘Dearest Kit', he continued. ‘I don't know how things will go now but with God's help we have brought peace to this land of ours – a peace which will end this old strife of ours for ever.'
2

When Tom Cullen met Collins and Griffith at the North Wall, Dublin, on 8 December, Mick seized him by the shoulder, ‘Tom, what are our own fellows saying?'

‘They're saying what is good enough for Mick, is good enough for me!' he answered. Soon enough Mick would know the truth!

At the Dublin cabinet meeting on 8 December, it became clear that Dev's views had become hardened. Collins was dismayed at ‘the open hostility' the delegates faced in the cabinet drawing-room of the Mansion House. De Valera sat gaunt and depressed, Stack was in ‘a blazing mood' and Brugha was ‘the personification of venom'.

Collins and Griffith had thought that de Valera would support their views, as the Treaty went some way towards satisfying them. They had expected opposition from Brugha and Stack, but not the torrents of accusations which these men hurled at them during the meeting which recessed three times.

De Valera, Brugha and Stack were not prepared to recommend the Articles of Agreement to the Dáil. Finally, after hours of acrimonious dispute, the cabinet endorsed the agreement. A narrow margin separated them – Collins, Griffith, Cosgrave and a reluctant Barton voted in favour, with de Valera, Brugha and Stack against.

Collins left the meeting in extreme distress. He made for Batt O'Connor's, knocked on the door, but remained on the doorstep when Batt opened it. There was a ‘strange expression' on his face. ‘Come in. What are you waiting for?' asked Batt.

While he still stood there, silent, Batt said, ‘Ah, Mick! This is a day I never thought I would live to see'.

‘I thought perhaps you would have no welcome for me, Batt,' said Mick.

Agitated he strode up and down the room. ‘I will leave Dublin at once,' he said, in extreme bitterness and distress. ‘I will go down to Cork. If the fighting is going to be resumed, I will fight in the open, beside my own people down there. I am not going to be chivvied and hunted through Dublin as I have been for the last two years.'

‘If we go back to fight, how long could we stick it?' asked Batt.

‘A fortnight and it would be over.'

It took some time for Batt to calm him down but eventually he sat down.

The two men talked, had tea and talked and talked until 3 o'clock. Before they parted Mick had assured Batt that he would not leave Dublin. He would see that the Treaty was fully discussed in the Dáil, and put clearly before the people.

‘I will accept their verdict,' he said as they parted.
3

Next morning a letter from de Valera appeared in the public press saying he could not ‘recommend the acceptance of this Treaty, either to Dáil Éireann or the country. In this attitude I am supported by the Ministers of Home Affairs and Defence ... ' (Brugha and Stack)
4

Kathleen O'Connell, de Valera's secretary, had written in her diary on the morning of 8 December: ‘P [President] in a awful state. What a fiasco.'
5

The ‘fiasco' took on monstrous proportions as the days passed. To the separatists it became ‘a sellout' but to others anxious to get on with daily life, the Treaty was seen as a victory. Soon it was regarded not as the Treaty versus Document Number 2 (de Valera's alternative) but as Michael Collins against de Valera with his two stalwarts, Brugha and Stack.

Mick knew he would face many a friend of old who might no longer be a friend. ‘My own brother will probably stand against me in Cork,' he said on that first tortured day. He had not been in touch with Johnny since Johnny's recent release from Spike Island. However, when Johnny came by train to Dublin to meet him, his handshake and smile told all. ‘Next time you're shaving, don't overlook that thing,' he said, referring to Mick's moustache. Next morning it was gone.

Collins needed to know what was going on across the water. He was well aware of Hazel Lavery's willingness to convey information. From his years at intelligence gathering he knew what to tell her and what to leave out. She, on the other hand ‘was besotted by him and he knew it, he knew he could feed her with the right information and it would get to where he wanted that information to go,' according to Emmet Dalton.
6

She wrote a letter to Michael which was apparently misdirected and was eventually returned. In a follow-up she wrote that there were so many things more important to him at present than the ‘Lost letter of a Lady' and suggested that that would ‘make a good title for a romantic novel?':

The letter is lost I fear and I picture the poor thing wandering desolately about like a pigeon in a storm looking for its owner Mr Michael Collins! and finally bruised and broken, pathetically rejected by man and Post Office, forced to struggle back to Hazel – admittedly a failure, and all its burden of news about perfectly unimportant personal matters having been read by indifferent eyes, alas!
7

Hazel now became the conduit for information from the House of Commons and inside information on the British government. On 9 December she had gone to hear Winston Churchill. His speech ‘was very long but excellent,' she wrote, ‘and generally well received, excepting of course by the Tories who still rage, albeit more and more powerlessly'.

She wrote:

Today I lunch with Lady Fitzalan [wife of Unionist Chief Whip, Catholic, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland] and on Tuesday with the Chamberlains' [Austen Chamberlain, leader of the Conservative Party and House of Commons, and member of British Treaty negotiating team].
8

This had to be interesting news for Collins. On 4 November Collins in a letter to O'Kane had written: ‘Don't know why exactly but I don't like Chamberlain ...'
9

Lady Lavery wrote:

I have not seen L. [the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, a leading Northern Unionist politician] – the other Lord we discussed the other day – as after dinner that night I went home I was so very tired, but I had a talk with Philip [Snowden, Socialist MP] about the matter. He is a clever creature, with imagination and warm towards you (you must get him that dog) also. Thanks to his oriental blood he delights in a secret and he undoubtedly has a certain influence over his illustrious Master' [J. Ramsay MacDonald, Labour leader].

It is obvious that Collins was using Hazel to get information. This letter contained a great deal of substance for Collins. ‘That dog' was that code, not a canine he would bring from Ireland. (A code, a key or a cypher was often referred to as a ‘dog'). ‘I shall not expect an answer,' she wrote, ‘unless you tell a secretary to say simply that you have received this letter so that I shall know that it has not gone a-missing.' She adds, ‘I
really
mean this
sure
.
Irish sure
. I understand you know. Bless you Michael always. Yours, H'. There appears to be more to this cryptic remark than a surface reading; the Irish word for sure is
cinnte
.

Hazel added a PS. She had found ‘a portion of a wonderful book in an old shop'. She would try to get ‘an intact copy ... all the facts about the French Revolution' and would send it to him.
10

A few days later she wrote again to Michael Collins. She had come from the House of Lords where the lord chancellor [the Earl of Birkenhead, Conservative and Treaty negotiator] had been speaking. He had ‘replied with his usual devastating urbanity to the bitter but rather futile sarcasm of Carson,' she wrote [Sir Edward Carson, Unionist leader, opponent of Home Rule]. ‘All the same the division was a very very close thing for the Gov: only a majority of one!'

Concern by the British cabinet that members of the crown forces were being shot in Ireland was expressed by Winston Churchill who later asked Lady Lavery to ‘please write to you [Michael Collins] and say how difficult the incident has made matters here. The old Die Hards have taken a vigorous new lease of life on it. Of course he knows you are doing everything you possibly can, and I hate to write to you and add a further weight of anxiety to your many cares. Please please forgive me'.
11

Collins had previously asked Hazel to arrange a meeting with the northern Unionist, Lord Londonderry, whom he felt would be in a position to sway Carson towards better north-south relations in Ireland.

She wrote:

In the matter of Lord Londonderry I find rather dissatisfaction. Winston saw him at luncheon and had a long talk but I imagine from what I have been able to gather not an altogether successful one. Lord L. has intimated that ‘he would like to see me on the subject' and I don't know exactly what that may mean. Almost anything I should think.
12

It would be March before Michael Collins and Lord Londonderry would have a face-to-face meeting. (It has been claimed that Hazel later had a romantic liaison with Lord Londonderry).
13

Hazel would often have her letters to Michael Collins sent via Sir Edward Marsh, one of Churchill's secretaries. Sam Maguire, Ned Broy and Moya Llewelyn Davies were emissaries of letters, dispatches and snippets of information from Hazel to Collins and vice versa.
14

Collins' letters, according to Shane Leslie's account were ‘full of half-educated half-romantic stuff but ending up with vital messages to the English Cabinet'.
15

The ‘vital messages' were the essential part, the rest a ploy. The ‘vital messages' Hazel would later destroy, the romantic passages she would keep. An undated fragment believed to be in Collins' handwriting with certain letters underlined reads:

Hazel, My Dear Dear Hazel,I too wish it was ‘tomorrow' –With all my love, Yours M.

The ‘Yours' is written in a different pen.
16

‘Mick would sometimes lay it on,' according to Emmet Dalton, especially if letters were posted. ‘In fact, as she was on first name terms with cabinet ministers and entertained all – what we would call – “the useful people”. Mick used the situation ... We have to remember that intelligence gathering was part of his make-up, important in his work, but he would never put himself in a situation where he could be blackmailed either by members of his own cabinet, his friends or enemies here [in Ireland] or by the British ... Mick was always yards ahead in his planning ... He liked Hazel, everybody did, you couldn't but! That was all there was to it! As I told you she was different, upper-class, very dramatic. Mick told me she liked to feel accepted by the Irish, and was glad to be useful.'
17

Ulick O'Connor has written that Oliver St John Gogarty told him that Hazel ‘could make a funeral feast entertaining. She was always thinking about other people and she had an absolute genius for tact'.
18
Oliver Gogarty himself wrote that she wanted to share in Collins' ‘dangers' and responsibilities and was therefore ‘willing to be identified with him in every way'.

Hazel wrote sympathetically to Michael: ‘Meanwhile all our thoughts and prayers are with you, Michael. I purchased a most expensive and gigantic candle on Sunday at early Mass and burnt it for your victory. God bless you, H.
'
Another fragment of an undated letter said to have been found on Collins' body after he was killed reads: ‘How fine and impressive and marvellously organised it all is – I am so
so
proud, Michael how can I say it all! “at all”, your letter has just come to me forwarded from London, may God keep you – Hazel.'
19