AN EXTENSIVE collection of personal letters and notebooks written by Michael Collins is to be auctioned later this month.
The documents have been consigned to sale by an unnamed family source who inherited the papers by descent, according to joint auctioneers Adam’s and Mealy’s.
A spokesman for the fine art auctioneers said that personal correspondence from Michael Collins, who led Ireland’s first government after Independence from Britain in 1922, was rare because, although he wrote many business letters, “he had few intimate friends”.
He described the collection as “fantastic” and predicted that its sale could make €100,000.
The auction also features handwritten minute books of the Geraldines GAA Club in London where Collins was secretary. These were, until recently, on loan to the GAA Museum at Croke Park and have been valued at between €15,000 and €20,000.
Michael Collins was shot and killed aged 31 at Béal na mBláth in Co Cork on August 22nd, 1922. Some 29 letters will be auctioned individually and have estimates ranging from €800 to €7,000.
They were written by Collins to his elder sister Johanna (whom he called Hannie), who lived in London, where she worked for the Post Office Savings Bank. Collins had lived in her flat in West Kensington during his time in England – between 1906 and 1916.
Collins wrote to his sister from various addresses in Dublin, the family home in Cork and various prisons (in Britain and Ireland) between 1916 and 1921, signing off as “Michael” (not the Irish form, “Mícheál”, which he generally used after 1916).
The letters, mostly handwritten, shed extensive light on his political views and personal life – from references to "herself" (Kitty Kiernan, his fiancee) and the books he liked (which included "the better class novels", Heath's Practical French Grammar and Dineen's Irish Dictionary).
From his family home in Cork (in December 1916), Collins writes that he was “not too impressed with the people here” [in Ireland] who are: “Too damn careful and cautious. A few old men aren’t too bad – but most of the young ones are the limit. The little bit of material prosperity has ruined them.”
In a letter sent from Dublin’s Exchequer Street in 1917, Collins comments on the first World War and German air attacks on London: “It was an awful pity that the Huns didn’t hit the House of Commons”. He displayed little sympathy for the civilians in London and, in a separate letter, declared he was “simply sorry that there are so many of our Irish people over there”.
A few sentences later he lightens the tone and says: “Great week-end in Granard – You know ‘herself’ lives there now.”
The auctioneers said the correspondence had been seen by historian Margery Forester, but not by later biographers. As well as the letters to his sister, the sale includes correspondence received by Collins.
An envelope marked “On His Majesty’s Service”, and addressed to Mr M Collins, contains a letter from a GAA official in May 1911 while Collins was living in London. The letter, signed by a D Brennan, apologises for “the informal way we have asked you to act as linesman” and reminds Collins of the starting time for a match the following evening.
The “Independence” sale on Tuesday, April 19th, also includes a range of other Collins-related memorabilia as well as hundreds of other Irish historical items. Public viewing begins at the Adam’s saleroom on St Stephen’s Green from Saturday, April 16th.
