Treasury Remembrancer was the quaint title used by the British administration for a civil servant whose duty it was to examine official spending in Ireland and to report to London or take action on the spot in cases of over-expenditure. Maurice Headlam held the office from 1912 to 1920, and 27 years after leaving, he published his Irish Reminiscences, dedicated "to those who have loved Ireland and do not care much for Eire."
He gives an example from the experience of a previous holder of the office (unofficially known as the "Treasury Spy"). Anyway, this Remembrancer, Sir Robert Holmes, had reason to think that too much was spent on heating the Four Courts and wrote to the Lord Chief Justice "then or afterwards the first Lord Morris and Killanin about it, saying that he would wait on his Lordship to discuss the matter." When he appeared, the Chief Justice rang his bell, and ordered the housekeeper's attendance, to whom he said: "Mary, here's the man come about the coals."
A man who had taken part in the national movement at this time wrote a note which he slipped into his copy of the book - a sort of personal review. "I began to read the book with a very well disposed mind, partly because he was such an enthusiastic fisherman. I have been perhaps more amused than disappointed. With some of these people, however, our tolerance is wasted. With all his loyalties and English civil-service integrity, Headlam's book is another condemnation of the Castle regime. He was intolerant, narrow-minded and, imperially shortsighted ... He plainly and stubbornly refused to recognise any claims of nationality. His whole book is a hunt for reasons of condemnation."
He enjoyed and appreciated much good fishing in Ireland, but solemnly records what he calls, "a Hunnish proceeding" in the West when a lunch-bag which had been left under a rock on the shore while he trolled, "had been wantonly destroyed in our absence. The people of the West are so pleasant to meet that we could not understand it." He goes on to compare wanton destruction by Sinn Feiners all over Ireland in later years to "German outrages of wanton destruction in the second World War in the countries which had been occupied." Lunch-baskets were apparently safe everywhere in England.
Much genial stuff, too. Especially in fishing. He got two 30-lb salmon in one day. He enjoyed club life and the wonderful flow of words when Yeats came up to him after dinner in the United Arts Club and talked of "the eternal duality and interaction of things - alas, I cannot remember what it all led to, only a wonderful flows of words."