Sir, – There has been press coverage recently about the return on loan to Ireland of the Gal Gréine banner for an exhibition in Dublin City Hall ("Historic Gal Gréine banner returns to Dublin 100 years on", March 3rd). This flag carried the emblem of Na Fianna Éireann and was seized in 1916 during a raid by members of the British army on the home of Countess Markievicz. It ended up in the Royal Collection and then in the Imperial War Museum.
George A Birmingham, in his autobiography, Pleasant Places, published in 1934, describes this search of Countess Markievicz's home. He doesn't mention the banner, but mentions other effects removed on this occasion.
George Birmingham was the pseudonym of Rev JO Hannay, Church of Ireland rector, and the author of many popular novels and plays in the early decades of the last century.
He knew Countess Markievicz and she produced one of his plays at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. He records that in the play there was a scene in which the heroine, played by Countess Markievicz, emerged from the bedroom in the middle of the night. He writes that he was anxious that his name should not be associated with anything risqué and he feared that “she would be inclined to wear as little as possible when making her appearance”.
He wrote her several letters urging that she wear a dressing gown, bedroom slippers and other similar garments. He remarks: “She wanted to reduce her clothing to a minimum”.
Hannay recounts that he had forgotten about the whole matter until 1916. After Countess Markievicz was arrested her rooms were searched and her papers seized by a young officer who happened to be the son of a former parishioner of his in Westport. He was probably looking for German or other incriminating documents. Instead, he found a bundle of letters tied up and labelled with Hannay’s name.
The officer was greatly upset about this, because he feared that his rector had involved himself in some treasonable correspondence. Hannay was in France at the time serving as a chaplain to the forces, and it would have been very awkward, so this young officer thought, if he was arrested as a rebel.
After the raid, the officer went to Hannay’s wife, Ada, and told her what he had found. He said that he himself had not read the letters, but had handed the packet over intact to some official in Dublin Castle.
Hannay then writes that he did not know whether anybody in authority read these letters. But, he could imagine the chief secretary, Augustine Birrell, being a “little puzzled by the correspondence between Madame Markievicz and me entirely about underclothes”.
Where are these letters now? Perhaps they also ended up in the Royal Collection in London. – Yours, etc,
Prof BRIAN WALKER,
School of Politics,
Queens University of Belfast.