For £1 million, then. Which well-known Irish person wrote the following to his partner in 1911: "I need a kiss, urgently . . . I want to press my wife to my heart, but we are 150 miles apart. Darling, do you think of me at all? - can you sleep without those long limbs wrapped around you? - those same limbs are longing to be wrapped around you again - two weeks - fourteen days - how can I endure it? You do not know how sorrowful I am . . ."
Just when we were getting used to the idea that our parents had sex and enjoyed it, a further imaginative effort is called for. Letters have come to light which make it clear that Eamon de Valera - for most of us the epitome of joyless rectitude - spent that faraway summer of 1911 in a haze of sensual longing for the physical presence of his young wife. It is a feeling that will be recognised by anyone who can remember what it was to be young.
The extract is from one of a collection of 17 letters which de Valera wrote to his wife, Sinead, between 1911 and 1920. Seven of them came from various prisons, Irish and British. They include the letter he wrote from Mountjoy Jail on the morning of May 11th, 1916, to tell her his death sentence for armed rebellion had been commuted to penal servitude for life. There are four letters from Lincoln Jail, one each from Lewes and Maidstone, two from Washington during his US mission of 1919-20, and five early letters from 1911 to 1913, when the young de Valera - not yet a politician, nor even perhaps a revolutionary - spent his summers on a small island off the Galway coast where he ran a Gaelic League college.
The letters have not been seen by any biographer. They must have been separated at an early stage from the main body of de Valera papers (now in the care of the Franciscan Library) - perhaps left behind somewhere in the years when the family had no permanent abode, and their writer had a price on his head. It is clear that they have been stored for a long time in damp conditions.
Their current possessor has submitted them to Mealy's of Castlecomer for sale by auction, and they are to be included in the firm's annual December sale in Dublin. Mealy's say the vendor is not a member of the de Valera family. They understand the letters turned up in England, and have passed through several hands; beyond that, the provenance is unexplained. However, there is no possible doubt about their authenticity. The handwriting is immediately recognisable, and the circumstantial detail is more than sufficient to preclude any doubt.
The letters are of enormous interest to historians and future biographers - not for political reasons, but for the insight they offer into that elusive creature, de Valera the private man. The prison letters of course were censored, but even in the later US letters, there are only brief comments on the progress of his political mission. What is entirely new, however, is the portrait they offer of de Valera as a young husband, struggling to overcome aspects of his personality which - as he himself sees - make it difficult for him to live up to his love for his wife.
In January, l9l7, writing from Lewes Jail, he says: "If we are ever reunited, I believe I can make you far happier than we have ever been before - in a place like this one reflects a good deal, and I hope, am certain indeed, that I will not in the future be guilty of so many acts of unconscious selfishness as I was in the past . . ." But later that year, after his release, he sends an apologetic note from a hotel, on his way to some political function: "What misfortune causes me always to complain about small things - especially when I am going away? I am always full of regret later . . ." And again, in November, 1917: "I think of you always and am sorry to be so often away . . . when I cannot talk to you, I have so much to say to you, but when we are together I am dumb. Can you understand?"
From a purely historical point of view, the most remarkable letter is the one announcing his reprieve. Written on prison notepaper, it is understandably constrained. "My darling wife: I know the agonies you must have endured during the past few weeks. The suspense at any rate is now over - the sentence of death passed on me has been commuted to penal servitude for life - so you have now only to cope with a certainty . . . I needn't tell you I am counting the minutes till I see you. As all letters are read by the prison authorities I cannot write you, love, the kind of letter I would like, or tell you how, through it all, you were ever-present to my thoughts. You and the children were my (only) source of anxiety . . ."
He gives some details of the prison regulations, and asks her for one thing only: his copy of Joly's Manual of Quaternions, which he hopes the governor may allow him to have. As it happened, the mathematician Joly had spent Easter Week in Trinity College, where he helped to put the college in a state of defence against the rebels. It would be interesting to know if they ever compared notes.
The early letters from Tawin Gaelic College are of particular interest, since little is known of this period in de Valera's life. In 1910, when he married, he was lecturing in mathematics in Dublin. He had learned Irish at classes run by the Gaelic League - it was there he first met his wife - and in the summer of 1911, he agreed to run an Irish course on Tawin island, off the Galway coast.
There is no hint in these letters of any interest in politics, but there is evidence of a hard-headed approach to his own professional future. He mentions an inspectorship, for which he intends to apply; and a long letter (lacking its first page) shows him coaching Sinead in the arguments she is to use with E.R. Dix in a discussion about his pay. His preference is to be paid expenses only, but at a rate which would cover his wife also; if Dix won't agree to this, then she is to hold out for five shillings an hour and not a penny less. (It is not clear why Sinead had to do the negotiating).
He mentions visits to the college by Dix and Roger Casement, who put up money for prizes in a cookery competition. Dix was one of the judges, and a letter describes him "wiring into a bit of everything. I'm sorry we haven't 20 houses to go to. He'd have indigestion then, I tell you . . ." (This is the same Dix who is better known as an expert on early Irish printing).
ALL this opens a new window on the interior life of a man whose external image has always been one of cold, cerebral, unyielding rectitude. There may be other such letters in the family archive, but if so, they have not been shown to biographers. The sincerity of these letters is self-evident, and at times very moving. One is left with a strong impression of how much he really missed family life, which he had to give up for politics. On December 31st, 1919, writing at midnight from the Shoreham Hotel, Washington, he says: "Another New Year's night away from you and the children - I hope you are not as lonely as I am. This separation is the great sacrifice and I know it is hard on you. When playing with the youngsters at McGarrity's, I felt more lonely than ever." By this time, Dev and Sinead had six children, all under 10. He had not lived continuously at home for almost four years, and it was another four before he could do so again.
Future writers about de Valera will have to come to terms with this new evidence of his interior hesitations, his determination to overcome his personal failings, and indeed the warmth and strength of his feelings for his wife and family. It should contribute to a more rounded, and perhaps a more sympathetic understanding of his complicated personality.
The letters are for sale on December 6th in the Tara Towers Hotel, Dublin, as part of a two-day sale of books and manuscripts. The auctioneer's estimate for the collection is £15,000-£20,000.