Who owns Pearse's letter?

Today, at the showrooms of Adam's auctioneers in Dublin, one of the last letters written by Patrick Pearse before his execution…

Today, at the showrooms of Adam's auctioneers in Dublin, one of the last letters written by Patrick Pearse before his execution will be sold. It was sent to Gen Sir John Maxwell, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Ireland, and asks for statements on his business affairs to be given to his mother or sister, writes Fintan O'Toole

Pearse adds that he would be grateful if his money could also be given to either of the women. The money in question was a five-pound note and two gold sovereigns.

The chances are that the letter will sell for rather more than that: a year ago, Pearse's surrender note to Maxwell fetched €700,000.

As Pat Cooke, former director of the Pearse Museum, wrote in History Ireland in 2005: "It is impossible not to be struck by the irony of it all. A piece of paper Pearse scribbled upon in the last throes of a failed insurrection sells 90 years later for an incredible, princely sum. Celtic Tiger Ireland certainly knows how to value its patriot dead. Patriotism is transmuted into patriotica."

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There is, however, a question that needs to be answered before the sale of Pearse's letter goes ahead today: to whom does it belong?

Rather unusually, the Adam's catalogue does not answer that question, giving no provenance for the letter. And there is, on the face of it, a strong possibility that it actually belongs to the Irish people, not just in a moral sense, but also in a literal one.

Before setting out the reasons why this may be the case, let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am not accusing anyone of any unethical, underhand or dishonest behaviour in relation to the offering for sale of Pearse's letter.

There are all sorts of ways in which this document may have innocently come into the possession of whomever is selling it, and there is no reason to believe that anyone connected with the sale is not acting in good faith.

The great authority on the last letters and statements of the 1916 Rising leaders was Piaras Mac Lochlainn, keeper of the museum at Kilmainham Gaol and organiser of the 50th anniversary commemoration in 1966.

His book Last Words, published by the Office of Public Works, is accepted as the definitive account of these documents. According to Last Words, the letter that is being sold today was part of a group of documents given to Pearse's sister, senator Margaret Pearse, in 1946.

They came from a Mrs Norton in Leeds, whose husband, a British army sergeant, worked in the records department at Kilmainham.

It is clear that Sgt Norton took the letter with him when he left Ireland and that his widow subsequently returned it to Margaret Pearse. After her death in 1968, the letter was at St Enda's, where Patrick Pearse had run his school.

More than a year before her death, in January 1967, Margaret Pearse signed an indenture gifting St Enda's to the State. I have a copy of the indenture. It clearly states that the gift includes the land "with the buildings thereon and the contents thereof". In the schedule to the indenture, it is stated that the gift includes "the furniture, furnishings, paintings, pictures, statues, china, books, manuscripts . . . and such like". The reference to "manuscripts" seems to suggest that the gift included Pearse's letters, many of which are indeed held in what is now the Pearse Museum at St Enda's.

Assuming that Piaras Mac Lochlainn was correct in writing that the letter to Maxwell was at St Enda's, it is hard to see how it could be excluded from Margaret Pearse's gift to the State.

There may be a perfectly good explanation for the fact that the letter is now on private sale, but the absence of any provenance from the catalogue means that it is less than obvious.

It is at the very least incumbent on the State to establish the ownership of the document. This is important, not just in this case, but because the taste for what Cooke calls "patriotica" is bringing very large amounts of historical material to the marketplace. Adam's auctioneers are selling 600 items today, and sold almost 500 in a similar auction last year.

This new market is distorting what has been, up to now, a remarkable tradition of public donation. The manuscript of Pearse's address to his court martial was withdrawn from sale at Sotheby's in 1969 and presented instead to the Irish people.

The late Jackie Clarke left his extraordinary collection of historical memorabilia to the public, and it is now being housed in a special library in Ballina.

The instinct to give historic material to the public remains strong, but curators find that approaches are increasingly concerned with establishing the price, rather than the value, of an object.

If today's sale of the Pearse letter goes ahead with no questions asked, it would send out a signal that the public interest matters less than a thriving market.

If, on the other hand, the State were to ask for the sale to be postponed pending an investigation of the document's provenance, it would be a timely reminder that history is not just a private matter.