A nation-builder who didn’t bring his parenting skills home

TERRY DE VALERA’S memoir, which was published this week, has some fascinating insights. As the youngest son of Eamon de Valera, Terry provides some up-to-date observations of his own on the international scene.

Throughout his life, in times of strife the Long Fellow turned to America but Terry believes his father would not be impressed with the behaviour of the United States now.

"He would not have had the same admiration for the US today, especially its government's foreign policy over the last few decades. Like all other large and powerful states, it has become bluntly and distinctly imperial, both in its attitude, but above all, its actions," Terry contends. "No fair-minded person can believe the arguments they put forward to justify their piratical activities and those of their lackey allies."

The most fascinating observations are excerpts from the reminiscences of his mother, Sinéad de Valera, who provides some fresh insights. She notes, for instance, that her romance with Dev, as she called him, was a whirlwind one. "We met in class and at a couple of céilís and by June had decided to get married," she wrote.

"We hardly knew each other until we were engaged." After a short engagement they got married in August.

"It is here that I have noted something of Dev's character," Sinéad continued. "In small things, Dev is very much given to weighing up things; he sees all the difficulties and takes all the precautions. On the other hand, when a big matter is at stake, he will go boldly forward."

Dev kept Sinéad in the dark about the Easter rebellion in order not to worry her. What did she have to worry about, a young woman with four young children and another on the way? Suddenly she found herself faced with trying to save her husband's life as he faced execution. She got his birth certificate, proving his American birth and bombarded the American consul and vice-consul to plead for her husband's life.

"I went to them several times," she wrote. The following days were anxious ones. Every day brought bad news of an execution. De Valera faced a court martial on Monday, May 8, 1916. Four men were executed that morning and another one on Tuesday. While putting young Eamon to bed on Wednesday evening, Sinéad recalled, "I looked out the window and saw a cab stopping at the door. A priest got out, Fr McCarthy from James' Street." It must have a heart-stopping moment.

"We can bear any news, Father, if it is not death," Sinéad's sister Bridget said. "It is not death," the priest replied. Dev's death sentence had been commuted to life in prison. They believed his life was spared because of the growing public revulsion, but the final two executions were not until two days later. Sinéad had to send the three older children to relatives while she and the baby moved in with her parents and her Aunt Mary, who was suffering from terminal cancer.

Only eight years older than Sinéad, Mary died in August, and Sinéad's father suffered a stroke that left him mentally confused. Ruairí was born in November, and Sinéad's mother died in January 1917. When de Valera got out of jail in June, Sinéad saw little of him, because he became involved in politics, and was again arrested.

Shortly after his escape in 1919, he went to the United States for 18 months. She went out to see him in the autumn of 1920 but for her six weeks there he had more important things to do than spend much time with her.

"The visit to America was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made," Sinéad recalled. "It was a huge blunder for me to go to America. I derived neither profit nor pleasure from my visit."

On first hearing that the Treaty had been signed, Vivion de Valera, the eldest of the children, seemed perplexed.

"Is this good?" he asked his mother. "Surely Mick wouldn't take anything that wasn't good."

"When Dev came home that night, he asked me what I thought of the Treaty," Sinéad wrote.

"Everyone else seems pleased but I don't like it," she replied.

"When Mother spoke of Michael Collins, which she often did," Terry notes, "she did so with a feeling of real gratitude and affection and always acknowledged his daring and supreme courage."

She noted, however, that "Collins was too prone to be duped by flattery and that the British had skilfully seized on this".

She added that they never would have "succeeded in doing this with Dev or Parnell". If Collins was a bad choice, it was entirely de Valera's fault he had selected Collins and insisted on sending him to London, very much against the Big Fellow's own better judgment. De Valera demonstrated real greatness but he was too wrapped up in himself. Terry takes umbrage at the unnamed writer who suggested that the Long Fellow had "no real humanity".

AFTER a radio programme Tim Pat Coogan asked me to autograph his copy of my book, De Valera: The Man and the Myths.

"If behind the cold, impersonal countenance of the subject of this biography, there seems to be no real humanity," I wrote, "possibly it's because there was none."

It was a throwaway remark that was not intended for publication, but Tim Pat quoted it later in the introduction to his biography. For all his filial devotion, Terry fails to demonstrate real paternal warmth on the part of his father. There was humanitarian concern, but that was not the same thing.

"Life will never be the same again," Dev remarked after listening to Neville Chamberlain's famous 1939 broadcast announcing that Britain was at war with Germany. "With God's help we will all be spared to see its end," Sinéad added. On the night of the Pearl Harbour attack, de Valera was roused to receive a telegram from Churchill.

Terry, then 19, heard a noise in the corridor and opened the door to find his father in a dressing gown. "He looked in my direction and said in a strong, stern voice: 'Go back to your room and do not come out unless I call you.'"

Jack Lynch told the story of the day at Áras an Uachtaráin in the late 1960s when Dev talked about hurling to the King of the Belgians. At one point Dev threw a sliothar in the air and, holding the hurley upside down, with the boss pointed to the ground, he gave it a puck, much to Lynch's amazement. Jack said that he had not thought that Dev could hit the Áras with a hurley, much less the sliothar. Terry points out, however, that when Jack tried to hit the sliothar, he missed and had to try again. Jack did not mention that!

The book is a collection of fond memories that are sometimes more loyal than historically accurate.

This hagiographical approach presents the best case for Sinéad's canonisation. The Long Fellow was the greatest Irish statesman of the 20th century, but he had little more paternal instincts than a jennet.

Terry de Valera, A Memoir, is published by Curragh Press at €24.99.