September, 1926, Monday 13

Yesterday Miss O’Brien sent me to St. Ita’s School with an umbrella. It was Miss Mary MacSwiney opened the door. Whatever about her politics, for an unpractical ideal, namely sudden break off and independence from England, cannot be put into force, she is really charming, both in her manner and in her ways. She is a devout Catholic, receiving every morning. As I ought to know, considering she was my mistress for over 3 years75. Miss Annie, on the other hand, is more fanatical, and as Pappie says, a ‘Treib auf’ [trouble maker] Got only a small portion of my work done, as Mám said we must go to the pictures, for the last time, and have a ‘burst’ before Páp comes home. The ‘Washington’ seemed good, ‘The Virgin of San Blas’ from a Spanish ballad, but unfortunately it was pretty hopeless. I can well understand what an evil effect weekly pictures such as these can have on the mind. I felt pretty rotten after it, though there was nothing particularly objectionable in it.

[In brackets and crossed out, possibly because it was meant for the entry of September Wednesday 15:] Written in terrible hurry, because Páp hates seeing me with my diary]
  1. The MacSwiney sisters’ school, Scoil Íte, opened in September 1916, with Aloys as pupil. He remained there till the end of 1919, before going to the Christian Brothers’ College. Mary MacSwiney (1872-1942) had known Tilly Fleischmann from their days as pupils at St. Angela’s Ursuline College, where she later taught. She was a suffragette and involved in the republican movement, founding the Cork women’s section of the Volunteers, Cumann na mBan, in 1914. After the 1916 rising she was imprisoned, lost her job and on her release had to found her own school. After her brother’s death, she spent nearly a year in the USA, lecturing and fundraising with her sister-in-law Muriel. She was elected to the Dáil in 1921 as a Sinn Féin member; she voted against the Treaty. She was interned during the civil war, went twice on hunger strike. She publicly criticised the bishop of Cork for interfering in politics. She refused to recognise the Free State government, and therefore would not accept state grants for her school. She was elected to the Dail again in 1923, but like the other republicans Sinn Féin deputies, would not take her seat. In 1926 de Valera gave up abstentionism; she refused to join his new party, Fianna Fáil. She lost her seat in 1927. [↩]