Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 15 February 1916

Foo, Bar; Bar, Foo

Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 15 February 1916

1 with all my warmest
love to my darling girl
from her ever loving
and constant James 39, Belgrave Square,
Rathmines,
Dublin. 15th July 1916 My dearest May, Your letter to-day was
a great pleasure as usual but somehow
I was disappointed that it was so
short. I suppose that was due to the
natural upset at home on Jim leaving
to make his fortune. I hope the poor
chap will get on well anyhow and
will reconcile himself to the queer
people of Mitchelstown better than you
did. I'm afraid you wouldn't get on
well in business, you would be too 2 fond of telling people your frank opinion
of them. I hope it will never come to
that between you and me. Somehow
or another for the past four days I have
been feeling depressed - maybe it's the
worries in the office that have been
affecting me without my knowing it so
i hope that you will, like the dear
little girl you are, send me a nice
loving letter in the next four days to
cheer me up. Now aren't I selfish
heart to be telling you all this to
worry you but somehow I can't help
letting you know. However there's a good
time coming on Saturday now and
I am sure that I will be quite cured

of the dumps by then. I'm not surprised to hear that
the bad weather you're having in the
country. One of the men in my office
was away in the south (Cork) for
the past four days and he tells me that
the country all down there is covered
with snow. We haven't had any in
Dublin but the weather has been very
cold and wet some days. Today is
wet and stormy and I got nearly wet
through coming home from the office Moll went out to Kingstown on
Sunday eveening and started work in
the Post office there yesterday morning.
We have been expecting a line from
her since but haven't heard anything 3 yet. she will like it very well.
though on both the work and the town
are allright. There's a good deal of
talk all round at present about the
coming of peace but it is impossible to
say what chance there is of it. I hope to
God something may come of all the talk
soon for I don't know how the middle
- never to speak of the unfortunate
poor in the towns and cities - are going
to hang on if the war last for another
year or so. The country people are lucky
that needn't worry about or
Well, love, I have spun
this letter out without saying anything pleasant
or interesting and maybe have added to your
worries by it. If I have will you please
forgive me and let me off for this time. I
won't offend again.

This is from a series of letters written between James Finn and his fiancée Mary (May) Fay. They became engaged in January 1916 and married in June. He lived in Dublin, she in Westmeath; he was 20 years older than her at 39 and had become acquainted with her during his regular visits to his relative Mrs Mary Seery, her neighbour. Throughout the series their relationship develops from the first somewhat tentative letters. They were not to be married long: in 1919 he fell ill with the great flu epidemic, it led to heart damage and he died in 1922 as she was expecting their fourth child. She held on to his letters as her reminder of him. Despite many offers and her difficult finances she never married again. She took in lodgers and trained (and practised) as a midwife, chiropodist, and public health nurse while raising her children. She proved to be an excellent entrepreneur, charmed bank managers into giving her loans (against the norm of the time) and bought properties one after another, many of which were broken up into flats. James Finn was a civil servant, working in the National Health Service Commission on Mount Street. Family history says that he was advising on the restructuring of the civil service as part of setting up the new government in 1922 and that eminent figures in that project were visiting him in his sick bed so that they could consult with him. Neither May nor James were politically active, although like many in the Civil Service, James learned Irish and as can be read in the letters after Easter, he knew many who more caught up in the Easter Rising. One can sense their shifting sympathies in the letters. He talks of his sister Moll's new job in the Post Office in Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), the bad weather and rumours of peace.

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How to cite

Letters 1916, published by the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, Vienna, 2026 (https://letters1916static.github.io/letters1916-static/item__5546.html)