Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 3 April 1916

Foo, Bar; Bar, Foo

Letter from James Finn to May Fay, 3 April 1916

1 NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE COMMISSION (IRELAND),
PEMBROKE HOUSE,
UPPER MOUNT STREET,
DUBLIN. 3 April, 1916. My dearest May, I have a minute or two to spare so I think I had
better send you a note. It will have to be a short one however so you
must be satisfied with it just as it is. In replying to your letter of
yesterday I should probably have told you that I was joking when I said in
a previous letter that I’d be tired of you before the honeymoon was over. You
know very well that that is not true and I hope in God it never will come
true. I’d rather a thousand times die than that the time should ever come when
I should so cruelly wound the tender and affectionate heart of my dearest and
best girl as to ever waver for a moment in my love and respect for you. I have
often told you that I have a very poor opinion indeed of myself- I have very
good reason for it because I know myself better than you or anyone else does-
and for that reason I always fear and distrust myself and think that perhaps a
day would come when – the grace of God failing me- I might be unkind or
neglectful of you. I pray heaven that I may die first. Today is a bit of a change from the days just past. It’s a bit cloudy
and inclined to turn chilly again and would not I fear be quite suitable for
white silk. I hope that we will have the luck of good weather for our little
celebration and for the honeymoon too. I think it would be no harm if 2 you started praying for it. The sooner you get your petition in the better
for perhaps someone else might be praying for rain that day and it would
be rotten luck to have a wet day for ones wedding never to speak of
having a wet honeymoon which would “put the lid on it”. Accountant
sailed off for London this morning, I believe, without me thank goodness.
There have been three separate and distinct Zeppelin raids on the east
coast of England in the last three nights, Friday Saturday and Sunday
and I expect the death toll and the injuries will be tremendous. I expect
people in England are getting very frightened over the whole business. We had Jim
Finn round last night and he was telling me that he is on the mail boat
work for the last few days and expects to have a few trips this week
also. I don’t envy him his job although I must say that if I had to
cross at present it would hardly cost me a thought. Perhaps I’m a bit
of a fatalist in these matters or perhaps it is that I think that if the good Lord
wants to hit you, He can do it as handy in your bed as on the “ocean wave”.
Let me know about the Easter present. I mean to get you something whether you
like it or not so you might as well let me know what you would prefer
as to have me spending money on something that perhaps wouldn’t please you.
Am spun out now both in time and news so I will close with my heart’s
warmest and (I hope) enduring love to the best and sweetest and dearest
and truest little girl in the world. Always your loving James

This is from a series of letters written between James Finn and his fiancee Mary (May) Fay. They became engaged in January 1916 and married in June and the letters were written between them during that period. He lived in Dublin, she lived 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. He tells how he "had his eye on her" for a long time but waited until she was old enough. Throughout the series of letters you can see how their relationship develops from the first somewhat tentative letters and how her confidence grows. The series is not complete; it is interrupted by visits to each other’s homes and by obviously missing 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, my father. She held on to his letters as her reminder of him: this explains their survival. 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, so that she ended up quite comfortable off! 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, trying to demand he be carried in to meetings. Neither May nor James were politically active though, like many in the Civil Service, James was obviously somewhat activated, learning Irish, probably Gaelic League, and as can be read in the letters after Easter, he knew many who more caught up in it. One can sense their shifting sympathies in the letters. James speaks of accountant Gallagher's trip to London and the Zeppelin raids there. His cousin Jim is working the mail boat and he fears danger for him

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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__5714.html)