MICHAEL COLLINS A good ALS to his sister Hannie, c/o his Aunt Hannah in Dublin, 27.1.16, 4 pp. He is working three days a week 10 to 4 as financial adviser to Count Plunkett 'for which I get...

MICHAEL COLLINS A good ALS to his sister Hannie, c/o his Aunt Hannah in Dublin, 27.1.16, 4 pp. He is working three days a week 10 to 4 as financial adviser to Count Plunkett 'for which I get lunch each day and ?1 a week. There are a few other part time jobs I have in view & something may come of them'. He discusses his plans for a visit to the south, asks is the flat lonely without him, enquires about a box which has not been delivered by the Railway Co., explains he is writing this letter under trying disadvantages. 'Aunt H[annah] is talking rubbish about my forefathers earning bread & butter honestly, & who are the English but the Germans, why don't I join the army to earn a decent honest living, you never heard the like!' He asks her to forward anything delivered for him in London to Dublin 'as I suppose I shall be in touch with this place at any rate unless something expected turns up' (underlined in original). Count Plunkett, father of Joseph Mary Plunkett, had a large farm at Kimmage where a number of young IRB men were accommodated early in 1916; it is said grenades were also made there. Collins left his accountancy job in London late in 1915 apparently because he had word that something was to happen soon in Dublin - perhaps the 'something expected' to which he makes a significant reference. Three months later he was in the GPO with the rank of staff captain, as aide-de-camp to Joseph Mary Plunkett. With an unaddressed envelope from Hotel Metropole, Cork. Provenance: Collins family, by descent.

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