Chapter 1  

THE VALUE OF PRACTICE

“… fluency of speech in public is as much an acquired talent as a natural gift.”¹

JOHN A. COSTELLO, JULY 1911

“Mr Jack Costello is an example of the value of practice. He improves every meeting and is now really worth listening to …”²

UCD MAGAZINE THE NATIONAL STUDENT, MARCH 1912

After John A. Costello’s election as Taoiseach, one of his former schoolmates, John Keane, produced a photograph of a group of pupils at O’Connell School, and asked his children to guess which one grew up to be the leader of the Government. The clue, it turned out, was that Costello was the only boy in the photograph wearing a watch chain³—a suitable symbol of the future wealth and upper middle class status of one of the leading barristers of his day. The watch chain also fits neatly into the widespread perception that Costello, like some of his colleagues in Cumann na nGaedheal and later Fine Gael, was the product of a privileged background.

But in fact, unlike other members of the pro-Treaty leadership such as Kevin O’Higgins, Patrick Hogan and Patrick McGilligan, the future Taoiseach was not a past pupil of the elite private school Clongowes. He was a Christian Brothers boy, his father a mid-ranking civil servant, and his upbringing modest, though comfortable.⁴ If the watch chain was symbolic, it was symbolic of an aspiration rather than a status achieved. And the story of Jack Costello’s early years is the story of how hard work and natural ability allowed him to make good on that aspiration.

John Aloysius Costello was born on 20 June 1891, at the home of his parents at 13 Charleville Road⁵ on the northside of Dublin, not far from the city centre. The house is a pleasant mid-terrace redbrick with a bay window. Charleville Road, quiet and tree-lined, runs from Cabra Road down to the North Circular Road. Although Costello’s birth certificate describes it as being in Cabra, it’s actually closer to Phibsborough, just down from the massive gothic St Peter’s Church (begun in 1862, but only finished in 1911).

Costello was part of the last generation to grow to adulthood in an Ireland that was part of the British Empire. His birth came in the middle of political crisis—the Home Rule Party had split in December 1890 over the continued leadership of Charles Stuart Parnell, who was to die the following October. Costello’s year of birth also put him, in terms of age, almost exactly halfway between two of his great political rivals—Eamon de Valera, born in 1882, and Seán Lemass, born in 1899.

His father, John Costello senior, was born in Barefield in Clare on 25 May 1862,⁶ while his mother, Rose Callaghan, was three years younger and a native of Westmeath. The couple married in 1888.⁷ When he became Taoiseach, Jack Costello was asked if he was related to various branches of the Costello clan, but had to reply that he had “made only very little study of his genealogical tree”.⁸ However, he apparently spent boyhood summers in Barefield, playing with the local children and eating apples from the local orchard—whether with permission or not is not clear.⁹ In later years, he enjoyed telling his family stories about Clare, particularly the West Clare Railway immortalised by Percy French in the song “Are You Right There Michael”. Costello claimed a printed notice in one station outlined a revised timetable and ended with the warning that “there will be no last train”.¹⁰

Just four miles from Ennis, Barefield was less a village than a “small cluster of houses”, although it was significant enough to have an RIC hut under the command of a sergeant. It was described in the mid-1940s as “a very undulating parish, and its good and bad land is just as much mixed as its contour”. At that time, it had two pubs, a Catholic church, a post office, a dispensary, and a national school.¹¹ The latter, described in 1943 as a “fairly new, substantial four teacher school” was built on Costello family land.¹²

John Costello senior began working in the Registry of Deeds in Dublin in 1881, shortly before his nineteenth birthday.¹³ His progress through the ranks of the organisation was steady if unspectacular—by 1898 he was a Second Division Clerk,¹⁴ in 1903 he became one of three Higher Grade clerks,¹⁵ and a decade later he became a Staff Officer—a senior position but still quite a bit down the pecking order, behind the Registrar, First and Second Assistant Registrars and the Chief Clerk.¹⁶ He was in the same position when he retired.¹⁷ His brother Jim also went into the Civil Service, in his case the post office, but appears to have had a more successful career, as in later life he had a house on the fashionable Alma Road in Monkstown.¹⁸

Outside work, John Costello was a prominent temperance activist in Father Mathew Hall in Church Street for over 40 years.¹⁹ He gave lectures in the Hall on diverse subjects, ranging from “Some Incidents in the Land War of the Last Century”²⁰ to “The Rise of the Peasant in Ireland”²¹ and even “A holiday by the Cliffs of Moher”, which was to be “illustrated by limelight view”.²² Of more significance, he served as chairman of the Father Matthew Health Insurance Society, which among other things campaigned for the extension of medical benefits to Ireland.²³ He was also active in trade unionism, being involved in the formation of the Civil Service Guild²⁴ and serving on its Executive.²⁵ As an active politician, his son was to champion the cause of civil servants, helping to bring about an arbitration system to resolve disputes over pay.²⁶

Jack Costello recalled in later years that his father was “a great Parnellite”.²⁷ This was a common position in the capital, as Tom Garvin has pointed out: “bourgeois and working-class Dublin became Parnellite in contrast to the mainly anti-Parnellite countryside.”²⁸ Of course, the son was also a supporter of Home Rule, and of John Redmond, in the years leading up to the First World War—as he said later, “everyone in Ireland was a Home Ruler with the exception of a very small minority who were in theIRB…”²⁹ As we shall see in Chapter 5, Costello senior was to become a Fine Gael Councillor on Dublin Corporation after his retirement.

John and Rose Costello had three children. Mary, known as May in the family, was born the year after their marriage. She was to live on in the family home, caring for her parents, and never married. Thomas Joseph, who was a year younger, became a doctor and emigrated to England—as we shall see, he was a larger-than-life character, and in their university days overshadowed Jack, who was two years younger than him. Their father was keen on walks—perhaps in the nearby Phoenix Park—so keen, in fact, that Jack was put off organised walks for life.³⁰

By the time of the 1911 Census, the Costello family was living at 32 Rathdown Road, in the parish of Grangegorman. Rathdown Road is just across the North Circular from Charleville Road, and runs down towards what was then Grangegorman mental hospital. Number 32 is part of a long terrace of red brick houses, and is similar in appearance to Costello’s birthplace on Charleville Road, with a bay window on the ground floor and two windows upstairs.

Rose Costello’s family may have helped with the purchase of both these houses, which could have been slightly beyond John Costello’s salary as a relatively junior civil servant. Just three months after buying the house at Charleville Road, he signed an indenture of assignment with his brother-in-law, James Callaghan, a grocer in North King Street, and with John McKeever, a draper from Navan married to one of the Callaghan sisters.³¹ This suggests they had some financial interest in the house, perhaps after lending their brother-in-law some money. Another of the Callaghan sisters, Bridget, had an interest in the house in Rathdown Road, and in her will, made in November 1921, she left that interest to Rose, stipulating that after Rose’s death it should pass to May. In a codicil to the will made in 1930, after Rose’s death, the interest in 32 Rathdown Road was left to John senior and May.³²

John Aloysius became a pupil at St Joseph’s, Marino, in the autumn of 1903, when he was 12. The school (later better known as “Joey’s”) was run by the Christian Brothers. One of its three rooms was devoted to the 43 pupils in the intermediate (secondary) class. The 300 primary pupils were divided between the other two rooms.³³ Among his classmates was Dick Browne,³⁴ later Chairman of the Electricity Supply Board, who was Costello’s greatest friend, godfather to his son Declan, and one of his golfing partners on Sunday mornings in Portmarnock for many years.³⁵

As Marino had no senior classes at the time, the two friends transferred to the O’Connell School in North Richmond Street,³⁶ also run by the Christian Brothers. The school was named after Daniel O’Connell, who laid the foundation stone in 1828.³⁷ It prided itself on its success in the Intermediate Examinations, frequently boasting the highest number of passes and distinctions in the country.³⁸ The school’s centenary book in 1928 noted the number of senior Government officials it had produced, including Costello, who was then Attorney General, Dick Browne, who was a Senior Inspector of Taxes, and the Secretary of the Department of Local Government, E.P. McCarron. With some self-satisfaction, R.C. Geary (later Director of the Central Statistics Office) wrote, “Your ‘Richmond Street’ boy makes a good official. In the first place he possesses the necessary academic qualifications to place him high on the examination lists. He has, in addition, certain qualities which make him a good colleague. This is an essential point. However clever an official he may be, he has to pull with the team …”³⁹

As well as civil servants, the school produced a great many rebels, with more than 120 pupils or former students believed to have taken part in the 1916 Rising, including three of the 16 leaders who were executed—Eamonn Ceannt, Con Colbert, and Seán Heuston.⁴⁰ The latter, in fact, was among John A. Costello’s classmates.⁴¹ Other past pupils included President Seán T. O’Kelly, Taoiseach Seán Lemass, and Judge Cahir Davitt, a son of Land League founder Michael Davitt, who became President of the High Court in 1951.⁴² Other notable legal figures who attended the school were Ireland’s last Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Molony, and Aindrias Ó Caoimh and Charles Casey, both of whom became High Court judges after serving as Attorney General (Casey having been appointed to that position by Costello).⁴³

At O’Connell School, in a pattern that would be repeated throughout his education, the young Costello performed well academically, winning prizes and distinctions. He also improved as he went along—another pattern that would be repeated in college, at the Bar and in politics.

At the time, the State examination, the Intermediate, was divided into Junior, Middle and Senior Grades, the latter corresponding to the Leaving Certificate, which was introduced in 1924 (along with, confusingly, another examination known as the Intermediate Certificate, the equivalent of the old Junior Grade).⁴⁴ In the Middle Grade, in 1907, Costello received Honours results in English, French, Irish, Algebra, Trigonometry and Science, with passing grades in Arithmetic, Shorthand, Geometry and Latin. The results were good enough to win him a £3 book prize.⁴⁵ In his final year, 1908, he took honours in English, French, Irish, Arithmetic and Algebra, Trigonometry and Physics, and passed Geometry, winning £3 prizes for modern literature and experimental science, as well as a £1 prize in mathematics. It was a fairly broad education. Costello appears to have been keen on Science—he had the joint highest (in 1907) or highest (1908) hours spent at Science according to the school records.⁴⁶ More importantly, he won the Fanning Scholarship, worth a substantial £50 a year for three years,⁴⁷ which was to pay his college fees.

It had been a successful school career, and while Costello didn’t speak much of his time at the school in later life, he didn’t complain about it either.⁴⁸ The link with the school was played on by an enterprising 11-year-old when Costello was elected Taoiseach. Tom Fahy of Vernon Park in Clontarf wrote to congratulate him on his election—which he felt could best be marked by a free day. Unfortunately, there is no record of whether the new Taoiseach did, as suggested by Master Fahy, contact the school authorities to let his successors off for the day.⁴⁹

When Costello won the Fanning Scholarship in 1908, he was one of its first recipients. The scholarship, set up two years previously, aimed to pay the college fees of the son of a civil servant receiving the highest marks in the Senior Grade of the Intermediate. It stipulated that the person holding the scholarship should carry out his studies at UCD. According to Costello, who paid a visit to the founder of the Trust after receiving the scholarship, Francis A. Fanning was “a very strong Catholic” who wanted to encourage Irish students to go to the new National University rather than Trinity College, which “in those days was regarded as the bastion of the then Protestant Ascendancy”.⁵⁰

The institution which he joined was in a state of flux, to put it at its mildest. He was in the last group of students who attended 86 Stephen’s Green under the old Royal University—the next year the new National University was established under the 1908 Irish Universities Act (introduced by Irish Secretary Augustine Birrell to placate Catholic opinion). The Act joined UCD with the former Queen’s Colleges in Cork and Galway to form the NUI. In a foretaste of partition, the other Queen’s College, in Belfast, became a separate university.

Costello claimed in later life that the authorities dithered so much about faculty positions that they ended up appointing a number of professors to the wrong chairs. “There was general confusion and we had not merely … no Professors to lecture us, we had not even a chair to sit on, we were walking around Stephen’s Green wasting our time until the National University authorities made up their minds to give us some Professors to lecture us.”⁵¹ The complaint was an echo of that made at the time, in an editorial in the first edition of a student newspaper, the National Student: “… there has been little academic work done this year. The Professors have been occupied busily in securing their positions, in making boards and committees on which to sit, and then in sitting on them … There is a vague but general feeling that no attention is being paid to the students, that they are regarded as necessary evils, whose sole duty is to pay fees and keep quiet …”⁵²

The new college was small, with only 530 students in its first academic year, 1909–10, although numbers grew quickly, almost doubling (reaching 1,017) by 1916.⁵³ As George O’Brien, a future senator and professor of economics, noted, “We were few enough to get to know each other very well, even if some of us did not like each other very much. Indeed, some of the developments in the political history of Ireland in the years since the Treaty grew out of the affinities and dislikes of my contemporaries. Old alliances and old quarrels reappeared in the wider field of public life.”⁵⁴ Among Costello’s contemporaries in UCD were future ministers Kevin O’Higgins, Patrick McGilligan and Patrick Hogan; his successor as Attorney General after the change of government in 1932, Conor Maguire; and the leading solicitor Arthur Cox.

These young men and their fellow NUI graduates were to provide much of the leadership of the new Irish Free State, in politics, the Civil Service and the professions. Of course, they could not have foreseen that the then dominant Irish Parliamentary Party would be destroyed within a decade by Sinn Féin. According to O’Brien, “we took it for granted that, if Home Rule was achieved, we would be among the politicians of the new Ireland … So certain were we of the approach of Home Rule that some of our students neglected to prepare for a profession, believing that they would get a good job when self-government came …”⁵⁵ While Arthur Cox could not be accused of neglecting his studies, his enthusiasm for imminent Home Rule is clear from his diary for 1913, in which he counted down the days to the Bill coming into force.⁵⁶

Academically, Costello progressed in much the same way he had in school, starting off with mediocre results but quickly improving. He received a pass mark in his First Arts exam in 1909;⁵⁷ first class honours in Irish and French, as well as a pass in Biology, in 1910;⁵⁸ and graduated with a First in Irish and French in 1911.⁵⁹ His interest in Irish was later demonstrated in government when he established the Department of the Gaeltacht. He had travelled to the Aran Islands to learn Irish while still at school,⁶⁰ although the experiment was not an unqualified success. He later complained that the islanders were “much more concerned with picking up little scraps of English and getting me to talk English to them than they were about speaking Irish to me”.⁶¹ This perhaps explains why, despite his exam results, there was some doubt about his fluency. At a meeting of the Literary and Historical Society in March 1912 a motion was proposed criticising the Records and Correspondence Secretaries, Tom and Jack Costello, for “incompetence … in not being able to answer questions in Irish”. The motion was only defeated by 20 votes to 18.⁶²

Among the lecturers Costello got to know were James Murnaghan, later a judge of the Supreme Court, Swift MacNeill, then an Irish Party MP, and Arthur Clery, whose favourite pupil he was.⁶³ George O’Brien described the latter lecturer: “Clery was a bachelor who liked the society of young men. He used to invite us to very pleasant dinner parties where we met some of his own generation. He was kind to us and I appreciated his friendship at the time. I learned later that he was very bigoted against the British and against Protestants and a great extremist in politics, although he took no active part in revolutionary movements. I am afraid he influenced some young men in the direction of his own views and that he sowed the seeds of a good deal of bitterness.”⁶⁴ As O’Brien’s biographer makes clear, this somewhat jaundiced account may have been influenced by O’Brien’s dislike of John A. Costello.⁶⁵

As a later interviewer put it, “in college his interests were intellectual rather than athletic”,⁶⁶ but the young Costello did have some sporting interests—he was a member of a football club based at Goldsmith Street.⁶⁷ However, he was to have a more enduring interest in golf. He joined a golf club in Finglas,⁶⁸ a forerunner of his membership of clubs at Portmarnock, Milltown and Rossapenna, Co. Donegal. He also, at least occasionally, was prevailed upon to sing at musical evenings.⁶⁹ According to his children Declan and Eavan, he spoke in later years about singing at parties as a young man, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Ida, on the piano.⁷⁰ Costello also regaled his children with reminiscences of the 1907 Great Exhibition in Ballsbridge, with its giant water slide and a Zulu tent featuring “real live Africans”, obviously an exotic sight at the time.⁷¹

In July 1911, just turned 20, Costello wrote a lengthy and mildly amusing article for the National Student, the college magazine, contrasting the old Royal with the new National University, suggesting that he saw some improvement in the situation of students. He claimed that the Royal “was little better than a glorified Boarding and Day School … The residents … rose in the morning by rule, lived mechanically, and even voted in the Societies mechanically and as they were told. The outdoor students of the College came to lectures, met casually, chatted desultorily outside the lecture room, and dispersed.” The new structure had a higher purpose than the old, which had served merely as an exam factory. “The National has been created to send forth students better equipped mentally and bodily than heretofore; to produce students with broader views and wider knowledge … Its aim should be culture rather than erudition; learning rather than pedantry.” Exams, he suggested, were “a necessary evil, and must be tolerated … The importance attached to them should, however, be reduced to a minimum: the true end of a real University should be culture, not examination.”

Of his fellow students, he observed mordantly that “students always take themselves and their opinions seriously”, before going on to criticise certain “types” of student, which could be divided into sots and swots. Of the first, he wrote, “These gentlemen often accost some meek and unoffending student whom they wish to impress; buttonhole him and tell him of the number of times they were on the bend; how hard it is to study when in such a state; what head-aches they had after it; what daring tricks they had played on their professors; and what damage they had done to other people’s property. These gentlemen in their first year wish to make it believed that they are real wits and veritable roués!” (It is impossible to know who Costello had in mind when he was writing this, but it sounds rather like the “dissipated” student Kevin O’Higgins, as described by his biographer, a regular at Mooney’s pub in Harry Street.)⁷²

Costello had this to say about the swots: “They walk rapidly, at the sound of the bell, from the Library to the lecture hall and install themselves in a place convenient to the professor and without losing an instant. They are fearful of being late. They are fearful of losing some of the words of wisdom which fall from the learned professor’s lips. They are fearful of incurring his ire. They take copious and meticulous notes and accept his opinions as final without demur. The lecture finished, they hasten back to their interrupted studies. No loitering, no conversation, no stories—all study concentrated and unlimited. No Society ever sees them. At social functions they are conspicuous by their absence—nor are they missed. Their one desire is success in examinations, and their one aim is to stuff their brains with a store of book learning, thereby taking the shortest path to pedantry.”

This leads him on to extol the virtues of the College societies, which are beneficial and, in fact, indispensable. “By means of books we may come under the influence of dead genius; by means of social intercourse we may be influenced by living talent. For the formation of student character there must be frequent conversation between the students, they must live and work together, and must get to know each other. What a blank student life would be if it merely consisted of daily attendance at lectures!”

Given his experience in the Literary and Historical Society (the L&H), his assessment of the quality of debate there is interesting: “The ideas of the members of these societies may not, and seldom are, either strikingly original or alarmingly learned, but at all events by speaking in public they are taught self-confidence and self-mastery, and even from listening to commonplace and mediocre ideas there is something to be gained … The real raison d’être of College Societies is to be found in the fact they are conducive to culture and refinement, and that fluency of speech in public is as much an acquired talent as a natural gift.”⁷³ He was an example of the truth of this observation—his future success in politics and the law was built on his ability as a public speaker, an ability honed in college debates.

It is possible that involvement in college societies conferred culture and refinement on students, but a more immediate reward was status—especially in the L&H, success in which “was firmly established as a significant benchmark against which any ambitious student’s career in university was measured”.⁷⁴ As Costello later observed, the lack of resources under both the old Royal and the new National Universities denied students the university life known in older academic institutions, but “they made it for themselves by congregating around the steps of the National Library, and by their activities in the famous Literary and Historical Society”.⁷⁵

The Library steps, according to George O’Brien, “were the scenes of much conversation. The conversations on the Library steps in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist bring back vivid memories of the hours that we used to spend on the same spot …”⁷⁶ The L&H, meanwhile, was the place where “many of the young men who helped to establish the new Irish State from 1922 onwards received their first lessons in politics and public speeches”.⁷⁷ If UCD was where the future elite of the Irish Free State met, the L&H was where they cut their teeth, learned the arts of public speaking and of politics, and made friendships and enmities that were to last a lifetime. Those young men included John A. Costello. He later claimed that his first appearance in print was as a “Voice” during an address by Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell to the L&H in the Aula Maxima in 86 St Stephen’s Green. He “was at the back of the hall, a very young student in my first year, and very tentatively I am afraid shouted out ‘What about the new University?’”⁷⁸

A contemporary, slightly tongue in cheek, description of the L&H sets the scene: “About a hundred and twenty people, some eighty men and forty women, sit from 8 p.m. till 11 p.m. in a room decorated with grisly pictures of skeletons [meetings were held in the same room as medical lectures], and in an atmosphere almost solid with tobacco-smoke. The first hour is occupied with a ‘discussion of rules’. The majority of the meeting have not the least idea what the rules are, but a handful of men spend an hour heckling the officers of the Society with regard to them … The debate begins … It was perfectly obvious to me after listening to a very few of the speeches that the real object of a speaker was not to say something new or weighty … but to talk good nonsense …”⁷⁹

Chief among the hecklers was Costello’s brother, Tom, a flamboyant figure who had preceded him to UCD in 1907 and was studying medicine.⁸⁰ The elder Costello quickly made a name for himself as a tormentor of the Society’s officials: “There are some who expend, in inventing posers for the Record Secretary, a wealth of time and ability that, otherwise applied, would make them medallists of the society. But … [Mr] Costello … and others of that ilk prefer asking questions to making speeches. And the society would be much duller if they did not.”⁸¹ Arthur Cox, a friend and rival of Jack Costello’s, described Tom as “dominant in private business. Caring little for more formal debate, he seemed to be for ever in opposition, thundering from the topmost bench down on the committee at their table below, moving votes of censure and perpetually taking the officers to task for some breach of Palgrave’s Parliamentary Procedure which ruled all our proceedings. Had he remained in Ireland … he would have been a leader.”⁸²Another contemporary, Michael McGilligan, said, “Tom was at that time the more dynamic of the two. Tom laid about him in the Society … Jack … was not then the Costello of the Courts …”⁸³

The younger Costello was very much overshadowed in his first few years in college by his brother, as is shown in the pages of the National Student, where Tom was frequently a target for good-natured banter. When Jack was mentioned, it was usually in relation to his more flamboyant brother.⁸⁴ The younger Costello made his maiden speech to the L&H in November 1908, shortly after starting in UCD. The then auditor, Tom Bodkin, later a good friend, remembered the speech as being “on the trite subject: ‘That the pen is mightier than the sword’”,⁸⁵ while Costello described it as “most undistinguished”.⁸⁶ It appears he was right—his effort received the lowest score of any speaker that evening, at just 3.92 out of 10.

In February 1911, Tom Costello’s badgering of the committee finally produced results, and led to advancement for him and his brother. Tom’s motion of censure on the committee was passed by the necessary two-thirds majority.⁸⁷ Elections were held for a new committee. Arthur Cox topped the poll, with 46 votes. Jack Costello was second, with 39, one more than Tom.⁸⁸ As a speaker, Jack Costello had not yet hit his stride. The National Student observed, “One cannot get over the idea that he does not believe in what he is saying … that he makes no distinction between his strong and his weak points—that he is not impressive.”⁸⁹ He was, for instance, ranked twentieth out of 23 speakers in the impromptu debate in May (which was won by Arthur Cox, with Patrick McGilligan second),⁹⁰ despite a fairly easy topic—“That the worst of things must come to an end”. His brother, the National Student noted, “denied stoutly, for several reasons, mainly personal, ‘That a large mind is impossible in a small family’ …”⁹¹

Drama was provided by the 1911 auditorial election between Patrick McGilligan, the previous year’s runner-up, and John Ronayne. A contemporary account read, “Who that has been through it either as active partisan or harried voter will ever forget it? … It was the final incident in the fierce struggle that has been going on between the two parties in the Society … the parties may well ask themselves what they were fighting for, and what is their exact point of difference … we do wish to deprecate the excessive bitterness which marred, grievously marred, the late election …”⁹² Michael McGilligan described the campaign as having “bitterness of a kind and degree that I had not seen in any previous election. I do not remember why: I am not sure that I ever knew why …”⁹³

Ronayne was declared the victor, by 83 votes to 80, but a petition was immediately lodged challenging the validity of a number of the votes. The row was so bitter that the President of UCD, Dr Denis Coffey, asked for legal advice from the Solicitor General, Ignatius O’Brien, himself a former auditor (and later Lord Chancellor). O’Brien ruled that a number of the votes for Ronayne were indeed invalid, and recommended a new election. Dr Coffey wisely decided to avoid a further divisive contest, and instead proposed a compromise, with Ronayne to continue as auditor until (perhaps appropriately) St Valentine’s Day, when McGilligan was to take over. This compromise was ratified by the Society on the proposal of Jack Costello,⁹⁴ though Ronayne later attempted to repudiate it.

The split in the Society appears to have left the Costello brothers on different sides—when it came to the division of offices within the committee, Tom first proposed Alec Maguire, who declined the nomination, and then Arthur Cox as Correspondence Secretary, in opposition to Jack. The younger Costello, however, was elected to the post by five votes to three. Tom was Records Secretary and Michael J. Ryan was Treasurer. Cox had been nominated for all three posts, and lost all three.⁹⁵ One of Jack’s more novel suggestions on the committee was for the society to hold a dance—a proposal later vetoed by Dr Coffey.⁹⁶ This was perhaps an attempt to appeal to members in advance of the next auditorial election.

In debate, meanwhile, Jack Costello was now a very regular contributor, with improved though still not spectacular marks—although by now he was occasionally beating Arthur Cox in debate as well as in elections.⁹⁷ As the National Student put it, “Mr Cox has, we think, the best style of speaking in the Society. While he is speaking he is very impressive, it is only when he has sat down that one is tempted sometimes to think that he has said nothing and said it very well. Mr Jack Costello is an example of the value of practice. He improves every meeting and is now really worth listening to …”⁹⁸ In May, he read a paper on “Ireland’s Literary Position” to the Society, receiving the very high mark of 9.16 out of 10.⁹⁹ According to the account in the National Student, he “enhanced his reputation by the excellence of his paper. It was so good … that his brother sat beaming with a look on his face which said quite plainly, ‘See what I could have done if I had only bothered’.”¹⁰⁰

This paper was delivered in the midst of an auditorial election campaign, which pitted Costello against Arthur Cox. Cox, who was to become Ireland’s leading solicitor in mid-century, was a Belvedere boy from a well-off family—his father, Dr Michael Cox, was the closest friend of John Dillon, at this point deputy leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.¹⁰¹ He and Costello were to be friendly rivals for many years, although at this time the rivalry rather than the friendship was dominant, certainly as far as Cox was concerned. In later years, Cox remembered the campaign as intense, because “electioneering tactics had been brought to a high perfection … no device was omitted by the supporters of either”.¹⁰² Costello’s recollection was probably more accurate: “I was the complete amateur. He knew every trick in the bag and always defeated me.”¹⁰³ In February 1961, a half century after the contest, Costello presided over a meeting of the L&H “and spoke of how he had been deprived of that office … by the ruthless methods of that most respectable Dublin solicitor Mr Arthur Cox. It was clear that the result still rankled after all the years.”¹⁰⁴

On nomination night, Cox was proposed by George O’Brien, who, in the lively account of the National Student, “gave us a list of Mr Cox’s successes from his earliest childhood up to the time he became a nut and went to dances. Nobody blames Mr Cox for winning a lot of medals—everyone must have his little hobby—but everyone blames Mr O’Brien for reminding us of them. Mr Davoren seconded, and in polished tones talked about the magnificent speeches which Mr Cox had made at every meeting of the society. As Mr Davoren had been present at not more than three meetings this year his opinion on the subject was of undoubted value. Mr C.A. Maguire proposed and Mr Dwyer seconded Mr J. Costello. They told us, of course, that Mr Costello had had ‘the interests of the Society at heart’, and had read a magnificent paper, and so on … All the voters on the authorised list—to the number of 200—listened breathlessly to the speeches … There were also many present whose subscriptions had been paid, but who did not know Mr Ryan, the treasurer, who were so unbiased that they did not know which was Mr Costello and which was Mr Cox, and who went out as they came in—with their minds made up for them. That insignificant minority, the lay, stay-a-thome members who had attended regularly during the year and had paid their own subscriptions, sat there unnoticed and unaddressed. What did their votes matter?”¹⁰⁵

The final touch of brilliance on the part of the Cox campaign was to appeal to female members. Admission of women had been a controversial subject in the Society until 1909, when they had outmanoeuvred their opponents by the simple expedient of paying their subscriptions to the Treasurer. Auditor Michael Davitt then ruled that as paid up members they could themselves vote on whether or not they should be admitted.¹⁰⁶ Both Costello and Cox had spoken against the admission of women, but the latter appears to have been more committed to the anti-suffragette cause, even telling a debate at the King’s Inns that women cause wars, as was proved by Helen of Troy.¹⁰⁷ But an election is an election. A number of female members informed Cox that they would not vote for him unless they were invited to the traditional auditor’s victory tea in the Café Cairo, which, equally traditionally, was male-only. As the National Student reported, “Mr Cox gave in, and ‘bought their votes with penny buns’. That was the way some brutes of men put it.”¹⁰⁸

But Cox had more going for him than such tactical shrewdness. He was the best speaker in the Society that year, winning the Gold Medal, and his opponent clearly recognised that this was an electoral advantage. Cahir Davitt, also a former O’Connell School boy, recalled being canvassed by Costello, and replying evasively that he hadn’t been to enough meetings to judge which of the candidates was the better speaker. Costello replied “that of course if that were the only matter that was to be considered I should vote for Cox”.¹⁰⁹ As it happened, Davitt voted for Costello, presumably because the school tie trumped eloquence; but the exchange is indicative of the future Taoiseach’s diffidence, modesty, and lack of a killer instinct—it is difficult to imagine Cox giving a similar reply.

On election night, Cox won 112 votes to Costello’s 63, a crushing defeat. George O’Brien, ever unsympathetic to Costello, wrote in his unpublished recollections in 1950, “If anybody had ventured to predict that one of the parties to this contest would have become prime minister of an Irish Republic his prophecy would have been received with some scepticism. If a hearer had chosen to believe that the prophecy would come true and had been asked to say which of the candidates was destined for this distinction, he would have unhesitatingly chosen Cox. I do not think that anybody would have chosen Costello, who matured late and whose elevation was the result of unforeseen political circumstances.”¹¹⁰ In his contribution to the L&H centenary history, published when Costello was in his second term as Taoiseach, O’Brien diplomatically left out the final two sentences of the quote above.¹¹¹

Costello had a respectable showing in the committee elections, coming in second with 95 votes, which kept alive his hopes for another run the following year. Ominously for his prospects, though, first place was taken by M.J. Ryan, an ally of Cox, who received 122 votes.¹¹² During the 1912/13 academic year, Costello was again a frequent and effective speaker—he was to end the year placed fourth overall,¹¹³ but, crucially, Ryan was first, winning the Society’s Gold Medal and cementing his claim to the auditorship. Among the topics Costello addressed were the future of the Intermediate System of Education (the National Student judged him “thoughtful and effective … his speech was, perhaps, the most interesting of the evening”), and, appropriately, International Arbitration (“Mr J.A. Costello cleverly sketched out the history of the growth of arbitration, and if Locke be correct when he asserts that a young man who is versed in the Jus Civile is assured of success, Mr Costello’s knowledge of international law should ensure his future”).¹¹⁴ He also successfully led the opposition to a motion calling for women to be given the vote,¹¹⁵ and to a motion by Ryan that the three Irish Universities should be federated.¹¹⁶

In a further sign of his stature within the L&H, he was one of the three members (the others were George O’Brien and Conor Maguire) elected to join the auditor, Cox, in an Inter-debate with the King’s Inns on the question of whether modern taste in literature was ‘decadent’. Their opponents were led by Tom Bodkin, and included Charles Bewley, later Irish Minister to Berlin.¹¹⁷ According to the following day’s Freeman’s Journal, Costello argued “that modern literature was a question of supply and demand. The commercialism of the day had gripped it, and the result was that it was not the finest taste that succeeded, but what was best from the point of view of the business man.”¹¹⁸

By the beginning of March, two months before the vote, Cox noted in his diary that “the Auditorial fight has begun in earnest. Three Hotspurs are already in the field—Ryan, Maguire and Costello.”¹¹⁹ Three days later he recorded that “Costello seems downcast. I think Maguire has the ball at his feet.”¹²⁰ The last prediction was spectacularly wrong, but Costello had every reason to be downcast. He had asked Cahir Davitt to propose him, which, the future President of the High Court later confessed, “I did very ineptly. I think he pulled me down before my peroration.”¹²¹ Ryan had the support of his fellow Engineering students. He also managed to project an image of being an outsider trying to over come the “Establishment”—he was described by Michael Tierney, later the President ofUCD, as “the candidate of the proletariat”.¹²²

In a four-way race, Ryan won with a majority of the votes cast—113. Costello had the consolation of coming second, with 44, two votes ahead of Conor Maguire, while J.B. Magennis, a medical student, got just 10 votes.¹²³ Costello later claimed that Ryan had pinpricked the ballot papers so he could see exactly who had voted for him. Addressing a meeting of the L&H in 1951, he turned to one of the other speakers, Seán Lemass, and assured him that “tactics were adopted here in connection with elections that have not even yet been thought up by the Opposition”. He added that what he had learned in the Society about politics and electioneering had been “of inestimable value” in his later career.¹²⁴

John A. Costello was in good company—James Joyce was an unsuccessful candidate for the auditorship (against Costello’s future mentor, Hugh Kennedy), as were many other future legal and political stars.¹²⁵ As an unsuccessful 1980s candidate for the post wrote, “Losing an election is a horrible feeling, even if there is the consolation that some of the best talents in the L&H, such as James Joyce and John A. Costello, also lost the Auditorial contest.”¹²⁶ In a sense, the L&H also lost out, as its most recent historian has suggested, “twice profligately dismissing what is perhaps at this stage likely to prove to have been its sole prospect of having an auditor who became Taoiseach.”¹²⁷ Ryan, incidentally, became Reid Professor of Law at Trinity College,¹²⁸ and later still applied to be made a Senior Counsel—to the then Attorney General, John A. Costello.¹²⁹

While their own internal politics naturally consumed a large amount of their attention, students at this period could not be unaffected by the dramatic events engulfing Ireland. It was the time of the crisis over Home Rule, of the Ulster Covenant, the formation of the Volunteers, and the 1913 Lockout. The L&H played its part at a huge Home Rule rally in the centre of Dublin on 31 March 1912. Professors and students of the National University occupied one of the four speakers’ platforms—John Redmond was on the main platform, while John Dillon was on the second, and Belfast’s Joe Devlin was the main speaker on the third. The speakers on the NUI platform, which backed onto the O’Connell monument facing College Green, included the President of UCD, Dr Denis Coffey, and itsMP Professor Swift MacNeill. There were student speakers too, most notably Arthur Cox, Michael Davitt and John Ronayne. The latter stole the show with a vigorous denunciation of the Union Jack, “which for some extraordinary reason had been hoisted over the offices of a newspaper at Carlisle buildings”.¹³⁰ Costello was there, and may have been on the platform, but there is no record of him speaking. Almost six decades later, he recalled the “tremendous demonstration”, and in particular the speech by Patrick Pearse, in which he agreed to give the British a chance to introduce a “proper” Home Rule bill. “That was Pearse … giving the British their chance and they didn’t take it … and they paid very dearly for that …”¹³¹

There could be no doubt about young Jack Costello’s political sympathies—he was a staunch Home Ruler. Many years later, he recalled listening to John Dillon address the L&H on the Home Rule Bill. “I was there as a very humble student indeed with no possible hope of ever attaining political significance in this country, but with a secret desire that if there was ever an Irish parliament set up in this country, that it would be vouchsafed to me by an Almighty Providence the privilege of being a member of that body …”¹³² He also attended an early meeting of the Proportional Representation Society of Ireland in the Antient Concert Rooms in 1911, where he heard Arthur Griffith extol the virtues of PR.¹³³ But he doesn’t seem to have been stirred by the more martial spirit that was demonstrated in November 1913 with the formation of the Irish Volunteers. While it was reported that “practically every male student of University College … attended”¹³⁴ the public meeting in the Rotunda which established the movement, there is no evidence that Costello was one of them. By then he was deeply immersed in his legal studies.

The exams for the LL.B, a one-year law degree, in the summer of 1913 reignited the competition between Costello and Arthur Cox. As his biographer notes, Cox “had no interest in coming second. His academic brilliance was matched by a very competitive instinct.”¹³⁵ This comes through clearly in his diary for 1913, which demonstrates his increasing concern about the exam (in fairness it should be pointed out that he was writing an M.A. thesis in English literature at the same time). On 1 May he judged that while he was assured of getting through, he couldn’t depend on coming first. “O’Brien and Costello are formidable propositions.”¹³⁶ Five days later, a rash of exclamation marks suggests mounting hysteria: “God help the 2nd Law! No work done! And George O’B and Costello working like blazes!”¹³⁷ A fortnight later Cox was sunk in despondency: “George O’Brien … will probably beat me in the Law exam … I am in despair …”¹³⁸ He had a brief moment of exhilaration two days later: “George O’Brien is not going up for the Law exam!”¹³⁹ But this was quickly followed by a reminder that he wasn’t out of the woods: “Davoren, Meagher and Costello all serious propositions.”¹⁴⁰ The exams lasted three days, with five papers: Jurisprudence; Real Property I; Real Property II; Constitutional Law and Legal History; and Law of Public and Private Wrongs. By coincidence, the two rivals met on the train some days after the exam as both went to supervise exams, Costello to Fermoy and Cox to Killarney.¹⁴¹

It was there that Cox received a telegram from Arthur Clery telling him he had come first. Two days later, he had a letter from Costello congratulating him, a characteristic gesture much appreciated by Cox, who wrote in his diary, “Decent of him to write.”¹⁴²Costello had come second, and both received £20 as First Class Exhibitioners in the LL.B. degree,¹⁴³ which suggests there was not a great deal of difference in their marks. But for the ever-competitive Cox, winning was important, and remained important for the rest of his life. In the 1950s, Terence de Vere White wrote an article in the Irish Times, in which he said (wrongly) that Costello, the then Taoiseach, had been beaten only once in a law exam. He received an immediate complaint from Cox: “You did not say who it was beat Costello.”¹⁴⁴

Fortunately for their future friendship, the rivals opted for different branches of the law, Cox becoming a solicitor, while Costello went to the Bar, possibly under the influence of Arthur Clery, who was a barrister as well as a lecturer and who was to sign the certificate seeking his admission to the Bar when he finished his studies.¹⁴⁵ Costello was admitted as a student of King’s Inns at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 1911 (his studies there continued at the same time as those in UCD).

The King’s Inns date back to the time of Henry VIII, and like the Inns of Court in London, began as accommodation for the judges and lawyers working in the courts nearby. Later, the Inns developed a role in the education, administration and regulation of lawyers.¹⁴⁶ But it wasn’t until 1850 that formal law lectures were introduced, after a select committee of the House of Commons revealed the inadequacies of legal education. Fourteen years later, examinations began, and students could opt either to attend lectures or sit exams—in 1872, both became compulsory.¹⁴⁷ As one product of the system, Rex Mackey, wryly remarked, “the course of legal education pursued at the King’s Inns, or for that matter at the university, is nicely calculated to unfit the student for the practice of any profession whatsoever, and more especially for that of the Law”. The graduate might be an authority on Roman or medieval law, but would have never seen a counsel’s brief or been taught how to cross-examine a witness.¹⁴⁸ Tom O’Higgins, later Chief Justice, wrote that “interesting as our lectures were, the main purpose of attendance at the Inns was the eating of the required number of dinners”.¹⁴⁹

Students had to eat between four and six dinners in each of the four legal terms. The dinners were each of five courses, and included a bottle of wine and as much beer as one could drink—in 1939, the cost for all six was £1.¹⁵⁰ The original idea of Commons was that students would learn from listening to the conversation of more experienced barristers—it evolved at a time when there was no formal legal education. It may be, as one participant observed, that the conversation was “more likely to relate to next Saturday’s prospects at the Curragh” than to complex legal problems, but the dinners had two advantages for the aspiring barrister: “they will, theoretically at any rate, teach him to hold his wine like a gentleman, and … bring him into an easy and friendly intimacy with the Bench and Bar among whom he will spend his professional life”.¹⁵¹

Despite such diversions, for an ambitious student, it was a place for hard work. Costello did well, although not quite as well as later writers claimed. He came third in his two law exams in his final year. In the final examinations for the Bar in June 1914, Costello won a £10 prize, compared to £25 for the winner, B. Fox, and £15 for James Francis Meagher of Trinity, who came second.¹⁵² In the Honour Examinations in October, Costello again placed third—this time Meagher was first, winning the John Brooke Scholarship of £50 per year for three years. Arthur Black was second, taking the Society’s Exhibition of £21 for three years. Costello won the Society’s prize of £21 for one year.¹⁵³

During his time at the King’s Inns, he also won a prize at the Law Students’ Debating Society for Legal Composition.¹⁵⁴ This was for an essay on “The Leading Principles of the Brehon Laws”, which was subsequently published in the December 1913 issue ofStudies. The 25-page essay demonstrated a firm grasp on the subject matter and a clear writing style. Costello’s primary degree in Languages came to the fore, as he used a number of phrases in French (without translation) as well as many words in Irish (all of which are translated, presumably a recognition that his readers were more likely to know French than Irish). He concluded by comparing the Brehon Laws—imposing, but primitive—to “a certain wonderful fort which stands perched in lonely grandeur on the top of a high cliff on the Big Island of Aran … This fort is Dun Aonghus.” Even if his attempts to learn Irish there were not successful, his visit to the Aran Islands had left an impression.¹⁵⁵ Publication in a prestigious journal like Studies must have done his reputation no harm, and was noticed by his contemporaries—Arthur Cox mentioned reading the piece, without commenting on its merits, in his diary.¹⁵⁶

On Monday 2 November 1914, John A. Costello was one of eight new barristers called to the Bar, second in the order of precedence behind Meagher, the winner of the Brooke.¹⁵⁷ The new barrister, having been admitted to the degree of barrister at law in the Benchers’ Room in the Four Courts,¹⁵⁸ is formally called to his profession (nowadays by the Chief Justice, in Costello’s time by the Lord Chancellor). The new barrister is asked if he wishes to move the court. “The person thus addressed merely bows, without saying anything. He has now been recognised and addressed as a barrister for the first time, but he is not to be obliged to declare that he is still without a brief. For this reason he bows and says nothing.”¹⁵⁹ On the sixtieth anniversary of his call, Costello suggested the day hadn’t had much impact on him. “To be honest I cannot remember much about it. It didn’t impress me, I think.”¹⁶⁰ Impressive or not, the call meant that he was now a fully fledged barrister—although, as one member of the profession observed, “tomorrow he will find that he is very small fry indeed in a very big pond”.¹⁶¹