Sir, - In his diary of May 24th, Kevin Myers, writing about Francis Ledwidge. made reference to my late mother and said: "He was badly served by his literary executor, Alice Curtayne. who thought those poems too frivolous for inclusion in the ill named Complete Poems and they now alas appear to have been lost."
First of all, I don't know where Mr Myers got the notion that my mother, Alice Curtayne, was Ledwidge's literary executor. She was no such thing. Her interest in the pastoral poet sprung largely from the fact that her own brother was killed in the Battle of the Somme and that she was prompted to undertake the poet's biography by her many visits to America where there was great interest in Ledwidge.
As to my mother suggesting that some of Ledwidge's poems were too frivolous for inclusion in the Complete Poems, that too is nonsense. She never said any such thing and might I suggest to Mr Myers he turn to page 23 of the biography where he will see that it was Ledwidge himself and not Alice Curtayne who alluded to frivolity: "When I was still at school many silly verses left my pen," etc.
Finally, to suggest that the memory of Francis Ledwidge was in any sense "badly served" by Alice Curtayne is not just gratuitously insulting but also terribly wrong. If it were not for my mother taking the great interest that she did, and at the time that she did, in Francis Ledwidge, then a great deal more may have been lost and Mr Myers would never have been able to complain. - Yours, etc.,
Prosperous,
Co Kildare.