SHANE (born John) was the eldest of the four Leslie boys (Norman, Seymour & Lionel). In this room, inspired by views of the lake, and many years before his granddaughter Sammy designed and installed the great gothic bath, Shane wrote many of his best books and poems. His novel about Cambridge `The Cantab' was suppressed by the Home Secretary, by mistake! Today Shane’s biographies and works are considered collectors' pieces and eagerly sort after.
At Kings College, Cambridge, he published the earliest poems of Rupert Brook in a college magazine and unsuccessfully tried to exorcise the college ghost. He also changed his name from John to the Irish Shane, and joined the Catholic Church. He wanted to become a monk until he was involved in a mild car crash with our beautiful American mother, Marjorie Ide of Vermont. After carrying her, unconscious, from the wreck he was so enamoured that he proposed marriage, and was accepted. But as a father, he seemed rather puzzled at having children and was never quite sure what to do about us. Once, on meeting little Desmond (aged 4) on the stairs, he asked: `Hello, who are you?'
When deafness came in old age, we presented him with the latest in electric hearing aids. He hurled it away in rage saying: `They can hear me. I do not choose to hear them.' He would have made a good politician. He did in fact campaign as Nationalist MP for Londonderry, a seat the Dukes of Abercorn tended to regard as their personal property. The duke was shocked when Father lost on a recount by a mere 59 votes. Furthermore Shane he became fluent in Irish, and would make his speeches in that lovely tongue. He was also one of the few Anglo-Irish to side with the Irish cause, even compiling a Latin-Irish dictionary just in case some Ancient Roman should visit the Gaelteach. All of this was slightly too much for his staid Protestant parents. Just as his obsession for inviting droves of elderly clerics to Castle Leslie proved too much for our poor Mother when she was trying to hold amusing house parties. He would then order us children to entertain them, which proved too much for us.
Shane loved trees and planted many thousands at Glaslough and seldom happier than when working alongside the foresters in our woods. He was a member of the commission to persuade the United States to join the Allies in WW1. and became instrumental in saving Eamon de Valera from being shot by the British after the 1916 rising. Father pointed out that as `Dev' was an American citizen America would probably not enter the war if he were shot, `Dev' was spared. What would have happened had Ireland been spared `Dev' is another matter.
Shane was a tremendous walker and could sustain the Red Indian jog trot indefinitely, doubtless due to the Iraquoi Red Indian blood injected by his American mother, Leonie Jerome, sister of Jennie Churchill, into the sleepy Leslie’s. During one night Shane walked the full 60 miles from our estate in Donegal to Castle Leslie, arriving in time for breakfast.
He loved clowning and could be devastatingly funny, often to the embarrassment of our Mother who failed to be amused when he entertained us children during our dull Sunday walks through Hyde Park to Mass at the Brampton Oratory, by climbing up lampposts and pretending to be a gorilla.
In World War 2 Shane was active in the London Home Guard (Dad's Army), valiantly rescuing valuable first editions from freshly bombed libraries. Some of these books seem to have made Glaslough their permanent refuge.
At one time he even had safe custody of Parnell's love letters to Kitty O' Shea,. which he would show to his children as if vouchsafing a glimpse of the Holy Grail.
After a long active life he died aged 89 and was laid beside his wife in their garden tomb.