Éamon de Valera's son Terry wrote in 2006, "Perhaps of all my father’s friends and colleagues none were so close, nor had his trust as had Robert Farnan." Farnan's home was de Valera's first hideout in 1919 after his escape from Lincoln Gaol. He warned de Valera that his "external association" alternative to the Anglo-Irish Treaty was too subtle to persuade the public. In September 1922, his house was the venue for a meeting between de Valera and Richard Mulcahy which tried in vain to halt the Civil War that the Treaty had started; it is mentioned in "As I Was Going Down Sackville Street", Oliver St. John Gogarty's memoir of the time.