How we Cherish our Heritage

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In 1716 the Cork-born Anglican cleric Edward Synge was appointed Archbishop of Tuam, County Galway, holding the office until his death in 1741. At some time during this period, he built a new archiepiscopal palace which to this day remains the largest and most prominent building in the town. Of three storeys over basement and of seven bays, the centre three forming an entrance breakfront, the house was set amidst gardens that to the rear ran down to the river Nanny. Its most significant external feature is the main doorcase, of cut limestone with fluted Ionic pilasters beneath a pediment. The palace was seemingly vacated in the 1950s; it now serves as the adjunct to a local supermarket.

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On with the Dance

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How fitting that this week’s funeral of Captain Sir John Leslie, otherwise universally known as Jack, should have taken place in glorious sunshine, the same kind he shed on so many peoples’ lives. Jack died last Monday just eight months shy of reaching his centenary, having been born in December 1916. Over the course of ten decades he witnessed many changes in the world but somehow still behaved as though it was much the same as that into which he had emerged: I remember on the first occasion we met our conversation turned to the Romanian author Princess Marthe Bibesco, and he produced a book she had given and signed to him. His own memoirs, Never a Dull Moment, written ten years ago are full of entertaining reminiscences and suggest a personal history untouched by setbacks or misfortune. Of course this was not the case, as evidenced by Jack’s experience during the Second World War. Commissioned in the Irish Guards, he and his platoon crossed to France in May 1940 where they were almost immediately captured by the German army: Jack spent the next five years in a Bavarian Prisoner of War camp with all its attendant privations.
Although he returned to Ireland on his release and was expected to assume responsibility for Castle Leslie, within a few years Jack left again, eventually settling in Rome where he occupied a small palazzo in the Trastevere district, as well as embarking on the restoration of an ancient monastery outside the city, the Badia di San Sebastiano di Alatri. Some twenty years ago he finally came back to Castle Leslie, by this time in the care of his niece Sammy Leslie, and settled down as resident guide and anecdotalist, always delighted to engage with visitors and explain the history of his family and their property.
In later years Jack also became well-known for his fondness for nightclubs where he would energetically dance to what he liked to call ‘boom boom’ music. I accompanied him on these expeditions more than once, initially in the self-appointed role of chaperone. However, like everyone else I discovered he was invariably received with wild enthusiasm, and would soon be surrounded by a coterie of solicitous admirers, on average only a quarter of his age. But there were other instances, notably a tea held in his honour some years ago at Bellamont Forest, where Jack demonstrated older forms of dancing: supported by a sixteen-piece band, that afternoon he gave a lively demonstration of the Black Bottom. So one likes to remember him, light of heart and light of foot. Wherever you may now be Jack: on with the dance.

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Literary Links

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On Main Street, Doneraile, County Cork a three-storey, three bay house dating from c.1810. Typical of the domestic buildings in this handsome town, for a long time it served as parochial house for the Roman Catholic priest. The property’s most famous residence was the Reverend Patrick Sheehan who occupied the premises from the time of his appointment to the parish in 1895 until his death in 1913. It was here that he wrote the novels such as My New Curate and Glenanaar, once found in many Irish homes but now more likely to be discovered in second-hand bookshops.

Finely Carved

 

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The limestone chimney piece in the entrance hall of the Hugh Lane Gallery, formerly Charlemont House, Dublin. This building, begun in 1763 to the design of Sir William Chambers, features the work of a number of master craftsmen including the London-born sculptor and stonecutter Simon Vierpyl. It is believed he was responsible for this chimney piece with its vigorous carving of a rams skull, and scrolls and swags in the upper section and a variety of tools and instruments running down the sides.
A reminder that I shall be speaking of Hugh Lane in the gallery tomorrow evening from 6.45. Admission is free.

Hugh Lane

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A portrait of art dealer and philanthropist Sir Hugh Lane. The picture was painted in September 1904 by Roman-born Antonio Mancini when Lane was visiting the artist’s native city. Tomorrow marks the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the coast of Cork, and Lane was among the 1,198 persons who died on that occasion.
I shall be giving two talks in the coming weeks on Sir Hugh Lane. On Thursday 14th May, I will be speaking at the Library in Douglas, Cork at 7pm (for more information, see http://www.vernonmountpark.ie/latest-news) and on Thursday 21st May I will be speaking at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane at 6.45 (for more information, see http://www.hughlane.ie/lectures/lectures-past/1320-evening-lecture-the-commercial-world-of-sir-hugh-lane-art-dealer-with-robert-obyrne). The Mancini portrait continues to hang in the gallery founded by Sir Hugh Lane and can be seen there in an exhibition marking the centenary of his death.

Amongst the Elect

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Here is a portrait of Richard Boyle, fourth Earl of Shannon painted by a relatively little-known mid-19th century artist, the Hon Henry Richard Graves. Prior to inheriting his title, Boyle sat in the House of Commons representing County Cork. However, in the aftermath of the 1832 Reform Act with its attendant increase in the size of the electorate, he lost his seat, one of those returned in his place being Garret Standish Barry, the first Roman Catholic to enter Parliament since the Catholic Relief Act three years earlier.
Once notable landowners in East Cork where they owned the Castlemartyr estate, the Earls of Shannon are a branch of the Boyle dynasty established in Ireland by Richard Boyle, the great Earl of Cork. Until the fourth Earl’s unseating, they had enjoyed an active association with this country’s politics: the first Lord Shannon Henry Boyle served as Speaker of the Irish House of Commons for more than two decades before being raised to the peerage in 1756.
The picture above is one of a collection depicting members of the family which from next week will be on show in the Irish Georgian Society’s headquarters, the City Assembly House, Dublin. To mark the opening of the exhibition, at 6pm on Tuesday, May 27th I will be holding a public discussion about his forebears with Harry Boyle, tenth Earl of Shannon. This event is free, but advance booking advised. For further information, see: http://www.igs.ie/events/detail/earls-of-shannon-portraits-launch

The Colossus of Castlemartyr

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As painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1759, this handsome gentleman is Richard Boyle, second Earl of Shannon whose Dublin residence has featured here before (see From Townhouse to Tenement – and Back, September 16th). A direct descendant of Richard Boyle, the great Earl of Cork, Lord Shannon owed his own title to his father, Henry Boyle who served as Speaker of the Irish House of Commons for almost quarter of a century before accepting a peerage. His son was less politically astute but still managed to acquire a large number of rotten boroughs, allowing him to control election to parliament and thus to become known as the ‘Colossus of Castlemartyr’ (this being the name of his country seat in County Cork). Strangely Lord Shannon voted in favour of the 1800 Act of Union, even though it meant a loss of power for himself. On the other hand, he held onto the title of First Lord of the Irish Treasury, only relinquishing the position in 1804 in return for an annual pension of £3,000; he would die just three years later. His great-grandson sold this picture through Christie’s in June 1889 when it fetched 215 guineas. The work then passed through a number of different hands before coming up at Christie’s again last July when it went for £73,875. The photograph here was taken earlier this month at an art fair in Dallas, Texas: the Colossus of Castlemartyr has travelled…

About Last Knight

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The late Desmond FitzGerald has been mentioned here before more than once (Knight and Day, October 1st 2012 and Shanid A Boo, July 8th last). I am now happy to advise that my new book The Last Knight which celebrates Desmond’s many achievements has been published and is available from the Irish Georgian Society (see: http://www.igs.ie). Thanks to the generosity of a number of benefactors, all proceeds from the sale of this work go to benefit the IGS.

The Luck of the Barrys

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These two portraits of James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore and his third wife Lady Anne Chichester are being offered for sale today at Sotheby’s in London. The Barrys were an old, but relatively impoverished Irish family although their finances were greatly improved by the fourth Earl making a succession of advantageous marriages. In the later 18th century they also became noted for their eccentricity: the seventh (and penultimate) Earl who died at the age of 23 in 1793 was one of the period’s most infamous rakes, commonly known as ‘Hellgate.’ (His sister was nicknamed ‘Billingsgate’ owing to her dreadful language, while his younger brothers were respectively called ‘Cripplegate’ due to a club foot and ‘Newgate’ since, as it was a women’s prison, he had never spent time there; in 1791 James Gillray produced a splendid caricature of the three men mocking their various distinctive characteristics). Their rackety lives were not dissimilar from that of another man with the same surname, Redmond Barry, eponymous hero of Thackeray’s 1844 picaresque novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, and like him they all ended badly.
Meanwhile descendants of the fourth Earl’s fourth son became Smith Barrys and inherited a large estate on Fota Island, County Cork at the centre of which stood what was originally a hunting lodge. This building was enlarged and embellished c.1820 to the designs of Sir Richard Morrison and his son William Vitruvius Morrison. In their charming George II rococo fames, the two portraits (that above judged to be from the studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller, that below attributed to Philip Hussey) formerly hung in Fota House which today is managed by the Irish Heritage Trust and open to the public. How wonderful it would be if this tale concluded better than did that of the Barrys, and after today the portraits once more returned to the house…

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Update: on Tuesday, 24th September the two portraits sold for ₤60,000 and ₤43,750 respectively.

September 2013

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September 1913
William Butler Yeats

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the ha’pence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save?,
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Inspired by Dublin Corporation’s refusal to provide financial assistance to Sir Hugh Lane for the building of a modern art gallery in the city, Yeats’ poem was published in The Irish Times 100 years ago today. The picture above shows one of the designs prepared by Edwin Lutyens for the projected gallery, not that of a bridge spanning the river Liffey but more conventionally sitting within the western railings of St Stephen’s Green.
You can discover more about the events behind the writing of September 1913 by watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62C1sbgKVk4