Guinness gossip
Jorn Barger
16 May 1999
Lifestyle
The golden Guinness girls
The ending of the SA Breweries distribution agreement for Guinness last
month raised a few eyebrows in Irish theme pubs countrywide. NEIL
PENDOCK takes a closer look at the Irish dynasty
GUINNESS is the greatest Irish invention since the harp. Known as
"Dublin's black wine", "the workman's friend" or just plain "the dark
stuff", Guinness has been brewed on the Emerald Isle for well over two
centuries.
But Guinness is far more than a dry stout, it is the very stuff of
legends - one of which may be safely disabused, namely that the beer is
made from water drawn from the River Liffey, which flows through
Dublin. Which must come as some relief to recent visitors to the city.
Dublin's Guinness brewery takes its water rather from springs in the
plains of Kildare and others near Curragh. It was the latter that the
Dublin City Corporation foolishly tried to claim in 1775 - and would
have, if not for one Arthur Guinness, who met them with a pickaxe,
decalring "with very much improper language that they should not
proceed".
This was the Guinness whose name is immortalised by the beer.
There is no shortage of places to drink Guinness in Dublin. The trick
is to avoid any pub mentioned in Ulysses, James Joyce's impenetrable
novel of the events which took place in the city on a single day,
Bloomsday, June 16 1904. Nearly a century later, city pavements are
soiled with tour groups pacing out the places mentioned in the novel
who make for an awful lot of congestion if you're thirsty.
One point of Irish bar-room etiquette worth noting is the terminology
deployed to order a Guinness. In Dublin, half a pint is called a glass,
while out west, in Galway, say, it is called a bottle. If you want a
bottle of Guinness, rather than a draught, you ask for a bottle bottle.
Which is very Irish.
With the lingo taped, it's off to the pub and as good a bar as any is
the one on the second floor of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. It was on these
boards that W B Yeats spoke some of the finest poetry written in the
English language and J M Synge's Playboy of the Western World was first
performed. As the interval approaches, a wave of fidgeting grows in the
audience as everyone readies themselves for the mad rush for the stairs
and the lined-up Guinnesses.
Dublin is a city on a roll. A recent EU-inspired economic boom and a 10
percent company tax rate has blown a whole slew of foreign companies
into town which, in turn, have encouraged a whole mess of fusion and
Rim-food restaurants in their wake.
La Stampa is a good example: an ethnically cleansed Italian restaurant
(no pasta or pizza) with walls crowded by oil paintings from famous
local artist Graham Knuttel. The paintings look like Nina Romm without
the cats and are firm favourites with the highconcept Hollywood set of
Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg and the like.
Knuttel is a typical Dublin artist. A full-on alcoholic until 10 years
ago, in his early days he would trade paintings for drinks and food -
which is no doubt how the La Stampa collection started.
The figures in Knuttel's paintings look like characters from a Raymond
Chandler novel, all pumped up with steroids - rather like Stallone, in
fact - although the portrait of Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce
Willis and Demi Moore commissioned for the Planet Hollywood restaurant
in London is still at La Stampa - Stallone was painted with too little
hair. "He wanted me to paint more hair and I refused," says Knuttel.
"There was all sorts of trouble." Oops.
La Stampa's food is good, if pricey, although it's hard to beat plain
parsnip soup and the local salmon in the city's more downmarket pubs.
For a real treat, Dublin Bay prawns are recommended, fat and full of
flavour having gorged themselves on effluent from the Guinness brewery
which is discharged into the Liffey and hence the bay.
The descendants of Arthur Guinness are the closest thing fiercely
republican Ireland runs to for a royal family. At the turn of the
century, Ernest Guinness was directing the company business. His finest
moment came during World War One when he arrested a British officer
cycling behind the lines on suspicion of being a German spy. No soldier
so young could have rightfully earned all the medals which adorned his
chest. Turned out the spy was the Prince of Wales.
Ernest had three daughters, Aileen, Maureen and Oonagh, collectively
known as the Golden Guinness Girls. With large doe-like eyes, shiny
hair, pale arms, social position and, of course, money, the Girls were
the true-life prototypes for the "It" crowd of the '20s, social
show-offs of note.
All three married well, ie. into the peerage. Oonagh became Lady
Oranmore and Browne, and was famous for throwing "raffish weekends" at
Luggala, her Gothic pile in Wicklow. A Magritte masterpiece hung above
the fireplace in the drawing room, looking a little dull after the maid
cleaned it with some Vim.
Oonagh's many guests were ferried around in break-neck style in her
silver Rolls Royce, although the passengers were likely to be found
crouched in the back, hanging on for dear life. Sam, the chauffeur, had
a small drinking problem. One guest summed up the journey as "like
going from Sodom to Gomorrah".
Oonagh, the youngest, was known as the nice one, kinder to her children
and more generous than her sisters. She was also a great collector - of
younger lovers and shoes, a la Imelda Marcos.
Maureen was the brightest and succeeded her father on the board of
Guinness. She became the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, and a star of
newspaper gossip columns. When the fascist politician Sir Oswald Mosley
made a pass, she blackened his eye with her evening bag.
This wasn't the end of her men trouble. Quite a looker, with a
heart-shaped face and baby blue eyes, plus a blonde bob, Maureen
attracted the attention of the society painter Augustus John. During
the third sitting for a portrait, he "launched himself upon his
subject" and she had to fight him off.
The novelist Evelyn Brideshead Revisited Waugh nicknamed Maureen
"Mannerless", probably after she boxed Randolph Churchill's ears in
public for not sending a letter of condolence on the death of her
husband during the war. This was quite a change from the shy debutante
who spent her coming-out season hiding in the lavatories of assorted
stately homes. On one occasion, the plumber was called as the staff
assumed the lady's failure to emerge was on account of her being
"compromised by the plumbing".
Maureen's favourite party trick was to dress up as a slovenly maid,
bringing guests the wrong drinks and breaking crockery, all the while
urging them to go to the lavatory. She took a boastful pair of US army
officers down a peg or two by persuading the local policeman (and
tennis ace) to dress up as a woman for a doubles match. The marquess
and "Patricia" won in straight sets.
Photographer and socialite Cecil Beaton was a close friend - until he
referred to her at a dinner party as "the biggest bitch in London".
Friendship with the Queen Mother lasted longer. The two old ladies had
a dinner party at Maureen's London pied-a-terre every spring for more
than 40 years. At a ball held at Claridges to celebrate her 90th
birthday in 1997 all the women had to wear tiaras.
Always a natty dresser - she caused quite a stir at the coronation of
King George VI in a dress embroidered with diamante shamrocks - even in
advanced old age she kept her fingernails painted bright crimson
(although her dress sense finally failed her towards the end when she
appeared at a book launch attired in a black sou'wester).
Aileen was the eldest and most beautiful of the trio and specialised in
parties. As chatelaine of Luttrellstown Castle, just outside Dublin,
she indulged her passion for letting her hair down. A nightclub was
established in a castle dungeon, and in the swinging '60s her "floor
parties" were famous. Everyone sat around and ate on the floor.
Guests incapable of driving home after a party were accommodated in one
of the castle's many bedrooms and wakened at 11am by a footman (in
livery) presenting a Pink Special - a Bloody Mary - to speed recovery.
Not that everyone was totally enchanted with Aileen. One dismissed maid
used her notice period to teach the parrot (successfully) to repeat
"F**k Madam".
Aileen died last month at the age of 94. Her death brought an end to a
generation of unforced glamour, when having fun was a full-time job. As
Oonagh's friend and biographer, Kenneth Rose, summed it all up:
"Nothing but foie gras and Bloody Marys for breakfast. It is an age
that cannot be repeated." *
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scottie mac
Guinness?
Scottie