Dublin Dossier

Pat Keenan on happenings in and around the capital

Seamus Heaney celebrated at Christchurch Cathedral

L-R (back) Laurence Kinlan, Fiona Cunningham, Republic’s Market Manager for Tourism NI, Tara Lynne O’Neill, Lisa Hannigan, Stephen Rea. Front, Neil Martin Lisa Hannigan, haunting rendering of Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Anahorish’

Back in early February we gathered in Christ Church Cathedral to celebrate the work of our Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. We shook hands, hugged, kissed cheeks, whispered in ears and sipped wine in affable closeness. We had no idea what was coming. On that very day, buried somewhere in the international news pages, there was a seemingly remote and irrelevant account of a virus affecting some far-flung province in central China. Two months later our country was in lockdown, many of us cocooned at home making the most of it, perhaps trying to cheer ourselves by recalling some relevant words Seamus himself: “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere”

The cat and the rat, chasing in perpetuity, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

land or the UK. Afterwards we moved upstairs to the nave to enjoy the ‘Embrace a Giant Spirit’ event organised by Tourism Northern Ireland. We had readings by renowned actors like Stephen Rea (Crying Game, Michael Collins), Tara Lynne O’Neill (Derry Girls), Laurence Kinlan (Love/Hate) and music by Neil Martin (Deutsche Grammophon label).

The highlight for me was the haunting rendering of Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Anahorish’ by singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan, beautifully and gently amplified by the acoustics of Christ Church Cathedral - “much better than St.Patrick’s” an unnamed reverend suggested.

The event was put together as part of an initiative which aims to highlight the literary connections between Seamus Heaney HomePlace, which recently reached its 130,000 visitor milestone, and the hugely successful ‘Listen Now Again’ exhibition, which draws on the National Library’s extensive Heaney archive and has welcomed over 162,000 visitors since it opened in Dublin in July 2018.

Fiona Cunningham, the Republic’s Market Manager for Tourism NI said, “With the impressive Seamus Heaney HomePlace, situated in Bellaghy, only two and a half hours from Dublin, visitors can really immerse themselves in our greatest poet’s writing and discover many areas of his beloved hometown that inspired so much of his work”. Relevant at the time but sadly the HomePlace is closed until further notice.

Christ Church itself is worth a visit once this pandemic is over. When I arrived in the crypt I knew there was something I wanted to see - two of the cathedral’s more intriguing inhabitants - the mummified remains of a cat and rat. According to lore, the cat chased the rat into a pipe of cathedral’s organ and both became stuck. James Joyce used this as a simile in ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ when he described someone as being “... as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ...” Having failed to find it, a pantomime style event happened later as we got to the dessert course of our dinner. From across the table a fellow diner asked, “Pat, did you find the cat and the rat?”

“Sadly no” I replied. “It’s behind you!” chorused just about everyone opposite- and they were right, Behind me, unnoticed when we were seating, the glass case with chasing pair in perpetuity. Another item not often associated with churches, the crypt contains punishment stocks which I first thought might have dated back to pre Reformation Roman Catholic confessional requirements - alas no, they were originally in Christ Church Place, set up in 1670 for offenders before the Court of the Dean’s Liberty. They were moved into the crypt in 1870.

2020 One City One Book Festival

O’Brien brought back some older memories for me. As a young man and an unashamed and happy reader of banned books I recall as a young man my journeys to Belfast and London to buy indecent goods. That feeling of anxiety and nervousness on the Belfast to Dublin train as we stopped at Dundalk for border customs checks. Dark uniformed men loomed ominously through the carriage, searching and checking passenger’s belongings, The dreaded Customs Men were also Ireland’s moral thought police.

With cinemas, pubs, music venues and theatres all closed and even though there is television, radio, Netflix, computer games that I know nothing about, Monopoly and Scrabble, showing my age.. Even though libraries and bookshops have also been forced to close, more of us - over 60 per cent more are turning to books. Even the scheduled ‘2020 Dublin One City One Book’ events are postponed until later in the year. In the meantime you can still read books including this years book choice - ‘Tatty’ by Christine Dwyer Hickey. It is available to buy online on Kindle or library members can borrow the ebook free from your library. The Government has increased library budgets by E200,000 to meet a rising demand to borrow ebooks. Amazon is somewhat affected resulting in slow deliveries or in cancellations - a book I ordered had a long delivery date, a week later it was simply cancelled. The dirty book I was smuggling into the Republic was The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien. Luckily they passed by, free at last, it was the same year I gave up confession boxes. Edna O’Brien herself once had her own books confiscated by Customs leaving her with just the dust jackets. Now we are free at last and just last year that dirty book became the choice for the ‘Dublin: One City One Book’ Festival. Again unfortunately because of the Covid19 epidemic, ‘The Evil Literature Exhibition’ planned for the Dublin Room at the Dublin City Library & Archive, 138-144 Pearse St, Dublin 2 is closed - keep an eye-out for the reopening.

Remembering Jammets Restaurant

With weeks and possibly months of compulsory home-dwelling ahead I’ve decided to sift through years and years of photos and hoards of travel memorabilia. I found this old photo of Jammets Restaurant, 45- 46 Nassau Street. I must have taken it in my early twenties since I now know that restaurant was in Nassau Street from 1926 until it closed in 1967 - when my weekly wage would not have stretched to cover a starter. When a young John Lennon (in 1964) signed the visitor book he drew a caricature sketch of himself and wrote:“The other three are saving up to come here!”

WB Yeats loved the place, had his own table there in the 1930s entertaining fellow writers Brinsley MacNamara, James Stephens, Lennox Robinson, FR Higgins, Seamus O’Sullivan, Peadar O’Donnell, Francis Stuart,Frank O’Connor, Miss Somerville, JM Hone and Walter Starkie. Actors of stage and screen, James Cagney, Rita Hayworth, Danny Kaye, Peter Ustinov, Josef Locke, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole.

21 Senior Times May - June 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, dined there often, at least once with Orson Wells but dined mostly with Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford, founder of the Gate Theatre, who just about always payed the bill. Which brings me to a well known Dublin expression, still used today and may in all likelihood derive from the restaurant, alluding to someone getting something for nothing, you might exclaim, “you Jammy bastard.” Perhaps, I surmise, another example might have been Charles Haughey and his clique Arthur Gibney and Sam Stephenson architect who reaped both praise and criticism and permanently left their mark on the city from the Central Bank and the Civic Offices to the destruction of rows Georgian houses in Fitzwilliam Street to be replaced by new ESB offices.

Jammets Restaurant: WB Yeats loved the place, had his own table there

Hard to imagine now, but there were not many restaurants in the city then. Thinking back, these would have been around in the 60’s: Nico’s, Dame Street; Trocadero, St Andrew Street; Unicorn, off Merrion Street; The Lord Edward, Christchurch Place and further out in Ballsbridge, The Lobster Pot. In Stillorgan, Beaufield Mews, said to be the oldest restaurant in Dublin is around. Out my side The King Sitric in Howth was a newcomer opening in 1971 and still surviving.

Today Jammet Restaurant is the Porterhouse and before that it was the Berni Inn and I could afford to bring the mot there. There was a second entrance to Jammets from Grafton Street through Adam Court, today that’s the entrance to Lillie’s Bordello.