Gorgeous Georgians (12/03/08)

Yesterday, after stopping for (really tasty) chicken shish and flatbread at a Turkish counter restaurant near Trinity (where, incidentally, we were the only women not wearing head covering and the only non Turkish speaking customers), Jo and I went over to the travel info center to get bus tickets to Kilkenny for Saturday.

And while we were there we picked up some more brochures about things to do in Dublin. I was excited to discover a museum called 29 Fitzwilliam, which was described in a history brochure as "an exhibition of home life in Dublin 1790-1820." I perked right up at the prospect of not only walking around the Georgian district in Dublin, which I'd planned to do when I went to the National Gallery today, but also seeing something of everyday life in that era at a museum apparently devoted to that very thing. Poor Jo has yawned through enough Jane Austen film adaptations for me to know that she wouldn't mind missing 29 Fitzwilliam, so off I went on my own this morning. Little did I know what an absolutely marvelous time I was about to have!

I walked down to Trinity and then across on Nassau St, along to Clare St to Merrion Square, where there is a lovely little park. I cut through the park and came upon a war memorial that has an eternal flame surrounded by bronzes of four soldiers, all encased in a pyramid of stone and glass. I have to find out more about that one. I really was looking for the Oscar Wilde statue that was installed in the late 1990s, and at a corner of the path I found him. He reclines a big boulder, all ennui and erudition, looking out at two small statues, each atop a four-sided marble base engraved graffiti-style with his witticisms. The two smaller bronze statues are nudes, neither identified, but one of a pregnant-looking woman, kneeling, and the other of a man's torso, with buttocks facing Oscar, as I'm sure pleases him.

Walking through the park, I could take in all the Georgian row homes facing Merrion Square. There appears to be a renaissance of sorts happening in the district, with many of the buildings restored for mostly offices and some homes. I learned it was not uncommon in the 19th century to have a law practice or some other business at street level and a residence above. (I want my office in one of them, please. With a bright blue door, please. And a shiny brass knocker, please.)

The colorfully painted front doors with their brass hardware that are emblematic of Dublin line these streets. The story goes that when the perpetually in-mourning Queen Victoria was to visit Dublin, her advance team gave orders that all the doors be painted black as a sign of respect. Middle class Dubliners who were none too keen on the Brits responded by painting their doors the brightest colors they could find. The doors have stayed colorful ever since.

My next destination was 29 Fitzwilliam St Lower, but I walked past it and saw the numbers getting smaller. So I backtracked and spotted it across the street. I stood with a group of about a dozen boys, maybe 9 or 10 years old, and their teacher, waiting to cross. It became apparent as we waited that the boys and I were bound for the same address. I walked a little ahead of them and down the stairs off the street, to the museum entrance, where a white-haired gentleman in a tweed sportcoat asked if I were with the school group. I said I was not but that I wouldn't mind having the tour with them. He directed me into a small seating area with a screen on one wall and a map of Georgian Dublin on another and asked me to wait there. The boys all took off their coats and hung them on hooks by the entrance and then tumbled into their seats in front of me. Their teacher, a cheerful, middle-aged woman who was lovely with them, kept the conversation on topic and their behavior in check as we all waited for the film to begin. The boys wore grey flannel trousers and blue shirts under grey sweaters and came from St. Christopher's School, if my eavesdropping is reliable.

So we all watched an interesting little film about 29 Fitzwilliam St, which was first owned by a wine merchant named Beatty in 1794 and occupied by himself and his wife and their seven children. The Merrion Square area was being developed as a residential district away from the crowded conditions closer to the Liffey, with mansions for the rich and narrower four-story homes for middle class families like the Beattys. Mr. Beatty, who was perhaps 20 yrs older than his wife, died shortly after moving in, and at least one of the children also died young, but Mrs. Beatty remained in the house until 1806, when she moved out of Dublin. Her husband had not left a will, and so she became dependent on her father-in-law, who died while she was in the house, as well. She left the city for a house owned by her father-in-law near Wexford, where she lived until her 80s. A couple of centuries later, the house eventually came into the possession of the National Museum of Ireland by way of the Electricity Supply Board, the latter organization being the financial supporters of the project to turn it into the museum it is has been since about 1990. The house has been completely restored with furniture and other artifacts from the Beatty family as well as reprentative pieces from the era 1790 to 1820.

So let me tell you about the tour. It was beyond excellent. That's because as the school boys were being lined up to start the tour, the white-haired gentleman gestured for me to wait behind. He instructed me to leave my coat on a hook by the door and to lock up my bag and my camera in a little closet. I grabbed a handful of Kleenex and put a couple of Ricola in my pocket (I'm a public nuisance when I have a cold), and then the gentleman beckoned to me from across the room and introduced me to a woman named Laura. Turns out, the staff had decided to send the boys on through with their teacher and give me my very own docent. I was just twitherpated.

Laura was impeccably groomed, maybe late 60s, bright and outgoing, an expert on the house who said she's been doing tours for 17 years. She and I were on a first-name basis before we even started the tour, and I'd agreed with her optimistic assessment of Barack Obama (and scathing criticism of W) before we were out of the first room of the tour, the scullery. She was full of information but seemed a bit edgy. By the time we were on the third floor, I learned that her youngest son, en route to Australia from Dublin after losing his job here, was being detained in Bangkok due to the recent trouble there, and that contact with him had been sporadic at best. So I'm thinking that the universe put us in the same place at the same time for a reason today, as often happens. I'm a good listener who is fascinated by Georgian life, and she's a good talker who needed the distraction of work and a chance to vent. Truth be told, I think I came out ahead, because I got the tour of a lifetime.

We talked about every single thing in the house, from bottom to top. Ready for some Fun Georgian Facts?

A "hastener" was a tin-lined kitchen shelf, closed on one side and open to the fire on the other, in which the reflective heat kept food warm and hastened the rising of the yeast bread dough.

To keep the rats away from the food, it was stored on a shelf suspended from the middle of the ceiling because while rats will crawl, they won't jump. In the Beatty household, a high window from the housekeeper's bedroom into the pantry allowed her to have a clear view of the rat shelf so that she could catch the day servants if they tried to steal food to take home to their famlies.

Water was a precious commodity in c. 1800 Dublin, so an occasional sitz bath or a scrubdown with powder was what the middle classes considered good hygiene.

A prospective governness would use a needlework sampler as her resume. Her best case scenario was to become a companion to the lady of the house who might arrange a match for her so that when the children no longer needed her, she'd have a marriage to enter into, thus ensuring her economic survival.

Young girls played with dollhouses as a way of learning to manage a household so that their husbands could rely on them. Their middle class or upper class mothers often knew little about the actual running of the household, so the servants and governess might play dollhouse with the girls to teach them.

So many Dubliners at that time had "weak chests" from bronchial infections (go figure) that beds were designed to allow people to sleep sitting up.

A brass rail attached to the wall inside the front door served as a place to hang capes and wraps, as well as to give gentlemen homeowners returning home drunk from the club something to grip so that the servants wouldn't see them keel over.

Break-ins were such a problem in Dublin at the time that front doors had massive iron chain bolts on them. It was considered unsafe to walk outside except in broad daylight because of muggings in which anything of value--like silver shoe buckles--might be stolen. Carriages and chaises used to carry residents around town were often set upon by thieves.

The main floor of the house was most sumptuously decorated, and the curtains were left open so that passersby would be able to look in. The decor got simpler the higher you'd go, until the children's and governness's rooms on the top floor (like the housekeeper's room in the basement) were quite stark and utilitarian.

The scullery maid in the Beatty household earned sixpence a week. She lived in squalor in the medieval district of town and walked to and from work at sun-up and after sundown. She, like most servants, was Catholic, while the Beattys were Protestant. In Dublin at the time, the "haves" were Protestant and the "have-nots" were Catholic.

A system of bell pulls connected each room upstairs to the basement and the servants. Although the bell board was marked with the name of the room associated with the bell, each bell gave off a different tone that allowed the illiterate servants to know where their attention was needed.

Wedgewood china in the late 18th century was not blue and white, as it is today, but tan and black. And Wedgewood produced a pottery hedgehog as a coveted promotional item that ladies would grow their irises in.

The lady of this house had a number of small, porcelain pill boxes, including one that held her "patches," or beauty marks to be worn on social occasions. She also wore eyeglasses, and she had ivory glove stretchers for her new kidskin gloves.

OK, I'll stop now. This is the kind of stuff that gets my heartrate up. Imagine visiting a museum dedicated to something that really floats your boat, and having your very own docent take you through and share tiny little details as well as describe the big picture, and let you get up close and see everything in the place, and not once say, "Don't touch." I kept waiting for her to say, that's enough now, go home. But instead she's say, "Do you have more time? Let me tell you about..."

After a few hours, we made our way back to the basement kitchen where we'd started and said our goodbyes in the (inevitable) cafe and gift shop area. I was looking at books and things before I left, and after a while Laura came out to where I was and recommended some cookbooks. We shook hands and wished each other Happy Christmas again, and she said, "Sleinte," which I've probably misspelled, but is Irish (Gaelic) for goodbye. I hope she hears from her son tonight.

No photos allowed at 29 Fitzwilliam, but I found a website you can check out if you are interested: http://www.esb.ie/main/about_esb/numbertwentynine/about_us/default.htm

So that was just marvelous. I was still buzzing when I walked along Merrion Square and found W.B. Yeats' residence (when he was an elected official after the rebellion), and then I stopped at a basement gallery to look at art I can't afford, and then I was going to go to the National Gallery, but the white-haired gentleman at 29 Fitzwilliam told me it might be closed because a set of stairs had collapsed under a group of teachers not long ago, and, well, there might have been a fatality but he wasn't sure, and in any event, the museums often close down for a few weeks at this time of year. It's hard to know how much of what these Irish gentlemen say is true. I think Jo and I, with our tendency to fabricate that which we do not actually know, fit in quite well here.

After Merrion Square, I stopped at the Kilkenny Shop on Nassau to get a nifty tote bag I'd seen there. Then it was on to Trinity's shop where the last visit was cut short by the closing time announcement. Picked up a few gifties there. And then up Dame St with a detour on George St to get milk and tea for the flat at Dunne's, and then up the hill to meet Jo after school. We went Indian for a late lunch in a restaurant that couldn't have been more than 50 degrees (F) inside but had good naan, and then came home to try to get warm. She's napping. I'm blogging. Life is good.

Have I mentioned that I like Dublin?