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User:Jnestorius/Kildare Street Club

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Escott edit

Club makers and club members 1913 pp.329–333:

As in the Scotch capital so in the Irish, the club maker developed himself from the tavern-keeper. The coffee-house life of Dublin reproduced in miniature that of London. Lucas's in Cork Street was the same house of call for fine gentlemen, idlers, and gamblers as White's from the earliest stage of its existence had been. At most of these meetings attention was fixed on the handsome face and well-dressed person of Maria Edgeworth's ancestor. This was the great Dublin buck of his day, Colonel Ambrose Edgeworth, called by Dean Swift " the prince of puppies," whose entrance into any company acted as the signal for Swift's departure from it.' Edgeworth, like others of his set, longed for a resort where the company would be a little more select and the fare not quite so roughly chosen. The first person to whom he imparted these notions was Enoch Sterne, then a collector of Wicklow, Clerk to the Irish House of Lords, and extensively acquainted with the men most likely to forward such a project. The eventual result was the creation of Daly's Club, encircled, as readers of Charles Lever's novels will remember, with so pleasant a halo of comic romance. Originating in Dame Street, Daly's reached the height of its fame after its removal to College Green in 1791. To Daly's, when the house was up, came Curran, Flood, Bushe, Plunket, all resplendent in evening dress-coats braided with gold, white pantaloons, satin waistcoats„ and above all the Irish Demosthenes, to adopt Lord Holland's[fn 1] description, Grattan, dressed exactly as he may still be seen in his portrait in Trinity College— the scarlet uniform of the Volunteers.

If the club idea had first occurred to Ambrose Edgeworth, it was Flood's chief disciple and successor who carried it into effect. What Henry Dundas was to Pitt, his contemporary and chief intimate, Denis Daly, had been from the first to Grattan, who looked upon him as a master of parliamentary tact and an oracle of social knowledge. At the club to which Grattan's confidant gave his name, the orator, ensconced in a quiet corner, would rehearse in an undertone some of the oratorical effects which, as Member for the Yorkshire borough of Malton, he was long afterwards to reproduce in the English Parliament, when the friend who had helped him so much in their preparation was no more. Grattan's fellow-clubmen at Daly's, Langrishe, Ponsonby, and Plunket, such of these as heard him in the House, said that his short, antithetical sentences, uttered in a foreign accent, owed something of their success, not only to their original preparation at Daly's Club but to the shrewd hints of Denis Daly himself. Daly's resembled White's, as well in its high play as in its exclusiveness . The severity of its entrance ballot caused a serious secession in 1787. The two most popular young men in Dublin society then were Lord Conyngham's twin sons. Of these, Henry afterwards became the third baron of his line, and subsequently the first marquis. His brother, on inheriting the Barton estates in the county Clare, took the Barton name. This Nathaniel Barton, as he had now become, in the year already mentioned was blackballed at Daly's from purely political motives.

The inevitable result was a withdrawal of his supporters from Daly's, promptly followed by the genesis of a new society. This, flourishing as much as ever at the present moment, gradually achieved the same consequence in the Isle of Saints as had been already done by the New Club in Scotland. It soon successfully competed with Daly's as a parliamentary and fashionable haunt, and eventually eclipsed its older rival. From the first it brought together not fewer celebrities than, as we have seen, met beneath the famous roof on College Green. The Kildare Street Club of one's own time is associated so closely with the territorial and bureaucratic elite that some surprise may be excited by the presence among its earliest members of men uncompromisingly opposed to the English connection. Such were Sir Jonah Barrington, the anecdotal historian of the Union Act, with which the nineteenth century opened, an independent and entertaining critic of successive administrations, while sitting for Tuam first, for Bannagher afterwards, the fourth son of the squire of Abbeyleix, in Queen's County (the reputed original of Miss Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent.) Sir Jonah certainly personified throughout the vicissitudes of his life the presiding spirit of the home surroundings described in that novel. In 1798, some years after he had been called to the Bar, he received the appointment of Admiralty Judge. Those portions of his Memoirs relating to the tenure and forfeiture for corruption of that office gave Thackeray some hints for Barry Lyndon. Other Kildare Street Opposition champions were Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor of the United Irishman, and Robert Stewart, who a few years later, as Lord Castlereagh, by a corruption more lavish than Barrington's, was to overthrow the national Legislature of which he had been a bulwark. But the club's most familiar ornament, in its opening years, was Sir Boyle Roche, noteworthy not only for his bulls but for his repartees.

Of the former, less hackneyed than the bird simile, was the passionate declaration : "I would gladly sacrifice, not only part of the Constitution but the whole of it to preserve the remainder." The readiness of rejoinder has no better example than the words addressed to Curran, who had just exclaimed : " Don't speak to me of my honour ; I am the guardian of my own honour." " Faith I " said Sir Boyle, " I knew you would, at one time or other, accept a sinecure." Contemporary with these, and not less well known in his day, was the head of the Conollies, whose father had been the first Member returned by Ballyshannon, and one of whose nineteenth-century descendants kept open house at Castletown, near Dublin. Between 1849 and 1876 "Tom" Conolly visited the club once or twice a week for the express purpose of reinforcing the guests under his huge, rambling, universally hospitable roof with some of its members, who generally included Sir William Gregory, the some-time Ceylon Governor, as well as M.P. for his native county, Galway, and for Dublin, the most delightful, instructive, and variously experienced Irishman of his time.

The bay window of the club, for the interest of its varied associations, may be compared with that of White's, and contains the comer in which the most illustrious of Kildare Street warriors, the first Viscount Gough, whose victories secured England the Punjab, talked over past times with Gregory, and often beckoned to his chair some of the younger men about him. To this period of the club belonged also the best known of the Herberts of Muckross, the second Earl of Erne, the most universally beloved of all Irish magnates, and the great Ulster leader of Florence Court, the picturesque patriarch of his people, the third Earl of Enniskillen.

So the Kildare Street Club succession has gone on till to-day, by no one in the Victorian era more impressively represented than by the fourth Earl of Longford, by none more agreeably or amiably than by the eloquent and resourceful Edward Gibson, the first Lord Ashbourne, by none in a manner more congenial to the place than the twentieth-century Lord Longford, and by the inheritor of so many great and graceful endowments, the David Plunket who is the first Lord Rathmore.

The common possession both of the chief Edinburgh and Dublin club is a cellar whose contents are of matchless merit and antiquity. Irish wine was in Swift's day and long afterwards the common description of claret. Scotland, of course, claimed an equal right to give the vintage her own name. No connoisseur in the British Isles during the first half of the nineteenth century had such an assortment as lay in the cellars of the New and Kildare Street Clubs of the 1834 claret, of the 1811 (the comet year) hock, and of Stock's dry champagne, bought at Crockford's sale for something between half a guinea and a guinea a bottle. This was the wine of which, at the Dublin club four Irish members drank fifteen bottles at a sitting in the worst year of Irish distress.

  1. ^ Actually Charles James Fox, younger brother of Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland

Picturesque Dublin edit

  • Gerard, Frances A. (1898). Picturesque Dublin: old and new. Hutchinson and Co. p. 226. Retrieved 30 January 2011.:

At the bottom of Kildare Street, or rather at the corner of Nassau Street, stands the Kildare Street Club, founded in 1782 in consequence of Daly's having dared to blackball Mr. Barton Conynham. It was built upon the site of two houses belonging to the Cavendishes, one of which was left by Sir Henry Cavendish for the purpose; the other was purchased from his heir. The original club was burned down in 1859, and rebuilt in 1861. Kildare Street is a very conservative and influential club, where Mr. Gladstone is heartily denounced, and at the present moment Mr. Balfour does not come off too well. Mr. Moore calls the Kildare Street Club the oyster bed, where all the sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course. This description more fitly applies to the Sackville Street Club. Sackville Street is, however, not so potential as it was. Mr. Moore likewise talks of the larva-like stupidity of the members. This is a decided libel: whatever their other shortcomings may be, Irishmen are rarely stupid, and a great deal of wit distinguishes the members of Kildare and Sackville Street Clubs. You will see few stupid faces if you glance at the famous bow-window, the terror of the débutante (the verdict of Kildare Street being all-important), where towards five o'clock the members congregate, and discuss last night's ball and the fair dancers. It is said that from this window (but of course it is a calumny) all the gossip of Dublin emanates. But who would believe this of grave country gentlemen? It is whispered (but again I only repeat, and do not credit) that many of the nicknames which fit their wearers so wonderfully are manufactured in Kildare Street.

Andrew O'Callaghan edit

The Education Clubs evidently grew out of the Bible Society, and undertook to supply its deficiencies. The latter offered only Bibles and private judgment; these were both refused. Then, to smooth the way for both, the Kildare-street Club stepped forth, with the alluring bribe of gratuitous education for the poor. Panting for that celebrity, which the honourable mention of his name, by a Kildare-street orator, confers, a country squire, or his lady, erects a school-house, which is soon supplied with a rich assortment of Bibles from the next depository.

The Streets of Dublin edit

in November, 1782, the interest in one of the houses erected here by him was conveyed to David La Touche, the younger, " in trust and for the use of the gentlemen of the Kildare-street club," an institution founded in that year, on the occasion, it has been said, of the right honorable William Burton Conyngham having been black-balled at Daly's in Dame-street, already noticed. In 1786 the club, through their treasurer, La Touche, purchased the second house erected by Cavendish, which, with the former one, now forms the Kildare-street club house. Of this institution a recent writer has left the following anecdote :—

" Within these forty years lord Llandaff proposed his brother general Montague Mathew as a candidate for admission into the Kildare-street club, Dublin. Montague was black-balled. Eighty-five black-balls registered the political rancour of the club, which was eminently Tory; amongst whom, nevertheless, the sons of three Roman Catholic brewers (C- F. and M.) figured; but they had been admitted because they had fixed political principles, and to give to the club an apparent claim to a character for liberality of opinion. When the numbers were declared, the great room of the club was full, lord Mathew, or rather Llandaff, (for his father was now dead), closed the door, and put his back to it. He then said in a loud voice: ' There are eighty-five —— rascals in this room.' ' Llandaff! Llandaff! recal those words,' cried several of his friends. 'No, I will not. I repeat that there are eighty-five —^— scoundrels in this room." ' Surely, my lord, you will allow men to exercise their right ?' ' Certainly I will; hut I repeat my words—there are eightyfive . scoundrels in this room, for every man it contains pledged himself to me to vote for my brother's admission.' The effect of this statement may be conceived. The haughty, indignant, and now supercilious earl, after a pause, proceeded amidst breathless attention: ' Montague Mathew is the only man in Ireland for whom I could not succeed in procuring admission into this club. Who among you is better entitled to the distinction, if it were one, than Montague Mathew ? Which of you is of a nobler family, or more illustrious descent? Who among you is more Irish, or rather more patriotic in principle and conduct, than he? Bear in mind, every man of you, that I denounce eighty-five of those who hear me as scoundrels!' He then threw open the door, and for the last time descended the staircase of the Kildare-street club."

George Moore edit

in Parnell and his Island, 1887:

The Kildare Street Club is one of the most important institutions in Dublin. It represents in the most complete acceptation of the word the rent party in Ireland; better still, it represents all that is respectable, that is to say, those who are gifted with an oyster-like capacity for understanding this one thing: that they should continue to get fat in the bed in which they were born. This club is a sort of oyster-bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course. There they remain spending their days, drinking sherry and cursing Gladstone in a sort of dialect, a dead language which the larva-like stupidity of the club has preserved. The green banners of the League are passing, the cries of a new Ireland awaken the dormant air, the oysters rush to their window — they stand there open-mouthed, real pantomime oysters, and from the corner of Frederick Street a group of young girls watch them in silent admiration.

Ulysses edit

John Kidd article in The New York Review of Books 25 September 1997, Making the Wrong Joyce:

One of the grosser gaffes in Gabler’s Ulysses: The Corrected Text was his deliberate change of cricketer “Captain Buller” to “Culler” on the last page of the “Lotus Eaters” chapter. This is Gabler’s mistranscription from the facsimile of a Ulysses galley at Harvard. One Captain Buller lived on the outskirts in “Byron Lodge,” which Joyce exploits by placing Buller in the episode where he first alludes to Lord Byron. This clever allusion aside, there was a famous Captain C. F. Buller rumored to have slogged a ball so far off Trinity’s College Park grounds that it broke a window in the Kildare Street Club, as Bloom recalls. (Other rumors say W. G. Grace was the champion slogger.) The British Captain Buller played for Harrow, Middlesex, and the flamboyant “I Zingari” (The Gypsies) Club, which had enough Irish visibility for Molly Bloom to recall the “Zingari colours.”

Note that CricketArchive's page Other matches played by Charles Buller includes some in Dublin and against TCD but not in TCD. cricinfo's Wisden obit for Charles Buller doesn't mention the story either. cricinfo has lists for College Park of first-class and other matches; WG Grace hit 112 in 1875, 32 in 1876, 11 in 1878, 34 and 14 in 1890.

Edward Martyn edit

Kelly, John Maurice (1984). The Irish constitution. Jurist Publishing Co. pp. 226, fn.65. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

The author has not been able to trace any printed confirmation of a story that, when Edward Martyn sued the Kildare Street Club in 1907 for wrongfully expelling him. there was great difficulty in putting together a Court of Appeal since most opf the then judiciary were themselves members of that club.

Oliver St. John Gogarty edit

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street I passed the Kildare Street Club, the landlords' Club, the Club that 'dear Edward' used to call the cod bank, from the silver heads shoaled high in its great windows. It is a museum of such as are left now; where the old ornaments from the past century compare with the gold ornaments of more archaic days.

William Butler Yeats edit

Gregory, Lady; Murphy, Daniel Joseph (1988-02). Lady Gregory's Journals: Books thirty to forty-four, 21 February 1925-9 May 1932. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195200676. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)

I asked Yeats how he likes Kildare St. Club, and he quotes what he had already said that he had gone there "because he was told the conversation was better than in the Stephen's Green Club." He does not find it better,

Hone, Joseph Maunsell (1962). W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939. Macmillan. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

More folklore clung to Kildare Street than to the Whiggish Club in Stephen's Green, from which he now resigned.

O'Connor, Frank (1999-04). My Father's Son. Syracuse University Press. p. 109. ISBN 9780815605645. Retrieved 30 January 2011. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

In his last phase, when I knew him, Yeats was by way of being a Fascist, and a supporter of O'Duffy...and caused me acute embarrassment by appearing at dinner in the Kildare Street Club wearing a blue shirt.

Hansard edit

T. M. Healy (27 May 1886) COMMITTEE. HC Deb vol 306 cc292-3:

When the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) talks of the unpopularity of Earl Spencer in Ireland, let me remind him of this—the right hon. and learned Gentleman is a shining light of the Kildare Street Club. He is a leading member of that Institution, where all the rotten landlords most do congregate; but there is another member of the Kildare Street Club who is not quite so popular there as the right 293 hon. and learned Gentleman. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not tell the Committee of the unpopularity of Lord Ashbourne at the Kildare Street Club, when the landlords believed that he had sold the pass in the Tory Administration.

T. M. Healy (27 November 1888) LAND PURCHASE (IRELAND) BILL. HC Deb vol 331 c368:

They knew that the Government intended to put upon the Commission Mr. Wrench, a noted member of the Kildare Street Club, who practically governed Ireland in respect to the Land Question from the Kildare Street Club.

T. M. Healy (14 May 1897) CLASS III. HC Deb vol 49 cc556:

The Chief Commissioners who managed all these things [sc. revision of rents at the Copeley estate in Wexford] were both members of the Kildare Street Club—a club consisting of landlords and land agents. So that it was by Kildare Street they were governed, and not as they thought, by the Castle. There was not a land case that was settled in Ireland that was not discussed in that club. And what was more, he said that remonstrances issuing from it — and sometimes personally—were made to the judicial members who belonged to the club. It was monstrous that judicial officers should belong to this Kildare Street Club. Would they be allowed to be members of the National League? And if not, why should they be allowed to belong to the chief landlord organisation in the country?

T. M. Healy (25 March 1902) LAND PURCHASE ACTS (IRELAND) AMENDMENT. HC Deb vol 105 cc1065:

we shall have to look to the old materials and officials for the manning of this new Estate Commission. If you have to look to the old materials and the old officers, I want to know whether they are to be taken from Kildare Street Club, or whether they are to be men with some glimmer of independence. Mr. Murrough O'Brien, in addition to possessing common sense, is not a member of Kildare Street Club. Most of the other members, as far as I can make out, are members of that club, and this House will gather some idea of what Kildare Street Club is when I state that Judge Gibson, brother of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was blackballed by the club, although Lord Ashborne was the man who, in this House in 1881, saved the landlords by the Amendments he moved to the Land Bill, and the fight he made against us, yet, even when his son was put up for membership of the club the other day, he was blackballed to boot. It is to that club, composed of the most hopeless, extreme, and irreconcilable members of the Irish aristocratic territorial party, that nearly every member of the Land Commission, engaged in either fixing rents or prices, belongs. There may be, of course, some tail end of them who do not belong to the club, but is it right that those engaged in exercising important functions about land should go down to court from the hothouse of Kildare Street Club?

John Dillon (11 May 1916) CONTINUANCE OF MARTIAL LAW. HC Deb vol 82 cc935-70:

In my opinion, and I think I really am speaking on a matter that I know, the British Cabinet has much less power in Ireland to-day than the Kildare Street Club and 941 certain other institutions.

John Dillon (1 August 1916) PETROL SUPPLY. HC Deb vol 85 cc163-4:

About four or five weeks ago a communication was received at the office of this same newspaper from a gentleman, a Noble Lord, Lord Decies, now the Military Censor in Ireland, forbidding the publication of a letter of a certain Catholic bishop. I have nothing to say about the letter. This bishop is a very great enemy of ours, and I must say a very scurrilous enemy of ours, and I do not make any comment on the letter of which the publication was forbidden. But will it be believed that the communication forbidding the publication of this letter was written on the official notepaper and headed by the stamp of the Kildare Street Club? Anybody who knows Ireland will understand the outrage, the cynical stupidity, of the Irish Censor who resorts to the Kildare Street Club, and from that sacred Ark of the Covenant of Toryism, of the most bitter and benighted Toryism in Ireland, proceeds to censor Nationalist newspapers, and to forbid the publication of a letter from a Catholic priest.

T. P. O'Connor: (18 October 1916) GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. HC Deb vol 86 c679:

it is no wonder that some of the men on our benches should think that the Kildare Street Club is really the inspiring institution in the present government of Ireland.

James Sexton: (19 February 1919) Reconstruction HC Deb vol 112 cc957-8W

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether any decision has yet been arrived at with regard to dealing with the problems of reconstruction in Ireland; whether the Lord Lieutenant's Advisory Council has been, or will be, empowered to deal with such questions; whether it was set up for that purpose, and, if not, for what purpose it was set up; whether that body has statutory rights or statutory recognition, and, if not, whether it is proposed to introduce legislation to confer such recognition; what is the total number of members of the Advisory Council; how many of them are members of the Kildare Street Club and how many of them are merchants or manufacturers; and whether it is proposed to entrust the spending of public funds to a body so constituted?

Jeremiah McVeagh (16 February 1920) CLAUSE 2.—(Continuance of certain Defence of the Realm Regulations). HC Deb vol 125 c631:

Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland, Sir John Taylor ... goes to the Kildare Street Club, the headquarters of Irish landlordism, and he gets his instructions there, and that is how Ireland is governed to-day.

Howth gun-running edit

Rifles were piled into automobiles and wagons, and with other rifles on their shoulders the Volunteers started back for the city in the early afternoon. The telegraph and telephone wires had been cut, but some communication had reached the authorities in Dublin just as the Volunteers started to march back to the city. Those who were nominally responsible for the government of Ireland the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary were not at hand. It was left to a police officer, Mr. Harrel, to take charge of the situation. Mr. Harrel's instant idea was to consult some one in the Kildare Street Club. When one talks of the Kildare Street Club one talks of a purely sectional institution. No Nationalist is permitted to be a member. When Mr. Edward Martyn, the dramatist, became a Nationalist, an effort was made to expel him from the Club. The Kildare Street Club is the headquarters of the landowners and the military officers. Mr. Harrel went to the Kildare Street Club. He met there a purely unofficial personage, General Cuthbert, who advised him to intercept the Volunteers with armed soldiery. The personage who gave this advice was, of course, without any responsibility. However, the advice was accepted and acted upon. Midway between Howth and Dublin, at Clontarf, the regular and irregular forces met. A demand was made that the Volunteers give up their arms. It was refused. The Volunteers got away with the rifles. The military forces marched back, and on their way through the city they were hooted by an idle crowd, some of whom threw stones. What did the military forces do who were assembled in this casual and unauthorized way? Their officer, Major Haig, gave orders to fire on the crowd. The soldiers loaded deliberately, knelt down and fired. Men and women were killed and wounded. The soldiers fired a second volley. This was the Bachelor's Walk affair that made such an impression upon Dublin people.

That biased account doesn't tally with the HC testimony: (Commons, Great Britain. Parliament. House of (1916). Papers by command. Vol. 11. HMSO. p. 95. Retrieved 30 January 2011.)

I then telephoned to the Kildare Street Club to get into communication with General Cuthbert, because it occurred to me that he might be there. He lunched there, and it happened that he was there. ... The only reason I mentioned the Kildare Street Club was that it was an important fact subsequently.

But then again Augustine Birrell said (30 July 1914) HC Deb vol 65 c1550:

The Under-Secretary informs me that he telephoned to Mr. Harrel that he was coming down to the Castle at once, but that no hour was named, nor did the Assistant Commissioner make any engagement to meet the Under-Secretary. No subsequent message was received by the Under-Secretary before he left his house, but shortly after his arrival at the Castle a superintendent informed him that Mr. Harrel was sorry that he was unable to see the Under-Secretary as he had an engagement with General Cuthbert at the Kildare Street Club.

Building edit

[the 11 November 1860 fire was] probably the final spur that forced the corporation into forming a municipal fire service...What was different in this case was that the fire was in the Kildare Street Club, haunt and home for many of the gentry and the judiciary; it could not easily be passed over as just another fatal conflagration...Mr Huighes led a total of nine people to safety across the roofs to the house next door.

The most singular act of architectural vandalism in recent Dublin history was the destruction in 1971 of Woodward's stair hall, the most dynamic Victorian interior in the city.

Lord Rossmore edit

I also belonged to the Kildare Street Club and as most of my particular friends were members of it I can't complain of the times we had. I remember once Percy La Touche being reprimanded by a surly old member in a not unamusing manner. Percy was looking out on the street when his attention was attracted by a pretty servant girl who was cleaning the windows of a house opposite. " I say," he remarked to the surly one, " There's a pretty girl for you," and as no notice whatever was taken of his observation he repeated it with marked appreciation of the window-cleaner. " Young man," said Surly, " I heard your remark perfectly well, as you intended me to do. I gather from it that you are one of those who go through life seeking the destruction of servants. One day a pretty housemaid will doubtless become an inmate of your home. The inevitable will happen, and then the girl will be discharged without a character. Yes, sir, and I will go still further, and affirm that you will not even be blamed in the matter, for your mother will probably say, ' Leave my house, you abandoned creature, words cannot express my indignation at discovering that you have corrupted my son.' "

We had some good times at the Kildare Street Club. One Horse Show I was lunching there with Lord Headfort, Lord Farnham, and also Lord Portarlington, who as George Damer was known as "The Dasher." Said the Dasher to me, " shooting his linen," " Derry, old boy, there's nothing left for you but to go to Bath." " Why on all the earth d'ye recommend me to go to Bath ? " " Look here, I've been having electric light baths up to 250° Fahrenheit, and the treatment has reduced my tummy by two inches." Everybody was all attention and Farnham, better known as " Sommy Maxwell," who was a very well-informed man, said, "Come, George, that's rather steep ; why, water boils at 212° Fahrenheit." " I don't care a d n, when the kettle boils," cried George displaying some heat (as was only natural). " I tell you my dear Sommy, that I was lying in the electric light at 250 degrees." "Well, well," said Sommy, dryly, "have it your own way, George, but at any rate you're lying in daylight now."

General Browne was looking out of the Kildare Street Club window one morning when a coster-barrow collided with a car, and there was the devil to pay. The barrow was upset, the greenstuff and fruit were scattered all over the road, and the language on both sides was something to wonder at. The row soon attracted attention and the windows were crammed with members, who were thoroughly enjoying the dialogue. The General did not say much ; he was apparently deep in thought ; then he turned gravely to the man next to him and said in his doubly-distilled brogue, "Sirrr, I would have ye to note the perfect insouciance of the ass ! "

Daly's edit

Not Denis Daly, pace Escott, but rather Patrick Daly. Robertson, Ian (1979-05-31). Ireland. Benn. p. 111. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

Nos 2 and 3 were the premises of Daly's Club, which grew from a chocolate or coffee-house established here c.1750 by one Patrick Daly, and by 1790 had become so popular with the bucks and rakes, and wits and literati, of Dublin that a new building was erected at the expense of the convivial coterie that gathered there; by 1823 however, it had all but expired, owing to its very exclusiveness, and was superseded by the Kildare Street Club

Commons, Great Britain. Parliament. House of (1812-07-07). "Copy of a Memorial, presented to His Grace the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on the 7th of April 1812, by certain Citizens of Dublin, complaining of the Conduct of the Police Magistrates.". Papers relating to the police of Dublin. House of Commons papers. Vol. 334. HMSO. p. 2. Retrieved 2011-01-31.

  • Your Memorialists show that, notwithstanding such direction on the part of the Legislature, no less than Six open and notorious Gambling Houses exist within a few yards of the Head Office of Police; and your Memorialists humbly beg leave to state, that, in a great Mercantile City, Houses of that kind are peculiarly mischievous, and frequently induce the Clerks, and Apprentices of the Citizens, to embezzle the Property of their respective Masters, and detach them from the pursuits of industry and trade, and at same time afford refuge to the nightly Plunderer and Assassin; and Memorialists humbly submit, that the existence of sucli Houses may well account for the numerous Street Robberies and, Burglaries committed within and in the Neighbourhood.
  • Your Memorialists state, that one of those common Gambling Houses has been for several years, and is still, kept in Dame-street, within a few yards of the Castle, and of the Head Police Office, by a Person of the name of Patrick Daly.
  • Your Memorialists further beg leave to state, that one John McCoen held said last-mentioned House for some time, from said Patrick Daly, ajt.the enormous rent of Eleven hundred Pounds yearly, but that said Daly, from some secret motive, resumed the possession of said House, and from thence down to the present time is suffered to keep same as a common Gambling House.

Gilbert, John Thomas (1859). A history of the city of Dublin. Vol. 2. Dublin. pp. 305–7. Retrieved 31 January 2011.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Early in the reign of George III., Patrick Daly, who had originally occupied a subordinate position in a Dublin tavern, opened a Chocolate-house at Nos. 2 and 3, Damestreet, which soon became the most famous establishment of its kind in Ireland, and was the usual resort of the nobility and Members of Parliament. Clubs first came into fashion about this time, and strange anecdotes have been told of the various extraordinary scenes which were enacted at Daly's ; the windows of some of the apartments are said to have been occasionally closed at noon, and deep gambling carried on by candle-light. As in Bath, it was not uncommon to see a gambler, suspected of cheating, flung out of one of the upper windows; and sanguinary duels were frequently fought in the precincts of the Club-house.
A tourist, in 1780, mentions Daly's Club as being very well regulated, adding, that he heard some anecdotes of deep play there, though never to the excess common in London. Nearly half the land of Ireland is said to have changed owners at Daly's, and tradition has preserved several marvellous tales of the reckless characters of the frequenters of his gamblingtables. The fashionable gentlemen of Dublin at this period were generally styled " Bucks :" such were " Buck Whaley," " Buck Lawless," and " Buck English;" of the latter the following characteristic anecdote has been left us by an Irish authoress of the last century, intimately conversant with the arcana of the fashionable world of Dublin in her own day:—
" One night at Daly's Hell, Buck English, that sanguinary hero, happened to fall fast asleep, when a thought came into the heads of some gentlemen engaged at silver hazard, to frighten the Buck out of his wits, and accordingly, without the smallest noise, had the fire removed, and all the candles extinguished, after which they began to make a horrid racket with the dice, 'seven or eleven,'—'seven's the main,'—'By G—, sir, that's not fair,'—' I appeal to the Groom Porter.' ' Rascal Davenport, what did Lawler throw ?'—' You lie, you lie, you villain,'—' d— your body, take that.' Then swords were drawn, and a dreadful clashing, and uproar ensued; all the while the dice rattling away. In the midst of this tremendous din, the Buck awoke frightened out'of his wits, fearing the Almighty, to punish him for his murderous deeds, had struck him blind, and falling on his knees, for the first time since his arrival to manhood, began to ejaculate, in the most devout manner, all the prayers he could recollect, not omitting his old ' Ave Maria,' for the Buck was reared a good Roman Catholic; and in this lamentable situation he was removed quite in the dark, to a bed prepared for him in the house, where he remained in inconceivable agony, being certain he had lost his sight. A little before daylight, he was visited by most of his companions, who were determined to carry the joke a little farther; they pretended it was noonday, began to condole with him on his misfortune, and recommended Mr. Rouviere, the celebrated oculist, to him; having no doubt but his ability would restore him to his sight. The Buck was assisted to dress by some of the servants (still in the dark), all the time bemoaning his misfortune, and promising that if heaven would be pleased to work a miracle in his favour, to immediately seclude himself from the world, and pass the remainder of his days in a convent in France: But as soon as Sol's gladsome rays had convinced him of the trick played on him, he started; (forgetting all his sanctity), and full of sentiments of revenge he jumped from his chair, with the firm determination to blow poor Peter Davenport's (the groom porter) brains out, and to call Lawler, D—y, O'Brien Charley S—1, Jack Prat, Major B—r, Jack Leary, Buck Lawless, and a number of other dupes and blacklegs to a severe account; in fact nothing but blood and slaughter was to be dealt around; however, by all accounts the matter ended with poor Davenport's being knocked down and kicked by the Buck."
The Lords and gentlemen who constituted Daly's Club, considering their house in Dame-street not sufficiently magnificent, entered into subscriptions for erecting a grander edifice ; the list was closed at the latter end of 1788, and the building of the new house on College-green commenced in 1789, two years after which it was opened for the reception of the members.

History of Dublin p.324 (1907) Sir James T. Gilbert

Between Foster Place and Anglesea Street once extended the palatial buildings of Daly's Club, the internal decorations of which were said to be superior to anything of the kind in Europe. The door, which led by a footpath to the western portico of the Houses of Parliament, is now a window in the offices of the National Assurance Company.

National Assurance Company of Ireland Aviva

Originally built in 1790, the company's head office at 3 College Green had previously been known as Daly's Club, a famous coffee house and gaming club. The building was connected to the Irish House of Lords by an underground passage and it was said that half the land in Ireland exchanged hands over the tables in its card room. The word "quiz" is purported to have originated there when a member successfully wagered that he could concoct a word which overnight would pass in to the English language. The member left the club in the early hours of Sunday morning and chalked QUIZ in large letters on all doorways leading to the principal city churches. While the story is curious enough to be true, the Oxford English Dictionary states, "it is doubtful whether any reliance can be placed on the anecdote of its invention by Daly, a Dublin theatre manager." After the building was purchased by the National Assurance Company, the company's own fire engine operated from the Anglesey Street side entrance.

What the OED actually says quiz, n. (Third edition, August 2010) is:

Etymology: Origin unknown. In branch II. probably < quiz v.1 Compare quoz n.
The source of quot. 1793 at sense 1b suggests that the word was regarded as unusual at an early date. An origin in public school slang may be suggested by the following:
  • 1798 G. Colman Heir at Law iv. iii. 60 A gig? Umph! that's an Eton phrase—the Westminster call it Quiz.
The following anecdote is widely repeated, but cannot be confirmed. It apparently first appears in Smart (1836), but is omitted in the 1840 edition. The man in question is perhaps Richard Daly (1758–1813), Irish actor and (from 1780) theatre manager:
  • 1836 B. H. Smart Walker Remodelled at Quiz, Daly, the manager of a Dublin playhouse, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours; in the course of this time the letters Q, u, i, z were chalked or pasted on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.

In fact it appears in 1835 The Mirror of literature, amusement, and instruction, Volume 25 p.128 and New-York mirror, Volume 12 p.352 col.1

Interesting is Racing calendar 1793 p.190 "Mr Hamiloton's b.f. Quiz bt. Mr Daly's spotted filly".

Miscellaneous edit

Campbell, Fergus J. M. (2009-08). The Irish establishment, 1879-1914. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 9780199233229. Retrieved 30 January 2011. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

  • p.32: 1860:700 members; 1894:630; 1914:688. Drop in 1870s during agricultural depression and Land War. Nora Robertson said KSC first "more social than political. During the Home Rule struggle it became wholly political."
  • p.33: In 1860, about half landowners, quarter army officers, eight legal, 2-3% C of I clergy.
  • p.70-1: Civil servants KSC and DUC
  • p.147: Almost half of the [Dublin Tory MPs] were members of the Kildare Street Club; the Sackville Street Club was "ultra-Protestant".
  • p.154: 3 of 12 Liberal Dublin MPs were members of KSC "where they could mix with Irish Tories, landlords, and senior civil servants"; 4 Liberal MPs of Stephen's Green
  • p.163: Home Rule MPs: 2 in KSC, 5 in Stephen's Green Club

O'Connor, Ulick (1984-10). All the Olympians: a biographical portrait of the Irish literary renaissance. Atheneum. p. 221. ISBN 9780689114908. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)

It was said that if you amalgamated the London Carlton Club and the Athenaeum and stuffed the result with mothballs you might get something approaching the Kildare Street Club. In 1938 Claude Cockburn heard the Earl of Wicklow [say there that] "If Hitler were to attack, Austria-Hungary would take him in the rear, and he knows it"

Pat Delaney of the Invincibles was arrested in 1882 for shooting at judge James Anthony Lawson coming from the KSC. (Tighe Hopkins (1896) Kilmainham Memories: The Story of the Greatest Political Crime of the ... p.62) or was it going to the KSC? (Peter O'Brien, 1st Baron O'Brien THE REMINISCENCES OF THE RIGHT HON. LORD O'BRIEN (OF KILFENORA) LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF IRELAND p.51) going to I think The Day (New London, Conn.) "An Irish Outrage" Nov.13 1882 p.1

The dictionary of Dublin, being a comprehensive guide to the city and its neighbourhood (1908) pp.72-3

  • Of Social Clubs one of the chief is the Kildare-street, at the junction of Nassau-street and Kildare street, a very fine Venetian Romanesque building, designed by Messrs, Deane and Woodward, with some quaint carvings on the window sills. Stephen's-green north, is the real club-land of Dublin, and here are the Stephen's-green Club, No. 8; the Hibernian United Service Club, No. 5, with large bow windows ; the Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, No. 22 ; the University Club, No. 17 ; and the Sheridan Club, No. 23. Other Clubs are the Ulster in Rutland-square and the Sackville-street Club, No. 59, the most important club on the north side of the city.

Thomas Sheridan elected a member on his last visit to Dublin in 1787 with one black bean. (Alicia Lefanu, "Memoirs of the life and writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan, with remarks upon a late life of the right Hon. R. B. Sheridan (1824) pp.353-4, fn.

Violet Florence Martin Irish Memories pp.13-4

  • My mother first met my father at the house of her uncle, Mr. Arthur Bushe, in Dublin. She met him again at a ball given by Kildare Street Club ... In March, 1844, they were married in Dublin. ... In was in the ... summer of stress and hope [1846] that my brother Robert was born, in Dublin, the first son in the Martin family for forty-two years, and the welcome accorded to him was what might have been expected. The doctor was kissed by every woman in the house, so he assured my brother many years afterwards, and, late at night as it was, my father went down to Kildare Street Club to find some friend to whom he could tell the news (and there is a touch of appropriateness in the fact that the Club, that for so many years was a home for Robert, had the first news of his birth).

T H Escott 1916 Great Victorians p.116

p.115 [Lord Gough] found a retirement for his declining days at St. Helens, at no great distance from Dublin, where, almost to the last, he might occasionally be seen in the famous bow window of the Kildare Street Club.

Mary McAleese (27 January 2006) 1916 - A View from 2006, remarks at a conference 'The Long Revolution: The 1916 Rising in Context':

  • In the nineteenth century an English radical described the occupation of India as a system of 'outdoor relief' for the younger sons of the upper classes. The administration of Ireland was not very different, being carried on as a process of continuous conversation around the fire in the Kildare Street Club by past pupils of public schools. It was no way to run a country, even without the glass ceiling for Catholics.
  • Ruth Dudley Edwards (5 February 2006) Question the right to life of a sacred cow
    • Last weekend, President Mary McAleese, presumably at the behest of the Government, denounced such heretics as "a powerful and pitiless elite" who wickedly suggested that 1916 was "an exclusive and sectarian enterprise". Her speech demonstrated that despite her modish rhetoric, at 54 our president is little changed from the Mary Patricia Leneghan who grew up sharing the prejudices of a fiercely nationalist, Catholic Belfast community. ... The McAleese hotch-potch of justifications for violence included women not having the vote and her curious belief that Ireland was run from the Kildare Street Club.
  • Paul Bew People look at 1916 and see their own reflection 26 February 2006
    • But this discontinuity at the heart of recent history creates a psychological embarrassment when confronted with 1916 and the need to turn it into something else with which we can more easily identify. Hence the President's need to turn it into a revolt against the glass ceiling for Catholics and the Kildare Street Club - even though the British administration had been throwing ideological bombshells into the Kildare Street Club since the 1830s and appointing Catholics to the most senior positions since that time.
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