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 collectorofWicklow, 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 HerbertsofMuckross, 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.
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.
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.
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."
inParnell and his Island, 1887:
John Kidd article in The New York Review of Books 25 September 1997, Making the Wrong Joyce:
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.
Kelly, John Maurice (1984). The Irish constitution. Jurist Publishing Co. pp. 226, fn.65. {{cite book}}
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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.
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}}
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Hone, Joseph Maunsell (1962). W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939. Macmillan. {{cite book}}
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O'Connor, Frank (1999-04). My Father's Son. Syracuse University Press. p. 109. ISBN 9780815605645. Retrieved 30 January 2011. {{cite book}}
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T. M. Healy (27 May 1886) COMMITTEE. HC Deb vol 306 cc292-3:
T. M. Healy (27 November 1888) LAND PURCHASE (IRELAND) BILL. HC Deb vol 331 c368:
T. M. Healy (14 May 1897) CLASS III. HC Deb vol 49 cc556:
T. M. Healy (25 March 1902) LAND PURCHASE ACTS (IRELAND) AMENDMENT. HC Deb vol 105 cc1065:
John Dillon (11 May 1916) CONTINUANCE OF MARTIAL LAW. HC Deb vol 82 cc935-70:
John Dillon (1 August 1916) PETROL SUPPLY. HC Deb vol 85 cc163-4:
T. P. O'Connor: (18 October 1916) GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. HC Deb vol 86 c679:
James Sexton: (19 February 1919) Reconstruction HC Deb vol 112 cc957-8W
Jeremiah McVeagh (16 February 1920) CLAUSE 2.—(Continuance of certain Defence of the Realm Regulations). HC Deb vol 125 c631:
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.)
But then again Augustine Birrell said (30 July 1914) HC Deb vol 65 c1550:
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(help):[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.
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 ! "
Not Denis Daly, pace Escott, but rather Patrick Daly.
Robertson, Ian (1979-05-31). Ireland. Benn. p. 111. {{cite book}}
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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.
Gilbert, John Thomas (1859). A history of the city of Dublin. Vol. 2. Dublin. pp. 305–7. Retrieved 31 January 2011.{{cite book}}
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History of Dublin p.324 (1907) Sir James T. Gilbert
National Assurance Company of Ireland Aviva
What the OED actually says quiz, n. (Third edition, August 2010) is:
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".
Campbell, Fergus J. M. (2009-08). The Irish establishment, 1879-1914. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 9780199233229. Retrieved 30 January 2011. {{cite book}}
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O'Connor, Ulick (1984-10). All the Olympians: a biographical portrait of the Irish literary renaissance. Atheneum. p. 221. ISBN 9780689114908. {{cite book}}
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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
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
T H Escott 1916 Great Victorians p.116
Mary McAleese (27 January 2006) 1916 - A View from 2006, remarks at a conference 'The Long Revolution: The 1916 Rising in Context':