Burning the toast

Arriving late for a reception in Guinness’s the other night, I noticed speaking notes left on a lectern, complete with a hand-written annotation at the end – “Slauncha”.

Clearly, someone from Diageo had been taking no chances with the local toast, which in the mouth of an unwary visitor might encourage guests to get “Slanty”. And the caution was more than usually wise.

The main event being marked was the opening of the billion-pints-a-year Brew House No 4. But it was also promoting some new Guinness products, including the 6 per cent proof “West Indies Porter”, a few bottles of which could indeed reduce your perpendicularity.

Actually, West Indies Porter is both old and new. Or at least it purports to descend from the similarly named brew, first produced in 1801 and later called “Foreign Extra Stout”, that made the brewery’s global fortune. Its reappearance now, ironically, is probably due to increased competition from craft beers which, combined with shrinking pub numbers and expanding excise duties, are squeezing Guinness sales.

Still, the new €169 million brewhouse doesn’t suggest a company in retreat. And the investment should add to Dublin’s economic health, however Diageo pronounces it.

Viewed from the glass-walled Gravity Bar, at night, the city looks very glamorous. Most cities do, when lit, and from a safe distance. But back at street level, walking home, I was reminded that the streets immediately around Guinness's are among the poorest in Dublin. You could debate long and hard whether there is cause-and-effect here. The question features in a book I read recently called The Streets of Dublin 1910-1911, a compilation of columns written by the then alderman Tom Kelly (later lord mayor and TD) for Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin newspaper.

His running theme was the decline of traditional trades everywhere in the city, which he blamed on 110 years of the Act of Union. But touring James’s Street, he was particularly struck by the contrast between the success of the brewery and the “utter want and misery” surrounding it.

Conditions were a lot worse then, it’s true. In a doss-house within a “stone’s throw” of Guinness’s, he witnessed “hundreds of poor women lying on the hard ground with a rough blanket around them [...] a disgrace to our so-called civilisation”. And he didn’t quite blame the evils of drink for the juxtaposition. But interestingly, he suggested that the profits-to-wages ratio at Guinness then had something to do with it.

He couldn’t be sure, he complained, because Guinness wouldn’t let him see its annual accounts. His educated guess, however, was that workers at Belfast’s Harland & Wolff received three times the wages, and the company one-third the profits, compared with the Dublin brewery.

Anyway, porter is not so profitable these days, and the conditions around Guinness’s are less dire. But you still don’t have to venture far from the brewery for sobering reminders of drink-related impoverishment. On the way home, the same stone’s throw as Kelly’s, I passed “the Fountain” – a little tree-lined plaza that could be in Paris except that here, in a twist on its name, it’s a haven for those poor citizens called “winos” (a misnomer, since they’re usually drinking beer).

Nearby too was one of those homeless hostels known as a “wet-house“ – wherein hard-case alcoholics may bring their liquid comforts in with them. And opposite that was the venerable St Patrick’s psychiatric hospital, where many alcohol-related illnesses are treated.

The hospital was famously founded by a bequest from Jonathan Swift, an enlightened gesture commemorated by his slightly less enlightened verse: “He gave the little wealth he had/To build a house for fools and mad,” etc. And the Dean’s many bon mots also include one quoted in Kelly’s book. It was delivered at a dinner where Swift was asked to raise a glass to the “Trade and commerce of Ireland“, a standard toast circa 1720. Since the destruction of Ireland’s trade by England was one of Swift’s favourite subjects, however, he refused the toast with the quip: “I drink to no memories”.

Kelly thought the joke could be usefully revived in 1911, and not just because Irish commerce was moribund then. He suspected that the toast to commerce, still popular in the early 20th century, was often just as “excuse for drinking” (perish the thought). And with Ireland poised for Home Rule, he argued, if not in these exact words, that it should learn to enjoy alcohol sensibly.

@FrankmcnallyIT