I am about to disturb the fourth Earl of Iveagh's breakfast again - presuming, of course, that he takes The Irish Times and consumes it with his early morning tea. A reasonable assumption, don't you think?
Again? Well, you see, Arthur Edward Rory Guinness and I go back a long way - 18 years to be exact, to the time when I taught (or rather, tried to) at a species of academy virtually extinct today: the lesser-spotted Anglo-Irish prep school, this one located in Co Wicklow and now, alas, no more.
Each morning, afternoon and evening, the school - masters, mistresses and pupils - would assemble at long trestle tables in the lofty diningroom for meals, with one teacher per table to maintain a semblance of order.
Came unstuck
It was at one of these tables that my relationship with the Guinness family came seriously unstuck. You see, seated next to me for my year at my table (that's all it was, I'm afraid - those who can, do, those who can't, teach, and those who can't even do that become journalists) was the aforementioned Arthur Edward, etc. - all 11 years of him.
One morning I was late for breakfast. I am one of those people whom psychologists describe as "owls" (as opposed to "larks"), and to whom morning, the very idea of it, much less the actual reality of it, is anathema. But that is no excuse (and properly so!) in prepschool land.
Well, this particular morning, when I did make my appearance, there was young Guinness sitting not, as he should have been, to my left, but (would you believe it?) in my chair! Breakfast had started and, in my absence, he had been designated to take Grace. I strolled up to him and said laconically, "Thank you, Guinness", expecting that he would, of course, surrender the place. But I was in for a shock. Guinness sat his ground, would not budge, glaring defiantly down into his porridge. An 11-year-old snigger crept down the table, initiated, I must say, not by Guinness but by my real enemy, the true villain of the piece, a pert young woman whom I knew, from my unsuccessful attempts in class to impart knowledge and appreciation of the English language, was determined to lose no opportunity of sabotaging me!
By now, things were getting desperate. The Situation was Beginning to be Noticed. I searched the hall for support from guzzling colleagues. None was forthcoming. They were probably relishing every moment of it. Desperate, I grabbed Guinness's arm and squeezed mercilessly. Summoning as much menace as I could, I half-whispered, half-growled: "Edward, get up and get out!"
School porch
Pupil and teacher, in that order, made their way to the school porch, out of sight and earshot. I was furious, and, as I have indicated, not yet fully awake - a perilous combination. I was wholly ill-equipped to appreciate the irony of what happened next.
"Don't you forget, Guinness," I said to the young Viscount Elveden, as he then was - "don't you ever again forget just who I am." I meant by this, of course, that as his teacher I was deserving of his respect at all times. Of course!
In a moment of punctured vanity which I now regret, I excluded Guinness from the rest of breakfast that February morning all those years ago, although I went in myself to the scrambled eggs which were by then making their appearance.
How the tables have turned, trestles or otherwise!
Guinness did not forgive me. When I visited the school the following year at the invitation of the acting headmaster, he refused to return my greeting when we met in a corridor, the damage plainly done. But I still have words for him which I hope will explain this namedropping on my part to the general reader, and these are they:
Charitable activities
It may be vulgar to say so, but in selling the last of the Iveagh Guinness lands recently at Castleknock, the Guinness family made a huge amount of money. It is possible that much of this money has made its way into the charitable activities for which that family has been famed and loved in the past in Dublin city, but there is no public evidence of it. This is a pity, especially as the Guinness connection with Dublin seems now to be breaking forever.
It seems to me that some of that Castleknock money should be symbolically re-invested in the sort of worthy cause which made Edward's great-grandfather, Rupert Guinness, such a rightly revered figure. I hope it will be, because I believe such gestures are greater than the merely tangible results they bring.
After all, Edward, my old pupil, you are the Earl of Iveagh, and don't you forget, don't you ever forget, just who you are.
I am, respectfully, and after all these years, apologetically, your old mentor -