Thanks to some spring-cleaning by Guinness family member and Claddagh Records founder Garech Browne, somebody somewhere is now the proud owner of fossilised deer antlers and a portable commode, writes Rosita Boland.
To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that an aristocrat in possession of a good fortune needs a large house and some eccentric qualities to go with it. The Honourable Garech Domnagh Browne (66), a member of the Guinness family, qualifies on all counts.
By Tuesday evening of this week, Browne - sometimes de Brun - was some €2.6 million better off, having held a sale of 400 of his unwanted possessions at his large estate in Luggala, Co Wicklow. Before the sale, he had said that he was "living with clutter, with things under the bed". The Browne bed must be vast, since some of the things which emerged from underneath it to be sold this week included a pair of fossilised giant Irish deer antlers (€22,000), a mahogany library bookcase (€70,000) - and a portable commode (€1,000).
Garech Browne was born on June 25th, 1939 in Glenmaroon house in Chapelizod, which was later to be sold and converted into a residential centre for handicapped children. His father was Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne, Lord Oranmore and Browne. His mother was Oonagh Guinness, who was herself born in the Guinness family home in Grosvenor Place, London. The house was sold and later became familiar to many as the Irish Embassy, and it still is.
Both of Browne's parents were married three times, which made for a large, complicated and unconventional family background. It was a second marriage for both of them. At the time of Browne's birth, he had three step-sisters and two step-brothers on his father's side, and one step-sister and one step-brother on his mother's side. Browne, the first-born, is the only surviving child of their marriage to each other. An unnamed brother died in 1943, aged only two days. Another brother, Tara Browne, was born in 1945 and died, aged 21, in a car crash in Chelsea, London. Their paternal grandfather had also died in a car crash, in Kent in 1927.
Among the different schools Browne attended were Castle Park in Dalkey, Co Dublin, and Le Rosey, an exclusive international boarding school in Switzerland. He left full-time education when he was 14, and has since said several times that he considers himself to be "self-taught". For his 21st birthday in 1960, he was given a gift of a round-the-world ticket and £1,000 spending money - a very substantial sum at the time.
In an interview with this newspaper in 1979, Browne said: "I don't want to be a sheep, very boring to be a sheep". In the same interview, he also said that being born into wealth had given him "an automatic security which helps one believe in oneself and allows you to do what you want to".
One of the things his wealth allowed him to do was to found Claddagh Records in 1959, a label which is still active and specialises in Irish traditional music and the spoken word. The first Claddagh album was Rí na bPíobairí, by piper Leo Rowsome. The second was The Chieftains' first recording, called simply Chieftains 1, and he is credited with discovering the now world-famous band.
Claddagh Records has featured work by musicians Matt Molloy, Sean Keane, Peadar O'Loughlin and Dolores Keane and poets Patrick Kavanagh, Ted Hughes, Austin Clarke and Hugh MacDiarmid. The most recent high-profile Claddagh production was a highly-praised collaboration between Seamus Heaney and Liam O'Flynn, entitled The Poet and the Piper.
Browne is well-known for his enthusiasm for Irish music and culture, and has a large collection of antiquarian books of Irish interest. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to learn Irish in adulthood. At one point in the 1970s he also ran Woodtown Music Publications, which published music scores. Its first publication was the score of Sean Ó Riada's Hercules Dux Ferrariae in 1970.
In 1978, Browne won the Book Design of the Year for his production of the score of Frederick May's String Quartet. It had a frontispiece by artist Louis le Brocquy, and an introduction by poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and is now undoubtedly a collector's item. In 2000, Browne received an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin, in recognition of his contribution to the arts and culture of Ireland.
Browne's various homes have always had their doors open to practitioners of the arts. Sean Ó Riada used Browne's antique harpsichord to play compositions for his final recording. His parties at his home in Luggala are legendary. His personal friends include Bono, Mick Jagger, Seamus Heaney, film-maker John Boorman, and actor John Hurt. Lucian Freud has painted him.
A profile of Bono and Ali Hewson published in Vogue last year described their visit with the journalist to Browne's home: "'We have to tell Garech that this place has become our epicentre,' Bono says as they drive down for their thank-you visit to Luggala, bottle of 1947 Armagnac in the back seat. Bono and Ali drive slowly up to the 1780s Gothic Revival home. See Garech Browne's 1953 Rolls-Royce. See the specially bred Japanese sika deer. See a mist descending on the lake," the reporter enthused.
BEFORE BROWNE SETTLED permanently into Luggala, which came to him through his mother's side of the family, he lived at Woodtown Manor in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, a Georgian house on 150 acres. It was sold in 1997 for £1.4 million to Sean Dunne, who has since become one of Ireland's most well-known property developers. Items in storage from Woodtown formed most of the lots for auction this week.
In 1979, Browne was asked about heirs in an interview. "I think it highly selfish to have children," he declared. Whether this was a decision arising from his own upbringing with an extended family or not, Browne, who married the following year, never did have children. His wife is Princess Purna of Morvi, the daughter of the Maharajah of Morvi in India, who was 26 when she married Browne in a Hindu ceremony in Bombay. Since then, the couple have continued to spend part of the year in Ireland and part in India, both separately and together. Browne also spends a portion of the year visiting Paris and London.
TWO REMARKABLY CONSISTENT features in photographs of Browne over the decades have been his ponytail and his long, bushy beard. His beard has changed in colour but not much in volume, perpetually hovering like an anxious nimbus at the end of his chin. Another consistent feature of his appearance is his striking dress sense.
His clothes are usually coloured and striped, made of materials ranging from Irish báinín and Scotch Harris tweeds to Thai shot silk, Egyptian silk poplin and Indian slub silk. His shirts are made by London tailors Turnbull & Asser, and his coats and suits by Lesley & Roberts, also in London. His father and grandfather used the same tailors.
He favours mother-of-pearl buttons, bought from the London specialist shop The Button Queen. Most exotic of all, he reportedly has shoes made from the skin of sika deer, ostrich and the ears of elephants.
Shoes made out of elephant's ears aside, it's true that the seriously rich are indeed different. In March, the State bought 1,600 acres of land from Browne's Luggala estate for €1.7 million, the going rate for land with no development potential. The newly-acquired land now links the two previously separated main areas of Wicklow Mountains National Park, joining up national parkland along the spine of the Wicklow Mountains from the Feather Beds on the Dublin border to Baravore, not far from Lugnaquillia mountain.
"It's only a little bit of land," Browne told this newspaper at the time of the State's purchase of the 1,600 acres. Even with no development potential, it does seem to be the property understatement of the year.
The Browne File
Who is he? A member of the Guinness brewing family.
Why is he in the news? This week, he auctioned off some of his "clutter" at his home in Luggala, Co Wicklow, netting €2.6 million.
Most appealing characteristic His generosity to friends and his patronage of the Irish arts.
Least appealing characteristic Those elephant ear shoes.
Most likely to say "Plenty more where all that old clutter came from."
Least likely to say "I'd be perfectly happy living in a nice semi-detached."