CONNECTIONS:What links Rosanna Davison to this smart character from yesteryear? Sometimes connections come in the oddest of ways as this tale of Dalkey illustrates
FIRSTLY, NO, this picture here is not an ad for Black Tie. Black tie what? Careful here, because I read recently that the owner of the well known chain finds the term "Dress Hire" distasteful. So, instead of responding that his cummerbunds do much the same for me, taste wise, best we use his preferred term, Black Tie Formal Wear.
No, no ad here for any of that, this man is the real article. A late Victorian Dublin gentleman. And yes he was in the tailoring trade, and a friend of my grandfather, also in the Dublin tailoring trade. Though neither this natty gent nor the grandfather would have considered the word "trade" appropriate. They considered themselves "merchants". Those were subtle times, as indeed are ours. JP McManus is not a "bookie", he is a "financier".
Grandfather had a shop in Dawson Street. Natty gent here had his in Grafton Street. In those days both streets were much of a muchness, whilst now the retail element of Dawson Street has mostly migrated elsewhere. Grandfather's place is long since demolished, but the actual building occupied by natty gent here survives, with the business itself surviving up until the 1950s. It was R.Tyson Ltd., at 57 Grafton Street. Even up to then it was posh, advertising itself as "by appointment to H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, Racing Colours". It also did shirts, "hand tailored on the premises". That sort of place. Fifty years earlier it was owned by this man, George Tyson.
George was pretty well off. In fact he did not have to rely on the tailoring business to keep him in spats. It wouldn't have mattered to George whose racing colours he produced. Because George was married to Esther. A plain enough woman, be it said, I have her photo. I know nothing about her personality, but I know she did have one definable attribute to compensate for her lack of beauty. She owned the Mooney chain of pubs. Esther was the equivalent of, for example, our modern-day Charlie Chawke. Though be assured that he is marginally prettier.
The Mooney chain of pubs are gone. And even in my own pub-haunting days they were in severe decline. Here and there about the city survive their distinctive clocks. Usually neglected, and stopped. Because time moves on. But back then they were big, and seemed to be on every corner on every street. Drinking was big back then. And no I don't know why I wrote that sentence either. It seems to imply that we are now a nation of sobriety. But what I mean to say is, drinking was big in the sense of pub drinking. They were the centres of our civilisation. And all this rubbed off agreeably on Esther's bank account.
George and herself maintained themselves in a very fine house in Dalkey, Co Dublin. Running over with maids, servants and gardeners and the like. They also maintained "a shoot" in Wicklow. Their life was good. There were few flies in their ointment. Though one slight fly did flutter in, in the shape of a tram driver who ran away with one of their daughters. And set up home with her in Dalkey's tramway cottages. Now do not be fooled. Dalkey's tramway cottages are now highly desirable, and many people would be glad to have their daughter nicely bedded into one of them. But back then, a hundred years or so, things were very different. Particularly for a family like the Tysons, who were not in trade.
They didn't speak to her again.
And then they died.
As a small child I visited the house where once they lived. There were two very old ladies there. These were the two remaining unmarried daughters, they who had not run away with tram drivers. They maintained an aviary. I visited there to buy a pair of breeding budgies. Yes, I have had a fulfilling and interesting life. I visited there and went away. The two old ladies died and the house changed hands.
It was Aelagh, and it was bought by the singer Chris de Burgh, and he brought up his family there. And yes, connections-wise we're getting warm. Because Chris De Burgh has a beautiful daughter, Rosanna Davison. A truly beautiful woman. A Miss World in fact. And yes, of course she has done some silly things in the media. But if there were no foolishness in youth there'd be no wisdom in the world. So about these connections?
Now I am not the sort of writer to worry about which bedrooms beautiful young women sleep in. (Unless those bedrooms be mine, an increasingly unlikely scenario). And I somehow suspect, even though quite new to these pages, that The Irish Times is not the sort of paper too concerned about the sleeping arrangements of beautiful young women. But needs must, needs must.
Rosanna obviously slept in Aelagh as a child, in the bedroom of one of old George Tyson's daughters. But we cannot know which, and we can only wonder. Did she sleep with the ghosts of the thoughts of the girl who ran away with the tram driver? Or in the shadows of the lives of those who grew up to be strange old spinster ladies, breeding budgies?
Time (which, unlike a Mooney clock, never stops) will tell.
• Conan Kennedy is a writer whose most recent books include the novel Ogulla Well, and (as editor) the recently published five-volume edition of The Diaries of Mary Hayden
e-mail: conan.kennedy@gmail.com