What a pity W.B. Yeats is not still with us to record the demise of Stringfellows, the exotic dancing club that has been forced to close, according to reports, by the Irish corporate sector's failure to "embrace" it, writes Frank McNally.
The poet would not be a bit surprised about the corporate sector, whose failure to embrace the Hugh Lane collection of modern art stung him into writing his bitter poem September 1913. Were he alive today, Yeats would surely be penning an update, July 2006. The message that "romantic Ireland's dead and gone" might need only minor adjustment.
Yet again, our business leaders have chosen "to fumble in a greasy till" rather than back a venture designed to broaden minds and uplift spirits. Well might the doomed club's PR manager worry about the message sent abroad by Stringfellows' Irish closure. "It goes against everything this country is supposed to be about - advancement and democracy," he complained. Although it's probably too late to save our international reputation, I suggest that Dublin Chamber of Commerce immediately dispatch a delegation to Britain to embrace Mr Stringfellow personally, by way of apology.
You may think it fanciful to compare the demise of what critics called a "glorified strip club" to Yeats's lament for the loss of an impressionist art collection. In fact, the similarities are persuasive. Hugh Lane amassed his pictures at a crucial juncture for European art, when painters were moving on from the traditional preoccupation with superficial appearances, towards a modern art that would peel away all layers of subjectivity to reveal the eternal truths that lay underneath an object's surface.
In presenting the cream of Europe's exotic dancing artistes, Stringfellows was attempting something broadly similar. According to friends of mine who visited the club, the underlying truths exposed there were often clearly enhanced. But nobody could doubt the sincerity of everyone involved, including the surgeons, in trying to create objects of beauty.
An even more striking comparison between art galleries and lap-dancing clubs concerns their respective rules of engagement. In both, you may look at the exhibits, but you may not touch. Attempts to embrace anything in a literal sense are vigorously discouraged. Indeed, clubs are even more assiduous than galleries in policing this rule. Should you set off the alarm surrounding a lap-dancer, bouncers will rush to the scene and restrain you. Like the early Cubists, they may even threaten to break you into geometric parts, before reassembling you in an abstract form that better expresses the truth of your condition.
In any case, the fear now must be that the Stringfellows Irish collection will be dispersed. Yet again, Dublin's loss will probably be London's gain, as we are left "to add the half-pence to the pence and prayer to shivering prayer until [ we] have dried the marrow from the bone". How ironic it will be if our corporate sector ends up going to Stringfellows during business trips to London and paying in sterling what it refused to pay in euro.
On this note, and in fairness to corporate Ireland, it should be said that much patronage of the local exotic dancing sector probably goes unreported. Yes, businessmen could flaunt their contribution by passing the lines of shouting protesters in Parnell Street and maybe even getting their pictures in the paper. But not everybody is as ostentatious as that. At this time of shame for Ireland, we should remember that thousands of people - business leaders, lawyers, perhaps even journalists - generously support our adult entertainment industry every day, often quietly and behind the scenes, in ways for which they seek no publicity whatsoever.
It's just that Stringfellows was a flagship project - the "pinnacle" of the business, in the founder's words - and its loss is a blow to national self-esteem. As the PR man said, "An Irish-owned, Irish-operated club is out of business because people don't like a brand name. This wouldn't happen in any other modern city." The good news is that Mr Stringfellow does not seem to be holding our ingratitude against us. Luckily he didn't lose any of his own money in the Irish club, only the prestige of lending his identity to the venture. It's poignant to recall that a mere six months ago, he spoke with such optimism of the move here. "I like the address, the capital city image - Dublin's a good name," he said then. However disappointed he must be in us now, he was refusing to show it at the weekend. Like Yeats's patriots, he appears to have weighed so lightly what he gave.
Better still, Mr Stringfellow has expressed confidence that another club bearing his name might yet open in Dublin. We hardly deserve such generosity of spirit. But for those who still dare to hope, there is a happy precedent. It's called the Hugh Lane Gallery, now belatedly displaying the benefactor's collection in a permanent space on Parnell Square, a mere thong's throw from the closed doors of Stringfellows.