For years I have walked past Daniel O'Connell's house on Dublin's Merrion Square on my way to and from the Dáil, writes Deaglán De Bréadún. You could call it "History Terrace" on this side of the square since other residents over the years have included the poets W.B. Yeats and George Russell (AE) and the novelist Sheridan Le Fanu.
The architectural historian Maurice Craig eloquently described the square as having "a cliff-like reticence, relieved by the warmth of the brick, lightened by the breadth of the streets".
O'Connell bought No. 58 as a rising young barrister in 1809. The neighbours probably thought he was getting ideas above his station. His wife, Mary, was appalled: "Where on earth will you be able to get a thousand guineas?" The Liberator lived there until his death in 1847. His debt-ridden family had to sell off the furniture soon afterwards and the house itself went in 1853. It passed into private hands for the next century-and-a half until the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, bought it last month.
Thus it was that, after years of wistfully walking past, I was finally able to pass through the doorway and see the home of Great Dan, minus the furniture as we have noted, but structurally unchanged for the most part.
Addressed the crowd
Thanks to the Notre Dame people a door has been reopened, not just to a house but to a sealed-off part of Irish history. The visitor can look out the window from which O'Connell addressed the crowd in 1844, following his release from prison. It is not hard to visualise the vast throng of humble Dublin folk blinking at the splendour of this grand square. As so often with the followers of O'Connell, their discipline was of such a high order that an observer was moved to write: "There was not a single policeman seen or needed in all that vast multitude."
There is a remarkable description from 1823 of O'Connell at work preparing a law case in the early hours of the morning while revellers are still on their way home from parties in the "raking metropolis" of Dublin. In his book Sketches of the Irish Bar, W.H. Curran describes "a tall, able-bodied man standing at a desk. . .upon the wall in front of him hangs a crucifix." Go to the Four Courts later in the day and you would see the same individual "miraculously transformed from the severe recluse of the morning into one of the most bustling, important, and joyous personages in that busy scene".
Notre Dame paid about €3 million for the house. The money was generously donated by two businessmen, Mr Don Keough and Mr Martin Naughton. The house seems in excellent condition but Notre Dame plans further restoration.
The front rooms are splendid, high-ceilinged affairs while the rear is a warren of smaller rooms and alcoves, as though O'Connell always needed a place close at hand for confidential consultation. The original window from his study is still in place.
Notre Dame has long been known as one of the great American universities with a strong Catholic and liberal tradition. It is famed for its "Fighting Irish" football team. But in the early 1990s it embarked on a new venture by developing the sphere of Irish studies under the academic guidance of our own Seamus Deane.
Every year, squads of Notre Dame students come to this country to take courses. Its international graduate seminar in the summer is a major intellectual event. Up to now it has used rented rooms in the stylish environs of Newman House. This will continue, but now Notre Dame will have a place it can call their own.
Altruistic dimension
There is also an altruistic dimension: many Notre Dame students spend two years after graduation working as teachers in disadvantaged areas in, say, Latin America. This programme will now be extended to poor areas of Dublin with the O'Connell residence as headquarters.
Both Don Keough, former president of Coca-Cola, and Martin Naughton of Glen Dimplex, are trustees of Notre Dame, which has also benefited from the generosity of Michael Smurfit: he recently purchased a vast quantity of 19th-century Irish fiction, the Loeber Collection, for the university.
Mr Keough was in town recently and I discovered that we shared a common Wexford heritage. His forebears emigrated after the Famine and settled eventually in Iowa. His father was a cattle dealer and Keough grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. He enlisted in the US Navy in the second World War and his college education was financed through the GI Bill. He joined a company that was later acquired by Coca-Cola. Keough worked his way up to be president of the corporation. But when he stepped down, he couldn't stay idle. "I flunked retirement," he quips. He now chairs an investment bank in New York.
Postponing the pleasure
Mr Keough didn't attend Notre Dame but his daughter was part of the first intake of female students to the university in 1972. Five other Keough children are also Notre Dame graduates and, in 1977, their father joined the board of trustees. When I spoke to him, he had not yet visited the house which is to become the main Irish base for the university's Keough Institute of Irish Studies. I had a feeling he was postponing the pleasure, thereby to savour it all the more.