An Irishman's Diary

This being the Fourth of July, its worth reminding ourselves that the White House – America’s great beacon of freedom, lighting the way for democracies everywhere – is an architectural twin of one of our own, slightly lower-wattage contributions to the cause.

It might not be obvious to a casual viewer. But the Kilkenny man who designed the White House, James Hoban, drew much of his inspiration from Leinster House, which had been built a few decades earlier. The Washington building’s North Portico, for example, bears strong similarities with the Dáil’s Kildare Street frontage, if you ignore the latter’s dowdier colour and its carpark.

(Which reminds me: thanks to reader Finbar Boyle who, as a contribution to our occasional series about people with apt surnames, mentions the architect responsible for St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, and Rathmines Town Hall, Dublin, among other buildings. Sir Thomas Drew he was called. A name and a short biography, all in one.)

Of course, unlike Hoban’s masterpiece, Leinster House was not built to serve democracy. In fact, no-one would be more surprised at this turn of events than a former occupant, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who once complained in a letter to his mother that the place “does not inspire the brightest ideas”.

In the same note, he added: “By-the-bye, what a melancholy house it is! A poor country housemaid I brought with me cried for two days, and said she thought she was in prison.”

Two centuries later, during my own time working there – in the stuffy old pol corrs’ room (I mean that the room was stuffy and old, not the pol corrs), with its small, hard-to-open sash windows – I often sympathised with that maid.

The “brightest ideas” quote was recalled by another Fitzgerald – JFK – when he visited Leinster House in 1963. But he had the good grace to suggest that the building’s anti-inspirational qualities were a thing of the past (comments on a postcard, please). Lest that not reassure his hosts, he also acknowledged its influence on his current home in Washington.

And even if the 18th century Fitzgeralds never warmed to it, their big house in Kildare Street certainly achieved one of its intended aims. Asked in 1745 why he was planning a mansion in Molesworth Fields on the city’s southern fringes, far from the then fashionable northside, the Earl of Kildare predicted: “They will follow me wherever I go.” The rest is history.

Even with the building’s supposed detrimental effect on ideas, our parliament could have been located in worse places.

In a 19th century book featured on www.chaptersofdublin.com, for example, Leinster House is mentioned alongside another mansion of its era, Moira House. The latter was situated on the Liffey at Usher’s Quay, and also had Fitzgerald connections: a fact mentioned in Ulysses.

As one of Joyce’s characters walks along Island Street, he notes: “Somewhere here Lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from Major Sirr. Stables behind Moira House.”

It was a magnificent building once, with beautiful gardens. By all accounts it would have inspired no end of bright ideas. But when its last private occupier died in 1808, the once-aristocratic structure was given over to the relief of Dublin’s poor, so becoming the “Mendicity Institution”.

Or as the old book’s chapter heading puts it, in a misprint that must once have been as common as it was understandable: the “Mendacity Institution”. It’s unfortunate the two words should be so similar. They appear to derive from separate Latin verbs. But you can see the problems that would have arisen if the Dáil had been housed in the old Mendacity (sic) Institution, no matter how many good ideas it inspired.

Speaking of Joyce: a short footnote to our recent diary about the demise of Sweny’s Chemists. It’s a detail I noticed belatedly in The Irish Times archive, in those reports of the 1866 court case involving the original Dr Sweny.

Readers may recall that he was involved in an altercation with a policeman on nearby Nassau Street late one night and that, despite threatening to “run him through” with a “sabre”, he subsequently won his assault case against the constable.

But the bit I missed at first reading was when, giving evidence of his client’s respectability, Dr Swenys counsel described him as a married man with “10 or 11 children”.

Joyceans may recognise an echo here, from a quote frequently attributed to James Joyce’s father: who was apparently wont to describe himself as having “16 or 17 children”.

Those are both very large families by 21st century standards, and some vagueness might be excused. But even so. It’s worthwhile noting that the custom whereby male parents are expected to know exactly how many children they have is only a recent one.

Personally, as father, I feel entitled to a certain amount of pride when I think about how far we’ve come.