Dublin is very much the poorer for the passing of such iconoclastic meeting places as Bewley's cafes, writes Hugh Oram.
In Bewley's of Grafton Street, Dublin, yesterday morning, Tattens, the Bewley's waitress of long-standing and equal renown, said it was like an Irish wake. "You don't know whether to laugh or cry," she said, clearly stopping herself from doing the latter. She was part and parcel of Bewley's as long as I or anyone else can remember.
Customers were bringing her in presents and signing the book of "condolences". It was like a wake after all. The place was packed yesterday morning and it was even busier last Saturday, when the doors had to be closed at times to keep the crowds outside from adding to those already inside.
No one can quite believe that this time, the closure is for real and it seems highly unlikely that this one last time, Bewley's will be saved. On other occasions, like 1986 when Bewley's was sold to Patrick Campbell's catering firm, it was a close call, but the cafés managed to keep going.
When my book on the history of Bewley's was launched just before Christmas, 1980, such luminaries attended as Noel Purcell and Frankie Byrne: now Bewley's itself has gone.
The writing was really on the wall when the South Great George's Street café closed some years ago. It was the first of the Bewley's cafés, opened towards the end of the 19th century, a decade before Westmoreland Street opened and well before the Bewleys nearly bankrupted themselves and their firm by opening Grafton Street in 1927.
Curiously enough, when the South Great George's Street café closed down, it just slid out of the public consciousness and no one took much notice. Similarly yesterday, most of the attention was focused on Grafton Street rather than Westmoreland Street, which in the past few days has seemed like a cold little orphan beside the Grafton Street café, which seems to have absorbed most of the love and affection people have for Bewley's now that it's vanished into history.
The Bewley family, in its various branches, who owned and ran the cafés from 1840 until 1986, were strong adherents of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers.
They always put their feelings of social consciousness into practice in the cafés, as during the second World War Emergency. Then, amid all the rationing, the only decent food many poor children from the inner city could get were the meals they enjoyed in Bewley's. In the years following, it often gave surreptitious helping hands to many other deserving people and causes, long before Victor Bewley took up the cause of the Travelling community.
Bewley's always managed a complete cross-cultural, multi-faceted social appeal. Everyone had a little place in their hearts for Bewley's, whether it was a comfortably off middle-class customer, a poor down-and-out who could linger for hours over a single cup of coffee or an exile returned perhaps briefly from abroad. That nurturing role continued right up to the close of business.
They often did that little bit extra, too. Ernest Bewley, who ran the cafés until his sudden death in 1932, always used to cash cheques for Maud Gonne; to no one else would she entrust the task. Bewley's, especially Grafton Street, also suckled the muses. Many creative people, from James Joyce to film director Joseph Strick and actor Cyril Cusack, had a yearning for Bewley's. Generations of artists, writers and actors rhapsodised over it in their craft.
Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards often gave impromptu performances there long before the Bewley's theatre opened. Some well-known writers did much of their work there, despite the clattery noise, such as Mary Lavin. Colonel James Fitzmaurice, one of the two co-pilots on the first east-west air crossing of the Atlantic in 1928, wrote his autobiography down in what was once the basement smoke room in Grafton Street.
Bewley's, especially in Grafton Street, has long been popular as well with tourists. For many, a visit to Dublin wasn't complete without a trip there and now that it's gone, a little essential piece of Dublin has disappeared.
Now, Bewley's in Grafton Street looks as if it's going to end up as a clothes shop with a difference for one of the big international fashion retailers.
On the other side of Grafton Street, Mitchell's café, once connected with the Mitchell's wine firm, which is due to celebrate 200 years in business next year, closed down and the site was eventually taken over by McDonald's, which is there to this day.
Bewley's has joined a long list of other Dublin institutions that closed down, their fate bemoaned at the time, but largely forgotten now.
It's 20 years this year since the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dawson Street closed down, to be replaced by a shopping mall. Just before it went, the old Russell Hotel in St Stephen's Green also closed, to be replaced by what was probably the ugliest modern office block ever built in the city. Before that even, the legendary Jammets restaurant shut its doors for good.
The Bewley's closure won't be the last landmark to go in Dublin, not that there are all that many places of equally historic stature and allure actually left in the city.
One of the strange things about its closing this week is the audacious silence on the subject by most politicians, with the exception of some people in the Labour Party and Sinn Féin. If this were Paris, they would all be on the march and Bewley's would be saved, just as the Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon was saved. More than 30 years ago, it was slated for demolition and redevelopment, but such was the public anger that the State-owned railway company, SNCF, had to keep it exactly as it was.
Last night at 6 p.m., two very special places for people of all creeds and none, of all social standing, closed for the last time and this morning, Dublin is much the poorer for the passing of such iconoclastic meeting places. Like countless other people at home and abroad, each with their own personal and family memories of the cafés, I feel a sense of indignation that at the last count, Bewley's wasn't allowed to live.
Hugh Oram is the author of Bewley's (Albertine Kennedy Publishing 1980), which is being reissued next week.