November Newsletter
“Guinness… the wine of Ireland!” James Joyce.
I have been watching the Netflix series, The House of Guinness, which I thoroughly recommend. A roughed-up version of Downton Abbey, it’s as if that rather precious family, the Crawleys, found themselves in the Wild West circa 1870.
When I was a child, my father, an extravagant man who believed in extravagant holidays, took us to Venice for a fortnight every August. We always stayed at the Grand Hotel des Bains, a splendid old seaside hotel on the unfashionable side of The Lido. Visconti’s famous flick, Death in Venice, about the composer Mahler was filmed there. Now, alas, the des Bains has been turned into condos. Venice certainly isn’t what it used to be, but at least it hasn’t sunk yet.
One summer we were invited to dinner at the Guinness palazzo on the Grand Canal. I think I was ten or eleven. Our hostess was the eccentric Oonagh Guinness, granddaughter of the brother in the series who runs the brewery. Anyway, how true the series is I couldn’t tell you. It’s certainly entertaining. I do know that their palazzo was the most beautiful house I have ever stepped inside. Candle lit with dripping stone walls and ancient Irish tapestries. It was a magical place. They were a hard drinking and charming bohemian family led by Oonagh, their flamboyant matriarch.
My sister, five years older than me, took a shine to Oonagh’s son Tara who crashed his Lamborghini in Piccadilly Circus a few years later and was immortalized by that Beatle’s song. “I read the new today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade. He blew his mind out in a car, “ . . . well, you know the rest.
Oonagh Guinness was perhaps most famous for turning one of the Guinness’s Irish estates, Luggala, into a legendary gathering place for artists, musicians and writers. Much like the Getty’s house in Morocco, featured in Mad Dog’s fireplace room, it became a mecca for the in-crowd during the ‘60s. Tara’s twenty- first birthday, shortly before his fatal car accident, was attended by everyone from Mick Jagger to Brendan Behan. Even Michael Jackson showed up at Luggala a decade or two later accompanied by his chimp and refused to leave.
Speaking of the ‘60s, I do a talk every year at the Oxford Exchange and this year it’s all about swinging London, if you aren’t doing anything Dec 8th.
The Guinnesses multiplied like rabbits. Their rebellious brood is often mentioned in what’s left of England’s society columns. The Honorable Rory Guinness takes the reigns… the Honorable Daphne Guinness was expelled from school, etc. They have always been an unpredictable glamorous lot, cursed like the Kennedys, but full of life and charm and Irish vigor.
Back in the day, they hit upon a beer that was actually good for you, which I suppose is like inventing a cigarette with mystical healing powers that doesn’t give you cancer, and made countless billions along the way.
Only the Irish, those magical people who survived everything from the potato famine to Sinead O’Connor and from The Troubles to Riverdance, could have come up with something so beautiful and dark as Guinness. If you ever find yourself in Dublin, you can tour the brewery. If you ever find yourself in Mad Dogs, have Gerry pour you one.
