Saturday 18th March 2017

I went to Dublin in Ireland with Reggie Cresswell by airplane in a Topman Donegal-type tweed suitlette. I’d never been there before nor to Ireland at all.  Harry Rollo was to give some perfs on the National Irish stage with Bertram Dibantry, the Irish performer who is quite against Ireland in many ways. His performances teeter on the brink of performance and those present often do not know the extent of their own terror.

Ireland is very Irish. I was struck. Most people there are Irish and speak like it. The other surprising thing was the grandeur. I had no idea. The Georgian squares are vast. I had envisaged Bath. The terraces are huge too and built of brick in old pink and other good shades but very plain – Reggie said to notice the colour. He’s been there before and given talks. They’d be uber-modern, so pared down, if they weren’t Georgian. Later on we were to see one of the most derelict interiors in existence.

But there’s been awful ruination. Terrible modern office blocks. And very untidy. They’re casual with their wiring and quite capable of nailing a cable to the back of a Georgian front door with no appearance of having looked to see what they were doing.  Our hotel was in one of the terraces but actually built in 1885. Tremendous push-out in the Irish way – so friendly and anxious we should consume food.  To the head Breakfast lady we were either ‘Gentlemen’, ‘boys’ or ‘lads’, all with that upward Irish song-like lilt which makes words less distinguishable from one another.

The first day we went to Trinity College Dublin and saw The Book of Kells which is tremendously sacred. Huge build-up with explanatory exhibits – history of, contents of, how made, illuminated manuscript technique etc – but when you get to the actual thing, it’s quite small and you can only see one page, of course. A dense mass of dark red decoration, incredibly intricate with clear Byzantine influence. As a product of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ it quite belies the term. Nothing primitive about this exquisite miniature work.

Upstairs was an immense library of dark wood with busts of 18th century people like Pope and Swift. But nothing in Ireland is quite what it seems, as I was to learn. Here was learning and enlightenment with an undertow.

Harry Rollo’s birthday dinner was held in a plush-velvet restaurant with distinguished older waiters such as aren’t seen in England any more. Had ordinary members of the public been nearby, they might have been disappointed that here were 3 or 4 world-class figures merely eating food and drinking champagne like anybody else. Talk was mostly of the forthcoming performance. Harry said if they didn’t start a particular bit perfectly synchronised, catastrophe would ensue and it would be as if wires had sprung loose, writhing and knotting horrifically and could never be put back in place again. In particular Bertram was in agony over his forthcoming perf, even though he had devised it himself. It was fiendish, he said. All Ireland would be watching. But secretly I suspect he both craved and feared revolutionary outrage that could force its way out of his perf at any second.

The Library of Trinity College Dublin with Busts

The Library of Trinity College Dublin – Enlightened but Frightening