Eavesdropping on tour guides while wandering the streets of Dublin, I sometimes have to suppress the urge to interrupt with questions or expressions of incredulity. The other day near Dublin Castle, for example, I overheard what sounded like a very dubious story about Jonathan Swift.
The gist of it was that during his time as dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Swift was regularly required by the archbishop to make the short journey from his house (then near what is now an alley of 40 steps) to Christchurch: a journey that, on foot, as the guide said, would take no more than “four minutes”.
But the archbishop didn’t want his dean tramping through dirty streets and mixing with hoi polloi, so he insisted on Swift always taking a cab, for which he supplied the fare. As a man of the people, however, Swift preferred to walk. And while doing so, according to the guide, he distributed the fare in pennies to the beggars he met along the way.
So far so plausible. Where I began to feel some Swiftian indignation on the part of the innocent Americans who were listening to this was when the guide mentioned, in all apparent seriousness, that even today, beggars in the area often find old pennies in their hats or cups.
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The implication was that the dean’s ghost still walked the streets, still redistributing his cab money to the poor. A nice idea, to be sure, if delivered with a twinkle in the eye. But I searched the guide’s tone in vain for any sign of italics, irony font or tongue in cheek. The bit about the old pennies still turning up was being presented as fact.
A basic problem with that, alas, is that pennies from Swift’s time would be worth a small fortune now. And never mind pennies. I saw a 1720 halfpenny on eBay recently (“pre-owned” it said, a little unnecessarily) for €896.70.
Then there are the infamous Wood’s Halfpence, the copper currency foisted on Ireland in 1722 as a favour to the king’s mistress. An outraged Swift led the attack against it with his Drapier’s Letters, eventually forcing withdrawal.
But if the coinage was proverbially worthless at the time, it is not so today. A type-one Wood’s halfpence in good condition could now fetch €1,000 or more, I’m told. A 1724 Wood’s farthing, featuring Hibernia with longer than usual hair, might make twice that.
If coins of that era were indeed still being dropped regularly into cups on the Forty Steps, homeless people would be fighting each other for pitches there. But honest beggars probably wouldn’t get a look-in – the place would be overrun with numismatists. I’d be tempted to join them myself.
On another city centre street one night recently, I heard a guide talking about the Irish Civil War, in which conflict, I’m almost sure he said, “four and a half thousand people died”. Bad as it was, I knew it wasn’t that bad. A quick iPhone Google confirmed the official death toll as just under 1,400.
But again I stifled the urge to interrupt – the guide was already moving on to the next stop, which I heard him say was The Old Stand pub. So I continued in the opposite direction, reflecting on the common human difficulty in processing large numbers. Hence the quote attributed to Stalin (although he never said it): “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
On a less sober note, I was looking for a place to watch the Shelbourne vs Linfield game in the Europa Conference on TV. And in fact, I had noted in passing that it was on in The Old Stand, but that’s a small, busy bar with a single television, of which it can be hard to get an unobstructed view.
So instead I tried O’Neill’s of Suffolk Street, which has multiple TV sets in many rooms. Unfortunately, they all seemed to be showing tennis. “The horror!” I thought, recoiling from the screens with a shudder and making a quick exit. It would have to be The Old Stand after all.
But wait! Another terrible thought overtook me as I remembered that the tour guide had just unleashed about 30 tourists on that pub. My blood ran cold at the thought of being stuck behind all of them at the bar. Then a desperate scan of the horizon revealed they hadn’t quite reached it yet.
The slow-moving phalanx was still proceeding up the left-hand side of St Andrew’s Street, past Trocadero. So in a move worthy of Michael Collins – who used to have an office on this street and often met contacts in the Old Stand – I quickened my step, outflanked the enemy on the opposite footpath and slipped into the pub by a side door.
Seconds later I was seated on a stool in the TV corner of the bar, feeling smug. Then I realised the poor tourists weren’t coming in anyway – their stop was outside – and felt a slight pang of regret that for once I couldn’t eavesdrop.
