An Irishman's Diary

If you walk along Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin, you'll pass a rather decrepit building at number 13, part of a long Victorian …

If you walk along Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin, you'll pass a rather decrepit building at number 13, part of a long Victorian terrace close to Fitzwilliam Square,  writes Hugh Oram.

Nothing in its appearance gives the slightest clue as to the extraordinary goings on in the cellars here over 50 years ago, when the Catacombs were at the hub of Dublin's wild artistic life.

Around 1950, many young artists and writers, some later to become well-known, gathered for all-night drinking sessions and worse. The Catacombs owed their origins to a tall, rather effeminate Englishman called Dickie Wyman, whose officer boyfriend had been killed during the second World War. Wyman subsequently became a night-club manager in London, before mysteriously turning up in Dublin. He was often infused with laudanum, to soften the pain of losing his boyfriend, whom he called "the Faithful Heart". Brendan Behan liked to annoy him by referring to "the Sacred Heart" .

Wyman rented the basement at number 13, Fitzwilliam Place and turned it into a hotbed of artistic discussion and more. After McDaid's pub, off Grafton Street - then a second home to much of Dublin's literary set - had closed for the night, many of the patrons set off for the Catacombs. A second group of artistic people would also make their way there, people who had been at salons held by a writer, sculptor and artist called Des MacNamara, whose studio was at Number 39, Grafton Street. (Today, the thought of an artist having a studio or organising salons in Grafton Street is simply unthinkable.)

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Once the gang of literary and artistic layabouts had arrived at the Catacombs, around midnight, the serious drinking began. The only passport for entry was a brown paper bag, filled with bottles of Guinness or a bottle or two of gin. The habitués included writers such as JP Donleavy, Anthony Cronin, John Jordan and Patrick Kavanagh. Tom Nisbet, an artist and Dan O'Herlihy and Godfrey Quigley, who both later became noted actors, were also part of the Catacombs congregation .

Another regular was Gainor Crist, who was at Trinity College with his fellow American Donleavy and who became the model for Sebastian Dangerfield in Donleavy' s novel The Ginger Man, which evidently derived much of its inspiration from the goings-on in the Catacombs.

One of the women who attended the Catacombs was Irene Broe, a sculptor. While she relished the below-stairs Bohemian life, she was also a creator of religious statues, including that of St Valentine in Whitefriars Street church.

More than drinking went on in the Catacombs, which were in fact a series of cellars and pantries. The place became renowned for its sexual licence. Brendan Behan, who was as prolifigate in his bisexual activities as in his consumption of alcohol, once remarked of the Catacombs that it was a place where "men had women, men had men and women had women". It was a fair field and no favour, he added.

While the cellars had plenty of mattresses, others who were there at the time consider that Behan was exaggerating. Everyone was so drunk and the place was so dark that no one was quite sure what was going on.

But if the stories of sexual activity were even partially correct, they showed that the Catacombs was somewhere gay men and lesbians could meet without fear of the law. More than 40 years were to pass before homosexuality became decriminalised.

The nocturnal happenings of the Catacombs took place at a time when Dublin was an impoverished city, though it had a thriving artistic life. But many up-and-coming artists had literally to beg on the streets for the price of a drink or a meal. It was also a very conservative city in a deeply reactionary country; after all, John Charles McQuaid was the Archbishop of Dublin.

Yet somehow, for about three years, the nightly activities in the Catacombs went on without interference. So much drink was consumed that a large part of Dickie Wyman's income derived from getting money back on all the empties the following day. Come dawn, and the inhabitants of the Catacombs staggered up the steps into the daylight, just as more respectable citizens were starting to come into work.

Some people actually lived in the Catacombs for a while, including a young Anthony Cronin. He noted the smell of damp, decaying plaster, as well as remarking that the room he had was so small that it barely had space for a bed. It had once been used as a wine cellar. Cronin himself described the Dublin of that era as being a city suffocated by sexual frustration, where people took refuge in strong drink. He wondered how anything actually got written.

When MJ MacManus, the literary editor of the Irish Press, died in 1951, Brendan Behan was among the congregation at the funeral. He noticed the recently painted Stations of the Cross in the church and saw that none other than Dickie Wyman, the landlord of the Catacombs, had been the model for Christ. Behan collapsed into fits of laughter and the late Ben Kiely, who was sitting next to him, had to nudge him in the ribs and tell him to behave himself in church.

These days, Number 13 Fitzwilliam Place is occupied by an insurance company - all very staid and sedate, with not a hint of the Rabelasian frolics that once went on in the cellars.