4. Celebrations Turn to Ashes

The official visit of the new king, George V, was a wonderful excuse for a party. Royalty were the celebrities of the day, and from 8 to 12 July 1911 it seemed that everyone wanted to make the king welcome, and get a good look at him and Queen Mary. The Irish Times of 8 July 1911 describes the eve of the long-anticipated event. There was 'such bustle and animation . and moving about of brightly attired folk. Such bunting, waving and exultant in the breeze; such decorations transforming cold stone and mortar into things of beauty and joy . and immense crowds about the streets all day.' The city was en fête for the occasion, with flags, flowers and cheering crowds.

MANY OF THE BUILDINGS on the main thoroughfares were illuminated with spectacular lighting effects. On Dame Street, the Bank of Ireland 'shone out in gleaming outline with a double row of lights. The initials "G.R." were displayed under a crown with "1911" set between shamrocks. Underneath the figures the harp rested on a base, which at either end took the form of a shamrock, while a star illumined the arched entrance at each side of the building.'17

The façade of Jammet's had similar if less profuse embellishment. Here the 'G' and 'R' are separated by a harp and a crown and underlined with a garland of flowers that may have been electrically illuminated. The French tricolore and other flags are suspended from the fourth floor, and hanging baskets add even more colour to ground-floor windows.

Never had the city witnessed such festivity. There were tramcars 'crowded with folk on gaiety bent . borne along on tram-top down the spacious Sackville Street [now O'Connell Street] now glowing with decorations'. Specially commissioned trains had conveyed 'big contingents of visitors from North, South, and West' to the capital for the purpose of seeing Their Majesties.

The Jammet Hotel and Restaurant, July 1911, decked out for the Coronation Visit. Courtesy The Irish Times.

Citizens of every class, with their sisters, cousins, and aunts, went about viewing the sights in the highest good humour. Soldiers and bluejackets went arm-in-arm in thorough good fellowship. Men of different political views appeared to sink their differences for the time being, and entered into the spirit of the occasion in a true feeling of camaraderie.18

It was a bonanza for all the eating and sleeping establishments in town, but Michel Jammet had special reason to celebrate the British Crown, for without the encouragement of Lord Cadogan he would never have opened his restaurant.

Three years later such celebrations appeared whimsical as the world descended into a kind of hell. The day after Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium, Britain entered the war against Germany. It was 4 August 1914. Michel Jammet's twenty-year-old son Louis hastened to Paris to volunteer for the French army. Louis had spent much of his life in and around Dublin, first in the Viceregal Lodge, then in St Andrew Street. He was educated in Belvedere College, run by the Jesuits, the school that James Joyce had attended.

As a private soldier, Louis endured the trenches and chemical warfare on the Western Front. He was shot through the right arm, almost at point-blank range, at Beauséjour, during the first battle of Champagne in 1915 in which 90,000 Frenchmen lost their lives. He was later awarded the Croix de Guerre, and invalided out of the army in 1916. Louis returned home to recuperate, but after the war he went back to his beloved France to study and work as an engineer. It was there that he married and intended to raise his family.

Louis Jammet, 1914. Courtesy Sue Parks.

Hippolyte Jammet, Louis' cousin, had lived in St Andrew Street for eight years. He and Louis, almost the same age, were friends. They ran barefoot through the streets with other lads and gained broad Dublin accents (which Louis lost, but Hippolyte retained). In Paris, Hippolyte started training as a chef, but got the opportunity to pursue his apprenticeship at the front desk of the most famous hotel in Berlin, The Adlon. He returned to France to do his military training in 1913, just before war engulfed the country. Hippolyte was stationed in the battlefield kitchens of Verdun. A horror of poison gas and the slow, agonizing death it inflicted on his comrades remained with him for the rest of his life.

Many men from Ireland participated in the Great War. The Royal Dublin Fusiliers had eleven battalions. They served in all the hellholes of Gallipoli, Ypres, Salonika, Hulluch, the Somme, the Messines Ridge and Passchendaele. The Fusiliers were decorated for bravery on many occasions, but lost over 4700 men; thousands more were wounded. Many were taken prisoner and incarcerated in German camps, where they suffered terribly. Fund-raising events were held throughout the war to try to alleviate their distress.

Such an event, described as a 'Mammoth Auction' in aid of the RDF Prisoners of War Fund, was reported in the Irish Independent of 5 October 1918. Among the many items on sale was a specialist section of wines and spirits, which realized high prices. Michel Jammet bought several lots, not all recorded here. Among the most interesting wines on offer were:

During this time, events in Ireland were gathering momentum. The Easter Rising of 1916 was quashed, but demands for independence from Britain were not subdued. Following the British general election of 1918, the majority of new Irish MPs belonged to the nationalist party, Sinn Féin. They refused to take their seats in the House of Commons and convened their own parliament in Dublin - Dáil Éireann. When that was banned, its leaders went underground, and the bloody turmoil of the War of Independence (1919-21) began in earnest. Corkman Michael Collins trained the Irish Republican Army to use guerrilla tactics against British forces, and gained a reputation as a brilliant strategist.

Yet all shades of opinion continued to meet in Jammet's. On any one day the Home Rule leader John Redmond could be observed rubbing shoulders with the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, both strenuously avoiding contact with members of the outlawed Sinn Féin party, brazenly dining out in public.

During the war a Mr John Foley was in Jammet's enjoying a plaice and chips when there was a commotion at the door. Several burly men elbowed their way through the diners, seized Mr Foley and marched him off to Dublin Castle. Following an anxious few hours Foley was correctly identified and released. The men, agents of the British, had thought he was 'The Big Fella', Michael Collins, who had a price tag of £10,000 on his head.

Mark Sturgis, a leading British civil servant and diarist seconded to the Castle during the last turbulent years of British rule, 1920-2, appeared to enjoy the heightened sense of intrigue and danger. Sturgis dined quite happily in several places around Dublin, never seeming to doubt his personal safety. The Kildare Street Club, St Stephen's Green Club and out in the Royal St George Yacht Club, Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), were all visited, but a favourite haunt was Jammet's.

Following a successful gamble on a horse race, on 11 November 1920, Sturgis noted in his diary, 'Oyster dinner in Jammet's which rather took the bite out of my "Kilsheelan" win today.'19 On another occasion he lamented, 'Gawd knows whether I shall ever settle down happily in a London office again. Here one is up to the neck in intrigue, plot and counter-plot with a small spice of danger all mixed up with the life of something like a big country house in the old days.'

The 'small spice of danger' that was the War of Independence involved brutal acts of killings, burnings and reprisals, leading to stalemate and eventual truce between the Crown forces and the IRA. Sinn Féin sent a delegation led by Michael Collins to Westminster to negotiate the...