Dublin, 23.9.2025: Grinning Faces and Ancestral Traces

One of many carved faces in doorways in the National Gallery of Ireland; Carlo Cambi was the artist who carved these.

(Writing on the 24th) As my previous entry notes, when we were in the National Library on the 22nd, I placed an order for three more Bessborough folders to be pulled for me on the morning of the 23rd, and on the 23rd, we returned to the library so that I could go through the folders. One of these was a set of payments to women for spinning and weaving flax for the Bessborough estate. I had known of the existence of these lists from something Jim Ryan published on his Ancestor Network website in the past. He had abstracted the names of the women paid for this work from the Bessborough papers and had noted which folder in the collection of Bessborough papers had this material.

The names in this list include a Peggy Ryan who is, I’m certain, my ancestor Margaret Oates Ryan, wife of John Ryan. As Jim Ryan’s notes when he published this material online say, though the residences of the women paid for doing the spinning and weaving are not noted, it’s logical to think they all lived close to the Bessborough estate. 

So I ordered that folder for the 23rd, along with another folder labeled “Bills for assisted emigration, to Newfoundland, U.S.A. and Australia, Bessborough Estate, 1828-1840.” Then I took a stab at the possibility of finding something of interest in another folder of accounts from 1828 to 1840 for the lime kilns and quarries owned by the Bessboroughs. 

When I went through the list of payments for spinning and weaving, sure enough, there was Peggy Ryan being paid several times for spinning and weaving, in one instance listed as Meg Ryan. A Mary, Martha, Ally, and Anastasia Ryan also show up in these lists, along with several Oates women including Mary, Biddy, and Ellen. It is wonderful to see and be able to copy these original lists.

The bills for assisted emigration were rather sad to see — so many people leaving due to lack of prospects, I assume, in Ireland, going to the U.S., to Australia, to Newfoundland. There are longstanding ties between the southern part of Kilkenny and Newfoundland, so emigration to that area is not surprising. The bills show the Bessborough estate buying clothes for people to emigrate — names and destinations are stated — trunks in which to store things, and so on. As I noted in my entry for the 22nd, one bill shows an Edmund Ryan of Whitechurch being paid in spring of 1834 for surrendering his land (at Whitechurch, the rent rolls show), with plans to emigrate, and the back of the bill states that John Ryan had also surrendered his land. 

The lime kiln and quarry papers: nothing of any value to me. I took a stab that they might contain some information that would help me because I have wondered if John Ryan did masonry work for the Bessborough estate, since two of his children were baptized in places that the Ponsonby family was building — Ponsonby villages, they’re called — at the time those children were baptized.

After we’d completed our work at the National Library, we did an enjoyable museum tour, going from the National Museum on Kildare Street to the National Gallery. The National Museum, which is just across the way from the National Library, turns out to be a kind of carbon copy of the library, architecturally speaking. The central part of both buildings is a large domed rotunda surrounded by columns. Inside, both open into the rotunda itself, with very different designs and architecture on the inside. Both are imposing buildings with richly carved woodwork all through the buildings and beautiful tiled floors with mosaics.

Inside the museum proper, there’s a set of exhibits having to do with prehistoric Ireland, and then some very interesting ones documenting the medieval period, with a reproduction of a fascinating arched entry to a Romanesque church in Clare at Dysert O’Dea.  But perhaps most interesting of all was a special exhibit of manuscripts calligraphed and illustrated by Irish monks engaged in evangelism in the German-speaking lands in the early medieval period. St. Gallen in Switzerland, named after the Irish monk Gall, has loaned (I think it’s the abbey of St. Gall that did the loaning) the National Museum a number of precious books calligraphed and illustrated by Irish monks, and they’re on display, opened to beautiful pages, at the museum. Connected to the display is a display of artwork done by young students across Ireland inspired by these medieval manuscripts. 

Before we reached that room, Steve spoke to a guard standing on the floor where this exhibit is located, and he came up to us and talked at length about the architecture of the museum and about the St. Gallen exhibit. As Steve told him, he could well be a docent for the museum, he was so knowledgeable — and so friendly and approachable in the way that so many Irish people are. 

From the National Museum, we walked in the early part of the afternoon to a Vietnamese restaurant, Madame Pho on Exchequer Street, and had an early supper or late lunch. We had spotted this place when we ate two nights previously at Good World Chinese nearby. 

Though Madame Pho looked promising and the décor and wait staff were very nice, the food was, I’m sorry to say, substandard. It’s the Irish equivalent of Vietnamese food, with no authentic Vietnamese taste or seasoning. I ordered a beef brisket pho and Steve a noodle bowl with shrimp, which had, as Steve said, a sauce simultaneously vinegary and sugary and nothing like the dressing you’ll find on a real bún thịt nướng. The broth for my pho had almost no flavor other than fatty beef and salt, and the entire soup wouldn’t have had any flavor had I not had that one tiny sprig of cilantro and a leaf of mint that came on a plate with a slice of lime, a tiny handful of bean sprouts, and a few pieces of red pepper. Disappointing….

After that meal, we stopped in at Dunnes on Great George’s Street, where we’d shopped previously, and bought some cookies and a chicken club sandwich to share in the hotel room in the evening. After Dunnes, I spotted an ice cream parlor, Murphy’s, and we walked in and bought a scoop of whiskey chocolate (whisky, I think it was spelled, Irish-style) and a scoop of raspberry ice cream, both of which we shared. Both turned out to be delicious, with good, pure flavors and not loaded with sugar. And the young man who scooped the ice cream for us couldn’t have been nicer.

Then back to the National Gallery and a tour of it. 

Lucien Freud, Profile of a Donegal Man

John Lavery, Her First Communion

Evie Hone, Head of St. John the Baptist

The National Gallery proved surprising. I’m not sure what I had expected, perhaps a representative collection of art from Europe in various periods. Instead — and this makes sense to me — the focus is on Irish art. The collection in that area is really nice, if sparse. It made me want to know much more about some of the artists whose work hangs in the National Gallery, from John Lavery to Charles Vincent Lamb and Jack B. Yeats. And then there was the room of amazing stained glass by Evie Hone, Michael Healy, Henry Clarke, etc. 

After the National Gallery, we returned to our room and were in for the night.