Countess Alison draws in the Irish aristocracy
The life of the Irish aristocracy seems to proceed largely unimpeded. And what of it?
On November 9, a large amount of them will converge on the United Arts Club on Upper Fitzwilliam Street for the unveiling of an exhibition of the Countess of Rosse’s latest works, Landscapes and Interiors — which includes, I’m told, interior paintings of Russborough and Mount Stewart and landscape of Killaun Bog in Birr.
Alison Rosse, say my Deep Throats in the landed gentry, would be in her 70s but doesn’t look it.
She was a society beauty in London in the 1960s. Her husband, Brendan, the Earl of Rosse, is — added another wellbred mole — “a friend of Prince Charles and has been over and back to Highgrove and is a member of the prestigious Irish Tree Society”. A society of trees, eh? The titled types expected on the night for the Countess’s launch at the United Arts Club (which, incidentally, had a certain Countess Markievicz as one of the founding members) will include: Alison’s son, Patrick, Lord Oxmantown the heir to the earldom, and his wife and fashion designer, Anna, Lady Oxmantown.
Alison’s daughter, the lovely Lady Alicia Clements, and her husband, Nat, are also attending, as are Alison’s friend Lindy Guinness, who is the Marchioness of Dufferin, plus Sir David Davies of Abbeyleix House in Laois.
Onetime diarist with The Irish Times, the exquisite Robert O’Byrne, will open the exhibition, while another former diarist with that newspaper, the dashing James Gibbons, will attend from his home in Clara in Offaly.
All this talk of titles has me in urgent need of a lie-down in a dark, and possibly draughty, room in some restored ruin down the country somewhere, with a pint glass of brandy.