Daly’s Club in College Green

Another gathering-place for the aristocracy and Members of Parliament was Daly’s Club in College Green, where extravagant scenes of gambling and dissipation were constantly being enacted. In this, the most famous establishment of its kind in Ireland, it is said that the shutters were occasionally closed at noon that gambling might go on by candle-light ; and it was no uncommon occurrence to see one of the players, suspected of cheating, being flung from an upper window into the street. The club-house was rebuilt in 1791, and on so luxurious a scale as to excite the surprise and admiration of travellers who visited Ireland.

The first Irish State Lottery was drawn in 1782, an occurrence which naturally added fuel to the fire of speculation which was already burning pretty brightly at this period amongst high and low : while, as an additional incentive to immorality and degradation, the hideous spectacles afforded by public executions provided constant amusement for a mob whose love of drink and devilment was only surpassed by their social superiors.

THE BEAUX WALK, STEPHEN’S GREEN, 1796

Such was the metropolis of Ireland at the time when Burns was writing, and to such surroundings young Whaley returned after a preliminary course of extravagance and dissipation in a foreign country where vicious habits of every kind were, if anything, more common than at home. It was probably about this time that he won his spurs as a Buck.

He does not himself mention the names of his Irish boon companions in the orgies that went on nightly in his Dublin house—but from other sources it is known that he was on terms of close intimacy with Francis Higgins, the notorious Sham Squire, and with Lord Clonmell, and that the three were frequently to be seen disporting themselves on the Beaux Walk in Stephen’s Green during the hours in which persons of fashion in Dublin were accustomed to take the air.

By all accounts, Buck Whaley must have presented a striking figure on such occasions. Amongst others, his brother-in-law, Lord Cloncurry, writing in 1849, describes him as having been “ a perfect specimen of the Irish gentleman of the olden time.” He had not, however, yet reached this high level of good looks when the portrait was painted which I am enabled to reproduce through the kindness of Mr. John Whaley of Annsboro, co. Kildare. This was apparently taken when he was still a boy.