By Richard Delevan 

It's difficult to know what to make of the demise of the famed Bewley’s cafes, which on Tuesday closed their doors at 6 p.m. for the last time in Dublin’s city center. 

Like its sister location on Westmoreland Street, the Bewley’s on Grafton Street was mobbed as hundreds lined up to take a long last look at a building that –- just as it reached its end –- is suddenly being lauded as a Dublin cultural Mecca that will be sorely missed.

A month ago the company that owns the cafes announced that they would close, with the loss of 234 jobs. The news sparked an outpouring of right-on sentimental blubbering that, to an outsider like this columnist, seemed a bit overdone.

I’ve lived in Dublin for more than four years, and in all that time and in previous visits to the city, I must confess Bewley’s never captured me with its charms.

The first time I visited Bewley’s it was to meet up with another journalist over coffee. When I mentioned that I’d never been to the famous Grafton Street cafe he was overjoyed.

I’d passed it many times, of course, walking up and down Dublin’s main shopping thoroughfare, but rather than enticing, the building looked a bit old, a bit unloved, all shadows and high ceilings and dark wood pews and musty smells, appealing to a clientele consisting almost entirely of little old ladies in woolly hats. Much like a church.

Further inside was a rabbit warren of staircases in odd places, cafeteria self-service with plastic trays that made me remember elementary school days in New York when President Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable.

The one outstanding physical feature of the place was an entire wall of stained glass, but its coloring could have easily come from the stains of 75 years of tobacco smoke and roasted coffee beans.

Scattered at tables around the room between chattering groups of shoppers were solo patrons mulling over cups of coffee, each looking at his cup occasionally as if to take a sip, placing it back down on the table, reading a paragraph or two from a paperback or that day’s Irish Times, then considering for another few minutes before taking the tiniest of slurps. 

I imagined that this process could go on all day with a single cup –- and for many of the more diehard patrons, it did.

The Bewley family, I learned later, were pioneers in bringing proper tea and coffee directly to a nation that sorely needed it, even if it could only manage small doses. Still, no nation sufficiently caffeinated can long remain under another’s rule, and sure enough there are historical associations between the Bewley’s and the War of Independence and the Civil War –- or so my journalist friend informed me on that visit.

This bit of history was perhaps meant to add some flavor to the coffee that I sampled that day; it helped explain why the coffee tasted like it had been brewed in 1927 when the Grafton Street cafe opened and had been re-warming in the same pot ever since.

Suffice to say, the experience wasn’t sufficiently magical to turn me into a regular. Nor, evidently, was it enough to persuade sufficient numbers of Dubliners –- besides the one-cup-over-12-hour crowd, many of whom also deserted when they could no longer smoke inside.

So when the Bewley’s owners announced the closures a month ago, there were mixed emotions around town. Nostalgia –- of a particularly forced variety –- was the dominant one. 

Many people -– that is to say, people over the age of 35 from Dublin south of the Liffey -– had pleasant memories of Bewley’s, when once upon a time it was a highlight of a trip into the city center.

The smell of coffee and a warm fire would, of course, have been welcome relief from a shopping trip to a Dublin that was choked with the smoke of countless coal fires, and worse.

Much effort was made to talk up the “literary and cultural” associations of the cafes. James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Maeve Binchy and Bob Geldof were all said to have frequented the place.

Callers to talk radio programs expressed, with some difficulty, the reasons why they would miss Bewley’s. It wasn’t just about the coffee, or the sticky buns, but the … the experience, the ethos. 

What specifically this meant was vague, other than the idea that a homeless person living rough might spend the day inside with a cup of coffee sat next to a rock star or bishop.

This half-remembered utopia that Bewley’s was meant to be intrigued me, so I did some digging. Most of this folk memory of Bewley’s is in fact down to one remarkable man, Victor Bewley (1913-1999).

Bewley was born into the prominent Dublin family of Quakers, and he took his religion seriously. In fact, he desperately wanted to become a missionary or artist rather than take over the family business, which he was forced to do when his father died young and Victor was only 20.

He inherited a cafe empire that at its height included its original location on South Great George’s Street, Grafton Street, Westmoreland Street as well as the southern suburban hamlets of Stillorgan and Dundrum, as well as one on Rosemary Street in Belfast.

Victor was noted for his good works. His work to improve the lives of Travelers earned him an honorary doctorate from Trinity College; he worked to foster cross-border ties in the 1970s when it was least fashionable.

He tried to instill in his family’s cafes his unique ethos among the patrons but also toward his employees. In 1972 he founded the Bewley’s Community, the idea of which was to give his long-term staff control of the operations and profits from the business. He said his Quaker ideas inspired him.

But like most utopian experiments, this one didn’t much outlast its founder. Victor retired in 1977, and Bewley’s struggled on until 1986, when it was threatened with closure. A buyer stepped in at the last moment and bought the remaining cafes.

In fact, the company, Campbell Caterers, pumped some $16 million into the business, including a major refurbishment in the late 1990s. But even then the two cafes racked up losses on the order of $5 million since 1996.

It may also have something to do with the fact that Grafton Street has gone from the threadbare thoroughfare of the 1970s to the fifth most expensive place in the world to rent a business property.

As the Celtic Tiger went into full roar, specialty coffee outlets in Dublin exploded. Bewley’s humble brew didn’t hold much appeal over the tall skinny double decaf latte with a shot of pretension that became popular.

All of which goes to explain the other emotion that Bewley’s closure has sparked, a kind of confused guilt.

Campaigners including the lord mayor have launched a “Save Bewley’s” drive, but when asked why a commercial concern that served coffee so bad that no one would pay to drink it should receive special preservation, the answers were less than compelling —www.savebewleys.com has some of them.

But even campaigners concede that “maintain a mix of retail choices” won’t overcome the fact that, when this supposed utopia of caffeine was open to all, few could be bothered patronizing Bewley’s. Certainly not enough for it to remain open.

Hence the guilt about the passing of one more symbol of a Dublin they knew growing up that was poor but proud and still capable of taking delight in small pleasures. A secular cathedral to literary Ireland, peculiar in being a business that didn’t seem much bothered about making money, a place -– as empty and lonely as the churches, coffee aroma replacing incense -– that nonetheless gave comfort by its continued welcome and open door.

Good God. Now I’m blubbering as well. But I’ll be okay -– when Starbucks opens next year.