The Search for God and Guinness

by Stephen Mansfield

  Joel Miller, my friend and publisher at Thomas Nelson, has a love for beer and beer history that exceeds my own. He has given sage advice and tender encouragement when it was needed most. I am, once again, grateful.

  The good people of Guinness at St. James’s Gate in Dublin could not have a better archivist than Eibhlin Roche. She is articulate, learned, a master of resources, and a fascinating person to interview. I’m grateful for the hours I spent in her archives and the wisdom she offered for my work.

  It has been one of the great honors of my life to have a member of the Guinness family care about this book. Michele Guinness—whose own The Genius of Guinness is a masterpiece— has both instructed and encouraged. Her kindness and passion for the Grattan story is an inspiration.

  Finally, if a man finds a loving wife in this life, he finds a good thing. If he finds in that same wife a friend, he is twice blessed. But if he finds as well a skilled partner who builds with him professionally while at all times being that lover and friend, he should fall to his knees often and thank God that there is mercy for the undeserving. I do, often, for I have Beverly—and I am grateful beyond words.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  I have great admiration for those who write about Guinness. It is not for the faint of heart. The Guinness family members themselves seldom participate, there have been lawsuits against writers who offended, and literary disagreements have been known to descend into personal vendettas and vicious betrayals. Then there is the scope of the story. The Guinness tale can range from the theme of a Beatles song—“A Day in the Life” was likely written about the death of a Guinness heir—to the preaching of John Wesley, from poverty in nineteenth-century Dublin to strictures against alcohol in modern Dubai.

  I have escaped most of these dangers because my purpose has been simply to describe the faith and generosity of Guinness. Details of brewing, controversies over genealogies, and gossip about the Guinness elite I have left to others. I trust I am on safe ground.

  Loving the Guinness story as I do, it is my hope that someone will do for Guinness the family what Diageo has done for Guinness the company: develop an archive. There is no depository of Guinness family documents, no research center or museum honoring the nobility of Arthur Guinness’s descendants. This is unfortunate, for theirs is too grand a story to leave to cartons of documents abandoned in attics. We should hope that a new generation of Guinnesses will address this need, for they will be serving well both their heirs and their fellow man if they do.

  I should describe some of the resources I have used. In the Introduction, the information about Guinness’s benevolence with its employees comes from a fascinating little booklet titled Guide to St. James’s Brewery. It was published by Arthur Guinness, Son & Co. Ltd. in 1928 and is the best snapshot of that era of Guinness history I have found. It is barely one hundred pages including photographs, but it is so interesting and inspiring I would be thrilled to see a version of it sold at the Storehouse today.

  The information on the Pilgrims and beer at the beginning of Before There Was Guinness is from William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647 and Mourt’s Relation, our two primary sources for the Pilgrim experience in the New World. For the story of beer in the ancient and medieval world, Gregg Smith’s Beer: A History of Suds and Civilization from Mesopotamia to Microbreweries and Tom Standage’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses were both enjoyable and essential. For the later history of beer leading up to the rise of Guinness, particularly the history of beer in the Christian church, Drinking with Calvin and Luther: A History of Alcohol in the Church by Jim West and God Gave Wine: What the Bible Says About Alcohol by Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. were learned guides.

  The fascinating thesis of Dr. Solomon H. Katz is summarized best in a New York Times article of March 4, 1987. It is titled “Does Civilization Owe a Debt to Beer?” and is widely available on the Internet, as are discussions of Dr. Katz’s fascinating work as an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

  Bill Yenne’s Guinness: The 250-year Quest for the Perfect Pint, which provided valuable information on the history of beer for this first chapter, is, I believe, the best book on Guinness the beer. Though his work is helpful as a corporate history, Yenne is at his best when he is describing matters like the evolution of brewing, the life of yeast, or Guinness’s contributions to brewing science. His writing is that of a journalist and his straightforward reportage makes this the best popular textbook on Guinness brewing.

  In writing The Rise of Arthur, I found Patrick Guinness’s Arthur’s Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness to be encyclopedic and wonderfully contentious. The author was eager to expose some of the myths that have surrounded his forebear and also did Guinness historians a great service with his vast knowledge of Arthur’s Ireland. That he takes on other Guinness historians by name and that he is willing to spend pages on background and context make this book a technical but sometimes surprisingly poetic read.

  The most beautifully written of all Guinness books is Michele Guinness’s The Genius of Guinness. Though her work focuses primarily on the Grattan line of Guinnesses for God, she provides insights into the brewery Guinnesses that are wise and instructive.

  My chapter At the Same Place By Their Ancestors was well served by Yenne and Michele Guinness, but also by The Silver Salver: The Story of the Guinness Family by Frederic Mullally. Though his focus is more on the lives of Guinness luminaries than brewing lore or faith, Mullally captures much of the modern tale of the Guinness clan that most other Guinness books neglect. A similar book is Dark and Light: The Story of the Guinness Family by Derek Wilson. I found Wilson’s work to be among the most helpful in understanding the historical context of Guinness. I also admire Wilson for doing justice to the religious influences in Guinness history, something that many historians neglect or treat merely as a curiosity.

  For my chapter The Good That Wealth Can Do, I relied on both Tony Corcoran’s The Goodness of Guinness: The Brewery, Its People and the City of Dublin and Corcoran’s monograph on the same topic in the Storehouse Archives. This author has served us well with his celebration of Guinness benevolence, his exploration of Dr. Lumsden’s work, and his delightful portrayal of Guinness goodness in his own family line and childhood.

  I found the writings of Dr. Charles Cameron to be very helpful and, thankfully, many of his reports are widely available on the Internet. For the background of Dr. Lumsden’s work and for a portrait of Dublin’s poor in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Cameron’s writings are essential.

  I drew from Michele Guinness’s The Genius of Guinness for much of what I have written in The Guinnesses for God. In my conversations with her, I learned that she has many of Henry Grattan Guinness’s letters and books in her possession and that this has enabled her to write as movingly as she has of this great man’s life. The world still awaits a major biography of this important Christian leader and I hope Michele Guinness will find a way to take on this task. His writings alone warrant the attention, not to mention his leadership of one of the most transforming religious revivals in Irish history.

  For Twentieth-Century Guinness, Bill Yenne was the most helpful, though a quirky little book called Guinness is Guinness . . . The Colorful Story of a Black and White Brand by Mark Griffiths provided rich details and a needed laugh. Crude and partisan, learned and lighthearted, Griffiths’s work is the most accessible on modern Guinness, Diageo, and the brilliant advertising that makes Guinness an icon in popular culture. I also found Michele Guinness’s depiction of Rupert Guinness tender and beautiful and was inspired by her hopes for Guinness generations yet to come.

  Though I have relied heavily on the books I have mentioned, I have also found the following to be valuable. Guinness 1886–1939: From Incorporation to the Second World War by S. R. Dennison and Oliver MacDonagh is essentially a corporate report but with moments of reflection and beauty. A Bottle of Guinness Please: The Colourful History of Guinness by David Hu
ghes is a highly technical but richly illustrated and lovingly written book that no student of Guinness history should fail to consult. Finally, Jonathan Guinness’s Requiem for a Family Business may be about the scandals of the 1980s but it provides a reflection—indeed, almost a lament—on the meaning of Guinness history that is unlike anything else in print.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stephen Mansfield is the New York Times best-selling author of more than a dozen books on history, biography, and contemporary culture. He founded and heads the Mansfield Group (Mansfieldgroup.com), a consulting and communications firm, and has also founded Chartwell Literary Group (Chartwellliterary.com), a highly successful company that creates and manages literary projects.

  Mansfield grew up the son of a United States Army officer and as a result spent the majority of his youth in Europe. Returning to the United States to attend college, he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and theology. He later earned a master’s degree in history and public policy and a doctorate in history and literature.

  He began his writing career with a book on Winston Churchill titled Never Give In, which became a Gold Medallion Award Finalist. He then wrote biographies of Booker T. Washington and George Whitefield. In 1997, the governor of Tennessee commissioned him to write the official history of religion in Tennessee for that state’s bicentennial.

  In 2003, Mansfield wrote his groundbreaking work, The Faith of George W. Bush, which spent many weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was credited with shaping the national dialogue about religion in American politics. He followed up this book with a study of faith among American soldiers in Iraq titled The Faith of the American Soldier and with a book on Pope Benedict XVI, which Publisher’s Weekly called “an inviting study of a new world leader.”

  In 2008, Mansfield wrote The Faith of Barack Obama, which was intended as an objective look at the nontraditional religious life of the nation’s first African American president. The book was highly controversial because the author—who is a theological and political conservative— insisted on a tone of impartiality and kindness in writing about a man with whom he disagreed. This book was a best seller and was credited with capturing well the religious themes at play in the 2008 presidential election.

  Beyond his influential writing career, Mansfield is a popular speaker on themes of faith, heritage, achievement, and leadership. He has also worked both in the United States and abroad on issues of poverty and social justice. He lives primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, with his beloved wife, Beverly, who is a successful songwriter and producer.