We have one more stop in Ireland, via Anthony Trollope’s novel (one of five he wrote set there) of upper-ish class romance, mystery, and such during the beginnings of the Irish famine. If you’ve missed the Castle Richmond Part I and Part II Cocktail Talks, then please, take a trip to them now (and for that matter, why not try out all the Anthony Trollope Cocktail Talks). Once back, take a step through the below quote into the Kanturk Hotel (and bar, moreso), where you’ll meet the charming Fanny O’Dwyer, and learn some charming phrases for drinks.
Behind the coffee-room was the bar, from which Fanny O’Dwyer dispensed dandies of punch and goes of brandy to her father’s customers from Kanturk. For at this, as at other similar public-houses in Irish towns, the greater part of the custom on which the publican depends came to him from the inhabitants of one particular country district. A large four-wheeled vehicle, called a long car, which was drawn by three horses, and travelled over a mountain road at the rate of four Irish miles an hour, came daily from Kanturk to Cork, and daily returned. This public conveyance stopped in Cork at the Kanturk Hotel, and was owned by the owner of that house, in partnership with a brother in the same trade located in Kanturk. It was Mr. O’Dwyer’s business to look after this concern, to see to the passengers and the booking, the oats, and hay, and stabling, while his well-known daughter, the charming Fanny O’Dwyer, took care of the house, and dispensed brandy and whisky to the customers from Kanturk.
To tell the truth, the bar was a much more alluring place than the coffee-room, and Fanny O’Dwyer a more alluring personage than Tom, the one-eyed waiter.
Our second delving into this lesser-read (probably? I feel overall Anthony Trollope should be read more, and this novel isn’t one of those read even partially enough atm) Irish-set Trollope tale takes us into a space Trollope wrote about better than anyone, the house of an English rector. While our man of the cloth here isn’t one of the book’s main characters, he has enough page time that you’ll come to enjoy his company (his wife’s too, though mostly for her sometimes ridiculousness). The fact that he likes a whisky punch in an evening, certainly makes liking him easier. Oh, don’t miss the Castle Richmond Cocktail Talk Part I, for more book background and brandy (and all the Trollope Cocktail Talks for even more).
But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils. Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.
Those who have visited Spiked Punch before (and really, who hasn’t?) know that I have a love of Anthony Trollope books, as there are a number of Trollope Cocktail Talks underlining that love. Please, go read them all! But I haven’t yet had one I don’t believe from Castle Richmond, one of five of his novels set in Ireland, a place where he lived for a good chunk of time, working for the post and kicking off his writing career. It’s perhaps my favorite of the five? Perhaps. Taking place at the beginning of the Irish famine, it has some harrowing moments and insights into that tragedy, though the core story itself is of a more personal family tragedy, or mystery, or both. Tragestery? There are the normal Trollopean well-developed characters a’plenty, mostly of the upperish class or want to be kind, but with enough others sprinkled in to keep it interesting. As well as the main did-she-or-they-or-didn’t-they kind of plot in a way, with enough side plots and history sprinkled in to keep it fresh. And of course, or we wouldn’t be here, a nice Cocktail Talky quote or two. At least two. Maybe three? Come back and see! Our first starts at a bar-rooming-house spot, where two of the more disreputable, shall we say, characters are living at for a chunk of the book. Living and drinking at, that is.
“You are cold I suppose, governor, and had better get a bit of something to eat, and a little tea.”
“And put my feet in hot water, and tallow my nose, and go to bed, hadn’t I? Miss O’Dwyer, I’ll trouble you to mix me a glass of brandy-punch. Of all the roads I ever travelled, that’s the longest and hardest to get over. Dashed, if I didn’t begin to think I’d never be here.” And so saying he flung himself into a chair, and put up his feet on the two hobs.
There was a kettle on one of them, which the young lady pushed a little nearer to the hot coals, in order to show that the water should be boiling; and as she did so Aby gave her a wink over his father’s shoulder, by way of conveying to her an intimation that “the governor was a little cut,” or in other language tipsy, and that the brandy-punch should be brewed with a discreet view to past events of the same description. All which Miss O’Dwyer perfectly understood.
Before you even accuse me of repetitiveness, I already know that I just did a Cocktail Talk post containing an Anthony Trollope quote (the one from The Three Clerks below). Or just a few weeks ago. But, but, but I also just read a different Trollope book, Castle Richmond, and it also had a few worthy quotes, one of which is below. See, I’ve run into a little Trollope luck lately, finding a few of the less-easy-to-find books, and so have been reading my Trollope-loving-heart out. Usually when browsing a bookstore, you’re only going to find a book from the Chronicles of Barsetshire (probably Barchester Towers or The Warden) and maybe something from the Palliser novels (usually, for reasons unknown to me, The Eustace Diamonds, which pales in my mind to Phineas Finn). The lesser known Trollope numbers? Not so much. Which is why, since I recently did find a few of these, A: I’m pretty excited, B: I’ve been reading so much Trollope, and C: why you, lucky people, get another quote about booze and boozing from a Trollope book. This may be, by the way, the finest whiskey punch quote ever. Castle Richmond itself is a darn fine read, an Irish tale which takes place during the potato famine with Trollope’s usual keen observing of politics, both personal and public. And with whiskey punch:
But the parlor was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils. Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some rare other occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.
