Cocktail Talk: Castle Richmond, Part III
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.
–Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond
