December 19, 2023

Cocktail Talk: Castle Richmond, Part III

Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope

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

December 12, 2023

Cocktail Talk: Castle Richmond, Part II

Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope

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.

–Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond

June 27, 2023

Cocktail Talk: The Terror By Night

Night Terrors Ghost Stories E.F. Benson

Recently delved into the full collection of ghost-and-such stories by E.F. Benson, said collection being called Night Terrors. E.F. Benson was an English writer, late 1800s-to-early-mid-1900s, who wrote all kinds of things, though he’s most known for his ghostly and spectral and other spine-tingling tales, which are, in the main, awfully fun to read (whether you do it at night or in the daytime – up to you). They follow along the time-period’s aesthetic (no modern slasher fair here friends), which I find myself enjoying muchly, especially in the last few years. There’s something so, oh, atmospheric, and the writing itself, always well-done. I’m not going to say every story here was to my taste, but there’s a lot of variety (vampires? Check. Ghosts of all kinds? Check. Giant worms? Check. And more!), and enough worthy chillers to balance out any less worthy. Do I like Mr. Benson’s work overall as well as M.R. James (the master of the time and genre)? Probably not, but I have been to Lamb House, where Benson lived in Rye, UK, so that’s something (admittedly, I visited cause Henry James himself lived there before E.F. Benson, but still). Not a ton of Cocktail Talking in the collection, but there was something delightful in the below quote, how one character manages to swipe a drink from another by saying “touch of liver.”

“I have felt most awfully down all day,” he said; “and just after receiving this splendid account from Daisy. I can’t think what is the matter.”

He poured himself out some whisky and soda as he spoke.

“Oh, touch of liver,” I said. “I shouldn’t drink that if I were you. Give it to me instead.”

–E.F. Benson, “The Terror by Night”

November 7, 2022

Cocktail Talk: This Gun for Hire

1524186I recently had another Graham Greene Cocktail Talk here on the Spiked Punch (that one was a Comedians Cocktail Talk), and when re-reading the book that that there post focused its light upon, I got the urge to re-read some other Greenes. Does that happen to you? You read or re-read a book by an author and then just get the urge to delve more deeply into said author? Well, it does to me! It’s a bit like when you have a delicious, say, whiskey drink, and then you’re like “well, that worked out nicely, how about another!” For another in our Greene reading situation, I grabbed one of the ‘entertainments’ as he called them, as opposed to his serious stuff I suppose, This Gun for Hire. Following along the paths of a not-so-nice hired gun and a nice aspiring actor (who happens to have a fiancé who is a police detective) whose paths cross after a political assassination, well, it moves fast, draws you in, and is, well, entertaining! And has the below fun quote about whiskey, and beer!

“Keep a bottle of whisky here, super?” the Chief Constable asked. “Do’us all good to ‘ave a drink. Had too much beer. It returns. Whisky’s better, but the wife doesn’t like the smell.”

–Graham Greene, This Gun for Hire

February 7, 2022

Cocktail Talk: Brother Wing Commanders

secret-of-holm-peel-sax-rohmerI haven’t perused many pages written by Sax Rohmer, who was one of – if not the, at least for a moment or two – best-selling mystery/adventure/action writers of his early-to-mid last century timeframe. Like too many of his contemporaries, he was fairly awful or deplorable, or really, in how he depicted people not exactly like him (other races, other genders, pretty much anything he would have thought of as “other”), and it makes reading much of his work not something I want to delve into, when there are many other things to read! However, I did receive a copy of stories by him recently, called The Secret of Holm Peel, and Other Strange Stories, and felt I should give it a whirl, and can admit that in the main, not too bad a collection. More adventure than strange (though there’s a demonic presence or two), and covering the basis of last-century adventure stories: meaning, there’s a pirate story, a swashbuckling story (the difference between those two genres is there, my friends!), a haunted castle and a haunted cliff story, all that. And a WW II story, naturally, which is called “Brother Wing Commanders,” and which is really a bird story combined with a hospital story and a little romance! That’s where this Cocktail Talk is coming from, a quote which contains a whisky line I hope to remember to use in the future!

“Inquiry from Buckingham Palace yesterday – and the eats and drinks! Why, Charles will be fatter than Goering if he goes to it! Yes, thanks a lot, it would set me up . . . Please excuse me reminding you, but your whisky is too good to deserve drowning. That’s fine.” There was a breathless interval.

 

–Sax Rohmer, “Brother Wing Commanders”

February 1, 2022

Cocktail Talk: The Case of Oscar Brodski

blood-on-the-tracksOn a rainy days like today, and yesterday, and probably tomorrow, I start to think “wouldn’t it be nice if it was sunny and I was on a train riding through the English countryside, with curious and attractive small towns and verdant and buzzing fields and such passing by outside my window?” And then I go back to reading the excellent collection of Golden Age British train-fueled mystery short stories Blood on the Tracks, and start to think, “hmm, maybe I’m safer inside with the rain outside dampening murderous thoughts?” One of the British Library Crime Classics collections (a fine series edited by writer and editor Martin Edwards, and one which unearths many mystery and crime gems nearly lost to history, usually placing them alongside some better-known hits), Blood on the Tracks boasts 15 stories that all share a train connection, making it a top choice for railway enthusiasts as well as mystery hounds – and for those, like me, who fit both categories? It’s dreamy! Our particular Cocktail Talk here comes from a story by R. Austin Freeman, a writer from that late 1800s, early 1900s Golden Age of crime fiction, one I don’t know well, but look forward to reading more from (probably with the help of more British Library Crime Classics!). In it, there are diamonds, a nefarious deed, actual blood on the tracks, a doctor detective of note, and wonderful usage of the wonderful word, “jorum.”

 

“Have a biscuit?” said Hickler, as he placed a whisky-bottle on the table together with a couple of his best star-pattern tumblers and a siphon.

“Thanks, I think will,” said Brodski. “The railway journey and all this confounded tramping about, you know.”

“Yes,” agreed Silas. “Doesn’t do you good to start with an empty stomach. Hope you don’t mind oat-cakes; I see they’re the only biscuit I have.”

Brodski hastened to assure him that oat-cakes were his special and peculiar fancy; and in confirmation, having mixed himself a stiff jorum, he fell to upon the biscuits with evident gusto.

 

–R. Austin Freeman, “The Case of Oscar Brodski”

October 12, 2021

Cocktail Talk: An Old Man’s Love, Part II

an-old-mans-love-trollopeI wasn’t sure we’d have two An Old Man’s Love Cocktail Talks, as it’s a quicker read (especially in comparison with many Trollope gems). However, here we are! I had to feature the quote in Part I (read it, to find out why, and to find out more about the book, the last full novel written by the English great, and for even more, check out all the Trollope Cocktail Talks), and then when mulling things over, didn’t want to miss the below, either. In it, we learn our lead character has had drinking whiskey as a doctor’s recommendation – something that doesn’t happen enough today!

 

He had, indeed, felt but little his want of success in regard to money, but he had encountered failure in one or two other matters which had touched him nearly. In some things his life had been successful; but these were matters in which the world does not write down a man’s good luck as being generally conducive to his happiness. He had never had a headache, rarely a cold, and not a touch of the gout. One little finger had become crooked, and he was recommended to drink whisky, which he did willingly,—because it was cheap. He was now fifty, and as fit, bodily and mentally, for hard work as ever he had been.

 

–Anthony Trollope, An Old Man’s Love

 

August 11, 2020

Cocktail Talk: No Name, Part I

wilkie-collins-no-nameFirst published in serial form in 1862/1863, No Name is not the book name (see what I did there!) that first pops up when one thinks of Mr. Wilkie Collins; instead, it’s The Moonstone, and then The Woman in White. Both of which have also had recent television adaptions. It makes some sense, too, especially as The Moonstone is in many ways arguably (gently, cause there is no need for a ruckus) the first, or one of the first, detective novels, kicking off a massive industry, and The Woman in White has a little of that action, too. However! Collins wrote many more novels, some good, some not as good, and strongly in the good column is No Name. It had been, maybe, twenty-odd years since I read this the first time, and on the second reading recently I was struck by just how good it is, and left wondering why more haven’t taken it up. It has, as you might expect, a fair dollop of Victorian melodramatics – meaning, lots of cliff’s edges or “oh that didn’t happen” ramped up moments, like a silent movie in a way, or like a fair amount of modern movies now that I think about it – and gets wordy at over 500 pages. But the story/stories of two sisters (Magdalen and Norah Vanstone) abandoned when their parents die, and left none of their inheritance due to the ridiculous legality of the times, and how they deal with it and the loss of standing and fortune (not to mention grief, degradation, all that) is done quite well, and gives us a heroine (Magdalen) that many readers at the time weren’t fond of, but which I quite liked in her “do whatever it takes” and “I’m not going to sit in a place others tell me to” attitude. It could, I think, also make a swell miniseries! Plus, it was Collins’ pal Charles Dickens favorite (of the Collins canon), and has a couple nearly Dickensian characters, including the rascally Captain Wragge, and his nemesis, the calculating Mrs. Lecount, who below gives us – along with cruel fool Noah Vanstone – our first of three Cocktail Talks from the book.

 

“The man has been drinking, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “It is easy to see and to smell that. But he is evidently used to drinking. If he is sober enough to walk quite straight–which he certainly does–and to sign his name in an excellent handwriting–which you may see for yourself on the Will–I venture to think he is sober enough to drive us to Dumfries.”

 

“Nothing of the sort! You’re a foreigner, Lecount; you don’t understand these people. They drink whisky from morning to night. Whisky is the strongest spirit that’s made; whisky is notorious for its effect on the brain. I tell you, I won’t run the risk. I never was driven, and I never will be driven, by anybody but a sober man.”

 

–Wilkie Collins, No Name

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