CHAPTER XV.—IRISH TROTTINGS AND JOTTINGS.
Some Irish hotels—When comfort comes in at the door, humour flies out by the window—A culinary experience—Plenty of new sensations—A kitchen blizzard—How to cook corned beef—A théoriser—Hare soup—A word of encouragement—The result—An avenue forty-two miles long—Nuda veritas—An uncanny request—A diabolic lunch—A club dinner—The pièce de resistance—Not a going concern—A minor prophecy—An easy drainage system—Not to be worked by an amateur—Après moi, le deluge—Hot water and its accompaniments—The boots as Atropos—A story of Thackeray—A young shaver.
WHEN writing for an Irish newspaper, I took some pains to point out how easily the country might be made attractive to tourists if only the hotels were improved. I have had frequent “innings,” and my experiences of Irish hotels in various districts where I have shot, or fished, or yachted, or boated, would make a pretty thick volume, if recorded. But while most of these experiences have some grain of humour in them, that humour is of a type that looks best when viewed from a distance. When it is first sprung upon him, this Irish fun is not invariably relished by the traveller.
Mr. Max O’Rell told me that he liked the Irish hotels at which he had sojourned, because he was acknowledged by the maîtres to possess an identity that could not be adequately expressed by numerals. But on the whole it is my impression that the numerical system is quite tolerable if one gets good food and a clean sleeping-place. To be sure there is no humour in a comfortable dinner, or a bed that does not require a layer of Keating to be spread as a sedative to the army of occupation; still, though the story of tough chickens and midnight hunts can be made genuinely entertaining, I have never found that these actual incidents were in themselves very inspiriting.
A friend of mine who has a capital shooting in a picturesque district, was compelled to lodge, and to ask his guests to lodge, at the little inn during his first shooting season. Knowing that the appetite of men who have been walking over mountains of heather is not usually very fastidious, he fancied that the inn cook would be quite equal to the moderate demands made upon her skill. The experiment was a disastrous one. The more explicit the instructions the woman was given regarding the preparation of the game, the more mortifying to the flesh were her achievements. There was, it is true, a certain amount of interest aroused among us every day as to the form that the culinary whim of the cook would assume. The monarch that offered a reward for the discovery of a new sensation would have had a good time with us. We had new sensations at the dinner hour every day. “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be,” was an apothegm that found constant illustration when applied to that woman’s methods: we knew that we gave her salmon, and grouse, and hare, and snipe; but what was served to us, Heaven and that cook only knew—on second thoughts I will leave Heaven out of the question altogether. The monstrous originalities, the appalling novelties, the confounding of substances, the unnatural daring manifested in every day’s dinner, filled us with amazement, but, alas! with nothing else. We were living in a sort of perpetual kitchen blizzard—in the centre of a culinary chaos. The whirl was too much for us.
Our host took upon him to allay the fiend. He sent to the nearest town for butcher’s supplies. The first joint that arrived was a fine piece of corned beef.
“There, my good woman,” cried our host, putting it into the cook’s hands, “I suppose you can cook that, if you can’t cook game.”
“Oh, yes, your honour, it’s misself that can cook it tubbe sure,” she cried in her lighthearted way.
She did cook it.
She roasted it for five hours on a spit in front of the kitchen fire.