Long before TripAdvisor, there was William Makepeace Thackeray, the novelist whose account of his travels around Ireland doubled as a colourful guide to our hotels, writes Michael Parsons
'FOR A STRANGER the Irish ways are the pleasantest, for here he is at once made happy and at home, or at ease rather," said English writer William Makepeace Thackeray after an extended "working" holiday in Ireland. The 19th-century novelist, best remembered for work such as Vanity Fair and The Luck of Barry Lyndon, spent four months travelling around Ireland in 1842 and wrote a classic account of his journey published as The Irish Sketch Book. It remains one of the most detailed and colourful surveys of Irish hotels ever written.
Arriving in Dublin by mailboat from Holyhead, Thackeray disembarked at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) and spent his first night in Ireland as a guest in the city's best-known hotel: the Shelbourne - a "respectable old edifice much frequented by families from the country". Plus ça change. Except the price, of course. He was "comfortably accommodated at the very moderate daily charge of six-and-eightpence", which included "a copious breakfast", (he had broiled Dublin Bay herrings), a buffet lunch and "a plentiful dinner" at 6pm. Later he found that the drawing-room had "tay and coffee and cakes in plenty to satisfy the largest appetite" for night owls who fancied a "rubber of whist". A room tonight would cost anything up to €400, and the Princess Grace Suite costs €2,500.
Thackeray's suite consisted of "a queer little room, and dressing-room on the ground floor, looking towards the Green". After checking in, he was not amused by the state in which he found it, but "a black-faced, good-humoured chambermaid had promised to perform a deal of scouring which was evidently necessary". Overall, though, he liked the hotel, which was "majestically conducted by clerks and other officers".
Moving south, Thackeray headed to Waterford where he stayed at "what is supposed to be the best inn". Sadly, he didn't record its name - perhaps fearing a libel suit? He entered a diningroom where the sideboard was coated with a "fine thick coat of dust which had been kindly left to gather for some days past", and found peevish, grumpy waiters "bawling and jangling". He wasn't impressed with the food either, recalling that dinner was "plentiful and nasty - raw ducks, raw pease, on a crumpled table-cloth, over which a waiter has just spirted a pint of obstreperous cider". The windows were open, affording him a "free view of a crowd of old beggar-women, and of a fellow playing a cursed Irish pipe". And, to add to his misery, the room soon filled with "choking peat-smoke" which he was told was caused by "a fire in a back-room".
Travelling west into Co Cork, he stayed at another unnamed establishment in Skibbereen, where he found "a dirty coffee-room, with a strong smell of whiskey". Still, "dirty as the place was", he was served "an exuberant dinner of trout and Kerry mutton". And he was later exposed to some real Irish hospitality when "Dan the waiter, holding up a dingy decanter, asks how much whiskey I'd have".
The following morning he awoke with the "pangs of hunger beginning to make themselves felt" but, despite "several useless applications to a bell", no member of staff appeared. Thackeray was forced to "make a personal descent to the inn-kitchen" where he found all the staff absorbed in the admiration of "an infant". He was astonished by the scene and declared: "Of all the wonderful things to be seen in Skibbereen, Dan's pantry is the most wonderful: every article within is a makeshift, and has been ingeniously perverted from its original destination. Here lie bread, blacking, fresh-butter, tallow-candles, dirty knives - all in the same cigar-box with snuff, milk, cold bacon, brown sugar, broken teacups and hits of soap. No pen can describe that establishment, as no English imagination could have conceived it."
At Glengarriff he stayed at a "very pretty" inn (Eccles Hotel, which is still going strong), which enjoyed a spectacular setting: "A beautiful bay stretches out before the house, the full tide washing the thorn-trees: mountains rise on either side of the little bay, and there is an island, with a castle in it, in the midst, near which a yacht was moored." However, he had the misfortune to stumble across some drunken English tourists at the inn that evening who were complaining about "the natives". Thackeray was appalled and was pleased that they had left by the time he came down to breakfast the following morning.
"'I thought thim couldn't be gintlemin,' was the appropriate remark of Mr Tom the waiter, 'from the way in which they took their whishky - raw with cold wather, widout mixing or inything.' Could an Irish waiter give a more excellent definition of the ungenteel?"
Moving north to Co Kerry, at Killarney Thackeray found the town in "a violent state of excitement with a series of horse-races, hurdle-races, boat-races, and stag-hunts by land and water" which had "attracted a vast crowd from all parts of the kingdom". All the inns were full but he found lodgings at a boarding house run by Mrs Macgillicuddy for five shillings a day. He wondered: "Where the ladies of the Macgillicuddy family have slept, heaven knows, for their house is full of lodgers."
His sleep was disturbed by other guests: "'Bring me some hot watah,' says a genteel, high-piped English voice. 'Hwhere's me hot wather?' roars a deep-toned Hibernian." He dined on potatoes and salmon and drank buttermilk and whiskey.
Thackeray had better luck in Limerick where he stayed at "one of the best inns in Ireland - the large, neat, and prosperous one kept by Mr Cruise". He was also delighted to meet the proprietor, which he claimed was a rare occurrence in Ireland where hoteliers "commonly (and very naturally) prefer riding with the hounds, or manly sports, to attendance on their guests".
Heading to the west of Ireland, Thackeray visited Galway where "the rain poured down for two days after our arrival at Kilroy's Hotel". It wasn't busy: "The company there, on the day of our arrival, consisted of two coach-passengers - a Frenchman who came from Sligo, and ordered mutton-chops and fraid potatoes for dinner by himself, a turbot which cost two shillings, and in Billingsgate would have been worth a guinea, and a couple of native or inhabitant bachelors, who frequented the table d'hote."
He had a room with a view but was singularly unimpressed: "A great, wide, blank, bleak, water-whipped square lies before the bedroom window; at the opposite side of which is to be seen the opposition hotel, looking even more blank and cheerless than that over which Mr Kilroy presides."
Crossing the country to Co Louth, Thackeray's coach dropped him at "a dilapidated mansion . . . which did not hold out much prospect of comfort" in Dundalk. But he recalled, "in justice to the King's Arms it must be said that good beds and dinners are to be obtained there by voyagers" - although the best food was reserved for "His Grace the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Armagh and of Ireland" and his clergy. Thackeray noted with irony that "when their reverences were gone, the laity were served; and I have no doubt, from the leg of a duck which I got that the breast and wings must have been very tender".
But, eventually, in Co Wicklow, Thackeray found an establishment much more to his liking at the village of Roundwood. He gushed: "The hotel of Mr Wheatly possesses attractions which few men can resist, in the shape of two very handsome young ladies his daughters; whose faces, were they but painted on his signboard, instead of the mysterious piece which ornaments it, would infallibly draw tourists into the house, thereby giving the opposition inn of Murphy not the least chance of custom." He was smitten - and charmed.
But it was later while travelling in Northern Ireland that Thackeray's inability to impartially review hotels was really exposed. In Newtown, Limavady, he "fell eternally in love" with a waitress called Margaret glimpsed during a brief, 10-minute stopover at an inn. He wrote a famous poem in honour of "Peg of Limavaddy" which contains these immortal lines:
"This I do declare
Happy is the laddy
Who the heart can share
Of Peg of Limavaddy.
Married if she were
Blest would be the daddy
Of the children fair
Of Peg of Limavaddy.
Beauty is not rare
In the land of Paddy
Fair beyond compare
Is Peg of Limavaddy."
Oh dear. Thackeray was a great travel writer, but his poetry hasn't aged well.