DINNY AND DANNY

DINNY and Danny represent to me the spirit of the hotel system in South-Western Ireland and I write of them in a grateful spirit. For without them and all their cousins hotel life would lack that kindly touch of humanity which it is their peculiar genius to impart.

They are useful tutelary deities, benign beings to whom little offerings of silver and grateful words mean much.

Dinny and Danny are hotel porters. They wear— when they are not in their shirt sleeves—hotel livery; peaked caps and smart coats. They meet the trains, and the weary traveller must feel his weariness refreshed when he sees Dinny's bright blue eye upon him or hears Danny's soft Kerry speech.

Dinny and Danny are types. I have changed their names slightly, but I am thinking of individuals down in the Kingdom of Kerry. When we said goodbye to Dinny he commended us to his cousin Danny in the big railway hotel where Danny lived a much harassed life. Or if we were not going to Danny it was certain that ninny knew the hotel porter where we were going and suggested that a mention of his name might be helpful. It seemed to- me that there was a league of Dinriys and Drool all over Kerry, a sort of mild secret service ; for when we left Dinny and went to Danny we found that he knew all about us, our car, the cattle we had bought in Sneem and our past travels.

The functions of Dinny and Danny are so varied that I never found out what they did not do. There were no signs that they ever slept, for I heard Danny beating the mats long after midnight and he confessed that owing to a dance at another hotel he had to be up all night. In all emergencies one went to them. Besides welcoming the coming and speeding the parting guests they have to give every information about fishing, trains, posts, telegrams and local news. It was Dinny who caught the mail by the last hair, Dinny who took the salmon to the post, Dinny who brought the rods, who made up the fire in the cold, wet evenings of May ; Dinny who was full of country lore and gossip. And best of all it was Dinny who seemed always freshly interested in the day's doings, and what a zest it gives to life when one can immediately tell the day's doings to a friendly ear. Again it was Dinny who encouraged the novice in motoring by saying that hers was the very best exit from the garage he had yet seen. Who would not return to a hotel where such praise was lavished.

I write of Dinny and Danny and all their clan because I feel that they represent the spirit of Irish hotel life and that tourists will find in them that personal touch which even the best hotels may lack. Hotel keeping is surely the gentlest of arts. It is the one in which Ireland has blundered and succeeded at once. She has been, in the past, grossly careless about the technical side of the art but successful in the spiritual graces of hospitality and gentleness. Now the railways have nearly perfected the technical part of the business by establishing a series of well-managed comfortable hotels in the loveliest places in Ireland. We have much to learn still from our foreign neighbours and we should listen reverently to our critics.

A Dutch publisher and his wife, a distinguished dramatist, were disCussing Irish hotels at breakfast one morning. " I tell our people," said Mynheer, " of your lovely country. They would come . . . yes . . . but it is still too expensive. The railways should give facilities, cheaper tickets, inducements to foreigners to choose Ireland instead of Switzerland."

" And you do not give us fruit," said Mevreow with a sigh, " we like fruit at breakfast. We get no ripe fruit."

And I for my part missed the salad which in summer seems the most necessary thing in a meal. We might well learn from our foreign visitors the value of fruit and vegetables.

Ireland is at present like the milkmaid of the nursery rhyme. She must reply : " My face is my fortune," to those who talk with her. The bounty of that fortune as one sees it in Kerry is amazing. But the loveliest face can be enhanced, and inconvenience is a thing that sometimes warps the sense of beauty. The view at a cross roads is certain to be of amazing beauty, but when there is no sign post and one must consult a map or look for a countryman to direct the way even the view loses something. Sign posts are so rare in southern Ireland that Saint Patrick might have banished them with the snakes. Where they exist they are usually unreadable with age and weather, or riddled by bullets or blown in wrong directions by Atlantic gales. Yet -half the men in Kerry sigh for employment and spend "weary days sitting on banks in the sun. Surely a descended Martian would marvel at a country so much in need of employment and also so greatly in need of road repair. He might wonder in his simple Martian fashion that the one need could not solve the other. But for us the problem remains insoluble.

One day we drove by the Muckross road towards Kenmare, meaning to go by Windy Gap. After seven miles we were stopped by road menders and told we must turn back. The bridge was up for repair.

" Why," we asked indignantly, " were there no warnings given on the road or at the hotels ? "

" But indeed it was on the paper in January that the road would be repaired and the bridge up some day this summer," protested the Kerry man. So without further comment we had to submit to fourteen miles out of our way before we reached the other road to Kenmare.

.Such things are remediable, so easily remediable if Ireland would believe it.

The awakening of the hotels is a hopeful sign at present. The homely fishing hotel has long been an institution. It depends usually on the same people who come year by year, and only grudgingly share their secret. It excels in soda bread and home-made fare. It has a quality all its own and some Dinny or Danny is sure to inhabit it. If I spoke of Derrynane as such a place I should do so with bated breath lest too many should find out the road that turns towards the Atlantic at Caherdaniel and passes the old home of the " Liberator." Already the visitors' book shows celebrated names. But the big railway hotels are developing their resources every season and other notable hotels can cater for visitors all through the winter. Eccles Hotel at Glengariff can boast of a Swedish masseuse and mud baths and sunlight treatments. Sciatica yields speedily to its care. Parknasilla has the diving board from whence G.B.S. made the first dive. It was erected for him and legend says that his dive was a perfect one. All these big hotels cater for the English, American and foreign visitors. They are trying to satisfy the more exacting of their guests.

And here Dinny and Danny show their native genius. Dinny and Danny know their business. They have that discernment which makes them see what is needed before the want is felt. Dinny knows the sort of jokes that an American will expect of him. If he is required to be the stage Irishman he will supply the patter. But when he talks to his own countrymen he will be the grave, shrewd man that he was born to be. Dinny has had, he avers, no hand in " the troubles." He deplores the burnt houses, the departure of the burnt-out country gentry. Probably when lie stands at the hotel door ready to welcome the stranger he sees himself as the proprietor of a dream hotel. He sees the coming of the " Yanks," a season as blessed as the coming of the swallow.

Danny, an older and graver man than Dinny, found consolation in the thought of his grocery business, kept in his absence by his wife. After the summer season, when the hotels are closed and the rains of autumn descend, Danny goes home and occupies himself gravely with the concerns of his shop. In the meantime he is the slave of every visitor. Whitsuntide left him weary and dispirited.

" What class of people is in it at all ? " he asked severely as the week-end visitors departed in their cars. " Where do they get the money ? " I asked.

" They don't get it and they haven't got it, an' that's the truth. Thim has neither money nor manners."

Danny is a Conservative, with the feudal heart of southern Ireland that recognizes but two classes—the landed gentry and their tenants and servants.

Dinny looks on life more humorously. He supports a tradition, for his predecessor, known as " Old Charlie.'! to a generation, has left him his mantle. Old Charlie acted as waiter and he was noteworthy for his terse remarks.

" Rice pudding or raspberry tart, Ma'am ? "

" Raspberry tart, please, Charlie."

" Well, you can't, ma'am, for there isn't any."

Some visitor offended him to the heart's core by an exclamation. " Really, Charlie, you're invaluable." Charlie went away sorrowfully.

" Mrs. Mahony says I'm unvaluable," he told a friend, " and it's quare for her an' I doing my best for her all the time she's been here."

More sophisticated is Dinny, a product of the schools, a reader of newspapers. Less light-hearted is Danny, who belongs to the grave generation which, said a wise man, succeeded the Land Act and its responsibilities. Good luck to them and all their kin. May they make Ireland the rival of Switzerland in the heart of every tourist.

W. M. LETTS.