"You could trot a mouse on it": D. M. LARGE, The Open Arms (1933)

The small, spray-drenched village of Derrybeg emerged from the period of strife known in Ireland as "the troublesome times," with two smoke-blackened ruins, and with an entirely new and firm belief that the less said on the entrancing topic of politics, the better. A new spirit had been born in Derrybeg during those hectic years—the spirit of caution. The old days, in which political views were aired on every possible occasion, and with complete confidence, seemed then to have passed for ever: men glanced uneasily at each other, and they talked of something else.

For this opening passage, and a number of others like it scattered throughout, I would happily have paid the price of admission for The Open Arms. Although in many ways this is a light and fluffy comedy about a woman who determines to turn her home in an isolated Irish village into what she imagines will be a lushly profitable hotel, this novel, like Large's later, WWII-era novel The Quiet Place, which I reviewed here, makes occasional fascinating mentions of the history and tensions in Ireland in the 1930s. (It also has a lot in common with the latter novel, which was also about a boarding house, so Large wasn't above recycling plots, though one gives us a peacetime look at Ireland, the other a wartime look.)

There's precious little real plot here, apart from the preparation of the hotel and the slightly bumpy visits of the first guests, but there are quite a few chuckles and some charming, silly villagers to enjoy. I liked Large's gentle mockery of English attitudes towards Ireland, in reference to a letters received by an Englishman living in the village:

One of Pat Turner's aunts on his father's side, continued to picture her adventurous nephew in the act of dodging from the shelter of one Irish wall to the haven of another, in order to escape the hail of bullets that, she was convinced, played all the time about his innocent head.

(Though for that matter, in Dorothy Lambert's Redferne M.F.H., which I reviewed here, characters really do shelter from hails of bullets in Ireland.)

But the most fun of all, for me, were two Irish expressions that popped up and made me laugh. Have you heard these? 

First, a reference to tea that was so strong "you could trot a mouse on it".

And then, a servant referring to her cranky employer: "Didn't she ate the face off of meself the very one way."

I'm currently trying to think of ways to utilize these expressions in my work conversations.