Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe House is the most important person in the history of the Irish state.
Her fifty years of service to Irish food and hospitality makes Eamon de Valera’s twenty-odd years as Taoiseach pale in comparison, and her rigorous certainty and unwavering moral vision is unmatched by another other politician or public figure in Irish life.
In addition, the international respect she commands cannot be matched by any other Irish man or woman.
So, it is worth pointing out that the on the first occasion when we personally saw Mrs Allen in Ballymaloe, it was late on a Friday evening during a very busy service, and she herself was busy clearing, and then re-setting, a table. The owner was acting like the newest recruit on the team, and her actions spoke volumes: that there was no hierarchy in Ballymaloe, and that here was a woman of infinite humility. She had taken the old French maxim of “Le patron mange ici”, and written it in Irish: “Le patron travail ici” – the boss works here.
Once, she famously remarked “If only common sense were more common”, and her life and work have been a relentless iteration of common sense, as applied to her business, her philosophy, her work, her creativity, her calling.
She has the ability to keep things simple, to keep things logical, and yet in doing so she makes them utterly personal. Every country house hotel in the world is, in essence, fashioned on Ballymaloe House and yet none of them are remotely like Ballymaloe House. How could they be? They don’t have a Myrtle Allen.
So, the next time that talk turns to great and important people in Ireland, and when your friends recite the names of rich men and notable public figures – the Bonos, the O’Briens, the Desmonds, the de Valeras, the Haugheys – just tell them that, actually, the most important person in the history of Ireland is a little lady with a posh voice who cooks lovely food in a friendly house in east County Cork.
Myrtle Allen celebrates her 90th birthday tomorrow. We took this photograph last weekend at Ballymaloe House.
