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I Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about
TELEMACHUS
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead,
bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay
crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained
gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the
bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and
called out coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round
gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the
tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains.
Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards
him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his
throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased
and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and
looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him,
equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair,
grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and
then covered the bowl smartly.
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—Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher’s tone:
—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine:
body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please.
those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of
call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white
teeth glistening here and there with gold points.
Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered
through the calm.
—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do
nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his
watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his
gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl
recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A
pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name,
an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to
the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped
up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the
edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his
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mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and
lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.
—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two
dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and
sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will
you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight,
cried:
—Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
—Yes, my love?
—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right
shoulder.
—God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous
Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these
bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion.
Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you
have the real Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O,
my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
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—He was raving all night about a black panther,
Stephen said. Where is his guncase?
—A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear.
Out here in the dark with a man I don’t know raving and
moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You
saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero, however. If he
stays on here I am off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade.
He hopped down from his perch and began to search his
trouser pockets hastily.
—Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into
Stephen’s upper pocket, said:
—Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show
by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck
Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over
the handkerchief, he said:
—The bard’s noserag! A new art colour for our Irish
poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can’t you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over
Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.
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—God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a
great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The
scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the
Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the
original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.
Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet.
Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the
mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea
to Stephen’s face.
—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said.
That’s why she won’t let me have anything to do with
you.
—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when
your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m
hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother
begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray
for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in
you ...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther
cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.
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—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself.
Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned
his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of
his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain
of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come
to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose
brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and
rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute,
reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the
threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet
mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay
and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of
white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the
green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting
liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must
give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the
secondhand breeks?
—They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his
underlip.
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—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg
they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them
off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You’ll
look spiffing in them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You look
damn well when you’re dressed.
—Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are
grey.
—He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in
the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but
he can’t wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of
fingers felt the smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump
face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said
Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He’s up in Dottyville
with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the
tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His
curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white
glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit
trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
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Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out
to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and
others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody
to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan
said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps
plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into
temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from
Stephen’s peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a
mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with
bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass
of a servant.
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s
and walked with him round the tower, his razor and
mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
—It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said
kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of
them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that
of his. The cold steelpen.
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—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the
oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s
stinking with money and thinks you’re not a gentleman.
His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or
some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I
could only work together we might do something for the
island. Hellenise it.
Cranly’s arm. His arm.
—And to think of your having to beg from these
swine. I’m the only one that knows what you are. Why
don’t you trust me more? What have you up your nose
against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll
bring down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging worse
than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive
Kempthorpe’s rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with
laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the
news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons
of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round
the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of
Magdalen with the tailor’s shears. A scared calf’s face
gilded with marmalade. I don’t want to be debagged!
Don’t you play the giddy ox with me!
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Shouts from the open window startling evening in the
quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with
Matthew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower on the sombre
lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos.
—Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong
with him except at night.
—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently.
Cough it up. I’m quite frank with you. What have you
against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray
Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping
whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t
remember anything.
He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind
passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and
stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
—Do you remember the first day I went to your house
after my mother’s death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
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—What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I
remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What
happened in the name of God?
—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across
the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some
visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who
was in your room.
—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
—You said, Stephen answered, O, it’s only Dedalus
whose mother is beastly dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more
engaging rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek.
—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
—And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours
or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them
pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up
into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing and
nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel
down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she
asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain
in you, only it’s injected the wrong way. To me it’s all a
mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not
functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks
13 of 1305
buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over. You
crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me
because I don’t whinge like some hired mute from
Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to
offend the memory of your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen,
shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in
his heart, said very coldly:
—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen
stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the
headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were
beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever
of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
—Are you up there, Mulligan?
—I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
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—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences?
Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach
wants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the
staircase, level with the roof:
—Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m
inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending
voice boomed out of the stairhead:
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning
peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore
and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by
lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The
twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the
harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite
wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly,
shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a
bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the
house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was
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open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and
pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched
bed. For those words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery.
Where now?
Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards,
powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked
drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her
house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in
the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with
others when he sang:
I am the boy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys.
Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water
from the kitchen tap when she had approached the
sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting
for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely
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fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from
the children’s shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted
body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of
wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute
secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and
bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her
agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud
breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees.
Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te
confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus
excipiat.
Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!
No, mother! Let me be and let me live.
—Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It
came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still
trembling at his soul’s cry, heard warm running sunlight
and in the air behind him friendly words.
—Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is
ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It’s all
right.
—I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.
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—Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake
and for all our sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very
clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
—I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
—The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much?
Four quid? Lend us one.
—If you want it, Stephen said.
—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with
delight. We’ll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy
druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone
stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:
O, won’t we have a merry time,
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
On coronation,
Coronation day!
O, won’t we have a merry time
On coronation day!
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel
shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should
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I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten
friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling
its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in
which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense
then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A
servant too. A server of a servant.
In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck
Mulligan’s gowned form moved briskly to and fro about
the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two
shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the
high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of
coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.
—We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open
that door, will you?
Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall
figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting,
went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.
—Have you the key? a voice asked.
—Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m
choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
—Kinch!
—It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
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The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the
heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air
entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out.
Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down
to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside
him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to
the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
—I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when ...
But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake
up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is
ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where’s the
sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the
buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a
sudden pet.
—What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come
after eight.
—We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s
a lemon in the locker.
—O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan
said. I want Sandycove milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
—That woman is coming up with the milk.
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—The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried,
jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea
there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can’t go fumbling at
the damned eggs.
He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it
out on three plates, saying:
—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
—I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say,
Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don’t you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said
in an old woman’s wheedling voice:
—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan
said. And when I makes water I makes water.
—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
—So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma’am, says Mrs
Cahill, God send you don’t make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice
of bread, impaled on his knife.
—That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book,
Haines. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the
folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird
sisters in the year of the big wind.
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He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled
voice, lifting his brows:
—Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and
water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the
Upanishads?
—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
—Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone.
Your reasons, pray?
—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or
out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one
imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.
—Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing
his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you
think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he
growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again
vigorously at the loaf:
—For old Mary Ann
She doesn’t care a damn.
But, hising up her petticoats ...
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and
droned.
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The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
—The milk, sir!
—Come in, ma’am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s
elbow.
—That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to
God.
—To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be
sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the
locker.
—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak
frequently of the collector of prepuces.
—How much, sir? asked the old woman.
—A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into
the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She
poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she
had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger.
She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out.
Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a
witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the
squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew,
dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman,
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names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly
form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay
betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the
secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could
not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
—It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring
milk into their cups.
—Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
—If we could live on good food like that, he said to
her somewhat loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full
of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp,
eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust,
horsedung and consumptives’ spits.
—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
—I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.
—Look at that now, she said.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old
head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter,
her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will
shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her
woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s
likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that
now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
24 of 1305
—Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
—Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said
to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
—I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it.
Are you from the west, sir?
—I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
—He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we
ought to speak Irish in Ireland.
—Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m
ashamed I don’t speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a
grand language by them that knows.
—Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan.
Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch.
Would you like a cup, ma’am?
—No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the
ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
—Have you your bill? We had better pay her,
Mulligan, hadn’t we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
—Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it’s seven mornings a
pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence
25 of 1305
over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three
quarts is a shilling. That’s a shilling and one and two is two
and two, sir.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with
a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his
legs and began to search his trouser pockets.
—Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him,
smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring
faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a
florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:
—A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman,
saying:
—Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I
give.
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
—We’ll owe twopence, he said.
—Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time
enough. Good morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck
Mulligan’s tender chant:
26 of 1305
—Heart of my heart, were it more,
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your
school kip and bring us back some money. Today the
bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every
man this day will do his duty.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to
visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
—Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a
month.
—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said
as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a
scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
—I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you
will let me.
Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub.
Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.
27 of 1305
—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant
being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table
and said with warmth of tone:
—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
—Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to
Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old
creature came in.
—Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from
the holdfast of the hammock, said:
—I don’t know, I’m sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent
across to Stephen and said with coarse vigour:
—You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that
for?
—Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money.
From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It’s a
toss up, I think.
—I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and
then you come along with your lousy leer and your
gloomy jesuit jibes.
—I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
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Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on
Stephen’s arm.
—From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
—To tell you the God’s truth I think you’re right.
Damn all else they are good for. Why don’t you play them
as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of
his gown, saying resignedly:
—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
—There’s your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he
spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling
watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his
trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we’ll
simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and
green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very
well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp
black missile flew out of his talking hands.
—And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to
them from the doorway:
—Are you coming, you fellows?
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—I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards
the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I
suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and
gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
—And going forth he met Butterly.
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace,
followed them out and, as they went down the ladder,
pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the
huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
—Did you bring the key?
—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan
club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or
grasses.
—Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
—Do you pay rent for this tower?
—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
—To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over
his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said
at last:
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—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello
you call it?
—Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when
the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
—What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
—No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I’m not
equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has
made out to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me
first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly
the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:
—You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch,
could you?
—It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can
wait longer.
—You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it
some paradox?
—Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of
Wilde and paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by
algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather
and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
—What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen.
He himself?
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Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck
and, bending in loose laughter, said to Stephen’s ear:
—O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a
father!
—We’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to
Haines. And it is rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of
Dedalus, he said.
—I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they
followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me
somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
isn’t it?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards
Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant
Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning
between their gay attires.
—It’s a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to
halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm
and prudent. The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the
bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague
on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
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—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere,
he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son
striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling
face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open
happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn
all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a
doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat
quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish
voice:
—I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you
heard.
My mother’s a jew, my father’s a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.
So here’s to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
—If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine
He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the
wine
But have to drink water and wish it were plain
That i make when the wine becomes water
again.

33 of 1305
He tugged swiftly at Stephen’s ashplant in farewell and,
running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands
at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air,
and chanted:
—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I
said
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the
dead.
What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly
And Olivet’s breezy ... Goodbye, now,
goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot
hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly,
Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back
to them his brief birdsweet cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on
beside Stephen and said:
—We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather
blasphemous. I’m not a believer myself, that is to say. Still
his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn’t it?
What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
—O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
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—Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
—You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I
mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word.
Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
—There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me,
Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in
which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his
thumb and offered it.
—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put
it back in his sidepocket and took from his
waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too,
and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk
towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either
you believe or you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t
stomach that idea of a personal God. You don’t stand for
that, I suppose?
—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim
displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his
ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the
path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling,
35 of 1305
Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path.
They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He
wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his
salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it.
That was in his eyes.
—After all, Haines began ...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had
measured him was not all unkind.
—After all, I should think you are able to free yourself.
You are your own master, it seems to me.
—I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an
English and an Italian.
—Italian? Haines said.
A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
—And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for
odd jobs.
—Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
—The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his
colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic
church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of
tobacco before he spoke.
—I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An
Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in
36 of 1305
England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems
history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s
memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam
catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and
change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a
chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for
pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in
affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of
the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs.
A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and
the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and
Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of
the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s
terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius
who held that the Father was Himself His own Son.
Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery
to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all
them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church,
Michael’s host, who defend her ever in the hour of
conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
37 of 1305
—Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I
feel as one. I don’t want to see my country fall into the
hands of German jews either. That’s our national problem,
I’m afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching:
businessman, boatman.
—She’s making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay
with some disdain.
—There’s five fathoms out there, he said. It’ll be swept
up that way when the tide comes in about one. It’s nine
days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the
blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll
over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek.
Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his
unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man
clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly
frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
—Is the brother with you, Malachi?
—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found
a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.
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—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly
man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He
scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate
and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest
and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging
loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and,
glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously
with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.
—Seymour’s back in town, the young man said,
grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and
going in for the army.
—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
—Going over next week to stew. You know that red
Carlisle girl, Lily?
—Yes.
—Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father
is rotto with money.
—Is she up the pole?
—Better ask Seymour that.
—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and
stood up, saying tritely:
39 of 1305
—Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his
flapping shirt.
—My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the
Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to
where his clothes lay.
—Are you going in here, Malachi?
—Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the
water and reached the middle of the creek in two long
clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.
—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
—Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
—I’m going, Mulligan, he said.
—Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep
my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it
across his heaped clothes.
—And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing,
undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before
him, said solemnly:
40 of 1305
—He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
His plump body plunged.
—We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen
walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
—Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium.
Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum.
The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed
discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I
cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from
the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called
again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water,
round.
Usurper.
*****
92 of 1305
II
CALYPSO
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of
beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards,
a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs,
fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton
kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly
scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the
kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy
tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of
doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel
a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right.
She didn’t like her plate full. Right. He turned from the
tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the
fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of
tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a
leg of the table with tail on high.
—Mkgnao!
—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the
fire.
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The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly
round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over
my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black
form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white
button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes.
He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
—Milk for the pussens, he said.
—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say
better than we understand them. She understands all she
wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice
never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to
her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.
—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly.
Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid
pussens as the pussens.
Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to
like it.
—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.
She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes,
mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite
teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed
till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the
94 of 1305
dresser, took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for
him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it
slowly on the floor.
—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.
He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light
as she tipped three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it
true if you clip them they can’t mouse after. Why? They
shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in
the dark, perhaps.
He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No
good eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water.
Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at
Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a
pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She
lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their
tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing
she can eat? He glanced round him. No.
On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the
hall, paused by the bedroom door. She might like
something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the
morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.
He said softly in the bare hall:
—I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice say it he added:
95 of 1305
—You don’t want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
—Mn.
No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm
heavy sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass
quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled
really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any
little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for
it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it at the governor’s
auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old
Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the
ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough
to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.
His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled
heavy overcoat and his lost property office secondhand
waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of
officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated
legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s
high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather
headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.
On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the
latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it.
Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her.
She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor
96 of 1305
to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped
gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All
right till I come back anyhow.
He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose
cellarflap of number seventyfive. The sun was nearing the
steeple of George’s church. Be a warm day I fancy.
Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black
conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t
go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank
quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland’s
breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers
yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you
feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off
at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s
march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older
technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a
city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big
moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander
through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark
caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated
crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the
streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander
along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet
him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the
97 of 1305
mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A
shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on.
Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway.
She calls her children home in their dark language. High
wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet,
colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl
playing one of those instruments what do you call them:
dulcimers. I pass.
Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read:
in the track of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He
smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said about
the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun
rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the
bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey
touch that: homerule sun rising up in the north-west.
He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar
grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the
open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger,
teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end
of the city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n.
g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the
North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value
would go up like a shot.
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Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use
canvassing him for an ad. Still he knows his own business
best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning
against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the
aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon
Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up.
Do you know what I’m going to tell you? What’s that, Mr
O’Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they’d
only be an eight o’clock breakfast for the Japanese.
Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad
thing about poor Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.
Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting
through the doorway:
—Good day, Mr O’Rourke.
—Good day to you.
—Lovely weather, sir.
—’Tis all that.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded
curates from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old
man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out
as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the
competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross
Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the
drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is
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that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the
wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the
town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we’ll split
the job, see?
How much would that tot to off the porter in the
month? Say ten barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off.
O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph’s National
school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps
memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue
rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk.
Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve
Bloom.
He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the
hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifteen
multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind,
unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links,
packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in
tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs’
blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned
dish: the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter.
Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her
hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of
Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips.
100 of 1305
Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish.
New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms.
Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it,
by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each
whack.
The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had
snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat
there: like a stallfed heifer.
He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the
model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can
become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I
thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle
cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it
nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page
rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the
cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded
sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed
boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a
ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled
switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently,
bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest.
The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.
The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile,
wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace.
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—Now, my miss, he said.
She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick
wrist out.
—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence
change. For you, please?
Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk
behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams.
Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn
it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the
shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He
sighed down his nose: they never understand.
Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars
in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard
glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another: a
constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like
them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,
I’m lost in the wood.
—Threepence, please.
His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it
into a sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his
trousers’ pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles.
They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc,
into the till.
—Thank you, sir. Another time.
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A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He
withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another
time.
—Good morning, he said, moving away.
—Good morning, sir.
No sign. Gone. What matter?
He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely.
Agendath Netaim: planters’ company. To purchase waste
sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with
eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and
construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields
north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a
dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or
citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation.
Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name
entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can
pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments.
Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.
Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat.
Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning,
ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left
from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste
of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates.
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Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s
parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant
evenings we had then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice
to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the
nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet,
wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They
fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place:
Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a
flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar,
Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the
quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies
handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s
whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn’t see.
Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like
that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today.
Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in
heaven.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey.
Far.
No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic
lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the
earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal,
poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining
down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom.
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All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old.
Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag
crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the
neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the
earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born
everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more.
Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.
Desolation.
Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his
pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward.
Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age
crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I
am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong
side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s
exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick
houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation
is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North,
MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters
on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of
the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed
flesh. Yes, yes.
Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley
road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening
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footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair
on the wind.
Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped
and gathered them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened
heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion.
—Poldy!
Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and
walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled
head.
—Who are the letters for?
He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.
—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a
card to you. And a letter for you.
He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near
the curve of her knees.
—Do you want the blind up?
Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his
backward eye saw her glance at the letter and tuck it
under her pillow.
—That do? he asked, turning.
She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.
—She got the things, she said.
He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled
herself back slowly with a snug sigh.
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—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.
—The kettle is boiling, he said.
But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat,
tossed soiled linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the
foot of the bed.
As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:
—Poldy!
—What?
—Scald the teapot.
On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the
spout. He scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in
four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to let the
water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle,
crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the
lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the
kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too
much meat she won’t mouse. Say they won’t eat pork.
Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her
and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce.
Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from
the chipped eggcup.
Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page
and over. Thanks: new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel
picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls.
107 of 1305
The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup,
sham crown
Derby, smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she
was then. No, wait: four. I gave her the amberoid
necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper
in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.
O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.
You are my lookingglass from night to morning.
I’d rather have you without a farthing
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he
was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to
bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his
silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O,
look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we
laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she
was.
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over:
then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he
took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar,
spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb
hooked in the teapot handle.
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Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the
tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead.
—What a time you were! she said.
She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly,
an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her
bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her
nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The warmth of her
couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance
of the tea she poured.
A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the
dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten
the bedspread.
—Who was the letter from? he asked.
Bold hand. Marion.
—O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.
—What are you singing?
—La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love’s Old
Sweet Song.
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that
incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:
—What time is the funeral?
—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.
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Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg
of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted
grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
—No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat.
—It must have fell down, she said.
He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if
she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must
have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The
book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the
orangekeyed chamberpot.
—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a
word I wanted to ask you.
She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by
nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the
blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she
reached the word.
—Met him what? he asked.
—Here, she said. What does that mean?
He leaned downward and read near her polished
thumbnail.
—Metempsychosis?
—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?
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—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from
the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.
—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.
He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The
same young eyes. The first night after the charades.
Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby:
the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with
carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor
naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and
flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all.
Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the
other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we’ll break
our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they
metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That
a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul ...
—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in
love with the first fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he
has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow
sideways.
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Must get that Capel street library book renewed or
they’ll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation:
that’s the word.
—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in
another body after death, that we lived before. They call it
reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth
thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we
have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her
tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An
example would be better. An example?
The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with
the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in
art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her
with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the
frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked
nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived
then.
He turned the pages back.
—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks
called it. They used to believe you could be changed into
an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs,
for example.
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Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed
straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils.
—There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave
anything on the fire?
—The kidney! he cried suddenly.
He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and,
stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried
out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs
with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an
angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of
the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it
turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the
pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle
over it.
Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice
of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to
the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing
with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a
turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread,
sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What
was that about some young student and a picnic? He
creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he
chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and
raising it to his mouth.
113 of 1305
Dearest Papli
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It
suits me splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in
my new tam. I got mummy’s Iovely box of creams and am
writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the
photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and
Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz
yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in.
We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few
friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy
and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the
piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville
Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here
some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something
are big swells and he sings Boylan’s (I was on the pop of
writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. Tell
him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close
with fondest love
Your fond daughter, MILLY.
P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M.
Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too.
Her first birthday away from home. Separation.
Remember the summer morning she was born, running to
114 of 1305
knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old
woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the
world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t
live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would
be eleven now if he had lived.
His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse
bad writing. Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her
shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the bracelet.
Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He
sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after
piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still,
she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He
drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal.
Then he read the letter again: twice.
O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not?
No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in
any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs
running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now.
Vain: very.
He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen
window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her
cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk
too long. On the ERIN’S KING that day round the Kish.
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Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale
blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.
All dimpled cheeks and curls,
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his
trousers’ pockets, jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of
the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps, summer
evening, band,
Those girls, those girls,
Those lovely seaside girls.
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past.
Mrs Marion. Reading, lying back now, counting the
strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.
A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone,
increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move.
Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the
flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now.
Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.
Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her.
Wanted a dog to pass the time. Might take a trip down
there. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Six
116 of 1305
weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through
M’Coy.
The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the
meatstained paper, nosed at it and stalked to the door. She
looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out. Wait
before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the
fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her
ear with her back to the fire too.
He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his
bowels. He stood up, undoing the waistband of his
trousers. The cat mewed to him.
—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.
Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag
up the stairs to the landing.
A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes
knocking just as I’m.
In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits.
He folded it under his armpit, went to the door and
opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to
go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.
Listening, he heard her voice:
—Come, come, pussy. Come.
He went out through the backdoor into the garden:
stood to listen towards the next garden. No sound.
117 of 1305
Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the
garden. Fine morning.
He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint
growing by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet
runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole
place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil
like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is
this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings
are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the
cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes.
Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid gloves.
Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow
peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh
greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee
or bluebottle here Whitmonday.
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must
have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor.
Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand too full. Four
umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s
shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment.
Brown brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash
and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning.
Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James
Stephens, they say. O’Brien.
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Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is
it? Now, my miss. Enthusiast.
He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be
careful not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He
went in, bowing his head under the low lintel. Leaving
the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and
stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he
peered through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The
king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper,
turning its pages over on his bared knees. Something new
and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit:
Matcham’s Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy,
Playgoers’ Club, London. Payment at the rate of one
guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a
half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column
and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his
last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease
themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that
slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not
too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah!
Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so.
It did not move or touch him but it was something quick
119 of 1305
and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on,
seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly.
Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won the
laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in
hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read
and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly
Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of
three pounds, thirteen and six.
Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom.
Invent a story for some proverb. Which? Time I used to
try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike
dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her
nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her.
9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta
Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb?
9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on
the patent leather of her boot.
Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her
stockinged calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when
May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the hours. Explain
that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then
night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night.
Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan
well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good
120 of 1305
rich smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then.
Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The
mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on
her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering
into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t pan out somehow.
Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then:
black with daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then
golden, then grey, then black. Still, true to life also. Day:
then the night.
He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped
himself with it. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and
buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of
the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.
In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he
eyed carefully his black trousers: the ends, the knees, the
houghs of the knees. What time is the funeral? Better find
out in the paper.
A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells
of George’s church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
Heigho! Heigho!
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Quarter to. There again: the overtone following
through the air, third.
Poor Dignam!
*****
By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom
walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed
crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could have given that
address too. And past the sailors’ home. He turned from CYCLOPS
the morning noises of the quayside and walked through
Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled,
I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the
his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A
D. M. P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned
smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed
but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear
him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if
into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight
he smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life isn’t such a
of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony
bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home.
Batter only Joe Hynes.
Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be many there.
—Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see
He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of
that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his
Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols’
brush?
the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay
—Soot’s luck, says Joe. Who’s the old ballocks you
Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. Singing with
were talking to?
his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In the
—Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I’m on two minds
dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she
not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the
528 of 1305 thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders.
Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She’s passed. Then —What are you doing round those parts? says Joe.
and not till then. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor.
529 of 1305
Coming. Krandlkrankran. I’m sure it’s the burgund. Yes.
—Devil a much, says I. There’s a bloody big foxy thief
One, two. Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written. I have.
beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken
Pprrpffrrppffff.
lane—old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him—
Done.
lifted any God’s quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob
*****
a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hopof-
my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there
near Heytesbury street.
—Circumcised? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named
Geraghty. I’m hanging on to his taw now for the past
fortnight and I can’t get a penny out of him.
—That the lay you’re on now? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of
bad and doubtful debts. But that’s the most notorious
bloody robber you’d meet in a day’s walk and the face on
him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him,
says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you
round here again or if he does, says he, I’ll have him summonsed
up before the court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And
he after stuffing himself till he’s fit to burst. Jesus, I had to
laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my
teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys?
For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of
13 Saint Kevin’s parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay
530 of 1305
ward, merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and sold
and delivered to Michael E. Geraghty, esquire, of 29
Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward,
gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five
pounds avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and
no pence per pound avoirdupois and three stone
avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at threepence per
pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said
vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling
for value received which amount shall be paid by said
purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments every seven
calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and
the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or
pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said
purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the
sole and exclusive property of the said vendor to be
disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said
amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to
the said vendor in the manner herein set forth as this day
hereby agreed between the said vendor, his heirs,
successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said
purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the
other part.
—Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe.
531 of 1305
—Not taking anything between drinks, says I.
—What about paying our respects to our friend? says
Joe.
—Who? says I. Sure, he’s out in John of God’s off his
head, poor man.
—Drinking his own stuff? says Joe.
—Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.
—Come around to Barney Kiernan’s, says Joe. I want
to see the citizen.
—Barney mavourneen’s be it, says I. Anything strange
or wonderful, Joe?
—Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the
City Arms.
—-What was that, Joe? says I.
—Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth
disease. I want to give the citizen the hard word about it.
So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the
back of the courthouse talking of one thing or another.
Decent fellow Joe when he has it but sure like that he
never has it. Jesus, I couldn’t get over that bloody foxy
Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a
licence, says he.
In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy
Michan. There rises a watchtower beheld of men afar.
532 of 1305
There sleep the mighty dead as in life they slept, warriors
and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth
of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the
gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed
haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the
pollock, the mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens
of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be enumerated.
In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty
trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the
wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted
planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of
the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly
well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity to the
roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs
while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for
example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings,
drafts of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems
and playful insects. And heroes voyage from afar to woo
them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of
unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of
smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruahan’s land and of
Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle,
princes, the sons of kings.
533 of 1305
And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering
roof is seen by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in
barks built expressly for that purpose, and thither come all
herds and fatlings and firstfruits of that land for O’Connell
Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from
chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring foison
of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach,
pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes,
drums of figs, drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and
tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy, and trays of
onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and
custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red
green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated
apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries,
pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and
raspberries from their canes.
I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out
here, Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber!
And by that way wend the herds innumerable of
bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs
and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares
and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and
Cuffe’s prime springers and culls and sowpigs and
baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly
534 of 1305
distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks
of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated
milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling,
cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling,
grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and
heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush
and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of
Thomond, from the M’Gillicuddy’s reeks the inaccessible
and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle
declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders
distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter
and rennets of cheese and farmer’s firkins and targets of
lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great
hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.
So we turned into Barney Kiernan’s and there, sure
enough, was the citizen up in the corner having a great
confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel,
Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop
in the way of drink.
—There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his
cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the
cause.
The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would
give you the creeps. Be a corporal work of mercy if
535 of 1305
someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I’m told
for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a
constabulary man in Santry that came round one time
with a blue paper about a licence.
—Stand and deliver, says he.
—That’s all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.
—Pass, friends, says he.
Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:
—What’s your opinion of the times?
Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob,
Joe was equal to the occasion.
—I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his
hand down his fork.
So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he
says:
—Foreign wars is the cause of it.
And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:
—It’s the Russians wish to tyrannise.
—Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I.
I’ve a thirst on me I wouldn’t sell for half a crown.
—Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
—Wine of the country, says he.
—What’s yours? says Joe.
—Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.
536 of 1305
—Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how’s the old
heart, citizen? says he.
—Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we
going to win? Eh?
And with that he took the bloody old towser by the
scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.
The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a
round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested
stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled
shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded
deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged
ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder
he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous
knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body
wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly
hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse
(Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which
bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such
capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the
fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in
which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were
of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful
current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the
profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance
537 of 1305
the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart
thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of
the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to
vibrate and tremble.
He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed
oxhide reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was
bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and
rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly
stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in
high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet
being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the
windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of
seastones which jangled at every movement of his
portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet
striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and
heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles,
Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi,
Art MacMurragh, Shane O’Neill, Father John Murphy,
Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O’Donnell, Red
Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O’Growney, Michael
Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M’Cracken, Goliath,
Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the
Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott,
Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S.
538 of 1305
Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald
Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the
Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The
Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in
the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t, Benjamin
Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan,
Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus,
sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes,
Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the
Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W.
Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg,
Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the
first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold
Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig
Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the
Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth,
Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley,
Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama
Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the
Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle,
Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don Philip
O’Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite
rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of
the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he
539 of 1305
was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by
hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master
repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a
mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.
So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was
standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I
saw him land out a quid O, as true as I’m telling you. A
goodlooking sovereign.
—And there’s more where that came from, says he.
—Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.
—Sweat of my brow, says Joe. ‘Twas the prudent
member gave me the wheeze.
—I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by
Pill lane and Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up
all the guts of the fish.
Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable
armour? O’Bloom, the son of Rory: it is he. Impervious
to fear is Rory’s son: he of the prudent soul.
—For the old woman of Prince’s street, says the
citizen, the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on
the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag, says
he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent, if you
please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman’s friend.
540 of 1305
Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland
Independent, and I’ll thank you and the marriages.
And he starts reading them out:
—Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of
Iffley, Saint Anne’s on Sea: the wife of William T
Redmayne of a son. How’s that, eh? Wright and Flint,
Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa
and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road,
Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s,
Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of
Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane,
London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart
disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow ...
—I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.
—Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of
the admiralty: Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh,
June 12, at 35 Canning street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen.
How’s that for a national press, eh, my brown son! How’s
that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?
—Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks
be to God they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.
—I will, says he, honourable person.
—Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
541 of 1305
Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the
want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the
pit of my stomach with a click.
And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike
messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a
comely youth and behind him there passed an elder of
noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of
law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage,
fairest of her race.
Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid
behind Barney’s snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And
who was sitting up there in the corner that I hadn’t seen
snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob Doran. I didn’t
know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the
door. And begob what was it only that bloody old
pantaloon Denis Breen in his bathslippers with two bloody
big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot
after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a
poodle. I thought Alf would split.
—Look at him, says he. Breen. He’s traipsing all round
Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with U. p: up
on it to take a li ...
And he doubled up.
—Take a what? says I.
542 of 1305
—Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.
—O hell! says I.
The bloody mongrel began to growl that’d put the fear
of God in you seeing something was up but the citizen
gave him a kick in the ribs.
—Bi i dho husht, says he.
—Who? says Joe.
—Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton’s and
then he went round to Collis and Ward’s and then Tom
Rochford met him and sent him round to the subsheriff’s
for a lark. O God, I’ve a pain laughing. U. p: up. The
long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now
the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green street to
look for a G man.
—When is long John going to hang that fellow in
Mountjoy? says Joe.
—Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf
Bergan?
—Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here,
Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand
pounds. You should have seen long John’s eye. U. p ...
And he started laughing.
—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that
Bergan?
543 of 1305
—Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.
Terence O’Ryan heard him and straightway brought
him a crystal cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the
noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew
ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of
deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the
hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they
mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred
fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those
cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the
manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the
crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in
beauty akin to the immortals.
But he, the young chief of the O’Bergan’s, could ill
brook to be outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor
with gracious gesture a testoon of costliest bronze.
Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the
image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of
Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent
Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond
the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India,
even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the
544 of 1305
wellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising
of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark,
the ruddy and the ethiop.
—What’s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen,
prowling up and down outside?
—What’s that? says Joe.
—Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino.
Talking about hanging, I’ll show you something you
never saw. Hangmen’s letters. Look at here.
So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes
out of his pocket.
—Are you codding? says I.
—Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.
So Joe took up the letters.
—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.
So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob’s a
queer chap when the porter’s up in him so says I just to
make talk:
—How’s Willy Murray those times, Alf?
—I don’t know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel
street with Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that
...
—You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With
who?
545 of 1305
—With Dignam, says Alf.
—Is it Paddy? says Joe.
—Yes, says Alf. Why?
—Don’t you know he’s dead? says Joe.
—Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf.
—Ay, says Joe.
—Sure I’m after seeing him not five minutes ago, says
Alf, as plain as a pikestaff.
—Who’s dead? says Bob Doran.
—You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us
and harm.
—What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five ... What? ...
And Willy Murray with him, the two of them there near
whatdoyoucallhim’s ... What? Dignam dead?
—What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who’s talking
about ...?
—Dead! says Alf. He’s no more dead than you are.
—Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying
him this morning anyhow.
—Paddy? says Alf.
—Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be
merciful to him.
—Good Christ! says Alf.
Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.
546 of 1305
In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and
when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper
quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light
became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric
double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of
jivic rays from the crown of the head and face.
Communication was effected through the pituitary body
and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays
emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus.
Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the
heavenworld he stated that he was now on the path of pr l
ya or return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of
certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In
reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great
divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a
glass darkly but that those who had passed over had
summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to
them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our
experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from
more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes
were equipped with every modern home comfort such as
talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest
adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest
nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was
547 of 1305
brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any
message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the
wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it
was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were
out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has
power. It was then queried whether there were any special
desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We
greet you, friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C. K.
doesn’t pile it on. It was ascertained that the reference was
to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H. J.
O’Neill’s popular funeral establishment, a personal friend
of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying
out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he
requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that
the other boot which he had been looking for was at
present under the commode in the return room and that
the pair should be sent to Cullen’s to be soled only as the
heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly
perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and
earnestly requested that his desire should be made known.
Assurances were given that the matter would be
attended to and it was intimated that this had given
satisfaction.
548 of 1305
He is gone from mortal haunts: O’Dignam, sun of our
morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the
beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, O
ocean, with your whirlwind.
—There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.
—Who? says I.
—Bloom, says he. He’s on point duty up and down
there for the last ten minutes.
And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then
slidder off again.
Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.
—Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.
And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his
poll, lowest blackguard in Dublin when he’s under the
influence:
—Who said Christ is good?
—I beg your parsnips, says Alf.
—Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away
poor little Willy Dignam?
—Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He’s over all
his troubles.
But Bob Doran shouts out of him.
—He’s a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little
Willy Dignam.
549 of 1305
Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep
quiet, that they didn’t want that kind of talk in a
respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran starts doing
the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you’re there.
—The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest
character.
The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his
bloody hat. Fitter for him go home to the little
sleepwalking bitch he married, Mooney, the bumbailiff’s
daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street, that used
to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me
that was stopping there at two in the morning without a
stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair
field and no favour.
—The noblest, the truest, says he. And he’s gone, poor
little Willy, poor little Paddy Dignam.
And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the
extinction of that beam of heaven.
Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that
was skeezing round the door.
—Come in, come on, he won’t eat you, says the
citizen.
So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and
he asks Terry was Martin Cunningham there.
550 of 1305
—O, Christ M’Keown, says Joe, reading one of the
letters. Listen to this, will you?
And he starts reading out one.
7 Hunter Street, Liverpool.
To the High Sheriff of Dublin, Dublin.
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned
painful case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of
Febuary 1900 and i hanged ...
—Show us, Joe, says I.
— ... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in
Pentonville prison and i was assistant when ...
—Jesus, says I.
— ... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith ...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
—Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the
noose once in he can’t get out hoping to be favoured i remain,
honoured sir, my terms is five ginnees.
H. RUMBOLD,
MASTER BARBER.
—And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the
citizen.
—And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here,
says he, take them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello,
Bloom, says he, what will you have?
551 of 1305
So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying
he wouldn’t and he couldn’t and excuse him no offence
and all to that and then he said well he’d just take a cigar.
Gob, he’s a prudent member and no mistake.
—Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a
mourning card with a black border round it.
—They’re all barbers, says he, from the black country
that would hang their own fathers for five quid down and
travelling expenses.
And he was telling us there’s two fellows waiting below
to pull his heels down when he gets the drop and choke
him properly and then they chop up the rope after and sell
the bits for a few bob a skull.
In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the
razor. Their deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they
lead to Erebus whatsoever wight hath done a deed of
blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith the Lord.
So they started talking about capital punishment and of
course Bloom comes out with the why and the wherefore
and all the codology of the business and the old dog
smelling him all the time I’m told those jewies does have a
sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I
552 of 1305
don’t know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so
on.
—There’s one thing it hasn’t a deterrent effect on, says
Alf.
—What’s that? says Joe.
—The poor bugger’s tool that’s being hanged, says Alf.
—That so? says Joe.
—God’s truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head
warder that was in
Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the
invincible. He told me when they cut him down after the
drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker.
—Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone
said.
—That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It’s
only a natural phenomenon, don’t you see, because on
account of the ...
And then he starts with his jawbreakers about
phenomenon and science and this phenomenon and the
other phenomenon.
The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold
Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that
the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and
consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to
553 of 1305
the best approved tradition of medical science, be
calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a
violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the
genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the
corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to
instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of
the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ
resulting in the phenomenon which has been
denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and
outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per
diminutionem capitis.
So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink
of the word and he starts gassing out of him about the
invincibles and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven
and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him
about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and
transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a
new Ireland and new this, that and the other. Talking
about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he
ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all
round the place and scratching his scabs. And round he
goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one
sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob Doran
starts doing the bloody fool with him:
554 of 1305
—Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old
doggy! Give the paw here! Give us the paw!
Arrah, bloody end to the paw he’d paw and Alf trying
to keep him from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of
the bloody old dog and he talking all kinds of drivel about
training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent
dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a
few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs’ tin he
told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old
boots and his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for
more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about
the point, the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond
on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and die for your
country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and
she’s far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his
knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face.
Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old
phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time
they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser Burke told
me there was an old one there with a cracked
loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the
soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bézique to
come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not
555 of 1305
eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always
thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk.
And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by
the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him
home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to
teach him the evils of alcohol and by herrings, if the three
women didn’t near roast him, it’s a queer story, the old
one, Bloom’s wife and Mrs O’Dowd that kept the hotel.
Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off
chewing the fat. And Bloom with his but don’t you see? and
but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the lout
I’m told was in Power’s after, the blender’s, round in
Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the
week after drinking his way through all the samples in the
bloody establishment. Phenomenon!
—The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up
his pintglass and glaring at Bloom.
—Ay, ay, says Joe.
—You don’t grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean
is ...
—Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The
friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before
us.
556 of 1305
The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the
belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled
unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled
the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums
punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance.
The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of
lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the
artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the
already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down
from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared
heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the
lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A
posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the
Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the
vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band
whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering
on their blackdraped instruments the matchless melody
endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza’s plaintive
muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered
charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our
country cousins of whom there were large contingents.
Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite
Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The
Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth
557 of 1305
provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring
trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy
element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real
Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their
hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female
Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows
overlooking the scene were delighted with this
unexpected addition to the day’s entertainment and a
word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the Poor for
their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and
motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The
viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown
ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most
favourable positions on the grandstand while the
picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the
Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly
opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of
Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the
semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to
his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur
Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire
Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von
Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága
Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count
558 of 1305
Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat
Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y
Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria,
Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf
Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan
Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr
Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr
Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli,
Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumso
rdinaryprivatdocent- generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor
Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without
exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible
heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity
which they had been called upon to witness. An animated
altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F.
O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March
was the correct date of the birth of Ireland’s patron saint.
In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars,
boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers,
umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of
pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely
exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden,
summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly
restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed
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the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally
honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted
ninefooter’s suggestion at once appealed to all and was
unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily
congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were
bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having
been extricated from underneath the presidential armchair,
it was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi
that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets
had been abstracted by him during the affray from the
pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing
them to their senses. The objects (which included several
hundred ladies’ and gentlemen’s gold and silver watches)
were promptly restored to their rightful owners and
general harmony reigned supreme.
Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the
scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite
flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence
by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have
tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking yet
withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the
worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of
acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies
waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the
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even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously
in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla
kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of
the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling
those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch
Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was
easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o’clock.
The signal for prayer was then promptly given by
megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the
commendatore’s patriarchal sombrero, which has been in
the possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi,
being removed by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr
Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last
comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about
to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a
pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and
offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of
supplication. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of
the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon
pot with two circular perforated apertures through which
his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal
he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it
upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid
succession a flock of sheep which had been provided by
561 of 1305
the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a
handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged
the quartering knife, the various finely tempered
disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the
worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and
Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of
the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc
when successfully extracted and two commodious
milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of
the most precious victim. The housesteward of the
amalgamated cats’ and dogs’ home was in attendance to
convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent
institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers
and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety,
delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been
considerately provided by the authorities for the
consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was
in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the
keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end
but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose
nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish
(immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided
in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and
indigent roomkeepers’ association as a token of his regard
562 of 1305
and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were
reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way
through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung
herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about
to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded
her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly
Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian
name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of
his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted
her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the
salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his
memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who
went to his death with a song on his lips as if he were but
going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She brought
back to his recollection the happy days of blissful
childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when
they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young
and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed
heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable pastor,
joining in the general merriment. That monster audience
simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome
with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh
torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the
vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost core,
563 of 1305
broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being
the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of
the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary,
were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe
to say that there was not a dry eye in that record
assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a
handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry
towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his
visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the
hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name
the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the
audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the
occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a
timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of
emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the
bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured
names in Albion’s history) placed on the finger of his
blushing fiancée an expensive engagement ring with
emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the
excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the ster
provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell
ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad
occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of
sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could
564 of 1305
not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed
gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard,
by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his
immediate entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering
undertone:
—God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding
tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it
does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub
what’s waiting for me down Limehouse way.
So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish
language and the corporation meeting and all to that and
the shoneens that can’t speak their own language and Joe
chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and
Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump
that he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic
league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of
Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he’d let
you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord
would call him before you’d ever see the froth of his pint.
And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their
musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up
on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was
a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out
of him in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about
565 of 1305
with temperance beverages and selling medals and oranges
and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
entertainment, don’t be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland
free. And then an old fellow starts blowing into his
bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling their feet to the tune
the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having an
eye around that there was no goings on with the females,
hitting below the belt.
So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the
tin was empty starts mousing around by Joe and me. I’d
train him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give
him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn’t
blind him.
—Afraid he’ll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.
—No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.
So he calls the old dog over.
—What’s on you, Garry? says he.
Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him
in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer,
like a duet in the opera. Such growling you never heard as
they let off between them. Someone that has nothing
better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the
papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that.
Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the
566 of 1305
drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his
jaws.
All those who are interested in the spread of human
culture among the lower animals (and their name is
legion) should make a point of not missing the really
marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous
old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the
sobriquet of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his
large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The
exhibition, which is the result of years of training by
kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system,
comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of
verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses
shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone unturned in his
efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has
found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to
the ranns of ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so
much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer
who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym
of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving
world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in
an interesting communication published by an evening
contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note
which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous
567 of 1305
Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a
more modern lyrist at present very much in the public
eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into
English by an eminent scholar whose name for the
moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we
believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather
more than an indication. The metrical system of the
canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and
isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more
complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the
spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that
the effect is greatly increased if Owen’s verse be spoken
somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of
suppressed rancour.
The curse of my curses
Seven days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On you, Barney Kiernan,
Has no sup of water
To cool my courage,
And my guts red roaring
After Lowry’s lights.
568 of 1305
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and,
gob, you could hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe
asked him would he have another.
—I will, says he, a chara, to show there’s no ill feeling.
Gob, he’s not as green as he’s cabbagelooking. Arsing
around from one pub to another, leaving it to your own
honour, with old Giltrap’s dog and getting fed up by the
ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and
beast. And says Joe:
—Could you make a hole in another pint?
—Could a swim duck? says I.
—Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won’t
have anything in the way of liquid refreshment? says he.
—Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just
wanted to meet Martin Cunningham, don’t you see, about
this insurance of poor Dignam’s. Martin asked me to go to
the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn’t serve any
notice of the assignment on the company at the time and
nominally under the act the mortgagee can’t recover on
the policy.
—Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that’s a good one if
old Shylock is landed. So the wife comes out top dog,
what?
569 of 1305
—Well, that’s a point, says Bloom, for the wife’s
admirers.
—Whose admirers? says Joe.
—The wife’s advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
Then he starts all confused mucking it up about
mortgagor under the act like the lord chancellor giving it
out on the bench and for the benefit of the wife and that a
trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed
Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow
contested the mortgagee’s right till he near had the head of
me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was
bloody safe he wasn’t run in himself under the act that
time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in
court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal
Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you’re there. O,
commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged
Hungarian robbery.
So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to
tell Mrs Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was
very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that he said and
everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer,
a finer than poor little Willy that’s dead to tell her.
Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom’s hand
570 of 1305
doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother.
You’re a rogue and I’m another.
—Let me, said he, so far presume upon our
acquaintance which, however slight it may appear if
judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope
and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request
of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the
limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the
excuse for my boldness.
—No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the
motives which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge
the office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection
that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of
your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness
of the cup.
—Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The
goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you
better than my inadequate words the expressions which
are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy,
were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even
of speech.
And off with him and out trying to walk straight.
Boosed at five o’clock. Night he was near being lagged
only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the
571 of 1305
world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time,
fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking
porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for
the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic
religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he
was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new
testament, and the old testament, and hugging and
smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing,
picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the
porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching
laughing at one another. How is your testament? Have you
got an old testament? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell
you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little
concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle
of the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and
her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney’s
sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms
to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told
him if he didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus, he’d kick the shite
out of him.
So Terry brought the three pints.
—Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
—Slan leat, says he.
—Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
572 of 1305
Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler
already. Want a small fortune to keep him in drinks.
—Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty,
Alf? says Joe.
—Friend of yours, says Alf.
—Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
—I won’t mention any names, says Alf.
—I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting
now with William Field, M. P., the cattle traders.
—Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano,
the darling of all countries and the idol of his own.
So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and
mouth disease and the cattle traders and taking action in
the matter and the citizen sending them all to the
rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for
the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the
guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up
one time in a knacker’s yard. Walking about with his
book and pencil here’s my head and my heels are coming
till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip
to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother
how to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling me in the
hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears some times with
Mrs O’Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of
573 of 1305
fat all over her. Couldn’t loosen her farting strings but old
cod’s eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do
it. What’s your programme today? Ay. Humane methods.
Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the
best known remedy that doesn’t cause pain to the animal
and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he’d have a
soft hand under a hen.
Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen.
She lays eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad.
Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then comes good uncle Leo.
He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg.
Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
—Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over
tonight to London to ask about it on the floor of the
house of commons.
—Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I
wanted to see him, as it happens.
—Well, he’s going off by the mailboat, says Joe,
tonight.
—That’s too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly.
Perhaps only Mr Field is going. I couldn’t phone. No.
You’re sure?
—Nannan’s going too, says Joe. The league told him to
ask a question tomorrow about the commissioner of police
574 of 1305
forbidding Irish games in the park. What do you think of
that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.
Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out
of the question of my honourable friend, the member for
Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman
whether the government has issued orders that these
animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is
forthcoming as to their pathological condition?
Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members
are already in possession of the evidence produced before a
committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add
anything to that. The answer to the honourable member’s
question is in the affirmative.
Mr Orelli O’Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar
orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who
dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park?
Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.
Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable
gentleman’s famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the
policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!)
Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.
Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don’t hesitate to
shoot.
(Ironical opposition cheers.)
575 of 1305
The speaker: Order! Order!
(The house rises. Cheers.)
—There’s the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic
sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got
away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at
putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best
throw, citizen?
—Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest.
There was a time I was as good as the next fellow
anyhow.
—Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody
sight better.
—Is that really a fact? says Alf.
—Yes, says Bloom. That’s well known. Did you not
know that?
So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games
the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the
stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once
again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his
say too about if a fellow had a rower’s heart violent
exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took
up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom:
Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That’s a straw.
576 of 1305
Declare to my aunt he’d talk about it for an hour so he
would and talk steady.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient
hall of Brian O’ciarnain’s in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under
the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of
ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical
culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient
Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the
race. The venerable president of the noble order was in
the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After
an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent
oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most
interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high
standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the
revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient
Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected
worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph
M’Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the
resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes,
practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as
calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength
and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L.
Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and
hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman
577 of 1305
brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated
requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper
house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the
immortal Thomas Osborne Davis’ evergreen verses
(happily too familiar to need recalling here) A nation once
again in the execution of which the veteran patriot
champion may be said without fear of contradiction to
have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi
was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were
heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured
anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb
highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly
enhanced his already international reputation, was
vociferously applauded by the large audience among
which were to be noticed many prominent members of
the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar
and the other learned professions. The proceedings then
terminated.
Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William
Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.;
the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C.
C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O.
S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr.
Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.;
578 of 1305
the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.;
the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William
Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T.
Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A.
Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr
M’Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the
very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.;
the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J.
Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke,
etc., etc.
—Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at
that Keogh-Bennett match?
—No, says Joe.
—I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it,
says Alf.
—Who? Blazes? says Joe.
And says Bloom:
—What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility
and training the eye.
—Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on
the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time.
—We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son.
We know what put English gold in his pocket.
—-True for you, says Joe.
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And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the
circulation of the blood, asking Alf:
—Now, don’t you think, Bergan?
—Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan
and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the
father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up
to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him
one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made
him puke what he never ate.
It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and
Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of
fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of
poundage, Dublin’s pet lamb made up for it by superlative
skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a
gruelling for both champions. The welterweight
sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the
previous mixup during which Keogh had been
receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting
in some neat work on the pet’s nose, and Myler came on
looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off
with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator
retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of
Bennett’s jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted
him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one.
580 of 1305
The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy
and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier
man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman,
whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where
he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell
went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of
knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to
a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers
and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice
cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was
tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk
exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of
the military man brought blood freely from his opponent’s
mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and
landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett’s stomach, flooring
him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense
expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out
when Bennett’s second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the
towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the
frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the
ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I
hear he’s running a concert tour now up in the north.
—He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?
581 of 1305
—Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That’s quite true. Yes, a
kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday.
—Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.
—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it
will be a success too.
He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.
Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the
milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s
chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour.
Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the
same horses twice over to the government to fight the
Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water
rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan.
You whatwhat? That’s the bucko that’ll organise her, take
my tip. ‘Twixt me and you Caddareesh.
Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter
of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where
loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda
knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The
chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful
bosoms.
And lo, there entered one of the clan of the
O’Molloy’s, a comely hero of white face yet withal
somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel learned in the law,
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and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of
Lambert.
—Hello, Ned.
—Hello, Alf.
—Hello, Jack.
—Hello, Joe.
—God save you, says the citizen.
—Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?
—Half one, says Ned.
So J. J. ordered the drinks.
—Were you round at the court? says Joe.
—Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.
—Hope so, says Ned.
Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the
grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile.
With his name in Stubbs’s. Playing cards, hobnobbing
with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking
fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders.
Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street
where no-one would know him in the private office
when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the
pop. What’s your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done
says I. Gob, he’ll come home by weeping cross one of
those days, I’m thinking.
583 of 1305
—Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there?
says Alf. U. p: up.
—Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.
—Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to
address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him
telling him to get the handwriting examined first.
—Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I’d
give anything to hear him before a judge and jury.
—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy
Johnson.
—Me? says Alf. Don’t cast your nasturtiums on my
character.
—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be
taken down in evidence against you.
—Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies
that he is not compos mentis. U. p: up.
—Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know
that he’s balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that
some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn.
—Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to
an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.
—Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.
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—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I
mean his wife.
—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman
marries a half and half.
—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he ...
—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s
neither fish nor flesh.
—Nor good red herring, says Joe.
—That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if
you know what that is.
Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom
explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the
wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool.
Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody
povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out
tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her
nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of
his old fellow’s was pewopener to the pope. Picture of
him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney’s moustaches,
the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal
Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to
Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair
back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he
585 of 1305
covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to
the world.
—And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It
was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase
Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie.
Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion?
Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even
do that much itself.
—Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.
—Good health, Ned, says J. J.
—-There he is again, says Joe.
—Where? says Alf.
And begob there he was passing the door with his
books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny
Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past,
talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a
secondhand coffin.
—How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.
—Remanded, says J. J.
One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the
name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro,
put an ad in the papers saying he’d give a passage to
Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in
the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney.
586 of 1305
What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the
county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling
us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something
weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing
by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.
—Who tried the case? says Joe.
—Recorder, says Ned.
—Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up
to the two eyes.
—Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of
woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of
kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve in tears on the bench.
—Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t
clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little
Gumley that’s minding stones, for the corporation there
near Butt bridge.
And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to
cry:
—A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking
man! How many children? Ten, did you say?
—Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.
—And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave
the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for
payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask
587 of 1305
me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious
man! I dismiss the case.
And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the
oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of
the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies,
the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to
pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of
law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber,
gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a
jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the
claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the
matter of the will propounded and final testamentary
disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late
lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus
Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another.
And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir
Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the
hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the brehons
at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden
in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat
with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar,
for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the
tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of
Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus
588 of 1305
and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of
the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the
tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all
twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by
Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try
and true deliverance make in the issue joined between
their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar
and true verdict give according to the evidence so help
them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats,
those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him
Who is from everlasting that they would do His
rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led
forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds
of justice had apprehended in consequence of information
received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would
take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge
against him for he was a malefactor.
—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over
here to Ireland filling the country with bugs.
So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking
with Joe, telling him he needn’t trouble about that little
matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr
Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by
that he’d do the devil and all.
589 of 1305
—Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement
you must have repetition. That’s the whole secret.
—Rely on me, says Joe.
—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor
of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house.
—O, I’m sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom.
It’s just that Keyes, you see.
—Consider that done, says Joe.
—Very kind of you, says Bloom.
—The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We
let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress
and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here.
—Decree nisi, says J. J.
And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested
in nothing, a spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel,
and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his
feet looking up to know who to bite and when.
—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s
the cause of all our misfortunes.
—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the
Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her
warpaint.
—Give us a squint at her, says I.
590 of 1305
And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures
Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging
your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman
W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but
faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers
misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her
tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his
peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick
of the loop with officer Taylor.
—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!
—There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of
corned beef off of that one, what?
So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan
with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast.
—Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the
scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at
their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language?
O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made
obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all
Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how
that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of
the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after
due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had
taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it
591 of 1305
might be, bring once more into honour among mortal
men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.
—It’s on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the
bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois.
So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story
was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the
Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the telescope and
drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and
Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration
and their colonies and their civilisation.
—Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To
hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light
sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores’ gets!
No music and no art and no literature worthy of the
name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us.
Tonguetied sons of bastards’ ghosts.
—The European family, says J. J. ...
—They’re not European, says the citizen. I was in
Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn’t see a
trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe
except in a cabinet d’aisance.
And says John Wyse:
—Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:
592 of 1305
—Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion!
He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny
strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and,
uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the
undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes,
rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as
the deathless gods.
—What’s up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look
like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.
—Gold cup, says he.
—Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.
—Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank
outsider. And the rest nowhere.
—And Bass’s mare? says Terry.
—Still running, says he. We’re all in a cart. Boylan
plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady
friend.
—I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel
that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden’s.
—Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an
outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit, and
talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.
So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see
if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur
593 of 1305
after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old
Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.
—Not there, my child, says he.
—Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She’d have won the
money only for the other dog.
And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history
with Bloom sticking in an odd word.
—Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in
others’ eyes but they can’t see the beam in their own.
—Raimeis, says the citizen. There’s no-one as blind as
the fellow that won’t see, if you know what that means.
Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be
here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our
potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And
our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal
and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim
and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint
glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin
that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk
and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the
Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the
whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that
came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now
grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian
594 of 1305
purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read
Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine,
peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second
to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies,
with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties
for the right to fish in our waters. What do the
yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our
ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon
they won’t deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog
to make us all die of consumption?
—As treeless as Portugal we’ll be soon, says John Wyse,
or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to
reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer
family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord
Castletown’s ...
—Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway
and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and
an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future
men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.
—Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.
The fashionable international world attended EN
MASSE this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier
Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish
National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley.
595 of 1305
Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll
Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss
Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan
Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper,
Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche
Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss
Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace
Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the
Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs
Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana
Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and
Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the
ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given
away by her father, the M’Conifer of the Glands, looked
exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green
mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming
grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished
with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme
being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn
bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and
Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very
becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of
plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and
repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form
596 of 1305
of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor
presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in
addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass,
played a new and striking arrangement of Woodman, spare
that tree at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the
church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the
happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of
hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod,
hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and
Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon
in the Black Forest.
—And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We
had our trade with Spain and the French and with the
Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale
in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.
—And will again, says Joe.
—And with the help of the holy mother of God we
will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours
that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale,
Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry,
Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with
a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan
O’Reillys and the O’Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of
Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles

597 of 1305
the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first
Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own
flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor’s harps, no,
the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond
and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three
sons of Milesius.
And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All
wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have
long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go
down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude
in Shanagolden where he daren’t show his nose with the
Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through
him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.
—Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you
have?
—An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate
the occasion.
—Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up.
Terry! Are you asleep?
—Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of
Allsop. Right, sir.
Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for
spicy bits instead of attending to the general public.
Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody
598 of 1305
skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down
like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in
Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and
they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue
out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown
him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to
make sure of their job.
—But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that
keeps our foes at bay?
—I’ll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon
earth it is. Read the revelations that’s going on in the
papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth.
A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One.
So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and
about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn
up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible
to witness punishment and a young lad brought out,
howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend
of a gun.
—A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that
old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern
God’s Englishman calls it caning on the breech.
And says John Wyse:
599 of 1305
—’Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in
the observance.
Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along
with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody
backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder.
—That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen,
that bosses the earth.
The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only
hereditary chamber on the face of God’s earth and their
land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball
barons. That’s the great empire they boast about of
drudges and whipped serfs.
—On which the sun never rises, says Joe.
—And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe
it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it.
They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of
hell upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who
was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy,
suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and
curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose
again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his
beamend till further orders whence he shall come to
drudge for a living and be paid.
600 of 1305
—But, says Bloom, isn’t discipline the same
everywhere. I mean wouldn’t it be the same here if you
put force against force?
Didn’t I tell you? As true as I’m drinking this porter if
he was at his last gasp he’d try to downface you that dying
was living.
—We’ll put force against force, says the citizen. We
have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven
out of house and home in the black 47. Their mudcabins
and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the
batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the
whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in
Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent
us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation
at home while the land was full of crops that the British
hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove
out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died
in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the
free remember the land of bondage. And they will come
again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of
Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.
—Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was ...
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—We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says
Ned. Since the poor old woman told us that the French
were on the sea and landed at Killala.
—Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts
that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed
us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We
gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese.
Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O’Donnell, duke of
Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was
fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for
it?
—The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters!
Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted
fart to Ireland. Aren’t they trying to make an Entente
cordiale now at Tay Pay’s dinnerparty with perfidious
Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were.
—Conspuez les Français, says Lenehan, nobbling his
beer.
—And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says
Joe, haven’t we had enough of those sausageeating bastards
on the throne from George the elector down to the
German lad and the flatulent old bitch that’s dead?
Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that
about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in
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her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her
jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up
body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by
the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about Ehren
on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper.
—Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker
now.
—Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There’s a bloody
sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward
Guelph-Wettin!
—And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys,
the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in
Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty’s racing colours and
sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The
earl of Dublin, no less.
—They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode
himself, says little Alf.
And says J. J.:
—Considerations of space influenced their lordships’
decision.
—Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.
—Yes, sir, says he. I will.
—You? says Joe.
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—Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow
never grow less.
—Repeat that dose, says Joe.
Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he
quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on
him and his old plumeyes rolling about.
—Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is
full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations.
—But do you know what a nation means? says John
Wyse.
—Yes, says Bloom.
—What is it? says John Wyse.
—A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people
living in the same place.
—By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a
nation for I’m living in the same place for the past five
years.
So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says
he, trying to muck out of it:
—Or also living in different places.
—That covers my case, says Joe.
—What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.
—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.
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The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his
gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right
in the corner.
—After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his
handkerchief to swab himself dry.
—Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your
right hand and repeat after me the following words.
The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient
Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and
Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of
Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth
prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary
beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one
can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn
presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical
symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far
nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in
passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from
Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory
field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs
and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones,
are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as
when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic
fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides.
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Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of
Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve
Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh
Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and
Company (Limited), Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of
Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick
Dun’s hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch’s
castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at
Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids,
Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury’s
Hotel, S. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth
college refectory, Curley’s hole, the three birthplaces of
the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog
of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal’s Cave—all
these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered
more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have
passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.
—Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?
—That’s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead
policeman.
—And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated
and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very
instant.
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Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old
cigar.
—Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted.
Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment,
says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco
like slaves or cattle.
—Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the
citizen.
—I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom.
—Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with
force like men.
That’s an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed
bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a
gun. Gob, he’d adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he
only had a nurse’s apron on him. And then he collapses all
of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a
wet rag.
—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all
that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred.
And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that
that is really life.
—What? says Alf.
—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I
must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the
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court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just
say I’ll be back in a second. Just a moment.
Who’s hindering you? And off he pops like greased
lightning.
—A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen.
Universal love.
—Well, says John Wyse. Isn’t that what we’re told.
Love your neighbour.
—That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is
his motto. Love, moya! He’s a nice pattern of a Romeo
and Juliet.
Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist.
Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves
the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman.
Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the
elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle
with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the
turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a
lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty
the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor.
You love a certain person. And this person loves that
other person because everybody loves somebody but God
loves everybody.
608 of 1305
—Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song.
More power, citizen.
—Hurrah, there, says Joe.
—The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you,
says the citizen.
And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.
—We know those canters, says he, preaching and
picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious
Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and
children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God
is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible!
Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about
that Zulu chief that’s visiting England?
—What’s that? says Joe.
So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers
and he starts reading out:
—A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of
Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the
Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup
of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt
thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in
his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the
conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of
a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain,
609 of 1305
the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his
best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial
relations existing between Abeakuta and the British
empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest
possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word
of God and the secret of England’s greatness, graciously
presented to him by the white chief woman, the great
squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august
hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a
lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and
White from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the
dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after
which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and
signed his mark in the visitors’ book, subsequently
executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the
course of which he swallowed several knives and forks,
amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.
—Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn’t doubt her.
Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would.
—Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in
that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished
exceedingly.
—Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.
610 of 1305
—No, says the citizen. It’s not signed Shanganagh. It’s
only initialled: P.
—And a very good initial too, says Joe.
—That’s how it’s worked, says the citizen. Trade
follows the flag.
—Well, says J. J., if they’re any worse than those
Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did
you read that report by a man what’s this his name is?
—Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman.
—Yes, that’s the man, says J. J. Raping the women and
girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all
the red rubber they can out of them.
—I know where he’s gone, says Lenehan, cracking his
fingers.
—Who? says I.
—Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a
few bob on Throwaway and he’s gone to gather in the
shekels.
—Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never
backed a horse in anger in his life?
—That’s where he’s gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam
Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and
he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you
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like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He’s the only
man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.
—He’s a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.
—Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.
—There you are, says Terry.
Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went
round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob
(hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my
(Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to
myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe
and one in Slattery’s off) in his mind to get off the mark to
(hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the
(dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and
letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a
gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she’s
better or she’s (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the
pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a
licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!)
never be up to those bloody (there’s the last of it)
Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos.
So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong,
John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn
Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of
jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off
612 of 1305
of the government and appointing consuls all over the
world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter
to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old
sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody
chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody
mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old
fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem
Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with
the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his
baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy
terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand.
Distance no object. No security. Gob, he’s like Lanty
MacHale’s goat that’d go a piece of the road with every
one.
—Well, it’s a fact, says John Wyse. And there’s the man
now that’ll tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham.
Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it
and Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or
Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general’s, an
orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he
drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the
country at the king’s expense.
Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted
from their palfreys.
613 of 1305
—Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the
leader of the party. Saucy knave! To us!
So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon
the open lattice.
Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him
with his tabard.
—Give you good den, my masters, said he with an
obsequious bow.
—Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked.
Look to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best
for ifaith we need it.
—Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor
house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your
lordships.
—How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a
man of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king’s
messengers, master Taptun?
An instantaneous change overspread the landlord’s
visage.
—Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you
be the king’s messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you
shall not want for aught. The king’s friends (God bless His
Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me.
614 of 1305
—Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken,
a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?
Mine host bowed again as he made answer:
—What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty,
some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with
crisp hog’s bacon, a boar’s head with pistachios, a bason of
jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish?
—Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well.
Pistachios!
—Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor
house and a bare larder, quotha! ‘Tis a merry rogue.
So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.
—Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and
orphans.
—Isn’t that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling
the citizen about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?
—That’s so, says Martin. Or so they allege.
—Who made those allegations? says Alf.
—I, says Joe. I’m the alligator.
—And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love
his country like the next fellow?
—Why not? says J. J., when he’s quite sure which
country it is.
615 of 1305
—Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a
swaddler or what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he?
No offence, Crofton.
—Who is Junius? says J. J.
—We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or
presbyterian.
—He’s a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in
Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to
the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle.
—Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack
Power.
—Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name
was Virag, the father’s name that poisoned himself. He
changed it by deedpoll, the father did.
—That’s the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen.
Island of saints and sages!
—Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says
Martin. For that matter so are we.
—Yes, says J. J., and every male that’s born they think
it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of
excitement, I believe, till he knows if he’s a father or a
mother.
—Expecting every moment will be his next, says
Lenehan.
616 of 1305
—O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom
before that son of his that died was born. I met him one
day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave’s food
six weeks before the wife was delivered.
—En ventre sa mère, says J. J.
—Do you call that a man? says the citizen.
—I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.
—Well, there were two children born anyhow, says
Jack Power.
—And who does he suspect? says the citizen.
Gob, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. One of
those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser
was telling me once a month with headache like a totty
with her courses. Do you know what I’m telling you? It’d
be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that
and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so
it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without
putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing.
Not as much as would blind your eye.
—Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is
he? We can’t wait.
—A wolf in sheep’s clothing, says the citizen. That’s
what he is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him.
Cursed by God.
617 of 1305
—Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.
—Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and
S.
—You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.
—Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar
and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like
that to contaminate our shores.
—Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all
here is my prayer.
—Amen, says the citizen.
—And I’m sure He will, says Joe.
And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a
crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers,
ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company
drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and
monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto,
Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans,
Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine,
Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the
children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel
mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop
and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown
and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers,
minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and
618 of 1305
the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of
Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his
children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led
by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after
came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr
and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas
of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de
Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen
Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S.
Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard
and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S.
Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis
and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S.
Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S.
Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and
S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous
and S. Laurence O’Toole and S. James of Dingle and
Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S.
Celestine and S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and
S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S.
Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and
S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas
and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-
Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius
619 of 1305
Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans
and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S.
Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S.
Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun
and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis
Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and
S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy
and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita
and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of
the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S.
Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with
nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps
and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were
woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns,
arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in
a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies,
buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives,
soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells,
crutches, forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks,
millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills,
unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson’s
Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain
street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which
beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the
620 of 1305
gradual Omnes which saith de Saba venient they did divers
wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life,
multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind,
discovering various articles which had been mislaid,
interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and
prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold
came the reverend Father O’Flynn attended by Malachi
and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the
appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co,
limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale grocers,
wine and brandy shippers, licensed fo the sale of beer,
wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the
celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned
windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises
and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and
the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and
sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed
that God might bless that house as he had blessed the
house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the
angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he
blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of
all the blessed answered his prayers.
—Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
—Qui fecit coelum et terram.
621 of 1305
—Dominus vobiscum.
—Et cum spiritu tuo.
And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave
thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed:
—Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam
effunde super creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum
legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per
invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et
animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum
nostrum.
—And so say all of us, says Jack.
—Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or
Crawford.
—Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And
butter for fish.
I was just looking around to see who the happy
thought would strike when be damned but in he comes
again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry.
—I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking
for you. I hope I’m not ...
—No, says Martin, we’re ready.
Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down
with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink
622 of 1305
itself. Devil a sweet fear! There’s a jew for you! All for
number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five.
—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen,
—Beg your pardon, says he.
—Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking
blue. Come along now.
—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out
of him. It’s a secret.
And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.
—Bye bye all, says Martin.
And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power
and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the
middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with
them on the bloody jaunting car.
—-Off with you, says
Martin to the jarvey.
The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in
the golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail
upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the
spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh
to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of
the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the
cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of
his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to
623 of 1305
another and he binds them all with an outer ring and
giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a
hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did
they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the
undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of
their foam: and the bark clave the waves.
But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint
when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door,
puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the
curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish,
spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf
round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.
—Let me alone, says he.
And begob he got as far as the door and they holding
him and he bawls out of him:
—Three cheers for Israel!
Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse
for Christ’ sake and don’t be making a public exhibition of
yourself. Jesus, there’s always some bloody clown or other
kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob,
it’d turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would.
And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round
the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and
the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and
624 of 1305
he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling
for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down
on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a
patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a
jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her:
—Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!
And says he:
—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and
Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and
his father was a jew. Your God.
—He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive
ahead.
—Whose God? says the citizen.
—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a
jew. Christ was a jew like me.
Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.
—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for
using the holy name.
By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that
biscuitbox here.
—Stop! Stop! says Joe.
A large and appreciative gathering of friends and
acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin
assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyasagos
625 of 1305
uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom’s,
printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure
for the distant clime of Szazharminczbrojugulyas-Dugulas
(Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which
went off with great éclat was characterised by the most
affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish
vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the
distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section
of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a
silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient
Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the
makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was
the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were
present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of
Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come back to
Erin, followed immediately by Rakoczsy’s March. Tarbarrels
and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four
seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock
Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of
Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin
peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills,
the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh
and Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin,
responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of
626 of 1305
henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills,
the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted
by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair
sex who were present in large numbers while, as it
proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges,
the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were
dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power
station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light.
Visszontlátásra, kedves baráton! Visszontlátásra! Gone but not
forgotten.
Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the
bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf
hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig,
as good as any bloody play in the Queen’s royal theatre:
—Where is he till I murder him?
And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing.
—Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel.
But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head
round the other way and off with him.
—Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop!
Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly.
Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left
him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county
Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old
627 of 1305
mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace
shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along
the street.
The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its
effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven
shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is
no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our
island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the
rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have
been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the
Inn’s Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a
surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole
or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the
palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice
itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important
legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins
beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have
been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it
transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a
violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An
article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much
respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell
and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved
initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the
628 of 1305
erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir
Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been
discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island
respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the
giant’s causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one
foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near
the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that
they observed an incandescent object of enormous
proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying
velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west.
Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly
received from all parts of the different continents and the
sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that
a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated
simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every
cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the
spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls
of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly
called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal
of débris, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs
Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and
Messrs T. and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall,
assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall’s
light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H.,
629 of 1305
rear admiral, the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal
Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K.
C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H.,
M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F.
R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.
You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob,
if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he’d
remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the
citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and
Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by
furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O,
Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him.
—Did I kill him, says he, or what?
And he shouting to the bloody dog:
—After him, Garry! After him, boy!
And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the
corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the
bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was
bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred
to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise
you.
When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness
and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to
heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed
630 of 1305
upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of
the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they
durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of
heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a
main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him,
ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the
glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over
Donohoe’s in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
*****
PENELOPE
1217 of 1305
Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask
to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the
City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid
up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself
interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he
thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a
farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest
miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her
1218 of 1305
methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too
much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and
the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help
the world if all the women were her sort down on
bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to
wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would
look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she
didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a
welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about
Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was
glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and
always edging to get up under my petticoats especially
then still I like that in him polite to old women like that
and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing
but not always if ever he got anything really serious the
matter with him its much better for them to go into a
hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to
dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a
hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying
there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the
smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes
because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they
want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it
was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south
1219 of 1305
circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the
sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack
bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at
the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans
bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he
was dying on account of her to never see thy face again
though he looked more like a man with his beard a bit
grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate
bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor
paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was
a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of
course the woman hides it not to give all the trouble they
do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite
anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her
so either it was one of those night women if it was down
there he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack
of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I
meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who
else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he
not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles
Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked
out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the
impudence to make up to me one time well done to him
mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I
1220 of 1305
ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having
a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little
bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on
the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because
the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a
letter when I came into the front room to show him
Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and
he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be
thinking about business so very probably that was it to
somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all
men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to
forty he is now so as to wheedle any money she can out of
him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my
bottom was to hide it not that I care two straws now who
he does it with or knew before that way though Id like to
find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my
nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in
Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him
bad enough to get the smell of those painted women off
him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to
come near me when I found the long hair on his coat
without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending
he was drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it
was all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing
1221 of 1305
that she could eat at our table on Christmas day if you
please O no thank you not in my house stealing my
potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her
aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was
sure he had something on with that one it takes me to find
out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her
proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told
her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be
alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the
garters I found in her room the Friday she was out that
was enough for me a little bit too much her face swelled
up on her with temper when I gave her her weeks notice
I saw to that better do without them altogether do out the
rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and
throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she
or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I
thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like
that one denying it up to my face and singing about the
place in the W C too because she knew she was too well
off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long
so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on
my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a
great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there
steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with
1222 of 1305
my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon
shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and
me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to
the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the
satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way
not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless
I paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it
myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a little
alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the
new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce
him I know what boys feel with that down on their cheek
doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour
question and answer would you do this that and the other
with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I
told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me
in the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that
woollen thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and
so on about the monuments and he tired me out with
statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who
is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who
is it tell me his name who tell me who the german
Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you
feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will
he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply
1223 of 1305
ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it
pretending to like it till he comes and then finish it off
myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its
done now once and for all with all the talk of the world
about it people make its only the first time after that its
just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why
cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first
you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so
nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man
or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss
me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot
down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that
confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he
touched me father and what harm if he did where and I
said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your
person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes
rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord
couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it
what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way
he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real
father what did he want to know for when I already
confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist
always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say
by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know
1224 of 1305
me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of
course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red
when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course
must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to
be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of
incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger
with a priest if youre married hes too careful about himself
then give something to H H the pope for a penance I
wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his
slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall
though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose
he was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake
thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that
flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink
not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste
they stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip
those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those
stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted once
with my finger dipped out of that American that had the
squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do
to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after
we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste
yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as
sound as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till
1225 of 1305
that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I thought
the heavens were coming down about us to punish us
when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those
awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world was coming
to an end and then they come and tell you theres no God
what could you do if it was running and rushing about
nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that
evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May
see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because
he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul
you have no soul inside only grey matter because he
doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp
because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that
tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the
vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to
burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my
things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and
perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a
thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten
oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice
no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of
that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole
sheep after whats the idea making us like that with a big
hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into
1226 of 1305
you because thats all they want out of you with that
determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my
eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in
him when I made him pull out and do it on me
considering how big it is so much the better in case any of
it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish
it in me nice invention they made for women for him to
get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it
themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly
nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina
Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers
filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as
the clock always with a smell of children off her the one
they called budgers or something like a nigger with a
shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last
time I was there a squad of them falling over one another
and bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be
healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like
elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having
another not off him though still if he was married Im sure
hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has
more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it
was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking
about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what
1227 of 1305
he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were
spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing
and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons
housewarming and then he wanted to ram it down my
neck it was on account of not liking to see her a
wallflower that was why we had the standup row over
politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord
being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a
woman is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with
myself after for giving in only for I knew he was gone on
me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so
much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot
of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside
I often wanted to study up that myself what we have
inside us in that family physician I could always hear his
voice talking when the room was crowded and watch him
after that I pretended I had a coolness on with her over
him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side
whenever he asked who are you going to and I said over
to Floey and he made me the present of Byron’s poems
and the three pairs of gloves so that finished that I could
quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how
Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going
out to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the

1228 of 1305
onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the
collar of my blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves
on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning
however alright well see then let him go to her she of
course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in
love with him that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to
her and ask her do you love him and look her square in
the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was
and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind of a
manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job
to get it out of him though I liked him for that it showed
he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was
on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was
rolling the potato cake theres something I want to say to
you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper
with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let
out too much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt
want to let him know more than was good for him she
used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was
there meaning him of course glauming me over and when
I said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me
and did you wash possible the women are always egging
on to that putting it on thick when hes there they know
by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the indifferent
1229 of 1305
when they come out with something the kind he is what
spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very
handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron I
said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he
was a little before we got engaged afterwards though she
didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with
the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling out
one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always
in great humour she said yes because it grigged her
because she knew what it meant because I used to tell her
a good bit of what went on between us not all but just
enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault
she didnt darken the door much after we were married I
wonder what shes got like now after living with that dotty
husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn
and run down the last time I saw her she must have been
just after a row with him because I saw on the moment
she was edging to draw down a conversation about
husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it
she told me O yes that sometimes he used to go to bed
with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just
imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that
might murder you any moment what a man well its not
the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyhow whatever
1230 of 1305
he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes
in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and
he always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street
like then and now hes going about in his slippers to look
for 10000 pounds for a postcard U p up O sweetheart May
wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to
extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off
now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die
20 times over than marry another of their sex of course
hed never find another woman like me to put up with
him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and
he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs
Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in
love with some other man yes it was found out on her
wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like
that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating
drive you mad and always the worst word in the world
what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all
that comes to yes because they cant get on without us
white Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I
wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say its
from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she
must have been madly in love with the other fellow to run
the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was
1231 of 1305
her nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes
enough to go and hang a woman surely are they
theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of
my foot he noticed at once even before he was introduced
when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing and trying
to listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas
and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two
old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl
where it was what do I care with it dropping out of me
and that black closed breeches he made me buy takes you
half an hour to let them down wetting all myself always
with some brandnew fad every other week such a long
one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that
I never got after some robber of a woman and he wanted
me to put it in the Irish times lost in the ladies lavatory D
B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom and
I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the turning
door he was looking when I looked back and I went there
for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did
that excite him because I was crossing them when we
were in the other room first he meant the shoes that are
too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had
a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill
stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot
1232 of 1305
so much still I made him spend once with my foot the
night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and
windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull
and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my
stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street west
and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to
walk in all the horses dung I could find but of course hes
not natural like the rest of the world that I what did he say
I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her
what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said
because the stoppress edition just passed and the man with
the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I
saw his face before somewhere I noticed him when I was
tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell dArcy too that
he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me
on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods Ave Maria what
are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the
brow and part which is my brown part he was pretty hot
for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was always
raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he
used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do
that there in a place like that I dont see anything so
terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now
and surprise him ay and Ill take him there and show him
1233 of 1305
the very place too we did it so now there you are like it or
lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him
knowing he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were
engaged otherwise hed never have got me so cheap as he
did he was lo times worse himself anyhow begging me to
give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the
evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in
the eye of my glove and I had to take it off asking me
questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of my
bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me
when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad
on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always
skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with
their skirts blowing up to their navels even when Milly
and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in
the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he
could see every atom she had on when he saw me from
behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me
however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road
with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the
Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown
hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing there
where hed no business they can go and get whatever they
like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to
1234 of 1305
ask any questions but they want to know where were you
where are you going I could feel him coming along
skulking after me his eyes on my neck he had been
keeping away from the house he felt it was getting too
warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he pestered
me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him
he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain
anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers
drawers the whole blessed time till I promised to give him
the pair off my doll to carry about in his waistcoat pocket
O Maria Santisima he did look a big fool dreeping in the
rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look
at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I
had on with the sunray pleats that there was nobody he
said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering
he would too and ruin his new raincoat you never know
what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for
it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched
his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with
my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where it was
too public I was dying to find out was he circumcised he
was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything
too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting
all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse
1235 of 1305
in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver
then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it
how could he have the face to any woman after his
company manners making it so awkward after when we
met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down
of course he saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that
other fool Henny Doyle he was always breaking or tearing
something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if I
knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form
sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is
of course it used to be written up with a picture of a
womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt
find anywhere only for children seeing it too young then
writing every morning a letter sometimes twice a day I
liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take
a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because
mine was the 8th then I wrote the night he kissed my
heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it
makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew
how to embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on
Monday as he said at the same time four I hate people
who come at all hours answer the door you think its the
vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the
door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old
1236 of 1305
frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard
street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with
boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im
a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was
impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out
you have to peep out through the blind like the
messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him
sending the port and the peaches first and I was just
beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was trying to
make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door
he must have been a bit late because it was l/4 after 3
when I saw the 2 Dedalus girls coming from school I
never know the time even that watch he gave me never
seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after when I
threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and
beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love
and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered
myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast
just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary the
27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at
the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on
in the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother
me with him in the next room or perhaps some protestant
clergyman with a cough knocking on the wall then hed
1237 of 1305
never believe the next day we didnt do something its all
very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me
telling him we never did anything of course he didnt
believe me no its better hes going where he is besides
something always happens with him the time going to the
Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for
the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the
platform with the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of
it hadnt he the nerve and the waiter after him making a
holy show of us screeching and confusion for the engine
to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two
gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right
so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a
thing into his head a good job he was able to open the
carriage door with his knife or theyd have taken us on to
Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him O I
love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I
wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do
it in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell
be the usual idiots of men gaping at us with their eyes as
stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional
man that common workman that left us alone in the
carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out
something about him l or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have
1238 of 1305
to look out of the window all the nicer then coming back
suppose I never came back what would they say eloped
with him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I
sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas
hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now
singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of
father being in the army and my singing the absentminded
beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts when I had
the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him
managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got
me on to sing in the Stabat Mater by going around saying
he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up
to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason
thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some
old opera yes and he was going about with some of them
Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves talking
his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he
showed me without the neck is very intelligent the
coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it thats all I
can say still it must have been him he knew there was a
boycott I hate the mention of their politics after the war
that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where
Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of
enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the
1239 of 1305
right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I
was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal
lock my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about
going away or wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand
properly and I so hot as I never felt they could have made
their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest
of the other old Krugers go and fight it out between them
instead of dragging on for years killing any finelooking
men there were with their fever if he was even decently
shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment
pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La
Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from
Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those
sham battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their
kilts in time at the march past the 10th hussars the prince
of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or
the Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money
over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy
me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him
theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono
things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in
the drawer with them it would be exciting going round
with him shopping buying those things in a new city
better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and
1240 of 1305
turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell
it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me
but theyd think were married O let them all go and
smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of
money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better
get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I
looked a bit washy of course when I looked close in the
handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the
expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the
time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy
chest for this heat always having to lie down for them
better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs
Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the dogs do
it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he
so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be
up to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue
suit he had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue
silk things on them hes certainly well off I know by the
cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a
perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the
stoppress tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because
he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that won
and half he put on for me on account of Lenehans tip
cursing him to the lowest pits that sponger he was making
1241 of 1305
free with me after the Glencree dinner coming back that
long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord
Mayor looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that
big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I was
cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have
picked every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it
was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only
for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks
and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had
some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff
when I was playing with them then always hanging out of
them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down
your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of
tea itself as a great compliment to be noticed the way the
world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at
least two other good chemises for one thing and but I
dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I
think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never
wore them either naked as God made them that
Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make much
secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette
stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have
brought them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up
a row and made that one change them only not to upset
1242 of 1305
myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining
the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id want
advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on
the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what
did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6
obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower
back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to
knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it
the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake
he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old
mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle
of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt
get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of
the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I
wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it the thin
ones are not so much the fashion now garters that much I
have the violet pair I wore today thats all he bought me
out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was the
face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my
skin like new I told him over and over again get that made
up in the same place and dont forget it God only knows
whether he did after all I said to him 111 know by the
bottle anyway if not I suppose 111 only have to wash in
my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that
1243 of 1305
opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look
coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer
where it peeled off there on my finger after the burn its a
pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry handkerchiefs
about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world without
style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it
around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a
handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy
a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new shoes yes
how much were they Ive no clothes at all the brown
costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the
cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old
hat and patching up the other the men wont look at you
and women try to walk on you because they know youve
no man then with all the things getting dearer every day
for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am
I at all 111 be 33 in September will I what O well look at
that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her
when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she was
a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to
her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in
Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look
across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it
pity I only got to know her the day before we left and that
1244 of 1305
Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of Wales was in love
with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads only
for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a
black mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45
there was some funny story about the jealous old husband
what was it at all and an oyster knife he went no he made
her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and the prince of
Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing like
that like some of those books he brings me the works of
Master Francois Somebody supposed to be a priest about a
child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a
nice word for any priest to write and her a—e as if any
fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending
of all things with that old blackguards face on him
anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair
Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I
came to page 5 o the part about where she hangs him up
out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for
a woman in that all invention made up about he drinking
the champagne out of her slipper after the ball was over
like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed
Virgins arms sure no woman could have a child that big
taken out of her and I thought first it came out of her side
because how could she go to the chamber when she
1245 of 1305
wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt honoured
H R H he was in Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he
found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted
more than that in his time he might have planted me too
if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am
he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few
shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or
something where hed get regular pay or a bank where
they could put him up on a throne to count the money all
the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so
you cant stir with him any side whats your programme
today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the .
smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for
advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still
only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it
up I could have got him promoted there to be the
manager he gave me a great mirada once or twice first he
was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs Bloom only
I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I lost
the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre
coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please him
I knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my
mind of going to Todd and Bums as I said and not Lees it
was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I
1246 of 1305
hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me
altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a
womans dress and cooking mathering everything he can
scour off the shelves into it if I went by his advices every
blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes take that thats
alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles off
my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming
down on my backside on pins and needles about the
shopgirl in that place in Grafton street I had the
misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent as ever
she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving
you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it
out of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he
changed the second time he looked Poldy pigheaded as
usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard
at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it
was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely
sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without making it too
marked the first time after him being insulted and me
being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my
chest was out that way at the door when he said Im
extremely sorry and Im sure you were
yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like
that so long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had
1247 of 1305
to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the
least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those
eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out for him what
are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2
the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent
beauty placed up there like those statues in the museum
one of them pretending to hide it with her hand are they
so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks
like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging
down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no
wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf that disgusting
Cameron highlander behind the meat market or that other
wretch with the red head behind the tree where the statue
of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he
was pissing standing out for me to see it with his
babyclothes up to one side the Queens own they were a
nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always
trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside
the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just
to try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it
was I of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of
those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy
after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make
you feel nice and watery I went into r of them it was so
1248 of 1305
biting cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal
was frozen yes it was a few months after a pity a couple of
the Camerons werent there to see me squatting in the
mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I
tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not
afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang of something
there the woman is beauty of course thats admitted when
he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich
fellow in Holles street when he lost the job in Helys and I
was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee palace
would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair
down yes only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty
bitch in that Spanish photo he has nymphs used they go
about like that I asked him about her and that word met
something with hoses in it and he came out with some
jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a
thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes
and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this
one not so much theres the mark of his teeth still where
he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent they
fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with
Milly enough for two what was the reason of that he said I
could have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled
out the morning that delicate looking student that stopped
1249 of 1305
in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me
washing through the window only for I snapped up the
towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they
used to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me
the belladonna prescription I had to get him to suck them
they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker than
cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes
beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him
in the budget if I only could remember the I half of the
things and write a book out of it the works of Master
Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an
hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind
of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their
mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I
can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished
he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come
again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it
when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind
with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my
legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to
shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all
only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who
knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with
a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them
1250 of 1305
want you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he
does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my
hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between
my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one
Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday
frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the
strength those engines have in them like big giants and the
water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end
of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to
be out all the night from their wives and families in those
roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the
half of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things
like that lying about hes getting very careless and threw
the rest of them up in the W C 111 get him to cut them
tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the
next year to get a few pence for them have him asking
wheres last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I
bundled out of the hall making the place hotter than it is
that rain was lovely and refreshing just after my beauty
sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my
goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black
as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a
big giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they
think is so great with the red sentries here and there the
1251 of 1305
poplars and they all whitehot and the smell of the
rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time
weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers
friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris
what a shame my dearest Doggerina she wrote on it she
was very nice whats this her other name was just a p c to
tell you I sent the little present have just had a jolly warm
bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she
called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib
and hear you sing Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is
the name of those exercises he bought me one of those
new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing things
but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont
you will always think of the lovely teas we had together
scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore
well now dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon kind
she left out regards to your father also captain Grove with
love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married
just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was
awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his
foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when
that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear these clothes
we have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to
walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all
1252 of 1305
staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd
run or jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when
that other ferocious old Bull began to charge the
banderilleros with the sashes and the 2 things in their hats
and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the
women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping
all the whole insides out of those poor horses I never
heard of such a thing in all my life yes he used to break his
heart at me taking off the dog barking in bell lane poor
brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose
theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a
mist makes you feel so old I made the scones of course I
had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to
compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed
me how to settle it at the back when I put it up and whats
this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one
hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night
of the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me
then we were fighting in the morning with the pillow
what fun he was watching me whenever he got an
opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I
was with father and captain Grove I looked up at the
church first and then at the windows then down and our
eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles
1253 of 1305
my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at
myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he
was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald
intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time
he was like Thomas in the shadow of Ashlydyat I had a
splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like a rose I
didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on
account of her but I could have stopped it in time she
gave me the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of
Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of
Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that other
woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so
as he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram
Molly bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account
of the name I dont like books with a Molly in them like
that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a
whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and
stuff and yards of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats
better I havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets
all rolled under me besides him and his fooling thats better
I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift drenched
with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the
chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when
I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up
1254 of 1305
and the bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I
couldnt read a line Lord how long ago it seems centuries
of course they never came back and she didnt put her
address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger
people were always going away and we never I remember
that day with the waves and the boats with their high
heads rocking and the smell of ship those Officers
uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say
anything he was very serious I had the high buttoned
boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or
seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips
were taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous
wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the
voyage made very peculiarly to one side like and it was
extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil after they went I
was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere
were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage
waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting
nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and
booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday
and throwing everything down in all directions if you
didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant
whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow
landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was
1255 of 1305
there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in
mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille
in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate
poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins
smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in
their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and
gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden
marching with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes
and only captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes
drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at
Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they
went out drunken old devil with his grog on the
windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose
trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a
corner but he never forgot himself when I was there
sending me out of the room on some blind excuse paying
his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking of course
but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I
suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like
years not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I
posted to myself with bits of paper in them so bored
sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to that old
Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument
singing his heah heah aheah all my compriments on your
1256 of 1305
hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands
hanging off me looking out of the window if there was a
nice fellow even in the opposite house that medical in
Holles street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves
and hat at the window to show I was going out not a
notion what I meant arent they thick never understand
what you say even youd want to print it up on a big
poster for them not even if you shake hands twice with
the left he didnt recognise me either when I half frowned
at him outside Westland row chapel where does their
great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter
they have it all in their tail if you ask me those country
gougers up in the City Arms intelligence they had a damn
sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling the
meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to
swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat
what a pair of paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend
any broken bottles for a poor man today and no visitors or
post ever except his cheques or some advertisement like
that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam
only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see
she wrote a letter to him who did I get the last letter from
O Mrs Dwenn now what possessed her to write from
Canada after so many years to know the recipe I had for
1257 of 1305
pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she
was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I
hear with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully
nice man he was near seventy always goodhumoured well
now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the piannyer
that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the
mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people
that have always their poor story to tell everybody has
their own troubles that poor Nancy Blake died a month
ago of acute neumonia well I didnt know her so well as all
that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its
a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong
things and no stops to say like making a speech your sad
bereavement symphathy I always make that mistake and
newphew with 2 double yous in I hope hell write me a
longer letter the next time if its a thing he really likes me
O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me
what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve
no chances at all in this place like you used long ago I
wish somebody would write me a loveletter his wasnt
much and I told him he could write what he liked yours
ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly women believe
love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose
thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your whole

1258 of 1305
day and life always something to think about every
moment and see it all round you like a new world I could
write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a
few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used
to write to the fellow that was something in the four
courts that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter
when I told her to say a few simple words he could twist
how he liked not acting with precipat precip itancy with
equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a
gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres
nothing else its all very fine for them but as for being a
woman as soon as youre old they might as well throw you
out in the bottom of the ashpit.
Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning
and Mrs Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood
there standing when I asked her to hand me and I pointing
at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it
with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in
the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about
her appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a loo her face a
mass of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because
she never could get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half
the ships of the world and the Union Jack flying with all
her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took all
1259 of 1305
the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass
often enough in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl
up on her except when there was a marriage on with all
her miracles of the saints and her black blessed virgin with
the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on Easter
Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with
the bell bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself
for his Majestad an admirer he signed it I near jumped out
of my skin I wanted to pick him up when I saw him
following me along the Calle Real in the shop window
then he tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed
write making an appointment I had it inside my petticoat
bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner while
father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the
handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember
shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the old
stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed
me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it
never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his
tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put
my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did
I tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish
nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed
me that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres
1260 of 1305
many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that
bloometh a few things I told him true about myself just for
him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I
suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited
he crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he
couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till I taught
him Cappoquin he came from he said on the black water
but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it
was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im
always like that in the spring Id like a new fellow every
year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras
tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all about
the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail
careering all over the show on each others back Mrs
Rubio said she was a regular old rock scorpion robbing
the chickens out of Inces farm and throw stones at you if
you went anear he was looking at me I had that white
blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I
could without too openly they were just beginning to be
plump I said I was tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild
place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the
galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint
Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them
hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots
1261 of 1305
Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea
to Africa when they die the ships out far like chips that
was the Malta boat passing yes the sea and the sky you
could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed
them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I
was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take
the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my
blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had
I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with
his for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully
put out first for fear you never know consumption or
leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told
me that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried
with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get
lost up in me somewhere because they once took
something down out of a woman that was up there for
years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there
where they come out of youd think they could never go
far enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till
the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling there
so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I
pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be
excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me
inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the
1262 of 1305
side I tormented the life out of him first tickling him I
loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt awokwokawok
his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the
same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a
little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned
him and took his out and drew back the skin it had a kind
of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the middle on
the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what
was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a
lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a
voice so I went round to the whatyoucallit everything was
whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed come back
Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed
do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him
block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a
captain or admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove
he would if he came up behind me and put his hands over
my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young
still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black
water and is quite changed they all do they havent half the
character a woman has she little knows what I did with
her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in
broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you
might say they could have put an article about it in the
1263 of 1305
Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew out the old
bag the biscuits were in from Benady Bros and exploded it
Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons
screaming coming back the same way that we went over
middle hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews
burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew on them I
wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt
know what to make of me with his peak cap on that he
always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S
Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off
the altar his long preach about womans higher functions
about girls now riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps
and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and
me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never
thought that would be my name Bloom when I used to
write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or
practising for the butcher and oblige M Bloom youre
looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him
well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those
awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or
some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad
about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my
mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer
name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita
1264 of 1305
Laredo the fun we had running along Williss road to
Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side
of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my
blouse like Millys little ones now when she runs up the
stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at
the pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves
off and throwing them at him he went to India he was to
write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of
the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze
or two at a woman while they can going out to be
drowned or blown up somewhere I went up Windmill hill
to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that
was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one
or two from on board I wore that frock from the B
Marche paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I
could see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangier
white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the
straits like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was
thinking of him on the sea all the time after at mass when
my petticoat began to slip down at the elevation weeks
and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow for
the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in
that Gibraltar only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded
and left a stink on you more than anything else I wanted
1265 of 1305
to give him a memento he gave me that clumsy Claddagh
ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south Africa
where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but
they were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad
luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must have been
pure 18 carrot gold because it was very heavy but what
could you get in a place like that the sandfrog shower
from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the
harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a
moustache that was Gardner yes I can see his face
cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again
weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyondre call
close my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes
open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate that
istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out
full when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen
Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss
Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about
politics they know as much about as my backside anything
in the world to make themselves someway interesting Irish
homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose
are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon
coach I thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down
dead off their feet if ever they got a chance of walking
1266 of 1305
down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the
bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion
God help their poor head I knew more about men and life
when I was I S than theyll all know at 50 they dont know
how to sing a song like that Gardner said no man could
look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not
think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he
so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my
mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so
snotty about themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit
like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get a
husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like
mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can
pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4
or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I
could have been a prima donna only I married him comes
looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it
double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about
the moated grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill
sing Winds that blow from the south that he gave after the
choirstairs performance Ill change that lace on my black
dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get that
big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is
itching me always when I think of him I feel I want to I
1267 of 1305
feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him have
him at it again slobbering after washing every bit of myself
back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my own
room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself
with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart
God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a
bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far
away pianissimo eeeee one more song
that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free
who knows if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea
after was quite good with the heat I couldnt smell
anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the
porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not
smoking fill my nose up with smuts better than having
him leaving the gas on all night I couldnt rest easy in my
bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see why am I so
damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter
its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that
winter when I was only about ten was I yes I had the big
doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and
undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those
mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at
the fire with the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat
myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back
1268 of 1305
into bed Im sure that fellow opposite used to be there the
whole time watching with the lights out in the summer
and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself
then stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only
when it came to the chamber performance I put out the
light too so then there were 2 of us goodbye to my sleep
for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with
those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young
again coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more
still he had the manners not to wake me what do they find
to gabber about all night squandering money and getting
drunker and drunker couldnt they drink water then he
starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon
haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him
sitting up like the king of the country pumping the wrong
end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he
learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the
stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and
then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own
sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always
licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they
see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at
the top of the stairs so long and listening as I wait always
what a robber too that lovely fresh place I bought I think
1269 of 1305
Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will
with some blancmange with black currant jam like long
ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the
London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as
far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a
nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3
forgetting anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers
meat from Buckleys loin chops and leg beef and rib steak
and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is
enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or let
him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs
Fleming and drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry
beds wed have him examining all the horses toenails first
like he does with the letters no not with Boylan there yes
with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are
little houses down at the bottom of the banks there on
purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday
anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for
the day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that
bee bit him better the seaside but Id never again in this life
get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the
boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he
ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it
came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and
1270 of 1305
the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins
now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in
through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup
its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course
me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in
his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off
him before all the people and give him what that one calls
flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in
the world only for that longnosed chap I dont know who
he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms
hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always
where he wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit
a better face there was no love lost between us thats 1
consolation I wonder what kind is that book he brought
me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other
Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname
going about with his tube from one woman to another I
couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with
the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy
and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because
the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and
the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they
were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near
a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old
1271 of 1305
chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb
up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long
ago besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a
place at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never
brought a bit of salt in even when we moved in the
confusion musical academy he was going to make on the
first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or Blooms
private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether
the way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he
told father he was going to do and me but I saw through
him telling me all the lovely places we could go for the
honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the gondolas and
the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper
of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said
whatever I liked he was going to do immediately if not
sooner will you be my man will you carry my can he
ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the
plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never
know what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long
story might be a tramp and put his foot in the way to
prevent me shutting it like that picture of that hardened
criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in
jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her
money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is
1272 of 1305
such a face youd run miles away from I couldnt rest easy
till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure but its
worse again being locked up like in a prison or a
madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails
a big brute like that that would attack a poor old woman
to murder her in her bed Id cut them off him so I would
not that hed be much use still better than nothing the
night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and he
went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he
was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out
of his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for
the burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the
Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with Milly
away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to
learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather
instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed
have to learn not like me getting all IS at school only hed
do a thing like that all the same on account of me and
Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and
plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the
place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the
fidgets coming in without knocking first when I put the
chair against the door just as I was washing myself there
below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the
1273 of 1305
loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to
look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little
gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before
she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend so that you
cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the
potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands
I noticed he was always talking to her lately at the table
explaining things in the paper and she pretending to
understand sly of course that comes from his side of the
house he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as
a matter of fact and helping her into her coat but if there
was anything wrong with her its me shed tell not him I
suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf
well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now
shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons
imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls
calling for her can Milly come out please shes in great
demand to pick what they can out of her round in Nelson
street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well he
sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds
wanting to go on the skatingrink and smoking their
cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress when I
was biting off the thread of the button I sewed on to the
bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell
1274 of 1305
you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it
brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2
halves see it comes out no matter what they say her
tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is open
too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle
blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up
like that on show on the windowsill before all the people
passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of
course any old rag looks well on you then a great
touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the
Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate
people touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt
with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in
theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to
wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for
Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to
be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every
two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit
daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two
stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same
little game I recognised him on the moment the face and
everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt
even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away
well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance on her
1275 of 1305
the way I did when she was down with the mumps and
her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of course
she cant feel anything deep yet I never came properly till I
was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always
only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny
Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper
sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the
curtain came down because he looked so handsome then
we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I
thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man
gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose
there are a few men like that left its hard to believe in it
though unless it really happened to me the majority of
them with not a particle of love in their natures to find
two people like that nowadays full up of each other that
would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit
foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to
go and poison himself after her still poor old man I
suppose he felt lost shes always making love to my things
too the few old rags I have wanting to put her hair up at I
S my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time
enough for that all her life after of course shes restless
knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont
stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the fair
1276 of 1305
with the thing answering me like a fishwoman when I
asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we met
Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended
not to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we
werent grand enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks
across the ear for herself take that now for answering me
like that and that for your impudence she had me that
exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too
because how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt
sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her
over and over again not to leave knives crossed like that
because she has nobody to command her as she said herself
well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was the last
time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself
they darent order me about the place its his fault of course
having the two of us slaving here instead of getting in a
woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper servant
again of course then shed see him coming Id have to let
her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old
Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her
putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into
the pots well of course shes old she cant help it a good job
I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost
behind the dresser I knew there was something and
1277 of 1305
opened the area window to let out the smell bringing in
his friends to entertain them like the night he walked
home with a dog if you please that might have been mad
especially Simon Dedalus son his father such a criticiser
with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the cricket
match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing
at the other and his son that got all those prizes for
whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine
climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew
us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral
trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for
anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen
now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day
my old pair of drawers might have been hanging up too
on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the
ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he
might think was something else and she never even
rendered down the fat I told her and now shes going such
as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting
worse theres always something wrong with them disease
or they have to go under an operation or if its not that its
drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again for
someone every day I get up theres some new thing on
sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead in
1278 of 1305
my grave I suppose 111 have some peace I want to get up
a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has
come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all
the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up in me
now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt
that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some
men do God knows theres always something wrong with
us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it
simply sickening that night it came on me like that the
one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn
gave him to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety
something he did about insurance for him in Drimmies I
was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that
gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses
and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and
his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled
the best I could all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was
interested having to sit it out then to the last tag I wont
forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to be a fast
play about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the
woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a
woman in the next lane running round all the back ways
after to make up for it I wish he had what I had then hed
boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us have we too
1279 of 1305
much blood up in us or what O patience above its
pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me
pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets
I just put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it
on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain
on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats
troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a
widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would
do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let
me up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested
that business for women what between clothes and
cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like
the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the
other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on
the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it
nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair
off me there scalding me I might look like a young girl
wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he turned
up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face
wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its
breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I
too heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the
easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse and
skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he
1280 of 1305
oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was
sweet after those kissing comfits easy God I remember one
time I could scout it out straight whistling like a man
almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it
for a wad of money from some fellow 111 have to
perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw a
better pair of thighs than that look how white they are the
smoothest place is right there between this bit here how
soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man
and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre
making like the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters
come down at Lahore
who knows is there anything the matter with my
insides or have I something growing in me getting that
thing like that every week when was it last I Whit
Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to the
doctor only it would be like before I married him when I
had that white thing coming from me and Floey made me
go to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on
Pembroke road your vagina he called it I suppose thats
how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round
those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for
every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina
theyve money of course so theyre all right I wouldnt
1281 of 1305
marry him not if he was the last man in the world besides
theres something queer about their children always
smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if
what I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to
do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I
smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him with all
my compriments I suppose hed know then and could you
pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the
rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice
invention too by the way only I like letting myself down
after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain
then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres
something in it I suppose I always used to know by Millys
when she was a child whether she had worms or not still
all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor
one guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions
where do those old fellows get all the words they have
omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked
sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me
chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when
he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his
nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O
anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever
enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him
1282 of 1305
and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything
connected with your glorious Body everything underlined
that comes from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever
something he got out of some nonsensical book that he
had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes
and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure
in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next
only natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know
how the first night ever we met when I was living in
Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for
about lo minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on
account of my being jewess looking after my mother he
used to amuse me the things he said with the half
sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was
going to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the
born fool to believe all his blather about home rule and
the land league sending me that long strool of a song out
of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O
beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once
explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution
he wont let you enjoy anything naturally then might he as
a great favour the very 1st opportunity he got a chance in
Brighton square running into my bedroom pretending the
ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk
1283 of 1305
and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round
it O I laughed myself sick at him that day I better not
make an alnight sitting on this affair they ought to make
chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit on it
properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in all
creation another man with the habits he has look at the
way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he
without a hard bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might
knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on his
nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet
Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a
pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes
sticking out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews
and Our Lords both put together all over Asia imitating
him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used
to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet
up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway
wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old
press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard
had a good time somewhere still she must have given him
great value for his money of course he has to pay for it
from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have
something better for us in the other world tying ourselves
up God help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy
1284 of 1305
old jingly bed always reminds me of old Cohen I suppose
he scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks
father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire
when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I
like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years
how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace and
Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and
he goes about whistling every time were on the run again
his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the
men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms
hotel worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming
place on the landing always somebody inside praying then
leaving all their stinks after them always know who was in
there last every time were just getting on right something
happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and
Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into
prison over his old lottery tickets that was to be all our
salvations or he goes and gives impudence well have him
coming home with the sack soon out of the Freeman too
like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the
freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me
dribbling along in the wet all by himself round by Coadys
lane will give him much consolation that he says is so
capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging by the
1285 of 1305
sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres Georges
church bells wait 3 quarters the hour l wait 2 oclock well
thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home
at to anybody climbing down into the area if anybody saw
him Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill
look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter
still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know
deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their
lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they
dont believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies
in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time
as if we hadnt enough of that in real life without some old
Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more
with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no
legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming
about with not another thing in their empty heads they
ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea and
toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I
suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let him
lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever
for the one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked
the way the jews used when somebody dies belonged to
them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word
wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough for
1286 of 1305
one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking
only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont
know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him do
it again if he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to
sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder was
it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born
liar too no hed never have the courage with a married
woman thats why he wants me and Boylan though as for
her Denis as she calls him that forlornlooking spectacle
you couldnt call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes
got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the
College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on
the top of his nob let us into by the back way he was
throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up
and down I tried to wink at him first no use of course and
thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy
Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral
in the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers
funeral thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums
the poor horse walking behind in black L Boom and Tom
Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue
off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or
other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and
Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny
1287 of 1305
thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed
want to be born all over again and her old green dress
with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way
like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and
they call that friendship killing and then burying one
another and they all with their wives and families at home
more especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does
of course his wife is always sick or going to be sick or just
getting better of it and hes a goodlooking man still though
hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of
them well theyre not going to get my husband again into
their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then
behind his back I know well when he goes on with his
idiotics because he has sense enough not to squander every
penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after his
wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all
the same Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and
5 children going to do unless he was insured comical little
teetotum always stuck up in some pub corner and her or
her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home
her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre
awfully becoming though if youre goodlooking what men
wasnt he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Ben
Dollard base barreltone the night he borrowed the

1288 of 1305
swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and
squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face
like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy
ballocks sure enough that must have been a spectacle on
the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved seats for that
to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Simon Dedalus
too he was always turning up half screwed singing the
second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so
sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was
always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with
him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious
glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart
sweetheart he always sang it not like Bartell Darcy sweet
tart goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there
was no art in it all over you like a warm showerbath O
Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it
was a bit too high for my register even transposed and he
was married at the time to May Goulding but then hed say
or do something to knock the good out of it hes a
widower now I wonder what sort is his son he says hes an
author and going to be a university professor of Italian and
Im to take lessons what is he driving at now showing him
my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it taken
in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look
1289 of 1305
young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it
altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving
down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and
mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago now yes hed
be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning
for what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry
was enough for me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in
the wall of course he insisted hed go into mourning for
the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an
innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord
Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage
when I saw him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I
remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on he
was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck
union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met
before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a
stranger either besides my face was turned the other way
what was the 7th card after that the 10 of spades for a
journey by land then there was a letter on its way and
scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise
in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new
garments look at that and didnt I dream something too yes
there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt
long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a
1290 of 1305
red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting
themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked
poetry when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like
lord Byron and not an ounce of it in his composition I
thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young
hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday
89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I
suppose hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23
or 24 I hope hes not that stuckup university student sort
no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting down in the old
kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of course
he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he
was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor
I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a
potent professor of John Jameson they all write about
some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find
many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar
where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon
shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from
Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow
played was so expressive will I ever go back there again all
new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for
him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as
darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words
1291 of 1305
as loves young star itll be a change the Lord knows to have
an intelligent person to talk to about yourself not always
listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and
Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in their
business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished
Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck
besides hes young those fine young men I could see down
in Margate strand bathingplace from the side of the rock
standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and
then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men
like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that
lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day
long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to
listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I
wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock
there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth
if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so
clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too
in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its
only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be
so clean compared with those pigs of men I suppose never
dream of washing it from I years end to the other the most
of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches
Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome
1292 of 1305
young poet at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing in the
morning till I see if the wishcard comes out or Ill try
pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and
study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew
who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all
women are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill
make him feel all over him till he half faints under me
then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too
with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes
famous O but then what am I going to do about him
though
no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no
refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us
behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him
Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a
cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their
proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the
chair before me so barefaced without even asking
permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of
a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher
or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of
course hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a
joke sure you might as well be in bed with what with a
lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for
1293 of 1305
himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its because
they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he
couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for
men all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans
body were so round and white for them always I wished I
was one myself for a change just to try with that thing
they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time
so soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long
I heard those cornerboys saying passing the comer of
Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because
it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it didnt make
me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts
his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns
out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men
again all over they can pick and choose what they please a
married woman or a fast widow or a girl for their different
tastes like those houses round behind Irish street no but
were to be always chained up theyre not going to be
chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell you for
their stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain
friends over it instead of quarrelling her husband found it
out what they did together well naturally and if he did can
he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and
then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in
1294 of 1305
Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a 2nd
thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he
wants and he gets her what else were we given all those
desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still
can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my
time living with him so cold never embracing me except
sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not
knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a
womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss
anything unnatural where we havent I atom of any kind of
expression in us all of us the same 2 lumps of lard before
ever Id do that to a man pfooh the dirty brutes the mere
thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita theres
some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did
what a madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but
me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times
a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so
long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the fellow
you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was
thinking would I go around by the quays there some dark
evening where nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor off
the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a pin whose I
was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those
wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp
1295 of 1305
pitched near the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our
things if they could I only sent mine there a few times for
the name model laundry sending me back over and over
some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking
fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the
dark and ride me up against the wall without a word or a
murderer anybody what they do themselves the fine
gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up somewhere
this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave
us the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing
match of course it was for me he gave it I knew him by
his gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a minute
after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it
too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife
after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten
again with disease O move over your big carcass out of
that for the love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft
my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the great
Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came
out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh
for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in
prison for Lord knows what he does that I dont know and
Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his
lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy
1296 of 1305
will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like to
see myself at it show them attention and they treat you
like dirt I dont care what anybody says itd be much better
for the world to be governed by the women in it you
wouldnt see women going and killing one another and
slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around
drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have
and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she
does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the
world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a
woman and a mother how could they where would they
all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them
what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild
now out at night away from his books and studies and not
living at home on account of the usual rowy house I
suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son
like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to
make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was
watching the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of
the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose
I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I
knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I
knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was
we were never the same since O Im not going to think
1297 of 1305
myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why
he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was
somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around
the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and
pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was
alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour
so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air
of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none
either he wants what he wont get or its some woman
ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no
wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot
of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us
so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in
there on the sofa in the other room I suppose he was as
shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the
next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what
harm Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar
Delapaz Delagracia they had the devils queer names there
father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary
Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and
Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a
name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a
name like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise
ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts
1298 of 1305
ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I
am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I
dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I get my
tongue round any of the Spanish como esta usted muy
bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I
had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any
person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel
cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the
questions in it all upside down the two ways I always
knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish
and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant
what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead
tired and wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought
him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of toast so long as I
didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was
going her rounds with the watercress and something nice
and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might
like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I
could do the criada the room looks all right since I
changed it the other way you see something was telling
me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing
me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or
pretend we were in Spain with him half awake without a
Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord
1299 of 1305
the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be
great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres the
room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the back room he
could do his writing and studies at the table in there for all
the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed
in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast for I
he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take in
lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a
house like this Id love to have a long talk with an
intelligent welleducated person Id have to get a nice pair
of red slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or
yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown that I
badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one
long ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him
one more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of
Cohens old bed in any case I might go over to the markets
to see all the vegetables and cabbages and tomatoes and
carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely
and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre
out looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to
say they are and the night too that was her massgoing Id
love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like
when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw him
up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to
1300 of 1305
make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream
too I know what Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too
much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieta Masetto then
Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu forte
Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good
eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let
him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is I s l o
fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck
nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the
mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to
even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont
believe me feel my belly unless I made him stand there
and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap
and make him do it out in front of me serve him right its
all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the
gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we
did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt
everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman
is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us
the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to
kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it
right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7
miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell
him I want LI or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy
1301 of 1305
underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too
bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women
do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself
and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few
times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill
let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear
all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do
the indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers
when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every
turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few
smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad
thing comes into my head then Ill suggest about yes O
wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and
friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a
thing pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry
were such a mixture of plum and apple no Ill have to wear
the old things so much the better itll be more pointed hell
never know whether he did it or not there thats good
enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off
me just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have
him eying up at the ceiling where is she gone now make
him want me thats the only way a quarter after what an
unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China
now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have
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the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to
spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night
office or the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering
the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5
what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars
the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron
he gave me was like that something only I only wore it
twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get
up early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get
them to send us some flowers to put about the place in
case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no
Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up
someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then
we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him
first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I
wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in
Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or
the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky
sugar I Id a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the
middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this
I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the
whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres
nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and
the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the
1303 of 1305
fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the
fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to
see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and
smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches
primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres
no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all
their learning why dont they go and create something I
often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves
go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go
howling for the priest and they dying and why why
because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad
conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first
person in the universe before there was anybody that
made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so
there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from
rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we
were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in
the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to
propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out
of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago
my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he
said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers
all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in
his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I
1304 of 1305
liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a
woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I
gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the
asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the
out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he
things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as
Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to
playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes
they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him
governors house with the thing round his white helmet yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts
poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I
their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the said yes I will Yes.
morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921
devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and
Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby
Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the
vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps
and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old
castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome
Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit
down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old
windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for
her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at
night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at

1305 of 1305
Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp
and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea
crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and
the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer
little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and
the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and