e distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course
nobody being acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely
no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art
thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as
Fox and Stewart, so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be
within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then, it would prey on his mind
as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a commanding figure,
a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet,
whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former
man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far
between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then
seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging.
And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back - that haunting
sense kind of drew you - to show the understudy in the title rÔle how to. He
saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the
Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated,
and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and
he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid expression
notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the
lip - what's bred in the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky
dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot
of shillyshally usually followed. Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And
then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to
produce your credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger
Charles Tichborne. Bella was the boat's name to the best of his recollection
he, the heir, went down in, as the evidence went to show, and there was a
tattoo mark too in Indian ink, Lord Bellew, was it? As he might very easily
have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up
to tally with the description given, introduce himself with, Excuse me, my
name is So-and-So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr
Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished
personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of
the land first.
-- That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
-- Fine lump of a woman, all the same, the soi-disant town-clerk, Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture in a barber's. Her
husband was a captain or an officer.
-- Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added. He was, and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he, without the
faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and
reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest
at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the
usual affectionate letters that passed between them, full of sweet nothings.
First, it was strictly platonic till nature intervened and an attachment
sprang up between them, till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the
matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a
welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed however, who were resolved
upon encouraging his downfall though the thing was public property all along
though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently
blossomed into. Sino their names were coupled, though, since he was her
declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the
rank and file from the housetops, the fact namely, that he had shared her
bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through
the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses
swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the
act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a
ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a
fact that the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined
shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was
simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch with nothing in
common between them beyond the name and then a real man arriving on the
scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms
and forgetting home ties. The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's
smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped
up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case,
exist between married folk? Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if
he regarded her with affection carried away by a wave of folly. A
magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented obviously by gifts
of a high order as compared with the other military supernumerary, that is
(who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an
individual in the light dragoons, the 18th hussars to be accurate), and
inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own
peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely
to carve his way to fame, which he almost bid fair to do till the priests
and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents and
his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural
parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that
exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his
matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head, much in the
same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind
of arrangement, all seemed a kind of dream. And the coming back was the
worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out
of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected,
Irishtown Strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years,
looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the
north side. North or south however, it was just the wellknown case of hot
passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just
bore out the very thing he was saying, as she also was Spanish or half so,
types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south,
casting every shred of decency to the winds.
-- Just bears out what I was saying, he with glowing bosom said to
Stephen. And, if I don't greatly mistake, she was Spanish too.
-- The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or
other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the
first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many.
-- Was she? Bloom ejaculated surprised, though not astonished by any
means. I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there it was,
as she lived there. So, Spain.
Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him
by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out his
pocketbook and, turning over the various contents rapidly, finally he.
-- Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a fades
photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?
Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large
sized lady, with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion, as she
was in the full bloom of womanhood, In evening dress cut ostentatiously low
for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision
of breasts, her full lips parted, and some perfect teeth, standing near,
ostensibly with gravity, a piano, on the rest of which was In old Madrid, a
ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's)
eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be
admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic
artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.
Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna, Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about '96. Very like her then.
Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his
legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian
Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer
having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet
sixteen. As for the face, it was a speaking likeness in expression but it
did not do justice to her figure, which came in for a lot of notice usually
and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup She could
without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on
certain opulent curves of the... He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his
spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so
happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian statues,
perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could
give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry. All the rest, yes,
Puritanism. It does though, St Joseph's sovereign... whereas no photo could,
because it simply wasn't art, in a word.
The spirit moving him, he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's
good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak
for itself on the plea he... so that the other could drink in the beauty for
himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the
camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional
etiquette so, though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet
wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm... And
he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of
inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless,
he sat tight, just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent
curves, none the worse for wear, however, and looked away thoughtfully with
the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment
while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact, the slight
soiling was only an added charm, like the case of linen slightly soiled,
good as new, much better, in fact, with the starch out. Suppose she was gone
when he?... I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but
merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning
littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic)
in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the
domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
distinguÉ, and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the
bunch, though you wouldn't think he had it in him... yet you would. Besides
he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was, though at
the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of
make-believe went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with
the usual splash page of letterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle
alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite
instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they
were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their
names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters
containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions, leaving no
loophole, to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at
some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal
course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's
Proctor to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made
absolute. But as for that, the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely
were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely
did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor, who filed a
petition for the party wronged in due course. He, Bloom, enjoyed the
distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the
thing occurred in the historic fracas when the fallen leader's - who
notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the
mantle of adultery - (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a
dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of
the Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means, by the by,
appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or
something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the
facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation,
reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a
radically altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though carelessly
garbed as usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long way
with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture
that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal, which
she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot
times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty
prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging
some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave
character. His hat (Parnell's) was inadvertently knocked off and, as a
matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush
after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it
to him he did with the utmost celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose
thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born
with a stake in the country, he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it
more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone,
instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing
what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and
thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir though in a very
different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose
headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history
repeating itself with a difference; after the burial of a mutual friend when
they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed
his remains to the grave.
On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
of the cabmen and so on, who passed it all off as a jest, laughing
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for
the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband
happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual
boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a
loving position locked in one another's arms drawing attention to their
illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair
one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising
to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the
aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with
tears in her eyes, though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the
same time, as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being
of a sceptical bias, believed, and didn't make the smallest bones about
saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always hanging around
on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in
the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument,
when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life, and was
on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on
her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on
another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women
getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous
cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.
It was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with an allowance of
brains, as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with
profligate women, who might present him with a nice dose to last him his
lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto
himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies'
society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible
doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about Miss
Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down
to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much
satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of
smirking misses without a penny to their names bi- or tri-weekly with the
orthodox preliminary canter of complimentpaying and walking out leading up
to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and
homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too
bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the
elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father. But
something substantial he certainly ought to eat, were it only an eggflip
made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty
Dumpty boiled.
-- At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and
tired though unwrinkled face.
-- Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
-- Yesterday, exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already
tomorrow, Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve!
-- The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.
Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence, Bloom reflected.
Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything, a certain analogy there
somehow was, as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one
train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of
years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours
in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a
source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those
same ultra ideas. For instance, when the evicted tenants' question, then at
its first inception, bulked largely in people's minds though, it goes
without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to
its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in
principle, at all events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession,
as voicing the trend of modern Opinion, a partiality, however, which,
realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of, and even was
twitted with going a step further than Michael Davitt in the striking views
he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he
strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion at the
gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often
considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it
repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one
in the gizzard though so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was
only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda
and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as
a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the
fittest, in a word.
Anyhow, upon weighing the pros and cons, getting on for one as it was,
it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit
risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody
having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on
the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw,
not that the cases were either identical or the reverse, though he had hurt
his hand too, to Ontario Terrace, as he very distinctly remembered, having
been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and away
too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some
perplexity as to which of the two alternatives... Everything pointed to the
fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity,
all things considered. His initial impression was that he was a bit
standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing
he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly
worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly,
supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great
personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or
some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding,
eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a
shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled
into a pillow. At least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on
a trivet. He failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always
with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made
because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question, who appeared to
be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way
home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some
sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties off Sheriff street lower would be
the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to
come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber
revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow
of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles with
rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations of potheen
and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let XX
equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same
time he inwardly chuckled over his repartee to the blood and ouns champion
about his God being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf
but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable
point too of tender Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they
appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere about in
the county Sligo.
-- I propose, our hero eventually suggested, after mature reflection
while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here, you just
come with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the
vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Wait, I'll just pay this lot.
The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain
sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of
the shanty, who didn't seem to...
-- Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen, to whom for the matter of
that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.
All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (Bloom's) busy
brain. Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize
titbits, up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering
resorts packed with theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the
accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity
of course to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it and a
slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected
he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the
cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the
conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to.
The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former
viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in
London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling
announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some
spark of vitality left read out that Sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston
for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing
piece of intelligence echo answered why. - Give us a squint at that
literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some
natural impatience.
-- And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.
The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles
which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.
-- Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the town
clerk queried.
-- Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was
a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of sea-green
portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand
in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner
of speaking. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a
Rose is She.
Thereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows
what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a
hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time
(completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening
an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him, as he
muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently
awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say,
either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark.
To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first
to rise to his feet so as not to outstay their welcome having first and
foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the
occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as
a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking
to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of
fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally
the last of the Mohicans) he having previously spotted on the printed
pricelist for all who ran to read opposite to him in unmistakable figures,
coffee 2d., confectionery do., and honestly well worth twice the money once
in a way, as Wetherup used to remark. - Come, he counselled, to close the
sÉance.
Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear, they left the
shelter or shanty together and the Élite society of oil skin and company
whom nothing short Of an earthquake would move out of their dolce far
niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out,
paused at the, for a moment... the door to...
-- One thing I never understood, he said, to be original on the spur of
the moment, why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside
down on the tables In cafes.
To which impromptu the never failing Bloom replied without a moment's
hesitation, saying straight off:
-- To sweep the floor in the morning.
So saying he skipped around nimbly, considering frankly, at the same
time apologetic, to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the by,
the right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air
was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his
pins.
-- It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in
a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. It's
not far. Lean on me.
Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on
accordingly.
-- Yes, Stephen said uncertainly, because he thought he felt a strange
kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all
that.
Anyhow, they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier, etc. where the
municipal supernumerary, ex-Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes
wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields
and pastures new. And apropos of coffin of stones, the analogy was not at
all bad, as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out
of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and
chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he
had put in their holdings.
So they passed on to chatting about music, a form of art for which
Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks
arm-in-arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand
in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first
go-off but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words
on the Cross, and Mozart's Twelfth Mass, he simply revelled in, the Gloria
in that being to his mind the acme of first class music as such, literally
knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the
sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite shop could
offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live
and I will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none in his
admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal
numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable
sensation, he might safely say greatly adding to her other laurels and
putting the others totally in the shade in the jesuit fathers' church in
Upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to
hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion
that there was none to come up to her and, suffice it to say in a place of
worship for music of a sacred character, there was a generally voiced desire
for an encore. On the whole, though favouring preferably light opera of the
Don Giovanni description, and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant,
though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such
as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about
the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's air in Martha,
M'appari, which, curiously enough, he heard, or overheard, to be more
accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of
Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in
fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a
politely put query, said he didn't but launched out into praises of
Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist
Dowland who lived in Fetter Lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno ludendo
hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr
Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom did not quite recall, though the name certainly
sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their dux
and comes conceits and Byrd (William), who played the virginals, he said, in
the Queen's Chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made
toys or airs and John Bull.
On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond
the swing chain, a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground,
brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not
perfectly certain whether he had caught a right the allusion to sixtyfive
guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political
celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a
striking coincidence.
By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving
Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual plucked the other's sleeve
gently, jocosely remarking:
-- Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.
They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth
anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite
near, so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh,
because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a
taildangler, a headhanger, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord
of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good
poor brute, he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely
reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might
crop up. He was just a big foolish nervous noodly kind of a horse, without a
second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in
Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it
was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel,
ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths
of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring
the bees; whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator, tickle the small of his
back and he sees the joke; chalk a circle for a rooster; tiger, my eagle
eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his
mind, somewhat distracted from Stephen's words, while the ship of the street
was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old...
-- What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging
in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your
acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.
He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,
image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual blackguard
type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after as he was
perhaps not that way built.
Still, supposing he had his father's gift, as he more than suspected,
it opened up new vistas in his mind, such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries
concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general.
Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End
by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from.
Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea
and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom a bit:
Von der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom, nodding,
said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means, which he
did.
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if
properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as
Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its own
price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate
possessor in the near future an entrÉe into fashionable houses in the best
residential quarters, of financial magnates in a large way of business and
titled people where, with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its
way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression
he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains
which also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his
clothes were properly attended to, so as to the better worm his way into
their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society's sartorial niceties,
hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you.
It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him
participating in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the
festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in
the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for
sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record, in fact,
without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to,
could easily have... Added to which of course, would be the pecuniary
emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition
fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need
necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy
space of time but a step in the required direction it was, beyond yea or
nay, and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his
dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed
a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though
taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that,
different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue, as it
would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual
hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St
Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, he could, with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening
to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where
he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for
the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were
forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak - a big if, however - with
some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination
which often tripped up a too much feted prince of good fellows and it need
not detract from the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would
have heaps of time to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous
of so doing without its clashing with his vocal career or containing
anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In
fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the
other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort,
hung on to him at all.
The horse was just then... and later on, at a propitious opportunity he
purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying Into his private affairs on the
fools step in where angels principle advising him to sever his connection
with a certain budding practitioner, who, he noticed, was prone to
disparage, and even, to a slight extent, with some hilarious pretext, when
not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it, which, in
Bloom's humble opinion, threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's
character - no pun intended.
The horse, having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted,
and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall
on the floor, which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking
globes of turds. Slowly, three times, one after another, from a full
crupper, he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had
ended, patient in his scythed car.
Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed
through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a
strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing
more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad:
Und alle Schiffe brÜcken
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent. He merely
watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black - one
full, one lean - walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father
Maher. As they walked, they at times stopped and walked again, continuing
their tÊte-À-tÊte (which of course he was utterly out of), about sirens,
enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same
category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the
sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case
couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near
the end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car.
Ulysses 17: Ithaca
WHAT PARALLEL COURSES DID BLOOM AND STEPHEN FOLLOW REturning?
Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they
followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy
square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by
an inadvertance as far as the farther corner of Temple street, north: then
at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street,
north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking
pace they crossed both the circus before George's church diametrically, the
chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends.
Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?
Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,
prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and
glow-lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed
corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical
celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the study of
medicine, the past day, the male-cent influence of the presabbath, Stephen's
collapse.
Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their
respective like and unlike reactions to experience?
Both were sensitive to artistic impressions musical in preference to
plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of
life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both indurated by
early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance
professed their disbelief in many orthodox religious, national, social and
ethical doctrines. Both admitted the alternately stimulating and obtunding
influence of heterosexual magnetism.
Were their views on some points divergent?
Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's view on the importance of dietary
and civic self help while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on
the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom assented
covertly to Stephen's rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning
the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to christianity from druidism
by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus, son of Odyssus, sent by pope
Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or
thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt (266 A.D.) suffocated by imperfect
deglutition of aliment at Sletty and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse
which Bloom ascribed to gastric inanition and certain chemical compounds of
varying degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by
mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing
atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud
(perceived by both from two different points of observation, Sandycove and
Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman's hand.
Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
paraheliotropic trees.
Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in
the past?
In 1884 with Ower Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's
corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield avenue. In 1885 with
Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall between Gibraltar
villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of Uppercross. In 1886
occasionally with casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers on
doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class railway carriages of suburban
lines. In 1888 frequently with major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss
Marion Tweedy, together and separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon's
house in Roundtown. Once in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius Mastiansky, on
both occasions in the parlour of his (Bloom's) house in Lombard street,
west.
What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885,
1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their
destination?
He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of
the converse domain of interindividual relations.
As in what ways?
>From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:
existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to
nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.
What action did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?
At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers,
number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back
pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.
Was it there?
It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on
the day but one preceding.
Why was he doubly irritated?
Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded
himself twice not to forget.
What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly
(respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?
To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.
Bloom's decision?
A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the
area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the
lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of
five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area
pavement, and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself
from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of the fall.
Did he fall?
By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in
avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical
selfweighing in the premises of Francis Fraedman, pharmaceutical chemist of
19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the
twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four
of the Christian era (jewish era five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour,
mohammedan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number $,
epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indication 2, Julian
period 6617, MXMIV.
Did he rise uninjured by concussion?
Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by
the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at
its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its
fulcrum gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent
scullery, ignited a Lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas
by turning on the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he
reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle.
What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?
Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent
kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 C P, a man lighting a
candle, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the
kitchen holding a candle of ICP.
Did the man reappear elsewhere?
Alter a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible
through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor.
The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the
doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.
Did Stephen obey his sign?
Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and
followed softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted
candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a
turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's house.
What did Bloom do?
He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen
with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary,
knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped
sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal
at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M'Donald of
14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one
ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in
the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free
union with the oxygen of the air.
Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?
Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two,
had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the
college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of
Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first
residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother
Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15
Usher's Island: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of
number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint
Francis-Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics'
theatre of university College, 16 Stephen's green, north: of his sister
Dilly (Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.
What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from
the fire towards the opposite wall?
Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope,
stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney
pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached
consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' grey hose with
lisle suspendertops and feet in their habitual position clamped by three
erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the third at their
point of junction.
What did Bloom see on the range?
On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
(larger) hob a black iron kettle.
What did Bloom do at the range?
He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron
kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let
it flow.
Did it flow?
Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of
2,400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter
mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of
#5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and
Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute
miles, and thence, through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250
feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though
from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the
water had fallen below the sill of the overflow weir for which reason the
borough surveyor and waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C.E., on the
instructions of the waterworks committee, had prohibited the use of
municipal water for purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the
possibility of recourse being had to the importable water of the Grand and
Royal canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians,
notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied
through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons
per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of
the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the
detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers,
solvent, sound.
What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier
returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature
in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's
projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific
exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles
visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units:
the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its
hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after
devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic:
its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over
the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square
leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the
multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: Its
capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including
billions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of
peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its
weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland
tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid
zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and
confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic
currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in
seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies,
freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers,
cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its
vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent
humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and
exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air,
distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent
parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues:
its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness
in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for
cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its
infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist,
cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety
of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and
atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal
estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its
docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power
stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals,
rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable
from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its
submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not
literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of
the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes,
pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.
Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he
return to the stillflowing tap?
To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of
Barrington's lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered (bought
thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold
neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long
redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.
What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer?
That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by
submersion in cold water (his last bath having taken place in the month of
October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass
and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.
What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and
prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a preliminary
wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid splashing of
the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river
bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to cold being the
nape, stomach, and thenar or sole of foot?
The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.
What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?
Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric
energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the
lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.
Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?
Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and
recuperation.
What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the
agency of fire?
The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of
ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was
communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of
bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated
fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their
vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat (radiant),
transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat
(convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was constantly
and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to the liquid
contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven unpolished dark
surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part absorbed, in part
transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the water from normal to
boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as the result of an
expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise I pound of water from 50
to 212 Fahrenheit.
What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?
A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at
both sides simultaneously.
For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?
To shave himself.
What advantages attended shaving by night?
A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from
shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly
encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours:
quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when
awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and
perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read,
reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with
thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster
rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and
humected and applied adhered which was to be done.
Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noises
Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine
feminine passive active hand.
What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting
influence?
The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human
blood even when the end justified the means, preferring in their natural
order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery.
What lay under exposure on the lower middle and upper shelves of the
kitchen dresser opened by Bloom?
On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal
breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustachecup,
uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, and
open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic
violet comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a
drum of table salt, four conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an
empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre
and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and
Co's white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue
paper, a packet of Epps's soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice
tea at 2/- per lb. in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister
containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one the larger,
Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface
and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown
crockery containing a noggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk,
converted by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds,
which added to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's
breakfasts made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered,
two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh
ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars of various sizes and
proveniences.
What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?
Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets,
numbered 887, 886.
What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?
Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction,
preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and
definitive result of which he had read in the Evening Telegraph, late pink
edition, in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge.
Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected,
been received by him?
In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain
street: in David Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell
street lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand
a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the
church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co
(Limited) dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had
rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the
current issue of the Freeman's Journal and National Press which he had been
about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the
oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the
light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the
secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.
What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event
followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the
electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by
failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally
from a successful interpretation.
His mood?
He hid not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he
was satisfied.
What satisfied him?
To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to
others. Light to the gentiles.
How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?
He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's
soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on
the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed
ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed.
What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his
guest?
Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation
Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly), he
substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served
extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the viscous
cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion (Molly).
Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of
hospitality?
His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely and he accepted
them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, the
creature cocoa.
Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed,
reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to complete
the act begun?
The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right
side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's
handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition.
Who drank more quickly?
Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation ad taking,
from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady flow
of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two, nine to
three.
What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?
Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was
engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from
literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied
to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of
difficult problems in imaginary or real life.
Had he found their solution?
In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages,
aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the
answers not bearing on all points.
What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him,
potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering of
three prizes at 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively by the Shamrock, a weekly
newspaper?
An ambition to squint
At my verses in print
Makes me hope that for these you'll find room.
If you so condescend
Then please place at the end
The name of yours truly, L. Bloom.
Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him?
Name, age, race, creed.
What anagrams had he made on his name in youth?
Leopold Bloom
Ellpodbomool
Molldopeloob.
Bollo edoom
Old Ollebo, M. P.
What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic
poet) sent to Miss Marion Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?
Poets oft have sung in rhyme
Of music sweet their praise divine.
Let them hymn it nine times nine.
Bearer far than song or wine,
You are mine. The world is mine.
What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G.
Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual years,
entitled If Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now,
commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49
South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the valley of
diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the grand annual
Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor (written by Greenleaf Whittier,
scenery by George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss
Whelan, produced by R. Shelton 26 December 1892 under the personal
supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir, harlequinade by
Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist principal girl?
Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest,
the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded 1837)
and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market: secondly,
apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the
respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses, the duke and duchess of York
(real), and of His Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary); thirdly, a conflict
between professional etiquette and professional emulation concerning the
recent erections of the Grand Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal
in Hawkins street: fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly
Bouverist's non-intellectual, non-political, nontopical expression of
countenance and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist's revelations of
white articles of nonintellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing
while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties
of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from
Everybody's Book of Jokes (1,000 pages and a laugh in every one); sixthly,
the rhymes homophonous and cacophonous, associated with the names of the new
lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new
solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton.
What relation existed between their ages?
16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen
was 6.16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age
Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages
initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the
proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary
future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had
continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when
Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as
Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have
attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive
having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the
maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen
would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D.,
Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been
obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C.
What events might nullify these calculations?
The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new
era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination
of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.
How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance?
Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon's house, Medina
Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Stephen's mother,
Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in
salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's hotel on a rainy
Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen's father and
Stephen's granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older.
Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and
afterwards seconded by the father?
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative
gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.
Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a
third connecting link between them?
Mrs Riordan, a widow of independent means, had resided in the house of
Stephen's parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also
resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City Arms Hotel owned by
Elizabeth O'Dowd of 54 Prussia street where during parts of the years 1893
and 1894 she had been a constant informant of Bloom who resided also in the
same hotel, being at that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffe of
5 Smithfield for the superintendence of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle
market on the North Circular road.
Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?
He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow
of independent, if limited means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow
revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road
opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a
certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses
unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles, equipped with
inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems, private and hired
landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the Phoenix
Park and vice versa.
Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity?
Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of
bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual
changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes,
vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim
of a round precipitous globe.
What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years
deceased?
The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her
suppositions wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal
deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the
Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart
Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers.
Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation
which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the more
desirable?
The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently
abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow's Physical Strength and How To Obtain
It which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in sedentary
occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in front of a mirror
so as to bring into play the various families of muscles and produce
successively a pleasant relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of
juvenile agility.
Had any special agility been his in earlier youth?
Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full
circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High School scholar he had
excelled in his table and protracted execution of the half lever movement on
the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally developed abdominal
muscles.
Did either openly allude to their racial difference?
Neither.
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts
about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's
thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephen?
He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he
knew that he knew that he was not.
What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective
parentages?
Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag
(subsequently Rudolf Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London
and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius Higgins (born
Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hegarty); Stephen, eldest surviving male
consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and of Mary,
daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born Grier).
Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or
layman?
Bloom (three times) by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A. alone in
the protestant church of Saint Nicolas Without, Coombe; by James O'Connor,
Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump in the village
of Swords; and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in the church of the
Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the reverend Charles Malone, C.
C., alone, in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar.
Did they find their educational careers similar?
Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively
through a dame's school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for Stephen
Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory, junior,
middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the matriculation,
first arts, second arts and arts degree course of the royal university.
Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the
university of life?
Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation
had or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to him.
What two temperaments did they individually represent?
The scientific. The artistic.
What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards
applied, rather than towards pure, science?
Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in
a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation
of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary for
example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral
corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with
winch and sluice, the suction pump.
Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of
kindergarten?
Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard,
catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve
constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical
orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with
zoological biscuits, globemap playingballs, historically costumed dolls.
What also stimulated him in his cogitations?
The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James,
the former by his 1d. bazaar at 42 George's street, South, the latter at his
6 1/2d. shop and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30 Henry
street, admission 2d., children 1d.; and the infinite possibilities hitherto
unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral
monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally
of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest
involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide.
Such as?
K. 11. Kino's 111- Trousers.
House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.
Such as not?
Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive
gratis I pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed I candle power.
Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot Street.
Bacilikil (Insect Powder).
Veribest (Boot Blacking).
Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and
pipecleaner).
Such as never?
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in
4 oz. pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda
Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of
deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree is a meatpot,
registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Montpat.
Plamtroo.
Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that
originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to
success?
His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn
by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated
engaged in writing.
What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark
corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits.
She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary
hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs.
She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He
holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's hotel, Queen's hotel,
Queen's Ho...
What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?
The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, County, Glare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf
Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in
consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the
form of a neuralgic liniment, composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment to 1
of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on the morning of 27
June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17 Church street, Ennis)
after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on
the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after
having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at the hour and in
the place aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid), at the general drapery store of
James Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis.
Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or
intuition?
Coincidence.
Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?
He preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's
words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament
relieved.
Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to
him, described by the narrator as A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable
of the Plums?
It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by
implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms
(e.g. My Favourite Hero or Procrastination is the Thief of Time) composed
during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction
with the personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social,
personal and sexual success, whether specially collected and selected as
model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent merit) for the use of preparatory
and junior grade students or contributed in printed form, following the
precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon's Studies in Blue, to a
publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as
intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of
successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement,
during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer
solstice on the day but three following, videlict, Tuesday, 21 June (S.
Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m.
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other
frequently engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spillikins, cup and ball,
nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess
or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing
society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and
piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety
entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly
obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the
clandestine satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state
inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent
prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to
and from female acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity:
courses of evening instruction specially designed to render liberal
instruction agreeable.
What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him
in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?
In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper
with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and
Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals as
to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of a city
in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications,
internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills
she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic
epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the
encaustic pigment exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol
and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted
phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike
hoses), alias (a mendacious person mentioned in sacred Scripture).
What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and
such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?
The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all
balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her proficiency
of judgment regarding one person, proved true by experiment.
How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?
Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a
certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent
knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other's ignorant
lapse.
With what success had he attempted direct instruction?
She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with
interest, comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater
difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered,
rerepeated with error.
What system had proved more effective?
Indirect suggestion implicating self-interest.
Example?
She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she
disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new hat
with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.
Accepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of
postexilic eminence did he adduce?
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides,
author of More Neubkim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of
such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose
none like Moses (Maimonides).
What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth
seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by
Stephen?
That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher,
name uncertain.
Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a
selected or rejected race mentioned?
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher),
Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish
languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts by
guest to host and by host to guest?
By Stephen: suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus, suil go cuin
(walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).
By Bloom: Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m'baad l'zamatejch (thy temple
amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).
How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages
made in substantiation of the oral comparison?
On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior literary style,
entitled Sweets of Sin (produced by Bloom and so manipulated that its front
cover came in contact with the surface of the table) with a pencil (supplied
by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple
and modified, and Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph,
daleth and (in the absence of mem) a substituted goph, explaining their
arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1,4 and
100.
Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the
extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?
Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence
and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.
What points of contact existed between these languages and between the
peoples who spoke them?
The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and
servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught
on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted
by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant
of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their archeological,
genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homilectic, toponomastic,
historical and religious literatures comprising the works of rabbis and
culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara) Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the
Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their
dispersal, persecution, survival and revival: the isolation of their
synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S. Mary's Abbey) and
masshouse (Adam and Eve's tavern): the proscription of their national
costumes in penal laws and Jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanan
David of Zion and the possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution.
What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple,
ethnically irreductible consummation?
Kolod balejwaw pnimali
Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.
Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?
In consequence of defective mnemotechnic.
How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency? By a periphrastic
version of the general text.
In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?
The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic
hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern
stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and
the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic).
Did the guest comply with his host's request?
Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.
What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation
of the past.
What was Bloom's visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a
future.
What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional
quasisensations of concealed identities?
Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by
Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as
leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair.
Auditively, Bloom's: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of
catastrophe.
What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with
what exemplars?
In the church, Roman, Anglican, or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very
reverend John Conmee S.J., the reverend T. Salmon, D.D., provost of Trinity
college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars,
Seymour Bushe, K.C., Rufus Isaacs, K.C. On the stage, modern or
Shakespearean exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian, Osmond Tearle
(1901), exponent of Shakespeare.
Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a
strange legend on an allied theme?
Reassuringly, their place where none could hear them talk being
secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid residual
sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa,
having been consumed.
Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend?
d Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all Went out for to play
ball
And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
He drove it o'er the jew's garden wall.
And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
He broke the jew's windows all.
How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?
With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew, he heard with pleasure and saw
the unbroken kitchen window.
Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.
Then out there came the jew's daughter
And she all dressed in green.
`Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,
And play your ball again.'
`I can't come back and I won't come back
Without my schoolfellows all,
For if my master he did hear
He'd make it a sorry ball.'
She took him by the lilywhite hand
And led him along the hall
Until she led him to a room
Where none could hear him call.
She took a penknife out of her pocket
And cut off his little head,
And now he'll play his ball no more
For he lies among the dead.
How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's
daughter, all dressed in green.
Condense Stephen's commentary.
One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by
inadvertence, twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he is
abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope and
youth holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation, to a
secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him, consenting.
Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him
should by him not be told.
Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?
In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.
Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?
He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the
incitation of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the
propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of
opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of
atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic
suggestion and somnambulism.
>From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not
totally immune?
>From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his
sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an indefinite
time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From somnambulism: once,
sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a
heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, unheated
in night attire had lain, sleeping.
Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member
of his family?
Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent
(Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation of
terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night attire
with a vacant mute expression.
What other infantile memories had he of her?
15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and
lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her
moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons one, tloo, tlee: a doll,
a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond
ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian army,
proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British navy.
What endemic characteristics were present?
Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line
of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant intervals to
its most distant intervals.
What memories had he of her adolescence?
She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn
entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and take
away her photographic image (objection not stated). On the South Circular
road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of sinister
aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and turned abruptly back
(reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the 15th anniversary of her
birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief
allusion to a local student (faculty and year not stated).
Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?
Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.
What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly
if differently?
A temporary departure of his cat.
Why similarly, why differently?
Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male
(Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently, because of
different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the habitation.
In other respects were their differences similar?
In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in
unexpectedness.
As?
Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it
for her (cf. neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake in
Stephen's green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented spit,
describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy of
its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf. mousewatching
cat). Again, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and
consequences of a famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair
(cf. earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an
unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph
to whom (which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had
appeared to have accepted (cf. hearthdreaming cat). Hence in passivity, in
economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness, their differences
were similar.
In what way had he utilised gifts 1) an owl, 2) a clock, given as
matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?
As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous
animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of vision,
the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the pendulum,
exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation in terms of
human or social regulation of the various positions clockwise of movable
indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the recurrence per hour of
an instant in each hour, when the longer and the shorter indicator were at
the same angle of inclination, videlicet, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per
hour in arithmetical progression.