ney 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
sØance.
Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear, they left the
shelter or shanty together and the Ølite 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 entrØe 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 brícken
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 tÙte-î-tÙte (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 shav