In what manners did she reciprocate?
She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to
him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation crown Derby porcelain ware. She
provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had been made
by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his necessities,
anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural phenomenon having been
explained by him not for her she expressed the immediate desire to possess
without gradual acquisition a fraction of his science, the moiety, the
quarter, a thousandth part.
What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist,
make to Stephen, noctambulist?
To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and
Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately
above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his
host and hostess.
What various advantages would or might have resulted from a
prolongation of such extemporisation?
For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the
host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the hostess:
disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian pronunciation.
Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a
hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent eventuality
of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's daughter?
Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother
through daughter.
To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest
return a monosyllabic negative answer?
If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at
Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.
What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the
host?
A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment
of Mrs Mary Dedalus, born Goulding, 26 June 1903, vigil of the anniversary
of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag).
Was the proposal of asylum accepted?
Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.
What exchange of money took place between host and guest?
The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money
(œ1.7s.0.), one pound seven shillings, advanced by the latter to the former.
What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified,
declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the
residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruction,
place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a series of static,
semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues, places the residence of
both speakers (if both speakers were resident in the same place), the Ship
hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and E. Connery, proprietors), the
National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare street, the National Maternity
Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, a public garden, the vicinity of a
place of worship, a conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the
point of bisection of a right line drawn between their residences (if both
speakers were resident in different places).
What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
selfexcluding propositions?
The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert
Hengler's circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive
particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a
place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly
declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his (the clown's)
papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the summer of 1898 he
(Bloom) had marked a florin (2s.) with three notches on the milled edge and
tendered it in payment of an account due to and received by J. and T. Davy,
family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on the
waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return.
Was the clown Bloom's son?
No.
Had Bloom's coin returned?
Never.
Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to
amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and
international animosity.
He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible,
eliminating these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct
from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of
destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the
ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death:
the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human females
extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at
sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their
resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality,
decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of
human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in
densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of
metamorphosis from infancy through maturity to decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
more acceptable phenomena in place of the less acceptable phenomena to be
removed.
Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational
reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the
incertitude of the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from
the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
I n what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the
exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected?
Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
BLOOM.
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
STEPHEN.
With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm?
The 113th, modus peregrinus: In exitu Israkl de Egypto: domus Jacob de
populo barbaro.
What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his
head.
For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the
guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the
rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
companion of various constellations?
Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in
incipent lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous
scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer
placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk
from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis
Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900
times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of
equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100
of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new
stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation
of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars,
in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote
futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted
human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of
the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed
in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of
microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable
trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by
cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human
serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void
space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of
divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of
redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing
without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough,
nought nowhere was never reached.
Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of
the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number
computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so
many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result
having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of
innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be requisitioned
in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units,
tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands,
millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of
the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the
potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power
of any of its powers.
Did he find the problem of the inhabitability of the planets and their
satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and moral
redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism,
normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when
elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered
with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the line of
demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated, from
nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing this
problem for solution he had conjectured as a working hypothesis which could
not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and differently anatomically
constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial,
Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent
conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms
with finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another
would probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to
vanities, to vanities of vanities and all that is vanity.
And the problem of possible redemption?
The minor was proved by the major.
Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their
magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the
waggoner's star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures
of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the interdependent
gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous discoveries of
Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the
systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and
squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of
hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from
perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan
floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist:
the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of
S. Lawrence (martyr, 10 August): the monthly recurrence known as the new
moon with the old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on
human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding
brilliancy dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the
collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about
the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent
neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of
similar origin but lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared
from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of the
birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin
which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the
constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus,
and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and
death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some
years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant
phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion,
abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures,
emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal
light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.
His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and
allowing for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not
a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the
known to the unknown: an infinity, renderable equally finite by the
suppositions probable apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same
and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in
space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a
present before its future spectators had entered actual present existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite
of their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
influences upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea
of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and
woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian
generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her
luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising, and setting
by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her
aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her
potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify,
to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency:
the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated
dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of
calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the
admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when
visible: her attraction, when invisible.
What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's
gaze?
In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a
paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind
supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter
manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible person, his wife
Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued
affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with
suggestion.
Boa then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal
flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen,
then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of
micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their
gazes, first Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected luminous and
semiluminous shadow.
Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations
were dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the
bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter who in his ultimate year at High
School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude
against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars:
Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous
day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure.
What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the
invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity,
reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pelosity. To Stephen: the problem of
the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (1st January, holiday of
obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work) and the
problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy
Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of
simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the
abscission of such divine excrescences as hair and toenails.
What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament
from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress of
Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.
How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal
departer?
By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning
its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling
inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture
for free egress and free ingress.
How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and forming
any angle less than the sum of two right angles.
What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of
their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the
bells in the church of Saint George.
What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
By Stephen:
Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet.
Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat.
By Bloom:
Heigho, heigho,
Heigho, heigho.
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day
at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to
Glasnevin in the north?
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in
bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John
Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed),
Paddy Dignam (in the grave).
Alone, what did Bloom hear?
The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth,
the double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane.
Alone, what did Bloom feel?
The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing
point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Riaumur: the
incipient intimations of proximate dawn.
Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind
him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis
Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip
Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater
Misericordi&Aelig; hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount).
What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of day-break, the
apparition of a new solar disk.
Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
Once, in 1887 after a protracted performance of charades in the house
of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the
diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of
Mizrach, the east.
He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the
visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first
golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering
the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the
candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room,
hallfloor, and reentered.
What suddenly arrested his ingress?
The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into
contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible
fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in consequence
of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.
Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of
furnitures?
A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite
the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an
alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and white
checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in the
place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard (a projecting
angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had been moved from its
position beside the door to a more advantageous but more perilous position
in front of the door: two chairs had been moved from right and left of the
ingleside to the position originally occupied by the blue and white checker
inlaid majolicatopped table.
Describe them.
One: a squat stuffed easychair with stout arms extended and back
slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an
irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply
upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The
other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly
opposite the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to base being
varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of white plaited rush.
What significances attached to these two chairs?
Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of
circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence.
What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray
containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two
discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the
key of G natural for voice and piano of Love's Old Sweet Song (words by G.
Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette
Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications ad libitum,
forte, pedal, animato, sustained, pedal, ritirando, close.
With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focusing his gaze on a large
dull passive and slender bright active: with solicitation, bending and
downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement, remembering Dr Malachi
Mulligan's scheme of colour containing the gradation of green: with
pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act and perceiving through
various channels of internal sensibility the consequent and concomitant
tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual discolouration.
His next proceeding?
>From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a
small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
(illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it
superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the
candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter
reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin of the
candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to facilitate
total combustion.
What followed this operation?
That truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted
a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
mantelpiece?
A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46
a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf tree
of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial gift of
Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman John
Hooper.
What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and
Bloom?
In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the
dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the mirror
the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear melancholy wise
bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while Bloom with obscure
tranquil profound motionless compassionated gaze regarded the matrimonial
gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle.
What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his
attention?
The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
Why solitary (ipsorelative)?
Brothers and sisters had he none,
Yet that man's father was his grandfather's son.
Why mutable (aliorelative)?
>From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix.
From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal
creator.
What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?
The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged
and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles on
the two bookshelves opposite.
Catalogue these books.
Thorn's Dublin Post Office Directory, 1886.
Denis Florence M'Carthy's Poetical Works (copper beechleaf bookmark at
p. 5).
Shakespeare's Works (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled).
The Useful Ready Reckoner (brown cloth).
The Secret History of the Court of Charles II (red cloth, tooled
binding).
The Child's Guide (blue cloth).
When We Were Boys by William O'Brien M.P. (green cloth, slightly faded,
envelope bookmark at p. 217).
Thoughts from Spinoza (maroon leather).
The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth).
Ellis's Three Trips to Madagascar (brown cloth, title obliterated).
The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of
Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel Street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve) 1904, due
4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing white
letternumber ticket).
Voyages in China by `Viator' (recovered with brown paper, red ink
title).
Philosophy of the Talmud (sewn pamphlet).
Lockhart's Life of Napoleon (cover wanting, marginal an notations,
minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist).
Soll und Haben by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters,
cigarette coupon bookmark at p. 24).
Hozier's History of the Russo-Turkish War (brown cloth, 2 volumes, with
gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor's Parade, Gibraltar, on verso of
cover).
Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland by William Allingham (second edition,
green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner's name on recto of flyleaf
erased).
A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates,
antique letterpress long primer, author's footnotes nonpareil, marginal
clues brevier, captions small pica).
The Hidden Life of Christ (black boards).
In the Track of the Sun (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent
title intestation).
Physical Strength and How to Obtain It by Eugene Sandow (red cloth).
Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry written in French by F. Ignat.
Pardies and rendered into Englifh by John Harris D. D. London, printed for
R. Knaplock at the Bifhop's Head MDCCXI, with dedicatory epiftle to his
worthy friend Charles Cox, efquire, Member of Parliament for the burgh of
Southwark and having ink calligraphed statement on the flyleaf certifying
that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher, dated this 10th day of
May 1822 and requefting the perfon who should find it, if the book should be
loft or go aftray, to reftore it to Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery
Gate, Ennifcorthy, county Wicklow, the fineft place in the world.
What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of
the inverted volumes?
The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its
place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the
incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined
in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document behind,
beneath or between the pages of a book.
Which volume was the largest in bulk?
Hozier's History of the Russo - Turkish War.
What among other data did the second volume of the work In question
contain?
The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a
decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).
Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question?
Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an
interval of amnesia, when seated at the central table, about to consult the
work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the military
engagement, Plevna.
What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?
The candour, nudity, pose, tranquillity, youth, grace, sex, counsel of
a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased
by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor's Walk.
What caused him irritation in his sitting posture?
Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two
articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males and
inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.
How was the irritation allayed?
He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible
stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned
successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest along
the medial line of irregular incrispated black hair extending in triangular
convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference of the abdomen and
umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes to the intersection of
the sixth pectoral vertebr&Aelig;, thence produced both ways at right angles
and terminating in circles described about two equidistant points, right and
left, on the summits of the mammary prominences. He unbraced successively
each of six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which
one incomplete.
What involuntary actions followed?
He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice
in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting
inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched
imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of prurition, various
points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He inserted
his left hand into the left lower pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and
replaced a silver coin (1 shilling), placed there (presumably) on the
occasion (17 October 1903) of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney
Parade.
Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.
#. s. d. #. s. d.
1 Pork kidney 0. 0. 3 Cash in hand 0.4.9
2 Copy Freeman's Journal 0.0.2 Commission recd. Freeman's Journal
1 Bath and gratification 0. 1.6 2.7.6
Tramfare 0. 0. 2 Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 1.7.0
2 In Memoriam Patrick
Dignam 0.5.0
2 Banbury cakes 0.0.1
2 Lunch 0.0.7
1 Rental fee for book 0.1.0
2 Packet notepaper and
envelopes 0.0.2
2 Dinner and gratification 0.2.0
2 Postal order and stamp 0.2.8
Tramfare 0.0.1
1 Pig's Foot 0.0.4
1 Sheep's Trotter 0.0.3
2 Cake Fry's plain choco
late 0.0.
1 Square soda bread 0.0.4
1 Coffee and bun 0.0.4
Loan (Stephen Dedalus)
refunded 2.7.0
BALANCE 0.27.5
#.2.29. 3 #.2.19.3
Did the process of divestiture continue?
Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended
his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient
points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in
several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots,
unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the
second time, detached the partially moistened right sock through the fore
part of which the nail of his great toe had again effracted, raised his
right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock suspender, took off
his right sock, placed his unclothed right foot on the margin of the seat of
his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of the great
toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of
the quick, then with satisfaction threw away the lacerated unguinal
fragment.
Why with satisfaction?
Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other
unguinal fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs
Ellis's juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief
genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.
In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions
now coalesced?
Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English,
or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of
acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation #42), of grazing
turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage drive nor,
on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, described as Rus in
Urbe or Qui si Sana, but to purchase by private treaty in fee simple a
thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect,
surmounted by vane and lightning conductor, connected with the earth, with
porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive
green, with smart carriage finish and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with
gilt tracery at eaves and gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence
with agreeable prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over
unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6
acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public
thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible at night above and through
a quickset hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not
less than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time
limit of not more than 5 minutes from tram or train line (e.g., Dundrum,
south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by trial to
resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates for phthisical
subjects), the premises to be held under feefarmgrant, lease 999 years, the
message to consist of 1 drawingroom with baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer
affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2 servants rooms, tiled kitchen with
close range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed
oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New
century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons,
dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone
receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream
ground and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with
massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed
timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart,
comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby plush
with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and
cuspidors (club style, rich wine-coloured leather, gloss renewable with a
minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and pyramidically
prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with a fingertame parrot
(expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/-per dozen with transverse
swags of carmine floral design and top crown frieze, staircase, three
continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished cleargrained
oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with stepped-up panel
dado, dressed with camphorated wax, bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining
and shower: water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong
window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod brace, armrests, footstool
and artistic oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servant's
apartments with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general
and betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of #2, with
comprehensive fidelity insurance annual bonus (#1), and retiring allowance
(based on the 65 system) after 30 years service), pantry, buttery, larder,
refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with winebin (still and
sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained to dinner
(evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply throughout.
What additional attractions might the grounds contain?
As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a