d. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista.
O'Hara's tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his
family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over
the sea she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always
thought I'd marry a lord or a gentleman with a private yacht. Buenos noches,
seÑorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because you were so
foreign from the others.
Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you
dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leoh,
Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope
she's over. Long day I've had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of keys,
museum with those goddesses, Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in Barney
Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters. What I said about his God
made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at
themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a
child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. Not so bad
then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel. Three cheers
for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style
of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the
wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in the
early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he
kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so
depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to
those Scottish widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for granted
we're going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it outside Cramer's
that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but progressing favourably on the
premium. Her widow's mite. Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle
her way along. Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor
wife and five children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some
good matronly woman in a pork-pie hat to mother him. Take him in tow,
platter face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three
shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they
say. Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we
die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the
trick. U. p.: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed. Curse
seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red
slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does. Would I like her
in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. Near Holyhead
by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats
for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's that? Might be money.
Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He
brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go.
Better. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and
pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with story
of a treasure in it thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children always want
to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters. What's this?
Bit of stick.
O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here
tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do.
Will I?
Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write
a message for her. Might remain. What?
I.
Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide
comes here a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror,
breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O,
those transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that
other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like.
AM. A.
No room. Let it go.
Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.
Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.
Except Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by
design.
He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. Now
if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance. We'll
never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel so
young.
Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone.
Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. I won't
go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a moment.
Won't sleep though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat again. No harm
in him. Just a few.
O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me
do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met
him pike hoses frillies for Raoul to perfume your wife black hair heave
under embon seÑorita young eyes Mulvey plump years dreams return tail end
Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her
next her next.
A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Bloom
with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. Just for a
few.
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon
O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were taking
tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking
about
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Because it was a little canarybird bird that came out of its little
house to tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there
because she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty
MacDowell, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was
sitting on the rocks looking was
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Ulysses 14: Oxen of the Sun
DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLES Eamus.
Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send
us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright
one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, hoyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy,
hoopsa.
Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals
with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most
in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's
ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent
they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is
the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure
of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for
that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent
when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent
nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some
significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour
may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary
anyone so is there inilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature's boon
can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just
citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to
tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced
might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an
inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors
transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was
audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no
more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign
that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with
prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of
reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?
It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians
relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable
admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak
of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest
doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down
the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health
whether the malady had been trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux.
Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity contains
preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was
by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of
experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of
subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest)
whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that
whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly required
and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who not being
sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist
valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.
To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be
molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers
prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity gods
mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so having
itself, parturient in vehicle the reward carrying desire immense among all
one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile. O
thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also even in being
related worthy of being praised that they her by anticipation went seeing
mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun
she felt!
Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in
that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with
wholesome food reposeful cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now
done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is
need and surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting
aspect of all very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our
terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the
cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive or eases
issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly
far gone and reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term
up.
Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of
Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth
of man his errand that him lone led till that house.
Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming
mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so
God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers they there walk, white sisters in ward
sleepless. Smarts they still sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an
hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward.
In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mild-hearted eft rising
with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens
in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin! Full she dread that God the Wreaker
all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she
on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That
man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.
Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow
he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land
and seafloor nine year had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting
he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground
of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had
looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning.
As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad
after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings
sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare
Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied
in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for friend so young,
algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She said that he had a
fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be shriven,
holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest
asked the nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun answered him
and said that he was died in Mona island through bellycrab three year agone
come Childermas and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul
in his undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So
stood they there both awhile in wanhope, sorrowing one with other.
Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the
dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked
forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to
go as he came.
The man that was come into the house then spoke to the nursingwoman and
he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in childbed. The
nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in throes now full
three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that now in
a little it would be. She said thereto that she had seen many births of
women but never was none so hard as was that woman's birth. Then she set it
forth all to him that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened
to her words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they
have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a young face
for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine
twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.
And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there
nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there came
against the place as they stood a young learning knight yclept Dixon. And
the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they had
had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this learning
knight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed for he was
sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful
dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and
chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go into
that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller
Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and
a subtle. Also the lady was of his avis and reproved the learning knight
though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was false for
his subtility. But the learning knight would not hear say nay nor do her
mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it
was a marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for
to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in
divers lands and sometimes venery.
And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy
and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move
for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are
made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix
in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there
were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air
by a warlock with his breath that he blares into them like to bubbles. And
full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a
fuller ne richer. And there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to
open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men
nie that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so.
And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land
because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olive
press. And also it was marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a
compost out of fecund wheat kidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain
angry spirits that they do into it swells up wondrously like to a vast
mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long
sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a
brewage like to mead.
And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp
thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe
Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in
amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and anon
full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his
neighbour wist not of his wile. And he sat down in that castle with them for
to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.
This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at
the reverence of Jesu our alther liege lord to leave their wassailing for
there was above one quick with child a gentle dame, whose time hied fast.
Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that
it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not come
or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that
hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older than any of the tother
and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by
cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. But, said he, or it be
long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing
for she hath waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said,
Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup that stood tofore
him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now
drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their
both's health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir
Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and
that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand under
hen and that was the very truest knight of the world one that ever did
minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman's woe
with wonder pondering.
Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be
drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the
board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with
other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin
that high! Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young Stephen
that had mien of a frere that was at head of the board and Costello that men
clepen Punch Costello all long of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of
all them, reserved young Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded
still of more mead) and beside the meek sir Leopold. But on young Malachi
they waited for that he promised to have come and such as intended to no
goodness said how he had broke his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for
he bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and
for that his languor becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as
they feasted him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him,
love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.
For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each
gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that
put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a
matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that now
was trespassed out of this world and the self night next before her death
all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her case). And they said
farther she should live because in the beginning they said the woman should
bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were of this imagination
affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had conscience to let her
die. And not few and of these was young Lynch were in doubt that the world
was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit the mean people
believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges did provide no remedy. A
redress God grant. This was scant said but all cried with one acclaim nay,
by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour
whereof they waxed hot upon that head what with argument and what for their
drinking but the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour them ale so
that at the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the
whole affair and when he said how that she was dead and how for holy
religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to
Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby
they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words
following, Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now
glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purge fire. But,
gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly unpossibilise,
which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord and Giver of Life?
For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures
within us and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch
Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken and the best word he
could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or
wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of
lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of
that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn the
other all this while pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did
malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that he
was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat laughed
they all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir Leopold which never durst
laugh too open by reason of a strange humour which he would not bewray and
also ford that he rued for her that bare whoso she might be or wheresoever.
Then spoke young Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out
of her bosom, of law of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness
wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to
mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of the occident or by the
reek of moonflower or an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain
with effectu secuto, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions
of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second
month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever
souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a
dam to bring forth beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth
the fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church
for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would he
in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness of
mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said
dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever
loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his
experience of so seldom seen an accident it was good for that Mother Church
belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he
scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a
pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he
averred that he who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord for he was of
a wild manner when he was drunken and that he was now in that taking it
appeared eftsoons.
But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had
pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and as
he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only manchild
which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art could save so
dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil hap
and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb's wool, the flower of
the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie akeled (for it was then
about the midst of the winter) and now sir Leopold that had of his body no
manchild for an heir looked upon him his friend's son and was shut up in
sorrow for his forepassed happiness and as sad as he was that him failed a
son of such gentle courage (for all accounted him of real parts) so grieved
he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously
with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores.
About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty
so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their
approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the
intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar of
Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, of
this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed parcel of my body but
my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to them that live by bread
alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for this will comfort more than
the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them glistering coins of
the tribute and goldsmiths' notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling
that he had, he said, for a song which he writ. They all admired to see the
foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were
then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build
eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but
after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark
me now. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker
all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the
postcreation. Omnis cam ad te veniet. No question but her name is puissant
who aventried the dear corse of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty
mother and mother most venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that she hath an
omnipotentiam deiparae supplicem, that is to wit, an almightiness of
petition because she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too,
whereas that other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive
anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a
penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I
say, and was but creature of her creature, vergine madre figlia di tuo
figlio or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or
ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and
with Joseph the Joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages
parce que M. LÉo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue
position c'Était le sacrÉ pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder
transsubstantiality oder consubstantiality but in no case subsubstantiality.
And all cried out upon It for a very scurvy word. A pregnancy without joy,
he said, a birth without pangs, a body without blemish, a belly without
bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we
withstand, withsay.
Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would
sing a bawdy catch Staboo Stabella about a wench that was put in pod of a
jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did now attack: The first three months
she was not well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley from the door angerly bid
them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as she remembered them
being her mind was to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because
she was jealous that not gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her
guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian
walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her
hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all
embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and with
menace of blandishments others whiles all chode with him, a murrain seize
the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in
the peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou
dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that like
a curse of God ape, the good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance the
flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion as most
sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's house rest should
reign.
To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in
Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he had
not cided to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the womb,
chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master Lenehan at
this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds and how, as he
heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding
female which was corruption of minors and they all intershowed it too,
waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he said very entirely it
was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the eternal son and ever
virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and they rehearsed to him his
curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as the
priests use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise of white and saffron,
her groom in white and grain, with burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed
while clerks sung kyries and the anthem Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis
mysterium till she was there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable
hymen minim by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis
Beaumont that is in their Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining of
lovers: To bed, to bed, was the burden of it to be played with accompanable
concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most
mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus
of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial
communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young
sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my truth, of such
a mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best
remembrance they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews to
make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and
the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love than this, he said,
no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend. Go thou and do
likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, said Zarathustra, sometime regius
professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there
ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy
tower it will go hard but thou wilt have the secondbest bed. Orate, fratres,
pro memetipso. And all the people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy
generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by my
word and broughtest in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my
sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned
against the light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants.
Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done
this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps
and didst deny me to the Roman and the Indian of dark speech with whom thy
daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land of
behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of
Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me
with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou
hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a
kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior,
he proceeded to say, hath not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint
nor so much as mentioned for the Orient from on high which brake hell's
gates visited a darkness that was foraneous. Assuefaction minorates
atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics) and Hamlet his father
showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane in the noon of
life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of prenativity and
postmortemity is their most proper ubi and quomodo. And as the ends and
ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their
inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads
forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that
minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so
is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail,
batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend.
First saved from water of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated
wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the
conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the
ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor
whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we
would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our
whoness hath fetched his whenceness.
Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly Etienne chanson but he loudly
bid them lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic
longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator all in applepie
order, a penny for him who finds the pea.
Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack,
See the malt stored in many a refluent sack,
In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac.
A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled, back. Loud on
left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm
that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and
witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he
that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed pale as they might all mark
and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now
of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his
breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some
jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenehan
vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the
least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in
his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead.
But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's
hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it
thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being
godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and
Master Bloom, at the braggart's side spoke to him calming words to slumber
his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise
that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having
taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon.
But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he
had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done
away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He
was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not
have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness
that then he lived withal? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that
bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what
Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear
unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For
through that tube he saw that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must
for a certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And
would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he
and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has
commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other
land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which
behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death
and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as
believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed
him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain
whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand
and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she
said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a
brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot
which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.
This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of
Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore
Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked
devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her.
For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they
could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she
ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which
were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy
and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and
the monsters they cared not for them, for Preservative had given them a
stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither
from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield
which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil
and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon,
Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye
all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous
rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their
abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth
to bring brenningly biddeth.
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields
athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard
to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this
long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone
brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flags and faggots
that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew,
the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a
small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening
after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be
seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some
sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke
with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within
door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a
clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as
the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through
Merrion green up to Holles street, a swash of water running that was before
bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack
after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door
(that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal.
Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the
writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced
against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now In with dance cloaks of
Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where
his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and
asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's
being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a
skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel and all this while
poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of
Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling
fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy, Vin. Lynch, a Scots
fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad for a racinghorse he fancied and
Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he
having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red
slippers on in pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be
for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her
belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the
midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop
that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than
good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks they say, but God give her
soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her
last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all
breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible. Her hub
fifty odd and a methodist but takes the Sacrament and is to be seen any fair
sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound
with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and
pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of
rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken
say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's
almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same
gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things
in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and
bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities
no telling how.
With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the
letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him
(for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on
Stephen's persuasion he gave over to search and was bidden to sit near by
which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a
merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of woman, horseflesh, or hot
scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the
most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps,
ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of
the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a
tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his
sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boiling-cook's and
if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of
tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off
with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every
mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello, that is,
hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank
(that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered
along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with
their bully beef, a pox on it. There's as good fish in this tin as ever came
out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that
stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which
was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. Mort aux
vaches, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a
brandy shipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a
gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father,
a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the
use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but
he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with
the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he
would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him
from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to
hoof it on the roads with the Romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by
favour or moonlight or fecking maid's linen or choking chickens behind a
hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with
naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of
tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across,
that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest
I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can
scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood
beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wools, having been some
years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove
his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in
Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose
of the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely, told
him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief
tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor
Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of
physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain
dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a
bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and Irish by nature, says Mr
Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about. An Irish bull in an English
chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent
to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattle breeder of them all,
with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the
table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a
portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat
of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the
women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him
hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but
before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly
gelded by a college of doctors, who were no better off than himself. So be
off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the Lord Harry tells you and
take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very
soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent,
for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid,
wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of
the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the
nape from his long holy tongue then lie with the finest strapping young
ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word:
And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet
and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him
all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the
road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that
he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of
the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could
scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels
brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full
he would rear up on his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and
roar and bellow out of him in bull's language and they all after him. Ay,
says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in
all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to
his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the
island with a printed notice, saying: By the lord Harry green is the grass
that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a
cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo
that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he
run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was
planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at
first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the
old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his
house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell
hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one
evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to
go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the
first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he
discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a
blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that
he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans,
Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr
Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinking trough in the
presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new
name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and
skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the
bull's language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the
first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if
ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it up
on what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of
cotton or a corkfloat. In short he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast
friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was
that the men of the island, seeing no help was toward as the ungrate women
were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their
bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards,
sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head
between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly
Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their
bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the
occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that
rollicking chanty:
-- Pope Peter's but a pissabed.
A man's a man for a' that.
Our worthy acquaintance, Mr Malachi Mulligan, now appeared in the
doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a
friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec
Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or
a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project
of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat
he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had
printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics:
Mr Malachi Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator, Lambay Island. His project,
as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures
such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop
Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our
bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend,
said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both.
'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation
and, expatiating on his design, told his hearers that he had been led into
this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the
inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due
to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether
the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities
acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch
defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable
females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their
flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly
bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply
the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when
a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made
his heart weep. To curb this inconvenience (which he concluded due to a
suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of
worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee
simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot
de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of not much in favour with our ascendancy
party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named
Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to
offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what
grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of
fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor
would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than
the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions, and their tempers
were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For
his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of
savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter
prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and
stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After
this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan
in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it.
The both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending
their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's
smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project
meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty
eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a
finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan
however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics
which as it dwelt upon his memory seemed to him a sound and tasteful support
of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut
matres familiarum nostro lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum
Romanorum magnopere anteponunt: while for those of ruder wit he drove home
his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach,
the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
man of his person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while
the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The
young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had
befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr
Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and
fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray,
sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon
his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance,
and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's
house, that was in an interesting condition, poor lady, from woman's woe
(and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken
place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask Mr Mulligan himself
whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due as
with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For
answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself
bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of
Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's
a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a
conceit that it renewed the storms of mirth and threw the whole room into
the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the
same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.
Here the listener, who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with
the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point,
having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to
pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning pose
of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a
gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the head,
asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat
him with a cup of it. Mais bien sÛr, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et
mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing
but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but
a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would
accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and
give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver
of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took
a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his
bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband that very picture
which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon
those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you
but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her
dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feast day as she told
me) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my
conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to
deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field
for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God I thank thee
as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature
will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these
words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and
sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessing to all Thy creatures, how
great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in
thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the
lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years.
But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all
our sublunary joys! Maledicity! Would to God that foresight had remembered
me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had
poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew
me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and,
thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from
whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever
kept a lady from wetting. Tut, Tut! cries le FÉcondateur, tripping in, my
friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked
a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my
authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet
through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells
me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest
posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy
things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy
mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My
dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she
would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing
piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words
but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted
it in our heart and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses
for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a
breach of the proprieties, is the fittest nay, the only, garment. The first,
said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to
fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my
ear), the first is a bath... but at this point a bell tinkling in the hall
cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our
store of knowledge.
Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and while
all were conjecturing what might be the cause Miss Callan entered and,
having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a
profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party of
debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less
severe than beautiful refrained the humorous sallies even of the most
licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry.
Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous
fine bit of cow-flesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you
dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud. Immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The
bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not
Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin? As I look to be saved I
had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven
months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest,
feigning a womanish simper and immodest squirmings of his body, how you do
tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibblywobbly. Why, you're
as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem that you are! May this pot of four
half choke me, cried Costello, if she ain't in the family way. I knows a
lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young
surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the
nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful
providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady
who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had
given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who
without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling
profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest
power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need
were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble
exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious
incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an
one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours and at an instant the most momentous that can befall a
puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of
a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right
reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered
himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to
the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the
low soaker without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor
would he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his
transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a round
hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap
my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello
which I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and thy mother that
had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I
always looks back on with a loving heart.
To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
some impudent mocks which he, however, had borne with being the fruits of
that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young
sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children:
the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and
not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that his
intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the
proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their
behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he
nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen
gibbosity born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback teethed and feet
first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull
lent indeed a colour to, so as it put him in thought of that missing link of
creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for
more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through
the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and
self a man of a rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all
motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest
precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base
minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable.
To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a
habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither
to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for
such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the
sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate
and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth
which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the
severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer express it) for
eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity
upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her
lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned
upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little
alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal
of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty
of the Supreme Being.
Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express
one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to
be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since
she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade
said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it
ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you,
said Mr Crothers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of
emphasis, old Glory Allelujerum was round again to-day, an elderly man with
dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of
Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness
for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I
cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock
another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own
fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another
than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy
(virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household.
Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty
of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the
dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere
acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of
time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which
most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added,
it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for
I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together.
But with what fitness, let it be asked, of the noble lord, his patron,
has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to
civil rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity?
Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the
recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados
did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece
against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the
security of his four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all
benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has
become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not his own and
his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a
respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most
distant reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as
it was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy
woman she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate
prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the
derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican
in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to
attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest
strata of society. Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary
angel it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the
question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr
Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort
couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him
to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seed-field that lies fallow
for the want of a ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second
nature and an opprobium in middlelife. If he must dispense his balm of
Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a
generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the
doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of
secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some
faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected and debauched but this
new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree
which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was
abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have
lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is
stagnant, acid and inoperative.
The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
usages of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior
medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation
that an heir had been born. When he had betaken himself to the women's
apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the
presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of
the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation, the
delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping
that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous
absence of abigail and officer rendered the easier, broke out at once into a
strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard
endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to restrain. The moment was too propitious
for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union
among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively
eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean
section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with
respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs murder and
endered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured
the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and
king's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides,
simulated and dissimulated, acardiac ftus in ftu, aprosopia due to a
congestion, the agnatia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate
Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along
the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other
spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of
labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the
premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual
case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination
by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause,
the problem of the perpetuation of the species in the case of females
impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called
by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multigeminal,
twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of
consanguineous parents - in a word all the cases of human nativity which
Aristotle has classified in his master-piece with chromolithographic
illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were
examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of
pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a country
stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and
the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and
ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person
which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The
abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle,
strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a primafacie and
natural hypothetical explanation of swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel
Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the taledonian envoy and worthy
of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such
cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the
human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views with such
heat as almost carried conviction the theory of copulation between women and
the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of
fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin
poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression
made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as
it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein
of pleasantry which none better than he knew know to affect, postulating as
the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a
heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate
Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma in the even of one
Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was
referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon
Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural
gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in
obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly, and as some thought
perfunctorily, the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder
what God has joined.
But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up
the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in
the recess appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep? He
had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial
marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while
he eyed them with a ghastly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he
began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes,
it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The
inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and
ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I
tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me
the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this
life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting,
the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his
lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope...
Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the
panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and
said: Meet me at Westland row station at ten past eleven. He was gone! Tears
gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to
heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaan! The sage repeated Lex talionis.
The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense
debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The
mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was
Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank
drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the
graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her
web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on
it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground.
What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the
chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry
and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No
longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of
reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance
in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a
mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young
figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning
from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his book
satchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a
mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his
first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged
traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a
thing now of the past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or
that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding
virgin shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins.
The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous
address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm
seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of
noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned
spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto,
the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a
tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him
might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He
thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores
there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and
mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luck-penny), together they hear
the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal
university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever
remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in
nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!)
light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a
breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl
flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of
night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and
memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken
from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to
be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of
cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey
twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields,
shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her
mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms
are they yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches,
a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad
phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and
the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of
the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts.
Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating
lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and
of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea,
Lacus Mortis. Ominous, revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the
clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned
the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all
their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.
Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent
grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own
magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And, lo, wonder of
metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar,
the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the
young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among
the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright
gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer! It floats, it
flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams emerald, sapphire, mauve
and heliotrope, sustained on currents of cold interstellar wind, winding,
coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till
after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and
triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past
and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life
across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who
supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and
giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of
vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said
to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more,
than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who wish you
well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you
meditate. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent, Lenehan
said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him, have no fear. He could not
leave his mother an orphan. The young mans face grew dark. All could see how
hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He
would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the
smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's
name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and,
huuh, off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with O. Madden up. She was
leading the field: all hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain
herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the
straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse
Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis
was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But
her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay
some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking
fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today.
What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the
victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient
wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is
not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such
another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish
you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said, how young she was and
radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock
of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us
were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen
floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone
a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplepomenos sells
in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm
with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed
too dose. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was
free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies too! Mad
romp that it is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in
your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field.
Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book
with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the
page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to
reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for
the very trees adore her. When conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely
echo in the little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he
had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck
with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely.
He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act,
pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi
whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful
perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely
regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do
you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in
a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic
law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orange-fiery shipload
from planet Alpha of the lunar chain, would not assume the etheric doubles
and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-coloured egos from the
second constellation.
However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised, which was
entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the
case at all. The individual whose visual organs, while the above was going
on, were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation, was
as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured
the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop.
During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a
certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at
Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right
opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract
anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and
solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself
which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after
the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf,
recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other
two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however,
both their eyes met and, as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other
was endeavouring to help himself to the thing, he involuntarily determined
to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the mediumsized glass
recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole
in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time however, a
considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer
that was in it about the place.
The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the
loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an
assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that
establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene
in truth it made. Crothers was there at the foot of the table in his
striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of
Galloway. There too, opposite to him was Lynch, whose countenance bore
already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. Next the
Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his
side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the
resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the
figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide
brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners
of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the
young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical
inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to
right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh
from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of
travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but
from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or
degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which
the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.
It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would
appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted
scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with
tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the street has to
face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he
can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer -
at present - such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb.
Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of
Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period,
assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long
neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as
most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani,
Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This
would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices)
between the nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the
other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix, of the passive element.
The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant
mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all
born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg.
et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged
citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the
bacteria which lurk in dust. These facts, he alleges, and the revolting
spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious
ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed
scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic
bachelors and unfructified duennas - these, he said, were accountable for
any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he
prophesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life,
genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive
pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus
and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little
attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass
the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc.
Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abnormal trauma in the case of
women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital
discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or
official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of
criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the
former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he
cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges In the peritoneal cavity is
too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder
is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all
things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often balk
nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr
V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all
other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood
temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's vast
workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of
the countless flowers which beautify our public parks, is subject to a law
of numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question
why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and
properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though
other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's
words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and
cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are
due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs
have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown that
only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at
an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement, which, though
productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is
nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in
general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus'
(Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an
omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass
through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such
multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition,
corpulent professional gentl