ULYSSES
{ms, 1}
Deisiol Holles Eamus. Deisiol Holles Eamus. Deisiol Holles 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 boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably 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 chief if it be absent when fortunately present
constitutes the certain sign of
|4'omnipollent4'|
nature's
|4'benevolent
incorrupted4'|
benediction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended
but is conscious that exterior splendour may be surface of a downwardtending and
lutulent reality or on the contrary
|4'is
there anyone so anyone so is
there4'| unilluminated as not to perceive
{ms, 2}
that as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so
it behoves every most just citizen to become the admonisher and exhortator 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
|4'such
a that
thither
of4'| profundity that
that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise
affirming that no more odious offence can
|4'to
for4'|
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 function of reiteratedly procreating 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'Hickey's, 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 the 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
{ms, 3}
preconsideration or as the maturation of
expirience
experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of
subsequent inquirers are not up to the present
conguedº to render manifest) whereby
maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care
the patient in that allhardest of
woman's woman
hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her
who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and not even scarcely could subsist
valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.
To
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 hoving itself, parturient in vehicle |4'thither thereward4'| carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile. O thing of |4'wise prudent4'| 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 the
babe
|4'bliss4'|
had
|4'bliss4'|.
Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one case done
was commodiously
done was. A couch and
food by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest
swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by
|4'their
wise4'|
foresight set: but
|4'thereto
to this no
less4'| also of what drugs there is need and surgical
{ms, 4}
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 to 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 as God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers twey 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 mildheartedº eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightened lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the wreaker 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
{ms, 5}
Horne's hall hat holding the
wa seeker stood. On
her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over
land and seafloor nine years 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 for that sorrow she feared. Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor from far coast tidings sent and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sorry was the man that word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him ruing death for so young man 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 man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was died through bellycrab in Mona Island three year agone come Yule and she prayed to God Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathlinessº. He heard her sad words in held hat, sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowingº one with other.
Therefore, everyman,
{ms, 6}
look to that last end which is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every
man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth of his woman's womb so
naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came.
The man that was come in to 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. The man hearkened Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew the man that time was had lived near her 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 fair 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 spokeº the door of
the castle was opened and there nighed them near 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
{ms, 7}
had had ado each with other in the house of miesicord 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. And
him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and oil as much as he
might suffice. And he said now he should go into the castle for to make merry
with them. And the traveller Leopold said he should go other whither for he was
a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and repreved the
learning knight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that
was false for his subtility. But the learningknight 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 to rest
for a space being sore of limb after many marches
|4'in
divers lands4'| environing and sometime 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 more 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 then in the
horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were
vessels that are wrought by magic out of seasand and the air by a
{ms, 8}
warlock with his breath that he blases into them like bubbleware.
|4'And
full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne
richerº4'|
And there we was a
vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in which lay strange fishes
withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible
things. without they
see it yet natheless they are so. And they lie in an oily water brought from
Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is which is like the liquor of
the olivepress. And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they
make a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys of Chaldee which, by
aid. of certain
angry juices that they do in to it swells up wondrously like a vast mountain.
And they teach the serpents there to entwine
themselvesº 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 learningknight let pour for the traveller a draught and halp thereto the
while all they that were there drank every each. And the traveller Leopold did
up his vizor for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in
amity. for he never
drank no manner of mead and anon full privily he voided the more part in his
neighbour glass and his neighbour
nist not of this
wile a. And he sat
down in the castle with them to rest 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
{ms, 9}
in the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it was whether of
child or woman and I marvel, said he, it be not come
ere or now.
Meseemsº it dureth overlong. And he was
ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older
than any
|4'of
the4'| tother and for
that they were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was
elder he spoke to him fully gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will
bring forth by God His bounty and have joy 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 un hand
under hen and that was the very gentlest knight 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 with other his fellows Lynch and
madden Madden,
scholars of medicine and the franklin that hight 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
{ms, 10}
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 lot 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
|4'young4'|
Lynch were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit
{ms, 11}
the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges did
provide no remedy. This was scant said but all cried with one acclaim the wife
should live sith she was
God's and the babe to die. And they waxed hot upon that head
what with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin Lenehan was
prompt to pour them ale so that at the least way mirth might not lack. Then
young Madden showed all the whole affair
and when she
|4'said4'|
how that she was dead and how for holy religion sake her goodman husband would
not let her death whereby they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen
had these words
following,: Murmur
|4'sirs,4'|
is eke oft among lay folk.
|4'Sirs,
pity is meet always but if here for this unborn
child.4'| Both
babe and mother now glorify Our Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in
purgefire. But what of those
|4'unreadpossibled
Godpossibled4'|
souls that we daily impossibilise. 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 so be it fortuned him to be
delivered of his spleen of
|4'lustihood
lustihead4'|.
Whereat
|4'young
Stephen Crotthers of
Alba4'| Longa sang
young Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millenium
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 Bastard his engines that he was
{ms, 12}
able by grace of his privities 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 for 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 from her bosom, of law of canons, 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
peradventure in
her bath according to the opinion of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also
how at the end of the second month a human souls was infused and how in all our
heavenly mother foldeth every souls for God's greater glory whereas that
earthly mother which was but a dam to bear 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 take life to save life. A
wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said
dissembling that as it was informed him and agreeing also with his experience of
so seldomseen an accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow
had birth and death pence. That is truth, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant
word. In such sort deliverly he scaped their question. Which hearing young
Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he averred that who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the
{ms, 13}
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 and no man of art could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil hap and to his burial, sore weeping, 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 that time 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
then 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, vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff we this
mead which is not indeed parcel of my body but my soul's bodiment
|4'and
leave.
Leave4'| ye fraction
of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any pain
for this will more comfort than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he
showed them glistering coins
|4'of the
tribute4'| and
goldsmith notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling, that he had,
{ms, 14}
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 and after it
becomes from a brambelbush to be a rose on 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 caro 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 omnipotentia deiparae supplex, that is to wit, an
almightiness of
petition. because
she is the second Eve
|4'that
won us4'|, saith
Augustine too, whereas that other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by
successive anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, lock, stock and barrel, 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 ignorance 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, parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise
dans cette fichue position c'était ce sacré pigéon,
ventre de Dieu! Entweder transubstantiality oder consubstantiality but in no
case subsubstantiality. All cried upon it for a very scurvy word. A pregnancy
without joy, he said,
a birth without
pangs, a body without blemish, a belly without
{ms, 15}
bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we withsay, withstand.
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 straightways 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 as she was jealous that no turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and a 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 him civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, |4'thou got in |athe sink, peasestraw,a|4'| thou chitterling, 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's,
gently 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
{ms, 16}
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 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, she to be
in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with burning of
nards 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
Feltcher 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. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, by, harkee, better were they
named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, 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, spake Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of
{ms, 17}
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 hast the secondbest bed. Orate, fratres, pro
memetipso. And all the people shall say, Amen.
Remember|4',
Erin,4'| thy
generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst like by Me and my word, and
broughtest
broughtedst in a stranger
|4'in
to4'|
my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like
Jeshurum. Thereforeº hast thou sinned
against
|4'the
my4'|
light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, return,
O Clan Milly! Why
hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a
merchant of jalap and didst deny me to the Roman and to the Indian of dark
speech with whom thy daughters did commit adultery? Look forth now, my people,
upon the land of behest, even from Horeb and from Pisgah and from the Horns of
Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money
|4'but.
But4'| thou hast
filled my soul with bitterness and thou hast taken from me the sun and the moon
|4'and.
And4'| I am left in
|4'darkness
dark
ways4'|, a solitary,
and with bitter 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 as much as mentioned for the Orient from on high Who brake
hell's gates visited a darkness which was foraneous. Assuefaction
makes minorates
atrocities 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
{ms, 18}
quomodo. And as the ends and finalities of all things accords 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
|4'their
|aitsa|4'|
nature so is it with our being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail,
batten, sport, slip, clasp, sudder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First,
saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of
fasciated wattles:
at last a cavity of a
|4'hill
mountain4'|,
occulted, 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 vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all in applepie order, a penny for him as finds the pea.
— Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack
See the malt stored in many a refluent sack
In the proud cirque of Ivan's bivouac.
A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left
Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. And Master Lynch bade him have
a care to witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry.
And he that had
|4'erst4'|
challenged to be so doughty
{ms, 19}
waxed
|4'pale
wan4'|
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 and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side,
spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear,
|4'advertising4'|
how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of
fluid, 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
|4'knew
his own wretchedness had in his bosom that
gnawing rat
Wretchedness4'| 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
|4'natural
the
bottle4'| piety that
then he lived withal? Indeed no for
grace Grace was not
there to give it. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god, Bringforth,
or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why
{ms, 20}
could not but hear unless he had
|4'sealed
plugged4'|
him 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 though he must nor would he
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
|4'neither
no4'|
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 whore of an
eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled
him
|4'wrongways4'|
from the true path by her flatteries to him as
Ho, you pretty
man. Turn aside hither and I will show you a
|4'brave4'|
place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot of shame
which is named Two in the Bush or, by some learned men also, 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
{ms, 21}
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
|4'the
in4'|
very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which was written Dalliance
and Loth to Brood and Chamber Delights and Harlotry 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 Sometimes
Godly and Mr Cavil, 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 up 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 sprouts, 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 flag and faggots that would catch at first
fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February
that did havoc the land so pitifully a small
{ms, 22}
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 running 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,
|4'Duke's
lawn4'| thence through
Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before
brave bone dry but
no more cracks 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 chanced against Al. Bannon that was new got to town
from Mullingar with the stage and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound
home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed
for., but would tell
him of a skittish heifer, big of her age, 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's, Vin.
Linch Lynch, a Scots
fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen
D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he having dreamed
|4'this
night
tonight4'|
a strange fancy of his dame Mrs
Moll.
in with red slippers
on in a pair of Turkish trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for an
omen of change & 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 and can't
{ms, 23}
deliver, she crazed for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the
insides and should be a bullyboy by the knocks, they say, but God give her soon
issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to life, as I hear,
|4'and
Lady day bit off her last's nails that was then a 12
monthº4'|
and her hub, fifty odd, a methodist, but is out in a punt
|4'every
any
faire4'|
sabbath with two
boys under Bullock
point trailing for flounders
|4'or
pollocks4'|. In sum a
infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest
yet some believe after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of
Malachi's almanac to have three things in all but this a mere fetch with
out 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 hither end 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 peen at pains about it) but on
Stephen's persuasion he gave over to search
and|4',
being
was4'|
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
women, horseflesh or new scandal
|4'in the
town4'| he knew (had)
it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered
about the coffehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies and other
rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole, often at nights till broad day, of whom he picked up
{ms, 24}
loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had
but gotten a mess of broken victuals or a dish of tripes into him 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 wine and brandyshipper in Bordeaux
and was back now with naked pockets and he spoke French like a gentleman too.
From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough,
matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit
between his feet 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
|4'sutler
then a4'| welsher then
he was for the ocean sea or to foot it on the roads with the romany folk,
fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. What, says Mr
Leopold, with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest
{ms, 25}
I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool boat, 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,
meadow auctions and
wether wool sales
having been at one time
an 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 or 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, (Doctor Rinderpest),
thanking him for the hospitality that was sending over (Doctor R. (v.s)) 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
cattlebreeder 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 cloth 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
{ms, 26}
bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came
over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch
himself had him
properly gelded by seven doctors that were no better off than himself. So be off
now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells 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 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 holy tongue
than 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 ruffles and clipped his forelocks 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 doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of
the faithful (for so they called) was so heavy that he could scarce walk to
pasture. To remedy which our dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their
apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full, he used to 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 have 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
{ms, 27}
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 Sligo or a husbandman 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 what was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There
was bad blood between them at one time, 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 make that animal smell hell,
says he, swearing h
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 Latin for Boss
of the Show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry
baptised himself by that
name put his head into a cow's drinking trough in the
presence of all the
|4'court
courtiers4'|
and
|4'taking
it out again4'| 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 got a grammar of the bull's
{ms, 28}
language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first
personal pronoun which he copied out big and if he went out for a stroll he
filled his skirt pockets with chalk to write it upon 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, sprang their luff, set her head on between wind and water, let the
bullgine run, ran up the jolly Roger
|4'weighed
her anchor4'| and
pushed off 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
|4'by
with4'|
a friend of his whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name
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 and 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
blank
bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi
Mulligan,. Fertiliser
{ms, 29}
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. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap
sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiatiating
upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a
considerationº of the causes of
sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in
its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to parsimony as well as whether the
prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities
unread
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 to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel
in
|4'some
an4'|
uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some
unaccountableº muskin when they might
multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the
inestimableº jewel of their sex when a
hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his
heart weep. To meet this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression
of latent heat) having advised with certain
{ms, 30}
counsellors of worth he had resolved to purchase
in fee simple
for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its owner count Anthony Considine, a
gentleman of note much in favour with our high church party. He proposed to set
up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos and to offer his
dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life
soever who should there
to 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:
|4'and
|aeven
the
Thea|4'| 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 nourishment, he said, he would feed himself
exclusively on the fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific
rodents having been
|4'highly4'|
recommended
|4'highly4'|
for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade or two of
mace. or a paprick
nut. 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. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their
mending of their pace had taken water as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's
smallclothes of
hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very
favourably entertained by his auditors and won
{ms, 31}
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 cogent support of his contention: Talis ac
tanta depravatio huius seculi, O quirites, ut
matresfamiliarumº nostrae lascivas
semiviri libici cuiuslibet 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 relish, 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
person he now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon
the sudden shower while the company lavished their
encomiumsº upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that
had late befallen him could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr
Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were
the those loaves and
fishes and, seeing the strangers, 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
{ms, 32}
there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house that was in an
interesting condition, poor ladyº, 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 if 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 Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For
answer Mr Mulligan 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 storm of mirth
and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. He 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 a
blank,
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 obligingnessº to
pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of
the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture)
to which was united an equivalent but contrary
{ms, 33}
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 sur, said
he cheerily. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this
cup to crown my felicity. But was I left with but a crust in my wallet and
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. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips
and 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 at that
affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her coquette cap (a gift for her
feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a
tenderness, 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. Thrice happy will he be whom
that amiable 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 blessings to all thy
creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of thy tyrannies which can hold
{ms, 34}
in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb,
the lover in the heyday of reckless fashion and the husband of maturer years.
But I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary
joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but
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 I know of a vendeur de capotes
Monsieur Poyntz
from whom I can have for a livre as pretty a cloak as ever kept a lady from
wetting. Tut, cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore that
most accomplished travellerº (I have just
cracked a bottle with him in a circle of the best wits of the town) is my
authority that in Cape Horn they have a rain that will wet through any, even the
stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, 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. A singler sunshade,
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 as she
{ms, 35}
whispered in my ear though there was none to catch her words but giddy
butterflies) dame Nature has implanted it in our hearts 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, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue
the outer pavilion 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 came in 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 humour
|4'sallies4'|
even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
ribaldry. Strike me silly,
doc said Costello, a
low fellow who was fuddled. I believe 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. As I look to be saved,
continued he, I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these
seven months. Demme, does not doctor O'Gargle
{ms, 36}
chuck the nuns there under the chin. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young
blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest
squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body?
|4'Bless
me, I'm all of a wibbly
wobbly4'| Why,
you're as bad as dear little father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot
of ale choke me, cried Costello, if she aint 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 is a 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. What? Malign such an one who is the
lustre of our her
own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that
can befal a puny
child of clay? I shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of
much malice have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of
{ms, 37}
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 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 by poor dear mamma 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 are 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 unwelcome
language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared
creature of a misshapen gibbosity, thrust like a crookback toothed and feet
first into the world so as to put him in mind
|4'thought4'|
of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious
Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the
allotted middle span of our allotted
{ms, 38}
years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence
and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man of 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, the rash judgers scorn and all find
tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the cost of
feminine delicacy 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
|4'&
inglorious4'| 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 for eating of the tree
forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition
soever toward 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 ausspicated after a trial 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
confinementº since she had been in such
pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's
{ms, 39}
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 Crotthers, clapping on the
table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was
round today again,
|4'a
an
elderly4'| meagre man
with side whiskers, preferring
|4'through
his nose4'| 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 cannot but extol
the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child of her.
All fell to praising of it, each after his fashion, though the same young blade
held with his former view that another than her
le conjugial was the
man in the gap, a clerk in orders or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in
every household. Singular, muttered the guest to himself, the wonderfully
unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal chamber
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, has this alien, whom the concession
of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the lord
paramount of our domestic polity? Where is now that
{ms, 40}
gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the recent war
whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with their granados did he not
seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire in 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 benefits received? Or is it that from being a
deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe
and 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 scouring brush 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
straight forward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel.
Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of
|4'a
the4'|
ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty
{ms, 41}
is second nature and an opprobium in middle life. If he must dispense his
balm of Gilead to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let
his practice consist better with
his 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 usage
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 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
obstretician 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 refrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness
the only band of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation
was successively eviscerated. The prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the
Caesarean operation, the fratricidal case known as the Childs murder and rendered memorable by
{ms, 42}
the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of
the wrongfully
accused, the rights of primogeniture and
|4'queen's
king's4'|
bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or
dissimulated, the acardiac foetus in foetu
|4'and
aprosopia4'| due to a
congestion, all cases which Aristotle's masterpiece has chronicled of
agnatia of certain chinless Chinaman (cited by Mr
M Candidate
Mulligan) as a consequence of a defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along
the medial line so that, as he said, one ear could catch what the other said,
the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep,
|4'|xthe
prolungation of labour from early gravidancy by reason of embryonic pressure
upon the vein,x|4'|
the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplied by the actual case)
necessitating an artificial distension of the matrix, the recorded instances of
multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births. The gravest problems of
obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much
animationº as the most popular beliefs on
the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to gravid women to step over a
countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle the foetus in
her womb and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and
ineffectually entertained, to lay her hand against that part of her person which
long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of
harelip, breastmole and strawberry mark were alleged by one as a prima
facie and natural explanation of those swinheaded (the case of the
foundress of Steven's hospital was not forgotten) or doghaired infants
occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the
Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for,
{ms, 43}
envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage
antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate of a bestial cast of countenance
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 the legend of the Minotaur
which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us. 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 more than he knew how 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 created in the event of one
Siamese twin predeceasing the other the problem, by mutual consent, was referred
to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus.
Hitherto silent, whether the better to show 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.
{ms, 42v}
|4'|xMalachi's
tale froze them with horror. The secret panel
|abeside the
chimneya| slid back and in
the recess appeared — Haines. He had a bag full of
|aIrisha|
poems in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror,
loathing appeared on all faces while he eyed them with a ghastly grin. I
anticipated this reception, he began, for which, it seems, history is to blame.
Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs.
|aHell
The future infernoa| has no
terrors for me. Like the modern Irish
I carry my hell is
in this life. I have 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, the black panther. With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back.
An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite. 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: 'Tis the
vengenance of Mananaun. The sage repeated: Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is
he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done.
Malachi ceased, overcome. 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.x|4'|
{ms, 43}
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 is her age too changeable as her mood. No longer is
Leopold, as he sits there, ruminatingº, chewing the cud of
{ms, 44}
reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity whom men respect. A score of
years are blown away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective
arrangement, a mirror within a mirror, he beholdeth himself. That young figure
of then, precociously manly, is seen walking on a nipping morning from the old
house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him
bandolierwise and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's care. Or
it is the same figure, some year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah,
that was a day!) already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the
|4'family4'|
firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handerchief
handerkechief (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 compliant
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, the oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many
a commitmentº to the head of the firm,
seated after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be
sure, is a heating
aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of
a month before. But,
hey, presto, the
mirror is breathed upon and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles
to a tiny point 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
{ms, 45}
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 luckpenny) together
they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the
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. 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 here. 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
generations that have lived. A
twilight 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 filly foal. Twilight phantoms are they,
yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim
shaped 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
|4'muttering
thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of
beasts4'| Huuh! Hark!
Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose
brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of
{ms, 46}
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
and with the tusked,
the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, ruminant, rodent 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 the 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
in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Pisistratus, Alcibiades. Where
were they now? Neither knew. You have spoke of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I
{ms, 47}
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. The 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, to
acclaim you Stephaneforos. 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 man's face grew dark. All could see
how sad 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. 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 waved her scarf. She could not contain herself and cried: Sceptre
wins. But in the straight on the run home when they were in close order
Throwaway drew level and outstripped her. All was lost. Phyllis was
silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am all undone. But her
lover consoled her and brought her a little casket of oval sugarplums which she
partook. But one tear fell. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday
{ms, 48}
and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the
boisterous buffalo the victory is still his. But let us bear it as was the
ancient wont. 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, 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 in her
yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The
chestnuts that shaded us were all 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 Periplipomenes sells in his booth by the bridge. But she had nought for her
teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she
bit nibbled
mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she was ill, four days on the
couch, but today she was free, blithe and mocked at peril. She is more taking
then. Her posies too! Mad romp that she is she had pulled her fill as we lay
together. And in your ear, my friend, he said to Francis, you will not think who
met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge,
reading a brevier, I think, with perhaps a witty letter in it from Glycera to
mark the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning
to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of undergrowth clung there for
the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo
in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us.
{ms, 49}
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
withheldº his act, pointing to the
stranger then 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
orangetawny shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the
etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the
|4'rosycoloured
rubycoloured4'|
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, 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 animations was as astute or astuter
than any man living.
and anyone that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves
pretty quickly in
the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been
staring at a
|4'bottle
certain
|aquantity
amounta|4'| of number
one Bass bottled by Bass and Co at Burton on Trent which happened to be situated amongst
{ms, 50}
a lot of others right opposite to where he was and was certainly calculated
to attract anybody's
|4'observation
remark4'|
on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it
subsequently transpired, which put put quite an altogether different complexion
on the proceedings, after the moment before's remarks about boyhood days
and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own that the
two others were as mutually
|4'ignorant
innocent4'|
of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and perceiving
that he was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily
determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck 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 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
engagedº 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.
Crotthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his
face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of
{ms, 51}
Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose countenance bore
already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom.
|4'Beside
Next4'|
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
|4'of
G tweed shorts and
salted cowhide
brogues,4'| contrasted
sharply with the
prime 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 accomodated 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 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 has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain
{ms, 52}
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 Bloom, Pubbl. Canv., regarding the future determination of sex. Must we
accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary is responsible
for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa the
differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such
as Spallanzani, Culpepper, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig,
Neopoldº and Valenti, a mixture of both.
|4'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 of the passive
element.4'| The other
problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: that of infant
mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently observes in this
connection, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr
Mulligan, Hyg et Eug. Doc, blames the sanitary conditions in which our
greylunged citizens contract aneroids, pulmonary complaints, etc by inhaling the
germs that lurk in dust.
|4'Mr
Crotthers, Discp. Bacc, attributes it to neglect, private or official. Although
the former is undoubtedly too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to
count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be
normative.4'|
These factors, he alleged, and the disgusting spectacles offered by our streets,
hideous posters, ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors,
exposed
carunreadasses,
paranoic bachelors, — these, he said, were accountable for any and every
falling off of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, will soon be 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, all these little attentions would enable
ladies who were
prospective mothers to pass the nine months of their pregnancy in a most
{ms, 53}
enjoyable manner.
|4'Mr
Crotthers, Discp. Bacc, attributes it to neglect, private or official. Although
the former is undoubtedly too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to
count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be
normative.4'| 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 baulk nature in her
intentions. An ingenious suggestion is thrown out by Mr. V. Lynch
(|4'B
Bacc4'|.
Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of
evolution, tidal movementsº, lunar
phases, blood temperaturesº, diseases in
general, everythingº, in fine, in
nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the
blossomingº of one of the countless
flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of
numerationº as yet unascertained. Still
the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and
seemingly a healthy childs 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, Nature, we may rest assured, has her own
good and valid reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths
are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms where 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 in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing
thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div.
{ms, 54}
Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous
being which masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary
channel
|4'with
pluterperfect
imperturbability4'|
such various aliments as cancrenous females, emaciated by parturition, corpulent
professional gentlemen not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic
religious might possibly find
a gastric relief in
an innocent collation of staggering bob reveals in a very unsavoury light the
tendency above alluded to. For the
enlightenmentº of those who perhaps are
not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this
morbidminded wouldbe esthete and embryo philosopher who can scarcely distinguish
an acid from an alkali prides himself on being it should perhaps be stated that
staggering bob, in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers,
signifies the cookable and edible flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother.
In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place
in the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 16 Holles Street,
of which, as is well known, Sir A. Horne M.B is the able and popular master he
is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the cat
into the bag (an esthete's allusion, probably, to one of the most
complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes — the act of
copulation) she must let it out again or give it life (as he phrased it) to save
her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor,
none the less effective for the moderate and measured
{ms, 55}
tone in which it was delivered.
Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy
accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All
that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped.
She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those
who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and
smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there (a
pretty sight it is to see) in the first bloom of her new motherhood breathing a
silent prayer of thanksgivingº to One
above, the universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes
only one blessing more to have her Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay
in his arms the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may
whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years
a grave dignity has come to the
conscientiousº secound accountant of the
Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old,
faithfulº companion (lifemate) now, it
may never be again that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her
pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now across the mist of
years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers
and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy
(Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called
after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and
Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union,
{ms, 56}
a Purefoy
if ever there was one with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in
Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here.
No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the
ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings
for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the
sacred book for
there the oil too
has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. You too have fought
the good fight. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
There are sins (or, let or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were other wise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.
The stranger still regarded
{ms, 57}
on the face before him a slow recession of that
|4'imposed
false4'|
calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so
embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthy sensitiveness, a
flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the
observer's memory. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the
wellrememberedº grove of lilacs at
Roundtown, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest
in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop,
one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn
where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as
fragrant sisterhoodº, Floey, Atty, Tiny
and their darker friend with I know what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady
of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear bringing out the
foreign warmth of her skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of
four or five in linseywoolsey of ripe damson (blossomtime, yes, but there will
be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched)
is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a
little just as this young man does now with perhaps a too conscious enjoyment of
the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches with
a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach in her
|4'glad4'|
still look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end
{ms, 58}
comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are
assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent.
Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their stations in that house, the
vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels on that holiest of nights about a crib
in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried
stormclouds heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses
turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above
parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in
an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder
the cloudburst pours its torrent so and not other wise in that room of quiet was
the transformationº, violent and
instantaneousº, upon the utterance of the word.
Burke's! Out flings my lord Stephen, giving the cry and a tag and
bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual
Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at
|4'headwear
headgear4'|,
ashplants, bilbos,
|4'Panama4'|
hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth,
noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay
them nor smiling surgeon, coming downstairs, with news of placentation ended, a
full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha!
They are out,
tumultuouslyº, off for a minute's
race, all lustily legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior
goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought
{ms, 59}
to send a kind word to happy mother convalescent up there. Doctor Diet and
Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now. Strain of watching in Horne's
house has told its tale to be read in that washed out pallor. Then all being
gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam,
blank
The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's
air, the Allfather's air, scintillant, cessile air. Breathe it deep into
thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch.
Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor, barring none, in this chaffering,
allincluding, most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed
preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's
work. Cleave to her.
Serve! Toil on,
labour like a very bandog and let scholarment go hang. Thou art all their
daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy
|4'toil
load
bemoiled4'| with
butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the counting house? Head
up! For every new begotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy
fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby there with his
Joan, a? A canting
jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their brood.
|4'Vegetables,
forsooth, and sterile cohabitation. Give her beefsteaks, red, raw,
bleeding.4'|
Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina not
worth a cracked kreutzer.
|4'Vegetables,
forsooth, and sterile cohabitation. Give her beefsteaks, red, raw,
bleeding.4'| She is a
hoary pandemonium of ills within, enlarged glands,
{ms, 60}
mumps, quinsy, bunions, ringworm, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks,
gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and
jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret
them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and
never — do. Thou sawest thy goal and didst charge to cover like the
transpontine bison. How saith Zarathusthra? Deine Kuh
Trübsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst
|4'Die
Du4'|
die süsse Milch des Euters. See! It displodes for thee in abundance.
Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin,
milk too of those stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such
as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the
honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her
milk is hot and sweet and fattening. To her, old patriarch! By Dea
Partula et Pertunda, nunc est bibendum!
All off for a buster, armstrongº,
hollering down the street. Bonafides.
|4'Where
you slep las
night?4'| Timothy
of the battered naggin. Like old Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the
family fambily?
Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and old clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah
there, Dix. Forwardº to the ribbon
counter. Where's Punch? All serene. O, look at the drunken minister coming
out of the maternity hospital! Benedicat vos omnipotens
Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille
lane boys.
|4'Hell,
blast you. Scoot.4'|
Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. You join us, dear sir. No hentrusion
{ms, 61}
in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. En avant, mes enfants.
Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Burke's! Thence they
advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot. Parson Steve,
apostates' creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch
on the clock. Chucking out time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mère
m'a mariée. British Beatitudes! Retamplatan digidi boumboum. Ayes
have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing
females. Calf covers of pissed on green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful
book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to
nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the
boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs,
battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef,
trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation!
Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to!
Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies!
Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damn all.
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week
gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the Uebermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones.
You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate the
caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old.
Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba. Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster.
Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention
it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever
he wos settin sleepin in his bit garten. Digs up near
{ms, 62}
the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure.
See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. None of your lean kine, not much.
Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall
don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of
mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen
to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O
gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock. You'll excuse me
saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro
Lapland? How's the squaws and papooses? Woman body after going on the
straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and
the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, mister! Mummer's wire. Cribbed
out of Meredith. Jesified,
orchidised,
polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi.
Hurroo! Collar the leather, young un. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock's |4'braw Hielentman's4'| your barley bree. My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my brandnew sit-in-ems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence. Machree Macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. Ex!
Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously
{ms, 63}
Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming.
Underconstumble? Heve got the chink ad lib. Seed near three pound on him a spell
ago he said was hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey.
Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off they there Frenchy
bilks. Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest
colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae. We're nae the
fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks. you.
'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. Bantam, two days teetee.
Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do.
Gum, I'm
jiggered. Too full for words. With a railway bloke How come you so? Opera
he'd like. Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some
H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers.
Gemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O cheese
it! Shut his Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him
a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady
coppalleen. He strike a telegram boy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot.
Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog.
Tell a cram that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing.
Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back
Madden's a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping.
Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots
me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for
hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her
spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big
{ms, 64}
holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez
I vil get misha mishinnah. Though yerd our lord, Amen.
You move a motion. Steve boy, you're going it some. Will immensely generous stander permit stooder of most extreme poverty to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiet posterioria nostria. Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby. Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyan wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee to tu find plais whear to tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest long break yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. |4'Got's Cot's4'| plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses! Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time! Who wander through the world. Health all! À la votre!
Golly. What in tunket's that guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it
real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a
{ms, 65}
deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the bread we calls
him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that
married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love.
Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for
the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o yourn passed in his
checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies!
Thou'llº no be telling me thot, Pold
veg! Did ums blubble big splash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black
bag! Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I
was born. Tiens, tiens but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O,
get, rev on a gradient one in nine.
Live axle drives
are souped. Lay you two to one
Jenatzy licks him
rudda ruddy well
hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him,
says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone.
Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! Ware hawk for the chap puking. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropulous. Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where hairy Mary is. Righto.
Any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming
{ms, 66}
long? Whipser, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds?
Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall
come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur
scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspoke medical Dick to his comrade
medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the
Merrion hall? Elijah is coming! All are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on
you winefizzling, ginsizzling, boose guzzling existences! Come on, you
bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers,
false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy!
Alexanderº J Christ Dowie that's my
name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to
Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that
He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the
grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus.
You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle
the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch
in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.