ULYSSES
{u21, 426}
{u22, 366}
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!º
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 omnipollent nature's incorrupted 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 anyone so is there
unilluminatedº as not to perceive that as
no nature's
boon can contend
against the bounty of increase so
it behoves every
most just citizen to become the 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
{u21, 427}
not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall
have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that
thither of
profundity that that
one was audacious
excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that
no more odious offence can for anyone be
{u22, 367}
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,º 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 preconsideration or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.
To her nothing
already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful for
this chiefly felt all
citizens except with
proliferent
mothers prosperity
at all not to can
be and as they had
received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when
the case was so hoving
itself, parturient
in vehicle thereward
carrying desire
immense among
all one another
was impelling on of
her to be
received into that
domicile. O
thing of prudent
nation not merely in being seen
{u21, 428}
but also even in being related
worthy of being
praised that
they her by
anticipation went seeing mother,
that she by them
suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!
Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship.
Whatever
in that one case
done
commodiously done
was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest
swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to
this no less also of what drugs
there is need and
surgical implements which are
pertaining to
her case not omitting
aspect of all very
distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our
terrestrial orb
offered together with images, divine and human,
the cogitation of which by
{u22, 368}
sejunct females is to
tumescence
conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers
when, ostensibly far gone and
reproductitiveº, 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 loneº led to that house.
Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he thereº teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale as God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tweyº there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still,º 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 mildhearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.
Loth to irk in Horne's hall
hat holding the
seeker stood. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and
lovesome daughter
that then over land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in
townhithe
meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now
{u21, 429}
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 undeathliness. He heard her sad words in held hat, sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one with other.
Therefore, everyman, look to that last end which is thy death and the dust
{u22, 369}
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. 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
spake the door of the castle was opened and there
{u21, 430}
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 had had
ado each with other in the house of
misericordº where this learning knight
lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed for he was sore
wounded in his breast by
a spear wherewith a
horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which
he did do make a
salve of volatile salt and 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
subtileº. Also the lady was of his
avis and
reprevedº
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 in divers lands
environing and
sometimeº 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
{u22, 370}
air by a warlock with his breath that he blases
intoº them like bubbleware.
And
full fair cheer and
rich was on the board
that no
wight
could devise a
fuller ne richer
And there was a
vat of silver that
was moved by
craft to open in which lay strange fishes
withouten heads
though misbelieving men nie
that this be
possible thingº
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,
{u21, 431}
by aid of certain angry juices that they do in to it swells up wondrously
like a vast mountainº.
And they teach
the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and
of the scales of these serpents they brew out a
brewage like to
mead. And the
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. 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
Lordº
to leave their
wassailing for there was above one
quick with
child,º a gentle dame,
whose time hied
fast. Sir Leopold
heard 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 or
now. Meseems it
dureth overlong.
And he was ware
and saw a franklin
that hight Lenehan
on that side the
table that was older than
any of the
tother and for that they were knights
virtuousº in the one emprise and eke
by cause that he
was elder he spoke to him
fullyº
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 hand under hen and that was the very gentlest knight that ever did minion
{u22, 371}
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
{u21, 432}
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, 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
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 languorº
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,º lothº 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,
theº woman should bring forth in pain and
wherefore they that were
of this
imagination
affirmed how young
Madden had said truth for he
had conscience to let
her die. And not few and of these was young Lynch
were in doubt that
the world was now
right evil
governed as it
was never other
howbeit
the mean people
believed it otherwise
but the law nor his
judges did provide no remedy.
This was scant said
but all cried
with one acclaim the wife should live 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
{u21, 433}
might not lack. Then young Madden
showed all the whole
affair said 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
{u22, 372}
had these words following:
Murmur
sirs,
is eke oft among lay
folk. Both babe and mother now glorify Our Maker, the one in limbo gloom,
the other in purgefire. But what of those Godpossibled 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 lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba 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 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
spakeº 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
Virgiliusº 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
{u21, 434}
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
motherº
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 questions.
Which hearing young
Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he averred that who stealeth from the poor lendeth
{u22, 373}
to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken
and that he was now
in that taking it appeared eftsoons.
But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only manchild which on his eleventh day on live 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
{u21, 435}
indeed parcel
of my body but my soul's bodiment.
Leave ye
fraction of bread
to them that live by bread alone. Be not
afeard neither for
any pain for this
will more comfort than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed
them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound
nineteen shilling, that
he had, he
said,º
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
bramblebushº
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
Eveº
that won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other, our
grandam, which we are linked
{u22, 374}
up with by
successive
anastomosis of
navelcords sold
us all,º lock, stock and
barrel,º 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,º 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
transubstantialityº 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 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
{u21, 436}
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 &sh14009emnow attack:
— The first three months she was not well, Stabooº,
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, thou got in peasestraw,º 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 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
{u22, 375}
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
{u21, 437}
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 Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their
Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining of lovers: To
bed, to bedº 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
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, Erin,
thy generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst like by Me and my word,
and broughtedstº in a stranger to my
gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum.
Therefore hast thou
sinned against my
light and hast made me, thy lord,º to
be the slave of servants. Return, return, 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 toº 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.
But thou hast filled my soul with bitterness and thou hast taken from me the sun
and the moon. And I am left in dark ways, a solitary, and with bitter ashes
{u22, 376}
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
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 quomodo. And as the ends and
finalities of all
things accordsº in some mean and
measure with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance
which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a
retrogressive
metamorphosis that
minishing and
ablation towards
the final which is
agreeable unto
nature so is it with our 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 mountain, 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.º
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, bawledº 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 erst
challenged to be
so doughty waxed
wanº 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
{u22, 377}
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'sº
side,º spoke to him calming words
to slumber his
great fear,
advertising how
it was no other
thing but a
hubbub noise that
he heard, the discharge of fluid,
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 heº had in his bosom that gnawing rat
Wretchedness 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 the bottle piety
that then he lived
withal? Indeed noº for 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 heº could not but
hear unless he had plugged himº 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
heº make more shows according as
{u21, 440}
men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book
Law. Then wotted
he nought of that other land which is called Believe on Me that is
the land of promise
which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no
death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many
as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed
him to the way but the reason was that in the way he
fell in with a
whore of an
eyepleasing
exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him
wrongways from the true path by her flatteries to him as
Ho, you
pretty man. Turn
aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so
flatteringly that she had him in her grot 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
{u22, 378}
(which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would
strain the last
but they would
make at her and
know her. For
regarding Believe on Me they said it was
nought else but
notion and they could conceive no thought of it
for, first, Two in
the Bush whither she
ticed them was
in 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,º 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.
{u21, 441}
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
sproutº, 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
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, Duke's lawn thence through Merrion green
up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before
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,º 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.,º scholar of my
{u21, 442}
lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T.
Lenehan, very sad about a racer he
fancied and
Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a
languorº he had but was now better, he
having dreamed
tonight a
strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll 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 to
itº and
can't
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,º they say,
but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth
chick to life,
as I hear, and Lady
day bit off her
last's nails that was then a 12 month and her hub, fifty odd, a
methodist, but is out in a punt any faire
sabbath with two
boys under Bullock
point trailing for flounders or pollocks. 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 was bidden to sit near by which he did
mighty brisk. He
was a kind of sport gentleman that
went for a
merryandrew
{u22, 380}
or honest
pickle and what
belonged of women, horseflesh or new scandal in the town 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 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),º '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
teethº like a raw
colt and was more
familiar with the
justiciary and
the parish beadle
than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor then a sutler then a
welsher then he was
for the ocean
sea or to
footº
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 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
{u21, 444}
the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets, and
wether wool
having been at one time 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
{u22, 381}
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
clothº of gold and a sweet smoky breath
coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs
and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What
for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a
eunuch had him properly gelded by seven doctors that were no better off than
himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the
lordº Harry tells
youº 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 upº 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,º 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
himº) 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 of the
{u22, 382}
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'dº 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,º 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, with the help of that good
pizzle my father
left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was
cleaning his royal
pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself
but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on
picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure
enough that he was a
lefthanded
descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good
bog Latin for
Boss of the Show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into
a cow's drinking trough in the presence of all the courtiers and taking
itº out again told them all his new name.
then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that
{u21, 446}
had belonged to his grandmother and got a grammar of the bull's
language to study but he could never learn
aº 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
aº 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 weighed her anchor 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
{u22, 383}
doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with 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 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
{u21, 447}
seated, both. 'Tis
as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr Mulligan
accepted of the
invitation and,
expatiatingº
upon his design, told his hearers that he had been
led into this
thought by a
consideration of
the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the
inhibition in its turn were due to
conjugal vexations
or to parsimony as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects
congenital or from proclivitiesº
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 anº uncongenial cloister
or lose their womanly
bloom in the embraces of some
unaccountable
muskin when they might
multiply the inlets
of happiness, sacrificing the
inestimable
jewel of their sex when
a hundred pretty
fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep.
To meet this inconvenientº (which he
concluded due to a suppression of
latent heat)
having advised
with certain 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 direct to
him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of
her natural. Money
was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains: The poorest
kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers
{u22, 384}
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 highly recommended 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
{u21, 448}
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
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,º seemed to him
a sound and cogent
support of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio huius seculi, O quirites,
ut
matresfamiliarum
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
encomiums 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 those
loaves and fishes
and, seeing the strangerº, he made him a
civil bow and said,
Pray, sir, was
you in need of any professional assistance we could give?
Who, upon his
offer, thanked him very heartily, though
preserving his proper
distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of
Horne's house that was in
an interesting
condition, poor bodyº, 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
ofº 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
{u21, 449}
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
obligingness
to pass him a
flagon of cordial
waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century
of polite breedingº had not achieved so
nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the
bottleº 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 took a
complacent draught
of the cordial,
slicked his hair
and, opening his
bosom, out
popped a locket
that hung from a
silk riband,º
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.
{u21, 450}
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
andº universal must be that sweetest of
thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple
swain and the
polished
coxcomb, the
lover in the
heyday of reckless
fashion and the husband of maturer years. But
{u22, 386}
I wander from the
point. How mingled and imperfect are all our
sublunary
joys.º
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,º 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 traveller (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 single 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 whispered in my ear though there was none to catch her words
but giddy butterflies)
dame Nature has
implanted it in our heartsº 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,º the only garment. The first, said she
{u21, 451}
(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 sallies even of the most licentious but her
departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said
Costello, a low
fellow who was
fuddled.º
I believe she has
rendezvoused you.
What, you dog? Have you a way with them?
Gad's bud.
Immenselyº so, said Mr Lynch. The
bedside manner it
{u22, 387}
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 chuck the nuns there under the chin. Lawksamercy, doctor,
cried the young
blood in the primrose vest, feigning a
womanish
simper and
withº immodest squirmings of his body,
how you do tease a body?
Bless me, I'm
all of a wibbly wobbly Why, you're as bad as dear little father
Cantekissem,º that you are!
May this
pot of
ale choke me,
cried Costello, if she ain'tº
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,º
without wit to enliven
or learning to instruct,
revile an
ennobling
profession which is a
power for happiness upon the earth.
{u21, 452}
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 her
own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous
that can befallº
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 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 borneº with
asº being the fruits of that age upon
which it is commonly
charged that it knows not pity. The young
{u22, 388}
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
scrupulouslyº
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 toothedº
and feet first into
the world so as to
put him in mind
thought of that missing link of creation's
{u21, 453}
chain desiderated by
the late ingenious
Mr Darwin. It was
now for more than the
middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through
the thousand
vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy
and self a man of
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,º
can lose no more
there remained the
sharp antidote of
experience to cause their insolency to
beat a precipitate
& inglorious
retreat.
Not but what he
could feel with
mettlesome youth
which, caring nought for the mows of
dotards or the
gruntlings of the severe, is ever 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
auspicatedº
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
confinement
since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade
said it was her
husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be
unless she were another
Ephesian matron.
I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers,
{u22, 389}
clapping on the
table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old
Glory Allelujurum
was round today again, an elderly meagre man with side whiskers,
preferring through
his nose a request to have word of
Wilhelmina, my life, as he
{u21, 454}
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
outº
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 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 civicº rights,
constituted himself the
lord paramount of
our domestic polity?
Where is now
that 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 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,º 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
{u21, 455}
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
{u22, 390}
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 straightforwardº 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 the ploughshare? A habit
reprehensible at
puberty is
second nature
and an
opprobriumº
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 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,º 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
{u21, 456}
propitious for the display of that discursiveness which
seemedº the only
bondº 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 the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which
secured the acquittal of the
wrongfully
accused, the rights of primogeniture and
king's bounty
touching twins and triplets,
miscarriages and
infanticides,
simulated or dissimulated, the
acardiac
foetus in foetu
and aprosopia
due to a congestion, all cases which Aristotle's masterpiece has chronicled
of agnatia of certain
chinless Chinaman (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) as a consequence of a
{u22, 391}
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,
the prolungation of labour from early gravidancy by reason of embryonic pressure
upon the vein, the
premature
relentment of the
amniotic fluid (as exemplied by the actual case) necessitating an artificial
distension of the matrix, the recorded instances of
multiseminalº, twikindled
and
monstrousº
birthsº. The gravest problems of
obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the
most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as
the forbidding to
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
{u21, 457}
were alleged by one as a
prima
facieº and natural explanation of
those swineheadedº (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, 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
{u22, 392}
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.
Malachi's tale froze them with horror. The secret panel beside the
chimney slid back and in the recess appeared
—º Haines. He had a bag full of
Irish 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
{u21, 458}
of Samuel Childs. The future inferno has no terrors for me. Like the
modern Irish 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:º 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.
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,
ruminating,
chewing the cud of
{u22, 393}
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 Clanbrassilº 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!)
{u21, 459}
already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped
with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchiefº (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
theseº the dark eyes, the oleaginous
address, brought home at duskfall many a commitment to the head of the firm,
seated after like
labours in the
paternal ingle (a meal of noodles,º you
may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper
from the Europe of a month before. But,
hey, presto, the
mirror is breathed upon and the young
knighterrant
recedes, shrivels, dwindlesº 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 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
—º 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
cyclesº of generations that have lived. A
region where grey
twilight ever
descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk,
scattering a perennial
{u22, 394}
dew of stars. She follows her mother
{u21, 460}
with ungainly steps, a mare leading her filly foal. Twilight phantoms are
they,º
yet moulded in
prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck,
the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone.
Agendath is a
waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa.
Netaim,º
the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come muttering
thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of
beasts.º Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax
stalks behind and
goads them, the
lancinating
lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak,
the bulls of
Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the
sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan,
passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked,
the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, 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,º 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
{u21, 461}
them? If I callº 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
{u22, 395}
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 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
{u21, 462}
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 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
sheº
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
{u22, 396}
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. The gods too are ever kind,
Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of
his may serve me
more propensely.
He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act,
pointing to the stranger 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 rubycoloured 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
{u21, 463}
to exhibitº symptoms of
animationº 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 certain amount of number one
Bass bottled by Bass and Co at Burton on Trent which happened to be situated
amongst a lot of
others right opposite to where he was
and was
certainly
calculated to
attract anybody's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was
simply and solely,
as it subsequently
transpired, which putº 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 innocent
of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and
perceiving that he was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he
involuntarilyº 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,º however, a considerable degree of
attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.
{u22, 397}
The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life.
Neither place nor
council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land,
the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of
Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied
nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
encyclopaedic. A
gallant scene in truth it made. 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 Galloway. There too,º
opposite to him,º was Lynch whose
countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and
premature
wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric
while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident, indeed,
{u21, 464}
stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of
Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and
salted cowhide
brogues, contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance
andº 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 them as best he can. There may be, it is true,
some questionsº 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,
Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both. This would be tantamount to a cooperation
{u22, 398}
(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. 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
{u21, 465}
die in different ways. Mr Mulligan, Hyg et Eug. Doc, blames the
sanitary conditions in which our
greylunged
citizens contract
adenoidsº,
pulmonary complaints, etcº by inhaling
the germs that lurk in
dust. These
factors, he alleged, and the disgusting spectacles offered by our streets,
hideous posters, ministers of all denominations,
mutilated
soldiers and sailors,
exposed
carcasses, 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
enjoyable manner. 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. 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 (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all
other phenomena of
evolution, tidal
movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in
fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to
the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks
is subject to a law of
numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents
{u21, 466}
and seemingly a healthy childs and properly looked after succumbs
unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the
{u22, 399}
same marriage do not) must
certainly,º in the poet's words,
give us pause.º 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
arrangementº which, though productive of
pain to some of our feelings (notablyº
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. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an
interruption?) that an omnivorous being which
canº masticate, deglute, digest and
apparently pass through the ordinary channel with
pluterperfect
imperturbability such various aliments as cancrenous
femalesº
emaciated by
parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen not to speak of jaundiced
politicians and chlorotic religious might possibly find gastric relief in an
innocent collation of staggering bob reveals in a very unsavoury light the
tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment 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
lowerclassº 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
{u21, 467}
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 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
{u22, 400}
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 thanksgiving
to One above, the
universal Husband.
And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing
more,º 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 conscientious
secondº accountant of the Ulster bank,
College Green branch.
O Doady, loved one
of old, faithful 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, 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
{u21, 468}
from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew
rings for you (may it be the distant
day!)º and dout the light whereby you
read in the sacred
book for 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 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
andº all but persuade himself that they
were not or at least were otherwiseº. 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
tranquilityº 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
{u22, 401}
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 on the face before him a slow recession of that
false 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
wellremembered
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
sisterhood, Floey,
Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with
I know
notº 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
{u21, 469}
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 theº danger but
must needs glance
at whiles towards where his mother watches with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach in her glad still look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end 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 otherwiseº in that room of quiet was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.
Burke's!
Outflingsº
my lord Stephen, giving the cry and a tag and bobtail
{u22, 402}
of all them after,
cockerel,
jackanapes,
welsher, pilldoctor,
punctual Bloom
at heels,º with a universal grabbing at
headgear, ashplants,
bilbos, Panama
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,
tumultuously, 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 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, glisteningº
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 load
bemoiled with
butcher's bills at home and
ingots (not
thine!) in the countinghouseº? 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
canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their brood.
Pshaw, I tell
thee! He is a
mule, a dead
gasteropod,
without vim or
stamina not worth
a cracked kreutzer. Vegetables, forsooth, and
sterile
cohabitation. Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding. She is a hoary
pandemonium of ills within, enlarged glands, 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 —º do. Thou sawest thy goal
{u22, 403}
and didst charge
to cover like
the transpontine
bison. How saith
Zarathustraº?
Deine Kuh
Trübsalº
melkest Du. Nun
trinkst Du die süsseº
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
{u21, 471}
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, armstrong, holleringº down the street. Bonafides. Where you slep las night? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like old Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambily? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and old clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah there, Dix. Forward toº 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. Hell, blast you. Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. You join us, dear sir. No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee disº bunch. En avant,º mes enfants!º Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Burke's!º 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
{u21, 472}
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
{u22, 404}
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
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 voolº. Well,
doc? Back fro
Lapland?
How's the squaws and
papooses?
Womanbodyº 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 braw
Hielentman's 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?º Machree Macruiskeen.
Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all togetherº. Ex!
{u21, 473}
Waiting, guvnor? Most
deciduously
Bet your boots on.
Stunned like,
seeing as how no shiners is acoming.º
Underconstumble?
He'veº
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
of
theyº 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.º We're nae the fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.
{u22, 405}
'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.º 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 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.
{u21, 474}
Landlord, landlord have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon,
aº wee drap to pree.
Cut and come
again. Right.º 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?º
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?º
Skunked? Leg
bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind
Kristyan wilº yu
helpº yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow
kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown ofº
his hed 2 night.
Crikeyº,
I'm about
sprung. Tarnally dog
gone my shins if this beent the
bestest
puttiest
longbreakº
yet.
Item, curate,
couple of cookies
for this child.
Cot's 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! ˼ la votre!
{u22, 406}
Golly,
whattenº
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 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? Seenº him today at a
runefal? Chum o yourn
passed in his
checks? Ludamassy! Pore
piccaninniesº! Thou'll no be telling
me thot, Pold veg! Did ums
blubble big splash
crytears cos frienº Padney was took off
in black bag?º 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
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,º
the Excellent One,º your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
{u21, 475}
Your attention! Ware hawk for the chap puking. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropulous. Blazeº 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 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, booseguzzlingº
existences!
Come on, you
bullnecked,
beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms
and excess baggage!
Come on, you triple
extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie that's my
nameº that's
yanked to glory most
{u22, 407}
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
propositionº. 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.