Ulysses: “Lestrygonians”

James Joyce

“A sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a

hand of Mr. Bloom.” (8.5-6)

• Young Men’s Christian Association.• Sought to promote “the physical, social, mental and spiritual

wellbeing of their members and of all other young men”

“Dr. John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is coming” (8.13-14)

• 1847-1907, A Scottish-Australian-American evangelist who began life in sober piety but found such success as a revivalist that he proclaimed himself “Elijah the Restorer” and “First Apostle of the Christian Catholic and Apostolic Church in Zion.”

“Torry and Alexander last year” (8.17)

• A team of American revivalists who carried out an extensive “Mission to Great Britain” in 1903-5, including a mission to Dublin in March-April 1904.

• Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) and Charles McCallom Alexander (1867-1928)

“From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s walk” (8.27)

• George Butler, manufacturer of musical instruments, 34 Bachelor’s Walk, the quay side, north bank of the Liffey.

“Crossbuns” (8.36)

• Small cakes prepared especially for Good Friday and appropriately marked with a cross.

“Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery” (8.46-47)

• In 1904, Guinness’s Brewery occupied approximately forty acres in southwestern Dublin.

“Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time” (8.109)

• The Ballast Office, at the southern end of O’Connell Bridge on the corner of Westmoreland Street and Aston’s Quay, was headquarters for the supervision of Dublin Harbor and its works.

“Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball’s” (8.110)

• 1840-1913, Astronomer royal and director of the observatory at Cambridge, England.

• The book that Bloom recalls is The Story of the Heavens (1885)

“They used to call him big Ben” (8.119)

• After the extraordinarily large bell in the clocktower of the Houses of Parliament in London.

“Powerful man he was at stowing away number one Bass” (8.121)

• A strong ale brewed by Bass, Ratcliff, and Gretton, Ltd., Burton-on-Trent, England.

• The import of Bass into Ireland was to become, by the 1920s, controversial to the point of riot.

“He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by” (8.155)

• O’Connell Bridge, over which Bloom crosses the Liffey, gives south into Westmoreland Street, which continues south to the west front of Trinity College and College Green.

“The Glencree dinner” (8.160)

• An annual fund-raising dinner at St. Kevin’s Reformatory (now the Glencree Reconciliation Center), Glencree, County Wicklow.

“She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf” (8.165-66)

• A mountain fourteen miles south-southeast of Dublin.

“… after Goodwin’s concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house” (8.185-86)

• The Mansion House, the official residence of the lord mayor of Dublin, is in Dawson Street, between Trinity College and St. Stephen’s Green.

“May be for months and may be for never” (8.190)

• A paraphrase of the chorus of the song “Kathleen Mavourneen,” words by Annie Barry Crawford, music by Frederick N. Crouch.

• http://youtu.be/B3Ntc_62xKg

“Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from Harrison’s” (8.232-33)

• Jampuffs are a puff pastry filled with jam• A rolypoly is a kind of pudding consisting of a sheet of paste

covered with jam or preserves, formed into a roll and boiled or steamed.

“Theodore’s cousin in Dublin Castle” (8.362)

• The lord lieutenant of Ireland, appointed by England, used the castle as his town residence, and it also housed the offices of the chief secretary, the law offices of the Crown, the Royal Irish Constabulary, and other administrative offices.

“He stood at Fleet street crossing” (8.368)

• Flee Street intersects Westmoreland Street halfway between O’Connell Bridge and the west front of Trinity College in College Green.

“Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons flew” (8.401-02)

• That is, the Bank of Ireland. The building had housed the Irish Parliament until its dissolution by the Act of Union in 1800.

“He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger” (8.414)

• A statue of the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852) stands over a public urinal near Trinity College, opposite the east front of the Bank of Ireland.

“Pupil of Michael Balfe’s, wasn’t she?” (8.418)

• Michael William Balfe (1808-70), a Dublin musician who sang, played virtuoso violin, conducted, and composed operas, including The Rose of Castile (1857), and The Bohemian Girl (1843).

“That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money”

(8.423-24)

• Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), an English politician and statesman.

• Once regarded as a “radical republican”, Chamberlain emerged as an aggressive imperialist.

“Still I got to know that young Dixon who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he’s in Holles street

where Mrs. Purefoy” (8.429-31)

• The Mater Misericordiae Hospital

“Three cheers for De Wet!” (8.435)

• Christian R. De Wet (1854-1922), a distinguished Boer commander noted for his gallantry, for his extraordinarily clever field tactics in the Boer War, and finally, for his dignity in defeat.

“Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill” (8.437)

• At Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the headquarters of the Wexford rebels in the Rebellion of 1798 and the site of their defeat at the hands of the English on 21 June 1798.

“Whether on the scaffold high” (8.440)

• After the chorus of the song “God Save Ireland,” by T.D. Sullivan (1827-1914).

• http://youtu.be/kiSemeG6tGE

“James Stephens’ idea was the best” (8.457)

• Stephens organized the Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenian Society) in circles of ten, which divided when more than ten members had been initiated.

“Garibaldi” (8.461)

• Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), a revolutionary leader (notably in Uruguay and Italy) famous for his quasi-successful efforts to establish a unified, independent Italy.

“Dublin Bakery Company’s tearoom” (8.464)

• Thom’s 1904 lists this as the Dublin Bread Co., Ltd.

“His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing Trinity’s surly front” (8.476)

• The great façade of the college was erected in 1759. • “Surly” in this context has its original meaning of “proud” or

“haughty” from the relatively unrelieved 300-foot neoclassical front of the college, which is severe, dark, and heavy-stoned.

“Big stones left. Round towers” (8.490-91)

• “Big stones” are the “standing stones” and “stone circles” of prehistoric Ireland. Their function remains a mystery.

• “Round towers,” many of which are still standing, were the most striking features of the pre-Norman Irish monasteries.

“Provost’s house. The reverend Dr. Salmon: tinned salmon” (8.496)

• The Reverend George Salmon (1819-1904), a distinguished mathematician, was provost of Trinity College from 1888 to 1902.

• The two-story sandstone façade of the provost’s house (built in 1769) is heavy-handed in its eighteenth-century symmetry and weighted down by overstated arches above the windows and the entry door.

“Mad Fanny” (8.513)

• C.S. Parnell’s sister, Frances Isabel Parnell (1849-82), was active in the Irish nationalist movement.

“He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses”

(8.551-52)

• Nassau street: Along the south side of Trinity College, intersects Grafton Street (which Bloom now enters) from the east.

• Yeates and Son: On the west side of Grafton Street, opposite the intersection of Nassau and Grafton streets.

“It’s the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink” (8.572)

• The observatory, northwest of Phoenix Park, was owned and operated by Trinity College from 1783-1946.

• The clocks in the Ballast Office were controlled by an electric current transmitted each second from the mean-time clock at the Dunsink Observatory.

“The young May moon she’s beaming, love” (8.589-90)

• A song entitled “The Young May Moon” by Thomas Moore, from The Dandy, O!

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9aRA5dWGx8

“Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet” (8.601-2)

• Dion Boucicault (1822-90), the “moonfaced” Irish-American playwright and actor, was regarded by contemporary critics as lacking “marked histrionic talent” but as making up for it “by his keen sense of humor”.

“The harp that once did starve us all” (8.606-7)

• After Thomas Moore’s song, “The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls”.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs6jsS2L1Wc

“Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses” (8.614)

• At that time the ‘smartest’ of the shopping thoroughfares of Dublin.

“He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers” ( 8.620)

• Brown, Thomas & Co., silk mercers, milliners, costumers, mantle makers, and general drapers.

“Father O’Flynn would make hares of them all” (8.713)

• After the ballad “Father O’Flynn” by Alfred Percival Graves (1846-1931), in Father O’Flynn and Other Lyrics (1879).

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo0tgb0cPxw

“Lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair” (8.710)

• The highly decorated, antique coach that the lord mayor of Dublin used on ceremonial occasions.

• In her declining years, Queen Victoria “took the air” in a so-called bathchair (after the basket-weave chairs on wheels used for invalids at the health resorts in Bath, England).

“Bubble and squeak” (8.724-25)

• Beef and cabbage fried together.

“He’s giving Sceptre today. Zinfandel’s the favourite, lord Howard de Walden’s, won at Epsom. Morny Cannon is

riding him” (8.829-31)

• Odds on Zinfandel (ridden by Mornington Cannon), was five to four. Zinfandel did win the Coronation Cup at Epsom Downs on 3 June 1904.

“Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning” (8.865-

66)

• Oysters from the red-bank beds in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland were advertised in Dublin as the best of Irish oysters by Burton Bindon’s Redbank Restaurant at 19-20 D’Olier Street.

“May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember” (8.888-89)

• Thom’s 1904 lists the Misses Du Bedat, Wilmount House, Killiney.

“Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky.” (8.899-900)

• Howth Head projects out into the Irish Sea to form the northeastern arm of Dublin Bay. The peninsula is dominated by 583-foot Ben (mountain peak) Howth.

“Venus, Juno: curves the world admires” (8.920-21)

• Bloom is almost cast in the role of Paris, judge of the beauty contest among Venus (Aphrodite), Juno (Hera), and Minerva (Athena).

“Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first?” (8.924)

• In Greek mythology, Pygmalion, a sculptor and the king of Cyprus, fell in love with his own handiwork, the ivory statue of a maiden. He prayed to Aphrodite, who breathed life into the statue (Galatea).

“But be damned but they smelt her out and swore her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint

Legers of Doneraile” (8.972-73)

• There are several (exceptional) histories of women who were initiated into Masonic lodges. The one Flynn cites is traditionally regarded not as the only but as the first. Elizabeth Aldworth, the only daughter of Arthur St. Leger, first Viscount Doneraile.

“Why I left the church of Rome” (8.1070-71)

• A thirty-page pamphlet by the Canadian Presbyterian minister Charles Pascal Telesphore Chiniquy (1809-99). Chiniquy was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1833 and switched allegiance to the Presbyterian church in 1858.

“Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school” (8.1153)

• The Bluecoat School (the Hospital and Free School of King Charles II, Oxmantown, Blackhall Place, Dublin) was a fashionable school modeled after the famous English public school Christ’s Hospital, which was also called the Bluecoat School.

“The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel” (8.1163.64)

• Handel’s oratorio was given its first performance on 13 April 1742 at Dublin’s Musick Hall, Fishamble Street, with Handel conducting.

“Mr. Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library” (8.1167)

• -Molesworth Street, through which Bloom has been walking, enters Kildare Street across from the quadrangle (now a parking lot), flanked by the façades of the National Museum to the south and the National Library to the north.

“Sir Thomas Deane designed” (8.1174)

• Sir Thomas Deane (1792-1871), an Irish architect, designed the Trinity College Museum building (1857) and the Ruskin Museum at Oxford (1815-61).