by James Joyce
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.
—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said.
THE GREAT GALLAHER
—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I’ll show you.
He pushed past them to the files.
—Look at here, he said, turning. The New York World cabled for a special. Remember that time?
Professor MacHugh nodded.
—New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean, Joe Brady and the rest of them. Where Skin-the-goat drove the car. Whole route, see?
—Skin-the-goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You know Holohan?
—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.
—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the corporation. A night watchman.
Stephen turned in surprise.
—Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, is he?
—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the stones, see they don’t run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?
He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.
—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee let us say. Have you got that? Right.
The telephone whirred.
A DISTANT VOICE
—I’ll answer it, the professor said going.
—B is parkgate. Good.
His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.
—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon gate.
The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarched dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.
—Hello? Evening Telegraph here … Hello? … Who’s there? … Yes … Yes … Yes …
—F to P is the route Skin-the-goat drove the car for an alibi. Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F. A. B. P. Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Burke’s publichouse, see?
CLEVER, VERY
—Clever, Lenehan said. Very.
—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody history.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present, Dick Adams, the besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself.
Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:
—Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.
—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s street was there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies.
—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
—Hello? … Are you there? … Yes, he’s here still. Come across yourself.
—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. He flung the pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up before the recorder …
—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan? Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense! Only in the halfpenny place!
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two.
…………… la tua pace
…………. che parlor ti place
…. mentrechè il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, per l’aer perso in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, in gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fe piu ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY …
J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery gutter sheet not to mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof,
LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K. C, for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes. Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for … But no matter.
J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.
And in the porches of mine ear did four.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the Vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced, Silence!
Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarette case.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtf
ully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and prophecy which if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His sum hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don’t ask.
—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarette case aside. Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F. Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing in a child’s frock, Myles Crawford said. Go on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction, I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sick bed. That he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F. Taylor rose to reply. Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smoke ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?
—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen; we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:
—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
He ceased and looked at them, enjoying silence.
OMINOUS—FOR HIM!
J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:
—And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.
—A sudden – at – the – moment – though – from – lingering – illness – often – previously – expectorated – demise, Lenehan said. And with a great future behind him.
The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the staircase.
—That is oratory, the professor said, uncontradicted.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches. The tribune’s words howled and scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn?
—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All who are in favour say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which particular boosing shed? … My casting vote is: Mooney’s!
He led the way, admonishing:
—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we will not. By no manner of means.
Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of his umbrella:
—Lay on, Mac
duff!
—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, slapping Stephen on the shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?
He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the crushed typesheets.
—Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in. Where are they? That’s all right.
He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.
LET US HOPE
J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen:
—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.
He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.
—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it? It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium ! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.
The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and rushed out into the street, yelling:
—Racing special!
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
They turned to the left along Abbey street.
—I have a vision too, Stephen said.
—Yes, the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.
Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:
—Racing special!
DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN
Dubliners.
—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.
—Where is that? the professor asked.
—Off Blackpitts.
