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Ulysses

James Joyce

Section 34 of 74 - Table of Contents
--And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be
sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my
opinion an action might lie.

Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink
our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself.

--Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.

--Good health, Ned, says J. J.

---There he is again, says Joe.

--Where? says Alf.

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his
oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking
in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a
secondhand coffin.

--How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

--Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James
Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying
he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green
in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled
them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own
kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or
something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the
holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.

--Who tried the case? says Joe.

--Recorder, says Ned.

--Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.

--Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears
of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in
tears on the bench.

--Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock
the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the
corporation there near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:

--A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many
children? Ten, did you say?

--Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.

--And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court
immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you,
sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking
industrious man! I dismiss the case.

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in
the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first
quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the
halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber,
gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury
in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the
first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will
propounded and final testamentary disposition IN RE the real and
personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased,
versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the
solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he
sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the
brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in
and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high
sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the
tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of
the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of
Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of
the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of
Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good
men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that
they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the
issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at
the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God
and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and
they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do
His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from
their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in
consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot
and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against
him for he was a malefactor.

--Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland
filling the country with bugs.

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling
him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he
would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by
this and by that he'd do the devil and all.

--Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have
repetition. That's the whole secret.

--Rely on me, says Joe.

--Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We
want no more strangers in our house.

--O, I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that
Keyes, you see.

--Consider that done, says Joe.

--Very kind of you, says Bloom.

--The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We
brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon
robbers here.

--Decree NISI, says J. J.

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a
spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling
after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and
when.

--A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our
misfortunes.

--And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the POLICE GAZETTE
with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.

--Give us a squint at her, says I.

And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry
borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts.
Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago
contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor.
Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for
her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in
time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor.

--O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!

--There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of
that one, what?

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a
face on him as long as a late breakfast.

--Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What
did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about
the Irish language?

O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the
puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that
which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city,
second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due
prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel
whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour
among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.

--It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal
Sassenachs and their PATOIS.

So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till
you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your
blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a
nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and
their colonies and their civilisation.

--Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The
curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged
sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the
name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of
bastards' ghosts.

--The European family, says J. J. ...

--They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan
of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in
Europe except in a CABINET D'AISANCE.

And says John Wyse:

--Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:

--CONSPUEZ LES ANGLAIS! PERFIDE ALBION!

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands
the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan LAMH
DEARG ABU, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous
heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the
deathless gods.

--What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had
lost a bob and found a tanner.

--Gold cup, says he.

--Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.

--THROWAWAY, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest
nowhere.

--And Bass's mare? says Terry.

--Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on
my tip SCEPTRE for himself and a lady friend.

--I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on ZINFANDEL that Mr Flynn gave
me. Lord Howard de Walden's.

--Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. THROWAWAY,
says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name
is SCEPTRE.

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was
anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck
with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.

--Not there, my child, says he.

--Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the
other dog.

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom
sticking in an odd word.

--Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't
see the beam in their own.

--RAIMEIS, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that
won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing
twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four,
our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in
the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time
of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim
and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass
down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since
Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory
raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in
the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the
pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with
gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read
Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries,
Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed
horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering
to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the
yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths?
And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions
of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption?

--As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland
with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land.
Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was
reading a report of lord Castletown's ...

--Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain
elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the
trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of
Eire, O.

--Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.

The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon
at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief
ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine
Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash,
Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs
Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss
Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche
Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla
Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa
San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss
Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs
Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs
Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their
presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of
the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green
mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a
yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued
fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn
bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer,
sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a
dainty MOTIF of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and
repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron
feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the
organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed
numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement
of WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE at the conclusion of the service. On
leaving the church of Saint Fiacre IN HORTO after the papal
blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire
of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod,
hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse
Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.

--And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with
Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were
pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.

--And will again, says Joe.

--And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the
citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours that are empty will be full
again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of
Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet
of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the
O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with
the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the
first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to
the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat,
the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue
field, the three sons of Milesius.

And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like
a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody
life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled
multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly
Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the
holding of an evicted tenant.

--Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?

--An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.

--Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep?

--Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.

Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead
of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to
crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down
like a bull at a gate. And another one: BLACK BEAST BURNED IN OMAHA, GA.
A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung
up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought
to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure
of their job.

--But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay?

--I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is.
Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the
training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself DISGUSTED
ONE.

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew
of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the
parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad
brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a
gun.

--A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John
Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the
breech.

And says John Wyse:

--'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long
cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad
till he yells meila murder.

--That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the
earth.

The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on
the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs
and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges
and whipped serfs.

--On which the sun never rises, says Joe.

--And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The
unfortunate yahoos believe it.

They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth,
and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast,
born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified,
flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again
from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further
orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid.

--But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't
it be the same here if you put force against force?

Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his
last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living.

--We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater
Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the
black 47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid
low by the batteringram and the TIMES rubbed its hands and told the
whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as
redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the
Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of
crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they
drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the
coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the
land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no
cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.

--Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was ...

--We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the
poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at
Killala.
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