Section 61 of 74 - Table of Contents
All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same
thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra basin,
the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no
ships ever called.
There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently AU
FAIT.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised
them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that day's
work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.
--Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his
private potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words
growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or other
in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate
the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the
time being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water jobs
and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he
rolled after his successful libation-CUM-potation, introducing an
atmosphere of drink into the SOIREE, boisterously trolling, like a
veritable son of a seacook:
--THE BISCUITS WAS AS HARD AS BRASS
AND THE BEEF AS SALT AS LOT'S WIFE'S ARSE.
O, JOHNNY LEVER!
JOHNNY LEVER, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to
grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the
natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described
in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face
of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large
quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten
millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by
England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose
always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus
steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and
all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish
soil, he stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in Navan
growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon?
But a day of reckoning, he stated CRESCENDO with no uncertain voice,
thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty
England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would
be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were
going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the
beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her
downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them
about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his
auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by
showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman
was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for
Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
Silence all round marked the termination of his FINALE. The impervious
navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.
--Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit
peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred
but nevertheless held to his main view.
--Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and
generals we've got? Tell me that.
--The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial
blemishes apart.
--That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic
peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman
worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few
irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to
the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as
they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.
From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was
rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for,
pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was
fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel,
unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather
concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with
the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the
coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went
on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say
on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to
the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to
try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart. Another
little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in
common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for
England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene
between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or
have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously
bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence
trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student
of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And
as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all,
he (B.) couldn't help feeling and most properly it was better to give
people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether
and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private
life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from
that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet,
though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom
in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while
inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man
who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his
political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a party to
any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south,
have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words
passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky
mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his
adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial LIAISON by plunging
his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-
the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage
and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush
which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin
on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our
friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his
welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high.
Like actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no
economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the
shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever
got rid of some l s d. in the course of his perambulations round the
docks in the congenial atmosphere of the OLD IRELAND tavern, come back to
Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the
same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually
silenced the offender.
--He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in
a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in
the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his
family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft
answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone
saw. Am I not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at
the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.
--EX QUIBUS, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four
eyes conversing, CHRISTUS or Bloom his name is or after all any other,
SECUNDUM CARNEM.
--Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of
the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right
and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though
every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government
it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to
boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent
violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything
or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan.
It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they
live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so
to speak.
--Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was
overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing.
--You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely ...
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously
supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely
a question of the money question which was at the back of everything
greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.
--They accuse, remarked he audibly.
He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as
the others in case they.
--Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of
ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would
you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the
inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an
uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for,
imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They
are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any
because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as
you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest
spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead
America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd
go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least
so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false
pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as
that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see
everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes PRO RATA having a
comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in
the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at
stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier
intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's
worth. I call that patriotism. UBI PATRIA, as we learned a smattering of
in our classical days in ALMA MATER, VITA BENE. Where you can live well,
the sense is, if you work.
Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of
different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath
or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say
the words the voice he heard said, if you work.
--Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who
owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must
work, have to, together.
--I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the
thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays.
That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of
you, after all the money expended on your education you are entitled to
recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right
to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has.
What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is
equally important.
--You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may
be 1160 important because I belong to the FAUBOURG SAINT PATRICE called
Ireland for short.
--I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
--But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.
--What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under
some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter
portion. What was it you ...?
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170
--We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down
but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put
on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was
clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy
spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his
sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost
importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been
familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the
young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some
consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more
especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw
much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of
cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of
premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there
was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably
connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose
other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody
all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit
of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual DENOUEMENT after the fun had
gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be
spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from
John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under
section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those
subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur
to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together,
six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so
forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the
seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life
the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the
upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of
the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and
crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a
number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by
nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on
though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was
except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another
it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who
like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his
and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal
islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others
who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of
their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not
exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having
in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of
someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection
would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he
felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which
was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the
here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of
events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in
especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers,
scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve
the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything
approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing
suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully
intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. MY EXPERIENCES, let
us say, IN A CABMAN'S SHELTER.
The pink edition extra sporting of the TELEGRAPH tell a graphic lie lay,
as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling
again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the
preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was
addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over
the respective captions which came under his special province the
allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du
Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio.
Lovemaking in Irish, 200 pounds damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration
Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.
Victory of outsider THROWAWAY recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's
dark horse SIR HUGO captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York
disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr
Patrick Dignam.
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