Joyce J. Ulysses

flambeau under a bushel in an 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 curb this inconvenience (which he concluded due to a
suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of
worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee
simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot
de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of not much in favour with our ascendancy
party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named
Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt 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
were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For
his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of
savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter
prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and
stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After
this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan
in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it.
The both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending
their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's
smallclothes of a 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 seemed to him a sound and tasteful support
of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut
matres familiarum nostro lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
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 stomach,
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 his person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics 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
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 stranger, 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 lady, 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 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 Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For
answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, 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 storms of mirth and threw the whole room into
the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle 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 tow, 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 pose
of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a
gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the head,
asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat
him with a cup of it. Mais bien sшr, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et
mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing
but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but
a crust in my wallet and a 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 by the Giver
of good things. 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 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 as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her
dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feast day as she told
me) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my
conscience, 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. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God I thank thee
as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a 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 blessing to all Thy creatures, how
great and 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 passion and the husband of maturer years.
But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all
our sublunary joys! Maledicity! Would to God that foresight had remembered
me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had
poured seven showers, 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,
thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from
whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever
kept a lady from wetting. Tut, Tut! cries le Fиcondateur, tripping in, my
friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked
a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my
authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet
through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells
me, sans blague, 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. One umbrella, 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 and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words
but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted
it in our heart 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, the only, garment. The first,
said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to
fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber 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 entered 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 humorous 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. A monstrous
fine bit of cow-flesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you
dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud. Immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The
bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not
Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin? As I look to be saved I
had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven
months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest,
feigning a womanish simper and immodest squirmings of his body, how you do
tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibblywobbly. Why, you're
as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem that you are! May this pot of four
half choke me, cried Costello, if she ain't 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
without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling
profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest
power for happiness upon the earth. 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 in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an
one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours and at an instant the most momentous that can befall a
puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of
a race where the seeds of such 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 nor
would he have received more than his bare deserts 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 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 borne with being the fruits of
that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young
sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as 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 scrupulously sensible of the
proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their
behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he
nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen
gibbosity born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback teethed and feet
first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull
lent indeed a colour to, so as it put him in thought of that missing link of
creation's 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 a 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, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable.
To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a
habit of mind which he never did hold with) 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, can lose no more, there remained the
sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate
and 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 (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer express it) for
eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity
upon any condition soever towards 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 auspicated after an ordeal
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 Crothers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of
emphasis, old Glory Allelujerum was round again to-day, an elderly man with
dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of
Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness
for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I
cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock
another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own
fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another
than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy
(virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household.
Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty
of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory 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, of the noble lord, his patron,
has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to
civil rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity?
Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the
recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados
did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece
against the empire of 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 all
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 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 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 scouringbrush not been her tutelary
angel it had gone with her as hard as with 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 straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him
to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seed-field that lies fallow
for the want of a ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second
nature and an opprobium in middlelife. If he must dispense his balm of
Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste 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
usages 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 in the
presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of
the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation, 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 officer rendered the easier, 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 restrain. The moment was too propitious
for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union
among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively
eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean
section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with
respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs murder and
endered 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 and dissimulated, acardiac ftus in ftu, aprosopia due to a
congestion, the agnatia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate
Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along
the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other
spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of
labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the
premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual
case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination
by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause,
the problem of the perpetuation of the species in the case of females
impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called
by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multigeminal,
twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of
consanguineous parents - in a word all the cases of human nativity which
Aristotle has classified in his master-piece with chromolithographic
illustrations. 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 a gravid woman to step over a country
stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and
the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and
ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person
which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The
abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle,
strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a primafacie and
natural hypothetical explanation of swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel
Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the taledonian 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 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 that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin
poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. 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 better than he knew know 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 in the even of one
Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was
referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon
Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural
gravity 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.
But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up
the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in
the recess appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep? He
had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial
marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while
he eyed them with a ghastly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he
began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes,
it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The
inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and
ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I
tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me
the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this
life. It is what I 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! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the
panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and
said: 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: The vendetta of Mananaan! The sage repeated Lex talionis.
The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense
debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. 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. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her
web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on
it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground.
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 too is her age changeable as her mood. No
longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of
reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance
in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a
mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young
figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning
from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his book
satchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a
mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his
first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged
traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchief (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 halfwon 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 these, the dark eyes and oleaginous
address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm
seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of
noodles, 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 on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a
tiny speck 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 luck-penny), together they hear
the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal
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. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a
breath 'twas done 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 and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. 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
cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey
twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields,
shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her
mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms
are they 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, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of
the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts.
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, rodent, ruminant 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 cold interstellar wind, winding,
coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till
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 together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past
and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call 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. That 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 you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you
meditate. 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 mans face grew dark. All could see how
hard 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 for a whim of the rider's
name: 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 could not contain
herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the
straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse
Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis
was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But
her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay
some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. 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 in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient
wont. Mercy on the luckless! 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. By gad, sir, 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 (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock
of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us
were in bloom: the air drooped with their 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 Periplepomenos sells
in his booth near 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 dose. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was
free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies too! Mad
romp that it is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in
your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field.
Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book
with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the
page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to
reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for
the very trees adore her. When conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely
echo in the 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 and 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 orange-fiery shipload
from planet Alpha of the lunar chain, would not assume the etheric doubles
and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-coloured 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 or mesmerised, 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 to exhibit symptoms of animation, was
as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured
the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop.
During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a
certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at
Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right
opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract
anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and
solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself
which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after
the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf,
recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other
two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however,
both their eyes met and, as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other
was endeavouring to help himself to the thing, he involuntarily determined
to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold 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, also at the same time however, a
considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer
that was in it about the place.
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. Crothers 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, opposite to him 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 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 and 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 accommodated 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 whose 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 like the man in the street has to
face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he
can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer -
at present - such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb.
Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of
Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period,
assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long
neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as
most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani,
Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This
would be tantamount to a cooperation (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, succubitus felix, of the passive element.
The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant
mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all
born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg.
et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged
citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the
bacteria which lurk in dust. These facts, he alleges, and the revolting
spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious
ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed
scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic
bachelors and unfructified duennas - these, he said, were accountable for
any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he
prophesied, would soon be generally 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, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little
attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass
the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc.
Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abnormal trauma in the case of
women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital
discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or
official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of
criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the
former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only 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 balk
nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that 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 and seemingly a healthy child and
properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though
other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's
words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and
cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are
due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which 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 arrangement, which, though
productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is
nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in
general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus'