Author: Jasmine Mulliken

Jasmine Mulliken is Digital Production Associate at Stanford University Press. Prior to that she spent five years as Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. She has a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and specializes in 20th-Century British Literature, Digital Humanities, and Digital Literacies.

Winetavern Street

Located in the ancient Dublin city center, Winetavern Street, though only briefly mentioned, plays an interesting role in Dubliners. In “The Dead,” the collection’s final story, Gabriel and Gretta are finally able to find a cab after the party where Winetavern Street meets the quays on the south bank of the Liffey where they have been walking: “At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab” (214). They had been unable to get a cab at the aunts’ house in Usher’s Island two quays west of Winetavern Street, which divides Merchant’s and Wood Quays. At the end of the party, the guests can only manage to get one cab, which is claimed by Freddy Malins, his mother, and Mr. Browne, so Gabriel and Gretta, along with Bartell D’Arcy and Miss Callaghan, begin walking east along the quays in hopes they’ll meet a cab closer to the city center.

Winetavern Street, pen, ink, and watercolor by Flora H. Mitchell.
Winetavern Street, pen, ink, and watercolor by Flora H. Mitchell.

The most obvious reason for the lack of cabs is the time of year and time of day. It’s generally agreed that the Morkans’ party takes place between January 2nd and 6th, between New Year’s and the Feast of Epiphany. Furthermore, when the guests leave, “[t]he piercing morning air” (206) is already making its way into the hall, and yet as the group begins their walk, “[t]he morning was still dark. A dull yellow light brooded over the houses and the river” (212). During the 2nd to the 6th of January, the sun rises at around 8:15 am, and stars start becoming imperceptible at about 6 am. Nevertheless, it is early enough still when they leave for sunrise to be a a long way off as is indicated by the need for a candle when the couple arrives at the hotel. Indeed the street lamps are still lit when Gabriel sits alone at the end of the story imagining his journey westward.

The walk from 15 Usher’s Island to the corner of Winetavern Street, according to the map, would take 8 minutes. Since a horse travels between 4 mph (6.4 kph) at a walk and 8 mph (13 kph) at a slow trot, the cab ride would have taken about another 10-15 minutes. If we imagine the entire scene at the hotel spans an hour, then the time between the end of the party and the end of the story is roughly an hour and a half. Could the party have gone on until 4:30 am? That seems unlikely. Nevertheless, that the morning is spilling into the hall at the start of the journey and the street lamps are still lit at the end of the story indicate that the group had to procure their cabs sometime between midnight and 4:30 am. Surely there would be a lack of cabs during these hours, especially over the holidays.

The photo, "Imperial Hotel and coaches, The Mall, Waterford," shows two horse-drawn cabs. Photo taken between 1900 and 1910, from the National Library of Ireland.
The photo, “Imperial Hotel and coaches, The Mall, Waterford,” shows two horse-drawn cabs. Photo taken between 1900 and 1910, from the National Library of Ireland.

But other tensions surround the procuring of cabs in the story as well. First, cabs are the only mode of transportation used in the stories following “A Painful Case.” There is a distinct lack of movement and mappable travel in the stories between that one and “Grace.” It is as if Emily Sinico’s death by train halts all travel, at least by means of apparatus. We first see a cab appear in “Grace,” as an inebriated and bloodied Mr. Kernan is being loaded into it by Mr. Power. Because Mr. Kernan can’t speak, Mr. Power must give the directions to the driver. Similarly, the first cab, in “The Dead,” the Browne-Malins cab, appears in a fog of confusion. Mr. Browne only reluctabtly gets into the cab, and then he and Mr. Malins give the driver contradictory directions. Ultimately, the driver is asked “Do you know Trinity College?” a rather insulting question for a Dublin cab driver, and told to “drive bang up against Trinity College gates,” instructions that connote a potentially bloody end to this inebriated group’s trip.

But even Gabriel and Gretta’s cab, which seems innocuous enough, is associated with threatening layers. They find the cab at Winetavern Street, a street named historically for its primary premises–taverns. According to J.T. Gilbert’s 1851 A History of the City of Dublin, the street, which was also called Wine-street, was the site of a violent fire. Gilbert cites “the native annalists record” which details the 1597 events:

“One hundred and forty-four barrels of powder were sent by the Queen to the town of the ford of hurdles (Dublin) to her people, in the month of March. When the powder was landed, it was drawn to Wine-street…,  and placed on both sides of the street, and a spark of fire got into the powder; but from whence that spark proceeded, whether from the heavens, or from the earth beneath, is not known; howbeit, the barrels burst into one blazing flame and rapid conflagration (on the 13th of March), which raised into the air, from their solid foundations and supporting posts, the stone mansions and wooden houses of the street, so that the long beam, the enormous stone, and the man in his corporal shape, were sent whirling into the air over the town by the explosion of this powerful powder; and it is impossible to enumerate, reckon, or describe, the number of honourable persons, of tradesmen of every class, of women and maidens, and of the sons of gentlemen, who had come from all parts of Erin to be educated in the city, that were destroyed. The quantity of gold, silver, or worldly property, that was destroyed, was no cause of lamentation, compared to the number of people who were injured and killed by that explosion. It was not Wine-street alone that was destroyed on this occasion, but the next quarter of the town to it.” (qtd. in Gilbert 154-55)

Though increasingly less direct, the connotations of drunkenness and disastrous injury present in the three instances of even primitively mechanized transportation after the disaster in “A Painful Case” show a wariness with the potential speed of movement. And though the cab Gabriel and Gretta find at Winetavern Street and their successful journey seems to indicate a gradual re-implementation of the evolving technology driving transportation at the turn of the century, the underlying historical connotations that are conveyed through the reference to this particular street suggest forward movement may not be re-evolving quite as smoothly as it appears to be.

“The Dead” Route

At the end of “The Dead,” Gabriel concludes that “[t]he time had come for him to set out on his journey westward” (223). Gabriel imagines himself moving from east to west, landing like the snow on various places on the Irish map: “the dark central plains,” “the treeless hills,” “the Bog of Allen,” “the dark mutinous Shannon waves,” and finally “the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried” (223-24). The imagined route from Dublin to Oughterard (near Galway), where Michael Furey is most likely buried, is roughly 230 km. It’s a significant journey and conveys Gabriel’s capacity for empathy and his desire to close the distance he feels lies between himself and his wife.

But the imagined route is much different than the actual route the couple travels in the story. Instead of east to west, Gabriel and Gretta make their from the Misses Morkan’s house in Usher’s Island eastward and then a little northward to the Gresham Hotel in Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. Instead of the plains, hills, bog, waves, and churchyard, they see Usher’s Island, the Four Courts, Winetavern Street, O’Connell Bridge, and the Gresham. And instead of flying gently through the air like snow, they walk a bit before upgrading to a cab that makes a “rattling noise” that drowns out any attempt at conversation. Though it’s not referenced in relation to their route,  they would also have passed Adam and Eve’s, where Julia is lead soprano.

The physical eastward movement is in direct contrast to the imagined westward movement of Gabriel’s ‘swooning soul.’ The contrast is yet another indication of the ambivalence that defines Gabriel and his circumstances. He’s drawn westward though he’s more comfortable in the east. At the party he feels himself to be a failure only to be met with applause and laughter when he performs. He envisions his life with Gretta romantically and looks forward to arriving at the hotel where he will seduce her but instead learns she had a lover before him that he can never compare to. The cemetery, the final destination of the imagined journey west, is permanent and powerful, whereas the destination of the physical journey, the hotel, is transitional and temporary.

Nevertheless, it is a journey, and the first distinct route illustrated in the text since “A Painful Case.” The three public life stories preceding “The Dead” make reference to many places but there is a lack of movement, a kind of paralysis initiated perhaps by the tragedy of “A Painful Case.” Mrs. Sinico’s death (she’s hit by a train) puts a halt to transportation and movement for the Dubliners until the end of the final story. In “The Dead,” we see a return to movement and re-evolution of transportation methods. From the immobility of the previous public life stories, the movement of “The Dead” starts slowly, with simple walking. Gabriel and Gretta walk five blocks (650 meters) from Usher’s Island to Winetavern Street and cover the remaining 1.5 km to the Gresham in a rattling cab.

While in one way the physical journey counters the imagined journey, perhaps painting Dublin as a kind of paralytic space working against the transcendent space of the imagination, the presence of a physical journey at all indicates a break from the immobility of the previous stories, a kind of return to the ease of movement that characterizes the childhood stories. And it’s fitting, then, that the final destination of the journey in “The Dead” is just steps away from Great Britain Street, the very first geographical reference in the opening story of Dubliners.

Ormond Quay

Ormond Quay is one of many waterfront spans of street lining the Liffey in central Dublin. Situated on the north bank, its upper (western) and lower (eastern) sections are bisected by Capel Street as it becomes Grattan Bridge. In association with Joyce’s works, it’s perhaps most recognized as the location of the Ormond Hotel, the setting for Ulysses’s Sirens episode where Bloom listens to and ruminates on music after tortuously yet curiously observing Blazes Boylan just before he is to meet Molly.

"[View of the River Liffey and Ormond Quay, Lower, taken from south quays]." Photograph by J.J. Clarke. From the Clarke Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
“[View of the River Liffey and Ormond Quay, Lower, taken from south quays].” Photograph by J.J. Clarke. From the Clarke Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
But Ormond Quay is also where Mr. Kearney, of “A Mother,” is a bootmaker:

“However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr. Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay” (137).

Don Gifford emphasizes that “[a] bootmaker should not be confused with a cobbler; bootmaking is an honored middle-class profession in England and Ireland” (Gifford 97). Miss Devlin marries Mr. Kearney both to silence her friends and to ensure her future security, “perceiv[ing] that such a man would wear better than a romantic person” (D 137).

Aside from sharing a geographical reference, “A Mother” and Ulysses also share a character: Mr. O”Madden Burke. In “A Mother,” O’Madden Burke is decribed as “a suave, elderly man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk umbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected” (145). We learn that Burke is to write the report of the concert and that Mr. Hendrick from the Freeman will “see it in.” Burke also appears in Ulysses, in the Aeolus episode set in the Freeman office, “tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed” as he “c[omes] in from the hallway.” During the spirited conversation among the group (which includes Lenehan who appears both in the novel and “Two Gallants”), the umbrella appears again:

“Lenehan announced gladly:

—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!

He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O’Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.

—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness” (U 7.590-94).

The reference to The Rose of Castile foreshadows the Sirens episode, set in Ormond Quay, where it figures prominently as one of the musical allusions. And just as O’Madden Burke appears first in “A Mother,” so too perhaps does Mr. Kearney the bootmaker of Ormond Quay make a brief appearance, at least as a playful phrase, in Ulysses: 

“(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)” (U 15.3726-31).

But what does the reference to Ormond Quay contribute to our reading of “A Mother?” The reference, like so many of Joyce’s geographical references, may recall a time before the story’s setting.  Incidentally, in 1850, there were two bootmakers listed in Thom’s Directory in Ormond Quay: William Muldary at 16 Lower Ormond Quay, and James Henry Baird at 11 Upper Ormond Quay. Furthermore, in “Robert Emmet’s Rising of 1803 and the Bold Mrs. Kearney: James Joyce’s ‘A Mother’ as Historical Analogue,” Martin F. Kearney explores the connections between the concert in “A Mother” and Robert Emmet’s 1803 uprising, pointing out that Anne Devlin is evoked in Mrs. Kearney’s maiden name Devlin, setting the stage for a much more politically charged story than what many of the early critics recognized. The author Kearney traces several interesting and convincing parallels between Anne Devlin and Mrs. Kearney, but he also suggests that Mr. Kearney’s character also carries correlative implications to the 1803 uprising. He notes, for example, that there were two Kearneys involved in the events: William Kearney, who “concealed Emmet and several rebel officers in the garret of his inn” (para. 18); and Edward Kearney, who “was the first to be executed, having been adjudged guilty of participation in the bid for Ireland’s freedom. The religious fervor of Joyce’s Mr. Kearney gains poignancy with the realization that Edward Kearney was forced to face the scaffold without benefit of a priest to hear his last confession or to offer spiritual comfort” (para. 18). Most interestingly, though, William Cole, a shoemaker, followed in the footsteps of William Kearney and hid Philip Long, a major member of the uprising, in his house in Ormond Quay. That Joyce stepped Mr. Kearney up from a shoemaker to a bootmaker may be a nod to Emmett’s well-known Hessian boots, which, as article’s author points out, he wore both on the night of the rebellion and during his execution at St. Catherine’s.

There are many ways in which “A Mother” reflects the political and personal complexities of the Irish Revival, and the geographical references only add more refractions to the prism of meaning and commentary Joyce built into the story.

 

Merrion Street

A section of an 1883 Letts Sns & Co. "Plan of the City of Dubln" map showing Merrion Street and Merrion Square. From the online David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.
A section of an 1883 Letts Sns & Co. “Plan of the City of Dubln” map showing Merrion Street and Merrion Square. From the online David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

When a modern-day Dubliner refers to Merrion Street, it’s likely she’s referring to, in general, the Irish government. The Irish Government Buildings are located in Merrion Street, part of which, as it extends northward, forms the western edge of Merrion Square as Merrion Square West, where the Leinster House is located. However, in 1906, by the time Joyce finished “Two Gallants,” the only story that references the street, the street was markedly different. It did not house the Government Buildings. It was lined on both sides with Georgian houses, all of which had only sprung up since the Leinster House had been built in 1748 for the Earl of Kildare, who became the Duke of Leinster in 1766. Prior to the construction of the mansion, affluent Dubliners generally lived north of the Liffey. But the Leinster House (originally the Kildare House) established the south part of Dublin, especially the area of Merrion Square, as the more desirable and elite neighborhood for the wealthy. In fact, Donald Torchiana argues that “Two Gallants” references many places that “reflect[…] the historic pomp and grandeur of Ascendency treacheries that cast long shadows behind the otherwise mean and stunted posturings of Corley and Lenehan near the end of Irish enslavement” (115).

Merrion Street first appears in the story in reference to the planned meeting place for Lenehan and Corley once Corley finishes his business with the “slavey:”

“–And after? Where will we meet?

–Half ten, answered Corley, bringing over his other leg.

–Where?

–Corner of Merrion Street. We’ll be coming back.

–Work it all right now, said Lenehan in farewell.” (55)

After Corley leaves Lenehan alone, Lenahan watches his friend greet the young woman and spies on them for a while until they catch a tram from the square. The street they walk along is Merrion Square West, which is what Merrion Street becomes when it reaches the southwest corner of the square from the south. Thus, Lenehan would have his back to Merrion Street as he followed the couple north along the square.

“Lenehan walked as far as the Shelbourne Hotel where he halted and waited. After waiting for a little time he saw them coming towards him and, when they turned to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly in his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square” (56).

"Nurse Crossing Merrion Street," a photograph by J.J. Clarke taken between 1897 and 1904. From the National Library of Ireland's Clarke Photograph Collection.
“Nurse Crossing Merrion Street,” a photograph by J.J. Clarke taken between 1897 and 1904. From the National Library of Ireland’s Clarke Photograph Collection.

Torchiana explains “[a] house [in Merrion Square] … was an almost certain entré into high society in the 18th century” (123). Corley’s girl is said to be a “slavey,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “[a] female domestic servant, esp. one who is hard-worked; a maid of all work.” No doubt she works in one of the houses on the square or in Merrion Street.

For the next couple hours, Lenahan back-tracks along his previous route with Corley and wanders through Dublin contemplating his circumstances and paralysis and potential. Just after ten he returns to Merrion Street to find out whether or not his friend had been successful:

“When he reached the corner of Merrion Street he took his stand in the shadow of a lamp and brought out one of the cigarettes which he had reserved and lit it. He leaned against the lamp-post and kept his gaze fixed on the part from which he expected to see Corley and the young woman return” (59).

He waits longer than he feels he should have to, and when he finally sees his friend, he has “[a]n intimation” of failure. He assumes Corley was not able to get the money.

In 1904 the demolition of some of the Georgian houses along the west side of Merrion Street was only just beginning. By 1922, they would be replaced by the The Royal College of Science for Ireland. Both the Leinster House and the College would become government facilities by 1926. At the time Lenehan and Corley use the street as their point of separation and reunion, it was somewhat in transition but not yet as strongly associated with Irish, or even British, government as it is today. So while the reference was not necessarily politically charged, it certainly carried economic implications at the time of its writing and publication.

Inchicore

Inchicore, a western suburb of Dublin, appears once in Dubliners at the opening of  “After the Race:”

“The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry” (42).

Steam train at Inchicore Works in 1879. From Inchicore.info
Steam train at Inchicore Works in 1879. From Inchicore.info.

Inchicore’s “channel of poverty” stands in stark contrast to the “wealth and industry” that the cars represent, but there’s more at work here than a simple economic and industrial binary. Embedded in the Inchicore reference is also a nod to Ireland’s own engineering industry. In fact, Inchicore was and still is home to the Inchicore Railway Works, which is, according to one online history of Inchicore, “the headquarters for mechanical engineering and rolling stock maintenance for Irish Rail.” It was established in the 1840s and “is the largest engineering complex of its kind in Ireland with a site area of 73 acres (295,000 m²).” But Joyce’s description of the cars “careering” and speeding through this area highlights the contrast between the movement of the new transportation technology against the “inaction” of even the largest engineering complex in all of Ireland. Though the clumps of sightseers watch, we get the sense that there’s a tinge of shame in their gaze as they observe these cars, these “snorting beasts,” racing into the city, into the financial center where the main characters finally hop out of their car and begin walking, safely removed from “poverty,” “inaction,” and “clumps” of people.

The lookout tower of Inchicore Works, designed by architect Sacton Wood and established in 1846. From Archiseek.com.
The lookout tower of Inchicore Works, designed by architect Sacton Wood and established in 1846. From Archiseek.com.

By setting up Ireland’s greatest engineering complex in contrast with the parade of international race cars, the story begins with a critique of Irish transportational technology. It then continues to portray a move backward through transportative modes. After the cars arrive in Dublin’s city center, the young men utilize the railway to get to Kingstown Harbour where they then board a boat to play cards and celebrate. The devolution of transportation methods mirrors the devolution of Jimmy Doyle’s spirit, and ultimately, as the title implies, we get the sense that the best times are already past, that now, after the race, there’s a slow decline in mood, resources, activity, and for Jimmy Doyle, opportunity, confidence, and money.

Jimmy and his friends are riding a high from the excitement of the race, but unlike his friends who will return to the wealth and industry of the continent, Jimmy feels the retrogressive pull of Dublin enclosing around him. That pull starts with the reference to Inchicore and its implications of what, in 1903, must have seemed an archaic and plodding industry in comparison to the speed and excitement of the automobile.

Grattan Bridge

Grattan Bridge, Dublin City, Co. Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Grattan Bridge, Dublin City, Co. Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Originally built in 1676 as Essex Bridge, the now-named Grattan Bridge connects Capel Street on the north side of the Liffey to Parliament Street on the south. At the time of its initial construction, it was the third bridge to span the Liffey. The first was the ca. 1014  Dubhghall’s Bridge, renamed and rebuilt several times over the centuries. When James Joyce wrote Dubliners, it was the Whitwort Bridge, and since 1928, it’s been called the Father Mathew Bridge. The second bridge was the Bloody Bridge, built in 1670, but by the time of Dubliners, it had also been rebuilt and was known as the Victoria & Albert Bridge. It’s now called the Rory O’More Bridge. According to the detailed history of the Dublin bridges in Michael Phillips and Albert Hamilton’s “Project History of Dublin’s River Liffey Bridges,” “[n]ame change appears to be a popular aspect of the Republic’s means of demonstrating change ‘from the old order’, and there also seems to be an apparent need for commemoration” (162).

Screenshot of the map showing Little Chandler's route in green and Grattan Bridge, marked by the highlighted green tag.
Screenshot of the map showing Little Chandler’s route in green and Grattan Bridge, marked by the highlighted green tag.

Grattan Bridge, the most logical of crossing points on Little Chandler’s route in “A Little Cloud,” was named after Henry Grattan when it was rebuilt between 1873 and 1875 by William J. Doherty. Grattan was an 18th-century Irish politician who was known for his oratory. He served both as a member of the Irish Parliament, where he opposed the 1800 Act of Union, and then later as a member of the British Parliament in London. Appropriately, the reference to Grattan Bridge, then, adds an additional layer to the tension between England and Ireland already at work in the story. Little Chandler is on his way to meet his friend Gallaher, who is visiting from England. As we learn at the story’s opening, Gallaher had left Ireland for good eight years before, and Chandler is anticipating the reunion with a mix of hopefulness and dread. He ponders all this before leaving his office in King’s Inn and as he walks south toward the Liffey, which he crosses at Grattan Bridge:

“As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise, shake themselves and begone” (73).

The spot is one of many where Little Chandler pauses to consider his home city in anticipation of the inevitable comparisons he will soon be imagining when he meets his expatriate friend. And though Chandler seems disenchanted with the view, the description of what he sees preserves a nonetheless romantic cast, a fitting lens for his obsession with “express[ing] the melancholy of his soul in verse” (84). The description of the houses and the riverbanks is immediately followed by:

“He wondered whether he could write a poem to express his idea. Perhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some London paper for him. Could he write something original? He was not sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward bravely” (73).

As he continues southward across the bridge toward the more cosmopolitan south bank, toward Corless’s where “he had heard that the waiters…spoke French and German” (72), he begins feeling less tied to the “dull inelegance” (73) of Capel Street and, indeed, Dublin altogether. As he crosses the Liffey, he becomes braver and more adventurous:

“Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old—thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the point of maturity” (73).

Essentially, the bridge over the Liffey is a geographical parallel to Little Chandler’s psychological geography as he emerges from what he considers the confines of his home to new opportunities in new lands.

Near the end of the story, after meeting Gallaher and while he’s watching his own child at home, feeling like “a prisoner for life” (84) he reflects back on the scene at the bridge:

“There were so many things he wanted to describe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for example” (84).

It isn’t clear which side of the Liffey Chandler lives on, but his return to his thin-walled little house where he feels imprisoned suggests that he may be back on the north side again. And it’s here that he returns, though with more melancholy and less hope, to his dreams of being a poet. That desire and its potential success has become associated, for him, with the moment on the bridge. If the north side of the river represents his Irishness and the south his potential success as a London-published poet, the bridge is a geographical and structural symbol of his poetic identity. Just after he crosses the bridge, in fact, he ruminates on his niche:

“The English critics, perhaps, would recognise him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems; besides that, he would put in allusions. He began to invent sentences and phrases from the notice which his book would get. Mr. Chandler has the gift of easy and graceful verse…. wistful sadness pervades these poems…. The Celtic note. It was a pity his name was not more Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother’s name before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler, or better still: T. Malone Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it” (74).

His poetry requires his connection to and even imprisonment in Ireland, but his publication depends on his ability to escape it. The in-between, the bridge, is his best hope.

Fleet Street

Sharing a name with the famous London locale, Fleet Street in Dublin is a busy pathway just south of the Liffey connecting Westmoreland Road with the bustling Temple Bar (another name echoing the London scene) district. In Dubliners the street appears in one story, only briefly, in reference to a character’s job and in another as the location of a business.

Modern-day Fleet Street in Dublin. By Jean Housen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Modern-day Fleet Street in Dublin. By Jean Housen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The first mention of Fleet Street happens in “The Boarding House:”

“Jack Mooney, the Madam’s son, who was clerk to a commission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard case. He was fond of using soldiers’ obscenities: usually he came home in the small hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to tell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing—that is to say, a likely horse or a likely artiste. He was also handy with the mits and sang comic songs” (62).

The next occurrence of the reference is in “Counterparts” as Farrington is plotting his drinking strategy. As he is low on funds, he considers pawning his watch:

“He felt his great body again aching for the comfort of the public-house. The fog had begun to chill him and he wondered could he touch Pat in O’Neill’s. He could not touch him for more than a bob—and a bob was no use. Yet he must get money somewhere or other: he had spent his last penny for the g.p. and soon it would be too late for getting money anywhere. Suddenly, as he was fingering his watch-chain, he thought of Terry Kelly’s pawn-office in Fleet Street. That was the dart! Why didn’t he think of it sooner?” (92)

For both men, Fleet Street is a source of money. Farrington’s acquisition of that money is perhaps a bit desparate while Jack Mooney’s is occupational. Nevertheless, Jack’s vocation is tinged with a bit of the subversive as well. In his annotations, Don Gifford suggests that “[s]ince Jack Mooney is ‘a hard case,’ it may be that he is well-suited to assist in the debt-collection side of a commission agency” (63). Jack himself seems savvy on the good bets, and this knowledge or penchant would certainly be a byproduct of dealing with gamblers and money borrowers.

The connotations in Dubliners of Fleet Street as a somewhat opportunistic money-exchange hub may be a Dublinized critique of the more prominent London Fleet Street, home to such sometimes rascals as the press and the fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. No doubt Joyce was aware of the penny dreadful The String of Pearls: A Romance, the first story to depict the murderous barber of London’s Fleet Street. But even more interesting is John Davidson’s 1893 Fleet Street Eclogues, a written verse play in seven sections, that chronicles an intermittent year-long conversation among journalists, reviewers, and writers as they lament the death of art and poetry and nature from their Fleet Street offices. These characters recognize their own contribution as paid press workers to the decay of the arts even though they strive to publish and create on their own, outside of their official duties, works and memoirs that will survive forever. The entire Eclogues is available on the Internet Archives and is embedded below, opened to a passage in the “Good-Friday” section that captures the longing of the journalist to escape the “brilliance” of the word and return to the more natural leanings of language.

“Clay” Route

The route Maria travels in “Clay,” from the laundry in Ballsbridge to her brother Joe’s house in Drumcondra, is approximately 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles). Though the distance doesn’t seem great, she estimates the trip will take about an hour:

“The women would have their tea at six o’clock and she would be able to get away before seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes; from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to buy the things. She would be there before eight” (100).

It’s Hallow Eve at the end of October, and in Dublin it would already be dark when Maria embarks on her journey, and she is eager to reach her family before she misses the festivities already under way. The darkness, combined with her age and the time it would take to walk are all possible factors in her decision to take the tram rather than walk like so many other characters do in Dubliners. The young boys in the childhood story “An Encounter” walk 4.6 km, a similar distance to Maria’s 4.5 km, but they spend most of the morning and afternoon doing so. And Lenehan in the adolescence story “Two Gallants,” covers 8.4 km (5.25 mi.) on foot while waiting for Corley to coax a coin out of his girl. Maria, a middle-aged woman with a clear destination, on the other hand, plans her route with efficiency. Indeed, the maturity section brings with it characters who travel, in general, more efficiently, and only walk when they want to think or drink. Whereas Maria’s maturity-story counterpart Farrington covers the same amount of ground in his story that she does in hers, his route spans several hours, is broken up by stop-ins at pubs, and concludes with, incidentally, a ride home on the Ballsbridge tram line, though his is in the opposite direction and he disembarks before reaching Ballsbridge. Little Chandler also walks in “A Little Cloud,” but his destination is only 1.5 km from his starting point, and he indulges a contemplative revery every step of the way. James Duffy walks to think through the shock of Emily Sinico’s death, not to get from one geographical point to another.

Maria’s efficient route turns out to have its own contradictions and symbolic problems, however.

Screenshot of the Google Earth map showing Maria's route in Clay, beginning in Ballsbridge in the southeast and ending in Drumcondra in the northwest.
Screenshot of the Google Earth map showing Maria’s route in “Clay,” beginning in Ballsbridge in the southeast and ending in Drumcondra in the northwest.

The first leg, the walk to the tram along the “streets…shining with rain” (101) and the tram “[f]rom Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes” is rather uneventful. She spends the twenty-minute ride rather awkwardly on display, though, since “[t]he tram was full and she had to sit on the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with her toes barely touching the floor” (102). During the ride, she feels appreciative that she is independent and has her own money.

The second phase of the journey introduces an interesting visual parallel to the themes and motifs of Christianity apparent throughout the rest of the text. (In the beginning we learn Maria, a Catholic, works among Protestants; and at the end, Maria chooses the prayer book in a game she plays, signifying that she will “enter a convent before the year [is] out” [105].) When Maria (a name invoking both the virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene)  exits the tram at Nelson’s Pillar in Sackville (now O’Connell) Street, she first heads east along Talbot Street to Downes’s cakeshop. As efficient with money as she is with time, she is careful not to waste a cent on cakes without enough icing, and since Downes’s doesn’t meet her icing standards, she doubles back and crosses Sackville Street heading west to a shop in Henry Street. After purchasing sufficient plumcake, she boards another tram back at the Pillar and continues northward toward Drumcondra. When viewed on the map, her movements form the shape of a cross:

The middle section of Maria's route in "Clay," which forms the shape of a cross. The visual symbol echoes the already apparent Christian themes and motifs in the story.
The middle section of Maria’s route in “Clay,” which forms the shape of a cross. The visual symbol echoes the already apparent Christian themes and motifs in the story.

“[F]rom the Pillar to Drumcondra” finalizes the trinity of phases within Maria’s route. If the first phase highlighted her pride in financial independece, and the second emphasized her efficiency with financial transactions, the third proves it all futile. Though she starts the ride thinking she will have to stand due to the crowd, she is quickly offered a seat by “a colonel-looking gentleman” who is “very nice with her” (102-103). Once she reaches the house, though, she realizes she has left the icing-slathered plumcake on the tram because of “how confused the gentleman with the greyish mustache had made her” (103). Was it her distraction with the man and lack of financial focus, the disruption of the economic trinity organized by the phases of her trip, that caused this failing? What are the connections between Christianity and economics and efficiency in “Clay?”

Maria initially chooses the clay in the game at the end of the story, but the children are scolded for even making clay an option because it means death, and Maria re-chooses the prayer book. Instead of death, the real outcome, she gets a life devoted to Christ. Which one is real? Which is better? Maria has financial independence and the freedom to buy cakes in any cakeshop she wants. But were she married to a man, like the one in the tram, who distracts her from her material possessions, her earth, her clay, she would have a life devoted to a husband. Which one is real? Which is better?

Dublin Castle

The city of Dublin has a long history, but perhaps its oldest structures and remnants are in the area of Dublin Castle, south of the Liffey. A site rich with connotations of power and politics, it’s no surprise that one of the Dubliners stories that references the Castle is “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” At the time in which the story is set, the Castle served as the seat of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the chief secretary for Ireland. Twenty years before Irish independence, these were obviously British offices.

Dublin Castle, Dublin City, Co. Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Dublin Castle, Dublin City, Co. Dublin, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Mr. Henchy, a centrist, alludes to the Castle to indicate his suspicion that Hynes (though he eases up on Hynes quickly) and others like him are spies, British sympathizers only feigning support for the Nationalist working class to get information:

“–[Hynes] doesn’t get a warm welcome from me when he comes, said the old man. Let him work for his own side and not come spying around here.

–I don’t know, said Mr. O’Connor dubiously, as he took out cigarette-papers and tobacco. I think Joe Hynes is a straight man. He’s a clever chap, too, with the pen. Do you remember that thing he wrote…?

–Some of these hillsiders and fenians are a bit too clever if you ask me, said Mr. Henchy. Do you know what my private and candid opinion is about some of those little jokers? I believe half of them are in the pay of the Castle.

–There’s no knowing, said the old man.

–O, but I know it for a fact, said Mr. Henchy. They’re Castle hacks…. I don’t say Hynes…. No, damn it, I think he’s a stroke above that…. But there’s a certain little nobleman with a cock-eye—you know the patriot I’m alluding to?

Mr. O’Connor nodded.” (125)

By the end of the story, Henchy is encouraging Hynes to recite his Parnell poem, applauding the young man’s loyalty and sincerity. His suspicions seem to be forgotten or at least placed on more deserving targets.

Dublin Castle appears in another public-life story, “Grace,” in quite another context. In fact, the young man who helps Mr. Kernan home after his drunken fall works at the Castle:

“Mr. Power, a much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. The arc of his social rise intersected the arc of his friend’s decline, but Mr. Kernan’s decline was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character. Mr. Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword in his circle; he was a debonair young man.” (154)

Mr. Kernan’s vocation also connects him to England as he works for a London tea firm with an office in Dublin’s Crowe Street. For both these men, the British empire offers gainful employment even though both men arguably suffer much because of it.

Castle yard, Dublin Castle, Dublin, photographed between 1900 and 1920. From the Eason Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Castle yard, Dublin Castle, Dublin, photographed between 1900 and 1920. From the Eason Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

“Ivy Day” directly criticizes British rule while “Grace” does so implicitly and more ambiguously, but both stories make their commentaries, in part, through their reference to Dublin Castle. The Castle itself was originally built in the 13th century, but before it was a castle, it was a Viking stronghold situated on a hill overlooking the intersection of the Rivers Liffey and Poddle. (The Poddle, according to Dublin Castle at the Heart of Irish History, is now underground.) In the 9th century, the Vikings, led by Olaf the White, made Dyflinn (or Dubhlinn, meaning “Black Pool”) the center of the kingdom of Dyflinnarskiri, which, also according to Dublin Castle at the Heart of Irish History, “stretched along the coast from Skerries to Wicklow and up the Liffey valley as far as Leixlip.” The King’s Palace would have stood at the site of Dublin Castle. The Vikings built up and held the area until the Battle of Clontarf when they were defeated by Brian Boru to whom they paid tribute. Because of this they were allowed to stay but both fell to the Normans in the 12th century.

The medieval castle was built in the 13th century and it has since been rebuilt several times over the centuries. Naturally, the Castle is symbolic of Ireland’s long and tumultuous political history. It would be impossible to interpret its reference by Joyce as simply an allusion to British authority in Ireland. It’s always more complicated than that. In this case it’s potentially a reference to everything from the Vikings to the Irish that overthrew them to the Normans that usurped them both to, yes, the British Empire, to an entire millennium of shifting power structures that are always vying for that power, whether through espionage, police force,  open combat, or socio-economic manipulation and oppression.

Chapelizod

Chapelizod is a neighborhood in the western part of Dublin, along the banks of the Liffey. In Joycean contexts it’s best known as the home of the Earwicker residence in Finnegans Wake, but it’s also where James Duffy lives in the Dubliners story “A Painful Case.” The story opens with a very Duffyesque voice explaining “Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious” (107).

"Village, Chapelizod, Co. Dublin," showing a street in Chapelizod, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
“Village, Chapelizod, Co. Dublin,” showing a street in Chapelizod, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.

Although Mr. Duffy lives in the suburbs, “[e]very morning he came in from Chapelizod by tram” to his office in Baggot Street (108), near the area where Corley meets his girl in “Two Gallants.” Chapelizod is mentioned two more times in the story, both in rather dreary terms after he has read the news of Mrs. Sinico’s death. The first time, he is aware of the news, but the reader is not:

“He walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel stick striking the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff Mail peeping out of a side-pocket of his tight reefer overcoat. On the lonely road which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod he slackened his pace.” (113)

Once he arrives at his house, he rereads the story in the newspaper, and this time the reader also gets access to the news that his problematized lover, “[h]is soul’s companion,” has been struck by a train and killed. Unable to calm his nerves, he goes back out into the cold night: “When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he went in and ordered a hot punch” (116).

"Chapelizod, Co. Dublin," showing a view of the village, looking south from the hill above. This view is more romantic than the one above, perhaps even Wordsworthean ala "Tintern Abbey." Recall that Mr. Duffy keeps his Wordsworth on the bottom shelf of his bookcase.
“Chapelizod, Co. Dublin,” showing a view of the village, looking south from the hill above. This view is more romantic than the one above, perhaps even Wordsworthean ala “Tintern Abbey.” Recall that Mr. Duffy keeps his Wordsworth on the bottom shelf of his bookcase.

Duffy’s feeling about Chapelizod is somewhat complex. He sounds rather unromantic about his reasons for living there on one hand, listing only his reasons for not living somewhere else as his motivations. Nevertheless, that he does not want to live somewhere “mean, modern, and pretentious” implies that he does  want to live somewhere just the opposite. Chapelizod, especially as it is reflected in Finnegans Wake, has rather romantic associations. It’s name means “Iseult’s chapel,” and Iseult refers to the Irish princess that features in the Tristan and Iseult stories. There are many versions of these stories, but perhaps the one most contemporary to Joyce’s work would have been Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. In this version, Isolde initially heals Tristan, her family’s enemy, after he is wounded in battle. She is later betrothed to Tristan’s uncle Marke, but during the voyage to Brittany to meet her fiance, she and Tristan, who is escorting her, drink a love potion and fall madly in love. Isolde still marries Marke, but she and Tristan meet during the night while her husband is hunting. They are caught and Tristan is wounded in an ensuing fight. He flees, but Isolde follows him. Tristan dies of his wounds just as his love arrives, and she dies of sorrow. In another version of the story, Mark stabs Tristan, and Iseult asks him to use his last bit of strength to kill her with his embrace, which he does.

Tristan and Iseult, 1902, painting by Edmund Blair Leighton.
Tristan and Iseult, 1902, painting by Edmund Blair Leighton.

If Chapelizod isn’t, in “A Painful Case,” “mean, modern, and pretentious,” it also isn’t dramatic and romantic in the way that its name’s associations would imply. While Emily Sinico exhibits certain Isolde-like qualities, James Duffy is certainly no Tristan. Mrs. Sinico is a married woman with obvious affection for Mr. Duffy, and even though the two spend time together at concerts, on walks, and eventually even at her cottage in the evenings; without a love potion, Mr. Duffy is not, after all, able to “ascend to an angelic stature,” to “emotionalise his mental life” (111), at least with her. Without a love potion, he can only “insist[…] on the soul’s incurable loneliness,” resolving that “[w]e cannot give ourselves…we are alone.” Although like Tristan and Isolde, Duffy and Sinico inhabit the world of night, existing together only in darkness, and though Duffy even begins to enjoy this, he is ultimately confined by what he accepts as his own sombre reality. The two “agreed to break off their intercourse” and four years later, his would-be Iseult was dead. Even though he’s attracted and moved by what Chapelizod represents and references, his Chapelizod is actually a stark realistic neighborhood in Dublin, the city whose brown tinted streets are reflected in his face (108). He does not follow Mrs. Sinico into death but stands at the end of the story listening to the silence, feeling alone, feeling realistic.