Of all the stories in Dubliners, “After the Race” contains the longest route travelled by characters within a story. At approximately 17 kilometers (or about 10.5 miles), the route stretches from Naas Road, on the western outskirts of Dublin, all the way to the harbors in the sea at Kingstown. To cover such an expanse, the characters employ a variety of transportation methods, the most varied of all the stories in Dubliners.
Camille Jenatzy at the 1903 Gordon Bennett cup race in Ireland
The story begins as the cars, from what we can surmise was the 1903 Gordon Bennet cup race, “c[o]me scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road” (42). The cars would have been, in that day, the newest, fastest, most advanced automobiles yet created. These machines “scudding” into the city set the fututristic tone of the story, whose descriptions, in many places, echo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto.
Once the cars approach the bank, Jimmy Doyle and Villona, who have been perched on their French friend’s car, hop off and walk up to Jimmy’s house to change for dinner. The men meet up again and eat at the hotel in which Segouin and Riviere are staying. Afterwards, the four men and their English companion walk along Stephen’s Green, and, running into Farley, the American, they hop on another car and head for Westland Row station. They board a train, and, “in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out of Kingstown Station…It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet…They got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American’s yacht” (47). By way of car, foot, car, train, rowboat, and yacht, these energetic youth cover a lot of Dublin ground. Unlike Gabriel and Gretta in “The Dead,” who, though they live only minutes away from Kingstown, take a cab to a hotel near their aunts’ house rather than make the long trek to Monkstown after the party, the young men of “After the Race,” with access to the newest and fastest modes of transportation, see nothing whatsoever daunting about a “few seconds” jaunt down to Kingstown for the sake of extending the party. Still, the vain and material isolation Jimmy Doyle feels at the end of the story is akin to that of the “Araby” narrator who also, with high hopes for the evening and the future, takes a train and is left, at the end of the story, far from home and wondering if it was all worth it.
Westland Row Station appears in two stories: “Araby” and “After the Race,” functioning as both a pass-through on and the beginning point for a train ride. In “Araby,” it’s referenced as a spot along the narrator’s route to the bazaar: “At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar” (34). In “After the Race,” it’s where the young men board the train that will take them to Kingstown: “They took the train at Westland Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out of Kingstown Station” (47).
The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway at the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row. Allen’s, fl. 1820’s-1830’s lithographer., and J.D. artist Jones. The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway At the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row: Shewing Cumberland St. & Arch, Part of All Hallows Chapel With Brunswick Street in the Distance. Dublin: [s.n.], 1834.
The station served as the terminus for the commuter line from Dublin to Kingstown and was built in 1834. The station is now called Pearse Station. The image to the right, from the National Library of Ireland, is a chromolithograph by J.D. Jones for Allan’s Publishing advertising the opening of the station. According to the “The History of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway,” the trains “were run on week days, every half hour, both ways from 9am until 5pm, while on Sundays trains ran every 20 minutes, with the exception of an interval from noon till 2pm. The single fare were 1s, 8d and 6d. for the three classes.”
Incidentally, two other stories include routes that would have been pretty nearly served by this rail line, but, perhaps due to the lack of stations adjacent to their destinations, the characters instead take trams. Maria in “Clay” takes a tram from Ballsbridge to Nelson’s Pillar and Farrington in “Counterparts” takes a tram from O’Connell Bridge to Shelbourne Road. The image below, a section of a Letts and Sons map from 1883, shows the rail line in red passing close to Shelbourne Road. A little further south we can see Ballsbridge. The blue line is the tram route, which obviously comes nearer to the precise locations Maria and Farrington need to access. It’s also worth noting that Gabriel and Gretta could have taken the train to Monkstown, but the trains would have long stopped running for the day by the time they left the Morkans’. Indeed, they don’t even arrive at the party until “long after 10 o’clock” (176). They most likely took a cab, and it would be an interesting investigation into modes of transportation of the day that would explore the reasons for all these characters’ choices of cab over tram or tram over train.
Plan of the city of Dublin. Letts’s popular atlas. Letts, Son & Co. Limited, London. (1883) . From the David Rumsey Maps Collection online
Detail from the 1836 Map. See links (1836 and 1883) for full interactive maps. From the David Rumsey Map Collection Online.
The “Canal Bridge,” mentioned in “An Encounter,” is the rendezvous point for the narrator and his two friends on the morning of their excursion:
“We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge” (21).
Mahoney is the only friend to show up, and so the boys, giving up on Joe Dillon, walk northeast along the bridge into North Strand Road. Though in the story it’s only called the “Canal Bridge,” two maps from 1836 and 1883 (from the David Rumsey Collection) name this bridge that crosses the Royal Canal in northeast Dublin, Newcombe and Newcomen Bridge, respectively. Why the name was left out would be an interesting question to explore in more depth. However, it is safe to assume this is indeed the bridge in question as it feeds directly northeast into the first street the boys enter.
The canal is the first body of water the boys cross. They eventually ferry across the Liffey, and, depending on where the ferry lands on the south side of the Liffey, they may also cross the Dodder to get into Ringsend. In any case, they end up on a sloping bank of the Dodder where they meet the josser and then discuss the possibility of returning home by train. This mode of transportation would be quicker, and they could avoid the more liquidy parts of Dublin, which, by the end of the story, carry more salacious implications than the waterways of the city’s topography.
This week’s featured place is Marlborough Street, where Mrs. Mooney of “The Boarding House” plans to attend mass after her confrontation with Bob Doran: “It was seventeen minutes past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr. Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street” (64). “Short twelve” refers to noon mass, and even though the church is never directly named, Mrs. Mooney would have been attending Marlborough Street’s St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, officially the “first Catholic episcopal seat established anywhere in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland since the Protestant Reformation,” according to the detailed Wikipedia entry.
St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral at Marlborough and Cathedral Streets from the Google map version of the Mapping Dubliners Project. Also visible to the south is the marker for Earl Street.
The cathedral’s official web site also provides a rich history of not only the cathedral itself but also of the turbulent political circumstances that led to its institution. The cathedral was finished in 1825 soon after the Penal Laws forbidding the building of Catholic churches dissipated. As Catholicism is closely tied to Irish Nationalism, the pro-cathedral carries connotations of open protest to the Churches of England and Ireland which were symbols of English rule. It’s fitting, then, that the pro-cathedral is also referenced in “A Mother,” in relation to the the Kearney family who are active in the Irish Revival: “On special Sundays, when Mr. Kearney went with his family to the pro-cathedral, a little crowd of people would assemble after mass at the corner of Cathedral Street” (137). St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral is indeed located at the corner of Marlborough and Cathedral Streets. Though Irish politics is an explicit theme in “A Mother,” it is perhaps less explicit in “The Boarding House,” making the somewhat hidden reference to the pro-cathedral in that story worthy of more study.
Incidentally, to add a musical element to this geographic reference, John McCormack, the oft-referenced tenor in Joyce’s works, was a member of the cathedral’s Palestrina Choir in 1904 and 1905. This connections provides perhaps a bit more fodder for those interested in the performative or musical elements of both these stories.
Once again, this week’s featured place is a route rather than one fixed location. The video below shows the path the narrator of “Araby” takes all alone one night in hopes of finding something special to buy for Mangan’s sister.
He starts in the street where he lives, North Richmond Street, walks down Buckingham Street, gets on a train which passes through Westland Row Station, and disembarks at the bazaar. The location of Araby, according to Don Gifford, is just across the River Dodder. As with the “An Encounter” route, the narrator does not return home but is left at the end of the story on the south side of the Liffey and east side of the Dodder. As all the childhood stories begin north of the Liffey, the crossing of it becomes almost a rite of passage, a journey into adulthood whether the move be temporary or permanent. The epiphany the narrator experiences at the end, coupled with the lack of a return home, emphasizes the permanence of the step toward maturity he has made even if we assume that he does return home after the end of the story.
To view the route on the map is to observe the visual cues of the journey. Though the trip is only represented in one paragraph in the text, it becomes quite a trek when seen played out on the screen and when considered as a solo night journey by a young boy. It begins with a walk along the streets before evolving into a more fast-paced train ride. The route as projected in Google Earth offers a modern-day view of the landscape, complete with tunnels and stadiums, but it also raises questions about that landscape as it would have appeared to a young boy in the 1890s. Was there indeed a tunnel on the path of the train? If so, what does the tunnel add symbolically to the narrator’s journey from home to Araby, from childhood to adolescence? What other elements of the landscape help contribute to the story’s themes?
Screenshot of Google Earth street view of Mulligan’s from the map. Copyright Google 2013.
This week’s featured place is Mulligan’s, a pub in Poolbeg Street that serves as the setting for Farrington’s arm wrestling match with Weathers in “Counterparts.”
It’s also where Farrington admires the lady from London, wishing that he hadn’t already spent all his money standing drinks for Weathers. It’s the final bar of the night, after Farrington and his varying crew have left Davy Byrne’s and the Scotch House:
“Weathers made them all have just one little tincture at his expense and promised to meet them later on at Mulligan’s in Poolbeg Street” (94).
“When the Scotch House closed they went round to Mulligan’s” (95).
According to the pub’s website, it was opened at its current location in 1854. Also according to the website, though they admit that the information is rather suspect, Joyce possibly “wrote at the counter of the premises while he sipped his guinness.” Regardless of whether or not that actually happened, Joyce certainly made a historic marker of the establishment by bringing his characters in for a few rounds on that February evening.
Storymap, “a web based multimedia project that revives Ireland’s age-old tradition of storytelling,” has filmed, on location, a re-enactment of the arm-wrestling scene in the story. The film is one of many that comprise this energetic interactive map of Dublin stories.
The place of the week, the Christian Brothers’ School, appears as a direct reference in “Araby” and “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” and indirectly in “An Encounter.” The school referenced in “Araby” is O’Connell School, which was established in 1829 in North Richmond Street. It is one of several Christian Brothers’ Schools established worldwide in the nineteenth century and the oldest in Dublin. But this school’s location is expressly noted in the opening sentence of the story:
“NORTH RICHMOND STREET being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free” (29);
The reference to the Christian Brothers’ School in “Ivy Day” is a bit more vague:
“–Ah, yes, he said, continuing, it’s hard to know what way to bring up children. Now who’d think he’d turn out like that! I sent him to
the Christian Brothers and I done what I could him, and there he goes boosing about. I tried to make him someway decent” (119) .
The location of the school is not specified; it could be any number of Christian Brothers’ Schools (CBSs) in Dublin at the time. In addition to the school in Richmond Street, CBSs were located in Synge Street and Westland Row. (These two in particular were popularized by Flann O’Brien’s satiric Bildungsroman A Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor.) The frame below shows a section of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction’s Annual General Report of the Department, Volume 7, Parts 1906-1907, which lists some of these schools as “not being national schools, in which instruction in drawing and manual work is recognised for grant by the department.”
The narrator of “An Encounter,” of course, is quick to point out that he and his companion are “not national schoolboys to be whipped,” (27) implying that they are, instead, students of a CBS, and most likely, based on other geographical references in the story, the one in North Richmond Street. Joyce and his brother Stanislaus even attended this particular school for a just a few months in 1893 before they were admitted to Belvedere for free by a sympathetic Father Conmee (Bowker 43).
This week’s featured place, The Star of the Sea Church, appears in “Grace” as the place where the Kernans were married:
“In her days of courtship, Mr. Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon his other arm” (156).
The description of Mr. Kernan as “not ungallant” recalls the story “Two Gallants” and suggests an association between the once “jovial well-fed man” in “Grace” and the “squat and ruddy” Lenehan with his “eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment” and “his figure [which] fell into rotundity at the waist” (49-50). Possibly an older version of Lenehan, Mr. Kernan is, although older and a father, not necessarily much more mature. But while his story begins with him on the floor of a bar, he returns in the end to another church in Gardiner Street, a geographic reference that connects him with the parents of Joe Dillon in “An Encounter.”
Star of the Sea Church from the National Library of Ireland’s digital photograph collection.
The Star of the Sea Church, pictured right in a photograph taken between 1880 and 1900, stands only a few blocks from Irishtown, where the priest of “The Sisters” had grown up. Perhaps Father Flynn attended mass at Star of the Sea as a child. The proximity revealed by the map’s visual interface invites scrutiny into other connections between “Grace” and “The Sisters” and the characters of Flynn and Kernan. While Flynn is hinted to have experienced a kind of fall from grace, Kernan shows signs of redemption “with God’s grace” (174). Viewed in the light of Father Flynn’s troubles, the effectiveness of Kernan’s redemption must be questioned if the vehicle of his redemption is supposed to be Father Purdon, another priest. At the very least, because of what Joyce sets up in “The Sisters,” we have to wonder whether Kernan’s redemption by the grace of God represents a hopeful ending to the story or a piercing, ironic criticism of the church. Is Kernan merely replacing one drug with another when he transforms from the drunk at the bottom of the stairs to the mathematical parishioner on the church bench?
Even though the Catholic church is always problematic in Joyce’s writing, the physical structure of the place in the landscape, its architecture, its design, its music, usually appears in Joyce as something reassuring. The Star of the Sea Church is a memory in “Grace,” a memory that clashes with the cold reality of married, mature life. When mentioned in Ulysses, the church is again placed in a context of solidity and comfort, as “a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea” (U 284).
But to return to Dubliners, incidentally, post-scriptively, notice the similarity of style in the Ulysses description of the sunset and “The Dead” description of the snowfall:
“Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea” (U 284/13.2-8).
“He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (D 223-24).
This week’s featured location is the intersection of Dame Street and George’s Street, where Lenehan of “Two Gallants” meets a couple of friends as he wanders the streets of Dublin waiting for Corley to finish a meeting with his girl:
“Then he turned into Dame Street. At the corner of George’s Street he met two friends of his and stopped to converse with them” (58).
The two friends are unnamed, but the group talks about Corley and a couple other common acquaintances identified as Mac and Holohan, both of whom Lenahan says he’s recently met in pubs. The conversation somewhat anticipates the mood of “Counterparts,” and aside from the fact that “Two Gallants”
Screenshot from the Google Maps version of the Mapping Dubliners Project showing part of Lenehan’s (yellow line) and Little Chandler’s (green line) paths.
takes place in August and “Counterparts” in February, it might even be possible that the two friends Lenehan talks to at the intersection are versions of O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard on their way to Davy Byrne’s to meet Farrington and friends or perhaps versions of Higgins and Nosey Flynn having already left.
The corner also appears in “A Little Cloud.” In fact, it is at this corner that Little Chandler’s and Lenehan’s paths finally diverge after overlapping each other for several blocks. Lenehan and Chandler, each in his own solitude, wander from the intersection of Capel and Great Britain Streets to Dame Street to George’s Street. During this section of their paths, both men ponder their failings and lament their loneliness or missed opportunities. After Lenehan talks to his friends, he turns right down George’s Street while Chandler keeps going along Dame Street. Chandler actually walks too far along Dame Street “pursu[ing] his revery so ardently that he passe[s] his street and ha[s] to turn back” (74).
The intersection might just be visual clue to the intersection of these stories in terms of their characters and themes.
This week’s featured geographical reference is Gardiner Street. The street appears twice in Dubliners: once in “An Encounter” and once in “Grace.” In both cases, the reference is associated with a church located there:
“An Encounter:” “His parents went to eight o’clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house” (19).
“Grace:” “The transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full; and still at every moment gentlemen entered from the side door and, directed by the lay-brother, walked on tiptoe along the aisles until they found seating accommodation” (172).
St. Francis Xavier Chapel
Inside of St. Francis Xavier Chapel
According to two historical maps (1836 and 1883) from the David Rumsey Collection, there is only one church in Gardiner Street, and that is St. Francis Xavier, pictured above in photographs taken between 1880 and 1900. The image below shows a Google Earth street view shot of the church as it appears today.
Street view of St. Francis Xavier from Google Earth
In “An Encounter,” the second story in Dubliners, Joe Dillon is described as having “a vocation for the priesthood” (19), but his behavior in the story suggests just the opposite temperament, and it is only his parents, not Joe, who are described as attending mass. In “Grace,” the second to last story in the collection, Mr. Kernan feels out of place at the church until he begins to recognizes the familiar faces of his friends (173).
Although the two references connote very different circumstances, the play between the two stories is, at the very least, intriguing. The stories both contain priests (Father Butler* aka “Bunsen Burner” in AE and Father Purdon in G); Leos (Joe’s brother Leo Dillon in AE and Pope Leo in G), secondness (AE is the second story and G is the second-to-last story), and the circumstance of a parent of two boys attending a church in Gardiner Street. In fact, we might even see the Kernans as older versions of the Dillon parents. The Dillons have two young sons, Joe and Leo, and the Kernans have two grown sons who live in Glasgow and Belfast. Though neither of the Kernans’ sons is a priest, the one in Glasgow is “in a draper’s shop,” a location recalling the residence of the problematized priest in “The Sisters.”
Untangling Joyce’s network of characters and versions of characters is an endlessly stimulating process, and this project’s map of geographic references certainly helps in providing leads in this perpetual puzzle!
*In “Grace,” Mr. Kernan also describes going “into Butler’s in Moore Street” with Crofton.
25 July 2013 update: Thanks to Shelby Cook (@ReadingJoyce) for pointing out that this church is also the location of Stephen’s retreat in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man:
U can visit the church and see red stained glass over door that let in the “dull scarlet light” at the retreat: @MapDubProj@ReadingJoyce
![The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway at the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row. Allen's, fl. 1820's-1830's lithographer., and J.D. artist Jones. The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway At the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row: Shewing Cumberland St. & Arch, Part of All Hallows Chapel With Brunswick Street in the Distance. Dublin: [s.n.], 1834.](http://mappingdubliners.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DKR3.jpg)
