“Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786” from Antonio de Córdoba’s expedition, the first scientific mapping of the region. Available at World Digital Library: http://www.wdl.org/en/item/52/
One of several references that expand the psychological geography of Dubliners beyond the city’s borders, the Straits of Magellan infuse James Joyce’s realist urban montage with hints of unattainable escapism. Frank, Eveline’s sailor sweetheart has travelled the world and fills her head with romantic tales about places like Canada, Buenos Ayres, Patagonia, and the Straits of Magellan:
“He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.” (39)
The story revolves around Eveline’s ambivalence concerning running away with Frank and making a new life with him in Buenos Ayres. Doing so would mean leaving her father and her siblings, all of whom have come to depend on her, and the city of Dublin itself, which, for her and the rest of the book’s characters, has an uncomfortably paralyzing effect.
The reference to the Straits of Magellan in particular does more than evoke an exotic locale an ocean away. Situated near the southern tip of South America and weaving through modern-day Chile (touching Argentina at its eastern mouth), the Straits are named after the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan who led an expedition through the waterways in 1520. The journey was chronicled by Antonio Pigafetta in The Journal of Magellan’s Voyage, which includes a very basic map, pictured below.
“The First Map of the Strait of Magellan, 1520” from The Journal of Magellan’s Voyage. Available at the World Digital Library at http://www.wdl.org/en/item/3972/
While the meta-reference–the reference to a place that references a person–imbues Eveline’s perceptions of Frank with qualities of exploration and adventure, it also signals to a critical reader that once again we are facing the colonization paradox. Exploration and discovery are exciting, but not to those being explored and discovered (or rather, exploited and displaced). Frank talks about the “terrible Patagonians,” the people native to the lands surrounding the straits. Magellan named the people already living in this place he “discovered” Patagones, meaning “big feet.”
Although there is no evidence that Eveline considers any of this when she ultimately does not board the ship with Frank, it is perhaps still worth considering the implications Joyce sets up within the context of Eveline’s potential “new world” and her inability as a European, especially an Irish European, to embark on that particular expedition. As people under the rule of the world’s largest empire, the Irish would be especially hesitant to implicate themselves with Spanish colonization of South America. And inasmuch as Eveline represents Ireland, she is held fast to the iron of her own shores, unable to become the colonizer. She can’t go with Frank the explorer, Frank the discoverer, Frank the Ferdinand Magellan who battles terrible Patagonians, because she is herself Ireland, the colonized, the oppressed, the paralyzed.
If the earlier geographical references would have been limited to just Canada and Melbourne and Buenos Ayres, the connotations might be more simple: emigration, reinvention, etc. But that Joyce chooses to include the more problematized references to the Straits of Magellan and Patagonians demands a more critical investigation of how place contributes to the post-colonial themes of this story and Dubliners as a whole.
The Tivoli Theatre on Burgh Quay, on the south bank of the Liffey. The theatre would have been a block north of Mulligan’s and a block east of the Scotch House. Photographed between 1901 and 1914 by Robert French, from the National Library of Ireland’s Lawrence Photograph Collection.
The Tivoli Theatre is mentioned twice in “Counterparts” as the venue where Weathers is performing:
“Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named Weathers who was performing at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout artiste. Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would take a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington, who had definite notions of what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris too; but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk became theatrical. O’Halloran stood a round and then Farrington stood another round, Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too Irish. He promised to get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some nice girls. O’Halloran said that he and Leonard would go, but that Farrington wouldn’t go because he was a married man; and Farrington’s heavy dirty eyes leered at the company in token that he understood he was being chaffed.” (94)
When the Tivoli is first mentioned, the group is in the Scotch House, which is about a block west of the theatre, also on Burgh Quay. A block south of the Tivoli is Mulligan’s in Poolbeg Street. This entire area just south of the Liffey is the predominant setting for the story. After the group leaves the Scotch House, and re-congregates at Mulligan’s, Weathers starts drinking cheaper drinks. It’s here that Farrington lusts after the woman with the London accent, whom Weathers explains is one of the Tivoli crowd.
“Presently two young women with big hats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close by. Weathers saluted them and told the company that they were out of the Tivoli.” (95)
Once again, though, Farrington is “chaffed,” denied anything more than a glance or two, a brush against his chair, and an “O, pardon!”
“[s]ituated on Burgh Quay, on the site of the old Conciliation Hall, and opened as the Grand Lyric Hall, a concert hall, on 26 November 1897. A year later it became the Lyric Theatre of Varieties, and closed on 31 August 1901. It reopened as the Tivoli Variety Theatre on 28 October, 1901 and closed in 1928. Irish Press offices later on site.” (96-97)
Conciliation Hall on Burgh Quay. Illustration form Archiseek.
Pictured above, the original building, Conciliation Hall, according to architectural records, was designed by Peter Martin and built in 1843 “as a meeting place for Daniel O’Connell’s Loyal National Repeal Association.” Interestingly, it seems Joyce may have chosen to reference the Tivoli, this musical-theatrical venue that also carries political connotations, as a way of possibly suggesting Farrington’s economic, sexual, and lifestyle paralysis have political origins.
The artiste’s lifestyle is one that Farrington covets, and his frustration at not being equal in economic status, sexual prowess, or physical strength (he loses at arm wrestling to Weathers) all contribute to his violent outburst later that night against his son. Though the Tivoli is simply a place reference, it embodies an entire lifestyle and occupation that Farrington can never fully access or experience. That the theatre has political origins only adds complexity to his situation.
“City Hall. Long shot, Dublin City, Co. Dublin.” City Hall is located at the south end of Parliament Street, just a few steps from Kavanagh’s. Note the “Daily Express” on the right. James Joyce, and Gabriel Conroy of “The Dead,” wrote reviews for the Express. This would have been just a couple doors down from Kavanagh’s. Photo taken between 1860 and 1883 by James Simonton or Frederick Holland Mares, held by the National Library of Ireland as part of the Stereo Pairs Photograph Collection.
Located in Parliament Street, between Essex and Dame Streets, south of the Liffey, Kavanagh’s is called in Ulysses “James Kavanagh’s winerooms” (10.992) and described by Don Gifford as “a gathering place for Dublin politicians and for those in search of political favors” (93). So it’s no surprise that the place makes its appearance in the most overtly political of all the Dubliners stories, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” In this story it’s mentioned as a place where Father Keon can often be found talking with Mr. Fanning. When mentioned in “Ivy Day,” Keon has just popped his head in the room, looking for Fanning. Not finding him, he quickly leaves, and the men in the Wicklow Street committee room begin to talk about him:
“–Tell me, John, said Mr O’Connor, lighting his cigarette with another pasteboard card.
–Hm?
–What is he exactly?
–Ask me an easier one, said Mr Henchy.
–Fanning and himself see to be very thick. They’re often in Kavanagh’s together. Is he a priest at all?
–‘Mmmyes, I believe so. …I think he’s what you call a black sheep. We haven’t many of them, thank God! but we have a few. …He’s an unfortunate man of some kind. …
–And how does he knock it out? asked Mr O’Connor.
–That’s another mystery.
–Is he attached to any chapel or church or institution or–
–No, said Mr Henchy. I think he’s travelling on his own account. …God forgive me, he added, I thought he was the dozen of stout.” (126-27)
During the discussion of Father Keon’s character, Henchy seems to have trouble nailing down any definite descriptions. His answers are filled with speculation and aposiopeses, echoing the dialogue surrounding Father Flynn, another problematized priest, in “The Sisters.” As they do with many other notable figures, the men in the committee room have trouble disparaging or criticizing Keon. Excepting Hynes, many of the characters take on the subtleties of political ambiguity when describing controversial figures. But more direct implications can be observed in the geographic allusions Joyce embeds in this particular passage.
As Gifford notes, Kavanagh’s is a political hotspot for making under-the-table deals. What indeed is Father Keon doing there? Here again, as in “The Sisters,” a priest is imbued with highly political overtones through a geographic reference. In “The Sisters,” the political implications resonate from the reference to St. Catherine’s, and in “Ivy Day,” it is Kavanagh’s. Furthermore, Fanning, the man Keon meets in Kavanagh’s appears in “Grace” as “the registration agent and mayor maker of the city, who was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly elected councillors of the ward” (172). In fact, the presence of Fanning and other well known politicos and businessmen at the Gardiner Street Jesuit church makes Mr. Kernan “feel more at home” (173). The “mayor maker’s” appearance in the Jesuit church and Father Keon’s presence in the political pub emphasize Joyce’s perception of the highly political nature of the church and the religiously motivated nature of Irish politics.
Fanning also appears in Ulysses, also at Kavanagh’s, where he is directly identified as the subsheriff “Long John Fanning” (10.995-1030). In Ulysses, as in “Grace,” Fanning is in the company of people like Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Power.
Dame Street, facing east toward Trinity College. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French, part of the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Referenced in two of the Dubliners adolescence stories, Dame Street is one of the largest thoroughfares in the city. Today, as in Joyce’s day, the street houses City Hall on the western end and Trinity College at the Eastern end. In between is still the city’s financial district, featuring the Bank of Ireland, several insurance and accounting firms, and high-end retailers. One of these retailers, Waterhouse’s, is referenced directly in “Two Gallants.” Don Gifford describes it as “goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewelers, and watchmakers” (Gifford 57).
Lipton’s Premises in Dame Street, photographed 13 October 1890 by James Talbot-Power. From the National Library of Ireland.
The National Library of Ireland’s photo collection also reveals the Lipton company was in the process of opening a store in Dame Street in 1890, and an American publication, The Book-Keeper: The Business Man’s Magazine, features a 1904 article on the company in which they describe this second Dublin location:
One of the Lipton stores is located at the corner of Dame and St. George’s streets, only a few steps from Pim Brothers’ great department store. The Dame street store is in the very heart of the business district frequented by fashionable and middle class purchasers. (St. Clair 25)
Dame Street serves as the energetic setting for the race cars’ entrance to the city center in “After the Race:”
They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram-drivers. Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that evening in Segouin’s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who was staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening. (45)
The cars would have been moving west to east. The bank (pictured below) is at the east end of Dame Street, just across from Trinity College, and it is here where Jimmy Doyle and Villona, his Hungarian friend, hop out of the car and make their way to Jimmy’s house. Walking north from the bank, they would be on Westmoreland Street heading toward Temple Bar and the Liffey. Where Jimmy lives is never stated, but since he has money, unlike the children in the previous set of stories who live well north of the Liffey, it’s reasonable to assume Jimmy lives nearby, on the south side of the river.
Bank of Ireland, at the corner of Dame Street and Westmoreland Street. Just to the right, not pictured) is Trinity College. Photographed by Robert French between 1880 and 1900. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
The bustling Dame Street setting of this story’s opening is appropriate to the tone of Futurism and thriving economy that characterizes the majority of “After the Race.” In “Two Gallants,” the street takes on a more contradicting, even out-of-place, implication. It’s first mentioned as the street in which Corley initially met the girl whom he is about to appeal to for money:
“And where did you pick her up, Corley?” he asked.
Corley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.
“One night, man,” he said, “I was going along Dame Street and I spotted a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock and said good-night, you know. So we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey in a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment. We went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told me she used to go with a dairyman…. It was fine, man. Cigarettes every night she’d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one night she brought me two bloody fine cigars—O, the real cheese, you know, that the old fellow used to smoke…. I was afraid, man, she’d get in the family way. But she’s up to the dodge.”
This girl, who works in the upper-class Baggot Street area and hangs out at night outside of Dame Street jewelry stores is, even though a “slavey,” quite better off than Corley. It’s a wonder how he was able to “pick her up” at all, and this remains one of the mysteries of the story. The street appears again as Lenehan wanders solitary through the city waiting for his friend to finish with the girl:
He went into Capel Street and walked along towards the City Hall. 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. He was glad that he could rest from all his walking. His friends asked him had he seen Corley and what was the latest. He replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends talked very little. They looked vacantly after some figures in the crowd and sometimes made a critical remark.
Though the text doesn’t point it out, at the corner of Capel and Dame, just across the street from City Hall, sits Watherhouse’s. That the geographic marker worth noting is City Hall, and not the previously-mentioned Waterhouse, could be indicative of Lenehan’s growing resentment toward Corley. Just prior to Lenehan’s arrival at this corner, he has been pondering his own failures, a rumination brought on by imagining Corley and his girl:
When he had eaten all the peas he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time thinking of Corley’s adventure. In his imagination he beheld the pair of lovers walking along some dark road; he heard Corley’s voice in deep energetic gallantries and saw again the leer of the young woman’s mouth. This vision made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was tired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own?
Corley clearly represents to Lenehan his own shortcomings, and his focus on City Hall instead of Waterhouse as he turns this corner could signify his unconscious, or even conscious, desire to break with Corley, who he may imagine is holding him back. But in the end, of course, he meets his friend, and nothing seems to change.
The section of Dame Street between Capel and George’s streets also serves as the beginning of a gnomon in Lenehan’s squarish route. It is here where we get a visually discernible parallel to the feeling of emptiness he has just experienced. More on the route’s gnomon can be found in “Two Gallants” Route.
The lines forming the route of Corley and Lenehan, then Lenehan alone, in “Two Gallants.”
The path Farrington travels in “Counterparts” is confined to the south side of the Liffey. Most of the story sees him wandering between pubs in the Temple Bar area. He visits places like Davy Byrne’s, The Scotch House, and Mulligan’s in Poolbeg. Once he runs out of money and drinking companions, he catches the tram at O’Connell Bridge and heads home to Shelbourne Road outside of the city center.
In all, he travels about 2.8 miles, or 4.5 kilometers. He starts at his office near O’Neill’s, a pub and shop which he visits briefly for a porter before returning to work at Crosbie & Alleyne. After he leaves the office for the evening, he makes his way to a pawn shop in Fleet Street to acquire some drinking money for the evening. From there he walks down Westmoreland Street to get to Davy Byrne’s, a pub later made famous by Bloom and his cheese sandwich and burgundy. After telling his friends various versions of his day’s events, the group separates and Farrington continues with O’Halloran and Leonard past the Ballast Office and on to the Scotch house on the south bank of the Liffey. There they meet Weathers and together close down the Scotch House and remove to Mulligan’s in Poolbeg Street. It’s there that Farrington loses his confidence as well as the arm wrestling match with Weathers. “Sullen-faced” (96), he suddenly stands alone on the O’Connlel Bridge, the closest he ever gets to the north side of Dublin, waiting for the Sandymount tram to take him home. The tram drops him in Shlebourne road where he hugs the wall of the barracks until he arrives at the side entrance to his home.
The animated approximated path Farrington takes shows a distinct shift from the bustle of the Temple Bar area to the quiet, almost monotonous landscape of his suburban neighborhood.
Google Earth satellite view of the route Farrington travels in “Counterparts.”
The moat at the Tower of London juxtaposed with modern architecture. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, June 2014.
Referenced in six stories, London consistently carries connotations of economic dependence or opportunity for the Dubliners who were, at the dawn of the twentieth century, experiencing rather dismal prospects in the marketplace. In fact, much of the paralysis depicted in the collection stems from characters’ vocational or financial challenges. As Joseph Kelly very clearly puts it, “First and foremost, paralysis was economic” (17). Kelly points to the essay “Fenianism” in which Joyce claims Ireland consists of
“a population which diminishes year by year with mathematical regularity, [through] the uninterrupted emigration to the United States or Europe of Irishmen for whom the economic and intellectual conditions of their native land are unbearable.” (CW 190)
One of those emigrants is Little Chandler’s friend Gallaher. From the very opening of the story, Little Chandler is obsessed with London:
“Little Chandler’s thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his meeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher’s invitation and of the great city London where Gallaher lived.” (70)
As we learn in Ulysses, Gallaher works for a “Chapelizod boss” (7.732), another Irish emigrant, most likely the Chapelizod-born Alfred Harmsworth who started London’s Daily Mail in 1894 and Daily Mirror in 1903. As “a brilliant figure on the London Press” (71), Gallaher is the epitome of success, even “greatness” (72) in Little Chandler’s eyes (“Ignatius Gallaher on the London Press!” [72].) And if only Little Chandler could write some verse about the Dublin tramps at nightfall, “[p]erhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some London paper for him” (73); if only he could accentuate the more “Irish-looking” (74) parts of his name, perhaps he too could be considered among the London literary circles. In other words, Little Chandler considers his Irishness artistic capital in an English economy.
Once Little Chandler finishes his trek from office to pub (“Every step brought him nearer to London” [73]),the two men discuss “the old gang” (75). O’Hara, who still lives in Dublin has “gone to the dogs” while Hogan, who recently visited “London and he seemed to be very flush” (76), is on the Land Commission, an agency that Don Gifford notes was a “notorious porkbarrel” (70). Gifford explains that “[t]he Land Purchase Bills of 1891, 1896, and 1903 provided for the tenants’ purchase of their farms from the landlords through the backing of British credit.” So even though the Irish farmers were getting their land, they were enabled to do so by the British economy. In turn, the Irish Hogan, though still living in Ireland, is”very flush” because his vocation involves British financial backing.
Soon, Gallaher encourages Little Chandler to travel outside of Ireland, and suggests he “[g]o to London or Paris” (76), and as they talk, Little Chandler becomes”disillusioned” by Gallaher’s new manner, but imagines it’s only because of ” living in London amid the bustle and competition of the Press (77).” In other words, living in London makes up for the “something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before.” Little Chandler is even envious of the worldliness that has created the new vulgarity in Gallaher. He begins appropriating London as another “moral” city on a level with Dublin, considering himself and his city, wishfully, in league with Gallaher and London against places like Paris, which he sees as immoral. Gallaher must correct him, though, insisting,
“–London! said Ignatius Gallaher. It’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about London when he was over there. He’d open your eye….” (77)
As uncomfortable as London’ potential immorality makes him, Little Chandler still dreams of following Gallaher. All his frustration pours out as at the end of the story as, holding his baby and questioning his marriage, he broods:
“A dull resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be paid for.” (83)
Ultimately, it’s his debt that holds him back from leaving his despised home even at the same time that the London literary industry represents a chance to escape.
London functions somewhat similarly in the other four stories, though it’s never as prominent as in “The Little Cloud.” In “A Boarding House,” London is mentioned only briefly as the home city of one of the guests: “one of the music-hall artistes, a little blond Londoner, had made a rather free allusion to Polly” (68). The free allusion of the Londoner anticipates the seedier side of London that Gallaher reveals to Little Chandler in the next story.
The city is alluded to again briefly in “Counterparts” as Farrington is reaching his breaking point in Mulligan’s. The woman he is so fascinated by speaks to him in a London accent before leaving and never looking back:
“She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party was leaving the room, she brushed against his chair and said “O, pardon!” in a London accent. He watched her leave the room in the hope that she would look back at him, but he was disappointed. He cursed his want of money and cursed all the rounds he had stood, particularly all the whiskies and Apolinaris which he had stood to Weathers. If there was one thing that he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he lost count of the conversation of his friends.” (95)
Part of Farrington’s frustration stems from the rejection of this exotic Londoner, and it’s just after this exchange that he channels his rage into an arm-wrestling match, which he loses. The rejection of the London woman who is apparently out of his league sets in motion Farrington’s downward spiral of inadequacy and inferiority.
In “Grace,” Tom Kernan makes his living by selling tea for the London-based Pulbrook, Robertson, and Company. Although we don’t learn these specifics until Ulysses, enough of the address on his office is given to reveal that whatever company it is, it’s based in London:
“Modern business methods had spared him only so far as to allow him a little office in Crowe Street, on the window blind of which was written the name of his firm with the address—London, E. C. On the mantelpiece of this little office a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn up and on the table before the window stood four or five china bowls which were usually half full of a black liquid. From these bowls Mr. Kernan tasted tea. He took a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate with it and then spat it forth into the grate. Then he paused to judge.” (154)
Again, the livelihood of this Dubliner is tied to industry located in England.
“A Mother” and “The Dead” reference London in the context of its music industry. While in “A Mother,” the Londoner Madame Glynn is described as “[a]n unknown solitary woman with a pale face” (143) and not a very good singer, Bartell D’Arcy in “The Dead” insists that London, along with Paris and Milan, is where all the good singers can be found (199). Though these references may appear to argue opposite perspectives on the London music scene, it’s interesting to note that Madam Glynn is an unknown among the rather inexperienced performers, understudies, and bronze-medalists of Mr. Holohan’s rather patched-together show. Kathleen Kearney has no knowledge of her whatsoever:
“–I wonder where did they dig her up, said Kathleen to Miss Healy. I’m sure I never heard of her.
Miss Healy had to smile. Mr. Holohan limped into the dressing-room at that moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown woman. Mr. Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London.” (143)
Essentially, Madam Glynn must perform in Dublin because, ostensibly, she cannot perform in London. Like Little Chandler, she lacks the talent or economic means to break onto the London scene. Caruso, on the other hand, whose talent D’Arcy extols in “The Dead,” had toured in London:
–Oh, well, said Mr. Bartell D’Arcy, I presume there are as good singers today as there were then.
–Where are they? asked Mr. Browne defiantly.
–In London, Paris, Milan, said Mr. Bartell D’Arcy warmly. I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned.” (199)
Overall, the role London plays as a reference in Dubliners tends to be one of economic privilege in opposition to a struggling Irish middle class. Some of the Dubliners capitalize on British economic opportunities while others find the London market hopelessly impenetrable.
Map of 19th-Century Iran. Creative Commons Wikimedia image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Iran_1900-en.png
Persia appears momentarily in “the Sisters” as the possible setting for a dream the narrator has the night he hears about Father Flynn’s death. Now modern-day Iran, Persia has had many iterations since the First Persian Empire in 550 BCE. Between that time, also known as the Achaemenid Empire, and 651 AD, it transitioned to the Parthian Empire and then the Sasanian Empire. Much of that time was marked by the ongoing Roman-Persian wars, which lasted from roughly 92 AD to 629 AD. Beginning in 1501, Persia was ruled by a series of dynasties. By Joyce’s time, Persia was under the Qajar Dynasty, which spanned from 1785 to 1925. Unsurprisingly, this period saw increased Brittanic influence, especially in the area to the southeast bordering India and what is now Pakistan. Thus the reference to Persia in the story evokes a long imperial history, not just that of the Persian Empire itself, but also the British Empire, which is also alluded to in the name of Great Britain Street, where the boy walks as he recalls his dream. As he walks, he also recalls that Father Flynn was educated at the Irish College in Rome, a more direct association to the Roman Empire than the one embedded in the Persia reference through the Roman-Persian wars.
There is no mappable route in “The Sisters” like there is in the other two childhood stories, but the narrator’s dream of Persia is a kind of imagined journey to the exotic. This imagined journey represents perhaps an expedition in embryonic form when contrasted with the one in “Araby,” which, though a real route, is only an artificial journey to the exotic locale evoked by the name of the bazaar.
The inherent mythos of places like Persia and Araby in Dubliners may perhaps also be viewed as a vestige of Romaticism, an early nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that romanticized the exotic East as mystical and erotic. Such references are restricted to the childhood stories, as if Joyce is drawing a parallel between the evolution of literature in the nineteenth century and the phases of maturation depicted in the collection as a whole. That the journey to these two places are only imagined or simulated reaffirms the Romantic unattainability they represent.
In “The Sisters,” the narrator describes Persia as part of a dream or vision:
“As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were strange — in Persia, I thought…. But I could not remember the end of the dream.” (13-14)
The smoky memory of the dream echoes the exotic strangeness of the place as a Romantic concept. But the images sharply contrast with the narrator’s realistic surroundings at that moment. He is recalling the dream as he walks down the sunny side of Great Britain Street in the heart of working-class Dublin. Persia and all its mysteriousness represent the secrets and mysteries that also surround Father Flynn whose death he has just confirmed from the notice in the draper’s shop window. The priest had formerly “amused himself by putting difficult questions to [the boy]” which “showed [him] how complex and mysterious were certain institutions in the Church” (13). Persia seems almost a dream representation of the mysticism the boy perceives in the church, and the correlation between the two in his perception shows the church to be an institution as exotic and Romantic as Persia itself.
Frederick Lange points out the downstairs room where the boy and his aunt talk to the sisters is a kind of materialized version of the boy’s dream: “The images of the ’empty fireplace’ and ’empty grate’ are linked to the dream image of ‘lamp.’ The boy recalls the ‘curtains’ in his dream after seeing the Drapery sign and the ‘lamp’ after remembering how the priest used to sit by the fire” (35). Lange’s association serves his purpose of tracing church history in Joyce’s work, but we can also use the comparison to note the evolution of imagery and setting from Romantic to Realist fiction. According to this comparison, the priest and his sisters’ quarters become a modern urban Dublin incarnation of the Romantic East, where “long velvet curtains” are replaced with the commercial Drapery, and the “swinging lamp of antique fashion” becomes the empty grate. And I would argue that we could also compare the “dead-room” itself to the Persia room in the dream, a pairing not so starkly contradictory, and one that reveals the still unevolved Romantic perspectives of childhood. In this case, the “long velvet curtains” become “the lace end of the blind [which] was suffused with dusky golden light” and the “swinging lamp of antique fashion” becomes the “candles [which] looked like pale thin flames” (14). Thus, while the downstairs room, where the grown-ups make small talk, is an uncomfortable and uninviting place (the narrator “grope[s] [his] way to [his] usual chair in the corner” and refuses a biscuit because he fears making too much noise), the upstairs room, where the priest lies dead, is to this child suffused with mystery.
The eighth story in Dubliners, “A Little Cloud” is the fifth story to contain a distinct route. It begins in the north part of Dublin city center, at an office in Henrietta Street. The story then follows Little Chandler as he traverses a path to meet his friend Gallaher who is visiting the city he had left eight years prior in search of adventure and a life outside of Ireland. Little Chandler meets Gallaher at Corless’s, a pub in the busy area just south of the Liffey.
On his journey, he would move steadily from the offices and “gaunt spectral mansions” of north Dublin with its “horde of grimy children” (71), past the shops of Capel Street, across Grattan Bridge, into and along Dame Street towards Trinity College and the financial district, and finally into Church Street to Corless’s. He actually passes Church Street, lost in thought, and has to double-back, but because Dame Street ends at Trinity College, and Church Street is the first cross-street before Trinity, Chandler isn’t much delayed at all.
“A Little Cloud” route, as illustrated on the Google Earth version of the Mapping Dubliners Project. The total distance is just under a mile, or 1.55 kilometers, which would take approximately 20 minutes. Since Chandler stops on the bridge, he would have taken a bit longer.
The route illustrated on the map and in the video above are approximations; they represent the most direct route to Corless’s as it is located by Don Gifford, at 26-27 St. Andrew’s Street and 6 Church Lane, right across the street from St. Andrew’s church in the Burlington Hotel. However, it’s likely that Little Chandler may have avoided the bustling avenues in favor of quieter lanes, for “[s]ometimes he courted the causes of his fear. He chose the darkest and narrowest streets and, as he walked boldly forward, the silence that was spread about his footsteps troubled him; and at times a sound of low fugitive laughter made him tremble like a leaf” (72). Still, Joyce explicitly has Chandler “[turn] to the right towards Capel Street” (72) and then later describes “his soul revolt[ing] against the dull inelegance of Capel Street” (73). He then “crossed Grattan Bridge [where] he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses.” His attitude on this night does not seem to be one of immersing himself in his fears. Rather, he seems above his fears, disdainful of them even. Perhaps this isn’t one of the “sometimes” when he chooses the quieter lanes.
Once he’s across the bridge, his attitude shifts from disdain toward his fellow Dubliners to a “melancholy” (a word used three times in one paragraph) that he channels into a desire to write poetry “of the Celtic school” (74). He also considers it “a pity his name was not more Irish-looking.” It is during this period of “revery” that “he passed his street and had to turn back.” Finally, “[a]s he came near Corless’s his former agitation began to overmaster him and he halted before the door in indecision.” He quickly makes up his mind, though, and enters “the light and noise of the bar,” initiating the next phase of the story, which is set in the bar and centered around the men’s conversation. The story then abruptly shifts to its third and final phase set in Chandler’s home in an unspecified location.
The route serves to introduce Little Chandler’s complex character as he interacts with the disparate features of his city.
Howth Castle & Ireland’s Eye, by Robert French. Photo published between 1880 and 1900. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Cited in both “Eveline” and “A Mother” as a leisure destination, Howth has long been a popular retreat for picnicers, hikers, and fishers. It’s a peninsula northeast of the Dublin city center, reachable today by the DART line and in Joyce’s day by tramline. Howth is never a direct setting in either story but instead the subject of reminiscence or an allusion to characters’ preference for local rather than international exploration.
In a rare moment of happy nostalgia for her childhood, Eveline remembers her father being kind and worries that he’ll miss her when she departs with Frank for Buenos Ayres:
“Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to make the children laugh” (39).
To Eveline, Howth is as exotic a land as she’s ever seen, romanticized in memories and indeed the farthest specific place from the city center still in Ireland that she has visited. In a story containing ten references, only three are in the Dublin area. Another is Belfast, a place connoting material wealth and commerce. The other six references span the globe, shrinking Eveline and her city to a constricting dot on an expansive map.
In “A Mother,” Howth is one of three places the idyllic-seeming Kearney family visit every summer:
“Every year in the month of July Mrs. Kearney found occasion to say to some friend:
-My good man is packing us off to Skerries for a few weeks.
If it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones” (137).
Although the two daughters attend good convents where they learn French and music, and Kathleen moves on to the Academy, and both have sufficient dowries, the family is not as well off as Mrs. Kearney projects it to be. Their vacations are never further than 15 miles away from the city center, and we wonder if Kathleen, like her mother, will never use her French other than for reading. Instead, as a bootmakers daughter, she will most likely end up much like Eveline: tied to Dublin by responsibilities to her aging parents. To ensure this situation, it seems, the mother encourages the girls in their activity with the Irish Revival. When explored in this context, Howth becomes not just a peaceful place for a summer holiday, but a symbol of Irish history and mythology, an eastern reflection of Miss Ivors’s Aran Isles, laden with ‘authentic’ Irishness.
Like a million places in Ireland, Howth has its ghost stories and legends as well as its traceable role in the country’s history.
The first known map showing Howth is by Ptolemy and dates back to the second century when, presumably, it was not a peninsula but an island, Edri Deserta. Over the centuries, Dublin itself saw times of flooding which prompted the construction of the canals and the river walls. It’s very likely that the isthmus that now connects Howth to the mainland was indeed underwater.
Map of Ireland Derived from Ptolemy’s Geographia 1490. Available on rootsweb.com.
“Evidence of human habitation on the peninsula dates back to at least 3,500 BC[E],” according to an impressive trail guide that describes the peninsula’s historical and legendary sites. The area was later home to Vikings and Norsemen even after the Battle of Clontarf until the Normans invaded. Tristram St. Laurence then “established his estate at Howth Castle. The castle has remained in the ownership of the St Laurence family ever since, although the unbroken line of male succession came to an end in 1909.”
That the Kearneys return to this place every few years for weeks at a time emphasizes their inextricable ties to the deep historical roots of their home. And these roots stretch from the once-island out of the sea to entangle Eveline in the paralyzing confines of memory and perpetuity that hold her fast to the railing at the North Wall.
“View of Hardwicke Street from North Frederick Street End, Drumcondra, Co. Dublin” from the National Library of Ireland’s Eason Photograph Collection. Photograph ca. 1900-1939
The location of Mrs. Mooney’s boarding, Hardwicke Street, is a small lane that, in Joyce’s Dublin days, was lined with tenements and middle-class residences. At the end of the street looms St. George’s, the bells of which Mrs. Mooney hears pealing as she plots her confrontation with Bob Doran in “The Boarding House.” (The Blooms can also hear the St. George’s bells from 7 Eccles Street in Ulysses.)
“Mrs. Mooney, who had taken what remained of her money out of the butcher business and set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing woman” (62).
Hardwicke Street is situated in the city’s northern section, and is near the opening setting of the childhood stories. It is also one block south of Dorset Street, where we’re told the two young men of “Two Gallants” have been just prior to that story’s opening.
The boarding house itself seems comfortable enough. Its lace curtain swing in the breeze; it’s at least three stories high; it’s furnished with a gilt clock and soft beds with pillows and iron rails; and it’s stocked with tumblers for punch and dishes for eggs and bacon and bread pudding. It’s home to Mrs. Mooney, whom the other residents call “The Madam,” and her two children, Polly and Jack. The house is described as having “a floating population made up of tourists from Liverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes from the music halls” (62). As noted in many critical studies of the story, Mrs. Mooney’s bequeathed title suggests interpretive possibilities that the house may have, at the very least, a reputation as a brothel, though in the context of the story, the suggestion seems more metaphoric of Mrs. Mooney’s figurative selling of her daughter into marriage than a literal indication of prostitution under the roof. Yet the ambiguity seems to anticipate the decline of the neighborhood through the twentieth century.
Hardwicke Street facing the former St. George’s. Photo taken by Jasmine Mulliken 2 July 2014.
Today, the street is a slightly declined modern iteration of its 1900s identity, containing low-income and public housing, an echo of the temporary connotations of the boarding house, which Julieann Veronica Ulin describes as “not the Victorian ideal of a home separate from the outside world, but rather a permeable home with strangers under its roof and an openness to outside threats: precisely the home structure feared by Nationalists” (266). The street is still, under independence, representative of impermanence. At the top of the street sits the church, but it’s for rent. Across the portico hangs a banner advertising “[s]pectacular offices in a unique setting.” The street has seen hard times since the already ambiguous overtones in Joyce’s story: in the 1980s it was a center for heroin dealing in the city until Concerned Parents Against Drugs organized there to clean up the neighborhood. (A documentary covering the incidents can be found here.)
The ‘To Let’ sign on St. George’s on 2 July 2014. Photo taken by Jasmine Mulliken.
