Tag: a little cloud

Capel Street

Capel Street in 1780, “from an old engraving.” From the National Library of Ireland’s digitized prints-and-drawings collections.

Capel Street, a typical yet rather non-exceptional shopping thoroughfare just a few blocks west of O’Connell Street in Dublin city center, appears in both “Two Gallants” and “A Little Cloud.” In both stories, it serves as an artery moving the focal characters from north to south as they walk through the city. For Lenahan in “Two Gallants,” Capel Street is one line amid a mostly destinationless perambulation, a trek that serves to pass the time while his friend Corley is engaged with his lover. And for Chandler in “A Little Cloud,” the street is one section of a mostly direct route from his office in Henrietta Street to Corless’s where he’ll meet his successful London-based friend Gallaher who is in town for a visit. For both men, Capel Street is the setting for a change of attitude.

Capel Street seems only a blip in the timeline of Lenehan’s wandering:

“He paid twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl and went out of the shop to begin his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked along towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street” (58).

But it is part of a series of stretches and turns that accompany an important internal review for the thirty-year-old gallant. The lines just before the Capel Street reference show Lenehan eating a plate of peas at a pub (likely in Great Britain Street) while he considers his life, first hopelesslessy and then a little more optimistically:

“He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how pleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good dinner to sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him. He felt better after having eaten than he had felt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready” (58).

The next glimpse we get into Lenehan’s mind is when he meets his firends at the corner of Dame and George’s Streets.But what occupies his mind for the 5 minutes the map indicates it would take him to traverse Capel Street and the additional 5 minutes it would have taken to cross Grattan Bridge, continue down Parliament Street, and then wander east along Dame street to the corner? Have the peas truly placated him, stopping all analysis and self-reflection? The exchange with his firends at the corner is described very matter-of-factly, listing the questions and answers without any embellishment of accompanying emotion besides that “[h]e was glad that he could rest from all his walking” (58). It would seem he’s also relieved to have a distraction from his self-doubts. He would rather gossip with fellow drinkers and drifters than examine his own failings and shortcomings. Indeed, it seems that after he resolves to become “less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit,” all thought must stop lest it return to the realism of his age and lack of love or vocation.

Chandler, who is more mature than Lenehan (partly evidenced by his habitation of a maturity story rather than an adolescence story), doesn’t stifle his thoughts as he traverses Capel Street. Rather, the 7 minutes it would take him to walk from the corner of Henrietta and Capel Streets to Grattan Bridge appear in the text as paragraphs packed full of reflection.

“He turned to the right towards Capel Street. Ignatius Gallaher on the London Press! Who would have thought it possible eight years before? Still, now that he reviewed the past, Little Chandler could remember many signs of future greatness in his friend. People used to say that Ignatius Gallaher was wild. Of course, he did mix with a rakish set of fellows at that time, drank freely and borrowed money on all sides. In the end he had got mixed up in some shady affair, some money transaction: at least, that was one version of his flight. But nobody denied him talent. There was always a certain … something in Ignatius Gallaher that impressed you in spite of yourself. Even when he was out at elbows and at his wits’ end for money he kept up a bold face. Little Chandler remembered (and the remembrance brought a slight flush of pride to his cheek) one of Ignatius Gallaher’s sayings when he was in a tight corner:

–Half time now, boys, he used to say light-heartedly. Where’s my considering cap?

That was Ignatius Gallaher all out; and, damn it, you couldn’t but admire him for it.

Little Chandler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he felt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses” (72-73).

The movement from north Dublin to south tranforms Chandler. He becomes more confident as “every step brought him closer to London, farther from his own sober, inartistic life” (73). So what is it about Capel Street that advances confidence or at least has the power to quiet self-doubt? What sights and sounds would have populated Lenehan and Chandler’s walks down this innocuous commercial corridor?

Rocque Map
John Rocque’s 1756 map, as reproduced and augmented with red border showing the Capel Street are by the Dublin City Council in its CAPEL STREET & ENVIRONS ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION AREA ( ACA ) report.

First, Capel Street is only one of two explicit references (along with Dame Street) the two stories share even though an implicit path is also common. So although the shared change of heart both men experience on their Capel Street walks suggests a kind of parallel characterization, their similar experience is perhaps more a product of the location itself than any similarity of personality. As a commercial artery, Capel street is and was a place of common utility for many Dubliners. A Dublin City development plan describes the street as “one of the most historically significant streets in Dublin City. The street formed part of an extension of the city north of the river by Sir Humphrey Jervis who built his estate on the lands of St. Mary’s Abbey. In 1676 Jervis built a new bridge, Essex Bridge [later renamed Grattan Bridge], which established Capel Street as one of the main thoroughfares between the north and south sides of Dublin City” (1). The report explains that “Capel Street was originally planned in the 17th Century for residential use,” and for a time it indeed “became one of the most fashionable addresses” (2). But the area was repurposed in the eighteenth century for commerce. The report continues, “Capel Street took on the its current appearance we see today during the 19th century. During this period retail became prominent on the street so that domestic houses at the top lost their front doors and railings to make way for shopfronts” (4). It wasn’t until the past century that “the Capel Street area was subject to urban decay” and the necessity arose to implement a plan to preserve its historic features.

A recent photograph from a local Dublin tourism and business website. The view is the same as the initial image above, 300 years later.
A recent photograph from a local Dublin tourism and business website. The view is the same as the initial image above, over 300 years later.

Capel Street was well established but already in the early stages of its decay during the time period in which Dubliners is set. Perhaps the comfortable and long-cemented bustle served as a kind of reassuring diversion from Lenehan’s perceived individual shortcomings. And for Chandler, “the dull inelegance of Capel Street” filled the role of inferior metropolis necessary to bolster his own imagined sense of superior displacement. More specifically, the inelegance Chandler perceived became a theme for the art he could create outside of Dublin. In both cases, the moments spanned on Capel Street offer a kind of transcendence of spirit while still anchoring their occupants with a kind of inevitability of fortune. It hardly needs to be noted that such co-existence of epiphany and paralysis defines Dubliners, but it is remarkable that this ambivalence can be gleaned through a simple geographical reference shared between two characters on very different paths and in very different stages in life.

 

London

Note: The following text is that of the author’s presentation at the XXV James Joyce Symposium held in London in June 2016. The original, shorter London entry can be found here. 

Across the Water:
Economic and Political Implications of the Dubliners London References

Dubliners, the work through which Joyce initially sought to “betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis that many consider a city” (Letters I 55), turned out to be much a more nuanced portrayal (“betrayal”) of that city by the time the last story was completed in 1907. At the time of his 1904 letter to Constantine Curran, the initial plan for Dubliners only consisted of ten stories. The following year, as Florence Walzl explains in “The Life Chronology of Dubliners,” “he had enlarged his plan for the book from ten to twelve stories” (408), and by 1906, he had completed those two additional stories and also added two more: “Two Gallants” and “A Little Cloud.” The collection now included fourteen stories, a defined “life chronology,” and a much more complicated looking glass than the one he had perhaps initially imagined. While in 1906, he still maintained Dublin was “the centre of paralysis” (Letters II 134) and that his stories about its inhabitants emitted “the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal,” he also insisted that “the Irish [were] the most spiritual race on the face of the earth” and its people “witty” and “artistic” (Letters I 63-64). In fact, it seems that after he left Dublin in 1904, his ambivalence toward his former compatriots only intensified. By the Fall of 1906, a few months before he wrote the final story, “The Dead,” he lamented to his brother that  he feared he had “reproduced (in Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city,” admitting that he had never, except in Paris, been as comfortable as he had been in Dublin. He sought to rectify his omission of the virtues of “hospitality” and “insularity” when he wrote “The Dead” (Letters II 166), and  with that coda his picture of Dublin was complete.

Parallel to his critique of Dublin, though, was his critique of the capital of the British empire. If Joyce imbued Dublin with a complex ambivalence over the course of writing his stories, he also painted the city’s relationship to London as a particularly complicated montage of economic co-dependence and artistic hope and limitation. Of the six stories that reference the city of London, four do so in terms of artistic standards while the other two, both written later in Joyce’s process, emphasize and lament London’s superior and even abusive economic position in the Dubliners’ lives. It seems that even as he was attempting to redeem what was redemptive about Dublin, he was also becoming harsher in his criticism of the city across the water.

Dubliners contains nearly 200 unique geographical references. Such a focus on place, though not unsurprising in a book named for a city, demands that we consider the implications of place names. For instance, the very first reference in the very first story of the collection is to Great Britain Street. While the street is located in Dublin, its name foregrounds the presence of the British empire in every corner of the Dublin landscape and psyche. Though “The Sisters” isn’t necessarily a very political story–it doesn’t explicitly call attention to the England-Ireland binary–to imbue the geography of Dublin at the very outset with connotations of empire is to hint at the ubiquity of Britain’s grip on everything from the poor North Dublin neighborhood to the subconscious spatial awareness of the youngest Dubliners narrator. The references only become more specific and suggestive in the stories that follow “The Sisters.”

The first story to reference London directly is “The Boarding House,” one of the initial ten stories that had already been written by September 1905. In that story 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 Joyce would introduce more thoroughly in “A Little Cloud.” In “The Boarding House,” though, it functions as a scene the blond artiste cannot break into, settling instead for what attentions and alms he can wring from an ostensibly less cultured and discriminating Dublin middle class.

The city is alluded to again briefly in “Counterparts,” another of the initial ten stories, as Farrington is reaching his breaking point in Mulligan’s after a night of drinking and storytelling. In the pub he keeps eyeing an attractive woman who is part of a group “out of the Tivoli” theater. The woman he is so fascinated by finally 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 and esteemed 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. Like the Londoner in “The Boarding House,” this woman is an artiste, but her association with the Tivoli sets her somewhat above the likes of the artistes who would be boarding with Mrs. Mooney. In fact, there is a suggestion in her attitude and Farrington’s bitterness at being rejected that this particular artiste is possibly even successful in the London scene, inasmuch as she is part of a touring group rather than a solitary performer like the blond Londoner or Madam Glynn in “A Mother.” Still, the Tivoli was not known for its serious dramas or operas, featuring instead burlesques, pantomimes, and farces. The artiste herself, though,  and the artiste’s lifestyle in general, 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 the English Weathers) all contribute to his violent outburst later that night against his son, when like many bullies, he inflicts the disdain and abuse he suffers on someone who is in turn dependent on him.

“A Mother” persists in the use of London as a measure of artistic success. The Londoner Madame Glynn, one of the singers in the program, is described as “[a]n unknown solitary woman with a pale face” (143) and later as a weak spot in the show:

“The first part of the concert was very successful except for Madam Glynn’s item. The poor lady sang Killarney in a bodiless gasping voice, with all the old-fashioned mannerisms of intonation and pronunciation which she believed lent elegance to her singing. She looked as if she had been resurrected from an old stage-wardrobe and the cheaper parts of the hall made fun of her high wailing notes” (147).

Although she is from London, where, along with Paris and Milan, Bartell D’Arcy insists all the good singers can be found, 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 a sloppily organized Dublin show because, like the blond Londoner in “The Boarding House,” she cannot perform in London because 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 only reference to London in “The Dead,” has 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).

“Grace,” which Joyce completed in late 1905, was at that time intended to be the closing piece in the now 12-story collection. The story’s main character, 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 based in England. That Joyce reintroduces Tom Kernan in Ulysses, along with more details about his employment, suggests that his working for an English firm is a critical part of his identity. Kernan is perhaps an older, now gentler, version of Farrington, still subdued by the British economic yoke and still drinking away the insult of this. Furthermore, his two sons have left Dublin, like they must, in order to achieve a measure of success. Even still, that they venture only as far as Glasgow and Belfast, suggests that the yoke is as wide as it is inescapable.

The two stories written next, after the initial 12 were complete, go further than any of the previous pieces to emphasize Dublin’s economic stagnation at the hands of British rule. “Two Gallants,” completed in February 1906, presents a detailed geography of Dublin as Corley and Lenehan, and then Lenehan alone, wander the city’s streets. With twenty-four geographical references, all of which are in Dublin, it is second only to “The Dead” in its use of place names. And although “Two Gallants” does much to articulate nationalistic themes and Ireland’s relationship with Britain, it never directly mentions London, England, or Great Britain at all. Instead, through the many references to landmarks, streets, and even the characters’ movement patterns, Joyce infuses the story with the history of Irish-English politics, one that, as Torchiana describes it “reflects the historic pomp and grandeur of Ascendancy treacheries that cast long shadows behind the otherwise stunted posturings of Corley and Lenehan near the end of Irish enslavement” (115).

But what is left out in English geographical references in “Two Gallants” is made up exponentially in “A Little Cloud.” Completed in 1906 after “Two Gallants,” it is perhaps the most direct illustration of the economic dichotomy of opportunity and paralysis that both drives and stagnates Joyce’s Dubliners.

In fact, much of the paralysis we see in the collection stems from its characters’ vocational or financial challenges. As Joseph Kelly succinctly puts it, “First and foremost, paralysis was economic” (17).  In his examination of Joyce’s political realism, Kelly points to his 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, whom we learn left Dublin eight years before the story’s opening to make a living on the London Press. From the very beginning of “A Little Cloud,” Chandler appears to be obsessed with his old friend and his old friend’s new home:

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)

But what really makes London a great city to Chandler? There is nothing in the description to indicate Chandler has any great desire to see the city’s streets or pubs, theaters or waterways. It is simply the great city because it is where Gallaher lives. Gallaher represents the possibilities that Chandler opted out of in favor of a quiet family life.

As we learn in Ulysses, Gallaher works for a “Chapelizod boss” (7.732), another Irish emigrant, likely the real-life 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, in which “[e]very step brought him nearer to London” (73), the two men discuss “the old gang” (75). One of their old friends, O’Hara, who still lives in Dublin has apparently “gone to the dogs” while another friend, Hogan, recently visited “London and he seemed to be very flush” (76). Hogan’s success is further depicted by his position 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 to buy the land they worked and maintained, they were only enabled to do so by borrowing from Britain. Even in their supposed property-ownership, the Irish are indebted to the British bank. Thus, the Irish Hogan, though still living in Ireland, is “very flush” because his vocation involves securing Ireland’s continued indebtedness to the British financial system.

As their conversation goes on, 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, though, 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. But like Eveline clinging to the rails of the Dublin dock while romance emigrates, Chandler is bound to familial and financial obligations. It is too late for him to seek economic prosperity because he is already under the yoke of Dublin’s dependent economy.

Walzl maintains that “a young man in economically-deprived Ireland was not likely to have reached a degree of prosperity before his mid thirties” (412). Indeed, those characters under 35 who appear or hope to be financially successful, like Frank, Jimmy Doyle, and Ignatius Gallaher are seeking or have sought their fortunes, educations, or vocations elsewhere.  Even Gabriel Conroy, a comfortable suburban Dublin resident with coin to spare for a caretaker’s daughter and a night at a hotel, is accused of being a West Briton because he writes for a unionist paper and takes his holidays on the the continent.

The initial twelve stories of the collection seem to primarily utilize London as a gauge by which to apprehend the artistic success or failure of performers. “The Dead” reprises this utilization and cements the notion that good artists are in London, not necessarily or just from London. In its final version, with the addition of “A Little Cloud,” 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. In either case, they can only really overcome their economic paralysis by selling themselves to the empire and/or, like Joyce himself before he even wrote most of Dubliners, getting the hell out of Ireland.

 

Bewley’s

Diagram of Dame Street from Henry Shaw's The Dublin Pictorial Guide & Directory of 1850. Bewley's is located at 6 Dame Street, in the upper left of the image, at the intersection of Palace Street.
Diagram of Dame Street from Henry Shaw’s The Dublin Pictorial Guide & Directory of 1850. Bewley’s is located at 6 Dame Street, in the upper left of the image, at the intersection of Palace Street.

At the end of “A Little Cloud,” Chandler sits “in a room off the hall, holding a child in his arms” (82). He has just returned home, rather depressed, from an anticlimactic meeting with an old friend who is visiting Dublin after having lived abroad for the past eight years. Gallaher has filled Chandler’s mind with stories of Berlin, Paris, London, and all the romanticism of not-Dublin, and in his “revery” (74), Chandler has forgotten to do his domestic duty of picking up coffee for his wife Annie. So while he holds his baby, his wife goes to the corner to buy tea instead:

“It was a quarter to nine. Little Chandler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had forgotten to bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Bewley’s…She said she would do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the shop at the corner closed she decided to go out herself for a quarter of a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar” (82).

The reference to Bewley’s, though seemingly innocuous, carries connotations in tandem with the ongoing Ireland-England dichotomy in the story. One of the persistent themes in Dubliners, and in “A Little Cloud” especially, is Ireland’s dependence upon and subordinance to the yoke of English economy. One of Chandler’s dreams, for example, is to become a poet, but he forms his poetic identity on the basis of English critics whom he imagines would “recognise him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems” (74). He has essentially conceded his Irishness as a kind of commodity for English consumption and critique. His friend’s emigration to England where he has become successful in the London Press weighs on Chandler, and he views his own life with “dull resentment.” He feels trapped by the passionless, hate-filled eyes of his wife and his mean little house (83).

Although it is unclear who operates the corner shop where Annie goes for the tea, it is very clear who runs Bewley’s. According to the business’s history, Samuel Bewley established his tea and coffee business in 1835, when he “dared to break the East India Company’s monopoly by importing 2,099 chests of tea on board the clipper ship The Hellas, the first ship chartered directly from Canton in China to Dublin.” The family sustained the business, opening shops in Dublin, including one in Dame Street, which Gifford notes would be the most likely location implied in the story as it is situated along Chandler’s route from office to bar. It would have been just a few steps away from City Hall, where Chandler would be turning into Dame Street from Parliament Street after crossing Grattan Bridge.

As an Irish company that challenged a British monopoly, the reference to Bewley’s infuses a subtle rebellion against the seemingly insurmountable English economic oppression of Ireland that fills the pages of the story. Nevertheless, Chandler simply forgets to make this stop, implicating him in his own imprisonment to the British capitalism that he feels has trapped him.

Isle of Man

Map showing the location of the Isle of Man. "British Isles Isle of Man" by Cnbrb - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Isles_Isle_of_Man.svg#/media/File:British_Isles_Isle_of_Man.svg
Map showing the location of the Isle of Man.
“British Isles Isle of Man” by Cnbrb – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Isle of Man is an island located in the Irish Sea between Ireland on the west and England and Scotland on the east. Like Ireland, it has Celtic and Gaelic origins and its government was influenced by Viking conquests. The Isle of Man boasts the “oldest continuous parliament in the world.” One of the Tynwald’s houses is called the House of Keys, which is the source of a play on words for Bloom in Ulysses.  It also appears in two stories in Dubliners: “The Boarding House” and “A Little Cloud.”

The first mention of the Isle, in “The Boarding House,” is in relation to the origin of some of the types of tourists that tend to stay at Mrs. Mooney’s establishment:

“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. Her house had a floating population made up of tourists from Liverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes from the music halls” (62).

Don Gifford suggests in his annotations that the reference implies the boarding house guests are from an “extraordinarily rowdy citizenry” (Gifford 63). Given the location of the boarding house in Hardwicke Street and description of Mrs. Mooney’s necessary demeanor with her residents (“She governed her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass. All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.”), Gifford’s suggestion is probably correct. In this story, then, the Isle of Man implies a certain raucousness that could be a danger to someone less worldly-wise than any member of the Mooney clan.

Little Chandler, on the other hand, is indeed less worldly-wise. In “A Little Cloud,” he is scoffed at by Gallaher for his travel destinations, which amount to the Isle of Man:

“–Tommy, he said, I see you haven’t changed an atom. You’re the very same serious person that used to lecture me on Sunday mornings when I had a sore head and a fur on my tongue. You’d want to knock about a bit in the world. Have you never been anywhere even for a trip?

–I’ve been to the Isle of Man, said Little Chandler.

Ignatius Gallaher laughed.

–The Isle of Man! he said. Go to London or Paris: Paris, for choice. That’d do you good.” (76)

To Gallaher, who has been living in London for the past eight years, the Isle of Man would seem to be pretty bland and uninteresting, and about as unworldly as you can get. Given these two references, it would seem, in fact, that it makes more sense for someone from the Isle of Man to visit Dublin rather than the other way around.

That the reference appears in these two consecutive stories does invite a comparison between its implications in each case. On one hand it’s the origin of rowdiness, something to be cautious of, while on the other, it’s boring and droll, far less interesting perhaps than Dublin itself. That it is so insignificant in “A Little Cloud” suggests that the ruffians that inhabit the boarding house aren’t quite as tough to deal with as the Mrs.-Mooney-esque narrator would have us believe. And at the same time, the roughness of the Manx citizenry in “The Boarding House” might suggest that Gallaher is just as pompous and boastful as he appears to be; he shrugs off the “extraordinarily rowdy citizenry” as tame compared to the company he’s used to keeping in places like London and Paris. Of  Paris, Gallaher exclaims, “Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy” (76). And when Chandler asks whether the city is immoral, Gallaher suggests going to one of its students’ balls: “That’s lively, if you like, when the cocottes begin to let themselves loose” (77). Based on his description of these cocottes, it may well be that Polly Mooney, quite able to handle the rough men of her mother’s establishment, could manage just fine in a place like Paris or even London, which Gallaher says is just as debauched as Paris. Instead, she’s kept in Dublin, by her mother, to marry Bob Doran, another kind of Chandler or Eveline. They are all trapped in the stasis of Ireland by the economics of familial duty. (Eveline is kept in place by her mother’s memory and her father, whom she supports; and Little Chandler, though he wants to travel like Gallaher or even just write poetry for an English publisher, is kept in place by his child and wife and the furniture he bought “on the hire system” [83].)

Incidentally, the ship Frank boards at the end of “Eveline,” would have most likely sailed first to the Isle of Man before going on to Liverpool where the ship to Buenos Ayres would have sailed from. The familial economics in each of these stories corresponds with the characters’, and Ireland’s, dependence on the British economy. Likewise, the Isle of Man is, although technically self-governing, a British Crown dependency. The Isle of Man, and its status as a Crown dependency, could very well represent the economic paradox that keeps the characters of Dubliners tied to Ireland through their livelihood’s dependence on  a market controlled by England, a country that taunts them with the mirage of opportunity if they could only get there.

 

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.

London

The moat at the Tower of London juxtaposed with modern architecture. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken, June 2014.
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.

“A Little Cloud” Route

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.
“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.

Paris, France

The Seine River in Paris. The river was a fascination for Joyce, and he hybridized the Seine and the Liffey, among many others, in Finnegans Wake. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken 2014.
The Seine River in Paris. The river was a fascination for Joyce, and he hybridized the Seine and the Liffey, among many others, in Finnegans Wake. Photo by Jasmine Mulliken 2014.

Paris, or France in general, only appears in three stories in Dubliners, but in those three stories, the references number 18. Here they are, in “After the Race:”

“Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the blue cars — the cars of their friends, the French.

The French, moreover, were virtual victors. Their team had finished solidly; they had been placed second and third and the driver of the winning German car was reported a Belgian. Each blue car, therefore, received a double measure of welcome as it topped the crest of the hill and each cheer of welcome was acknowledged with smiles and nods by those in the car. In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four young men whose spirits seemed to be at present well above the level of successful Gallicism: in fact, these four young men were almost hilarious” (42).


“Segouin was in good humour because he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance (he was about to start a motor establishment in Paris) and Riviere was in good humour because he was to be appointed manager of the establishment; these two young men (who were cousins) were also in good humour because of the success of the French cars” (43).


“They were not much more than acquaintances as yet but Jimmy found great pleasure in the society of one who had seen so much of the world and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in France” (43).


“The Frenchmen flung their laughter and light words over their shoulders and often Jimmy had to strain forward to catch the quick phrase” (44).


“At the control Segouin had presented him to one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur of compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of shining white teeth. It was pleasant after that honour to return to the profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks” (44).


“Jimmy, whose imagination was kindling, conceived the lively youth of the Frenchmen twined elegantly upon the firm framework of the Englishman’s manner” (46).


“Riviere, not wholly ingenuously, undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the French mechanicians” (46).


“They drank Ireland, England, France, Hungary, the United States of America. Jimmy made a speech, a long speech, Villona saying: “Hear! hear!” whenever there was a pause” (47).

“A Little Cloud:”

“–Go to London or Paris: Paris, for choice. That’d do you good. 
–Have you seen Paris?” (76)


“–It’s not so beautiful, you know. Of course, it is beautiful…. But it’s the life of Paris; that’s the thing. Ah, there’s no city like Paris for gaiety, movement, excitement….” (76)


“–Everything in Paris is gay, said Ignatius Gallaher. They believe in enjoying life — and don’t you think they’re right? If you want to enjoy yourself properly you must go to Paris. And, mind you, they’ve a great feeling for the Irish there” (77).


“–Tell me, he said, is it true that Paris is so… immoral as they say?

Ignatius Gallaher made a catholic gesture with his right arm.

–Every place is immoral, he said. Of course you do find spicy bits in Paris. Go to one of the students’ balls, for instance” (77).


“There’s no woman like the Parisienne — for style, for go” (77).

and “The Dead:”

“–Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany, said Gabriel awkwardly” (189)

In the adolescence story, France is used as a general nationality for Jimmy Doyle’s friends, and in the maturity story, Paris insinuates the exotic, the unreachable, the intriguingly immoral opposite of Chandler’s existence in Dublin. In the public life story, France is mentioned “awkwardly,” in true Gabriel fashion, as he defends his increasingly apparent disinterest in Ireland to Molly Ivors. The author shared Gabriel’s tenuous relationship with the country, and it was this relationship that incited him exile himself to the continent prior to writing “The Dead.” Joyce lived in Paris for twenty years, but not until 1920, six years after the publication of Dubliners and sixteen years after the letter in which he announces that he was working on the “series of epicleti.” He had, however, spent time in Paris as a medical student, observing the “gaiety, movement, excitement” and spicy students’ balls to which Gallaher refers. And the movement and excitement  translate into the Futurist overtones of “After the Race,” a story based on the 1903 Gordon Bennett cup race in Ireland. Joyce had, earlier that same year, published his essay “The Motor Derby: Interview with the French Champion” in which he predicted that Henri Fournier would be a favorite in the July race.

Early film footage shows Joyce in the streets of the city he came to love and which he only left because of the invasion of the Nazis in 1940.

North Wall

North Wall, the site of ships arriving and departing in Dublin, features in both “Eveline” and “A Little Cloud” as a place of frustrated dreams for their main characters. It’s where Eveline watches Frank set out for yet another adventure without her and where Little Chandler, eight years prior to the story’s setting, watches his friend Gallaher set off for a life he would come to envy. The place reference begins the story of “A Little Cloud” and begins the final movement of “Eveline:”

“Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and wished him godspeed” (“ALC” 70).

“She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again.” (“E” 40)

In both cases, the main characters are contrasted with someone who gets to leave, and the fact that they have stayed or must stay in Dublin is the source of their paralysis. Their Dublin responsibilities, while offering a certain level of comfort, are also their bindings. The North Wall, which offers some the chance to escape, is yet another unassailable boundary for the likes of Eveline and Little Chandler.

The National Railway Museum has digitized this photo from its collections with the following description: "Sailing ships and steam passenger ferries at North Wall docks, Dublin, about 1906."
The National Railway Museum has digitized this photo from its collections with the following description: “Sailing ships and steam passenger ferries at North Wall docks, Dublin, about 1906.”

 

North Wall can refer to the general area north of the Liffey and east of the canal or the North Wall Quay which spans the north wall of the Liffey from the Custom House to East Wall. In the case of both stories, it would seem to refer to the docks from which ships sailed, which are indeed along the quay. The photo above is from the National Railway Museum and shows “[s]ailing ships and steam passenger ferries at North Wall docks, Dublin, about 1906.” Many of the ships that would dock here would take their passengers to Liverpool or Holyhead. From there, they could travel anywhere in the world.