Tag: after the race

“After the Race” Route

Of all the stories in Dubliners, “After the Race” contains the longest route travelled by characters within a story. At approximately 17 kilometers (or about 10.5 miles), the route stretches from Naas Road, on the western outskirts of Dublin, all the way to the harbors in the sea at Kingstown. To cover such an expanse, the characters employ a variety of transportation methods, the most varied of all the stories in Dubliners.

Camille Jenatzy at the 1903 Gordon Bennett cup race in Ireland
Camille Jenatzy at the 1903 Gordon Bennett cup race in Ireland

The story begins as the cars, from what we can surmise was the 1903 Gordon Bennet cup race,  “c[o]me scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road” (42). The cars would have been, in that day, the newest, fastest, most advanced automobiles yet created. These machines “scudding” into the city set the fututristic tone of the story, whose descriptions, in many places, echo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto.

Once the cars approach the bank, Jimmy Doyle and Villona, who have been perched on their French friend’s car, hop off and walk up to Jimmy’s house to change for dinner. The men meet up again and eat at the hotel in which Segouin and Riviere are staying. Afterwards, the four men and their English companion walk along Stephen’s Green, and, running into Farley, the American, they hop on another car and head for Westland Row station. They board a train, and, “in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out of Kingstown Station…It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet…They got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American’s yacht” (47). By way of car, foot, car, train, rowboat, and yacht, these energetic youth cover a lot of Dublin ground. Unlike Gabriel and Gretta in “The Dead,” who, though they live only minutes away from Kingstown, take a cab to a hotel near their aunts’ house rather than make the long trek to Monkstown after the party, the young men of “After the Race,” with access to the newest and fastest modes of transportation, see nothing whatsoever daunting about a “few seconds” jaunt down to Kingstown for the sake of extending the party. Still, the vain and material isolation Jimmy Doyle feels at the end of the story is akin to that of the “Araby” narrator who also, with high hopes for the evening and the future, takes a train and is left, at the end of the story, far from home and wondering if it was all worth it.

Westland Row Station

Westland Row Station appears in two stories: “Araby” and “After the Race,” functioning as both a pass-through on and the beginning point for a train ride. In “Araby,” it’s referenced as a spot along the narrator’s route to the bazaar: “At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar” (34). In “After the Race,” it’s where the young men board the train that will take them to Kingstown: “They took the train at Westland Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out of Kingstown Station” (47).

The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway at the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row. Allen's, fl. 1820's-1830's lithographer., and J.D. artist Jones. The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway At the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row: Shewing Cumberland St. & Arch, Part of All Hallows Chapel With Brunswick Street in the Distance. Dublin: [s.n.], 1834.
The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway at the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row.
Allen’s, fl. 1820’s-1830’s lithographer., and J.D. artist Jones. The Opening of the Dublin & Kingstown Railway At the Rere [sic] of Entrance Westland Row: Shewing Cumberland St. & Arch, Part of All Hallows Chapel With Brunswick Street in the Distance. Dublin: [s.n.], 1834.

The station served as the terminus for the commuter line from Dublin to Kingstown and was built in 1834. The station is now called Pearse Station. The image to the right, from the National Library of Ireland, is a chromolithograph by J.D. Jones for Allan’s Publishing advertising the opening of the station. According to the “The History of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway,” the trains “were run on week days, every half hour, both ways from 9am until 5pm, while on Sundays trains ran every 20 minutes, with the exception of an interval from noon till 2pm. The single fare were 1s, 8d and 6d. for the three classes.”

Incidentally, two other stories include routes that would have been pretty nearly served by this rail line, but, perhaps due to the lack of stations adjacent to their destinations, the characters instead take trams. Maria in “Clay” takes a tram from Ballsbridge to Nelson’s Pillar and Farrington in “Counterparts” takes a tram from O’Connell Bridge to Shelbourne Road. The image below, a section of a Letts and Sons map from 1883, shows the rail line in red passing close to Shelbourne Road. A little further south we can see Ballsbridge. The blue line is the tram route, which obviously comes nearer to the precise locations Maria and Farrington need to access. It’s also worth noting that Gabriel and Gretta could have taken the train to Monkstown, but the trains would have long stopped running for the day by the time they left the Morkans’. Indeed, they don’t even arrive at the party until “long after 10 o’clock” (176). They most likely took a cab, and it would be an interesting investigation into modes of transportation of the day that would explore the reasons for all these characters’ choices of cab over tram or tram over train.

Plan of the city of Dublin. Letts's popular atlas. Letts, Son & Co. Limited, London. (1883) . From the David Rumsey Maps Collection online
Plan of the city of Dublin. Letts’s popular atlas. Letts, Son & Co. Limited, London. (1883) . From the David Rumsey Maps Collection online

Kingstown

Kingstown Harbor
“The Harbor, Kingstown. County Dublin, Ireland” from the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsc.09881/

This week’s featured place is Kingstown, “a harbour, a town, a sea-front,” that appears several times in Dubliners. The suburban town, southeast of the city center, was called Kingstown only from 1821 to 1920. Today, it’s called Dún Laoghaire. It’s first mentioned in “After the Race,” as the place where Jimmy Doyle’s father “had made his money as a butcher in Kingstown and by opening shops in Dublin and in the suburbs he had made his money many times over” (43). It’s also the setting for the late night party on Farley’s yacht: “They took the train at Westland Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walking out of Kingstown Station…It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet…They got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American’s yacht. There was to be supper, music, cards” (47).

The town is close to Monkstown, where Gabriel and Gretta of “The Dead” live. Many of Mary Jane’s student’s, we learn, live, if not in Kingstown, between Dublin center and Kingstown: “Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line” (176). Gabriel & Gretta opt to stay in a Dublin hotel rather than make the long trek back to Monkstown after the party, but what of Mary Jane’s students? And the crew in “After the Race” reach Kingstown “in a few seconds.” Ah youth!Of course, many factors could be at play here. In “The Dead” it’s winter, and Gabriel is worried about Gretta catching cold like she had the previous year during the cab ride home. The fact that they would be taking a cab rather than a train is most likely attributable to the train schedule and the timing of the party. They leave the aunts’ house in the early morning hours, and the train would have certainly have stopped running, from the Westland Row station by then.