Tag: ivy day in the committee room

Suffolk Street, a short lane connecting St. Andrew’s and Grafton Streets, appears briefly in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” as the reported meeting spot of three ambiguously identified conspirators. According to Mr. O’Connor, there is something shady going on between some of the political set he and the rest of the men in the story know:

“There’s some deal on in that quarter, said Mr O’Connor thoughtfully. I saw the three of them hard at it yesterday at Suffolk Street corner” (127).

“The three of them” could be  any combination of the several people the men have been discussing during their early evening fireside chat. One member of the trio is almost certainly Alderman Cowley, who has just been mentioned as the reason Henchy couldn’t get the attention of the “shoeboy” who is supposed to be bringing the men beer. The second could be this young “shoeboy” or, as Henchy calls him “hop ‘o my thumb,” a seventeen-year-old politico in the making who downs a whole bottle of stout between running errands for canvassers and city officials. And the third might be Father Keon, the strange priest who spends suspicious amounts of time in Kavanagh’s with political bargainers. As discussed in greater detail in the Kavanagh’s article, that particular locale was noted as a wineroom where under-the-table deals were made between existing and aspiring politicians, and the symbolic value of a priest meeting there with a politician echoes the inextricable (rather then ineluctable) relationship between religious and political modalities in Joyce’s Ireland.

A block north of the committee room, Suffolk Street, like Kavanagh’s, reflects this confluence of two pivotal sectors in turn-of-the-century Dublin. But whereas Joyce’s use of Kavanagh’s highlights the relationship of politics and religion, Suffolk Street, in the context of the story, represents a symbiosis of religion and commerce. Connecting St. Andrew’s Street, home of St. Andrew’s Church, on its northwest end, and Grafton Street, a thoroughfare known for its retail and financial institutions, on its southeast end, Suffolk Street is a geographic symbol of the economics of religion and the religion of economics. Considering the connotations of St. Andrew’s and Grafton Streets as religious and economic spaces, Suffolk Street becomes an illustration of the thread connecting those two principles. The three men “hard at it” at the corner of Suffolk Street (which corner?) personify those connections while the geospatial markers map the relationship of these factors that fuel the political campaigns and legacies of all the figures in the story, from the fictional Tierney to the real Parnell to the alluded to Dublin mayor to Edward Rex.

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.

In honor of Ivy Day (October 6), this week’s featured place is Wicklow Street, the setting of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room:”

“Mr. O’Connor had been engaged by Tierney’s agent to canvass one part of the ward but, as the weather was inclement and his boots let in the wet, he spent a great part of the day sitting by the fire in the Committee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the old caretaker” (119).

It’s where the canvassers gather to await their pay and where Hynes delivers his poetic tribute to Parnell.

“Ivy Day” is the only story to reference Wicklow Street, and in the story it is the most central location amid the other references. The location seems a logical centralizing place for a meeting room of canvassers who are spread out in Aungier and Dawson Streets. On a map, Aungier Street is southwest, or to the left of the committee room while Dawson Street is southeast, or to the right. The “left-leaning” O’Connor, appropriately, has been canvassing in Aungier Street,  and Henchy, who is “ambivalent center,” manages to sway Crofton the “conservative Orangeman on the far right” in Dawson Street (Gifford 88).

By the end of the story, all the characters seem to meet in the middle, around the fire in Wicklow Street, applauding in approval of Hynes’s tribute to Parnell. That the committee room is north of the canvassing areas, above those places on the map, adds an element of possibly ‘rising above’ the momentary political quibbles to reflect on a figure of historic political significance that has affected “The Irish heart where’er it be” (Joyce 134).