At the end of “The Dead,” Gabriel concludes that “[t]he time had come for him to set out on his journey westward” (223). Gabriel imagines himself moving from east to west, landing like the snow on various places on the Irish map: “the dark central plains,” “the treeless hills,” “the Bog of Allen,” “the dark mutinous Shannon waves,” and finally “the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried” (223-24). The imagined route from Dublin to Oughterard (near Galway), where Michael Furey is most likely buried, is roughly 230 km. It’s a significant journey and conveys Gabriel’s capacity for empathy and his desire to close the distance he feels lies between himself and his wife.
But the imagined route is much different than the actual route the couple travels in the story. Instead of east to west, Gabriel and Gretta make their from the Misses Morkan’s house in Usher’s Island eastward and then a little northward to the Gresham Hotel in Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. Instead of the plains, hills, bog, waves, and churchyard, they see Usher’s Island, the Four Courts, Winetavern Street, O’Connell Bridge, and the Gresham. And instead of flying gently through the air like snow, they walk a bit before upgrading to a cab that makes a “rattling noise” that drowns out any attempt at conversation. Though it’s not referenced in relation to their route, they would also have passed Adam and Eve’s, where Julia is lead soprano.
The physical eastward movement is in direct contrast to the imagined westward movement of Gabriel’s ‘swooning soul.’ The contrast is yet another indication of the ambivalence that defines Gabriel and his circumstances. He’s drawn westward though he’s more comfortable in the east. At the party he feels himself to be a failure only to be met with applause and laughter when he performs. He envisions his life with Gretta romantically and looks forward to arriving at the hotel where he will seduce her but instead learns she had a lover before him that he can never compare to. The cemetery, the final destination of the imagined journey west, is permanent and powerful, whereas the destination of the physical journey, the hotel, is transitional and temporary.
Nevertheless, it is a journey, and the first distinct route illustrated in the text since “A Painful Case.” The three public life stories preceding “The Dead” make reference to many places but there is a lack of movement, a kind of paralysis initiated perhaps by the tragedy of “A Painful Case.” Mrs. Sinico’s death (she’s hit by a train) puts a halt to transportation and movement for the Dubliners until the end of the final story. In “The Dead,” we see a return to movement and re-evolution of transportation methods. From the immobility of the previous public life stories, the movement of “The Dead” starts slowly, with simple walking. Gabriel and Gretta walk five blocks (650 meters) from Usher’s Island to Winetavern Street and cover the remaining 1.5 km to the Gresham in a rattling cab.
While in one way the physical journey counters the imagined journey, perhaps painting Dublin as a kind of paralytic space working against the transcendent space of the imagination, the presence of a physical journey at all indicates a break from the immobility of the previous stories, a kind of return to the ease of movement that characterizes the childhood stories. And it’s fitting, then, that the final destination of the journey in “The Dead” is just steps away from Great Britain Street, the very first geographical reference in the opening story of Dubliners.
Shannon River, Foynes, Co. Limerick, photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland
The River Shannon, and more specifically, “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” make only one appearance in Dubliners, in the famous closing of “The Dead:”
“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (223-24).
The River Shannon is the longest river in Ireland and flows from County Cavan’s Cuilcagh Mountain in the north to Limerick City where it becomes an estuary and connects to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Partially because of its enormous estuary, only about 45% of the River Shannon is freshwater.
The path of the River Shannon through Ireland. (“ShannonRiversml” by Seabhcan at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ShannonRiversml.png#mediaviewer/File:ShannonRiversml.png)
According to legend, the Shannon got its name from Sinann (or Sionann), granddaughter of the Irish sea god. Sinann was drowned in the river when she attempted to eat a salmon from Connla’s well in order to gain knowledge. One version of the legend, as described by the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland, notes that “It was forbidden to women to come within the precincts of Connla’s wonderful well; but the beautiful Lady Sinann…longed to have also those more solid and masculine acquirements which were accessible at Connla’s well to the other sex only.” When she approached the well, the waters ran out and engulfed her, forming the River Shannon.
For much of Dubliners, the primary river reference is the Liffey. It is at least implicit in just about every story because it bisects the city in which every story is set. But if the Liffey is the river of the east of Ireland, emptying into the Irish Sea, the Shannon is the river of the west, feeding into the Atlantic. And at the end of “The Dead,” Gabriel imagines that “The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward.” His turn westward is very much effected by his wife Gretta’s story about Michael Furey and, arguably, her usurpation of the story of “The Dead” in general. From the beginning of the evening, Gabriel fights to steer moods and events his way, attempting to appease Lily’s challenges with a coin, fighting off the intellectual challenge introduced by Molly Ivors during lancers, revising his speech at the last minute in response to that challenge, and finally plotting the seduction of his wife whom he assumes will be open and inviting to his advances. But throughout the story he’s met with challenges to his intentions, even what he might consider in his solipsistic perspective as mutinous waves of opposition.
The greatest mutiny comes from his own wife who does not “[feel] the impetuous desire that was in him” and who does not feel “the yielding mood …come upon her” when they get to the hotel room (218). Instead she mutinies, like Sinann seeking knowledge, with the story of her past, what until now has been unknown to Gabriel, that she had a young man in Galway who she “was great with…at that time” and who died for love of her (220). “The Dead” has becomes Gretta’s story by the end, not Gabriel’s. He even feels that “[h]is own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling” (223).
In the end “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” are one of several western locations that beckon Gabriel’s imagination, and his acceptance of a fading identity, though in one way sad, is what gives the story’s end a possible epiphanic tone. And actually, “the dark mutinous Shannon waves” are the only landscape that is ultimately not affected by the snow. In fact, whereas the snow falls on “the dark central plain, “the treeless hills,” “the crooked crosses and headstones,” “the spears of the little gate,” and “the barren thorns;” whereas the snow falls upon “the Bog of Allen” and “the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried;” the snow only falls into “the dark mutinous Shannon waves.” Ultimately they absorb the snow, unaffected.
Salmon Weir Bridge, Galway City, Co. Galway, photographed by Eason and Son between 1900 and 1939. From the Eason Photographic Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
Though mentioned six times in Dubliners, Galway appears in only one story: “The Dead.” The city, also the name of the county in western Ireland where it’s located, is the former home of Gretta Conroy, Gabriel’s wife. Fittingly, it is Gretta that makes first mention of the place, even though the general area has already been introduced within the context of the rather heated exchange between Gabriel and Molly Ivors. After a tense session of lancers during which Miss Ivors calls Gabriel a West Briton and scolds him for preferring to vacation on the continent rather than explore his own country, Gretta asks her husband what all the trouble was about:
“–There were no words, said Gabriel moodily, only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn’t.
His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.
–O, do go, Gabriel, she cried. I’d love to see Galway again.
You can go if you like, said Gabriel coldly.
She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs. Malins and said:
There’s a nice husband for you, Mrs. Malins.” (191)
The couple’s very different reactions to and moods associated with the west of Ireland embodied in this scene become more complex throughout the story. For Gabriel the west of Ireland in general represents the disconnection he feels from his own geography. He feels disassociated from much of his political and intellectual surroundings, and the exchange with Miss Ivors makes it apparent that he can’t escape that conflict.
To Gretta, the reference has a completely different effect and meaning. It initiates a series of reminders, that manifest throughout the night, of her past and another life. Like Joyce’s wife, Nora, Gretta grew up in Galway. It’s indicated in Joyce’s and Nora’s biographies that Nora had several relationships during her time in Galway before moving to Dublin to escape an abusive family. Two young men in particular, Michael Feeney and Michael Bodkin, are noted as possible models for Gretta’s Michael Furey, “a person [she] used to know in Galway when [she] was living with [her] grandmother” (218).
St. Joseph’s Chapel & Presentation Convent, Galway City, Co. Galway, where a young Nora Barnacle was sent after her parents separated. Photographed between 1865 and 1914 by Robert French. From the Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland.
When Gretta first reveals to Gabriel that she’s been remembering an old flame from Galway, he’s shocked and upset:
–I used to go out walking with him, she said, when I was in Galway.
A thought flew across Gabriel’s mind.
–Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl? he said coldly.” (219)
But he soon learns there is much more to the story and becomes sympathetic though no less shocked and disturbed. Not only did the young man die, Gretta reveals, she believes that Michael Furey died for love of her:
“–It was in the winter she said, about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my grandmother’s and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and wouldn’t be let out, and his people in Oughterard were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew rightly.” (220)
…
“–And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn’t be let see him so I wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in the summer, and hoping he would be better then.
She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on:
–Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmother’s house in Nuns’ Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn’t see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden, shivering.
–And did you not tell him to go back? asked Gabriel.
–I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there was a tree.
–And did he go home? asked Gabriel.
–Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!” (221)
Though Galway has its share of political, historical, and mythological resonance, its appearance in Dubliners is more biographical than anything else. Joyce’s reference to it is primarily a very direct parallel to his own experience and associations with the place in the context of his relationship with Nora. As Gordon Bowker puts it, the death of Nora’s lover “haunted her thereafter and came to haunt also the man she eventually married” (122).
Nevertheless, that Galway is situated in the west of Ireland works perfectly for the conflict that Joyce sets up in the story between west and east, Ireland and England, preserving the past and moving toward a new progressive and global age.
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.
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.
Long shot Wellington Memorial, Phoenix Park, Dublin City, Co. Dublin. From the National Library of Ireland’s The Stereo Pairs Collection, featuring the work of photographers James Simonton and Frederick Holland Mares. http://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000564051
A figure of the tension between English and Irish, the Wellington monument stands, for Gabriel in “The Dead,” as a longed-for alternative to the cramped and perceptibly judgmental space of the Morkans’ party just after Molly Ivors declares him a West Briton. As he shifts his attention to the impending speech, Gabriel longs to be outside in the cold open air:
“How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it would be there than at the supper-table!” (192)
Geographically, the monument resides in Phoenix Park, a locale often referenced in “A Painful Case.” It’s about 1.5 kilometers walking distance from Usher’s Island, where the party is. To Gabriel at this moment, the site represents an escape from his own responsibility to his hosts and fellow guests, a retreat to solitude and exteriority. Politically, though, the place marker signifies a part of Gabriel that perhaps longs to be free of Irish responsibility.
The Wellingotn Monument is an obelisk commemorating the military accomplishments of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. He was an Irish born British statesman and highly esteemed and decorated military leader who eventually served as Prime Minister. Thus, in many ways, the Duke of Wellington embodies Gabriel’s position as Irish and British, and his desire to retreat to the monument expresses his desire to overpower the polemics of the recent argument with Molly Ivors, though in perhaps a militaristic and even phallic way.
The monument is mentioned again, but before it is, we get a detailed and rather militaristic description of the food and wine arranged in the dining room. Bottles of stout are “squads” in uniform, and “[i]n the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry.” The pyramid might be compared to the obelisk as the interior monument to public life.
Gabriel envisions the monument again just before he begins his speech:
“In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.
He began:
–Ladies and Gentlemen,” (202)
The reference here recalls the image that he initially uses to consciously shift his thoughts away from the argument with Miss Ivors and on to his approaching speech. Its placement here is partially a reminder of that shift and perhaps also a kind of invoking of the muse of the duke who, as Commander in Chief of the British Army, would certainly possess skill in public speaking. Some of these speeches, in fact, were collected by George Henry Francis in Maxims and Opinions of Field-Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington, Selected From His Writings and Speeches During a Public Life of More Than Half a Century. The public life, the life of speech-making and strategizing, towers like an obelisk for Gabriel. It looms as much in the crowded warmth of Usher’s Island as it does in the cold snowy night.
Taylor’s Hall, Back Lane, Dublin City, Co. Dublin. Published ca. 1865-1914. Photograph by Robert French from the National Library Ireland’s Lawrence Photograph Collection.
Back Lane, where Gabriel Conroy teasingly situates his family’s ancestral mansion, is, despite its unassuming name, quite rich with history and allusion. Located just south of the Liffey, it’s a small, narrow lane, which according to the Database of Irish Excavation Reports, was “an important medieval street known as La Rochelle Street, presumably one of the premier residential streets of the city.” Parts of the medieval city wall still lie buried under the street’s structures, and the lane has seen several excavations in the past two decades. According to the report compiled from one of these excavations,
The site has the potential to contain some of the richest and best-preserved Viking and Anglo-Norman archaeological deposits within the medieval city on the basis of the survival of a Hiberno-Norse earthen bank which pre-dates the wall and the medieval deposits which present at a relatively high level on the Back Lane frontage. In addition the site also contains the remains of a 17th-century Jesuit chapel and novitiate.
Although Joyce was likely unaware of much of this recently uncovered history, he was certainly familiar with the Back Lane Parliament, a group meeting in December 1792 that drafted a petition to the king for relief from the harsh penal laws and restrictions on Catholics during the period. The meeting was called the Back Lane Parliament because they met at the Tailors’ Hall located in Back Lane. (For more on the fascinating history of the Tailors’ Guild and its Hall in Back Lane, see F.E. Dixon’s “The Dublin Tailors and Their Hall” in Dublin Historical Record , Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 147-159.)
In “The Dead,” Gabriel begins the story of Johnny, his grandfather’s horse, with a nod to Back Lane:
–So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed Johnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near Back Lane, I think.
Everyone laughed, even Mrs. Malins, at Gabriel’s manner and Aunt Kate said:
–O, now, Gabriel, he didn’t live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was there” (207-08).
Gabriel continues his story, delighting his audience with the tale of Johnny, who “whether he fell in love with the horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the mill, anyhow…began to walk round the statue” (208). King Billy, of course, is known for ensuring the succession of Protestants to the British throne with his victory over James II during the Battle of the Boyne. The statue was erected in 1701 by Protestant Irish supporters of William III.
What may appear at first to be a simple geographic indicator is more likely Joyce establishing the political opposite of the King Billy symbol. The Back Lane and William of Orange references reintroduce the story’s continuing tensions between Catholic and Protestant, Irish and English.
“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.
