97 (U179.1219) Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street.

 Cast 97. Page 179, line 1219.

　Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown.

　Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar.

            Laud we the gods
　And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
　From our bless’d altars.

The colonnade of the National Library of Ireland.

File:Dublino, national library of ireland, 01.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The closing passage of Episode 9. Stephen has just followed his companion Mulligan out of the library.

Map of the city of Dublin and its environs, constructed for Thom's Almanac and Official Directory（1898）

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A little before this point, there is the following passage:

　The portico.

　Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered.

（U173.1205-）

Stephen recalls that he had once thought about augury while standing in the portico of this library. This episode appears in Chapter 5 of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which depicts the period prior to Ulysses. Reading that passage helps in understanding the present section of this blog.

What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look at them, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the late March evening made clear their flight, their dark darting quivering bodies flying clearly against the sky as against a limp-hung cloth of smoky tenuous blue.

 

Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their shrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good or evil?

 

The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur.

Kind air defined the coigns of houses

The opening phrase of this blog passage, “Kind air defined the coigns of houses,” is a poetic expression characteristic of Stephen, but its meaning is difficult to grasp.

First, “coigns of houses” seems to refer to the corners of buildings (cf. American Heritage Dictionary).

It likely corresponds to “the jutting shoulder” in the passage from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Then what does “Kind air defined the coigns of houses” mean?

“Define” usually means “to define,” but it can also mean “to delineate clearly.”

If we take into account the line from A Portrait—“The air of the late March evening made clear their flight”—then here it likely means that the corners of the buildings appeared clearly through the gentle air.

Kildare Street is the street in front of the library. The buildings on the opposite side are not flat façades; they have articulated corners.

Chimneys can also be seen.

Augury

Augury is a ritual practiced in ancient Rome to determine matters of state. Specially appointed augurs observed the flight, cries, and feeding patterns of birds according to elaborate rules in order to discern the will of the gods.

Standing in the library porch, Stephen imagines ancient Roman temples and augury, then shifts to the druids of ancient Ireland. This chain of associations leads him to the soothsayer in the final scene of Cymbeline. The smoke rising from the chimneys along Kildare Street becomes, in his mind, the smoke rising from an altar used in divination. (In Cymbeline, the soothsayer is actually Roman, not a druid.)

“Cease to strive” is likely an inner voice telling him to stop contending with Mulligan. Just as ancient Britain (in the Celtic age) and the Roman Empire are reconciled in Cymbeline. However, that hope is not realized on this day; it seems that the two quarrel later, between the maternity hospital scene in Episode 14 and the nighttown scene in Episode 15.

Smoke from the chimneys

“two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming” deliberately repeats “plume.”

“in a flaw of softness softly were blown.” likewise repeats “soft.”

“Plume” has two meanings: (1) a long feather or plume, (2) a column of smoke or cloud, the latter derived from the former. In this novel it appears to be used in both senses, and perhaps quite deliberately as an important word.

Let us look at examples of (2), smoke:

Episode 1. The Englishman Haines, who calls Hamlet a wonderful tale, gazes at the horizon; smoke rises from a mailboat.

　—It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
　Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague· on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.

(U16.575)

Episode 4. Bloom boils water in the kitchen to make tea for his wife; a plume of steam rises from the spout of the teapot.

On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout.

(U51.271)

Episode 8. As Bloom steps onto O’Connell Bridge, a puff of smoke rises from a barge carrying export stout bound for England.

As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England.

(U125.44)

Episode 11. In James Kavanagh’s wine room, the sub-sheriff John Fanning smokes a cigar; a plume of smoke rises from his lips.

Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.

（U203.113）

Episode 15. Bloom, wrapped like a mummy, falls from a cliff into the sea; a tourist vessel, the Erin’s King, emits a spreading plume of smoke from its funnel.

　THE DUMMYMUMMY：Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!
　(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land.)

（U449.3383）

The rising columns of smoke seem to be connected, in one way or another, with England and with its authority. Drinking tea is part of English culture. and as noted in Cast 90, the Erin’s King was built in Liverpool.

For the method of this blog, see Here.

96 (U629.972) I suppose the people gave him that nickname

 Cast 96. Page 629, line 972.

I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa

Episode 18. The final episode. Molly’s thoughts in bed, the interior monologue of Bloom’s wife. A vast unbroken flow of words without periods or commas, composed of eight sentences; this passage belongs to the sixth of them.

Molly suggests that “Paul de Kock” might be a nickname. Charles-Paul de Kock （1793 – 1871）was a French writer whose novels depicting life in Paris enjoyed enormous popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. He was so widely read in England that it was even said that “the best-known French author in England is Paul de Kock.”

Paul de Kock, portrait pour Le Drôlatique, n°20 du 24 août 1867. Lithographie de Charles Pipard. Musée Carnavalet

File:Le Drolatique N20 Paul de Kock.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Molly, earlier in Episode 4 (the morning scene), asks Bloom to bring her another book by Paul de Kock.

—Did you finish it? he asked.
—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time?
—Never read it. Do you want another?
—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.　

（U53.358）

“Kock” sounds like “cock”. That is why Molly assumes that a writer of popular fiction like Paul de Kock must be using a pseudonym. I had thought so as well. However, according to his biography, his father also bore the name de Kock, so it is in fact his real name.

After that, Molly suddenly drifts into memories of her birthplace, Gibraltar.

Catalan Bay is a bay on the eastern side of Gibraltar. In the middle of the peninsula stands the large rock formation known as Rock of Gibraltar. The town lies on the western side, while the eastern side drops off in steep cliffs. Thus “round the back of the rock” means that Catalan Bay lies on the far side, out of view from the town.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Gibraltar_-_Places_mentioned_in_Simon_Susarte_episode_-_Adapted_from_W.H._Smyth_1831.jpg

The name “Catalan Bay” derives from Catalan soldiers who supported the British and Dutch forces when they captured Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession in 1704 and later settled there.

In addition, from the 17th to the 18th century, fishermen from Genoa migrated to this bay and made their living by fishing. This is the background to the mention of old Luigi, said to be from Genoa and nearly a hundred years old.

"Catalan Bay" by VisitGibraltar.gi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

For the method used in this blog, ☞ click Here .

95 (U269.1314) And he took the last swig out of the pint.

 Cast 95. Page 269, line 1314.

　And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in Shanagolden where he daren’t show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.

　—Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?

　—An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.

　—Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep?

　—Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsopp. Right, sir.

Episode 12. In Barney Kiernan’s pub, the nationalist known as “the Citizen” is in conversation with the others. Lenehan (a freelance racing journalist) and John Wyse Nolan arrive together, and Terry is behind the bar.

They have been lamenting the decline of Ireland, once a great power. The Citizen has just been thundering about filling Irish harbours with warships again. This passage follows immediately after.

It is the Citizen who drains the pint. The unnamed narrator of this episode mocks his grandiose rhetoric. These inner comments are not heard by the other characters. The lines following the dash mark the spoken dialogue.

The narrator’s vigorous colloquial style makes this passage especially lively, though in the end much remains elusive.

Moya

“Moya” comes from the Irish mar dhea, sometimes spelled “moryah.” It means “as if,” or “as though”—something like “yeah, right” in tone. It is a characteristic Hiberno-English expression, a sceptical interjection used to convey doubt, contradiction, or mockery.
All wind and piss like a tanyard cat

What exactly is meant by “all wind and piss”? There is the phrase “pissing in the wind,” meaning something futile or empty—talk with no substance. It likely carries that same sense here. Not so much “fart and piss,” but rather something pointless, without effect.

Then comes the problem of “a tanyard cat.” There is a slang expression “big dog of the tanyard,” meaning an important or influential person or thing, though its origin is unclear.

However, it turns out—surprisingly—that dog excrement was historically an important raw material in tanning. Up until the nineteenth century (indeed, until around the First World War), there were even people who made a living collecting it from the streets.

From this, one might suppose that the “dog of the tanyard” came to signify something important. If so, the narrator’s use of “tanyard cat” could be a deliberate inversion—suggesting something useless or insignificant.

Cows in Connacht have long horns

“Cows in Connacht have long horns” likely parallels the idea that distant things are exaggerated—like saying “Far away cows have long horns.” In other words, it refers to boastful or inflated talk.

Molly Maguires

Shanagolden is a small village in County Limerick, in the south of Ireland. It is not associated with any particularly famous historical event and why it appears here is unclear.

The Molly Maguires were a secret society formed in early eighteenth-century Ireland, organizing resistance by tenant farmers against landlords—for example, opposing evictions. Later groups of the same name appeared in the United States and became known for violent resistance to exploitation in mining communities.

“As much as (one’s) life is worth to do …” means that doing something is dangerous—risking one’s life.

The Citizen is presumably anti-landlord and anti-Protestant, so why he would be targeted by the Molly Maguires is not entirely clear.

Imperial yeomanry

John Wyse Nolan invites the order. By pub custom, the one who invites pays. Nolan asks, and Lenehan gives the order.

Why does “imperial yeomanry” mean a drink, and what drink is it? From Terry’s reply, Nolan has ordered whisky and Allsopp beer—but which does the phrase refer to?

The “imperial yeomanry” were a volunteer cavalry force of the British Army, active mainly in the Second Boer War (the most recent British war as of 1904, the present time of the novel). They were also recruited in Ireland. Members were drawn from the middle classes and from yeomen. The term “yeoman” originally referred, from the mid-fourteenth century onward, to independent smallholding farmers; from the sixteenth century it came to denote a middle stratum of producers between the gentry and small peasants, but by the mid-eighteenth century many had fallen, through land consolidation and other pressures, into the ranks of urban or rural laborers.

After extensive searching, I found the match-holder shown below. It is a novelty item for a whisky called Usher’s Old Vatted Glenlivet, and it depicts a wounded British soldier from the Boer War.

The poem printed on it is The Absent-Minded Beggar by the English novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). It was written in 1899, at the request of the Daily Mail, in order to raise funds for soldiers fighting in the Boer War and for their families. This match-holder may well be connected with that campaign.

In other words, “imperial yeomanry” here means whisky. One can imagine such a match-holder lying on the counter of the pub.

As noted in Cast 47 of this blog, Lenehan is someone who is always being treated. Here too, brazenly, he orders the more expensive whisky, while Nolan cuts it down to a half. An Irish single measure is said to be 35.5 ml, so a half would be half of that. Most likely, the half whisky cost about the same as the small bottle of beer Nolan ordered for himself; one would hardly treat someone to something more expensive than one’s own drink.

A hands up

Thus, what John Wyse drinks is Allsopp beer. It is a historic English beer, once discontinued in 1935 but revived in 2017, known for its red hand trademark. Nolan’s phrase “a hands up” refers to this Allsopp beer.

For more on the method of this blog, see  Here.

94 (U382.1120) BLOOM: (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands:

Cast 94. Page 382, line 1120.

　BLOOM: (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien.) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)

　MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Severely.) Don’t do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!

　THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.) I’ll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I’ll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I’ll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?

　BLOOM: (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.

Episode 15. Fantasy and reality intermingle. As noted in Cast 87 in this blog, Bloom’s trial begins after he is questioned by the night watchman. This is one of the scenes that follows. Three society ladies—Mrs Yelverton Barry, Mrs Bellingham, and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys—accuse Leopold Bloom of having sent them obscene letters.

It is not that Bloom has actually done such things; rather, his subconscious seems to be surfacing in these hallucinatory episodes.

The Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys appears in the following attire:

　THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) …

(U381.1058)

An “Amazon” refers to the tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology, said to have lived around the Black Sea. By extension, an “amazon costume” denotes a woman’s riding habit for hunting: a top hat, spurred boots, long gloves, a trailing skirt, and a riding crop.

Searching for “amazon” in an online dictionary（https://www.finedictionary.com/） yields an illustration by the French artist George Barbier from Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui (1922). Remarkably, it matches exactly the outfit described for Mrs Mervyn Talboys.

There are many puzzling elements in this scene.

First, why is Bloom shivering with cold? It is June in the novel.

“Kismet” is a word of Ottoman Turkish origin meaning fate or destiny, and it appears several times in the novel. Why Bloom uses it here is not entirely clear.

His offering of the other cheek is based on the Gospel of Matthew (5:39):

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

“Pigdog” is slang meaning “a contemptible or worthless person.”

It is also unclear why Bloom, who has just been complaining of the cold, suddenly remarks that the weather has been very warm of late. Perhaps it is a feeble attempt to avoid having his trousers removed.

For the method of this blog, see ☞ Here

93 (U331.773) But indeed, sir, I wander from the point.

 Cast 93. Page 331, line 773.

But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting.

Episode 14. The setting is the common room of the National Maternity Hospital. Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and the medical students are eating, drinking, and talking together. Malachi Mulligan, Stephen’s housemate, has met his friend Alec Bannon on the street after Bannon returned to Dublin from Mullingar, and the two of them have come in here together. This is part of Bannon’s speech.

Episode 14 is constructed as a sequence of stylistic imitations tracing the history of English prose from the past to the present. This passage is said to parody the style of Laurence Sterne, the eighteenth-century English novelist best known for The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, specifically his A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). That work is a travel narrative based on Sterne’s experiences during several journeys in France.

Bloom’s daughter Milly Bloom has only just turned fifteen, but is already living away from home and working at a photographer’s shop in Mullingar, County Westmeath. And Bannon is seeing Milly.

A conversation between Haines and Malachi Mulligan, who live with Stephen:

　—Is the brother with you, Malachi?

　—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.

　—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

　—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

(U18.682)

A passage from Milly’s letter to Bloom:

There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells・・・

(U54,407)

I looked up “Maledicity!” but could not really pin it down. “Maledict” means something like accursed, or under a curse, so perhaps it is roughly equivalent to “Curse it!”

“Would to God that …” is a literary expression meaning “if only …”.

“Cloak” means a cloak or overcoat, but here it is clearly being used as a euphemistic way of referring to a condom.

“Thousand thunders” does not seem to appear in the dictionary either. It feels much like “by thunder!”—something along the lines of “Good Lord!”, “Really!”, or “Damn it all!” Since there appears to be a thunderstorm outside, perhaps thunder is actually sounding in the scene.

“Capote” is a French word. It can mean (1) a hooded military coat, or (2) a condom. Like “cloak” above, it carries the secondary meaning of condom here.

As is well known, in Britain a condom used to be called a “French letter,” while in France it was called a “capote anglaise,” an “English coat.”

In the end, I think this passage simply means that Bannon is regretting not having had a condom with him, and lamenting that he might otherwise have slept with Milly.

Bloom is sitting there with them, but he does not realize that this man is Bannon, nor that the girl he is involved with is his own daughter.

So what is Sterne’s prose actually like? I flipped through A Sentimental Journey and the following passage seems to me to come closest in atmosphere to the one under discussion here.

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is but a capfull of wind in or about Paris, ’tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu’d there than in any other aperture of the whole city,—and with reason good and cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d’eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth.

Laurence Sterne, THE FRAGMENT PARIS, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

Since it is a French travel narrative, the sprinkling of French is certainly similar. I searched Sterne’s work for some of the unusual turns of phrase that appear in today’s passage, but most of them do not really occur there. In terms of vocabulary and actual sentence texture, the resemblance does not seem all that close to me.

The use of dashes in dialogue, and the blending of speech with narrative prose, are techniques common to Joyce’s fiction in general, so perhaps Sterne’s influence is indeed there.

Laurence Sterne

　　　　　　　　
Joseph Nollekens | Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) | British | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)

For the method of this blog, see ☞ Here

92 (U522.929) While he was in the act of getting his bearings

Cast 92. Page 522, line 929.

While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise.

Episode 16. It is after midnight. Having left the brothel, Mr Bloom has come to the cabman’s shelter in order to look after Stephen. There he is listening to the talk of the sailor who calls himself Murphy. This is the moment when the sailor slowly gets up from his seat.

Episode 16 is written in bad prose, and this too is an astonishingly hard passage to read. One wonders whether there is any other novel quite like it.

It is full of forced clichés and awkward foreign expressions. It multiplies conjunctions and relative clauses until the syntax becomes needlessly tangled, and the insertion of clause after clause makes it difficult to tell where the subject and verb properly join. For all the piling up of words, the actual picture remains vague and blurred.

The phrase “ship’s rum” presumably refers to the rum carried aboard British naval vessels and issued to the crew. A rough summary of the history of rum in the Royal Navy, based on the Wikipedia article, would be as follows.

• Originally, British warships carried water, but water was difficult to preserve on long voyages.
• For that reason, beer and wine came to be carried in place of water.
• Later still, distilled spirits such as brandy were preferred from the standpoint of preservation and supply.
• After Britain captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655, Jamaican rum began to be loaded aboard and issued to sailors.
• In 1740 it was decided that half a pint of rum should be diluted with water in a ratio of one to four and issued twice daily. This drink was called grog.
• The dilution ratio and the amount issued later changed over time.
• In the Royal Navy, grog continued to be issued until 1970 (though officers received the rum undiluted).

The sailor says that he came in this morning at eleven o’clock on the Rosevean, bringing bricks from Bridgwater in England. Of course, that may itself be a lie.

　—We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The threemaster Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.

（U511.450-）

But he was not serving on a naval ship. Whether rum was also issued on ordinary vessels, or whether he simply had some naval liquor by less official means, I have not been able to determine.

The woman whom Bloom thinks the sailor has gone after is probably the streetwalker in the straw hat who peered into the cabman’s shelter a little earlier.

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill.

（U517.704-）

“Manœuvre” is a word of French origin, and as a military term it means something like a tactical movement or strategic deployment of troops or fleets. Since the man is a sailor, the narration describes his movement in language associated with ships and military action.

The “Loop Line” that the sailor looks up at is the railway viaduct running above the cabman’s shelter: the Loop Line Bridge.

In the photograph below, the cabman’s shelter stood beneath the bridge on the far bank. At the right-hand edge is the Custom House.

File:Loop line (Liffey) viaduct, Dublin - geograph.org.uk - 1754871.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The Loop Line Bridge was built between 1889 and 1891, when the line connecting Westland Row Station (now Pearse Railway Station) on the south bank of the River Liffey with Amiens Street Station (now Connolly Station) on the north bank was elevated.

In the map published in 1908 (Eason’s New Plan of Dublin and Suburbs / Eason & Son, Ltd.), the Loop Line can be seen connecting the stations on the north and south sides. The cabman’s shelter stood at the point marked with a star.

In the map published in 1883 (Plan of the City of Dublin. Letts’s Popular Atlas. Letts, Son & Co. Limited, London.), the stations are not yet connected.

So the last time he was here must have been before 1891, when the bridge did not yet exist, and that is presumably why he is so astonished. He says he has been away at sea for seven years and has not seen his wife in all that time (U510.421). Since the present time of the novel is 1904, the chronology does not quite fit.

From the time it was under construction, the bridge was criticized for spoiling the magnificent view of the Custom House from the city centre.

View of the Custom House through the Loop Line Bridge in the 1930s

The “piers” the sailor looks up at are the bridge supports, and the “girders” are the main horizontal beams spanning the sides of the structure. 

For the method of this blog, see ☞ Here

91 (460.3729) (Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle.

Cast 91. Page 460, line 3729.

　(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)

　FLORRY: What?

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)

　THE BOOTS: (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Haw haw have you the horn?

John Ford’s film The Quiet Man (1952), starring John Wayne: a hackney car

Episode 15. Fantasy and reality overlap. Characters from earlier in the novel reappear and perform little dramas from within the novel itself. At Bella Cohen’s brothel, Bloom is having his palm read by Zoe. This is the moment just after he pulls his hand back. Presumably what Zoe whispers to Florry is something she has read in his palm.

Pencil

Bloom is said to be writing with a pencil (pencilling), but it seems odd that there would be an actual pencil lying around on a brothel table, so I suspect he is writing with eyebrow pencil.

The prostitutes are using eyebrow pencil — pencil — on their brows.

(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)

 (U409.2022)

Backhand

Backhand means a left-slanting style of handwriting.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Backhand_writing_(PSF).jpg

Now then, why does the hackneycar suddenly appear?

This is a fantasy scene summoned up from the Ormond Hotel episode in Episode 11.

A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz’ porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare.

(U229.878－)

Blazes Boylan, the lover of Bloom’s wife Molly, is on his way by carriage to the Bloom house.

But why does this scene surface now?

Just before Boylan’s carriage scene in Episode 11., Bloom is in the restaurant at the Ormond Hotel, borrowing writing materials and composing a reply to his secret correspondent Martha. He tries to write the letter e as the Greek epsilon ε, then gives up.

Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. 

(U229.860)

On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres enclos. Ask her no answ. 

(U229.865)

Surely he is trying to disguise his handwriting so as to leave no evidence — and not just by altering the letters, but by changing the whole hand, that is, by writing in backhand. In the fantasy courtroom scene that began around my Cast 87, the society lady Mrs Yelverton Barry testifies that Bloom once sent her an anonymous letter in a left-slanting hand.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: ・・・Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. ・・・

(U379.1017)

His absent-minded scribbling in backhand has called up the Boylan carriage scene that stands next to the Martha-letter scene in Episode 11

Incidentally, just after the passage I wrote about in Cast 88, Nosey Flynn says something odd. There is one thing, he says, that Bloom will never do — and that is put his name to anything.

　—He’s not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He’s been known to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has his good points. But there’s one thing he’ll never do.

　His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.

　—I know, Davy Byrne said.

　—Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.

(U145.984―)Bloom seems to be a man with a very particular caution about handwriting.

Hackney car - Jaunting car

A hackneycar is the same thing as a jaunting car: “a light two-wheeled single-horse carriage with the passengers’ seats arranged back to back and the driver seated in front.”

Nobuaki Tochigi has a fine essay on this vehicle in his book Ireland Monogatari. He also says a great deal there about carriages in Ulysses.

This small, light, open two-wheeled carriage, with two-person seats mounted back to back on either side behind the driver and hung down over the wheel area, was a uniquely Irish conveyance. Its very name is delightful: the ‘jaunting car.’ Since ‘jaunt’ in English means to go on an excursion or pleasure outing, it was, quite literally, the equivalent of a modern taxi.

“Going for an Excursion by Carriage,” in Ireland Monogatari (Misuzu Shobo, 2013)

The Boots riding on the axle is the hotel bootblack from the Ormond Hotel, whom I mentioned in Cast 75. He had been flirting with Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy, the barmaids there.

Crossblind

The windows of the Ormond Hotel are fitted with something called a crossblind.

Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head, appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.

(U202.963)

Miss Douce’s brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by sunlight.

(U220.460)

What exactly this is turns out to be quite a puzzle, and Naoki Yanase, the Japanese translator of Ulysses, discusses it in detail in one of his books (“Cross Blind,” 2004, in Ulysses Kokaiki, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2017).

According to the Yanase’s theory, crossblind is “a window shade that pulls down from a roller at the middle of a window”.

I think in Japanese interior-design terminology, the nearest equivalent would apparently be what is called a “café curtain.”

A short curtain fitted so as to cover only part of a window, mainly for privacy or decoration, usually hung not from an ordinary curtain rail but from a rod stretched across.

Dictionary of House and Interior Terms

Perhaps it is called a crossblind because the horizontal rod and the vertical lines of the window frame form a cross. Still, what the Ormond has is probably not a curtain but rather a kind of blind or shade. Something like the form below seems closest to me.

Thumb one's nose

"mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers" is surely the Western gesture known as thumb one’s nose: placing the thumb on the tip of the nose and waggling the fingers outward to mock someone.

Cocking a snook Statue of a street urchin on Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cocking_a_snook_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1136252.jpg

 

“Haw haw have you the horn?” — what does that mean?

According to the dictionary, have the horn means to be sexually aroused, especially of a man, or to have an erection.

To be or become lustful or sexually excited, especially of a man; to have an erection.

The Free Dictionary

This too comes from the Boylan carriage scene in Episode 11, on its way toward the Bloom house.

By Bachelor’s walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun in heat, mare’s glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn.

(U222.527)

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