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)

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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. 

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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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90 (U54.432) He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window.

Cast 90. Page 54, line 432.

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin’s King that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.

The Erin’s King in her Heather Bell days

Photograph of Heatherbell, Borough of Wallasey | National Museums Liverpool (liverpoolmuseums.org.uk)

 

Episode 4. Morning in the Bloom household. Mr Bloom has just read a letter from his daughter Milly. She has only just turned fifteen yesterday and is away from home, working.

It has long been known that giving milk too long in infancy can contribute to anaemia.

Milk contains calcium and phosphorus, and these can combine with iron in the gut and interfere with iron absorption. Iron is essential for producing haemoglobin in red blood cells, so if haemoglobin levels fall, anaemia can result.

Bloom is remembering a time when he and his daughter took a trip on the steamship Erin’s King out to the Kish lightship.

I found an article on Erin’s King in IRELAND'S SAILING, BOATING & MARITIME MAGAZINE. To sum it up:

• The Erin’s King had originally been a steamship called the Heather Bell, built in Liverpool in 1865. It belonged to the city of Wallasey in England and was used as a ferry between Wallasey and Liverpool.
• In 1891 it was sold privately for £950, renamed Erin’s King, and put into service as a sightseeing pleasure boat on Dublin Bay.
• Its route was a circular excursion departing from and returning to Custom House Quay in Dublin, taking passengers out around the Kish lightship.
• It was broken up in 1900.

Admiralty Chart No 1415 Dublin Bay, Published 1875

File:Admiralty Chart No 1415 Dublin Bay, Published 1875.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The novel is set in 1904, so Bloom and Milly’s outing must have taken place before 1900, but the text does not tell us exactly when.

Off the coast of Dublin lies a sandbank called the Kish Bank, dangerous for shipping and liable to cause wrecks. For that reason a lightship was stationed there from 1811 onward.

A lightship is a ship that serves the function of a lighthouse. It is used where the water is too deep for a lighthouse to be built, marking safe sea routes. In 1965 an actual lighthouse was built there, taking over the lightship’s role.

                                      Kish Lightship                                             

  https://coastmonkey.ie/kish-lighship/

"tub" has a number of meanings, but here it is probably “a slow-moving, clumsy ship or boat” (Collins Dictionary).

That would fit, since the Erin’s King was already in the last stage of its second life by then.

If so, "pitch" here means : to heave up and down lengthwise.

"funky" also has several meanings, but from the context it must mean “frightened” or “nervous”.

For Bloom, the memory of riding on the Erin’s King with Milly is a happy one, and he will recall it several times over the course of the day.

In Episode 8, he remembers throwing cake to the gulls from the Erin’s King.

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.

(U125.60)

In Episode 13, he remembers tossing old newspapers to the men on the lightship.

He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom. Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin’s King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo.

(U310.1184)

In Episode 15, the Erin’s King sails across the sea into which Bloom’s mummy falls.

THE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!

(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.)

(U449.3382)

In Episode 16, during his conversation with the sailor, Bloom again recalls how rough the sea had been around the Kish lightship.

…the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.

(U515.650)

For Bloom, his daughter Milly — and also the young girls such as Gerty in Episode 13 — are associated with the shore and with the sea.

And the Erin’s King is bound up not only with his memories of his daughter, but also with the dropping of objects and with the motion of rising and falling.

For the method of this blog, click ☞  Here.

89 (U437.3009) BELLO: (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling

 Cast 89. Page 437, line 3009.

　BELLO: (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?

Episode 15. The brothel-keeper Bella Cohen has become masculinised into Bello, while Bloom has been transformed into a woman.

It is suggested that about ten years earlier, around 1895, Bloom dealt in second-hand clothes and theatrical costumes, and that at the Shelbourne Hotel he bought old garments and black underclothes from a Mrs Miriam Dandrade.

O yes! Mrs so Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express.

（U132.350）

It is also hinted elsewhere that Bloom once dressed himself in Mrs Dandrade’s underclothes, and Bello’s speech here clearly builds on that suggestion.

The long list Bello reels off appears to consist of imaginary names of Mrs Dandrade’s lovers or “clients.”

The names themselves do not seem to carry especially deep significance.

Laci Daremo is a pun on the Italian phrase “Là ci darem la mano” (“There I shall give you my hand”). It comes from the duet in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (Act I, Scene 9), in which Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina. It is also one of the songs Molly Bloom is due to sing on the concert tour being organised by her lover Boylan.

The Gordon Bennett Cup was an international motor race held six times between 1900 and 1905. It was founded by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the wealthy Paris-based owner of the New York Herald. In the time of the novel, the next race was due to take place in Germany on the day after 16 June 1904.

Henri Fleury is a variation on Henry Flower, the pseudonym Bloom uses in his secret correspondence with Martha Clifford.

“Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?” is a playful variation on the phrase “It is enough to make a cat laugh,” meaning something outrageously funny. Apparently the expression was popularised by advertising for the 1893 Broadway production of Charley’s Aunt, the farce by the English playwright Brandon Thomas.

Advertisement for the Sydney production of Charley’s Aunt (Everyone’s, 1931)

You can see the phrase “enough to make a cat laugh.”

Vol.12 No.576 (4 March 1931) (nla.gov.au)

For the method of this blog, click  Here.

88 (U140.740) What will I take now?

Cast 88. Page 140, line 740.

　What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?

　—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.

　—Hello, Flynn.

　—How’s things?

　—Tiptop... Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.

　Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there.

Episode 8. Around one o’clock in the afternoon. Bloom has just entered Davy Byrne’s pub to get a light lunch.

A customer already there, Nosey Flynn, speaks to him. “Nosey,” derived from “nose,” means nosy, prying, inquisitive — Flynn’s nickname.

“Nook” means a corner, a tucked-away place, somewhere out of sight. “said from his nook” is a wonderfully efficient phrase. It perfectly suggests that he was settled into his usual hidden corner where Bloom had not noticed him. Bloom probably was not delighted.

It is odd that Bloom looks at his pocket watch while deciding what to order. Later, while Bloom is in the lavatory, Flynn tells the proprietor that Bloom always does this whenever he is invited to drink. He says Bloom always pulls out his watch before deciding what to imbibe.

　—God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you see him look at his watch? Ah, you weren’t there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.
　—There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe man, I’d say. 

（U146.979）

Reading that exchange, one gets the impression that Bloom is a man who does not get drunk and who is cautious by nature. Perhaps he chooses his drink by calculating how long it will take him to sober up in light of what he has to do later in the day. He has already attended a funeral in the morning and done some advertising work at the newspaper office, but he does not really have any urgent business for the afternoon, so there seems little practical need for such calculation. Or perhaps he likes to give the impression of being a man with important engagements.

Bloom says “Let me see” over and over. It seems to be one of his habitual phrases. He is really hesitating.

Later in the evening, at the Ormond Hotel, he orders cider, and at that moment too he keeps saying “Let me see.” This is one of those small details that make the novel feel extraordinary.

And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider.

 （U220.445-）

A shandygaff is a beer-based mixed drink, made with ginger ale. The origin of the name is apparently uncertain.

He abandons the idea of the shandygaff and instead drinks burgundy — that is, Burgundy wine.

It is interesting to think about what Bloom drinks over the course of the day.

• Breakfast at home: tea
• Lunch here: Burgundy wine
• Evening at the Ormond Hotel: cider
• Later, after the maternity hospital, at Burke’s: ginger cordial
• At home: cocoa

Unlike many of the other male characters, he does not drink beer or whiskey. He does drink alcohol but prefers beverages of relatively low strength. He drinks tea, probably in part because of Molly. His wine is not claret (the Bordeaux wine favoured by the English) but Burgundy. Cider comes from traditions associated with Brittany and Normandy in France. His tastes are un-English, un-masculine by conventional standards, and rather health conscious.

“Tiptop” literally means the very top, but colloquially means excellent, first-rate. I am not sure whether it is still current. In this novel it is used by people other than Bloom, so it does not seem to be a personal catchphrase of his.
(U214.196)　(U291.324)

I am not entirely sure what “Almost taste them by looking” means in relation to the sardines.

A little earlier, Bloom thinks of tinned salmon as being like a mortuary chapel. So perhaps he simply does not care for fish. I took it to mean that merely looking at them is enough to put him off.

Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.

（U135.496）

“Ham” is also the name of one of Noah’s three sons in the Book of Genesis, alongside Shem and Japheth, each of whom became the ancestor of peoples spread across the world.

“Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there” is a pun on the sandwich ingredients ham, mustard, and bread. “Musterred” echoes “mustard,” and “bred” echoes “bread.” It is so neat that Bloom probably did not invent it himself; it was perhaps a familiar joke of the time. 

In the end, however, he orders a gorgonzola sandwich.

Davy Byrne’s gorgonzola sandwich

Davy Byrnes -Facebook

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87 (U373.773) SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.)

Cast 87. Page 373, line 773.

　SECOND WATCH: (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

　BLOOM: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare’s nest. I am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain’s fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift.

Episode 15. Just after midnight. Bloom has followed the drunken Stephen and Lynch into the red-light district. They are around the point where Mabbot Street meets Mecklenburg Street, a little after the passage discussed in Cast 25.

Bloom is suspected of feeding ham and mutton to a dog, and is questioned by two members of the watch. Episode 15 shifts constantly between reality and hallucination, and at this point turns into a courtroom scene in which various charges are brought against him.

What exactly is the “watch”? The novel also contains “constables” (as mentioned in Cast 57), but the watch and the constables are clearly not the same thing.

Based on material from  Police History.com , the outline seems to be roughly this.

• Before the eighteenth century, Dublin’s policing system was extremely weak.
• There was no effective police presence by day, and at night patrols were carried out by the inefficient watch.
• The watch was appointed by each parish and supervised by constables nominated by the churchwardens and parishioners.
• Under an act passed in 1715, Dublin Corporation (the old name of the city government, not a company) was given the power to appoint the watch. The constables stood above them in the chain of command.
• In 1777, the inhabitants of each parish were empowered to elect between six and twelve men to form a wardmote court, and that court in turn selected the constables and the watch.
• After that the police system was gradually reorganised.
• Under legislation passed in 1836, Dublin policing was reformed along lines similar to the reorganisation of the Metropolitan Police carried out by Sir Robert Peel in London in 1829. The new force was placed under the authority of the Chief Secretary for Ireland. This seems to be the Dublin Metropolitan Police mentioned in Cast 33. Constables and the watch were absorbed into this newer police structure.

      A Limerick City Night Watch inspector, c. 1910.

The repeated “I am” in Bloom’s speech conveys his agitation and fluster.

“Mare’s nest” means something that does not exist, and so it came to mean a supposed discovery that turns out to be nothing, a false alarm, a fabrication, a misunderstanding, a rumour.

Molly’s father Tweedy is referred to elsewhere in the novel as “Major Brian Cooper Tweedy,” so he is probably not a major general at all, but a major.

The Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom in southern Africa. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was one of the engagements in that war. Around 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors attacked the British garrison entrenched at the former mission station at Rorke’s Drift, but despite being heavily outnumbered, the defenders held out for two days, and when British reinforcements arrived the Zulu forces withdrew.

The Defence of Rorke’s Drift by Alphonse de Neuville

File:Défense de Rorke's Drift.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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