From Butler’s monument house corner
The 58th Cast. Page 124, line 28.
From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s walk. Dedalus’ daughter there still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms. Must be selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father. Lobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That’s in their theology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea?
The building at the extreme left is Butler’s Monument House.
"Sackville Street & O'Connell Bridge, Dublin, Ireland, ca. 1899" by trialsanderrors is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Episode 8. This scene takes place a little earlier than the one in the previous post. Mr. Bloom has left the newspaper office and is heading south down Sackville Street. He is around the spot marked with a star ★ on the map. At the corner of Sackville Street and Bachelor’s Walk stands Butler’s Monument House, the musical instrument maker’s premises (the place circled on the map). On Bachelor’s Walk there is Dillon’s auction rooms (the building enclosed in the oval).
When Mr. Bloom says that “Dedalus’s daughter still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms,” it is because he himself had just gone to Dillon’s a little earlier from the newspaper office on advertising business, and must have seen Simon Dedalus’s daughter, Dilly, there at that time.
Joyce’s care in keeping such small details consistent is astonishing.
—I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.
（U106.430）
Why is Simon there in the auction rooms in the first place? Simon—who is the father of Stephen, another protagonist of the novel—is impoverished and down at heel, with far too many children. On top of that, his wife died of illness the previous year. So, Bloom assumes, he is trying to raise money by putting household goods up for auction.
From what the novel itself tells us, the Dedalus family consists of Stephen as the eldest son, one younger brother (U173.977), and the sisters Dilly, Katey, Boody, and Maggy (Episode 10, sections 4, 11, and 13). Whether there really were fifteen children, we do not know.
Bloom says that Dilly’s eyes resemble her father’s. As I noted in Cast 30 of this blog, one of the themes of this novel is that “father and son are one and the same being,” and one variation on that theme is the motif of parent and child having exactly the same eyes or the same voice.
① Stephen thinks that he and his father have the same voice and eyes.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.
（U32.45）
② In Paris, the exile Kevin Egan says that Stephen’s voice resembles his father’s.
You’re your father’s son. I know the voice.
（U36.230）
③ On the way from the newspaper office to the pub, the editor Crawford says that Stephen is the very image of his father (“chip of the old block”).
—Lay on, Macduff!
—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the shoulder. Let us go.
（U118.900）
④ In the library scene, Stephen says that Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna was very like her father (“chip of the old block”).
It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery.
（U174.1005）
⑤ At the second-hand bookstall in Bedford Row, Stephen recalls that people once told him that his sister Dilly had the same eyes as he did.
—I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing nervously. Is it any good?
My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring. Shadow of my mind.
（U200.866-）
Now, back to the main passage.
I was not sure what lob means in “lobbing about.”
Normally it means “to throw (a ball) in a high arc.” But according to the dictionary, it can also mean “to move slowly and heavily” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary), so for the moment I take it here to mean something like “hanging about” or “loitering.”
“Absolution” means remission or forgiveness of sins.
In Catholicism, it is an authority possessed only by ordained clergy of priestly rank or above, and refers to the act by which, on behalf of Christ, forgiveness of sins and their punishment is pronounced for one who is contrite.
“Increase and multiply” echoes the Book of Genesis (9:1) in the Old Testament.
And God blessed Noe and his sons. And he said to them: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.
Mr. Bloom seems, in general, to feel a certain resentment toward religious matters.
For the method used in this blog, ☞ click Here .
