A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
—There could be neither luck nor grace, Dante said, in a house where
there is no respect for the pastors of the church.
Mr Dedalus threw his knife and fork noisily on his plate.
—Respect! he said. Is it for Billy with the lip or for the tub of guts
up in Armagh? Respect!
—Princes of the church, said Mr Casey with slow scorn.
—Lord Leitrim’s coachman, yes, said Mr Dedalus.
—They are the Lord’s anointed, Dante said. They are an honour to their
country.
—Tub of guts, said Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a handsome face, mind
you, in repose. You should see that fellow lapping up his bacon and
cabbage of a cold winter’s day. O Johnny!
He twisted his features into a grimace of heavy bestiality and made a
lapping noise with his lips.
—Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before Stephen. It’s not
right.
—O, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, said Dante hotly—the
language he heard against God and religion and priests in his own home.
—Let him remember too, cried Mr Casey to her from across the table, the
language with which the priests and the priests’ pawns broke Parnell’s
heart and hounded him into his grave. Let him remember that too when he
grows up.
—Sons of bitches! cried Mr Dedalus. When he was down they turned on him
to betray him and rend him like rats in a sewer. Lowlived dogs! And
they look it! By Christ, they look it!
—They behaved rightly, cried Dante. They obeyed their bishops and their
priests. Honour to them!
—Well, it is perfectly dreadful to say that not even for one day in the
year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be free from these dreadful disputes!
Uncle Charles raised his hands mildly and said:
—Come now, come now, come now! Can we not have our opinions whatever
they are without this bad temper and this bad language? It is too bad
surely.
Mrs Dedalus spoke to Dante in a low voice but Dante said loudly:
—I will not say nothing. I will defend my church and my religion when
it is insulted and spit on by renegade catholics.
Mr Casey pushed his plate rudely into the middle of the table and,
resting his elbows before him, said in a hoarse voice to his host:
—Tell me, did I tell you that story about a very famous spit?
—You did not, John, said Mr Dedalus.
—Why then, said Mr Casey, it is a most instructive story. It happened
not long ago in the county Wicklow where we are now.
He broke off and, turning towards Dante, said with quiet indignation:
—And I may tell you, ma’am, that I, if you mean me, am no renegade
catholic. I am a catholic as my father was and his father before him
and his father before him again when we gave up our lives rather than
sell our faith.
—The more shame to you now, Dante said, to speak as you do.
—The story, John, said Mr Dedalus smiling. Let us have the story
anyhow.
—Catholic indeed! repeated Dante ironically. The blackest protestant in
the land would not speak the language I have heard this evening.
Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning like a country
singer.
—I am no protestant, I tell you again, said Mr Casey, flushing.
Mr Dedalus, still crooning and swaying his head, began to sing in a
grunting nasal tone:
O, come all you Roman catholics
That never went to mass.
He took up his knife and fork again in good humour and set to eating,
saying to Mr Casey:
—Let us have the story, John. It will help us to digest.
Stephen looked with affection at Mr Casey’s face which stared across
the table over his joined hands. He liked to sit near him at the fire,
looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce
and his slow voice was good to listen to. But why was he then against
the priests? Because Dante must be right then. But he had heard his
father say that she was a spoiled nun and that she had come out of the
convent in the Alleghanies when her brother had got the money from the
savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps that made her severe
against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because
Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that
used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of
the litany of the Blessed Virgin. _Tower of Ivory_, they used to say,
_House of Gold!_ How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of
gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the
infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and
the moan of sorrow from the people when they had heard.
Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put
her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft.
That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of _Tower of
Ivory_.
—The story is very short and sweet, Mr Casey said. It was one day down
in Arklow, a cold bitter day, not long before the chief died. May God
have mercy on him!
He closed his eyes wearily and paused. Mr Dedalus took a bone from his
plate and tore some meat from it with his teeth, saying:
—Before he was killed, you mean.
Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on:
—It was down in Arklow one day. We were down there at a meeting and
after the meeting was over we had to make our way to the railway
station through the crowd. Such booing and baaing, man, you never
heard. They called us all the names in the world. Well there was one
old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her
attention to me. She kept dancing along beside me in the mud bawling
and screaming into my face: _Priesthunter! The Paris Funds! Mr Fox!
Kitty O’Shea!_
—And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus.
—I let her bawl away, said Mr Casey. It was a cold day and to keep up
my heart I had (saving your presence, ma’am) a quid of Tullamore in my
mouth and sure I couldn’t say a word in any case because my mouth was
full of tobacco juice.
—Well, John?
—Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content, _Kitty O’Shea_ and
the rest of it till at last she called that lady a name that I won’t
sully this Christmas board nor your ears, ma’am, nor my own lips by
repeating.
He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the bone, asked:
—And what did you do, John?
—Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up at me when she said
it and I had my mouth full of tobacco juice. I bent down to her and
_Phth!_ says I to her like that.
He turned aside and made the act of spitting.
—_Phth!_ says I to her like that, right into her eye.
He clapped his hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream of pain.
—_O Jesus, Mary and Joseph!_ says she. _I’m blinded! I’m blinded and
drownded!_
He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating:
—_I’m blinded entirely_.
Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair while uncle Charles
swayed his head to and fro.
Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they laughed:
—Very nice! Ha! Very nice!
It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye.
But what was the name the woman had called Kitty O’Shea that Mr Casey
would not repeat? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of
people and making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been
in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had
come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice
with his father and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And
that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come
to the door and he had heard his father say something about the
Cabinteely road.
He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante
too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman
on the head with her umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the
band played _God save the Queen_ at the end.
Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.
—Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an unfortunate
priestridden race and always were and always will be till the end of
the chapter.
Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:
—A bad business! A bad business!
Mr Dedalus repeated:
—A priestridden Godforsaken race!
He pointed to the portrait of his grandfather on the wall to his right.
—Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said. He was a good
Irishman when there was no money in the job. He was condemned to death
as a whiteboy. But he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he
would never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.
Dante broke in angrily:
—If we are a priestridden race we ought to be proud of it! They are the
apple of God’s eye. _Touch them not_, says Christ, _for they are the
apple of My eye._
—And can we not love our country then? asked Mr Casey. Are we not to
follow the man that was born to lead us?
—A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor, an adulterer! The
priests were right to abandon him. The priests were always the true
friends of Ireland.
—Were they, faith? said Mr Casey.
He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one
finger after another.
—Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when
Bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess
Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of
their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they
denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confession box?
And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?
His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his
own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw
of coarse scorn.
—O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of
God’s eye!
Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:
—Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion
come first.
Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:
—Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.
—God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion
before the world.
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a crash.
—Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for
Ireland!
—John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled
up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the
air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside
a cobweb.
—No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God in Ireland.
Away with God!
—Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost
spitting in his face.
Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again,
talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of
his dark flaming eyes, repeating:
—Away with God, I say!
Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting
her napkinring which rolled slowly along the carpet and came to rest
against the foot of an easychair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed
her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently and
shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:
—Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!
The door slammed behind her.
Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on
his hands with a sob of pain.
—Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!
He sobbed loudly and bitterly.
Stephen, raising his terrorstricken face, saw that his father’s eyes
were full of tears.
The fellows talked together in little groups.
One fellow said:
—They were caught near the Hill of Lyons.
—Who caught them?
—Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car.