A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the
cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain
falling softly in the brimming bowl.
Chapter II
Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested
to him to enjoy his morning smoke in a little outhouse at the end of
the garden.
—Very good, Simon. All serene, Simon, said the old man tranquilly.
Anywhere you like. The outhouse will do me nicely: it will be more
salubrious.
—Damn me, said Mr Dedalus frankly, if I know how you can smoke such
villainous awful tobacco. It’s like gunpowder, by God.
—It’s very nice, Simon, replied the old man. Very cool and mollifying.
Every morning, therefore, uncle Charles repaired to his outhouse but
not before he had greased and brushed scrupulously his back hair and
brushed and put on his tall hat. While he smoked the brim of his tall
hat and the bowl of his pipe were just visible beyond the jambs of the
outhouse door. His arbour, as he called the reeking outhouse which he
shared with the cat and the garden tools, served him also as a
soundingbox: and every morning he hummed contentedly one of his
favourite songs: _O, twine me a bower_ or _Blue eyes and golden hair_
or _The Groves of Blarney_ while the grey and blue coils of smoke rose
slowly from his pipe and vanished in the pure air.
During the first part of the summer in Blackrock uncle Charles was
Stephen’s constant companion. Uncle Charles was a hale old man with a
well tanned skin, rugged features and white side whiskers. On week days
he did messages between the house in Carysfort Avenue and those shops
in the main street of the town with which the family dealt. Stephen was
glad to go with him on these errands for uncle Charles helped him very
liberally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes and barrels
outside the counter. He would seize a handful of grapes and sawdust or
three or four American apples and thrust them generously into his
grandnephew’s hand while the shopman smiled uneasily; and, on Stephen’s
feigning reluctance to take them, he would frown and say:
—Take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? They’re good for your bowels.
When the order list had been booked the two would go on to the park
where an old friend of Stephen’s father, Mike Flynn, would be found
seated on a bench, waiting for them. Then would begin Stephen’s run
round the park. Mike Flynn would stand at the gate near the railway
station, watch in hand, while Stephen ran round the track in the style
Mike Flynn favoured, his head high lifted, his knees well lifted and
his hands held straight down by his sides. When the morning practice
was over the trainer would make his comments and sometimes illustrate
them by shuffling along for a yard or so comically in an old pair of
blue canvas shoes. A small ring of wonderstruck children and nursemaids
would gather to watch him and linger even when he and uncle Charles had
sat down again and were talking athletics and politics. Though he had
heard his father say that Mike Flynn had put some of the best runners
of modern times through his hands Stephen often glanced at his
trainer’s flabby stubble-covered face, as it bent over the long stained
fingers through which he rolled his cigarette, and with pity at the
mild lustreless blue eyes which would look up suddenly from the task
and gaze vaguely into the blue distance while the long swollen fingers
ceased their rolling and grains and fibres of tobacco fell back into
the pouch.
On the way home uncle Charles would often pay a visit to the chapel
and, as the font was above Stephen’s reach, the old man would dip his
hand and then sprinkle the water briskly about Stephen’s clothes and on
the floor of the porch. While he prayed he knelt on his red
handkerchief and read above his breath from a thumb blackened
prayerbook wherein catchwords were printed at the foot of every page.
Stephen knelt at his side respecting, though he did not share, his
piety. He often wondered what his granduncle prayed for so seriously.
Perhaps he prayed for the souls in purgatory or for the grace of a
happy death or perhaps he prayed that God might send him back a part of
the big fortune he had squandered in Cork.
On Sundays Stephen with his father and his granduncle took their
constitutional. The old man was a nimble walker in spite of his corns
and often ten or twelve miles of the road were covered. The little
village of Stillorgan was the parting of the ways. Either they went to
the left towards the Dublin mountains or along the Goatstown road and
thence into Dundrum, coming home by Sandyford. Trudging along the road
or standing in some grimy wayside public house his elders spoke
constantly of the subjects nearer their hearts, of Irish politics, of
Munster and of the legends of their own family, to all of which Stephen
lent an avid ear. Words which he did not understand he said over and
over to himself till he had learnt them by heart: and through them he
had glimpses of the real world about them. The hour when he too would
take part in the life of that world seemed drawing near and in secret
he began to make ready for the great part which he felt awaited him the
nature of which he only dimly apprehended.
His evenings were his own; and he pored over a ragged translation of
_The Count of Monte Cristo_. The figure of that dark avenger stood
forth in his mind for whatever he had heard or divined in childhood of
the strange and terrible. At night he built up on the parlour table an
image of the wonderful island cave out of transfers and paper flowers
and coloured tissue paper and strips of the silver and golden paper in
which chocolate is wrapped. When he had broken up this scenery, weary
of its tinsel, there would come to his mind the bright picture of
Marseilles, of sunny trellises and of Mercedes.
Outside Blackrock, on the road that led to the mountains, stood a small
whitewashed house in the garden of which grew many rosebushes: and in
this house, he told himself, another Mercedes lived. Both on the
outward and on the homeward journey he measured distance by this
landmark: and in his imagination he lived through a long train of
adventures, marvellous as those in the book itself, towards the close
of which there appeared an image of himself, grown older and sadder,
standing in a moonlit garden with Mercedes who had so many years before
slighted his love, and with a sadly proud gesture of refusal, saying:
—Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.
He became the ally of a boy named Aubrey Mills and founded with him a
gang of adventurers in the avenue. Aubrey carried a whistle dangling
from his buttonhole and a bicycle lamp attached to his belt while the
others had short sticks thrust daggerwise through theirs. Stephen, who
had read of Napoleon’s plain style of dress, chose to remain unadorned
and thereby heightened for himself the pleasure of taking counsel with
his lieutenant before giving orders. The gang made forays into the
gardens of old maids or went down to the castle and fought a battle on
the shaggy weedgrown rocks, coming home after it weary stragglers with
the stale odours of the foreshore in their nostrils and the rank oils
of the seawrack upon their hands and in their hair.
Aubrey and Stephen had a common milkman and often they drove out in the
milkcar to Carrickmines where the cows were at grass. While the men
were milking the boys would take turns in riding the tractable mare
round the field. But when autumn came the cows were driven home from
the grass: and the first sight of the filthy cowyard at Stradbrook with
its foul green puddles and clots of liquid dung and steaming bran
troughs, sickened Stephen’s heart. The cattle which had seemed so
beautiful in the country on sunny days revolted him and he could not
even look at the milk they yielded.
The coming of September did not trouble him this year for he was not to
be sent back to Clongowes. The practice in the park came to an end when
Mike Flynn went into hospital. Aubrey was at school and had only an
hour or two free in the evening. The gang fell asunder and there were
no more nightly forays or battles on the rocks. Stephen sometimes went
round with the car which delivered the evening milk: and these chilly
drives blew away his memory of the filth of the cowyard and he felt no
repugnance at seeing the cow hairs and hayseeds on the milkman’s coat.
Whenever the car drew up before a house he waited to catch a glimpse of
a well scrubbed kitchen or of a softly lighted hall and to see how the
servant would hold the jug and how she would close the door. He thought
it should be a pleasant life enough, driving along the roads every
evening to deliver milk, if he had warm gloves and a fat bag of
gingernuts in his pocket to eat from. But the same foreknowledge which
had sickened his heart and made his legs sag suddenly as he raced round
the park, the same intuition which had made him glance with mistrust at
his trainer’s flabby stubblecovered face as it bent heavily over his
long stained fingers, dissipated any vision of the future. In a vague
way he understood that his father was in trouble and that this was the
reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes. For some
time he had felt the slight change in his house; and those changes in
what he had deemed unchangeable were so many slight shocks to his
boyish conception of the world. The ambition which he felt astir at
times in the darkness of his soul sought no outlet. A dusk like that of
the outer world obscured his mind as he heard the mare’s hoofs
clattering along the tramtrack on the Rock Road and the great can
swaying and rattling behind him.
He returned to Mercedes and, as he brooded upon her image, a strange
unrest crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and
led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace
of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender
influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play
annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than
he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not
want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial
image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to
seek it or how but a premonition which led him on told him that this
image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would
meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst,
perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be
alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of
supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into
something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment, he would be
transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from
him in that magic moment.
Two great yellow caravans had halted one morning before the door and
men had come tramping into the house to dismantle it. The furniture had
been hustled out through the front garden which was strewn with wisps
of straw and rope ends and into the huge vans at the gate. When all had
been safely stowed the vans had set off noisily down the avenue: and
from the window of the railway carriage, in which he had sat with his
redeyed mother, Stephen had seen them lumbering along the Merrion Road.
The parlour fire would not draw that evening and Mr Dedalus rested the
poker against the bars of the grate to attract the flame. Uncle Charles
dozed in a corner of the half furnished uncarpeted room and near him
the family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp on the table
shed a weak light over the boarded floor, muddied by the feet of the