Ulysses
midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some
Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten
their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he
proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews
or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly
powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as
gods. There’s an example again of simple souls.
However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied the
boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the
management in the _Flying Dutchman_, a stupendous success, and his host
of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him
though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually
fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically
incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the
back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he
was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the
fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in
little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking
fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless
necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to
have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ off him or
her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
—Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own
hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they
carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally.
My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could
actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in
(technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite
dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate
accounts for character. That’s why I asked you if you wrote your poetry
in Italian.
—The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very
passionate about ten shillings. _Roberto ruba roba sua_.
—Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
—Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown
listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles
triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san
Tommaso Mastino.
—It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the
blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare
street museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it,
and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid
proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against those kind
of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a
way you find but what I’m talking about is the female form. Besides
they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly
enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled
stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it’s a
thing I simply hate to see.
Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course
had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and
weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all
those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him
or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt’s rock, wreck
of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for
the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry
Campbell remembered it _Palme_ on Booterstown strand. That was the talk
of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of
original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish
_Times_), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore
in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about
the case of the s. s. _Lady Cairns_ of Swansea run into by the _Mona_
which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with
all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the _Mona_’s, said he
was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it
appears, in her hold.
At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him
to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.
—Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just
gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.
He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door,
stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore
due left. 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. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had
a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manœuvre after the
counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared
to all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when
duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and
girders of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was
all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some
person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by
the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a
brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor,
evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the
noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the
ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped
anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly
disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of
the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking
up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now
practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin
in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before
shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again
in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its
most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and
familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a
cool £ 100 a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass
proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the
end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink
without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed
only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of
business if—a big if, however—he had contrived to cure himself of his
particular partiality.
All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the
same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra
basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there
only no ships ever called.
There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently _au
fait_.
What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr
Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he
advised them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that
day’s work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line.
—Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his
private potation and the rest of his exertions.
That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words
growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or
other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom’s sharp ears heard him then
expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have
lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and
making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in
question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful
libation-_cum_-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the
_soirée_, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:
—The biscuits was as hard as brass
And the beef as salt as Lot’s wife’s arse.
O, Johnny Lever!
Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to
grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent
the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he
described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none
on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal
in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every
year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained
out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through
the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot
more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly
became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any
mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel
Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find
anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated
_crescendo_ with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the
conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of
pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest
fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their
little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.
Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be
Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the
vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at
once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the
tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay
in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland.
Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.
Silence all round marked the termination of his _finale_. The
impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.
—Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a
bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper
concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.
—Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals
and generals we’ve got? Tell me that.
—The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial
blemishes apart.
—That’s right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic
peasant. He’s the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added
he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no