Ulysses
divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains.
Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly
turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and
the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in
the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne,
then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high
personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state,
he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before
under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good
Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the
reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women
chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being
largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like
distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of
a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned
his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the
cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a
continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the
other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest
rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius,
that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could
not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad
having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the
acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food
for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation,
as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the
mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance,
row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers,
the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of
the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth,
viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the
microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he
might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy
if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the
common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea
per column. _My Experiences_, let us say, _in a Cabman’s Shelter_.
The pink edition extra sporting of the _Telegraph_ tell a graphic lie
lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just
puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and
the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard
was addressed A. Boudin find the captain’s age, his eyes went aimlessly
over the respective captions which came under his special province the
allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a
start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du
Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle,
Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, £ 200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration
Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William ✠. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.
Victory of outsider _Throwaway_ recalls Derby of ’92 when Capt.
Marshall’s dark horse _Sir Hugo_ captured the blue ribband at long
odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral
of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address
anyway.
—_This morning_ (Hynes put it in of course) _the remains of the late Mr
Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,
Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a
most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise after a
brief illness came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom
he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the
deceased were present, were carried out_ (certainly Hynes wrote it with
a nudge from Corny) _by Messrs H. J. O’Neill and Son, 164 North Strand
Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan
(brother-in-law), Jno. Henry Menton, solr, Martin Cunningham, John
Power, eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora_ (must be where he called
Monks the dayfather about Keyes’s ad) _Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,
Stephen Dedalus B. A., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, Joseph
M’C Hynes, L. Boom, C P M’Coy,—M’Intosh and several others_.
Nettled not a little by L. _Boom_ (as it incorrectly stated) and the
line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M’Coy
and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by
their total absence (to say nothing of M’Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out
to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half
nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of
misprints.
—Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom
jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
—It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there
could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and
a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford’s after all managing to. There.
While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the
nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits
and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three,
his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire
colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander’s _Throwaway_, b. h. by
_Rightaway-Thrale_, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de
Walden’s _Zinfandel_ (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass’s _Sceptre_ 3. Betting 5
to 4 on _Zinfandel_, 20 to 1 _Throwaway_ (off). _Sceptre_ a shade
heavier. It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the fore,
got long lead, beating Lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W.
Bass’s bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by
Braime so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe.
Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs with 3000 in
specie. Also ran: J de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam Lyons was
anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) _Maximum
II_. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though
that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing
though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn’t much reason to
congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it
reduced itself to eventually.
—There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said.
—Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:
_Return of Parnell_. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was
in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it
was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for
a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with
no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone
down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his
senses. Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they
brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the
Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and
so on.
All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and
not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it
was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow
of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in
his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just
when his various different political arrangements were nearing
completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having
neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold
resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his
room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a
fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find
the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted
with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his
whereabouts which were decidedly of the _Alice, where art thou_ order
even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and
Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within
the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on his mind as
a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure,
a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged
feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren’t even a patch on
the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were
very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with
feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on
him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You
had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the
understudy in the title _rôle_ how to. He saw him once on the
auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the _Insuppressible_
or was it _United Ireland_, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in
point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he
said _Thank you_, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid
exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the
cup and the lip: what’s bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You
were a lucky dog if they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got
back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and
Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in
possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the
Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, _Bella_ was the boat’s name to
the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence
went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew
was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some
pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description
given, introduce himself with: _Excuse me, my name is So and So_ or
some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to
the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under
discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land
first.
—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the _soi-disant_ townclerk Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man’s thighs.
I seen her picture in a barber’s. The husband was a captain or an
officer.
—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his _entourage_. As regards Bloom he, without