Ulysses
sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again
effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic
sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right
foot on the margin of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently
lacerated the protruding part of the great toenail, raised the part
lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the quick, then,
with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated ungual fragment.
Why with satisfaction?
Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other
ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs
Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief
genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.
In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions
now coalesced?
Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English,
or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of
acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation £ 42), of
grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage
drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa,
described as _Rus in Urbe_ or _Qui si sana_, but to purchase by private
treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse
of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor,
connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy
or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish
and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and
gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable
prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and
unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6 acres of its
own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as
to render its houselights visible at night above and through a quickset
hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less
than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time
limit of not more than 15 minutes from tram or train line (e.g.,
Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by
trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates
for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under feefarm grant,
lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with
baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms,
2 servants’ rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge
hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase
containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New Century Dictionary,
transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons, dinner gong,
alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone receiver
with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground
and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with
massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed
timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart,
comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby
plush with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen
and cuspidors (club style, rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable
with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and
pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with
fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/-
per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown
frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles,
of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and
handrail, with steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax:
bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on
mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat,
bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests, footstool and artistic
oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servants’ apartments
with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and
betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of £ 2,
with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual bonus (£ 1) and retiring
allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years’ service), pantry,
buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with
winebin (still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if
entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply
throughout.
What additional attractions might the grounds contain?
As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse
with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery
with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval
flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of
scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet
William, sweet pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James
W. Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants and
nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper),
an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery, protected against illegal
trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock
for various inventoried implements.
As?
Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone,
clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth
rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot,
brush, hoe and so on.
What improvements might be subsequently introduced?
A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2
hammocks (lady’s and gentleman’s), a sundial shaded and sheltered by
laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese
tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious
waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler
with hydraulic hose.
What facilities of transit were desirable?
When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their
respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound
velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar
attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart
phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).
What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?
Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold’s. Flowerville.
Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?
In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful
garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned
young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling
a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the
scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom,
achieving longevity.
What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?
Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative
to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the
celestial constellations.
What lighter recreations?
Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways,
ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and
unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge
anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation),
vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with
inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers’
fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor:
discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal
problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house
carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl, nails, screws, tintacks,
gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew.
Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live stock?
Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and
requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip
pulper etc.
What would be his civic functions and social status among the county
families and landed gentry?
Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that
of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his
career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest
and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto _(Semper paratus_),
duly recorded in the court directory (Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C.,
K. P., L. L. D. (_honoris causa_), Bloomville, Dundrum) and mentioned
in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom have
left Kingstown for England).
What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?
A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the
dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes,
incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social
inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered
with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but exactable to the
uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to
the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated
by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance
of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all
simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a
preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution),
the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law
merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in
contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass
and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by
desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all
perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of
domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic
connubiality.
Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.
To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his
disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his
father Rudolf Virag (later Rudolph Bloom) had been converted from the
Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promoting
Christianity among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of
Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in
1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a juvenile
friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he
had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of
colonial (e.g. Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of
Charles Darwin, expounded in _The Descent of Man_ and _The Origin of
Species_. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence to the
collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan
Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X. O’Brien and others,
the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of
Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of peace,
retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for
Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political convictions, had
climbed up into a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on
Northumberland road to see the entrance (2 February 1888) into the
capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of 20,000
torchbearers, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches
in escort of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) John Morley.
How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?