Ulysses Meandering - Part 3

Plaque #6 - “He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and Son, pricing the field glasses.”

As I walked down College Green, towards Nassau street, I got a chance to take in some of Trinity College. When Bloom was walking by the school, Joyce started taking shots at his alma mater's rival. However, the best quote about any college (although he is still referring to Trinity) comes from his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city’s ignorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring".

I crossed Nassau St. and found the next plaque. The changing city swept away the optometrist many years ago and left the ICS Building Society in its wake. They’re a mortgage company that works with the Bank of Ireland. The field glasses have been replaced with pictures of homes for sale. Alas, there was nothing in my price range.

Plaque #7 - “Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking, passed Adam court.”

I continued down Grafton for just a short distance before finding another plaque. Adam court is now the back of Judge Roy Bean's Bar, but soon after Ulysses was published it was known as Jammet's Restaurant. Yvonne Jammet was a Paris born sculptor and painter who bought the place in 1928. It was a popular meeting place for writers and artists for 40 years, right up to the point it went out of business. Apparently encouraging young and experimental artists doesn’t pay the bills.

Plaque #8 - “He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.”

Eventually, I reached the point where Grafton St. becomes a pedestrian walkway for high-end stores and boutiques. Back in 1904 the street was made of hexagonal wooden blocks so they could access pipes under the stores. This created the "hoofthuds" of the horses as they passed by Bloom. Today it is paved with bricks, and there are far too many people taking after Bloom and "dallying" in front of windows for a horse to get by. My favorite part of this neighborhood was the myriad of street performers vying for the attention of passersby. As far as Brown Thomas is concerned, it was moved across the street in the 1990s. I also moved, moved right down to Duke Street where I turned left in search of my next stop.

Plaque #9 - “His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant.”

Heading off in this new direction I passed Bailey Restaurant on my left. This was a favorite spot for Parnell to hang out and talk politics. Later, in Joyce's day, Arthur Griffith and his followers (including Gogarty) hung out to bemoan the British. It also housed the door of 7 Eccles Street (the real house Bloom fictionally lived in) after the house was demolished, before it was moved to the James Joyce Center. I couldn't help but think about how similar this was to the 'Sons of Liberty' when they used to hangout at the Green Dragon in Boston and plot to overthrow the British.

Just past Duke Lane (I was still on Duke Street remember...it got a little confusing at times), on the right side of the street was the next plaque. Not only was the building behind the plaque not the Burton restaurant, it wasn't a dinning establishment at all. It looked more like an apartment building. After reading the next line in the book it was easy to see why Bloom didn't stick around, "Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuce, slush of greens. See the animals feed." Since I had no reason to stick around, I followed Blooms lead and headed back towards Grafton Street.

Ulysses Meandering - Part 2

Plaque #3 - “Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballast office.”

Once I finished crossing the bridge, and fighting my way through the crowds on Aston Quay, I found the next plaque near the Ballast House. While I'm not quite sure what exactly Bloom was smiling at with an 'O rocks' smile, I am sure it had more to do with remembering a conversation that he had with his wife earlier that day than with the ballast office. His eyes were drawn to the building because of the big copper sphere on a pole sitting on the roof. This was known as the timeball.

Unfortunately, there is no more timeball (in fact the building isn't even in same location it was in 1904) but then again, the reason for it no longer exists. Back in 1904 (and for a long wile before that) the "local mean time" was the official time across the British Isles despite Greenwich Mean Time having being adopted by the railroad companies as far back as 1847. As a result everyone needed to establish for themselves what time it was (time to get ill perhaps?). Dublin used the Dunsink observatory just outside of town to determine that they were 6 six degrees fifteen minutes west of London, which corresponds to 25 minutes behind GMT. So, the timeball would fall everyday at 1pm GMT, making it 12:35 Dublin Mean Time or "Dunsink time". This was the official Irish time until they adopted GMT in 1916.

Plaque #4 - “Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from Harrison's."

I proceeded south down Westmoreland St. until I reached a Chinese restaurant that use to be Harrison's Restaurant, and the next plaque. Bloom was temped to eat here because it was so inexpensive, but decided against it because it was just too sketchy ("Knife and fork chained to the table."). Not being much of a Chinese food fan, I didn't find much of interest in the area. However, at this point in the book Mrs. Josie Breen is introduced along with the infamous postcard reading "u.p.: up".

Joyce came out and said that he put so many riddles in Ulysses, it would keep the professors busy for three centuries. Most scholars think that "u.p.: up" is one of these riddles, since no one has any idea what it means. I've seen theories that range from it having something to do with a urinary tract infection to a threat on her husband, Denis', life. Denis, it turns out, is crazy and when they run into Bloom they are on their way to sue the unknown author of the card for libel. Some of the other riddles include: the identity of the Man in the Macintosh, what was Bloom going to write in the sand at the end of chapter 13 ("I AM A..."), and when is Bloom's birthday? Stuff like this is why more has been written about James Joyce than about Shakespeare.

Plaque #5 - “He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters.”

Continuing down the road I passed Fleet Street and came upon the Bank of Ireland. I didn't find a plaque here, but I bet if there is another it would have been in front of this building. It wasn't always a bank, this use to be the Irish Parliament House. In 1801 the Irish Parliament earned the dubious honor of being the only Parliament to ever vote themselves out of existence. If there is a plaque I bet the quote is, "Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black." Since sequence takes place in Blooms head and he is the only one in black; he is literally choosing to defecate on himself. A commentary on how Joyce feels about the Parliaments decision?

Another block down the road, at the intersection with College Green, I found the plaque at the base of a statue of Thomas Moore. Even though 'Tommy' died in 1852 he is still considered Ireland's national poet. For reasons I can't figure out, they put the statue over Dublin's largest public urinal, giving the title of one of his poems (The Meeting of the Waters) a rather comical twist. Sadly, the urinal no longer exists.

Ulysses Meandering - Part 1

In commemoration of my finishing James Joyce's magnum opus Ulysses, I would like to take a look back at my time in Dublin and recount my experience following in the steps of the novel's protagonist as he looked for lunch in chapter 8 (a.k.a. Laestrygonians). I chose this chapter because the route Leopold Bloom took is described in such detail that in 1988 a series of brass plaques (one reference said there was 14, but after more than two hours of searching I only found 13) were put onto the sidewalk, marked with an appropriate quote from the chapter based on its location. The plaques were fittingly provided by the Cantrell and Cochrane group. It's fitting since their ginger ale from 84 years earlier was mentioned twice in chapter 5 (Lotus-Eaters).

Plaque #1 - “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch…among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon's.”

I began my journey the same way Bloom did, by gazing through a shop window on O'Connell St. between Abbey St. and the River Liffey. Back on June 16th, 1904 (when the story takes place), the shop was known as Graham Lemon's sweetshop. Today (at least when I was there), it's a Foot Locker. As a result, the images in the window did not have quite the same affect on my appetite as they did for Bloom. I looked up above the neon ‘Foot Locker’ sign and was a little surprised to see that most of the wooden letters that make up the title ‘The Confectioner's Hall’ were still attached to the store front.

I wasn't surprised because the sign was there, providing proof that it was a real candyshop back in the day and not just a fictitious creation. Joyce wrote Ulysses with a copy of Thom's Dublin Directory by his side. As he once said, "I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." Not only were the places Bloom went real, but most of the characters that he interacted with were based on contemporaries of Joyce.

I was surprised by the sign because it was still there after more than a century. As I looked to my right, up O'Connell St., I could make out the giant pillars in front of the General Post Office which are still pockmarked with bullet holes from the 1916 Easter Rising. The street was once again engulfed by violence during the Irish Civil War in 1922. Right across from the GPO I could see the Spire of Dublin which stands in the same spot that the 'Nelson Pillar' did until the IRA blew it up in 1966. The fact that this section of the road was able to survive this long, and remain relatively unscathed by the destruction and carnage that took place just a couple blocks away, left me a little stunned.

Plaque #2 - “As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the parapet.”

Turning away from the more gruesome reminders of Irelands long fight for independence, I started walking towards the river. Before crossing Bachelors Walk, I looked both ways (like a good boy) and as I looked to my left saw the large and imposing statue of Daniel O'Connell. This reminded me of one of the more snicker-worthy legacies of the 1916 rising. Dan is surrounded by four winged Nikes, one of whom has a hole in her right breast thanks to a stray bullet.

Crossing the street and reaching the foot of the bridge I spotted the next plaque. In this part of the book Bloom is watching a barge leave for England loaded with beer fresh from the Guinness St. James Gate brewery which is located just a mile or so west of the Bridge. The 'puffball' came from the hinged funnels on this barge. These funnels would be let down so the boats could slip under the bridge, and when this happed a wisp of smoke would be released.

There haven’t been any brewery barges on the Liffey since 1961 so I was forced to content my self with watching the sightseeing cruses pass underneath me. Apparently there are still some romantic recollections of these barges. I imagine it's similar to the way some people reminisce about the days of steam powered locomotives. At any rate, there is a display at the St. James Gate Brewery Storehouse which depicts several of these barges with handmade wooden models. Personally, I was much more interested in the Coopering exhibit and the free Guinness in the Gravity Bar (probably the best pint of Guinness in the world).