When Bloom stands on the doorstep of his house in Calypso,
feeling in his hip pocket and carefully leaving the door
ajar because he has forgotten the latch key "In the trousers I
left off" from the previous day and does not want to disturb
his wife by opening the "Creaky wardrobe," neither he
(realistically) nor the narrator (artfully) thinks to mention
where in Dublin he is. Later in the chapter, when he returns
from the butcher shop, the narrative notes that "he turned
into Eccles street, hurrying homeward." But the precise
address of the Blooms' house, 7 Eccles (pronounced ECK-əls, or
alternatively ECK-ləs), is not identified until many chapters
later.
Gifford notes that "Eccles Street in 1904 was regarded as a
sedate and respectable neighborhood, solidly middle class and
not at all shabby as what is left of it today is" (70). It
lies in the north part of inner Dublin, near the North
Circular Road. Joyce became aware of the row of townhouses on
its eastern end when he visited his friend J. F. Byrne in
Dublin in 1909. Byrne lived at 7 Eccles Street. In 1904 the
house was unoccupied, allowing Joyce's fictional protagonist
to move in.
In Wandering Rocks an unnamed woman, having opened
a window sash to fling a coin to a beggar and inadvertently
dislodged a card that was displayed on the sash, puts the card
back in its place: "A card Unfurnished Apartments
reappeared on the windowsash of number 7 Eccles street."
7 Eccles was one of a row of three-story brick houses on the
north side of the street. This passage supplies an address but
not the names of the people who live there. Only later still
will it become clear that the unnamed woman was Mrs. Bloom.
Once again, the unschooled reader is given some information,
but not enough.
Ithaca, which is so scrupulous about providing
identifying information and tying up loose ends, affirms three
times that Mr. Leopold Bloom resides at the address mentioned
in Wandering Rocks. It is first described
mathematically, in the manner of a man counting the doorways
on his side of the block: "At the housesteps of the
4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles
street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back
pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey."
(The key is still not there.)
The address is also mentioned by comparison to a grander
abode: "Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom
of Flowerville?" And it is mentioned by comparison
to having no abode at all: "5 pounds reward, lost,
stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street,
missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom,
Leopold (Poldy), height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive
complexion, may have since grown a beard."
The house at 7 Eccles Street, alas for Joyce pilgrims around
the world, was demolished in 1967. But John Ryan, the Dublin
artist and man of letters who organized the first Bloomsday in
1954, rescued the front door and its surrounding masonry and
installed it in The Bailey pub which he had purchased in 1957
and made a hangout for writers. In 1995 the doorway was moved
to the James Joyce Centre, a museum in an elegant Georgian
house at 35 North Great George's Street.
Very recently the door was reunited with its knocker, which a
New Yorker named Fredric Seiden, visiting Dublin and making a
pilgrimage to 7 Eccles, removed when he realized that the
house was soon to be torn down. The James Joyce Centre flew
Seiden from New York to Dublin in June 2013 to return the loud
proud knocker to its place of honor.
