"Dorset street" is a major thoroughfare in the north part of
inner Dublin, running from southwest to northeast. Eccles Street, where the
Blooms live, is a short street just inside the North Circular
Road whose eastern end marks the junction of Upper and Lower
Dorset Streets. The pub owned by "Larry O'Rourke" sits on the
corner of Dorset and Eccles, while "Dlugacz's" shop is on Upper
Dorset Street, farther south toward the river. Bloom's
food-finding jaunt on Dorset Street in Calypso
reappears as a food fight in Circe, and in Sirens
the approach of Boylan's carriage to Eccles Street is signaled
by the phrase, "Jingle into Dorset Street."
When Bloom leaves his house in Calypso to buy
breakfast, he crosses "to the bright side," i.e. the south
side of Eccles being lit by the early morning sun, and then
walks southeast a short distance to Dorset. We hear that "He
approached Larry O'Rourke's" on the corner, gazing into the
windows and imagining seeing the pub owner's "Baldhead over
the blind. . . . There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry,
leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the
aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket." Bloom
decides to say good morning and, "Turning into Dorset street
he said freshly in greeting through the doorway" (visible in
the first photograph), "Good day, Mr O'Rourke."
After an exchange of pleasantries, Bloom reflects on the pub
business for two paragraphs. During the meditation we learn
that he has "passed Saint Joseph's National school," on
Dorset Street Upper, meaning that he has turned right at the
corner. The school was on the west side of Dorset, so Bloom
has remained in the sunlight. Then we we find him standing in
front of the butcher's shop: "He halted before Dlugacz's
window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and
white." This establishment too appears to be on Dorset Street,
though Gifford notes that "The only pork butcher in Dorset
Street Upper, where Bloom goes to buy his kidney, was Michael
Brunton at 55A." (Joyce gave the shop to a fictional owner
based on Moses Dlugacz, whom
he knew in Trieste.) After going in and buying the kidney, the
narrative says that "He walked back along Dorset street,
reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planters' company."
As he nears Eccles Street on his return trip, "A bent hag crossed
from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck."
Cassidy's was on the east side of Dorset Street, directly
across from O'Rourke's. Other than a small distance getting
from his house to Dorset Street, then, Bloom's entire journey
in Calypso takes place on this thoroughfare. Since
it is his go-to place for buying food, the fantasy in Circe
makes sense: "Several shopkeepers from upper and
lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no
commercial value" at Bloom: "hambones,
condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread,
sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat."
