Ulysses contains several references to "the Ship," a
public house on Lower Abbey
Street, which runs east from O’Connell Street (Sackville
Street in 1904), only two blocks north of the Liffey in the
heart of downtown. Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan make
plans to meet there for drinks, but Stephen skips the
appointment and instead sends Buck a taunting telegram at the
Ship. Much later in the book, Stephen and Bloom discuss the
possibility of meeting at the tavern for continued
conversation.
In Dublin in Bloomtime: The City James Joyce Knew (Viking,
1969), Cyril Pearl notes that this large pub, "destroyed
during the Troubles, had a long musical tradition" of hosting
live performances, and was also "very popular with writers and
journalists" (29). Mulligan evidently spends a lot of time
there. In Telemachus he mentions talking about
Stephen with a "fellow I was with in the Ship last
night." Later in that chapter he reminds Stephen of
their plan to meet for drinks at the Ship at "Half
twelve" (12:30), after Stephen's morning duties as
a teacher are completed, and in Scylla and Charybdis
he complains that Stephen did not show, leaving him and Haines
"one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's
sitting civil waiting for pints apiece." W. and E.
Connery were listed in the 1904 Thom's as the pub's
proprietors. (The poster displayed here shows a different
proprietor, J. Davin.)
The book never directly represents Stephen's decision to
avoid meeting Mulligan at the Ship. In Proteus he
appears to think of it as an obligation, like his promise to Deasy: "I
mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The
Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a
good young imbecile." Does Stephen think, from an
unaccustomed access of prudence, to dodge the predatory plan
that Mulligan has expressed in Telemachus to "have a
glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids" at the expense
of Stephen's "Four omnipotent sovereigns"? It's tempting to
suppose so, but at about the same time that he had agreed to
meet Mulligan for drinks, Stephen treats the hangers-on in the
newspaper office to drinks. Financial prudence seems less
important to him than an aversion to Mulligan himself.
§
Whatever reasons Stephen may have for dodging the meeting, the
book supplies one of its own, via the network of parallels
with Homer's Odyssey built up in the first chapter.
At the end of Book 2 of the Odyssey, Telemachus
ships out of Ithaca, to inquire about his father on the
mainland. On his return at the end of Book 4, Antinous and
nineteen other suitors lie in ambush for him behind an island
that he must pass. Athena helps him to escape the deadly trap.
Stephen similarly evades his antagonist. Instead of meeting
Mulligan at the pub he sends him a taunting telegram from only
a short distance away. We learn of this development in Scylla
and Charybdis, when Mulligan finds Stephen in the
library and Stephen thinks (in Shakespearean idiom), "Hast
thou found me, O mine enemy?" Shortly later in the
episode, Mulligan regales him with the experience of receiving
the telegram: "Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey
street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!"
In Ithaca, the narrator enumerates a series of
"counterproposals" to Bloom's proposal (declined by Stephen)
to have Stephen stay the night at 7 Eccles Street. One of
these is the idea that they will meet at "the Ship
hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and E. Connery,
proprietors)." Pretty clearly, this suggestion must
have come from Stephen and it indicates a desire to have Bloom
replace Mulligan as a guide and advice-giver. The reference to
the Ship in Ithaca, then, confirms Bloom's role as
Odysseus, the counterpart to Mulligan's Antinous.
