"Mullingar" is the chief town in "county Westmeath," west of
Dublin in the Irish Midlands. Milly Bloom, the daughter of
Leopold and Molly, has recently taken a job in a photographer's
shop in Mullingar. In Calypso, she writes
her father to say that she has met "a young student" there
named Bannon.
In this chapter, and at several later points in the novel,
Bloom thinks of making a trip to Mullingar to visit his
daughter, no doubt spurred in part by paternal worries about
her sexual maturation. Two kinds of Irish transportation
corridors figure in his plans: railways and canals.
Having contemplated Milly's sexual maturation in conjunction
with Molly's sexual infidelity, Bloom thinks a little later in
Calypso of paying her a visit: "Better where she is
down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the time. Might
take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only
two and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might
work a press pass. Or through M'Coy."
The 2s. 6p. return-trip fare that Bloom wonders if he could
avoid paying is for a train. "Grace," a story in Dubliners,
observes that M'Coy once
worked as "a clerk in the Midland Railway."
The Midland Great Western Railway company operated a line from
Dublin to Mullingar, and thence on to Athlone and Galway. In Lotus
Eaters, having agreed to do a favor for M'Coy, Bloom
parts from him and later thinks, "Damn it. I might have tried
to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar." In Eumaeus,
he is still thinking about "the fare to Mullingar,"
which has strangely grown to "five and six, there and back."
In Hades, on the other hand, he sees a bargeman
who has floated into Dublin down the Royal Canal, and thinks
of other ways of traveling west: "Athlone, Mullingar,
Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly
by the canal. Or cycle down. . . . Perhaps I will without
writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla." He soon has
second thoughts that betray the purpose of his contemplated
visit: "She mightn't like me to come that way without letting
her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with
their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen." Gifford
notes that the Royal Canal passes through Athlone (78 miles
west of Dublin), and then, to the east, through Mullingar (50
miles), Moyvalley (30), and Clonsilla (11). Leixlip is on the
Liffey, not the canal.
ยง Joyce
spent time in Mullingar with his father and some of his
siblings in the summer of 1900. As Ellmann observes (77), it
was his first experience of Ireland outside of Dublin and
Cork. He tried writing about Mullingar in Stephen Hero but omitted
these scenes in A Portrait of the Artist. "Some of
the places he noticed, however, such as Phil Shaw's
photographic shop, stayed with him, and he put Milly Bloom to
work there in Ulysses" (78).
