"The Evening Telegraph," a Dublin daily, was from 1871 to 1924 one of the most-read newspapers in Dublin and in Ireland generally, along with the Freeman's Journal and the Irish Times. It was printed on pink paper (to distinguish it from the ocher color of the Dublin Evening Mail), on four pages of nine columns each. The Telegraph and the Freeman were published from offices in the same building on Prince's Street North, and they professed similar nationalist politics. These two dailies receive far more mentions in Ulysses than any other newspapers.

In response to Mr. Deasy's request that Stephen place his editorial letter in two newspapers, Stephen thinks of two where he knows editors: "Telegraph. Irish Homestead." Asked to name them, he gets out one ("The Evening Telegraph...") before Deasy rudely cuts him off. Most of Aeolus takes place in the offices of the Telegraph, where Stephen's errand from the headmaster brings him in search of the editor, Myles Crawford. Bloom comes there a bit later in search of the same man. Having started out in the offices of the Freeman's Journal, where he discusses the design of an ad with the newspaper's foreman, he walks next door to talk to Crawford about placing "a little puff" for the advertiser's business in the Telegraph.

In Proteus Stephen realizes that he lacks paper to record his thoughts for a poem and turns to one of Deasy's two letters: "Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter." In the newspaper office in Aeolus, he begins his overture to Myles Crawford by thinking of how he has mutilated the letter he is about to hand over: "Bit torn off." He says, "Mr Garrett Deasy," and the mere mention of the name sends the editor off into a tirade of abuse. "Good day, sir, Stephen answered, blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to..." We never learn if he gets farther into his appeal than this, but some time later it does seem that Crawford has heard him and will consider printing the letter: "Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket. / — That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right."

Two later chapters make clear that Crawford did indeed include the letter in Thursday evening's edition of the Telegraph. In Oxen of the Sun Lenehan comes "to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search." In Eumaeus Bloom finds a copy lying about in the cabman's shelter, and thinks of a disrespectful Dublin pun: "The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a graphic lie lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow." He opens the paper, glances at various articles, hands part of the paper to Stephen, and reads part himself. Among the items recorded in his thoughts is "Foot and mouth." Recorded, also, is the fact that the funeral for Patrick Dignam was attended by "Stephen Dedalus, B. A."—a non-fact that amuses Bloom greatly.

Of greater significance in the evening's Telegraph, however, is the announcement of the results of the Gold Cup race of June 16. In Nausicaa, Bloom hears "a shrill voice" hawking papers by promising news of the race results: "Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup race!" In the cabman's shelter in Eumaeus he reads an account of the race on page 3. The story can be seen in the image at right, page 3, column 8, under "SPORTING." In Ithaca Bloom thinks again about the race, "the official and definitive result of which he had read in the Evening Telegraph, late pink edition, in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge."

Other things catch Bloom's attention when he looks at the paper in Eumaeus, most of which actually appeared in the Telegraph on this date. The "Gordon Bennett" race is discussed at length on page 2. The "New York disaster, thousand lives lost" appears on page 2 and page 4. "Great battle Tokio" occupies the last column of page 2 and the beginning of page 3. "Emigration Swindle" from police court is reported on page 3. "Lovemaking in Irish, £ 200 damages," a breach of promise case, is covered on page 3. On some subjects, however, Joyce added features of his own invention. No letter about foot and mouth disease appears in the actual paper. Nor does the funeral of the late Patrick Dignam.

The Telegraph makes one fantastic appearance in Circe, when the newspaper-seller Davy Stephens passes by "with a bevy of barefoot newsboys" like the ones that mocked Bloom in Aeolus. Stephens is hawking the "Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin."

Read More

John Hunt 2015