As Stephen contemplates the gypsy
couple on the sands in Proteus, he imagines the
woman offering herself to men in the street while her pimp
works two others in a bar: "Her fancyman is treating two Royal
Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts." He is recalling a time
that he spent walking through this bleak part of town in the Liberties: "Fumbally's
lane that night: the tanyard smells." In Aeolus he
makes this neighborhood the fictional residence, not of the
gypsy couple, but of the two
aging women that he spotted earlier on the beach, who
now star in his Parable of the Plums.
Blackpitts is a short street just west of Clanbrassil Street
on the south side of Dublin. Fumbally Lane runs east for a
couple of blocks from the north end of Blackpitts, whose name
is variously said to derive from burial pits used during
plague years (the "Black Death"), or from black vats used by
tanners starting in the 18th century. In 1904 this
working-class neighborhood was the site not only of tanneries,
but also of piggeries (pig pens) and illegal cockfighting
venues. Gifford identifies one particular tannery as the
source of "the tanyard smells" that Stephen
remembers: "Kelly, Dunne & Co., tanners, fellmongers, and
woolmerchants, 26-27 New Row South, just around the corner
from Fumbally's Lane." He speculates that "O'Loughlin's"
is a "shebeen" or unlicensed pub.
When Stephen locates his two fictional vestals in this area,
saying that they "have lived fifty and fiftythree
years in Fumbally's lane," Professor MacHugh asks,
"Where is that?" Stephen replies, "Off Blackpitts."
The thoughts of squalid sexuality that he entertained about
the gypsies continue to play in his mind as he composes this
scene: "Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall.
Face glistening tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic
hearts. Akasic records.
Quicker, darlint!" The conjunction of the two pairs of walkers
in the artist's mind may have something to do with the genesis
of his heavily sexualized story, in which two aged virgins
spit seeds off the top of a phallic tower.
ยง Stephen
may know this area because Richie
and Sara Goulding lived nearby, before moving to their
present house in Strasburg Terrace, Irishtown. Gabler's 1984
edition of the novel includes, in Ithaca, a
recollection of visiting his beloved "aunt Sara, wife of
Richie (Richard) Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at
62 Clanbrassil street."
