In 1904 they thronged the streets of Dublin, where they were
licensed and numbered. Along with the fairly new urban tram system, and
walking, they offered one of three major ways of getting
around town, as represented by Tom Kernan's thoughts in Wandering
Rocks, "undecided whether he should arrive at
Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by
hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield, Constitution
hill and Broadstone terminus."
Jaunting cars carried as many as four passengers, facing
outward in two seats set high above the wheels. A metal step
afforded access to the high seats. Between the seats lay a
shallow well, running from front to back, which could hold
parcels and luggage. Passengers sat with their backs against
the walls of the well, resting their feet on footboards which
could be folded up when not in use to shield the seats from
bad weather. Nothing but blankets protected the passengers
from bad weather, and fast driving around corners threatened
to toss them from their precarious perches. Metal handholds at
the four corners of the seats guarded against such accidents.
In Lotus Eaters Bloom tries to take advantage of
the high step up to the seat of the jaunting car to catch a
glimpse of an elegant woman's undergarments. A couple is
leaving the Grosvenor Hotel across the street, probably (he
thinks) "Off to the country." The man takes his time, fiddling
in his pockets for the right change: "Mr Bloom gazed across
the road at the outsider drawn up before the
door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise
up on the well. She stood still, waiting, while
the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for
change." "Which side will she get up?"
wonders Bloom.
Working his way to "the side of M'Coy's talking head" to get
a clear line of sight, Bloom thinks that surely the woman will
be "Getting up in a minute." Catlike, he
waits intently for his moment: "Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich
stockings white. Watch!" But "A heavy tramcar," the second
most commonly mentioned kind of "car" in Ulysses,
invades his field of vision, interrupting his vision of
paradise. This episode recurs in Circe, when The
Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys accuses Bloom of having "observed
me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double
envelopes an obscene photograph."
The sexual possibilities of the jaunting car surface also in
Wandering Rocks, when Lenehan tells M'Coy about a
trip back from Glencree to Dublin late at night, over the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom
and Chris Callinan took one side of the cart, and Lenehan and
Molly the other. Lenehan relished at the time, and still
relishes in the retelling, the way the bouncy car put him in
contact with Molly's breasts: "Every jolt the bloody
car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's
delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her."
A jaunting car figures prominently again in Sirens,
when one carries Blazes Boylan first to his appointment with
Lenehan at the Ormond hotel, and then to his appointment with
Molly in Eccles Street.
Bloom spots the car moving toward the Ormond: "He eyed
and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting
car. It is. Third time. Coincidence. / Jingling
on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to
Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four." The "jingle"
sound comes from harness bells that were mandated as a safety
measure after Dublin's jaunting cars were fitted with rubber
tires. Throughout Sirens Boylan's progress is marked by this sound. The
overture sounds the motif "Jingle jingle jaunted
jingling," and the text works numerous variations
on the theme: "Jingle jaunty jingle"; "Jingle jaunted by the
curb and stopped"; "Jingle a tinkle jaunted. Bloom heard a
jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom
sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone.
Jingle"; "Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on
bounding tyres."
Bloom follows the car from the Essex Bridge to the Ormond
Hotel, and after Boylan descends from his car and enters the
bar to Lenehan's greeting, he walks gingerly past the cab: "Between
the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered
hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm."
He thinks that Boylan has kept the "Car waiting."
Sure enough, Boylan leaves before long, and the narrative
follows his journey to 7 Eccles in car no. 324: "A
hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver
Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a
fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue
serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of
number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy,
bought of John Plasto of
number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is
the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop
bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare." In
one of the hallucinations of Circe, Lenehan joins
Boylan on the car: "A hackneycar, number three
hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare,
driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl
swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind
on the axle."
In Cyclops "the castle car" (a
jaunting car leased by Dublin Castle?) brings Martin
Cunningham and two companions (Jack Power and Crofton) to
Barney Kiernan's pub, and at the end of the chapter these
three men rescue Bloom by taking him away from the pub in the
same car, with "Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead" and
"Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car
and hold his bloody jaw." The horse takes fright when the
Citizen pitches his biscuit tin, the dog Garryowen lights out
after the car, "And the last we saw was the bloody car
rounding the corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and
the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was
bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb."
The last major appearance of a jaunting car comes at the end
of Circe, when Bloom is leaving Bella Cohen's: "From
the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows
to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is about to
dismount from the car with two silent lechers."
After the assault on Stephen, Bloom, "Peering over the
crowd," says, "I just see a car there."
Kelleher appears among the bystanders, responds to Bloom's
plea for help, and calms the constables, assuring them that "I've
a car round there." Bloom seems interested in using
the car to get Stephen away, and Kelleher offers to "give him
a lift home," thinking that he lives in the near NW suburb of
Cabra. When he learns that Stephen lives far out in Sandycove,
however, the offer is tacitly withdrawn.
