As the carriage begins its journey in Hades, the men
inside notice "crustcrumbs" on the seats and speculate that
someone has been "making a picnic party" there. Neglecting to
clean the vehicle before sending it out for a funeral is cause
enough for disapproval, but their reactions suggest that they
think something more than food has been spilled inside.
The insinuations are
subtle but strong:
Martin Cunningham began to
brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs.
— What is this, he said,
in the name of God? Crumbs?
— Someone seems to have
been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said.
All raised their thighs,
eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather of
the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward
and said:
— Unless I'm greatly
mistaken. What do you think, Martin?
— It struck me too,
Martin Cunningham said.
Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad
I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I
wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.
Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly.
— After all, he said, it's
the most natural thing in the world.
Eating is the most natural thing in the world, but surely
special intuition would not be needed to infer that from the
crumbs, nor would it inspire the crinkled noses and creeping
flesh. A couple having sex in the carriage––presumably after
hiring it to take them out in the countryside––would account for
these reactions. Since this inference is never explicitly
confirmed, readers thinking it will inevitably ask whether they
are imposing their own lubricious fancies on Joyce's text. But
there are many reasons outside the passage to suppose that the
dirty mind is the author's.
Slote cites an apposite observation in Ian MacArthur's "Some
Notes for
Ulysses,"
JJQ 41.3 (2004): 523-35, p.
526. In chapter 23 of
As I Was Going Down Sackville Street,
Oliver St. John Gogarty recalls what is evidently a familiar
anecdote:
'Are you coming to
the picnic, Mrs. Murphy?'
'Picnic, me neck! Look at
Mary's belly since the last picnic.'
I do not know if there are other examples of this association
in Irish popular culture, but there are two in Ulysses:
the picnic on Howth Head that both Bloom (in Lestrygonians)
and Molly (in Penelope) remember as an occasion of
rapturous sexual pleasure, and the Lough Owel trip in Milly's
letter that gets Bloom thinking nervously (in Calypso)
about "some young student and a picnic." And in a more general
way, Joyce repeatedly associates nature trips and the great
outdoors with sexual release. Examples are legion: Stephen's
vision of the bird-girl on the beach (represented in A
Portrait), his outburst on the Howth tram
(recalled in Proteus), Bloom's adolescent naughtiness
at the Poulaphouca falls (recalled in Circe), his
masturbation on the beach (represented in Nausicaa),
Lynch's dalliance in the bushes with his Kitty (represented in
Wandering Rocks, recalled in Oxen of the Sun),
and the recurrent theme of lustful adoration associated with
the Seaside
Girls song. All of these details suggest that "making
a picnic party" may involve something more than food.
Having sex in nature is "the most natural thing in the
world."
