Nelson's pillar was the originating point for most of
Dublin's trams. From this hub, tramlines radiated in all
directions (but especially south and southeast) to the city's
suburbs. The destinations that the "timekeeper"
bawls out at the beginning of Aeolus are mostly in
the prosperous southern suburbs, but, as illustrated here by
pages reproduced from a schedule, tramlines also ran west to
such destinations as Palmerstown Park (which is among the
names called out), Inchicore, Park Gate, and Phoenix Park,
east to the poor suburb of Ringsend (also mentioned), north to
Glasnevin and Drumcondra, and northeast to Dollymount and the
poor inner-city distrinct of Ballybough. There was
also a tram to the far northeastern village of Howth. In Proteus
Stephen recalls a time when he rode "on the top of the Howth tram," and in
Eumaeus Bloom thinks that the natural splendor of the
Howth cliff walk is easily accessible from the city, "it
being only three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar."
In Hades, the pillar is one of a number of sights
that register in the narrative as the funeral carriages roll
north on Sackville Street: Elvery's, statues
commemorating Daniel O'Connell, Sir John Gray, and Father Mathew, and the Rotunda. All but O'Connell's
statue appear again in Sirens, as Blazes Boylan
retraces Bloom's path, rolling north on Sackville Street in a
jaunting car toward his
appointment with Molly.
In February 1808, several decades before Nelson's Column was
erected in Trafalgar Square in London, work began on a
foundation stone for the pillar in central Dublin, smack in
the middle of Sackville Street. By late 1809 an immense
granite Doric column had been constructed on the foundation,
topped with a statue of Lord Nelson carved in Portland
limestone by the Cork sculptor Thomas Kirk. The column
enclosed 168 stone stairs spiraling to the top, which afforded
an impressive view of greater Dublin to those willing to pay
the entrance price. When the second photo of the pillar
reproduced here is expanded, the iron railing that protected
visitors who climbed up for the view can be seen below the
statue.
All the traffic from people catching trams to various parts
of the city, or coming to enter the momument, made the
pillar's base a natural spot for sellers to hawk flowers and
food. As Paddy Dignam's funeral procession passes by the
pillar in Hades, a girl is selling plums to tourists
and locals coming to take in the view: "—Eight plums a
penny! Eight for a penny!" Stephen takes these
calls as the inspiration for his narrative vignette in the
next chapter. His two elderly vestals, Florence MacCabe and
Anne Kearns, "want to see the views of Dublin from the
top of Nelson's pillar." They buy bread and pressed
meat, plus "four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at
the foot of Nelson's pillar," pay threepence each
for admission to the staircase, and "begin to waddle
slowly up the winding staircase," exclaiming
wearily at the distance and "peeping at the airslits."
On the platform at the top of the stairs they eat their lunch,
and then "go nearer to the railings" for the
dizzying view: "Rathmines' blue dome, Adam and Eve's,
saint Laurence O'Toole's."
Nelson's statue and the top half of the pillar were crudely
demolished by IRA explosives in March 1966, in what is
generally supposed to have marked a 50-year commemoration of
the Easter Rising which began less than a block away, at the
General Post Office. Today, the modernist Spire of Dublin
rises from the spot on which the pillar once stood.
The IRA bombing may have inspired revenge attacks by
loyalists in 1971. Their three bombings utterly destroyed a
statue of Theobald Wolfe Tone and obliterated the staircase
inside Daniel O'Connell's round
tower, but left O'Connell's
monument on O'Connell Street largely unscathed.
