"Moore street," mentioned twice in the novel, is in central
Dublin, several blocks north of the Liffey and two blocks west
of O'Connell Street. It was, and is, the site of a large
open-air market.
Flora Mitchell observes that it was the city's "main shopping
district" in the days (long before Joyce's time) when "this
was the fashionable quarter of Dublin," but as time went on
and the neighborhood decayed, "gradually it became an open
market, radiating out into courts and lanes filled with booths
and stalls" (64). Mitchell conveys the decidedly unfashionable
quality of the street in a typical conversation she has
overheard. A customer shouts: "Your stall looks for all the
world like a box of gems Mrs Cassidy." And Mrs. Cassidy:
"Thanks be to God it does, but 'tis a fright ye'd get at the
dead o' night and the whole street heavin' wid rats. Ye could
sthroll on the craythurs! But bedad they do a better job than
the corporation. They'd eat up the least crumb off of the
street."
When Mitchell wrote this in the 1960s the area had
encountered "periodic threatenings of closure, but much
trading is done here and the street is a riot of colour and
noise." The situation has not changed much over the last 50
years. Today the street presents a cascade of fruits and
vegetables, flowers, meat and fish. Haggling over prices is
common.
In Lestrygonians Bloom thinks of the "filleted
lemon sole" at a fancy dinner being "the same fish
perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out
of making money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills can't
write his name on a cheque." In Ithaca he
thinks of a commode which he "bought of Henry Price,
basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer,
21, 22, 23 Moore street." These were real
businesses, located next to one another on Moore Street.
Gifford notes that in 1904 "M. and P. Hanlon, fish and ice
merchants," resided at 20 Moore Street (182). Of the fancy
goods store, he notes that the 1904 Thom's directory
"lists George, not Henry, Price at this business and address.
Henry Price is listed (p. 1990) as a dealer in hardware,
chandlery, and fancy goods, 27 South Great George's Street"
(603).
The resemblance of this name to the "Henry Blackwood Price"
of Nestor is intriguing. Did Joyce change George to
Henry deliberately, or by error?
