Seeing Mulligan grab "a slip of paper" from John Eglinton's desk in the library office to write down an idea, Stephen thinks, "Take some slips from the counter going out." He is referring not just to random pieces of paper, as in the preceding sentence, but to ones that the library provided at the "counter," or circulation desk. These "slips" were almost certainly forms that patrons filled out to request books. Their size in Joyce's era, if not their precise appearance, is well documented.

In his autobiography Silent Years (1953), John Francis Byrne mentions that he often sat next to Joyce in the National Library as the writer obsessively revised short poems. "When he had at last polished his gem to a satisfying degree of curvature and smoothness," Joyce would copy the final drafts down "with slow and stylish penmanship" and jokingly hand them to Byrne as collector's items (63-64). Byrne recalls that "The finished poems were invariably done on slips of good quality white paper provided free and in abundance to the readers of the National Library. The slips were approximately 7 5/8 inches in length by 3 3/8 inches in width" (64).

Stephen is evidently in the habit of writing down his poems on these slips even outside the library. Near the end of Proteus, looking for some way to jot down the fragment of verse he has just composed, he thinks, "Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter."

Byrne's language might be taken to suggest that the library generously provided sheets of blank paper to its patrons for taking notes as they read, but such an inference would be mistaken. In a personal communication Senan Molony notes that throughout his experience "the National Library gently discouraged writing at desks. Any writing instrument could be used to mark, underline or disfigure books." If the library had made note-taking paper available to patrons, he observes, it would have been distributed around the reading desks, and there would have been wastepaper baskets, neither of which appear in contemporary photographs. The slips were available only at the circulation "counter." Until only a couple of years ago, Molony reports, the counter held a stack of "slim rectangular request forms for books, backed by a carbon card." These were "like mini notebooks, extremely useful for jottings in everyday life."

The image of one of these recent cards displayed here shows a shape distinctly similar to the slips of paper that Byrne measured, though not in precisely the same ratio. It seems likely that the library followed the same method for requesting books throughout the intervening 120 years, but also that the physical characteristics of the slips changed slightly during that time. Perhaps in Joyce's era there was not even a printed image on the front, just "good quality white paper." But the important (though admittedly fine) point is that what the library was providing "free and in abundance" must have been forms intended for a single, library-specific purpose: checking out books. Stephen, like Molony and no doubt many other Dubliners, is creatively repurposing them.

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John Hunt 2024

Recent photograph of a patron's slip from the National Library of Ireland.
Source: Senan Molony.

Colorized detail of an early 20th century photograph of the National Library counter, showing a man filling out a request slip. Source: Senan Molony.

Photograph by John J. Clarke ca. 1897-1904 giving another view of the counter with pile of slips visible. Source: www.openculture.com.