New space-time. Section 18 of Wandering Rocks begins
on "Wicklow street," a narrow shop-filled street about a third
of a mile (half a kilometer) west of the spot where the
previous section ended, and it concludes much closer to that
spot. Paddy
Dignam's son has been sent from his family's Sandymount
home to buy some pork steaks for the funeral gathering. Going
home, he walks east on Wicklow Street and north on Grafton
Street before turning east again on Nassau Street on a course
that will retrace the footsteps of Artifoni,
Farrell, and the blind stripling to Merrion Square.
There, the viceregal cavalcade will pass by him in section 19.
There are no interpolations in this section.
"Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam," elsewhere Patsy, starts at
the corner where William Street intersects Wicklow Street from
the south, carrying the steaks he bought at "Mangan's, late
Ferhenbach's," a pork butcher at 1-2 William Street
South. Heading east along the south side of Wicklow Street, he
goes "Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's," a bar at 23 Wicklow
Street that stood catty-corner to Mangan's across the
intersection. He passes "Wicklow Lane," which Gifford
and Slote identify as a small street running south not far
from the intersection with William Street. Still on the south
side, he stops at "the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress
milliner," a shop at 33 Wicklow Street, to gaze in at a
poster advertising a prize fight, and beside it another poster
promoting English singer Marie Kendall. Lost in thoughts about
the fight, he makes his way to Grafton Street and there sees
Blazes Boylan ("a toff") talking to Bob Doran ("the
drunk"), a scene previously represented by interpolation
in section 15. Seeing "no Sandymount tram,"
he continues walking up Nassau Street.
In the first paragraph of this section Patsy is "dawdling,"
because "It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour" with
his relatives "jawing the whole blooming time and sighing."
Clive Hart remarks that "After lunch Master Dignam has been
'sent for' a pound and a half of Mangan's porksteaks. Although
we are never explicitly told why he should have been sent
nearly two miles from his home on such a trifling errand when
perfectly good porksteaks could certainly have been bought
from many shops very much closer to hand, it is apparent that
he had been growing a little fractious at the 'blooming dull'
conversation in the parlour, and that he has been got out of
the house for an hour or two for the benefit of everyone."
Hart estimates that he leaves Mangan's "shortly after a
quarter past three" but moves home very slowly. "When last
seen, in section 19, he has stopped altogether. As the
viceregal horses pass him in Merrion Square, he is said to be
'waiting'––not, presumably, for the next tram, which he could
as well have caught in Nassau Street, but for the end of the
cavalcade, which provides a further welcome excuse for
delaying his return to the gloomy house of mourning" (James
Joyce's Dublin, 56).
