The account of the journey begins in the rough Monto
district, on or near Tyrone Street where Stephen was knocked
down: "They both walked together along Beaver street or,
more properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the
distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the
corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the
left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the
corner of Dan Bergin's." There is no Beaver Lane, and as
Slote observes, Beaver Street is "not especially narrow," so
the prose evidently reflects someone's feeling threatened in
this wretchedly poor and crime-ridden part of town. That
someone is more likely Bloom than Stephen. A horse-shoeing
business ("farrier's") was located at 14-15 Beaver
Street, and the livery stable at 42 Montgomery (now Foley)
Street, where Beaver deadends, adds foul smells to the close
dark atmosphere. Here the identity of the person feeling
oppressed seems certain, because A Portrait of the Artist
has observed that Stephen welcomes the odor of "horse piss and
rotted straw." The two men, we learn, "made tracks"
toward Amiens Street––a cliché that often implies haste,
suggesting that Bloom cannot wait to get out of Monto.
Their turn onto the thoroughfare, which takes them past
Daniel Bergin's pub at 46 Amiens Street, is described as a "debouching,"
a rather recherché way of saying "emerging into the open." The
French word, which came into English in the 18th century,
means coming "from the mouth." It can apply to things like
rivers emptying into the sea, but it was often used to
describe a body of troops emerging from a town or other
enclosed space onto open ground. Joyce uses it in that way in
Lestrygonians when the narrative observes that "A
squad of constables debouched from College street,
marching in Indian file." In Eumaeus, applied to two
men emerging from narrower streets onto a broader one, the
word feels more than a little pretentious. It may well express
Bloom's sense of quiet triumph at having reached somewhat
safer streets.
Looking down Amiens Street for a cab, Bloom sees only one: "as
he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu
plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a
fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the
spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was no
symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who
was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail
it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched
over his head, twice." The North Star Hotel at 26-30 Amiens
Street (now The Address Connolly) is a long city block from
the Montgomery Street corner, and elevated train tracks crowd
the space between, so Bloom's weak yoo-hoo signals appear
comically futile.
The narration too is inept. It says "confidently anticipated"
instead of "correctly feared." It informs readers that the cab
has probably been hired "by some fellows inside" before
observing the cab's location "outside the North Star hotel."
And who has ever heard of professional whistlers? Bloom's
awkwardness, and the awkward descriptions of his actions,
together threaten to obscure the very kind efforts that he is
making on his companion's behalf. A fourwheeler (a closed
carriage like the one taken to the cemetery in Hades)
would be more expensive than a two-wheel jaunting
car, but Bloom is determined to find Stephen a ride. His
search for "a Jehu plying for hire" contributes to the
sense of his urgent desire to help the young man. This slang
word for a fast driver comes from a biblical verse: "the
driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he
driveth furiously" (II Kings 9:20).
Failing to find a cab means more walking: "This was a
quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and
foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by
Mullett's and the Signal House which they shortly reached,
they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street
railway terminus." Wordiness, clichés, and obscure slang
(Gifford notes that "bevelling" means "moving or pushing")
here complicate a simple and straightforward action. "Mullett's"
was another grocery and public house at 45 Amiens Street,
right next door to Bergin's. The "Signal House," yet
one more such establishment at 36 Amiens Street, remains in
business today under the name J. & M. Cleary. This pub
tucked almost directly beneath the train tracks is one of the
oldest in Dublin. It has a rich history, and several films
have been shot on the premises. It merits a visit from all
Joycean tourists.
On the other side of Amiens Street sits the station where the
train tracks lead: "They passed the main entrance of the
Great Northern railway station, the starting point for
Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at
that late hour..." This railway was one of four major lines
with terminals in Dublin: trains for southeastern parts of
Ireland departed from the Westland Row station, trains
for the southwest from Kingsbridge, trains for the
west from Broadstone, and trains for
the north from Amiens Street, all four stations being served
by different railway companies. The Loopline under which
Bloom and Stephen have just walked connects the Westland Row
station and the one on Amiens Street (now Connolly Station) on
elevated tracks.
The sentence continues, "and passing the backdoor of the
morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say
gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) ultimately gained
the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street,
famous for its C division police station." Store is a
short but wide street with a right-angle turn in its middle
that in 1904 offered the only connection between Amiens Street
and Beresford Place. (Today, with the docks filled in, traffic
on Amiens can continue farther south.) The men pass an
entrance to the City Morgue at 2-4 Amiens Street, reach the
Dock Tavern on the corner, turn into Store Street, and then
pass a door to the Coroner's Court housed in the same building
as the morgue (this door goes unmentioned in the narrative,
but is illustrated in a photograph here).
The Dublin City Coroner's Court and City Morgue opened on
Store Street in 1902. Although the narrative describes it as "gruesome"
(based, apparently, only on knowing what the building
contains), its founding in fact represented a clean modern
solution to Dublin's longstanding problem of keeping people
who had died of unknown causes in conditions that were truly
gruesome: unrefrigerated, poorly lit, poorly ventilated, and
often filthy. In a 2021 blog
(lornapeel.com/2021/09/12/morgue), Lorna Peel describes the
new facility: "The purpose-built coroner’s court and morgue on
Store Street was designed by the city architect Charles J
McCarthy who had gone on a fact-finding tour of coroner’s
courts in England. It contained a court with a public gallery,
a jury box, retiring rooms and a waiting room for witnesses.
The mortuaries and post-mortem room were separate and to the
rear of the building. The viewing lobby was separated from the
mortuaries by glass screens so jurors and others called upon
to view the bodies on which inquests were being held could
observe them without actually entering the mortuaries." (Today
the morgue has moved to another part of town, but the
coroner's court remains on Store Street.)
A little farther down the same side of the street, they pass
the C Division police station. Calling it "famous" may
have something to do with police suppression of demonstrations
on Beresford Place. In 1899 opponents of the Boer War staged massive
demonstrations there and were met with massed police
forces. Slote notes that police lived in barracks in this
building only one block away from the large open Place, so
their pouring out of it to contain the crowds––a true "debouching"––could
possibly have made it notorious. The neutral term "famous"
seems characteristic of Bloom's guardedly ambivalent attitudes
toward republican insurrection. (Political demonstrations were
also held in Beresford Place in the wake of the Easter Rising
of 1916, as a photograph in another note on
this site shows.)
One more building on Store Street makes its presence known
when the narrative observes that Bloom "inhaled with internal
satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery,
situated quite close to where they were." The final
clause reflects the fact that the two men do not walk directly
past Rourke's: they jog left on Store just before the
triangular plaza on which the bakery fronts. But the pleasant
aroma coming from the nighttime baking calls forth a torrent
of playful verbal associations in Bloom's consciousness. His
olfactory delight makes a kind of bookend to the "fetid"
stench of horses that assaulted his nose on Montgomery Street,
announcing a happy end to a journey that seemed foreboding at
the outset. This pairing of two striking odors may be taken as
evidence that Joyce conceived of the walk down Amiens Street
as one united action, starting shortly before the men reach
the thoroughfare and concluding shortly after they leave it.
§ If
design may govern in a thing so small, it may also involve the
grandest kind of planning in the novel, the analogy with
Homer's Odyssey. In Lotus Eaters Joyce's
cunning artifice made Bloom's feet sketch two huge
question marks on the Dublin pavements, evoking his
aimless lotus-like confusion. The opening paragraphs of Eumaeus
may be doing something similar by having Bloom and Stephen
walk southeast to Amiens Street, south down the length of the
boulevard, and southwest to Beresford Place. Gifford observes
that the route is "circuitous, circumspect––as are both
Odysseus's and Telemachus's approaches to Eumaeus's hut in The
Odyssey." The mortal peril that Homer's heroes skirt as
they return to Ithaca seems to be reflected in Joyce's heroes'
late-night trek through darkened streets in a dangerous part
of town, skirting prostitutes, thieves, drunks, dead bodies,
and policemen. The cabman's shelter, like Eumaeus's house,
provides a place of relative safety where they can carefully
assess one another and plot their next moves.
