Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can’t.
James Joyce was fond of pubs, as was his father John Stanislaus, who drank the family inheritance away in them. His mother was no stranger to them either, having been born the daughter of a publican in the Eagle House Tavern in Terenure, formerly Roundtown, on the southern edge of Dublin.
Leopold Bloom posed his famous puzzle about crossing Dublin without passing a pub in the novel Ulysses, as he wandered out to buy a kidney for his breakfast on the morning of the 16th June 1904.
In May 2016 I worked out a route across Dublin without passing a pub. You can see the original blog post here. In late 2017, I started working out if you could cross Dublin by passing all of the pubs in Dublin that are mentioned in Ulysses and that still exist. This took rather longer than I expected. In large part, this is because lots of places we now routinely call pubs had different and more complex classifications in 1904.
Thom’s Directories classify Dublin. Amongst other things, Thom’s Directories list businesses, street addresses, nobility and gentry in Dublin on an annual basis. The introduction to my 1903 copy states:
Thom’s Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the year 1903. Comprising British Foreign and Colonial Directories, Parliamentary Directory, Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage Directory, Naval and Military Directory, Statistics of Great Britain and Ireland. Government Offices’ Directory, University, Scientific and Medical Directory, Law Directory, Ecclesiastical Directory, Banking Directory, Postal Directory, County and Borough Directory, Lieutenancy and Magistracy of Ireland. Post Office Dublin City and County Directory.
We know that James Joyce used a copy of Thom’s Directory from 1904. This lists the following classifications of licensed premises where you could purchase alcohol:
Dining Rooms (see also Refreshment Rooms)
Grocers, &c. (See also Wine & Spirit Merchants)
Hotels and Proprietors
Refreshment Rooms (see also Dining Rooms)
Spirit Dealers (See also Wine and Spirit Merchants)
Taverns and Inns
Vintners and Publicans (See also Wine and Spirit Merchants, and Taverns.)
Wine and Spirit Merchants (See also Spirit and Tea Dealers and Vintners.)
These are the simple classifications. In The Story of the Irish Pub, Cian Molloy highlights the many different types of licensed premises in addition to the Spirit Grocer’s licence.
Other valid licences in 1890 were a beer off-licence, a beer dealer’s licence, a spirit grocer’s off-licence, a spirit dealer’s licence, a methylated spirits licence, a shopkeeper’s wine off-licence, a wine dealer’s licence, a refreshment house wine and sweets on-licence, a sweet dealer’s off-licence, a theatre licence and a packet-boat licence.
Groceries were sold alongside alcohol, and it is difficult to separate out what we would know as a pub from a grocery shop. In Have ye no homes to go to? The history of the Irish Pub, Kevin Martin outlines how the mix of the grocery and the pub led to social problems.
In his 1902 paper presented to the Irish Temperance Society on ‘Licensing and Public-House Reform in Ireland’, William Lawson identified the problem of groceries mixed with draper’s shops, with licences to sell alcohol, as a particular social evil. In Dublin, 90 per cent of the trade was mixed in this way, which he felt allowed women to put drink on the grocery accounts and put families in debt. This type of pub – a spirit grocer – has played a significant role in the history of licensed premises in Ireland, and continues to be a design motif in new Irish pubs.
In Ulysses, various premises and proprietors are mentioned, and these are listed under several of the different classifications in Thom’s. By way of example, people drink in The Ormond which is listed under Hotels and Proprietors. We know that Mulligans of Poolbeg Street is a pub that has changed little over the years and features in the Dubliners short story Counterparts. It is categorised under Grocers, &c. in Thom’s Directory. Grocers &c. sounds like the most loosely defined of pubs, whereas we know Mulligans is the most definitive of pubs. The difficulty of definition is written about in Mulligan’s, Grand Old Pub of Poolbeg Street by Declan Dunne.
The nature and business carried on in previous times on the premises that Mulligan’s occupies is difficult to establish. It is described as a spirit grocer from its establishment in 1782 right up to the 1960’s. These traders were forbidden to allow alcohol to be consumed on the premises but were allowed to sell it.
We know from Counterparts that alcohol was served and consumed on the premises in the early 1900’s. As Dunne notes,
The term spirit grocer, then, has to be treated carefully. It is used in the text but it is important to bear in mind that while Mulligan’s was a spirit grocer by name, it was, at least from the 1860’s onwards, a pub by nature.
Alfred Millar interviewed by Kevin C. Kearns highlights another difficulty of judging what a premises was by its licence type,
“I started in the trade at 15 in the Red Bank restaurant on D’Olier Street. It was a public house and a restaurant.”
Joyce names actual Dublin streets, buildings and businesses throughout his works. When he wrote the later works of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, he had been in exile for a long period and had more freedom to name real people and places. This was not always the case. He began to write Dubliners in July 1904 in Dublin. He had arguments with the proposed publisher George Roberts about using real names of pubs and publicans. On 23 August 1912 he wrote to his brother Stanislaus to outline his defence to Roberts for naming the pubs,
ii) Public houses are mentioned in four stories out of 15. In 3 of these stories the names are fictitious. In the 4th the names are real because the persons walk from place to place (Counterparts)
iii) Nothing happens in the public houses. People drink.
iv) I offered to take a car and go with Roberts, proofs in hand, to the 3 or 4 publicans really named and to the secretary of the railway co. He refused.
v) I said the publicans would be glad of the advertisement.
vi) I said that I would put in fictitious names for the few real ones but added that by so doing the selling value in Dublin of the book would go down.
It is interesting that Joyce wants to name the real pubs that people walk between, the journey being significant, and that he wanted to ground the story in the reality of place. So also, do I.
Having made some ground rules for my Cross Dublin Without Passing a Pub run, I do the same here.
The first rule is that the route has to have some relevance to the writings of James Joyce, and or his actual life in Dublin. This rule pretty much defines all the runs in these blog posts.
In my Cross Dublin Without Passing a Pub, I decided to try to find a route from 5 St.Peter’s Road in Cabra, the Joyce family home on 1904, on the north-west side of the city to 60 Shelbourne Road, on the south-east side. We know that this is the journey that Joyce made when he moved out of the family home. For this run, I picked the pub closest to Cabra and the one closest to Shelbourne Road as the start and finishing points, so as to align with the start and finish points of the previous run and also align the run with a journey James Joyce made. In this case, the pubs are The Brian Boru in Glasnevin and The Oarsman in Ringsend.
I decided that any licensed premises named in Ulysses that you can still buy a drink in would constitute a pub for the purposes of this blog post. Some are bars in hotels, like The Shelbourne, and some are more like coffee houses, such as the Eccles Townhouse, but I figured if you could freely walk in and buy a pint of Guinness in them, then they could be included.
There are too many pubs to drink in all of them and then run across the City, even if for sanity and stability’s sake you only drank water. A few are abroad, one or two are not identifiable and at least one mentioned is as far south as Blackrock. So I excluded any pubs, not in Dublin City. I limited the run to those pubs still trading as pubs while trying to pass as many other former pubs as possible.
This blog is named after the half marathon distance. I try to keep any long runs to c.21km. This lead to a lot of editing of this running route. But that is half the fun. I kept the run to every pub I can find in Ulysses that is still trading, and that, plus some road closures on the day, pushed the run to c.22k.
It took a long time to figure out the route. Obviously, you have to read or listen to Ulysses, or in my case both. Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman is another essential read, as it lists the addresses of most of the pubs in the text and gives brief notes. A lot of time was spent reading Thom’s directories of 1903 and 1904. I then travelled around Dublin identifying where the original pubs were and what the present use is. In the case of Davy Byrne’s this is quite easy, some like Crimmins, now The Malt House are a little more difficult to identify.
Not all of the pubs mentioned have continuously traded as pubs since Ulysses was written. Davy Byrne’s has had the same name since 1904 but has changed ownership and interior. The Bleeding Horse has changed names a few times, and Mary Mac’s, part of Alexander Keyes pub was a travel agent when I was in college.
It was very common for names of streets and house numbers to be changed in Dublin. I have noted some in the text. In the route descriptions and the list of pubs, I give the present name, the former name as mentioned in Ulysses, the listing in Thom’s and the present address.
I have used various Thom’s directories for historical information. Generally, I use the Thom’s directory of 1904, because we know Joyce used it and the Thom’s of 1903, because I own a copy, and have it on hand. All of the directories are available to read in the Dublin City Library and Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. D02 HE37.
In the descriptions below I have made reference to present day and historical Ordnance Survey digital maps. I have referred to the Historic Map 25 inch set from 1888 – 1913, which shows the layout of the city that most closely matches the layout of 16th June 1904. Google Street View and Apple Maps are useful tools.
I quote a passage or passages from Ulysses for each pub mentioned. Sometimes its short and sometimes I like the passage so much that I quote at length. I also give brief directional notes.
As part of the process and solely in the interests of research, I also visited each of the pubs still in existence to have a drink. Someone had to. I make occasional notes in the text about the pubs. I made several other trips to take photographs.
Right, enough of the research. Now for the running. Off we go.
Mac Maloney says this pub has been in the ownership of the Hedigan family since 1904 (p.125), the year in which Ulysses is set. Popular after funerals due to its proximity to Glasnevin Cemetery, Paddy Dignam’s funeral cortège passes it, Joyce referring to it in its Irish Language title.
They drove on past Brian Boroimhe House. Near it now.
The pub is commonly known as Hedigan’s after the proprietor. Most of the pubs in Dublin and in this blog are named after the proprietor, rather than by a descriptive name.
Kevin Martin explains why.
It became a legal requirement to display the proprietor’s name over the front door of the premises after legislation was passed in 1872. The legacy of this law is often cited as one of the unique features of an Irish pub. Often, a public house operates under a long-obsolete family name – a signature feature in the boom of ‘Irish Pubs’ outside Ireland. This change in legislation limited the previous inventive array of names in Dublin, The Sots Hole in Essex Street, The Wandering Jew in Castle Street, Three Candlesticks in King Street, House of Blazes in Aston Quay, The Blue Leg in High Street, The Holy Lamb in Cornmarket and the Golden Sugar Loaf in Abbey Street are all long defunct. Some pubs, such as The Bleeding Horse and The Brazen Head, kept both the family name and the original title.
I will pass both the Brazen Head and the Bleeding Horse, mentioned in the list above, on this run. The other pub names no longer exist. I head off from the Brian Boru, running directly south on Phibsborough Road.
Just over Cross Gunn’s Bridge, I cross the route of my previous blog post on pubs, Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub, which you can read, here.
Doyle’s is situated on what is now known as Doyle’s corner in Phibsborough, it used to be Dunphy’s corner and also Dunphy’s pub, which is how Joyce refers to it.
—And Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on to the road.
—That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse fell about the road. Terrible!
—First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup.
—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.
Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out onto the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.
—Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.
Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.
At the time of the run, in March 2018, the pub was undergoing another refurbishment, but I doubt the name or use will change. Bloom thinks it’s a great location for a pub and it is, even if the pub, before its current refurbishment, wasn’t. I turn the corner at Doyle’s and head east on the North Circular Road in the opposite direction to the passage of Paddy Dignam’s funeral cortège, the route of which features in my blog post At Walking Pace, which you can read, here.
Bloom is still obsessing about the location of pub’s when we pass our next pub, Mc Auley’s.
For instance McAuley’s down there: n.g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a shot.
McAuley’s also features in the story Grace in Dubliners. Now called The Big Tree, it opens on irregular hours, principally around events in nearby Croke Park. A sign in the window says it opens for all matches and concerts. Perhaps Bloom was right, perhaps it is in a poor position, otherwise it would be open every day. It was the only pub closed every night I went there for my research. I don’t imagine I missed much.
I turn at McAuley’s and head southwest on from Dorset Street Lower, towards Dorset Street Upper.
A bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck.
Cassidy’s is now Kavanagh’s The Temple, and the bent hag is crossing over Dorset Street from Cassidy’s towards Larry O’Rourke’s, directly opposite, which is mentioned several times in Ulysses.
Larry O’Rourke’s has had several name changes, the last two being to the Aurora Gastropub and now it is the Eccles Townhouse, which is more like a bistro than a pub, with an atmosphere to match. It still serves a pint of Guinness so I can regard it as a pub. It features in Ulysses when Bloom enters the novel, and both the pub and Larry O’Rourke are mentioned several times throughout in relation to Bloom, Blazes Boylan, and Molly. O’Rourke’s is just a few doors down from the Bloom’s house at 7 Eccles Street.
He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, tea dust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic.
With regard to these last three pubs, Bloom thinks Doyle’s is in a tiptop position, McAuley’s is in a not good position, and Larry O’Rourke’s is good, just at the end of the city traffic. Although I have run these pubs in sequence, Bloom’s thoughts on pub locations occur in separate chapters. It shows a consistency in the things Bloom thinks about, and obviously Joyce is aware of, in his native city. It also shows how creating a run can bring together thoughts and aspects of Dublin, scattered throughout the novel but rearranged in a different moving sequence in a way that a linear reading of Ulysses cannot.
Here are a few more quotes regarding O’Rourke’s and other characters in Ulysses, the onelegged sailor, Blazes Boylan, Molly Bloom and O’Rourke’s;
A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell’s corner, skirting Rabaiotti’s icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry O’Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably:
—For England ….
By Larry O’Rourke’s, by Larry, bold Larry O’, Boylan swayed and Boylan turned.
my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy Larry
I continue southwest on Dorset Street before turning southeast onto North Frederick Street, then downhill to Parnell Street east onto O’Connell, formerly Sackville, Street.
The Two Gallants came down here in Dubliners coming like my fellow runners and me, from a pub in Dorset Street. Lenehan and Corley both reappear separately in Ulysses and later in this blog post.
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can’t.
Bloom is musing again.
In the Little Review serialised edition of Ulysses, the passage above is significantly different and reads,
Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the country eitrim, rinsing empties in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as publicans. Then think of the competition. Save it they can’t.
Joyce clearly replaced the word publicans with Adam Findlaters and Dan Tallons, presumably to give them the additional status of magnates and politicians. Oddly the sentence about the puzzle is left out in the earlier version, but the Save it they can’t text is left in. Perhaps it was a printer’s error, or maybe Joyce is referring to the redheaded curates blossoming out. The sentence works either way.
I often assume some errors come from the fact that the book was initially typeset in France where English is at best, a second language, but the Little Review was printed in the United States, so errors like “country eitrim” instead of County Leitrim seem less understandable.
Findlater’s occupied nearly an entire block of Sackville Street, Now O’Connell Street, upper. There is an excellent website with details of the Findlater family and their history and business interests, here. There is a picture of the premises in 1923, here.
You could get a drink in the Holiday Inn that now occupies the site, but as the building has been entirely reconstructed, I have disregarded it.
I turn and head north-east, running briefly along Cathal Brugha Street, before turning south-east down Marlborough Street.
I pass the Pro-Cathedral and turn west along Cathedral Street heading for Brannigans.
Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six he got informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam’s the shipchandler’s, bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle’s back with O’Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.
The Nagle brothers Acky and Joe are mentioned in Ulysses. Joe Nagle owned pubs at 9 Cathedral Street and at 25 North Earl Street, and we pass them both in short sequence. It happens a few times on the run that I pass two pubs owned by the same publican that have the same name and that it cannot clearly be identified which one Joyce was referring to in Ulysses. In each case, I pass both.
Passing Brannigan’s I head to O’Connell Street, turning south for a block before I turn east on North Earl Street. I pass a statue of James Joyce along the way, somewhat haphazardly positioned. On the southern side of North Earl Street, across from Madigan’s is a vacant unit, formerly Meagher’s where Bloom played the role of the moneylender.
According to Christine Casey, Madigans (p. 232) was rebuilt in 1917-1919. Most of the buildings in this part of Dublin were destroyed in the rising of 1916.
Mr Bloom stood in his way.
—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing backward with his thumb.
—Did you? Hynes asked.
—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.
—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.
He hurried eagerly on towards the Freeman’s Journal office.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third hint.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could mention Meagher’s just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph. Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he’ll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere else.
Bloom is still interested in pub economics.
I continue down North Earl Street and into Talbot Street.
(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)
O’Beirne’s and Cormack’s were diagonally opposite each other at the entrance to Nighttown on Mabbot, now James Joyce, Street.
Publican Eugene O’Reilly is interviewed in Dublin Pub Life & Lore, an Oral History.
“Anyhow I bought my first public house after I left McGill’s. I bought it from an old fella called Byrne. It was on the corner of Talbot Street and Corporation Street. This old fella was eight-something and it was a rough place and he was doing nothing in business…Now the pub was only a few hundred yards down from the Monto. It had a reputation for brothels…They were called kips…Back then droves and droves of these men were coming back from the war and all these unemployed men would be hanging outside my door there, standing around. ‘Corner boys’, we called them. They were all back over from England. These corner boys, they wouldn’t look well and they were a deterrent to trade.”
The pub purchased is likely O’Beirne’s, as Corporation Street in 1904 was known as Mabbot Street, and is now James Joyce Street. It is interesting that Joyce has people hanging around on opposite corners, and they linger there for a long time, well past the war. Places get reputations and customs, and they can take a long time to change.
I turn the corner, heading a short distance north-east on James Joyce Street, before turning southeast on Foley, formerly Montgomery Street. At this point, I am heading for the greatest concentration of Joyce pubs in Ulysses, all mentioned in sequence as Stephen and Bloom pass them, and all still in existence as pubs. This says something about the area and the lack of change along Amiens Street, at the edge of the city centre.
(He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching.)
Cormack’s is now the Seventy Four, Talbot. I have lingered here, but pleasantly, inside in the Seventy Four. I can’t hang around watching this time.
Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, 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.
Dan Bergin had two pubs, and each was mentioned separately. In addition to 46 Amiens Street, he had a pub at 17 North Strand Road, which Fr. Conmee passes in the episode Wandering Rocks. The area was bombed during the emergency in 1941. You can see and read about the damage, here.
What remained of Dan Bergin’s at 17 North Strand after the Luftwaffe left, was demolished. The site is now a local health centre. It is one of the places of Ulysses pubs that I do not pass on this run, though I do pass it on the Dubliners run that you can read about, here.
Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
We are back with Bloom and Stephen, heading south along the western edge of Amiens Street. Next door to Lloyd’s is Mullet’s. The pub still has the same name as in Ulysses, though it changed a few times over the intervening years.
So, bevelling around by Mullet’s and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the time-honoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance.
Mentioned in the quote above, Cleary’s is one of the pubs which has an interior probably little changed since Ulysses was written and is tucked in below the Loopline Railway bridge. If you want to really know Dublin pubs, you must visit Cleary’s.
But 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 whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
It’s late, and the streets are deserted as Bloom and Stephen move towards the River Liffey. The taxi rank mentioned in the novel has now moved from outside the North Star Hotel to across the street alongside Amiens Street Train station.
The North Star has undergone an extensive refurbishment recently and has moved upmarket. I continue southwards, crossing the bottom of Talbot Street.
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 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.
Joyce describes the area as a not very enticing locality. He is right, and like his description of the dull inelegance of Capel street in Dubliners, it seems to me that some parts of cities do not change much, as evidenced by Capel Street and this part of the Dublin. Like Bloom and Stephen, I also pass the entrance to what is now Connolly Station on my way to the Dock Tavern. I turn right at the corner, heading along Store Street.
The back entrance to the morgue and the police station on Store Street are both still there, and I pass both, heading for Lower Abbey Street.
And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions.
The mention of the Crown and Anchor in Ulysses seems to refer to a prototypical pub in England. However, there was a Crown and Anchor pub in Dublin as listed in The Post Office Directory of 1832 (Appendix p. 84), at 42 Lower Abbey Street.
Joyce had an extensive knowledge of Dublin, and it may be that he had this pub in mind. The quote is from the Eumaeus episode of Ulysses where Bloom and Stephen are talking to the sailor, D B Murphy in the Cabman’s shelter by the Loopline Bridge, which is only a couple of hundred metres from the location of the real Crown and Anchor.
There was also a dice game called Crown and Anchor, popular with sailors, which is mentioned in the Circe episode.
The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen.
In Dublin, pubs are typically named and called after proprietors. There are a few pubs with descriptive names such as The Brazen Head, and there are very few with traditional names popular in England. This was not the case before 1872. In the 1850’s Dublin, there were two Prince of Wales pubs, as well as a Cock and Bull Inn.
Heading west on Lower Abbey Street I turn towards the Liffey Quays on Marlborough Street. At the Quays I turn right and head west on Eden Quay.
—I see, he said. I didn’t recognise him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately?
He had.
—I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In Mooney’s en ville and in Mooney’s sur mer.
Gerald Mooney had two pubs in very close proximity, one on Middle Abbey Street and one on Eden Quay alongside the River Liffey. Lenehan has been to both with Stephen and in his usual manner has a jokey way of differentiating between the two locations.
Mooney’s sur mer overlooked the River Liffey and is now the Carlyle Club. You could probably get a drink in the Carlyle Club, in much the same way as you could in Bella Cohen’s in Nighttown, but I will disregard it.
I turn right and head north on the back lane that is Harbour Court, running under Wynn’s Hotel and onto Lower Abbey Street.
Wynn’s, as the name suggests is a Hotel, but I have included all Hotels in my general descriptor of pubs. It’s a nice place for a quiet drink, popular with people coming to Dublin from the country.
Like many buildings in this area of the city, Wynn’s Hotel suffered significant damage in the 1916 rising. You can see a description and a picture of the original hotel on the Archiseek website, here.
an invitation to supper at Wynn’s (Murphy’s) Hotel, 35, 36 and 37 Lower Abbey street
On the other side of Lower Abbey Street is The Ship.
The Ship is the first pub mentioned in Ulysses. It appears several times, in connection with Buck Mulligan, described by the name of its proprietor, Connery on one occasion.
—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan says you have g.p.i. He’s up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!
—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.
—Good, Stephen said.
Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call your insubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!
Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous brogue:
—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ‘Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
No doubt Joyce picked the Ship deliberately as the first pub as the journey of Telemachus begins, but he got the address incorrect as the Ship was at number 5, rather than number 6, Lower Abbey Street.
I previously wrote a blog post called He’s up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman that you can read here.
I have money.
—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn?
—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr O’Madden Burke asked. ‘Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.
—That it be and is hereby resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which particular boosingshed …? My casting vote is: Mooney’s!
This will be Stephen’s first drink of the day. It will be far from his last.
I keep heading west across O’Connell Street.
—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone?
—Who? the professor said, turning. They’ve gone round to the Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night.
The Oval has been trading on the site since 1822, although it was rebuilt after heavy damage sustained in 1916. There is a good article on the history of The Oval on its website, here. There is a great picture inside of the rebuilt pub standing along amongst vacant sites taken in the early 1920’s.
I continue on Middle Abbey Street, heading west.
That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to dive into Manning’s or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George. Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones.
Bloom has a lucky escape by diving into Manning’s, which is now a Bagel Bar. I head towards Little Britain Street, going north on Jervis Street, across Wolfe Tone Square, west on Mary’s Street and North on Capel Street.
Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now. Enough. Barney Kiernan’s I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O’Ciarnain’s in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag under the auspices of Sluagh na b-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race.
Barney Kiernan’s is the site of some of the best dialogue in Joyce’s writing. Joyce also refers to it by its name in the Irish language, Brian O’Ciarnain’s, the second pub after the Brian Boroimhe, where he does so. In the earlier Little Review Ulysses, it is simply O’Kiernan’s.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of the O’Kiernan’s under the auspices of Sluagh na b-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race.
I have passed here before in the blog post, I’ve a thirst on me I wouldn’t sell for half a crown, which you can read, here.
Barney Kiernan’s is one of the most interesting pubs in Ulysses but has not been a pub for a long time. I turn south on Little Green Street.
When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohue’s in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.
A chariot would indeed be handy, but no luck. I turn and head east on Mary’s Abbey.
The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary’s abbey past James and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Thosel beyond the ford of hurdles.
I turn and head south on Capel Street, before turning to head west along Ormond Quay when I reach the River Liffey.
At this point, I cross the route of a previous blog post about the smells of Dublin, Pprrpffrrppffff, which you can read, here.
—Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from Sport was in looking for you. Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he’ll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after five.
Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to wash it down. Glad I avoided.
Like Barney Kiernan’s the Ormond Hotel is semi-derelict, but like Kiernan’s, it is central to the novel in a way that many of the other pubs with only brief mentions are not. I try to include all the pubs that have dialogue or events taking place within them on this run, even if they have been redeveloped. Along Amiens Street, all of the pubs mentioned in Ulysses survive, but I have now passed several that have not.
I run along the quays heading west. I head north through Smithfield and up Manor and Prussia Streets as I head on my way to the City Arms Hotel.
I pass the corner of Arbour Hill, where the Cyclops episode opens, the point of a previous blog post, Alice the Elephant and the Fox and the Chicken that you can read about, here.
The City Arms Hotel is mentioned many times in Ulysses. Formerly the Dublin residence of the Jameson Family, the City Arms Hotel was an early residence for Leopold and Molly Bloom. Jameson’s, a whiskey, is mentioned, and drunk, on two occasions in Ulysses.
In curating this run, I have had to make a number of choices. I decided to include all place names in Ulysses that you can get a drink in, even if drinking is not mentioned. The City Arms Hotel is a good example of the choices made. Alcohol is not mentioned in relation to the City Arms Hotel, and at first glance, Clarke’s City Arms pub seems not to be integral to the house. However, if you go into the pub, and it is well worth going into, you can see that it extends at the back under the original house. It also appears on the Ordnance Survey Maps of the early eighteenth century.
—That will do , Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders’ association today at the City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they?
Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table d’hôte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you’re chewing.
The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bézique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk.
* Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting to that of faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of
I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was no love lost between us
The City Arms Hotel and the next pub, Mr Crimmins are both quite far apart and on the edges of Dublin City in 1904. To get to the next pub, I head a short distance south on Prussia Street, southwest on Saint Joseph’s Street, south on Aughrim Street, west on Halliday Road, through Tobar Court, and down through Arbour Hill to the River Liffey. I cross the Liffey and head of Steeven’s Lane, at the top of which is The Malt House.
I cross the River Liffey. I have been to the northeast and northwest and now head to the southwest and southeast of Dublin. Joyce used all of the city for Ulysses, with the pubs distributed throughout.
From the sundial towards James’s gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James’s street, past Shackleton’s offices. Got around him all right. How do you do Mr Crimmins? First rate sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we’re having, Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling, I’ll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir.
The Malt House is just to the west of Saint James’s Gate, the home of the Guinness Brewery, which is located on both sides of the road. On a run around the drinking establishments of Dublin, it’s good to pass the main brewery, having just come from the house of main whiskey distilling family. Guinness’s is mentioned several times in Ulysses.
I head south on Bridgefoot Street before travelling east on Oliver Bond Street. This street did not exist in Dublin in 1904, and I run through the site of the former Anchor Brewery the second largest brewery in Dublin, demolished in the 1930’s. To the south is the former Power’s Distillery. I turn downhill and head north on Bridge Street Lower.
Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but McConachie told him you get a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn’t said a word about it.
—Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.
The address as described is incorrect as The Brazen Head is on Bridge Street, rather than Winetavern Street. Perhaps Joyce intends the character, McConachie, to make the error. I feel I made an error when I went to drink in the pub. Overpriced and overrated. I won’t be back.
From the Brazen Head, I head east along the quays, past Winetavern Street into Exchange Street Lower and onto Essex Gate.
They went down Parliament street.
—There’s Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh’s.
—Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.
Beyond Lundy Foot’s from the shaded door of Kavanagh’s winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland.
Kavanagh’s is much changed. Now the Turk’s Head, it has an interior dominated by bright mosaics.
I cross Parliament Street and head down East Essex Street. I am back running through the city centre, and locations and references become more dense. I am glad I am not running through Temple Bar late on a Friday night, as I would struggle to make it through the crowds, who can barely walk.
Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin.
On. Through Temple Bar, I pass the front of the former Dolphin Hotel as I pass the rear entrance to The Clarence Hotel. They are across the street from each other.
References to the Dolphin are complicated because there were two at opposite ends of the same block, at 45 to 49 East Essex Street and at 9 Sycamore Street, with the same proprietor Michael Nugent. The Dolphin Hotel at 45-48 East Essex Street is now The Family Law Courts. At the opposite end of the block alongside Sycamore Street, is the other, now Bad Bob’s.
Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Lenehan showed McCoy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky’s vest and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope around the poor devil and the two were hauled up.
—The act of a hero, he said.
At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for Jervis street.
—This way, he said walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam’s to see Sceptre’s starting price. What’s the time by your gold watch and chain?
On. I run on through Temple Bar.
McCoy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses’ sombre office, then at O’Neill’s clock.
—After three, he said. Who’s riding her?
—O’Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is.
The last two quotes follow on directly. O’Neill’s also features in Dubliners, one of several pubs to do so, and I pass it in the Dubliners run, He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, which you can read, here.
The clock on O’Neill’s is long gone, but time is pressing, and I continue on.
He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland House. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap Tom Kiernan.
Although you can get a drink in The Westin Hotel, the site has been comprehensively redeveloped since Bloom passed it. I exclude it from my list. I head straight across Westmoreland Street, and down Fleet Street.
The Star and Garter
Thom’s 1904 Listing
Hotels and Proprietors: Star and Garter. 16 D’Olierstreet, John Whelan.
Present Use: House of Colour Creative Hairdressing, 16 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2.
—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to…
—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter’s face in the Star and Garter. Oho!
The Star and Garter was on the corner of Fleet and D’Olier Streets. I cross and head north towards the Liffey on D’Olier Street.
Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who was he?
—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in salute.
—He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes he does. How do you do?
—Who? Mr Dedalus asked.
—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.
Just at that moment I was thinking.
Mr. Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed
I like this quote. The memorial fountain sat at the junction of Great Brunswick, now Pearse, Street and D’Olier Street and was decorated with extravagant tropical leaves. I expect Joyce was aware of this when he wrote of Martin Cunningham raising his palm.
I come to the River Liffey and head east on Burgh Quay.
U. p: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton’s Office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.
—I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?
—I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said smiling. Was it the little nuns taught you to be so saucy? Here.
He handed her a shilling.
Beside the Scotch House is the statue to Constable Patrick Sheahan who died while trying to save a man overcome with sewer gases. You can see the statue, here, and the pub and the statue, here. Joyce mentions the incident with regard to Tom Rochford, and you can read about the events and Tom Rochford, here.
Joyce must have liked the Scotch House. It appears in both Dubliners and Ulysses. If there is one Joyce pub I would want to bring back, this would be it.
I turn north on Hawkins Street, east on Poolbeg Street, south on Townsend Street and the east again on Pearse Street. When I get to Westland Row, I head south.
Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up against the door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch out of her.
Bloom is watching a woman outside the Grosvenor Hotel. The hotel was located opposite Westland Row, now Pearse Street, station. The hotel was demolished and in its place are modern buildings forming part of Trinity College Dublin.
—I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we were.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.
—I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.
Bob Doran appears in Dubliners and pops up a few times in Ulysses. He was the punter sloping into the Empire, and he also appears in Barney Kiernan’s.
Kennedy’s was Conway’s in Ulysses. I used to know it as Kenney’s. According to Colm Quilligan in Dublin Literary Pub Crawl (p.98), it is because the “d” fell off the sign sometime around the 1990’s. The new name stuck, at least for people of my vintage.
The location is called Conway’s corner in Ulysses. Many corners in Dublin are named after pubs. Hanlon’s Corner, Leonard’s Corner, and Doyle’s Corner which was Dunphy’s corner in Ulysses. Somehow Conway’s corner has never become Kennedy’s corner.
This is a great pub. I plan to return regularly.
For now, I run eastwards on Fenian Street towards Holles Street.
Burke’s! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute’s race, all bravely legging it, Burke’s of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there.
Burke’s was on the corner of Denzille, now Fenian Street and Holles Street. I turn the corner and run uphill, heading south on Holles Street and pass the famous maternity Hospital. Stephen and his companions drink in the Hospital, but it’s hardly a pub.
At Holles Street I cross my Dubliners 21k, He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, the blog post, which you can read about, here.
I head west on Merrion Square North, Merrion Square West and Merrion Street before turning to head west on Merrion Row and on to Stephen’s Green North.
Who is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne Hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn’t take a feather out of her my handling them.
Ho! Ho! I have to laugh. That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
The Shelbourne is one of the pubs in Ulysses also mentioned in Dubliners, where it features in the story After the Race. It might have been simpler if Bloom had just bought himself a drink.
I turn north on Kildare Street, before turning and heading westwards on Molesworth Street.
Walking by Doran’s publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it’s whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see.
This pub is long gone, and the site is being redeveloped again as offices. Bloom feels the slack fold of his belly. As part of this run I have had a drink in each of the pubs, so what I lost in the running training I gained immediately back in the drinking, and I too have a slack fold on my belly.
At the end of Molesworth Street, I head downhill, north on Dawson Street.
Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long’s a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything.
I turn and head down Duke Street, heading west.
I pass the Burton at 18 Duke Street, scene of some of the best descriptions in Ulysses, with the diners scaring off Leopold Bloom. They are long but best quoted at length.
His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed.
Men, men, men.
Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.
—Roast beef and cabbage.
—One stew.
Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarettesmoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the stale of ferment.
His gorge rose.
Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this.
He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose.
—Two stouts here.
—One corned and cabbage.
That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.
An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?
Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:
—Not here. Don’t see him.
Out. I hate dirty eaters.
He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s. Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.
—Roast and mashed here.
—Pint of stout.
Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
Bloom leaves and travels as I do, the short distance to Davy Byrne’s.
He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.
What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?
—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.
—Hello, Flynn.
—How’s things?
—Tiptop … Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and … let me see.
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree’s potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow’s digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.
—Have you a cheese sandwich?
—Yes, sir.
Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.
—Wife well?
—Quite well, thanks… A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?
There is more great dialogue happening in Davy Byrne’s, as well as the presence of the regular drinker, Nosey Flynn who was also there sitting in his usual corner as in Dubliners. Bloom sets up Davy Byrne’s for life, by having his Burgundy and Gorgonzola.
Davy Byrne’s is still serving glasses of Burgundy and Gorgonzola sandwiches. The exterior is similar to that of 1904, but the interior has been completely changed.
Oddly, Joyce gets the address wrong in the Ithaca episode in one of Bloom’s lists, placing it at 14 rather than 21. I am not sure why this would be. It cannot be easily explained as the mistake of a character in the novel.
Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been received by him?
In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O’Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion:
Joyce also refers to O’Connell Street rather than Sackville Street, even if it wasn’t officially renamed that until 1924. Perhaps Bloom’s, or Joyce’s Nationalist sympathies are coming through.
I started this piece on Davy Byrne’s with a passage by Joyce where he describes Davy Byrne’s character. In Kevin C. Kearns, Dublin Pub Life & Lore, an Oral History he interviews Michael Gill who describes Davy Byrne,
“And you take Davy Byrne, a most extraordinary man. Davy held court in his own place. And the story goes that he was making his will and was asked, ‘Did you make all that money filling pints?’ ‘No, not filling them.’”
Leaving Davy Byrne and his pub behind, I run on, turning right to head north on Grafton Street. I pass Adam Court, the back entrance to the Empire, now The Porterhouse Central.
Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.
With ha quiet keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here middle of the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M’Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year sober as a judge.
Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good.
We meet Bob Doran who appears in three pubs in Ulysses. He was also at Conway’s and in Barney Kiernan’s.
The Empire and now the Porterhouse Central stretch from Nassau Street southwards to the small lane that is Adam Court that runs eastwards off the bottom of Grafton Street. The nightclub, Lillie’s Bordello is located at the end of Adam Court. I talk about this in an earlier blog post, He knew the value of the name, here.
At the bottom of Grafton Street, I turn left and head west on Suffolk Street.
Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my (Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery’s off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she’s better or she’s (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there’s the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos.
A contentious selection this. Gifford and Seidman place Slattery’s at 28 Ship Street Great. But there was a Slattery’s at 15 Suffolk Street which seems to me to be a more likely reference. There is only a slight reference to the Slattery’s in the text. There are no pubs left in Great Ship Street, and I prefer to think of the reference as more likely to be this pub, which has been comprehensively redeveloped, as it is much closer to the city centre.
What a brilliant description of that essential aspect of pub life, as the narrator urinates and spits in the back of the yard.
I run on past the original site of Jammet’s, which is also mentioned in Dubliners as Corless’s.
Why that highclass whore in Jammet’s wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind please telling me the right time? I’ll tell you the right time up a dark lane.
I have now passed two former sites of Jammet’s restaurant as it moved from here on Saint Andrew’s Street to Adam Court.
From Suffolk Street, I loop northwards down Church Lane onto College Green and Dame Street, before heading south on Trinity Street and onto Saint Andrew Street, all to pass the locations of some of Stephen’s drinking haunts.
The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch’s castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury’s Hotel, S. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley’s hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal’s Cave—all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.
—Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?
This section is from one of the Cyclops episode’s long rambling lists. Amongst all the beauties of the landscape are the Guinness Brewery, The Scotch House and Jury’s Hotel, each of which I have now passed.
I run past the former sites of Jury’s, The Larchet, The Moira and The Bodega. All are close together, and all have been redeveloped.
PHILIP SOBER
Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holles street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.
So it’s not just me looking at who drinks what and where. Here Philip Sober is keeping a close eye on Stephen’s drinking. I have now passed all of Stephen’s watering holes.
Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his joyful fingers in the air.
—Come along with me to the subsheriff’s office he said. I want to show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s a cross between Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He’s well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don’t…Wait awhile…..We’re on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.
His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. Greyish over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bring her a pound of rump steak. Who was it she was? Barmaid in Jury’s. Or the Moira, was it?
Bloom is thinking about Mr Power’s adventures.
Opposite Ruggy O’Donohue’s Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the pound and a half of Mangan’s, late Fehrenbach’s, porksteaks he had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street, dawdling.
I would not dawdle again in The International Bar, one of the most disappointing of Dublin pubs.
I run on down Exchequer Street, turning south on Dame Court, through the archway and west on Dame Street, before turning south at South Great George’s Street.
He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olive trees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out.
Andrews was located on the corner of South Great George’s Street, there is a good image of it, here. It sold all sorts of produce. Perhaps not strictly a pub, I mention it in passing.
Running through the city has involved a lot of twists and turns, but I am now on the long straight stretch south along South Great George’s Street, Aungier Street, Redmond’s Hill, Wexford Street, Camden Street and South Richmond Street to the Grand Canal. Lots of different names for one relatively short road.
He stood at Fleet Street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national library.
Rowe’s was situated at the bottom of South Great George’s Street, where there is now a vacant gap site. Like Amiens Street, the pubs that are mentioned in Ulysses along the length of South Great George’s Street, Aungier Street, Redmond’s Hill, Wexford Street and Camden Street Lower and Upper and Richmond Street, apart from this one, mostly remain. This perhaps indicates the difference in land values in the city centre to the outer inner city, as well as the destruction of the north city centre in 1916.
Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons.
We passed Adam Findlaters on the other side of the city in O’Connell Street. Adam Findlater and Dan Tallon were Dublin stalwarts. Dan Tallon was the Lord Mayor from 1898 – 1900. As Lord Mayor, he laid the foundation stone for the Parnell Monument in 1899, just across from Findlaters on what was then Upper Sackville Street.
Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
—But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o’clock the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter’s night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: Lo, the early beam of morning. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt’s port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell’s delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.
Lenehan is here walking with M’Coy, and in the next quote, we hear from Corley, who Lenehan walked through Dublin with, in the Two Gallants story in Dubliners. Things haven’t gone well for Corley, he is down on his luck, has fallen out with Lenehan, and after a chance encounter, Stephen ends up lending him a half-crown.
Delahunt’s features as a product rather than a place, but as Joseph Delahunt did own two pubs and they both still exist, I include them.
—Thanks, Corley answered, you’re a gentleman. I will pay you back one time. Who’s that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get me taken on there. I’d carry a sandwich board only the girl in the office told me they’re full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as a crossing sweeper.
Corley sees Stephen with Bloom. Robert Martin Adams in Surface and Symbol: The Consistency of James Joyce’s Ulysses thinks it unlikely that Bloom would have met Boylan in the Bleeding Horse as it was far out of his neighbourhood, and a good deal lower that on the social scale than Barney Kiernan’s (p.205). I can’t entirely agree as the Jewish quarter is very near to the Bleeding Horse, on the south side of the city. Barney Kiernan’s despite being close to the courthouse on Little Green Street on the inner north side, seems no more desirable a location socially.
Perhaps I am judging this too much by a contemporary context.
I run on past The Bleeding House to where South Richmond Street meets the Grand Canal.
The imprevidibility of the future: once in the summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches on the milled edge and tendered it in payment of an account due to and received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return.
The bar of the Portobello appears old, but it isn’t, I remember working on it in the 1980’s. I turn east on Charlemont Mall and run alongside the Grand Canal. Then I cross Charlemont Bridge to the other side of the canal before heading south on Upper Leeson Street.
The Leeson Lounge, formerly J. and T. Davy’s is mentioned in Ulysses but in different ways in different editions.
—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerstown Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him to go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s publichouse, see?
—F to P is the route Skin-the-goat drove the car for an alibi. Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerstown Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Leeson street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him to go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Burke’s public house, see?
—F to P is the route Skin-the-goat drove the car for an alibi. Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerstown Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is Burke’s publichouse ‘n Baggot street.
The professor came to the inner door.
—Bloom is at the telephone, he said.
—Tell him to go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Burke’s publichouse, see?
In the first quote from the Gabler edition of Ulysses, the pub where the Invincibles go to is Davy’s in Upper Leeson Street. In the earlier Little Review Ulysses, it is Burke’s of Baggot Street. In Ulysses, The 1922 Text it is a hybrid of both.
It was well-known that the Invincibles went to Davy’s in Leeson Street. It seems likely that the error being made, is being made twice by the editor in The Little Review in calling the pub Burke’s. However, written this way, it could be construed as an error by Joyce. In the 1922 text, the editor’s error and confusion are much more clearcut as he uses two different names for the same place in quick succession, Davy’s and Burke’s. It seems to me that the Gabler edition, in changing the discrepancy in names to having both references listed as Davy’s may be an overcorrection of the text and has hidden Joyce’s intentions.
Argue it amongst yourselves, I’ve got places to go and pubs to see.
It is not just names that change. As it happens, both the name and address of this pub have changed. The address in 1904 for J. and T. Davy’s, was 100 Leeson Street Upper, and is now The Leeson Lounge at number 148. The pub is in the same place, it is the numbering and name that changed.
This is the second pub owned by J & T Davy in quick succession. The family went on to found Davy Stockbrokers, leaving the licensed trade and their pubs behind them. I also leave the Leeson Lounge behind me, running off back to the canal by way of Sussex Terrace and heading east.
The next pub proves slightly difficult and highlights some of the complexities of this run. Tunney’s is mentioned several times in Ulysses. Just as there were several J & T Davy’s, there were two Tunney’s. It is generally assumed that Joyce refers to the one in Ringsend as it is closer to Sandymount where Paddy Dignam lived, but there is a chance that he also meant the one in Haddington Road. After all, it seems he referred to the two separate Dolphins in Essex Street. No matter, I will run past both. I head off along the southern edge of the Grand Canal towards Smyth’s of Haddington Road.
I include Smyth’s pub, but I prefer to think of Tunney’s as the Oarsman rather than Smyth’s. I include the quotes relating to Tunney’s, there, in the last pub on my run, below. As it happens, I like to drink in both Smyth’s and the Oarsman, and I live between the two of them.
I run pass Smyth’s and head on down Haddington Road, turning right on Northumberland Road. At this point, I cross the point where Farrington in Dubliners is nearly home, which you can read about in my blog post Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll…I’ll say a Hail Mary for you, here.
Pubs can be great fun, but alcohol can also have a downside. When I was researching pubs and pumpingship in Mulligan’s, the last pub that Farrington visited, I saw an advertisement that said A closed door shouldn’t hide domestic violence and that 2 in 5 people in Ireland know someone who has experienced domestic violence. The story Counterparts seems more accurately observed than ever.
Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeas corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha?
Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate.
Alexander Keyes owned 5 and 6 Ballsbridge. They became Fagan’s after 1904 and at some point in time number 5 became an office and 6 continued as a pub. They are now reunited as Mary Mac’s and Paddy Cullen’s. There is a great picture in Mary Mac’s of Fagan’s pub. You can see it if you go inside. It is at the rear, on the right-hand side. Interestingly it shows the pub with a decorative parapet. The decorative parapet no longer exists, nor did it exist in the early photograph from the National Library Flickr account here. Perhaps the pub was decorated for the Exhibition of 1907. More research.
One more pub to go. I planned to run down along the River Dodder towards Ringsend and the final pub. Due to flooding, the river path was closed, so I ran down Shelbourne Road instead. It has the advantage is that it passes one of Joyce’s residences at 60 Shelbourne Road, but is a much less enjoyable way to finish a long run.
I have now crossed both canals, the River Liffey and the River Dodder, which flows to the last pub in Ringsend.
It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from Tunney’s. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the whole blooming time and sighing.
The last night pa was boossed he was standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney’s for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead.
and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney the grocer’s christmas almanac
(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney’s tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry, roughing and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets.
The quotes above show how intertwined the pub and grocery were. In one instance a bottle of sherry is purchased, in another Paddy Dignam wants to go to Tunney’s to drink, and in another Mr Tunney is described as a grocer.
On a run like this, it is not possible to run by every pub in Dublin mentioned in Ulysses. My original plan was to identify and run by every pub in Dublin still trading that is mentioned in Ulysses, and pass as many others as possible.
I ran past thirty-six pubs still in existence and did some research by visiting all of them in advance. Of these pubs, Delahunts, Nagles and Tunney’s have been included twice, with two different pubs in the same ownership. It is not clear which one Joyce meant.
In a novel as complex and layered with references as Ulysses is, it is always possible that I may have missed some pubs in the text but of those identified, I pass most of them. Of those that are still pubs, I pass all of them, which was the plan.
The ones that I don’t pass and the reasons that I don’t are,
Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris.
There is a brasserie Mac Mahon at 17 Avenue Mac-Mahon, Paris. According to Robert Martin Adams, in Surface and Symbol, The Consistency of James Joyce’s Ulysses (p.148). Joyce initially used the name Minerva instead of Bar Mac Mahon in early drafts, changing to Bar MacMahon at a later stage. This was possibly because as he got to know Paris better, he may have found a more relevant Irish name.
James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a fellow couldn’t round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey’s daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.
Being overseas, I couldn’t quite run to these two, nor the next three, which are all outside of the City of Dublin.
Martin Cunningham whispered:
—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.
—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?
—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary.
—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?
The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin’s hotel on a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen’s father and Stephen’s granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older.
I didn’t think I could make it to Wicklow and Clare on this particular run. Likewise, I did not get to Blackrock to visit Jacob Halliday’s, which is now a retail establishment. Gifford notes that Breslin’s was called the Station Hotel by 1904, presumably Joyce remembers the name from his childhood, part of which he spent in Bray.
the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased
Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts
I could not find any exact location for O’Loughlin’s. Gifford and Seidman think it was an unlicensed shebeen, in which case it would not be listed in any official directories or records.
The website, James Joyce Online Notes state that it refers to O’Loughlin’s of New Row South, which is an extension of Blackpitts. This seems plausible to me, but it is no longer a pub.
Gifford and Seidman (p.166) say that this pub is north of Dublin on the River Tolka. They are possibly referring to a pub called The Jolly Toper which was at Cardiffsbridge, near Finglas. I could not find any definitive references to the location, or actuality of, the Three Jolly Topers.
There is a traditional musical air called the Three Jolly Topers and you can read about it and hear it, here.
Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t’s are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.
It’s not just ladies underwear Bloom thinks about on his meanderings.
Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups.
Bob Doran makes another appearance, here in Bride street. Shebeen’s, being unlicensed pubs, are naturally are hard to trace. Shebeen comes from the Irish word síbin, which means illicit whiskey.
We had to search all of Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh’s gave us his number. Remember?
This quote may not even refer to a pub, and if it does it was possibly near Holles Street, but definitely not in South Anne Street, the site of the well known Kehoe’s pub. I searched all of Holles Street in Thom’s 1904, and there is no reference to a Keogh’s on the street listing. There are some Keogh’s listed as Nobility, Gentry, Merchants and Traders, but none with commercial premises near Holles Street.
From Cahill’s corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M.A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons.
Gifford and Seidman (p.285) disagree with Gunn and Hart (p.102) as to the location of Cahill’s. Gifford and Seidman refer to the letterpress printers at 35-36 Strand Street and Gunn and Hart refer to Cahill, Timothy listed as Grocers, &c. at 8 Liffey Street. Both are listed in Thom’s Directory of 1904.
Either way, they are a few doors from each other, but there is only a view of the quays from Timothy Cahill’s. It’s now a Spar convenience store, so I don’t run past it.
I didn’t run past the following, mainly because they have been redeveloped and are uninteresting in themselves. I list them in order that I would have passed them, before editing them out of the run.
On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree’s potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co’s white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps’s soluble cocoa
W. and A. Gilbey’s have more licensed listings in Thom’s than any other group. I run by a few on the run. In particular 54 Upper Dorset Street, 90 Talbot Street, 74 South Great George’s Street, none of which are pubs today. The headquarters was at 46 and 47 Sackville Street, now the top of O’Connell Street, which was diagonally across from Findlater’s, across from The Gresham Hotel. Gilbey’s, like Delahunt’s, is noted more for the product than the place, so is not really a pub from Ulysses.
—What’s wrong with him? He said. He’s dead, he said. And, faith, he filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes, he said. He’s gone. He died on Monday, poor fellow.
As far as I can tell the original building had an arch in the front, the clue being in the title, and also in a photo that I saw online somewhere. This is no longer the case, and the building is a Vodafone mobile phone shop. It is on the opposite side of the Spire to North Earl Street that I run down instead.
Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.
This site was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1941, and nothing remains of the original premises. I decided to skip it on this run.
—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins, proprietress. They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn.
I came close to here, but I could not quite fit it in. Anyway, it was not really a pub and is now part of the redeveloped Irish Life Centre.
So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some £.s.d. in the course of his perambulations around the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on.
The building is long demolished and is now the modern Citi offices. Not an interesting place to run by.
How do you do Mr Crimmins? First rate sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in Pimlico.
This pub is not far from The Malt House that I drank in, and ran by. Both were owned by Mr Crimmins. The present building has been completely redeveloped, with no trace of the original mentioned in Ulysses. I leave it be.
By Cantwell’s offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi’s virgins, bright of their oils.
This is on the Liffey Quay’s, near the front entrance to The Clarence Hotel and is no longer a pub.
Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat. And Bloom with his but don’t you see? and but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the lout I’m told was in Power’s after, the blender’s, round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!
I edited out the former site of Power’s with the entire street being very different to that of 1904, with the Central Bank Development dominating the southern side. Power’s was a wholesale merchant, so probably not a place you could buy a drink to consume on the premises. Power’s was on the side of the former Central Bank of Ireland.
Ian Gunn and Clive Hart are of the view (p.41) that Bloom thinks that A.E. Russell and Lizzie Twigg have come from the College Hotel and Restaurant, The McCaughey Restaurant, Ltd. at 3 and 4 College Street. It has now been absorbed into the Westin Hotel as has almost all of the buildings on that block. I give it a miss.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit. Don’t eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it’s healthier. Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all night.
Striding past Finn’s hotel Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate.
One of the most important Joycean locations is Finn’s Hotel on Nassau Street, where Nora Barnacle was staying when Joyce first met her. The sign for Finn’s Hotel can still be seen, fading on the gable of the former Hotel.
This is an interesting location and will be central to a future run.
Interestingly there are 36 pubs still in existence, almost equally split on the northside and on the southside of Dublin. I think this shows that Joyce had a knowledge of both the north and south sides of the city, having lived on both. Interestingly when he got a chance to move from the family home, he immediately headed south, back across the river Liffey and onwards to continental Europe.
In his book Have ye no homes to go to?: The History of the Irish Pub, Kevin Martin notes that you can buy a James Joyce Irish Pub Award. And you can. It seems you can buy it here for €395.00. But does it have any validity, credibility or authenticity? Hardly. It gets the quote from Ulysses wrong for starters.
What is the most authentic Joyce pub? As part of this blog, I tried to find every pub in Ulysses and create a run past all of the ones that remain in existence as pubs. I also decided to go and have a drink in each one of them, on a different day and before the run took place. Research. Most of them I already had drunk in, some I had worked on, but some were new to me. It meant that preparing for this blog post was a bit of yin and yang, what calories I lost in the run, I gained back in the research.
The most famous pub in Ulysses is probably Davy Byrne’s. It continues with the same name and location as in the novel, albeit with a change of ownership. But importantly the inside has been entirely remodelled. Principally in the early 1940’s and probably to some extent several times since. I know that I worked on a refurbishment in the late 1980’s as I did with The Brian Boru and also The Portobello, all while working with David Crowley Architects.
Many pubs changed names, sometimes several times. O’Neills became Farrington’s and is now The Norseman. It probably had numerous other names over the last century. Some like Mullet’s changed their name, as Mullet’s did to Dooley’s before reverting back to Mullet’s. Many pubs in the north city centre like The Oval were completely rebuilt after 1916.
Does it matter if a pub is just mentioned in passing in Ulysses, does that make it authentic? In one sense, yes, but for me, the most authentic would have to be one in which significant dialogue took place. So Barney Kiernan’s, The Bar in the Ormond Hotel, and Davy Byrne’s would be the strongest candidates. However, the first two are closed awaiting redevelopment, and Davy Byrne’s has been redeveloped so that the inside bears no relationship to the pub frequented by Nosey Flynn in both Ulysses and Dubliners.
The most authentic James Joyce pub is not to be found in Ulysses at all. Instead, you will find it in the story Counterparts in Dubliners. There are great scenes as Farrington admires the English actress and arm wrestles the acrobat Weathers, without success. The pub has the same name, is in the same place, and is little changed over the century, the parlour room where the main action takes place is still in existence in the back of the bar. It is the essential James Joyce Dublin pub, and I ran by it on this run. That it is reputed to sell the best Guinness in all of Dublin is a bonus.
While the pub itself does not appear in Ulysses, its name features in the opening line.
My casting vote is: Mulligans!
Adams, R.M. (1967) Surface and Symbol: The Consistency of James Joyce’s Ulysses. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.
Casey, C. (2005) Dublin: The City within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road, with the Phoenix Park. New Haven, Connecticut, United States: Yale University Press.
Dunne, D. (2015) Mulligan’s: Grand Old Pub of Poolbeg Street. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press.
Gifford, D. and Seidman, R.J. (2008) Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses. 2nd edn. Berkeley, California, United States: University of California Press.
Gunn, I. and Hart, C. (2004) James Joyce’s Dublin: A Topographical Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses. London, United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson.
Joyce, J. (1966) Letters of James Joyce Volume Two. Edited by Richard Ellmann. London, England: Faber and Faber.
Joyce, J. (1998) Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe, and Claus Melchior. Afterword by Michael Gordon edn. New York, United States: Vintage Books.
Joyce, J. (2008) Ulysses, The 1922 Text. Edited by Jeri Johnson. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Joyce, J. (2015) The Little Review ‘Ulysses’. Edited by Mark Gaipa, Sean Latham, and Robert Scholes. New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press.
Kearns, K.C. (1996) Dublin Pub Life and Lore: An Oral History Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan.
Martin, K. (2016) Have ye no homes to go to?: The History of the Irish Pub. Cork, Ireland: The Collins Press.
Maloney, M. (2012) The Dublin Pubspotter’s Guide. Dublin, Ireland: A & A. Farmar.
Molloy, C. (2002) The Story of the Irish Pub: An intoxicating history of the licensed trade in Ireland. Dublin, Ireland: The Liffey Press.
Nicholson, R. (2015) The Ulysses Guide. Dublin, Ireland: New Island Books.
Quilligan, C. (2013) Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, 3rd ed. Dublin, Ireland: Writers’ Ireland
The Post Office Annual Directory for 1832. Dublin, Ireland: John S. Folds
Thom’s & Co. (Limited) (1903) Thom’s Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1904. Dublin, Ireland: Alex. Thom’s & Co. (Limited).
Thom’s & Co. (Limited) (1904) Thom’s Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1905. Dublin, Ireland: Alex. Thom’s & Co. (Limited).
General Bibliography
Barich, B. (2009) A Pint of Plain, Tradition: Change and the fate of the Irish Pub. New York, Unites States: Walker Publishing Company Inc.
Malone, A. (2001) Historic Pubs of Dublin. Dublin, Ireland: New Island Books.
McCarthy, J.F. and Rose, D. (1991) Joyce’s Dublin: A Walking Guide to Ulysses. New York, United States: St. Martin’s Press.
Oldenburg, R. (1997) The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and other hangouts of a community. Philadelphia, United States: Da Capo Press.
There is a longer bibliography of background material here
You can see more of my research output on the Technological University Dublin repository Arrow, here