Metal bridge

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Simon Dedalus and Bob Cowley run into one another "outside Reddy and Daughter's," an antiques shop run by one Richard Reddy at 19 Ormond Quay Lower. Dedalus has been walking upstream along the quays from Dillon's and is now between the Ha'penny Bridge and the Essex (or Grattan) Bridge. Hearing that Cowley is waiting to meet Ben Dollard, who has promised to go with him to the subsheriff's office to help fend off Reuben J. Dodd's men, Simon scans the area and spots Dollard crossing the metal bridge. After some banter Dollard says, "Come along with me to the subsheriff's office," and the three men head west toward this office at 30 Ormond Quay Upper.

Section 19 will show, however, that Simon does not get that far west. Near the Essex Bridge he visits a greenhouse to empty his bladder, no doubt plagued by excessive drinking at the Oval, and on exiting the urinal he finds his progress interrupted by the viceregal cavalcade moving along the quay. Early in the next chapter he enters the bar of the Ormond Hotel at 8-9 Ormond Quay Upper without his two companions. They enter the bar a bit later in Sirens, perhaps having arranged to meet Simon there after visiting the subsheriff without him, or perhaps guessing that the prospect of another drink has waylaid him from his intended course.

After Cowley asks Dollard, "And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin?," there is an interpolation: "Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club." This is one of only three interpolations in Wandering Rocks for which the estimable Clive Hart cannot discern a thematic counterpart in the primary scene, but there are some linkages to explore. Both Dollard and Farrell give voice to striking noncommunicative utterances. After the interpolation Dollard booms out a deep note: "Aw!" In section 17, "With ratsteeth bared," Farrell mutters "Coactus volui" and strides on, "grinding his fierce word." The Latin phrase––"Having been forced, I was willing"––concerns legal contracts entered into by force and fear. If Farrell is in the grip of some crushing legal entanglement, then he resembles Father Cowley, who is being pressed by two different creditors for payment legally due them. And if Farrell's "fierce word" expresses defiance of ineluctable law, that analogue colors the "Aw!" of section 14. Dollard has come to put heart in a friend ground down by money troubles, and his deep bass, still potent despite poverty and ill health, sounds a clarion call of courage.

A second interpolation comes shortly later, just after Cowley affirms that the trombone is still in fine form and just before a confident Dollard says, "Come along with me to the subsheriff's office." Now appears one of the two men to whom Cowley owes money: "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 Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles." The connection is straightforward: though unaware of one another, creditor and debtor are quite close and possibly about to cross paths. After leaving the chapter house in section 8, the Reverend Love has walked east on Mary's Abbey and reached the corner of Capel Street, where James and Charles Kennedy, "rectifiers and whosesale wine and spirit merchants," had a shop (31-32 Mary's Abbey, 150-51 Capel Street). Love is now heading south on Capel toward Ormond Quay, while Crowley and his companions are heading west on Ormond Quay toward Capel. This narrative intrusion, then, is barely an interpolation at all. Like the glimpse of Father Conmee in section 2, its action nearly falls within the scope of the primary scene.

Several more geographical signifiers attach to the history-minded Love, all of them from the past. Ben Dollard tells Crowley, "The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?" Cowley says, "That's right.... The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister in the country somewhere." Ellmann notes that for parts of 1898 and 1899 the Joyce family lived at 29 Windsor Avenue in Fairview, on the northeastern edge of Dublin (68). In addition to this Joycean history, the interpolation evokes bygone Dublin geography. Mulling stories of the Geraldines in the 15th and 16th centuries, Love heads "towards the Tholsel," a major civic building of the 14th century that was rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries and demolished in the early 19th. It stood to the southwest in Skinner's Row (now Christchurch Place), on the other side of the river in south central Dublin. The "ford of the hurdles" was an ancient fording spot before Dublin had any bridges, west of Love's present location. Dublin's Irish name, Baile Átha Cliath, means the Place of the Ford of the Hurdles.

Section 14 continues a long series of sections that bounce back and forth between the northern and southern banks of the Liffey. Section 7 takes place less than one block south of the river on D'Olier Street. Section 8 jumps across the river and far to the west, visiting St. Mary's Abbey a block from the northern quays. Section 9 goes back to the south bank, starting a little to the southeast at Crampton Court and moving up to Wellington Quay. Section 10 takes place on that quay. Section 11 jumps to the northern quays, two or three blocks to the east on Bachelor's Walk. Section 12 crosses the water again, this time even farther to the west, starting a few blocks south of the river near James's Gate and ending in view of the quays. Section 13 stays on the south bank but moves far east to a street near Aston Quay, just across the river from Bachelor's Walk. Section 14 again jumps to the northern quays, this time west of the Ha'penny Bridge.

Sections 5-6 and 15-18 take readers to places not much farther from the Liffey, but with the possible exception of number 15 they do not seem to fit the pattern. All of them are set in the southeast quadrant of Dublin, several blocks away from the river, and all cluster quite near the route of the viceregal cavalcade in section 19. That procession, after following the northern quays from Phoenix Park eastward, crosses the river at the Essex Bridge, passes by Dublin Castle, and then moves east along Dame Street and southeast on Nassau Street. Its proximity to every scene in sections 5-6 and 15-18 would seem to sketch a different kind of geographical pattern.