Merrion Square
Merrion
Square
In Brief
New space-time. Section 17 of Wandering Rocks takes
place on the northern edge of Merrion Square, a lovely urban
oasis southeast of Trinity College that was originally
constructed for the sole benefit of the prosperous citizens
who lived around it. Three men, some distance apart from one
another, walk in the same southeasterly direction along the
continuous thoroughfare formed by Nassau Street (on the
southern edge of the Trinity campus), Leinster Street, Clare
Street, Merrion Square North (on the northern edge of the
square), and Lower Mount Street. The man in the middle
abruptly reverses his direction and, soon after, nearly
collides with the third. There are no interpolations in this
short section, but the movements of the three men sketch
narrative connections with other sections and chapters.
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In the second half of the 18th century Richard FitzWilliam,
an Anglo-Irish nobleman who lived in Mount Merrion, a suburb
several miles south of Dublin, sponsored a plan to build
Georgian townhouses around a lushly planted central square, as
part of a larger movement of moneyed families from the north
side of the city to the south. This movement was spurred by
the decision of the Earl of Kildare (later Duke of Leinster)
to build a palatial residence there in 1745. Over the last
four decades of the century a rectangle was plotted to the
east of Leinster House, houses were built around it, and
greenery was planted. For most of the 19th century the square
was primarily residential, and until the 1970s access to the
fenced green was permitted only to local key-holders. But by
1904 commerce had begun to encroach on the elegant
development, albeit in the highly genteel form of medical
offices. Slote and his collaborators quote from Cosgrave and
Strangways's Dictionary of Dublin (1895): "The north
side is mostly occupied by doctors" (223).
The section begins, "Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard." Having missed his tram at College Green, Artifoni has started walking home along Nassau Street and now, according to Clive Hart's calculations, about ten minutes have passed. He has passed the National Maternity Hospital at the northeast corner of Merrion Square and is starting along Lower Mount Street. Thom's 1904 directory lists James Walter Sewell and Son and James Simpson as the proprietors of a "horse repository, commission, and livery establishment" at 60 Lower Mount Street. Trailing Artifoni on earlier blocks of the same concourse are two other men: "Behind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park." Philip H. Law Smith was a barrister at 14 Clare Street, on the northwest edge of the square. College Park, the walled cricket fields of Trinity College on the north side of Nassau Street, lies still further west on the same sequence of streets.
In Lestrygonians Farrell passes Bloom on Westmoreland
Street, probably headed to his accustomed haunt in the
National Library. In an interpolation in section
14 of Wandering Rocks he is seen striding "past
the
Kildare Street club," presumably having left the library
and begun his present course up Nassau Street and its
continuations, ultimate destination unknown. The blind piano
tuner likewise has been seen on the streets before. Hart
describes his known movements: "Not long after he is helped by
Bloom across Dawson Street, at about 1:45 PM [in Lestrygonians],
the tuner makes his way to the Ormond Hotel, to tune the piano
at what would, from the point of view of both the proprietor
and the customers, be the most convenient time, the period
shortly after lunch. At about 3:10 PM, having forgotten his
tuning fork, he makes his slow way back to the centre of
Dublin. When we see him in section 17, walking behind Artifoni
but ahead of the cavalcade, he has already spent a good deal
of his afternoon merely getting from one place to another" (James
Joyce's Dublin, 53).
Farrell continues east along Merrion Square North, dodging
outside every lamp post, but when he gets to "Mr Lewis
Werner's cheerful windows" he turns around and goes back
the way he came. Louis Werner was a ophthalmic surgeon whose
offices were at 31 Merrion Square North, on the corner of
Holles Street near the northeastern edge of the park. Slote
observes that "He is not the same Louis Werner mentioned in Hades"
and reports that, according to Kenny's Bookshop and Art
Galleries 75 Years (2015), "The windows of his
consulting room at Merrion Square were adorned with stained
glass windows" (16). Farrell halts again "At the corner of
Wilde's house" before continuing into Clare Street.
Oscar Wilde's parents moved into the house at 1 Merrion
Square, at the park's northwest corner, in 1855 when he was
only an infant, and he lived there into his early 20s. His
father Sir William Wilde was an oto-ophthalmic surgeon of
great renown. In 1904 the Wildes were gone and a dental
surgeon named Charles H. Dowling was on the premisses.
Standing in front of this house, Farrell stares to the
southwest, frowningly, at "the distant pleasance of duke's
lawn" on the back side of Leinster House. A "pleasance,"
according to the OED, is "A pleasure-ground, usually
attached to a mansion; sometimes a secluded part of a garden,
but more often a separate enclosure laid out with shady walks,
trees and shrubs, statuary, and ornamental water." Such a
grand bit of gardening is exactly what the Duke of Leinster
commissioned, as the photograph here illustrates. Farrell is
then said to look northward at "Elijah's name announced on
the Metropolitan hall," which is puzzling, because
Metropolitan Hall was on Abbey Street, north of the river and
thus impossible for him to see. Gifford concludes that Farrell
must instead be looking "at Merrion Hall, which is off to his
left, on the corner of Denzille Lane (now Fenian Street)
and Merrion Street Lower, the northerly extension of Merrion
Square West." At the end of Oxen of the Sun, he notes,
Stephen and Lynch spot a poster on the wall of that building
after walking down Denzille Lane: "Christicle, who's this
excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is
coming. Washed in the blood of the Lamb." Merrion Hall,
Slote notes, was an Evangelical church––consistent with
posting a notice of John Alexander Dowie's visit.
Moving on, Farrell walks west on "Clare Street" past "Mr
Bloom's dental windows." Marcus J. Bloom, no relation to
Leopold though both men had Jewish fathers who converted to
Catholicism prior to marriage, was a dental surgeon whose
office was at 2 Clare Street. At this spot the "dustcoat" of
the fiercely striding, word-grinding madman nearly knocks down
the blind piano tuner, who is moving east on the same
sidewalk. The disabled boy hurls a curse at the back of his
distracted and seemingly indifferent assailant. The possible
confusion created by the mention of a second Bloom adds to the
confusion of a second Louis Werner moments earlier, and both
build on the close conjunction of "Jimmy Henry" and "Henry Clay"
in section 15. Wandering Rocks forces its readers to
navigate the tricky turns of language as well as geography.
Merrion Square was the home of moneyed Anglo-Irish families
as well as prominent Protestant writers W. B. Yeats and George
Russell, and its luxuriant shaded paths were off-limits
to ordinary Dubliners. In Sirens Simon Dedalus
remembers the night when Ben Dollard went to the Blooms' house
to rent some concert attire and found grand things there––
"luxurious operacloaks," and "Balldresses, by God, and court
dresses." He sums up such posh finery in the phrase, "Merrion
square style."
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/nassaumount.jpg)
Detail of 1920 Bartholomew map showing Nassau, Leinster, Clare, Merrion North, and Lower Mount Streets leading from Trinity College past Merrion Square, and the "lawn" of Leinster House. Source: www.leventhalmap.org.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/merrionsquare.jpg)
Recent aerial photograph of Merrion Square taken from the west, with Clare Street visible at lower left and Mount Street Lower at top center.
Source: www.eghn.org.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/kildarestreet.jpg)
The Kildare Street Club seen from across Nassau Street, in a ca. 1880-1900 Robert French photograph held in the Lawrence Photograph Collection of the National Library of Ireland. Source: mappingdubliners.org.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/wildehome.jpg)
2013 photograph of the Wilde home on Merrion Square by Pi3.124.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/leinstergarden.jpg)
1890s photograph of the "pleasance" at the back side of Leinster House, colorized by Rob Cross in 2020. Source: twitter.com.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/merrionhall.jpg)
2010 photograph of the Davenport Hotel, formerly Merrion Hall, by DubhEire. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
![](/images/for-chapter/10/thumbnail/yeatsrussell.jpg)
Cartoon of Yeats and Russell going to meet one another from number 82 and number 84 Merrion Square, and missing each other at number 83.
Source: swanriverpress.wordpress.com.