Wicklow Street

Read More

"Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam," elsewhere Patsy, starts at the corner where William Street intersects Wicklow Street from the south, carrying the steaks he bought at "Mangan's, late Ferhenbach's," a pork butcher at 1-2 William Street South. Heading east along the south side of Wicklow Street, he goes "Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's," a bar at 23 Wicklow Street that stood catty-corner to Mangan's across the intersection. He passes "Wicklow Lane," which Gifford and Slote identify as a small street running south not far from the intersection with William Street. Still on the south side, he stops at "the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress milliner," a shop at 33 Wicklow Street, to gaze in at a poster advertising a prize fight, and beside it another poster promoting English singer Marie Kendall. Lost in thoughts about the fight, he makes his way to Grafton Street and there sees Blazes Boylan ("a toff") talking to Bob Doran ("the drunk"), a scene previously represented by interpolation in section 15. Seeing "no Sandymount tram," he  continues walking up Nassau Street.

In the first paragraph of this section Patsy is "dawdling," because "It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour" with his relatives "jawing the whole blooming time and sighing." Clive Hart remarks that "After lunch Master Dignam has been 'sent for' a pound and a half of Mangan's porksteaks. Although we are never explicitly told why he should have been sent nearly two miles from his home on such a trifling errand when perfectly good porksteaks could certainly have been bought from many shops very much closer to hand, it is apparent that he had been growing a little fractious at the 'blooming dull' conversation in the parlour, and that he has been got out of the house for an hour or two for the benefit of everyone." Hart estimates that he leaves Mangan's "shortly after a quarter past three" but moves home very slowly. "When last seen, in section 19, he has stopped altogether. As the viceregal horses pass him in Merrion Square, he is said to be 'waiting'––not, presumably, for the next tram, which he could as well have caught in Nassau Street, but for the end of the cavalcade, which provides a further welcome excuse for delaying his return to the gloomy house of mourning" (James Joyce's Dublin, 56).