Geraghty and Herzog

Read More

In the parodic passage that follows the narrator's account, Geraghty is identified more properly (though probably misleadingly) as "Michael E. Geraghty, esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman." The 1904 Thom's directory lists an M. E. Geraghty at 29 Arbour Hill, and the terms "esquire" and "gentleman" cohere with the narrator's report that Geraghty "said he had a farm in the county Down," implying that he is a country gentleman living off income generated by his land. But Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner, noting that Geraghty was listed as a "labourer" in the 1901 census, plausibly infer that his claim of owning such a farm is a lie enabling him to obtain groceries on credit. Geraghty does not act like a gentleman: "But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him, says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you round here again or if he does, says he, I'll have him summonsed up before the court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And he after stuffing himself till he's fit to burst."

If the narrator is quick to condemn the brazen mendacity of this "robber" who has made off with another man's goods, he is equally quick to mock the merchant who has hired him to recover the unpaid money. Jews who feel that Gentiles should be obligated to pay them what they owe are beneath contempt: "Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys?" The grocer is "a hop-of-my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury street." Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Catch Phrases, cited in Slote's annotations, and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable both identify "hop of my thumb" as slang for a dwarf. Heytesbury Street is on the eastern edge of the Jewish quarter in south central Dublin. The parodic paragraph more exactly places Herzog's address half a dozen blocks west––"13 Saint Kevin's parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward"––and Thom's confirms this address.

Saint Kevin's Parade is quite close to Clanbrassil Street, where Bloom grew up. Like Bloom's father, and Bloom himself for a time, the actual Moses Herzog was a traveling salesman, peddling groceries from door to door. Vivien Igoe, relying on census records and Louis Hyman's The Jews of Ireland, describes him as "a one-eyed Dublin Jew and peddler, trading as an itinerant grocer travelling around the city. He shared the house with relations, Isaac Herzog, a Polish Jew and widower, and his son Abraham, who were born in 1843 and 1882 respectively; both were also peddlers. Herzog was renowned for slipping out of the synagogue at St Kevin's Parade during the long services of the High Festivals to have a drink."

The narrator conjures vivid portraits of a violently blustering thief with a potholed face who ludicrously claims to be a country gentleman and an impotently outraged little immigrant peddler with poor English and Shylockian demands to be paid. The real-life models can add little to these fictions. Nothing but a missing eye and a drinking problem characterize the known Herzog, who left Ireland for South Africa in 1908. Even less biographical information attends the Irishman, and Joyce seems determined to make him enigmatic. Geraghty died in 1905 at the age of 40 or 41, so it is odd that the narrator calls him "old," and neither Thom's nor census records identify him as a "plumber." (Gifford suggests, without attribution, that this may be "slang for a clumsy, brutal person.") These opening paragraphs plunge readers into a disorienting realm of unfamiliar individuals, obscure insinuations, rough talk, and shady dealings. Things do not get any better when Hynes and the narrator enter Barney Kiernan's pub in search of "the citizen."