Amiens Street

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The account of the journey begins in the rough Monto district, on or near Tyrone Street where Stephen was knocked down: "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." There is no Beaver Lane, and as Slote observes, Beaver Street is "not especially narrow," so the prose evidently reflects someone's feeling threatened in this wretchedly poor and crime-ridden part of town. That someone is more likely Bloom than Stephen. A horse-shoeing business ("farrier's") was located at 14-15 Beaver Street, and the livery stable at 42 Montgomery (now Foley) Street, where Beaver deadends, adds foul smells to the close dark atmosphere. Here the identity of the person feeling oppressed seems certain, because A Portrait of the Artist has observed that Stephen welcomes the odor of "horse piss and rotted straw." The two men, we learn, "made tracks" toward Amiens Street––a cliché that often implies haste, suggesting that Bloom cannot wait to get out of Monto.

Their turn onto the thoroughfare, which takes them past Daniel Bergin's pub at 46 Amiens Street, is described as a "debouching," a rather recherché way of saying "emerging into the open." The French word, which came into English in the 18th century, means coming "from the mouth." It can apply to things like rivers emptying into the sea, but it was often used to describe a body of troops emerging from a town or other enclosed space onto open ground. Joyce uses it in that way in Lestrygonians when the narrative observes that "A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file." In Eumaeus, applied to two men emerging from narrower streets onto a broader one, the word feels more than a little pretentious. It may well express Bloom's sense of quiet triumph at having reached somewhat safer streets.

Looking down Amiens Street for a cab, Bloom sees only one: "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 a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice." The North Star Hotel at 26-30 Amiens Street (now The Address Connolly) is a long city block from the Montgomery Street corner, and elevated train tracks crowd the space between, so Bloom's weak yoo-hoo signals appear comically futile.

The narration too is inept. It says "confidently anticipated" instead of "correctly feared," "symptom" instead of "sign." It informs readers that the cab has probably been hired "by some fellows inside" before observing the cab's location "outside the North Star hotel." And who has ever heard of professional whistlers? Bloom's awkwardness, and the awkward descriptions of his actions, together threaten to obscure the very kind efforts that he is making on his companion's behalf. A fourwheeler (a closed carriage like the one taken to the cemetery in Hades) would be more expensive than a two-wheel jaunting car, but Bloom is determined to find Stephen a ride. His search for "a Jehu plying for hire" contributes to the sense of his urgent desire to help the young man. This slang word for a fast driver comes from a biblical verse: "the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously" (II Kings 9:20).

Failing to find a cab means more walking: "This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus." Wordiness, clichés, and obscure slang (Gifford notes that "bevelling" means "moving or pushing") here complicate a simple and straightforward action. "Mullett's" was another grocery and public house at 45 Amiens Street, right next door to Bergin's. The "Signal House," yet one more such establishment at 36 Amiens Street, remains in business today under the name J. & M. Cleary. This pub tucked almost directly beneath the train tracks is one of the oldest in Dublin. It has a rich history, and several films have been shot on the premises. It merits a visit from all Joycean tourists.

On the other side of Amiens Street sits the station where the train tracks lead: "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..." This railway was one of four major lines with terminals in Dublin: trains for southeastern parts of Ireland departed from the Westland Row station, trains for the southwest from Kingsbridge, trains for the west from Broadstone, and trains for the north from Amiens Street, all four stations being served by different railway companies. The Loopline under which Bloom and Stephen have just walked connects the Westland Row station and the one on Amiens Street (now Connolly Station) on elevated tracks.

The sentence continues, "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." Store is a short but wide street with a right-angle turn in its middle that in 1904 offered the only connection between Amiens Street and Beresford Place. (Today, with the docks filled in, traffic on Amiens can continue farther south.) The men pass an entrance to the City Morgue at 2-4 Amiens Street, reach the Dock Tavern on the corner, turn into Store Street, and then pass a door to the Coroner's Court housed in the same building as the morgue (this door goes unmentioned in the narrative, but is illustrated in a photograph here).

The Dublin City Coroner's Court and City Morgue opened on Store Street in 1902. Although the narrative describes it as "gruesome" (based, apparently, only on knowing what the building contains), its founding in fact represented a clean modern solution to Dublin's longstanding problem of keeping people who had died of unknown causes in conditions that were truly gruesome: unrefrigerated, poorly lit, poorly ventilated, and often filthy. In a 2021 blog (lornapeel.com/2021/09/12/morgue), Lorna Peel describes the new facility: "The purpose-built coroner’s court and morgue on Store Street was designed by the city architect Charles J McCarthy who had gone on a fact-finding tour of coroner’s courts in England. It contained a court with a public gallery, a jury box, retiring rooms and a waiting room for witnesses. The mortuaries and post-mortem room were separate and to the rear of the building. The viewing lobby was separated from the mortuaries by glass screens so jurors and others called upon to view the bodies on which inquests were being held could observe them without actually entering the mortuaries." (Today the morgue has moved to another part of town, but the coroner's court remains on Store Street.)

A little farther down the same side of the street, they pass the C Division police station. Calling it "famous" may have something to do with police suppression of demonstrations on Beresford Place. In 1899 opponents of the Boer War staged massive demonstrations there and were met with massed police forces. Slote notes that police lived in barracks in this building only one block away from the large open Place, so their pouring out of it to contain the crowds––a true "debouching"––could possibly have made it notorious. The neutral term "famous" seems characteristic of Bloom's guardedly ambivalent attitudes toward republican insurrection. (Political demonstrations were also held in Beresford Place in the wake of the Easter Rising of 1916, as a photograph in another note on this site shows.)

One more building on Store Street makes its presence known when the narrative observes that Bloom "inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to where they were." The final clause reflects the fact that the two men do not walk directly past Rourke's: they jog left on Store just before the triangular plaza on which the bakery fronts. But the pleasant aroma coming from the nighttime baking calls forth a torrent of playful verbal associations in Bloom's consciousness. His olfactory delight makes a kind of bookend to the "fetid" stench of horses that assaulted his nose on Montgomery Street, announcing a happy end to a journey that seemed foreboding at the outset. This pairing of two striking odors may be taken as evidence that Joyce conceived of the walk down Amiens Street as one united action, starting shortly before the men reach the thoroughfare and concluding shortly after they leave it.

§ If design may govern in a thing so small, it may also involve the grandest kind of planning in the novel, the analogy with Homer's Odyssey. In Lotus Eaters Joyce's cunning artifice made Bloom's feet sketch two huge question marks on the Dublin pavements, evoking his aimless lotus-like confusion. The opening paragraphs of Eumaeus may be doing something similar by having Bloom and Stephen walk southeast to Amiens Street, south down the length of the boulevard, and southwest to Beresford Place. Gifford observes that the route is "circuitous, circumspect––as are both Odysseus's and Telemachus's approaches to Eumaeus's hut in The Odyssey." The mortal peril that Homer's heroes skirt as they return to Ithaca seems to be reflected in Joyce's heroes' late-night trek through darkened streets in a dangerous part of town, skirting prostitutes, thieves, drunks, dead bodies, and policemen. The cabman's shelter, like Eumaeus's house, provides a place of relative safety where they can carefully assess one another and plot their next moves.