The map of it all

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In a personal communication, Vincent Van Wyk has called my attention to the existence of these handkerchiefs. For nearly three years Britain was fighting a war of imperial conquest in an unfamiliar land on the other side of the globe. Newspapers sometimes printed maps to help their readers make geographical sense of the war, but some enterprising manufacturers also reproduced maps of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State on pocket handkerchiefs which people could buy and carry about. The handkerchiefs were produced in huge numbers and raised enormous sums for support of the troops.

None of these three commentators shows how the figurative meaning might mesh with a coherent understanding of Molly's thought and syntax, but when one attempts to do so its limitations become evident. Why would Molly think that she looked Irish, and why would she recall one occasion "when" she "had" it? People normally think of others having a certain ethnic look, not themselves, and if she thinks she had the look of the Irish when she sang at the concert, does that mean she has since lost it? Still another implausibility is that, as Raleigh admits, this would be the only time in the novel when Molly is said to appear distinctively Irish: she has a dark complexion that makes her look exotic. The difficulties continue. Does Molly remember looking Irish at the time of the concert because she thinks it somehow advantaged her? Even among relatives of the Irishmen fighting in the British army in South Africa, it is hard to imagine how an Irish-looking singer on the stage would make them support English aggression more enthusiastically.

But perhaps Raleigh supposes that the phrase connects not with the preceding words but with what comes after: "I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him." Construed in this way, Molly is jumping from thoughts of South Africa to the issue of being hired for concerts: Bloom has trouble getting gigs for her because he doesn't look Irish enough, but she had the map of it all.... This reading too is hard to square with the fact that Molly looks exotically Spanish and Jewish, and with the temporal limitation of only once having had the look. Even more importantly, though, her Irish appearance seems irrelevant to landing gigs, because Molly never once thinks of finagling concert appearances herself. In the male-dominated concert world of turn-of-the-century Dublin (vividly represented in "A Mother," and Kathleen Kearney has popped into her thoughts only seconds before), she leaves that to people like her husband and Blazes Boylan.

Slote avoids all these problems by assuming that "I had the map of it all"  refers not to Molly but to Lord Roberts, and there seems to be some logic to his choice: an Irish audience supporting Irish troops might well respond favorably to a British general who looked Irish. But in addition to the tense problem of "had," this reading runs roughshod over the grammatical subject of the clause. "I" normally refers to oneself, doesn't it? How could "I had" possibly mean "Lord Roberts had"?