No More Learning

It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married
daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it
was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will
and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of
my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin,
committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under
which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty
and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in
the world he has created, in _Much Ado about Nothing_, twice in _As you
like It_, in _The Tempest_, in _Hamlet,_ in _Measure for Measure_--and
in all the other plays which I have not read.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

Judge Eglinton summed up.

--The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He
is all in all.

--He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.
All in all. In _Cymbeline,_ in _Othello_ he is bawd and cuckold. He acts
and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he
kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago
ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.

--Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!

Dark dome received, reverbed.

--And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When
all is said Dumas _fils_ (or is it Dumas _pere? )_ is right. After God
Shakespeare has created most.

--Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after
a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of
life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The
motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet _(pere? )_ and Hamlet _fils. _
A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what
though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for,
Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom
they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it:
prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of
love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the
place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world
without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck
says: _If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated
on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps
will tend. _ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through
ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives,
widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright
who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light
first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom
the most Roman of catholics call _dio boia_, hangman god, is doubtless
all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and
cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there
are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife
unto himself.

_--Eureka! _ Buck Mulligan cried. _Eureka! _

Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's
desk.

--May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.

He began to scribble on a slip of paper.

Take some slips from the counter going out.

--Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one,
shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
variorum edition of _The Taming of the Shrew. _

--You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe
your own theory?

--No, Stephen said promptly.

--Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.

John Eclecticon doubly smiled.

--Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment
for it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is
some mystery in _Hamlet_ but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man
Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes
that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to
visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor
wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But he
believes his theory.

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help
me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? _Egomen. _ Who to unbelieve? Other
chap.

--You are the only contributor to _Dana_ who asks for pieces of silver.
Then I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
article on economics.

Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.

--For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then
gravely said, honeying malice:

--I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the _Summa contra
Gentiles_ in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and
Rosalie, the coalquay whore.

He broke away.

--Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.

Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
and offals.

Stephen rose.

Life is many days. This will end.

--We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. _Notre ami_ Moore says
Malachi Mulligan must be there.

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

--Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk
straight?

Laughing, he. . .

Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.

Lubber. . .

Stephen followed a lubber. . .

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His
lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt
head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of
no thought.

What have I learned? Of them? Of me?

Walk like Haines now.

The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle O'Connor
Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet
mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.

--O please do, sir. . . I shall be most pleased. . .

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:

--A pleased bottom.

The turnstile.

Is that? . . . Blueribboned hat. . . Idly writing. . . What? Looked? . . .

The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:

_John Eglinton, my jo, John, Why won't you wed a wife? _

He spluttered to the air:

--O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a
new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I
smell the pubic sweat of monks.

He spat blank.

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
left the _femme de trente ans. _ And why no other children born? And his
first child a girl?

Afterwit. Go back.

The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.

Eh. . . I just eh. . . wanted. . . I forgot. . . he. . .

--Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there. . .

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:

_I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M'Curdy Atkinson,
The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering filibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,
Magee that had the chinless mouth.
Being afraid to marry on earth
They masturbated for all they were worth. _


Jest on. Know thyself.

Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.

--Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing
black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.

A laugh tripped over his lips.

--Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that
old hake Gregory.
O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you
a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus.
Couldn't you do the Yeats touch?

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:

--The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
One thinks of Homer.

He stopped at the stairfoot.

--I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice
with caps of indices.

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet: _Everyman His
own Wife or A Honeymoon in the Hand (a national immorality in three
orgasms) by Ballocky Mulligan. _


He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying:

--The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.

He read, _marcato:_

--Characters:

TODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
CRAB (a bushranger)
MEDICAL DICK )
and ) (two birds with one stone)
MEDICAL DAVY )
MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
FRESH NELLY
and
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:

--O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to
lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

--The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted
them.

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must
come to, ineluctably.

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.

--Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.

The portico.

Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they
come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots
after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.

--The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you
see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient
mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.

Manner of Oxenford.

Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.

A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
under portcullis barbs.

They followed.

Offend me still. Speak on.

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail
from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw
of softness softly were blown.

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:
from wide earth an altar.

_Laud we the gods
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless'd altars. _


The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth watch
in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to
three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again?
Dignam. Yes. _Vere dignum et iustum est. _ Brother Swan was the person
to see. Mr Cunningham's letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good
practical catholic: useful at mission time.

A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his
crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the
sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very
reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his
purse held, he knew, one silver crown.

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long,
of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs,
ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey's words:
_If I had served my God as I have served my king He would not have
abandoned me in my old days. _ He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking
leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P.

--Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton
probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at
Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that.
And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to
be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was
very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O,
yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really.

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P.
Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M. P.
Yes, he would certainly call.

--Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the
jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again,
in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father
Bernard Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice.

--Pilate! Wy don't you old back that owlin mob?

A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his
way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish.
Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?

O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.

Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy
square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. And were
they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his
name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man?
His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have.

Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and
pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.

--But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said.

The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:

--O, sir.

--Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.

Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's letter
to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. Father
Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square
east.

Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate
frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender
trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave
deportment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady
Maxwell at the corner of Dignam's court.

Was that not Mrs M'Guinness?

Mrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the
farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and
saluted. How did she do?

A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to
think that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a. . . what should he
say? . . . such a queenly mien.

Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup
free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B. A. will (D. V. )
speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say
a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They
acted according to their lights.

Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular
road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important
thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.

A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All
raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly.
Christian brother boys.

Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint
Joseph's church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females.
Father Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but
occasionally they were also badtempered.

Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift
nobleman. And now it was an office or something.

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted
by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father
Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came
from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan's the
Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful
catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually
happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an
act of perfect contrition.

Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the window of
which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.

Father Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where Corny
Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay.
A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted
the constable. In Youkstetter's, the porkbutcher's, Father Conmee
observed pig's puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in
tubes.

Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a
turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty
straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above
him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of
the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it
out and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor
people.

On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis
Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound
tram.

Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of
saint Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.

At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for
he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.

Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with
care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence
and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse.