ch14a

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From the Broadstone to Mullingar is a journey of some fifty miles across the midlands of Ireland. Mullingar, the chief town of Westmeath, is the midland capital and there is a great traffic of peasants and cattle between it and Dublin. This fifty-mile journey is made by the train in about two hours and you are therefore to conceive Stephen Daedalus packed in the corner of a third-class carriage and contributing the thin fumes of his cigarettes to the already reeking atmosphere. The carriage was inhabited by a company of peasants nearly every one of whom had a bundle tied in a spotted handkerchief. The carriage smelt strongly of peasants, (an odour the debasing humanity of which Stephen remembered to have perceived in the little chapel of Clongowes on the morning of his first communion) and indeed so pungently that the youth could not decide whether he found the odour of sweat offensive because the peasant sweat is monstrous or because it did not now proceed from his own body. He was not ashamed to admit to himself that he found it offensive for both of these reasons. The peasants played with blackened edgeless cards from Broadstone onward and whenever it was time for a peasant to leave the company he took up his bundle and went out heavily through the door of the carriage, never closing it behind him. The peasants spoke little and rarely looked at the scene they passed but when they came to Maynooth Station a gentleman dressed in a frock-coat and tall hat who was giving loud directions to a porter concerning a case of machines attracted their wondering attention for several minutes.





At Mullingar Stephen took his neat little valise down from the rack and descended to the platform. When he had passed through the claws of the ticket-collectors he paused for a few moments in indecision before he was sighted by the driver of a small dark-green trap. The driver asked was he the young gentleman for Mr Fulham and on Stephen's answering 'yes' invited him to climb up beside him on the seat. So they set off easily. The trap which was not very clean jolted a good deal and Stephen looked once or twice anxiously at his oscillating valise but the driver said he need have no fear. The driver when he had said this a few times in the same words fell silent a while and then asked didn't Stephen come from Dublin. Re-assured on this point he fell silent again and began with a deliberate whip to flick flies off the ill-groomed hide between the shafts.



The trap went up the long crooked main street of the town and crossing over the bridge of the canal made out for the country. Stephen remarked that the houses were very small but catching sight of a large square building that stood in grounds closely walled he asked the driver what building it was. The driver told him it was the lunatic asylum and added impressively that there were a great many patients in it. The road wound through heavy pasture lands and in field after field Stephen saw herds of cattle fattening. Sometimes these cattle were in the charge of a drowsy peasant but oftener they were left to themselves and moved slowly from marsh to dry land and from dry land to marsh as the will took them. The little cottages along the road were covered with overblown roses and in many of the doorways there would stand a woman gazing silently over the flat country. Now and again a peasant plodding along the road would give the driver the time of day and if he judged Stephen worthy of the honour fumble at his hat. Proceeding in this manner along the dusty road the trap gradually drew near Mr Fulham's house.

lunatic asylum [info]

It was an old irregular house, barely visible from the road, and surrounded by a fair plantation. It was reached by an untended drive and the ground behind it thick with clumps of faded rhododendrons sloped down to the shore of Lough Owel. The lodge was a whitewashed cottage at the door of which a little child in a chemise sat eating a big crust of bread. The gate was open and the trap turned up the drive. After a circular tour of a few hundred yards the trap reached the door of the old discoloured house.

Lough Owel

As the trap drew up to the door a young woman advanced to meet it with a quiet dignified gait. She was dressed completely in black and her dark hair was brushed plainly off her temples. She held out her hand:



— Welcome, she said. My uncle is in the orchard. We heard the noise of the wheels.



Stephen touched her hand slightly and bowed.



— Dan, leave that valise in the hall for the present and you, Mr Daedalus, are to come along with me. I hope you are not fatigued by your journey: it is so tiresome travelling.



— Not in the least.


"Clare Howard" appears in the character list, but Mr Fulham does not (he must have been introduced/described earlier though)


She led the way along the hall and through a little glass door into a great square orchard, the nearer half of which was still a sunny region. Here, screened by a broad straw hat, Mr Fulham was discovered sitting in a basket-chair. He greeted Stephen very warmly and made the usual polite enquiries. Miss Howard had brought out a little tray containing fruit and milk and the visitor gladly ate and drank for the dust of the roads had invaded his throat. Mr Fulham asked a great many questions about Stephen's studies and tastes while Miss Howard stood beside his chair in silence. At a pause in the interrogation she took up the tray and carried it into the house. When she came back she offered to show Stephen the orchard and, Mr Fulham returning at the same moment to his newspaper, she led the way down a walk of currant-bushes. Stephen had found his godfather's questions a somewhat severe ordeal and he revenged himself on Miss Howard by a counter-fire of questions concerning the names and seasons and prospects of her plants. She answered all his questions carefully but with the same air of indifferent exactness which marked all her acts. Her presence did not awe him as it had done when he had last met her and he thought that perhaps the uncontaminated nature which he had then imagined accusing him was no more than an unusual dignity of manner. He did not find this dignity of hers very congenial and his new fervour of youth was vitally piqued by her lack of animation. He decided in favour of some definite purpose of hers and against a mechanical discharge of duties and said to himself that it would be an intellectual game for him to discover it. He set this task to himself all the more readily since he suspected that this purpose guiding her conduct must be inimical to his present genial impulses and would probably elude him out of instantaneous distrust and seek natural safety in flight. This fugitive impulse would be prey for him and at once he summoned all his faculties to the chase.


Fulham's house is based on Awley Bannon [j&c233] 

(does he discover the "definite purpose of hers"?)

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