The Most Historic Spot in All Dublin

“History in ‘Wandering Rocks’ is not only colonial history registered in the fabric of the city; it is also quite specifically colonial history distorted and dominated by Protestant and Anglo-Irish interpretations.” - Len Platt

The eighth section of Ulysses’ tenth episode, “Wandering Rocks” opens with “two pink faces” greeting a third in some dark, dusty chamber. We are reunited with two characters we haven’t seen since the “Aeolus” episode: Ned Lambert and J.J. “Jack” O’Molloy. Ned is accompanied by an entity introduced simply as a clergyman with a “refined accent,” but who we learn in time is the reverend Hugh C. Love M.A. Rev. Love is working on a history book and Ned just so happens to have access to St. Mary’s Abbey, which he calls “the most historic spot in all Dublin.” Ned, a seed and grain merchant, has access to the Abbey’s ancient council chamber because it is currently being used by his employer as storage. He offers to have the space cleared of stock so that Love can come back and take a photo. It’s a deceptively simple vignette depicting a cordial but uneventful interaction. Of course, there’s so much more to it than that.

“Wandering Rocks”’ short scenes give us a chance to spend time with Ulysses’ vast cast of minor characters. The players in this scene are about as minor as you get, but they all come with a bit of their own history. I wrote about J.J. O’Molloy in depth here. Ned Lambert’s origin is a bit of a head scratcher; he’s one of the few Ulysses characters for whom scholars haven’t found a real-life counterpart. In “Aeolus,” he mocks doughy Dan Dawson’s purple prose, and then teases Myles Crawford about his passion for the North Cork Militia of Ohio. Leopold Bloom notes in his internal monologue that the buoyant Ned is actually quite well-connected, as he is the nephew of the vice-chancellor of Ireland, Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Ned stands to inherit a substantial fortune from his uncle, who stubbornly remains alive for the time being:

“He has influence they say. Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.”

Hugh C. Love is a Protestant clergyman with a passion for Irish history, particularly the Fitzgeralds, the erstwhile Earls of Kildare. Robert Adams wrote in his book Surface and Symbol that Love doesn’t perfectly match any real person. There’s no book about the Fitzgeralds by anyone fitting his description, there’s no Protestant church in the town of Rathcoffey listed on Love’s card, and there was no one named Hugh C. Love holding office in the Church of Ireland at that time. Love is a bit of a cipher throughout this passage. We don’t even know his name until after he has left, when Ned reads his card:

“—The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael’s, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He’s writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He’s well up in history, faith.”

As this scene in “Wandering Rocks” revolves around Irish history, we should evaluate the history put forth by Love and Lambert. The very air our boys are breathing is swirling with history, but Ulysses characters have a knack for bungling the details of historical events both large and small. We begin with Ned playing tour guide:

“We are standing in the historic council chamber of saint Mary’s abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed himself a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin…. The old bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and the original jews’ temple was here too before they built their synagogue over in Adelaide road.”

All that remains of Saint Mary’s Abbey is its chapter house, visible here, which is still standing on Dublin’s north side since its founding in 1139. Ned’s right that it is one of the most historic spots in all Dublin. It was in that very room that Silken Thomas famously declared rebellion (more on him in a minute). It ceased to be a monastery after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530’s and has acted as a revolving door of functional spaces over the centuries.

The Bank of Ireland was originally located in the same building in 1783 but moved to its current home in the former House of Parliament in 1803 after the Act of Union. Following the Bank of Ireland’s exit, the site was home to a synagogue for much of the nineteenth century, though it wasn’t the “original jews’ temple” as Ned states, as there was an earlier synagogue established across the Liffey in Crane Lane in 1650. The Jewish congregation left the abbey in the 1890’s for newer digs south of the river, and the space was then occupied by Messrs. Alexander & Co., seed merchants, who are using the space in “Wandering Rocks.” Saint Mary’s Abbey is now preserved as a historic structure by the Office of Public Works and open for tours. You won’t need an in with Ned Lambert to see the famous council chamber. As a bonus, it’s lit with electric lights, so you don’t need to use a match like Hugh C. Love.

And what of Silken Thomas? Stephen lists him among a group of famous pretenders to the throne in “Proteus” as “Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight.” Thomas was the Earl of Kildare at the time of his famous rebellion in 1534. Silken Thomas’ family, the Fitzgeralds (also called the Geraldines), were a powerful family of assimilated Normans. Scholar Andrew Gibson explains how they spoke Irish, intermarried with Irish families, and adopted Irish customs. In 1534, Silken Thomas dramatically declared rebellion against Henry VIII by storming into the council chamber of Saint Mary’s Abbey and tossing the sword of state onto the council table in front of a meeting of Archbishops and English dignitaries, and renouncing his allegiance to the English crown. Silken Thomas’ rebellion was short-lived, and in the end, pushed Henry VIII to retaliate and consolidate his power in Ireland.

Gibson emphasizes in his discussion of this passage in “Wandering Rocks” that Silken Thomas’ rebellion is notable because “... he identified Church with English power and opposed both together.” This insight is key to interpreting “Wandering Rocks” as a whole. The episode is framed with Father Conmee’s long journey as the opening and the Viceregal Cavalcade thundering across Dublin in the opposite direction at its close. A cursory reading makes it feel like these two opposing forces, Church and State, are at odds, but upon closer inspection, they are deeply enmeshed and support one another in maintaining the social hierarchy. Silken Thomas’ rebellion was partially in response to a consolidation of Church and State power, when Henry VIII (who was Silken Thomas’ cousin) declared himself head of the Church of England in defiance of the Catholic Church, an act that led to centuries of turmoil and oppression of Catholics in Ireland and beyond. Love, a member of the Protestant clergy, breathlessly beholds the chamber where Silken Thomas’ rebellion against Church and State was birthed, but offers no comment on these actions beyond the basic facts:

“—He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court.
—That’s right, Ned Lambert said. That’s quite right, sir.”

It’s not quite clear what Love means here, as the Earls of Kildare didn’t have a residence in Thomas Court. Perhaps he’s just confusing the name with the name “Silken Thomas?” Ned simply agrees with Love, deferentially calling him “sir.” Ned seems to know his history, so does he also know that Love is sorely mistaken in this instance?

Once Love has departed, Ned tells J.J. O’Molloy a story about Silken Thomas’ grandfather Gerald Fitzgerald, aka Fitzgerald Mor or the Great Earl:

“—God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I’m bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside. He mightn’t like it, though. What? God, I’ll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.”

Ned's story is essentially accurate. The Great Earl did set fire to Cashel Cathedral, and when questioned about it by Henry VII, responded with the absolute zinger Ned quotes:

“I’m bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside.”

Afterward, the Great Earl was promoted to Lord Deputy of Ireland, with the king declaring “All Ireland cannot govern this Earl; then let this Earl govern all Ireland.” You can imagine Henry and the boys slapping their knees as they laughed, saying, “That’s our Gerald!” The Great Earl supported either tacitly or openly two more of the pretenders to the throne that Stephen names in “Proteus,” Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. This didn’t seem to hurt his career, either.

Scholar Mark Osteen places Love among the pantheon of Ulysses characters who are history buffs with a dubious grasp on history, including Haines, Mr. Deasy, and Father Conmee. Like Deasy, Love is a Protestant, and like Conmee, he is a member of the clergy. Like all of them, he believes in the current social order and benefits from his status within it. Unlike, say, Stephen Dedalus, for whom history is an unceasing, waking nightmare, the past is a glorious fantasy of the intellect to Love. Osteen sees Love as a representation of the “economic and political tyranny” ruling Ireland, which links him to Deasy, a devotee of that tyranny.

There is a subtle parallel baked into the way both Love and Deasy speak. Love politely excuses himself by stating, “I won’t trespass on your valuable time,” while Deasy includes the line “May I trespass on your valuable space” in his letter about foot and mouth disease. The time and space of the Irish people are exactly what the colonial rulers are trespassing upon, however. In the context of Ulysses, time is usurped as Ireland’s past is transformed into a playground for the wealthy classes, and space is usurped in terms of the land of Ireland itself. Dilettantes like Haines reduce Irish culture to an aesthetic for English consumption while Love’s fascination for the Fitzgeralds inspires him to write their history, despite his possibly shallow knowledge of the subject matter. Adams wrote that “...Joyce intended to suggest the history of his country, like its language, was the diversion of well-mannered, well-spoken, but essentially cold and selfish usurpers.”

While there is a slight connection between Love and Deasy, there is a much stronger parallel between Love and Fr. Conmee. It might be easy to miss at first because Fr. Conmee is Catholic, but, in truth, he holds quite a similar worldview to his Protestant counterparts. Mr. Deasy is so blustery and openly bigoted compared to Fr. Conmee, whose courtly, gentle nature conceals his class-based prejudices. When we first meet Love in “Wandering Rocks,” he is described as a disembodied “refined accent” conversing with Ned Lambert, his refinement superseding all other characteristics, apart from his interest in history. Though Fr. Conmee is much more fleshed out as a character, “upper class” and “history buff” are his two dominant characteristics as well, superseding even his Catholicism. We learn that Love is working on a history book, while Conmee has completed a history book, “Old Times in the Barony,” described by scholar Len Platt as a “Catholic elegy for Protestant landlordism.”

Once left to their own devices, both Love and Conmee slip into daydreams of their imagined versions of history. I’ve previously discussed Conmee’s musings here, so let’s take a look at Love’s flights of historical fancy. We have to look to later sections of “Wandering Rocks” to get a fuller sense of Love as a character, though. In the fourteenth section of “Wandering Rocks,” Hugh C. Love appears as an intrusion briefly interrupting the conversation of Simon Dedalus, Bob Cowley, and Ben Dollard:

“The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary’s abbey past James and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles.”

Love dreamily floats through the urban density of Dublin in his own private reverie “attended by Geraldines,” imagining them as “tall and personable,” which is some real fan-fiction stuff. As readers, we can suspect Love is concocting a work of hagiography about his favorite guys rather than a more serious, academic project. Love makes his way “towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles,” two Dublin landmarks that haven’t existed for centuries. The Tholsel was a major landmark in medieval Dublin, in what is now Skinner’s Row. The Tholsel performed various civic functions over its lifespan, including housing the Parliament of Ireland in the 1640’s. It would have been a major landmark in its day, but that day had been long-gone for almost a century by the time Love took to the streets, as the Tholsel was demolished in 1809. Additionally, Love is planning to traverse the ford of the hurdles in order to reach the Tholsel. The ford of the hurdles was the place where early inhabitants of Dublin crossed the Liffey before permanent stone bridges were constructed. The Irish name for Dublin, Baile Áth Cliath, comes from this structure. Needless to say, the ford of the hurdles was long gone before Love got there. In essence, Love is walking towards a non-existent building across a non-existent ford attended by a flock of ghosts.

According to Platt, Love’s fascination with the Geraldines would have been in line with the Anglo-Irish art at the turn of the last century, which sought to link the Anglo-Norman Ireland of the past with contemporary nationalist causes. The Fitzgerald dynasty and Silken Thomas in particular were common subjects for hagiographical poetry and other literature produced in this period. The Fitzgeralds wouldn’t necessarily share much in common politically with the early twentieth century Irish Nationalist movement, especially considering figures like the Great Earl were pro-monarchy. Such dubious historical links, in Platt’s view, were meant to be "representative of a heroic, patriotic tradition of Anglo-Irish selflessness and honour.” Both Love and Conmee fit well into this description, as their love for history consists mainly of valorizing the ruling elites of old.

We get a hint that Love is enraptured with a more sanitized version of the Fitzgeralds’ legacy because his Geraldine ghosts are “tall and personable,” well-mannered gentlemen like himself. When we look at the two figures discussed in the eighth section of “Wandering Rocks,” though, we see one man who raised a violent rebellion and stormed Dublin Castle, and another who burnt down a cathedral, it seems, to mess with one guy in particular. I think Ned Lambert’s observation that, “Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines” is probably closer to the truth, and that Love would have found these wild, entitled men terribly uncouth.

We get one final glimpse of Love before the end of “Wandering Rocks,” as the viceregal cavalcade passes in the final section of the episode:

“From Cahill’s corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons.”

“Advowsons” are religious offices that historically were bestowed by powerful members of the aristocracy. Though Love’s obeisance is unperceived by the passing carriages, Love is sure to perform it nonetheless because in his historical role-play, these mighty “lords deputies” could bestow a “rich advowson” upon him, despite this being an archaic practice by the early 20th century.

A landlord begging for rent, from *Fun* magazine, 1880 (source)

Love has trespassed on the time of his fellow citizens through his distorted depiction of the nation’s past, but has he trespassed on their space as well? Of course! Naturally, Love is a landlord. Joyce’s younger brother Stanislaus wrote that Love is based loosely on a real landlord of the same name that the Joyces dealt with around 1900. Because Love is a “representative of Anglo-Protestant usurpers” as Osteen wrote, he absolutely must be a landlord. We learn in the fourteenth section of “Wandering Rocks” that Love is in the process of evicting Father Bob Cowley. Bob tells Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard how he is trying to fight the eviction, but Love has distrained him for rent arrears, meaning Love can seize his possessions for purposes of repayment.

During the course of their conversation, we learn that Cowley is also in money trouble with Reuben J. Dodd, though Love’s distraint is a far more serious situation. Simon Dedalus’ anti-semitism muddies the waters, as his personal animus against Dodd becomes the focus of their conversation. It’s an interesting little historical allegory. A wealthy Protestant evicts a Catholic from his home, but his peers simply blame the Jews for their problem. It’s easier to scapegoat a more marginalized group than to acknowledge the injustice of the system in which they all live. The law of this system places Love’s right to be made whole financially above Cowley’s right to housing. This system, which goes unquestioned even today, favors the rights of the wealthy over those of the vulnerable, a relic of the social hierarchy that Conmee and Love fantasize about.

There’s a great irony in a man of God named Love who throws tenants out on the street and sells their possessions to make up the debt. It’s not exactly turning the other cheek. I think Joyce found this disconnect a bit absurd and tucked it into an obscure corner of Ulysses. In Love’s final appearance in “Circe,” he re-emerges, fused with Haines into the hybrid entity “The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A.” ready to perform a Black Mass during which he “raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.” Adams wondered if Joyce was “paying off an old family score” with his depiction of Love. We certainly can’t rule it out.

The Most Historic Spot in All Dublin

Further Reading:

Sweets of Sin

Who was the real Almidano Artifoni?