by James Joyce
Everything’s going on the same, or so it appeals to all of us, in the old holmsted here. As popular as when Belly the First was keng and his members met in the Diet of Man. Coughings all over the sanctuary, bad scrant to me aunt Florenza. The horn for breakfast, one o’gong for lunch and dinnerchime, the same shop slop in the window, Jacob’s lettercrackers and Dr Tipple’s ViCocoa and the Eswaurds’ desippated soup beside Mother Seagull’s Syrup. Coal’s short but we’ve plenty of bog in the yard. Meat took a drop when Reilly-Parsons failed. But barley’s up again, begrained to it! The lads is attending school nessons regular, sir. Spelling beesknees with hathatansy and turning out tables by mudapplication. All for the books and never pegging smashers after Tom Bowe-Glassarse or Timmy the Tosser. ’Tisraely the truth! Now isn’t it, roman pathoriks? You were the doublejoynted janitor the morning they were delivered and you’ll be a grandfer yet entirely when the ritehand seizes what the lovearm knows. Kevin’s just a doat with his cherub cheek and his little lamp and schoolbelt and bag of knicks, chalking oghres on walls and playing postman’s knock round the diggings, and if the seep were milk you could lieve his olde by his ide. But, laus sake, the devil does be in that knirps of a Jerry sometimes, the tarandtan plaidboy, making encostive inkum out of the last of his lavings and writing a blue streak over his bourseday shirt. Hetty Jane’s a Child of Mary. She’ll be coming (for they’re sure to choose her) in her white of gold with a tourch of ivy to rekindle the flame on Felix Day. And Essie Shanahan has let down her skirts. You remember Essie in Our Luna’s Convent? They called her Holly Merry her lips were so ruddy berry and Pia de Purebelle when the redminers’ riots was on about her. Were I a clerk designate to the Williamswoods menufactors I’d poster those pouters on every jamb in the town. She’s making her rep at Lanner’s twicenightly. With the tabarine tamtammers of the whirligigmagees. Beats that cachucha flat. ’Twould dilate your heart to go.
Aisy now, you decent man, with your knees and lie quiet and repose your honour’s lordship!
Hold him there, Ezekiel Irons, and may God strengthen you! It’s our warm spirits, boys, he’s spooring. Dimitrius O’Flagonan, cork that cure for the Clancartys! You swamped enough since Portobello to float the Pomeroy. Fetch neahere, Pat Koy! And fetch nouyou, Pam Yates! Be nayther angst of Wramawitch! Here’s lumbos. Where misties swaddlum, where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!
I’ve an eye on queer Behan and old Kate and the butter, trust me. She’ll do no jugglywuggly with her war souvenir postcards to help to build me murial. Tippers, I’ll trip your traps! Assure a sure there! And we put on your clock again, sir, for you. Did or didn’t we, sharestutterers? So you won’t be up a stump entirely. Nor shed your remnants. The sternwheel’s crawling strong. I seen your missus in the hall. Like queenoveire. Arrah, it’s herself that’s fine, sure, don’t be talking! Shirksends? You storyan Harry chap longa me Harry chap storyan grass woman plelthy good trout. Shakes-hands. Dibble a hayfork’s wrong with her only her lex’s salig. Bald Tib does be yawning and smirking cats’ hours on the Pollockses’ woolly round tabouret cushion watching her sewing a dream together, the tailor’s daughter, stitch to her last. Or, while waiting for winter to fire the enchantment, decoying more nesters to fall down the flue. It’s an allavalonche that blows nopussy food. If you only were there to explain the meaning, best of men, and talk to her nice of guldenselver. The lips would moisten once again. As when you drove with her to Findrinny Fair. What with reins here and ribbons there all your hands were employed so she never knew was she on land or at sea or swooped through the blue like Airwinger’s bride. She was flirt-some then and she’s fluttersome yet. She can second a song and adores a scandal when the last post’s gone by. Fond of a concertina and pairs passing when she’s had her forty winks for supper after kanekannan and abbely dimpling and is in her merlin chair assotted, reading her Evening World. To see is it smarts, full lengths or swaggers. News, news, all the news. Death, a leopard, kills fellah in Fez. Angry scenes at Stormount. Stilla Star with her lucky in goingaways. Opportunity fair with the China floods and we hear these rosy rumours. Ding Tams he noise about all same Harry chap. She’s seeking her way, a chickle a chuckle, in and out of their serial story, Les Loves of Selskar et Pervenche, freely adopted to The Novvergin’s Viv. There’ll be bluebells blowing in salty sepulchres the night she signs her final tear. Zee End. But that’s a world of ways away. Till track laws time. No silver ash or switches for that one! While flattering candles flare. Anna Stacey’s how are you! Worther waist in the noblest, says Adams and Sons, the would -pay actionneers. Her hair’s as brown as ever it was. And wivvy and wavy. Repose you now! Finn no more!
For, be that samesake sibsubstitute of a hooky salmon, there’s already a big rody ram lad at random on the premises of his haunt of the hungred bordles, as it is told me, Shop Illicit, flourishing like a lordmajor or a buaboabaybohm, litting flop a deadlop (aloose!) to lea but lifting a benbranch a yardalong (ivoeh!) on the breezy side (for showm!), the height of Brewster’s chimpney and as broad below as Phineas Barnum, humphing his share of the showthers is senken on him he’s such a granfallar, with a pocked wife in pickle that’s a flyfire and three lice nittle clinkers, two twilling bugs and one midgit pucelle. And aither he cursed and recursed and was everseen doing what your fourfootlers saw or he was neverdone seeing what you coolpigeons know, weep the clouds aboon for smiledown witnesses, and that’ll do now about the fairyhees and the frailyshees. Though Eseb fibble it to the zephiroth and Artsa zoom it round her heavens for ever. Creator, he has created for his creatured ones a creation. White monothoist? Red theatrocrat? And all the pinkprophets cohalething? Very much so! But however ’twas ’tis sure for one thing, what Sherif Toragh voucherfors and Mapqiq makes put out, that the man, Humme the Cheapner, Esc, overseen as we thought him, yet a worthy of the naym, came at this timecoloured place where we live in our paroqial fermament one tide on another with a bumrush in a hull of a wherry, the twin turbane dhow The Bey for Dybbling, this archipelago’s first visiting schooner, with a wicklowpattern waxenwench at her prow for a figurehead, the deadsea dugong updipdripping from his depths, and has been repreaching himself like a fishmummer these sixtyten years ever since, his shebi by his shide, adi and aid, growing hoarish under his turban and changing cane sugar into sethulose starch (Tuttut’s cess to him!), as also that, batin the bulkihood he bloats about when innebbiated, our old offender was humile, commune and ensectuous from his nature, which you may gauge after the bynames was put under him in lashons of languages (honnein suit and praisers be!), and, totalisating him, even hamissim of himashim, that he, sober serious, he is ee and no counter he who will be ultimendly respunchable for the hubbub caused in Edenborough.
Now (to forebare for ever solittle of Iris Frees and Lili O’Rangans), concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden’s occupational agnomen (we are back in the presurnames prodromarith period, of course, just when enos chalked halltraps) and discarding once for all those theories from older sources which would link him back with such pivotal ancestors as the Glues, the Gravys, the Northeasts, the Ankers and the Earwickers of Sidlesham in the Hundred of Manhood or proclaim him offsprout of vikings who had founded wapentake and seddled hem in Herrick or Eric, the best authenticated version, the Dumlat, read the Reading of Hofed-ben-Edar, has it that it was this way. We are told how in the beginning it came to pass that, like cabbaging Cincinnatus, the grand old gardener was saving daylight under his giant redwood one sultry sabbath afternoon, Hag Chivychas Eve, in prefall paradise peace by following his plough for rootles in the rere garden of mobhouse, ye olde marine hotel, when royalty was announced by runner to have been pleased to have halted itself on the highroad along which a leisureloving dogfox had cast followed, also at walking pace, by a lady pack of cocker spaniels. Forgetful of all save his vassal’s plain fealty to the ethnarch, Humphrey or Harold stayed not to yoke or saddle but stumbled out hotface as he was (his sweatful bandanna loose from his pocketcoat), hasting t
o the forecourts of his public in topee, surcingle, solascarf and plaid, plus fours, puttees and bulldog boots ruddled cinnabar with flagrant marl, jingling his turnpike keys and bearing aloft amid the fixed pikes of the hunting party a high perch atop of which a flowerpot was fixed earthside hoist with care. On his majesty, who was, or often feigned to be, noticeably longsighted from green youth and had been meaning to inquire what, in effect, had caused yon causeway to be thus potholed, asking, substitutionally, to be put wise as to whether paternoster and silver doctors were not now more fancied bait for lobstertrapping, honest blunt Haromphreyld answered in no uncertain tones very similarly with a fearless forehead: Naw, yer maggers, aw war jist a cotchin on thon bluggy earwuggers. Our sailor king, who was draining a gugglet of obvious adamale, gift both and gorban, upon this, ceasing to swallow, smiled most heartily beneath his walrus moustaches and, indulging that none too genial humour which William the Conk on the spindle side had inherited with the hereditary whitelock and some shortfingeredness from his greataunt Sophy, turned towards two of his retinue of gallowglasses, Michael, etheling lord of Leix and Offaly, and the jubilee mayor of Drogheda, Elcock, the two scatterguns being Michael M. Manning, protosyndic of Waterford, and an Italian excellency named Giubilei according to a later version cited by the learned scholarch Canavan of Canmakenoise (in either case a triptychal religious family symbolising puritas of doctrina, business per usuals and the purchypatch of hamlock where the paddish preties grow), and remarked dilsydulsily: Holybones of Saint Hubert, how our red brother of Pouringrainia would audibly fume did he know that we have for surtrusty bailiwick a turnpiker who is by turns a pikebailer no seldomer than an earwigger! For he kinned Jom Pill with his court so gray and his haunts in his house in the mourning. (One still hears that pebblecrusted laughter, japijap cheerycherrily, among the roadside tree the lady Holmpatrick planted and still one feels the amossive silence of the cladstone allegibelling: Ive mies outs ide Bourn.)
Comes the question: are these the facts of his nominigentilisation as recorded and accolated in both or either of the collateral andrewpaulmurphyc narratives? Are those their fata which we read in sibylline between the fas and its nefas? No dung on the road? And shall Nohomiah be our place like? Yea, Mulachy our kingable khan? We shall perhaps not so soon see. Pinck poncks that bail for seeks alicence where cumsceptres with scentaurs stay. Bear in mind, son of Hokmah, if so be you have metheg in your midness, this man is mountain and unto changeth doth one ascend. Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin, that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, uncontrollable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who afterwards, when the robbarees shot up the socialights, came down into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts paythronosed, Meliodorus and Galathee. The great fact emerges that after that historic date all holographs so far exhumed initialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hungerlean spalpeens of Lucalizod and Chimbers to his cronies it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody.
An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation, every time he continually surveyed, amid vociferatings from in front of Accept these few nutties! and Take off that white hat!, relieved with Stop his Grog and Put It in the Log and Loots in his (bassvoco) Boots, from good start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage gathered together in that king’s treat house of satin alustrelike above floats and footlights from their assbawlveldts and oxgangs unanimously to clapplaud (the inspiration of his lifetime and the hits of their careers) Mr Wallenstein Washington Semperkelly’s immergreen tourers in a command performance by special request with the courteous permission for pious purposes the homedromed and enliventh performance of the problem passion play of the millentury, running strong since creation, A Royal Divorce, then near the approach towards the summit of its climax, with ambitious interval band selections from The Bo’ Girl and The Lily on all horserie show command nights from his viceregal booth (his bossaloner is ceilinged there a cuckoospit less eminent than the redritualhoods of Maccabe and Cullen) where, a veritable Napoleon the Nth, our worldstage’s practical jokepiece and retired cecelticocommediant in his own wise, this folksforefather all of the time sat, having the entirety of his house about him, with the invariable broad-stretched kerchief cooling his whole neck, nape and shoulderblades and in a wardrobepanelled tuxedo completely thrown back from a shirt well entitled a swallowall, on every point far outstarching the laundered clawhammers and marbletopped highboys of the pit stalls and early amphitheatre. The piece was this: look at the lamps. The cast was thus: see under the clock. Ladies’ circle: cloaks may be left. Pit, prommer and parterre: standing room only. Habituels conspicuously emergent.
A baser meaning has been read into these characters the literal sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint. It has been blurtingly bruited by certain wisecrackers (the stinks of Mohorat are in the nightplots of the morning) that he suffered from a vile disease. Athma, unmanner them! To such a suggestion the one selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain statements which ought not to be and, one should like to hope to be able to add, ought not to be allowed to be made. Nor have his detractors, who, an imperfectly warmblooded race, apparently conceive him as a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in the calendar recorded to the discredit of the Juke and Kellikek families, mended their case by insinuating that, alternatively, he lay at one time under the ludicrous imputation of annoying Welsh fusiliers in the people’s park. Hay, hay, hay! Hoq, hoq, hoq! Faun and Flora on the lea love that little old joq. To anyone who knew and loved the Christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal existence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing for trouble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous. Truth, beard on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would be necessary quoniam to invent him) abhout that time stambuling haround Dumbaling in leaky sneakers with his tarrk record who has remained topantically anonymos but (let us hue him Abdullah Gamellaxarksky) was, it is stated, posted at Mallon’s at the instance of watch warriors of the vigilance committee and years afterwards, cries one even greater, Ibid, a commender of the frightful, seemingly, unto such as were sulhan sated, tropped head (pfiat! pfiat!) waiting his first of the month froods turn for thatt chopp pah kabbakks alicubi on the old house for the chargehard, Roche Haddocks off Hawkins Street. Lowe, you blondy liar, Gob scene you in the narked place and she what’s edith at home defileth these boyles! There’s a cabful of bash indeed in the homeur of that meal. Slander, let it lie its flattest, has never been able to convict our good and great and no ordinary Southron Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author calls him, of any graver impropriety than that, advanced by some woodwards or regarders who did not dare deny, the shomers, that they had, chin Ted, chin Tam, chinchin Taffyd, that day consumed their soul of the corn, of having behaved with an ongentilmensky immodus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners pleaded, Dame Nature in all innocency had spontaneously and about the same hour of the eventide sent them both but whose published combinations of silkinlaine testimonies are, where not dubiously pure, visibly divergent, as warpt from wept, on minor points touching the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial exposure with such attenuating circumstances (garthen gaddeth green hwere sokeman hrideth girling) as an abnormal Saint Swithin’s summer and (Jesses Rosasharon!) a ripe occasion to provoke it.
We can’t do without them. Wives, rush to the restgowns
! Ofman will toman while led is the lol. Zessid’s our kadem, villapleach, vollapluck. Fikup, for flesh Nellij, el mundo nov, ole flen! If she’s a lilyth, pull early! Pauline, allow! And malers abushed, keep black, keep black!
Guiltless of much laid to him he was clearly for so once at least he clearly and with still a trace of his erstwhile burr expressed himself as being and hence it has been received of us that it is true. They tell the story (an amalgam as absorbing as calzium chloereydes and hydrophobe sponges could make it) how one happy-go-gusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights in appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all creation, tiger-wood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness he MET a cad with a pipe. The latter, the luciferant not the oriuolate, who (the odds are) is still berting dagobout in the same straw bamer, carrying his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out, so as to look more like a coumfry gentleman and signing the pledge as gaily as you please, hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Poolblack at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly recall) to ask could he tell him how much a’clock it was that the clock struck had he any idea by o’cock’s luck as his watch was bradys. Hesitency was clearly to be evitated. Execration as cleverly to be honnisoid. The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally and noxally, of physical life (the nearest help relay being pingping K.O. Senpatrick’s Day and the fenian rising) and unwishful as he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a softnosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and, replyin that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket his Jurgensen’s shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirling of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunderous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin’s call!), told the inquiring kidder, by Johova, it was twelve of em sidereal and tankard time, adding buttall, as he bended deeply, with smoked sardinish breath, to give more pondus to the copperstick he presented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chapstuck ginger which, as being of sours, acids, salts, sweets and bitters compompounded, we know him to have used as chawchaw for bone, muscle, blood, flesh and vimvitals), that whereas the hakusay accusation againstm had been made, what was well known in high quarters, as was stood stated in Morganspost, by a creature in youman form who was quite beneath parr and several degrees lower than yore triplehydrad snake. In greater support of his word (it, quaint anticipation of a famous phrase, has been reconstricted out of oral style into the verbal for all time with ritual rhythmics, in quiritary quietude, and toosammenstucked from successive accounts by Noah Webster in the redaction known as the Sayings Attributive of H.C. Earwicker, prize one schillings, postlots free) the flaxen Gygas tapped his chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect above the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happenence, with one Berlin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest signlore his gesture meaning: !) pointed at an angle of thirtytwo degrees towards his duc de Fer’s overgrown milestone as the fellow to his gage and after a readypresent pause averred with solemn emotion’s fire: Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my no-nationwide hotel and creamery establishments which for the honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woowoo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to make my hoath to my dear sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon the Open Bible and befu before the Great Taskmaster’s eye (I lift my hat!) and in the Presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.