![[b&w 3-storey]](../img/7eccles.jpg)
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"...one of those brown brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis" [SH211]
[retouched from this original]
Bloom's house is based on JF Byrne's residence at the same address from 1908 to 1910 [bio], where Joyce spent time in August 1909. It was in the middle of a solid row of such houses, three storeys plus a lower level with the kitchen. This picture shows the row from a distant point to the northwest (Eccles runs diagonally NW-SE). [map]
This pic and this purport to show a closer view, but the door is on the wrong side according to Joyce's text (17.121: qv), to Byrne's photo (taken 1947), and to Hart & Knuth, so I've reversed one to give the mirror-image simulacrum above.
(Byrne sows some doubt by writing [sy155] that he "climbed over the railing to the right of the hall door" but he may have meant 'as one exits' rather than 'from the street'.)
H&K's map seems to be wrong too, though-- they number 1 thru 7 from the corner without skipping the even numbers as Joyce implies at 17.71. [qv] #1 and #3 would have had adjacent doors, as did #5 and #7, which is how Byrne's photo in Silent Years shows it.
This closeup of the door shows the area on the right, too, implying that the numbering changed and they saved the wrong door! Probably the newer numbering matched H&K's map, so they saved the door from #13:
1909: | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 | later: | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
The Blooms' living room is at street level with two windows facing the street, with their bedroom behind it and the kitchen under it. The metal fence surrounds the 'area' with its seven-or-so foot drop, and what Joyce calls the 'dwarf wall' at its base. (Byrne's photo shows a much shorter 'dwarf' at this point.)
The upper two floors would have included Bloom's study (2nd front) and Milly's bedroom (2nd back), plus the rooms they were trying to let.
Byrne's photo shows clearly that the 'stoop' is flat all the way out to the sidewalk, with a small step (or two?) down only at that point. Calypso mentions a threshold which may be another small step up?
Calypso opens [qv] with Bloom pottering in the kitchen, then he comes up the back stairs (first passing thru a diningroom on the groundfloor (back) that Byrne mentions but Joyce ignores) and calls to Molly thru the closed bedroom door. The bedroom is on his right as he faces the street. He continues down the hall to the front door where he dons his highgrade ha, exits without locking, and bears left as he crosses the street. On his return [qv] the mail has arrived and Molly calls him into the bedroom.
![[very rough sketch]](../img/eccles1.gif)
[first try]
At 17.2303 [qv] Molly will be described as lying "S.E. by E." If this means her head is pointed in that direction, the head of the bed must be against the inner, hall wall. H&K show the bedroom door as being towards the front of the house, so Bloom entering would find the bed on his right.
H&K claim the bedroom has a bow window looking onto the garden in back. Bloom opens the blind partway (the window is closed despite the heat!?) eager to please her, and then heads back down to the kitchen where the teakettle is boiling. (A kitchen window is mentioned-- there's certainly one in front, Byrne says also in back.)
He takes her up her tray, then rushes back down for the kidney, and out the back into the garden and the outhouse. (Byrne [sy155] calls it a "supplementary toilet to the left as you went out".) H&K think he has to climb halfway back up the stairs to get out the back door, but the text doesn't fit this-- he wants to avoid going up to the landing where there's some kind of indoor commode.
17.114 [qv] offers a puzzling mystery: Bloom disappears for four minutes before he lets Stephen in. The logical thing would be to check that Boylan is gone-- but Stephen doesn't notice any light from the bedroom door opening (when they pass it it's closed with the light on).
He's probably not urinating, because he's able to urinate again when Stephen leaves. Four minutes implies he went upstairs for something... but what?
The furniture arrangement goes something like this, before and after:
![[very rough sketch]](../img/livingrooms.gif)
green = easychair grey = mantel circle = cane chair purple = sofa blue and white = small table brown = sideboard black = piano missing from pix: big table, rug, flag, bookshelves, chairs?
It's also perplexing that at 17.1840 [qv] he puts Martha's letter into a lockable drawer, apparently while sitting at a (second?) table in the middle of the livingroom...?
Missing top storeys mid-demolition?
New hospital there now (from SW) with old Mater in distance
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