The tryptich of the three men is quite wonderful here. Despite the clarity of the arrangement, however, the politics of this moment are quite complex.

Haines, the Englishman, asks about the tower, “Martello, you call it?,” apparently unaware of who built the towers or why, or how they represent a particularly painful moment in British/Irish relations.  Mulligan explains that the famous British Prime Minister William Pitt had them built “when the French were on the sea,” that is, at a moment when many Irish people hoped that Napoleon would invade Ireland and free them from British rule. So the towers were build not purely for the defense of Ireland, but rather to defend against an invasion that a significant number of natives would have welcomed.

Mulligan is quoting to an Irish song called the “Shan van Vocht,” a/k/a the Poor Old Woman, in which the nation of Ireland, in her frequent guise as an old woman, sings about how the French will soon come to save them from the devils who rule Great Britain, of the House of Orange (“and the Orange will decay,” etc.), and who, after the Battle of the Boyne, will rule Ireland without rival for a long time. Of course the old woman is wrong, and the French never came. But it’s an Irish song, so this all has a nostalgic glow to it anyway.

Here is a latter-day Mulligan, Haines, and Dedalus doing a bit of a dance that is reminiscent of Joyce’s famous “spider dance” to the same tune:

Mulligan quickly redirects Haines away from this line of thought by saying that the tower now serves as the “omphalos,” or center, of modern Irish thought.  In talking about the last page, we mentioned how Mulligan’s real-life counterpart Oliver Gogarty hoped that the tower would become a new capital of Irish bohemian intellectualism, and that Joyce would play a significant part in this.

Haines is quite interested in Irish culture, but not contemporary Irish intellectuals. As we will soon hear more about, when Haines looks at the tower he thinks, naturally, of the greatest English poet, Shakespeare.

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Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus

Having left the tower, Mulligan, Haines, and Stephen walk towards the sea.

Mulligan is beating the grass with his towel, seeming playful, but when Haines asks about the rent, he quickly inserts himself into the conversation. In an early version of this drawing, we had attributed the statement about the rent to Stephen–it seems like a logical thing for him to say, since he makes that following comment about paying the rent to the Secretary of State for War. But Joyce clearly puts those words in Mulligan’s mouth. What this does is to remind us of Mulligan’s interest in money, particularly in making some money off of their gentleman houseguest. He needs to make sure that Haines knows what the rent is–perhaps in order to set up an “ask” later on–and doesn’t want Stephen to step in the opportunity again.

Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce has a surprising amount to say about Joyce’s life in the actual Martello tower. It also has a great image of the original lease from the government, which was signed by Oliver St. John Gogarty, and was for 8 pounds, not 12. Ellmann describes Gogarty as wanting the tower to seem a a “haven of unrespectability in ‘priestridden godforsaken’ Ireland” a “temple of neo-paganism” where “Nietzsche was the principal prophet, Swinburne the poet laureate” (172).

Skipping back to Ulysses for a moment–Mulligan also has these dreams of the tower being an “omphalos,” a kind of center of bohemian and free thought.  But his credibility depends on Stephen, who’s the real artist.  But Stephen doesn’t look like he’s going to want to play this part.

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Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus