The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 017

by James Joyce

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie, he spoke to them, chid-
ing them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged
in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. Agenbite of inwit. God,
we’ll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots.
Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.

— And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.

Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway :

— Are you coming, you fellows?

— I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come
out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out
with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow :

— And going forth he met Butterly.

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out
and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it.
He put the huge key in his inner pocket.

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked :

— Did you bring the key?

— I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy
bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.

— Down, sir. How dare you, sir?

Haines asked :

— Do you pay rent for this tower?

— Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.

— To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last :

— Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?

— Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were
on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.

— What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.

— No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I’m not equal to Thomas
Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it up. Wait till I have a
few pints in me first.

He turned to Stephen, saying as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his
primrose waistcoat :

Annotations

Agenbite of inwit

Ayenbite of Inwyt (or Remorse of Conscience), the title of a confessional prose work written in a Kentish dialect of Middle English, dated 1340.

puce gloves and green boots

Puce is a shade of red; combined with green possibly symbolic of Mulligan's ambivalent attitude to British/Irish relations.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.

Lines from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (section 51): "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself, . . ."

And going forth he met Butterly.

“And going forth, he wept bitterly” Matthew 26:75

Omphalos

Greek, literally navel; a religious stone artifact.