The "City Arms" hotel on Prussia Street, located in north
Dublin near the North Circular Road, is mentioned often in Ulysses—twice
in connection with "a meeting of the cattletraders'
association," and many more times because Leopold and Molly
Bloom lived there for parts of 1893 and 1894, when Bloom had a
job with Joseph Cuffe, a trader at the nearby cattle market.
Mr. Deasy tells Stephen that he has asked "Mr Field,
M.P." to present his letter about foot-and-mouth disease to
the cattletraders' group. Gifford notes that in 1904 William
Field was a member of Parliament and also the president of the
Irish Cattle Traders and Stock Owners Association, which held
meetings every Thursday at its offices in the City Arms hotel.
In Cyclops, Joe Hynes tells the narrator that "I
was up at that meeting in the City Arms," a meeting
which was "about the foot and mouth disease."
He assumes that the Citizen will be interested.
Both Bloom and Molly think often about their days in the
hotel, and of the other inhabitants: a tortoiseshell cat "with
the letter em on her forehead" (Nausicaa);
Dante Riordan, Stephen's governess in A Portrait,
who lived there with her Skye terrier, and with whom Bloom
took great pains to ingratiate himself (Lestrygonians,
Ithaca, Penelope); various "country gougers"
who were in town to sell cattle (Penelope); Pisser
Burke (Cyclops, Penelope); a Mrs. Duggan who talked
about her husband "rolling in drunk" at night
(Nausicaa). In Lestrygonians Bloom thinks
of how Mrs. O'Dowd, the proprietress of the hotel, served
meals in a communal fashion: "Hate people all round
you. City Arms hotel table d'hôte she
called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts
you're chewing." Molly took a similar dislike to
the shared bathroom: "that charming place on the
landing always somebody inside praying then leaving all
their stinks after them always know who was in there last."
