A minor domestic comedy unfolds as Stephen imagines his uncle
Richie commanding him to have a seat ("Sit down or by the law
Harry I'll knock you down"), prompting his son Walter to
observe that there are no chairs in the bedroom ("He has
nothing to sit down on, sir"), prompting Richie to repeat the
observation as if it is Walter's fault ("He has nowhere to put
it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair"). Clearly, the
Chippendale is the one good chair in the house.
Chippendale is a late-eighteenth century style of furniture
named after the English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. Many
Chippendale chairs were made in a Rococo style, modified from
French models to appeal to slightly less extravagant English
tastes. "Irish Chippendale" was an offshoot of mahogany
furniture whose carvings were somewhat less exquisite than
those of the English originals.
In the Gouldings' solitary Chippendale chair one can perhaps
see an instantiation of Irish Catholics' tenuous connection to
the middle-class respectability that they last enjoyed in the
Georgian era, before the troubles of the 1790s and the Act of Union that cemented
their irrelevancy. Just as Simon Dedalus has held onto the
family portraits as his family has moved to steadily less
prepossessing domiciles, Richie Goulding has held onto one
piece of furniture that proclaims bourgeois elegance.
