FRIENDS PRODUCE A VIVID PORTRAIT OF JAMES JOYCE

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29058, 21 November 1959, Page 3

FRIENDS PRODUCE A VIVID PORTRAIT OF JAMES JOYCE

{Reviewed by H.L.G.I

Our Friend James Joyce. By Mary and Padraic Colum. Gollancz. 239 pp.

Mary and Padraic Colum were close friends of James Joyce. All three were contemporaries at Dublin University in the early years of the century when the Irish nationalist movement, led by Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats (and detested by Joyce) was at its height. And later, in Paris, jn the years between the two wars, after the publication of "Ulysses” and in the long period when “Finnegan’s Wake” was the “work in progress," the Colums were regular visitors to the Joyce family, living in self-imposed exile. Their book about Joyce is spontaneous and charming. It is written with obvious enjoyment and affection, but plenty of detachment. The Colums are both writers and interesting personalities themselves; they are no mere uncritical literary hangers-on, or tedious worshippers at the shrine of genius. They have been able jointly to produce a portrait of Joyce that is vivid, intimate, and fully rounded. It is much more than a book of friendly gossip about a famous literary figure: it tßrows real light both on the man and the writer. And it* is so very readable that it could be enjoyed even by someone with only a slight acquaintance with Joyce’s writing.

Joyce first appears as a student, mature and learned far, beyond his fellows, but delighting to be known mainly as a ‘‘character” who, in company with the flamboyant Oliver St. John Gogarty (the original of Buck Mulligan in “Ulysses"), was famous for his scandalous sayings and adventures. “The Joyce all of us knew best at this period,” said Padraic Colum, “was the shabbily dressed, penniless, lewd-spoken youth whose disreputability was striking because of the witticisms that rose out of it. . . . No matter how hungry or how shabbily he was dressed, he always had a fine composure. He would repeat a lyric or a limerick, relate a bawdy incident, or discuss a point in aesthetics in an unruffled, 'de-

liberate way. Not even a compliment to his writing could disturb him. Once, when I mentioned that I had read an article of his,

he replied in a way that was characteristic of the matter and the manner of his speech: T” received for it thirty shillings, which I immediately consecrated to Venus Pandemos.’”

In 1904, Joyce disappeared from Dublin, taking with him Nora Barnacle (who 28 years later became his legal wife), and a great deal of violent and bitter animosity toward Dublin and Dubliners, animosity that had little or no real cause, as Colum frankly says. He was seen again in Dublin in 1909 when he returned from Trieste in the unexpected guise of a businessman—to give Dublin its first moving-picture theatre. And he reappeared once more in 1912; but with his wretched failure on this visit to get “Dubliners” published, he went into final and absolute exile, to feed for the rest of his life on his sense of persecution, and to make his magnificent contributions to the literature of exile. He was famous by the time the Colums met him again in Paris after the war. As admirers of his work, and as compatriots and contemporaries of Joyce who could discover many of the local references in his jokes and allusions, they plunged with enthusiasm into talk of his writing. They explain for us the meaning of some very obscure passages in “Finnegan’s Wake”— the “madjealous girl,” for instance, who turns out to be a reference to a little known Dublin musichall artist of their student days named Madge Ellis: and “chsllybombom and forty bonnets,” which proves to be a private (and rather pointless) dig at Rebecca West, who was known to Joyce to have gone out and bought herself a new hat after having written a hasty and unfriendly review of “Ulysses.”

They give us many revealing glimpses of Joyce’s mind and conversation: Mary Colum recalls his fantastic memory and erudition, particularly in philological subjects: “he knew by

heart paragraphs of pages of early Anglo-Saxon, of Italian of before Dante’s time, of preLuther German, and the ‘Serment de Strasbourg’ Padraic Colum recalls how, owing to Joyce’s near-blindness, all his friends had to do his reading for him, and how he himself was set to read “Hudibras” and the sixteen-volume version of the “Arabian Nights” and talk them over with Joyce. Both of them recall many times the beauty of his voice as he recited poetry and his charm as a singer, especially of humorous or sorrowful Irish ballads. And they give a happy and delightful> impression of Joyce in his Parisian heyday in the twenties. He and his family lived well. In fact, they spent money like water, behaving always as if the large lump sum Joyce had been given by his benefactress, Miss Harriet Weaver, would last for ever.

But apart from their feckless extravagance there was nothing Bohemian about their lives; Joyce and Nora were (by conviction) unmarried until 1931, yet nothing shocked Joyce more than to hear that Somebody he knew was comipittjng adultery. The author of “Ulysses” was most scrupulous about the tone of his conversation in the presence of women. And the Colums are of the opinion that Joyce’s mind, in spite of his alienation from the Church, was fundamentally Catholic in structure; the mental and moral training were ineradicable. • They report many amusing incidents of the Paris days. Notable is the account of the characteristic meeting between Joyce and Proust at a fashionable salon. Proust arrived three hours late, dressed dramatically in black, and this is what ensued: The two authors were presented to each other, and the company arranged itself so as not to miss anything of the conversation. Here is what was said: Proust: Ah, Monsieur Joyce . . . . You know the Princess ? Joyce: No, Monsieur. Proust: Ah. You know the Countess ? Joyce: No, Monsieur. Proust: Then you know Madame ? Joyce: No, Monsieur. And that terminated the ProustJoyce meeting of minds. Notable also is Joyce’s astonishing belief that his later work had a public appeal. He evolved a new slogan for the Dublin brew, Guinness’— “My brandold T üblin lindub, the free, the froh, the frothy freshener” (“lindub” being the Irish for black ale)—and, according to Padraic Colum, was actually disappointed that the Guinnesses preferred “Guinness is good for you.” The Colums are always very fair. The explanation of how

and why Joyce came to break with his first greatest helper,

Sylvia Beach, who published “Ulysses,” appears unbiassed and convincing. They are able, too, to sympathise with Joyces family, in spite of their affectionate admiration for Joyce himself. And their account of the gradual decline into insanity of Joyce’s daughter Lucia, the great tragedy of his last years, shows conspicuous understanding for all concerned. Lucia (who had some artistic gifts) appears as a pathetically deracinated figure, not speaking any of the three languages of her childhood with complete certainty, bursting out at the prospect of a projected gathering, “If anyone talks of my father. I’ll leave.” And Joyce as a parent appears, at intervals, devoted but often preoccupied. “The trouble with artists as parents,” remarks Mary Colum, “is that their work (’.ims too much from them—their intensity goes into, it, and they are likely to be oblivious to their human commitments.”

The end of the Joyce story is '?ad indeed. The Joyces are separated from Lucia, who is now in a sanatorium, by the German Occupation; in 1941 Joyce dies in Zurich; and Nora Joyce is left alone and in straitened circumstances with her son, who has been abandoned by has rich American wife, and can find no work in wartime Switzerland; her last letter acknowledges remittances of 50 and 40 dollars which the Colums have been able to raise for her in America. All trace of the “halcyon days and ambrosial nights” of the Paris days has vanished; but their essential flavour has been caught and held in this attractive book, a tribute of friendship well worth writing.