He was always mad gone on her
Jorn Barger
Joyce's Works, I might go with this, from Proteus, of Paris c1903:
With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door
of the post office slammed in your face by the usher.
Hunger toothache. _Encore deux minutes._ Look clock. Must
get. _Fermé._ Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang
shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all
khrrrrklak in place clack back...
Comparing this to the surviving letters to and from Joyce in Paris, it
matches neatly with an undated letter ('Sunday 2:30pm') that Ellmann
[L2-34] guesses as 08March 1903, from JAJ to his mother, sounding--
again-- his worst:
"I cannot cash your order today. I do not understand in the least
what you write about Gaze's [travel agency]. When you spend only
three minutes at a letter it cannot be very intelligible. In any
case Gaze's was shut..."
Ellmann's date can't be right, though, because he's complaining about
how hungry he is, and he would have just gotten paid by Douce on 08Mar.
A better fit is 22Feb, which very precisely matches a mention of a
20-hour fast at [L2-29].
So there's a very longshot coincidence for this new 22Feb date, that
I'll offer just for the pleasures of speculative excess:
When Joyce arrived in Paris in Dec 1902, one of the first things he did
was call on Maud Gonne who was living in or near Paris at the time. He
was (characteristically, alas) turned away by the concierge, but left
his address and got (entirely uncharacteristically) a lovely letter the
next day which Stannie reprints at mbk198. Her 'little cousin' was ill,
she explained (actually her illegitimate 7yo daughter Iseult, conceived
on the tomb of her illegitimate brother... but that's another story).
She continues by inviting him to come any afternoon at 2pm: "Mr Russell
and Mr Yeats have both spoken and written to me so much about you that I
have been looking forward to making your acquaintance."
So, of course, he was on her doorstep the very next day... right? No,
in fact, he _never_ went. I can't find any sign he ever met her at all,
though he'd seen her in Yeats plays in Dublin.
So why not take advantage of the best friend an Irish-theater fanboy
could hope to have? The commentators all agree he was embarrassed by
his clothes... but this was also unprecedented!
So I'm guessing he must have had a major crush on her (cf my
subjectline, which is based on a line from the Mamalujo vignette).
And the coincidence, that may have plunged him on 22Feb 1903 into
possibly the blackest rage depicted in all his fictions?
On 21Feb 1903 in Paris, Maud Gonne went and married Major John MacBride.
So is it possible that the chance of meeting her was one of his driving
motives, in going to Paris at all?
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Jorn Barger
> in fact, he _never_ went. I can't find any sign he ever met her at all,
> though he'd seen her in Yeats plays in Dublin.
I started wondering if any of Chamber Music might have been written to
her, and I find CM IV sent to Stannie on 08Feb 1903:
When the shy star goes forth in heaven,
All maidenly, disconsolate,
Hear you amid the drowsy even,
One who is singing by your gate.
His song is softer than the dew
And he is come to visit you.
O bend no more in revery
When he at eventide is calling,
Nor muse who may this singer be
Whose song about my heart is falling?
Know you by this, the lover's chant,
'Tis I that am your visitant.
Yeats's best poems never won her hand-- could this have?
Might he actually have sent it to her, two weeks before she married?
Jorn Barger
> she explained (actually her illegitimate 7yo daughter Iseult, conceived
> on the tomb of her illegitimate brother... but that's another story).
I found a webpage that tells the Gonne/Yeats saga in admirable detail
(alas, few dates): http://www.wiseley.com/matt_old/academic/aca144.html
1891 (coincided with death of Parnell):
...She returned to France to find her daughter, Georgette, near
death. She was overwrought with guilt for having spent so
little time with the child, leaving her to the care of a nurse
while she was so frequently away.
In despair, Maud returned to London. She joined the Order of
the Golden Dawn with William, hoping to learn how to
reincarnate her dead daughter. The group accepted
reincarnation and practiced astral projection. During her
visit, Maud and William claimed to visit each other in
out-of-body experiences.
Maud eventually returned to Paris and explained to Lucien her
belief that their dead daughter, Georgette, could be
reincarnated. They made love, and she believed her second
child was conceived, at the site of Georgette's grave. [c1895]
Despite the guilt she felt for seeing so little of her first
daughter, she left Lucien and her baby daughter, Iseult, for
Ireland shortly after recovering from labor.
She told William that the baby's father was a stranger with
whom she had a one night stand in order to replace her first
daughter. [continues]
The details I'm tracking down mostly weaken the theory of Maud as the
fair lady of Chamber Music: JAJ probably never saw her on the stage
before April 1902 in Kathleen ni Houlihan, when she was already 36yo.
(She did a lot of political rabble-rousing in Ireland pre-1902, though,
so he'd certainly heard her speak-- but only on political topics that he
was largely indifferent to.)
Her engagement to MacBride had been announced in the Paris papers at
some point, so the marriage was probably not unanticipated. Proteus has
'Kevin Egan' mentioning Gonne and Millevoye (Iseult's father), but not
MacBride though they'd been keeping company for several years.
Their son Sean MacBride won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for co-foundng
Amnesty International.