The Paris adventure
Jorn Barger
And why, having flopped so dramatically and expensively, did he go back
in Jan 1903???
When University classes finished in June 1902 there must have been
pressure from his family to start bringing in some money, but there's no
indication he did anything specific except, maybe, register for med
school in April.
Having made 12 guineas for a week's work on the Ibsen review in 1900,
why-ever didn't he keep mining this vein??? Did he have a falling-out
with Courtney, when he dropped in on him in London in 1900? (Stannie
calls the visit unnecessary: mbk96)
He had certainly decided on a career in literature, but he also knew
there was no quick money in his major projects: he told AE in August
1902 he was writing a comedy that would take five years to finish
because he wrote slowly-- he had no illusions about this! And he told
Lady Gregory in November 1902 that he was doing a sequence of poems that
wasn't yet complete, and in March 1903 announced the completion date as
1907. (The title 'Chamber Music' didn't get chosen until mid-1904, as
far as I can see, and it was no longer described as a sequence by then--
in 1905 it was a 'suite'.)
Curran [cpc43] says "in Oct 1902, when we both took our degree, it was
plain enough that J was at a loose end and in difficult circumstances.
His determination to live for letters was no less and he surprised us by
entering his name as a student of the Medical School in Cecilia Street.
He told me in all seriousness that he proposed to make a fortune as a
doctor in a few years in order to devote the rest of his life to
literature."
So he understood that he needed other sources of income to be able to
pursue his art at its own pace, and 'Plan A' was med school.
Byrne seems to be the only witness that Joyce pre-registered for med
school in April 1902, but his account is pretty definite. Joyce formally
(?) registered on 02Oct.
Byrne says JAJ attended the first few lectures in the autumn, but I have
no clue when they started, or what he would have had to pay upfront.
Costello says final exams for graduation weren't until 06Oct, and
graduation was 30 or 31Oct, so classes may well not have started until
Nov despite registering a month earlier.
October was an eventful month in other ways-- Yeats returned from London
and was moderately encouraging, even inviting JAJ to dine with Yeats Sr.
and Lady Gregory on 04Nov. He made a good enough impression there that
Lady G was very willing to help him later that month.
He spent a little time at Marsh's Library, maybe reading Joachim
Abbas (though he'd found the Yeats _stories_ that mention Abbas more
than a year earlier).
At his graduation ceremony at the end of October he was reportedly
jubilantly rowdy... but so was everyone else.
Joyce's father bought a house on 24Oct, and immediately took a Ł100
mortgage to pay various related expenses-- maybe UC med school was among
these?
If so, he got poor value for that investment, since Joyce abandoned the
course almost immediately. His first approach to the Paris medschool was
18Nov. He wrote Lady Gregory around this time:
I have broken off my medical studies... I had made plans to study
medicine here. But the college authorities are determined I shall
not do so, wishing I dare say to prevent me from securing any
position of ease from which I might speak out my heart... they
refuse to get me any grinding or tuitions or examining-- alleging
inability... I want to get a degree in medicine, for then I can
build up my work securely...
Curran thinks this was persecution-mania, and Byrne says:[jfb79]
...for two reasons, the less impelling of which was financial, J
decided to defer his medical studies and take a trip to Paris...
(I don't see anywhere JFB explains the 'more impelling' reason, alas!)
Lady G replied, in a very gracious letter: "Please write and tell me
more-- why do you not think of Trinity [College]? What do your people
say?" [L2-16]
Mary Colum seems to confirm that the med school fees were never paid,
for she remembered seeing his name on a noticeboard for this. [ofjj14]
The simplest interpretation here is that Joyce fell for the same
illusion that small children suffer when trying to get their parents to
buy more pets: "We promise, we'll take care of it!" (We'll take the dog
for walks, clean the catbox, change the water in the fishtank, etc.)
He couldn't picture himself in Dublin hustling for book reviews,
tutoring, etc and simultaneously taking boring classes, but (supposedly)
when he imagined doing these things in Paris, they had sufficient glamor
that he thought it would be easier there.
In Odyssean terms, this is the Sirens-fallacy, I think: from a certain
distance the possibilities sound delightful... but if you let yourself
be seduced you'll soon be bones on the beach.
Ellmann invokes his standard myth of Joyce-the-self-deluder here, which
I normally refuse to accept, but which may apply in this case, given the
embarrassing naivete of Joyce's letters from Paris to his family.
Curran [cpc43] postulates a "desperate resolve to be quit of his
domestic entanglements and to live, however precariously, free from
otherwise inescapable burdens." Gorman compares Dublin to a cramped and
noisy house, and Joyce in 1939 would insist Gorman add this sentence
somewhere (Gorman choosing 1902 rather than 1904?): "Mr Joyce's father
was coming to the conclusion that his son's literary intransigence was
up against an insurmountable barrier in reactionary Dublin and in fact
later advised him to seek a freer atmosphere in which to live and work
according to his own ideas." [e725]
Proteus says: "You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to
Europe..." and Stannie says [mbk231] of mid-1903: "He had learned in
Paris that the world was not waiting for him", so there may have been
some sense in Nov 1902 that Yeats et al had not responded with
sufficient enthusiasm, and an expectation that he'd be better lionized
in Paris, where his 'mission' would be better appreciated.
There's one longshot conicidence that almost certainly happened around
this time, and that may tie in with the wonderful _Stephen Hero_ episode
where he madly asks Emma to sleep with him:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/portrait/mccann.html#emma
Mary Colum [ofjj12] wrote, c1957:
"The first I heard of James Joyce was under odd circumstances. I
was living in a university residence house in Dublin, studying for
the matriculation examination. [Nov 1902 is plausible I think-- she
was born in 1884] It happened that one of the girl students in the
house-- a graduate, I seem to remember [ME Cleary, the original of
Emma, had graduated with Joyce in October]-- got a postcard from
one of the men students that annoyed her very much by its contents.
At the time, though Queen Victoria was dead, girls took offense in
Ireland at any uncalled-for communication or approach from the male
sex. The contents of the postcard became known to a number of us
younger girls: the writer, I remember, suggested a meeting or
rendezvous of some sort; the signature was 'James A. Joyce.' The
recipient of the postcard seemed to know who the writer was, for,
highly indignant, she penned a haughty answer that was meant to
humiliate and insult this James A. Joyce. In due time she received
an equally haughty reply, phrased with extreme politeness but
conveying to her that it was foolish to imagine that he, James A.
Joyce, would have perpetrated such a missive, as he never
remembered to have seen her, and anyhow never communicated with
girl students unless they were family friends.... there was no
resemblance between the handwriting on the postcard and that in the
second communication [cf? Greek E's]... He had already taken his
B.A. degree..." [cf e53]
Since he left for Paris just a month after getting his degree this
scandal seems to belong to November. Byrne may have intended it as the
mysterious 'more impelling' reason for leaving.
So suddenly in mid-November there's a flurry of activity making contacts
in Paris and arranging to write book reviews, leaning especially on
Yeats, AE and Lady G (none of whom he'd met before August). Costello
says Lady G sent Ł5, which covered the Ł3 one-way ticket.
He arrives in Paris and industriously goes thru the motions of settling
down to work... but attends just one lecture, according to Gorman,
blaming the requirement that he pay fees in advance.
He _does_ start reviewing, and finds a paying student (Douce) for
English lessons, and even gets a very hopeful offer to teach fulltime at
Berlitz, which he objects will interfere with his medschool studies-- as
if these are still seriously meant. But he complains to Lady G on 21Dec
"to create poetry out of French life is impossible" which seems rather a
damning argument against staying! And on 06Dec he wrote home,
curiously: "No information is to be given about me to anybody except--
'O, Very Nicely, thank you.'" [L2-20]
But he's so poignantly homesick that his father ***takes another
mortgage*** to bring him back for Christmas, after less than three
weeks, and then he hangs around home for more than three weeks before
going back.
During this time (supposedly) he meets Gogarty (and Eglinton) and they
hit it off well enough for Gogarty to lend him a pound, and they keep
writing to each other when Joyce goes back. (But Gorman claims [hg104]
that "he remained quietly at home and mixed not at all in the life of
his native city" during this Xmas break!? Which might fit with a sense
of humiliation at 'Emma's' hands...?)
This latest mortgage is for Ł50, much of which apparently goes for a
spending spree including new carpets... which would be sold by
mid-February, to send cash to now-starving James. He left Dublin the
second time with enough money to spend a week in London, including a
visit to a whorehouse (if I read the 'Eva Leslie' epiphany correctly)
but by his 21st birthday he's broke again.
And there's no more talk of medschool after Xmas, nor of Berlitz, that I
can see. He gets a very hopeful offer in London from 'Men and Women',
which would have solved everything if it had come thru... but he
couldn't have known about it before he left-- so why did he leave the
second time, at all?
Was it just that there was money left from the mortgage, and he had
enough leverage to convince them to give it to him, so he took it and
ran?
What advantages did he expect in Paris, if not med school or Berlitz,
and if book reviewing could be done more cheaply in Dublin... and if
French life lacked poetry?
My gut instinct is that he anticipated sexual adventures in Paris that
Dublin didn't offer, but I have no evidence of this except Stephen's
sex-show gabble in Circe.
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