My Whetstone, My Love
Jorn Barger
'handjob day' was 27Aug (not 16Jun), also the date of the great
'A Mother'-inspiring, sharing-the-stage-with-McCormack concert.
That dating was based mainly on the elimination of possibilities, by
correlating all the bits of evidence about what went on between James
and Nora that summer-- not all that many bits, ultimately, to have to
wrestle with.
But James's relations with Gogarty are even less well documented, I
fear. From Gogarty's perspective, as best I've been able to discover:
1898: OG switches from Royal University (where he was underachieving) to
Trinity
1899: OG starts writing for Griffith's 'United Irishman' [uoc98]
June 1900: writes acrostic 'Ode of Welcome'
1901: banned from cycling for swearing during race
c1901: enthusiastically embraced by Trinity literati (eg Mahaffy), and
Dublin literati (Yeats, Moore, AE, Eglinton, Best)
1901-3: consecutive gold medals for poetry at Trinity
Xmas 1902: meets Joyce, just home from Paris, at Nat'l Library, with
Eglinton, discussing Yeats
The question at this point is-- have they heard of each other? Joyce
only met AE and Yeats the preceding fall. Eglinton and Best were
probably not working at the Library yet. Trinity students and UC
students were natural enemies, I think, so JAJ may not even have heard
about the acrostic-coup.
Gogarty ought to have heard of Joyce's Ibsen-coup and 'Day of the
Rabblement', and you can picture Joyce saying to the two of them (OG and
Eglinton), in the most natural tone, 'When I was in Paris, _boul'Mich'_
I used to...'
And then they'd have started quoting poems to each other, Gogarty
fascinated by this human enigma, and Joyce dazzled in spite of himself.
Joyce lingers three weeks more before heading back to Paris, and he sees
enough of Gogarty that they exchange addresses, and Gogarty's name turns
up in J's monthly Paris budgets, already owed a pound! And Gogarty
apparently met Elwood during this time (a letter refers to him as
'Joyce's disciple').
Joyce is dead nuts for Ben Jonson at this point, and Gogarty appreciates
this style. Ulick O'Connor says there were lots of letters back and
forth but they were apparently undated, and UOC mis-imagines that
Gogarty was at Oxford while JAJ was in Paris, when those two trips were
really a year apart (1904/1903). JAJ's letters were burned with OG's
house in the 1922 troubles, but JAJ somehow preserved some (many?) of
OG's, and the ones UOC quotes, from 1904 more than 1903 I think, are
affectionate to the point of infatuation...
So in April 1903 JAJ is summoned home from Paris to his dying mother. On
top of this, Byrne immediately, formally breaks off his friendship with
JAJ because of some wound, probably related to Joyce's obscene postcard
to Cosgrave. Joyce apologises almost-but-not-quite satisfactorily, but
things take another year to heal.
Fairview to Fairfield
Over the next few months Joyce and Gogarty become inseparable.
Gogarty's mother has one fancy house in Rutland square, near Belvedere,
and a fancier one called 'Fairfield' near the Botanical Gardens in
Glasnevin. The latter has an idyllic garden that may have inspired some
of the imagery of rivers and trees in Chamber Music. (The river is the
Tolka, that Joyce knew well between Fairview and Drumcondra, but
Gogarty's privileged point-of-view would have been very different.)
The strange thing is that this whole period (Apr1903 to Jan1904, for
starters) left almost no dateable documents. This feeble poem, dated
1903, is one of the very few exceptions:
In the dark pinewood
There, O there,
Beside you, dearest,
I would I were!
For the night is still there,
Still and grave,
Repose in the shadows
Should we have.
In the dark pinewood
There, O there,
Beside you, dearest,
I would I were!
The kindly elves the pine-wood
To revel go,
And peace, sweet peace there
Should we know.
Joyce supposedly didn't give in to Gogarty-the-exuberant-drinker until
after his mother's death in August. There's a very difficult anomaly in
a letter of Jan 1907 [SL143] from JAJ to Stannie, commenting that OG's
mother is 'beastly dead' (JAJ's quotes). Since Ulysses was no forrarder
than the title at that point, this reference must mean Gogarty really
_did_ use that expression soon after May's death... but whatever crisis
it caused at the time is totally unhinted in the surviving documents,
etc.
Padraic Colum crosses paths with them a lot in this period. Once they
all three visit Tom Kettle in Sandymount. Cosgrave and Elwood are also
companions for the drinking and whoring, and they often visit a widowed
ladyfriend of OG's named Jenny.
Joyce spends a lot of time with the Sheehys, apparently without OG.
Gogarty supposedly wins a UC gold medal for a poem with a last line
supplied by JAJ: "Shines on thee soldier of song Leonidas" [uoc66] They
clearly bring out the best in each other poetically.
Well-connected Gogarty creates a comic persona for cool-fish Joyce with
nicknames like Cadet Rouselle, Bardolph, Dante, and Kinch. They were
rumored to be collecting urinal graffiti for an anthology. And they were
self-consciously attempting to live like Elizabethans-- almost
proto-Renaissance-faire geeks? (Huzzah!)
Probably it was in this period that OG and JAJ raided the Hermetic
Society and stole the panties-samples. [mbms53]
For some reason in Sept Joyce got industrious and applied for a library
job ("quite unsuitable"), wrote a slew of new reviews for the Express
(consecrating his earnings to Venus Pandemos), refused a job-offer from
Skeffington (tutoring French), and tried to launch a new daily paper
called 'The Goblin'.
Gogarty was probably paying most of the bills during this period-- by
16Jun Stephen would owe Mulligan nine pounds.
On 07Jan 1904 Joyce writes his 'Portrait' essay for _Dana_ (rejected)
and this inspires Stephen Hero, first chapter supposedly done by 10Feb.
(Already in early 1903 he'd been called the epiphanies a sequence,
though, so this may have been SH taking shape.)
Within this interval Gogarty has decamped to Oxford for two terms--
Jan-Mar and Apr-Jun-- with the hope of winning the Newdigate poetry
prize (he finished second). This is the period of the most affectionate
letter-writing, with Gogarty usually sending money, sometimes
unpublished Elizabethan poems he finds in the library.
Joyce is suddenly an autobiography-machine, writing two chapters per
month of SH, and decides to train for the Feis, requiring (?) he move
out of home and rent a piano. He chooses to do this while OG is home for
Easter break, to offer moral and financial support, then starts his new
job at Clifton school when OG departs.
The month of May is especially eventful: the first issue of 'Dana' comes
out with Gogarty's review of AE's anthology of young poets (minus OG and
JAJ)-- he pans it. The Saturday Review publishes a poem of JAJ's, and he
does pretty well at the Feis.
Gogarty meanwhile is living among Oxford snobs, having his worst
tendencies in that regard encouraged. He and JAJ both imagine they'll
resume Elizabethan-ing come June, but by that time JAJ is getting
involved with Nora and apparently he doesn't even want OG to meet her.
And apparently JAJ comes to feel Oxford has changed OG for the worse.
OG has returned from Oxford in time to see JAJ's black eye of 20Jun, and
by mid-July they've hatched the Tower plan, with OG to pay the rent and
JAJ to spend a year there finishing Stephen Hero.
But then JAJ expresses his growing distrust, in the poem 'Holy Office',
and when Gogarty reads it he breaks with Joyce, more or less
immediately:
15Aug mystery-letter to Nora: "I offended two men today by leaving them
coolly"
undated poem:
Because your voice was at my side
I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.
There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend--
He is a stranger to me now
That was my friend.
27Aug letter from OG to someone: "I have broken with Joyce... His want
of generosity became to me inexcusable. He lampooned Yeats, AE, Colum,
and others to whom he was indebted. A desert was revealed which I did
not think existed amid the seeming luxuriance of his soul." [uoc86. cf
e167]
Of Gogarty JAJ wrote:
"Or him whose conduct 'seems to own'
His preference for a man of 'tone'"
'Tone' here probably means Wolfe Tone, so Arthur Griffith is the
man-of-Tone, and JAJ feels slighted that OG seeks AG's company more than
his own...?
Some of J's friends are criticising Nora in this period, and maybe OG is
one?
Gogarty is living in the Tower by mid-August, guests include Trench,
Starkey, maybe Griffith already. On 09Sept Gogarty relents (?) and lets
JAJ move in, but they break finally on 15Sept, and JAJ leaves the
country with Nora.
(Supposedly they have some friendly communication c1907 and later,
though.)
And JAJ in Ulysses has to boil this all down to a day, starting with
'beastly dead' and the Haines-spat, and then the 'sentimentalist'
telegram and the competition (?) at the Library and the maternity
hospital, and the final mystery-break at Westland row station...
But the issue I want to raise is: how far was this about JAJ and OG
being in love, with Nora-love supplanting the OG-love, which supplanted
the Byrne-love which maybe supplanted the Clancy-love?
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