by James Joyce
Mr. Dillon points out what would be the certain consequence of action of the kind recommended to the Irish Party. Not only would it involve the sacrifice of the Home Rule Bill and the Home Rule movement, but it would defeat the very object alleged by these advisers. After such an incident no British Minister dare open the English ports for months, because his motives would be instantly challenged. Equally bad and dangerous has been the talk about the unimportance of the disease, and the advice given by some foolish people to the farmers to conceal it. Fortunately the Irish farmers have not listened to the advice. They have proved their commonsense by reporting every suspicious case. Their anxiety to assist the public authorities has been proved by the fact that a majority of the cases so reported have proved to be cases of some other ailment. It is obvious that only by such action can the confidence of the trading public be so restored that the English Minister will be free to act upon the facts disclosed. The talk that the disease is only ‘like measles in children and that all the cattle should be allowed to get it’, like the foolish advice to farmers to conceal cases of the disease, is probably the explanation of the extraordinary official suggestion that the healthy areas should be denied their rights ‘until the situation disclose itself further’. The situation is fully disclosed, because the Irish stock- owners have been perfectly above-board in the matter. They ought not to be held responsible for the stupidities of irresponsible speakers like those whom we have quoted. But a moment’s reflection will convince the stock-owners that stupid people of the kind are worth as much as ten outbreaks of the disease to persons like the Right Hon. Henry Chaplin and Mr. Charles Bathurst.
We do not mean to urge that the Irish farmers and traders should relax their efforts or cease their agitation. Quite the contrary. The situation is critical, and they have sound and solid reasons for demanding the reopening of the ports to healthy Irish stock. These sound and solid reasons are only weakened by menaces that defeat themselves, and by declarations that allow slanderers to say that the disease is being concealed in Ireland. The stock-owners can point to the fact that since the original outbreak, when the existence of the disease could scarcely have been suspected, not a single prosecution for concealment has taken place, though the Constabulary and the officials of the Department are actively watching for symptoms of the disease all over the country. A fact of that kind is the most complete justification of the demand for equality of treatment with the English healthy areas, which the Irish stock-owners and traders are pressing. In putting forward that demand they have the full and hearty co-operation of the Irish Party and its Leader. The influence of the Party will be exercised no less strongly, because it is being used in a legitimate and reasonable way, and in a manner that will leave the exclusionists with no ground for slander. The Irish Department is, we have the strongest grounds for believing, no less active. Mr. Russell has not concealed his endorsement of the claim of the Irish stock-owners. On the contrary, he has taken the strong step of publicly proclaiming his agreement. His statement is the best justification for a vigorous agitation against the unreasonable prolongation of the embargo. It is essential to maintain that agitation, but it is no less essential to discountenance the use of silly and mischievous language, which is the only justification the intimidators of Mr. Runciman can plead for their attitude.
Gas from a Burner
1912
Ladies and gents, you are here assembled
To hear why earth and heaven trembled
Because of the black and sinister arts
Of an Irish writer in foreign parts.
He sent me a book ten years ago.
I read it a hundred times or so,
Backwards and forwards, down and up,
Through both ends of a telescope.
I printed it all to the very last word
But by the mercy of the Lord
The darkness of my mind was rent
And I saw the writer’s foul intent.
But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I hold her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her «Titers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
’Twas Irish humour, wet and dry,
Flung quicklime into Parnell’s eye;
’Tis Irish brains that save from doom
The leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome
For everyone knows the Pope can’t belch
Without the consent of Billy Walsh.
O Ireland my first and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove!
0 O lovely land where the shamrock grows!
1 (Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose)
To show you for strictures I don’t care a button
2 I printed the poems of Mountainy Mutton
3 And a play he wrote (you’ve read it I’m sure)
4 Where they talk of’bastard’, ‘bugger’ and ‘whore’
5 And a play on the Word and Holy Paul
And some woman’s legs that I can’t recall
Written by Moore, a genuine gent That lives on his property’s ten per cent:
I printed mystical books in dozens:
I printed the table-book of Cousins
Though (asking your pardon) as for the verse
Twould give you a heartburn on your arse:
I printed folklore from North and South
By Gregory of the Golden Mouth:
I printed poets, sad, silly and solemn:
I printed Patrick What-do-you-Colm:
I printed the great John Milicent Synge
Who soars above on an angel’s wing
In the playboy shift that he pinched as swag
From Maunsel’s manager’s travelling-bag.
But I draw the line at that bloody fellow,
That was over here dressed in Austrian yellow,
Spouting Italian by the hour
To O’Leary Curtis and John Wyse Power
And writing of Dublin, dirty and dear,
In a manner no blackamoor printer could bear.
Shite and onions! Do you think I’ll print
The name of the Wellington Monument,
Sydney Parade and Sandymount tram,
Downes’s cakeshop and Williams’s jam?
I’m damned if I do — I’m damned to blazes!
Talk about Irish Names of Places!
It’s a wonder to me, upon my soul,
He forgot to mention Curly’s Hole.
No, ladies, my press shall have no share in
So gross a libel on Stepmother Erin.
I pity the poor — that’s why I took
A red-headed Scotchman to keep my book.
Poor sister Scotland! Her doom is fell;
She cannot find any more Stuarts to sell.
My conscience is fine as Chinese silk:
My heart is as soft as buttermilk.
Colm can tell you I made a rebate
Of one hundred pounds on the estimate
I gave him for his Irish Review.
I love my country — by herrings I do!
I wish you could see what tears I weep
When I think of the emigrant train and ship.
That’s why I publish far and wide
My quite illegible railway guide.
In the porch of my printing institute
The poor and deserving prostitute
Plays every night at catch-as-catch-can
With her tight-breeched British artilleryman
And the foreigner learns the gift of the gab
From the drunken draggletail Dublin drab.
Who was it said: Resist not evil?
I’ll burn that book, so help me devil.
I’ll sing a psalm as I watch it burn
And the ashes I’ll keep in a one-handled urn.
I’ll penance do with farts and groans
Kneeling upon my marrowbones.
>
This very next lent I will unbare
My penitent buttocks to the air
And sobbing beside my printing press
My awful sin I will confess.
My Irish foreman from Bannockburn
Shall dip his right hand in the urn
And sign crisscross with reverent thumb
Memento homo upon my bum.
Dooleysprudence
1916
Who is the man when all the gallant nations run to war Goes home to have his dinner by the very first cablecar And as he eats his canteloup contorts himself in mirth To read the blatant bulletins of the rulers of the earth?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley,
The coolest chap our country ever knew
They are out to collar
The dime and dollar’
Says Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the funny fellow who declines to go to church
Since pope and priest and parson left the poor man in the lurch
And taught their flocks the only way to save all human souls
Was piercing human bodies through with dumdum bulletholes?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley,
The mildest man our country ever knew
‘Who will release us
From Jingo Jesus
Prays Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the meek philosopher who doesn’t care a damn
About the yellow peril or the problem of Siam
And disbelieves that British Tar is water from life’s fount
And will not gulp the gospel of the German on the Mount?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley, The broadest brain our country ever knew
‘The curse of Moses
On both your houses’
Cries Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the cheerful imbecile who lights his long chibouk
With pages of the pandect, penal code and Doomsday Book
And wonders why bald justices are bound by law to wear
A toga and a wig made out of someone else’s hair?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley,
The finest fool our country ever knew
‘They took that toilette
From Pontius Pilate’
Thinks Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the man who says he’ll go the whole and perfect hog
Before he pays the income tax or licence for a dog
And when he licks a postage stamp regards with smiling scorn
The face of king or emperor or snout of unicorn?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley,
The wildest wag our country ever knew
‘O my poor tummy His backside’s gummy!’
Moans Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Who is the tranquil gentleman who won’t salute the State
Or serve Nabuchodonesor or proletariat
But thinks that every son of man has quite enough to do
To paddle down the stream of life his personal canoe?
It’s Mr Dooley, Mr Dooley,
The wisest wight our country ever knew
‘Poor Europe ambles
Like sheep to shambles’
Sighs Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo.
Programme Notes for the English Players
1918-19
The Twelve Pound Look
By J. M. Barrie
One Sims is about to be knighted: possibly, as the name would suggest, for having patented a hairgrower. He is discovered rehearsing his part with his wife whose portrait we see on the wall, painted by a Royal Academician, also knighted, presumably for having painted the label for the hairgrower. A typist is announced. This typist is his runaway wife of some fourteen years before. From their conversation we learn that she left him not for another man but to work out her salvation by typewriting. She had saved twelve pounds and bought a typewriter. The twelve pound look,’ she says, is that look of independence in a wife’s eye which every husband should beware of. The new knight’s new wife, ‘noted for her wit’ — chary of it, too — seems likely to acquire the look if given time. Typewriters, however, are rather scarce at present.
Riders to the Sea
By John M. Synge
Synge’s first play, written in Paris in 1902 out of his memories of Aran. The play shows a mother and her dead son, her last, the anagke being the inexorable sea which claims all her sons, Seumas and Patch and Stephen and Shaun. Whether a brief tragedy be possible or not (a point on which Aristotle had some doubts) the ear and the heart mislead one gravely if this brief scene from ‘poor Aran’ be not the work of a tragic poet.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets By G. B. Shaw Mr. Shaw here presents three orthodox figures — a virgin queen, a Shakespeare sober at midnight and a free giver of gold and the dark-haired maid of honour, Mary Fitton, discovered in the eighties by Thomas Tyler and Mr. Harris. Shakespeare comes to Whitehall to meet her and learns from a well-languaged beefeater that Mr. W. H. has forestalled him. The poet vents his spleen on the first woman who passes. It is the queen and she seems not loth to be accosted. She orders the maid of honour out of the way. When Shakespeare, however, begs her to endow his theatre she refers him with fine cruelty to her lord treasurer and leaves him. The most regicide of playwrights prays God to save her and goes home weighing against a lightened purse, love’s treason, an old queen’s leer and the evil eye of a government official, a horror still to come.
The Heather Field
By Edward Martyn
Edward Martyn, the author of the ‘Heather Field’, has in company with W. B. Yeats inaugurated the Irish National Theatre. He is an accomplished musician and man of letters. As a dramatist he follows the school of Ibsen and therefore occupies a unique position in Ireland, as the dramatists writing for the National Theatre have chiefly devoted their energies to peasant drama. The plot of the ‘Heather Field’, the best known of Martyn’s plays, is as follows:
Carden Tyrrell has made an unhappy marriage early in his youth and is now living on bad terms with his wife, Grace. He is an idealist who has never cared for the ordinary routine of life. Forced to settle down on his estate and finding most of his neighbours uncongenial, he has idealized farming and is engaged at the opening of the play in trying to bring into cultivation a vast tract ‘of heather land. To carry on this work he has had to borrow large sums of money. His friend Barry Ussher and his brother Miles warn him of the danger he is running, but in vain. They urge that he is likely to get little profit from his work, for Ussher knows that it is very hard to reclaim lands on which heather grows, for the wild heather may break out upon them soon again. Grace learns that Carden intends borrowing further large sums of money and fears that he will ruin himself. Carden has admitted to his brother Miles that he hears mysterious voices in the air and that every day life is becoming more and more unreal to him. Convinced that he has lost his reason, Grace confides to her friend, Lady Shrule, that she has arranged for two doctors to come and see Carden; she hopes to have him certified as a lunatic and put under restraint. Lady Shrule sympathizes, but neither she nor her husband will do anything to help. The doctors come on an excuse of examining Kit, Carden’s son, but the plan is defeated by Barry Ussher who warns them of the danger they are running by falling in with Grace’s scheme. However matters go from bad to worse; Carden quarrels with his tenants, thus losing further money and having to have police protection. He is unable to pay the interest on the sums he has borrowed and is threatened with financial ruin. At this crisis Kit comes back from a ride and shows his father some wild heather buds which he has found in the heather field. Carden loses his reason and memory; his mind goes back to happy days before his marriage. As Grace tried to domesticate him, so he has tried to domesticate the heather field, and in each case the old wild nature avenges itself.
Letter on Pound
1925
8 Avenue Charles Picquet Paris, France March 13, 1925
Dear Mr. Walsh:
I am glad to hear that the first number of your
review will shortly appear. It was a very good thought of yours in dedicating this number to Mr. Ezra Pound and I am very happy indeed that you allow me to add my acknowledgment of thanks to him to the others you are publishing. I owe a great deal to his friendly help, encouragement and generous interest in everything that I have written, as you know there are many others who are under a similar debt of gratitude to him. He helped me in every possible way in the face of very great difficulties for seven years before I met him, and since then he has always been ready to give me advice and appreciation which I esteem very highly as coming from a mind of such brilliance and discernment.
I hope that your review, setting out under so good a name, will have the success which it deserves Sincerely yours, James Joyce
Letter on Hardy
1928
Cher Monsieur, La demande que vous venez de me faire au sujet d’une contribution éventuelle de ma part à votre numéro spécial dédié à la mémoire de Thomas Hardy me touche profondément. Je crains malheureusement de manquer des titres nécessaires pour donner une opinion qui ait une valeur quelconque sur l’oeuvre de Hardy, dont j’ai lu les romans il y a tant d’années que je préfère ne pas en faire le compte; et en ce qui concerne son oeuvre poétique, je dois vous avouer que je l’ignore complètement. Il y aurait donc de ma part une singulière audace à émettre le moindre jugement sur la figure vénérable qui vient de disparaître: il vaut mieux que je laisse ce soin aux critiques de son pays.
Mais quelque diversité de jugement qui pourrait exister sur cette oeuvre (s’il en existe), il paraît par contre évident à tous que Hardy offrait dans son attitude de poète vis-à-vis du public, un honorable exemple de probité et d’amour-propre dont nous autres clercs avons toujours un peu besoin, spécialement à une époque ou le lecteur semble se contenter de moins en moins de la pauvre parole écrite et où, par conséquent, l’écrivain tend à s’occuper de plus en plus des grandes questions qui, du reste, se règlent très bien sans son aide.