by James Joyce
— And what will you do?
— Refuse it, of course.
— I expected you would.
— How could I take it? asked Stephen in astonishment.
— Not well, I suppose.
The following day a letter arrived for Stephen:
Dear Mr Daedalus,
I have spoken to our President re what we discussed a few days ago. He is greatly interested in your case and would like to see you at the College any day this week between 2 and 3. He thinks it may be possible to find something for you such as I suggested — a few hours or so daily — to enable you to continue your studies. That is the main point.
Sincerely Yours
D. Butt SJ.
Stephen did not call to see the President but replied to Father Butt by letter:
Dear Father Butt,
Allow me to thank you for your kindness. I am afraid, however, that I cannot accept your offer. I am sure you will understand that in declining it I am acting as seems best to me and with every appreciation of the interest you have shown in me.
Sincerely Yours
Stephen Daedalus.
Stephen spent the great part of his summer on the rocks of the North Bull. Maurice spent the day there, stretching idly on the rocks or plunging into the water. Stephen was now on excellent terms with his brother who seemed to have forgotten their estrangement. At times Stephen would half clothe himself and cross to the shallow side of the Bull, where he would wander up and down looking at the children and the nurses. He used to stand to stare at them sometimes until the ash of his cigarette fell on to his coat but, though he saw all that was intended, he met no other Lucy: and he usually returned to the Liffey side, somewhat amused at his dejection and thinking that if he had made his proposal to Lucy instead of to Emma he might have met with better luck. But as often as not he encountered dripping Christian Brothers or « disguised policemen, » apparitions which assured him that whether Lucy or Emma was in question the answer was all one. The two brothers walked home from Dollymount together. They were both a little ragged-looking but they did not envy the trim dressed clerks [that] who passed them on their way home. When they came to Mr Wilkinson’s house they both paused outside to listen for [the] sounds of wrangling and even when all seemed peaceful Maurice’s first questions to his mother when she opened the door was “Is he in?” When the answer was “No” they both went down to the kitchen together but when the answer was “Yes” Stephen only went down, Maurice listening over the banisters to judge from his father’s tones whether he was sober or not. If his father was drunk Maurice retired to his bedroom but Stephen, who was untroubled, discoursed gaily with his father. Their conversation always began:
— Well (in a tone of extreme sarcasm) might I ask where were you all day?
— At the Bull.
— O (in a mollified tone). Had a dip?
— Yes.
— Well, there’s some sense in that. I like to see that. So long as you keep away from those canaille (in a suspicious tone). Sure you weren’t with Knickerbockers or some of those noblemen?
— Quite sure.
— That’s all right. That’s all I want. Keep away from them … Was Maurice with you?
— Yes.
— Where is he?
— Upstairs, I think.
— Why doesn’t he come down here?
— I don’t know.
— Hm … (again in a tone of ruminative sarcasm). By God, you’re a loving pair of sons, you and your brother!
Lynch pronounced Stephen all the asses in Christendom for having declined the Jesuits’ offers:
— Look at the nights you could have had!
— You are a distressingly low-minded person, answered Stephen. After all I have dinned into that mercantile head of yours you are sure to come out on me with some atrocity.
— But why did you refuse? said Lynch.
The summer was nearly at an end and the evening had grown a little chilly. Lynch was walking up and down the Library porch with his hands in his pockets and his chest well protruded. Stephen kept at his side:
— I am a young man, isn’t that so?
— That — is — so.
— Very well. My entire aptitude is for the composition of prose and verse. Isn’t that so?
— Let us suppose it is.
— Very good. I was not intended to be a clerk in a brewery.
— I think it would be very dangerous to put you in a brewery … sometimes.
— I was not intended for that: that is enough. I went to this University day-school in order to meet men of a like age and temper … You know what I met.
Lynch nodded his head in despair:
— I found a day-school full of terrorised boys, banded together in a complicity of diffidence. They have eyes only for their future jobs: to secure their future jobs they will write themselves in and out of convictions, toil and labour to insinuate themselves into the good graces of the Jesuits. They adore Jesus and Mary and Joseph: they believe in the « infallibility » of the Pope and in all his obscene, stinking hells: they desire the millennium which is to be [a] the season for glorified believers and fried atheists … Sweet Lord Almighty! Look at that beautiful pale sky! Do you feel the cool wind on your face? Listen to [my] our voices here in the porch — not because [it is] they are mine or yours but because they are human voices: and doesn’t all that tomfoolery fall off you like water off a duck’s back?
Lynch nodded his head and Stephen continued:
— It is absurd that I should go crawling and cringing and praying and begging to mummers who are themselves no more than beggars. Can we not root this pest out of our minds and out of our society that men may be able to walk through the streets without meeting some old stale belief or hypocrisy at every street corner? I, at least, will try. I will not accept anything from them. I will not take service under them. I will not submit to them, either outwardly or inwardly. A Church is not a fixture like Gibraltar: no more is an institution. Subtract its human members from it and its solidity becomes less evident. I, at least, will subtract myself: and remember that if we allow a dozen for one’s progeny the subtraction of oneself may mean a loss to the Church of 12n members.
— Aren’t you rather liberal about the progeny? said Lynch.
— Did I tell you I met Father Healy this evening? asked Stephen.
— No, where?
— I was walking along the Canal with my Danish grammar (because I am going to study it properly now. I’ll tell you why later on) and whom should I meet but this little man. He was walking right « into the golden sunset: » all his creases and wrinkles were scattered with gold. He looked at my book and said it was very interesting: he thought it must be so interesting to know and compare the different languages. Then he looked far away into the golden sun and all of a sudden — imagine! — his mouth opened and he gave a slow, noiseless yawn … Do you know you get a kind of shock when a man does a thing like that unexpectedly?
— He’ll have something to do shortly, said Lynch pointing to a little group which was laughing and chatting in the doorway, and that’ll keep him from walking in his sleep.
Stephen glanced over at the group. Emma and Moynihan and McCann and two of the Miss Daniels were evidently in high spirits.
— Yes, I suppose she will do it legitimately one of these days, said [Lynch] Stephen.
— I was talking of the other pair, said Lynch.
— O, McCann … She is nothing to me now, you know.
— I don’t believe that, let me tell you.
[The Manuscript ends here]
George Clancy, J. F. Byrne (“Cranly”) and James Joyce during University College days
A Photostat of Page 827 of the Manuscript
Additional Manuscript Pages
[The additional pages of the Manuscript begin here]
nations. They were held out to say: We are alone—come: and the voices said with them: We are your people: and the air grew thick with the
ir company as they called to him, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.
[Departure for Paris (written across between paragraphs in blue crayon)]
From the Broadstone to Mullingar is a journey of some fifty miles across the midlands of Ireland. Mullingar, the chief town of Westmeath, is the midland capital and there is a great traffic of peasants and cattle between it and Dublin. This fifty-mile journey is made by the train in about two hours and you are therefore to conceive Stephen Daedalus packed in the corner of a third-class carriage and contributing the thin fumes of his cigarettes to the already reeking atmosphere. The carriage was inhabited by a company of peasants nearly every one of whom had a bundle tied in a spotted handkerchief. The carriage smelt strongly of peasants, (an odour the debasing humanity of which Stephen remembered to have perceived in the little chapel of Clongowes on the morning of his first communion) and indeed so pungently that the youth could not decide whether he found the odour of sweat [unpleasant] offensive because the peasant sweat is monstrous or because it did not now proceed from his own body. He was not ashamed to admit to himself that he found it [unpleasant] offensive for both of these reasons. The peasants played with blackened edgeless cards from Broadstone onward and whenever it was time for a peasant to leave the company he took up his bundle and went out heavily through the door of the carriage, never closing it behind him. The peasants spoke little and rarely looked at the scene they passed but [at] when they came to Maynooth Station a gentleman dressed in a frock-coat and tall hat who was giving loud directions to a porter concerning a case of machines attracted their wondering attention for several minutes.
At Mullingar Stephen took his neat little valise down from the rack and descended to the platform. When he had passed through the claws of the ticket-collectors he paused for a few moments in indecision before he was sighted by the driver of a small dark-green trap. The driver asked was he the young gentleman for Mr Fulham and on Stephen’s answering “yes” invited him to climb up beside him on the seat. So they set off easily. The trap which was not very clean [and it] jolted a good deal and Stephen looked once or twice anxiously at his oscillating valise but the driver said he need have no fear. The driver when he had said this a few times in the same words fell silent a while and then asked didn’t Stephen come from Dublin. Re-assured on this point he fell silent again[st] and began [to] with a deliberate whip to flick flies off the ill-groomed hide between the shafts.
The trap went up the long crooked main street of the town and crossing over the bridge of the canal made out for the country. Stephen remarked that the houses were very small but catching sight of a large square building that stood in grounds closely walled he asked the driver what building it was. The driver told him it was the lunatic asylum and added impressively that there were a great many patients in it. The road wound through heavy pasture lands and in [mea] field after field Stephen saw herds of cattle fattening. Sometimes these cattle were in the charge of a drowsy peasant but oftener they were left to themselves and moved slowly from marsh to dry land and from dry land to marsh as the will took them. The little cottages along the road were covered with overblown roses and in many of the doorways there would stand a woman gazing silently over the flat country. Now and again a peasant plodding along the road would give the driver the time of day and if he judged Stephen worthy of the honour fumble at his hat. Proceeding in this manner along the dusty road the trap gradually drew near Mr Fulham’s house.
It was an old irregular house, barely visible from the road, and surrounded by a fair plantation. It was reached by an untended drive and the ground behind it thick with clumps of faded rhododendrons sloped down to the shore of Lough Owel. The lodge was a whitewashed cottage at the door of which a little child in a chemise sat eating a big crust of bread. The gate was open and the trap turned up the drive. After a circular tour of a few hundred yards the trap reached the door of the old discoloured house.
As the trap drew up to the door a young woman advanced to meet it with a quiet dignified gait. She was dressed completely in black and her dark hair was brushed plainly off her temples. She held out her hand:
— Welcome, she said. My uncle is in the orchard. We heard the noise of the wheels.
Stephen touched her hand slightly and bowed.
— Dan, leave that valise in the hall for the present and you, Mr Daedalus, are to come along with me. I hope you are not fatigued by your journey: it is so tiresome travelling.
— Not in the least.
She led the way along the hall and through a little glass door into a great square orchard, the nearer half of which was still a sunny region. Here, screened by a broad straw hat Mr Fulham was discovered sitting in a basket-chair. He greeted Stephen very warmly and made the usual polite enquiries. Miss Howard had brought out a little tray containing fruit and milk and the visitor gladly ate and drank for the dust of the roads [was] had invaded his throat. Mr Fulham asked a great many questions about Stephen’s studies and tastes while Miss Howard stood beside his chair in silence. At a pause in the interrogation she took up the tray and carried it into the house. When she came back she offered to show Stephen the orchard and, Mr Fulham returning at the same moment to his newspaper, she led the way down a walk of currant-bushes. Stephen had found his godfather’s questions a somewhat severe ordeal and he revenged himself on Miss Howard by a counter-fire of questions concerning the names and seasons and prospects of her plants. She answered all his questions carefully but with the same air of indifferent exactness which marked all her acts. Her presence did not awe him as it had done when he had last met her and he thought that perhaps the uncontaminated nature which he had then imagined accusing him was no more than an unusual dignity of manner. He did not find this dignity of hers very congenial and his new fervour of youth was vitally piqued by her lack of animation. He decided in favour of some definite purpose of hers and against [the] a mechanical discharge of duties and said to himself that it would be an intellectual game for him to discover it. He set this task to himself all the more readily since he suspected that this purpose guiding her conduct must be inimical to his present genial impulses and would probably elude him out of instantaneous distrust and seek natural safety in flight. This fugitive impulse would be prey for him and at once he summoned all his faculties to the chase.
Dinner was served at half past six in a long plainly-furnished room. The table spread under a tall lamp of elegant silver-work wore an air of chaste elegance. It was a slight trial on Stephen’s hunger to accept these cold manners and in the warmth of his relish for food he condemned this strange attitude of human beings as ungrateful and unnatural. The conversation was also a little mincing and Stephen heard the words ‘charming’ and ‘nice’ and ‘pretty’ too often to find them agreeable. He discovered the weak point in Mr Fulham’s armour very soon; Mr Fulham, like most of his countrymen, was a persuaded politician. Most of Mr Fulham’s neighbours were primitive types and he, in spite of the narrowness of his ideas, was regarded by them as a man of ripe culture. In a discussion which took place over a game of bézique Stephen heard his godfather explain to a more rustic proprietor the nature of the work done by the missionary fathers in civilising the Chinese people. He sustained the propositions that the Church is also the chief repository of secular culture and that the tradition of learning must derive from the monks. He saw in the pride of the Church the only refuge of men against a threatening democracy and said that Aquinas had anticipated all the discoveries of the modern world. His neighbour was puzzled to discover the whereabouts of the souls of the Chinese people in the other life but Mr Fulham left the problem at the door of God’s mercy. At this stage of the discussion Miss Howard, hitherto silent, said that there were three kinds of baptism and her statement was accepted as a closure.
Stephen was a long time in doubt as to the motive of his godfather’s patronage. The second day after his arrival as they were driving back from a tennis-tournament Mr Fulh
am said to him.
— Isn’t Mr Tate your English professor, Stephen?
— Yes, sir.
— His people are Westmeath. We often see him during holiday time. He seems to take a great interest in you.
— O, you know him then?
— Yes. He is laid up at present with a bad knee or I’d write to him to come over here. Perhaps we may drive over to see him one of these days … He is a very well-read man, Stephen.
— Yes, said Stephen.
Tennis-tournaments, military bands, rustic cricket-matches, little flower shows were [devised] resorted to for Stephen’s entertainment. At these functions he remarked that his godfather was very openly humoured and Miss Howard very respectfully courted and he began to suspect that there was money somewhere in the background. These entertainments did not amuse the youth; his manner was so quiet that often he passed unnoticed and remained unintroduced. Sometimes an officer would send a glance of impolite inquiry at the cheap-looking white shoes he wore but Stephen always looked his enemy in the face. After a short trial of eyes the youth could usually procure a truce. He was surprised to find that Miss Howard discharged her social duties with such apparent goodwill. He was displeased and disappointed to hear her make a pun one day—a pun which though it was not very clever [but caused] raised a polite laugh from two scrupulous lieutenants. Mr Fulham was old and honoured enough to allow himself the luxury of admonishing publicly whenever occasion arose. [When] One day an officer told a humorous story which was intended to poke fun at countrified ideas [Mr Fulham said:
— Our peasants may be ignorant of many things]
The story was this. The officer and a friend found themselves one evening surprised by a heavy shower far out on the Killucan road and forced to take refuge in a peasant’s cabin. An old man was seated at the side of the fire smoking a dirty cutty-pipe which he held upside down in the corner of his mouth. The old peasant invited his visitors to come near the fire as the evening was chilly and said he could not stand up to welcome them decently as he had the rheumatics. The officer’s friend who was a learned yound lady observed a figure scrawled in chalk over the fireplace and asked what it was. The peasant said: