Presenting Everyman and the Riddle
in the First Question of Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 (126.1-139.14)

Grace Eckley
Denver, Colorado, 2010

Inspired by the "riddle task" that tested ancient heroes, Chapter 6 begins (126.68) [*1] with an encyclopedic first question about the legendary Finn MacCool as an inspiriting genius of the ages, both approximating and exacting bits of intelligence that far exceed, as Bernard Benstock counted, the more than four hundred characteristics as separated by semicolons [*2]. The first of twelve questions is important for establishing the character and history of an anonymous citizen representing Finn MacCool through a compendium of facts and speculations, and making an imaginative, quizzical entertainment of it. Readers of the London journal the Review of Reviews can appreciate, for example, a factual link between an African kraal and a Dublin pub crawl (134.2); the undistributed middle term is left for the riddle player to negotiate. Verbal grotesqueries resemble those with which Joyce and his friends entertained themselves in Dublin [*3]. Typographical patterns have been sorted out and examined by Bernard Benstock; further, Patrick McCarthy, who in The Riddles of Finnegans Wake calls the first question "the most extensive catalog in Finnegans Wake" (47-63), supplies additional insights. The question that remains is whether the sound and sense of the clauses can be discerned, always weighed against the caveat that Joyce himself deliberately left answers "in their own fine artful disorder" (126.9). His purpose was not to solve a riddle but to create one. Each of the "383 discrete clauses" is a riddle for whoever is in the back of the woods, projecting a picture of Joyce's world: its laws, geography, theater, newsworthy topics. The question is whether sense can be derived from those clauses or whether they represent chaos and complexity.


Having begun writing in 1922, by the time Joyce reached Chapter 6 in 1926 he had already established tree and stone [Shem and Shaun respectively] laden with correspondences. A Master Builder had built a wall against vice and crime in "bould Babylon" (139.11), or London, with a purpose of social regeneration. The same journalist who attempted the building had pronounced in his youth regarding the Scandinavian world tree Yggdrasil that "Its boughs are the Histories of Nations. In every leaf there is a biography; in every fibre an act or word" (28 Dec 1974 Northern Echo). In his journalistic maturity he expanded the notion, that "The rustle of its myriad sheets, unfolded afresh every morning and folded for ever at night, supplies a realistic fulfillment of one part of the old Norse saga of the Ashtree Ygdrasil [sic], whose roots were watered by the Norns, and on whose leaves were written the scenes of the life of man. . . . A man without a newspaper is half-clad, and imperfectly furnished for the battle of Life (Journalist on Journalism 56. Joyce phrased it "we are fed of its forest, clad in its wood, burqued by its bark and our lecture is its leave" (503.36-504.1. Together (see "Treestone" 113.19), they comprise the animate and inanimate halves of nature.


The journalistic tree (see 502.17-506.16) is "a given" as Chapter 6 opens, and the "Wellington Sequoia" (126.12), particularly the Wellington monument in Dublin's Phoenix Park, engages Joyce's ambivalence toward an Irish-built symbol of British domination. The Irish hero Charles Stewart Parnell was falsely accused of forging documents that implicated him in the Phoenix Park murders of 1882 and in a trial in 1888-89 was exonerated by the culprit Richard Pigott's misspelling of "hesitancy." Thereafter "no one could be 'hesitant' without provoking guffaws in public meetings" (25 Feb 1889 PMG) and burdened the protagonist Earwicker with plausible guilt. Items seemingly fixed in time belong to a universal continuum that represents Earwicker as Ireland's Howth mountain, with his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle as the river Liffey that flows by his side; his sons Shem and Shaun are tree and stone, and daughter Issy is a cloud.


All people are clasped in the folds of eternity, known as the afterlife or the "Other World" and moralized in resurrection and reincarnation. As Joyce said, "Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book" (Ellmann 554). Two narrators, one to question and exclaim and one to "tell," are parked up there in the ether looking down on the world in all phases of its construction (see skyview first paragraph 3.1 and "us" and "we" unnamed narrators). Eternal cosmic forces that impinge upon humanity through all time are anchored in the verities of numerology (leap year), mythology (Ragnarok), orthography (Enderson for Hans Christian Anderson), and voluminous bits of error-prone popular culture (Wellingon's "white horse"). The first question is comprised of these fragments of the Joycean "collideorscape" (143.28) world that glimmer like the butterfly that Lorenz made famous, captured in words before their evanescence vanishes. The cosmos at times throws out a legendary hero Finn MacCool, subject of the First Question, and his contemporary incarnation Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. One of Joyce's riddle tasks was to convince the world that an Everyman equals Finn MacCool.


Our progress toward the goal of comprehension demands an explanation of Joyce's faithfulness to Irish history and mythology. Breaking his Shem/Shaun paired distinctions [Shem is Shem; Ham is Shaun], a third party of Noah's three sons appears. While creating his new Irish mythology, Joyce adopted the traditional creation story for Irish myth as codified by the Welsh brothers Alwyn and Brinley Riis: "Celtic tradition has preserved no native story of the creation of the world and of man. Even in the oldest documents that have survived, the Biblical Adam and Eve have already been accepted as the first parents [and the myth] proceeds from the Creation to the story of Noah and the Flood, the Dispersal of the Nations, and the descent of the Gael of Ireland from Japheth son of Noah" (95). After that come the legendary heroes of Ireland.


Opposite this view of logic, stability, and veracity is that of Thomas Jackson Rice--and of most frustrated readers--expressed in Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity (1997). Rice reasons that "Humankind has always organized phenomenal reality for its convenience by superimposing simplifying patterns of meaning" (124). He finds Finnegans Wake "situated 'halfway between pure order and pure chaos' and generating the maximum information content possible in a message, in terms of its symbolic dynamics" (128) and "In terms of complexity theory, the decreasing availability of keys for the Wake is a measure of the increase in the 'algorithmic complexity' of Joyce's fiction" (133). Despite the inaccuracy of the "increase in the 'algorithmic complexity'" [*4], this latter is a point to quarrel with, for Wake scholarship has never adequately examined the conditions and the thought with which Joyce occupied his youth. The example of tunneling through the mountain as "Joyce's favorite metaphor for his composition of the book" (Rice 113) is the easiest to refute [*5]. The tunnel, familiar to many in Joyce's time, originated with advances in the mental sciences made by philosophers of his youth, of whom the honored spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge expressed it in his popular personal narration The Survival of Man (1909). By the time W. T. Stead reviewed the book the next year, "Tunnellers from the Other Side" was sufficiently known to provide a heading (R 38: 284-88). In similar historical mode, many "complexities" are resolved. Much of the value of the Stead source lies in its record-keeping of Joyce's time and its resolution of many of those "complexities."


Verily, the riddle task of Chapter 6 was founded in the prior chapter, when a similar challenge was issued, just as Joyce in the process of writing Finnegans Wake tested his friends, exhausted the patience of his patroness Harriet Shaw Weaver, and brought forth the failure he expected of the twelve "exagminators." The prior challenge appeared as "You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy?" when the speaker admitted he was creating "a puling sample jungle of words" (112.3-4). Beginning Chapter 6 with a juvenile streetgang swagger "So?" he reissues the challenge. The potential audience is still in the jungle, now designated "the echo . . . in the back of the woods" (126.3). Piling his own Pella upon Ossa, the narrator eventually arrives at a "heavengendered, chaosfoedus, earthborn" HCE (137.14) announcing a historical system and a compound attribute of the evergreen old gentleman of the world, forever remembered and forever vanishing, Finn MacCool.


The method employed here for walking out of the woods utilizes Roland McHugh's Annotations to "Finnegans Wake" plus my own investigations, to provide a clarified reading text of the first question, in which alternating past and present clauses throughout defy the notion that Finn MacCool possibly stands for past and Earwicker for present; both are personages of all time. This method demonstrates that a formidable test like that of McHugh's example from Rabelais, "Ricqueracqubrimbillyjicqueyjocqjolicass?" (254.15) can be resolved: "Ricqueraque: love and its ill consequences; jocquer: to perch; brimballer: make love; and Joly cas: (fig.) pregnant." This method transforms Finnegans Wake from a gigantic Word Game to a consistent Message, in which bits and pieces adhere.


This modernization and simplification of the text of Finnegans Wake establishes for its "hero" the contemporary-historical personality that Joyce found in a London journalist to unify the disparate parts of his novel, including those derived from his own autobiography. The present text and context have evolved over years of attempting to find a means to present the Wake and historical associations without intolerably lengthening the text. Endnotes, marked [*], are vital.


To review basic facts applicable to the first question, W. T. Stead (1849-1912) investigated and published an account of London vice and white slavery in July, 1885. To demonstrate the operation of the system, he "abducted" Eliza Armstrong, age 13, from her mother for the sum of five pounds, and combined her story with that of another abducted child named Lily. His series "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" definitely besmirched London, for which authorities sent him to jail. While many subjects of the Queen called Stead a "knight," others believed he had fabricated his accounts, which they called "filth," meaning excrement. This negative view explains most of Earwicker. Joyce occasionally adds a dollop of the hero Stead, but for the most part Earwicker is a fallen hero, stuck in the "stucckomuck" (91.1) and dumped in the dump of the "Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump" (Chapter 10). The "filthdump" (90.6) that the charwoman Kate deposits in Phoenix Park is not excrement but the midden trash of a newspaper "letter." After the Maiden Tribute (MT), Stead continued social reforms, founded the Review of Reviews, and turned his attention to world affairs.


The judge at Stead's trial said he had "deluged" London with "a quantity of filth." Joyce exploits from the Maiden Tribute the "flood" with its attributes of thunder and rain, rainbow, raincoat, umbrella, pursuit of the female, maidens as flowers, Stead's law; secret wealth; the fish and smoking and drinking. Most onerous was the public's unfounded assertion that the editor gained private wealth with the MT (see 129.20); because of declined advertising, the paper actually lost money. Question 1 adds Stead's Yorkshire origins, affiliation with Cromwell, Puritan consciousness of time, intense religion, world peace efforts, skillful sailing (hence "the sailor king"), and the "Inn." Other allusions are stereotypes of the time; maidens were dehumanized as fruit, especially the apple blossom, about to be plucked. Hence through Stead and his time the "bits and pieces" of Earwicker and family are not only unified but many are oft revisited. Frequent mention of the Victorian Prime Minister Gladstone, the "GOM," reinvokes the period of Joyce's Irish residence. What Joyce needed for his "everyman" character was a contemporary-historical person who could subsume all the others, either in person or in publication, to account for oddities repeated: e.g. F.E.R.T., Billy-in-the-Bowl, and episodes like that of the Cad and the Russian General. There are rarefied extravagances like "our Thersites."


The following represents the text of Finnegans Wake for the first question of Chapter 6 with obscure words either modernized or retained with a slash for Wakean double-sense alternatives, e.g. heather/heaven. Allusions and references are bracketed: e.g. Protestant Boyne [battle 1690]. Longer explanations are assigned to narrational endnotes. To avoid the over-frequent mention of Stead, I call him "the editor."

 

So? (126.1)
Who do you know tonight, ladies and gentleman? [Questioning narrator]
The echo is there in the back of the woods; call him forth!

 

[Stage directions] (Shaun Mac Irewick, briefdragger/postman, for the concern of Messrs John Jamieson and Son, rated one hundred and ten perstorehundred [110%] on this nightly quiz of the twelve apostles [see Endnote 76], set by Jockit MicEreweak. He misunderstood and aim for am ollo [hodgepodge; Olla, minstrel in MacPherson's Temora] of number three of them and left his free/three natural ripostes to four of them in their own fine artful disorder.) (126.9)


1. What second-to-none myth erector and maximost/Maximos [Ibsen: bridge paganism and Christianity] bridgemaker [Pope: bridge earth and heaven] was the first to rise taller through his beanstock/tale than the Bluegum buaboababbaun [tallest tree] or the giganteous Wellington Sequoia [tallest stone monument; giant trees after Waterloo were named for Wellington] went wading/nudiboots with trout/trousers in the Liffey when she [ALP] was barely in her tricklies/adolescence; was well known to claud/clap a conciliation cap [O'Connell at Conciliation Hall, 1844, wore green cap] onto the esker [ridge] of his Howth [*6];
sports a chainganger's [editor's imprisonment] Albert [watch chain] solemnly over his Hollander's [Dutch/papermaking machine] opulence [paunch] [*7]; thought he weighed a new ton [Newton] when there felled his first lapapple [*8]; gave the heinousness of choice to every [HCE] knight betwixt yester Dicks and two Maries [yesterday and tomorrow] [*9]; had several successive-coloured [rainbow] sereban/servant maids on the same big white drawing room hearthrug ["purity" reformers]; is a Wilberforce to this hour at house as he was in heather/heaven [*10]; pumped the Catholic wartrey [Vartry river: Dublin] and shocked the Protestant Boyne [battle 1690] [*11]; killed his own hungry self [Finn MacCool: salmon] in anger as a young man [*12]; found fodder for five [Noah, wife, three sons/Earwicker's family] when all markers rose flooded; with Irish tutors ["Irish Tutor" play] Cornish made easy [*13]; (126.36)


voucher of rotabiles [with wheels], toll [damages, injuries] of the road; bred manyheaded [heads of families] stepsons for one leap your/year own daughter [*14]; is too finny/funny for a fish and has too much outside for an insect [Earwicker] [*15]; like a heptagon crystal emprisons [colors] true and false/fausse for us [motto: "get the facts"]; is infinite swell in unfitting induments [prison uniform]; once was he shovelled [EARTH] and once was he arsoned [FIRE] and once was he inundered [WATER] and she hung him out [AIR] Bill Bailey [*16]; has a Quadrant in his tale to tell taller/Toler [judged Robert Emmet] cad [see 35.1-36] a'clog it is [*17]; offers chances to Long on but stands up to Legge before [cricket]; found coal at the end of his harrow and moss roses [Portulaca flowers: maidens] behind the seams [coal strike, 1912]; made a fort out of his postern [back door] and wrote F.E.R.T.[*18] [motto of House of Savoy] on his buckler/Buckley [*19]; is escapemaster-in-chief [Houdini; Earwicker] from all sorts of hiding places [in prison, the editor continued editing his newspaper]; he out-Harrods against Barkers, to the Shoolbred he acts Whiteley [London dept. stores]; was evacuated at the mere appearance of three Germans [soldiers] and twice besieged by a sweep [*20]; from zoo morphology to omni-animals he is brooched [zoomorphic brooches] by the spin of a coin [animals on Irish coins]; towers, an Edison [Eddystone lighthouse] amid the lampless, casting Swann beams on the deep [*21]; threatens thunder [MT thunderbolt] [*22] upon malefactors and sends whispers up fraufrau's [opera Frou Frou] froufrous [petticoats]; when Dook [ghost] Hook-or-by-Crook [crookback Richard III was killed in battle] upsets his ass, boos-worthies jeer/cheer and junket but they boo him oos and bahs his ahs/ass [amused audiences required encore] when he lukes like Hunkett Plunkett [played Richard III] ; by so-and-sos and search a party on a lady [MT: brothel owner Mrs Jeffries] of this city [Annals of the Theatre]; business [theatrical movements], reading newspaper, smoking cigar [*23], arranging tumblers on table, eating meals, pleasure, etcetera, etcetera, pleasure, eating meals, arranging tumblers on table, smoking cigar, reading newspaper, business; minerals [water], wash and brush up [in gentlemen's toilets], local views, juju [African magic] toffee, comic and birthday cards; those were the days and he was their hero; pink sunset shower, red clay [Adam from Hebrew adamah] cloud, sorrow or Sahara/Sara [wife of Abraham], oxhide/oxide of iron [red clay: see Terrecuite (133.30)]; arraigned and attainted, [convicted] listed and lited [sued], pleaded and proved [arraign, indict, impeach]; cashes his check at Bank of England and endorses his doom [insufficient funds] at chapel exit/Chapelizod; brain of the Franks, hand of the Christian [*24], tongue of the North [editor's Yorkshire heritage]; commands to dinner [Commendatore in Don Giovanni invites a statue] and calls the bluff; has a block at Morgan's [hat maker] and a hatache all the after-lunch [prison caps too small]; plays Geheimrat [privy councillor] when he's earnest but misses mausey [heavy buttocks/Howth mauser rifles] when he's lusty [merry]; walked as far as the Head [of Howth] where he sat in state as the Rump [Stead likened to Cromwell] [*25]; shows Early English [13th century architecture] trademarks/tracery and a marigold window with many gilt lights [*26], a myrioscope [Cathedral stained glass windows], two remarkable piscines [stone basins] and three Walworth/well-worth-seeing aumbries [church recesses for storage]; arches [of bridge] all portcullised [gated] and his nave [where congregation sits] dates from dots [long ago]; is a horologe [timekeeper] unstoppable and the Ben of all bells [*27]; (128.1)


fuit, isst and herit [was, is, and will be] and though he's mildewstained he's mouldystoned; [mouldy: drunk] is a Quercus [oak tree] in the forest but plane [tree] member for Megalopolis [great city]; mountain-mighty [*28], faun-on-fleet foot; plank in our platform, blank in our scutcheon; hidal [acreage], in carucates [feudal land measurement] he is enumerated, hold [in prison] as an earl [*29], he counts; shipshaped phrase of bug/big-looking words with a form like the easing moments [excrement] of a graminivorous [grass-eating]; to our dooms [judgments] he brought law, our manners he made his will of [*30]; was an overgrind to the [London] underground and aqua-ducted for fierythroats [Earwicker-Innkeeper]; sends boys in socks acoughawhooping [gas works cures whooping cough] when he lets forth his carbon-monoxide [MT: gas] and silk stockings show her shapings when he looses hold on hers; stocks dry powder for the ill people [*31] and Pinkun's ["the pink 'un," The Sporting Times] pellets for all the Pale [English-governed area of Dublin in medieval times]; gave his Lundy Foot [Dublin tobacconist] to Miserius [wretched], her pinch/pitch to Anna Livia, that [sold] superfine pigtails to Ceresia Cerosia [cherries] and quid rides to Titus Andronicus [*32], Caius and Sempronius [characters in Titus]; made the man who had no notion of shopkeepers [Napoleon] feel he'd rather play the Duke [Wellington] than play the gentleman [*33]; shot two queans [chess] shook three castles [on Dublin coat of arms and Stead's Holloway prison] when he won his game of draughts; fumes inwards like a Stromboli till he smokes at both ends [*34]; man must, be fair to him [acting out his nature], womankind, pietad! [mourns] [*35]; shows one white drift of snow among the gorse growth of his crown and a chaperon [headdress] of repentance [violet color] on that which shed gore [heather on Howth]; Ps and Qs [linguistic split], triple bill; went by Metro for the polis [Dublin/London Metropolitan Police] and then hoved by; to the finders, hail! woe, you that seek [have not found truth: Matt. 7:7]!; (128.23)


whom filth [the MT] had plenished, death devoured [destroyed reputation]; hock [last card in faro] is leading, cocoa [cardgame] comes next, emery [card game] tries for the flag; can dance the O'Bruin's [Bruno of Nolan] pole-passer [penis, fuck] a Nolan to his own orchis-testicle accompaniment [*36]; took place before the internatural convention of Catholic midwives and found Stead before the congress for the study of endonational calamities [*37]; makes a delicious entrée and finishes off the course [fish] between sweets and savouries; flouts for forecasts, flairs for finds and the fun of the fray on the fairground; cleared out three hundred sixty-five idols [Mohammed destroyed 360 idols in Ka'aba] to set up one all Colossal [el Khalasa] for henwives hoping to have males [coming prophets]; the flahoolagh [princely], the grasping one, the kindler of Phoenix be his pyre [St. Patrick's Paschal fire], the cinders his sire [Phoenix reborn from ashes]!; piles big Pelion on little Ossas [Greek mountains] [*38] like the Pillars of Hercules [a possible site of the Colossus of Rhodes]; has an Oedipus complex and a drink-the-dregs kink [Earwicker ending Chapter 11]; West Meath for champs and Co. Carlow [nickname "the Scallion eaters"] for scallions; when he plies for our favour is very truly ours; two psychic espousals and three desertions [*39]; (129.3)


may be matter of fact now but was fuck of magd/maid then [MT]; Cahermohill Hill [Limerick], exmountain of flesh [actor Cattermole] was reared up by stress and sank under strain; tank it up, dank it up, tells the tailor to his tout [solicitor]; entoutcas/umbrella for a man, but bit a thimble [small drink] for a maid; blimp, blump [*40]; a dud/dead letter, a sing a song a syllable; a byword, a sentence with surcease [*41]; while stands his can-you-see-him [Byron on Roman Colosseum] frails [women] shall fall; was hatched at Celbridge [Co. Kildare] but ejaculated/educated abroad [Irish emigraion]; as it gan/was in the beginnings [prayer] so wound up in a bottle of Bass [Irish alcoholics]; Roderick, Roderick, Roderick [O'Connor last high king], O, you've gone the way of the Danes [absorbed into Irish population]; variously catalogued, regularly regrouped [indexing started by the editor]; a busman's holiday, a Quaker's meeting [silence], a Witch's Sabbath [Friday the 13th]; the same homoeterous [same other] chickenlessegg [shape of truncated soldier in song] as when Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye [similar to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"]; real detonation but false report; spa mad but Inn/insane; Via Aemillia [from Placenta to Rimini] via bogus census but a no street [Baron] Haussmann and alphanned [Jean Alphand, with Haussman, renovated Paris]; is the handiest of all Andies [Samuel Lover novel Handy Andy] and a most elegant/Allegheny [mountains] spot to dump your hump [excrement]; hands his secession to the new Patrick but plumps phlegmatically for the bloody old centuries; eats with doors open and ruts with gates closed [Grace O'Malley]; some dub him [Dublin] Rothschild [secret wealth: European bankers] and more limn him Rockyfeller [American wealth]; shows he's fly to both hemispheres but tries to cover up his traces; seven dovecotes [towns] cooclaim to have been Pigeon House/home [birthplace] to this Homer: Smyrna/Merrion [Dublin], Rhodes/Roebuck [Dublin], Kolonsreagh/ Kolophon, Seapoint/Salamis, Quayhowth/Chios, Ashtown/Argos, Ratheny/Athenae; independent of the lordship of [Joseph] Chamberlain [Lord Chamberlain censors British plays], acknowledging the rule of Rome [*42]; we saw thy Form at Youthful Prime [Moore song "Domhnall"], Domhnall; reeks like Ill-Bel-Paese [cheese il bel passe; Italian homeland] and looks like Ireland's Eye [island near Howth]; lodged at quot [how many] places, lived through tot [so many] reigns; takes a sunbath/Saturday for his weekend and a wassarnap/Sunday for his refreshment; after a good bout at stool ball [possible ancestor of baseball and cricket] enjoys Giroflé Girofla [opera, singing game]; what Nevermore [Poe's Raven] missed and Colombo [Dove] found [*43]; believes in everyman his own goalkeeper [priest] and in Africa for the fullblacks/fullbacks [football]; the arc/bow of his drive was forty/forte [Strongbow] full and his stumps were pulled [cricket] at eighty; boasts him to the thick-and-thin the oldest crater/creature in Aryania [meteor crater in Iran] and looks down on the Swiss Family Robinson/Collesons [hill] whom he calls les nouvelles roches [rocks; rich]; though his heart, soul and spirit [faith, hope, charity] turn to Pharoahs' times [dynasties 1570 B.C.-1075 B.C.], his love, faith and hope stick to Futurism [20th century art]; light leglifters [fornicators] sense him souriantes/smiling/Sorrento [Dalkey] [*44] from afore/afar while Boer browbenders [persuaders] curse him grumbling to his hindmost; (130.1)


between Ulysses and the Iliad last glimpse of Erin [Moore song]; the Eng his peak has [*45], the Lugh [Celtic sun god] his pile [peak and pile are synonyms for mountain]; drinks tar and water [poet Mangan and philosopher Berkeley] for his asthma and eats the unperishable sow [heroes in Valhalla] to stave off regular rack [Ragnarok]; the beggars cloak themselves reclined about his paddystool [home place] [*46], the whores beckon him as they walk their side [permitted on one side of street]; on Christmas at Advent Lodge, New Zealand/Years, after a Lent/lengthy illness the reverend Mr Easterling of Pentecost [measures life by holy days: Christmas, Advent, New Year, Lent, Easter, Pentecost], no flowers/followers [attend funeral] by request [Gladstone requested no flowers], fanfare/funeral all private [keep public at bay]; Gone Where Glory Waits Him/Thee [Moore song] (Ball, bulletist) but Not Here Yet (Maxwell, Clark) [*47]; commenced under Articles [of Faith] but phoenished a burgess [reincarnation]; from the vat [draught beer] on the bier [coffin] through the beurre [butter/pitch] in the dark to the battle of the Boyne [*48]; is AI an the highest but Roh [low] re his root; felt fond of Huckleberries [more Finns] when all was stuck and toss up [prepare food quickly] for him as a youngster to fall foul of hock in beakers wherein he had gained the age of reason [alcoholic at age seven]; ads aliments, das [yeses] doles, raps rustics, tames turmoil; has seed enough for a semination but pursues skivvies on the sly [MT/Buck Mulligan]; learned to speak from hand to mouth till he could talk Irish with his eyes shut [Vico: first language must have been signs]; hacked his way through hic haec hoc [Latin this] but hanged himself from there hereafters/rafters [higher reach]; Rialto, Annesley, Binn and Balls [Dublin Bridges] to say nothing at all of Newcomen [Bridge] [*49]; the gleam of the glow of the shine of the sun through the dearth of the dirt on the blush of the brick of the viled ville of Barnehulme [Danish island in the Baltic] has dust turned to brown [song: "The flea on the hair of the tail of the dog of the nurse of the child of the wife of the wild man from Borneo has just come to town"] [*50]; these dyed to Tartan [clothe] him, rueroot/red, dulse/brown, bracken/yellow, teasel/green, fuller's ash/dark green, sundew/purple and cress/violet; long gunn but not for cotton [*51]; stood his sharp assault of famine [Irish history] but grew girther, girther and girther [spread farther and farther]; he has twenty-four or so cousins [towns named Dublin] germane in the United States of America and a namesake with an initial difference in the once kingdom of Poland [Lublin]; his first's a young rose [bud] and his second's French-Egyptian [Nil (e)] and his whole means a slump [Null Bid] at Christie's [auction]; forth of his pierced part [Adam] came the woman of his dreams [Eve], blood thicker than water last trade overseas [emigration]; Bishop of Glendalough [post declined by], earl of Howth [St. Lawrence O'Toole]; you and I are in him [DUblIn] surrounded by brown buildings [dirty Dublin]; Elin's flee polt [Chinese: Erin's free port] perhaps but Huang-Shang/Hwang Ch'êng [Emperor] everytime [HCE]; he once was one of your highty-tighty [uppish] bagpipey boys but fancy him as smoking fags at his time of life [too old]; (131.1)


Mount of Slemish [Antrim], Magh Meall [Irish Elysium]; had two cardinal ventures/virtues and three capitol sins; has a peep [mirror] in his pocketbook and a packetboat [regular route between ports] in his keep; B.V.H.[blessed Virgin Humphrey] B.L.G [Burke's Landed Gentry], P. P.M. [postage paid in money], T.D.S.[to be taken three times a day], V.B.D [Volta Bureau for the Deaf], T.C.H.[D: Trinity College Dublin], L.O.N [League of Nations]; is Breakfast, Lunch, Dierner [servant] and Supper; as the streets were paved with gold he felt his Tipperary [winning hurling team]; taught himself skating and learned how to fall; distinctly dirty but rather a dear [Dublin]; Haveth Chieftains/Children Everywhere, with murderer; Ostman [Viking] Effendi [Turkish "sir"] Serge Paddishah [Persian]; baases [boss] to many, outPriams al' his Paris-ites [sons of Priam of Troy]; first of the Fenians, Les Roi Fainéants [last Merovingian kings]; his Tiara of stone [Coronation stone called Lia Fáil kept in Westminster Abbey] was held infallible till one Liam Fail [Liam Gladstone failed attempt at Irish Home Rule in 1886] felled him in Westminster [burial in Abbey]; was struck out of his shittem [wood, boat] when he rowed Sauly/solely [the "Dead March" in Handel's Saul was played at Gladstone's funeral] to Damascus and to our appauling [changed name to Paul] predicament brought us plagues from Budapest; put a matchhead on an Alpenstalk and set the Liffey a-fire [figuratively] [*52]; spared the rod and spoiled the lightning [child]; married with cakes and repented with pleasure/at leisure [*53]; till he was buried [Vico's phases] how happy was he and he made the welkins/Wilkins ring with Up Micawber! [Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield] ; god at the top of the staircase [Osiris], carrion on the mat of straw [carrion flower: maidens] the false hood of a spinner/spider web chokes the cavemouth of his invisibility [Mohammed in cave] but the nestlings that lived in his leafscreen [bird laid eggs in it] sing him a lover of arbuties [evergreen]; we strike hands over his bloodied warsheet [fact sheet upon battle] but we are pledged entirely to his green mantle ["four green fields"] [*54]; our friend viceregal, our Swaran [Norse leader in Fingal] foe; under the four stones by his streams who vanished the wassailbowl at the joy of shells [Macpherson: The Death of Cachulain]; Mora and Lora [two hills in Macpherson] had a hill of a high time looking down on his confusion [kings on hilltops survey battle below] till firm look in readiness, forward spear and windfoot [Macpherson's Temora] of curach [Macpherson "the madness of battle"] strewed the lakemist of Lego [Macpherson Ossian] over the last of his fields [Macpherson Ossian]; we darkened [Fingal: grieved] for you, faulterer, in the year of mourning but we'll fidhil/feel to the stars dim-twinkled when the streamy Morven Light calls up the sunbeam [Macpherson Fingal: to begin battle]; his striped pantaloons [trousers of Victorian gentleman], his rather strange walk; hereditatis columna erecta, hagion chiton eraphon [HCE] [tran: Lofty column of inheritance; holy garment of a kid]; nods a nap for the nonce but crows cheerio when they get ecumenical; is a simultaneous equation of eliminated integrals when three upon one is by inspection improper [3/1 an improper fraction: prostitution]; has the most comical headpiece/codpiece of Confucius hair on him [HCE] and that Chufu [place of Confucius] Chinchin ["Chinese" from reign of Chin] of his is like a Kung Fu-tze [Confucius] kingdom around Tai Shan [sacred mountain]; he's as globeful as a gasometer [voluble talker] of lithium [lightest metal] and luridity and he was thrice ten annular years before he wallowed round Regent Circus [London] [*55]; (132.1)


the Cabal [King Arthur's dog] cobblestone at the coping of his cabin is a canine constant [faithful dog] but only an American could approximate the à peu [almost] pres/preciosity [Greek par oxys, beyond acute] of his Atlas's at-long-gement [alignment]; sticklered rights and lefts at Badderstown [Co Meath/Booterstown Dublin] in his [Finn's] hunt for the [magic] bare/boar truth/trwth [Twrch Trwyth: boar hunted by Arthur in Mabinogi] but made his end with the Mordreds/madradh [dog] that came at him in Cammlan [where Arthur died in battle] /Camden street [Dublin]; a Hannibal [Book of Aneirin names Arthur] in exhaustive conflict] [HEC], an Otho [Roman emperor] to return; burning body to aiger [chill] air [quotes Hamlet: "a nipping and an eager air"] on melting mountain in wooing wave; we go into him sleepy children, we come out of him strugglers for life [innocence to experience]; he divested to save from the Mrs Brownings their Rival Queens [play] while Grimshaw, Bagshaw and Bradshaw [play] made off with his store clothes; taxed and rated, licensed and ranted; his threefaced stone head [*56] was found on a White Horse hill [in Berkshire] and the print of his costellate [spangle] feet is seen in the goat's grass circle [Puck or Goat Fair of Killorglin]; pull the blind, toll the deaf and call dumb, lame and halty [Luke 14:21]; Miraculone [big miracle], Monstrous culone [big arse]; led the applause at the Creation and hissed a snake charmer [Eve] off her stays; hounded became haunter/hunter, hunter became fox [Earwicker, Parnell]; harrier, marrier, terra [burial], taw; alaph [last and first letters, Hebrew] /Olaf [Norse king] the Ostman [Viking], Turko the Terrible [first pantomime at Gaiety, Dublin, 1873; Christmas play U 15: 4612] you feel he is Vespasian [Roman emperor] yet you think of him as [Marcus] Aurelius; Whigamore, traitor Tory, Socianist [denied Christ], communist; made a summer assault on our shores and bygod got his hands full; first he shot down Raglan Road [Dublin] and then he tore up Marlborough Place [Dublin]; Cromlech [prehistoric monument: Cromleach in Macpherson] height and Crommal Hill [in Macpherson] were his farfamed footrests when our lurch [rogue] as lout let free into the Lubar [river, Co. Antrim] he loved; mareschalled his Wardmotes [Court in Guildhall, London] and delimited the main [*57]; netted before nibbling [net weight], can scarce turn a scale but, grossed [gross weight] after meals, weighs a ton in himself; Banba [Ireland] prayed for his [Gladstone's U 5: 24] conversion, Beurla [English language] missed that grand old [Gladstone] voice; a Colossus among cabbages [Irish peasants], the Melarancitrone [orange, apple] of fruits; larger than life, doughtier than death; El Gran Turco [Sultan of Turkey], orege ferment [barley, wheat]; Luxemburger, leperlean; the sparkle of his genial face [*58], the depth of his calm sagacity, the clearness of his spotless honour [*59], the flow of his boundless benevolence [inscribed on statue of Sir Philip Crampton, Dublin]; our family forebear; our tribal turnpike [gatekeeper]; quary/how [James Carey informed on Invincibles] was he Invincibled and cur/why was he burked [*60]; partitioned Irska holm [Partition of Ireland], united the Irish [United Irishmen founded 1791]; he took a swig/swing at his own methryr [wine, svigermoder: mother-in-law] but she tested/tasted a bit corky/Gorky [The Mother: bitter] and as for the salmon he was coming up in him all life long; comm, eile dich [hurry up!], Hucklebury [Finn] and Tom [Sawyer] thee, warden; silent as the bee in honey, stark as the breath [strong breath] on Howth [Macpherson, Temora] Costello, Kinsella, Mahony, Moran, though you roam America your Home Ruler is Dan [O'Connell]; (133.3)


figure right, he is hoisted by the scruff of his shaggy neck, figure left, he is rationed in isobaric [lines of equal atmospheric pressure] patties among the crew [*61]; one asks was he poisoned [consequences of Adam's apple], one thinks how much did he leave; ex-gardener (Riesengebirger) [Bohemian, Polish mountains], fired up with planturous [settlers on forfeited Irish lands, 17th century] existences would make Sweet Rosie O'Grady [song] (mite's/child's) little hose/rose; taut sheets and scuppers [carry water off deck] awash but the oil silk mack Liebsterpet [dearest] micks [approves] his aquascutum [mackintosh] [*62]; the enjoyment he took in quay/gay women, the employment he gave to G- men [MT detectives]; sponsor to a squad of Persses, ally to a host of Reillys [together, Earwickers]; [insurance] [*63] against lightning, explosion, fire, earthquake, flood [water], whirlwind [air], burglary, third party, to, loss of cash, loss of credit, impact of vehicles; can rant as grave as oxtail soup and chats gay as a porto flippant [carries folio] [*64]; is unhesitent [Pigott] in his unionism [Great Britain and Ireland, 1800] and yet a Pigotted/bigotted nationalist [*65]; Sylvia [Silence 61.1] is why of him [MT opposed "conspiracy of silence" protecting vice], Matrosen [German WWI sailors] hosens [trousers] knows the joke; shows the sinews of peace in his chest-o-wars/drawers [the editor participated in world peace conferences at The Hague; published War against War 1899-1900]; fief of home, ninehundred and thirtynine years [New Zealand Parliamentary debate 1907] of copyhold [lease]; is always open for polemy [war] polity's sake when he's not suntimes closed [in peace] for the love of Janus [temple in Rome] [*66]; sucks life's elixir from the pettipickles [Kosher] of the Jewess and Raouls [hero of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots] in sulks if any Popeling/poplin [Catholic] runs down the Huguenots [*67]; Bonaparte, Wellesley, Uber Marshall Blücher [Waterloo] and Supercharger [*68], Monsieur Ducrow [horseman, actor called "The Napoleon of Equestrians"], Mister Mudson [Adam], master gardiner [Gardiner Street, Dublin]; to one he's just Punch and judex/Judy, to another full of beans [mistakes] and Brehons [judgments]; hallucination, cauchman [nightmare], ectoplasm [spiritualism]; passed for Baabaa Blacksheep [MT] till he grew white woo woo woolly [nominated for Nobel Prize for Peace, 1904]; was dramatized by Mac Milligan's daughter [Alice Milligan, Last Feast of the Fiana] and put to music by one Schubert [Die Forelle]; all W. J. Fitzpatricks [historians] in his emirate remember him, the Boys of Wexford [song] hail him Babu [Hindu respect] [*69]; identified himself with [Brian] Boru tribute [called "Brian," tax extracted from Leinstermen] and was given publicly to Bristol [Henry II gave Dublin to Bristol]; was given the light in three orchards and buried in three places [birthplaces for first Duke of Wellington U 12: 1460]; his likeness is in terra-cotta (orange-brown unglazed pottery] and he giveth rest to the rainbowed [colors of ceramics]; liberty, fraternity, and equality [French motto]; his reverse [unsteady] makes a virtue of necessity while his obverse [steady] mars a mother of invention; besilk [drape in flags] his gunwale and he's the Second Imperial [Second Reich 1871-1918/Imperial Germany], untie points [release cloth], unhook tenters [on which cloth is stretched] and he's lath and plaster [master builder]; calls upon the National Assembly when he fails to appeal to each of us [*70]; basileus [king], ardree [high king], Kongs-emnerne [Ibsen Crown-Pretenders] rex regulorum [king of princes/journalists]; stood into Dee [river Scotland, St. Patrick invaded at Inverdea] mouth, then backed broadside on Balaclava [see "Russian general," Chapter 11]; (134.1)


either Eldorado [imagined gilded city in South America] or Ultima Thule [farthest north, possibly Norway]; a kraal [Zulu's home] of foolish feud fires, a crawl of five pubs [*71]; laid out lashings [abundance] of Laveries [portraits by Sir John Lavery] to hunt down his family ancestors and then pled double trouble or quick quits [card game double or quits] to hush the buggers up [undesirables in family tree]; threw pebbles for luck over one sodden shoulder [Pyrrha and Deucalion after flood] and dragooned people armed to their teeth [Cadmus in Metamorphosis]; pept [invigorated] as Gaudio Gambrinus [Flemish king brewed first beer], grim as Potter the Grave [cemetery]; ace of arts, deuce of diamonds, treble of clubs, four of spades [cards]; cumbrum, cumbrum [General Cambronne (9.27)], twin-nice-nurseys [prostitutes] fore a drum [brothel] but tre to uno tips the scale [denotes prostitutes/improper fraction, see 131.32] [*72]; reeled the title role opposite a brace of girdles [actress Anne Bracegirdle] in Silver on the Screen [cinema] but was sequenced from the set as Crookback [Richard III] by the even more titulars, Rick [*73], Dave [Garrick] and [Spranger] Barry; he [Easter] can get on as early as the twenty-second of March but occasionally he doesn't come off before Vercentigorix/viginiquinque [25 April] [*74] Germinal [May-June]; his Indian name is Have-Papooses-anyway/Ojibway and his number in arithmosophy [counting skills] is the Stars of the Plough [Irish rebel flag; seven stars in Ursa Major]; took weapon [Wapentake] in the province of the pike and let fling his line on Eelwick/Earwicker [*75]; moves in vicious circles yet renews the same; the drain rats bless his offals while the park birds [people scavengers] curse his floodlights [MT shed light on labyrinth]; Portobello [Dublin Bridge], Equadoctoa/aquaducted Terracotta [pipe], Percorello [Calabrian wine]; he pours into the softclad Shellbourne [Dublin Hotel] the hard cash earned in Wall/Watling Street [Guinness Brewery]; his birth proved accidental shows his death its grave mistake [he lives in posterity]; brought us giant iyy [in Glenasmole, Finn's hunting ground] from the land of Younkers [German title of honor; youngsters] and bewildered Apostolopolos with the gale of his gall [*76]; blossom into fine silkclad joyous blooming young women is not so pleased that heavy swearsome strongsmelling irregular-shaped men should blot out active handsome wellformed frankeyed boys; Herald Fairhair [first king of Norway], Olaf theWhite/wheat [first Norse king of Dublin; his name Holofius meant "whole loaf"]; husband your aunt [Isolde Tristan's aunt] and endow your nephews [grandsons]; hearken but hush it, screen him and see; time is, an archbishopric, time was, a tradesmen's entrance [words of Brazen Head in Robert Greene's Honourable Historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay on time]; beck, burn and brook [words for a stream] with wash [a ford], scale [landing place] scarred by scow [punt]; his rainfall [in Dublin] is a couple of kneehighs [30 inches per annum] while his mean grass temperature [32N F.] marked three in the shade; is the melting point of snow [32N F.] and the bubbling place of alcohol; has a tussle with the trolls [Ibsen Et Vers]/trulls [whores] and then does himself justice; hinted at in the eschatological [four last things] chapters of Humphrey's The Justice of the Peace in Ireland and hunted for by Theban recensors who sniff there's something behind the Bug of the Deaf [Book of the Dead]; the king was in his cornerwall [Mark of Cornwall] milking mark so morose, the queen was steep in arbour [parlour] feeling faint and furry [sexy], the maids was midst the hawthorns [Furry Glen] showing up their hose, out pimps the back guards (pomp!) And pump gun they goes [nursery rhyme]; (135.4)

 

To all his foretellers [past fathers] he reared a stone [of commemoration] and for all his comethers [future mothers] he planted a tree; forty acres [former Townland in present Dublin], sixty miles, white stripe, red stripe [barber's pole: bandages and blood], washes his fleet/feet in annacr-water/soda water [Eliot, Wasteland]; who missed a porter so whot shall he do [song] for he wanted to sit for Pimlico [Street, Dublin] but they've caught him to stand for Sue/Paris [*77]? Dutchlord [Deutschland], overawes us [über alles song]; St. Edmund, King and Martyr, St. Dunstan-in-the East, St. Peter-le-Poer [clown/Paul], St. Bartholomew the Great; St. Bartholomew by-the-Exchange [London churches]; he hastens towards Dame [Street] troth and wedding hand/band like the prince of Orange and Nassau Street [Dutch royal family] while he has Trinity left behind him [Nassau Street runs south of Trinity College] like Bowlbeggar Bill-the-Bustonly [legless beggar] [*78]; brow of a hazelwood [Old Irish Drom-Choll-Coil: Dublin], pool in the dark [Black Pool, Dublin]; changes Blowyks into Bullocks [name change] and a well of artesia [Irish name Fionn-nuisce/clear water] into a bird [Phoenix] of Arabia; the handwriting on his facewall [Belshazzar's feast] [*79], the cryptesthesia [Charles Collette] Cryptoconchoidsiphonostomata [at Theatre Royal, Dublin] in his expressions; his birth spot lies beyond the Hellespont and his burial plot in the pleasant little field [Glasnevin]; is the Yildiz [palace of Sultan of Turkey] Kiosk on the peninsula and the youngest hostel in Saint Scholarland [Ireland: land of saints and scholars]; walked many hundreds and many score miles of streets and lit thousands in one nightlights [Burton, Thousand and One Nights] in hectares of windows [Castletown House was said to have one window for every day of the year: see 609.14]; his great wide cloak ["hugecloaked" in U 6: 249 for statue of Daniel O'Connell, who killed D'esterre in a duel] lies on Fifteen Acres [Phoenix Park] and his Little White Horse [symbol of William III] decks by dozens our doors [painted on walls]; O sorrow the sail and woe the rudder that were set for Mairie Quail/Amerikay [song "Thousands Are Sailing to Amerikay" Portrait II]; his sons the Huns, his daughters the Tartars, are plenty here today [song "The Memory of the Dead"]; who repulsed from his birth the thunderbolts of Ostenton/assaults on and fashioned each flash [*80] downs a duck [boat] in the deep [song "Adams and Liberty"]; a personal problem, a locative [grammar: at which or in which] enigma; upright one, vehicle of arcanisation [making secret] in the field, lying chap, floodsupplier [MT flood] of circulation [newspapers] through ebb/Eblana [Dublin]; a part of the whole as a port for a whale [Earwicker 13.34]; Dear Howth/Hewitt [name used by Robert Emmet] Castle, Equerry [Royal Stables: officer attending English sovereign], we're delighted with our outing and are looking backwards to an early summer, from Rhoda Dundrums [rhododendrons on Howth: Dundrum district of Dublin]; is above the seedfruit level and outside the leguminous [plants] zone [*81]; when older links lock older [when other lips and other] hearts then he'll/you'll remember me/she [Balfe song]; can be built with glue and clippings, scrawled or voided on a buttress [*82]; the night express/mail sings his story [PMG an evening paper], the song of sparrow notes on his stave of wires [Portrait II]; he crawls with lice, he swarms with saggarts/priests; (135.36)


is as quiet as a mosque but can be as noisy as a synagogue; was Dilmun [Sumerian paradise in Gilgamesh] when his date was palmy [Sumerian Tree of Life] and mawdlin/Dublin when his nut was cracked; suckup the seas [Arthur's companion Sugyn could suck up seas], leap land [Gillia, chief Irish leaper] at ease, one lip on his lap: [below his belt; Gwevyl] and one Cushla ma Cree [Moore song]; his porter [Glewlwyd of Mabinogion] has a Mighty Grasp and his baxters [bakers] the boon of bread white; as far as wind dries and rain eats and sun turns and water bounds he is exalted and depressed, assembled and asundered [Mabinogion]; go away, we are deluded, come back [revenant or ghost], we are disghosted [*83]; bored the Ostrov [island], leapt the Inferno [Mare Inferus: Tuscan sea], swam the Mabbul/flood and flew the Moyle [sea]; like fat, like fatlike tallow [from Summerian poem "A Hymn of Praise"] [*84], of greasefulness [gravy], yea of dripping greasefulness; did not say to the old, old, did not say to the scorbutic [with scurvy], scorbutic [protected feelings]; he has founded a house, Uruk ["Uruk of the strong walls" was built by Gilgamesh], a house he has founded to which he has assigned its fate [Gilgamesh]; bears a raven [Danish boat] geulant [bawling] on a field dove; ruz the halo off his varlet [no man is a hero to his valet] when he appeared to his peacook as Haycock [son of a seacook], Emmet [ant], Boaro [cowherd], Toaro [bull], Austria/ostrich, Mongoose [Southern Asia] and Skunk [genus Mephitis]; pressed the beer of old age out of the nettles of rashness [nettle rash]; put a roof on the Lodge [Masonic, tiler] for Hymn and a cock in his pot pro homo [Henry IV of France promised a chicken in every pot]; was dapifer [waiter] then panis et circensor [bread and circus games] then, Pontifex Magnus [high priest, pope]; the topes [heavy drinkers] that tippled on him, the types that toppled off him; still starts our hares yet gets our goat; pocketbook packetboat [travels regular route between ports], gapman [man in the gap: defender] gunrun; the light of other days [Moore song], dire dreary darkness [dear dirty Dublin]; our/My Awful Dad [play by Chas Matthews], Timour the Tartur [play by M. G. Lewis]; puzzling, startling, shocking, nay, perturbing [Henry Irving's interpretations: Annals of Theatre Royal 83]; went puffing from king's Burgh [Thomas Burgh built old custom house] to new customs, doffing the gibbous [hunchbacked; gibus: opera hat] off him to every breach of all size [Guinness barge lowered funnel at bridges]; with Pa's new heft and Papa's new helve [handle] he's Papapa's old cutlass [joke about old cutlass with new blade from one owner and handle from another] Papapapa left us; when youngheaded oldshouldered [old head on young shoulders] and middlish neck aged about; Caller Herring [song] every [HCE] daily, turgid tarpon [giant relation of herring] overnight; see [Otto] Loewi/Lori on the chameleon [song] that changed endocrine history [discovery 1921; Nobel Prize 1936] by living/levening his loaf/life with Forty Bonnets [Mrs Tommy Healy of Galway]; she drove him daft/deaf till he driv her blind up; the pigeons doves be perchin all over him [his statue] one day on Ballsbridge [Dublin] and the ravens dubh [black] be pitchin their dark nets after him the next night behind Kingstown's Harbour; tronf of the rep [triumph of the republic/state], comf of the priv [comfort of the privileged], prosp of the pub [public prosperity]; his headwood/headwind it's ideal if his feet are bally clay [Baile Átha Cliath: Dublin]; he crashed in The Hollow of the [Phoenix] Park, trees down, as he soared in the vacuum of the phoenix [Phoenix column in Park], stones up [tree/stone]; looks like a mountain boulder and sounds like a rude word; (136.36)


the mountain view/dew [whiskey], some lumin [lamp] pale [lemon peel] round a lump of succar/sugar in Boyne/boiling water [Boyne Water song]; three shots of Paddy [Irish whiskey] at up blup saddle; made up to Miss MacCormack Ni [daughter of] Cormac McAirt who made off with Darly/darling Diarmaid, swank and swarthy; once diamond/Diarmaid cut garnet [stone] now Dermot/Diarmaid cuts Grania; you might find him at the Florence but watch out for him [Joyce] in Wynn's Hotel [where Nora Joyce worked]; there's his bow and where's his liquor and here lays his big white horse, deep [see "Supercharger," Endnote 68]; Sweet Auburn [Goldsmith poem], likeliest villain of the place [loveliest village of the plain] [*85]; Henry Canterel [hen and cock; to crow] - Cockran [Cantrell and Cochran, Dublin mineral water], egotists, limited; we take our tays [teas] and frees our fleas round Slattery's Mounted Foot [song]; built the Lund's kirk [Lund Cathedral built by Finn MacCool] and destroyed the church's land; who guess his title [Rumplestiltskin or Tom Tit Tot] grabs his deeds [St. Lawrence was required to guess church's builder or forfeit his eyes]; flesh and praities [meat and potatoes], fish and chips; artful Duke of Wellesley/Wellington; Huckleberry's Funeral; Huckhuck Kallikak [Kallikek:American "inherited" poverty] (137.12); heard in camera [secret] and excruciated; born/boon [blessing] when with wenches billeted, bann if buckshot [Buckley] backshattered [marriage banns announced; otherwise shotgun wedding]; heaven-engendered, chaos foedus [*86], earthborn [HCE]; his father presumably ploughed it deep [rutted] on overtime and his mother as all evidence [at all events] must have travailed/travelled her fair share; a footprint on the Magazine [wall], hetman [chief] unhorsed by searing sand; honorary captain of the extemporised [HCE] fire brigade, reported to be friendly with the police; the door is still open [Howth Castle]; the old stock collar is coming back [see caricatures of Gladstone]; not forgetting the time you laughed at Elder Charterhouse's duckwhite pants and the way you said the whole township can see his hairy legs [*87]; by stealth of a curse/Kersse [the Wake's tailor] her auburntresses/albatross abaft his nape she hung ["Ancient Mariner"]; when his kettle became a hearthscald our Thersites [*88] set their Liffey on fire (137.24); his yearletter ["Annual" a special edition of serial publication] concocted by masterhands of essays/assays [Parnell assayed gold] his hallmark imposed by the standard of wrought plate [gold]; a pair of pectorals and a triplescreen [flying machine] to get a wind up; lights his pipe with a rosin tree and hires a towhorse to haul his shoes [giant Finn]; cures slavey's scurvy, breaks baron's boils [king cures king's evil]; called to sell polish and was found later in a bedroom [*89]; has his seat of justice, his house of mercy, his cornucopia and his stacks a'rye; prospector, he had a rucksack, retrospector, he holds the alpenstock [iron-pointed staff for mountain climbing/sceptre]; won the freedom of New York for the minds of Yugoslavs; acts active, peddles in passivism and is a Gorgon of Selfridge rightousness [*90]; pours a laughsworth of his illformation over a Harmsworth [newspapers: question of reliability] of salt; half heard the single maiden speech La Belle [*91] spun to her Grand Mount St. Jean [Mont St. Jean village, south of Waterloo] and wholed a lifetime by his own fireside [Elizabeth Hamilton song: "My Ain Fireside"], wondering was it Hebrew set to himmeltones [George Hamilton, Study of Hebrew Scriptures] or the quicksilver song [James Archibald Hamilton studied planet Mercury (quicksilver)] of quaternions [discovered by William Rowan Hamilton]; (138.2)



his troubles may be over but his doubles have still to come; the lobster pot that crabbed our keel, the garden pet [earwig] that spoiled our squeezed peas [flowers: sweet peas]; he stands in a lovely park, sea is not far, importunate towns of X, Y and Z are easily over reached; is an excresence to civilised humanity and but a wart on Europe [*92]; wanamade singsigns to soundsense an yet he wanna git all his fresh newmade mots truly prurire [sexy] and plausible [*93]; has excessively large rings [journalism-tree] and is uncustomarily perfumed [stink of the MT "filth"]; lusteth ath he listeth [John 3:8] the cleah whithpeh [clear whisper] of a chemise/Themis [divine justice; Sylvia Silence (61.1) speech]; is a Prince of the Irish Hudibras or Fingallian in a Hiberniad of hoolies [hooligans]; has a hodge [farmer] to carry him and a Frenchy to curry him and a Brabanson/Belgian for his beater [game hunting] and a Fritz [German] at his switch [internationalism]; was waylaid of a barker/Parker [pistol:Wilde's partner Charles Parker] and shot at by a Buckley [Earwicker as Russian General]; kicks lentils [Jacob and Esau] when he's hicuppy [or in his cups] and casts Jacob's arroroots [biscuit], time after time, to poor waifstrays on the parish/perish [*94]; reads the charms of H. C. Endersen [HCE] all the weeks of his evening and the crimes of Ivan the Terrible [sympathized with tsars] every strongday morn [*95]; soaps you soft to your face [flattery] and slaps himself when he's badend/bathing; owns the bulgiest bunbarrel that ever was tiptapped in the privacy of the Mullingar Inn [Chapelizod]; was born with a nua/new silver tongue in his mouth [Nua of the Silver Arm-Tuathan king] and went round the coast of Erin/iron with his left hand to the sea [clockwise]; raised but two fingers and yet smelt it would/all day; for whom it is easier to found a see in Eblana [Ireland] than for I or you to find a dubbeltye [Dutch coin or spelling teetotaler] in Amsterdam haze; to live with whom is a lifemayor/nightmare; to live with and to know whom is a liberal education [*96]; was dipped in Hoily [olive oil] Olives [St Olave's Church, Fishamble St. Dublin] and chrismed [consecrated] in Scent/Saint Lawrence O'Toole's; hears cricket on the hearth [Dickens novel] but annoys the life out of predikants/preachers; still turns the deaf's ear of Darius [Persian king] to the now thoroughly infuriated one of God; made Man with juts that jerk and minted money among many [Hebrew maneh]; likes a six o'clock pudding when he's come Home Sweet Home [song]; has come through all the eras of life's adventure from moonshine and champagne down to stout and bottled porter; William the First, Henry the Eighth, charge the [Charles] Second, Richard the Third; if a mandrake shrieked to convulsions [when uprooted] at last surviving his birth the Wild Duck [Ibsen] will wail bitterly [bittern] over the Rotter's resurrection [*97]; loses weight in the moonlight but girds girder [gains girth] by the sundown; with one touch of nature set a veiled world agrin [Troilus and Cressida III.3.175] and went within a sheet of tissuepaper [newspaper] of the option of three gaols [*98]; (139.2)

who could see at one blick/glance a salmon taken with a lance, hunters pursuing a doe, a swallow ship in full sail, a whyte [Whyte, Stead's biographer] robe lifting a host [Joyce saw this document in Galway: see his "City of the Tribes"]; faced flattery like old King Canute and turned his back like Cincinnatus (30.13) [refused to serve in war] [*99]; is a farfar [paternal grandfather] and morfar [maternal grandfather] and a hoar Father Knickerbocker [New York City] in villas old as new; squats athwart and cracks [drinks] a quart when it's flagon in town and on haven [Lord's Prayer]; blows whiskey round his summit but stands stout [Edwin H. Stout on PMG staff, assisted with MT; ed. Journalist on Journalism] upon his feet; stutters before he falls and goes mad entirely when he's waked; is Tim [Irish-Finnegan] to the pearly morn and Tom [British] to the mourning night; and he had the best sunbaked bricks [built a wall against crime] in bould Babylon ["Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon": London] for his pitching plays he'd be lost for the want of his one Dublin wall? (139.13)
Answer: Finn MacCool!

A gratifying task, deciphering the first question exhibits a benediction that Joyce bestowed upon his followers in depicting his world; the "discrete" clauses are recognizable as curt codifications of elements appearing elsewhere throughout the Wake, like small green shoots promising the reward of spring flowers. Easily recognized are the cad, F.E.R.T., Ps and Qs, the Boer War, Gladstone, Dublin bridges, Osiris, Adam and Eve, as if Joyce were anxious to be understood. However, simplifying the words does not always solve the riddle, and many clauses are self-explanatory. Otherwise, a riddle should survive invasions such as this. Although I have not exhausted the Stead allusions that I see, many of Joyce's plain statements remain riddles and challenge us further to fortify Chapter 6 with additional insight. Terms like "Porto flippant" (133.14) resemble the word games Joyce played with his friends. Why should setting the Liffey afire appear twice? No doubt because Sir Philip Gibbs said Stead "wanted to set the Thames on fire" (95). The riddle game continues.


While the "questions" as prepared above leave many questions unanswered, it is obvious that an Everyman of the day comprises the legendary Finn MacCool or Earwicker. Such an Everyman is W. T. Stead, of whom the editor A. G. Gardiner in 1920 summarized his prowess in battle: "He loved the battle, and never counted the odds. The hotter the fight, the higher rose his spirits; the more foes there were the merrier he became" (R 62: 97-103). Again, "He was the most fearless knight that ever fought with a pen, and his fearlessness had none of that furtive self-interest that inspires so much of the sham heroics of journalism. It was wholly independent of considerations of 'what the public want.' It went out in all weathers and braved any storm. If the sun shone, good; if the rain fell and the lightning blazed, good also" (R 62: 99). Gardiner's remembrance in its entirety particularizes so many comparative types of Stead that this essay alone would suffice for Joyce's inspiration. Stead's many publications provide the setting and the vocabulary for events that Joyce found characteristic of an Everyman, fallen and rising. After a blunder (not his fault), Stead replied to Annie Besant: "I get the thing done that I want to get done, but I go under pro tem. Only pro tem., because I always keep bobbing up again!" (Whyte 1:21).

 

Notes


1. At critical times the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, W. T. Stead, resorted to the question format as the best means to debate, inform, and engage. The lengthiest was The Candidates of Cain (1900) in preparation for the General Election; it was addressed, in a series of 698 questions and answers in 120 pages, to those who condoned the Boer War. The purpose of Stead's Review of Reviews, a monthly international journal that he founded in 1890, was to inform the world of current events and issues. A riddle is a question with an integral puzzle. Every social movement is such.
2. Benstock, "Bedeviling," 21-27.
3. See Ulick O'Connor, ed., The Joyce We Knew. See especially William G. Fallon and Padraic Colum.
4. My actuary: "Finnegans Wake has been written and will not change. Its 'algorithmic complexity" cannot change; the phrase 'increasing algorithmic complexity' is a phrase that cannot apply to it."
5. Ellmann reports that Joyce explained Finnegans Wake to August Suter as "It is like a mountain that I tunnel into from every direction, but I don't know what I will find" (543).
6. The important "Conciliation Bill" in 1911 would give a vote to every woman who was head of her household and "mistress of her own affairs" (Eckley MT 353). Stead's internal conciliation was phrased "Always arbitrate before you fight."
7. The editor ran a newspaper at The Hague during the international Peace Conferences, 1899 and 1907.
8. "Lapapple" implies maiden. Stead's first fallen apple, his imprisonment, made him famous; he confidently expected a second and titled his diary "My First Imprisonment." The "Dick" most frequently called upon is Dick Whittington; Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalen deserved equal devotion in Stead's mind: "these two women stand out against the gloom of the past radiant as the angels of God, and yet the true ideals of the womanhood of the world" (R 2: 76).
9. The editor was extremely ecumenical and found virtue in religions that barely tolerated each other. Journalists were called "knights of the press."
10. Summary: bridgemaker: "Rightly was the old Pope called Pontifex-bridge builder" to improve the social structure (Here Am I: 17). Tricklies: the young adult male/maiden sex theme. Bishop Wilberforce opposed slavery and defended Stead for opposing white slavery. As he was in heaven: Lord's prayer.
11. Stead at times alarmed Protestants who feared he might turn Catholic. The battle in 1690, oft cited, marks a hollow victory for Protestants because Ireland is Catholic.
12. Stead's campaign of social reform began at age four when he declared he needed God to give him a big whip to whip all the wicked out of the world.
13. Stead's title for rendering languages easy to learn was "Learning Languages by Letter Writing," with school children, begun in 1895 in the Review of Reviews and continued to his death in 1912. Francois Gouin preceded Herr Berlitz by two years in publishing his system.
14. The magical leapyear attaches to Issy the recondite number 29: 2 + 9 = 11.
15. Stead declared that girls in London deserved as much protection as a dead fish, which was indeed protected by law (MT: PMG 8 July 1885: 3). Having "too much outside for an insect," Earwicker has internalized the earwig myth; instead of burrowing into the physical brain, the earwig (MT experiences) has planted ideas and attitudes for life.
16. In Chicago, Stead joined the homeless employed in shoveling snow. In Russia, he dragged Tolstoy out of a burning hut. He was submerged in Coldbath prison, and William or Bill Stead was tried at the Old Bailey. Stead mentioned the song in his novel Here Am I; Send Me!
17. The editor's "Quadrant in his tale" told of strolling "round the Quadrant [borough of Richmond, London] at midnight" searching for prostitutes to interview for MT (7 Jul 1885 PMG : 3). Midnight was the "a'clog" for the "cad" section, and the "tenor toller" (35.32) is in the Speckled Church by the Mullingar Inn.
18. The motto F.E.R.T. ("his strength has held Rhodes" is the most common translation) is repeated several times. The motto was adopted by the King of Italy to honor Duke Amadeo V who defended Rhodes against the siege of the Saracens in 1310. In Joyce's time "the Colossus" Stead defended was Cecil Rhodes, of whom Albert Shaw, editor of the American Review of Reviews, said Stead's "expression of the meaning of England, and the influence of Anglo-American ideas ... had created in Cecil Rhodes the ambition to paint with British red as much as possible of the map of Africa" (Am R 45: 689-95). The public in general credited Stead's powerful support of Rhodes with making him foremost among empire builders. F.E.R.T. means that Stead's strength upheld Cecil Rhodes. Stead gave Rhodes the details for the famous scholarships. See Stead on Rhodes at R 3: 352-57; also R 13: 117-36 and R 20: 450-62.
19. See Buckley (Shaun): "I shuttm, missus" (352.14). McHugh found "Who Struck Buckley?" a 19th century phrase to annoy Irishmen (101.15). Buckley may be down; he is never out.
20. Earwicker's "sin in the park" was witnessed by three soldiers and two females. In general terms, the "sweep" probably represents Stead's blackened reputation from the MT; the "sweep" in his life was Charles Armstrong, the chimney sweep father of Eliza.
21. Stead promised to "bring light into the labyrinth" of London vice. A lawsuit over patents occurred in the Edison and Swan United Co.; Joseph W. Swan had invented an incandescent lamp (PMG 19 Jul 1888: 1).
22. As public outrage to his "Armstrong case" evolved, Stead crowed "We knew we had forged a thunderbolt" (PMG 8 Jul 1885: 1). He had broken "the conspiracy of silence" protecting crime.
23. A non-smoker, Stead took up smoking to improve his disguise as a denizen of London's underworld for the MT. Caricaturists profited thereby.
24. McHugh: Damiri found wisdom in "the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of the Arabs."
25. Stead was repeatedly likened to Cromwell (1599-1658), whom he designated "the inspiration of my life" (Whyte 1: 18), about whom he wrote a prize-winning essay as a teenager. Cromwell was prominent in the news in Joyce's time; a bust by Bernini was discovered in 1898 (R 18: 483); the Irish in 1894 objected to a statue of "the greatest of English rulers" in Westminster (R 12: 7-8, 27); the editor John Morley brought out his biography of Cromwell, who was known as "the bold bad man" in 1900; Stead listed five reasons for Cromwell's enduring power, of which one was "He was the Handy-man incarnate" (R 22: 493). Admiral Lord Fisher said Stead was "Cromwell and Martin Luther rolled into one" (Robinson Scott 235). The editor A. G. Gardiner reflected in 1920 that "Stead always seemed like one of Cromwell's russet-coated captains who had strayed into Vanity Fair, and led its revels with a Psalm" (R 62: 97-100).
26. Marigolds, resembling rose windows, are said to be Scottish. Durham Cathedral in County Durham has a famous marigold window.
27. In Stead's Puritan home, "life was the vestibule of Eternity, and . . . everything that tended to waste time, which is life in installments, was regarded as an evil thing" (R 30: 29).
28. Earwicker as a mountain means loftiness of spirit; the mountain unites mass with verticality, making it the "Centre" of the world.
29. In humor, Stead was called the Earl of Mowbray House (his office).
30.The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 raised the age of consent and was called "Stead's Law." It taught wealthy men the error of their pedophile/predator ways and taught women they were entitled to justice. It was the dominant legal advancement of the Victorian age and remains in force today.
31. Lydia Pinkham's a women's tonic; "Lily the Pink" was a drinking song. "Pink pills for pale people" were advertised. When supplies ran out for printing the MT, Stead borrowed pink paper from the Sporting Times; pinkness is mentioned several times as an attribute of Earwicker. Pinkeen is a tributary of the Tolka near Mulhuddart.
32. McHugh: John Philpot Curran told Lundy Foot to inscribe "quid rides" (Latin for "what are you laughing at?") on his carriage. Lundy Foot sold "super fine pigtails to ladies."
33. Napoleon designated England "a nation of shopkeepers. "Rather" implies Wellington, a famous whoremonger, was not a gentleman.
34. Stromboli: Stead was likened to a volcano, as in E. J. Dillon: "All great abuses kindled a volcanic fire in the heart of Mr. Stead" (R 45: 485). A pipe was designed with a cylindrical bowl with central bore open at both ends and a lid on the top. Stead was sometimes engaged with two sides of an issue. He smoked a pipe in South Africa on a visit during the Boer War. Smoking is an attribute of Earwicker.
35. Joyce distinguishes the sexes as did the brothel madams that Stead interviewed: the girl would be ruined anyway and she might as well get money for it. See also "frails" 129.9 and both sexes compared as to their prospects at 134.23-26.
36. Joyce satirizes and demonizes Browne and Nolan for their piety and everything he hated about the Catholic church. For their rejection of his manuscript, Joyce blames them for his departure from Ireland. See "Browne's barrow in Nolan's land. . .all persecuted with Ally Croker [Aly Sloper] by everybody, by decree absolute [divorce from country] through Erin's isle, because he forgot himself, making wind and water, and made a Neptune's [rowing club] mess of all of himself [Joyce's escape from Ireland], sculling over the Giant's causeway" (391.14-19).
37. Summary: Stead supported divorce and birth control for women (R 43: 77-80). See Eckley MT 356-58. His support of the Pope failed to persuade His Highness of the necessary advancement of women; "found stead" is one of many uses of Stead's exact surname, in this instance crediting him for advancing the Tsar's Rescript leading to the first Peace Conference at The Hague, 1899.
38. Another triumph of myth over fact. Ossa is a few feet taller than Pelion. Phrase from Ovid's Metamorphosis: "Giants. . .Piled Pelion on Ossa, mountain on mountain" (Book 1: line 55).
39. Applies the two temptresses and three soldiers to Stead's investigation of psychic phenomena.
40. Following a series of blimp disasters, the famous Hindenburg went blump in 1937.
41. Stead's prison sentence, on the third day, was commuted from convict at hard labor to first class misdemeanant.
42. Stead's political opposition to Joseph Chamberlain, whom he blamed for the Boer War, was said to have prevented Chamberlain's rise to position of Prime Minister. Possibly, as implied, Stead would accept Rome rule before Chamberlain rule. Also, the play Dear Old Charley in 1911 was considered immoral, like the Lord Chamberlain (Charles Brookfield) assigned to approve or censor it. Lord Sandhurst replaced Brookfield and lifted the ban on a play of "double adultery" (R 45: 237).
43. In How I Know That the Dead Return, Stead adopted the biblical story of the raven and dove (Columbo) to illustrate Columbus' arrival in the New World as similar to the soul's arrival in the Other World.
44. Joyce's notebook VI.B.32.140-1: "chorus girls they hang their legs like censers."
45. Eng is German for "narrow." Heine said "Wie eng-wie englisch!" (R 24: 611).
46. Robertson Scott on Stead and women: "Clever women with sparks of ability but often stranded, undisciplined and unfit, women to whom no other editor than Stead would have given any hearing at all, were often to be met with ascending or descending his stairs or lying in wait for his kind word, his recommendation or his charity" (87).
47. A time-space discussion in miniature. Ulysses 6:787-89: "Spurgeon [famous Pentecostal preacher at London Tabernacle] went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. (closing time) Not arrived yet. Peter." The French hospital issued hourly briefings. Charles Haddon "Brimstone" Spurgeon (1834-1892) died at Mentone on the Riviera at midnight 31 Jan. 1892 (R 5: 481, R 5: 239-55). John Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Scot physicist and the "founding father of thermodynamics . . . anticipated Joyce's Messenger interpolation in Ulysses by using the match: 'The match is responsible for the forest fire, but reference to a match does not suffice to understand the fire'" (Rice 95). Robert Stawell Ball (1840-1913), astrronomer, wrote The Story of Heavens; see U 8: 110. The bulletist link is with Salvador Dali, whose painting "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) or the Melting Clock "debunked the notion that time is rigid."
48. This escalation from a draught beer to a decisive battle is, I suspect, improved with application of a French expression in which "beurre" is transformed: "Onne put manier le beurre qu' on ne se graisse les doights" or "You cannot touch pitch without soiling your fingers."
49. Ulysses 2: 41: "How sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river."
50. Identification of the "wild man from Borneo" is not definite; one source claims two persons named Hiram and Barney Davis (born 1825, 1827) who entertained for P. T. Barnum exhibiting great strength and wrestling. The single wild man called Oofty Goofty who toured San Francisco is almost too late for Joyce, he was featured in a 1937 Little Rascals film called "The Kid from Borneo." The horse Wild Man from Borneo won the Grand National in 1895.
51. Stead in 1904 promoted a guncotton experiment in a balloon over the city to attract attention to the launching of his Daily Paper. Additional puns on gone-Gunne/Gonne stem from a "person named William Gon" error (Coates 34-35).
52. Failure "to set the Liffey afire" is a common expression for underachievement, as Wyndham Lewis said of Joyce's Chamber Music that it would "hardly have set the Liffey on fire for five minutes" (73).
53. "Married with cakes" is Joyce's adaptation of an event in Stead's MT, which told about a child of four lured to her ruin with a penny cake, and stands for seduction, which is euphemized as marriage; repent with pleasure is Issy's attitude toward her pregnancy, revealed later in subtle hints.
54. Green "mantle" of "Ireland's green isle" has various applications. Greensand, used for potassium in fertilizer, is from the olive-green colored or glauconitic sandstone rock. Or shamrocks apply.
55. Stead moved to London and the Pall Mall Gazette at age thirty.
56. Three-faced stone head from Drumeague, Corleck, Co. Cavan, dating from the Iron Age, now in National Museum, Dublin.
57. Mareschalled: one of General William Booth's daughters was Kate, called La Maréchale, was arrested and imprisoned in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1882, questioned about money collected, expelled to Geneva.
58. Sir Philip Gibbs: "He [Stead] was more than a journalist. He was a reformer, and at the heart of him a saint, though a very genial, humorous and violent kind of saint. He did not regard journalism as a profession, but as a mission" (95).
59. Mrs. Millicent Garett Fawcett (suffrage leader) wrote to Stead in jail: "I cannot find words to say how I honour and reverence you for what you have done for the weakest and most helpless among women" (see Eckley MT 88-91).
60. Stead said prior bills to raise the age of consent were "burked in Commons."
61. "Eating of the god" in Fraser's Golden Bough. Stead was hanged in effigy twice, once for the Maiden Tribute and once for opposing the reelection of Sir Charles Dilke. The angry public could "eat him alive."
62. "Mackintosh" in British slang is a pervert, the text adhering to Stead and MT, as do the gay women and G-men that follow in this passage.
63. Britain passed the "National Insurance Act-Health and Unemployment" in 1911.
64. "Porto flippant" from "portfolio" as a member of a cabinet, from Latin portare (carry) and feuille, a leaf.
65. Unionism and nationalism accurately speak for Stead's British patriotism (unionism) and defense of the Irish (nationalism), giving evidence in the trial of Parnell for the forged Pigott documents, as revealed in the misspelling of "hesitancy." Stead took up a collection for Pigott's children after Pigott's suicide. "Hesitent," because of Pigott, means guilty.
66. Two-faced Janus, the guardian of portals, is deceptive.
67. Anticipating a massacre of Jews because of Dreyfus, Stead compared the "threatened St. Bartholemew in France" in 1898 with the massacre of Protestants in 1572 (R 17:132). From Hugon, the word meant heretic. Stead said "the truth begins in heresy" (R 3: 549).
68. "Supercharger": a triumph of myth over fact. Wellington rode not a white horse (see 8.17) at Waterloo but a chestnut charger named Copenhagen, who was buried in 1836 with all honors. See 137.6.
69. For work in latter years, Stead was called "Friend of India." See Harper Stead 252.
70. If Stead's schemes for social progress failed, he had failed the Senior Partner (God).
71. The King of the Zulus, Lobengula, compelled each visitor to drink "three cans of beer, each holding about a gallon" (R 8: 372).
72. What's wrong with three soldiers and two females: tre to duo [or uno], not two and two, means prostitution.
73. Possibly either Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1757-1815) or Richard Mansfield (1857-1907).
74. McHugh suggests Vercentigorix. Apparently British/Irish schools taught the heroism of the Gallic chief Vercingetorix, who was frequently evoked for comparisons, e.g. a departed hero desired for Boer leadership (R 22: 478). He led a rebellion against Caesar, was executed 46 B.C. (see 281: FN1 and 346.19).
75. For pike as weapon, see R 24: 255. Pike County Ballads by Col. John Hay was reviewed in England (see R 15: 372) and reprinted in Stead's Penny Library No. 57.
76. Farmer and Henley: the last twelve of graduates at Cambridge, ranked by merit, were called "the twelve apostles," "the chosen twelve," or "after the others." "Gale of his Gaul": The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill 79-81; Irish plundered Viking-held Limerick in the year 968.
77. From "Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do/ I want to go to Birmingham/ And they're taking me on to Crewe" [Courtesy Neil Sharp]. Novelist of city life, Eugene Sue (1804-1857), after the revolution of 1848, stood for election and sat for the Assembly from April 1850 until his exile in December 1851. A street in Paris is named for him.
78. Billy-in-the-Bowl appears several times. The analogy is Stead's nickname as Billy-the-Bum in Chicago when he changed into tattered clothing to work with the Chicago homeless. From "Slums Mourn Stead" in Chicago Record-Herald 18 April, 1912: 1. Courtesy Tony Stead.
79. Writing on the wall a common expression: e.g. Cecil Rhodes as "King of South Africa" was caricatured under "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" (Daniel 5: 25) for "Free Booting, self-aggrandizement, disunion, dissension, destruction!" (R 4: 125).
80. Who "repulsed from his birth" refers to George Washington in the song "Adams and Liberty," most popular song of the Revolutionary war: Washington would "repulse with his Breast, the assaults of the thunder!/ His sword from the sleep/Of its scabbard would leap,/ And conduct with its point, ev'ry flash to the deep." Changing the song's "flash" to "downs a duck in the deep" evokes the World War II amphibious vehicle DUKW, pronounced and known as DUCK. Although part of this is too late for Joyce, the project to build a flying boat was underway in 1914 and a prototype British amphibious aircraft, the Saro A. 18 Windhover, was flown at Cowes in 1930.
81. In his last four years, Stead promoted nitro-bacterine to enhance the growth of leguminous plants (R 36: 450-57).
82. Glue and clippings: Stead's Review of Reviews, on origin, was scorned as "scissors and paste" of items gleaned from other publications. Posters denigrating his spiritual pronouncements were pasted by journalistic competitors on the hoardings of the Strand and Fleet Street; Stead collected a few to display in his office windows announcing "Stead and Julia Exposed" (Harper 184-85).
83. Scorns Stead's spiritualism and much research about ghosts.
84. "Like tallow or fat" is quoted from an article "Noah, Not Adam, Ate the Apple" in The New York Times 15 August 1915 summarizing a translation of a Sumerian tablet by Dr. Stephen Langdon of Oxford University. The names are different from those in Gilgamesh, the most popular version, which is comprised of several tablets of the creation and flood story a thousand years before the Old Testament.
85. As references to Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" accumulate, it is obvious that Joyce intends this to represent Chapelizod.
86. Ancient Britain foederati (singular foedus) were united in Saxon settlements at estuaries until a rebellion in 442 shattered the allied state and started warfare and chaos.
87. A Charterhouse is a Carthusian monastery. The Charterhouse at Avon has an Elder Lady Chapel, which appears to be a Joycean decoy. More fetching, at the London Charterhouse School, outside Godalming in Surrey, Dr. Edward Elder was headmaster from 1853 to his death in 1858. Better still, pupils were entitled to name their boarding house for their Headmaster. The original Headmaster for the Girdlestonites, Frederick Girdlestone, was observed to walk like a duck, yielding the name Duckites, which survives occasionally to this day in the school magazine, and in Joyce’s “duckwhite pants” (137.21). [Thanks to Neil Sharp.] "Hairy legs" insists upon the human, not the feathers.
88. Thersites, the ugly and hated soldier of the Trojan War, provided a comparison for Stead, who branded Swinburne "the Thersites of our bards" (R 20: 444). Swinburne's poem "The Marquis of Stead" sets forth the common MT charges of Stead's drinking plus commitment of "Obscenity, falsehood, monstrosity."
89. Salesman in bedroom typical of the case histories that Stead studied for the MT.
90. While Stead fought for world peace, he was "inflexible" against the unjust conditions of women. For his character sketch of Harry Gordon Selfridge of London department store, see R 41: 416-28.
91. Summary: Harmsworth, or Viscount Northcliffe, born in Chapelizod, was a journalistic competitor of W. T. Stead, who found Northcliffe's paper unreliable and found he and other journalists nearly provoked a war (see R 30: 593-606). Single maiden speech of William Gerard Hamilton, Irish M.P. Anthony Hamilton wrote Memories of Grammont, and married Elizabeth, La Belle, Hamilton.
92. Ireland was usually both the excresence and the wart, metaphors applied variously. Stead condemned Europe in 1904, as "indeed, but an excresence upon Asia" (R 29: 552).
93. Sound sense meant "profound" sense in the example of Sir Charles Russell, first Roman Catholic to attain position of Chief Justice "since the Reformation" (R 22: 224-36) but meant the meaning of the sound in Sir Richard F. Burton (Suppl. Nights 6: 328).
94. Summary: lentils are the similar "peas in the pod" of Eliza and other abducted maidens, and Stead's purported inebriation during the investigation; the waifstrays are typical of Stead's "Bitter Cry of Outcast London" and assistance for orphanages. In general, Stead was famed for helping vast numbers of beggars, some of them "honourable."
95. Summary: Hans Christian Anderson, just this once, stands in for Earwicker. The Pall Mall Gazette, which Stead edited, was one of only two evening papers. Stead was an advocate of Russia and in general sympathized with the tsars.
96. Oxford-educated John Morley, when editing the Pall Mall Gazette, said knowing Stead was a liberal education in itself (R 20: 22-23). See McHugh: similarly, Sir Richard Steele on Lady Elizabeth.
97. "Rotter" a type of literature; the unsavory "rotter" must die, and to assure his resurrection must take on a lifequest and dedicate himself to it.
98. Summary: "One touch of nature" alludes to the "dirty joke" element of the MT for its "excrement" and exposure of hidden vice; newspapers were called "tissues"; and Stead occupied three gaols-Newgate (during trial), Coldbath-in-the-Fields (for three days immediately upon conviction) and, his sentence commuted, Holloway, a "gentleman's prison."
99. Stead's response to flattery was "stained glass!"; of attacks after he began the MT, he said "we have put our hand to the plough and we will not turn back."


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