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Home , Dubliners, James Joyce (biography), John Stanislaus Joyce, Pomes Penyeach

Author Chronologies

General Editor: Norman Page, Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature, University of Nottingham

Published titles include:

J.L Bradley A RUSKIN CHRONOLOGY Michael G. Brennan and Noel J. Kinnamon A SIDNEY CHRONOLOGY 1554–1654 Gordon Campbell A MILTON CHRONOLOGY Martin Garrett A BROWNING CHRONOLOGY: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND ROBERT BROWNING A MARY SHELLEY CHRONOLOGY A. M. Gibbs A BERNARD SHAW CHRONOLOGY J. R. Hammond A ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON CHRONOLOGY AN EDGAR ALLAN POE CHRONOLOGY AN H.G. WELLS CHRONOLOGY A GEORGE ORWELL CHRONOLOGY Edgar F. Harden A WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY CHRONOLOGY John McDermott A HOPKINS CHRONOLOGY Roger Norburn A CHRONOLOGY Norman Page AN EVELYN WAUGH CHRONOLOGY AN OSCAR WILDE CHRONOLOGY Peter Preston A D.H. LAWRENCE CHRONOLOGY Author Chronologies Series Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71484–9 (outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England A James Joyce Chronology

Roger Norburn © Roger Norburn 2004 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004 978-1-349-51143-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51143-3 ISBN 978-0-230-59544-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230595446

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Norburn, Roger, 1938– A James Joyce chronology/Roger Norburn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Joyce, James, 1882–1941–Chronology. 2. Novelists, Irish–20th century–Chronology. I. Title. PR6019.09Z7625 2004 823’.912–dc22 [B] 2003070730

10987654321 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 To my wife Mary

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General Editor’s Preface viii Introduction and Acknowledgements x List of Abbreviations xiv Chronology 1 Monetary Equivalents 199 The Structure of ‘’ and Order of the Stories 200 ‘’: the Homeric Names and Order of the Episodes 201 A Who’s Who in the Joyce Chronology 202 Bibliography 211 Index of Works by James Joyce 219 General Index 222

vii General Editor’s Preface

Most biographies are ill adapted to serve as works of reference – not sur- prisingly so, since the biographer is likely to regard his function as the devising of a continuous and readable narrative, with excursions into interpretation and speculation, rather than a bald recital of facts. There are times, however, when anyone reading for business or pleasure needs to check a point quickly or to obtain a rapid overview of part of an author’s life or career; and at such moments turning over the pages of a biography can be time-consuming and frustrating occupation. The present series of volumes aims at providing a means whereby the chronological facts of an author’s life and career, rather than needing to be prised out of the narrative in which they are (if they appear at all) securely embedded, can be seen at a glance. Moreover whereas biogra- phies are often, and quite understandably, vague over matters of fact (since it makes for tediousness to be forever enumerating details of dates and places), a chronology can be precise whenever it is possible to be precise. Thanks to the survival, sometimes in very large quantities, of letters, diaries, notebooks and other documents, as well as to thoroughly researched biographies and bibliographies, this material now exists in abundance for many major authors. In the case of, for example, Dickens, we can often ascertain what he was doing in each month and week, and almost on each day, of his prodigiously active working life; and the student of, say, David Copperfield is likely to find it fascinating as well as useful to know just when Dickens was at work in each part of that novel, what other literary enterprises he was engaged in at the same time, whom he was meeting, what places he was visiting, and what were the relevant circumstances of his personal and professional life. Such a chronology is not, of course, a substitute for a biography; but its arrangement, in combination with its index, makes it a much more con- venient tool for this kind of purpose; and it may be acceptable as a form of ‘alternative’ biography, with its own distinctive advantages as well as its obvious limitations. Since information relating to an author’s early years is usually scanty and chronologically imprecise, the opening section of some volumes in this series groups together the years of childhood and adolescence. Thereafter each year, and usually each month, is dealt with separately. Information not readily assignable to a specific month or day is given as a general note under the relevant year or month. Each volume also con- tains a bibliography or the principal sources of information. In the

viii General Editor’s Preface ix chronology itself, the sources of many of the more specific items, includ- ing quotations, are identified, in order that the reader who wishes to do so may consult the original contexts. NORMAN PAGE Introduction and Acknowledgements

In a letter to Frank Budgen written early in 1932 James Joyce proudly points out that seven books have either been written on him or are in the offing. Seventy years later the total must be between 2000 and 3000. Then there are all the articles in learned journals, some of them devoted virtually exclusively to Joyce: the , the James Joyce Broadsheet, the James Joyce Literary Supplement and so on. There are now scores upon scores of internet websites devoted exclusively to Joyce although the value of some of them may be doubted, producing as they do such gems of misinformation as Joyce marrying in 1931 in Paris and dying 10 years later during an eye operation. The first duty of the serious student of Joyce is to read James Joyce. The second is surely to try and come to terms with this enormous mass of material. So far as the biography of this author is concerned that is what I have attempted to do in this book, presenting a chronological record of Joyce’s life from birth to death taking into account as much as possible the latest research as expressed in books and articles that deal with his life. Fortunately for the chronologist the material to be considered is nothing like as formidable as it is for the student of Joyce’s works. First and foremost there are the five volumes of his letters which are treasure troves of information, although all readers of them must devoutly wish that there were only one chronological sequence to deal with instead of four. There are the bibliographies, the catalogues of Joyce holdings in various libraries and the stupendous achievement of The James Joyce Archive. And then there are the biographies. Pre-eminent amongst the biographies is ’s James Joyce. This was first published, to great acclaim, in 1959. A revised edition was published in 1982 but, as some commentators have noted, it was basically the same work with a greatly improved and expanded index. ‘Monumental’ and ‘magisterial’ are the sort of adjectives used in describing Ellmann’s book and in the two and a half years that I have taken to compile this chronology my respect for Ellmann’s achievement has increased, not decreased. He does, however, make mistakes; he does make inferences when perhaps none should be made. What proof is there, for example, that Joyce and Nora actually went out together on 16 June 1904? Others have argued cogently and ingeniously that Joyce set the action of Ulysses on this day for entirely different reasons. Certainly it was convenient for Joyce (and how he made use of conveniences!) that the outsider Throwaway won the Ascot Gold Cup that day, beating the royal favourite Sceptre, although I am not of course suggesting that this was the reason for the date of the

x Introduction and Acknowledgements xi action of Ulysses. Another example is Ellmann’s insistence that Joyce was in hospital as well as Nora when she gave birth to Lucia on 26 July 1907. Recent research, however, based on ’s unpublished Triestine Book of Days, has clearly shown that Joyce himself took Nora to the hospi- tal the day before, then went out to dinner, home to bed and returned the following morning to discover that Nora had already given birth. There are more trivial examples which are nevertheless important for the chronologist. Ellmann has William Bulfin, rambling in Eirinn, reaching the Martello Tower, Sandycove on Sunday, 12 September 1904. Unfortunately 12 September was a Monday. So was it Sunday, 11 September or Monday, 12 September that saw the visit so memorably described by him? Actually, as he clearly refers to the lovely weather that Sunday morning, it was the former. (To clinch this, Robert Nicholson, the Curator of the Joyce Tower – who better? – has pointed out that Joyce bemoaned the dreadful weather when he wrote to Nora on the morning of 12 September.) To take one final example of mistakes in Ellmann: I well remember my excitement when, working several years ago in the Lincolnshire Archives, I realized that Evelyn Gilford of Market Rasen, who sent Joyce on his European Odyssey in 1904, was a man and not, as Ellmann has it, a woman. This is the sort of mistake that gets perpetuated in later biogra- phies but is not a mistake that Joyce himself made as a reading of the letter of 23 September 1904 from the Berlitz School of Languages (Letters II, 55) makes clear. Since Ellmann there have been highly readable biographies of members of Joyce’s family – although a biography of that fascinating and enigmatic figure Stanislaus is long overdue – and portions of Joyce’s life: his school days, his early years, Joyce in Trieste, in Rome, in Zurich. All these I have tried to take on board (see Section B of the Bibliography) but to write a chronology, not another biography. Biographers can and do speculate. I have tried to keep speculation to a minimum. For example, on 10 June 1927, while staying in Amsterdam, Joyce visited the Tsar Peter House at Zaandam. In the visitors’ book for place of residence he put ‘’. Why? The chronologist does not speculate but simply records the fact of the visit. Again, controversy has raged about the causes of various illnesses Joyce suffered from for much of his life. I merely record the illnesses and their symptoms. This, then, is not a biography of Joyce. Nor is it a chronology of other members of his family (although it should be noted that, from October 1904 onwards, unless the context makes clear otherwise, where Joyce was, so was Nora), but I readily concede that the chronologist, like the biogra- pher, is faced with decisions about selection, what to include, what to emphasize by repetition, what to omit. To take but one example: biogra- phers generally, it seems to me, do not make enough of his valiant efforts, xii Introduction and Acknowledgements at a time when he was desperately worried about Lucia and had his own health problems, to save his Jewish friends and acquaintances from the clutches of the Nazis. I have here tried to redress the balance a little. In the pages that follow I have also tried to avoid assigning events, the writing of a work, its publication, or whatever, to something as indefinite as a year. Whenever possible I have tried to be more exact, stating the time of year, or month, if not the actual day. Sometimes, however, a given event cannot be pinned down even to a year. When did Joyce write the poem ‘Dooleysprudence’? Some critics say 1916, some 1918, others, perhaps more canny, c. 1916–18. It seems impossible to be more definite now, so that effective piece of anti-war satire will have to make do with a mention here. When something must have taken place within a period of, say, 10 days I have normally selected a c. date in the middle of such a period. I have referred to as such throughout, although Joyce kept the title of his last work a secret from everyone except Nora until August 1938. He refers to it as, and parts of it were published as, ‘Work in Progress’. ‘Italo Svevo’ is the well-known author of several novels, but I have referred to him by his real name, which Joyce would have used in his dealings with him, of Ettore Schmitz. A few comments are called for on some other sections of this book. I have thought it useful to include a table of monetary equivalents in which selected sums of money (those marked in the text with an asterisk) – whether UK pounds, US dollars, Austrian crowns, Italian lire or French francs – are given their value today (2002) in both pounds and dollars. This can be a revelation. For example, the £7 gave his eldest son before he embarked for the continent in October 1904 sounds like small change. In fact in today’s terms it is the equivalent of £440 or $670, a staggeringly generous gift from a man down on his luck. On the other hand, the royalties Joyce received from Dubliners, three years after publication, of 2s 6d (see 13 June 1917) still seem absolutely derisory at today’s values of £4 or $8. As Joyce did not write the stories of Dubliners in the order in which they appear in the book I have given that order and also the order, by means of their Homeric names, of the episodes of Ulysses. The phrase ‘cloacal obsession’, which H.G. Wells used in his review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the Nation on 24 February 1917, is quoted by kind permission of A.P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of the Literary Executors of the Estate of H.G. Wells. I regret that it was not possible to include a reproduc- tion of Joyce’s signature on the front cover of this book. James Joyce famously paid off old scores, even those of his father, in his writing. What is sometimes forgotten is that he also remembered acts of kindness and responded accordingly. Books such as these are collaborative efforts and it is a pleasure for me to record my thanks to all the many institutions and individuals who have made the writing of the book so much easier than it otherwise would have been. First of all I would like to Introduction and Acknowledgements xiii record my thanks to the staffs of the following institutions: the British Library including the Newspaper Library, Colindale; the Special Collections Library of University College, London; the Hallward Library of the University of Nottingham; the National Library of ; the Archive Department, University College, Dublin; the , Dublin; Lincolnshire Archives and last but not least Lincolnshire Libraries whose staff have responded to hundreds of requests of mine with patience and expertise. I must thank the students who repeatedly returned to my weekend schools on Joyce which I held for the WEA and University of Nottingham at Horncastle College every year from 1982 to 1999. They kept my interest in Joyce alive and open to new challenges when it might have been crowded out by an overfull career in adult education. Andrew Gillott expertly surfed the net for me and greatly assisted in the compila- tion of the ‘monetary equivalents’ table. Frank O’Reilly similarly looked up internet sites for me and was a mine of information on all things Irish. For years Marjorie Calow has been sending me newspaper cuttings on Joyce whenever and wherever she could lay her hands on them. Norman Page, the general editor of this series, was the soul of forbearance and sound advice whenever I approached him. The following responded helpfully and politely to my letters, or more usually e-mails, on specific points: Morris Beja, Zack Bowen, Bill Brockman, Ronald Ewart, Clive Hart, Cheryl Hindrichs, Jean Kimball, Nigel Nicolson, Thomas Rice, Robert Scholes, Bonnie Kime Scott, Carol Shloss, Alistair Stead, Jack van der Weide, Rick Watson and David Wright. Others had the misfor- tune to be the object of more persistent nagging but invariably responded kindly and effectively: Nicholas Fargnoli, Michael Gillespie, , John McCourt, Ken Monaghan, Robert Nicholson, Myra Russel and Fritz Senn. Finally, the following all read parts of my typescript and came up with good suggestions or detailed criticism: my fellow chronologists John Hammond and Peter Preston and the Joyceans Bruce Arnold and John Wyse Jackson. All these people are responsible for whatever merits the book may have. I alone take responsibility for its faults. If I have omitted to thank anyone who should have been thanked I sincerely apologize. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Claire Cook for her excellent typing and, even more, her interest in the project from the very start. Finally, I must thank my immediate family, Mary, Jonathan and Kate, without whose commitment and encouragement (and humour) this book would never have been written. regretted that she could find no trace of Irish blood within her. I have similar regrets. However, my Irish mother-in-law did have the to be born, in Kilkenny, on 10 September 1904, the very day that ‘’ was published in the Irish Homestead and James Joyce’s first full day at the most famous of his many addresses, the Martello Tower in Sandycove. List of Abbreviations

The abbreviation JJ refers throughout to James Joyce. The following abbre- viations are used for his family:

GJ Giorgio (George) Joyce, son HKJ Helen Kastor Joyce, daughter-in-law JSJ John Stanislaus Joyce, father LJ , daughter MJ Mary (May) Joyce, mother NBJ Nora Joyce (née Barnacle), wife SJ Stanislaus Joyce, brother SJJ , grandson

The following abbreviations are used for his works:

ALP Anna Livia Plurabelle (Crosby Gaige, New York, 1928) CM Chamber Music (Elkin Mathews, London, 1907) D Dubliners (Grant Richards, London, 1914) E (Grant Richards, London; B.W. Huebsch, New York, 1918) FW Finnegans Wake (Faber and Faber, London; The Viking Press, New York, 1939) HCE Haveth Childers Everywhere (Babou & Kahane, Paris and the Fountain Press, New York, 1930) P A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (B.W. Huebsch, New York, 1916) PP (Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 1927) SH (Jonathan Cape, London; New Directions, Norfolk, Connecticut, 1944) U Ulysses (Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 1922)

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