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The Encryption of Finnegans Wake Resolved W. T. Stead, 1907. The Encryption of Finnegans Wake Resolved W. T. Stead Grace Eckley Hamilton Books Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Copyright © 2018 by Hamilton Books 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 Hamilton Books Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938244 ISBN: 978-0-7618-6919-1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN: 978-0-7618-6918-4 (electronic) TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. To my husband, Wilton Eckley Contents List of Figures ix List of Abbreviations xi Prolegomenon xiii Acknowledgments xv 1 The Stead Source and the Critical Dilemma 1 2 The Predication of the Portrait’s “Good Man” W. T. Stead 51 3 The Strategy of the Encrypted Name 75 4 The Thunder of Stead’s Scandalous “Maiden Tribute” 99 5 The Park Maid and the Sinister Sir 143 6 Who Was the Hen and Whose the Letters 169 7 Light and Science in the “Dark Night of the Soul” 209 8 Maamtrasna Retrial Defends the Joyce Family Name 247 9 The Brunonian “Hiresiarch” and the Russian general (Sic) 287 10 Timing and Terrain of the Snake and the Whale 321 11 The Encrypted Hero of Finnegans Wake 351 References 379 Index 387 vii List of Figures Frontispiece W.T. Stead 1.1. “Some Forestallings over that Studium of Sexophonologistic Schizo- phrenesis” 1.2. “He [Stead] sent out Christy Columb” 1.3. Gladstone’s umbrella 1.4. Gladstone wearing a barrel 1.5. Recruitment Poster 2.1. Joyce’s Essay: “Ibsen’s New Drama” 2.2. “One of the Victims” 3.1. H.C.E. Childers 4.1. Cardinal Manning: bishop regionary 4.2. Eliza’s letter, with “crosskisses” 4.3. The frothwhiskered pest of the park 4.4. His “broad and hairy face” 4.5. “his wee ftofty od room” 6.1. Children’s Nightletter 7.1. Joyce’s 293 Sketch 7.2. Actuary’s Analysis of 293 Sketch 8.1. Stead with Pope Leo XIII “on the brain” 8.2. Hiding from the Boer War in “Drinkbattle’s Dingy Dwellings” 10.1. “Jarley Jilke began to silke for he couldn’t get home to Jelsey: but ended with: He’s got the sack that helped him moult instench of his gladsome/Gladstone rags/bags” 10.2. “Detractors . conceive of him as a great white caterpillar” 11.1. Pears’ soap tramp ix List of Abbreviations References to Finnegans Wake are identified by page and line numbers. The figure 60.30 designates page 60, line 30. The former system of designating chapters by Roman numerals, (II.iv for Book II, chapter iv) are now largely replaced by numbering the chapters 1 to 17 sequentially, as “the Wake’s chapter 12.” The letters L and R in chapter 10 designate Left and Right marginal notes with F for footnotes. Other abbreviations cited parenthetically or bracketed for Joyce’s works are as follows: AP: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1964. CLA: Criminal Law Amendment Act Co: County in Ireland C/S: Crispi/Slote, How Joyce Wrote “Finnegans Wake” CW: Collected Writings E MT: Eckley, Maiden Tribute: A Life of W. T. Stead FW: Finnegans Wake HSW: Harriet Shaw Weave JC: Jackson and Costello, John Stanislaus Joyce JJ2: Richard Ellmann. James Joyce, Revised 1982 MT: Maiden Tribute NS: NewsStead with volume and page numbers McHugh: Many authors and contributors to Annotations to “Finnegans Wake’” Ph: Common phrase PMG: Pall Mall Gazette R: Review of Reviews, London: volume number and page number SK: Skeleton Key xi xii List of Abbreviations The extensive variety of languages and dialects, in parentheses or brack- ets, are identified within the text. Other abbreviations and symbols: c.: century cg.: children’s game nr: nursery rhyme qtd: quoted s.: song sl.: slang tr.: Translation Prolegomenon Presenting W. T. Stead and supplementary information for interpreting the entirety of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake would require perhaps four or five volumes and certainly more than one lifetime. In selecting eleven topical chapters to represent “the Wake” with W. T. Stead (1849–1912) as biographi- cal original of the hero, I present the tools for interpreting the book. These “tools” are basically “how the book works,” beginning with the organization- al Motifs that Clive Hart originally specified. Hart’s Concordance to “Finne- gans Wake” is the indispensable necessity. This “Encryption of Finnegans Wake Resolved” advocates reading Joyce’s text and not rewriting it; Finne- gans Wake, Joyce’s chief publication, can be understood as it is. The hypothetical “dreamer” of prior criticism is replaced by two “Over- look” narrators evident in the text: Asking and Telling. Their location is off- planet, where they can observe and comment on Earthbound matters. Amy Dawson Scott’s book From Four Who Are Dead presents “The Stead Script” in which Afterlife Stead on another planet relates the expanded interplanetary experiences and knowledge of the spiritualist, which includes observing the formation of the earth in the past. In Joyce’s view, no thought or knowledge from the past is ever lost. Joyce’s work itself offers a continuum from the early Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the end of Finnegans Wake. Stead’s Letters from Julia provides a primer for spiritual- ism in support of an alternate universe, which prepares for Einstein. Joyce views all the thoughts and knowledge of the past as never lost and continuing today. Since language changes constantly, use of a slang and dialect diction- ary for Joyce’s time is a necessity, for which I use Farmer and Henley, as well as a nineteenth century unabridged dictionary. Mental processes in Finnegans Wake take precedence over physical ac- tion, particularly in the unhampered mental ranging of the episode persona xiii xiv Prolegomenon (frequently Shem). Propinquity or nearness to reality is best demonstrated in Kate’s “Willingdone” episode wherein the painted subjects in the Apsley House (London) gallery in her narration move and speak. “Multiplexity” identifies an unrelated fragment inserted in the major story line to maintain a subject that is developed elsewhere. The transfer from Euclid to Einstein is accomplished with much discussion of atomic science expolodotanating in Dublin streets by means of Stead’s bombastic Maiden Tribute, and all is independent of Joyce’s notebooks. Finnegans Wake is an historian’s un- heralded Shangri La. Acknowledgments I owe special thanks to the research assistance of our government’s NEH grants, which guided me to the Lockwood Memorial Library at Buffalo where Karl C. Gay guarded the Joyce collection and Thomas E. Connolly informed me of Swinburne’s satiric poem “The Marquis of Stead.” Barbara Stoler Miller at Columbia urged me to apply for an NEH Fellowship to advance this work; at Drake University, Charles Smith tolerated my presence in his biblical Hebrew and Greek. All of the reference librarians at Drake deserve medals of honor. Danis Rose in Dublin caused me to retrieve a Joyce rarity from Salisbury House in Des Moines; in Dublin also my chief infor- mants and hosts were author Benedict Kiely and Francis Kiely. Leslie Shep- ard often contributed to NewsStead, and Peter Costello has contributed much to this work. In England my hosts and language instructors at Hayling Island at the southern tip were Margaret and Victor Jones, and John Stephenson was in the north, in Wallsend. Neil Sharp in Embleton, England, has been both prompt and prolific while supplying anything and everything that may be useful. Defying the limits of copying and the stress of mailing unusual shapes in London have been achievements of Tony Stead, who found and forwarded numerous helpful documents. In London also was author and hostess Linda Williamson and, in Eastbourne the late Joseph O. Baylen, the American biographer of W. T. Stead. In the United States, Solomon Goodman in New York photographed the Stead Memorial in Central Park. Tom Staley and Harold Billings at the Ransom Center of the University of Texas both assisted with research efforts, supplemented by the work of the late John Squires in Cincinnati. Martha Vogeler in Fullerton, California, kept Stead and Joyce information flowing along with her own research of Austin Harrison. Among the Denver Joy- ceans, who contributed variously with much witticism and laughter, was xv xvi Acknowledgments Timothy Quinn, who changed the pace by fetching the Law Reports for the C.L.A. Act from the Law Library of the Colorado Supreme Court. Special thanks go to my editors Holly Buchanan and Beverly Shellem at Hamilton Books. None of this work could have been accomplished without the support of my husband, Wilton Earl Eckley, to whom this book is dedicated. Our three sons, Douglas the actuary and his computer-technical son Nevan Eckley contributed the title and general expertise, especially evident in the “293 sketch” and Doug’s indexing. Stephen Eckley has expedited numerous tasks, literary and nonliterary. Timothy Eckley and his wife Erika Eckley have been indispensable for their computer skills, survival skills, and moral support. Erika prepared the final text for Hamilton Books. Note on the cover sketch: W.T. Stead’s favorite caricaturist Phil May sketched a series of notable persons with their favorite topics “on the brain.” Tim commissioned the cover sketch of Joyce with Stead “on the brain” from Des Moines sidewalk artist “Teddy” in 1994.