by James Joyce
— What are you laughing at? said his father. Everyone knows you’re only this fellow’s jackal.
— Stephen was thirsty, said Maurice.
— By God, he’ll be hungry as well as thirsty one of these days, if you ask me.
Stephen gave details of his interview to Maurice:
— Don’t you think they are trying to buy me? he asked.
— Yes, that’s evident. But I’m surprised at one thing . . .
— What is that?
— That the priest lost his temper when speaking to Mother. You must have annoyed the good man a great deal.
— How do you know he lost his temper?
— O, he must have when he suggested to her to put you on the books of a brewery. That gave the show away. Anyhow we can see what right these men have to call themselves spiritual counsellors of their flocks . . .
— Yes?
— They can do nothing for a case like yours which presents certain difficulties of temperament. You might as well apply to a policeman.
— Perhaps his notion was that my mind was in such a state of disorder that even routine would do it good.
— I don’t think that was his notion. Besides they must all be liars in that case for they have all expressed great admiration for your clearness in argument. A man’s mind is not in intellectual disorder because it refuses assent to the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity.
— By the way, said Stephen, do you notice what understanding and sympathy exist between me and my parents?
— Isn’t it charming?
— Yet, there are plenty of people who would consider them my best friends for having advised me as they have done. It seems absurd to call them enemies or to denounce them. They want me to secure what they consider happiness. They would like me to accept anything in the way of money at whatever a cost to myself.
— And will you accept?
— If Cranly were here I know how he would put that question.
— How?
—”Of course, you will accept?”
— I have already told you my opinion of that young gentleman, said Maurice tartly.
— Lynch, too, would say “You’d be a damn fool if you didn’t take it.”
— And what will you do?
— Refuse it, of course.
— I expected you would.
— How could I take it? asked Stephen in astonishment.
— Not well, I suppose.
The following day a letter arrived for Stephen:
Dear Mr Daedalus,
I have spoken to our President re what we discussed a few days
ago. He is greatly interested in your case and would like to see
you at the College any day this week between 2 and 3. He thinks
it may be possible to find something for you such as I suggested
— a few hours or so daily — to enable you to
studies>. That is the main point.
Sincerely Yours
D. Butt SJ.
Stephen did not call to see the President but replied to Father Butt by letter:
Dear Father Butt,
Allow me to thank you for your kindness. I am afraid, however,
that I cannot accept your offer. I am sure you will understand
that in declining it I am acting as seems best to me and with
every appreciation of the interest you have shown in me.
Sincerely Yours
Stephen Daedalus.
Stephen spent the great part of his summer on the rocks of the North Bull. Maurice spent the day there, stretching idly on the rocks or plunging into the water. Stephen was now on excellent terms with his brother who seemed to have forgotten their estrangement. At times Stephen would half clothe himself and cross to the shallow side of the Bull, where he would wander up and down looking at the children and the nurses. He used to stand to stare at them sometimes until the ash of his cigarette fell on to his coat but, though he saw all that was intended, he met no other Lucy: and he usually returned to the Liffey side, somewhat amused at his dejection and thinking that if he had made his proposal to Lucy instead of to Emma he might have met with better luck. But as often as not he encountered dripping Christian Brothers or disguised policemen, apparitions which assured him that whether Lucy or Emma was in question the answer was all one. The two brothers walked home from Dollymount together. They were both a little ragged-looking but they did not envy the trim dressed clerks [that] who passed them on their way home. When they came to Mr Wilkinson’s house they both paused outside to listen for [the] sounds of wrangling and even when all seemed peaceful Maurice’s first questions to his mother when she opened the door was “Is he in?” When the answer was “No” they both went down to the kitchen together but when the answer was “Yes” Stephen only went down, Maurice listening over the banisters to judge from his father’s tones whether he was sober or not. If his father was drunk Maurice retired to his bedroom but Stephen, who was untroubled, discoursed gaily with his father. Their conversation always began:
— Well (in a tone of extreme sarcasm) might I ask where were you all day?
— At the Bull.
— O (in a mollified tone) . Had a dip?
— Yes.
— Well, there’s some sense in that. I like to see that. So long as you keep away from those
— Quite sure.
— That’s all right. That’s all I want. Keep away from them . . . Was Maurice with you?
— Yes.
— Where is he?
— Upstairs, I think.
— Why doesn’t he come down here?
— I don’t know.
— Hm . . . (again in a tone of ruminative sarcasm). By God, you’re a loving pair of sons, you and your brother!
Lynch pronounced Stephen all the asses in Christendom for having declined the Jesuits’ offers:
— Look at the nights you could have had!
— You are a distressingly low-minded person, answered Stephen. After all I have dinned into that mercantile head of yours you are sure to come out on me with some atrocity.
— But why did you refuse? said Lynch.
The summer was nearly at an end and the evening had grown a little chilly. Lynch was walking up and down the Library porch with his hands in his pockets and his chest well protruded. Stephen kept at his side:
— I am a young man, isn’t that so?
— That — is — so.
— Very well. My entire aptitude is for the composition of prose and verse. Isn’t that so?
— Let us suppose it is.
— Very good. I was not intended to be a clerk in a brewery.
— I think it would be very dangerous to put you in a brewery .. sometimes.
— I was not intended for that: that is enough. I went to this University day-school in order to meet men of a like age and temper . . . You know what I met.
Lynch nodded his head in despair:
— I found a day-school full of terrorised boys, banded together in a complicity of diffidence. They have eyes only for their future jobs: to secure their future jobs they will write themselves in and out of convictions, toil and labour to insinuate themselves into the good graces of the Jesuits. They adore Jesus and Mary and Joseph: they believe in the a infallibility of the Pope and in all his obscene, stinking hells: they desire the millennium which is to be [al the season for glorified believers and fried atheists . . . Sweet Lord Almighty! Look at that beautiful pale sky! Do you feel the cool wind on your face? Listen to [my] our voices here in the porch — not because [it is] they are mine or yours but because they are human voices: and doesn’t all that tomfoolery fall off you like water off a duck’s back?
Lynch nodded his head and Stephen continued:
— It is absurd that I should go crawling and cringing and praying and begging to mummers who are themselves no more than beggars. Can we n
ot root this pest out of our minds and out of our society that men may be able to walk through the streets without meeting some old stale belief or hypocrisy at every street corner? I, at least, will try. I will not accept anything from them. I will not take service under them. I will not submit to them, either outwardly or inwardly. A Church is not a fixture like Gibraltar: no more is an institution. Subtract its human members from it and its solidity becomes less evident. I, at least, will subtract myself: and remember that if we allow a dozen for one’s progeny the subtraction of oneself may mean a loss to the Church of 12n members.
— Aren’t you rather liberal about the progeny? said Lynch.
— Did I tell you I met Father Healy this evening? asked Stephen.
— No, where?
— I was walking along the Canal with my Danish grammar (because I am going to study it properly now. I’ll tell you why later on ) and whom should I meet but this little man. He was walking right a into the golden sunset: all his creases and wrinkles were scattered with gold. He looked at my book and said it was very interesting: he thought it must be so interesting to know and compare the different languages. Then he looked far away into the golden sun and all of a sudden — imagine! — his mouth opened and he gave a slow, noiseless yawn . . . Do you know you get a kind of shock when a man does a thing like that unexpectedly?
— He’ll have something to do shortly, said Lynch pointing to a little group which was laughing and chatting in the doorway, and that’ll keep him from walking in his sleep.
Stephen glanced over at the group. Emma and Moynihan and McCann and two of the Miss Daniels were evidently in high spirits.
— Yes, I suppose she will do it legitimately one of these days, said [Lynch] Stephen.
— I was talking of the other pair, said Lynch.
— O, McCann . . . She is nothing to me now, you know.
— I don’t believe that, let me tell you.
The End of the unfinished text
The Short Stories
DUBLINERS
This collection of fifteen short stories was first published in 1914. The stories are Joyce’s naturalistic attempt in depicting Irish middle class life in the early years of the 20th century. Written at a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, Joyce’s characters search for a national identity, when Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce’s idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of older characters.
The first edition
Joyce, 1902 at graduation
CONTENTS
THE SISTERS
AN ENCOUNTER
ARABY
EVELINE
AFTER THE RACE
TWO GALLANTS
THE BOARDING HOUSE
A LITTLE CLOUD
COUNTERPARTS
CLAY
A PAINFUL CASE
IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM
A MOTHER
GRACE
THE DEAD
Joyce’s brother, Sanislaus
DUBLINERS
THE SISTERS
THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:
“No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly... but there was something queer... there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion....”
He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.
“I have my own theory about it,” he said. “I think it was one of those... peculiar cases.... But it’s hard to say....”
He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me:
“Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.”
“Who?” said I.
“Father Flynn.”
“Is he dead?”
“Mr. Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.”
I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.
“The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.”
“God have mercy on his soul,” said my aunt piously.
Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.
“I wouldn’t like children of mine,” he said, “to have too much to say to a man like that.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Cotter?” asked my aunt.
“What I mean is,” said old Cotter, “it’s bad for children. My idea is: let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be... Am I right, Jack?”
“That’s my principle, too,” said my uncle. “Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large.... Mr. Cotter might take a pick of that leg mutton,” he added to my aunt.
“No, no, not for me,” said old Cotter.
My aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table.
“But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr. Cotter?” she asked.
“It’s bad for children,” said old Cotter, “because their mind are so impressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it has an effect....”
I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!
It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It murmured, and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.
The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children’s bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the window, saying: Umbrellas Re-covered. No notice was
visible now for the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the doorknocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:
July 1st, 1895 The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine’s Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years. R. I. P.
The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.
I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart; and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip — a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.
