ch17

Ch17
TS48-68
?MS567-604
written Feb 1905 [L2-81] (JAJ started wearing glasses again at this point, after ten years of nearsightedness)
Maurice forbidden walks, SD threatened with withdrawal of support
SD determined to live, rejoices in self-centeredness
finds solitude restful, making friends at school
writing paper to try and win converts
SD debates McCann's theories-- Socratic dialog
SD trembles to think of McCann's "unhorizoned doggedness working its way backwards" [ = frigging??? unhorizoned = shortsighted? backwards to virginity? to the womb?! sex is the spirit working backwards to womb??]
license as a sin against the future
Ibsen not a moralist
SD feigns interest in Irish to get close to Emma, via Madden
SD hates church more than English, Madden panders to church for support
SD sees no gain in Irish language
others adjust to idea of SD studying Irish
Maurice's retreat, SD marvels how far he's come, Maurice's seriousness
no 'companions'-- fear of SD?
Maurice's prosaic self-contemplation appalls SD
Wed night Irish class, Mr Hughes
the word for 'love' discomfits a young man
Citizen, Madden, Griffith in Cooney's
nationalism as bogus fraud
Bacon quote: [etext]
Silas Verney: historical novel of 17th C by Edgar Pickering
JAJ and JFB attend Gaelic meeting May 1900 [historical context]
Stannie's retreat Dec 1898
28Feb to Stannie: "It seems to me that what astonishes most people in the length of the novel is the extraordinary energy in the writer and his extraordinary patience. It would be easy for me to do short novels if I chose but what I want to wear away in this novel cannot be worn away except by constant dropping. Gogarty used to pipe '63' in treble when I told him the number of the chapters. I am not quite satisfied with the title 'Stephen Hero' and am thinking of restoring the original title of the article 'A Portrait of the Artist' or perhaps better 'Chapters in the Life of a Young Man'." [SL56] 

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Stephen's home-life had by this time grown sufficiently unpleasant: the direction of his development was against the stream of tendency of his family. The evening walks with Maurice had been prohibited for it had become evident that Stephen was corrupting his brother to idle habits. Stephen was harassed very much by enquiries as to his progress at the College and Mr Daedalus, meditating upon the evasive answers, had begun to express a fear that his son was falling into bad company. The youth was given to understand that if he did not succeed brilliantly at the coming examination his career at the University would come to a close. He was not greatly troubled by this warning for he knew that his fate was, in this respect, with his godfather and not with his father. He felt that the moments of his youth were too precious to be wasted in a dull mechanical endeavour and he determined, whatever came of it, to prosecute his intentions to the end. His family expected that he would at once follow the path of remunerative respectability and save the situation but he could not satisfy his family. He thanked their intention: it had first fulfilled him with egoism; and he rejoiced that his life had been so self-centred. He felt however that there were activities which it a would be a peril to postpone.



Maurice accepted this prohibition with a bad grace and had to be restrained by his brother from overt disobedience. Stephen himself bore it lightly because he could ease himself greatly in solitude and for human channels, at the worst, he could resort to a few of his college-companions. He was now busily preparing his paper for the Literary and Historical Society and he took every precaution to ensure in it a maximum of explosive force. It seemed to him that the students might need only the word to enkindle them towards liberty or that, at least, his trumpet-call might bring to his side a certain minority of the elect. McCann was the Auditor of the Society and as he was anxious to know the trend of Stephen's paper the two used often to leave the Library at ten o'clock and walk towards the Auditor's lodgings, discussing. McCann enjoyed the reputation of a fearless, free-spoken young man but Stephen found it difficult to bring him to any fixed terms on matters which were held to be dangerous ground. McCann would talk freely on feminism and on rational life: he believed that the sexes should be educated together in order to accustom them early to each other's influences and he believed that women should be afforded the same opportunities as were afforded to the so-called superior sex and he believed that women had the right to compete with men in every branch of social and intellectual activity. He also held the opinion that a man should live without using any kind of stimulant, that he had a moral obligation to transmit to posterity sound minds in sound bodies, and that he should not allow himself to be dictated to on the subject of dress by any conventions. Stephen delighted to riddle these theories with agile bullets.

Ellmann says the Auditor was Arthur Clery (31yo barrister in 1911)

21yo in 1901

Skeffington [1909 map] [1901 census] ('Roman Catholic Professor of Languages')


— You would have no sphere of life closed to them?



— Certainly not.



— Would you have the soldiery, the police and the fire-brigade recruited also from them?



— There are certain social duties for which women are physically unfitted.



— I believe you.



— At the same time they should be allowed to follow any civil profession for which they have an aptitude.



— Doctors and lawyers?



— Certainly.



— And what about the third learned profession?



— How do you mean?



— Do you think they would make good confessors?



— You are flippant. The Church does not allow women to enter the priesthood.



— O, the Church!







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Whenever the conversation reached this point McCann refused to follow it further. The discussions usually ended in a deadlock:



— But you go mountain-climbing in search of fresh air?



— Yes.



— And bathing in the summertime?



— Yes.



— And surely the mountain air and the salt water act as stimulants!



— Natural stimulants, yes.



— What do you call an unnatural stimulant?



— Intoxicating drinks.



— But they are produced from natural vegetable substances, aren't they?



— Perhaps, but by an unnatural process.



— Then you regard a brewer as a high thaumaturgist?



— Intoxicating drinks are manufactured to satisfy artificially induced appetites. Man, in the normal condition, has no need for such props to life.



— Give me an example of man in what you call 'the normal condition.'



— A man who lives a healthy, natural life.



— Yourself?



— Yes.



— Do you then represent normal humanity?



— I do.



— Then is normal humanity short-sighted and tone-deaf?



— Tone-deaf?



— Yes: I think you are tone-deaf.



— I like to hear music.



— What music?



— All music.



— But you cannot distinguish one air from another.



— No: I can recognise some airs.



— For instance?



— I can recognise 'God save the Queen.'



— Perhaps because all the people stand up and take off their hats.



— Well, admit that my ear is a little defective.



— And your eyes?



— They too.



— Then how do you represent normal humanity?



— In my manner of life.





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— Your wants and the manner in which you satisfy them,



— Exactly.



— And what are your wants?



— Air and food.



— Have you any subsidiary ones?



— The acquisition of knowledge.



— And you need also religious comforts?



— Maybe so... at times.



— And women... at times?



— Never!



This last word was uttered with a moral snap of the jaws and in such a business-like tone of voice that Stephen burst out into a fit of loud laughter. As for the fact, though he was very suspicious in this matter, Stephen was inclined to believe in McCann's chastity and much as he disliked it he chose to contemplate it rather than the contrary phenomenon. He almost trembled to think of that unhorizoned doggedness working its way backwards.



McCann's insistence on a righteous life and his condemnation of licence as a sin against the future both annoyed and stung Stephen. It annoyed him because it savoured so strongly of paterfamilias and it stung him because it seemed to judge him incapable of that part. In McCann's mouth he considered it unjust and unnatural and he fell back on a sentence of Bacon's. The care of posterity, he quoted, is greatest in them that have no posterity: and for the rest he said that he could not understand what right the future had to hinder him from any passionate exertions in the present.



— That is not the teaching of Ibsen, said McCann.



— Teaching! cried Stephen.



— The moral of Ghosts is just the opposite of what you say.



— Bah! You regard a play as a scientific document.



— Ghosts teaches self-repression.



— O Jesus! said Stephen in agony.



— This is my lodging, said McCann, halting at the gate. I must go in.



— You have connected Ibsen and Eno's fruit salt forever in my mind, said Stephen.

— Daedalus, said the Auditor crisply, you are a good fellow but you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of the human individual.





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Stephen had decided to address himself to Madden to ascertain where Miss Clery was to be found. He set about this task carefully. Madden and he were often together but their conversations were rarely serious and though the rustic mind of one was very forcibly impressed by the metropolitanism of the other both young men were on relations of affectionate familiarity. Madden who had previously tried in vain to infect Stephen with nationalistic fever was surprised to hear these overtures of his friend. He was delighted at the prospect of making such a convert and he began to appeal eloquently to the sense of justice. Stephen allowed his critical faculty a rest. The so-desired community for the realising of which Madden sought to engage his personal force seemed to him anything but ideal and the liberation which would have satisfied Madden would by no means have satisfied him. The Roman, not the Sassenach, was for him the tyrant of the islanders: and so deeply had the tyranny eaten into all souls that the intelligence, first overborne so arrogantly, was now eager to prove that arrogance its friend. The watchcry was Faith and Fatherland, a sacred word in that world of cleverly inflammable enthusiasms. With literal obedience and with annual doles the Irish bid eagerly for the honour which was studiously withheld from them to be given to nations which in the past, as in the present, had never bent the knee but in defiance. While the multitude of preachers assured them that high honours were on the way and encouraged them ever to hope. The last should be first, according to the Christian sentiment, and whosoever humbled himself, exalted and in reward for several centuries of obscure fidelity the Pope's Holiness had presented a tardy cardinal to an island which was for him, perhaps, only the afterthought of Europe.



Madden was prepared to admit the truth of much of this but he gave Stephen to understand that the new movement was politic. If the least infidelity were hoisted on the standard the people would not flock to it and for this reason the promoters desired as far as possible to work hand in hand with the priests. Stephen objected that this working hand in hand with the priests had over and over again ruined the chances of revolutions. Madden agreed: but now at least the priests were on the side of the people.



— Do you not see, said Stephen, that they encourage the study of Irish that their flocks may be more safely protected from the wolves of disbelief; they consider it is an opportunity to withdraw the people into a past of literal, implicit faith?



— But really our peasant has nothing to gain from English Literature.



— Rubbish!



— Modern at least. You yourself are always railing...



— English is the medium for the Continent.



— We want an Irish Ireland.



— It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish.



— I do not entirely agree with your modern notions. We want to have nothing of this English civilisation.



— But the civilisation of which you speak is not English — it is Aryan. The modern notions are not English; they point the way of Aryan civilisation.



— You want our peasants to ape the gross materialism of the Yorkshire peasant?



— One would imagine the country was inhabited by cherubim. Damme if I see much difference in peasants: they all seem to me as like one another as a peascod is like another peascod. The Yorkshireman is perhaps better fed.

— Of course you despise the peasant because you live in the city.



— I don't despise his office in the least.



— But you despise him — he's not clever enough for you.



— Now, you know, Madden that's nonsense. To begin with he's as cute as a fox — try to pass a false coin on him and you'll see. But his cleverness is all of a low order. I really don't think that the Irish peasant represents a very admirable type of culture.



— That's you all out! Of course you sneer at him because he's not up-to-date and lives a simple life.



— Yes, a life of dull routine — the calculation of coppers, the weekly debauch and the weekly piety — a life lived in cunning and fear between the shadows of the parish chapel and the asylum!



— The life of a great city like London seems to you better?



— The intelligence of an English city is not perhaps at a very high level but at least it is higher than the mental swamp of the Irish peasant.



— And what about the two as moral beings?



— Well?



— The Irish are noted for at least one virtue all the world over.



— Oho! I know what's coming now!



— But it's a fact — they are chaste.



— To be sure.



— You like to run down your own people at every hand's turn but you can't accuse them...



— Very good: you are partly right. I fully recognise that my countrymen have not yet advanced as far as the machinery of Parisian harlotry because...



— Because...?



— Well, because they can do it by hand, that's why!



— Good God, you don't mean to say you think...



— My good youth, I know what I am saying is true and so do you know it. Ask Father Pat and ask Dr Thisbody and ask Dr Thatbody. I was at school and you were at school — and that's enough about it.



— O, Daedalus!



This accusation laid a silence on the conversation. Then Madden spoke:



— Well, if these are your ideas I don't see what you want coming to me and talking about learning Irish.



— I would like to learn it — as a language, said Stephen lyingly. At least I would like to see first.



— So you admit you are an Irishman after all and not one of the red garrison.



— Of course I do.



— And don't you think that every Irishman worthy of the name should be able to speak his native tongue?



— I really don't know.



— And don't you think that we as a race have a right to be free?



— O, don't ask me such questions, Madden. You can use these phrases of the platform but I can't.



— But surely you have some political opinions, man!



— I am going to think them out. I am an artist, don't you see? Do you believe that I am?



— O, yes, I know you are.



— Very well then, how the devil can you expect me to settle everything all at once? Give me time.



So it was decided that Stephen was to begin a course of lessons in Irish. He bought the O'Growney's primers published by the Gaelic League but refused either to pay a subscription to the League or to wear the badge in his buttonhole. He had found out what he had desired, namely, the class in which Miss Clery was. People at home did not seem opposed to this new freak of his. Mr Casey taught him a few Southern songs in Irish and always raised his glass to Stephen saying "Sinn Fein" instead of "Good Health." Mrs Daedalus was probably pleased for she thought that the superintendence of priests and the society of harmless enthusiasts might succeed in influencing her son in the right direction: she had begun to fear for him. Maurice said nothing and asked no questions. He did not understand what made his brother associate with the patriots and he did not believe that the study of Irish seemed in any way useful to Stephen: but he was silent and waited. Mr Daedalus said that he did not mind his son's learning the language so long as it did not keep him from his legitimate work.




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One evening when Maurice came back from school he brought with him the news that the retreat would begin in three days' time. This news suddenly delivered showed Stephen his position. He could hardly believe that in a year his point of view had changed so completely. Only twelve months ago he had been clamouring for forgiveness and promising endless penances. He could hardly believe that it was no other than he who had clung so fiercely to the sole means of salvation which the Church vouchsafes to her guilty children. He marvelled at the terror which had then possessed him. One evening during the retreat he asked his brother what kind of sermons the priest was giving. The two were standing together looking into the window of a stationer's shop and it was a picture of S. Anthony in the window which had led to the question. Maurice smiled broadly as he answered:



— Hell today.



— And what kind of a sermon was it?



— Usual kind of thing. Stink in the morning and pain of loss in the evening.



Stephen laughed and looked at the square-shouldered boy beside him. Maurice announced facts in a dry satirical voice and his cloudy complexion did not change colour when he laughed. He made Stephen think of the pictures in 'Silas Verney.' His sombre gravity, his careful cleansing of his much-worn clothes, and the premature disillusionment of his manner all suggested the human vesture of some spiritual or philosophic problem transplanted from Holland. Stephen did not know in what stage the problem was and he thought it wiser to allow it its own path of solution.

— Do you know what the priest told us also? asked Maurice after a pause.



— What?



— He said we weren't to have companions.



— Companions?



— That we weren't to go for walks in the evenings with any special companions. If we wanted to take a walk, he said, a lot of us were to go together.



Stephen halted in the street and struck the palms of his hands together.



— What's up with you? said Maurice.



— I know what's up with them, said Stephen. They're afraid.



— Of course they're afraid, said Maurice gravely.



— By the bye of course you have made the retreat?



— O, yes. I'm going to the altar in the morning.



— Are you really?



— Tell the truth, Stephen. When mother gives you the money on Sunday to go in to short twelve in Marlboro' St do you really go to Mass?



Stephen coloured slightly.



— Why do you ask that?



— Tell the truth.



— No... I don't.



— And where do you go?



— O anywhere... about the town.



— So I thought.



— You're a 'cute fellow, said Stephen in a sidewise fashion. Might I ask do you go to mass yourself?



— O, yes, said Maurice.



They walked on for a short time in silence. Then Maurice said:



— I have bad hearing.



Stephen made no remark.



— And I think I must be a little stupid.



— How's that?



In his heart Stephen felt that he was condemning his brother. In this instance he could not admit that freedom from strict religious influences was desirable. It seemed to him that anyone who could contemplate the condition of his soul in such a prosaic manner was not worthy of freedom and was fit only for the severest shackles of the Church.



— Well today the priest was telling us a true story. It was about the death of the drunkard. The priest came in to see him and talked to him and asked him to say he was sorry and to promise to give up drink. The man felt that he was going to die in a few moments but he sat upright in the bed, the priest said, and pulled out a black bottle from under the bedclothes



— Well?



— And said "Father, if this was to be the last I was ever to drink in this world I must drink it."



— Well?



— So he drained the bottle dry. That very moment he dropped dead, said the priest lowering his voice. "That man fell dead in the bed, stone dead. He died and went..." He spoke so low that I couldn't hear but I wanted to know where the man went so I leaned forward to hear and hit my nose a wallop against the bench in front. While I was rubbing it the fellows knelt down to say the prayer so I didn't hear where he went. Amn't I stupid?



Stephen exploded ill laughter. He laughed so loudly that the people who were passing turned to look at him and had to smile themselves by attraction. He put his hands to his sides and the tears almost fell out of his eyes. Every glimpse he caught of Maurice's solemn olive-coloured face set him off on a new burst. He could say nothing between times but — "I'd have given anything to have seen it — 'Father, if this was the last' ...and you with your mouth open. I'd have given anything to have seen it."





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The Irish class was held every Wednesday night in a back room on the second floor of a house in O'Connell St. The class consisted of six young men and three young women. The teacher was a young man in spectacles with a very sick-looking face and a very crooked mouth. He spoke in a high-pitched voice and with a cutting Northern accent. He never lost an opportunity of sneering at seoninism and at those who would not learn their native tongue. He said that Beurla was the language of commerce and Irish the speech of the soul and he had two witticisms which always made his class laugh. One was the 'Almighty Dollar' and the other was the 'Spiritual Saxon.' Everyone regarded Mr Hughes as a great enthusiast and some thought he had a great career before him as an orator. On Friday nights when there was a public meeting of the League he often spoke but as he did not know enough Irish he always excused himself at the beginning of his speech for having to speak to the audience in the language of the 'Spiritual Saxon.' At the end of every speech he quoted a piece of verse. He scoffed very much at Trinity College and at the Irish Parliamentary Party. He could not regard as patriots men who had taken oaths of allegiance to the Queen of England and he could not regard as a national university an institution which did not express the religious convictions of the majority of the Irish people. His speeches were always loudly applauded and Stephen heard some of the audience say that they were sure he would be a great success at the bar. On enquiry, Stephen found that Hughes, who was the son of a Nationalist solicitor in Armagh, was a law-student at the King's Inns.

Hughes??? 1901

O'Connell avenue 1909

The Irish class which Stephen attended was held in a very sparely furnished room lit by a gasjet which had a broken globe. Over the mantelpiece hung the picture of a priest with a beard who, Stephen found, was Father O'Growney. It was a beginners' class and its progress was retarded by the stupidity of two of the young men. The others in the class learned quickly and worked very hard. Stephen found it very troublesome to pronounce the gutturals but he did the best he could. The class was very serious and patriotic. The only time Stephen found it inclined to levity was at the lesson which introduced the word 'gradh.' The three young women laughed and the two stupid young men laughed, finding something very funny in the Irish word for 'love' or perhaps in the notion itself. But Mr Hughes and the other three young men and Stephen were all very grave. When the excitement of the word had passed Stephen's attention was attracted to the younger of the stupid young men who was still blushing violently. His blush continued for such a long time that Stephen began to feel nervous. The young man grew more and more confused and what was worst was that he was making all this confusion for himself for no-one in the class but Stephen seemed to have noticed him. He continued so till the end of the hour never once daring to raise his eyes from his book and when he had occasion to use his handkerchief he did so stealthily with his left hand.

O'Growney

The meetings on Friday nights were public and were largely patronised by priests. The organisers brought in reports from different districts and the priests made speeches of exhortation. Two young men would then be called on for songs in Irish and when it was time for the whole company to break up all would rise and sing the Rallying-Song. The young women would then begin to chatter while their cavaliers helped them into their jackets. A very stout black-bearded citizen who always wore a wideawake hat and a long bright green muffler was a constant figure at these meetings. When the company was going home he was usually to be seen surrounded by a circle of young men who looked very meagre about his bulk. He had the voice of an ox and he could be heard at a great distance, criticising, denouncing and scoffing. His circle was the separatist centre and in it reigned the irreconcilable temper. It had its headquarters in Cooney's tobacco-shop where the members sat every evening in the 'Divan' talking Irish loudly and smoking churchwardens. To this circle Madden who was the captain of a club of hurley-players reported the muscular condition of the young irreconcilables under his charge and the editor of the weekly journal of the irreconcilable party reported any signs of Philocelticism which he had observed in the Paris newspapers.



By all this society liberty was held to be the chief desirable; the members of it were fierce democrats. The liberty they desired for themselves was mainly a liberty of costume and vocabulary: and Stephen could hardly understand how such a poor scarecrow of liberty could bring serious human beings to their knees in worship. As in the Daniels' household he had seen people playing at being important so here he saw people playing at being free. He saw that many political absurdities arose from the lack of a just sense of comparison in public men. The orators of this patriotic party were not ashamed to cite the precedents of Switzerland and France. The intelligent centres of the movement were so scantily supplied that the analogies they gave out as exact and potent were really analogies built haphazard upon very inexact knowledge. The cry of a solitary Frenchman (A bas l'Angleterre!) at a Celtic re-union in Paris would be made by these enthusiasts the subject of a leading article in which would be shown the imminence of aid for Ireland from the French Government. A glowing example was to be found for Ireland in the case of Hungary, an example, as these patriots imagined, of a long-suffering minority, entitled by every right of race and justice to a separate freedom, finally emancipating itself. In emulation of that achievement bodies of young Gaels conflicted murderously in the Phoenix Park with whacking hurley-sticks, thrice armed in their just quarrel since their revolution had been blessed for them by the Anointed, and the same bodies were set aflame with indignation by the unwelcome presence of any young sceptic who was aware of the capable aggressions of the Magyars upon the Latin and Slav and Teutonic populations, greater than themselves in number, which are politically allied to them, and of the potency of a single regiment of infantry to hold in check a town of twenty thousand inhabitants.





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Stephen said one day to Madden:



— I suppose these hurley-matches and walking tours are preparations for the great event.



— There is more going on in Ireland at present than you are aware of.



— But what use are camans?

camans

— Well, you see, we want to raise the physique of the country.



Stephen meditated for a moment and then he said:



— It seems to me that the English Government is very good to you in this matter.



— How is that may I ask?



— The English Government will take you every summer in batches to different militia camps, train you to the use of modern weapons, drill you, feed you and pay you and then send you home again when the manoeuvres are over.



— Well?



— Wouldn't that be better for your young men than hurley-practice in the Park?



— Do you mean to say you want young Gaelic Leaguers to wear the redcoat and take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and take her shilling too?



— Look at your friend, Hughes.



— What about him?



— One of these days he will be a barrister, a Q.C., perhaps a judge — and yet he sneers at the Parliamentary Party because they take an oath of allegiance.



— Law is law all the world over — there must be someone to administer it, particularly here, where the people have no friends in Court.



— Bullets are bullets, too. I do not quite follow the distinction you make between administering English law and administering English bullets: there is the same oath of allegiance for both professions.



— Anyhow it is better for a man to follow a line of life which civilisation regards as humane. Better be a barrister than a redcoat.



— You consider the profession of arms a disreputable one. Why then have you Sarsfield Clubs, Hugh O'Neill Clubs, Red Hugh Clubs?



— O, fighting for freedom is different. But it is quite another matter to take service meanly under your tyrant, to make yourself his slave.



— And, tell me, how many of your Gaelic Leaguers are studying for the Second Division and looking for advancement in the Civil Service?



— That's different. They are only civil servants: they're not...



— Civil be damned! They are pledged to the Government, and paid by the Government.



— O, well, of course if you like to look at it that way...



— And how many relatives of Gaelic Leaguers are in the police and the constabulary? Even I know nearly ten of your friends who are sons of Police inspectors.



— It is unfair to accuse a man because his father was so-and-so. A son and a father often have different ideas.



— But Irishmen are fond of boasting that they are true to the traditions they receive in youth. How faithful all you fellows are to Mother Church! Why would you not be as faithful to the tradition of the helmet as to that of the tonsure?



— We remain true to the Church because it is our national Church, the Church our people have suffered for and would suffer for again. The police are different. We look upon them as aliens, traitors, oppressors of the people.



— The old peasant down the country doesn't seem to be of your opinion when he counts over his greasy notes and says "I'll put the priest on Tom an' I'll put the polisman on Mickey."



— I suppose you heard that sentence in some 'stage-Irishman' play. It's a libel on our countrymen.



— No, no, it is Irish peasant wisdom: he balances the priest against the polisman and a very nice balance it is for they are both of a good girth. A compensative system!



— No West-Briton could speak worse of his countrymen. You are simply giving vent to old stale libels — the drunken Irishman, the baboon-faced Irishman that we see in Punch.

Punch

— What I say I see about me. The publicans and the pawn-brokers who live on the miseries of the people spend part of the money they make in sending their sons and daughters into religion to pray for them. One of your professors in the Medical School who teaches you Sanitary Science or Forensic Medicine or something — God knows what — is at the same time the landlord of a whole streetful of brothels not a mile away from where we are standing.



— Who told you that?



— A little robin-redbreast.



— It's a lie!



— Yes, it's a contradiction in terms, what I call a systematic compensation.





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Stephen's conversations with the patriots were not all of this severe type. Every Friday evening he met Miss Clery, or, as he had now returned to the Christian name, Emma. She lived near Portobello and any evening that the meeting was over early she walked home. She often delayed a long time chatting with a low-sized young priest, a Father Moran, who had a neat head of curly black hair and expressive black eyes. This young priest was a pianist and sang sentimental songs and was for many reasons a great favourite with the ladies. Stephen often watched Emma and Father Moran. Father Moran, who sang tenor, had once complimented Stephen saying he had heard many people speak highly of his voice and hoping he would have the pleasure of hearing him some time. Stephen had said the same thing to the priest adding that Miss Clery had told him great things of his voice. At this the priest had smiled and looked archly at Stephen. "One must not believe all the complimentary things the ladies say of us" he had said. "The ladies are a little given to — what shall I say — fibbing, I am afraid." And here the priest had bit his lower rosy lip with two little white even teeth and smiled with his expressive eyes and altogether looked such a pleasant tender-hearted vulgarian that Stephen felt inclined to slap him on the back admiringly. Stephen had continued talking for a few minutes and once when the conversation had touched on Irish matters the priest had become very serious and had said very piously "Ah, yes. God bless the work!" Father Moran was no lover of the old droning chants, he told Stephen. Of course, he said, it is very grand music severe style of music. But he held the opinion that the Church must not be made too gloomy and he said with a charming smile that the spirit of the Church was not gloomy. He said that one could not expect the people to take kindly to severe music and that the people needed more human religious music than the Gregorian and ended by advising Stephen to learn "The Holy City" by Adams.








— There is a song now, beautiful, full of lovely melody and yet — religious. It has the religious sentiment, a touching a melody, power — soul, in fact.



Stephen watching this young priest and Emma together usually worked himself into a state of unsettled rage. It was not so much that he suffered personally as that the spectacle seemed to him typical of Irish ineffectualness. Often he felt his fingers itch. Father Moran's eyes were so clear and tender-looking, Emma stood to his gaze in such a poise of bold careless pride of the flesh that Stephen longed to precipitate the two into each other's arms and shock the room even though he knew the pain this impersonal generosity would cause himself. Emma allowed him to see her home several times but she did not seem to have reserved herself for him. The youth was piqued at this for above all things he hated to be compared with others and, had it not been that her body seemed so compact of pleasure, he would have preferred to have been ignominiously left behind. Her loud forced manners shocked him at first until his mind had thoroughly mastered the stupidity of hers. She criticised the Miss Daniels very sharply, assuming, much to Stephen's discomfort, an identical temper in him. She coquetted with knowledge, asking Stephen could he not persuade the President of his College to admit women to the college. Stephen told her to apply to McCann who was the champion of women. She laughed at this and said with genuine dismay "Well, honestly, isn't he a dreadful-looking artist?" She treated femininely everything that young men are supposed to regard as serious but she made polite exception for Stephen himself and for the Gaelic Revival. She asked him wasn't he reading a paper and what was it on. She would give anything to go and hear him: she was awfully fond of the theatre herself and a gypsy woman had once read her hand and told her she would be an actress. She had been three times to the pantomime and asked Stephen what he liked best in pantomime. Stephen said he liked a good clown but she said that she preferred ballets. Then she wanted to know did he go out much to dances and pressed him to join an Irish dancing-class of which she was a member. Her eyes had begun to imitate the expression of Father Moran's — an expression of tender significance when the conversation was at the lowest level of banality. Often as he walked beside her Stephen wondered how she had employed her time since he had last seen her and he congratulated himself that he had caught an impression of her when she was at her finest moment. In his heart he deplored the change in her for he would have liked nothing so well as an adventure with her now but he felt that even that warm ample body could hardly compensate him for her distressing pertness and middle-class affectations. In the centre of her attitude towards him he thought he discerned a point of defiant illwill and he thought he understood the cause of it. He had swept the moment into his memory, the figure and the landscape into his treasure-room, and conjuring with all three had brought forth some pages of sorry verse. One rainy night when the streets were too bad for walking she took the Rathmines tram at the Pillar and as she held down her hand to him from the step, thanking him for his kindness and wishing him good-night, that episode of their childhood seemed to magnetise the minds of both at the same instant. The change of circumstances had reversed their positions, giving her the upper hand. He took her hand caressingly, caressing one after another the three lines on the a back of her kid glove and numbering her knuckles, caressing also his own past towards which this inconsistent hater of inheritances was always lenient. They smiled at each other; and again in the centre of her amiableness he discerned a point of illwill and he suspected that by her code of honour she was obliged to insist on the forbearance of the male and to despise him for forbearing.







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