JAMES JOYCE - ULYSSES

She was entitled to her widow’s dower

At common law. His legal knowledge was great

Our judges tell us.

Him Satan fleers,

Mocker:

And therefore he left out her name

From the first draft but he did not leave out

The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,

For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford

And in London. And therefore when he was urged,

As I believe, to name her

He left her his

Secondbest

Bed.

Punkt .Leftherhis

Secondbest

Leftherhis

Bestabed

Secabest

Leftabed.

Woa!

– Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.

– He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace?

– It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest Best said finely.

– Separatio a mensa et a thalamo , bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled on.

– Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. Let me think.

– Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.

– Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean ….

– He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!

– What? asked Besteglinton.

William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William. For terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house ….

– Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days . Lovely!

Catamite.

– The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton.

Steadfast John replied severe:

– The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your cake and have it.

Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?

– And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his jew’s heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love’s Labour Lost . His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired the Merry Wives of Windsor , let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depths of the buckbasket.

I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere .

– Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean of studies holds he was a holy Roman.

Sufflaminandus sum.

– He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals.

– A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him myriadminded.

Amplius. In societate humana hoe est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia inter multos.

– Saint Thomas, Stephen began …

– Ora pro nobis , Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.

There he keened a wailing rune:

– Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day! It’s destroyed we are surely!

All smiled their smiles.

– Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.

– Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

– Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.

– Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.

– The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s widow, is the will to die.

– Requiescat! Stephen prayed.

What of all the will to do?

It has vanished long ago …

– She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches and The Most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze . Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.

– History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos . The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man’s worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a gentleman to see you. Me? Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.