04 October 2022

Her Wife Langley

 

Her Wife Langley (RFW 040.27-040.37)

In the previous chapter of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, two tinkers, Treacle Tom and his brother Frisky Shorty, were bumming around Baldoyle Racecourse when they overheard a conversation between a clergyman and a lay teacher. The subject of that conversation was HCE’s encounter in the Park with the Cad with a Pipe, and Treacle Tom would play his part in circulating a garbled version of the tale:

’Twas two pisonouse Timcoves (the wetter is pest, the renns are overt and come and the voax of the turfur is hurled on our lande) of the name of Treacle Tom, as was just out of pop following the theft of a leg of Kehoe, Donnelly and Pakenham’s Finnish pork, and his own blood and milk brother Frisky Shorty (he was, to be exquisitely punctilious about them, both shorty and frisky), a tipster come off the hulks, both of them awful poor, what was out on the bumaround for an oofbird game for a jimmy o’goblin or a small thick un as chanced, while the Seaforths was making the colleenbawl, to ear wick their own hears the passon in the motor clobber make use of his law language (Edzo, Edzo on) touchin the case of Mr Adams what was in all the sundays about it which he was rubbing noses with and having a gurgle off his own along of the butty bloke in the specs. (RFW 031.16-27)

So what have we learnt about Frisky Shorty? He is a tinker, Treacle Tom’s brother, a tipster, a recent inmate of a prison ship, very poor, and a chancer who is ever alert for an opportunity to earn a few sovereigns. (Jimmy O’Goblin is Cockney rhyming slang for a sovereign, a gold coin worth one pound sterling. And thick ’un is slang for a crown, a coin worth five shillings.)

In the last article, we saw that between 1824 and 1834 the former USS Essex served as a prison ship in Kingstown Harbour (now Dún Laoghaire), Dublin.

Prison Hulk Essex in Kingstown

First-Draft Version

Like the other characters who were featured in the Humphriad I (Chapter I.2), Frisky Shorty is given a new identity in the Humphriad II (Chapter I.3): Langley, who is described as her wife. This seems to imply that both Frisky Shorty and his brother Sordid Sam (Treacle Tom’s new identity) have experienced a change of sex. But in the rest of his obituary, Langley is given exclusively male pronouns, making Langley bisexual.

The first-draft of Langley’s death notice was just two lines long and was written in “wide-awake” English:

Shorty disappeared from the surface of the earth so completely as to lead one to suppose that his habitat had become the interior. (Hayman 69)

Frisky Shorty has lost the first part of his name, but otherwise his original identity has been preserved. In The Restored Finnegans Wake, these two lines have been expanded fivefold, but the gist of the first draft remains unchanged. I presume his habitat had become the interior is just another way of saying he died and was buried. Or has Frisky Shorty become a subterranean dweller?

Let’s take a look at the details.

The Third Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (1809)

Frisky Shorty’s Obituary

Stripped of its four parentheses, this obituary reads as follows:

Disliker as he was to druriodrama, her wife Langley, the prophet, and the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through his spoke, disappeared ... from the sourface of this earth, that austral plain he had transmaried himself to, so entirely spoorlessly ... as to tickle the speculative to all but opine ... that the hobo ... had transtuled his funster’s habitat to its finsterest interrimost. Bhi she. (RFW 040.27-37)

According to the first four obituaries, Frisky’s associates were all associated with the stage: Osti-Fosti was an operatic tenor : A’Hara served in the Crimea, scene of the Zouave Theatre at Inkerman : Paul Horan was the utility man in a troupe of actors : and Sordid Sam played a stage drunkard. Frisky too is associated with the stage, though he is a disliker of it. In The Restored Finnegans Wake, Rose & O’Hanlon have reverted the published disliken to Joyce’s earlier disliker.

The coinage druriodrama refers to Drury Lane, London, site of the Theatre Royal—which is often known simply as Drury Lane. Dublin, too, had a Theatre Royal—five of them, in fact—and it still has a Drury Street. Both Drury Lane and Drury Street were named for William Drury, Lord Justice of Ireland in 1578-79.

The Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the owner of the Third Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which opened its doors in 1794 but burnt down fifteen years later. He had also owned the Second Theatre Royal for the last thirteen years of its existence (1778-91).

  • dreary drama Tragedy, as opposed to comedy?

FWEET also identifies in druriodrama an allusion to Duryodhana, the principal antagonist of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. He was one of the Kauravas, the 100 sons of the blind king Dhritarashtra. Sordid Sam’s obituary referred to my centuple selves, which strengthens this allusion.

Duryodhana and the Elderly Preceptor Drona

As we have seen, Frisky Shorty’s new identity makes both him and his brother female. His new surname is surely intended to be an antonym for Shorty.

  • German: lang, long.

Does Langley refer to a particular person of that name?

Langley—maybe Francis Langley, builder and proprietor of the Swan theater. (Glasheen 159)

The Swan was one of the Bankside theatres in Elizabethan England. A reference to Francis Langley would certainly be appropriate here, given the prevalence of theatrical allusions in all the obituaries. Incidentally, Joyce spelt the name Langly on a loose notesheet when he was proofreading the galleys for Finnegans Wake in late 1937, but I think this was just a careless misspelling on his part (FW Sheet 8 : p. 3(k)). I believe this name was chosen simply because it sounded like an antonym of Shorty.

The Swan (London)

The feminine element in her wife Langley naturally raises the possibility that Langley also represents one of the Wake’s female characters. John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut College, thinks so. As we saw in the last article, Gordon identifies Sordid Sam with Sackerson, HCE’s elderly servant:

Then comes fellow-servant Kate, as ‛her wife Langley, the prophet’, identified first with ‛Levey’—that is, a variant of the Liffey—then one of ‛Padre Don Bruno’s’ ‛yarnspinners’ (cf. 620.35-6 [RFW 487.15-16]). As at 38.09-39.13 [RFW 030.20-031.15], the combination of old woman and priest is enough to get the scandal circulating. (Gordon 130)

This identification of Langley with Kate, ALP’s elderly maid, is confirmed by a passage in the next chapter:

Kate Strong (tip!), a widow (tiptip!)—she pulls a lane picture for us in a dreariodreama setting ... (RFW 063.30-31)

Here lane and dreariodreama are clear echoes of Langley and druriodrama, though of course there is more to them than that.

The Tipster

Why is Langley called the prophet? The word anticipates allusions to Colmcille’s Prophecies and Mohammad (see below), but otherwise I do not understand what relevance it has to Frisky Shorty. He is a tipster—someone who makes money at the racetrack by advising punters which horses to bet on—which is a sort of prophet, I suppose.

Langley is also described appositionally in the following terms:

... and the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through his spoke ... (RFW 040.28-29)

In the previous chapter, Frisky Shorty’s brother Treacle Tom repeated a garbled version of HCE’s encounter with the Cad when he was sleeping in a rooming house in the Liberties. He was overheard by three other bums: the busker Hosty, and his two associates Peter Cloran and O’Mara. The following morning, this trio made a prolonged visit to the Old Sots’ Hole, a public house in the parish of Saint Cecily, where they were joined by two other unnamed down-and-outers, one of whom stood them a round of drinks:

... the trio of whackfolthediddlers was joined by a further-intentions-apply-tomorrow casual and a decent sort of the hadbeen variety who had just been touching the weekly insult, phew it, and all figblabbers (who saith of noun?) had stimulants in the shape of gee and gees stood by the damn decent sort ... (RFW 042.01-05)

This decent sort cannot be Frisky Shorty, who is unlikely to have ever stood anyone a drink, but the coincidence of the expressions decentest ... short and short of a frusker in the present passage inextricably links the two characters. And frusker also seems to echo busker, which draws Hosty into the mix. The Decent Sort takes part in the first performance of Hosty’s Rann, where he is named as a Mr Delaney (Mr Delacey?), horn who piped out of his decentsoort hat (RFW 034.35-37). To talk out of one’s hat, however, is to talk nonsense.

Christ Healing the Mother of Simon Peter’s Wife

Why is the Decent Sort described as dozendest? In Finnegans Wake, the regulars at HCE’s tavern often appear as a jury or chorus, known as The Twelve. Perhaps that is the point of the allusion: the Decent Sort meets Hosty and his associates in a pub. But the presence of The Twelve is usually flagged by the concatenation and syllabification of sesquipedalian Latinisms—Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, for example.

Or is Frisky Shorty being compared to one of the Twelve Apostles? John P Anderson thinks he is. Anderson is the author of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Curse of Kabbalah, a multi-volume study of Finnegans Wake from a non-academic point of view:

As much as the misogynist St. Peter disliked a two-part drama, disliked sharing the spotlight particularly with a woman ... he was the most decent one of the 12 apostles short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through his spoke [had relations with a female]. (Anderson 76-77)

Peter Cloran and Paul Horan are clearly Saints Peter & Paul, but I do not see how Frisky Shorty or Langley can be equated with any of the Apostles. There is a tradition, however, that when he went into exile, Colmcille was accompanied by twelve companions—his Twelve Apostles (Spence-Jones 67).

The phrase stuck his spickle through his spoke seems to allude to the expression a pig in a poke, meaning something one buys without first checking that it is what one thinks it is. There may also be an echo of the related expression like a stuck pig, meaning to squeal like a pig being slaughtered. Another possible element may be the phrase in a pickle, which in turn brings to mind the tongue-twister about Peter Piper and his peck of pickled peppers—and we are back to both St Peter and the Decent Sort piping out of his hat during the first performance of Hosty’s Rann.

St Peter’s Square, Vatican City

Frisky Shorty is certainly the sort of confidence man who would try to pass off a cat for a suckling pig. It is also possible that spickle through his spoke repeats the sexual innuendo of the outandin ... candlestock of the preceding obituary. Anderson compares this image with the ithyphallic obelisk that is “stuck” into St Peter’s Square—which is not a square at all, but a giant wheel with spokes—like a penis penetrating a vagina.

There is no such word as spickle. Perhaps this coinage comes from the Latin: spicula, a small spike, a pointed fleshy appendage (eg a penis?). And what about the verbs speak and spoke?

Joyce added this passage about the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through his spoke at a very late stage in the composition—between March 1937 and February 1938—when he was proofreading the first set of galleys (James Joyce Digital Archive).

The next passage refers to the surface of the Earth, from which Langley has disappeared:

Langley ... disappeared ... from the sourface of this earth, that austral plain he had transmaried himself to, so entirely spoorlessly ... (RFW 0.40.28 ... 29 ... 31-32)

David Patrick Moran

  • surface

  • sourfaces According to John Gordon, the Irish journalist D P Moran referred to the English as “sourfaces” (Gordon 50.10). If this allusion is accepted, it strengthens the probability that Langley conceals L’Anglais, the Englishman.

  • austral plain Astral plane. In Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s The Theosophical Glossary, we read:

Astral Body, Astral Light (Blavatsky 1918:35-36)

The exact phrase astral plane is never explicitly defined in any of her writings, though she does use it on occasions (eg Blavatsky 1918:39). In another of her works, The Key to Theosophy, she makes clear the distinction between the physical world of our senses and the astral plane:

Mediumship: A word now accepted to indicate that abnormal psycho-physiological state which leads a person to take the fancies of his imagination, his hallucinations, real or artificial, for realities. No entirely healthy person on the physiological and psychic planes can ever be a medium. That which mediums see, hear, and sense, is “real” but untrue; it is either gathered from the astral plane, so deceptive in its vibrations and suggestions, or from pure hallucinations, which have no actual existence but for him who perceives them. (Blavatsky 1910:230)

The Astral Plane is the title and subject of an 1895 book by Charles Webster Leadbeater, a pupil of Blavatsky’s. It is also clear from his account that the astral plane is not the physical plane to which the surface of the Earth belongs, though that seems to be implied by Joyce’s usage here.

  • Australia In Finnegans Wake, Australia seems to double as the Underworld, or Hell, while America is the Promised Land. Australia is associated with Shem and America with Shaun. Elsewhere, I have suggested—very tentatively—that in the “real world” of Finnegans Wake, the two adult sons of the landlord of the Mullingar House in Chapelizod have emigrated, one to Australia and one to America.

Clive Hart

In his classic study Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, one of the pioneers of Joycean studies Clive Hart writes:

Shaun will eventually reach the New World but, like Joyce’s own son Giorgio (who made two trips there), he will always be disappointed and return. Nevertheless, in spite of constant disillusionment the United States is the only Promised Land that Finnegans Wake can offer and it even comes to symbolise a second-grade Heaven ... While Shaun’s east-west journey is quasi-horizontal, Shem’s displacement is in the vertical north-south direction. Shem is the thinker, the artist who plumbs the depths and loses his soul in the process ... A Miltonic Satan, though less attractive, Shem finds his Pandemonium in the hot and hellish antipodes of Australia—‛down under’, as it is popularly called ... Shem’s and Shaun’s cycles intersect in the first place in Dublin, where a conflict between the two always takes place, just as Christ and Satan find common ground on earth, midway between Heaven and Hell ... The hierarchy of worlds in Finnegans Wake is now seen to be complete: the three united ‛states’ of God (Trinity) in the Heaven of America; Patrick’s Purgatory and the earthly mean in Ireland; and a torrid austral Hell. (Hart 115-118)

Hart later retracted most of what he had written in Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake (See Chrisp for further discussion), but I think there is still much to be learnt from this remarkable book. It is a must-read for all Wakean enthusiasts.

St Columba and His Twelve Apostles Departing from Ireland

  • transmaried Latin: mare transire, to cross the sea. Of course, it is impossible to reach Australia from Ireland without crossing the sea, but there is probably also a reference to Colmcille crossing the sea to Iona when he went into exile.

  • married After all, Langley is identified as her wife.

  • spoorlessly German: spurlos, without a trace. There is also the English: spoorless, without leaving a spoor or track, which is generally applied to a hunted animal—a fox, for example. The Humphriad is bookended by two foxhunts.

Where the first draft has as to lead one to suppose the published version reads:

as to tickle the speculative to all but opine ... (RFW 040.34)

This is still good King’s English. To tickle can be used transitively to mean to to prompt or impel someone to do something, though this meaning is flagged as obsolete in the Oxford English Dictionary (II.7.b). As a noun, speculative generally denotes a speculator or a speculatist, though here it probably refers to the speculative faculty of the mind. And all but is an adverb, splitting the infinitive to opine, meaning to express an opinion. Joyce has added nothing new here. He has simply given the first draft a whimsical new garb.

  • hobo A homeless vagrant worker. The term is American rather than Australian, but it is an apt description of Treacle Tom and Frisky Shorty. Later, in Chapter III.1 (The First Watch of Shaun), Shaun will identify himself as a hobo (318.05). As we have seen, Shaun is associated with America.

An Irish Inside Jaunting Car

  • oboe Given the musical associations with Hosty’s Rann, this allusion is just about possible. As we have seen, the Decent Sort accompanies Hosty on the horn, piping out of his hat. Elsewhere in Finnegans Wake, Joyce connects oboes with horns (eg RFW 006.07 and 318.05-06). The English horn, or cor anglais, is a species of oboe—Langley = L’anglais.

The final part of Langley’s obituary is another example of Joyce reclothing his first draft in whimsical garb without really changing the original meaning:

[that the hobo] had transtuled his funster’s habitat to its finsterest interrimost. (RFW 040.37)

Compare this to the first draft:

that his habitat had become the interior.

  • transtuled Latin: transtulit, he transferred. The four principal parts of this Latin verb are fero, ferre, tuli, latum. So, to transtule means the same as to transfer and to translate.

  • funster’s A funster is simply one who makes fun, just as a punster is one who makes puns. Understandable, coming right after humoresque. It suggests that Langley’s disappearance is a comedy rather than a tragedy. This too makes some sense, as Langley has already been described as a disliker of dreary dramas.

  • German: Fenster, window. I don’t see the relevance, but FWEET includes it.

  • habitat The published version of Finnegans Wake has latitat, but Rose & O’Hanlon have restored the original habitat.

Mr Latitat the Lawyer

  • latitat A writ of latitat is a court order summoning an accused person who is presumed to be in hiding to answer in the King’s Bench. Latin: latitat, he lies hidden, he is in hiding. This word makes sense in this context, in which Langley has disappeared from the surface of the Earth. Were Rose & O’Hanlon really justified in restoring the original version? According to FWEET, latitat is also slang for attorney, while Roland McHugh gives latitat as dialect for idle talk & chatter. I don’t see how the former could be relevant here, but the latter does make some sense (cf Mr Delacey talking out of his hat, as discussed earlier).

  • latitude

  • German: finster, dark. Hence, finsterest, darkest (though the correct German is am finstersten).

  • Cape Finisterre A headland near the northwestern tip of Iberia. The name comes from the Latin: finis terrae, the end of the earth—Land’s End, if you like. This is reminiscent of one of the fourteen names of Ireland according to the 17th-century historian Geoffrey Keating:

The second name was Críoch na bhfuineadhach from its being at the limit or end of the three divisions of the world which had then been discovered; fuin indeed, from the Latin word finis, being equivalent to ‘end’. (Keating 99)

Cape Finisterre

  • interior To match the superlative suffix -est which has been tacked on to finster another superlative suffix -most has been added to interior. Langley has disappeared into the darkest, most interior part of the earth. In Latin, interior is actually the comparative degree of inter, though it is construed as the positive form.

  • inter To bury in a grave. This is, after all, Langley’s death notice.

He Was

Each of the six death notices in this passage ends with the expression He was in one of six different languages. Langley’s epitaph is in Irish:

  • Irish: Bhí sé Langley (ie Frisky Shorty) plays Kersse the Tailor to Sordid Sam’s Norwegian Captain—native Irishman to foreign invader.

The Irish: sé, he, is pronounced shay, while the Irish: sí, she, is pronounced shee. So Joyce’s spelling of Langley’s epitaph, Bhe she, is fittingly bisexual.

According to Rose & O’Hanlon, the He was motif was inspired by a passage in Edward Sullivan’s The Book of Kells:

The “Qui fuit” pages Five pages are then occupied with the Genealogy of Christ, each line beginning with “Qui fuit” as illustrated in Plates XV., XVI. and / XVII. (Sullivan 20)

The Book of Kells 200r (Sullivan Plate XV)

The First Parenthesis

Joyce was very fond of repeatedly interrupting the flow of his text with passages in parentheses. There is hardly a page of Finnegans Wake that does not include at least one such interpolation. For all its ten lines or so, Langley’s death notice contains no fewer than four sets of parentheses. The first of these was another late addition:

(in which toodooing he has taken all the French leaves unveilable out of Calomnequiller’s Pravities) (RFW 040.29-31)

Tattooed Pict

There’s a lot to unpack here. The first neologism, toodooing, is multifaceted:

  • so doing When he disappeared, Langley took with him all the French leaves ...

  • toodleloo Goodbye! Farewell! From the French: à tout à l’heure, see you soon. This is the death notice of the recently departed, who is taking his leave.

  • Te Deum An early Christian hymn of praise. The Te Deum is generally sung to give thanks on celebratory occasions: births, marriages, birthdays, anniversaries, jubilees. It is not associated with deaths. Hosty’s Rann can hardly be described as a Te Deum. Far from praising HCE, it scandalizes him. Incidentally, the French composer Jean Langlais (Langley?) composed a Te Deum in 1934, a few years before Joyce added this parenthetical passage to his obituary. But Frisky Shorty’s new identity, Langley, made its first appearance in March 1927, so an allusion to this particular Langlais is unlikely (James Joyce Digital Archive).

  • tattooing The Picts, the ancient pagan Celts of northern Britain, tattooed their bodies. Colmcille was the Apostle to the Picts.

The next phrase, taken all the French leaves unveilable, is similarly multifaceted:

  • to take a leaf out of someone’s book To model one’s actions on the example set by another person. The phrase can also be interpreted literally, as we shall see below.

  • to take French leave To depart suddenly without permission or notice. The French, however, say filer à l’anglaise (to leave in the English manner), which suggests that Langley conceals the French L’anglais (see below). Irish Goodbye is an American expression for a similar practice, but this phrase has only recently entered our vocabulary on this side of the ocean.

  • French loaves available Baguettes? But why would Langley abscond with all the bread that was available?

  • to take one’s leave To depart. Langley is departing for the next world.

The Apparition of St Michael the Archangel to St Aubert

French leaves can also mean the leaves of a French book. This reminds me of an earlier reference to the pages of a French manuscript:

So, how idlers’ wind turning pages on pages ... (RFW 011.17)

In one of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake notebooks, the following entry occurs:

wind turns over pages (VI.B.14.18)

The reference is to a passage Joyce read in Les Grandes Légendes de France [The Great Legends of France] by Édouard Schuré. The legend in question concerns an apparition of the Archangel Michael to Saint Aubert, the 8th-century monk who is alleged to have founded Mont St-Michel:

L’apparition tourna vers lui son épée et Aubert eut peur. Il pencha la tête vers les saintes écritures ouvertes sur ses genoux. Aussitôt un ouragan passa sur le livre et en froissa toutes les feuilles. Il resta ouvert au XII<sup>e</sup> chapitre de l’Apocalypse. La pointe de l’épée s’arrêta sur un passage, et Aubert lut à la lumière de l’ange: «Alors il y eut un combat dans le ciel, Michel et ses anges combattaient contre le dragon et le dragon combattait contre eux avec ses anges ...

[The apparition turned his sword towards him and Aubert was afraid. He bent over the Holy Scripture, which was open upon his knees. Immediately a hurricane passed over the book and crumpled all its leaves. It remained open at the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse. The point of the sword stopped at a passage, and Aubert read by the light of the angel: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels ...”] (Schuré 162)

You may recall that this Bible verse is the very one that is illustrated by the picture above the fireplace in HCE’s bedroom according to RFW 435.14-15. It is possible, however, that the image depicted is actually of St George and the Dragon. HCE is a Protestant and considers himself a loyal British subject, so he is more likely to hang a print of St George on his bedroom wall than an icon of St Michael.

Michael the Archangel and the Dragon

The French elements in this passage raise the possibility that Langley also conceals the French: L’Anglais, the Englishman. Or, perhaps: L’anglais, the English language (Yared 421).

The words Calomnequiller’s Pravities comprise one of the Wake’s characteristic portmanteau expressions, into which Joyce has managed to cram a plethora of competing allusions:

  • Colmcille’s Prophecies The Book of Kells was also known as the Book of Colmcille. In his Latin Life of Columba, Adomnán attributes several prophecies to Colmcille (Adamnan & Reeves 4-37).

  • Column-filler A journalist, who fills the columns of a newspaper.

  • quiller A professional writer, who works with a quill.

  • calamus A quill. From Latin: calamus, reed, reed pen, quill.

  • calumniator One who calumniates, or slanders, another person—a dishonest journalist, for example.

  • depravities Yellow journalism. Also, the pages of French novels (French leaves) were widely suspected of being full of depraved matter. Such pages ought not to be unveiled, but their obscenity cannot be concealed (Atherton 63). Compare this with the familiar expression Pardon my French).

The Book of Kells (339r and 339v)

The French leaves that Langley has taken with him are the missing leaves from the Book of Kells:

Whether or not the famous Book of Kells, or as it is often called the Book of Colum Cille, was written and illuminated in the ancient town of Kells is a question still unsolved. The last few leaves of the Manuscript, which in all probability would have furnished us with full information as to scribe, illuminator, and place of origin, have been missing for many years ... Having regard to the average number of lines and words contained in each page of the Book of Kells, we find by a simple calculation that at least twenty-four leaves of text alone have disappeared from the book. (Sullivan 4 ... 23)

These missing pages—Sullivan’s final estimate is that as many as 29 folios were actually lost—have, as it were, taken French leave. I give the final word to James Atherton:

The first unmistakable mention of The Book of Kells in the Wake is ‛all the French leaves unveilable out of Calomnequiller’s Pravities’ (50.9). ‛French leaves’ means missing leaves—there are at least sixty leaves missing from the extant manuscript, but it also means ‛obscene pages’—the depravity of which cannot be veiled or concealed. ‛Pravities’ must derive from pravus, crooked, depraved; and ‛Calomnequiller’ must mean a writer of calumnies. This sets the tone for all the allusions to The Book of Kells in the Wake. Like all other acts of creation it has something sinful about it; indeed, it is something crooked and depraved. (Atherton 62)

The Second Parenthesis

Like the first passage in parentheses, the second is about Colmcille:

(the mother of the book with a dustwhisk tabularasing his obliterature done upon her involucrum) (RFW 040.32-33)

The phrase the mother of the book alludes to an early instance of copyright involving Colmcille. The story is worth recounting in full:

Movilla Abbey, Newtownards

On a time Columcille went to stay with Finnen of Druim Finn, and he asked of him the loan of a book, and it was given him. After the hours and the mass, he was wont to tarry behind the others in the church, there transcribing the book, unknown to Finnen ... And when Finnen heard that his book had been copied without leave from him, he accused Columcille and said it was not lawful for him to copy his book without his leave.

“I shall require the judgment of the King of Erin between us,” saith Columcille, “to wit, the judgment of Diarmaid, son of Cerball.”

“I shall accept that,” saith Finnen.

Anon withal they went together to Tara of the Kings, to Diarmaid son of Cerball. And Finnen first told the King his story, and he said:

“Columcille hath copied my book without my knowing,” saith he, “and I contend that the son of my book is mine.”

“I contend,” saith Columcille, “that the book of Finnen is none the worse for my copying it, and it is not right that the divine words in that book should perish, or that I or any other should be hindered from writing them or reading them or spreading them among the tribes. And further I declare that it was right for me to copy it, seeing there was profit to me from doing in this wise, and seeing it was my desire to give the profit thereof to all peoples, with no harm therefrom to Finnen or his book.”

Then it was that Diarmaid gave the famous judgment: “To every cow her young cow, that is, her calf, and to every book its transcript. And therefore to Finnen belongeth the book thou hast written, Columcille.” (O’Donnell & O’Kelleher 177-179)

Diarmait Mac Cerbaill, High King of Ireland

Colmcille’s kinsmen, Cenél Conaill and Cenél nEógain, rallied to his side in the dispute, which was put to a trial of arms in County Sligo in the Battle Of Cúl Dreimhne. In the battle the High King was defeated, but Colmcille was visited by St Michael the Archangel and commanded to go into perpetual exile.

This, at least, is the tradition handed down by Manus O’Donnell in his 16th-century Life of Colmcille. There are, however, some indications that the story is to be taken with a grain of salt. For example, O’Donnell identifies Colmcille’s adversary as Saint Finnen of Druim Finn, but the patron saint of Dromin, County Louth, was Fintan, another saint altogether—allegedly. The saint who was associated with Colmcille was Finnian of Movilla (Parlin 341-343). Moreover, the story is not recounted in Adamnán’s Life of Columba. On the other hand, the Cathach of St. Columba, which is traditionally identified as the infamous copy of Finnian’s Psalter, does date back to the 6th century. It is, in fact, the oldest extant Irish manuscript. It is made of vellum, a type of parchment made from calfskin—whence Diarmait’s famous analogy.

The Cathach of St Columba (Folio 19r) and its Cumdach

  • mother of the book In Islam, the Quran is said to be a copy of The Mother of the Book, which is preserved under the throne of Allah in Heaven. Joyce’s source for this tidbit of information is Stanley Lane-Poole’s The Speeches & Table-Talk of the Prophet Mohammad:

Preserved Book: Mohammad taught that every “revelation” in the Korān was but a transcript from the pages of a great book, known as the “Mother of the Book,” “preserved” under the throne of God. (Lane-Poole 186)

Here, Preserved Book is a quotation from Surah 56:77-78, Al-Waqi‛a, of the Quran.

  • dustwhisk A dust-whisk is a traditional Chinese fly-swatter. It was usually made of horsetail and was carried by Buddhist masters as a symbol of their authority. They were also used by Taoist masters. Here, however, it is being used as an eraser to wipe out all trace of Langley’s existence.

A Chinese Buddhist Dust-Whisk

  • dustwhisk Dust cover. The Cathach of Saint Columba does not have a dust cover, but it is protected by a cumdach, or book shrine, an oblong, hinged wooden box covered with decorative bronze and gilt-silver plates. Before the construction of this cumdach in the 11th century, the manuscript was kept in a leather satchel, or tíag.

It is proverbial that one should not judge a book by its cover.

  • tabularasing Latin: tabula rasa, blank slate, scraped tablet, erased writing-tablet. This expression has been used in Western philosophy to describe the theory that the human mind is a blank slate at the point of its creation, which is then imprinted with knowledge and experience acquired through the senses. This concept has been traced back to Aristotle, though the Latin phrase only dates back to the Middle Ages. In modern times, the English 17th-century philosopher John Locke adopted the idea in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, though his actual words were “white paper”, not tabula rasa (Locke 2:1:2). Locke did use the Latin rasae tabulae in the third of his nine Essays on the Law of Nature, which were written in Latin. The form rasa tabula occurs in Draft B of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but it was replaced by white paper and blank cabinet before publication (Goldie 96).

A Roman Writing-Tablet and Stylus

Later philosophers have been critical of the idea. The most elaborate and sustained criticism of the theory came from the pen of Immanuel Kant, who believed that we humans are created with certain, fundamental a priori ideas or intuitions, without which we cannot even begin to make sense of our own perceptions. For example, we are compelled by nature to interpret our sense perceptions of the world in terms of space, time and causality, which are “prior” to any and all sensations. That is to say, we do not deduce from sense perception that space and time exist and that causality is a fact of nature. These intuitions are already imprinted on our minds before we have any experience of the world.

In the Proteus episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus, I believe, is alluding to the Kantian a priori when he thinks of the Ineluctable modality of the visible (Ulysses 37).

  • obliterature Obliteration of literature? Curiously, this is actually a real word, albeit an archaic one: it is a synonym of obliteration. It derives from the Latin: obliterātūrus, about to erase, going to erase, which ties in with tabularasing. But did Joyce know this? The word is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (First Edition) or in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. The first edition of Finnegans Wake had obliteration.

  • done upon her involucrum Latin: involucrum, wrapper, covering, case, envelope. If her refers to the Mother of the Book (both Finnian’s Psalter and Allah’s Quran), then it would appear that the original is erasing the copy with a dust-whisk. The book’s dust jacket represents the surface of the Earth.

Roland McHugh—Annotations to Finnegans Wake (Third Edition)—detects another citation from Lane-Poole’s Speeches and Table-Talk of the Prophet Mohammad:

“The tidings of the earth are these—she will bear witness to the actions of every man and woman done upon her surface.”—Tradition of Mohammad. (Lane-Poole 184)

Finnegans Wake Dust Jackets (1939)

The Third Parenthesis

The third passage in parentheses is not obviously connected with Colmcille—the theatrical element is the dominant one—but the saint is in the mix, nonetheless.

(since the Levey who might have been Langley may have really been a redivivus of paganinism or a volunteer Vousden) (RFW 040.34-36)

Richard Michael Levey

  • Levey Richard Michael Levey was the stage name of Richard Michael O’Shaughnessy (1811-1899), a violinist with the Theatre Royal Orchestra, Dublin, from 1826 to 1880. This was Dublin’s third Theatre Royal, on Hawkins Street.

Levey was the Leader of the Orchestra from 1834 until 9 February 1880, when the theatre burned down. He was also the theatre’s musical director, which saw him conduct the orchestra, compose the overtures and incidental music for dozens of plays and pantomimes, and direct operatic performances. In addition to his onerous duties at the Theatre Royal, he was also leader of the orchestras of the Antient Concerts Society and the Philharmonic Society, and Secretary of the Dublin Madrigal Society and the Irish Musical Fund. Levey was also a prominent violin teacher, and a co-founder of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He was the RIAM’s Professor of Violin until his retirement in 1897. He was married three times and fathered twenty children. He died in Dalkey, County Dublin, in 1899 at the age of 87 (Grove 153-154).

Levey’s son’s Richard Michael Levey Junior (some sources give his name as Richard C Levey) and William Charles Levey—two of a set of triplets born in 1837—were also prominent members of the Theatre Royal Orchestra. From 1868 to 1874, the latter conducted the orchestra at Drury Lane Theatre, London. Later, he was Musical Director of the Adelphi Theatre in London and a Member of the Society of Artists and Musicians of Paris. He was also a successful composer of operettas.

The Third Theatre Royal, Dublin (1821)

In the Annals of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, a Miss Levey is listed in the credits in the role of Ines (soprano) in an 1868 performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Was she one of Levey’s many daughters?

R M Levey Senior was an intimate friend of the Irish composers Michael William Balfe and William Vincent Wallace. Among his pupils were two other prominent Irish composers: Charles Villiers Stanfordand Robert Prescott Stewart.

In 1880, R M Levey Senior co-authored the Annals of the Theatre Royal, Dublin with John O’Rorke, whose father had been a ’cellist with the orchestra from 1823. This book was used by Joyce as a source for more than two dozen bits of theatrical trivia in Finnegans Wake. Nine of these occur in the opening pages of Chapter I.3, which we are currently analysing.

  • Liffey Identifying Langley with Dublin’s River Liffey confirms the female element in her wife Langley. If Langley is Kate, “she” is also ALP.

Advertisements for Paganini Redivivus

  • a redivivus of paganinism Richard Michael Levey Junior, violin virtuoso and son of the prominent Musical Director of the Theatre Royal, was popularly known as Paganini Redivivus (“Paganini Restored to Life”), in honour of the famous Italian virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. In London, in the early 1860s, Levey had played the title role in an entertainment called The Temptation of Paganini, in which the virtuoso’s daemon appeared as a Pepper’s Ghost. Other sources refer to The Demon of Paganini and Paganini’s Ghost, which may have been alternative names for the same skit. Levey subsequently adopted Paganini Redivivus as his stage name and gave numerous concerts and recitals under this name between 1865 and 1885. His twin brother, W C Levey, often accompanied him on the pianoforte during recitals.

  • recidivist One who relapses into crime—a common occurrence in a circular work like Finnegans Wake.

  • Paganinism In the early 19th century, the term Paganinism was coined to describe the mania for the man and his music. In a letter addressed to her sister in 1831, the English socialite Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville, wrote:

Paganini is the idée dominante just now. They say there is a new religion called Paganinism, and talk nonsense, when exaltés. (Granville 93)

Obviously, the name of this new religion was a play on the old religion paganism, which leads us to our next gloss.

Saint Columba Converting the Picts

  • paganism Colmcille is known as the Apostle to the Picts. After he emigrated to Iona, he became a missionary to the pagan Picts of northern Britain. In the opening episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus recalls the “new paganism” promoted by the Scottish writer William Sharp. Sharp also wrote under the feminine pseudonym Fiona Macleod, which makes his appearance here particularly appropriate.

  • volunteer Vousden Valentine Vousden was a multi-talented popular entertainer of the 19th century. He was born on Moore Street, Dublin, in 1821. Vousden is best known for his song The Irish Jaunting Car, which he wrote in the 1850s, shortly after Queen Victoria visited Ireland and, it seems, rode in a jaunting car. This is an Irish form of the sprung cart, a light, horse-drawn, two-wheeled open vehicle, with seats placed lengthwise, so that the passengers ride either back to back (outside jaunting car) or face to face (inside jaunting car). It was a popular mode of transport in the 19th century. The Irish jaunting car will soon make a prominent appearance in this chapter of Finnegans Wake (RFW 043.03). A later entertainer, William McNevin, adopted the stage name Val Vousden in honour of the 19th-century performer.

The Fourth Parenthesis

The fourth and final passage in parentheses does not appear to have any connection with Colmcille. As it is a subordinate relative clause, whose antecedent is hobo, it could just as easily have been marked off with commas. But Joyce chose to place it between parentheses. Why?

(who possessed a large amount of the humoresque) (RFW 040.36)

  • humoresque This is another musical term, generally denoting a light-hearted composition. It was first used in this sense—in the German form Humoreske—by Robert Schumann in 1839 for his Op 20, a suite of seven movements for piano. The musical allusion is appropriate, considering the proximity of Valentine Vousden, R M Levey and Paganini, not to mention Hosty’s Rann.

  • humorous The modern sense of funny or provoking laughter may not be the dominant one intended here. The word originally referred to the bodily humours, which were thought to control a person’s mood and health—both physical and mental. Langley’s disappearance may be the result of his moodiness or ill-humour, rather than mere caprice or his sense of humour. But note the occurrence of funster’s in the next line.

Niccolò Paganini

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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