04 November 2022

Chee Chee Cheers for Upkingbilly

William III, Oliver Cromwell, The Duke of Wellington (RFW 043.28-043.33)

In our ongoing study of Chapter I.3, the Humphriad II, in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, we are currently examining the Cad’s side of the story. This is essentially a rehash of the infamous encounter between HCE and the Cad with a Pipe in the Phoenix Park. In the last article, we saw how a jarvey, who was recounting the tale to the passengers of his jaunting car, used his horsewhip to point out the Wellington Memorial. This is a typical Viconian example of history repeating itself. In the previous chapter, during the original encounter, HCE did something similar:

In greater support of his word ... the flaxen Gygas tapped his chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect above the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happenence, with one Berlin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge ... pointed at an angle of thirtytwo degrees towards his duc de Fer’s overgrown milestone as the fellow to his gage and after a readypresent pause averred with solemn emotion’s fire: (RFW 028.36-029.07)

The paragraph we are now studying is—among other things—a variation on the words HCE stuttered on that occasion:

Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my no-nationwide hotel and creamery establishments which for the honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woowoo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to make my hoath to my dear sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon the Open Bible and befu before the Great Taskmaster’s eye (I lift my hat!) and in the Presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications. (RFW 029.07-19)

A Jaunting Car by the Wellington Memorial in the Phoenix Park

A few details should be noted:

  • HCE’s stutter—his hesitancy of speech, which is always a sign of his guilty conscience.

  • I lift my hat In the last paragraph, it was the Cad who raised his hat in deference to HCE. This raising of the hat will also be echoed on the following page.

These details are prominent in the present paragraph. Several other details will reappear in the following two paragraphs (RFW 043.34-044.20), so we will be returning to this passage in future articles.

First-Draft Version

Nothing in Joyce’s first draft of this passage resembles the final published version of this short paragraph. Instead, the paragraph that ends with the passage about spending a whole half hour in Havana is followed by a short paragraph that eventually became the one on RFW 044 beginning And, Cod, says he. Nor is the present paragraph in the early version of this chapter that was published by Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul in their literary journal transition in June 1927. It only made its first appearance at what Rose & O’Hanlon refer to as Draft Level 8, which Joyce made around 1930-33. There is little difference between that draft and the final published version:

Chee chee cheers for up Kingbilly and crow cru cromwell down a boo. Girls, Hup, boys, and hat him! See! Oilbeam they’re lost we’ve found rerembrandtses; their hours to date link link these heirs to morra but wowhere are those yours of Yestheirsdays? Farseeingetherich & Poolannagadherer, Carachthecuss & his Ann van Vocht. D.e.e.d? Edned, ended or sleeping soundlessly? Favour with your tongues! Intendite! (James Joyce Digital Archive)

transition (Issue 3, June 1927, Page 35)

The pairs of opposites that we noted in the preceding paragraph are also in evidence here:

  • cheers ... boo

  • up ... down

  • Girls ... boys

  • See! ... Intendite! (Medieval Latin: intendite, hear!)

  • lost ... found

  • to date ... to morra ... Yestheirsdays (today ... tomorrow ... yesterday)

  • wo ... Yes (no ... yes)

  • rich ... poor

As is pointed out in FWEET, this paragraph may be summed up thus:

remembrances of yesterday — listen! (FWEET)

Historical Portraits

In these few lines we are presented with portraits of at least half a dozen historical figures.

  • Chee chee cheers HCE’s guilty stutter is obvious, but this phrase also conceals three cheers. In Finnegans Wake, the curtain goes up on the love-life of HCE and ALP with the words Three quarks (RFW 297.01) and is later rung down with the words Tiers, tiers and tiers (459.40). Remember that in the eyes of many Christian theologians the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was one of concupiscence, the eating of the Forbidden Fruit being a symbolic representation of sexual deviance. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the Primal Scene (German: Urszene) is the phenomenon of the child watching his parents copulate. In Finnegans Wake, HCE’s Original Sin is equated with Freud’s Primal Scene (Norris 45, 143 n5).

The Temptation and Fall of Eve

  • Anglo-Indian: Chee-Chee, an ethnic slur against an Anglo-Indian or Eurasian half-caste; also a pejorative reference to the minced English spoken with a South Asian accent by Eurasians in India. Arthur Wellesley, the future 1st Duke of Wellington, began his military career in India.

  • Upkingbilly and crow cru cramwells Downaboo! King Billy is still the popular name in Ireland for William III of Orange, the victor of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Cromwell also made a memorable mark on Irish history. His notorious cruelty explains cru, but why cram-? There is a surname Cramwell. It was introduced into England by the Normans in 1066, and later some members of the family settled in Ireland. Perhaps in the dreamworld of Finnegans Wake the dreaded name of Cromwell is simply being disguised—the Freudian censorship of dream displacement at work (Freud 283-288).

  • Irish: Crom Cruach, a pagan god of ancient Ireland, propitiated by human sacrifice.

  • Irish: Crom abú! Up Crom! Victory to Crom! the war cry of the Fitzgeralds.

  • crow The first occurrence of the Three-Cheers Motif, just after the Museyroom Episode (RFW 009.11-13), featured The three of crows.

  • Downaboo Not just down with! and boo! but also the whimsical Irish expression: An Dún abú!, Up Down!, referring to County Down.

Up, Guards, and at ’Em!

  • Hup, boys, and hat him! Up, Guards, and at ’em! This command, allegedly given by Wellington to the 1st Foot Guards at a crucial point in the Battle of Waterloo, initiated the French rout. The actual words, as later reported by Captain Robert Batty of the Foot Guards, were Up, Guards, and at them again (Clarke 280), but Wellington himself could not recall what he had said. About one month after the battle, the 1st Foot Guards were renamed the Grenadier Guards, after Napoleon’s Mounted Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, who were disbanded shortly after their last stand at Waterloo.

  • hat him! We have already noted the detail of the Cad tipping his hat to HCE (043.26). HCE also lifted his hat at a crucial moment during the original encounter in the Park (RFW 029.14).

  • Oilbeam Albeit. After the reference to Wellington, does this conceal a reference to Napoleon, who was called Lipoleum in the Museyroom episode. Greek: λίπος [lipos], fat, lard, tallow, and Latin: oleum, oil, olive oil. And don’t forget the mysterious oilcloth flure (linoleum?) in the Prankquean episode.

  • Oilbeam they’re lost we’ve found rerembrandtsers The sense seems to be that old oil paintings of HCE’s ancestors have faded over the years, but we still have fond remembrances of them. Rembrandt was famous for his portraits in oil—especially self-portraits. HCE is identified with his ancestors and his descendants, as history endlessly repeats itself. I am also reminded of the phrase from the opening chapter: a fadograph of a yestern scene (RFW 006.20).

Rembrandt van Rijn

  • rerembrandtsers Remembrancer was a title borne by various officials of the British Exchequer or of the City of London. In Ireland, the Exchequer of Ireland was also staffed by remembrancers. Perhaps the sense is: Despite the passage of time and the lapse of memory, we have found remembrancers among our remote ancestors. Originally, the word remembrancer simply meant reminder. The persistence of memory is an abiding theme in all of Joyce’s works.

  • hours to date ... wowhere The familiar Time|Space Motif. In Finnegans Wake, time & space comprise another pair of Shem|Shaun opposites, with Einstein’s (or Minkowski’s) spacetime representing the Oedipal Figure. German: wo, where and wowhere conceal the spatial here as well as the obvious nowhere. Note how the spatial no-where also conceals the temporal-spatial now-here. In the original edition, the presence of the Time|Space Motif was clearer: their hours to date link these heirs to here ...

  • but wowhere are those yours of Yesthersdays? François Villon, Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis: Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? [The Ballad of Dead Ladies: But where are the snows of yester-year? (translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti).]

  • Yestherdays Rose & O’Hanlon’s emendation of the first edition’s Yesterdays brings Swift’s Stella (Esther Johnson) & Vanessa (Esther Vanhomrigh) into the mix. They represent the victims of HCE’s Original Sin in the Park—identified with his daughter Issy.

Stella & Vanessa

HCE and ALP

The next passage names four people, but the reference is actually to HCE and ALP, the Adam and Eve whose coupling begat all those ancestors|descendants:

Farseeingetherich and Poolaulwoman, Charachthercuss and his Ann van Vogt. (RFW 043.31-32)

The comma after Poolaulwoman was missing in the first edition. John Gordon noted its absence:

There should probably be a pause between these names. Joyce is parsimonious with his commas. (Gordon 54.4)

  • Farseeingetherich Vercingetorix (pronounced wer-king-GET-or-ix) was the leader of the Gallic revolt against Julius Caesar. He was finally defeated by Caesar at the Battle of Alesia in 52 BCE. Six years later, he was paraded and ritually sacrificed in the first of Caesar’s four triumphs.

Vercingetorix Casts His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar

  • German: Fernsehgerät, television set (literally far-see device), echoing Television kills telephony in brothers’ broil on the previous page.

  • Farsee...r John Gordon notes that this name reflects the etymology of Prometheus, the character in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gifted it to mankind: fore-seer. I’m not so sure.

  • -rich This forms a pair of opposites with the following Pool- (poor, the L/R Interchange).

  • -ich German: ich, I. VI.B.32.200e: Farseengetter ich. Joyce compiled this notebook in May-October 1930. Once again, HCE or the Cad (they are essentially the same) is identifying himself with his ancestors.

  • Poolaulwoman Poor Old Woman, a poetic personification of Ireland.

  • Characthercuss Caractacus was the King of the Catuvellauni, a British tribe which resisted the Roman Conquest of Britain under Claudius. Like Vercingetorix, he was eventually defeated and taken to Rome as a captive—presumably to be ritually sacrificed during a triumph. Unlike his Gallic predecessor, however, he was spared and allowed to live out his life in Rome.

Caractacus at the Tribunal of Claudius at Rome

  • Ann van Vogt Irish: Seanbhean Bhocht, Poor Old Woman. The Irish is traditionally Anglicized as The Shan Van Vocht, which was also the name of a nationalist ballad, a novel and a newspaper. Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson “translate” Charachthercuss and his Ann van Vogt as the Magistrate’s daughter Anne (Campbell & Robinson 67). In the opening lines of this chapter, there were allusions to his old Shanvocht and Caraculacticors, between which the word Vergobretas occurred. A vergobret was a magistrate in ancient Gaul. Ann is, of course, HCE’s wife ALP: Anna Livia Plurabelle.

  • Vogt Lorenz Juhl Vogt, Dublin som Norsk By [Dublin as a Norse City], H Aschehoug & Co, Christiania (1896). Joyce listed this book in VI.B.7:177a. The author was a Norwegian historian and politician.

  • German: Vogt, steward, governor, bailiff, reeve—not quite a remembrancer, or a magistrate, but a similar office.

  • Dutch: vocht, fluid, liquid, moisture, which perhaps refers to the micturition of the two girls in the foliage, as HCE spies on them (RFW 006.40 ff).

  • D.e.e.d Dead: Rossetti’s translation of Villon’s Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis had the title The Ballad of Dead Ladies. Note that this spelling brings the word one letter closer to Eden, the scene of HCE’s Original Scene, the deed that brought death into the world.

  • Edned, ended E-D ‛n’ E-D? These two anagrams rearrange the letters from D.e.e.d and add an n. I presume Eden is also in there somewhere. The sense is: Paradise Lost.

  • sleeping soundlessly sound asleep, meaning fast asleep, is the usual expression. Here sound means deep, heavy, profound, as well as unbroken, undisturbed (OED 468). This form of the word is related to the German: gesund, healthy. The word sound meaning noise is of a different etymology but is also relevant here.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  • Latin: favete linguis, favour with your tongues, be propitious with your tongues. During ancient Roman religious ceremonies, this phrase was used proverbially to enjoin silence, lest a careless word have ominous consequences: Keep sacred silence. Joyce’s source was probably his beloved Horace, Odes 3:1:2, though the phrase was also used in various forms by Cicero, Ovid, Seneca and Pliny the Elder.

  • Medieval Latin: Intendite! Hear!, Pay attention! In the first chapter, we were similarly enjoined to silence: Hush! Caution! Echoland! (RFW 010.36). Will what we heard on that occasion be relevant to the following paragraph?

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

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