James Joyce at the Victoria Palace Hotel

 

In Paris for Bloomsday, Lisa and I visited one of the key locations of Finnegans Wake, the Victoria Palace Hotel, which has been completely renovated since we were last here. It's nice that the hotel's website draws attention to Joyce's stay here.

'Can you hear whispers of verses by James Joyce? The poet’s words echo gently around the Victoria Palace like a soft breeze brushing the hotel’s majestic façade, which dates back to 1913.'

It's curious that they call him a poet rather than a novelist, though he did write one poem here, 'A Prayer', the final poem in Pomes Pennyeach.  

The Joyces stayed here five times between August 1923 and June 1925, and Joyce wrote the Mamalujo episode and most of books one and three of Finnegans Wake here.  

The hotel is near Montparnasse, and within walking distance of his favourite restaurant of the 1920s, Les Trianons,  Edgar Quinet's grave in the cemetery, and Louis Borsch's eye clinic where he had five operations on his left eye.

It was while he was staying here that he learned that Bloomsday was being celebrated:

'There is a group of people who observe what they call Bloom's day – 16 June. They sent me hortensias, white and blue, dyed. I have to convince myself that I wrote that book. I used to be able to talk intelligently about it.'

Joyce to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 27 June 1924

The Victoria Palace Hotel is Joyce's only Paris address to be mentioned, by its initials, in Finnegans Wake. In the Earwicker sequence, written in the hotel, Joyce describes a rumour that HCE has come to a violent end:

'Aerials buzzed to coastal listeners of an oertax bror collector's budget, fullybigs, sporran, tie, tuft, tabard and bloody antichill cloak, its tailor's (Baernfather's) tab reading V.P.H., found nigh Scaldbrothar's Hole, and divers shivered to think what kaind of beast, wolves, croppis's or fourpenny friars, had devoured him.' 99.13

The initials also reappear in a footnote and a marginal comment  in the lessons chapter:

'V for wadlock, P for shift, H for Lona the Konkubine.'  284.F6

'Vive Paco Hunter'!   286.L1

The hotel's James bar

Joyce, who moved into the hotel after his holiday in Bognor Regis, saw the place as a temporary base while flat hunting. 

'We left London on Thursday and here we are (homeless, ragged and tanned) running about and looking for a flat.'  To T.S.Eliot 15 August 1923

In his letters, he repeatedly complained about the noise of the hotel, which was full of Americans, and the poor light. 

There's a letter to Valery Larbaud of February 1924, in which he mockingly gives his address as 'S.James Palace, Dungeon 76, Luteatia.'  

Lutetia was the Roman name for Paris. Perhaps he was in room 76?

'The wild hunt still continues in the Paris jungle, stampede of omnibuses and trumpets of taxi elephants etc and in this caravanserai peopled by American loudspeakers I compose ridiculous prose writing on a green suitcase which I bought in Bognor. I want to get as many sketches done or get as many boring parties at work as possible before removal somewhere or anywhere after which I suppose I shall do the same again till I am hauled off to the eye clinic.'  To Harriet Shaw Weaver, 17 October 1923

'I am gathering my scattered wits for a different essay and have made plans and jigsaw puzzles in this penumbra of a room'.  To HSW 23 October 1923

'O dear me! What sins did I commit in my last incarnation to be in this hole?'  To Robert McAlmon, 18 February 1924

'I have been working ten hours a day in semi-dark for the past seven months.' To HSW 6 April 1924

'I am very fatigued, in sight of the operating table and half stupified by the gloom, noise, expense and uncertainty in which I try to work.' To HSW 13 May 1924

'It is impossible to work any longer in this hotel. However, I send you a short poem – the first I have written for six years,' To Valery Larbaud, 22 May 1924

'The weather became very hot a few days ago and at once all the windows in the courtyard were flung open and the inmates leaned on the sills talking, laughing, arguing in all tongues, dominated by two American ladies who discussed loudly selfconsciousness. I endured for four days, then I went out, bought another case, packed and put to storage all my books, gathered my MSS including Shawn...which I could not write out again, made a parcel of them and telephoned to Miss Beach who came and removed them hastily so that there is as much literature now in my room as in your office. I was to have gone on writing a little longer but the nine months' labour was quite enough for me. In this atmosphere I found my memory, vision, power of attention all gradually getting worse yet I knew if the books or even the MSS and notebooks were here I would go on. So I stopped.'  To HSW 24 May 1924

I was curious to see if the hotel still has a courtyard.  The friendly concierge invited us to look around.

Here it is!  Imagine the inmates leaning over these balconies talking loudly about selfconsciousness.

Despite Joyce's grumbling about the hotel, this was the most creative period of his Paris years.  Listening to the inmates of the Victoria Palace Hotel 'arguing in all tongues' might have been just what he needed.

'I don't like being shut up. When I am working I like to hear noise going on around me – the noise of life.'
                            James Joyce to Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, p.105

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Guidebook Narration in Finnegans Wake

'The Rue Reaumur, to the left of the church, leads us back to the Rue de Turbigo, about 500 yds. from the Place de la Republique.'

Baedeker's Paris and its Environs, 1900 

'riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.'

The opening sentence of Finnegans Wake introduces us to a guidebook narrator, who uses first person plural pronouns and the formal word 'environs'. I think I've only seen this word used in guidebooks.  It was familiar to readers of Baedeker's - the most popular guidebooks in Joyce's day. 

Danis Rose discovered that Joyce also had a copy of Dillon Cosgrave's North Dublin: City and Environs (1909), which he used for information about Chapelizod.

Joyce told Cyril Connolly that the book's opening was 'an air photograph of Irish history, a celebration of the dim past of Dublin.' This opening chapter is written like a guidebook, in which we are taken on a tour of this dim past.

Our guide points out the picturesque sights to look at, and gives us useful practical information.

sightseeing. 

'a proudseye view is enjoyable of our mounding's mass, now Wallinstone's national museum, with, in some greenish distance, the charmful waterloose country... Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free...For her passkey supply to the janitrix Kathe.' 7.36

The guide is also responding to the sights we see, alongside us. Coming out of the stuffy Museyroom, the narrator breathes a sigh of relief:

'Phew!

What a warm time we were in there but how keling is here the airabouts!' 10.24

Later the guide exclaims:

'So This Is Dyoublong?
Hush! Caution! Echoland!
How charmingly exquisite!'  13.04

 

I feel like this guide is standing beside me, like Vergil beside Dante in The Inferno.

I'm also reminded of my favourite of all guidebooks, J.G.Links' Venice for Pleasure, 1984. 

'Now we really can take our coffee, and after it we can start our walk. I promise to write as little as possible while we are walking; nothing is worse than having to read a guide book while walking and looking round, all at the same time'

'We may well be asked on our return what we thought of these Tintorettos and it would be unthinkable to visit Venice without seeing them. Never let it be said that I suggested such a thing. I only point out that the stairs are steep, the pictures, though wonderful, profuse and that they will still be there tomorrow, and, indeed, on our next visit to Venice.'

J.G.Links, Venice for Pleasure

Joyce uses this 'we' narrative form throughout the first five chapters of Finnegans Wake.  He came up with it first while writing chapter 2.

'...concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden’s occupational agnomen (we are back in the presurnames prodromarith period, of course just when enos chalked halltraps) and discarding once for all those theories from older sources which would link him back with such pivotal ancestors as the Glues, the Gravys, the Northeasts, the Ankers and the Earwickers of Sidles- ham in the Hundred of Manhood...' 30.02

Note that 'we are back'. 

Peter Timmerman discovered that this passage was itself inspired by Joyce reading the Ward Lock Guide to Bognor Regis, while on holiday there in 1923. It was here that he first came across the name 'Earwicker'.  

'Sidlesham Church is an Early English structure worthy of notice, and an examination of the surrounding tombstones should not be omitted if any interest is felt in deciphering curious names, striking examples being Earwicker, Glue, Gravy, Boniface, Anker, and Northeast.'

It's easy to find cheap second hand copies of this online. This is mine. There are six on ebay right now.

The narrator in chapters 2 to 5 is less of a guidebook writer than an historian, investigating and presenting contradictory accounts of the distant past. 

'Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude...'  57.16  

In the fifth chapter, the narrator becomes various kinds of literary critic and then an art historian, using a voice modelled on Sir Edward Sullivan's description of the Book of Kells.    

In the five early chapters, Joyce is more concerned with helping and encouraging the reader than in any other part of the book. 

'Now, patience; and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience.' 108.08

'You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of a beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means. Gee up, girly! 112.03

When Joyce wrote the early Earwicker chapters, he did not yet have a stable cast of characters. This 'we' narrator gave him and the reader a point of stability. Once he had created a family for HCE, he could hand over the narrative voice to Shem and Shaun and other characters.  They take over the narration in chapters 6-8.

When we move forward to Book Two, we switch to third person narration and we move from descriptions of past events to the present. 

'The youngly delightsome frilles-in-pleyurs are now showen...drawens up consociately at the hinder sight of their commoner guardian.' 224.22

Rather than having a controlling narrator, this chapter uses what Hugh Kenner in Joyce's Voices called the 'Uncle Charles principle', where characters being discussed in the third person take control of the narrative voice. 

Joyce briefly brings back the 'we' narrative voice in the same chapter's Phoenix Park nocturne:

'It darkles (tinct, tint), all this our funnaminal world....We are circumveiloped by obscuritas.' 244.13

The passage ends with the guide recommending the warm welcome at HCE's pub, the Mullingar Inn in Chapelizod: 

'And if you wand to Livmouth, wenderer, while Jempson's weed decks Jacqueson's Island, here lurks, bar hellpellhullpullthebell, none iron welcome.... here's dapplebellied mugs and troublebedded rooms and sawdust strown in expectoration. And, for ratification by specification of your information, Mr Knight, tuntapster, buttles; his alefru's up to his hip. And Watsy Lyke sees after all rinsings and don't omiss Kate, homeswab homely, put in with the bricks.' 245.23

The guidebook 'we' voice returns in the introductory section of the childrens' lessons chapter, locating the reader:

'As we there are where are we are we there....' 260.01

For the next few pages, our guide leads us again to the pub, which is in the barony of Castleknock.

Approach to lead our passage.

This bridge is upper.

Cross!

Thus come to castle.

Knock!  262.03 

This is followed by a guidebook description of the beauties of Chapelizod, where we readers/ tourists will sojourn (sojournemus):

'In theses places sojournemus, where Eblinn water, leased of carr and fen, leaving amont her shoals and salmonbrowses, whom inshore breezes woo with freshets, windeth to her broads....By this riverside, on our sunnybank, how buona the vista, by Santa Rosa! A field of May, the very vale of Spring. Orchards here are lodged: sainted lawrels evremberried: you have a hoig view ashwald: a glen of marrons and of thorns: Gleannaulinn, Ardeevin: purty glint of plaising height. This Norman court at boundary of the ville, yon creepered tower of a church of Ereland, meet for true saints in worshipful assemblage...'  264.16

Riverside House, Sunnybank, Santa Rosa, Mayfield House, Springvale House, Orchard Lodge, St Laurence Lodge, Ardeevin, Norman Court, Glenmaroon House, Glenthorn Villa, Glenaulin, and Boundary Villa are all names of grand houses in Chapelizod, which Joyce found in Thom's Dublin Directory. Glenmaroon House was the mansion of Arthur Guinness and Glenaulin was home to T.M.Healy, the enemy of Parnell. You can still find most of these places today. Santa Rosa certainly does have a buona vista! 

You can download Thom's from the excellent Joycetools. Here's the page Joyce scoured for suggestive house names, which you can find listed in fweet. He got his 'creepered tower' from the description of the Church 'with an ivied tower'.

After the introductory guidebook section, the lessons chapter goes back to past tense third person narration, which continues in the following pub chapter. 

Book Three introduces a new 'I' voice, like a medieval dream poem narrator:

'And as I was jogging along in a dream as dozing I was dawdling, arrah, methought broadtone was heard and the creepers and the gliders and flivvers of the earth breath and the dancetongues of the woodfires and the hummers in their ground all vociferated echoating: Shaun! Shaun! Post the post!'   404.04

Joyce brought the 'we' narrator fully back in the final book, written in 1938 as a companion to the opening guidebook chapter, written 11 years earlier. This 'we' is now much bigger than a guidebook narrator - it's the collective voice of sleeping humanity moving towards dawn.

'Passing. One. We are passing. Two. From sleep we are passing. Three. Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing. Four. Come, hours, be ours!' 608.34

This 'we' also includes the reader looking back on the experience of getting through this mighty odd book.

'Have we cherished expectations? Are we for liberty of perusiveness?...' 614.23