A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (45 page)

8.3
Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
: Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey (
c
. 1474–1530), both cardinal (1515–30) and Lord Chancellor (1515–29) during the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; r. 1509–47); ultimately accused of treason due to his failure to secure the papal dispensation necessary to allow Henry to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn; died at Leicester Abbey on his way to trial.

8.10
square ditch
: ‘square’ refers not to the shape of the ditch, but to its location. The ‘square’ was the boys’ nickname for the outside lavatory behind the dormitory; the ‘ditch’ either the slate trough running across it or the cesspool for it (see
A
).

8.11
hacking chestnut
: as in the childhood game of ‘conkers’, a horse chestnut with a hole drilled in it through which a string is passed; held by the string, one chestnut is hit against another in an attempt to best the opponent by breaking his chestnut. This one has beaten forty others (either directly or by beating others which had themselves beaten others, so totalling forty).

8.17–18
Mozambique … moon
: Anderson argues that each of these ‘discoveries’ can be tied to Catholic ingenuity, Mrs Riordan’s reason for both knowing about them and passing them on to Stephen. See
A
and
G
.

8.25
lower and third lines
: see 6.18 n.

8.32
suck
: slang for a sycophant, as in one who ‘sucks up’ to another.

8.34
the prefect’s false sleeves
: the soutane has two strips of cloth with no functional use hanging down from the shoulders, as in some academic gowns.

9.13
York … Lancaster
: the two sides in the Wars of the Roses (1455–85), the dynastic struggle in England which ended with the defeat of the Yorkist Richard III and the accession of the Lancastrian Henry Tudor (Henry VII), who then united the two houses by marrying the Yorkist Edward IV’s daughter. The emblem of the House of York was the white rose, that of the House of Lancaster the red rose. Ireland supported York; Lancaster remembered.

9.18
wax
: a fit of anger.

9.21
red rose wins
: as it did historically. See 9.13 n. above.

9.26
elements
: see 6.18 n.

9.38
green rose
: we have already had one: see 5.11.

10.27
Dalkey
: village on the east coast between Dublin and Bray (where the Dedalus family lives).

10.32
higher line
: see 6.18 n.

11.3
Tullabeg
: town west of Dublin where Peter Kenny (founder of Clongowes: see 12.21 n.) also founded St Stanislaus College, which in 1885–6 merged with Clongowes. Later the site of the Jesuit Novitiate in Ireland. (Cf.
G
and
A
.)

11.6
kiss your mother
: a joke (to which Stephen is clearly not privy): Aloysius Gonzaga, one of the patron saints of youth (see 46.38–9 n.) (and of James
Augustine Aloysius Joyce) was reputed to be so intent on maintaining bodily purity that he would not even kiss (or in some accounts even look at) his own mother. Stephen’s anxiety, though, has a double source: both his outsider status (the other boys understand something he doesn’t) and the fraught question of a boy’s relationship with his mother. Both will recur in the book. The latter returns at 204.12 (and in
U
28, 199, 540).

11.21
third of grammar
: see 6.18 n.

12.21
Clongowes Wood College
: an extremely fashionable Jesuit school for boys, near Sallins, County Kildare, some miles west-south-west of Dublin; the school was founded by the Revd. Peter Kenny, SJ in 1814 and dedicated to St Aloysius Gonzaga. (See, too, 7.9 and 46.38–9 nn.)

12.28
a cod
: a joke.

13.18
Parnell was a bad man
: Parnell was so labelled, explicitly or implicitly, by English nonconformists, the Irish Catholic leadership, the English Liberal Party, and the Irish Parliamentary Party, after he was named as co-respondent in the divorce petition (2 Dec. 1889) of Captain O’Shea (one of Parnell’s political associates) against his wife Katherine (‘Kitty’) O’Shea. When the divorce was granted (Nov. 1890), a furore ensued (
F
359).

13.22–3
something in the paper about it
: the 1890–1 political repercussions of the O’Shea divorce scandal as Parnell continued to assert his leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party against considerable opposition (see 26.18 n.) were extensively reported in the press.

13.26
poetry and rhetoric
: see 6.17 n.

13.34
prayers in the chapel
: ‘The day [at Clongowes] … began around six in the morning with a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, followed later by the celebration of Mass, and ended around nine in the evening with the school assembled in chapel for night prayers’ (Sullivan, 55).

14.8
marbles
: the columns in the chapel, made of wood but painted to look like marble (
A
).

14.13
the responses
: the ritual responses of the server, minister, choir, or congregation to the words spoken by the priest who is celebrating mass.

14.14–17
O Lord … help us!
: the opening lines of the Matins in the Divine Office: ‘Matins’: one of the canonical hours at which the Divine Office was by obligation recited by all holy orders (properly a night office); ‘Divine Office’: the daily service of the Catholic breviary (book containing the service to be read for each day) (
OERD
); the second and fourth lines here are the ‘responses’.

14.22
Clane
: village a mile and a half from Clongowes; the college chapel was the parish church for Clane.

14.25
Sallins
: see 12.21 n.

14.33–6
Visit, we beseech … Amen
: the last prayer in Compline, the last of the canonical hours.

15.17–32
Was it true … cloak of a marshal
: a very local ghost story: Maximilian Ulysses, Count von Browne (1705–57), Austrian-born son of an Irish expatriate member of the Browne family who owned Clongowes Wood Castle, and a marshal in the Austrian army, was killed at the Battle of
Prague; his ghost is said to have appeared in bloodstained clothing to the servants at Clongowes on the night of his death (see
E
29).

16.4
the cars
: horse-drawn form of public transport, supplementing train services.

16.10
Bodenstown
: parish that includes Sallins, site of the grave of Wolfe Tone (see 154.24–5 n.).

16.21–2
Hill of Allen
: a 219m. high hill some 8 miles west of Sallins; not on the train route Stephen would take to go home.

16.25
pierglass
: a large mirror, originally used to fill the space between two windows.

16.30–1
marshal … magistrate
: Stephen confuses the army office of Count von Browne (‘marshal’) with the judicial office (‘magistrate’) (see 6.33 n.).

17.20
don’t spy on us
: ‘don’t tell on me’.

17.34
foxing
: now dialect or slang, ‘to fox’ means to sham (
SOED
).

18.5
Father Minister
: the vice-rector in charge of all non-academic activities.

18.8
Brother Michael
: called ‘brother’ because in the second grade (of six) of Jesuit membership: a temporal coadjutor; as such his duties would be more domestic than ecclesiastical or tutelary.

18.15
Hayfoot! Strawfoot!
: after the supposed practice of putting a piece of hay on the left foot, a piece of straw on the right foot, of an Irish recruit to teach him one from the other and how to march (
G
).

19.5
third of grammar
: see 6.18 n.

19.20
a dead mass
: a requiem mass, i.e. one specifically for someone who has died.

19.21
when Little had died
: Peter Stanislaus Little, died while a schoolboy at Clongowes, 10 December 1890, and is buried in the cemetery there (
A
).

19.23–4
cope of black and gold
: the long cloaklike vestments worn by the priest at a requiem mass are black and gold.

19.25
catafalque
: the decorated wooden framework used to support a coffin during the funeral, usually of a distinguished person (
OERD
).

19.31–8
Dingdong! … soul away
: anonymous nursery rhyme (Iona and Peter Opie,
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 34).

20.25
Athy
: town in County Kildare some 40 miles south-west of Dublin.

21.18
the liberator
: Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), known as ‘the Liberator’, Irish nationalist leader and champion of Catholic Emancipation—the lifting of restrictions on the rights of Catholics that had been in place since the seventeenth century (see 28.22 and 38.36–7 nn.). Catholics were not admitted to Parliament, for example, which meant that from the time of the Act of Union (5.23–4 n.), no Irish Catholic could represent Ireland at Westminster. His election as MP for Clare (1828) forced the hand of the British government; Catholic Emancipation was granted in 1829. He went on to establish the Repeal Association, the aim of which was to repeal the Act of
Union, was tried and convicted of sedition (1844; sentence quashed) and finally died on his way to Rome on a pilgrimage (
F
291).

21.21–2
blue coats … rabbitskin
: the earliest uniform for Clongowes boys.

21.28
legend
: the story of a saint’s life.

22.1–5
He saw the sea of waves … their harbour
: cf. Joyce’s ‘epiphany’, no. 28 (
PSW
188).

22.12
Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!
: 6 October 1891; he lay in state in Dublin City Hall, 11 October, and was buried that afternoon in Glasnevin Cemetery in north-west Dublin.

22.26
toasted boss
: ‘a kind of foot-stool with two ears, stuffed without a wooden frame. The term is childish and popular. Compare the word “hassock”’ (Joyce to Spanish translator of
Portrait
(31 Oct. 1925),
LIII
129).

23.1–2
birthday present for Queen Victoria
: imprisoned as an Irish revolutionary, he has ‘picked oakum’ at Her Majesty’s leisure, that is in an English prison: i.e. picked old rope to obtain the loose fibres which are then used for other things.

23.7–8
the Head
: Bray Head, a promontory just south of the village of Bray, itself on the coast south of Dublin.

23.25
champagne
: explosives?

23.28
jack foxes
: male foxes.

24.12–13
Bless us … Amen
: standard Catholic grace.

24.19
guinea
: one pound, one shilling; used for pricing expensive goods.

24.19
Dunn’s of D’Olier Street
: posh meat, fish, and game merchant in central Dublin.

24.22
Ally Daly
: Dublin slang: ‘the sine qua non’ (after Alice Daly, whose butter was) (Bernard Share,
Slanguage: A Dictionary of Irish Slang
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1997)).

24.23
Why … pandybat a turkey
: ‘pandybat’, from Latin
pande
, ‘stretch out!’ (
Oxford English Dictionary
): a leather strap, reinforced with whalebone, used to strike the palms of one being punished; Mr Barrett calls it a ‘turkey’ because it turns hands red, ‘Turkey red’ being the name of a brilliant and permanent red colour (
SOED
).

25.23–4
I’ll pay … pollingbooth
: the speaker suggests that the Catholic Church ought to stay out of political affairs, something the history of Ireland shows it seldom to have done. In particular, once O’Shea was granted his divorce (having implicated Parnell), various priests denounced Parnell from the pulpit (‘You cannot remain Parnellite and remain Catholic’, to quote one such). In the 1892 election 9 Parnellite and 71 anti-Parnellite candidates were elected (
F
424).

26.18
The bishops … have spoken
: they had, but most vociferously only once the Irish Parliamentary Party (‘IPP’) had acted. When the O’Shea divorce was granted (17 Nov. 1890) scandal erupted; Gladstone (whose Liberal Party had formed a coalition with the IPP) published an open letter declaring that his party would not continue this alliance if Parnell remained the IPP leader. Parnell refused to resign. In December 1890 in
Committee Room 15 of the Houses of Parliament, the IPP split: 44 against, 27 for Parnell. In the subsequent elections, Church leaders typically (if not unanimously) spoke against the Parnellites. (See preceding note and 13.18, 13.22–3 and 210.31 nn.)