A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (47 page)

38.37
benediction
: strictly, ‘Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament’: the ritual ceremony during which the celebrant exposes the Host in the monstrance to the congregation for veneration.

38.39
censer
: see 34.8 n.

39.8
first holy communion
: typically, children in the Catholic Church went through religious instruction and took their first communion at the age of 7 or 8.

39.20–1
Gentlemen … holy communion
: wholly apocryphal and given his lack of piety undoubtedly untrue.

39.29–31
decline the noun mare … plural
: nouns are ‘declined’ by stating their grammatical cases (there are six), number, and gender.
Mare
: Latin: ‘the sea’; ‘ablative’: case of noun (sometimes called the ‘adverbial case’) which indicates means (by what), agent (by whom), accompaniment (with whom), manner (how), location (where), or time (when).

40.13–15
minister … general of the jesuits
: hierarchy (from lowest to highest) of ‘officers’ in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits: see 46.34 n.), the ‘provincial’ being head of the Jesuits in a ‘province’ (here, Ireland), and the ‘general’ overall head; there is no requirement that confession be to one higher in rank.

40.25
prefect of studies
: see 36.32 n.

41.22
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
:
Macbeth
,
V
. v. 19, Macbeth on hearing of the death of Lady Macbeth, used here as tired cliché.

44.24
The senate and the Roman people declared
: after the opening of a Roman senatorial decree (Latin:
Senatus populusque Romanus
).

44.33
lent
: forty-day period preceding Easter during which various kinds of fasting and abstention may be practised; here, fish appears to have replaced meat.

45.1–2
Richmal Magnall’s Questions
: not Magnall, but Mangnall; Richmal Mangnall,
Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People
(Stockport, 1800), used to teach elementary history and geography.

45.3–4
Peter Parley’s Tales about Greece and Rome
: Stephen has conflated two titles by ‘Peter Parley’ (pseudonym of the American Samuel Griswold
Goodrich (1793–1860), who produced numerous such books for children’s education (Sullivan).

46.34
saint Ignatius Loyola
: St Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), a Spanish soldier who fought for Ferdinand and Isabella, who was wounded and left lame, though through what he considered his miraculous recovery he became devout and pious and founded in 1540 the Society of Jesus (‘the Jesuits’); the painting is symbolic: the book signifying his learning (he drew up the constitution for the Jesuits, and wrote
Spiritual Exercises
), the finger pointing to the motto, his founding of the society so dedicated (see below).

46.35–6
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
: Latin: ‘To the greater glory of God’, the motto of the Jesuits.

46.36
saint Francis Xavier
: (1506–52), the first and most famous of Loyola’s disciples, went as missionary to India and Japan; points to (the cross on) his chest because of his emphasis in his mission on the cross.

46.36–7
Lorenzo Ricci
: (1703–75), general of the Jesuits (1758), the biretta being a symbol of his office (and the mark of a cardinal).

46.37–8
prefects of the lines
: masters responsible for specific class groups at the school; clearly they too wore birettas.

46.38–9
three patrons … John Berchmans
: all young Jesuit saints (so patrons of youth and of Jesuit boys’ schools): Kostka (1550–68) walked from Vienna to Rome to join the order; Gonzaga (1568–91) died at 23 as a result of having attended plague victims; Berchmans (1599–1621) is called ‘Blessed’ by Stephen but he has recently been sanctified (1888). (See, too, 11.6 and 12.21 nn.)

47.1
Father Peter Kenny
: founder of Clongowes Wood College (see 11.3 and 12.21 nn.).

47.16–17
skull on the desk
: a
memento mori
, or reminder of one’s mortality.

49.22
Conmee
: rector of Clongowes and the name of the actual rector during Joyce’s time there: Father John Conmee, SJ (1847–1910), who was later prefect of studies at Belvedere College, Dublin, and became in 1905 Rome provincial of the Irish Jesuits; this Conmee reappears in ‘Wandering Rocks’ (
U
210–44).

49.26
obedient
: like all good Jesuits; cf. Loyola’s remarks: ‘Above all, I desire that you be most outstanding in the virtue of obedience … in true and perfect obedience, and in the abdication of your own will and judgment, I especially desire that you who serve God Our Lord in this Society, be outstanding’ (‘Epistola S. Ignatii de virtute obedientiaie’, quoted in Sullivan, 119).

49.31
Major Barton
: magistrate, high sheriff, and owner of the estate a couple of miles from Clongowes.

49.32
gallnuts
: growths produced by insects or fungus on, especially, oak trees.

CHAPTER II

50.1
black twist
: roll of tobacco in the form of a twist.

50.18
O, twine me a bower
: ballad by Thomas Crofton Croker (1798–1854): ‘O twine me a bow’r all of woodbine and roses’, etc.; music by Alexander Roche.

50.18
Blue eyes and golden hair
: Matthew C. Hodgart and Mabel P. Worthington suggest ‘Blue Eyes’ by the Irish composer James L. Molloy (1837–1909) (
Song in the Works of James Joyce
, New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Seamus Deane suggests the more likely ‘I Would Not Give My Irish Wife’ by the Young Irelander Thomas D’Arcy McGee (1825–68) (ed.,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(London: Penguin, 1993), 291).

50.19
The Groves of Blarney
: song by Richard Alfred Milliken (1767–1815): ‘the groves of Blarney, they look so charming | down by the purlings of sweet silent brooks’, etc.

50.21
Blackrock
: the family has moved from Bray (12 miles south of Dublin on the coast) to Blackrock (5 miles south of Dublin on Dublin Bay), the first move in a downward direction, though Blackrock is still a respectable address.

50.24–5
Carysfort Avenue
: in Blackrock.

51.13
athletics and politics
: a pair that had been yoked together with the founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884 and the Gaelic League in 1893, the aims of which were the re-establishment of Irish pastimes (especially sports), the Irish language, and particularly Irish (as against English) culture (see
F
446–56).

51.27
prayerbook
: book containing the forms of prayer in regular use, as well as hymns and parts of the different masses performed.

51.30–1
prayed for … happy death
: in Catholicism, those who died with venial (as opposed to mortal) sins still to expiate would go to purgatory (rather than to hell); their time there could be alleviated by the prayers of the living. To pray for God’s grace (the unmerited favour of God through which alone individuals could be saved), which would bring a ‘happy death’, would be standard practice.

51.33
Cork
: county on the south coast of Ireland, the principal city of which is also called Cork.

51.37–9
Stillorgan … Dundrum … Sandyford
: all villages within a few miles of Blackrock.

52.3
Munster
: one of the traditional four ‘provinces’ of Ireland: Ulster (north), Connacht (west), Leinster (east), and Munster (south); Cork lies in, and was the capital of, Munster whence Simon Dedalus comes.

52.12
The Count of Monte Cristo
: romantic adventure novel (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
père
(1802–70) with the typically convoluted plot of such novels: Edmon Dantes falls victim to the machinations of his enemies, is wrongfully arrested (on the eve of his wedding to Mercedes), imprisoned for fourteen years during which time Mercedes is led to believe he is dead and so marries another, escapes (having been told by a dying prisoner of the location of a vast hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo), gains the treasure, returns to avenge his enemies, which includes revealing the treachery of Mercedes’s husband; her son challenges Dantes to a duel but after her intervention Dantes spares him; her husband commits suicide but,
rather than marrying her, Dantes provides her with a cottage in Marseilles and sails off with a Greek princess whom he has previously purchased in a Constantinople slave market.

52.12
dark avenger
: Edmon Dantes.

52.15
wonderful island cave
: where the treasure lay and which Dantes used as a hideout.

52.19
Marseilles
: town on the south coast of France; see 52.12 n.

52.20–1
small whitewashed house
: Mercedes’s cottage in Marseilles.

52.30
Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes
: Dantes on being offered the same by Mercedes in her house in Paris; her son explains that this is a sign that Dantes is bent on revenge, for such men never eat or drink in the house of their enemy.

52.35
Napoleon’s plain style of dress
: at the beginning of his career Napoleon did so dress.

52.39
the castle
: one of the Martello towers on the east coast of Ireland, built during the Napoleonic wars (1803–6) to defend against possible invasion; Stephen lives in one at the opening of
Ulysses
.

53.5–9
Carrickmines … Stradbrooke
: inland village and area south of Blackrock.

54.1
Rock Road
: one of the connected roads that runs along the coast all the way from Bray to Dublin, this part in Blackrock.

54.22
caravans
: covered horse-drawn carriages; here clearly used as removal vans.

54.29
Merrion Road
: continues Rock Road in the direction of Dublin (see 54.1 n.).

55.19
neighbouring square
: Mountjoy Square in the north of Dublin off which runs the large Gardiner Street.

55.22
customhouse
: at the end of Gardiner Street, on the north bank of the River Liffey which runs west to east through the centre of Dublin; completed in 1791, the impressive Custom House held the custom and excise tax offices, the Board of Public Works, and the Poor Law Commission.

56.9
japanned
: covered with hard black varnish (originally from Japan).

56.13
Mabel Hunter
: may have been a real music-hall performer (see
G
).

56.25
stone of coal
: a stone’s weight (14 lbs.) of coal.

56.30–57.13
He was sitting … Josephine … Stephen
: cf. Joyce’s ‘epiphany’, no. 5 (
PSW
165).

57.15
Harold’s Cross
: suburb in the south-south-west part of Dublin.

57.33–58.22
the last tram … he did neither
: cf. Joyce’s third ‘epiphany’ (
PSW
163) and 187.4–11

58.27
emerald exercise
: an emerald-green exercise book.

58.28
A.M.D.G
. abbreviation of the Latin phrase
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
: ‘For the greater glory of God’: Jesuit motto, often put by students at the opening of essays.

58.31
Lord Byron
: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), poet, wrote such love poems in his early career; he was considered by Victorians as scandalous because of his notorious private life and his irreverent irony, particularly that directed at Church and State.

58.34
Bray
: see 23.7–8 n.

58.36–7
second moiety notices
: ‘moiety’: half; so notices for tax owed for the second half of the year.

59.15
L.D.S
.: abbreviation of the Latin phrase
Laus Deo Semper
: ‘Praise to God Always’, Jesuit motto, often put at the end of essays; see 58.28 n. and e.g. James Joyce, ‘Trust Not Appearances’ (?1896) (
CW
15, 16 and
KB
3).

59.26
him
: see 49.22 n.

59.29
Belvedere
: Belvedere College, Jesuit boys’ day school (founded 1841) in north-east Dublin, not quite as fashionable as Clongowes Wood College.

59.30–1
provincial of the order
: see 40.13–15 and 49.22 nn; again, real historical time does not match fictional time; the ‘real’ Conmee did not become ‘provincial’ until 1905.

59.32
christian brothers
: a lay teaching order of the Catholic Church, its members being bound only by temporary vows; here the Irish Christian Brothers (founded 1802), who provided education for those who could not pay; so, such an education was less fashionable than one provided by the Jesuits.