Complete Works of James Joyce (347 page)
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Authors: Unknown
1903
Paris, Sunday.
In the Rue d’Anjou, not far from the Church of the Madeleine, is M. Henri Fournier place of business. ‘Paris-Automobile’ — - a company of which M. Fournier is the manager — has its headquarters there. Inside the gateway is a big square court, roofed over, and on the floor of the court and on great shelves extending from the floor to the roof are ranged motor-cars of all sizes, shapes, and colours. In the afternoon this court is full of noises — the voices of workmen, the voices of buyers talking in half-a-dozen languages, the ringing of telephone bells, the horns sounded by the ‘chauffeurs’ as the cars come in and go out — - and it is almost impossible to see M. Fournier unless one is prepared to wait two or three hours for one turn. But the buyers of ‘autos’ are, in one sense, people of leisure. The morning, however, is more favourable, and yesterday morning, after two failures, I succeeded in seeing M. Fournier.
M. Fournier is a slim, active-looking young man, with dark reddish hair. Early as the hour was our interview was now and again broken in upon by the importunate telephone.
‘You are one of the competitors for the Gordon-Bennett Cup, M. Fournier?’
‘Yes, I am one of the three selected to represent France.’
‘Andyou are also a competitor, are you not, for the Madrid prize?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which of the races comes first — the Irish race or the Madrid race?”The Madrid race. It takes place early in May, while the race for the International Cup does not take place till July.”I suppose that you are preparing actively for your races?”Well, I have just returned from a tour to Monte Carlo and Nice.”On your racing machine?”No, on a machine of smaller power.’
‘Have you determined what machine you will ride in thelrishrace?”Practically.’
‘May I ask the name of it — is it a Mercedes?’
‘No, a Mors.’
‘And its horse-power?’
‘Eighty.’
‘And on this machine you can travel at a rate of ?’
‘You mean its highest speed?”Yes.’
‘Its highest speed would be a hundred and forty kilometres an hour.’
‘But you will not go at that rate all the time during the race?”Oh, no. Of course its average speed for the race would be lower than that.’
‘An average speed of how much?’
‘Its average speed would be a hundred kilometres an hour, perhaps a little more than that, something between a hundred and a hundred and ten kilometres an hour.’
‘A kilometre is about a half-mile, is it not?’
‘More than that, I should think. There are how many yards in your mile?’
‘Seventeen hundred and sixty, if I am right.’’
‘Then your half-mile has eight hundred and eighty yards. Our kilometre is just equal to eleven hundred yards.’
‘Let me see. Then your top speed is nearly eighty-six miles an hour, and your average speed is sixty-one miles an hour?’
‘I suppose so, if we calculate properly.’
‘It is an appalling pace! It is enough to burn our roads. I suppose you have seen the roads you are to travel?’
‘No.’
‘No? You don’t know the course, then?’
‘I know it slightly. I know it, that is, from some sketches that were given of it in the Paris newspapers.’
‘But, surely, you will want a better knowledge than that?’
‘Oh, certainly. In fact, before the month is over, I intend to go to Ireland to inspect the course. Perhaps I shall go in three weeks’ time.’
‘Will you remain any time in Ireland?’
‘After the race?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am afraid not. I should like to, but I don’t think I can.’
‘I suppose you would not like to be asked your opinion of the result?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Yet, which nation do you fear most?’
‘I fear them all — Germans, Americans, and English. They are all to be feared.’
‘And how about Mr. Edge?’
No answer.
‘He won the prize the last time, did he not?’
‘O, yes.’
‘Then he should be your most formidable opponent?’
‘O, yes .... But, you see, Mr. Edge won, of course, but... a man who was last of all, and had no chance of winning might win if the other machines broke.’
Whatever way one looks at this statement it appears difficult to challenge its truth.
1903
This book is compiled from the first three books of the Ethics, and the tenth book, with some extracts from the Politics. Unfortunately, the compilation is not a complete treatise on education, nor is it even exhaustive so far as it goes. The Ethics is seized upon by admirers and opponents alike as the weak part of the peripatetic philosophy. The modern notion of Aristotle as a biologist — a notion popular among advocates of ‘science’ — is probably less true than the ancient notion of him as a metaphysician; and it is certainly in the higher applications of his severe method that he achieves himself. His theory of education is, however, not without interest, and is subordinate to his theory of the state. Individualism, it would seem, is not easily recommended to the Greek mind, and in giving his theory of education Aristotle has endeavoured to recruit for a Greek state rather than to give a final and absolute solution to questions of the greatest interest. Consequently this book can hardly be considered a valuable addition to philosophical literature, but it has a contemporary value in view of recent developments in France, and at the present time, when the scientific specialists and the whole cohort of Materialists are cheapening the good name of philosophy, it is very useful to give heed to one who has been wisely named ‘maestro di color che sanno.’
1903
After all a pseudonym library has its advantages; to acknowledge bad literature by signature is, in a manner, to persevere in evil. ‘Valentine Caryl”s book is the story of a gypsy genius, whose monologues are eked out by accompaniments on the violin — a story told in undistinguished prose. The series in which this volume appears, the production of the book, and the scantiness of its matter have an air of pretentiousness which is ill justified by perusal.
1903
Empire building does not appear to be as successful in Northern, as it has been in Southern Africa. While his cousins are astonish- ing the Parisian public by excursions in the air M Jacques Lebaudy, the new Emperor of the Sahara, is preparing to venture into the heavier and more hazardous atmosphere of the Palais. He has been summoned to appear before M André at the suit of two sailors, Jean Marie Bourdiec and Joseph Cambrai, formerly of the
Frosquetta.
They claim 100,000 francs damages on account of the hardships and diseases which they have contracted owing to M Lebaudy’s conduct. The new emperor, it would seem, is not over-careful of the bodily welfare of his subjects. He leaves them unprovided for in a desert, bidding them wait until he returns. They are made captive by a party of natives and suffer the agonies of hunger and thirst during their captivity. They remain prisoners for nearly two months and are finally rescued by a French man-o’- war under the command of M Jaurès. One of them is subsequently an inmate of a hospital at the Havre and after a month’s treatment there is still only convalescent. Their appeals for redress have been all disregarded and now they are having recourse to law. Such is the case of the sailors for the defence of which Maître Aubin and Maître Labori have been retained. The emperor, acting through a certain Benoit, one of his officers, has entered a plea for arbitration. He considers that the case is between the French Republic and the Saharan empire and that in consequence it should be tried before a tribunal of some other national. He petitions, therefore, that the case should be submitted for judgment to England, Belgium or Holland. However the case goes (and it is plain that the peculiar circumstances attending it render it an extremely difficult one to try) it cannot be that the new empire will gain either materially or in
prestige
by its trial. The dispute, in fact, tends to reduce what was, perhaps, a colonising scheme into a commercial concern but indeed, when one considers how little the colonising spirit appeals to the French people, it is not easy to defend M Lebaudy against the accusation of faddism. The new scheme does not seem to have the State behind it; the new empire does not seem to be entering on its career under any such capable management as reared up the Southern Empire out of the Bechuanaland Commission. But, however this may be, the enterprise is certainly sufficiently novel to excite an international interest in this new candidate for nationhood and the hearing of a case, in which such singular issues are involved, will doubtless divide the attention of the Parisians with such comparatively minor topics as Réjane and
les petits oiseaux.
James A. Joyce 7 S. Peter’s Terrace Cabra, Dublin
1903
This little volume is a collection of stories dealing chiefly with Indian life. The reader will find the first five stories — the adventures of Prince Aga Mirza — the more entertaining part of the book, if he is to any extent interested in tales of Indian magic. The appeal, however, of such stories is, frankly, sensational, and we are spared the long explanations which the professional occultists use. The stories that treat of camp life are soundly seasoned with that immature brutality which is always so anxious to be mistaken for virility. But the people who regulate the demand for fiction are being day by day so restricted by the civilization they have helped to build up that they are not unlike the men of Mandeville’s time, for whom enchantments, and monsters, and deeds of prowess were so liberally purveyed.
A book written by the author of ‘The Increasing Purpose’ is sure of a kind hearing from a public which can be thankful to those who serve it well. Mr. Allen has not yet written any work of extraordinary merit, but he has written many which are, so far as they go, serious and patient interpretations of his people. Whether it be in the writer or in his theme, one cannot fail to recognize here the quality of self-reliant sanity — the very mettle (to employ the Shakespearian phrase which serves him for the title) of the pasture. The style is nearly always clean and limpid, and is at fault only where it assumes ornateness. The method is psychological, very slightly narrative, and though that epithet has been used to cover a multitude of literary sins, it can be as safely applied to Mr. Allen as
longo intervallo
to Mr. Henry James.
It is a tragedy of scandal, the story of a love affair, which is abruptly terminated by a man’s confession, but which is renewed again years later when it has passed through the trials which the world proposes to such as would renew any association and so offer offence to time and change. This story is surrounded with two or three other love affairs, all more or less conventional. But the characterization is often very original — as in the case of old Mrs. Conyers — and the general current of the book arrests the reader by its suggestion of an eager lively race working out its destiny among other races under the influence of some vague pantheistic spirit which is at times strangely mournful. ‘For her’, he says somewhere in a passage of great charm, ‘for her it was one of the moments when we are reminded that our lives are not in our keeping, and that whatsoever is to befall us originates in sources beyond our power. Our wills may indeed reach the length of our arms, or as far as our voices can penetrate space; but without us and within us moves one universe that saves us or ruins us only for its own purposes; and we are no more free amid its laws than the leaves of the forest are free to decide their own shapes and seasons of unfolding, to order the showers by which they are to be nourished, and the storms which shall scatter them at last.’
1903
One may have no satirical reference either to the subject of this book, or to its treatment by Mr. Pollock, in saying that this account of the Popish Plot is far more diverting than many works of fiction. Mr. Pollock, though he seems thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of the historical method, has set forth an account of the ‘Plot’ which is clear, detailed, and (so far as it is critical) liberal-minded.
By far the most interesting part of the book is the story of the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey — a murder so artistically secret that it evoked the admiration of De Quincey, a murder so little documented, yet so overwhelmed with false testimonies, that Lord Acton declared it an insoluble mystery. But justice was freely dealt out in those days of political and religious rancour, and Green and Berry suffered the last penalty for a crime of which posterity (unanimous in this one thing at least) has acquitted them.
As for those who swore against the poor wretches, Prance and Bedloe cannot be accorded the same condemnation. Prance, after all, was only lying himself out of a very awkward position, but Bedloe was a more enterprising ruffian, second only to his monstrous, moon-faced leader8 the horrible Oates. It is bewildering to read all the charges and counter-charges made in connection with the Plot, and it is with a sigh of sympathy that we read of Charles’s conduct. ‘In the middle of the confusion the King suddenly left for the races at Newmarket, scandalizing all by his indecent levity.’ Nevertheless he conducted the examination of Oates in a very skilful manner, and he described Oates very succinctly as ‘a most lying knave’.
Mr. Pollock’s treatment of those who have been accused as instigators justifies him in citing a concise phrase from Mabillon on his title page, and the reader will know how patient and scholarly this book is if he compares it with the garbled, ridiculous account set down by L’Estrange.