JOYCE'S
DUBLIN
109
brother was "a madman, a lunatic, a filthy-minded poseur." These, of
course, are controversial opinions, but there is a statement I cannot
let pass unchallenged. T. C. T. says: "We in Ireland close the door of
the W. C." Come, come now, T. C. T. and your alphabetical friend
D. R., you cannot expect people to believe that. Isn't the W. C. a
typically English invention, which under its own name even in foreign
countries blazes the glory of England abroad? And isn't the patriotic,
truly national technique a dock leaf at the side of a ditch?
As the passage in question has attracted some attention-it seems to
be
the only passage that certain readers thoroughly grasp--a little
anecdote of my brother may be illuminating. Shortly before the First
World War, when Carnival was still a gay tradition in Trieste, we were
invited to a party on the afternoon of Shrove Tuesday by an Italian
friend of ours, Alessandro Francini-Bruni, a Florentine journalist. Among
the Carnival games that were played, there was one called "Confession,"
in which one member of the company, chosen by lot, asks the others
questions which they are supposed to answer frankly. When it came to
Francini's turn he displayed impish ingenuity in asking questions that
were a good deal more than embarrassing. At each question my brother
gave his characteristic loud guffaw, while Signora Francini protested,
scandalized: "Ma, Sandro!"
Returning home late that evening, my brother and I were walking
on in silence in front of his wife and the children, my brother puffing
at his long
sigaro di Virginia.
Then my brother said:
"I think that sort of thing is fundamentally sane."
His conversations with me were usually disjointed. I knew at once,
of course, what he was alluding to, but I said: "What sort of thing?"
"Well, Francini ... and all that."
"Why?"
My brother puffed at his cigar for a while in silence. Then he
said: "Because it reminds people of what they would willingly forget."
To be argumentative, I replied: "I think people get many such
gentle reminders in the course of the twenty-four hours."
"Perhaps so," said my brother, "but I haven't seen many of them
in print."
Then he added grimly: "It's what they're going to get from me."
James Joyc e's Dublin
is a handsome production, excellently printed
and bound, and embellished with very fine photographs, and Patricia
Hutchins writes in a pleasant, friendly, often humorous style, but as a
study of my brother's life and background the book suffers from a too
uncritical sifting of information.
