The Provenance of Joyce’s Haka

The Provenance of Joyce's Haka

Joyce's sister Margaret Alice (nicknamed Poppie) joined the Sisters of Mercy as Sister Mary Gertrude in 1909 and left Ireland in the same year to serve the Order in New Zealand, first in Greymouth and later at the Loreto Convent in Christchurch (where she is buried). Several scholars attempted to interview her about her favorite brother, but the only one to have published an account of such an interview is Noel Purdon, who met her on 22 August 1962 and waited more than thirty years before describing the occasion in a Sydney journal, The Independent Monthly.¹

While Purdon's article is colorful, its accuracy is open to question. His reliability is compromised almost immediately, when he claims that May Joyce "was dying . . . on June 16 1904" (4); in fact, of course, she died on 13 August 1903. I suspect that he also misrepresents the degree of contact between Poppie and Joyce, probably because she misrepresented it to him. He recalls Poppie telling him that Joyce had contacted her only once after her departure for New Zealand: "I had nothing from him but a telegram after the earthquake when he wanted me to come back" (5).² The correspondence between Joyce and Poppie, however, must have been more extensive than a single telegram. We know, for example, that she wrote him at least one letter, since Joyce told Stanislaus in 1933 that he "had a letter from Poppie. She was operated, the usual thing, I expect, but is now better" (LettersIII 288). Moreover, in response to a request from Professor R. G. Frean for information about any correspondence between Poppie and Joyce, Sister Eileen Burrell, Secretary to the Sisters of Mercy in Christchurch, wrote on 25 October 1979: "Unfortunately, from a historian's point of view, Sister Mary Gertrude asked just before her death that all letters and photos, including those received from her brother, be destroyed. You will understand that Sister's superior at that time felt that she must honour that wish of Sister Mary Gertrude."³ A brief accompanying statement by Sister Mary Patricia—the "superior" referred to by Sister Burrell—indicates that some of these "letters and photos" came from a "sister in Dublin,"⁴ but Sister Burrell's plural "those" indicates that James sent more than one telegram. (The context makes it clear that he is the "brother" referred to.)

Further evidence that Joyce and Poppie corresponded with some regularity is provided by two tributes to Sister Mary Gertrude shortly after her death in Christchurch on 1 March 1964. The Christchurch Press carried an anonymous obituary on 4 March, one paragraph of which reads as follows: "What Sister Mary Gertrude thought of the work of the genius in the family is not known, but she had a strong affection for her brother. They wrote to each other from the time she arrived in New Zealand until he died in Zurich in 1941."⁵

The second tribute appeared in The New Zealand Tablet (a Catholic weekly) exactly a month after Poppie's death.⁶ It is also unattributed, though there can be little doubt that it was drafted by the Christchurch Sisters of Mercy.⁷ It makes a more specific point about the correspondence between brother and sister: "When the All Blacks first visited Paris, James Joyce attended the games and later requested that Sister Mary Gertrude send him the Maori words with translation and music of the Haka" (38).

"The All Blacks" are the New Zealand national rugby team, so called because the players' uniform is totally black, apart from a few white embellishments. They "first visited Paris" in 1925, near the end of a highly successful tour that included games in Britain, Canada, and Australia, as well as France. They played (and beat) a French Selection at Colombes Stadium (Joyce's "Parkland" perhaps?—FW 335.07) on 11 January and then traveled to Toulouse for a test match against...