Before Daybreak: "After the Race" and the Origins of Joyce's Art

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Introduction 1. This particular campaign had direct impact on the Joyce household, since Stanislaus worked at Telfords, the Dublin organ builders (JJII 43). (This is why Harry Hill, Eveline’s less-favored brother, is “in the church decorating business” [D 38.8].) 2. For the typesettings of this story in the Irish Homestead, in the 1910 proofs, and in the 1914 edition, see volumes 3–5 in the James Joyce Archive, edited by Hans Walter Gabler (vol. 3) and by Michael Groden (vols. 4, 5) (New York: Garland, 1977–78). Gabler’s collation of these texts in the Norton edition of Dubliners has a few omissions (32–38). It should be supplemented by these five emendations: D 47.30: for form’ sake] for form’s sake IH D 48.9–10: Play ran very high and] Play ran very high IH D 48.25: They began then] then absent IH D 48.27: He knew] Jimmy knew IH D 48.33:—Daybreak, gentlemen] NO PARAGRAPH IH. 3. As the organ of the cooperative movement among Irish dairy farmers, the Irish Homestead must have had few readers attuned to Joyce’s story. In the latter event, only 532 copies of the first printing of Dubliners were sold by the end of 1915 (JJII 400). 4. The others are “Araby” (the bazaar at the Royal Dublin Society in May 1894), “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” (the Municipal elections of 1903–4), and “A Mother” (the Grand Gaelic Concert of August 27, 1904). 5. It contrasts with the Anglo-Irish, or Catholic professional, domestic, agricultural, and industrial classes above and below them (Brady and Simms, 263). During the summer of 1905 Joyce briefly entertained the prospect of his following Dubliners with another collection, Provincials (Letters II: 92). Chapter 2. The Automobile Age 1. John Boyd Dunlop’s pneumatic bicycle tire, developed in Belfast, made its debut at the Queen’s College Easter Sports in 1889. Known as the “bladder-wheel” and “windbag,” it was smoother and lighter than the solid tires that preceded it, and thus facilitated faster rides (Lynch, Triumph, 25). That same year the world’s first pneumatic tire factory opened on Dublin’s Stephen’s Street, and within a short time there were twenty-five companies manufacturing bicycles in Dublin (Daly, 48–49). During Joyce’s adolescence, then, Dunlop’s pneumatic tires were a household name (as the reference to “rheumatic wheels” in “The Sisters” indicates [D 17.8]). 278 · Notes to Pages 15–31 When Dunlop moved his manufacturing center to England, the economic benefits of the cycling boom of the 1890s came to an end. With the sudden growth of the motor trade in the next decade, Dunlop’s success continued, but abroad. Thus, even though the name of Dunlop provided a nominal incentive in Ireland’s case to stage the 1903 Gordon Bennett race (Lynch, Triumph, 25), the resentment aroused by his “capital flight” was reignited by the “buy Irish” opponents of the race. To this resentment against British capital luring Dunlop from Ireland, Griffith periodically returned, as we read in the pages of Sinn Féin (e.g., June 6, 1908 and September 24, 1910). 2. Automobilism gave rise to a couple of amusing temporary local usages. A joke had a Dublin shawlie explaining to an unwitting onlooker that the chauffeur got the name from his role as “shuvver” (Lynch, Triumph, 79). The conflation of “chassis” and “chaos” gave rise to the Dublin argot invoked by Sean O’Casey’s Captain Boyle, “I’m telling you . . . Joxer . . . th’ whole worl’s . . . in a terr . . . ible state o’ . . . chassis!” (Juno and the Paycock , 1925). 3. For example, Mr. Deasy pays Stephen Dedalus the equivalent of £43 per annum. See Gifford, 6–8. 4. The Ford Edge brand of motor oil preserves his memory. 5. In putting this aggressive question, Joyce may have been cannier than he pretended. Fournier was indeed at the time considering defecting to the Mercedes camp (Ward, 33). 6. In the interview, Joyce makes a curious move in describing Fournier as “a slim, active-looking young man, with reddish hair” (CW 107), whereas the historical person was muscular and of average height. The French driver to whom the fictional Jimmy Doyle is introduced in “After the Race”—with his “swarthy face” and “shining white teeth” (D 44.20–21)—fairly describes the historical Fournier (Ward, 32). 7. The narrator does not identify the hotel. Its up-to-date furnishings, private...