An Irishman's Diary

ACCORDING TO one of his biographers, the young Samuel Beckett hero-worshipped James Joyce to an extent that would have worried…

ACCORDING TO one of his biographers, the young Samuel Beckett hero-worshipped James Joyce to an extent that would have worried a chiropodist. “Beckett even wore pointed-toe patent leather pumps that were too small,” wrote Deirdre Bair, “because he wanted to [have] the same shoe in the same size as Joyce, who was very proud of his small, neatly shod feet.”

The infatuation was not completely uncritical, however. In the latest study of Beckett, the 800-page first volume of his collected letters, he writes (circa 1937 from Paris) with exasperated affection for the old master, who is by then engaged in Finnegans Wakeand clearly taking advantage of the younger man's good nature, writes

Beckett is still suffering for the relationship but at least now the pain is only psychological. “Joyce paid me 250 [French francs] for about 15 hrs. work on his proofs,” he confided to long-term correspondent Tom McGreevy. “That is needless to say only for your ear. He then supplemented it with an old overcoat and 5 ties! I did not refuse. It is so much simpler to be hurt than to hurt.”

Presumably Joyce was no more flush with funds in 1937 than he had been 34 years earlier when, during his first days in Paris, he wrote home thanking his mother for a three-shilling postal order: adding that, before it arrived, he had been “without food for 42 hours”.

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In any case, Beckett’s letter reminds me of a story about one of the great first encounters in literature, also in Paris: when TS Eliot and (the writer and painter) Percy Wyndham Lewis travelled from London in 1920 to meet Joyce, carrying with them a present from Ezra Pound.

The parcel was large, somewhat heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. And since it was too big for a suitcase, Eliot had to carry it everywhere under his arm or on his lap, until they reached their Left Bank hotel: where it was placed ceremonially in the middle of the “large second-empire marble table” that dominated the apartment.

Once settled, Eliot telegraphed Joyce inviting him out to dinner and suggesting he drop by the hotel first to collect the package. Joyce arrived at 6pm, accompanied by his son Giorgio and wearing his evening best: topped off with a straw boater.

There followed a series of slightly stiff introductions as the group stood around the table, according to Lewis’s pained account of the event, “like people out of a scene in an 1870 gazette, resuscitated by Max Ernst, to amuse the tired intelligentsia”.

Introductions between artists with big egos can be tense at the best of times. Here, for example, Lewis noticed that at the mention of his name, Joyce “started in a very flattering fashion”; but that the gesture was ruined by not being quite spontaneous enough. In any case, the awkward part of the meeting was disposed of; or so everybody thought.

Then Eliot gestured towards the parcel, whereupon Joyce, “overcoming the elegant reluctance of a certain undisguised fatigue in his person”, inquired if this was Pound’s present. He first attempted to untie the string, in vain. Whereupon he asked Giorgio, “crossly in Italian”, for a penknife. His son replied, even more crossly in Italian, that he had none. So Eliot went to fetch a knife, also in vain; and finally someone located a nail scissors.

When the mystery parcel was unwrapped, revealing some nondescript clothes and “a fairly presentable pair of old brown shoes”, embarrassment gripped the room. “Oh,” said Joyce, faintly. “Oh,” echoed Lewis with a laugh. Eliot’s reaction is not recorded, but he soon summoned enough tact to repeat the dinner invitation, allowing Joyce’s wounded dignity a retreat.

Pound’s charitable gift backfired horribly. Mounting a recovery operation, Joyce first dismissed his son: sending him home with the parcel and instructions that Pater would not be joining the family at table this evening.

Then, subverting Eliot’s invitation, he took charge of the visitors’ dining arrangements. He chose the restaurant. He chose the table. And after inquiring about his guests’ tastes, he even chose the dishes, with suitably accompanying wines: all first class. So it continued through a pleasant evening, rounded off with liqueurs and coffee.

After that, taking advantage of the visitors’ momentary distraction, Joyce also seized control of the bill; whipping out several hundred-franc notes and paying, with a generous tip. Nor did it end there. For the remainder of their trip, Joyce prevented either Eliot or Lewis putting hand in pocket, anywhere, for anything.

"We had to pay his Irish pride," wrote Lewis. "That was it. He would not let us off. He was entirely unrelenting and we found it impossible to outmanoeuvre him." It's just a pity Beckett wasn't among the visiting party (he was 14 at the time). If he had been there, knowing the importance Joyce attached to footwear, he might have forestalled the disaster. He would also have understood the Irish need to put on a good front for the visitors, even at the risk of self-impoverishment. And the memory of the event might at least have eased the pain, 17 years later, when got paid for his work on Finnegans Wakewith a second-hand overcoat and five ties.