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London, located between Ireland and the Continent, is a very influential city for Joyce as well as Dublin, Paris, Trieste and Zurich. Joyce, who had a British passport, visited this city many times. On December 1, 1902 Joyce left Dublin for Paris to study medicine. On the way to Paris he stopped in London where he could meet William Butler Yeats. Yeats, informed beforehand of his arrival time, came to Euston Station at six in the morning to meet him. The older poet spent the whole day with Joyce, buying him breakfast, lunch and dinner, paying for cabs, and took him to Arthur Symons and to the people he thought would be most useful. Needless to say Joyce was very grateful. In late September 1904 Joyce tried to find a job in London for Nora.
In middle April 1931 Joyce and Nora went to London to marry following the British law. First they stayed for a little over a month in the Hotel Belgravia in Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.1, then moved at the beginning of May to a flat at 28b Campden Grove, Kensington, W.8, where they planned to stay indefinitely (although they stayed there until September and moved back to Paris). He wrote to Miss Harriet Shaw Weaver, "In reading a book on a legal position of women, I find that under Scots law I am legally married, and my daughter-in-law tells me, the same holds good in the United States. When I lived in Ireland I always believed that marriage by habit and repute was recognized in the United Kingdom.... I wonder what is Irish law on the point or where did I get the idea?...." He chose his father's birthday, July 4, as the wedding day, perhaps remembering that John Joyce (who died in Dublin on December 29, 1931) had been grieved by his elopement. During the 1931 stay they, accompanied by Nora's sister Kathleen, went to the Tower of London, Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, Windsor Forest, Stonehenge, and to places associated with Shakespeare, etc. (Cf. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, (rev.1982), pp.111, 637 & 639)
For Joyce, Dublin can bear comparison with London:
"And what a city Dublin is!" he continued. "I wonder if there is another like it. Everybody has time to hail a friend and ' start a conversation about a third party, Pat, Barney or Tim.' Have you seen Barney lately? Is he still off the drink?' 'Ay, sure he is. I was with him last night and he drank nothing but claret.' I suppose you don't get that gossipy, leisurely life in London?"
"No," I said." But then London isn't a city. It is a wilderness of bricks and mortar and the law of the wilderness prevails. All Londoners say, 'I keep myself to myself.' The malicious friendly sort of town can't exist with seven million people in it."
But it is not by way of description that Dublin is created in Ulysses. There is a wealth of delicate pictorial evocation in Dubliners, but there is little or none in Ulysses. Streets are named but never described. Houses and interiors are shown us, but as if we entered them as familiars, not as strangers come to take stock of the occupants and inventory their furniture. Bridges over the Liffey are crossed and recrossed, named and that is all. We go into eating-houses and drinking bars as if the town were our own and these our customary ports of call. Libraries, churches, courthouses, the municipal government, professional associations function before us without explanations or introductions. The people are being born, dying, eating and drinking, making love, betting, boozing, worshipping, getting married and burying their dead. Politics, especially the politics of Irish nationalism, and economic questions, such' as the cattle trade with England, are being fiercely debated. The history of Dublin and of the Irish nation is served up piping hot in the speech of living patriots. Young men are struggling for bread and a place in the sun; prudent middle age is doing what it can to keep what it has; and the old are scheming for a little peace and quietness away from the hungry generations. Women of all ages aid, thwart, distract, criticise and comfort them in all their enterprises. Sex, in all its normal manifestations, is ever present together with the solidarities and disputes of families. There is much in Ulysses that, in the normal acceptation of the word, is obscene, but very little that is perverse. The cultural life of Dublin is revealed to us in discussions on music and literature. It is a thirsty day and any moment of it seems to be a suitable moment for having a drink. At times the reader so acutely realises the existence of Dublin that Dublin's sons and daughters, even including Bloom and Stephen, become by comparison unimportant. (Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses," and Other Writings (1972), pp.69-70)
There are, however, similarities, striking enough, between the Londoner and the Dubliner. Each aims at summing up the elements of human experience, at presenting a picture of the world as complete, having in view its changes of time and substance the evolution of things. To this end they both work with words as symbols, and create a mythology to represent the elemental shapes and forces of the universe. Each has a native town with its surroundings which supplies a mystical place wherein the universal legend may be enacted. In the case of Blake that place is London; in that of Joyce, Dublin.
Both Blake and Joyce have a passion for locality, but Joyce has with that passion a painter's love of the natural scene in colour, tone, space, whereas Blake is graphically abstract and delimiting. The grace, the glitter, the elegance of the Liffey landscscape shine out in Work in Progress, but no line in Jerusalem creates for us a vision of London's mighty tidal drudge. They seem nearest to each other in their love of place names. (Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses," and Other Writings (1972), pp.318-19)
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Reference: Richard Ellmann ed. Letters of James Joyce, Volume II New York: The Viking Press, 1966.
(*See also the "London and Joyce" page and the "Bognor Regis, West Sussex" page of "Joycean Pics 2009.")
Thus there are numerous descriptions about London in Joyce's works:
[London: in a house at Kennington]
Eva Leslie -- Yes, Maudie Leslie's my sister
an' Fred Leslie's my brother -- yev 'eard of
Fred Leslie? .... (musing) ... O, 'e's a whoite-arsed
bugger ... 'E's awoy at present .......
(later)
I told you someun went with me ten toimes
one noight .... That's Fred -- my own brother
Fred .... (musing) ... 'E is 'andsome ... O I
do love Fred ....
Little Chandler's thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his meeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher's invitation, and of the great city London where Gallaher lived. ("A Little Cloud," 008-10; Dubliners, Gabler & Hettche 1991)
He turned to the right towards Capel Street. Ignatius Gallaher on the London Press! Who would have thought it possible eight years before? ("A Little Cloud," 072-73; Dubliners, Gabler & Hettche 1991)
Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old - thirty-two. ("A Little Cloud," 108-10; eds. Gabler & Hettche 1991)
`Then it is an immoral city,' said Little Chandler, with timid insistence - `I mean, compared with London or Dublin?'
`London!' said Ignatius Gallaher. `It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about London when he was over there. He'd open your eye... I say, Tommy, don't make punch of that whisky: liquor up.' ("A Little Cloud," 240-45; eds. Gabler & Hettche 1991)
He caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the room. He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had bought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself and it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be paid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that might open the way for him. ("A Little Cloud," 432-41; eds. Gabler & Hettche 1991)
--The life of a great city like London seems to you better? (XVII, p.55)
--O, the world of professors whom he helps to feed . . .
--Competent critics, said the President severely, men of the highest culture. And even the public themselves can appreciate him. I have read, I think, in some . . . a newspaper, I think it was . . . that Irving, the great actor, Henry Irving produced one of his plays in London and that the London public flocked to see it.
--From curiosity. The London public will flock to see anything new or strange. If Irving were to give an imitation of a hard-boiled egg they would flock to see it. (XIX, p.97)
... The barmaid ran screaming for the proprietor, the medical student was soothed and restrained by considerate friends and the offender was escorted out by Cranly and Stephen and a few others. At first he lamented that his new cuffs were stained with porter and expressed a great desire to go back and fight it out but, dissuaded by Cranly, he began to tell Stephen in an indistinct undertone that he had got the highest marks in Pure Mathematics ever given in the degree examination. He advised Stephen to go to London to write for the papers and said he could put him in the right way to get on. (XXV, p.208)
09.0147. --What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
09.0148. into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
09.0149. manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris
09.0150. lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to
09.0151. the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
15.0169. BLOOM
15.0170. Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side
15.0171. anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (he
15.0172. hums cheerfully) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire!
15.0173. (he catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther
15.0174. side of Talbot street) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.
17.0534. Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag (subsequently
17.0535. Rudolph Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London and
17.0536. Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius Higgins (born
17.0537. Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hegarty). Stephen, eldest surviving male
17.0538. consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and of Mary,
17.0539. daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born Grier). (cf. U 17.1906-15)
253.09. ever for a silly old Sol, healthytobedder and latewiser. Nor that the
253.10. turtling of a London's alderman is ladled out by the waggerful to
253.11. the regionals of pigmyland. His part should say in honour bound:
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| Shakespeare's Globe Theatre | The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (Centre), Bankside Southwark: ten minutes walk from London Bridge Station.
The performance of the day: Hamlet. |
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(Wednesday 28 June) 14:00-17:15: The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (Centre), Bankside Southwark: ten minutes walk from London Bridge Station | |
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(Wednesday 28 June) 14:00-17:15: The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre | |
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(Wednesday 28 June) 14:00-17:15: The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre | |
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(Wednesday 28 June) 14:00-17:15: The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre | |
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(Wednesday 28 June) 14:00-17:15: The Shakespeare's Globe Theatre: the curtain call of Hamlet. | |
| The Palace of Westminster, the Clock Tower and Westminster Bridge | The Palace of Westminster, the Clock Tower on the north-eastern end, and Westminster Bridge across the Thames River | |
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(Tuesday 27 June) The Palace of Westminster, the Clock Tower on the north-eastern end, and Westminster Bridge across the Thames River | |
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(Tuesday 27 June) c.17:30: The Clock Tower, the world's biggest four-faced, chiming clock, which is situated at the north-eastern end of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Commonly known as the Big Ben. | |
| The River Thames | The River Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading and Windsor.
The river gives its name to the Thames Valley, a region of England centered around the river between Oxford and West London, the Thames Gateway, the area centered around the tidal Thames, and the Thames Estuary to the east of London. The River Thames is the longest river (346 km or 215 mil) entirely in England, rising officially at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, and flowing into the North Sea at the Thames Estuary. It has a special significance in flowing through London, the capital of the United Kingdom, although London only touches a short part of its course. The river is tidal in London with a rise and fall of 7 meters (23 ft) and becomes non-tidal at Teddington Lock. The catchment area covers a large part of South Eastern and Western England and the river is fed by over 20 tributaries. The river contains over 80 islands, and having both seawater and freshwater stretches supports a variety of wildlife. The river has supported human activity from its source to its mouth for thousands of years providing habitation, water power, food and drink. It has also acted as a major highway both for international trade through the Port of London, and internally along its length and connecting to the British canal system. The river's strategic position has seen it at the centre of many events and fashions in British history, earning it a description as "Liquid History." It has been a physical and political boundary over the centuries and generated a range of river crossings. In more recent time the river has become a major leisure area supporting tourism and pleasure outings as well as the sports of rowing, sailing, skiffing, kayaking, and punting. The river has had a special appeal to writers, artists, musicians and film-makers and is well represented in the arts. It is still the subject of various debates about its course, nomenclature and history. (Referred to the site of Wikipedia.) |
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(Tuesday 27 June) c.17:30: The London Eye (the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe: 135 meters or 443 ft high), also known as the Millennium Wheel in the opposite (south) bank of Westminster across the River Thames. It is precisely located in the western end of Jubilee Gardens, on the South Bank of the River Thames, London, UK. |
