Hugh Kenner proclaimed that the mythology of the nineteenth century summed up in the partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson underlies Ulysses and its partnership of Stephen and Bloom.(1) The relationship between the works of Conan Doyle and Joyce was subsequently studied by Samuel Rosenberg, Fritz Senn, William Jenkins, Fumitaka Sasano, Jim LeBlanc, and others.(2) This paper builds on their insights and examines the Joycean implications of the Holmes tales’ recently discovered connections to the Victorian farce Box and Cox and to Homer’s Odyssey.
In Section 1, I describe how Box and Cox is thematically reflected in A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first Holmes tale, and in Ulysses.
In Section 2, the remaining parallels in each Ulysses episode are described, combined with fleshing out of Rosenberg’s parallel-plot skeleton of Study and Ulysses. References to Doyle (63, 64), Peter Carey (81, 163, 642), Sherlock Holmes (495, 636), and Doyle’s Stark Munro Letters (708) are shown to be strategically placed to mark the critical points in the development of Doylean plot elements.
The basic premise of Ulysses is that of the landlord Buck juggling two tenants Haines and Stephen, and, more importantly, of the landlady Molly juggling tenor Box (Boylan and Stephen) and baritone Cox (Bloom). The story of Ulysses is driven first by the operatic counterpoint of tenors (Stephen and Boylan) and the baritone (Bloom) and their fugal near-misses, and thereafter by the Homeric-Doylean plot of Bloom’s tracking Stephen as he gets drunker, and taking him home. In terms of contributing structural plot to Ulysses, the significance of Box and Cox and A Study in Scarlet is surpassed only by the Odyssey, and the intricate and interconnected ways in which Joyce used the Odyssey, Box and Cox and Study leave little doubt that Joyce was aware of Doyle’s use of the Odyssey and Box and Cox.
In Section 3, analysis of Study and A Case of Identity (1891), the third short story in the Holmes series, illustrates the commonality in the methods of Doyle and Joyce as a combination of three elements: visceral themes of adultery and death, mythology, and allusive comedy (puzzles and irony).
Contents:
[1] Box and Cox, Holmes and Watson, Stephen (Boylan) and Bloom; Box and Cox, boots and hat's in Beckett's Waiting for Godot
[2] Homer’s Odyssey, A Study in Scarlet, and Ulysses
Three Odysseyian elements: Nosebleed. “Dogs!” Pale fear and collapse
The library book by "Jesus, Mr. Doyle," the medical savior
Foot-and-mouth sleeping position and French farces Frisette and Une Chambre a Deux Lits
[3] Joyce and Doyle: allusive literature and detective fiction
[Recap] Bohx and Cowx - their Bloomsday in Dublin
[1] Box and Cox, Holmes and Watson, Stephen (Boylan) and Bloom
Edmund Wilson observed about the Holmes tales: “over the whole epic there hangs an air of irresponsible comedy, like that of some father’s rigmarole for children”.(3)Box and Cox, 1847 farce by John Maddison Morton, was recently shown to be a major source of the underlying comedy.(4)
John Box (a printer) unknowingly shares a room with James Cox (a hatter), as a result of a scheme by the greedy landlord. Box works at a newspaper office all night and Cox makes hats all day, so they never run into each other and the landlord can get double rent for the single room. Cox has an unexpected day-off. They discover each other, and start fighting over the room. Soon they discover that they are engaged to the same undesirable woman, Penelope Ann. To avoid marrying her, they duel by identically-rigged dice and coins. The dice are rigged to give sixes and each coin has two heads. A letter arrives informing that she has drowned, leaving her fortune to her “intended,” which Box and Cox each suddenly claim to be. But second letter reveals that she has survived the shipwreck and may be arriving any moment, causing panic. Third letter brings news that she’s marrying Knox. In the end, they discover that they are long-lost brothers, and embrace.
The play was made into Cox and Box; or, The Long-Lost Brothers (1866), a comic opera with a libretto by F. C. Burnand and music by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan), with tenor Box and baritone Cox.(5) The operetta adds songs to the play with the story unchanged, except the landlady Mrs. Bouncer was changed to a man, Sergeant Bouncer (Bass-Baritone). The popular vaudeville routine made “Box and Cox” a common phrase to describe two people taking turns occupying a place,(6) and left a generous bequest of its motifs and devices to the theatre. Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest has Gwendolen and Cecily quarrelling over their proposals to Ernest. Beckett’s plays feature a series of name-rhyming characters neither dead nor alive, and enigmatically embracing pairs Didi and Gogo or Hamm and Clov. Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano presents a similar living arrangement of the Smiths and the Martins. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip a coin to obtain ninety-two consecutive heads.(7)
Box and Cox, boots and hats in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) follows Box and Cox closely, and yet the exact parallels have perhaps not been spelled out. The tragi-comedy repeats the following story in the play’s two acts: Gogo and Didi are waiting for Godot. The pair engage in quick, semi-nonsensical conversations, while singing, embracing, and talking about suicide (as do Box and Cox). The landowner Pozzo intervenes to provide temporary diversions and entertainments (as does the landlord Bouncer). They mostly talk about, sometimes fight about, and wait for the never-arriving Godot (as do Box and Cox for Penelope Ann). At the end of each act, they receive a letter informing Godot’s non-arrival. (The original pair in Une Chambre a Deux Lits (described below) receive one letter informing non-arrival Box and Cox receive three letters about Penelope Ann --- informing non-arrival, arrival, and non-arrival.)
Beckett often said that the name Godot was suggested by godillot and godasse, French slang words for “boot.” (Note that Go(go) + Di(di) = Godi, which is like Godot.)Godot opens with this description:“Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. To Estragon (the slower of the pair), Vladimir (the smarter one) remarks about the daily taking-off of boots, “Never neglect the little things of life.” (the play’s third page). A typical opening for a Holmesian story is Holmes remarking on Watson’s boots, of which two examples from A Scandal in Bohemia and The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax are described later. Holmes in A Case of Identity talks about the importance of “the great issues that may hang from a bootlace”, and remarks, “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Throughout Godot, the characters, especially Vladimir, are constantly peering inside hats and boots, observing and detecting.
On the play’s second page, Vladimir reminisces of their long-gone happy days in Paris, “Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower”. In the opening paragraph of A Case of Identity, Holmes tells Watson, “If we could fly out of that window hand in hand,” containing “hand in hand” used in Ulysses.
Box and Cox reads like a Beckettian or Stoppardian absurd comedy, and depending on the production, the look and feel would be exactly like that of Godot. Martin Esslin’s failure to mention Morton in his Theatre of the Absurd (1961) seems a grave oversight. Beckett’s use of Box and Cox and Holmesian elements was perhaps suggested by Joyce’s use in Ulysses.
Let us see what Box and Cox bequeathed to Doyle and Joyce.
A Study in Scarlet, too, is a story of reconciliation between the accidental room-mates: at first Watson seldom sees and is skeptical of Holmes and his claims of deductive powers, but by the end of the novel, they are becoming like brothers. There are detailed parallels between Box and Holmes: Box, like Holmes, has ink stains on his hands. Box is a tenor-part, and Holmes has a high voice. The eccentric Box is up all night, like Holmes. At the play’s opening scene, Cox (a non-smoker) complains about tobacco smoke seeping into his room, and one of the first things Holmes asks Watson is: “You don't mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?” (19)(8) Two other elements from the play’s opening scene (ascending the stairs and key displacement) are also represented in Study.(9) Box demonstrates an elaborate deduction about hats (as Holmes does about Henry Baker’s hat in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle), and makes paradoxical assertions. Box fakes his own death by leaving clothing and a farewell note at the edge of a cliff, and is for three years presumed dead --- which Box reveals to astonished Cox. Holmes fakes his own death by leaving his Alpine-stock, silver cigarette-case, and a farewell note to Watson at the edge of a cliff (of the Reichenbach Falls) in The Final Problem, and is for three years (1891-1894) presumed dead --- which Holmes reveals to astonished Watson in The Empty House.(10)
In 1920 Joyce wrote, “Dear Pound: Messrs Box and Cox, interviewed by you,” humorously referring to James B. Pinker (Letters III 12), and he made ample use of Box and Cox and their risqué overtones in Finnegans Wake.(11) Joyce’s awareness of the Box-Holmes connection can be discerned from Finnegans Wake containing a cluster of references to Box (and Cox) --- “Burrus and Caseous”, “Hatboxes”, “B and C”, “a boîte à surprises”, “The boxes”, “pourbox” --- before the mention of “Shedlock Homes” (FW 165).
Ulysses also follows the overall plot of Box and Cox. Stephen has a “tenor voice” (663), and Bloom hums and sings the baritone “La ci darem” (77, 445).
The basic premise of Box and Cox is the landlord juggling two tenants. Similarly, Buck juggles Haines and Stephen, and Molly juggles Boylan and Bloom. The visitors Haines and Boylan seem to be content with their accommodations in the households, but Stephen and Bloom feel their rightful places threatened. From a broad viewpoint, Ulysses is about the landlady Molly juggling tenor Box (Boylan and Stephen) and baritone Cox (Bloom).
Box and Cox are keyless when they go outside, for the landlord is busily moving and displacing the room key on the door ledge, etc. to be found by Box and Cox. Stephen and Bloom too are a “keyless couple” (668), not having complete possession of their dwellings. Stephen handed the tower key to Mulligan, and Bloom left the key in his other pair of trousers.
Note the rhyming names: Penelope Ann, engaged to Box and Cox, eventually marries Knox. The singers in Molly’s life are Doyle and Boylan, and at the end of the novel Molly is with Poldy. Morton appended “Ann” to create “Penelope Ann,” as did Joyce to Hugh Boyle Kennedy (JJII 378)(12) to create “Hugh Boylan.” In the FW passage where everyone is named Doyle (574-6), “Ann Doyle” (575.06) is denoted as “Doyle (Ann)” (575.07).
1. “Telemachus” The operetta’s opening scene at 8 a.m. presents Cox, while shaving and before breakfast, complaining to his landlord Sergeant Bouncer about tobacco smoke: “I wish to know how it is that I frequently find my apartment full of smoke?” (4). Cox does not know it yet, but the tobacco smoke is coming from his accidental roommate Box. Bouncer (with brag and bounce) breaks into a song of military reminiscences, ending in the refrain of gunfire sound, “Rataplan! Rataplan!”
Ulysses opens similarly at 8 a.m. While Mulligan is shaving before breakfast, Stephen complains about Haines’s nightmares. Mulligan asks, “Were you in a funk?” (4). The original meaning of the word funk is the stench of smoke. (Hensleigh Wedgwood, A Dictionary of English Etymology (London: Trübner & co., 1872) p.234 gives, “Funk. A strong rank smell as that of tobacco. … smoke. … Hence the metaphorical sense of perturbation, fright.”) Buck boasts his knowledge of classical Greek, ending in “Thalatta! Thalatta!” (5).
Cox’s unhappiness with his living conditions (tobacco smoke, evaporating coals, candles, wood, sugar, and matches --- all caused by his yet-unknown roommate) comprises much of the morning scene, as Stephen’s unhappiness with his roommates Haines and Mulligan comprises much of “Telemachus.” Bouncer (Buck)’s attitude is generally patronizing and appeasing; as a landlord (usurping co-tenant), he needs the contribution of rent from Cox (Stephen).
The play’s opening scene presents Box coming up stairs, and Ulysses opens with Stephen coming up the stairs (3).
Before discovering each other, Box and Cox prepare their breakfasts on the same stove at the same time, but keep missing each other --- as Stephen and Bloom’s synchronous breakfasts are three episodes apart. Box and Cox initially see each other only when they pass on the stairs, as Bloom sees Stephen passing by from inside a carriage (88). Bloom and Stephen are initially distant, physically and emotionally, and as they get acquainted, Bloom thinks of introducing Stephen to Molly --- which is reminiscent of how Box and Cox each wanted the other linked to Penelope Ann. Then, Bloom offers Stephen cocoa in one of two identical cups (677), which correspond to Box and Cox’s identically-rigged dice and coins (by way of Jefferson Hope’s two pills described below). Then, Bloom and Stephen reach a measure of reconciliation.
The counterpoint of Stephen and Bloom drives the story, where the two traverse the same location at different times, or think of like things at the same moment (JJII 359). In “Hades” Bloom sees Stephen pass by from inside a carriage. In “Aeolus” Bloom visits the newspaper office, then later Stephen does. In “Scylla and Charybdis” Bloom walks between Stephen and Mulligan at the library steps. In “The Wandering Rocks” Bloom and Stephen do not meet, but go through parallel movements, both browsing a bookseller’s cart and look at books about sex. In “The Oxen of the Sun” they finally meet, and then in “Circe” Bloom follows Stephen into a brothel. Then begins the portion of the story summarized in Rosenberg's parallel-plots described below.
Boylan and Bloom also go through Box-and-Cox near-misses. Boylan is a tenor, which can be inferred from Bloom’s thought on Boylan, “Tenors get women by the score.” (274). Bloom is trying to avoid Boylan, but keeps running into him ineluctably all day. In “Hades” Bloom hears three men in the carriage greet Boylan. In “The Lestrygonians” the sight of Boylan’s straw hat and tan shoes forces Bloom to flee into the museum. In “The Sirens” Boylan leaves the Ormond bar as Bloom enters. Then finally in “Ithaca” Bloom finds signs left behind by Boylan: torn betting tickets, crumbs of potted meat, etc.
[2] Homer’s Odyssey, A Study in Scarlet, and Ulysses
Penelope Ann in Box and Cox is a minor character who doesn’t even appear on stage. Box and Cox talk about her, receive letters from her, and see her come and go. Her name no doubt derives from the faithful, beautiful wife of Odysseus whom the suitors desired and courted, and for the comical contrast with Penelope Ann, who is a fickle, “majestic” widow whom Box and Cox fight in order to avoid marrying. Each of Penelope and Penelope Ann has husband/fiancé who disappeared and are presumed dead at sea or drowned, and each is at the center of the suitors’ duel.(13)
In a curious accident of literary history, the name whimsically chosen for a minor character in Box and Cox inspired Doyle to model his Holmes and Watson tale after the Odyssey, which provided an inspiration for the mythical structure of the great modernist novel. Jonathan Quick found many implicit borrowings from another precursor, A. E. W. Mason’s Miranda of the Balcony (1899).(14) But the only acknowledgement that I have been able to find is “A.E.” Mason “I.O.U.” (190.3). Doyle’s allusive structure in the Study was probably not a decisive influence upon Joyce, but its significance is perhaps evidenced by Joyce’s many explicit references and tributes to Doyle in Ulysses.
A Study in Scarlet’s a structural parallel to Homer’s Odyssey was discovered by Fumitaka Sasano: In each story, the avenger (Odysseus / Jefferson Hope) wanders for 20 years and kills the suitors who had wooed his lover (wife Penelope / fiancée Lucy Ferrier). In impoverished appearance (as beggar / cab driver) he finds the suitors, who do not recognize him. He gets help from a younger man (son Telemachus / young actor who appears as an old woman), and locks the suitors in a room. Odysseus first kills the suitors with arrows, and then by stabbing with two spears, whereas Hope kills the first suitor (Enoch Drebber) with arrow poison and then the second suitor (Joseph Stangerson) by stabbing him to the heart.(15)
The narrative schemes are also similar. The story begins near the end of the 20-year journey, and contains in the middle the wanderer-avenger’s major flashback told to Nausicaa and the Phaeacians (and to Holmes, Watson, and the police). The novel itself is in two parts. Part 1, narrated by Watson, tells of his meeting Holmes and sharing a suite on Baker Street. Holmes investigates a murder, and catches Jefferson Hope. Part 2 is the confession by Hope of how Drebber and Stangerson caused the death of his fiancée Lucy Ferrier and her father in the plains of western United States, and how Hope tracked them to London and killed them. The novel concludes, narrated by Watson, by Holmes explaining his method of solving the case.
A strong evidence of Joyce’s awareness of Study is the plot parallels discovered by Rosenberg (106-07), presented here as a parallel-plot skeleton: Hope (Bloom) sees Drebber (Stephen Dedalus) from inside a hansom cab, then tracks him through the labyrinthine London (Dublin) streets. Drebber (Stephen) gets drunker as he moves from one saloon to the next, and is punched by a young man for insulting a girl. At about 1 a.m. Hope (Bloom) takes Drebber (Stephen) to an empty house (a house Bloom fears is empty), lights a candle, and offers an item from two identical things: Hope offers Drebber a choice of two identical-looking pills, one of which is poison, whereas Bloom offers Stephen cocoa in one of two identical cups.
Rosenberg’s parallel-plot skeleton will now be fleshed out. After establishing the Box-and-Cox themes in “Telemachus,” the remaining parallels begin to develop in the fourth episode, together with the introduction of Doylean elements. The play’s opening scene presents the melody containing three elements (tobacco smoke, ascending stairs, and displaced key --- which become part of the subject in “Telemachus”).
Box and Cox prepare their breakfasts at the same time, but keep missing each other. Three episodes after Stephen’s breakfast, a variation of the melodic subject (or countersubject) will begin in Bloom’s breakfast --- which in a musical fugue is typically in the next displaced key (the dominant, or the fifth note up). This melody is a part of the larger theme of “breakfast--work--brooding walk” by Stephen and Bloom.
4. “Calypso” “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” (55). With great anticipation Cox and Bloom cook on stove, respectively, mutton chop and mutton kidney (pork kidney on this day). Box in the opera version even serenades his bacon on stove with the lullaby, “Hush-a-bye, Bacon.”
At the beginning of the play, Box ascends stairs, Cox mentions that a cat might be taking his possessions, and complains about tobacco smoke, and then later, Cox “pokes fork into bacon, opens window, and flings it out” (11). Bloom goes upstairs to deliver breakfast to Molly (56), then smells smoking kidney from the pan, then “shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth” (65).
In this scene occurs the first explicit mention of a Doylean element. J. C. Doyle (63) was a leading baritone of the day, with whom Joyce shared the stage in 1904 at the high point in Joyce’s singing career (JJII 168). There seems to be a bit of Conan Doyle (who was not particularly musical) in Ulysses’s J. C. Doyle. In his time, the public generally identified and sometimes confused Conan Doyle with his creation J. Watson, because they were both medical doctors with similar, gentlemanly appearances. And Watson’s connection to Cox is very firm, as described earlier. Thus we have the correspondences of Box -- Holmes -- Stephen (tenors), and Cox -- Watson -- A. C. Doyle -- J. C. Doyle -- Bloom (baritones).
-- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has.
She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.
Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the word. (64-65)
The equation of Poldy and Cox is underlined with “Paul de Kock’s” (64). Cox is a baritone part and Bloom hums and sings “La ci darem” (77, 445), the baritone part from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. “Then we’ll go hand in hand” is the message that Bloom is sending to Stephen throughout much of the novel, until they finally go hand in hand to the cabman’s shelter and then home --- just as Box and Cox work toward shaking hands and embracing.
Poldy-Cox (“Paul de Kock’s”) reminds Joyce and Bloom of the library book by Conan Doyle and reincarnation of characters (Odysseus, Penelope, Box-Holmes, Cox-Watson-Bloom, etc.).
Bloom and Molly talking about “Metempsychosis” (64), “reincarnation” (65), and “remember their past lives” (65) is self-referential, with a hint of Romantic irony: Odysseus reincarnated as Poldy (Cox), and Penelope (Ann) reincarnated as Molly. Ulysses Annotated cites Mary Power who discovered that the book Ruby doesn’t contain the word “metempsychosis.” Perhaps there is a subtle reference to Conan Doyle, who used the word in at least two books, The Captain of the Polestar, and other tales (1890)(16) and Through the Magic Door (1907).(17) Doyle announced his conversion to spiritualism in 1916, published books The New Revelation (1918) and The Vital Message (1919), and devoted the rest of his life to promoting spiritualist causes until his death in 1930.(18) Atherton (47-48, 247) notes that Doyle’s History of Spiritualism (1926) was probably one of Joyce’s source books for Finnegans Wake.
Bloom, like Cox, frets about his hat.
Cox: […] Now for my hat. (Puts on his hat, which comes over his eyes.) That’s the effect of having one’s hair cut. This hat fitted me quite tight before. Luckily I’ve got two or three more. (Goes in at L., and returns with three hats of different shapes, and puts them on, one after the other -- all of which are far too big for him.) This is pleasant! Never mind. This one appears to me to wobble about rather less than the others -- (Puts on hat.) -- and now I’m off!
Cox’s fretting about the hat (trying-on different hats before going out) may be reproduced in this episode in a number of ways.
[Bloom] His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe. (56)
Bloom keenly observes his hat (recalling Box’s deduction about Cox’s hats, and Holmes’s deduction about Henry Baker’s hat), and frets about his card with the “Henry Flower” pseudonym.
The “Henry” in the name “Henry Flower” probably came primarily from the association of kingly names Henry and Leopold (JJII 395). Perhaps Joyce was conscious of the secondary association between Henry Baker’s hat initialed “H. B.” in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle and Henry / Bloom’s hat concealing the “Henry Flower” name.
Bloom goes out and buys meat, returns home, picks up mail at the door, and goes up to Molly’s bedroom.
Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.
---- No: that book.
Other stocking. Her petticoat. (63-64)
Bloom’s picking-up different pieces of clothing (and playfully pretending to try them on in the film Ulysses (1967), but not so much in Bloom (2003)) perhaps comes from Cox’s trying-on different hats. The he walks out into the garden and outhouse. Bloom frets about his hat:
He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that. (68)
He doesn’t remember because he was distracted by the delivered letters on the hallfloor, especially the one from Boylan (61). (Bloom’s hat upon entering his garden was suggested by Fritz Senn in a comment to an earlier version of this paper.)
5. “The Lotus Eaters” “Rachel” (76.30) refers to Elisabeth Rachel Félix (1821-58), French theatre actress best known for the title role of Phèdre by Racine. In Study, the word “RACHE” (“revenge” in German) written in blood is found at Drebber’s murder scene. Rosenberg (85-90) explains how the initial suggestion of Miss Rachel is appropriate because of Elisabeth Rachel’s many connections to Study’s themes, including the murderous revenge for thwarted love and the blood-dipped hand from Phèdre.
Four lines prior to humming the baritone “La ci darem la mano” (77), Bloom passes “the cabman’s shelter” (77), whose Sherlockian significance is explained where it figures prominently in “Eumaeus.”
“Peter Claver and the African mission. Save China’s millions” (80) has Doylean overtones. “Save China’s millions”, according to Ulysses Annotated, refers to the Jesuit missions and the European suppression of the Boxer Rising of 1900. In Finnegans Wake, there is a strong association between the Boxer Rebellion and Box and Cox: “Through the Boxer Coxer Rising in the House with the Golden Stairs” (105.05-06), and “Boxerising and coxerusing.” (347.29). Its occurrence here suggests that the association was perhaps already present in Joyce’s mind while writing Ulysses.
“Peter Carey” (81) is mentioned among “Peter Claver” and “Denis Carey.” Bloom is confused about the name of the informer (James Carey) who turned queen’s evidence in the Phoenix Park murders. Fritz Senn infers that Bloom’s confusion is caused by having read the Holmes story The Adventure of Black Peter about the murder of Peter Carey being harpooned to the wall.(19) Aside from the Irish connection (Peter Carey was probably of the “black Irish” stock), Peter Carey is linked to the Sherlockian “cabman’s shelter,” and The Adventure of Black Peter is one of the Homeric stories of the Holmesian canon.(20)
6. “Hades” Bloom sees Stephen pass by from inside a carriage (88). This corresponds to how Jefferson Hope sees Drebber and Stangerson from inside a hansom cab, then tracks them through the labyrinthine London streets. “Sometimes I followed them on my cab” (78). “During two weeks I drove behind them every day” (78). Regarding tracking through labyrinthine streets, Rosenberg (107) notes that Jefferson Hope used a map of London to make his way through the “maze of London” and Joyce used a map of labyrinthine Dublin to track the characters of Ulysses.
“Boots giving evidence” (97) refers to a hotel bootsboy nicknamed “boots” giving testimony at the suicide inquiry of Bloom’s father. Fritz Senn suggests that this may be a reference to Holmes.(21) A Holmes reference regarding an investigation of a man’s death would be appropriate. Holmes, who emphasizes “the great issues that may hang from a bootlace” (196) in A Case of Identity, demonstrates deductions from evidence given by Watson’s boots in the opening scenes of the first short story, A Scandal in Bohemia (cuts on the shoe caused by a clumsy and careless servant girl) and a later one, The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (unusual bootlace-tying done at a Turkish bath). Senn notes the recurrence of boots: Bloom noticing a priest “showing a large grey bootsole” (81) and Stephen in the morning had “a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels in view” (147).(22)
Bloom has an amateur scientist’s mind and often thinks about opportunities for inventions. At the graveyard, he thinks the coffin is a waste of wood. “All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way.” (109-10). Upon hearing abut Mrs. Purefoy’s painful labor, Bloom thinks: “Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that.” (161). In my mind I associate Bloom’s peculiar inventions with that most peculiar Victorian invention, the bathing machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing_machine), which Penelope Ann sold. “Cox: […] but my wife --- I mean, my intended wife --- happens to be the proprietor of a considerable number of bathing machines”
8. “The Lestrygonians” On Page 163, talk of the Boer War “--Up the Boers! --Three cheers for De Wet!” precedes “Peter or Denis or James Carey”. Doyle was knighted in 1902 for his defense of the British role in the Boer War, and the association seems firm in Joyce’s mind. In 1921 Joyce asked Budgen for a copy of “Doyle’s History of South African War” (SL 285).
11. “The Sirens” (Suggested by Fritz Senn in a comment to an earlier version of this paper.) Bloom disguises his writing by using Greek ‘e’s (like ‘3’ in a mirror) in his letter to Martha: “Remember write Greek ees. (279). “In haste. Henry. Greek ee.” (280).
Holmes remarks on Greek ‘e’s in the following stories:
- The Sign of Four: “but there can be no question as to the authorship. See how the irrepressible Greek e will break out, and see the twirl of the final s. They are undoubtedly by the same person.”
- The Adventure of the Reigate Squire: “There is something in common between these hands. They belong to men who are blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the Greek e’s, ….”
- The Valley of Fear: “I can hardly doubt that it is Porlock’s writing, though I have only seen it twice before. The Greek ‘e’ with the peculiar top flourish is distinctive.”
- A Case of Identity: Holmes observes four typewritten letters, and notes “in every case there is a some little slurring over of the ‘e’, and a slight defect in the tail of the ‘r’.” The slurred ‘e’ possibly looks like a Greek ‘e’.
12. “The Cyclops” Ulysses Annotated lists 21 references to the Boer War. Because Joyce made a strong association between Doyle and the Boer War, as just noted, one suspects a hint of Doylean allusion every time the Boer War is mentioned. This is especially true when a reference occurs near another possible Doyle reference as on Page 328.
“An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.” (328.21-22). This refers to the regiment that distinguished itself in the Boer War and was awarded the title of Imperial Yeomanry in 1901.
“Molly Maguires” (328.17) was an Irish secret organization. The investigation of the Scowrers in Doyle’s Holmesian novel The Valley of Fear (1915) is based on the sensational 1876 arrests of Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania coal fields.
13. “Nausicaa” “Gerty MacDowell” … “was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.” (348)
Jenkins attributed this line to Chapter 16 of Doyle’s The Firm of Girdlestone (London: Chatto and Windus, 1892, p.129): “… she was as fair a specimen of English girlhood as could have been found in all London.” (23)
15. “Circe” Bloom contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, including “Sherlock Holmes” (495.17). The explicit naming of Holmes is closely followed by Enoch (Drebber) as “Eunuch” (495.25) and “A DEADHAND (writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod.” (496.10), recalling blood-written “RACHE” on the wall.
Bloom follows Stephen into a brothel, which seems to be on the second floor, since Zoe tells Bloom, “Don't fall upstairs.” (501) and later, a “male form passes down the creaking staircase” (525). Perhaps Joyce had in mind the idea that Stephen (Box) and Bloom (Cox) are rising up the stairs to this brothel, as in “Through the Boxer Coxer Rising in the House with the Golden Stairs” (FW 105.05-06), which refers to a brothel in Shanghai named “House of the Golden Stairs.” (24)
“The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters.” (527). Bella (and her alter-ego Mr. Bello) dominates Bloom and, to a lesser extent, Stephen. Penelope Ann in Box and Cox is a massive woman. Box says, “There’s no mistaking that majestic person --- it’s Penelope Ann! Hark --- she’s coming up stairs!” (33).(25) She dominates Cox, and to a lesser extent, Box, who frees himself by faking suicide.
Three Odysseyian elements: Nosebleed. “Dogs!” Pale fear and collapse
In Study, for insulting a girl Drebber is punched by Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty's navy. In “Circe,” Stephen is punched for ostensibly the same reason by Private Harry Carr, a military man with a somewhat similar name.
The three elements at a climactic scene of the Odyssey, Book XXII, where Odysseus reveals his identity to the suitors and begins his revenge, are dutifully recreated in Study and Ulysses.
Nosebleed. Odysseus shoots an arrow through the neck of Antinous, the leader of the suitors, who falls, “and at once through his nostrils there came up a thick jet of slain man's blood”.(26)
“Dogs!” Then Odysseus announces to the suitors, “Ye dogs, ye said in your hearts that I should never more come home from the land of the Trojans, … .”
Pale fear and collapse. Odysseus’s speech terrifies the suitors. “Even so he spake, and pale fear gat hold on the limbs of all, and each man looked about, where he might shun utter doom.” “He spake, and their knees were straightway loosened and their hearts melted within them.”
A Study in Scarlet recreates the three elements in the scene where Jefferson Hope confronts Enoch Drebber.
Nosebleed. Hope suddenly has a nosebleed. As recounted by Hope, “The pulses in my temples beat like sledge-hammers, and I believe I would have had a fit of some sort if the blood had not gushed from my nose and relieved me.” (81)
“Dogs!” Hope declares, “You dog! … I have hunted you from Salt Lake City to St. Petersburg, and you have always escaped me” (81), and delivers a speech similar in tone, length, and content to Odysseus’s.
Pale fear and collapse.(27) “He [Drebber] staggered back with a livid face” (81). “He shrunk still farther away as I spoke” (81).
Ulysses recreates the three elements in Circe, although not quite as exactly.
Nosebleed. Before punching Stephen, Private Carr says, “I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!” (600) (Odysseus shot an arrow through Antinous’s neck.) After Stephen is punched in the face, Cissy Caffrey asks, (with expectation) “Is he bleeding!” (602) Stephen is probably bleeding from his nose.(28)
“Dogs!” Before Stephen is punched, the voice of Adonai calls, “Dooooooooooog!” (600) And afterwards, Stephen is indirectly described as a “bleeding tyke”. (602)
Pale fear and collapse. “(He [Private Carr] rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, … .)” (601)
16. “Eumaeus” Bloom takes helplessly drunk Stephen to a cafe at a cabman’s shelter. The Odysseyian hut of Eumaeus corresponds to the cab-office in Study and the cabman’s shelter in Ulysses, as follows.
“Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter” (621), which recalls the cab-owner’s office in Study. The avenger Jefferson Hope recounts: (after arriving in London) “I applied at a cab-owner’s office, and soon got employment. I was to bring a certain sum a week to the owner” (78) and keep the rest. Hope tells how he followed his targets before taking Drebber to an empty house to lock him in. This corresponds to how Bloom takes Stephen to a cabman’s shelter before taking him home. Bloom unreliably thinks that “Skin-the-Goat” Fitzharris is the owner of the cabman’s shelter (621), and the driver in the Phoenix Park murders (642). Note Jefferson Hope, a cab driver, talks of the cab-office owner.
This correspondence is marked by mention of “Peter Carey”(642), which was noted by Fritz Senn as a Holmesian reference. After tracing “Peter Carey”(642) in “Eumaeus” to the Holmes story The Adventure of Black Peter and listing the characteristics Odysseus and Holmes share, Fritz Senn attributes the most famous of Holmes’s paradoxical assertions (termed “Sherlockismus”) --- “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” (347) --- to Odysseus’s statement in the hut of Eumaios (Odyssey, xvi).(29)
Thus, the Odysseyian hut of Eumaeus, the Study’s cab-office, and Ulysses’s cabman’s shelter are the respective last stops before arriving home, and the correspondence is marked by Joyce with references to the cab-driver and cab-office owner (Jefferson Hope, “Skin-the-Goat” Fitzharris) and Holmesian “Peter Carey,” whom Bloom thinks is the name of the informer in the Phoenix Park murders.
Now, considering the possible Doylean references in the order they occur in the episode, “Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter” (621), then on the next page is a mention of “Mr. Doyle” (622).
Immediately after “lie like old boots” (635) (which is a possible Holmes reference, as noted earlier) is the line, “life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature” (635), which recalls Holmes’s opening speech in A Case of Identity (“life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” … “the strange coincidences”) which Joyce alludes to in Finnegans Wake. Bloom observes Murphy: “He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up” (636), which is followed by several lines of Holmes-like observation and deduction by Bloom.
Bloom thinks of the library book by Conan Doyle: … “which reminded him by the by of that Capel street library book out of date” (652). Then six lines below, regarding Molly’s photo: “she was in a full bloom of womanhood” (the only occurrence of “womanhood” in Ulysses). This perhaps gives further support for Jenkins’s attribution of Gerty description (Gerty was a fair “specimen of winsome Irish girlhood” (348)) to Doyle, described earlier.
Bloom shows Stephen a glamour photo of Molly, and thinks of introducing Stephen to Molly: “My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.” (662-3) --- which is reminiscent of how Box and Cox each wanted the other linked to Penelope Ann. In “Ithaca” Bloom again thinks of bringing Molly and Stephen together to cause Molly’s “disintegration of obsession” (695) with Boylan. As noted earlier, the tenor-Box is represented in Ulysses by Stephen and Boylan. In “Circe” Bloom acts like a pimp who wants Molly to be with Boylan, the other tenor-Box; Bloom says to Boylan: “Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.”(565).
Bloom’s Cox-like thought of introducing Stephen to Molly (662-3) is closely followed by Stephen’s “phenomenally beautiful tenor voice” (663).
Bloom advises Stephen “to sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage” (664). The budding practitioner may refer to both Buck Mulligan and (George) Budd, Doyle’s medical student friend, whom Doyle’s mother Mary advised Doyle to sever connection with. Jenkins lists other amazing parallels between Joyce’s friend Gogarty fictionalized as “Buck Mulligan” in Ulysses and Doyle’s friend Budd fictionalized as “Cullingworth” in Stark Munro Letters, concluding the list noting that “Budd-Cullingworth” even sounds like “Buck Mulligan.” (30)
17. “Ithaca” Bloom takes Stephen to a house Bloom fears is empty (as Hope takes Drebber to an empty house) and lights a candle (669). Then, Bloom offers Stephen cocoa in one of two identical cups (677), which correspond to Box and Cox’s identically-rigged dice and coins.
When they reach home, Bloom doesn’t have the key. “Why was he doubly irritated? Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.” (668) On this day Bloom reminds himself twice of the library book The Stark-Munro Letters by Doyle: “Must get that Capel street library book renewed” (64), and “which reminded him by the by of that Capel street library book out of date” (652). This suggests semantic proximity of Box-and-Cox (key displacement) and Doylean elements.
Bloom finds signs inside the house --- including torn betting tickets, crumbs of potted meat, and “an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of cigarettes” (706) (17.1305) --- and engages in Holmes-like observations and deductions about Boylan’s presence in the house in the afternoon. (Suggested by Fritz Senn in a comment to an earlier version of this paper.)
The catechistic question-and-answer format of the episode begins with an inventory of personal characteristics of Bloom and Stephen. Perhaps this format was inspired by the similar list in A Study in Scarlet, where Watson famously produces an inventory of Holmes’s knowledge and limitations (Chapter 2).
I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way —
Sherlock Holmes — his limits.
- Knowledge of Literature. — Nil.
- Philosophy. — Nil.
- Astronomy. — Nil.
- Politics. — Feeble.
- Botany. — Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
- Geology. — Practical, but limited. […]
From Ulysses (p. 666), the first page of “Ithaca” ---
Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?
Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, […], jesuit education, careers, the study of medicine, […]
Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective like and unlike reactions to experience?
Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to plastic or pictorial.
The library book by “Jesus, Mr. Doyle,” the medical savior
The inventory of Bloom’s bookshelf includes: “The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve) 1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue” (708). The Stark-Munro Letters is the most autobiographical of Doyle’s tales, and Rosenberg (108-09) notes that the book’s appearance in Bloom’s bookshelf is Joyce’s intimation that he has “borrowed” a Doyle book. The book’s due date is June 4, and Doyle’s story A Literary Mosaic, which may have inspired Joyce’s parody of English authors in “Oxen of the Sun,” takes place on June 4 (1886), as noted by Rosenberg (108-09). In addition to the literal meaning of the book being “13 days overdue” (for it is now June 17), a precise metaphoric interpretation of “13 days overdue” suggests itself. Since the first explicit mention of a Doylean element was “J. C. Doyle” (63) in the fourth episode (“Calypso,” where Bloom first reminded himself about the borrowed Doyle book (64)), acknowledgement of debt to Doyle in the seventeenth episode (“Ithaca”) is 13 episodes overdue.
The name-puzzle “Jesus, Mr. Doyle.” (622.42), as noted in Ulysses Annotated, was solved by Robert Adams (Surface and Symbol, 1962, p. 223) with the following conversion: Jesus = Christ = Anointed = oiled = Doyle. Additionally, the name of Joyce’s acquaintance J. C. Doyle (63) (see my notes for “Calypso”) is a combination of “Jesus Christ” and “Doyle.” Adams (238) notes: “The passage in FW where everyone is called Doyle (pp. 574-6) probably plays with the Doyle-Christ conversion”.
Perhaps “Mr. Doyle” was Joyce’s way of specifying much older Conan Doyle, as there are three probable ways in which Joyce associated Jesus Christ specifically with Conan Doyle.
(1) Whitsun or Pentecost is the forty-ninth day after Easter Sunday. “White Sunday” refers to the white garments for baptism worn on this day. By coincidence Whitsun before Bloomsday in 1904 happened to be on May 22, Doyle’s birthday. This is noted by Joyce’s designation “21 May (Whitsun Eve)” by which May 21 is likened to Christmas Eve ---- “Jesus, Mr. Doyle.” (622).
(2) The correspondence described in my notes for “Calypso” (Cox -- Watson -- A. C. Doyle -- J. C. Doyle -- Bloom (baritones)) provides additional association between the two Doyles: J. C. (Jesus Christ) Doyle and Conan Doyle.
(3) Conan Doyle was a medical savior for Joyce. In 1904 Joyce sought treatment for ailment contracted during a visit to Nighttown (JJII 150), and Kathleen Ferris gathered overwhelming evidence that show that Joyce suffered from a severe case of tabes dorsalis, degeneration of the nerve cells and fibers in the spinal cord caused by syphilis infection (James Joyce and the Burden of Disease, 1995). Even if the impact of the disease on Joyce’s life was not as grave as argued by Kathleen Ferris, it was so only because of medical researchers such as Doyle. Doyle received his Medical Doctor’s degree from University of Edinburgh in 1885, upon completing his thesis, “An Essay upon the Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis.” (See also Deborah Hayden, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis, “Chapter 19. James Joyce” 2003.)
After Jefferson Hope is captured, he lets Watson examine his chest, and the abnormal heartbeats lead Watson to diagnose an aortic aneurism, which medical doctors believe was caused by syphilis. (Hampton R. Bates, M.D. “Letter: Sherlock Holmes and syphilis.” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 113 (9), (November 8, 1975) p. 815. Earl M. Cooperman, M.D. “Letter: More on Sherlock Holmes.” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 113 (11-12), (December 13, 1975) p. 1024-1025.) Katherine Ferris meticulously documents the typical symptoms of syphilis --- poor eyesight, stiff gait, digestive problems, impotence, etc. --- exhibited by James Joyce and his created characters, most notably Stephen and Bloom (James Joyce and the Burden of Disease, 1995). Joyce would surely have recognized that syphilis caused Jefferson Hope’s aortic aneurism and rapidly failing health, providing additional motivation for modeling Bloom’s tracking of Stephen after Hope’s tracking of Drebber.
Jefferson Hope wandered the world for 20 years. Joyce would have seen in Hope a figure of the Wandering Jew. (The name “Jefferson Hope” perhaps signifies “the American Flying Dutchman” combining Thomas Jefferson and Cape of Good Hope.) The 39-year-old Wandering Jew in the poem “The Nameless One,” the 38-year-old Bloom, and similarly-aged Hope are men who are prematurely old and physically broken (Ferris 68-69).
Another commonality between Odysseus, Jefferson Hope, and Bloom is their talismans. In the Odyssey, Hermes protects Odysseus from Circe’s spell by bestowing upon him a herb, moly. Bloom’s moly is his lucky potato, which he calls “A talisman. Heirloom.” (15.1313). When Bloom surrenders his moly to Zoe, he falls under Bella Cohen’s spell, until he retrieves it. Jefferson Hope’s moly is Lucy’s ring. When he loses it, he falls for Holmes’s trap and is captured.
Hope’s and Bloom’s realizations of the missing ring and key employ similar language.
- A Study in Scarlet: “I had driven some distance when I put my hand into the pocket in which I usually kept Lucy’s ring, and found that it was not there. I was thunderstruck at this, for it was the only memento that I had of her.”
- Ulysses: “On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have.”(57).
Bloom’s potato talisman corresponds to the moly given to Odysseus by Hermes. The Roman name for Hermes is Mercury --- Joyce was likely treated with mercury in 1904 (Ferris 28-32, 74). Bloom’s other talisman is soap in another pocket. Soap, if applied to the skin soon enough, will kill the syphilis spirochete (Ferris 71). Hope took the marriage ring from his fiancée Lucy Ferrier’s dead finger and always carried it with him for 20 years. The faithful marriage that the ring signifies would have protected Hope from contracting syphilis.
Regarding Box and Cox, aside from the usual risqué connotations of the words Box and Cox, the story about Box and Cox saved by Knox would have had special titillating appeal for Joyce, who never forgot Gorgarty’s coarse, taunting, pox-themed poems (Ferris 30). Ulysses contains many references to pox, e.g.: “There’s a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo.” (330). “And snares of the poxfiend.” (427).“BLOOM: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!” (554).
“-- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he has. She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.” (64). The name “Paul de Kock” has previously been recognized to suggest “Poldy cock.” The form “Paul de Kock’s” suggests Poldy-Cox and probably Pox, with “tea” in the next line. Tea, especially the capital T (“cupital tea”, FW 369.32), for Joyce signifies T. pallidum (syphilis spirochete), according to Ferris (139).
The peculiar description of watching the tea (T) “flow sideways” probably hints at the first sightings of T. pallidum in 1905. Joyce would have been familiar with early descriptions similar to the following: “The silvery organism Schaudinn observed undulating relentlessly from one side of the microscope slide to the other” (Hayden, Pox, p. 25). “The minute organism is very active, moving with one or the other end of the body forwards, and at the same time rotating on its principal axis, or bending the body sideways.” (Thomas Clifford Allbutt, A System of medicine, by many writers, Vol. 1, 1905/11, Macmillan, 1907, p. 47).
Early medical texts often described T. pallidum as “serpentine” (“spirochœta pallida, a serpentine and flexile organism, resembling a corkscrew, having sinuous movements like the swimming of a snake or an eel”, The Medical Brief, Vol. 35 (1907) p. 735) which I believe contributed to Joyce’s association of T. pallidum with snakes (Ferris, 140-141): “strange exotic serpentine, […] corkhorse […] uncoil spirally and swell lacertinelazily before our eyes” (FW 121.20-25).
Foot-and-mouth sleeping position and French farces Frisette and Une Chambre a Deux Lits
“In what directions did listener and narrator lie? Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.” (736) The foot-and-mouth sleeping position of Bloom and Molly is foretold by Mrs. Bouncer who says, “Now, then, to make the bed --- and don't let me forget that what’s the head of the bed for Mr. Cox becomes the foot of the bed for Mr. Box” (6). Boylan and Bloom, like Box and Cox, take turns sleeping in the same bed (with Molly): Bloom-Cox in the morning and evening, and Boylan-Box during the day, using the bed in opposite directions. Each of the four ambivalently desire and avoid Molly and Penelope Ann.
In this paper about plot/motif origins and influences, it is appropriate to note that Morton’s Box and Cox (1847) is based on two French farces, both of which premiered at the Palais Royal in Paris in 1846.
In Une Chambre a Deux Lits by Varin and Lefevre,(31) two men find accommodation in a room with two beds at a country inn, and they discover each other. They find they are both married to the same woman, Veronique, and one of them faked a suicide to avoid marrying her. They duel to avoid marrying the woman. After considering pistols and roasting skewers, they decide to duel by playing cards. They both repeatedly have the trump card of “five.”
In the second French farce, Frisette by Labiche and Lefranc,(32)Gaudrion (a young man working nights at a bakery) and a Frisette (a young woman working during the day as a lace seamstress) unknowingly share a room as a result of a scheme by the landlady Mme Menachet. Many Box and Cox motifs discussed in the paper are presented in the opening scenes of Frisette, taking place beginning 8 a.m.
- Complaining about tobacco smoke: “…hier au soir en reentrant, j’ai trouve ma chambre empestee de fumee de tabac!” (p.4, scene ii) (Coming home last night, I found my room filled with tobacco smoke!)
- Tenant ascending the stairs: “… ce monsieur que je rencontre tous le martins dans l’escalier? il monte toujours quand je descends” (p.5, scene ii) (… the gentleman I run into every morning in the stairs? --- he’s always ascending when I’m descending)
- Key displacement: Mme Menachet’s daily moving of the key under the vase on the mantelpiece (from where both tenants get it every day) keeps both tenants from suspecting their situation. (p.7, scene iii)
Especially interesting is the landlady Menachet’s comment on the foot-and-mouth sleeping positions of the yet-unsuspecting tenants:
“Ah ! ca, refaisons le lit, et n’oublions pas de changer le tranversin de cote… Gaudrion veut avoir la tete par la … et madmoiselle Frisette par ici … S’ils etaient maries, ca serait genant tout de meme! ” (p.7, scene iii)
(Now, then, to make the bed --- and don’t let me forget to move the bolster… Gaudrion wants to have the head there, and Miss Frisette here. If they get married, it’s going to be packed and cramped all the same!)
Mme Menachet’s comment closely parallels Molly’s comment on the packed and cramped sleeping arrangement: “look at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed / how can he without a hard bolster / its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth” (771)
There are many more parallels between the central places of action in Frisette and Ulysses: the Mme Menache’s single-bedded apartment room and the Bloom bedroom.
The foot-and-mouth sleeping of Gaudrion and Frisette occurs in Room No. 7 (p.6, scene iii), and the foot-and-mouth sleeping of Bloom and Molly occurs at 7 Eccles Street, where Joyce’s friend John Francis Byrne lived (JJII 281).
One half of Mme Menache’s apartment room is covered in yellow wallpaper, and the other half in red wallpaper (p.2, scene i). In the “Calypso” episode, the predominant colors are yellow and orange: “yellow twilight” (61) and “Orangegroves”, “oranges,” “oranges”, “Oranges” (60), “orange-keyed chamberpot” (64). Stuart Gilbert notes that in the “Calypso” episode, the hollow cave where Calypso held Odysseus captive has its counterpart in the “yellow twilight” (61) of the bedroom presided over by the Nymph, from which Bloom emerges into the orange brightness of the streets (James Joyce's Ulysses (1930, 1955), p. 144).
Frisette loses her hairpins (p.5, scene ii), and later Gaudrion sits on her hair-pin on the bed, and takes great interest in it: Ouch! What is this? A black hairpin! A woman’s hairpin! It pricked me!” (p.10, scene v). At an analogous point in Bloom’s morning, Bloom takes great interest in the pin that secured the flower to Martha’s letter: “Common pin, eh?” “Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.” (78) --- which leads to other thoughts: “O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers.” “Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere” (79).
Frisette is a story in which Gaudrion loses his infant son and later recovers him in a most unexpected way.
The central plot occurring on the stage is that of love triangle: a woman, the main man (Bloom / Gaudrion), and the seducer from the outside. The seducer or the “mystery man” does not appear directly on the stage. We learn of Boylan’s presence on the stage from the clues he left behind and from Molly’s thoughts, and we only hear the voice of Barbaroux without ever seeing him. (We never find out who Barbaroux is, and in this way he is like Ulysses’s mystery man in Macintosh.)
We hear the woman’s soliloquy while she compares the two men. At one point, Frisette temporarily decides on the mystery man, provided he becomes the father of her adopted child (p. 31, scene xvii). Molly temporarily thinks about the possibility of having Boylan’s child: “supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was married Im sure hed have a fine strong child” (742).
But in the end, the woman chooses the main man. The play ends with a marriage proposal and acceptance, and Ulysses ends with memories of a marriage proposal and acceptance.
Despite these tantalizing parallels, I am not convinced that Joyce had read either of the two French plays.
18. “Penelope” The ship referred to as “that derelict ship that came up to the harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit” (U-G 18.871-72 (762.23)) is the Mary Celeste, fictionalized as the Marie Céleste in “J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement,” an early success by Conan Doyle.(33)
[3] Joyce and Doyle: allusive literature and detective fiction
(I should like to ask that Shedlock Homes person who is out for removing the roofs of our criminal classics by what deductio ad domunum he hopes de tacto to detect anything unless he happens of himself, movibile tectu, to have a slade off) (FW 165.32-36)
Removal of roofs by Holmes in this parenthetical remark was identified by LeBlanc (62) as a reference to the opening paragraph of A Case of Identity, where Holmes tells Watson, “If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs” (191).
The connections of the Holmes tales (Identity and Study) to Box and Cox and to the Odyssey offer many elucidations, as did Ulysses’s connections.
Identity’s appeal to Joyce must be partially due to the incest theme common to Identity and FW noted by LeBlanc (67), and the connection of Bloom’s “Then we’ll go hand in hand” (“La ci darem la mano” (77)) to Holmes’s words, which Doyle borrowed from the penultimate line of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Doyle superimposed Identity with layers of allusions. The overall plot of Identity combines many elements, including Hamlet (which also shares the incest theme) and the sorrows of young Arthur (Doyle) about the affair between Doyle’s mother Mary and step-father figure Bryan Waller.(34)
Identity also features a pair acting in a Box-and-Cox fashion (James Windibank and Hosmer Angel), and a reenactment of a Homeric “pale fear and collapse” scene from the Odyssey. Odysseus locks in the suitors and delivers his terrifying speech: “Even so he spake, and pale fear gat hold on the limbs of all, and each man looked about, where he might shun utter doom.” When Holmes locks in Windibank, the trapped villain shouts while “turning white to his lips and glancing about him like a rat in a trap.” (199) The “rat in a trap” is perhaps from Hamlet: “King Claudius: What do you call the play? Hamlet: The Mouse-trap.” (III.ii)
The connections also solve problems that have puzzled Holmes fans for many years. In The Man with the Twisted Lip, Mrs. Watson says to a visitor, “Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?” Why was Dr. John H. Watson called “James”? Doyle said that this was just an error, but he never corrected it. The “James” Watson puzzle has been a subject of vigorous speculations since first pointed out in 1911, and it turns out to be Doyle’s tongue-in-cheek nod hinting at Watson’s origin in James Cox.(35)
The parallels explain Study’s three plot peculiarities.
- The first concerns the circumstances leading to Jefferson Hope’s capture when his cab is summoned to 221B Baker Street. Hope sent a young man disguised as an old woman to that address on the previous day, but Hope shows no suspicion upon being called to the same address. The role of the unnamed young friend was perhaps an afterthought, to recreate Telemachus who helps Odysseus.
- The second peculiarity is the “duel by two identical pills” --- Hope’s offering Drebber and Stangerson a choice between two pills one of which is poison. This mirrors Box and Cox’s duel by tossing of identically-rigged dice and coins. Hope’s two pills are also reminiscent of the antidote that Hermes gives Odysseus to counteract Circe’s bewitching poison, and correspond to the last chance given to the suitors by an archery competition using Odysseus’s bow.
- The third peculiarity is Holmes’s “euthanasia” of the old, dying dog to test the poison pill (48-49). This is a recreation of a scene from the Odyssey. Odysseus appearing as a beggar is recognized by his old dog Argos, who gives him welcome and immediately dies of old age. And it is appropriate that Holmes should kill the dog (Argos), because he is modeled after Hermes (Greek god of thieves and invention), who was called “the slayer of Argos” for killing the many-eyed giant Argus Panoptes.
Morton’s The Double-Bedded Room and Doyle’s double-bedded room in The Cedars
The complex Box and Cox family tree includes two main contributing sources, the Frisette side and the double-bedded side. The latter side originated with E. F. Prieur and A. Letorzec’s Une Chambre pour Deux (1839), which inspired Morton’s The Double-Bedded Room (1843). Une Chambre à Deux Lits (1846) together with Frisette (1846) inspired Morton’s Box and Cox (1847).
In Morton’s ealier play, The Double-Bedded Room (1843), a woman and a man accidentally occupy the same hotel room with two beds, without being aware of each other’s presence. After finding each other, they fall asleep in the same bed, and then her lover returns to find them in this state.
Doyle’s The Man with the Twisted Lip begins with the “James” Watson reference to James Cox. After Watson’s trip to the opium den, we are told of Mr. St. Clair who is missing from his mansion called The Cedars. Holmes stays at the mansion while he investigates the case. Holmes tells Watson, “My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.” In Morton’s play the man staying in the double-bedded room ends up falling asleep in the same bed with the woman, which explains why Mrs. St. Clair in her night-gown acts so coquettishly toward Holmes.
Later, Watson joins Holmes in the mansion (“A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal”) and sleeps in the other bed --- like the two men of Une Chambre à Deux Lits.
Conclusion
There is a fundamental affinity between literary allusion and detective fiction. When a reader is on alert, looking for clues in text, descriptions lose their inertia; all words become sharper, stranger.(36) In reading imaginative fiction, the reader always participates in interpreting and understanding; the detecting and deciphering aspect is merely more explicit for allusive and detective fiction. Vladimir Nabokov begins his Lectures on Literature by announcing, “My course, among other things, is a kind of detective investigation of the mystery of literary structures.” (37)
Joyce’s stories contain epiphanies, as detective fiction contains dénouements.(38) Ulysses as a whole is written like a detective story, full of hints, clues and mysteries. Many red-herrings are presented in “The Wandering Rocks,” including Marcus J. Bloom, the real-life dentist unrelated to Poldy, and Lorcan Sherlock, another real-life Dubliner unrelated to Sherlock Holmes. “Ithaca” presents dénouements explaining everything in a super-lucid clarity, followed by “Penelope,” a sentimental coda or envoi, which is a common way of ending a mystery tale.
By infusing Holmes tales with allusions, Doyle accomplished the seemingly impossible task of producing tales that appeal to both the mass and sophisticated readership. The giants of 20th-century literature recognized the allusive depth of Doyle’s stories and paid him tributes. After much debate, in 1951, T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral was shown to have deliberately used lines from Doyle’s The Musgrave Ritual. Then Samuel Rosenberg (106-07, 114-16) argued in his 1974 book how Joyce’s Ulysses and Franz Kafka’s The Trial borrowed extended plot elements from Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. Also uncovered by Rosenberg were Doyle’s allusions to Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Racine, Mary Shelley, The Old and New Testaments, Greek myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and Minotaur, and other classical sources.
Holmesian allusions are often ironic. The comedic tale of The Red-Headed League concealed allusions to homosexual themes of Sodom and Gomorrah (Rosenberg 123-26). Similarly, the insipid tale of marriage fraud in A Case of Identity ironically parallels the tragedy of Hamlet.(39) Multiple killings and revenge murders of A Study in Scarlet allude to Box and Cox, and the tragic death of Holmes at Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem is modeled after Box’s fake suicide.
The commonality of methods in the writings of Doyle and Joyce can be summarized as a combination of three elements. At the deepest levels are visceral themes of a family member’s death or adultery.(40) These themes are given mythical dimensions by allusions to Homer and other classical sources. Everywhere in the text are clues and puzzles, and superimposed allusions provide comedy and irony. Music of Box and Cox adds an air of irresponsible comedy to Study and Ulysses in a similar manner.(41)It works even if the readers do not see the reference to Box and Cox, because the characters go through Box-and-Cox-like near-misses and because it puts the author in a parodist mindset.
Despite the commercial success of Rosenberg’s 1974 book, I have not seen a single mention or discussion in the literature of his Study-Ulysses parallelism claim. This was apparently caused by the general prejudice toward Doyle’s work held by literary scholars (the prejudice not shared by Joyce or T.S. Eliot) and also by Rosenberg’s sketchy presentation. The Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_is_the_Best_Disguise has included Rosenberg’s parallel-plot skeleton since 2005, and since 2007 (Aug. 25), it has included the caveat, “It should, however, be noted that these similarities are based on common actions and may have been purely coincidental.” Because Rosenberg’s presentation is so skeletal, after my initial examination in early 2007 of the relevant parts of the Study and Ulysses, I too concluded that the common actions could be coincidental. Then, I learned of Sasano’s discovery of Odyssey-Study parallelism, which prompted me to reexamine Rosenberg’s claim and discovered a multitude of additional supporting evidence ---Box-Holmes-Stephen and Poldy-Cox-Watson correspondences, “Jesus, Mr. Doyle”, Senn’s discovery about “Peter Carey”, etc. --- which leave little doubt that Joyce was deliberate in his use of interconnected works of Homer, Morton, and Doyle that came before him.
Letters and other extrinsic evidence for Joyce’s interest in Doyle have so far been sporadic. For example, the only mention of Doyle in Ellmann’s Joyce biography is that Joyce while living in Pola, Austria in 1904-05 “read pell-mell Tolstoy, Conan Doyle” among other authors (JJII 193). Perhaps pertinent material will be found in Stanislaus’s 1907-08 Triestine diary, containing “surprising amount of space” for Doyle, whose stories Joyce liked to have Stanislaus read to him when he was ill.(42)
Is Ulysses a comic novel based on the light-hearted Box and Cox, or is it a novel with dark themes of guilt, suffering, and shame analyzed by Kathleen Ferris in James Joyce and the Burden of Disease? Clearly it is both. It has often been asked of Finnegans Wake, “Is it just a big joke?” --- an issue Joyce touched on as, “Tis jest jibberweek’s joke.” (FW 565.14). Leaving aside the question of whether Finnegans Wake is a colossal leg-pull, it is instructive to consider Freud’s conception of jokes. In my earlier paper analyzing the psychology of racism, I summarized Freud’s theory of jokes by stating that jokes give us pleasure because they titillate us by giving us a tiny taste of what we desire and fear.(43) Jokes enable us to fool our censors and inhibitions, deceive ourselves, and indulge in our desires and wishes that we would not admit that we have, and joke largely accomplish this by the Trojan horse of double meaning. The harmless, surface text hides the inner message that targets our deepest desires and fears. All works of literature employ such methods, but I find especially in the works of Doyle and Joyce a Trojan-horse, two-plane or two-story combination of elements: dark, visceral themes of adultery, disease, and death; mythology; and allusive comedy and puzzles. It is my hope that the parallels I have uncovered between the works of Doyle and Joyce stimulate further interest that is long overdue.
[Recap] Bohx and Cowx --- their Bloomsday in Dublin
Anthony Burgess in Re Joyce (1965, Part Two, Chapter 2) tells the story of Joyce’s Ulysses using the names Telemachus and Odysseus, and focusing on the novel’s Odysseyian aspects. What follows is the same novel told using the composite names such as Bohx and Cowx (Brebberx and Cohpx) based on the names of Box-Holmes, Cox-Watson, Mr. and Mrs. Bouncer, Boylan, Enoch Drebber, and Jefferson Hope.(Note that these characters are themselves Homeric: Box (presumed drowned) and Cox are suitors who duel over Penelope Ann. Holmes is the Odysseyian hero who remarked on non-barking dogs. Jefferson Hope and Enoch Drebber are the Odysseus and Antinous of A Study in Scarlet.) Like Burgess’s synopsis, the following recap indicates the level of contribution of plot elements from Box and Cox and Sherlock Holmes to the overall structure of Joyce’s Ulysses.
Episode 1. 8 a.m. Box comes up stairs to the landlord Bouncer who is shaving before breakfast. Box complains about funk caused by his roommate, and Bouncer tries to placate him because Bouncer needs his contribution of rent. Box hands over his key and becomes keyless.
Episode 4. 8 a.m. Cowx comes up stairs to the bedroom of his Number 7 home, which is surrounded by yellow and orange. Cowx likes mutton kidney. He observes Henry’s hat, goes out, feels his pocket and finds that his key is not there (he too becomes keyless). He buys kidney, returns home, cooks it, and goes upstairs. He learns from the landlady, Mrs. Bouncer, that her singing partner is Doyle. She tells him to get her another book by Poldy-Cox, which reminds him of the borrowed Doyle book and reincarnation. Cowx smells smoke, then flings burnt meat to his cat. As Cowx goes out of the house, he frets about his possibly-misplaced hat.
Episode 5. Cowx passes the cabman’s shelter thinking of Peter Carey and hums the baritone “La ci darem la mano”.
Episode 6. Cohpx sees Brebberx from inside a carriage, then thinks of Boots giving evidence. Cohpx, who is avoiding the tenor Boyx, notices him standing outside the carriage.
Episode 7. Cowx visits the newspaper office, then later Bohx does, nearly meeting each other.
Episode 8. Cowx sees Boyx’s straw hat and tan shoes, which forces Cowx to flee into the museum. Talk of the Boer War and Peter Carey.
Episode 9. Cowx walks past between Bohx and Bouncer at the library steps. Cowx and Bohx again nearly meet.
Episode 10. Cowx and Bohx go through parallel movements, both browsing booksellers’ carts and looking at books about sex. There are other Box-and-Cox near-misses involving Boyx and others.
Episode 11. Boyx leaves the Ormond bar as Cowx enters. In the bar Cowx (as Henry) writes a letter to Martha using Greek ‘e’s.
Episode 12. In a bar, there is talk of the Boer War and Molly Maguires.
Episode 13. On the beach, Cowx sees a young girl, who is as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.
Episode 14. Cowx enters the maternity hospital, and there he finally meets Bohx.
Episode 15. At Nighttown, Cohpx contracts his face to resemble Sherlock Holmes, followed by mention of Enoch Drebber and a deadhand writing on the wall. Cohpx tracks Brebberx who gets drunker as he moves from one saloon to the next. Cohpx follows Brebberx into a brothel, through the Boxer Coxer rising up the stairs. Penelope-Ann, the majestic whoremistress, enters. She dominates Cohpx (who has lost his talisman) and, to a lesser extent, Brebberx. A voice calls “Dooog!” Brebberx is punched by a young military man for insulting a girl. Brebberx, now a nose-bleeding tyke, collapses to the ground.
Episode 16. Cohpx takes helplessly drunk Brebberx to a cafe at the cabman’s shelter linked to Peter Carey. There Cohx observes the talkative sailor Murphy, Sherlockholmesing him up. Cowx thinks of “Jesus, Mr. Doyle”, Murphy lying like old boots, and the borrowed Doyle book. Cowx shows Mrs. Bouncer’s glamour photo to Bohx, and admires his phenomenally beautiful tenor voice. Cowx then advises him to sever his connection with the ‘Budd’ing doctor.
Episode 17. [The dénouement explains everything in super-clarity, in the style of itemized descriptions found in A Study in Scarlet.] At about 1 a.m. Cohpx and Brebberx (the keyless couple) go to the house that is feared empty, Cowx’s Number 7 home. Cohpx lights a candle, and offers Brebberx cocoa in one of two identical cups. Cohx observes torn betting tickets, crumbs of potted meat, and cigarette ends, and engages in intricate deduction about Boyx’s presence in the house that afternoon. Bohx departs, but he and Cowx have reached a measure of reconciliation, like long-lost kin. In Cowx’s bookshelf is the library book, The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, lent on the Whitsun Eve and the eve of Doyle’s birthday. (“Jesus, Mr. Doyle” --- Conan Doyle was a medical savior for Joyce.) Cowx goes to bed, and lies with bolster at his feet in a foot-and-mouth sleeping position with respect to Mrs. Bouncer and Boyx that afternoon.
Episode 18. The novel ends with the woman’s half-sleep thoughts including “that derelict ship that came up to the harbour” --- Mary Celeste (Sutherland) --- and thoughts of a marriage proposal and acceptance.
NOTE ON THE TEXT
I’d like to thank Mr. Fritz Senn for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.