Dubliners

by James Joyce

Ivy Day in the Committee Room

An Outline Commentary

Bob Williams - © 1999

Joyce A-Z asks if the Lyons of this story is Bantam Lyons? Tindall says no. Joyce A-Z says maybe. I say it's Bantam Lyons unless Joyce indicates otherwise just as the Holohan of 'Two Gallants' has to be Hoppy. Hynes banal poem emphasizes the gulf between a remembered greatness and the gritty reality of the present. This story's references to Edward VII and the use of the word 'bloody' especially fired Grant Richards's thirst for changes. Joyce agreed to some but not all and, when Richards did finally publish in 1914, everything was exactly as Joyce had written it.

Ellmann observes that not only does this story involve the relations between the living and the dead, it resembles Anatole France's story, 'The Procurator of Judea,' and thus involves also the motif of the real absence.

The collectors, of whom John Joyce was one, were known to themselves as the twelve apostles, more in regard to their number than for any other quality. Henchy and Crofton (there were two Croftons) were of this company. Of elections to supply Joyce with details there were four: three council elections of 1903, 1904 and 1905 and a mayoralty election of 1904. In 1903 John Joyce worked for Mr Cummins, a Nationalist candidate. The setting was a dingy borrowed room in Wicklow Street.

Stanislaus claimed that Henchy was a version of John Joyce toned down to his surroundings. The usual attitude is calm acceptance of Stanislaus' evidences on the basis of 'why not?' but it seems that he rewrote his diaries often (proved by the frugal use of the back of already used and sometimes dated paper whose dates were inconsistent with the diary dates.) Thus the directness of his diary material may be considered somewhat impaired. John Joyce called Canon Keon (a Fairview parish priest and friend of the hated Murray's) 'Frosty Face.' Joyce's use of the name may be seen as a tiny paying off of his father's scores, a habit of his.

Of the twenty-nine characters in 'Ivy Day' twenty-one are not present, they are mentioned. They range from the Almighty Chris t to old Jack's wife. This relatively high number is very appropriate in a work that describes detraction and malicious gossip as a peculiarly Irish art form.

In a scene that recalls the fire building scene in A Portrait (also see Ulysses: 17.135 et seq.) old Jack starts a fire in the room used as an election office for Mr Richard J. Tierney. His only companion is Mr O'Connor, one of Tierney's canvassers, who has sought shelter from the rain. (He, like Little Chandler in 'A Little Cloud,' has a light brown moustache except his is light brown while Chandler's is light-brown.) O'Connor has no scruple in making a spill of a Tierney promotion piece to light his cigarette, the first of many acts, some of them greater than others, of disloyalty. O'Connor wears an ivy leaf in his lapel to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Parnell. He and Jack are in the middle of a conversation about Jack's unruly, drunken and lazy son. He has turned out badly despite Jack's efforts, beating him with a stick as severely as he knew how. He blames the boy's evil ways on his indulgent mother. Joe Hyne's comes in. He has come to find out if Tierney has paid his canvassers yet. No definite answer is available from these two so he stays to talk. They compare Tierney with his opponent Colgan. Jack belittles him as a mere working man but Hynes defends him for that very reason and says that Colgan would not agree to an address to Edward VII when he comes to visit, the question of the address being very controversial. Hynes takes off his coat and he too is wearing ivy. They all agree in praise of Parnell. Mr Henchy enters with the news that Tierney (already referred to by Hynes as Tricky Dicky) has found an excuse for deferring payment to his canvassers. He greets Joe curtly, takes Jack's chair and sends him to fetch more coal. Henchy berates Tierney and gossips colorfully about Tierney's father. Joe now knows that Tierney has not paid his canvassers and leaves. Henchy accuses the departed Hynes of being a Colgan spy. O'Connor defends him but Henchy and Jack are strong in their suspicions and O'Connor becomes tepid in his efforts. Henchy asserts that many rabid nationalists, but not Hynes, are in the pay of the castle and he alludes mysteriously to one certain spy, comparing him in typical Irish fashion to the infamous Major Sirr. This comparison of a contemporary spy with a similar figure from the past is another example of the interplay between the dead and the living.

In one of the Three Famous Spits (Cotter in 'The Sisters' and Tom Kernan in 'Grace') Henchy almost puts out the fire.

Father Keon enters. He is looking for Mr Fanning, known in Ulysses as Long John Fanning. Henchy welcomes him effusively and treats him with great ceremony. Father Keon leaves and Henchy gossips about him to O'Connor. Father Keon, a suspended priest, makes his living in unknown and, Henchy suspects, dishonest ways. Henchy had thought at first that Father Henchy was the boy sent by Tierney with bottles of stout for the refreshment for his canvassers. He talks with casual but vivid enmity about the unreliability of Tierney, of contemporary politicians in general and Jack regales them with gossip about the frugal ways of the present Lord Mayor.

But Henchy has been a little unfair to Tierney. The boy arrives with the stout but there is no corkscrew and he returns to the Black Eagle to borrow one for them. He returns with it almost immediately. Henchy offers him a drink as reward and he accepts. After he leaves, with the corkscrew, old Jack and Henchy are sanctimonious in their disapproval of a lad that age (seventeen) drinking.

Henchy boasts of his canvassing accomplishments but speaks disparagingly of Crofton, companion in his efforts. Crofton and Lyons come in and Henchy has to leave the rest of his strictures unspoken. Henchy puts a bottle for each of them on the hob to pop the cork since the boy took the corkscrew with him. Joyce gives us a sudden interior glimpse of Crofton's mind. He says nothing because he has nothing to say, Henchy's criticism of him, and because he feels superior to his companions.

The voluble Henchy continues to boast of his prowess as a canvasser and tells how he had bamboozled one voter by some dexterous verbal shuffling. Lyons brings up the issue of the address to the king. Henchy argues that such an address would (somehow) boost the weary economy. O'Connor cites Parnell on the opposite side of the question. Henchy says Parnell is dead. (Henchy may have been based on John Joyce but John Joyce would never have said this.) Henchy gets so far carried away by his blustery eloquence as to commit a historical error, claiming that Queen Victoria had never visited Ireland. Crofton, by a silent nod conveys his agreement with Henchy. Lyons objects that Edward's personal life is unseemly. Henchy counters, much in the same way that a comparable group in 'Grace' praises Father Purdon, that Edward's faults merely prove that he is one of themselves. Lyons accepts this but claims that it is inconsistent to accept Edward's shady life after rejecting Parnell for his. Henchy can't see that the cases are alike. O'Connor steps in to make peace. "After all, we all respect Parnell, now that he's dead and gone." Emphasis supplied and in no need, I think, of commentary.

Crofton, appealed to, speaks as he claims his opened bottle. Parnell was, after all, a gentleman. Henchy elaborates fiercely on this tepid contribution and, fired by contention, gives the returning Joe Hynes a boisterous welcome, very opposite from his original cold greeting. He puts a bottle on the hob for him. Henchy speaks glowingly of Joe for his loyalty to Parnell. Joe, possibly overcome, takes his place among them silently. O'Connor asks him to recite his poem on Parnell. After a becoming affectation of hesitation, he does so. His poem is eleven stanza of heartfelt verse that teeters continuously on the edge of absurdity. But the company is moved. Henchy asks Crofton for his opinion and Joyce shifts suddenly into indirect discourse, impishly one suspects: "Mr Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing."

Joyce was proud of this story and well he should have been. Its virtues are in the mass and in the detail and like 'After the Races' it is a story in which nobody is alone but what a difference! Here there is no strain. We can see what we need to see without authorial manipulation except for a slight detour into the mind of Crofton, structurally necessary as the event proved and thus justified. The opening is natural and the descriptions, if conventional, are placed precisely and function smoothly. Characterization arises from situation and lively conversation. Crofton needs to be authorially displayed since he is evasive and reserved, the opposite of the typical Irishman. Joyce was an additive writer and in the accumulative texture of this story he reached a peak in the art of the short story. It also displays the true Joycean manner, how to extract real feeling from phony sentiments. A.Walton Litz sees 'Two Gallants,' the thirteenth Dubliners story, as expression of Joyce's maturity. This says too much for 'Two Gallants' and not enough for 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room,' eighth in order of composition.

Ivy Day in the Committee Room: Characters (*mentioned)

• Old Jack
• Mr O'Connor (Mat)
• Mr Tierney*
• Old Jack's son*
• Old Jack's wife*
• Mr Hynes (Joe)
• Colgan*
• Edward VII*
• Parnell*
• Mr Henchy (John)
• Grimes*
• Father Burke*
• Mr Fanning*
• Joe Hynes' father*
• A certain little nobleman*
• Major Sirr*
• The Almighty Christ*
• Father Keon
• Alderman Cowley*
• Pat Keegan*
• The boy
• Crofton
• Lyons
• Wilkins*
• Parkes*
• Atkinson*
• Ward*
• Queen Victoria*