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Dublinersby James Joyce |
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GraceAn Outline CommentaryBob Williams - © 1999The fall and tongue injury happened to John Joyce who was rescued by Tom Devin just as Tom Kernan was by Jack Power. It was Charlie Chance (mentioned in Finnegans Wake) who talked John Joyce into the triduum for businessmen at the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street. The details are in Stanislaus' diary and Joyce used many of them but not the most amusing exchange:
Pappie: Do you think I have much to tell him? [much to confess to the priest]Matthew Kane was the original of Martin Cunningham. Ned Thornton is Mr Kernan and Father Purdon (named after a street in a Dublin brothel district) is Father Bernard Vaughan. Fogarty the grocer had his store on a corner near the house where the Joyces lived (32 Glengariff Parade off the North Circular Road) in 1901. Joyce's structure is based on Dante's Comedy: the downstairs lavatory is the inferno; the sickbed is purgatory; and the highly secularized Dublin church is paradise. Simony, another Dantean theme, is involved in Father Purdon's commercialism. Ellmann suggests that this use of Dante pointed Joyce towards a similar use of Homer in Ulysses. Tindall, as usual, has some helpful hints. Cardinal Dowling is Johann Dšllinger, excommunicated 1871. Fogarty misquotes Dryden. Dryden's "Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd" becomes "Great minds are very near to madness." The reference to Leo XIII, who died in 1903, places the time of the story in the pontificate of Pius X, his successor. The Gardiner Street church is attended by Joe Dillon's parents. There is a Constable 65 in Ulysses. And there are story links in that Kernan knows Crofton. Tom Kernan, drunk, falls down the lavatory steps of a bar on Grafton Street. Two gentlemen and a curate carry the unconscious Mr Kernan into the bar and lay him on the floor. The manager, alarmed at Kernan's pallor, sends for a policeman who appears almost immediately but gives little evidence of intelligence. A young man in cycling gear takes over and deals efficiently with Kernan. He is restored to consciousness but only to face arrest. Jack Power enters and rescues him, undertaking to see him home. The constable knows Power, a ranking official in the constabulary. Kernan's two companions, described as gentlemen, had abandoned him to his plight and Power and the young cyclist see Kernan to a car. The young man takes his leave. The young man, of course, is M'Intosh. At Tom's home on the Glasnevin road Power observes the shabbiness of the house and the impertinence of the three children. He confides to Mrs Kernan, who has returned from putting Tom to bed, his plans that he and some friends will undertake for her husband's reformation. There is the interruption symbol of dotted lines. The interruption's sole function is to take Power off-stage. Alone, Mrs Kernan goes through her husband's pockets and we go through her mind. It is not richly furnished and we find out that she could not endure being a wife but took well enough to being a mother. Two evenings later, Power accompanied by Martin Cunningham and C.P. M'Coy comes to visit Tom who is still bedfast. Reference to Mrs Kernan gives us another glimpse of her mind, one fixed with religious convictions, few, simple and not especially discriminating. M'Coy, successive holder of many very ordinary jobs and a little stupid, receives many snubs from Cunningham. Except for the stupidity, M'Coy seems like Bloom in many respects. Tom can't remember the name of one of the men who abandoned him but the other was Harford. "Hm, said Mr Cunningham" and we learn that Harford is a moneylender and his function, so necessary in impoverished Dublin, makes him and the Jews who perform similar services despised by Irish gentlemen like Cunningham. Those of his opinion see Harford's idiot son as a sign of divine disapproval. This opinion of the relation between God and commercialism has a simoniacal edge to it and one appropriate to this story and especially its close. The conversation moves along according to plan and touches lightly on the evils of drink. One evil was the inevitability of Tom's arrest if Power had not rescued him. Tom declaims indignantly against the constables as stupid lads recruited from the country. Cunningham diverts the company Đ and Tom's indignation Đ with a joke about constables. Mrs Kernan brings them bottles of stout, a perhaps peculiar choice of refreshment for the wife of a man with a drinking problem. His guests, as Mr Power serves them their drinks, begin to discuss plans in a way sufficiently mysterious to arouse Tom's curiosity. He swallows the bait and asks them what they are talking about. They explain about the retreat, a spiritual exercise wherein, they will among other observances, participate in the sacrament of penance. Cunningham describes this as washing the pot. His homely metaphor is certainly appropriate to Tom, a professional taster and seller of tea. They invite Tom to join them and he thinks about it as his guests speak approvingly of the Jesuits. Tom admits they are not a bad group of men. Father Purdon will conduct the retreat. Tom is weakening and his visitors discuss the favorite topic of Irishmen, eloquence, this time that of the pulpit. Mr Fogarty enters with a gift, a half-pint of special whisky. Mr Power again dispenses the drinks and they talk about popes, their great minds whereupon Mr Fogarty makes sententious hash of a quotation from Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. The visitors talk then of the doctrine of papal infallibility and the council of 1870. Mr Cunningham introduces Cardinal Dowling, present, he says, at the 1870 council. Although he is correct that 'Dowling' opposed papal infallibibility, he is wrong about everything else. Johann Dšllinger was not present at the council and was not a cardinal. Into a solemn lull of this conversation, Mrs Kernan enters and Mr Power, assuming victory, tells her that Tom will be of their number at the retreat. Tom assents but draws the line at the use of candles to the amusement of his hearers. Another interruption (row of dots) and we are in the Jesuit church on Gardiner Street. Many of the men in the congregation have familiar names. There is Mr Hendrick (last seen in 'A Mother') and, very ironically, Harford the moneylender of whom Mr Cunningham was so disapproving. Father Purdon ascends the pulpit and, after a theatrical pause for prayer, begins his sermon. It is a silly one and theologically loony with its hint of buying God off but it fits well with the equally silly conversation in Tom's bedroom, a conversation composed of inaccuracies, clichés masquerading as profundities and stale ideas represented as thoughts. In all this Joyce observes scrupulous accuracy. He describes the true way of any laity anywhere. For the good of their cause they cheerfully make up what they need of anything that's handy whenever the facts elude them or contradict their prepossessions. In a frightening way this is a very funny story. As the second longest story, it clearly establishes that Joyce needed the freedom of more ample forms to achieve the best of which he was capable. Grace: Characters (*mentioned)
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