No Modernism Without Lesbians, Diana Souhami [love books to read txt] 📗

class. When he visited Harriet Weaver in London, he booked his whole family into the Strand Palace Hotel. In Paris, he and his family dined most nights at Le Petit Trianon at the corner of boulevard Montparnasse and rue de Rennes. The proprietor and staff greeted him from his taxi, took him to his special table, the head waiter read the items from the menu. Joyce cared little for food but he urged his guests to choose the best on the menu and the finest wines. The waiter kept his glass filled.

Joyce would have sat there with family and friends and his white wine till all hours if at a certain moment Nora hadn’t decided it was time to go. He ended by obeying her…

His tips were famous – to the waiters, the attendant who took his coat, the doorman who fetched him a taxi. ‘I never grudged tips’, Sylvia wrote, ‘but knowing the circumstances, it seemed to me that Joyce overtipped.’ She said he enjoyed spending the way other people might enjoy hoarding. A publisher, visiting her shop after dining out with Joyce, said: ‘He spends money like a drunken sailor.’ His parties were elaborate – food supplied by the best caterers, the best wines, though for himself he preferred large quantities of an ordinary white, a waiter hired to serve. He assiduously remembered birthdays and sent huge bouquets of flowers – all of which showed his generosity and largesse – except that the money came from women friends, not employers.

Darantiere of Dijon

Adrienne’s printer, Maurice Darantiere in Dijon, agreed to take on the typesetting and printing. He and his father before him were master printers. They had printed J.K. Huysman’s À rebours and other contentious writers. Darantiere shared his house with his young assistant, liked good food and was unfazed by colourful relationship or supposedly dirty words. He did not know, though, what he was letting himself in for with Ulysses. He did not use linotype machines. He cast Joyce’s 600-page novel, one letter at a time, from tiny metal blocks. The process would have been laborious and costly even with minimal corrections. Joyce viewed proofs as manuscript drafts to be revised; there was no point at which he considered his book finished and Sylvia told Darantiere to give him all the galleys he wanted.

Sylvia had no capital so Darantiere agreed to wait to be paid until her subscriptions came in. He printed a prospectus advertising the publishing by Shakespeare and Company of Ulysses by James Joyce, ‘complete as written’. The edition would be limited to 1,000 copies, 100 on Hollande paper and signed by Joyce for sale at 350 francs, 150 on Arches paper with special binding at 250 francs and 750 on ordinary paper at 150 francs. There was a photograph of Joyce and excerpts from reviews of the episodes serialized in The Little Review.

Prepaid orders came in fast, though Sylvia did not want to bank this money before delivery. Gide, ‘always sure to give his support to the cause of freedom of expression’, subscribed, as did W.B. Yeats. Ernest Hemingway wanted several copies. Robert McAlmon ‘combed the nightclubs for subscribers’. T.E. Lawrence ordered two of the expensive editions. George Bernard Shaw was antipathetic and complained to Sylvia of the book’s ‘foulmouthed, foul-minded derision and obscenity’.

Sylvia wrote to Holly on 23 April 1921: ‘I am about to publish Ulysses – of James Joyce. It will appear in October.’ She voiced hopes that this might put her shop into profit. Both projections were optimistic.

grey bare hairy buttocks

Printing was held up because no typist could transcribe the ‘Circe’ episode. Seven typists failed to make sense of it, the eighth threatened to throw herself out of the window, the ninth rang the bell of Shakespeare and Company, flung the pages she had attempted to transcribe through the door, then dashed off down the road. Cyprian did her best then handed over to her friend Raymonde Linossier, one of the few women barristers in Paris. Raymonde often helped Sylvia in the shop but had to conceal her lesbian, feminist and freethinking interests from her father. Francis Poulenc hoped for a lavender cover-up marriage with her to hide his homosexuality but she declined. Raymonde struggled with forty-five pages then passed the manuscript to a Mrs Harrison, whose husband worked at the British Embassy. He found pages on his wife’s desk describing Father Malachi O’Flynn celebrating a black mass. He read:

‘I’ll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!’

(The Reverend Mr Love raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoats revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.)

Mr Harrison raged, threw the manuscript pages on the fire and chased his wife into the street. John Quinn in America had the only other manuscript copy. Sylvia, Joyce and Darantiere had to wait for him to send photographed copies of the destroyed pages.

Sylvia’s father was a minister, Harriet Weaver’s a doctor and an evangelical Christian. Both Sylvia and Harriet seemed prim in aspect. Virginia Woolf had said Harriet symbolized ‘domestic rectitude’. Carrots up clergymen’s bottoms were not the customary narrative for daughters of the pious.

By allowing Joyce to go into proof after proof, the cost to Sylvia in time and expense was huge. His alterations alone added 4,000 francs to the quoted printing price. She took on an assistant to help with all the extra administration: a Greek subscriber, Myrsine Moschos, who was with her for nine years.

Joyce was delighted to hear of my Greek assistant. He thought it a good omen for his Ulysses. Omen or no omen, I was delighted to have someone to help me now, and someone who was a wonderful helper.

Stratford on Odéon

In the middle of this fraught publication process, Sylvia moved shop. Adrienne, as ever, was the enabler. The antique dealer opposite her in rue de l’Odéon wanted someone to take over her lease. Though the timing was inconvenient for Sylvia, it was an opportunity