Additional to the “U.P.: up” thriller in Joyce’s Ulysses (Diary, June fifth), there may be the associated puzzle of the place we first meet Denis Breen: unlucky recipient of the cryptic message who, if he wasn’t demented already, has been pushed so by receipt of the nameless postcard.
He’s now tramping round Dublin with two lawbooks below his oxter and on the way in which to see John Henry Menton a few £10,000 libel go well with. However when Leopold Bloom encounters Mrs Breen, in Dublin’s Westmoreland Road, her different half is in Harrison’s, a confectioner’s store subsequent door to The Irish Instances.
The scent of “scorching mockturtle soup and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly” emerges from the doorway, setting Bloom on one other of his streamlets of consciousness, which ends with: “Penny dinner. knife and fork chained to the desk”.
That final bit appears to be a reference, to not Harrison’s – or to The Irish Instances canteen, as some may suspect – however to a Christian charity on Abbey Road that served free breakfasts, and did certainly imprison the cutlery lest or not it’s thought of charity too.
However getting again to Breen, is there any significance in his being first positioned right here? Nicely, as all the time with James Joyce, sure. Or no less than most likely.
For as hardcore Joycean and common correspondent Senan Molony once more jogs my memory, the real-life James White Harrison who owned that confectionery store had himself as soon as been the recipient of nameless mail, despatched with malevolent intent.
We all know this as a result of, simply as Breen intends to, Harrison went to courtroom over it. However he had a considerably stronger case, albeit as a mere witness slightly than the plaintiff. Both manner, he was sufficiently dedicated to it that he travelled from Dublin to Liverpool to testify.
This was again in 1883, the identical 12 months because the trials for the notorious Phoenix Park murders of Britain’s chief secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish and his everlasting under-secretary TH Burke.
Harrison’s proof, nevertheless, associated to his having been a juror within the earlier trial of a Patrick Walsh, charged with the “Letterfrack Murders” of a father and son in 1881, on the top of the Land Struggle.
Walsh was hanged for that in September 1882, though not earlier than a number one prosecution witness, Constable Kavanagh, had been shot lifeless outdoors Letterfrack Barracks.
Now, in 1883, even because the Phoenix Park Homicide trials acquired below manner, Harrison – a Presbyterian born in Scotland – and plenty of different common jurors acquired an anonymously posted envelope containing two paperwork.
One was an evaluation of the juries that had served in 18 Fenian trials in Eire, purporting to indicate that they had been packed by the crown with individuals who may very well be trusted to ship responsible verdicts.
The second doc was a single-page warning, with a black border, saying: “Woe to you when you’ve got the products of any of those jurors in your own home, for you, in addition to they, can have the blood and struggling of harmless individuals upon your heads”.
The letters had been postmarked in Manchester however a path from there ultimately led detectives to a printing home in Liverpool, the place one Michael Haines admitted producing 1000’s of copies for a Patrick O’Brien, late secretary of the Land League’s Liverpool department.
They and a second printer had been charged with conspiracy to defeat the course of justice, and with prison libel (the identical factor Denis Breen thinks he’s suffered). The printers went free ultimately, after a interval on remand. O’Brien served six months in jail.
Harrison’s involvement within the Liverpool trial was properly reported. And by his personal account, he was not intimidated by the nameless letter. “I used to be not frightened, as there was nothing to be frightened about,” he stated.
The case could have survived within the folks reminiscence of 1904, and from there infiltrated Ulysses, by way of an incidental cameo. However it hardly helps us with the thriller of what the “U.P.” on Breen’s postcard means, or why it’s been despatched.
Bloom has his personal suspicions: “U.P.: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it for a lark within the Scotch Home, I guess something.” However simply then, he passes The Irish Time and thinks. “There could be different solutions mendacity there.”
He goes on to admire the enterprise acumen of these working the newspaper, who’ve managed to increase their promoting attain past the standard ascendancy class:
“Finest paper by lengthy photographs for a small advert. Acquired the provinces now. Prepare dinner and basic, exc delicacies, housemaid stored. Wished stay man for spirit counter. Resp. lady (R.C.) needs to listen to of submit in fruit or pork store. James Carlisle made that.”
Carlyle – as he spelt his title – was the real-life managing director of The Irish Instances. And amongst different issues, he was a member of the United Presbyterians, a Scotch Home of a distinct variety and a “U.P.” too.
That could be neither right here nor there, after all. Even so, it’s pretty much as good a spot as any to say how, based mostly on the chance that The Irish Instances may nonetheless have all of the solutions, the Diarist was lately interviewed by a authorized podcast referred to as The Fifth Courtroom. It was for a Bloomsday particular on the regulation in Ulysses. The outcomes are actually stay at thefifthcourt.com
