Finnegans Wake ‒ A Prescriptive Guide

Edith Thompson, Percy Thompson & Frederick Bywaters (RFW 047.13-049:29)

Chapter I.3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—the Humphriad II—is a journalistic investigation into the HCE affair. We continue our study of the episode known as the Plebiscite—RFW 046.16-049.29—which documents the people’s response to the affair. Having studied the four introductory paragraphs, we finally come to the Plebiscite proper—also known to Joyceans as the Street Interview (Deane 1995:10). This comprises a single long paragraph—97 lines in The Restored Finnegans Wake and 113 in the first edition—in which members of the public are quizzed on HCE’s alleged Crime in the Park.

The Bywaters Case

In an earlier article—Finnegans Wake and the Bywaters Case—we discussed the influence a celebrated murder trial had on the conception of Finnegans Wake.

On 4 October 1922, just as Joyce was giving thought to his next work, an event occurred that was to have a lasting impact on the writing of Finnegans Wake. Shortly after midnight a man and a woman were walking home from Ilford Station in the northeast of London. Percy Thompson, a shipping clerk, and his wife Edith had been enjoying a night out at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly. They were accosted on Belgrave Road by a youth. An altercation ensued. A knife was drawn. The younger man dealt Percy Thompson a mortal wound and ran off.

A twenty-year-old merchant seaman called Frederick Bywaters was identified by Edith Thompson as the killer and was quickly arrested. When the police searched his room they found among his belongings more than sixty love letters addressed to him by Mrs Thompson. On the foot of this discovery she too was arrested and both lovers were charged with the murder of Percy Thompson.

Frederick Bywaters, Edith Thompson, & Percy Thompson

Their joint trial opened at the Old Bailey on 6 December 1922—the same day that the Irish Free State came into existence. Bywaters insisted that he had acted alone, but the love letters were produced in evidence to prove otherwise. In the incriminating correspondence Edith Thompson made it clear that she felt trapped in a loveless marriage and saw her young lover as a way out. She mentioned failed attempts on her part to bring about her husband’s death. She also referenced newspaper articles involving women who had successfully murdered their husbands. On more than one occasion she encouraged Bywaters to take decisive steps and bring matters to a head.

This scandal and the ensuing criminal proceedings captured the public imagination. The case was closely followed by both sections of the British press. The country’s leading broadsheet, The Times, limited itself for the most part to the legal niceties of the case and the subsequent appeals. It was critical, however, of the sensational coverage which the tabloids gave the case, describing the excitement fomented by them as unhealthy and calling their publicity campaign a grave discredit to British journalism (Rowbotham et al 134). The tabloids meanwhile debated the ins and outs of the case and took sides in what had become a cause célèbre. The Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch took the view that Bywaters was an innocent youth who had been led astray by an older, more experienced femme fatale. The Daily Express and The News of the World, on the other hand, portrayed Thompson as a bored young housewife with a vivid imagination and an obsession with romantic fiction, an unhappily married woman who fantasized about killing her dull husband and running off to sea with her youthful lover but who never had any real intention of acting out these fantasies.

Frederick Bywaters & Edith Thompson at the Old Bailey

Edith Thompson was advised by her attorney not to take the stand, but she disregarded his advice. It was a fatal miscalculation. Her testimony was at times contradictory. She was more than once caught in a lie, and her histrionic demeanour in court did not help her cause. Her claims that the accounts of poisoning her husband or of mixing broken glass into his food were fictions intended to impress her paramour did not convince the jury. On several occasions, when asked to account for an incriminating passage in one of the letters, she could only reply: I have no idea.

On 11 December 1922, after a trial which had lasted only six days, Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson were found guilty of the murder of Percy Thompson. They were both sentenced to death by hanging. The Court of Criminal Appeal heard and dismissed their appeals on the twenty-first. Bywaters was hanged at Pentonville Prison on the morning of 9 January 1923. Thompson was hanged at Holloway Prison at the same time.

The attitude of both press and public shifted dramatically in the wake of the guilty verdicts and death sentences. Almost one million people signed petitions for the reprieve of Bywaters organized by the Daily Sketch and The Daily News, while The News of the World and The Daily Express petitioned for the reprieve of Thompson. Bywaters was widely praised for the philosophical demeanour he showed in the face of death and for his repeated attempts to exonerate his lover. His last words were: They are hanging an innocent woman. Thompson attracted sympathy from the general abhorrence the public felt at the idea of a woman being hanged, whether she was guilty of murder or not. She was carried to the scaffold in a state of collapse.

Bantry Bay (Arthur Power)

From his vantage point in Paris, James Joyce too had been closely following the Bywaters case. The scandal fascinated him. He filled several pages of one of his notebooks with newspaper quotes—the Daily Sketch was his principal source of information—and discussed the case with his friend the artist Arthur Power (Power & Hart 61-65). When an account of the trial was published in 1923, he procured a copy and proceeded to mine it for more quotes. He came down clearly on the same side of the debate as The News of the World and The Daily Express: Edith Thompson was a woman of imagination but not of action : if her love letters were enough to convict her of murder in a court of law, then no writer of fiction was safe from the scaffold. One might as easily convict Vladimir Nabokov of paedophilia, or Daniel Defoe of piracy.

The Street Interview was inspired by one particular newspaper article on the Bywaters Case—as the indefatigable Joycean sleuth Vincent Deane first pointed out in 1994. The article in question—PETITION FOR REPRIEVE OF BYWATERS IS READY TO-DAY—appeared in the Daily Sketch on 14 December 1922. A reproduction of the article can be found in Volume 9, Number 1 of the James Joyce Literary Supplement. The article takes up almost the whole page 3 of the newspaper, but the section that interests us only comprises about two columns and has the title WHAT THEY THINK:

Opinions were collected by the Daily Sketch yesterday from people chosen at random in the City and suburbs, the region of the clubs and the poorer neighbourhoods of the East. Three out of four of those spoken to declared themselves at once heartily in sympathy with the petition. (Daily Sketch, Thursday, 14 December 1922, Page 3)

Vincent Deane

Several members of the public were interviewed for this article, nine of whom were depicted by small portrait photographs (indicated in bold below):

• A Waitress
• An Omnibus Driver
• A Woman Shop Assistant
• A Mannequin [Fashion Model]
• A Railway Porter
• A Dustman [Binman], Mr Churches
• An Actress, Sheila Courtenay
• A City Policeman
• Three Soldiers (one Soldier is photographed and quoted)
• A Sailor
• A Barmaid
• A Taxicab Driver
• A Typist
• A Chef
• A Postman
• A Shop Assistant
• A Commercial Traveller [Travelling Salesman]
• An Hotel Manager
• A Civil Servant
• A Commissionaire [Uniformed Doorman] at a Well-Known Store (A Shop Girl is photographed)
• A Solicitor
• An Artist
• A Bus Driver (photographed but not quoted, unless he is the Omnibus Driver quoted above)

Daily Sketch 14 December 1922, Page 3

A waitress: Bywaters had more love for Mrs. Thompson than sense; she instigated him to the crime, she is older than he and ought to have a greater sense of responsibility.

An omnibus driver: I heartily support the petition; Bywaters ought not to die.

A woman shop assistant: All the wrong was on Mrs. Thompson’s side. I would like to see Bywaters reprieved because he was not a murderer in the strict sense of the word.

A mannequin in one of the large stores: I would like to see Bywaters reprieved because I feel so sorry for him.

A railway porter: Bywaters has been under this woman’s influence ever since he was a boy.

A dustman named Churches in the employ of the City Corporation, said:—“We have been discussing the case at our wharf, and most of the fellows will sign the petition; in fact, I believe we shall all sign it. Bywaters is only a young fellow, and ought to be let off the death sentence. The woman dominated him and led him astray.”

Miss Sheila Courtenay, who is appearing in “The Cat and the Canary” at the Shaftesbury Theatre, put the same view: “I sincerely hope,” she said, “that Bywaters will not be hanged. He is very young, and was egged on by a woman older than himself to do what he did. And then he has been so wonderful in his behaviour at the Old Bailey.”

The Cat and the Canary

Other opinions can be compressed into lines. Here are a few only:—

A City policeman: If anyone is entitled to sympathy it is Bywaters; he was drawn into it.

Three soldiers were walking together in Fleet street; one gave an opinion in which all concurred. It was the woman who was to blame. Bywaters played a bad part in the crime, but he was coerced. He proved himself a man afterwards.

A sailor, on the Embankment, was encouraged to speak by his fiancée, and said: I think the woman was more to blame than Bywaters, but I think there was someone else in it.

A barmaid in the West End: It would be a shame if Bywaters died.

A taxicab driver: Bywaters is a silly young fellow, but he ought not to pay the full penalty.

A Typist: There were extenuating circumstances in the case of Bywaters. The woman drew him into the trouble.

A Chef: I do not believe in the capital sentence, and I certainly do not think that this boy deserves it. He seemed to be entirely under the influence of the woman.

The Thames Embankment

A Postman: Bywaters certainly ought to be reprieved. After all, he was led into wrong-doing by a will stronger than his own.

A shop assistant: My heart goes out to the young fellow who has proved himself such a man in standing by his sweetheart at all costs.

A commercial traveller: I have discussed the case with many people, and in every instance the view has been expressed that Bywaters should escape the gallows. Should Mrs. Thompson be reprieved, Bywaters should most certainly be similarly treated.

An hotel manager: When I read the Daily Sketch this morning I was struck with its humanitarian attitude. Personally I believe in the abolition of capital punishment. I hope that both Bywaters and Mrs. Thompson will be reprieved, although it is obvious to everyone that the youth was drawn into the crime by the irresistible influence of his lover.

A prominent Civil Servant: Every member of my staff has intimated his or her desire to sign the petition for the reprieve of Bywaters, who, at an impressionable period of his life, they consider was the unfortunate dupe of an unscrupulous woman.

A commissionaire at a well-known store: I can assure you that among the hundreds of girls employed here, sympathy is strongly felt for Bywaters, and every one will be glad to sign the Daily Sketch petition.

A solicitor: The policy of the Daily Sketch in this tragic case is in accord with public sentiment. But time is short, and your readers should make a point of signing the petition at once.

An artist: I have no doubt whatever that public opinion will save Bywaters’ life. It is inconceivable that a woman so much his senior should be reprieved and that he should lose his life.

Daily Sketch, Thursday, 14 December 1922, Page 3

Montgomery Street (Foley Street), Dublin

First Draft

Joyce’s first draft of the Street Interview illustrates the extent to which he relied upon the Daily Sketch. While reading this draft, one should remember that Joyce had not yet conceived of the character of HCE or written the vignette known as Here Comes Everybody, which would eventually blossom into the Humphriad (Deane 1995:11). There was as yet no Crime in the Park. His initial interest in the Bywaters case was piqued by its similarity to the plot of the Tristan and Iseult myth, a love triangle with Oedipal overtones, which was the proximate inspiration for Finnegans Wake.

Three soldiers of the Coldstream Guards were walking in Montgomery street. One gave an opinion in which all concurred. It was the women, they said, he showed himself a man afterwards. A leading actress was interviewed in a beauty parlour and said she hoped he would be acquitted and: Then he has been so truly wonderful, she added. A dustman named Churches in the employ of Bullwinkle and McHanger was asked and replied: We have just been discussing this case. All the fellows say he is a game one. A taxi driver said: He is a damned scoundrel in private life but he has parliamentary privilege. A barmaid: it would be a shame to jail him on account of his health. A sailor, seated on the granite setts of the fish market, was encouraged to speak by his fiancee & said: [I think] he was to blame about the two slaveys, but I think there was someone else behind it about the 3 drummers. (Hayman 71-72 : James Joyce Digital Archive)

These six interviewees have been lifted straight from the Daily Sketch:

• Three soldiers of the Coldstream Guards No doubt Joyce was struck by the similarity to the three soldiers set to spy on Tristan in Joseph Bédier’s retelling of the Tristan and Isolde myth. In Finnegans Wake they became, in time, Shem, Shaun and the Oedipal Figure. London’s Fleet Street has been replaced by Montgomery Street, the centre of Dublin’s red-light district. This draws the two soldiers in the Circe Episode of Ulysses into the mix. In the final version the soldier who speaks is called Pat Marchison.

Defence of the Château d’Hougoumont by the Flank Company, Coldstream Guards, 1815

• A leading actress Sheila Courtenay became, first, the 18th-century actress Mrs Siddons, and then the celebrated murder victim Fanny Adams. The man executed for Adams’ murder, Frederick Baker, had a similar name to Frederick Bywaters. In 1922 The Cat and the Canary was a new play by John Willard, an American playwright, screenwriter and actor. Note that beauty parlour is slang for brothel.

• A dustman named Churches In the published version he has become a dustman nocknamed Sevenchurches, which adds an Apocalyptic element. There are, however, a number of places in Ireland with this name: Clonmacnoise, the Aran Islands, and Glendalough. Glintalook narrows our search for the relevant one.

• A taxi driver A taxicab driver in the Daily Sketch.

• A barmaid She no longer works in London’s West End. In the final version she is employed by a railway company.

• A sailor The sailor is no longer on London’s Thames Embankment. A sett is a squared piece of quarried stone used for paving. Joyce borrowed the granite setts from D H Lawrence’s novel Aaron’s Rod, which was published in 1922. The fish market must refer to Dublin’s Fish Hall, a fishmarket which first opened its doors in 1892 on the corner of Mary’s Lane and St Michan’s Street. The reference to two slaveys suggests that Joyce had conceived of schizophrenic Issy by this time. In the Tristan and Isolde myth there are two Iseults: Iseult the Fair, with whom Tristan has his adulterous affair, and Iseult of the White Hand, whom he weds. Joyce’s daughter Lucia would be diagnosed as schizophrenic in the 1930s, but in 1922 she was still a perfectly healthy teenager. The two slaveys are the only indication in this draft that Joyce had already conceived of the Crime in the Park, which involves two young women. But it appears that the true origin of the Crime is a note in VI.B.3, a notebook Joyce compiled in March-July 1923 (James Joyce Digital Archive).

Dublin’s Fish Hall

The version of the Street Interview which appeared in the third issue of Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul’s literary journal transition on 1 June 1927 is already very close to the final version.

Sources

In expanding the first draft, Joyce drew upon articles unrelated to the Bywaters case that he came across in a variety of newspapers:

• Evening Standard 9 January 1923

• Daily Mail 25 January 1923, 27 January 1923, 27 May 1924

• Sunday Pictorial 29 October 1922, 17 December 1922. The James Joyce Digital Archive identifies this as the Sunday Express, but it was the Pictorial, which was later renamed the Sunday Mirror.

• Daily Sketch 14 December 1922, 21 December 1922

transition (Jolas & Paul 38-40)

Other sources include

• Ada Peter, Dublin Fragments: Social and Historic (1925)

• Joseph B Holloway, Souvenir of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Opening of the Gaiety Theatre: 27th November 1871 (1896)

• Édouard Trogan, Les Mots Historiques du Pays de France (1916)

• Mrs Patrick Campbell, My Life and Some Letters (1922)

• Léopold-François Sauvé, Proverbes et Dictons de la Basse-Bretagne (1878)

• Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies (1882)

• Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905, 1962). In 1895 Wilde was tried for gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

• Alfred Tennyson, The May Queen (1870)

• Richard Michael Levey & J O’Rorke, Annals of the Theatre Royal, Dublin (1880)

• Marjory Kennedy-Fraser & Kenneth Macleod, Songs of the Hebrides (1917)

• D H Lawrence, Aaron’s Rod (1922)

• Bernard Gilbert, Old England: A God’s-Eye View of a Village (1921)

• Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing (1600)

• The Book of Common Prayer (1892)

• The Bible

Tirez les Premiers, Messieurs les Anglais! (Trogan 48-49)

Dramatis Persona

In the final version, the number of Street Interviewees exceeds two dozen:

• Three Soldiers of the Coldstream Guards The French expressions are taken from Thomas Ravenscroft’s song We Be Soldiers Three, which is set in the early 17th century during the Dutch Revolt, or Eighty Years’ War. Finner Camp is a military establishment in County Donegal. The puzzling Anglo-Saxon expression Wroth mod eldfar, ruth redd stillstand, wrath wrackt wroth might be translated to angry with old father (the Oedipal Event? Bywaters attacking Thompson?), red ruth stood its ground (Edith Thompson?), anger waxed angry (?). See Campbell & Robinson below on the Ancient Greek: μῆνις [mēnis] wrath—the opening word of Homer’s Iliad.

• A Vauxhall Actress

• An Entychologist

• A Dustman

• A Cardriver

• A French Chef (Auguste Escoffier?)

Auguste Escoffier

• A Perspiring Tennis Player Perhaps anticipating an allusion to Tennyson’s The May Queen.

• A Railway Barmaid

• A Board of Trade Official

• The Daughters Benkletter Danish: underbenklæder, drawers, underpants.

• Brian Lynskey

• A Wouldbe Martyr

• Ida Wombwell, a Young Revivalist. Wombwell was a real person, as Peter Chrisp discovered.

• A Bookmaker (Mr Danl Magrath, or “Caligula”). He may be based on a real person known to Joyce as Magrath: Daniel McGrath, grocer, wine merchant and publican, 4-5 Charlotte Street, Dublin (McHugh 128).

• El Caplan Buycoat, a Chaplain. The allusion to Captain Charles Boycott is obvious.

Captain Charles Boycott

• Dan Meiklejohn, a Church Precentor

• Lord Doran (“Sniffpox”) and Lady Morgan (“Flatterfun”)

• The Dainty Drabs

• Sylvia Silence, the Girl Detective. Peter Chrisp has traced her origins. We will be meeting this girl with a lisp—in Finnegans Wake hesitency of speech is always an admission of guilt—on two further occasions. Joyce first came across her in the Sunday Pictorial (29 October 1922, Page 17).

• Jarley Jilke Like Parnell, the politician Charles Dilke was involved in a sex scandal. Unlike Parnell, however, he survived it.

• Walter Meagher, a Naval Rating (enlisted naval man). Adaline Glasheen comments: _seems to have inherited a pair of family trousers in bad condition and to have been involved in some kind of “troth.” (Glasheen 190)

Laurence O’Toole

Laurence O’Toole & Thomas à Becket

HCE & ALP’s twin sons Shem & Shaun appear in Finnegans Wake under many guises. One of the first of these occurred on the second page of the novel:

he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin ’twas born his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down. (RFW 004.21-28)

The allusion to the Archbishop and Patron Saint of Dublin Laurence O’Toole and the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket is obvious. Note also the allusion to Caligula, which is repeated in the Street Interview (RFW 048.37). But I have always suspected that there was more going on here than meets the eye.

In the Street Interview, we find the following curious passage:

Mrs F— A— saidaside, half in stage of whisper to her confidante glass, while recoopering her cartwheel chapot (ahat! we now know what thimbles a’baquets on lallance o’talls mean) ... (RFW 047.27-30)

• cartwheel hat a hat with a very wide circular or saucer-shaped brim.

A Cartwheel Hat

• French: chapeau, hat.

• chamberpot

• French: capote anglaise, condom.

Putting two and two together, John Gordon arrived at the following result (he is describing the master bedroom, upstairs in HCE’s tavern in Chapelizod):

The most prominent feature of the bed is the bedposts, each aligned with one cardinal point of the compass ... Three other items in the room, a chamber-pot, a hat, and a bell-pull or buzzer ... The hat—generally described as a bucket-shaped affair—is whisked before our eyes in one of the book’s teases when an actress is described as speaking ‘while recoopering her cartwheel chapot (ahat!—and we now know what thimbles a baquets on lallance a talls mean)’ (59.06-7) [RFW 047.28-30]. If this means anything it means that ‘tombles a’buckets’ of 5.03 [RFW 004.28], ‘clottering down’ the bauble-topped tower there is the same thing as the thimble-shaped baquet [French, tub] on the tall lance there—that is, a hat. As such it is perhaps the primary source of the pot-on-pole insignia already mentioned, and the readiest way of accounting for it is to conclude that HCE, like many men, has hung his hat on the handiest vertical, one of his knob-topped bedposts, as one of Issy’s notes puts it, ‛the nightcap’s on nigh’ [234.FN4], on high ... The hat is probably atop the bedpost above the sleeper’s head, the chamberpot at the bed’s foot. (Gordon 18-20)

Four-Poster Bed with Top Hat

In his online blog on Finnegans Wake, Gordon adds the following remark:

59.6-7: “ahat! — and we now know what thimbles a baquets on lallance a talls mean:” refers back to “with larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down” (5.3-4). Like this authorial-intrusion interlude in “Sirens:” “Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires,” where we are parenthetically informed, by degrees, that someone is looking inside the workings of a piano. Problem, at least for me, is that I still can’t see how what was first being referred to was a hat, or how it illuminates the rest of the cited passage. Not the only place in FW that teases its readers.

5.3-4: “larrons o’toolers clittering up and tombles a’buckets clottering down:” Laurence O’Toole and Thomas à Becket were both assaulted before the main altar of Canterbury Cathedral; O’Toole got back up and survived; Becket was mortally wounded and remained fallen. (Much of the language describing the structure here seems apt for a cathedral.)

There is also the sexual connotation, in which Issy’s nightcap refers to a condom. The image depicted is of an erect penis wearing a condom and penetrating a vagina:

• French (slang): baquet, cunt, female genitalia.

• English (slang): lance, penis.

• French: capote anglaise, condom.

Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson

An Entychologist

One of the Street Interviewees is identified as an entychologist:

Prehistoric, obitered to his dictaphone an entychologist, his propenomen is a properismenon. (RFW 047.36-37)

Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson’s commentary on this line in their pioneering study A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is worth quoting:

This sentence is typical of Joyce’s tremendous condensation of meaning. “Entychologist” and “properismenon” do not occur in any dictionary, but contain roots and overtones which yield a rich harvest of significance. “Entychologist” suggests the Latin ens, entis,meaning “being.” The Greek entychia means “conversation,” and entychon, “one met by chance.” The word may be read to mean “a conversationalist met by chance and skilled in the science of being.”

But the word resembles “entomologist,” “one skilled in the science of insects.” This resemblance adds an amusing overtone, for is not that earwig, Mr. Earwicker, the ens, entis, of all? But what is the entychologist actually saying about Earwicker? “He is of prehistoric origin and his name is a properismenon.” This latter word suggests the Greek properispomenon, i.e., “a word having a circumflex accent on the penult[imate syllable].” Such a word is Iris; such a word, too, is Menis; these may be concealed in the syllables “eris-menon.” Iris was the Greek rainbow goddess; Menis means “wrath of the gods.” Cf. Rainbow-Thunder. But Menis suggests “Menes,” the first Pharaoh. Add the facts that the syllable “ris” means a cereal (rice), that the Egyptian Pharaoh is the incarnation of the god of grain, and the connection with HCE is reinforced. The fusion in one word of a goddess and a king suggest the Hermaphrodite theme: the emergence of the temptress Eve from the very body of her lord. Finally, Greek smenos means “beehive,” “swarm”; peri means “around,” and pro means “before.” Perhaps we may read: “his proper name, a properispomenon, precedes and surrounds [i.e., is the root of and represents] a swarm.” (Campbell & Robinson 70-71 fn)

The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo

In the Museyroom

In Finnegans Wake Joyce tells the same stories over and over again. There are a few elements in the Street Interview that link it with an earlier and better known episode: In the Museyroom. You may recall that the narrative of that episode—a sort of retelling of the Battle of Waterloo—was punctuated by four isolated interjections in parenthesis:

... (Bullsfoot! Fine!) ... (Bullsear! Play!) ... (Bullsrag! Foul!) ... (Bullseye! Game!) (RFW 007.06-008.39)

The Street Interview is also interrupted by four brief interjections in parenthesis:

... (Terse!) ... (Tart!) ... (Tosh!) ... (Trite!)

Each of these seems to conceal the meaning Third! But why?

The Duke of Wellington—Arthur Wellesley—who played a prominent rôle in the Museyroom Episode, is also mentioned in the Street Interview:

... that fatal wellesday ...

At Waterloo the Coldstream Guards defended the Château d’Hougoumont.

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

---

References

• Joseph Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, H Piazza et Compagnie, Paris (1902)
• Mrs Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Cornwallis-West), My Life and Some Letters, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York (1922)
• Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
• Thomas Cranmer et al, The Book of Common Prayer, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London (1892)
• Vincent Deane, Bywaters and the Original Crime, European Joyce Studies, Volume 4, Finnegans Wake: Teems of Times, Pages 165-204, Rodopi, Amsterdam (1994)
• Vincent Deane, NOTED SCRIBE IN MURDER TRIAL APPEAL BID CHARGE SHOCK!, James Joyce Literary Supplement, Volume 9, Number 1, Pages 10-11, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida (1995)
• Bernard Gilbert, Old England: A God’s-Eye View of a Village, W Collins Sons & Co Ltd, London (1921)
• Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
• John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
• David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
• Joseph B Holloway et al, Souvenir of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Opening of the Gaiety Theatre: 27th November 1871, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin (1896)
• Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 2, Shakespeare & Co, Paris (1927)
• James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1958, 1966)
• James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
• Marjory Kennedy-Fraser & Kenneth Macleod, Songs of the Hebrides, Volumes 1-3, Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited, London (1917)
• D H Lawrence, Aaron’s Rod, Martin Secker, London (1922)
• Richard Michael Levey, J O’Rorke, Annals of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, Joseph Dollard, Dublin (1880)
• Roland McHugh, The Sigla of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1976)
• Thomas Moore (lyricist), John Stevenson & Henry Bishop (arrangers), Moore’s Irish Melodies with Symphonies and Accompaniments by Sir John Stevenson, Mus Doc, and Sir Henry Bishop, New Edition, M H Gill & Son, Dublin (1882)
• Ada Peter, Dublin Fragments: Social and Historic, Hodges Figgis & Co, Dublin (1925)
• Arthur Power & Clive Hart, Conversations with James Joyce, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1974)
• Thomas Ravenscroft, Pammelia, Deutromelia, Melismata, Edited by MacEdward Leach, Reprint of the First Editions (1609, 1611), The American Folklore Society, Inc, Philadelphia (1961)
• Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
• Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson, Samantha Pegg, Crime News in Modern Britain: Press Reporting and Responsibility, 1820-2010, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2013)
• Léopold-François Sauvé, Proverbes et Dictons de la Basse-Bretagne, H Champion, Paris (1878)
• William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, The Yale Shakespeare, Yale university Press, New Haven, Connecticut (1917)
• Florence Simmonds (translator), The Romance of Tristram and Iseult, Translated from the French of Joseph Bédier, William Heinemann, London (1910)
• Alfred Tennyson, The May Queen, Frederick Warne and Co, London (1870)
• Édouard Trogan, Les Mots Historiques du Pays de France, Eighth Edition, Maison Alfred Mame et Fils, Tours (1916)
• Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, Abridged Version, G P Putnam’s Sons, New York (1905)
• Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, Complete Version, Rupert Hart-Davis (editor), The Letters of Oscar Wilde,Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, New York (1962)
• Filson Young, The Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson, Notable British Trials Series, William Hodge & Co, Ltd, Edinburgh (1923)

Image Credits

• Edith Thompson, Percy Thompson & Frederick Bywaters: Associated Newspapers Press (photographers), Public Domain
• Frederick Bywaters, Edith Thompson, & Percy Thompson: Associated Newspapers Press (photographers), Public Domain
• Frederick Bywaters & Edith Thompson at the Old Bailey: The News of the World, 10 December 1922, Page 10, Public Domain
• Bantry Bay: Arthur Power (artist), © James Adam & Sons Ltd (photographers), Fair Use
• Vincent Deane: © Peter Chrisp (photographer), Finnegans Wake at 80, Trinity College Dublin (2019), Fair Use
• The Cat and the Canary: Shaftesbury Theatre, Public Domain
• The Thames Embankment: Photochrom Print Collection, Detroit Publishing Company, Public Domain
• Montgomery Street (Foley Street), Dublin: Public Domain
• Defence of the Château d’Hougoumont by the Flank Company, Coldstream Guards, 1815: Denis Dighton (artist), National Army Museum, London, Public Domain
• Dublin’s Fish Market Hall: Anonymous Photograph, Public Domain
• Auguste Escoffier: Auguste Escoffier, A Guide to Modern Cookery, New and Revised Edition, William Heinemann Ltd, London (1926), Public Domain
• Captain Charles Boycott: Lafayette (photographers), Public Domain
• Laurence O’Toole: St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Armagh, © Ashley Morrison (photographer), Fair Use
• A Cartwheel Hat: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Public Domain
• Four-Poster Bed: Finnian's Four Poster Bed, © The Beautiful Bed Company, Fair Use
• Top Hat: © Nikodem Nijaki (photographer), Creative Commons License
• Joseph Campbell: © Barbara Morgan (photographer), Getty Images, Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers, New York (1953), Fair Use.
• Henry Morton Robinson: Anonymous Photograph, Fair Use
• The Duke of Wellington at Waterloo: Robert Alexander Hillingford (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain

Useful Resources

• Jorn Barger: Robotwisdom
• Joyce Tools
• FWEET
• The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
• FinnegansWiki
• James Joyce Digital Archive
• From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay
• Tim Finnegan
• Finnegans Wake Page-A-Day
• John Gordon’s Finnegans Wake Blog
• James Joyce: Online Notes