A Madder Tea Party
Brady, Charles A
A MADDER TEA PARTY ANNIVERSARY- SYMPOSIUM CHARLES A. BRADY A CLOCK is striking six as our conversation-piece begins. Virginia Woolf. Lewis Carroll and James Jowe are at table more or less in the...
...is Groundhog Day in the States...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...Hardly-and Ulster is maddest of all...
...that was what I was after with my Molly Bloom...
...Are you drinking poteen yourself...
...It is, by the way, one of the greatest compensations of our present laureate state that we are able to drink what we wish-at will VIRGINIA WOOLF As you say, my dear Mr...
...we are "the movers and shakers/Of the world forever, it seems...
...A Gewurztramincr from les caves Klug at Bcnnwihr, Haut-Rhin...
...And, by God, Ireland knows it at last...
...VIRGINIA WOOLF (murmuring...
...He's a hibernating rodent...
...VIRGINIA WOOLF (glaring) Mr JOYCE, 1 will thank you toLEWS CARROLL, {interposing to redeem the situation).-to propose a toast...
...A different Bloomsbury-one with five sexes, not just three...
...He turns to Carroll) Mv best pun, I think I took over that trick of portmanteau word from you, friend Carroll...
...Carroll, one of the pleasanter functions indeed You have saved your March Hare's face after all these years...
...You really shouldn't be...
...Accept my belated thanks...
...I went to a Child's party once dressed as a Mad Hatter...
...Your Alice is world literature's most radiant manifestation of Goethe's "eternal womanly " If 1 hadn't other good reasons for my feminine partisanship, your Alice alone would have made me proud to be a woman-she is so resolute, so practical, so beautifully bred JAMES JOYCE...
...But the hounds of spring are on winter's traces...
...The Groundhog recites, heating lime with one paw) In the midst of the word he was trying to say...
...As a compatriot of mine once put it...
...I would suggest going...
...Take Bussoftlhce...
...The keys to...
...I thought the nicest touch of all was opening thai new hostehy named Blooms...
...Woolf achieved the hundred mark two days before that...
...You will remember that he said to Alice, "Have some wine," and, when she replied...
...I turned 150 on January 27th of this year...
...Let the Dormouse answer that...
...Sure, and if I did spit into Ana Livia Plurabelle, it helped improve the flavor of the malt in the Guinness Works...
...JAMES JOYCE (grumbling a little) Ton bad you didn't say in public instead of calling me "a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples " Why, that was CHARLES A BRADY book columnist and literary caricaturist for the Buffalo Evening News and author of numerous books including A Catholic Reader...
...You yourself became a centenarian on February 2nd...
...I said that to my husband, Leonard-and it is true...
...LEWIS CARROLL No...
...Woolf Didn't I put Sinbad in Dublin...
...Yes, you built a Bloomsbury...
...We're all mad hero...
...Why ever not...
...VIRGINIA WOOLF: I don't know why we should have been elected toplay the guests at this mad tea party...
...We're certainly all mad enough to qualify...
...GROUNDHOG (struggling sleepily to its feet...
...Joyce, I don't suppose you wish to argue that Ireland is any saner than England race " I have helped build Dublin as much us any old Viking founder...
...Coming, far...
...Oh, breakfast was always capital in Ireland-and even in my day on could find a French restaurant here and there...
...I grant you, though, the Irish are every bit as miserable cooks as the English...
...Surely you remember the place in "Hamlet" where Claudius sent the Danish Prince to England "because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there...
...Death banes and the quick quoke...
...Joyce-time when it isn't Carroll-time...
...No Alice, no Mrs...
...true enough-but providence spared us that ultimate indignity...
...It may be always six o'clock at my tea putty...
...lewis Carroll Time, Mr Joyce Anno Domini...
...But you are right, Carroll me boyo...
...Us then...
...back to Davy Byrne's, or else to The Bailey which has preserved the Blooms's green front door from 7 Eccles Street I read in the Irish Times that this new Blooms you speak of is serving an abomination called a "Molly Bloom cocktail...
...Joyce...
...I did indeed...
...You're mad...
...Das Ewig-Weibliche/Zicht uns hinan: the eternal in woman draws us on" - "some meinherr from Almany" said that, to quote myself...
...I heard they still keep the clock five minutes fast at Davy Byrne's There's wonderland for ye VIRGINIA WOOLF...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...anyway...
...I wonder what they will make of my Bloom in the literary coffeehouses of the Middle Fast I can see one of my shorter sentences coining true all over again "When in doubt persecute Bloom...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...The creature's true identity will emerge as the party unfolds...
...Far calls...
...JAMES JOYCE As an Englishman, you are mad by definition...
...A white vin d'Alsace...
...LEWIS CARROLL...
...or, if he do not, 'tis no great matter . . . there the men are as mad as he...
...1 wondered why my tea tasted so much like good port-my father taught me to appreciate good port, you know...
...New York...
...lewis carrou...
...Your health...
...Gulls...
...End here...
...What seems to be the traditional Dormouse slumbers between the Hare and Hatter...
...February 2nd...
...Given...
...Why, it isn't tea at all, at all...
...JAMES JOYCE (with a guffaw) Bloomsbury-Bloom's city...
...But that was a long time ago...
...I don't see any wine," he answered: "There isn't any...
...I'm not mad...
...the answer may he found in the final stanza of "The Hunting ot the Snark" where the unfortunate hunter discovers that his would-be prey is a Boojum, after all...
...You may remembn that one of my pleasanter functions as :in Oxford don was to lay down the wines for the .senior common room ot my college...
...But in the world of letters, it's always Joyce-time now when it isn't Woolf-time...
...Mahaffcy, saying that I was no more than a corner boy spitting into the Lif-fey...
...I'm mad...
...Wait till they hear of this in Bloomsbury...
...March is the March Hare's month...
...And all interchangeable...
...How-very curious...
...VIRGINIA WOOLF...
...It was tit for tat...
...amaranthine, golden afternoon...
...Excuse me, hut I am not a dormouse...
...We did what my Hatter said no one should set out to do We beat time...
...Till thousandslhce...
...Eveille-toi...
...Lewis Carroll and James Jowe are at table more or less in the postures Sir John Tenniel caught Alice, the March Hare, and the Mad Hatter in nhen he drew them for Alice ' in Wonderland's Mad Tea Party...
...But, speaking of Ulysses...
...I have helped forge "the uncreated conscience of my as bad as Trinity's Great Cham, Dr...
...Thomas, taught English for many yers at Canisius College in Buffalo...
...You began it all...
...But if you want to drink in a civilized way...
...A way a lone a last a loved a long the . . . In again, out again, gone again...
...May they find the quarks (hey search for-and if they come upon that even rarer entity, a Snark, may he not turn out a Boojum...
...Actually, of course, the correct French for dormouse is loir, masculine...
...Church Mouse, and St...
...To our readers...
...Virginia WOOLF...
...Now that's a nightman: history hasn't yet awakened from-that and Ulster...
...Yes E- me2, equals kaboom, equals poof, equals-nothing All gone...
...As for your question, Mrs...
...The true test will corne when they try Finnevan in Arabic...
...Well, I for one won't deny it...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...The allusion escapes me...
...You saw how they celebrated my birthday this time...
...It's burnished Jameson's...
...Are you surprised...
...I believe February 2nd was the same day Cairo published Ulysses in Aiabic What did you think of thai, Mr...
...I am an American cousin, a groundhog, to be exact, also known as a woodchuck, the latter from Algonquian wejack...
...Dalloway, no Shem and Shaun...
...Except, of course, for my American commentatois LEWUIS CARROLL...
...Orange |uice and Irish Mist, God save the mark...
...Slninte...
...mememur-mcc...
...JAMES JOYCE (reciprocating, then speaking in a startled voice...
...Virginia WOOLF (quoting with a smile...
...We had Pink Ladies and Orange Blossoms in m> day...
...Joyce...
...Bloom is your masterpiece, Mr...
...of those "comtivubly padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England...
...In the midst of his laughter and glee...
...l\MFS JOYCE...
...Perpend now...
...Joyce: modem letters' first and greatest Jewish kleiner Mann...
...He had softly and suddenly vanished away -For the snark WAS a Boojum, you see...
...What is that...
...Finn, again Take Bussoftlhce...
...ma dormeuse...
...and so- annihilation...
...as it were, as you once called it, Mr...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...Mr Joyce-you have the Algonquian for thunder in your Finne-gan, you know-genus Marmota monax, species Americana...
...I also offer your own Cheshire Cat as witness...
...VIRGINIA WOOLF(in a puzzled voice...
...The "annihilation of the etym...
...Or Bushmill's-I was never enough of a nationalist to tell a northern "glance of Irish frisky" from a southern...
...The clock strikes six again as Mrs Woolf pours ome morejrom the mad teapot on the table and the conversation goes on forever in the endless...
...I suppose that makes you a stand-in for my American commentators...
...It occurs to me that there may be a more flattering reason for the three of us being here JAMES JOYCE...
...I once spoke, in my "Common Reader...
...I spoke from experience, you see-I was born in one But...
...JAMES JOYCE (accepting the pacific gambit...
...A man with \our peculiar passion for pedantic parallels must know that your birthdate...
...you know...
...mememor-back to sleep) VIRGINIA \MX1L1-" Curiouser and curiouscr...
...A Gull...
...LEWIS CARROLL (pleased, raising his teacup...
...Maybe it will be possible to get good food in Dublin at last...
...GROUNDHOG A sleep-in, rather...
...Not certifiably so...
...JAMES JOYCE...
...It helped make my day an Irish addendum to Guinnessis...
Vol. 109 • May 1982 • No. 10
