When the 50th anniversary of Bloomsday came around in 1954 I was in my fifth year at Clongowes Wood College and had just achieved a long-cherished ambition. I had made my cricketing debut, modest though it was, for the First XI in a match against Belvedere. At the time I would have seen no connection between the fulfilment of my dream and the creator of Leopold Bloom, writes Denis Tuohy.
Indeed I had scarcely heard of James Joyce, whose own sojourn at Clongowes was then regarded by most of my Jesuit teachers as an unfortunate accident of which the less said the better. I had gathered that Bloomsday was something to do with a book called Ulysses which Catholics should not even approach without crossing themselves first.
Only later did I come to realise that going in to bat for either Clongowes or Belvedere would probably have been as big a thrill for Joyce as it had been for me. During his time in Clongowes he was too young for even the junior team, but according to his brother Stanislaus he showed promise as a batsman and kept working on his technique after the move to Belvedere: "I remember having to bowl for him for perhaps an hour at a time in our back garden in Richmond Street."
When Joyce arrived as a boarder in 1888 Clongowes had one of the best school cricket teams in Ireland. It also had a beautifully laid out pitch which in my own day, more than half-a-century later, was still being mown, rolled and watered with expert care. Two outstanding players from the Joycean era, both mentioned by Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist, were Paddy Rath and Jimmy Magee. Bruce Bradley SJ, in James Joyce's Schooldays, describes how Paddy Rath, the captain, was lionised by his fellow pupils after taking four wickets for two runs to win a match against Phoenix that had seemed hopelessly lost. A few days later, on the eve of the hero's departure from Clongowes, one of the Jesuits delivered a farewell eulogy "at the end of which Paddy Rath received a great ovation from the boys. Joyce, who took a keen interest in cricket, would have been present on these occasions and it is hardly surprising that Stephen should be aware of Paddy Rath. Jimmy Magee succeeded him both as captain of the house and of the cricket XI in 1891-92."
Which brings me to Roy Clements and his booklet Re Joyce and Cricket. A literary scholar and once-upon-a-time wicket keeper with the City of Derry club, Roy has laboured lovingly through Joyce's work, in particular Finnegans Wake, exploring the author's fascination with cricket and cricketers. For instance, "Magrath he's my pegger, he is, for bricking up all my old kent road." Who is Magrath? Well, says Roy, if we take the names of those two celebrated Clongownians, Magee and Rath, and put them together, what else do we get but Magrath?
The Magrath quote is from pages 583-4 of Finnegans Wake, from a section which, as Frank Budgen, the author's friend in Zurich, noted, "is written in an idiom of cricket reminiscences". On one occasion Budgen himself was unflatteringly linked with those reminiscences, being told by Joyce that he "looked like an English cricketer out of the W.G. Grace period. Yes, Arthur Shrewsbury. He was a great bat but an awkward-looking tradesman at the wicket."
In guiding us through the "cricket sequence" Roy Clements demonstrates how well acquainted Joyce was with the game's culture and the names of contemporary heroes. Here, contained within a mere 29 words, is an Anglo-Australian pantheon: "as he studd and stoddard and trutted and trumpered, to see had lordherry's blackham's red bobby abbels, it tickled her innings to consort pitch at kicksolock in the morm."
Studd and Stoddart (Stoddard) played for England, the latter being one of the great batsmen of the 1880s. Trott (Trutt) was capped for both England and Australia and few batsmen from Down Under have ever matched Trumper's genius. Lord Harris (lordherry's) captained England, Blackham captained Australia and Bobby Abel (bobby abbels) was an England opening bat, popularly known as "The Guv'nor".
Joyce clearly relished cricket's eccentric vocabulary. The double entendre "it tickled her innings" can speak for itself but the sequence also includes "till the empyseas run googlie" - "googly" being the name for one of the tricks of a leg-spin bowler's trade. Then there's "Declare to ashes and test his metche". "Declare" is what a side does when it chooses not to bat any longer. The Ashes are the curious prize for which England and Australia compete. And "test metche" is how a certain class of Englishman, even in these days, would pronounce "test match".
Yet it isn't just the word-play, and there is much more of it in those pages from the Wake, which reveals Joyce's affection for the game and touches the hearts of fellow enthusiasts. When I think of my schooldays and of players practising on late summer evenings as the light faded, what comes to mind is this description in A Portrait of the Artist of one of Stephen's fondest memories of Clongowes:
". . .and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl."