CHAPTER 11
Raymonde’s father made a sudden and almost miraculous recovery, which meant that Raymonde herself could return to seeing patients—but she told Sylvia not to worry about the typing because she’d found a replacement for herself in the form of Mrs. Harrison, an Englishwoman who’d come to the store a few times with Raymonde and was keen to do the job. Sylvia hardly had time to exhale before calamity struck, however. On one of the first warm days of May, Mrs. Harrison hurried into Shakespeare and Company wringing a well-used handkerchief in her red hands.
“Oh, Sylvia, I’m so sorry,” she said with a trembling voice.
Though the other woman’s expression struck fear in her heart, Sylvia replied, “No, no, I should be thanking you.”
“You won’t when I tell you what happened.”
“I’m sure we can fix whatever it is.”
Breaking down in tears, Mrs. Harrison hiccupped out the story. “I was nearly . . . finished . . . the Circe episode. It was so good, but . . . but . . . but . . . I left it out on my desk . . . I’m sorry, I never should have . . . because . . . because . . . my husband came home and . . . he read it, and he burned it. Both copies.” At this, she completely dissolved into tears.
“Both? Your typed copy as well as Joyce’s draft?”
Mrs. Harrison cried and nodded.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sylvia snapped. “What is it with men and this book?”
“I’m so sorry, Sylvia.”
“It’s not you who should be apologizing.”
This made Mrs. Harrison cry all the more. If she hadn’t felt so fiery with anger, Sylvia might have cried herself—not with sadness, but with wit’s-end exasperation. Would Ulysses never become a book? Would her own failure be the ultimate one to damn it to obscurity?
Joyce hasn’t even finished it, she reminded herself. They’d already had to push the fall publication to winter. Joyce had promised to finish by mid-January so that the novel could be published by his birthday, February 2. He’d be forty that year, 1922. Something about this goal seemed to spur him on—so much so that he rarely even came to Shakespeare and Company these days, so intent was he on finishing. Sylvia hoped his eyes wouldn’t fail him before he finished; he told her that most days after he stopped writing he spent the rest of the day in bed with cold compresses on his eyes.
As Mrs. Harrison cried, everything about Ulysses felt doomed.
When Sylvia finally convinced her to go to Raymonde’s office to calm down, she sat smoking despondently, and Joyce himself made one of his infrequent appearances.
“I have some bad news,” Sylvia said as he leaned his ashplant stick against the shelves and lowered himself into the green chair. She explained what had happened to his latest pages.
“Well, I suppose you’ll just have to ask John Quinn for his copy.”
Sylvia blinked, racking her brain.
John Quinn’s copy?
Ah yes. She remembered now. Joyce had been sending duplicates of his drafts to Quinn from the beginning; he was buying them as if they were objets d’art. Wasn’t it Ezra who’d told her that months ago? She’d entirely forgotten. Now, remembering, the fact of it presented Sylvia with more questions than it answered. Joyce had enough time—to say nothing of enough productive eyesight—to copy out duplicates of his chapters? How different would Quinn’s pages be from those that Ezra had edited and were eventually printed in The Little Review? Why was John Quinn purchasing Joyce’s novel, when he’d effectively denounced it as repulsive in a court of law? She didn’t see much point in asking Joyce any of these questions; she often felt that the less she knew of his process the better.
“Well, this is excellent news,” she simply replied. Then, once he’d gone and a dried-out Mrs. Harrison had been reassured that all hope was not lost, Sylvia wasted no time in writing to the lawyer.
Dear Mr. Quinn,
I’m Sylvia Beach, and I run Shakespeare and Company, an English language bookstore and lending library in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. First, let me extend my admiration for your attempts to ensure a future for our dear friend James Joyce’s Ulysses in the United States—which is my home as well as yours, as I was born in Maryland and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.
I, too, am a great admirer of James Joyce. He has become quite a fixture at Shakespeare and Company, and his Portrait is one of my favorite novels. Ulysses just might supplant it, which is why I offered to publish it when it became clear that American publishers could not.
Putting together a complete manuscript is proving difficult, however, what with the seizures and Joyce’s own labored process. It’s come to my attention that you have a complete copy of the manuscript. I would be greatly indebted to you if you could send me your draft. I would of course reimburse you for expenses, and send the pages right back to you after we record them.
I do hope that if any of your travels bring you to Paris, you’ll stop by the store. It would be wonderful to meet you in person.
I send you many thanks and wish you well.
Yours truly,
Sylvia
A month ticked by and no reply was forthcoming. Three more typists came and went, to work on the pages after the missing Circe episode, and she managed to send Monsieur Darantiere the first sections for typesetting, noting that there was a blank space to be filled when some pages arrived from America. When Darantiere sent the first set of pages back to her for proofing, she opened the wrapped package with hands so excited they actually shook. She was a publisher! Oh, and they were beautiful. The paper was crisp and white, the ink fresh and black. She ran her hand over them, and they felt cool and smooth, and made the most soothing sound under her fingers.
Joyce came to the store a day or so after they arrived, and Sylvia handed them to him with an eager smile. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”
His eyes were so watery these days, she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw tears cloud his vision even more. “My, my,” he said in a hushed tone as he gently thumbed through the pages.
“You’ll want to take them home, I assume? To make sure they are correct?”
It took him a minute or two to reply, he was so mesmerized by the pages. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Yes, thank you.”
It was a warm afternoon, and Sylvia took her cigarette to smoke just outside the entrance to the store. Joyce joined her on the step, and the two of them looked up and down the rue Dupuytren together.
“Any Leopolds today?” he asked.
“None yet.”
This was one of her favorite games, played many times with Joyce on this very spot, and also at café tables on the sidewalks of the carrefour: Which passersby looked like Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, Gerty MacDowell, and other main characters from Ulysses? Since Joyce never described them in a conventional sense, their game was based more on feeling, on an air carried by someone walking past. Stephens were generally young, hungry, and tightly coiled; Leopolds were closer to middle age, more languid and nourished; Gertys were confident, unafraid to meet a gaze or cast one herself.
“I saw a very fine Leopold by the école on my way here today, in a once fine but slightly fraying overcoat, tapping a rolled-up newspaper against his leg.”
“Have you seen any other ashplant sticks in Paris? I keep waiting for that to become a trend.”
“My dear Miss Beach, some affectations are too unique to be adopted by the common man.”
She chuckled, then gasped. “Look! A Molly Bloom.”
Joyce fixed his gaze in the same direction as Sylvia’s, at the tall woman with a figure like the body of a guitar walking down the street with—of all things—a red rose tucked behind her ear, amidst her long chestnut tresses.
“Good lord, she’s even walking from the direction of the theater. Perhaps she’s also an opera singer?”
“She must be.”
“A good omen.” Joyce lived for the opera. He was as familiar with Mozart and Rosetti as he was with Homer and Tennyson.
“Very good,” Sylvia agreed just as the woman passed by the two of them at number eight, without so much as looking at them, but leaving behind her a cloud of strong, rose-scented perfume.
“Speaking of good signs, Adrienne and I have already received twenty replies to our letters asking for subscriptions to Ulysses, and that’s in addition to the dozen we already took down from our favorite customers in Paris. People are very excited to finally read the work in its entirety. Including William Butler Yeats.” Just thinking about sending James Joyce’s opus to writers like Yeats gave Sylvia a fluttery feeling. “In fact, given how quickly we’re receiving replies to our queries, I wouldn’t be surprised if we need a second printing right away.”
They had agreed to print one thousand copies in the first edition, one hundred of which would be signed and printed on the finest Dutch paper and cost 350 francs, and another hundred and fifty would be on vergé d’Arches paper and cost 250 francs. The rest would be on regular paper and cost 150 francs. All the editions would be bound in a blue paper cover lithographed in the precise color of the Greek flag—at least that was the plan. She and Maurice Darantiere had yet to find a dye that was right.
“Have you heard from Shaw yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure we will.” Sylvia wasn’t sure why Joyce was so concerned about George Bernard Shaw’s reaction to their personal letter and plea for a subscription; he hadn’t even wanted to solicit the great playwright from his own country, but Sylvia had insisted. “He doesn’t like me,” Joyce had warned.
“I’m sure he won’t let that stand in the way of buying your book.”
“Want to wager? If he replies and he’s kind, or he makes the purchase, you win and I have to take you for lunch at Maxim’s. If he never replies, or if his reply reflects his true and negative feelings about me, you have to take me for lunch.”
“I can accept those terms.”
They shook on it. Joyce smirked and said, “I can taste the turtle soup now.”
While they waited on Shaw, Joyce spent time with the page proofs from Dijon. In just a few days, he returned to Shakespeare and Company with the pages covered in scribbles and scratches and whole sections x-ed out.
The once clean, crisp paper had become soft and gray under his hand. Her heart plunged in her chest. “Goodness, I hope he can make all these changes.”
“I’m sure he can. I made changes to Portrait at this stage as well.”
Still, Sylvia had a feeling she ought to go in person to speak to Maurice. He was already doing her the enormous favor of printing the novel speculatively, without any money up front.
“You must take him to a very fine lunch,” advised Adrienne.
“Just what I need, another expense.” Until money from paying customers came in for the novel, she had nothing to spare.
“It will be worth it. Maurice loves good food and wine. I know just the place in Dijon.”
“Come with me?”
Adrienne tutted, then kissed Sylvia tenderly. “Of course.”
Sylvia nervously smoked one cigarette after another the whole train ride, feeling disgusted with her smoke-sodden fingers but unable to stop. Then, when they stood before the wiry, tall printer with the brilliantined crow-black hair, among the humming and clanking iron machines in his workshop, Sylvia’s mouth felt as dry as ashes. He greeted Adrienne like an old friend, with an embrace and two cycles of kisses on the cheeks, and one cycle for Sylvia, whom he was meeting for only the second time. At their first meeting a few months before, when she’d explained to him that he would be printing a novel that had been banned in the United States, his eyes had lit up mischievously and he’d said, to her intense relief, “So the work will be very interesting, non? Bon. I am not afraid of the American courts.”
Today he said, “To what do I owe the pleasure of my two favorite libraires rebelles?”
“Does Petit Cochon still serve the best boeuf bourguignon in France?” Adrienne asked.
“Indeed it does, but I feel their coq au vin has surpassed it.”
“Then let’s order both.”
Over the beef and chicken, both of which were delicious but Sylvia was hardly able to stomach, she finally showed Darantiere the pages.
He frowned down at them. “You were wise to order the Bordeaux,” he said.
“We know how time consuming it is to set the type, and we are terribly sorry to have to ask for this many changes,” Adrienne cooed apologetically, and Sylvia was so grateful for her longtime relationship with the printer. “But Joyce is a genius, to put it simply. And this book will be famous. You will be famous, as the man brave and skillful enough to print it.”
Darantiere looked carefully at each page, his expression unchanged. Finally he set them aside and said, “If this continues, the job will cost more.”
“How much more?” Adrienne asked. She and Sylvia had discussed this inevitability and come to a decision about how much extra Sylvia could afford to pay.
Thank god for Adrienne, Sylvia thought as she haggled brilliantly with the printer. It wasn’t long until she wrangled him down to the right number, and Sylvia finally began to relax, though her first bites of coq au vin were cold.
Some of the best breaks from Ulysses came in the form of Ernest and Hadley Hemingway, both of whom stopped by Shakespeare and Company regularly. One of the first things Ernest did was insist on taking Sylvia and Adrienne to a boxing match in Ménilmontant. Sylvia had never been there before, and when Adrienne whispered to her in the snug metro car that it was a neighborhood where only lowlifes lived, Sylvia felt as thought she’d entered an exciting movie complete with nefarious characters and illicit deeds. Squeezing Adrienne’s arm, she whispered back breathlessly, “Quel frisson!”
“Tu es terrible,” Adrienne whispered back, though she smiled and leaned into Sylvia as she said it.
“Boxing is a tremendous metaphor for life,” Ernest said as they sat down, he and Hadley making a companionable foursome with Sylvia and Adrienne. The small audience was a fascinating mix of clean-shaven men in bespoke suits alongside working-class Parisians in their berets, many of whom seemed to be arguing passionately with each other and pointing heatedly to the glowing ring around which everyone was seated; there were also far more women than Sylvia had anticipated, many in fine clothes and coiffures.
Sylvia became as absorbed in watching Ernest watch the fight as she became in the fight itself. It was almost as though the young writer were attempting to puppet the men in the ring, as he moved his shoulders and arms, fists clenched and making small jabs in the air, as he alternately muttered and shouted tips from the sidelines: “Don’t drop your guard!” “Fists Up!” “Duck, you fool!” “Wait! Let him come to you!”
Adrienne occasionally covered her eyes with her hands, then peeked between her fingers when noses gushed blood and chests were gashed. “Scratches,” pooh-poohed Ernest. Sylvia found herself surprisingly drawn in, the hard-eyed determination of the men with their wrapped hands in tight balls in front of their faces, and the cheering and jeering of the crowd around the ring. The boxers were so light on their feet! Sometimes it felt like watching a dance at a cabaret.
Hadley appeared to be as invested in the match as her husband. When she noticed Adrienne’s more squeamish attraction to the spectacle, she said to Sylvia, “I was like that the first few matches Tatie brought me to. Now I can’t tear my eyes away.”
Apparently, Ernest had also enticed Ezra to the ring, because the next thing Sylvia knew, she was hearing about the two of them spending long, sweaty hours at a nearby gymnasium as the younger writer taught the older the finer points of pugilism. Occasionally she’d think to herself that it was too bad Gertrude was missing out on the fun being had by the Americans of Shakespeare and Company because of her feelings about Joyce, who’d befriended them all, at which point Sylvia would remember that Ernest and many of the others attended the salon on the rue de Fleurus with some regularity. It seemed Gertrude had taken Ernest under her wing; it mattered less to the grande dame that he was friends with that Irishman than that she was. Sylvia wondered how Ernest felt about being a protégé, this hotheaded former ambulance driver who seemed intent on showing the older writers what he knew about boxing, journalism, war, and life.
One thing she knew, which thrilled her: she’d find out how all the dramas in the crowd played out, because her store was rapidly becoming the Latin Quarter’s vault of secrets and ambitions, hopes and fears. It was even beginning to make a bit of money, which she’d sent to her mother as repayment, and her mother had immediately sent back with a letter saying, “What I gave you was not a loan, darling girl. It was a gift. I cannot wait to read Ulysses in full.”
“Shakespeare and Company is doing so well,” Adrienne would brag on Sylvia’s behalf to her own parents at Rocfoin, or to anyone else who’d listen.
“It’s all because of you and La Maison,” Sylvia would reply.
“Nonsense.”
Sylvia didn’t know why Adrienne’s unabashed faith in her made her feel so queasy. While she could see the ways in which her own heart and talents were present in Shakespeare and Company, she was also keenly aware of its origins and the ways in which Adrienne propped her up every day. What was Shakespeare without La Maison? A half dream, a twin missing its sister.
But.
As long as they were together, perhaps none of that mattered.