Joyce’s Ellmann: The Beginnings of James Joyce

Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce biography began unwittingly, during a conversation with W. B. Yeats’s widow in the aftermath of World War II. At her house in Dublin, Ellmann inquired about the fabled Joyce-Yeats meeting of October 1902. ‘‘I began this biography of Joyce in perhaps the happiest way, without knowing that I was beginning it,’’ Ellmann relates in his notes.1 At the time, Ellmann was writing a life of Yeats and had only a marginal interest in Joyce, but this meeting with the poet’s widow, like Joyce’s earlier meeting with Yeats, would prove the starting point of one of modern literature’s most significant literary relationships. Ellmann’s meeting with Mrs. Yeats was itself a stroke of luck, the first of many ‘‘gold mines’’ he would strike in his research excursions. Ellmann possessed an ‘‘intuitive knack for being in the right place to benefit from fortuitous discoveries,’’2 and his meeting with Yeats’s widow proved especially fortuitous. Stationed in England during World War II, Ellmann took advantage of his proximity to Ireland to write the poet’s widow. The neutral Irish government had relaxed restrictions on American servicemen after the Allied victory, and Ellmann was hopeful of a possible visit to Mrs. Yeats. ‘‘Fortunately I knew nothing of her well-earned reputation for never replying to letters,’’ Ellmann later wrote in his 1979 preface to Yeats: The Man and the Masks.3 Despite her reputation, Mrs. Yeats replied to Ellmann’s letter, encouraging him to see her. With this good news, Ellmann approached the head of his O.S.S. section, Norman Holmes Pearson, and requested a week’s leave. ‘‘Take two,’’ he replied (Yeats: The Man and the Masks xi). Ellmann then made the journey to 46 Palmerston Road, Rathmines, and viewed Yeats’s former study for the first time. ‘‘I asked his widow if