Transcription: He asked me if I had read "Finnigan's Wake". I said I had read of it when it was being published   ^ in "translation."   He said it was even worse than the "Ulysses" and had taken seventeen years to write it. I said: Is it a big book? I have not seen it yet, and he replied : that reminds me of the story of the drunken Irishman walking from and when questioned as to the length of the road, said it was not the length that worried him, it was the width! - He told me he has also published a book with a title something like "Thirteen poems for a penny" (reminiscent of D Kelleher's commercial display on the Strand) . - He then began to rake up mutual acquaintances. He had shaken the dust of Dublin off his feet some years before I arrived there. I  told him I was an Autrim  man who spent his early life in Belfast. - You need not tell me, he replied (my accent always sharpens again when I am with Irish). His father came from Cork, he said; his wife from Galway and he from Dublin, so we were a representative group. He spoke of Oliver   Logasty   about whom he inquired and about his hotel in the West. I had never met John Eglinton and yet it is only he kept coming back to Herbert Hughes, the northern musician who spent much time in London; I had met him notlong before his death and liked him very much but told him of my wife's long acqaintanceship with him. Hughes he said had published a peculiar book of at least a dozen of his poems having them set to music by twelve composers all of different nationali- ties. A nice little international tribute to Joyce. I mentioned Desmond Fitzgerald's name with a very faint response. Dick Hayes, he knew only by name. As to   Lemlox Robinson   he inquired whther he was a parti- cular friend of mine. I said I knew him fairly well and then he reffered to a series of dramatic compe- titions given onver the Dublin wireless; they ended after a couple of weeks, or rather the adjudications by Robinson he said that there was not the slight- est doubt the man was completely tight; he had two   adjectives   which he employed without any other qualification for each of the competitors.

Transcription: 1st January 1941.         Dull as ditchwater this morning, fed up and depressed. Partly because I stayed out till nearly 1 this morning and drank a glass of champagne at midnight, including a toast to "absent ones". Also got a letter from Arthur S last night and one from Alec L today both on Arthur's position and not coinciding with what had been done. And I have much sympathy with them and am not at all sure that I have acted for the best. I don't want to clame anyone but I was and allowed myself to be very much influenced by Jacklin and though he may have been right about the money end I perhaps should have insisted more on my own instinctive judgement. However- we'll see.         Also all my New Year greetings have included the hope that we shall soon be reunited and I keep avoiding thinking too much on that myself- it gets too much under the skin. So here I am this bright New Year's Day passing off all my depression on you.             And I am not going ot the office and don't know what to do with my leave.         After looking at this have decided that it can't go to Ireland. I am down in the mouth. I am living from week to week and month to month and the future is dark and unknoown. I can't see how it could come about that I'll see my dear ones for a year. I must hold on here. I dare not desert. I hope I shall not. I suppose I have not real courage nor real "guts".         Have also begun again this last weeks to worry about the financial future. Over 52 and no sign of peace and modest easy. Even modest earning uncertain. Children not yet educated and Elsie unprovided for. I had ceased to worry when the war did come and there seemed little that could be done to provide for an unsure future. It's all very blue.         I suppose it mainly comes from physical nervous and mental tiredness and the loneliness.         This has been accompanied by a sermon from St Pierrre on the TSF in which the Genevese pastor had a marvellous text in the futility of human provision against the ills of life- the states that had a year ago believed themselves strong and well protected, or virtours in their isolation, with food and force and wealth and armies; and they are no more. And the men who insure against all troubles and who in their complacency believe themselves sheltered. And who can say it today?         Nowthat I have got this off I can settle and write someting more balanced for my letter home.         We certainly find it hard to realise how well off we are.

Transcription: replies. The only one I could remember was when one of them was asked the precise meaning of a "bourgeois" and replied "an Italian soldier". Then Joyce remarked that one of the competitors, the one who got top-marks on the previous Sunday, when asked who had won such and such a literary prize two years ago, had replied "I am not sure, but I think it was Joyce"; there were short controversies with the competitor, but he was adjudicated correct. Joyce said that when the Dublin labourer gave this reply, which was correct, he stood up and bowed to the receiver.          They were going to settle in Zurich, where thery had some good friends. I said I thought it was an unusual place for him to choose and asked, what about Suisse Romande? His wife then intervened and said that Zurich had always been associated with certain crises in their life: they had rushed from Austria at the beginning of the last war and ha lived in Zurich very comfortably; they had spent their honeymoon there; it was there that Joyce's eyesight had been saved and now they were going back in another crisis- The like the stolid virtues of the people. Joyce describing any Saturday night dinner in a restaurant when a score of men, fat and square-headed, would sit eating a great meal talking the patois of which he could not understand a word, while the wives stayed at home darning socks and cleaning silver intil they were allowed out on the Sunday night- - Joyce said he often wondered he had not been expelled from France because of his strongly expressed conviction that Switzerland's white wine (he only drinks white wine) was vastly superior to anything he drank in France.         They had left their place in Paris in May; it was filled with most precious books, first editions and presentations from all over the world, and with many good pictures. He had, he told me, some of Jack years and asked about Paul Henry, whom he also admired.         Gossiping afterwards, he told me that he had been a rival to the young McCormack in their early days in Dublin, his wife had some time tried to persuade him otherwise follow the musical carreer and drop the writing. That was at a time when he was having a hard struggle and apparently it was "a near thing". Mrs. Joyce - showing more signs of her cosmopolitan life, pleasant voice - joined in deploring McCormack's pathetic and tragic insistence on continuing ot sing as he did when his voice had gone.         Joyce's practical blindness was most noticeable over the tea; he asked his wife to prepare a piece of toast for him and then decided with slight pathos to have biscuits which were easy to find. Shaking hands with him, I noticed his wife who acted as his eyes indicated to him to hold out his hand. When I asked him if he had read on or twon recent books mentioning Desmond Ryan's book of recollections, he showed me his difficulties: he has two glasses, one, a small magnifying glass which he has to use for reading and when he writes he has another glass which must be affixed to his spectacles and each time he has to read something while writing has to make a change; obviously the poor fellow can read very little and slowly: one can understand the radio!         The second time I mentioned the question of his returning home, his wife said she had been trying to induce him to for the last two or three years. Joyce said nothing, but when I spoke of getting home in the present circumstances, he said the journey would have been quite possible for him, but he felt it would not be very dignified to get home in the present circumstances. Speaking about the daughter who has had a bad nervous breakdown and has been in a sanatorium for two or three years, he said she was a very gentle and sweet creature; he apparentlyy had gone to visit her every weekend and that at first Sean Murphy obtain permission from the Germans to leave the occupied zone; O'Kelly who had acted for Murphy siad that when the application was made to the German Commandant in Paris, the latter granted it as once having read and admired Joyce's work. The visa given by the Vichy Government for the exit of his son in view of very strict application of the rule preventing foreigners, and especially belligerents (the Joyces all had British passports) under the age of 40 to leave the country, was difficult to understand and had astonished them - the application had been made for the four visas: Joyce, wife, son and eight-year old grandson; they did not understand it had been granted, but perhaps it was again the magic of Joyce's name.

Transcription: Monday, December 16th 1940         I had had some correspondence with and about James Joyce and his family. On Sunday morning got a telephone message from the Richmond they had arrived there. I spent three hours with them in the afternoon before they caught their train for Lausanne.         The famous Joyce is tall, slight, in the fifties, blue eyes and a good thatch of hair. No one would hesitate in looking at him to recognize his nationality and his accent is as Dublin as when he left it over thrity years ago. His eye-sight is very bad and he told me some years ago it had been saved for him by the famous Vogt of Zurich, who had also operated on De Valera.- His son, seemingly in the late twenties, came in first. A fine well-built fellow, with a peculiar hybrid accent in English. He told me he is a singer and has sung in Paris and New-York. He is married to an American girl and I had the secret hope that, energetic as he seemed, he was no mere hanger-on.         Joyce and I soon got on intimate terms. He is completely unspoilt by his world success. Natural and pleasant in manner. I told him I had read very early his small book of poems "Chamber Music"; then "Dubliners" and had then reviewed "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". (having assured myself that he had no recollection I had done it for the Freeman Journal); and although I had not re-read the book for fifteen years, I still remembered very vividly the first chapter in which he described "A Parnellite Household in the crisis of the 90's"; I am sure the review was very inadequate.         I then told him that I had tried to read "Ulysses" but had to confess I never read it all. I remembered the impression of splashes of beauty, but the Dublin "argot" at times beat me; I had often wondered how on earth foreigners got along with it.- He told me it had been translated into French, German, Czech, Russian, Swedish and, I think, Italian. When I ventured my remark on the incomprehensibility of parts of it, Joyce said that he too had some times wondered what the Monsieur in Tokio made of the Japanese translation.- There was a touch of humour in his voice which showed me I had not been trampling too much and in too grave a way on his susceptibilities.

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Description: Auguste LE RONCÉ, grand-oncle de Michèle BOUCHERON, est tombé au champ d'honneur le 29 mai 1918. || Carte postale représentant L'enfant Jésus de Prague annonçant le décès d'Auguste LE RONCÉ à sa soeur. Attestation d'attribution de la médaille militaire. Citation à l'ordre de la Ve Armée. Courrier de Mathurin LE GALL, alors au combat, adressé à sa fiancée Tréphine LE RONCÉ (grands-parents de la contributrice) déplorant la mort d'Auguste LE RONCÉ et décrivant les combats.

Description: This is a discharge certificate from the war office originally given to Bill in 1919 and now reprinted and sent to his Galway address in 1930. It provides information about when he joined, what he did and a character reference.

Description: 1) 3 μετάλλια 2) 4 διπλώματα 3) 2 πιστοποιητικά στρατιωτικής υπηρεσίας 4) 2 Active Service Pay Book 5) 2 Returned soldier's handbook & an information on pensions 6) 1 Special order of the Day by Major-General A.C. MacDonell (ημερήσια διαταγή) 7) 2 forms of will 8) ένα αποδεικτικό επιστροφής των διαθηκών || Ο Δημήτριος Αστεριάδης ή James Asteriades, παππούς του Γεώργιου Κωνσταντινίδη, γεννήθηκε στο Ασβεστοχώρι το 1891 και πέθανε στην Αθήνα το 1953, -54. Ζούσε ως μετανάστης στον Καναδά και κατετάγη στον καναδικό στρατό το 1917, για να υπηρετήσει στον Α' Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο. Μετά την αποστράτευσή του, ο καναδικός στρατός του απένειμε μετάλλια και διπλώματα για τις υπηρεσίες του στον πόλεμο και το στρατό. || || Ελληνικά || 3 μετάλλια από τον καναδικό στρατό || Medal || Καναδάς || James Asteriades || || Official document || James Asteriades || Καναδάς || Ένα δίπλωμα για τις υπηρεσίες του στον καναδικό στρατό. || English || || Καναδάς || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || James Asteriades || Ένα δίπλωμα για τις υπηρεσίες του στον καναδικό στρατό || English || Official document || || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || English || Ένα δίπλωμα για ις υπηρεσίες στον καναδικό στρατό. || Καναδάς || James Asteriades || Official document || || James Asteriades || Official document || 43.653226,-79.38318429999998 || Τορόντο || English || Ένα δίπλωμα για τις υπηρεσίες στον καναδικό στρατό. || || Official document || English || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || James Asteriades || Οτάβα || Ένα πιστοποιητικό για τις υπηρεσίες στον καναδικό στρατό. || || Ένα πιστοποιητικό στρατιωτικής υπηρεσίας. || Official document || Οτάβα || English || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || James Asteriades || || James Asteriades || Official document || Active Service Pay Book || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || English || Οτάβα || || English || Official document || Active Service Pay Book || Οτάβα || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || James Asteriades || || Οτάβα || English || Official document || Στρατιώτες του καναδικού στρατού || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || Δύο Returned Soldier's Handbook & Information on pensions. || || 1 φύλλο (ημερήσια διαταγή), Special Order of the Day by Major - General A.C. MacDonell. || English || Official document || || English || James Asteriades || Official document || A Form of Will Οι στρατιώτες ήταν υποχρεωμένοι να συντάξουν διαθήκες πριν από κάθε μάχη. || || Οτάβα || 45.4215296,-75.69719309999999 || James Asteriades || Official document || Ένα αποδεικτικό επιστροφής διαθηκών. || English

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