1n6xZiV

[Aetat. 18-20] J O Y C E 93ising to attend the ^a^s^Sxpos^tion~in^io, or, if that did not take place,the Passion Play akOberammergau-r 5^ He also participated in the mockelection of a new pope^tcr-rep'lace Leo XIII (who died in 1903). The mostlikely candidate at the time was Cardinal Rampolla. Joyce firstplayed thepart of an election official, and as the cardinals filedin he meticulouslyspelled out his name, R-A-M-P-O-L-L-A, 'for their better guidance invoting.' 'If youse can't write,' he advised, 'will ye make your mark?' Havingtallied the vote, he announced, 'Rampolla, nothing,' a phrase thathis friends recalled for years afterwards. 57Joyce bribed the cardinals tovote for him, and won the election; asked for his blessing, he apologized,saying he had left it in his suitcase. Such incidents suggest that taste forcallow foolery which Joyce chose never to renounce.These frolics inspired Margaret Sheehy to write a play, Cupid's Confidante,which was staged firstat the rear of the X.L. Cafe on GraftonStreet on March 21, 1900, then at the Antient Concert Rooms on January8, 1901. Joyce took the role of the suave villain, Geoffrey Fortescue.One of his best effects was to ad lib, at a time when nationalists58urged Irishmen to buy Irish only, as his match failed to ignite, 'Damnthese Irish matches!' 59He did so well in the part that J. B. Hall, thedrama critic for the Evening Telegraph, described his work as 'a revelationof amateur acting,' and with less ambiguity went on, 'But for the factthat he was too young to copy, plagiarise, or otherwise hamper himselfby such a thing, one might say that he followed with extraordinary skillthe combined methods of Charles Matthews and Robertson of "Hawtree"fame.' 60This clipping remained in Joyce's wallet for a long time thereafter.The success of Cupid's Confidante led the Sheehys one Christmas toproduce Robertson's Caste, perhaps to afford Joyce the opportunity ofplaying Captain Hawtree. Years later Eugene Sheehy could still recallthe aplomb with which Joyce arranged his tie in the mirror and said, 'Idon't pretend to be a particularly good sort of fellow, nor a particularlybad sort of fellow. I suppose I'm about the average standard sort ofthing.'* 61The calm of Joyce's last months at University College was rudelychecked early in 1902 by the illness of his brother George, who hadcontracted typhoid fever. George was not yet fifteenyears old; the rest ofthe family were fond of him, and especially Stanislaus, who saw in hima more openhearted companion than James could be. As he lay in bed,wasted by disease, even John Joyce was touched and read to him in the'Joyce, for his part, remembered how Polly describes in Act 11 the mimicking, at Astley'sAmphitheatre in London, of Napoleon on horseback before the battle of Waterloo. Heused it in the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegans Wake (214):Is that the great Finnleader himself in his joakimono on his statue riding the highhorse there forehengist? . . . You're thinking of Astley's Amphitheayter where thebobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers.