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[Aetat. 21-22 } J O Y C E 169nacle was delighted with him. She formed the abiding impression, to theconsternation of his friends in later years, that 'Jim should have stuck tomusic instead of bothering with writing.' They were drawn even closertogether, but Joyce was as always anxious to question contentment.As he became increasingly bound to Nora Barnacle, Joyce began tofeel compunction, fearing that she did not know him as he was. Onenight he described to her his sexual life before their meeting, and Norawas predictably shocked and disturbed, like Bertha in Exiles. Her reactionmade him feel more misgivings, for no one believed more strongly thanJoyce in his essential innocence. He wished to wound her image of himby swaggering as a desperado, and also wanted her to break through thissecond image and detect the vulnerable boy. She was not allowed toignore his crimes; she must absolve them out of love, out of mercy, outof awareness that his real nature was not in them. He fed, as he was tosay in Exiles, the flameof her innocence with his guilt;* but this wasnot quite enough: his guilt was a kind of innocence too. Though he knewNora to be a churchgoer, he told her unhesitatingly, in a letter of August29, of his defection from religion and all its concomitants:60 Shelbourne RoadMy dear NoraI have just finished my midnight dinner for which I had no appetite.When I was half way through it I discovered I was eating it out of myfingers. I felt sick just as I did last night. I am much distressed. Excusethis dreadful pen and this awful paper.I may have pained you tonight by what I said but surely it is well thatyou should know my mind on most things? My mind rejects the wholepresent social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classesof life, and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? Myhome was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which Ihave inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father's illtreatment,by years of trouble, and bymy cynical frankness of conduct.When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin—a face grey and wastedwith cancer—I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim andI cursed the system which had made her a victim. We were seventeen infamily. My brothers and sisters are nothing to me. One brother alone iscapable of understanding me.Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. Ifound it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses ofmy nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declinedto accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a beggarbut I retainedmy pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I writeand say and do. I cannot enter the social order except as a vagabond. Istarted to study medicine three times, law once, music once. A week agoI was arranging to go away as a traveling actor. I could put no energy into* Exiles (584 [409]). He wrote in a notebook, with more objectivity, a slightly differentpoint, that she spoke as often of her innocence as he of his guilt.