1n6xZiV

392 / A M E S [ 1915-1916 ]I receive nothing in the way of royalties. My contributions to reviewsetc were made twelve years ago. From my first publisher and from mysecond I did not receive any money for royalties, the sale in both casesbeing below the required number. In the case of my second publisher Ibought and paid for at trade prices 120 copies of my book as a conditionof publication. For my contributions to reviews in the current year, TheSmart Set and The Egoist, I received no payment.I enclose a medical certificate which attests my state of health and shallbe much obliged if you will kindly return it to me under registered coverwhen it has been examined. In present circumstances in this country whereI may have to remain for some time it seems very difficult to obtain anywork of the kind which I do. My literary work during the last eleven yearshas produced nothing. On the contrary my second book Dubliners cost mea considerable sum of money owing to the eight years of litigation whichpreceded its publication. I have tried to obtain an engagement with severalschools here but have not succeeded.I trust that I have given you a clear statement of the facts of the case. Iam writing to my friends W. B. Yeats and Mr Ezra Pound who, I amsure, will corroborate me in my statements.I am, dear Sir,Sincerely yours,James JoyceDebts contracted in the course of the war.i) to Baron Ambrogio Ralli, Palazzo Ralli, Trieste, AustriaCrowns/Austrian/300. -ii) to Gioacchino Veneziani Esq., Murano, Venice, Italy,Crowns /Austrian 12. 50. -Cr.A, 550.-30 July 1915 1 0The most outspoken letter was from Ezra Pound, who began contentiouslyby announcing that he did not suppose his opinion could carryany weight with the committee. Still he derived some satisfaction fromsaying that Joyce was a good poet and the best of the younger prosewriters. He thought Dubliners uneven, but considered A Portrait to beof indubitable value. Joyce had managed to remain totally uncorruptedby commercial demands and standards; his work had the hard clarity ofa Stendhal or a Flaubert, and the richness that comes from erudition.Pound anticipated that the committee would jib at such lofty claims, butinsisted that he was convinced Joyce deserved them. 11The joint result of the sedate and the flamboyantinterventions of hisfriends was that the Royal Literary Fund awarded Joyce a grant of seventy-fivepounds, payable in installments over nine months. Its importanceto him was enhanced by the sense of quasi-official recognition of hiswork. It opened up, as well, a vista of future patronage. His sense of becomingsomewhat established helped to poise the more relaxed tone ofthe Bloom episodes in Ulysses, to which he now bent his mind. In the