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[ Aetat. 36 ] J O Y C E 443and you have almightily answered the critics who asked me whether havingmade Stephen, more or less autobiography, you could ever go onand create a second character. . . .' 40In London Miss Weaver continued to look for a printer willing to setthe episodes for serial publication in the Egoist, but she had no luck untilearly in 1919, when one printer was prevailed upon to do a few episodes(IL III, VI, and X) only. She informed Joyce through Pinker, in March1918, that she wished to publish Ulysses in book form, and Joyce repliedon March 20 that he would be pleased, 'though I am sure it is in moresenses than one a Greek gift.' The possibility of having it published in amore regular way came up again in June 1918, when Roger Fry suggestedMiss Weaver call on Leonard and Virginia Woolf to induce themto publish the book at their new Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf noted inher diary the incongruous appearance of Miss Weaver as the 'buttonedup'and woollen-gloved missionary for a book that 'reeled with indecency.'*The Woolfs told her they could not print it because it wouldtake two years on their handpress, though they said they were very muchinterested in the firstfour episodes which they read. Actually they seemto have regarded it as 'underbred,' though Katherine Mansfield, wholooked at the manuscript one day while paying them a visit, began byridiculing it and then suddenly said, 'But there's something in this: ascene that should figure I suppose in the history of literature.' 42Joyce continued to hope for the production of Exiles, which was receivinga good press. Arthur Clutton-Brock reviewed it in a long, laudatoryarticle in the Times Literary Supplement of July 25, 1918, suggestingthe Stage Society produce it, but they still could not agree to do so. Joyceafterwards blamed Bernard Shaw for preventing acceptance, 43but apparentlywithout direct evidence.! Desmond McCarthy spoke well of theplay in the New Statesman on September 21, and Joyce's friend SilvioBenco wrote a favorable article in the Trieste journal Umana, on July 6.* Miss Weaver, when the passage was quoted to her, demanded with acerbity, 'What iswrong with woollen gloves?' 41t Bernard Shaw firmly disclaimed this responsibility. In a note to Sylvia Beach datedJanuary 22, 1950 (now at Texas), he wrote:Joyce was misinformed about his early play Exiles. It was never 'about to [be]performed by the Stage Society'. He sent it to the Society and it was sent to me toread. I at once spotted a considerable youthful talent; but as it contained a few wordsthat were then tabooed as unmentionable, and still are, and as it was necessary tocombat the current notion that the Stage Society existed for the performance ofindecent plays, I reported that the unmentionable passages must be blue-penciled. Inever said that the whole play was obscene. Presumably he refused to allow thebowdlerisation. Anyhow Exiles was not performed.Joyce and I never met in person. I have never had time to decipher Finnegans[sic] Wake.G. Bernard Shaw