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[Aetat. 50-53 ] J O Y C E 677would be better to sell shoes if that can be done with simplicity and truth.And besides, I don't know whether all this I am writing means anything toyou.I should like to have a life as quiet as I have n'ow with a garden andperhaps a dog, but nobody is ever contented, isn't that so? So many peoplewere envious of me and of Mama because you are too good. It is a pitythat you don't like Ireland for after all, it is a lovely country if I may judgeby the pictures I have seen, and the stories I have heard. Who knows whatfate has in store for us? At any rate, in spite of the fact that life seems fullof light this evening, here, if ever I should go away, it would be to acountry which belongs in a way to you,* isn't that true father? I am stillwriting silly things you see.I send you both affectionate greetings, and I hope you did not miss yourtrain the other day.LuciaP.S. Why don't you go and have dinner in that little restaurant near theHotel Habis Royal where we went years ago?The seemingly innocent suggestion in the postscript referred to the hotel(under a new name) in which her father and mother had spent theirhoneymoon. 120Lucia's world turned, as much as her father's, about afamily axis.As her madness increased, his belief in her clairvoyance increased too.tOn October 21, 1934, still smarting perhaps from the implication thather incendiary attack was directed against himself, he wrote Miss Weaver:It seems to me that the attempts made by more than one person to poisonher mind against me have failed and that I am in such a position thatwhether I go or stay I shall be blamed as the culprit. Maybe I am an idiotbut I attach the greatest importance to what Lucia says when she is talkingabout herself. Her intuitions are amazing. The people who have warpedher kind and gentle nature are themselves failures and if they smile at herremarks as those of a spoilt bourgeoise child it is because they are stupidfailures into the bargain. My wife and I have seen hundreds of examplesof her clairvoyance. Of course I don't mean the juggling variety. 122The proofs he adduced of Lucia's clairvoyance were touching. He pointedout that Lucia was suddenly aware that her Aunt Eileen Schaurek hadmoved to Bray, though she had not seen the letter in which the fact wasreported. 123He did not bother to investigate the possibility that her doctorhad informed her. Again, Lucia remarked on October 25 that shehad been thinking all day of John McCormack, and was jealous of his* A paraphrase of remarks by Joyce and by his Stephen Dedalus.t He had sometimes found instances of clairvoyance in his own work. As he said longbefore to Oscar Schwarz in Trieste, echoing Wilde, 'My art is not a mirror held up tonature. Nature mirrors my art.' 121And he had many examples, such as Cosgrave's suicidein the Thames in accordance with Stephen's prediction about 'Lynch' in Ulysses.