In response to Mr. Deasy's request that he place his letter
about foot and mouth disease
in two newspapers, Stephen thinks of the Evening Telegraph
and the "Irish Homestead." The Homestead
was a weekly newspaper of relatively small circulation,
targeted at rural readers. Stephen names it because he knows
that George Russell
works there, and the novel seems to be obliquely alluding to
the fact that Russell published Joyce's earliest stories in
this newspaper.
The Homestead was published from 1895 to 1923.
Russell edited the paper from 1905 to 1923, as a consequence
of his work with rural cooperatives for Sir Horace Plunkett's
Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. In 1904 he was
working at the paper under the general editorship of H. F.
Norman. Stephen's choice of the Homestead as a second
venue for the letter reflects his acquaintance with Russell,
and he is probably expecting to encounter him in the National Library later
in the day. The two men do in fact meet in Scylla and
Charybdis, and when Russell gets up to leave, saying, "I
am afraid I am due at the Homestead,"
Stephen stands up with him and says, "If you will be
so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman..." To
himself he thinks, "The pigs' paper." The Homestead
focused on agrarian issues.
The Homestead also, however, published Joyce's first
short stories. When Joyce was begging friends for the loan of
a pound in 1904, Russell (who had read and enjoyed Stephen
Hero) offered to pay him that sum for "a short story
suitable for the Irish Homestead, something 'simple, rural?,
livemaking?, pathos? [pathetic].'" He suggested that "It is
easily earned money if you can write fluently and don't mind
playing to the common understanding and liking for once in a
way. You can sign it any name you like as a pseudonym."
Joyce wrote "The Sisters" (in a version different from the
one that eventually began Dubliners) and received a
sovereign in payment. Loath to
publish in the pigs' paper under his own name, he accepted
Russell's suggestion and wrote as Stephen Daedalus. The story
appeared in August 1904. The Homestead also
published "Eveline" in September 1904, shortly before Joyce
left Ireland with Nora Barnacle, and "After the Races" in
December of the same year. But Joyce was definitely not
"playing to the common understanding and liking," and by the
end of the year there were so many objections to his stories
that he was asked not to submit any more. He responded,
typically, by including Russell in the host of betrayers that
he assaulted in his poem The Holy Office.
