The real Goodwin,
according to Vivien Igoe, worked as the organist at St. Peter's
Church, a large Catholic church in Phibsborough built in the
style of Gothic cathedrals. He also played piano, conducted
concerts in various Dublin locations, taught music in several
local schools, and composed sacred music. Igoe notes that his
Discite
a Me "was composed and arranged with organ accompaniment,
and was advertised in the
Nation in June 1890. His
publications included
Goodwin's Hand Book of Singing for the
Use of Schools." John Stanislaus Joyce, the writer's
father, was a friend of Goodwin and sang in at least one of his
concerts.
The Blooms think of Professor Goodwin because he used to
accompany Molly when she performed. In their recollections he
cuts a pitiful figure. Bloom thinks in
Calypso, “
Poor
old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a
courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off
the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night
Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in
professor Goodwin's hat!" The hat comes back in
Lestrygonians,
along with Bloom's memories of a windy night "after Goodwin's
concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house." On
that night Bloom and Boylan were walking next to each other on
the sidewalk, with "
Professor Goodwin linking her in front.
Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts.
Positively last appearance on any stage. May be for months and
may be for never." When they got home Bloom fried some meat for
his wife over the fire and made some "mulled rum." The details
are important because they mark this as the same night that
Molly recalls in
Penelope: "the night after
Goodwins
botchup of a concert so cold and windy it was well we had
that rum in the house to mull and the fire wasnt black out."
Goodwin's drinking has been interfering with his piano-playing,
then, and after this night it prematurely ended his career and
life. The men who gather around the piano in
Sirens are
probably recalling the same farewell concert: “
Poor old
Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded
them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself
and the Collard grand. There was.” Simon Dedalus affirms the
cause: “The devil wouldn't stop him. He was a crotchety old
fellow in the primary stage of drink.” Molly scorns the
"Professor" moniker: "
he was a patent professor of John
Jameson." Still, she thinks, "he was a real old gent in
his way it was impossible to be more respectful."
In
Circe, as the action in the whorehouse approaches its
climax Goodwin’s ghost suddenly appears and takes a spectacular
turn at the piano: "
Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted
periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent
in two from incredible age, totters across the
room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the
pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the
keyboard, nodding with damsel's grace, his bowknot bobbing."
This frantic, ghoulish performance emphasizes the old man's
alcoholic debility, but it may also be a response to his
sobriquet, since "professors" often played popular music on
pianos in the bordellos of New Orleans. They included, among
many others, the famous Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand Joseph
LaMothe, nicknamed after a product sold at the brothels where he
began playing at the age of 14), Tony Jackson (even more famous
locally), and Manuel "Fess" Manetta.
In the years around 1900 the whorehouse reached its
institutional zenith in New Orleans. The city's red light
district was called Storyville, much to the irritation of Sidney
Story, the civic reformer who in 1897 proposed to sequester the
vice trade in a single neighborhood to protect the sensibilities
and property values of decent citizens. This counterpart to
Dublin's Monto (New Orleans also had a flourishing community of
roiling, Fenian-supporting Irish expats) featured poorer houses
where uptight youths cooling their heels might
feed a player piano with coins or
turn the crank on a gramophone, as well as decidedly upscale
establishments with Victorian music parlors where customers
could listen to small string ensembles or to pianists playing
grand pianos.
The Historic New Orleans Collection website confirms that
pianists in these expensive brothels were commonly called
“professors." They "played for tips against a guarantee put up
by the madams. Playing at the most exclusive brothels meant
access to an audience with deep pockets. With no band members
to pay out, professors were the highest paid of the District’s
musicians." Many had classical training, and they were
essentially practicing musicologists: "Customers frequently
wanted to hear popular tunes from Broadway shows and the
Ziegfeld Follies, opera favorites, ragtime hits, and the
latest releases from New York’s Tin Pan Alley. Musicians had
to be prepared to play anything the customer wanted to hear.
Bawdy lyrics sometimes replaced the actual words to the songs
and were often sung by the piano player, the madam herself, or
the sex workers in her employ." Late in the evening, given
some heat and lubrication, the tunes often switched to the
latest “funky” sounds borrowed from players like Buddy Bolden
on the black side of Canal Street.
Working on Circe in 1920, Joyce may conceivably have
heard some New Orleans-style piano music played in a Paris
cafe and learned about the whorehouse music scene. It would
explain his decision to take a classically trained musician
out of the concert hall, move him into a whorehouse
"musicroom," and have him bust out with My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl.
Perhaps the Professor plays this popular favorite in an
up-tempo stride beat with a ghostly banjo and tuba for
accompaniment!