The Women of Ulysses: Lizzie Twigg
Note: This image is Dermot’s artistic restoration of a photograph of Lizzie Twigg.
“Everybody who met her liked her - because she was warm and outgoing. Here I am saying good things about Lizzie. Poor Liz - nobody remembers her now.” - Padraic Colum, 1969
As Leopold Bloom passes the offices of the Irish Times in “Lestrygonians”, Ulysses’ eighth episode, he can’t help but think about all the letters that might be waiting there for his alter ego, Henry Flower. However, his fantasy is disrupted by the memory of one “smart lady typist” who didn’t meet Henry’s exacting standards:
“Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.”
To me, Lizzie sounds like a kindred spirit; I’d love to be her nerdy confidante.
Uncharacteristically, our normally empathetic Bloom is surprisingly judgmental. It seems Lizzie was too smart a lady typist to tickle his fancy. She is serious and professional, so she likely has better things to do than get wrapped up in Henry Flower’s psychosexual epistolary madness, unlike the more titillating Martha Clifford. Lizzie’s memory lingers with Bloom like a strand of hair stuck to his sleeve. By chance, he happens to pass the aforementioned Æ on the street near Trinity College. At the poet’s side is young, female admirer:
“And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second time. Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps…. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary work.
His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side.”
While Æ was a prominent literary figure of the day and presumably recognizable to Bloom, the woman only might be Lizzie Twigg. He is, however, certain about her fashion sense:
“Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless. Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are.”
In fact, Bloom is so thrown by her attire, that it’s still haunting him post-ejaculation in “Nausicaa”:
“Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings.”
Why is Bloom so fixated on this young woman who says nothing on the pages of Ulysses? In truth, she doesn’t really even appear on-page as a character, just as a name in Bloom’s memory. Lizzie Twigg, however, was a real person, a contemporary of James Joyce’s with parallel literary ambitions, and an undeserving target of Joyce’s acid satire. Sadly, Lizzie’s impact as a poet has all but faded more than a hundred years on. Prominent Joyce scholars have reported being shocked to learn she was a real person, when they mention her at all. Lizzie is worth a second glance, and not only because Joyce noticed her. So, who was the real Lizzie Twigg?
Lizzie Twigg was born in India but lived in Limerick before moving to Dublin in her early 20’s. Like James Joyce, she was born in 1882, so the two wannabe poets would have been almost exactly the same age when they tried to break into the Dublin literary scene in the early 1900’s. In the few, brief biographies of Lizzie written by Joyce scholars, she is often described as a protegée of Æ, a theosophist, and an ardent nationalist. In “Lestrygonians”, Joyce portrays the Lizzie doppelganger spotted by Bloom as a fawning acolyte of Æ. Bloom recalls her query to Henry Flower:
“My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell).”
However, when we look closer at the real Lizzie’s biography, we see that our perceptions are skewed by Joyce’s portrayal. Let’s start with her politics. It’s true that Lizzie had her poems published in Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, The United Irishman. However, her obituary in the Limerick Leader tells the story of how her time at this nationalist paper came to an abrupt end. Her poems largely focused on the natural beauty of Ireland and on personal topics like love. Her style incorporated a realism that was anything but “opal hush.”
The other writers at The United Irishman, perturbed by her insufficiently patriotic style, allegedly gathered in secret in a Martello Tower somewhere near Dublin (though it’s not clear it was that Martello Tower). They issued an ultimatum to Griffith: either Lizzie goes or they would boycott the paper. Though Lizzie tried to write poems with a more overt patriotic tone under the pen name Élis Ní Chraobhín, the damage was done and her time at The United Irishman was over. Her poems from this era were published in 1904 in a volume called Songs & Poems and were generally well received by critics in both Dublin and New York. One of her poems, “Flame in the Skies of Sunset”, was even set to music and recorded. Despite this, Lizzie Twigg abandoned here career as a poet.
As far as we know, Lizzie was also not a theosophist or a follower of Æ. There’s no evidence that she worked for Æ or knew him by more than reputation. Æ had his own publication, The Irish Homestead, but Lizzie never had any work published there. She may have been effectively blacklisted in Dublin after The United Irishman debacle, but the details are unclear to me. Æ was certainly willing to give up-and-coming writers a chance. He was, for instance, the first to publish Joyce’s short story “The Sisters” in 1904. There’s also no evidence that Lizzie ever attended a theosophy meeting during her time in Dublin. Lizzie was a lifelong practicing Catholic, and theosophy would have been at odds with her religious beliefs. Scholar Elizabeth Foley O’Conner points out that Lizzie was living at a boarding house for young Catholic women, which required her to remain in good standing with the Church. One would assume that fraternizing with known theosophists would have put her at odds with her landlords.
The real Lizzie doesn’t match the caricature in “Lestrygonians”. However, her real name is associated with this adoring, young hanger-on of Æ’s, so she gets remembered as such nonetheless. Scholar Zack Bowen suggested that the description of Lestrygonian Lizzie has more in common with another contemporary writer, Susan L. Mitchell. She was the sub-editor of The Irish Homestead and listed as a dedication in one of Æ’s books, and she was indeed an ardent nationalist. Her work was praised by James Joyce, and she even gets mentioned in Finnegans Wake as “Miry Mitchel.” Most of Mitchell’s biographies justifiably have much more to say about the calibre of her verse than the looseness of her stockings, so the reality of this description is lost to history.
It doesn’t seem that Joyce and Lizzie knew each other, though it’s almost certain that Joyce would have been aware of her reputationally. The secret Martello meeting and her public banishment were hot gossip in Dublin in this era. She was even ridiculed in the guise of “Liza Ann Twigglety” by writer and musician Cathal O’Byrne in the Belfast Weekly Times. O’Byrne “Twigglety” material was so popular, he subsequently developed it into a stage show, which O’Connor surmises that Joyce could have attended or at least been aware of. Being out of work at The United Irishman and thoroughly shamed, Lizzie could have hypothetically answered a classified ad seeking employment as a typist and been dismayed to receive a creepy, sexualized reply from Mr. Henry Flower, Esq. in return.
Bloom’s commentary on the fictional Lizzie Twigg is uncharacteristically harsh. It’s out of character for Bloom to hold such bitter views of someone he doesn’t know. Especially notable is how persistently and specifically critical he is of her stockings. We know that Bloom likes a shapely, well-clad feminine leg. He is desperate to see the ankles of the woman boarding the jaunting car in “Lotus Eaters” and driven to public indecency by the sight of Gerty MacDowell’s legs in “Nausicaa”. Bloom is not above sexualizing and objectifying women, but his palpable, simmering anger at Lizzie stands out. O’Connor theorizes that Bloom may be offended by Lizzie’s rejection. We can imagine that she was simply disgusted by Henry Flower’s advances and just stopped responding. Perhaps, however, Lizzie was no shrinking violet and gave Henry a piece of her mind for his creepiness, and now Bloom, who knows perfectly well what he did wrong, has sublimated his embarrassment into bitter, childish insults about her appearance.
And why would Joyce include her real name alongside this unflattering depiction? Scholar Robert Adams hypothesized that the Ulyssean depiction of Lizzie was due to a combination of her “irresistably funny” name and just plain, old misogyny. According to Adams, Joyce himself saw women as primarily sexual objects and derided any attempts by a woman at his preferred artform. I think there is some truth to this in Joyce’s younger years, despite the fact he praised the work of other female poets like Mitchell.
O’Connor gives a very insightful reason as to why Joyce bore such animus against poor Lizzie specifically. She and Joyce were contemporaries, born in the same year and vying for a place in Dublin’s literary scene at the same time. Initially, Lizzie seemed to be the bigger success, securing for a time a regular publisher for her poetry. Despite her ignominious expulsion, her poetry collection was met with favourable reviews in 1904. In the same year, Joyce was penniless, homeless, and struggling to find a publisher at all. He had been forced to self-publish several of his early works because they were incredibly inflammatory against the literary establishment in Dublin. He got a few short stories into The Irish Homestead, but Æ eventually stopped publishing them when his readership complained.
Between 1904 and 1922 when Ulysses was published, Joyce struggled to publish anything, particularly Dubliners. He may have thought, in a moment of spite and hurt feelings, about the injustice of a genius like himself being overlooked while a hack like Lizzie Twigg got a few crumbs of attention and praise. Those memories lingered over the years, and he paid Lizzie the ultimate insult - mocking her in Ulysses. The focus on her stockings might be a reference to the gendered insult “bluestocking,” meaning a woman who dabbles in literature but has no real talent. Notice the way she is portrayed in “Lestrygonians” as an unspeaking hanger-on of Æ. She offers no opinion or insight. She simply listens and adores:
“His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side.”
The sad ironic coda to this story is that Lizzie and Jim should have been allies raging against a common enemy. Joyce frequently chafed at the nationalist politics of the era, and Lizzie was an artist whose career was cut short by this political chauvinism. Petty jealousy and prejudice prevented any potential friendship from developing. As Adams put it, “he resented Æ and his bevy of literary acolytes with the special arrogance of a lonely man.”
Joyce’s depiction of Lizzie is the one that has endured the longest. As a result, today Lizzie is mainly remembered for her foolish appearance in “Lestrygonians”. This, to me, is the true injustice. Lizzie was a talented poet with an original voice and style. Had she been given space to develop her skills, there’s no telling where her poems may have ended up. I can understand not wanting to continue her creative pursuits following such a massive public shaming for such a minor sin. She spent her post-literary life working for the rights of her fellow citizens in Limerick. She was a friend of writers Mary and Padraic Colum, who remembered her fondly to Zack Bowen in the late 1960’s. Padraic Colum recalled:
“Everybody who met her liked her - because she was warm and outgoing. Here I am saying good things about Lizzie. Poor Liz - nobody remembers her now.”
Let’s remember her, then, for her own beautiful words and not for petty misogyny flung her way by Mr. Joyce. Let’s remember Lizzie.
