Stella Steyn
[ 1907 - 1987 ]

Stella Steyn [center] with her teacher, artist Patrick Tuohy
to her left, Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin c.1925-26.

Illustrations for Finnegans Wake

from Anna Livia Plurabelle by James Joyce

Transition No. 18, Paris 1929

from her 'Autobiographical Memoir':

"And so we went together to the Square Robiac to present the letter to Joyce. The door was opened by a tall slender man in a white linen jacket, wearing a shade over one eye. He seeemed a little languid and fragile and my mother said she felt sympathy for him at first sight. He asked us into the little salon and told us his wife and his daughter Lucia were out shopping but would soon be back. Then he read Tuohy's letter and looked at the drawings Tuohy had told me to take with me. He took us into the little dining room, which opened with folding doors from the salon, and showed us the portraits Tuohy had painted of his father and himself."

"When Joyce had shown us the portraits of his father and himself we came back to the little salon and sat down--my mother and I on a couch on one side of the room and Joyce oppopsite in an armchair--and we looked at each other, he clearly at a loss what to do next. He repeated again that his wife and daughter would soon be back. My mother gazed at him intently, and I was astonished and dismayed to hear her say, naively, that 'it was terrible the things that people said'. I tried to intervene, but Joyce pulled me up rather sharply and told me not to interrupt my mother who could express herself very well without any assistance from me, so I had to listen while my mother gave him the benefit of Dublin opinion of him through the mouth of Mrs. Griffith. He took it very generously, however, although I think he minded what Dubliners thought of him. The next day my mother received a basket of crystallised fruit from him with a card attached, hoping she was not lonesome for Dublin."

and later:

"When I returned to Paris in 1929 Joyce sent me to show my work to Sylvia Beach and to Adrienne Nomdries [possibly Monnier], who was most appreciative. About this time he also asked me if I would like to do a few illustrations for 'Finnegans Wake', which was appearing in instalments in 'transition'. I was a bit alarmed about this as I was young and was always rather afraid of Joyce--he was so silent and I rarely spoke to him.

One late afternoon I had called for Lucia and was sitting waiting for her when he came into the room and, taking no notice of me, he went to the piano and with his head bowed over his hands, accompanying himself, he sang some melancholy Irish songs in a low, sad, voice. I said 'You must miss Ireland'. He replied, 'I do'. I said, 'Would you not like to go back?' He replied, 'No. They jeer too much.'

I agreed to try some illustrations for him for 'Finnegans Wake'. He read passages from the part he suggested to me. I think it was old Ondt's funeral and the rivers of the world holding the train of Anna Livia (the Liffey). I am afraid I understood nothing. He said I had a smattering of a couple of languages and might get something from it, and drew my attention to the musical quality of the language. Today I would have said I understood him, but I am afraid at that age I didn't lie, and so had to admit to him that I did not.

He also tried to explain about meaning on more than one level, and there was something about the chemical contituents of the large egg I afterwards drew to pull in the Earwig's funeral, but I can't remember what it was, exactly, he told me to draw, and why. He expressed himself satisfied, however, and gave me a copy of 'transition', which he signed and dated on one of the pages. He had asked me if there was anything I wanted him to sign for me, but I said 'Oh no thank you', as I had been very embarrased by acquaintances in Dublin sending their copies of 'Dubliners' and Portrait of the Artist' for his signature."