Page 38

 JAMES JOYCE 38 
 "What do you think, Mr. Budgen, of a book with a big, fat, horrible married
woman as the heroine? Mollie Bloom!" 
 I said I thought there was nothing wrong with being fat and married. Anyway
a fat, married woman is a change from the syiph-like sweethearts we usually
read about. 
 Strolling through the street one day Joyce laughed and said to me: 
 "Some people were up at our flat last night.. and we were talking about
Irish wit and humour. And this morning my wife said to me, ' What is all
this about Irish wit and humour? Have we any book in the house with any of
it in? I'd like to read a page or two.'" 
 Joyce and his family settled in Zurich right away on coming from Austria,
and stayed there about four years. From Base! I came to ZUrich and outstayed
Joyce there for the greater part of a year. Their flat in 29 Universitätsstrasse
was the fourth of their ZUrich habitations. Previously they had lived in
the Seefeldstrasse, sharing a flat first with Philip Jarnach, Busoni's secretary
and assistant Kapellmeister at .the Stadttheater and later the same flat
with Charlotte Sauermann, one of the leading sopranos of the ZUrich opera.
We both watched the fortunes of war change for the combatants (Joyce more
objectively than I), celebrated the armistice, experienced the grippe epidemic,
the Swiss general strike of 1918, many Föhn winds, much good wine. (for
noble Turricum, in spite of rationing, abounded in all manner of goodly merchandise)
and many fluctuations of our own personal fortunes. And it was in Athens
on the Limmat that Joyce wrote the half of Ulysses.