With all the more reason now, Ticklepenny’s to Murphy. It will not take many moments.
After much hesitation Ticklepenny consulted a Dublin physician , a Dr. Fist more philosophical than medical, German on his father’s side. Dr. Fist said: ‘Giff de pooze ub or go kaputt.’ Ticklepenny said he would give up the booze. Dr. Fist laughed copiously and said: ‘I giff yous a shit to Killiecrrrankie.’ Dr. Angus Killiecrankie was R.M.S. to an institution on the outskirts of London known as the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat. The chit proposed that Ticklepenny, a distinguished indigent drunken Irish bard, should make himself useful about the place in return for a mild course of dipsopathic discipline.
Ticklepenny responded so rapidly to this arrangement that the rumour of a misdiagnosis began to raise its horrid head in the M.M.M., until Dr. Fist wrote from Dublin explaining that the curative factor at work in this interesting case was to be sought neither in the dipsopathy nor in the bottlewashing, but in the freedom from poetic composition that these conferred on his client, whose breakdown had been due less to the pints than to the pentameters.
This view of the matter will not seem strange to anyone familiar with the class of pentameter that Ticklepenny felt it his duty to Erin to compose, as free as a canary in the fifth foot (a cruel sacrifice, for Ticklepenny hiccuped in end rimes) and at the cæsura as hard and fast as his own divine flatus and otherwise bulging with as many minor beauties from the gaelic prosodoturfy as could be sucked out of a mug of Beamish’s porter. No wonder he felt a new man washing the bottles and emptying the slops of the better-class mentally deranged.
But all good things come to an end and Ticklepenny was offered a job in the wards at the seneschalesque figure of five pounds a month all found. He accepted. He no longer had the spirit to refuse. The Olympian sot had reverted to the temperate potboy.
Now after a bare week in the wards he felt he could not go on. He did not mind having his pity and even his terror titillated within reason, but the longing to vomit with compassion and anxiety struck him as repugnant to the true catharsis, especially as he could never bring anything up.
Ticklepenny was immeasurably inferior to Neary in every way, but they had certain points of contrast with Murphy in common. One was this pretentious fear of going mad. Another was the inability to look on, no matter what the spectacle. These were connected, in the sense that the painful situation could always be reduced to onlooking of one kind or another. But even here Neary was superior to Ticklepenny, at least according to the tradition that ranks the competitor’s spirit higher than the huckster’s and the man regretting what he cannot have higher than the man sneering at what he cannot understand. For Neary knew his great master’s figure of the three lives, whereas Ticklepenny knew nothing.
Wylie came a little closer to Murphy, but his way of looking was as different from Murphy’s as a voyeur’s from a voyant’s , though Wylie was no more the one in the indecent sense than Murphy was the other in the supradecent sense. The terms are only taken to distinguish between the vision that depends on light, object, viewpoint, etc., and the vision that all those things embarrass. In the days when Murphy was concerned with seeing Miss Counihan, he had had to close his eyes to do so. And even now when he closed them there was no guarantee that Miss Counihan would not appear. That was Murphy’s really yellow spot. Similarly he had seen Celia for the first time, not when she revolved before him in the way that so delighted Mr. Kelly, but while she was away consulting the Reach. It was as though some instinct had withheld her from accosting him in form until he should have obtained a clear view of her advantages , and warned her that before he could see it had to be not merely dark, but his own dark. Murphy
After much hesitation Ticklepenny consulted a Dublin physician , a Dr. Fist more philosophical than medical, German on his father’s side. Dr. Fist said: ‘Giff de pooze ub or go kaputt.’ Ticklepenny said he would give up the booze. Dr. Fist laughed copiously and said: ‘I giff yous a shit to Killiecrrrankie.’ Dr. Angus Killiecrankie was R.M.S. to an institution on the outskirts of London known as the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat. The chit proposed that Ticklepenny, a distinguished indigent drunken Irish bard, should make himself useful about the place in return for a mild course of dipsopathic discipline.
Ticklepenny responded so rapidly to this arrangement that the rumour of a misdiagnosis began to raise its horrid head in the M.M.M., until Dr. Fist wrote from Dublin explaining that the curative factor at work in this interesting case was to be sought neither in the dipsopathy nor in the bottlewashing, but in the freedom from poetic composition that these conferred on his client, whose breakdown had been due less to the pints than to the pentameters.
This view of the matter will not seem strange to anyone familiar with the class of pentameter that Ticklepenny felt it his duty to Erin to compose, as free as a canary in the fifth foot (a cruel sacrifice, for Ticklepenny hiccuped in end rimes) and at the cæsura as hard and fast as his own divine flatus and otherwise bulging with as many minor beauties from the gaelic prosodoturfy as could be sucked out of a mug of Beamish’s porter. No wonder he felt a new man washing the bottles and emptying the slops of the better-class mentally deranged.
But all good things come to an end and Ticklepenny was offered a job in the wards at the seneschalesque figure of five pounds a month all found. He accepted. He no longer had the spirit to refuse. The Olympian sot had reverted to the temperate potboy.
Now after a bare week in the wards he felt he could not go on. He did not mind having his pity and even his terror titillated within reason, but the longing to vomit with compassion and anxiety struck him as repugnant to the true catharsis, especially as he could never bring anything up.
Ticklepenny was immeasurably inferior to Neary in every way, but they had certain points of contrast with Murphy in common. One was this pretentious fear of going mad. Another was the inability to look on, no matter what the spectacle. These were connected, in the sense that the painful situation could always be reduced to onlooking of one kind or another. But even here Neary was superior to Ticklepenny, at least according to the tradition that ranks the competitor’s spirit higher than the huckster’s and the man regretting what he cannot have higher than the man sneering at what he cannot understand. For Neary knew his great master’s figure of the three lives, whereas Ticklepenny knew nothing.
Wylie came a little closer to Murphy, but his way of looking was as different from Murphy’s as a voyeur’s from a voyant’s , though Wylie was no more the one in the indecent sense than Murphy was the other in the supradecent sense. The terms are only taken to distinguish between the vision that depends on light, object, viewpoint, etc., and the vision that all those things embarrass. In the days when Murphy was concerned with seeing Miss Counihan, he had had to close his eyes to do so. And even now when he closed them there was no guarantee that Miss Counihan would not appear. That was Murphy’s really yellow spot. Similarly he had seen Celia for the first time, not when she revolved before him in the way that so delighted Mr. Kelly, but while she was away consulting the Reach. It was as though some instinct had withheld her from accosting him in form until he should have obtained a clear view of her advantages , and warned her that before he could see it had to be not merely dark, but his own dark. Murphy
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