Mr Pound wrote to me so urgently from Sermione (lake o f Garda), that in spite o f my dread o f thunderstorms and detesta-ation o f travelling, I went there bringing my son with me to act as lightning conductor.’ Joyce was writing to Miss Weaver explain­ ing how he reached Paris in July 1920. In the meantime Ezra Pound had described his impressions in a letter to John Quinn some weeks previously:

Joyce-pleasing; after the first shell of cantankerous Irishman, I got the impression that the real man is the author of Chamber Music, the sensitive. The rest is the genius; the registration of realities on the temperament, the delicate temperament of the early poems. A concentration and absorption passing Yeats’—Yeats has never taken on anything requiring the conden­ sation of Ulysses.