Two days at the races? 

  “Going the two days” is a textbook case illustrating both Gilbert and Joyce’s roles in the first French translation of Ulysses. In the Notes, an undated first round of revisions suggests work should indeed be done on Morel’s tentative translation: Gilbert referenced the typescript page number, and quoted the beginning of the provisional French version, “En route…,” and had a dot in blue pencil precede the annotation. A second round of revisions, again featuring the corresponding typescript page number, provided a tentative answer to the crux as Gilbert juxtaposed Morel’s translation (“weekend”), the original phrase (“Going the two days”) and his own, tentative interpretation, “probably means this, but I am not sure. Or a race?”. Again, a circle coloured in blue pencil, and another circle drawn in blue pencil precede the annotation. There is no key listing the meaning of specific symbols or colours attached with Gilbert’s Notes, but the second round of revisions of Morel’s “Lestrygons” does come with an undated typewritten note, on which Gilbert himself wrote that “Blue pencil indicates – reference to Mr Joyce necessary.” As Zanotti has shown, these mysterious blue dots may therefore be the very elements enabling us to identify and trace some of the doubtful elements about which Gilbert needed to ask the writer for clarification. Confirmation can be found in the Glossary, where an annotation in Gilbert’s hand referencing both the Berg Collection typescript and the 1922 text page numbers equates the original phrase (“Going the two days”) with what is likely to have been Joyce’s answer to the query, “= Fantastically dressed – Super elegant. Going two days running to the races” or, as translator Auguste Morel later put it, “sur son trente-et-un.”

  In Ireland, a journal published by a village community centre provides some information on the purported origin of “going the two days”.

This paragraph explains the evolution of “going the two days”. It had its purported origin in the suggestion that someone would be attending a popular horseracing festival two days in a row. Or “Going two days running to the races”, as written in Gilbert’s explanatory notes. It would appear that people who were unusually well dressed became the butt of a joke: It was said that they were so well dressed that they could attend on both days of the fashionable meeting wearing the same clothes. Over time, as the joke became more widely known, “going the two days” could be said mockingly of anyone in flamboyant attire. “Fantastically dressed – Super elegant”, as also explained in Gilbert’s notes.

  There is evidence that the phrase’s racing origin continued to be widely known. Newspaper archives reveal reports of two-day race meetings which include “the two days” in quotation marks. No explanations are provided, indicating that their readers were aware of the humorous association.

       This is an 1886 report about a race meeting in a suburb of Joyce’s native city.

 BALDOYLE

Turfites! need I say Baldoyle, our pleasant though far from well patronised metropolitan meeting, will claim your attention on Monday, and Tuesday too, if to use a phrase of the gamins, you will "go the two days."

  So, Joyce could have been familiar with the expression from an early age. It is easy to imagine such a colourful phrase coming from his father or his companions.

Flavie Epié and Eamonn Finn