Under adverbial meanings of "up," the OED lists several 19th
century uses of the word to mean "Come to a fruitless
or undesired end; 'played out'. Usu. with game"
(as in the expression "the game is up") or, even more to the
point, "All up, completely done or finished;
quite over. Also All UP (yū pī)."
The usage is also recorded in John Camden Hotten's Dictionary
of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, first
published in 1859. In a gloss on James Joyce Online
Notes, John Simpson notes that "Hotten was the slang
lexicographer of the mid-nineteenth century," and quotes his
entry: "UP, […] it’s all UP with him", i.e.,
it is all over with him, often pronounced U.P., naming the
two letters separately." In Surface and
Symbol, Robert Martin Adams quotes from a later
edition of Hotten's dictionary: "when pronounced U.P.,
naming the two letters separately, the expression means
'settled' or 'done'" (193).
The OED cites several early literary examples, including J.
W. Warter's The Last of the Old Squires
(London, 1854), in which the eponymous protagonist maintains
that "It's all UP—up" is a corruption of an
older expression from the English Midlands, "It is all
O.P.," referring to Orthodox (Catholic) and Puritan
sects (87).
But the citation that seems most relevant to Joyce is Charles
Dickens' Oliver Twist (serialized 1837-39), where
the expression refers to a health emergency. In chapter 24
several women and "the parish apothecary's apprentice" attend
the bed of a sick woman in a grim attic room. When their
conversation is interrupted by a moan from the patient, the
apothecary's deputy says that she will be dead soon: "‘Oh!’
said the young mag, turning his face towards the bed, as if he
had previously quite forgotten the patient, ‘it’s all
U.P. there, Mrs. Corney.’ / ‘It is, is it, sir?’
asked the matron. / ‘If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall
be surprised.’ said the apothecary’s apprentice, intent upon
the toothpick’s point. ‘It’s a break-up of the system
altogether.’"
This use of U.P. can be found in later publications. Simpson
quotes from Ann Elizabeth Baker's Glossary of
Northamptonshire Words (1854): "'It's all U.P.
with him'; i.e. all up either with his health, or
circumstances." In Joyce's own time the application to health
emergencies can be found in Arnold Bennett's novel The
Old Wives' Tale (1908). In the fourth section of
chapter 4 a doctor tries in vain to revive the comatose
Sophia. He leaves the sickroom with Dick Povey and voices his
professional opinion: "On the landing out-side the bedroom,
the doctor murmured to him: 'U.P.' And Dick
nodded." Some hours later, Sophia dies.
Joyce himself used the expression to refer to his disastrous
eye problems. Simpson quotes from a letter he wrote to Valery
Larbaud on 17 October 1928: "Apparently I have
completely overworked myself and if I don't get
back sight to read it is all U-P up."
The conclusion seems inescapable: the anonymous postcard is
suggesting that Dennis Breen's life is falling apart, probably
because of failing health. As to the nature of the health
problems, the characters of the novel clearly think that he is
losing his wits. When Bloom urges Josie to observe
the behavior of the lunatic Farrell, she says, "Denis will be
like that one of these days." His actions on June 16—tramping
through the streets of Dublin, weighed down by bulky legal
tomes, to find a solicitor willing to lodge a libel action
against an anonymous perpetrator, for the unimaginable sum of
£10,000—hardly help to dispel the impression.
In Cyclops Alf Bergan (who Bloom thinks may have
sent the postcard) describes Breen as a raving lunatic, and J.
J. O'Molloy (who is himself a solicitor) is quick to recognize
that Breen's deranged activity will only confirm the charge of
insanity that he is trying to defend himself against: "—Did
you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. P:
up. . . . / —Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It
implies that he is not compos mentis.
U. P: up. / —Compos your eye! says Alf,
laughing. Do you know that he’s balmy? Look at his head. Do
you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a
shoehorn."
Despite the strong evidence that the postcard is commenting
on Breen's mental health, readers have sought out other
possible meanings. Some are perhaps loosely compatible with
the "you're finished" hypothesis—notably one mentioned by
Gifford, that there is an allusion to "the initials that
precede the docket numbers in Irish cemeteries." This
interpretation has the advantage of connecting with one
textual detail in the novel. In Circe, the
caretaker of the Glasnevin cemetery, John O'Connell, refers to
Paddy Dignam's grave with an absurd series of identifying
numbers: "Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive
thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one
hundred and one."
But the roads most traveled have been sexual and excretory,
prompted by reading U.P. as "you pee." Adams, whose 1962 book
was perhaps the first critical study to seriously address the
phrase, includes among five possible readings the meanings You
urinate, You're no good, You put your fingers up your anus,
and You can't get it up any more. Only the first of these can
be connected very clearly to the letters on the page. Gifford
notes that Richard Ellmann proposed the more ingenious but
physiologically bizarre reading, "When erect you urinate
rather than ejaculate." An entire M.A. thesis, Leah Harper
Bowron's The Pusillanimous Denis: What "U.P.: Up" Really
Means (University of Alabama, 2013) has been devoted to
the even more bizarre claim that Breen suffers from
hypospadias, a congenital condition in which the male urethra
opens on the underside of the penis.
Against these speculations about Breen's private parts,
Simpson sensibly objects that the novel's contexts do not
cooperate with such scabrous inferences: "From the internal
dynamics of Ulysses and from the social
etiquette of the day (would Mrs Breen show Molly's husband a
postcard with a virtually unspeakable obscenity?) we might
regard the “You pee up” interpretation, which has sometimes
found favour, to be laboured."
Simpson adds that the crudely physical and irreverent Molly
thinks about the postcard and says nothing about Breen's
genital equipment: "After the I-narrator of 'Cyclops' Molly
has perhaps the most slanderous tongue in Ulysses.
And yet she passes up the opportunity to make a malicious
comment on the supposedly obscene allusion behind the wording
of Breen’s postcard. She simply regards him as a
forlorn-looking spectacle of a husband who is mad enough on
occasions to go to bed with his boots on. This is in keeping
with the way in which Breen is regarded generally in the
novel—the cronies in Cyclops collapse with laughter at his
lunatic behaviour, not because of some urinary or sexual
irregularity."
Joyce did not invent the use of postcards to lodge hurtful
personal attacks. As Natalie Zarrelli observes in a February
2017 post on atlasobscura.com, one subgenre of the insult
postcard, the "vinegar valentine," goes back at least to the
1840s. People in the U.K. and the U.S. bought mass-produced
expressions of romantic disesteem and sent them anonymously on
Valentine's Day. By Joyce's time other such cards targeted
disagreeable salespeople, doctors, and suffragists.
At some point individuals began to be addressed simply for
their general insufficiency as human beings. The recent
artistic efforts of Mr. Bingo in England, some of which are
reproduced here, show that this tradition is alive and well
today. It may very well have been alive in Joyce's lifetime.
In Surface and Symbol Adams observes that "on p. 2
of the Freeman's Journal for Thursday, November 5,
1903, appeared a report of a suit in which one McKettrick sued
a man named Kiernan, for having sent him a libelous postcard"
(193).
