After some of the young men gathering in the street inquire
into the whereabouts of three others (Joseph Dixon, Punch
Costello, and Stephen Dedalus), someone says "All serene,"
suggesting that one of the missing men has reported himself
ready for drinking duty. The speaker might be Costello, but
Stephen seems a much more likely candidate given his uncle's
fondness for this phrase meaning "All's well." The expression
may possibly also carry military connotations appropriate to
the context of mustering troops.
Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner aptly observe that "All serene"
was a cherished saying of Joyce's relative William O'Connell,
the model for Uncle Charles in A Portrait of the Artist.
(They mischaracterize him as a "maternal uncle." He was
James's paternal great-uncle.) In A Portrait Stephen
enjoys walks of ten or twelve miles with his father and
"granduncle," listening avidly to their talk: "Words which he
did not understand he said over and over to himself till he
had learnt them by heart: and through them he had glimpses of
the real world about them." In My Brother's Keeper,
Stanislaus Joyce remembers this genial old bankrupt living in
the family house as "a large, white-haired old man,
imperturbable and quietly religious" (15). "Whatever happened,
nothing could ever upset him; he had his magic formula at all
sticky points: 'All serene, ma'am, all serene'" (16).
As Stanislaus knew, his brother used this distinctive phrase
in A Portrait:
Uncle Charles smoked such
black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy
his morning smoke in a little outhouse at the end of the
garden.
—Very good, Simon. All
serene, Simon, said the old man tranquilly. Anywhere you
like. The outhouse will do me nicely: it will be more
salubrious.
—Damn me, said Mr Dedalus
frankly, if I know how you can smoke such villainous awful
tobacco. It’s like gunpowder, by God.
—It’s very nice, Simon, replied
the old man. Very cool and mollifying.
When "
All serene" sounds again in
Oxen of the Sun,
Slote and his collaborators infer that Punch Costello must be
speaking the words, because just before this someone has asked,
"Where's Punch?" But given Stephen's personal history––hanging
on his uncle's words, absorbing their meaning, committing them
to memory––it seems much more likely that he is the speaker,
using the old man's vocabulary to say, "Put your mind at rest.
I'm here. All is well." And the two-word sentence could just as
easily be set in the context of what comes next: "Jay, look at
the
drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal!"
The Slote team claim unpersuasively that the phrase in Oxen
comes "From" the second of American writer Bret Harte's Tales
of the West (T. Nelson, n.d.), "The Luck of
Roaring Camp." This story tells of a baby who is adopted by
all the men in a California gold-mining camp after his mother
dies giving birth to him. A prospector named Stumpy takes
charge, and another miner called Kentuck finds himself deeply
touched by the way the baby grabs his finger. He visits
Stumpy's tent at night to share the warm feeling and asks
Stumpy how he is. "All serene," replies Stumpy.
"Anything up?" asks Kentuck. "Nothing," says Stumpy (50).
There is nothing much to this exchange, and little reason to
suppose that Joyce even read it, though another work by Harte
does surface in Lotus Eaters when Bloom thinks of the
"heathen
Chinee." "All serene" is a recognized colloquialism that
could have reached Harte and William O'Connell independently.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable gives the
definition "All right, all is well" and connects it to the
Spanish word sereno, "the sentinel's countersign."
Molly recalls that expression in Penelope: "the night
we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about
serene with his lamp." If Stephen, or Punch, is aware of
the Spanish sereno, then he may be adding a military
touch to this paragraph in Oxen where the students
"March" down Holles Street singing martial anthems. In that
case, "All serene" would mean not simply "All is well," but
also "Reporting for duty. Let's march the dark street
together."
