The Man in the Macintosh Is a Man in a Hat
- The Man in the Macintosh Is a Man in a Hat
The man in the macintosh is a man in a hat, because every man of the time wore headgear. Hence, in "Counterparts," Farrington has a ruse, which depends on the reader's understanding that a man not taking his hat from its place on the hat-rack is not going outdoors.1
True in general, this is doubly true for "Hades." In that episode, men's hats—"[t]hese pots we have to wear"—are a major concern.2 "Hades" begins with Martin Cunningham's "silkhatted head" going into a carriage and ends with the unpleasantness over the dinge in John Henry Menton's hat (U 6.01). In between—in the street, in the chapel, at the gravesite—men's hats are repeatedly being taken off and put back on.
The reason for this is obvious. "Hades" is about a funeral, and the doffing and donning of hats is a standard feature of the funeral ceremony, which in turn depends on the understanding that every male present will show up wearing one. So, perforce, the man in the macintosh wears one. If he did not, if he were the only perpetually bareheaded man in the company, he would have been noticed from the outset and not just because of his raincoat.
Aside from Menton's dented bowler, there may be another notable hat present in the episode, unusual in one particular: it can render the wearer invisible. In his study of Ulysses Notebook VIII.A.5, Phillip F. Herring calls attention to Joyce's identification (confirmed in the Carlo Linati list of correspondences3) of John O'Connell with Hades, the Greek lord of the underworld, and then adds that in the same notes
the German word "Tarnkappe" appears, which Roscher [Herring's source, W. H. Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie4] uses to compare Hades' cloak of invisibility with that of Nordic mythology. Joyce's mystery man [the man in the macintosh] has two prominent characteristics: his macintosh and his elusiveness. This evidence suggests that both the caretaker John O'Connell and the Man in the Macintosh are avatars of Hades.5
I think that Herring has a point here but one that calls for some refurbishing. The idea seems to be that M'Intosh's macintosh is or in some way corresponds to the "Tarnkappe," which in turn means "cloak of [End Page 691] invisibility." But if that were so, he should be invisible by virtue of wearing it, and he is not. After all, there he is, in plain sight, macintosh and all. As for O'Connell, there is no indication that he is wearing any sort of remarkable cloak or coat.
O'Connell is, however, wearing a hat. In fact, here is how he is introduced: "A portly man, ambushed among the grasses, raised his hat in homage" (U 6.708-09). That is, he comes into the field of vision at or about the moment he takes off his hat.
The German "Tarn" means "camouflage." "Kappe" means "hood." A "Tarnkappe" can be either a hood (or cape) that renders the wearer, along with everything else he has on, invisible, or a hood (or hat) that does the same. A hood, after all, can plausibly be taken either as part of an article of outerwear or as a separate article of headwear. Also, "Kappe" sounds like "cap," a coincidence that may help explain why, in a search through Google Books entries for the years from 1850 to 1950, the first ten hits for "Tarnkappe" emerge in translation as "camouflage cap."6 Herring's assumption that the word means "cloak of invisibility," evidently tracing to Roscher, is an inference.
All this is a recipe for muddle, and muddles there have been. In Richard Wagner's Ring cycle, Siegfried's "[h]elm" of invisibility—his "Tarnhelm"—can in the same translation both be called a "tarncap," that is, a cap, and described as conferring a "cloak of invisibility." Wikipedia's entry on Alberich, the dwarf whose brother forged the Tarnhelm, calls it, wrongly, a "Tarnkappe" (in fact...
