MYSINE MOSCHOS SYLVIA BEACH'S ASSISTANT

SYLVIA BEACH, MYRSINE MOSCHOS AND LUCKY 1924

"A charming Greek girl, Mademoiselle Myrsine Moschos, a member of the library, said that she would like to help me. The job would be ill-paid and I did my best to dissuade Mlle Moschos from accepting it, pointing out that she could to much better for herself in something else, but she had made up her mind and still wanted to come, luckily for Shakespeare and Company.

Joyce was delighted to hear of my greek assistant. He thought it a good omen for his Ulysses. Omen or no omen, I was delighted to have someone to help me now and someone who was a wonderful helper. Myrsine worked side by side with me for 9 years. She was invaluable as an assistant, as interessed as I in everything going on, not afraid of manual work,  of which there is a great deal to be done in bookshop, or of the still harder and more delicate job of dealing with the customers and understanding the needs of the members of the library, which required a lot of understanding.

One of Myrsine great asset was her larger family of sisters, on whom she could always fall back in time of need.

Helene the youngest of the Moschos daughters acted as messenger between Joyce and the bookshop. She would set off in the morning with a brief case stuffed with mail, books, theater tickets and other things and returned with a load  just as heavy. Joyce awaited what he called  her t'endering step. She had rather a heavy step for such a small person. When all her messenger business was done he would perhaps detain her to read something in a mafazine aloud to him and he was probably more interessed in Helene's pronunciation, for instance of doublévé vé  Yats ( W.B YEATS), than in the article itself.

Myrsine's father, Doctor Moschos, was a nomadic medical man. He had wandered  almost as much as Odysseus and had had nine children in as many countries. Doctor Moschos introduced me to a man who had outdone Ulysses in cunning, but whose cunning had turned to be somewhat of a boomerang. This man was stone death, but had not always been so. To evade the draft when a came up for military service, he pretended to be deaf. He was exempted but to be safe he kept up his deafness for some time. Then, when it was no longer necessary to continue his strategy, he found he had completly lost his hearing, and for good. I don't know wether this astounding case was ever reported to learned bodies or whether of not an ear specialist would belived it, but it is true.

Myrsine had a good many friends from orientals countries, amoung these was a young prince,  heir to the trhone of Cambodia and a student at the medical school in Paris. This young man changed his name from  Ritarasi fo Ulysses in honor of Joyce's masterpiece."

SYLVIA BEACH SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY.

(From Left:) Myrsine Moschos, Helene Moschos, Sylvia Beach, & Ernest Hemingway on Sylvia's birthday.