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Irish History and Mythology in James Joyce's ‘The Dead’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John V. Kelleher
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Extract

THANKS to Richard Ellmann's definitive biography of James Joyce we know quite a lot about the genesis and writing of ‘The Dead,’ the concluding story in Dubliners. Joyce wrote no other short stories after it, but in a letter (January 6, 1907) to his brother Stanislaus, from Rome, in which he first referred to ‘The Dead,’ he mentioned it as one of five stories “all of which … I could write if circumstances were favorable.” The others, which seem not to have been attempted were ‘The Last Supper,’ ‘The Street,’ ‘Vengeance,’ and ‘At Bay.’ It must have been immediately thereafter that ‘The Dead’ took precedence in his thought, for in a letter written only five days later he remarked that the news of the controversy in Dublin over The Playboy of the Western World had “put me off the story I ‘was going to write’ — to wit, The Dead.” Shortly afterwards he decided to give up his job as a bank cashier in Rome and return to Trieste, which on March 5, 1907, he did. Apparently he worked at the story intermittently in the ensuing months.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , July 1965 , pp. 414 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1965

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References

* Paper read at Conference on Irish Studies sponsored by the American Committee for Irish Studies and the Department of English and Division of General Studies. University of Illinois, Urbana, April 25, 1964.

1 For this quotation I am indebted to Professor Richard Ellmann who allowed me to read the galleys of his edition of Joyce's letters, soon to be published by Cape. In his James Joyce (New York, 1959), p. 238Google Scholar, another unwritten story, 'Catharsis,' is mentioned along with these.

2 Ibid., p. 248.

3 Ibid., p. 274.

4 Ibid.

5 Recollections of James Joyce (New York: James Joyce Society, 1950), p. 20Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Ulysses (New York, 1946), p. 654Google Scholar, where Stephen watching Bloom light the fire thinks of other fires which had been lighted in his presence. The second and third recollections are “of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon Street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island.” For these see the Portrait of the Artist (New York, 1928), p. 71 and p. 74Google Scholar. In the latter Kate is not named and Julia, now senile, is called Ellen, but they are clearly the same persons as the Kate and Julia of ‘The Dead.’ Since the Joyces moved to Fitzgibbon Street early in 1893, when James was eleven (which would agree with Stephen's age in this section of the Portrait), and since Ellen's (Julia's) senility is apparently of recent origin, it would appear that the latest date for the party in ‘;The Dead’ would be the Christmas season of 1892.

7 James Joyce, p. 258.

8 Stokes's translation is available in a somewhat abridged form in Cross, and Slover's, Ancient Irish Tales (New York, 1936)Google Scholar. Probably the most easily found text of it is in the last volume of Dr. Eliot's famous Five Foot Shelf.

9 P. 171. See also p. 123.

10 Portrait, p. 210.

11 There is a picture of the hotel, taken about the beginning of the century, on the second page of The City and County Dublin, a photographic album published by William Lawrence (Dublin, n.d.).

12 Unfortunately the collection of Dublin directories in Widener Library at Harvard is woefully incomplete. From a full set it should be possible to trace the careers of Joyce's great-grandfather, Patrick Flynn, the starch manufacturer, and his daughters, the Misses Flynn who were the models for Kate and Julia Morkan. In 1821 Patrick's mill was at 157 Francis St. and 49 Thomas St.; in 1827 at 50 Back Lane; in 1831 at 50 and 51 Back Lane; and in 1852 at 79 Thomas St. and 13 and 14 John Street, West. All these addresses are in the same neighborhood. In Thorn's directory for 1860 we find “Flynn, Misses, the, teachers of the pianoforte and singing, 16 Ellis's quay,” and at the same address “Flynn, Patrick, starch and blue manufacturer, and commission agent.” In 1878 the Misses Flynn are still there, but Patrick and his mill are gone. The Misses Flynn are at the same address in 1886 but are gone by 1905.

There was a competing “musical academy and ladies' intermediate school” at 12 Usher's Island, run by Miss Mary Glannan. It is noticed as early as 1878 and as late as 1915.

13 As Ellmann, shows, James Joyce, p. 255Google Scholar, Browne was a real person, a Protestant who had married a first cousin of Joyce's mother. He was named “Mervyn Achdale Browne” and “combined the profession of music teacher with that of agent for a burglary insurance company.”

In the directories his middle name is given as Archdall. In 1878 he was listed as “teacher of pianoforte and singing” at 55 Mountjoy Street, but two years later was gone from that address. In 1907 he was listed under Professors of Music and as living at 14 Royal Terrace, Clontarf. In 1915 he was still at that address but was no longer listed as Professor of Music. None of the notices of insurance agents in the directories give his name.

In 1900–01 the Joyces lived at 8 Royal Terrace, the home described at the beginning of the last chapter of the Portrait. The chances are that Joyce knew Browne well, and that Browne had the mortuary interests betokened in Bloom's recollection of him and that would eminently fit his symbolic role in ‘The Dead.’