Scenario

Objective

Saying that the Sandycove Atlas was the ‘gorescarred book’, one of the ‘mothers of memory’ James Joyce drew on to write Ulysses, is a major claim. It needs to be supported by a clear picture of how, why and when Joyce could have come into contact with the Atlas.

This section aims to provide such a picture, a scenario for how the Atlas could have been acquired for use in Clifton School and so come into Joyce’s life. How Joyce arranged to leave the Atlas behind when he eloped with Nora, and how it survived in the area where Joyce briefly taught school until I bought it 115 years later.

The scenario is laid out below.

Pre-Joyce

• 1893 Clifton School founded by Thomas Preston Walsh, in the roomy premises of Clifton House, Dalkey i
• 1895 Clifton School moves to Summerfield House and Lodge, Dalkey
• 1897 T P Walsh no longer in charge at Clifton School. He may have been overtaken by illness. He died aged about 45 in 1903.
• 1900 Francis Irwin takes over as head of Clifton School
• 1901 Census shows Irwin living with his widowed sister Anna Knox Gore and others at Summerfield House
• 1902, 31 May The Boer Wars ended.
• 1903 Gall and Inglis, publishers in Edinburgh and London, produced a new edition of their successful ‘book of maps’ – the Imperial Globe Atlas of Modern and Ancient Geography – early in 1903. It aimed to benefit from the greatly increased interest in Southern Africa following the Boer War. The only significant change from the 1899 edition was a much more developed map of South Africa (Plate 5a).
• The new edition was marketed, together with other educational books, through Gail and Inglis’ network of sales representatives. It may be there was a special schools edition. The Sandycove Atlas was bound in board covered by yellow cloth. All the other examples of the Imperial Globe Atlas I have seen, whether of the 1903 or other editions, are bound with crimson cloth.
• Bound in cloth-of-gold, the school edition of the Atlas would have been an expensive, prestige object. Francis Irwin, head of Clifton School, could well have seen it as a demonstration to fee-paying, pro-British parents, of the school’s status and commitment to an imperialist view of the world.
• 1903, by September Francis Irwin buys the Atlas for use at Clifton School.
• 1903, 15 Oct Joyce visits his former teacher at Belvedere, George Dempsey, by then teaching at Clifton School, to discuss working as a teacher. It is possible that Joyce visited Clifton School on this occasion, or soon afterwards, in which case he would have seen it housed in Summerfield House with enough space to play sports, rather than the much more limited accommodation it moved into in January 1904. It is possible that he actually saw a Pyrrhic Wars lesson in progress on this occasion, or even worked himself at Clifton School during the Autumn Term of 1903.
• 1903 Nov 3 Marks on the South America map of the Atlas (Plate 7) suggest that the school, or whoever was using the Atlas originally, must have been using it no later than November 1903, The marks are pencil underlines of Portobello, Cartagena and Baranquilla, all on the Caribbean coast of Colombia when the Atlas was published. However, on 3 November 1903, Panama declared independence from Colombia, with vital support from the United States, then trying to secure a route for the future Panama Canal. Colombia sent a battalion of troops from Baranquilla to prevent the move but they were easily diverted. Portobello became part of the new nation of Panama.

• James Joyce sees the Atlas in use for teaching at the school, sometime between October 1903 and June 1904
• Joyce borrows the Atlas no later than early June 1904, and keeps it in the large room he was renting at the McKernan’s house.
• Joyce marks numerous English seaside and other resorts in the Atlas on or about 3 June 1904
• Joyce shares the Atlas with Nora Barnacle, making marks such as Kandahar and Cappoquin, any time between late June and early October
• Joyce marks Kwei Chow, a German concession in China, on or about 13 August
• Joyce has to leave the McKernan house on 31 August. He passes the Atlas to Nora for safe keeping.
• Joyce writes to Nora from Sandycove Tower asking “Have you found that place on the map?” on 12 September.
• Joyce organizes with his friend James Starkey (who became a leading Irish poet and writer under the pen-name of Seamus O’Sullivan) meeting at 7:10pm on 8 October, to return the Atlas to Clifton School, along with other errands.
• Joyce and Nora elope from Ireland at about 9pm on 8 October 1904, without the Atlas.

Post Joyce

• 1904 October James Starkey successfully returns the Atlas to Clifton School.
• 1907-08 Clifton School fails. Either Irwin keeps the Atlas, or it is disposed of to recoup money owed by the school.
• 1911 The Irish Census shows Francis Irwin living with his sister, the widowed Mrs Anna Knox-Gore at 4 Derrynane Terrace. Convent Road, Dalkey.
• 1915, 18 May Irwin is present at the death of his sister, at 4 Derrynane Terrace. This is the last known reliable record of Francis Irwin.
• Irwin dies sometime after May 1915. If he still has the Atlas it will have been disposed of as part of his effects.
• Someone, possibly Irwin, pencils in the new names for Kings County (Offaly) and Queens County (Leix), most likely about the time of Irish Independence in 1921-22.
• The Atlas has a quiet life in one or more domestic libraries, at least until the 1970s.
• Eamonn Buckley acquires the Atlas as part of a job lot, sometime between the 1970s and 2010.
• Tim Johnson buys the Atlas on 2 July 2019.

i Details of the establishment and decline of Clifton School are based largely on ‘Francis Irwin, TCD, in the fusty world of Garrett Deasy,’ from James Joyce Online Notes