Mullingar, Paris, Zurich: Re-Joyce it’s Bloomsday
Mullingar, Trieste, Paris, Zurich, Dublin: they all have something in common – they are all places where writer James Joyce lived for a while.
For fans of Joyce, today’s date (June 16) is of special significance as it is Bloomsday, the day on which the events in his novel Ulysses takes place.
Joyce spent time in Mullingar in 1900 and in 1901, and the town can proudly boast that it features several times over in Joyce’s accounts of the actions and thoughts of Leopold Bloom on June 16, 1904.
It is in Mullingar that Bloom’s daughter Milly is living, and she is described as working for a photographer by the name of Shaw.
The pretty blond 15-year-old writes to her father: “Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to Lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic... There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Sunday.”
In addition, there’s Alec Bannon, the student from Mullingar with whom she appears somewhat enamoured.
In 1900, Joyce’s father, John Stanislaus Joyce had to travel to Mullingar to “straighten up the confused Mullingar electoral list” and Joyce came with him.
A year later he visits the town again and in ‘Stephen Hero’, the book that presaged ‘Portrait of the Artist’, he describes a trip to Levington Park, the house latterly owned by ‘The Ginger Man’ author and artist, the late JP Donleavy, but owned at the time by WC Levinge, Westmeath County Council’s county secretary.
The links don’t stop there, however: an interesting coincidence is the fact that The Ginger Man was published by The Olympia Press, the firm that also published Ulysses.
The Greville Arms Hotel prides itself on its Joycean connections: in ‘Stephen Hero’, there is a flirtatious encounter between Stephen Daedalus and a barmaid at The Greville Arms Hotel.
A wax figure depicting James Joyce has long held pride of place at the establishment.
The connections between James Joyce and Mullingar were fully explored in a book by the late Mullingar author Leo Daly, ‘James Joyce, The Mullingar Connection’.
Even the Westmeath Examiner features in the writings of Joyce, getting a mention in ‘Stephen Hero’, and it is in this that the Greville Arms gets much mention.
Fagan’s Office Supplies shop is where Ulysses character Molly Bloom’s employer (Shaw) ran his photographic business.
A small commemorative plaque mounted on the wall there celebrates the connection.
Michael Fagan, of Fagan’s Office Supplies, is proud of the place their building holds in literary history: “It’s good for the town overall to have this Joycean connection because Mullingar is not a huge tourist destination, so it is nice to have this.”
He said the plaque was erected a few years ago by local Joycean fans, including historian Ruth Illingworth, who has done much work promoting Bloomsday locally over the last 15 years.