Nora Barnacle

Nora Barnacle went walking with James Joyce on 16 June 1904, which is the day Joyce set Ulysses on, and stayed with him for thirty-seven years. She was from Galway, the daughter of a baker, had left school at twelve, and was working as a chambermaid at Finn's Hotel in Dublin when they met. She had almost no interest in his books and said so; she read very little of them and once suggested he write something people could understand. They left Ireland together in October 1904 without marrying and lived in Trieste, Zurich and Paris in a poverty that was frequently acute, on English lessons, borrowed money and eventually patronage, with two children, Giorgio and Lucia. They married in London in 1931, for inheritance reasons, after twenty-seven years. The letters between them from 1909, published in 1975, are explicit enough that their release caused a scandal, and they are also the clearest evidence of how the relationship worked. Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of Ulysses draws on her speech and her unpunctuated letters, and the last word of it is yes. Their daughter Lucia was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalised from 1936, which broke both parents. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941; Nora stayed there through the war, was often short of money, and died in 1951. Bloomsday is celebrated annually on the date of their first walk out together. Her name amused Joyce s father, who said she would stick to him. Brenda Maddox s 1988 biography is the standard account and drew on the letters. She is buried beside Joyce at Fluntern in Zurich, though not in the same grave until 1966.

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