This cache is part of a series that takes you to a number of locations that were significant in James Joyce's life in Ireland. This one takes you to the one of the smallest houses in Galway city where Nora Barnacle spent her childhood and is now a museum. It can be visited from the end of May to mid September - Tuesday to Saturday inclusive. 10.00-13.00 and 14.00-17.00.
James Joyce first met his mother-in-law Annie Barnacle in the small kitchen of the house when he and his son Giorgio visited in 1909. In 1912 the Joyces made a family visit to Galway and spent much of their three week holiday at the house. Nora, accompanied by Giorgio and Lucia, paid her final visit in 1922. Annie Barnacle continued to live here until her death in 1940.
Nora Barnacle left Galway early in 1904. She was 20 years old, a strong-willed girl running from a tyrannical uncle who disapproved of her latest boy friend. Within weeks of her arrival in Dublin she would become the muse and lover of James Joyce and the inspiration of some and his greatest works — Greta Conroy in The Dead, Bertha the common law wife in Exiles and Molly Bloom in Ulysses — all share some of Nora’s character and experiences. In October of that same year Nora and Jim would elope to Europe and in due course step on to the pages of literary history. She would return to her native city only twice during her 47 years of exile before dying in Zurich in 1951, having lived 67 tumultuous years.
The first visit came in 1912, in the summer of that year, accompanied by her five-year-old daughter Lucia. Nora posed as the wife of the writer James Joyce with a ring purchased shortly before her departure from Trieste.* She and Joyce had been based there more or less since they had left Ireland except for a few months when Joyce had taken a job in a Rome bank.
In Galway, Nora visited her mother and sisters in Bowling Green where the precocious Lucia charmed the Barnacle ladies and their neighbours with her Continental exoticism. Joyce meanwhile, feeling lonely in Trieste with their son Georgio, decided on a whim to join Nora in Galway.**
With another hastily purchased ring and little money, he and Nora enjoyed what amounted to a belated honeymoon. Thanks to the generosity of Nora’s uncle Thomas Healy, a wealthy bachelor, they watched the regatta at Menlo, went racing in Ballybrit and sailed to the Aran Islands. Joyce was eager to see where Synge had conceived his great western plays.
All the while the children were fussed over by the Barnacle girls and their Uncle Tommy, a tram conductor on the Salthill route. Nora also showed the writer where she had courted Michael Bodkin, Michael Feeney and the Protestant William Mulvaghy the relationship that had so enraged her guardian. Joyce would in later years adapt and recycle her reminiscing in his writing and even mock Nora when he was drunk or jealous.The 1912 visit was a relaxed time for the couple and their kids, away from their rented apartment and the poverty that was a daily source of conflict. Joyce who was prone to sickness in Trieste, was healthy and content, even cycling to Oughterard and back.
Jim would leave Galway before Nora to conclude some publishing business that would prove unsuccessful, leaving their finances in poor order and Joyce’s work unpublished. Nora with her children visited the nuns in the Presentation Convent where she had been a laundress after leaving school at 12. The Nuns welcomed her and her children, unaware that their parents were unmarried.*** The family would return to Trieste staying until they were forced to leave for Zurich with the Great War looming.
Nora would return to her native city 10 years later in April 1922. Easter Week, the sixth anniversary of the 1916 rising, which had begot that terrible beauty as Yeats put it, was about to turn ugly. Again she had her children in tow but unlike the childlike innocence of 1912 Georgio and Lucia at 17 and 15 were Continental adolescents transported from the sophistication and colour of Paris to the of the west of Ireland, grey and poor after the War of Independence. Nora herself was at somewhat of a crossroads as she had grown tired of wandering across Europe and of Joyce’s lifestyle.
Joyce, while he reluctantly agreed to give Nora an allowance, had done all he could to stop them going to Ireland as he could see that civil war was inevitable but Nora was adamant. Following a week in London, another possible place where she might settle, she wanted to give Galway its chance; after all, it had given them such a great welcome in 1912.
The Galway that they found in 1922 was no longer the loyal servant of the crown, the Connaught Rangers no longer marched to St Nicholas admired by the locals. The Royal visit of 1903 was a distant memory. The so called Free State, created just a few months earlier was already threatening to tear itself apart. The Treaty that had facilated the fledgling state had in fact created two factions both with armies at their disposal. Renmore Barracks was in the hands of the anti Treaty forces the so called Irregulars, while less than a mile away the Railway Hotel and the city was controlled by the Free State or regular I R A. De Valera was due on Easter Sunday to rally support for rejecting the treaty in an election due in June. It was not a time to be different, to stand out, so Nora and her children as they stepped from the train must have made heads turn in their continental finery.
Still Nora was here now and made her way to Bowling Green, only to have Georgio and Lucia refuse to enter the Barnacle home. They objected to the smell of boiled cabbage and no amount of coaxing would make them change their mind. Mortified Nora found lodgings in Casey’s boarding house in Nuns Island and had to take them to a restaurant for their meals. As before, Nora visited the Presentation nuns where she was again warmly received by the nuns who remained unaware of her marital status.
It was in the little two-room house in Bowling Green that she spent most of her time. Her mother Annie was widowed the previous year and even though she and Thomas Barnacle (Nora’s father) lived apart, she bore the full cost of his burial. Delia and Kathleen were the only two sisters still at home at the time and Nora enjoyed hearing of their adventures while courting, which was a tricky business during those years. Curfews and stop and search operations were common — a boyfriend of Delia’s got caught out after curfew was stripped of his pants. Nora’s only brother Tommy had quit his job with the tram company and gone to London.
Joyce’s father on hearing Nora’s surname for the first time remarked “Barnacle, she’ll stick to him”. He was close — they stuck together for better and for worse and despite two wars and all that life with a volatile genius could throw at her, she stuck to Joyce because the literary Gods decreed it that Nora Barnacle from Bowling Green in Galway would be the rock and muse without which the celebrated genius of James Joyce may have floundered.
The cache a Petling is hidden I'm a tree near the entrance to the church opposite Bowling Green.
Please Please re-hide EXACTLY as you found it and Reseal the container! thanks
The other caches in the series so far:
(GC3D4D4) James Joyce's Life Series #1 - Childhood Days
(GC3D4D4) James Joyce's Life Series #2 - University Days
(GC3DMQT) James Joyce's Life Series #3 - Courting Days
(GC3K4F7) James Joyce's Life Series #5 - The French Connection
(GC3MGH5) James Joyce's Life Series #6 - Faithful Departed
There will be a bonus cache to find for those who collect all the caches in this series...simply collect the code number from inside the lid of this cache and a final set of co-ordinates will be posted at the end of the series which is set to go international, so watch this space for listings of the extended series, as they become available...