A Joycean mystery is mapped out in London as Bloomsday looms

Irish Times

2 days ago

The delightfully-British historian and author Dominic Selwood threw it in at the end of our interview. We had been discussing his country's national identity.
'One more thing,' he said with a sheepish little chuckle. 'My father-in-law won't forgive me unless I mention it to The Irish Times. You see, he found this rather interesting atlas.'
I didn't know what to expect when, a few weeks later, I arrived at his father-in-law Tim Johnson's house on the leafy north London road to which I had been directed. As I walked up the garden path, I hoped this wasn't a metaphor for my trip.
As it turned out, it wasn't. He really had found a rather interesting atlas. If only
Joyceans
, as they prepare for Bloomsday next week, would agree.
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I sat for tea with Johnson, a pioneering Fleet Street technology journalist in the 1960s, and his wife Patricia. Their fine old house was adorned with books and art, but in a quaint, restrained fashion: more wisdom than ostentation on display. I liked its English charm.
Johnson's atlas, meanwhile, was imbued with literary Irishness. He acquired it when the couple were on holidays in Dublin in 2019. Johnson, in keeping with his bookish mores, decided to read James Joyce's meandering opus, Ulysses, while on the trip. Not exactly light holiday fare, but apposite all the same.
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I re-read Ulysses after 45 years. It did not go well
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The couple took a trip on the Dart out to
Sandycove
to see its museum and James Joyce Tower. Staff gave them some Joycean tips and sent them up the hill to Fitzgerald's pub.
After lunch, Johnson spotted Eamonn's Bookshop across the road. As a collector of old maps, he wandered in to see if it had any. 'Just the one,' said the shopkeeper. He pulled down an old imperial atlas from 1903 and sold it to Johnson for €5.
He flipped through its various map plates on the Dart back to town. He noticed little marks in certain places – not unusual in such an old document.
When he flipped to a map of ancient Italy, he saw marks on places such as Tarentum and Asculum, site of a famous battle in the Pyrrhic wars mentioned early in Ulysses.
Johnson later discovered dozens more marks on places he felt could be linked to Joyce and Ulysses. Several seaside towns were marked on the map of England in blue crayon; Joyce was known for using crayon when he worked. He wrote a letter in 1904, the year after the atlas was printed, about his wish to make a tour of English coastal towns.
Johnson found a crayon mark on the Tipperary town of Cappoquin, mentioned in Ulysses as the home of Molly Bloom's first lover. Others were on places in Afghanistan that he linked to soliloquies in Ulysses.
Who could have made these old marks? A fan of Joyce's work? With little else to do during the pandemic, Johnson took a deep dive into the elite world of Joycean scholarship. He wrote a journal paper on the possibility that Joyce, who briefly taught in Dalkey's Clifton School near Sandycove in 1904, may have used the atlas himself.
The timing fits; Joyce was known to study the world; and the bookshop conceded it was possible it acquired the atlas after a clear-out by someone linked to a nearby school.
It isn't easy to link the marks to the writing of Ulysses – Joyce didn't start on it for another decade. Johnson believes he may have used the atlas to mark spots that interested him, later recalling them as a 'mother of memory' when writing the book.
'Here is Joyce, in my view, sitting down and thinking 'what am I going to do with my life?'' he said. An interesting theory that is, as he concedes, possibly unprovable. It cannot be disproved either, he said with a glint in his eye.
Johnson returned to Dublin in 2023 to film interviews with sceptical scholars, including a lovely meeting with former senator and über-Joycean, David Norris. He agreed it could have been the kind of imperial atlas used at Clifton. Yet when Johnson suggested Joyce may have marked it himself, Norris looked at him like he might be faintly mad.
The story of the map, its marks, how Johnson found it and his theories are detailed in a new website –
sandycoveatlas.com
– launched in time for Bloomsday on Monday.
Johnson hopes to spark debate among Joyceans about what he believes is an exciting find. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Maybe that's not the point at all. Joyce was a purveyor of stories. The best stories have that little hint of mystery.
Later, I looked a little further in Johnson's story. He told me he was a consultant after he quit journalism. He didn't say he had set up several successful businesses, including research firm Ovum, later bought by Datamonitor for £42 million. That surely made a few investors happy.
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Ulysses and me – Frank McNally and his long relationship with Joyce's greatest book
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We all go on journeys. Joyce had his. Johnson, when he should have his feet up, seems to be enjoying yet another.