Mural of Nora Barnacle by artist Margaret Nolan located at Barnacles Restaurant in Salthill. Words by Brian Nolan of Galway Walks.
Like A Limpet!
“She will stick to you like a limpet,” was what James Joyce’s father said of Nora Barnacle when James told him about his new girlfriend!
I’m not sure how much James told his father about the woman whom James claimed “had made him a man”, but hey, it was a match made in heaven for all he cared, and their relationship lasted a lifetime, from the moment they met on the 16th of June 1904 (Bloomsday) to his death in Zurich in 1941, and Nora’s death, also in Zurich in 1951.
For all the time they spent together, she was his muse, and he, her adoring suitor. He’d lost his heart to a Galway girl. But it wasn’t the first heart our Nora stole, nor even the second. It was the fourth!
It was love or leave as far as Nora was concerned. And I don’t mean ‘hit the road’, I mean – well, let me explain.
Youthful Romance:
Nora was born in Bowling Green, opposite St. Nicholas Church in 1884. By the time she was a teenager, she’d seen a lot of life, and hard times too. Her parents had split up, leaving her mother to rear six children on her own, long before social welfare and the children’s allowance. They were constantly moving house and the children were farmed out to uncles and aunts to help her mum out. Nora was not shy.
She was full of life, exhuberant, mischievous and bubbly, perhaps more suited to today’s era than the staid and conservative Victorian society she was born into.
Her first boyfriend was a lad from Eyre Square, Michael Feeney. She doted on him, her first crush, and he on her. But tragically, he died of a fever within a year. Her second boyfriend, Michael Bodkin, also known as ‘Sonny’ Bodkin, also fell headlong in love with the now 15 year-old Nora, and likewise, tragically, he too died, this time of ‘consumption’.
Her third boyfriend, Willie Mulvagh, also fell for her, but luckily for him, he was a Protestant, and that was frowned upon by her Catholic mother and uncle. And so Nora was unceremoniously packed off to Dublin, to Finns Hotel, to work as a waitress, and within a week she had met James Joyce. The rest is history!
In Memory of Sonny Bodkin:
In January of this year, President Michael D. Higgins unveiled a plaque to Sonny Bodkin at his burial place in Rahoon cemetery in Galway, in recognition of the connection between the cemetery and Michael ‘Sonny’ Bodkin with James Joyce and Nora Barnacle.
This took place on the 110th anniversary of the publication of ‘Dubliners’, James Joyce’s first book, a collection of short stories, including the somewhat biographical final story, ‘The Dead’. It was Nora’s doomed earlier love affairs in Galway that formed the basis of the masterpiece short story, which is considered to be among the greatest of the 20th century.
Both Michael Feeney and Michael Bodkin were the inspiration for the character of Michael Furey in that beautifully written piece, Nora Barnacle was personified as the lead character, Greta Conroy. The great film director, John Huston, also fell in love with Greta, or Nora, and purchased the film rights to ‘The Dead’, making the movie in 1987. He cast his own daughter, Angelica Huston, as Greta Conroy.
Ironically, it had all come full circle, as Angelica was a Galway girl herself, having lived at St. Clerans house in Kiltulla near Athenry, and to school in Loughrea. Yes, Galway girls, and the way they might look at you!
