The delightfully-British historian and writer Dominic Selwood threw it in on the finish of our interview. We had been discussing his nation’s nationwide id.
“Yet one more factor,” he mentioned with a sheepish little chuckle. “My father-in-law gained’t forgive me except I point out it to The Irish Instances. You see, he discovered this fairly fascinating atlas.”
I didn’t know what to anticipate when, a number of weeks later, I arrived at his father-in-law Tim Johnson’s home on the leafy north London street to which I had been directed. As I walked up the backyard path, I hoped this wasn’t a metaphor for my journey.
Because it turned out, it wasn’t. He actually had discovered a fairly fascinating atlas. If solely Joyceans, as they put together for Bloomsday subsequent week, would agree.
I sat for tea with Johnson, a pioneering Fleet Avenue know-how journalist within the Sixties, and his spouse Patricia. Their high-quality outdated home was adorned with books and artwork, however in a quaint, restrained style: extra knowledge than ostentation on show. I preferred its English appeal.
Johnson’s atlas, in the meantime, was imbued with literary Irishness. He acquired it when the couple had been on holidays in Dublin in 2019. Johnson, in line with his bookish mores, determined to learn James Joyce’s meandering opus, Ulysses, whereas on the journey. Not precisely gentle vacation fare, however apposite all the identical.
[ I re-read Ulysses after 45 years. It did not go wellOpens in new window ]
The couple took a visit on the Dart out to Sandycove to see its museum and James Joyce Tower. Employees gave them some Joycean suggestions and despatched them up the hill to Fitzgerald’s pub.
After lunch, Johnson noticed Eamonn’s Bookshop throughout the street. As a collector of outdated maps, he wandered in to see if it had any. “Simply the one,” mentioned the shopkeeper. He pulled down an outdated imperial atlas from 1903 and bought it to Johnson for €5.
He flipped by its numerous map plates on the Dart again to city. He observed little marks in sure locations – common in such an outdated doc.
When he flipped to a map of historical Italy, he noticed marks on locations akin to Tarentum and Asculum, website of a well-known battle within the Pyrrhic wars talked about early in Ulysses.
Johnson later found dozens extra marks on locations he felt might be linked to Joyce and Ulysses. A number of seaside cities had been marked on the map of England in blue crayon; Joyce was recognized for utilizing crayon when he labored. He wrote a letter in 1904, the 12 months after the atlas was printed, about his want to make a tour of English coastal cities.
Johnson discovered a crayon mark on the Tipperary city of Cappoquin, talked about in Ulysses as the house of Molly Bloom’s first lover. Others had been on locations in Afghanistan that he linked to soliloquies in Ulysses.
Who might have made these outdated marks? A fan of Joyce’s work? With little else to do in the course of the pandemic, Johnson took a deep dive into the elite world of Joycean scholarship. He wrote a journal paper on the likelihood that Joyce, who briefly taught in Dalkey’s Clifton College close to Sandycove in 1904, might have used the atlas himself.
The timing suits; Joyce was recognized to check the world; and the bookshop conceded it was potential it acquired the atlas after a clear-out by somebody linked to a close-by college.
It isn’t simple to hyperlink the marks to the writing of Ulysses – Joyce didn’t begin on it for an additional decade. Johnson believes he might have used the atlas to mark spots that him, later recalling them as a “mom of reminiscence” when writing the guide.
“Right here is Joyce, in my opinion, sitting down and pondering ‘what am I going to do with my life?’” he mentioned. An fascinating principle that’s, as he concedes, probably unprovable. It can’t be disproved both, he mentioned with a glint in his eye.
Johnson returned to Dublin in 2023 to movie interviews with sceptical students, together with a beautiful assembly with former senator and über-Joycean, David Norris. He agreed it might have been the sort of imperial atlas used at Clifton. But when Johnson instructed Joyce might have marked it himself, Norris checked out him like he could be faintly mad.
The story of the map, its marks, how Johnson discovered it and his theories are detailed in a brand new web site – sandycoveatlas.com – launched in time for Bloomsday on Monday.
Johnson hopes to spark debate amongst Joyceans about what he believes is an thrilling discover. Possibly it’s. Possibly it isn’t. Possibly that’s not the purpose in any respect. Joyce was a purveyor of tales. One of the best tales have that little trace of thriller.
Later, I seemed a bit of additional in Johnson’s story. He instructed me he was a advisor after he give up journalism. He didn’t say he had arrange a number of profitable companies, together with analysis agency Ovum, later purchased by Datamonitor for £42 million. That absolutely made a number of traders joyful.
All of us go on journeys. Joyce had his. Johnson, when he ought to have his toes up, appears to be having fun with one more.
