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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
M
ARY Jane Joyce died of can-
cer at St Peter’s Terrace,
Phibsborough, on August ,
, at the age of . Mary
Jane who, as it were?
As neglected in death as she was in
her short life with her profligate husband,
John Stanislaus, Mary Jane was the mother
of James Joyce. Hagiographies galore have
been penned of James and family members,
including John Stanislaus – and indeed of
Nora, his celebrated wife. But the refined
woman who had a key influence on one of the
twentieth century’s greatest writers – and
bequeathed the love of music which infuses
his work – still awaits her biographer.
Ken Monaghan, son of Joyce’s younger
sister, May, recalled: ‘”My mother was thir-
teen when Mary Jane died. She said that her
mother had spent her life bearing children.
She had eleven, one of whom died in infancy.
When John Stanislaus was at home and not
drinking he just created trouble. Even at
tea, he often beat my mother and her sis-
ters. Poor Mary Jane had a terrible life”.
The only monument to James Joyce’s
mother is a plaque in Terenure’s Eagle House
pub, where she was born Mary Jane Murray,
on May . Fair-haired and pretty,
she studied music and dancing from the age
of five and became an accomplished piano
player and singer. She met John Stanislaus
Joyce at Rathgar’s Church of the Three
Patrons, where both were choristers.
Mary Jane’s Longford father, John
Murray, disapproved of her friendship with
Joyce, whom he knew to be a heavy drinker.
But the relationship developed and the
couple married in Rathmines in , ten
days before Mary Jane’s twenty-first birth-
day. Their first child was born prematurely
in November and lived for only a few days.
James Joyce was born momentously, and
on time, in February at Brighton
Square, Rathgar.
John Joyce was Secretary of the Dublin
and Chapelizod Distillery Company, he
also earned rents from property in his
native Cork. A popular raconteur, he spent
more time in city pubs and with political
cronies than at home. His appoint-
ment as Collector of Rates set up even more
James’ neglected mother cries out for a
biographer. By Brendan Lynch
The other Joyce
woman
CULTURE JOyCe
extravagant socialising. Though there
were occasionally shared family experi-
ences, such as an concert in Bray, Co
Wicklow, where he sang with Mary Jane and
six-year old James.
John’s drinking eventually cost him his
Cork properties. When he was released from
his Collector’s position in , his finan-
cial position became even more critical. The
grand suburbs soon became a distant mem-
ory. The family retreated to a succession of
inner-city addresses, until they settled at
the end of in what is now St Peter’s
Road.
By this time, Mary Jane had given birth
to four boys and six girls and prevailed
through several miscarriages. Freddie
Joyce died in infancy in . Mary Jane
nursed five-year old George for several
weeks, before he succumbed to typhoid and
peritonitis in March, . Grief-stricken
at his death, she bore the burden of keep-
ing the family together and shielding the
innocent brood from her husband’s fre-
quent outbursts. She saved their home by
quenching a chimney fire on one occasion.
One of her few treats was visiting the beguil-
ing and politically-fecund Sheehy household
at Belvedere Place, where she played the
piano, while James sang. Sustained by her
strong Catholic faith, Mary Jane’s miseries
were augmented when both James and his
brother Stanislaus rejected the church.
James Joyce left for Paris in December
to study medicine. He was soon
broke, hungry and suffering from the cold.
“Do not despair”, Mary Jane wrote duti-
fully and – with the practicality that was
needed to assist the incipient unworldly
genius, pawned an heirloom to help him.
He promised to buy her a set of false teeth
from his first earnings and exhorted her
to walk more and to have her eyes tested.
Her teeth and eye problems proved to be
symptoms of something sadly more serious,
cancer of the liver. In March , Joyce
received a telegram from Dublin: Mother
[in fact, by mistake, “Nother”] dying come
home father.
Mary Jane enjoyed a partial recovery
after James’s return, before she was confined
permanently to bed. As she lay dying, she
vainly encouraged her eldest son to make
his confession and receive communion. He
tried to comfort her by playing the piano
and singing her favourite songs. She faded
into a coma and died on August .
James consoled his tearful young sister
Mabel, soon to die prematurely herself:
“Mother is in heaven. She is far happier
now than she has ever been on earth, but if
she sees you crying, it will spoil her happi-
ness”. He later confided to Nora Barnacle;
“My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my
father’s ill-treatment, by years of trouble,
and by my own cynical frankness”.
At the climax of the brothel scene, itself
the climax of ‘Ulysses’, Stephen is appalled
by his mother’s ghost, but like Ulysses he
seeks information from her. His mother
says, ‘’You sang that song to me. Love’s bit-
ter mystery.’’ Stephen responds ‘’eagerly’’,
as the stage direction says, ‘’Tell
me the word, mother, if you
know now. The word known to
all men’’. She fails to provide
it. This passage has been much
interpreted. According to Joyce’s
best biographer, Richard Ellman,
most readers have supposed that
the word known to all men must
be love, though one critic main-
tains that it is death,
In , James Joyce paid for
a tombstone for Mary Jane and
John Stanislaus, who had died
the previous year. Mary Jane
had encouraged James’s learn-
ing and, at his request, regularly
examined him on his homework.
She read Ibsen’s plays at his
behest. She supported his artis-
tic aspirations, though hardly
understanding them. As well as
a love of music, she bequeathed
the courtly manner noted by
Arthur Power and other Paris
visitors. James Joyce’s sorrow
at his mother’s death is docu-
mented in both ‘Ulysses’ and ‘A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, books
she never lived to read.
James Joyce’s grandson, Stephen Joyce,
is understandably apprehensive of further
invasion of family privacy. But Peter Costello,
co-author of John Stanislaus Joyce and
author of ‘James Joyce, The Years of Growth’,
insisted; “Mary Jane’s role in James Joyce’s
life was immense. Hopefully, another lady
will join the ranks of Joyce biographers and
record Mary Jane’s life and literature’s debt
to her”. For the influential solidness of the
mother of the twentieth century’s greatest
novelist at least matched that of his long-
suffering though long-fashionably-feted
wife.
Brendan Lynch’s latest Liffey Press book is ‘City
of Writers: The Lives and Homes of Dublin
Authors’
Left: Dublin, September 1888. The Joyce family. From
left to right: Maternal Grandfather John Murray, young
James, Mother Mary Jane and Father John Joyce. Taken
on the day James entered Clongowes Wood College
She bore
the burden
of keeping
the family
together
and
shielding
the
innocent
brood
from her
husband’s
frequent
outbursts
“
