Nestor: Comments by Joyce


According to Richard Ellmann, Joyce taught for a few weeks at the Clifton School in Dalkey. "The founder and headmaster was an Ulster Scot, very pro-British, named Francis Irwin, a Trinity College graduate." The students are based in part on the ones Joyce taught. Deasy is an amalgam of Irwin and Henry Blackwood Price, an Ulsterman Joyce knew in Trieste (Ellmann, James Joyce [1982], pp. 152-53). Roger Norburn's chronology of Joyce claims that he began teaching at the Clifton School sometime after May 16, 1904 (Norburn, A James Joyce Chronology [2004], p. 19).