When Stephen and Mulligan stand "looking towards the blunt
cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a
sleeping whale," they cannot actually see it from the
Sandycove tower. But this prominent landmark in the northern
part of County Wicklow, praised as one of the glories of
Ireland in Cyclops, is not very far away. It stands
just beyond the prosperous seaside community of Bray where
Stephen grew up, and where Molly and Bloom once took a rowboat
out on the waves.
The fact that Bray Head cannot be seen from the Tower raises
the question of whether Joyce's memory failed him when he
described Stephen and Mulligan looking in that direction. But
the narrative says only that they are looking "towards"
the cape. In an article in JJQ 20 (1982), "Can Bray
Head Be Seen from the Martello Tower?," Robert Boyle argues
that Joyce probably knows what he is doing, and is
representing Stephen thinking of Bray "in the mind's eye,"
being "drawn by memories of his mother and of the earliest
shelter he could remember leaving, as he intends to leave this
tower" (131).
Finerty's photograph from the 1890s shows the seawall
promenade that runs toward Bray Head along a 1.6 km walkable
beach. Stanislaus Joyce mentions the view of it from the
Joyces' house very near the coast on Martello Terrace: "From
our windows we had a long view of the Esplanade, which
stretched along the sea-front half the way to Bray Head" (My
Brother's Keeper, 4). This elegant mile-long promenade
was built during the Victorian era, at a time when moneyed
middle-class Dubliners were moving to Bray to escape the press
of city life while remaining within commuting distance. The
extension of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway to the town in
1854 transformed Bray into a comfortable suburban resort
destination.
The Joyce family lived on Martello Terrace from 1887 to 1892,
when they were still comfortably well off. The Bray home is
represented in A Portrait of the Artist, in the
magnificent Christmas dinner scene in which Simon Dedalus
squares off against Dante O'Riordain over the tragic death of
Charles Stewart Parnell. One of Joyce's memories from those
days surfaces in Calypso, when Bloom mentally
recites a little love poem
to his daughter.
In Penelope Molly recalls a nearly disastrous
outing off the Bray coast: "Id never again in this life get
into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the
boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he
ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it
came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the
weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now
pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through
the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy
we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no
danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers
Id like to have tattered them down off him before all the
people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was
black and blue do him all the good in the world." Rowing clubs
keep seagoing rowboats on the Bray beach to this day, ready to
launch into the choppy water.
