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THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS taken exactly 75 years ago on Bloomsday in 1949, in Trieste, Italy, by my grandfather John McAfee. My grandad was an amazing records keeper and an avid photographer when it came to documenting his work and travels throughout his life, and just as well he was because this photo is a little bit of a gem.
I don’t profess myself to be in any way all that knowledgeable about the Joyce family, but finding this photo in one of several albums that my grandad had given to my Dad led me to try and find out a bit more about it. Namely who exactly are the people in the photograph, and how on earth did my grandad end up in Trieste, befriending the Joyces?
In the photo are the younger brother of James Joyce, Stanislaus; a Sir William John Sullivan who was a British diplomat and political advisor in Trieste between 1945-1950, and Mrs. Livia Italo Svevo, wife of Italo Svevo, a former pupil and good friend of Joyce.
(John) Stanislaus Joyce was born in Dublin in 1884 and passed away in Trieste six years after this photo was taken, in 1955. Again, not knowing much about the Joyces, I would wonder why Stanislaus left Ireland for Trieste in the first place. It is well documented that he was agnostic and not a fan of organised religion, as well as a radical liberal, and struggled in the political and religious climate of Ireland that was viewed by him as restrictive and stifling and not encouraging of creativity.
Eager to leave all this behind, Stanislaus joined his brother in Trieste in October 1905 where he got a job teaching English at the Berlitz Language School. James Joyce had moved to Trieste in 1904, and left Ireland for similar reasons to Stanislaus, feeling oppression from societal norms and values that were also seen as a barrier to his writing. Trieste offered a far more relaxed atmosphere, encouraging the arts.
Although Joyce is undoubtedly associated with Dublin, it was in Trieste where he lived for a decade and worked on many of his famous novels including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and Ulysses.
Livia Veneziani Svevo was born in 1874, into a middle-class family. She married Italo Svevo, born Ettore Schmitz, in Trieste in 1896. She would have met James Joyce through her husband who was taught English by Joyce at the Berlitz language school, where Stanislaus was also later employed. Under the pen name Italo Svevo, her husband had self-published two failed literary works – Una Vita (1893) and Senilità (1898), both of which disappeared into the ether. His writing career fell by the wayside in favour of his working as a businessman in the Veneziani family paint manufacturing business, and it wasn’t until James Joyce sent his works to two French literary critics, that Italo Svevo became a well-known writer in his own regard.
You may recognise Livia’s name in the character of Anna Livia Plurabelle from Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake, and the Anna Livia statue previously located on O’Connell St., and currently residing in Croppies Acre Memorial Park. Joyce notably wrote to Italo Svevo: “Reassure your wife with regard to Anna Livia. I have taken no more than her hair from her and even that only on loan, to adorn the rivulet which runs through my city, the Anna Liffey…”. It’s difficult to tell from the photo just how long Livia’s hair was by 1949, but it looks as though she decided to keep some of her infamous long locks, pinned up in the style of the era.
Now having found out a little about Stanislaus and Livia, and how they ended up in Trieste on Bloomsday 1949, I was left with the question as to how my grandfather ended up there and how he came to know the Joyce family.
Two things influenced my grandad in the choice of his career as a marine engineer, that ultimately brought him to Trieste. One was an event in his life as a 7-year-old boy, that he recounted to me on several occasions when I was of a similar age, and that was his visit to the Titanic in dock before it set sail from Belfast. He would recall how a housekeeper arranged for him to have a tour of the Titanic, and his absolute shock in reading in the newspaper that it was now at the bottom of the sea.
Another big influence on my grandad’s choice of career was his aunt Jane, who accompanied her seafaring husband on all his voyages over a span of 15 years. On her death in 1931, the Belfast Telegraph recorded that she had sailed over a million miles, crossing the equator 108 times and rounding Cape Horn 17 times.
She was reckoned at the time of her death to be the most travelled woman in the world. So it’s not surprising that my grandad ultimately had a love of everything maritime. He started his career at Harland and Wolff working in their drawing office (now the bar at the Titanic Hotel, something I think my grandad would have approved of!), and later on went to work for Lloyd’s Shipping Register, being posted to their office in Trieste in 1939.
It was here that he attended the Berlitz language school, and thus, met Stanislaus Joyce. In an article my grandad wrote in 1989 for Lloyds Register News International magazine, he said “I had to find something to keep me occupied during dull evenings and weekends. To learn Italian at the Berlitz school was an obvious choice. James Joyce had once been a teacher there and I met his brother Stanislaus with whom I had many interesting conversations as he was writing a critical book about the other’s literary activities”.
I imagine they had many interesting chats over cups of coffee at the McAfee household in Via Rosetti – it’s one of those instances where you wish you could go back in time and be a fly on the wall.
Finally, I asked my Dad if he has any particular memories of the Joyces from that time, given that he spent six years growing up in Trieste. He recalls being friends with Stanislaus’ son, James, known as Jimmy.
He said that the name “Jimmy Joyce” caused some linguistic problems for the locals since the letter J does not really appear in the Italian language – he was known, therefore, as “Yimmy Yawchay”.
So that’s the story behind the photograph, or at least as much of it as I can discover. I hope that those in the photo, and the man who took it, would be happy to know that the original photo has now been donated to the James Joyce Tower & Museum in Sandycove. It can be viewed there from today, Bloomsday 2024, exactly 75 years to the day the photo was taken.
Clare McAfee is an occasional writer and designer of neurodivergent-friendly spaces. She has “too many” books and vinyl records, is an enthusiast of Hans Zimmer and EDM, an avid player of 90s LucasArts games, and is the owner of Daisy, the naughtiest mini sausage dog in Ireland.
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I would expect hydropower to return every litre it uses. It’s just a diversion of the water flow none of it is consumed. It should not appear in this at all.
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: That’s probably the case with all users, water always returns to the ecosystem.
@Donal Balfe: Except hydropower returns water as it finds it.
The others contaminate the water.
@Donal Balfe: Some of it gets bound up chemically into products. The rest gets polluted by all other users. Hydropower just pumps it around.
Why is the dept of agriculture, which is funded entirely by us have the right to redact information for ANY reason.
@bruce banner: And why would they want to?
That is concerning.
@bruce banner: GDPR reasons. The Department of Agriculture, other government agencies, and private companies, collect a lot of sensitive personal data about us.
GDPR rules state they must ensure the info they collect and retain about us is accurate, is only retained as long as it’s needed, is only used for it’s original stated purpose. They must also delete personal data when it’s no longer needed, and above all, they must never to publish our personal data.
For example, if the CSO released it’s unredacted Census data, you could find out all sorts of private info about your neighbors, from their educational attainment to health. So the CSO aggregates Census data to ~20 households or more, preventing you finding individual information for your neighbors.
This is the same with the Department of Agriculture avd farmer’s data. Strict privacy laws and EU wide GDPR rules means they cannot publish individual information, unless it is required by law e.g. The Industrial Missions Directive means you can go to the EPA’s website and see what pollution lincesed companies, not people, are likely to produce and what they are allowed to release.
@David Jordan: individuals arent using that much water though. I would suspect they are hiding companies that farm on industrial scales. Data protection was high jacked by corps as a means to keep their business private from citizens in precisely these types of situations.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: I wouldn’t be concerned
@David Jordan: this explanation you give doesn’t make much sense to be honest. They can release the information as a sector or large grouping, not as individuals when it comes to colating the data for this exercise. GDPR doesn’t need to come into it. It’s made a nonsense of the whole study as it isn’t fit for purpose if farming isn’t accurately recorded in it. I’ve worked in GDPR so I don’t need a lesson in it in response to this, only know that there was a way to report the findings without entering into a GDPR issue.
These Sunday morning articles sometimes really are a waste of time. I’ll comment on the Cork hydropower one only. Water comes from the source of the river Lee. Flows through the ESB hydroelectric dam, then continues straight back down the river Lee out through the harbour into the Atlantic ocean. Why in the name of god is that even been measured in terms of water consumption/diversion when neither is occurring?
@Mark Murphy: And with Turlough hill, the water flows down the mountain during the day and it’s pumped back up the mountain at night. It’s not used up or polluted. Water still flows down the river.
“IDF recovers bodies of 6 hostages murdered by Hamas”
There fixed your headline for you.
Regarding the above story …
@frank dowling: Far more likely killed by the wanton rampant bombing of the Palestinian by the israeli.
Even if not, all the death and destruction in that region is caused by the israeli who have been attacking the Palestinian to drive them off their land to take it for themselves. That is how this “israel” came into existence in the first place.
None of this would be happening if not for israeli crimes against humanity.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: as-salamu alaykum islamic shill
@jak: Gaza population in 1960 = 265000
Gaza population in 2023 = 2.1m
Some annihilation ..
@frank dowling: “Were it not for the delays, sabotage, and excuses those whose deaths we learned about this morning would likely still be alive.” (Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
There.. contextualised your comment for you.
@jak: what a load of mindless krap Hamas control your thoughts ?
Israel is the rightful home of the Jews and they would be happy to live in peace with the Arabs, but the terrorists are against it.
Hamas are the problem, remove them and allow the innocent Palestinians live a normal life .
@frank dowling: I watched a programme the other evening on Saudi Crown Prince and it seems that he was trying to regularise relations with Isreal. Hamas couldn’t have that and was one of the main reasons behind the Oct 7 attacks. As you say remove Hamas and there can be some hope for Gaza.
@frank dowling: israel is NOT the rightful home of the Jews.
There was never a land called Isreal in what is Palestine.
There *was* a land called Judah, from which Jews came to be called. There was another land called Israel, though more commonly Samaria or The Northern Kingdom, further to the north in modern day Lebanon. The people of Judah despised the Samaritans, possibly because they had been conquered and ruled by them for a time.
Either way, people who are descendant from those who left a region have no right to return.
Palestine is the rightful home of the Palestinian, the descendants of those who have lived there for millennia, the descendants of those who REMAINED in the region.
But most of whom had the gall to change their religion, some to Christianity – which is how that cult spread to become worldwide – and most to Islam when it came on the scene.
Those that call themselves israeli merely CLAIM to be descendant from those who LEFT the region long ago.
And just as those who claim to be descendant from those who left our shores long ago have no claim to return here, to establish terrorist groups, to attack our people to steal our land, to attack our government to steal our homeland, then neither do those that call themselves israeli
Palestine had Jew, Christian and Muslim until the racist colonist arrived to take it for themselves.
Those racists allow me, as a Jew, the “right to return” to this state they created even though I might have only a single Jewish grandparent, but deny any right for the true people of that land to return to the land their forebears have been in since time immemorial.
Those who support what the israeli do to the Palestinian would not support it if done to any other.
So it can only be racism.
If you have another reason – one than stands to logic and reason, one based on fact – then please tell us.
@The next small thing: Saudi Arabia? The Saudi Arabia of Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS or more affectionately as “Bone Saw”? The Saudi Arabia that oppresses its own people, and perpetrates appalling atrocities on its neighbouring people, the Yemeni?
Yea, israel and Saudi would be great bed-fellows.
Of course, the actions of the Palestinians would have had nothing to do with the continuous atrocities and crimes against humanity perpetrated upon them by those who call themselves israeli.
@offside again: Conveniently ignoring the numbers forced into that concentration camp from other parts of Palestine over the decades.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: sure it happened between the Saudis and Yemen, Syria and itself, the former yugoslavia, Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and the taliban, Pakistan and India, Russia and Ukraine, and various part of Africa.
@offside again: You israeli shills cannot handle how easy it is to destroy your propaganda.
Accept it: israel has no right to exist, much less to commit any of its atrocities, its crimes against humanity.
And to do so on the people who are descendant from those they too claim to be makes it all the more disgusting.
@P. V. Aglue: I do not know what you intend by that word salad.
Probably to try to deflect, or confuse.
In any case, nothing changes that those who claim to be descendant from people who left our shores long ago do not have any right to return here. Any right to wage terrorism on us to create their own state on our homeland.
And neither does any other.
Neither do those who chose to call themselves israeli.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: yawn
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: AHH the irony ,the only democratic government in the whole region, Palestine is controlled by hamas terror against its own people.
That is why no one will Arab govt will put it’s full force behind hamas because they do not want them to grow they took control in Palestine by murdering their opponents.
@sean weir: So because you claim it to be a “the only democratic government in the whole region”, then its atrocities, its crimes against humanity, are to be ignored?
Do you not see how this claim makes it far worse?
That the actions of such a rogue state reflects on all of us?
And how the rest of the world see our “modern democratic states” and associates these atrocities with us too?
While the Palestinian is the victim of this “greatness”?
Why do you try to hide israeli atrocities behind this veil of democracy?
Anyway, that claim about israel being the only democracy in the region that they use to somehow justify their atrocities is yet just another lie. Turkey, which used to rule that entire region until relatively recently, is a democracy.
As it the country just to the north.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: no, killed by Hamas.
None of this would be happening if Hamas wasn’t turning billions of aid money into rockets and smuggling tunnels.
@John Mulligan: he would blame Israel for the Oasis ticket prices that lad.
@John Mulligan: Do explain how those who merely claim to be descendant from people who left a region long ago have any right to return to it, to establish terrorist groups – like Haganah, the Stern Gang and Irgun – attack the people of that region to drive them off their land to take it for themselves, attack their government to steal their homeland for themselves.
And do explain how the victims of all these atrocities are not entitled to fight back in any way they can.
And then explain how all the death and destruction, all the suffering, is not the consequence of the colonial invader.
All the death and destruction, all the suffering in the region is caused by and the responsibility of those that chose to call themselves israeli.
You can the other israeli propaganda shills have never been able to refute a single point i have made.
For it is the simple truth.
All you have is your propaganda lies.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: there is only one language spoken there today which was spoken 3000 years ago .. not Palestinian, not Arabic.. Hebrew .. the language of the Jews . It’s their land .. they were there before the Arabs and they are the one constant .. not the assyrians , not the Samaratans, not the Babylonians or anyone else .. give over this stuff about Judea (Israel) not being home of the Jews.. of course it is .. your antisemitism prevents you from seeing the truth ..
@frank dowling: They were not there before the Arabs, read your Bible if you’re lost on this point. The people of Israel have no more right to Palestine than American Irish have right to land their ancestors left behind in Ireland.
If you leave your home vacant and somebody squats in it they typically have ownership rights within 15-20 years. Now if the ancestors of those who left that land return in 500 years they still have rights to it, they don’t? Get real!
Fill up bottles with tap water and sell it at the farmers market as pure mineral water. A great scam a la del boy.
Falsely make hydropower look like a significant water extractor in order to make industrials look not that bad. How about we see a breakdown of industrials and see what portion is data centers and animal agriculture food production, which is broken down into export versus home consumption. It looks like there are some funky presentation tactics going on with this data to mask some industry or industries.
@Lewis Armstrong: Yea.
Hydo does not extract water at all.
Not in any common sense understanding at any rate.
@Lewis Armstrong: hydro effects the migrating fish and the land up stream.
Data centers consume vast quantities of electricity and water.
The cover up on Data Centres continues, nobody in Ireland investigating the scandal, nobody will take notice till we start getting blackouts to keep the Data Centres on. If we had any investigative journalism in Ireland, they would be looking at the energy use & water usage by Data Centers, both of which are off the Richter scale.
Really good article, great depth.
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