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The Death of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

james-joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century, dies in Zurich, Switzerland, following surgery for a perforated ulcer on January 13, 1941.

Joyce is born on February 2, 1882, in the wealthy Rathgar suburb of Dublin. The family is initially well off as Dublin merchants with bloodlines that connected them to old Irish nobility in the country. James’ father, John Stanislaus Joyce, is a fierce Irish Catholic patriot and his political and religious influences are most evident in Joyce’s two key works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922).

The Joyce family is repeatedly forced to move to more modest residences due to their steadily diminishing wealth and income. John Joyce’s habitual unemployment as well as his drinking and spending habits make it difficult for the Joyces to retain their social standing. As a young man, Joyce is sent away to the renowned Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare in 1888, a Jesuit institution regarded as the best preparatory school in Ireland. The Clongowes school figures prominently in Joyce’s work, specifically in the story of his recurring character Stephen Dedalus. Joyce earns high marks both at the Clongowes School and at Belvedere College in Dublin where he continues his education. At this point in his life, it seems evident that Joyce is to enter the priesthood, a decision that would please his parents. However, as Joyce makes contact with various members of the Irish Literary Renaissance, his interest in the priesthood wanes. Joyce becomes increasingly critical of Ireland and its conservative elements, especially the Church.

Against his mother’s wishes, Joyce leaves Ireland in 1902 to pursue a medical education in Paris and does not return until the following year upon receiving news of his mother’s debilitation and imminent death. After burying his mother, Joyce continues to stay in Ireland, working as a schoolteacher at a boys’ school, another autobiographical detail that recurs in the story of Stephen Dedalus. After barely spending a year in Dublin, Joyce returns to the Continent, drifting in and out of medical school in Paris before taking up residence in Zurich. It is during this period that Joyce begins writing professionally.

In 1905, Joyce completes a collection of eight stories entitled Dubliners, although it is not actually printed until 1913. During these frustrating and impoverished years, Joyce heavily relies upon the emotional support of Nora Barnacle, his unmarried Irish lover, as well as the financial support of his younger brother, Stanislaus Joyce. Both Nora and Stanislaus remain as protective, supporting figures for the duration of Joyce’s life. During the eight years between Dubliners‘ completion and publication, Joyce and Barnacle have two children, a son named Giorgio, and a daughter named Lucia.

Joyce’s next major work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, appears in serialized form in 1914 and 1915. Joyce is “discovered” by Ezra Pound and the complete text is printed in New York City in 1916, and in London in 1917. It is with the assistance of Pound, a prominent literary figure of the time, that Joyce comes into contact with Harriet Shaw Weaver, who serves as both editor and patron while Joyce writes Ulysses.

When Ulysses is published in Paris in 1922, many immediately hail the work as genius. With his inventive narrative style and engagement with multiple philosophical themes, Joyce has established himself as a leading Modernist. The novel charts the passage of one day, June 16, 1904, as depicted in the life of an Irish Jew named Leopold Bloom, who plays the role of a Ulysses by wandering through the streets of Dublin. Despite the fact that Joyce is writing in self-imposed exile, living in Paris, Zurich, and Trieste while writing Ulysses, the novel is noted for the incredible amount of accuracy and detail regarding the physical and geographical features of Dublin.

Similar in theme to Joyce’s previous works, Ulysses examines the relationship between the modern man and his myth and history, focusing on contemporary questions of Irish political and cultural independence, the effects of organized religion on the soul, and the cultural and moral decay produced by economic development and heightened urbanization. While Joyce is writing it, there is serious doubt as to whether Ulysses will be completed. Midway through his writing, Joyce undergoes the first of eleven eye operations to salvage his ever-worsening eyesight. At one point, a disappointed Joyce casts the bulk of his manuscript into the fire, but Nora Barnacle immediately rescues it.

While Ulysses is hailed by some, the novel is banned in both the United Kingdom and the United States on obscenity charges. It is not until 1934 that Random House wins a court battle that grants permission to print and distribute Ulysses in the United States. The novel is legalized in Britain two years later.

By this time, Joyce is approaching the end of his public career and has concluded work on his final novel, Finnegan’s Wake (1939). Considered to be far more baffling and convoluted than Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake is a critical failure. At the outbreak of World War II, Joyce remains in Paris until he is forced to move, first to Vichy, and then to Switzerland. On January 13, 1941, Joyce dies of a stomach ulcer at the age of 58 and is buried in Zurich’s Fluntern Cemetery.


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Death of Shipbuilding Mogul John Roach

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John Roach, an American industrialist who rises from humble origins as an Irish immigrant laborer to found the largest and most productive shipbuilding empire in the postbellum United States, John Roach & Sons, dies in New York City on January 10, 1887.

Roach is born on December 25, 1815, at Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland, the first of seven children to Patrick Roche, a retail salesman, and his wife Abigail Meany. In 1832, at the age of sixteen, he emigrates together with his cousin to the United States. Arriving in New York City, he is at first unable to find regular work, but eventually gains secure employment at the Howell Works of James P. Allaire on the recommendation of a former employee of his father.

In 1852, after 20 years in the employment of Allaire, Roach and three partners purchase the Etna Iron Works, a small New York City ironworks which has fallen into receivership. Roach soon becomes sole proprietor, and during the American Civil War transforms the Etna Iron Works into a major manufacturer of marine engines. He continues to prosper after the war and in 1867 he purchases the Morgan Iron Works on New York’s East River and relocates his business there.

In 1871, Roach purchases the Reaney, Son & Archbold shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania, which has fallen into receivership and renames it the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works. This becomes his main facility. Over the next few years, he founds a network of new companies in Chester to support the shipyard’s operations. To give his sons a stake in the business, Roach founds the firm of John Roach & Sons, which becomes the overall parent and marketing company. He also attempts to create his own shipping line with the establishment of the United States and Brazil Mail Steamship Company, but this venture is a costly failure.

From 1871 until 1885, John Roach & Sons is easily the largest and most productive shipbuilding firm in the United States, building more tonnage of ships than its next two chief competitors combined. In the mid-1880s the firm runs into trouble when a series of U.S. Navy contracts become the subject of political controversy. Roach signed the contracts under a Republican administration, but when the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland comes to power, it voids one of the contracts. Doubts over the validity of the remaining three contracts make it impossible for John Roach & Sons to obtain loans and, in 1885, the Roach shipbuilding empire is forced into receivership.

During the contract disputes, Roach falls ill with a chronic mouth infection which is diagnosed as cancer in 1886. Roach undergoes surgery in the spring of 1886, but it provides only temporary relief. He dies at the age of 71 on January 10, 1887, while his business is still in the hands of receivers. Roach’s eldest son, John Baker Roach, assumes control of the business which continues for another 20 years, although it never regains the pre-eminent position in American shipbuilding that it had enjoyed under Roach Sr.

During its existence between 1871 and 1907, the shipyard established by Roach builds 179 iron ships, 98 under Roach’s own management and an additional 81 under that of John Baker Roach.


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Death of Archbishop John Joseph Hughes

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John Joseph Hughes, Irish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and the fourth Bishop and first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, dies in New York City on January 3, 1864.

Hughes is born in the hamlet of Annaloghan, near Aughnacloy, County Tyrone. He emigrates to the United States in 1817.

After several unsuccessful applications to Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, he is eventually hired as a gardener at the college. During this time, he befriends Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, who is impressed by Hughes and persuades the rector to reconsider his admission. Hughes is subsequently admitted as a regular student of Mount St. Mary’s in September 1820.

On October 15, 1826, Hughes is ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Henry Conwell at Old St. Joseph’s Church in Philadelphia. His first assignment is as a curate at St. Augustine Church in Philadelphia, where he assists its pastor by celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, preaching sermons, and other duties in the parish.

Hughes is chosen by Pope Gregory XVI as the coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of New York on August 7, 1837. He is consecrated bishop at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on January 7, 1838, with the title of the titular see of Basilinopolis, by the Bishop of New York, John Dubois, his former Rector.

Hughes campaigns actively on behalf of Irish immigrants and attempts to secure state support for parochial schools. Although this attempt fails, he founds an independent Catholic school system which becomes an integral part of the Catholic Church’s structure at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), which mandates that all parishes have a school and that all Catholic children be sent to those schools. In 1841, Hughes founds St. John’s College in New York City which is now Fordham University.

Hughes is appointed Apostolic Administrator of the diocese due to Bishop Dubois’ failing health. As coadjutor, he automatically succeeds Dubois upon the bishop’s death on December 20, 1842, taking over a diocese which covers the entire state of New York and northern New Jersey. He is a staunch opponent of Abolitionism and the Free Soil movement, whose proponents often express anti-Catholic attitudes. Hughes also founds the Ultramontane newspaper New York Freeman to express his ideas.

Hughes becomes an archbishop on July 19, 1850, when the diocese is elevated to the status of archdiocese by Pope Pius IX. As archbishop, he becomes the metropolitan for the Catholic bishops serving all the dioceses established in the entire Northeastern United States. To the dismay of many in New York’s Protestant upper-class, Hughes foresees the uptown expansion of the city and begins construction of the current St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st Street, laying its cornerstone on August 15, 1858. At the request of President Abraham Lincoln, Hughes serves as semiofficial envoy to the Vatican and to France in late 1861 and early 1862. Lincoln also seeks Hughes’ advice on the appointment of hospital chaplains.

Hughes serves as archbishop until his death. He is originally buried in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, but his remains are exhumed in 1882 and reinterred in the crypt under the altar of the new cathedral he had begun.