JJON - Bailey

A load of Bull about the Bailey

U 13.1068-9: Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or they might think it a house.

From my research, I have concluded that it is not possible to reconcile Bloom’s mental timings with the character of the Baily Lighthouse in 1904. (Note that Joyce adopts a common misspelling of "Baily".)

According to an 1893 guide to mariners,1 the Baily exhibited “a fixed white light, which should be visible in clear weather from a distance of 15 miles.”2 On January 1, 1902, however, the character of the lighthouse was changed. The fixed white light was discontinued, and replaced by a flashing white light every 30 seconds.

It seems clear that a mental counting sequence that stops at nine could not be associated with a lighthouse that emits a flash every 30 seconds. So, we look for reasons for this contradiction.

We can assume that Bloom was looking in the general direction of Howth peninsula. It is referenced in the opening paragraph of the episode, and Gerty gazed out towards “the Bailey light on Howth” later on (13.409).

It was dark or almost dark (lighthouse keepers’ instructions were to turn on the lights after sunset), so the distant Howth peninsula would no longer be clearly visible.

Were there any other lighthouses in Bloom’s field of vision between Sandymount Strand and Howth that could have been mistaken for the Baily?

The answer is yes: Poolbeg and North Bull lighthouses, on the seaward extremities of the South and North Bull walls, with the North Bull light only a few degrees south of the Baily light.

According to the 1893 guide to mariners cited above, Poolbeg had a “Fixed white light, 66 feet above high water, visible from a distance of 12 miles.”3 So that lighthouse can be ruled out.

However, the character of North Bull lighthouse in 1893 is far more promising. The aforementioned guide described it as “… a white occulting light, showing bright for ten seconds and eclipsed for four seconds.”4

This would fit in perfectly with Bloom’s interior monologue at 13.1068-9. He saw a light come on in the distance and assumed it was the Baily lighthouse. He started counting the seconds in his head: “Two, four, six, eight, nine.” On the tenth second (“See.”), the light went out, starting the four second eclipse. And so on, throughout the hours of darkness.

There remains the question, common to the interpretation of Joyce: who was in error? Has Joyce simply misremembered the details, or did he know the lighthouse sequences, but in the guise of an unreliable narrator made Bloom commit the error?5

Eamonn Finn

I am indebted to John Gordon, whose query about the Baily prompted this research.

Footnotes

1 The Irish Coast Pilot (Admiralty Hydrographic Office, London; 1893, ed. 4) (Retrieved from Google Books)

2 Ibid., p. 145

3 Ibid., p. 152

4 Ibid., p. 152-3

5 In support of Joyce's knowledge of local lighthouses, "And they winxed and wanxed like baillybeacons" (Finnegans Wake, 358.25) might suggest that he was aware of the fact that the Baily lighthouse had a rotation machine that sent out two flashes every revolution.