How did Gerty come by her limp?

Introduction: Dalkey hill and Dalkey quarry

Bloom watched Gerty MacDowell across Sandymount Strand as she sat with her friends near the Star of the Sea church one summer evening. Gerty was well aware of his voyeuristic attention, and discreetly played up to it. But as she left Bloom wonders about her:

She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly – because Gerty MacDowell was …

Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s why she’s left on

the shelf and the others did a sprint. (U 769-73)

     Slightly earlier we were told how Gerty came by her limp:

but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. U 649-51

     In the early draft versions of this sentence Joyce originally had just “coming down the hill” up to the first placards in late August 1921, when he replaced “the” with “Dalkey” to create the final version’s “coming down Dalkey hill”. Dalkey is a town on the coast less than ten miles south-east of the city of Dublin. Dalkey hill, still popular with walkers and hikers, is shown on the map below, south of the town of Dalkey and at the end of the pathway leading “to Granite Quarry”.

     That is all well and good, and we have no right to think any more about how Gerty went lame, except that John Gordon had the foresight to pose the question to a Joyce online expert group. It is well known that Joyce derived many details for Ulysses from real-world events, often in and around Dublin and particularly in and around Bloomsday, 16 June 1904. Could this be one of those facts?

  If Gerty chose to walk on Dalkey hill one day towards Dalkey, she might well find herself on the path around the quarry: it would be a convenient way down the hill’s incline. But there were other routes: nowadays “the park is crossed by a number of walking tracks”, and this was doubtless the case in Joyce’s day.

Accidents on Dalkey hill

Taking a cue from Joyce’s preference for citing real-world detail, and grasping at what might be considered a long shot, what do the local papers from the early twentieth century have to say about accidents to walkers on Dalkey hill?

     Accidents reported to the newspapers on Dalkey hill usually related to mishaps around the quarries. The paths through the quarries were poorly protected and several people were recorded at the time as suffering serious injuries and in some cases death when they fell or tripped over the quarry’s edge. At other times people drowned in the pools that had grown up in the quarry basins. Clearly minor injuries would not have been reported in the newspapers, but then it seems Gerty did not just suffer from a sprain or a bruise, as she was left lame by whatever happened to her.

     One such fatality on Dalkey Hill was Mary Ellen Lally, aged thirty-three, on holiday in Dalkey from Dublin in August 1911. Peter Murphy “saw a young lady dressed in white sitting on a rock on Dalkey quarry cliff, and next saw her hanging out from the rock as if in difficulties. He made for the place, but before he and others could reach her she fell a distance of 45 feet.” She died at the scene.1

     Dalkey hill could be a very dangerous place to walk if you were not careful.

Accident to Miss Mollie Ross at Dalkey quarry

Almost three years later there was another “Shocking Accident at Dalkey”. On Tuesday 7 July 1914 Miss Mollie Ross went out for a walk from her home in Dalkey at about 9 pm and was found the next morning “at the bottom of Dalkey quarry, suffering from serious injury … having apparently fallen a distance of 80 feet from the top of the cliff, where there is a right-of-way”. The story grabbed the attention of the local newspapers around Dublin, which expressed their incredulity that the lady had remained alive although suffering “a serious accident” and even (“considering the inclement weather which prevailed”) “torture” from her exposure all night at the foot of the quarry. She had been heard to moan faintly around 11.30 the previous evening but no one had come to rescue here. The next morning Mr Abraham D’Arcy was alerted by Miss Ross “waving her handkerchief”.2

  She was found “helpless” and was immediately taken home but, in her “semi-comatose state”, was unable to say more than that she had “tumbled over”. The newspapers had to go to press before the results of X-rays were available, and they seem to have drifted away from the case over the next few days and did not return to report on the subsequent state of Miss Ross’s injuries. The local council at Dalkey asserted that “that portion of Dalkey Hill … [was] nothing more than a death-trap”, and called the condition of the public right of way a scandal that the Board of Works should have already addressed.3

  This incident bears some further investigation. The Irish Weekly Mail drew attention to the “remarkable accident to the well-known young lady”, who “falls over the quarry cliffs and lies untraced till morning”.

     Do we know anything about her?

Miss Mollie Ross

The newspaper reports of Mollie Ross’s accident tell us a fair amount about her. She was “well-known” in the Dalkey area and was twenty-five years old, the daughter of Mr William Ross, of Summerfield (other reports say Summerville House), Dalkey Avenue, the “principal of the well-known firm, Ross and Walpole, engineers, Dublin, and an ex-Chair of the Dalkey Urban Council”. And of course that she liked to go out on walks on her own in the evening. As mentioned above, the newspapers did not return later to update readers on the seriousness of Mollie’s injuries, but a broken bone was presumably considered by the doctors, as she was given an X-ray.

  Mollie’s father, William Ross, was a respected Dublin civil engineer, born in 1855 and a graduate of Trinity College. Dubliners may have associated him both with the firm of Ross and Walpole, but also with the work he did in constructing iron bridges for the Midland Great Western Railway and the Dublin, Wicklow & Wexford Railway companies. He had also been President of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland in 1906-7, and, as well as chairing Dalkey Urban District Council, was Chairman of the Dublin Port and Docks Board. He was a Dalkey citizen of some substance.4

  Readers of this website may remember William Ross from an earlier article: “Francis Irwin, TCD, in the fusty world of Garrett Deasy”. Francis Irwin (one of the real people conflated in Joyce’s Garrett Deasy) joined the small staff of Clifton School in Dalkey in 1900 or just before. At that time the school occupied Summerfield Lodge in Dalkey, and the rest of the building (known as Summerfield House) had been occupied since 1897 by William Ross and his family.5 The Rosses lived at Summerfield House for many years, and were the occupants when Joyce came to teach for a short while at the school in Summerfield Lodge.6

  It is therefore extremely likely that Joyce enjoyed some level of acquaintance with William Ross and his family.

The Rosses at Summerfield House

William Ross and his wife Mary Jane (née Turner) had five daughters (and no sons), roughly the same age as Joyce (born 2 February 1882) or slightly younger. The daughters, Janet Turner Ross (1882-1964), Margaret Murray Ross (1885-1966), Mary Wylie Ross (1887-1931), Dorothy Ross (1890-1936), and the youngest Stella Christine Ross (1901-72), were known informally as Jessie, Madge, Mollie, Dollie, and Stella.7 They were a lively set of girls, who loved amateur dramatics, performing from at least 1907 in the “Dalkey People’s concerts”:

Dalkey People’s Concerts given by Mr and Mrs Ross of Summerville [sic], Dalkey.

“Farcical comedy”. “Miss Jenny Ross gave a very faithful representation of the gushing Mrs Nervesby; Miss Ross displayed a wonderfully correct conception of the character … It would be difficult to find a better impersonation of the American hostess than that given by Miss Made Ross … while Miss Molly Ross acquitted herself creditably as Mrs Robert Browne.” (Wicklow News-letter 12 January 1907)

  In addition, they (or some of them) were keen sportswomen, and their mother often held private tennis parties for them in the grounds of Summerfield House (sport in the grounds was a feature of the school housed there too). In 1910, for example, the girls’ mother, “Mrs William Ross”, hosted a tennis party at which “The Misses Mollie [Mary Wylie Ross] and Dollie Ross [Dorothy Ross] wore tennis frocks of white”. Mrs Wisdom Hely was present, with Miss Violet Hely. (Charles Wisdom Hely was the managing director of Hely’s Ltd, a major printing and stationery firm based at 27-30 Dame Street, Dublin, where Bloom worked for a while).8

  In August 1912 “The Misses Ross” organised a tennis tournament and a golf competition at Summerfield during a garden fête held in aid of the Cottage Home for Little Children. The fête was opened by the Viscountess Powercourt, and as well as the tennis and golf competitions boasted an aunt sally, donkey rides, half-hour concerts, theatricals, and the String Band of the Royal Irish Constabulary. For an admission price of one shilling (6d for children).

Mollie’s accident revisited

Is there any reason to think that Joyce may have been recalling Mollie’s accident in 1914 when he wrote about Gerty MacDowell several years later in Ulysses? There’s no definite evidence, such as references in Joyce’s letters. But the suggestion does seem to have some merit.

     Joyce taught at Clifton School at Summerfield Lodge for a short while in 1904 while the Misses Ross were all living there. He remembered Summerfield Lodge as the place at which Francis Irwin (Garrett Deasy) taught at the same time. The girls were all more or less of Joyce’s age, and seem to have been a lively group who cannot have escaped Joyce’s attention. He notes that Gerty is unmarried (“That’s why she’s left on the shelf”), and by 1914 Mollie’s two elder sisters were both married, including Margaret Murray Ross, a minor Irish graphic artist and decorative designer, three of whose paintings were lost when the Royal Hibernian Academy was set on fire during the Easter Rising of 1916.9 Mollie remained unmarried.

Is there any evidence that Mollie Ross was permanently lame after her accident at Dalkey quarry in 1914? No, but she was injured badly enough to require an x-ray, and she does not appear in the newspapers at any tennis tournaments after 1912. In fact, her later choice of career was that of physiotherapist or masseuse, and she appeared in the Physiotherapy and Masseuse Register for 1922, practising from Summerfield in Dalkey and qualified as a Member of the Chartered Society of Massage and Medical Gymnastics.10 Perhaps her career choice was influenced by an earlier injury?

  And how might Joyce have come across a newspaper report of her accident? We know that he regularly received clippings from local Irish newspapers as he was writing Ulysses, so that – amongst other things – he could add topical gloss to his prose. We know he received clippings of reviews of Dubliners, published 15 June 1914, less than a month before Mollie’s accident.

  And evidence from within the newspaper reports? Should we make anything of the fact that Mollie attracted attention by waving her handkerchief?

The young lady was observed waving a white handkerchief by Mr Abraham D’Arcy, Dalkey Hill, who immediately went to her assistance. (Irish Weekly Mail 11 July 1914)

  This, it might be argued, is echoed in:

Gerty had an idea, one of love’s little ruses. She slipped a hand into her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he’s too far to. (U 13.757-8)

  One last coincidence: Gerty MacDowell’s fantasy husband was Reggie Wyllie, brother of William Evelyn Wylie, the cyclist from Trinity College mentioned by Joyce in Ulysses: see Wheelmen don’t eat quiche on this site. Mollie Ross’s full name was Mary Wylie Ross. Chance, or something that tickled Joyce?

Conclusion

The possible link between Gerty MacDowell and Mollie Ross is intriguing, and perhaps no more than that. But Mollie’s accident brings to the surface several similarities between the two girls, in age, possible infirmity, and even in the name Wylie/Wyllie. Dalkey Hill was a scene of numerous accidents in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, originally industrial accidents to quarry workers but later to ordinary pedestrians taking walks around the landscape south of Dalkey. What might at first sight appear a sequence of similarities or coincidences may perhaps suggest an association which has to date eluded Joyce scholars.

John Simpson