The original Bloom unmasked

Joyce blurred the line between art and life when he made an obscure advertising canvasser his hero, writes Terence Killeen.

JAMES JOYCE'S enormous novel, Ulysses, published in 1922, had its origin in a projected short story for his collection, Dubliners.

Joyce first mentions this story in a postcard to his brother Stanislaus, sent from Rome on September 30th, 1906. It would deal, he said, with "Mr Hunter". Mr Hunter was Alfred Henry Hunter, who lived in the Drumcondra area, was believed to be Jewish, and was believed to have an unfaithful wife.

The idea for the story continued to remain alive for some time: Joyce had already decided on the title; even then, it was to be called Ulysses.

He asked Stanislaus to write to him what he remembered of Hunter, and asked him also how he liked the title. Finally, however, on February 6th, 1907, he wrote to Stanislaus, with regret, that Ulyssesnever got any forrader [sic] than the title."

The source of Joyce's interest in Hunter has been much debated. Stanislaus told Joyce's biographer Richard Ellmann that his brother had known Hunter only very slightly. He and Hunter were certainly together at the funeral of Matthew Kane on July 13th, 1904, and it is quite possible that they met there - Joyce's father may have known Hunter.

There is a persistent belief that Hunter rescued Joyce from a fracas some time in 1904 (that all-important year) in which the writer was knocked down, if not out, by a man whose female partner he had accosted. It would be satisfying indeed if that were the case, since it would prefigure and provide a rationale for the rescuing of Stephen Dedalus by Bloom at the end of the "Nighttown" episode of the novel.

Unfortunately, the evidence for this good Samaritan deed is scanty. Although it is presented as fact in many quarters, its origin may well be a "back formation" from its occurrence in Ulysses, its source supplying a story to fit the novel. (Ellmann admits as much in the second edition of his biography, the only one even to recount the alleged incident.)

That Joyce was indeed involved in such a fracas in June 1904, caused by his accosting a woman without realising she had a male companion, is certain: it occurred in St Stephen's Green and he refers to it subsequently in his Trieste notebook, and in contemporaneous letters and remarks to his friends CP Curran and Oliver St John Gogarty.

MOST OF JOYCE'Sfocus, though, is on the failure of his friend Vincent Cosgrave to come to his aid in the encounter (this is echoed in Ulysses); there is no allusion to any putative rescue by Hunter, or by anybody else.

The other approach is to assume that the account of another fracas, and of Stephen's rescue from it by Bloom, given in the "Nighttown" episode of Ulysses, is autobiographical, and that Joyce is recounting something that actually happened to him, including his succour from Hunter, despite the absence of any external confirmatory evidence. It seems a very dangerous approach to take the word of a work of fiction about something of this kind. All this makes Hunter an even more shadowy figure in the story of Ulysses; the source of Joyce's interest in him becomes even more obscure. (And it remained a live interest: as late as October 1921, when Ulysseswas all but finished, he was still asking his aunt Josephine what had become of Hunter.) Tracing the actual Hunter has proven to be a difficult exercise: he left very little public record, and he seems to have had nearly as many addresses as Leopold Bloom. In 1912, for instance, he is recorded in Thom's Street Directoryas living at 24 May Street, which is off Clonliffe Road.

Unfortunately, for the two census years of 1901 and 1911, his whereabouts have proved difficult to trace. Now, however, the placing of the 1911 census for Dublin online by the National Archives, complete with search function, has enabled a fuller picture of Alfred H Hunter to emerge. In 1911 he was living in Great Charles Street, off Mountjoy Square.

The admirable and veteran researcher Peter Costello discovered as long ago as 1992 (in his James Joyce: The Years of Growth 1882-1915) that Hunter's occupation was advertising agent, as is Leopold Bloom's. This major find, which did not receive sufficient attention at the time, is confirmed by the census entry. Building on the earlier work of Louis Hyman, Costello established that Hunter was born, as the census confirms, in Co Down, more precisely at Mount Pottinger, Ballymacarrett, then on the edge of Belfast, on August 30th, 1866. This makes him the same age as Leopold Bloom in 1904. He was not Jewish - the family was Presbyterian.

As Costello also establishes, Hunter married on February 15th, 1898, a woman called Margaret Cummins, of Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines in Rathmines Catholic Church. (Evidently Hunter was as relaxed about switching denominations as Bloom himself.)

Remarkably, by the time of the 1911 census, this lady has metamorphosed into Marian (or Marion) "Brúini" Hunter. She has also changed her religion to Church of Ireland, as has her husband. So Margaret Cummins has reinvented herself (Madonna wasn't the first) both in terms of name and religion. The fact that her first name is now Marian and the likelihood that her mysterious second name is a stage name bring her very close to Bloom's wife, whose first name is also Marion, and who is a professional singer.

Hunter died on September 12th, 1926, curiously, again back in Great Charles Street. His death notice in The Irish Times of two days later states that he is deeply regretted by his sorrowing wife "Marian B Hunter". His death certificate states starkly that his occupation is "canvasser"(meaning advertisement canvasser), the same occupation that would have summed up Leopold Bloom had he died, say, on June 17th, 1904.

Hunter is buried in Mount Jerome cemetery. The headstone is almost indecipherable (there are other names on it), but it is there, a stone monument to a life.

Looking at these various documents, especially the census entry, confirming the close connections between the Hunters and the Blooms, is a strange experience.

THE LINE BETWEENart and life becomes uncannily blurred: it is as if Leopold Bloom suddenly comes alive, takes on a new reality. It is obviously highly unlikely that the obscure Hunters ever knew of their incarnation as hero and heroine of one of the 20th century's major novels. Or knew that they would provide the answers to questions that have long exercised literary critics: eg, why is Bloom an advertisement canvasser? Answer: because he was.

But it is part of the book's programme, after all, that God is a shout in the street: that a humble advertisement canvasser can be Ulyssesreborn. Alfred H Hunter may or may not have rescued James Joyce from an assailant; but even if he did not, his centrality, and that of his wife, to Joyce's creation has been amply confirmed.

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