The James Joyce Tower
The reason the Martello Tower at Sandycove has become a place of pilgrimage for Joyce fans is not so much the association with the author's life - the 22-year-old writer spent barely a week here with his friend Oliver St John Gogarty in August of 1904, a month before he left the country with Nora Barnacle - as the fact that it features so prominently in the opening chapter of Ulysses . Joyce's stay wasn't a particularly happy one: Gogarty's other guest was one Samuel Chenevix Trench who, on their sixth night, had a nightmare, grabbed a gun and let off some shots into the fireplace of the room where they were sleeping. Gogarty then seized the gun and shot a row of saucepans that were hanging above Joyce's head, shouting "Leave him to me!" Joyce left the following morning. The tower was opened as a museum in 1962 by Sylvia Beech, who first published Ulysses . The exhibits inside amount to little more than a collection of memorabilia - the author's guitar, cigar case and cane are on display - which, with one or two exceptions, offer no great insights into his life. Perhaps most interesting are the letters, including a plaintive note to Nora Barnacle on September 10, 1904, accusing her of "treating me as if I were simply a casual comrade in lust"; there's also a delicious edition of Ulysses illustrated by Henri Matisse. But it's the atmosphere of the place that really makes it worthwhile, particularly when you climb up the narrow staircase to the open top of the tower where stately, plump Buck Mulligan performs his ablutions at the beginning of Ulysses .
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