Sir—I should like to express my interest and gratitude to David Mulhall for his piece ‘Ulysses as history’ (HI 32.3, May/June 2024). As a historian first, I have found this extremely helpful in highlighting major themes and the wider span of experience, language, nuances of decades drawn into a day’s events. As a historian involved with Portarlington, Co. Laois, I am aware of ‘Blong’s bacon’ in Finnegans Wake, a nod to one of the Huguenot family names.
Please may I add to this letter the seeking of opinion and evidence on who was the real Miss Ivors in the story ‘The Dead’. In my book Schooling in Ireland: a clustered history 1695–1912 (Esker Press, 2020) I deal with the various schools in the town. The wife of one headmaster (Edward Carson’s teacher) was Mildred Ievers of Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare. Her sister, Mary Shinkwin Ievers (b. 1843), author of Glimpses of Mount Ievers Past (1929), looks a potential Miss Ivors. Might there be a Joyce connection?
The following information I acknowledge from the Ievers family, for which I express gratitude. As Karen Ievers relates:
‘Mary was part of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, founded in 1876 by Douglas Hyde and Count Plunkett. She began teaching Irish to local ladies at Mount Ievers. She later became a member of the Gaelic League, after hearing a speech by Thomas Concannon in Sixmilebridge, which inspired her to write a poem about the Irish language that was later published. The first ever Feis Ceoil in County Clare was held at Mount Ievers in 1899 and included prizes for the best spoken and written Irish. It was evidently such a success that Mount Ievers hosted a second Feis Ceoil in 1900. As one commentator remarks: “Miss Ievers was a successful student of the language long before it was popular to do so and that much if not all of the Irish renaissance in Sixmilebridge was due to her inspiration”. This really shows how the Ievers family was more than willing to integrate with the local people of Sixmilebridge after years of being seen above the common person but also tried to help the locals find their own traditions again in the Irish language. While also trying to learn the native Irish tongue and as a standing testimony to this work completed by the Ievers family, the family still exists today in Sixmilebridge with the next generations having married local people within the village.
Mary Shinkwin Ievers also established a knitting industry for the benefit of the local ladies; their works were sent to London, as well as the Countess of Aberdeen’s celebrated Village of Irish Industries in Chicago. Lady Aberdeen came to Sixmilebridge train station on her way to Ennis and was briefed by Father Little, PP, on the work of Miss Ievers. The local ladies presented some of their knitted goods to Lady Aberdeen who, duly impressed, asked that more winter items be made to send over to the Irish Village. Mary died unmarried on 4 October 1934, aged 91. She was buried in Limerick with a memorial at the Church of Ireland in Kilfinaghty Church.’
—Yours etc.,
JOHN STOCKS POWELL
Portarlington