Pocket watch featured in 'Ulysses' goes up for auction

A GOLD pocket watch worn by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses has unexpectedly turned up in a Dublin fine art saleroom and is to be auctioned next month.

Adam’s auctioneers of St Stephen’s Green has been asked to sell the watch by a descendant of a “real-life” Dubliner who was featured in the novel.

The sixth chapter of Ulyssesdescribes the funeral of "Paddy Dignam" in Glasnevin Cemetery on June 16th, 1904. Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and other characters in the novel follow his funeral procession from Sandymount to the graveyard.

While most of the characters in the novel are fictitious, Joyce included John O’Connell, the actual caretaker of Glasnevin Cemetery. He first appears as “a portly man” who “raised his hat in homage” to the coffin of the deceased and is described as: “Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort.”

Joyce then mentions the gold watch in a scene where O’Connell regales mourners with anecdotes: “The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watch chain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.”

A newly revealed photograph of O’Connell – wearing the watch – confirms the accuracy of Joyce’s description: “Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk.”

Born in 1844, O’Connell’s official title was superintendent of Glasnevin Cemetery and it is presumed that Joyce knew him – at least to see.

Bloom muses: “Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her at first. Courting death.”

In fact, O’Connell seems to have been happily married. He and his wife, Mary Ann had 17 children and lived opposite the entrance to the cemetery, in a house called “Clareville”, provided by the authorities. The children used the cemetery as their playground.

O’Connell died in 1925. His 18ct gold watch, on a 12-inch gold chain decorated with an amber stone to the T bar, became a family heirloom and is known as “the Ulysses watch” in the O’Connell family.

James O’Halloran, the managing director of Adam’s, said it would be auctioned in Dublin on December 5th and was expected to make €8,000.

“It is a rare treat to handle an object we can trace back to an actual character in one of literature’s truly great and seminal works,” Mr O’Halloran added. The watch provided “a feeling of tangible connection with that historic day in the life of Leopold Bloom”.

The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watch chain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles

Glasnevin caretaker John O’Connell who featured

in Ulysses