Father Farley
Father Farley
In Brief
In Lotus Eaters Bloom wishes he had asked Father John
Conmee for help getting Molly into a church choir "instead of
that Father Farley." Here as almost everywhere in Ulysses,
Joyce had a real person in mind. Charles Farley was a Jesuit priest at the church of St. Francis Xavier
where Conmee was the superior. He comes up later in the novel
as someone who is suspicious of Bloom's Catholic bona fides.
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Ellmann's biography does not mention Father Farley (neither
does Bowker's), but Gifford finds him listed in the 1904 Thom's
directory "at the Presbytery,
Gardiner Street Upper (i.e., associated with St. Francis
Xavier's Church and therefore with Father Conmee." Slote
believes that "Joyce changed the surname to Farley; Thom's
lists him as Farrelly," but Vivien Igoe confirms that Farley
was the man's actual name. She supplies many biographical
details: born in Dublin in 1859 to the "victualler" (i.e., spirit grocer)
Joseph Farley and his wife, entered the Society of Jesus at
age 18, served in County Offaly and in northern Wales,
ordained a priest in 1888, returned to Ireland at an
unspecified later date, died in 1938. One puzzling detail in
Igoe's account is her observation that in Ireland Father
Farley "moved around the various Jesuit houses. He spent 1911
to 1938 based at Gardiner Street, Dublin, his longest period
in any one place." Did he live in the St. Xavier's presbytery
two separate times?
A more interesting detail for novelistic purposes is Bloom's
recollection that Father Farley "looked a fool but wasn't.
They're taught that." He is no doubt thinking of the
Jesuits' reputation for intellectual cunning. Gifford infers a
connection between these sentences and the moment in Penelope
when Molly remembers that the Jesuits quashed his efforts to
get her a singing gig in church: "he got me on to sing in the
Stabat Mater by going around saying he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music
I put him up to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason
thumping the piano lead Thou me on." The connection may seem a
bit loose, as Bloom is thinking in Lotus Eaters of
getting Molly "into the choir"
whereas she thinks of his getting her a solo part in Rossini's
Stabat Mater. But the sense may well be that Bloom got
her that part by playing up an interest in Cardinal Newman's
Catholic song, and then ("till") the Jesuits learned
of his Protestant connections and denied his choir request.
If this reading is correct, it coheres perfectly with Father
Farley's one appearance in the novel. In Circe, as
Bloom preaches various utopian plans for human happiness
including the "Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile," a
hallucinated version of the Jesuit priest rises up to condemn
him:
FATHER FARLEY
He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN
(Tears up her will.) I’m disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN
(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beast! You abominable person!
