Oddlet: James Joyce · 1 min read
Oct 30, 2026
The Forecast
At fifty, famous and half-blind, the author of Ulysses still hunted for a cupboard at the first low rumble of thunder.
James Joyce wrote Ulysses. He also spent his adult life terrified of the weather.
His governess Mrs "Dante" Conway, devout and thorough, had taught the small Joyce that thunder was God's wrath, and that at every flash he must cross himself and recite: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, from a sudden and unprovided for death deliver us, O Lord. As a boy he hid in cupboards. It stuck.
At forty, at fifty, famous and spectacled and half-blind, he was still, at the first low rumble, a small boy hunting for a cupboard. In Paris the sculptor August Suter learned to telephone ahead with the forecast, and to keep a folding screen and a blanket in the studio so his sitter could crawl behind them when a storm broke. Friends were forbidden to describe storms in his presence. To a Copenhagen journalist in 1936 he said, plainly, "You must not even tell me stories about thunderstorms."
Once, asked why, he gave the only answer he had.
"You were not brought up in Catholic Ireland."
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- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford UP, 1959; rev. 1982) — canonical biography — Primary source for the astraphobia origin story, the 'Dante' Conway governess, the superstitions catalogue, and Joyce's 24 June 1921 letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver.
- Peter Chrisp, 'Thunderbolts' (From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay) — Detailed compilation of primary-source evidence for Joyce's astraphobia — Ellmann, Stanislaus, August Suter and Ole Vinding, plus the 'You were not brought up in Catholic Ireland' quote.
- Maria Popova, 'James Joyce's Humorous Morphology of the Many Outrageous Myths About Him' (The Marginalian) — Reproduces Joyce's 24 June 1921 letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, including the 'four watches' rumour — the documentary root of the wristwatch story.
- 'The Broken Window of My Soul': Joyce's Horrific Eye Troubles — Detailed timeline of the 11 eye operations 1917-1941, including the 24 August 1917 iridectomy by Ernst Sidler Huguenin.
- Wikipedia: James Joyce — Reliable overview of dates, education, family, publication chronology, and marriage/civil-ceremony details.
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