A visit to the grave of Lucia Anna Joyce 1907-1982
In a post last year, my review of Brenda Maddox’s ‘Nora’, I mentioned that the Barnacles were kinsfolk of us Coynes, back in the time of Ancient Irish History. Both names descend from the Irish name O’Cadhain. I thought then I should visit the grave of Lucia Joyce, only daughter of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, buried some thirty five miles from here in the town of Northampton, in the English Midlands.
I set out, only a second trip out of town since the lockdown, and arrived in Northampton mid-morning. I felt I should have prepared better. I did not have the grave location, the cemetery, Kingsthorpe, could be very large – there was the risk I would not find it although I had read it was in the East European section. I was waiting at the traffic lights to turn left onto the A508 to drive the last couple of miles when I spotted a tradesman’s van coming from that direction. The name on the van was ‘White and Joyce‘ – after this I was confident I would find it!
Not far from the main entrance I was soon aware of foreign names, Polish, Greek etc. Soon in red marble close to a pathway I spotted it – simply stating ‘Lucia Anna Joyce. Trieste 1907. Northampton 1982.’ Her Trieste birthplace had presumably resulted in a woman born to Irish parents in an Italian border city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire being deemed ‘East European’? So how did she come to be buried in Northampton and not in the Joyce family grave in Switzerland?
When World War Two broke out in 1939, Lucia was already in a mental institution in France. As the family fled to neutral Switzerland there was no time to sort out continued treatment for her. She was caught in German-occupied France when her father, seemingly the closest to her, died in 1941. In 1951 she was transferred to the St.Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton, where she had been a patient for a while in the 1930s. After Nora’s death in 1951 Harriet Weaver Shaw, James Joyce’s great patron, became her legal guardian – a possible reason for the move to England? After she died Harriet’s goddaughter took on the role.
Although Lucia never saw her mother again after 1939 she did keep in touch with other family members. Her brother Giorgio visited her in 1967, while her aunt Nelly ( widow of Stanislaus) and cousin, Jimmy Joyce, kept in touch after they moved to live in London. Giorgio died before Lucia. He died in 1976 and was buried alongside his parents at the cemetery at Fluntern. Apparently alongside the three names is a space for the fourth, presumably reserved for Lucia. According to Brenda Maddox, however, it was Lucia’s ‘own choice’ to be buried in Northampton.
Today the grave is visited by members of Northampton’s Irish community, literary fans of the Joyces, and, it was rumoured, on one occasion before he died in 1986, by an elderly Samuel Beckett who left a note.
Img. Grave of Lucia Joyce, Plot 11044, Kingsthorpe Cemetery, Northampton/ author
Cadhain's blog 
Thank you for the interesting post. I was talking with my wife about how often schizophrenia diagnoses seem to come up among the pre-war intelligentsia, especially among women. But apparently Einstein also had a son diagnosed with it as well. You convey the experience of visiting Lucia’s grave very well, and the events leading up to her time in Midlands.
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