Is Blazes Boylan really the worst man in Dublin?

—Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed up in it?

Author’s note: If you’re interested in further exploring the psyche of Blazes Boylan, I recommend checking out Margot Norris’ excellent article, Don’t Call Him “Blazes”: Hugh E. Boylan’s Narrative Caricature, linked below under “Further Reading.”

Throughout Ulysses, Leopold Bloom’s steps are haunted by a spectre bedecked in a white straw hat - Blazes Boylan. We readers don’t encounter Boylan “in the flesh” much at all throughout the novel. He mainly manifests as a dread, horny phantom skulking in the darkest recesses of Bloom’s psyche. Boylan is managing Molly’s upcoming music tour to Belfast and is scheduled to meet her that afternoon to “discuss business,” wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Because of this impending doom, Bloom has dubbed Boylan the “worst man in Dublin.” We can easily empathize with Bloom’s hatred of Boylan, but since most of Ulysses is told from Bloom’s point of view, it’s clear that we are presented with a biased view of ol’ Blazes. Sleeping with someone else’s spouse is widely regarded as dirtbag behavior, but is Blazes Boylan really the worst man in Dublin?

Given that Boylan’s off-page presence is far larger than his on-page one, let’s take stock of what we actually know about him and try to separate the facts from Bloom’s understandable bias. To begin with, Boylan’s general vibe and aesthetic are repeatedly described as “jingly” and “jaunty.” Consider this passage from “Wandering Rocks”:

“By the provost’s wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.
Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders’ skyblue frontlets and high action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips.”

In a vacuum, Boylan comes across as jolly, irreverent and flirtatious, playfully making eyes at the ladies in the passing Viceregal Cavalcade. Boylan is the epitome of sartorial excellence in his straw hat and indigo suit. And who doesn’t love those socks with little clocks on them? When Paddy Dignam, Jr. sees Boylan earlier in the same episode, he thinks of him as a “toff” with a “swell pair of kicks,” affirming Boylan’s eye-catching style. His signature white straw hat is how Bloom and the boys in Dignam Sr.’s funeral cortège in “Hades” spot him instantly outside the Red Bank oyster bar in D’Olier St. Mr. Power quips that Boylan is “airing his quiff”, so we can infer that Boylan also sports a flashy hairdo. In “Sirens,” Boylan is referred to as a “young gentleman”, and while we don’t know his exact age, it seems his jaunty, fashionable appearance is in part the blush of relative youth.

So, we’ve got “jaunty” covered, but why does Boylan jingle? Boylan is often seen walking with his hands in pocket, implying that they are full of money, thus the jingling. Maintaining such a meticulous personal style requires resources, afterall. This implication is emphasized by the detail that Bloom has his suits turned by Mesias the tailor, but Boylan has his suits custom made by Mesias. In “Calypso” Bloom recalls Molly asking about Boylan’s affluence when she met him at a bazaar dance. Apparently he even smells rich:

“Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing.”

Boylan is referred to as a “billsticker” in later episodes of Ulysses, but upon closer inspection, he has clearly been successful in his career as a promoter and advertiser. For instance, we know he hires sandwichmen to march around Dublin, though Bloom quickly assesses that the sandwichmen in “Lestrygonians” belong to someone named M’Glade. Perhaps Bloom’s disdain for sandwichmen in that episode is just a bit of sour grapes. In addition to promos and ads, Boylan invests in entertainment, such as Molly’s singing tour, and sport, such as Myler Keogh’s big fight. He has been successful enough at his trade to employ a staff and keep an office in D’Olier St. Boylan’s reputation for business prowess and ample cash flow are also confirmed by Tom Rochford’s desire to pitch his invention to Boylan in “Sirens.” The worst thing Boylan’s friends call him behind his back is “Blazes,” which we learn from Molly he doesn’t exactly appreciate, as he insists that she call him “Hugh.” Apparently he has a habit of using the word “blazes,” and his friends have honored this peculiar verbal quirk with an unflattering nickname.

Boylan’s youth, style and wealth would be enough to make anyone jealous, so again, we can empathize with Bloom a bit at having someone so charismatic take aim at his partner. Bloom does ok, to be sure, but Boylan is far more successful as an advertiser. Bloom spends the day scrambling after a single ad buy from Alexander Keyes, while Boylan breezily jaunts around in his tailored suit, oozing confidence, seemingly without a care in the world while women swoon and men clamber to gain his favor. No one is pitching their brilliant ideas to Bloom, a man whose head is also filled with dozens of business ideas. No barmaids bronze, gold or otherwise flirt with Bloom. His wife Molly mostly just grunts and demands tea and toast from him. Even without the impending adultery, Bloom might well see Boylan as an obnoxious showboater, deservedly or not.

But is there a darker side to Boylan? Surely no one can be that perfect. While the men in the Ormond Hotel like Boylan well enough, the crowd in Barney Kiernan’s pub in the “Cyclops” episode takes a skeptical view. First of all, they are quick to undercut the source of Boylan’s wealth.The anonymous narrator is quick to note that his father was a horse trader of dubious loyalty:

“Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That’s the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip.”

The Citizen also has his eye on the Boylans’ misdeeds:

“—Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time.
—We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son. We know what put English gold in his pocket.”

The controversy around Myler Keogh the boxer really sticks in the craw of these inveterate gamblers. Keogh was a real-life boxer, but the scandal involving him as described in Ulysses seems to be fictional. The story goes that Boylan stashed Keogh away somewhere in Co. Carlow to keep him sober in the lead up to his big fight but then spread rumors that Keogh was on the sauce to skew the odds in his favor, leading to a big payday for Boylan when Keogh won the fight. Perhaps Boylan the serial entrepreneur is just a greasy conman, rubbing his ill-gotten wealth in the noses of honest men like the Citizen and the rest. While the Myler Keogh story is juicy gossip, it is worth noting that the men in Barney Kiernan’s pub consider Bloom to be a world class schemer as well, not only “defrauding orphans and widows,” but also secretly manipulating the political world by laundering his political machinations through Arthur Griffith. Both of these claims are astoundingly untrue, so we can assume that Boylan may be getting an unfair shake as well.

We also get the impression of Boylan as an oversexed lothario, but this may also be misplaced or at least exaggerated. Boylan is complicit in Molly’s betrayal of her husband, a deeply cruel act, but I don’t think there is evidence to suggest that Boylan is the sex-crazed monster Bloom makes him out to be. It’s completely understandable that Bloom would cast such a dark view onto Boylan to preserve his own ego, but it’s not a fair portrayal, not that Boylan is totally innocent either. So, what do we actually know Boylan has done? In “Wandering Rocks,” we see Boylan purchasing gifts for his impending liaison with Molly, and during the transaction Boylan looks “into the cut of [the shopgirl’s] blouse.” Gross and disrespectful to the shopgirl, absolutely, but Bloom himself has done worse just that morning. While in Dlugacz’s butcher shop in “Calypso,” Bloom lusts after the “vigorous hips” of the “nextdoor girl.” He then attempts to follow her to ogle her “moving hams” and then fantasizes about her having sex in Eccles Lane with an off-duty constable. Gross, disrespectful, and certifiably creepy. We don’t have as comprehensive access to Boylan’s thoughts as we do to Bloom’s, in fairness, but Bloom is clearly willing to take nonconsensual actions to achieve his sexual desires. As far as we know, Boylan does not visibly masturbate at women on the beach, either, which is an actual sex crime. His liaison with Molly, while unethical and disrespectful to Bloom, is consensual and welcome.

There’s also the issue of Miss Dunne, Boylan’s secretary who we meet in “Wandering Rocks.” Bloom, we recall, has fraudulently placed an ad in the Irish Times seeking a “smart lady typist” but then just propositioned his candidates instead. This is straight up sexual harassment. Martha seems into it, but she is clearly an outlier. In a systematic manner, Bloom has sent such indecent letters to dozens of women who were hoping to find employment. Intriguingly, in “Circe”, Bloom is accused of harassing a “Miss Dunn” in a similar manner:

“Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D’Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.”

Given the outlandish nature of the other accusations levied against Bloom in this passage, this may or may not be a real incident. Since he telephoned “mentally,” he may have just thought about making creepy calls to Miss Dunne but never pulled the trigger. Despite the misspelling of her name, the address on D’Olier St. points to Boylan’s office. Both Blooms think about Boylan eating oysters as an aphrodisiac prior to meeting Molly, but it seems like he works either in the same building as or in a neighboring building to the Red Bank. For Miss Dunne’s part, her biggest complaint against Boylan as a boss is that he makes her work too late in the evening. Perhaps that’s why she might hypothetically apply to the position advertised in the paper by Mr. Henry Flower, Esq. Admittedly, we know very little about Miss Dunne, and at least in her brief appearance in “Wandering Rocks”, she makes no complaints about Boylan as a sex pest. I doubt Lizzie Twigg would say the same of Mr. Flower.

Finally, to get a handle on James Joyce’s intentions for Boylan, we should look at his real life inspirations behind the character. Like many Ulysses characters, Boylan is based on real people, and, like Bloom, Boylan is a composite of many such people. Boylan’s name and connection to horse traders is a melange of various Dublin characters from Joyce’s era. In his biography of Joyce, Richard Ellman notes there was a horse trader named James Daly who worked off Island Bridge like Boylan’s father but who bore no other similarities to the Boylans. There was another horse dealer active in the 1890’s with the surname Boylan nicknamed either “Blazes” or “Blazer”, so a good candidate for the origin of Boylan’s name. A third horse trader, Ted Keogh, also managed a prizefighter and ran a stall in Merchant’s Arch near to where Bloom buys The Sweets of Sin. He apparently was a snappy dresser fond of straw hats. Ellmann thinks the name “Hugh” was taken from Joyce’s UCD classmate Hugh Boyle Kennedy, a future Chief Justice of the High Court, as a private joke for the author.

Boylan’s connection to the Dublin music scene is likely taken from a notable tenor of the era, Augustus Boylan. This Boylan sang at the 1904 Feis Ceoil, as did Joyce. He also sang with stars of the day like John McCormack and J.C. Doyle and became famous for songs like “Seaside Girls,” “The Young May Moon,” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song” - basically all of Blazes’ greatest hits.

Most intriguing to me as an inspiration for Boylan is Roberto Prezioso, described by Ellmann as a “jaunty, dapper Venetian.” Joyce met Prezioso when the latter was a student in Joyce’s English class. Prezioso was very supportive of Joyce’s writing career and helped Joyce get his work published in the Trieste newspaper, Il Piccolo della Sera. In 1912, Prezioso attempted to have an affair with Nora, who rejected him. Joyce wove this pain into his art, using this betrayal for the basis of his only stage play, Exiles, giving the name “Robert” to the unsuccessful betrayer in that work. Ellmann sees parallels to the portrayal of Blazes Boylan as a dapper man-about-town with a penchant for clandestine romance in Prezioso, who was all of those things.

In my opinion, Joyce used Molly’s tryst with Boylan to work through his lingering fear and doubt about the “what-ifs” of this near miss. Particularly notable to this interpretation is that Joyce wrote a nonviolent smiting for Molly’s suitor. Rather than the bloodbath that concludes The Odyssey, Bloom’s rival is destroyed by the fact that it’s Leopold, not Blazes, who is in Molly’s thoughts as she falls back to sleep. We lack too much information to have a well-rounded understanding of Boylan like we do Bloom, but all in all, I think there are seedier characters lurking in Joyce’s Dublin than Blazes Boylan.

Is Blazes Boylan really the worst man in Dublin?

Further Reading:

Was Leopold Bloom a Freemason?

Leopold Bloom’s Gorgonzola