Who Was the Real Paddy Dignam?

“—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very suddenly.”

This post is a part of an occasional series on the real people behind the characters in Ulysses.

You can listen to a podcast discussion of this topic here.

Ulysses’ sixth episode, “Hades,” centers around the funeral of Leopold Bloom’s acquaintance, Paddy Dignam. Dignam appears in Ulysses mainly as a memory or a ghost. We know only a little about him - that he had a red face, that he was a family man, that he once worked for John Henry Menton, and that he was a drinker, or as Molly Bloom so eloquently puts it, a “comical little teetotum always stuck up in some pub corner.” We get very few biographical clues from Leopold Bloom about Dignam, leaving a keen reader scratching their head. Who exactly was Paddy Dignam?

Like many characters in Ulysses, Paddy Dignam has a real-world counterpart - a Joyce family friend called Matthew Kane. Like Dignam, Kane died suddenly and left behind five children for whom his friends raised money after his death. Dignam died of alcoholism, though in polite conversation his death is blamed on a heart condition. Kane, on the other hand, drowned in July of 1904 on a boating excursion in Dublin Bay. Kane dove into the water for a swim. While in the water, he experienced some kind of acute distress - some sources say heart attack, others say stroke. Regardless, Kane was pulled from the water but didn’t survive.

A funeral cortège carried Kane from his home in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) to Glasnevin Cemetery, along nearly the same route as Dignam’s cortège from Sandymount. Unlike Dignam’s funeral, Kane’s funeral was well-attended, with The Freeman’s Journal reporting the attendance of both J. S. Joyce and J. A. Joyce. Other names on the list will be familiar to Joyce aficionados as well, such as John Henry Menton and Alf Bergan (who appear as characters in Ulysses), and Alfred Hunter, long believed to be the model for Leopold Bloom (though that thinking has changed in recent decades.) The ceremony was officiated by a Fr. Coffey. Like at Dignam’s funeral, Kane’s wife was not in attendance.

Kane was the inspiration for more than just Paddy Dignam, though. Kane, who worked as the chief clerk of the Crown Solicitor’s Office in Dublin Castle, was quite influential among his friends. He had convinced John Joyce, James’ father, and several of their friends to attend a Jesuit-organized retreat for businessmen. Stanislaus Joyce relayed the story to his brother James, who had moved out of Dublin by that point. The comedic potential of their less-than-pious father fumbling his way through a church service at the behest of his charismatic friend was just too great. This anecdote was transformed into the Dubliners story “Grace,” and Kane became the good-natured Martin Cunningham on the page.

Thus, Kane is split between two Ulysses characters, though Cunningham is far more fleshed out than Dignam. It’s not surprising since “Grace” and Martin Cunningham both pre-date Ulysses, but Joyce wanted to incorporate his memory of Kane’s funeral into his novel. It’s not clear to me why he didn’t write about Martin Cunningham’s funeral instead of introducing this new character. Perhaps he wanted Paddy to feel ghost-like, a wispy memory rather than a fully-realized character like Cunningham. Maybe Joyce is soft at heart and couldn’t kill off sweet Martin. Maybe he simply wanted to have one man in the funeral party who was sympathetic towards Bloom. Perhaps there was a more personal reason, as we’ll explore in a bit. Curiously, in “Ithaca,” Bloom recalls a list of friends who have passed on, and both Dignam and Kane are on the list:

“Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount).”

While Kane’s funeral inspired the creation of Dignam, his life and personality inspired the creation of Cunningham. He and Cunningham share a profession and an admiration for the Jesuits. Bloom notes to himself in “Lotus Eaters” that Martin Cunningham knows “the very reverend John Conmee S.J.” This is likely a call-back to Cunningham’s reverence for the Jesuit Order in “Grace”:

“They’re the grandest order in the Church, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham, with enthusiasm. “The General of the Jesuits stands next to the Pope…. Every other order of the Church had to be reformed at some time or other but the Jesuit Order was never once reformed. It never fell away.”

Stanislaus Joyce describes Kane as a “squat, black-bearded man” who was “ignorant but shrewd, and his energy and self-confidence caused him to be regarded by his friends as very reliable and level-headed, a solid man.” Kane’s beard can be seen in his photo, as well as his fashionably tall hat, a fashion choice he shares with Cunningham. “Hades” opens with the line that reflects Cunningham’s style and bearing:

“Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself.”

The descriptions of Cunningham tend to veer away from words like “squat” and focus instead on the kindness written in the lines of his face and on the intelligence behind his eyes that reminded his friends of Shakespeare. From “Grace”:

“Everyone had respect for poor Martin Cunningham. He was a thoroughly sensible man, influential and intelligent. His blade of human knowledge, natural astuteness particularised by long association with cases in the police courts, had been tempered by brief immersions in the waters of general philosophy. He was well informed. His friends bowed to his opinions and considered that his face was like Shakespeare’s.”

And from “Hades”:

“Martin Cunningham’s large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say. ”

I’m not sure if I see Shakespeare in Kane’s face myself, but his gravestone in Glasnevin lists him as the model for both Dignam and Cunningham in Ulysses, as well as the immortal bard. I guess Shakespeare is in the eye of the beholder.

Kane and Cunningham share an equally bleak personal life. It’s well known among Cunningham’s social circle that his wife is an alcoholic who has repeatedly pawned the family’s furnishings. From “Grace”:

“[Cunningham’s] own domestic life was not very happy. People had great sympathy with him for it was known that he had married an unpresentable woman who was an incurable drunkard. He had set up house for her six times; and each time she had pawned the furniture on him.”

Bloom also notes this in “Hades”:

“And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that.”

Kane’s wife was absent from his funeral just as Dignam’s was, but in Kane’s case, that was because he had put her in “a home for inebriates,” as Stanislaus described it. Dignam’s wife isn’t shut away in an institution, though we later learn in “Circe” that Dignam’s ghost is concerned about her drinking:

“How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry.”

The final thing to consider is the origin of the name “Dignam.” “Matthew Kane” and “Martin Cunningham” begin with similar initials, so that would seem to be the inspiration there. How about Dignam, then? Vincent Altman O’Connor suspects that the name Dignam is taken from a man called James Dignam, who was a prominent supporter of the temperance movement in Dublin. In his opinion, portraying a Dignam as someone who drank himself into an early grave is an example of Joyce’s wicked sense of irony.

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Journalist Senan Molony hypothesizes that the name Patrick Dignam could have been inspired by a man of the same name who died during the Easter Rising in 1916. Real Dignam was the same age as Fictional Dignam and lived less than 100 meters from Bloom home. In fact, Bloom would have walked past Real Dignam’s home on the way to buy his kidney in “Calypso”. Real Dignam drove a van for Downes Bakery, thus the carriage seats in “Hades” are untidily littered with bread crumbs. You can find his name on the Glasnevin Memorial Wall that was erected to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising.

In the end, Paddy Dignam is a bit of an empty vessel. We don’t know much about him as readers, and even Bloom doesn’t know him particularly well. This allows us to project onto Paddy whatever we want. Bloom’s grief related to Dignam is really grief for his lost father and son. Bloom’s attendance at his funeral is an act of compassion, as he takes time out of his day to mourn a man he barely knew. Martin Cunningham, on the other hand, plays a more tangible role in Bloom’s day. After all, during Bloom’s disastrous encounter with the Citizen in “Cyclops,” it’s kind, intelligent Martin Cunningham who comes to Bloom’s rescue.

Further Reading:

Incubism

Ulysses & The Odyssey: Hades