"Clongowes" refers to Clongowes Wood College, a boys'
boarding school run by the Jesuits
in Sallins, County Kildare, a short distance west of Dublin.
James Joyce was a student at Clongowes from 1888 to 1891 (ages
6-9), as was his fictional avatar Stephen Dedalus, whose
life-defining experiences there are represented in A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce had to
leave when his father could no longer afford the bills, and
the same appears to be true of Stephen.
Many people at the time regarded Clongowes as the best
Catholic school in Ireland, and a Jesuit education could be
not only intellectually formidable but also socially
advantageous. John Joyce took pride in the fact that his sons
were educated so prestigiously. In A Portrait, Simon
Dedalus refers contemptuously to the less distinguished
Christian Brothers as “Paddy Stink and Micky Mud. No, let him
stick to the jesuits in God’s name since he began with them.
They’ll be of service to him in after years. Those are the
fellows that can get you a position.” Stephen perhaps
shares some of his father's pride in his education, but he
also thinks ruefully of the gulf between his family
(middle-middle-class and declining rapidly) and the
upbringings that most of his classmates enjoyed. In Proteus
he thinks of the lies he invented to save face: "You
told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an
uncle a general in the army. Come out of them,
Stephen. Beauty is not there."
Experiences from his days at Clongowes continue to fill
Stephen's mind. In Telemachus he remembers how "I
carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am
another now and yet the same." In Proteus, as he
imagines trying to save a drowning man, he thinks back to his
reactions to the water basin at school. "Water cold soft. When
I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes.
Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly!" Still
another experience with cold water at Clongowes—being pushed
into a cesspool by a sadistic classmate—lies behind his morbid fear of the element.
In Ithaca Stephen remembers his time with "Brother
Michael in the infirmary of the college of the Society of
Jesus at Clongowes Wood," as he recovered from the
alarming infection acquired in this incident.
In Wandering Rocks, Father
John Conmee, who was the Rector of Clongowes during
Stephen's time, recalls walking through the green fields that
surround the school: "His thinsocked ankles were
tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field. He
walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of
the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet
evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild."