Richie Goulding

Joyce modeled Stephen's "uncle Richie" and "aunt Sara" Goulding on his mother's brother William Murray and William's wife, Josephine Giltrap Murray. Richie Goulding works as a "costdrawer" or cost accountant (a position that involves scrutinizing the costs of a business to improve its management) in a firm of Dublin solicitors called "Collis and Ward." In Proteus Stephen thinks of him doing his paperwork at home in the morning. Wandering Rocks shows Goulding moving about town with his "costbag" of work papers. In Sirens he joins Bloom for an early supper in the Ormond hotel dining room.

John Hunt 2016

Mrs. William Murray with her daughters, in a photograph reproduced by Richard Ellmann courtesy of the Cornell University Library. Source: Ellmann, James Joyce.