Sir, It is heartening to read in your property supplement (April 10th) that Heritage Properties has applied for permission to restore the house of Usher's Island where James Joyce set the story The Dead. It is not so generally known, however, that Joyce, also made use of the house in A Portrait of the Artist.
It features in the section which begins. He was sitting in the narrow breakfast room high up in the old dark windowed house. The firelight flickered on the wall and beyond the window a spectral dusk was gathering upon the ever." The scene takes place in great aunts living quarters on the top floor of the house and he alludes to the floor of the house again in Ulysses.
If Heritage really is serious about revitalising the building as a fitting "cultural facility celebrating James Joyce", no doubt it is about to reinstate this upper floor (the house has been decapitated). Should it fail to do so, its aspirations to pay homage to Joyce could only be deemed half hearted and farcical. Yours, etc., Dungarvan, Co Waterford.