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performance, that he should look to his clients’ best interests

and speak at the bar rather than chat away his time in the

newspaper office and drink at a bar.

The other lawyer worth mentioning in Joyce’s text is

John Henry Menton, “solicitor, commissioner for oaths and

affidavits” (1986: 94), who, like O’Molloy, has a brief

encounter with Bloom on 16 June 1904. Recalling who the

familiar face belonged to at the cemetery, Menton comments

on the man’s wife first, seeing Molly as a sex object: “She was

a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen

seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon’s in Roundtown.

And a good armful she was” (87). He then confesses that he

“fell foul of [Bloom] one evening . . . at bowls” (88), which

results in his long-held grudge against the man who beat him at

sport. So resentful of his rival is he that after learning of

Bloom’s relation to Molly, he exclaims, “In God’s name . . .

what did she marry a coon like that for? She had plenty of

game in her then” (88). Bloom also recalls that unpleasant

incident later in the same episode:

Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen

because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the

bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at

first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the

lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if

women are by. (94-95)

Bloom interprets Menton’s “rooted dislike” to him as a

reaction to the humiliation he felt at the game, especially when

the defeat was witnessed by women. In an attempt to show his

friendliness, Bloom tells the solicitor of the dinge in the side of

his hat; Menton, however, “stared at [Bloom] for an instant

without moving” (95), as though the man’s utterances went

unheard. It is Martin Cunningham, a Dublin Castle official

Menton prefers not to offend, who rescues Bloom from

embarrassment. Very likely Menton detests Bloom and treats