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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