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“OMNIUM GATHERUM”
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him rudely not only because he beat him at bowls long time
ago, but because the rival who married a sexually attractive
woman is a Jew and canvasser
—
a member of a degenerate race
and not employed in a traditionally respectable occupation.
Chauvinistic, narrow-minded, and snobbish, Menton takes
advantage of women, harbors long-lasting enmity, and slights
the socially inferior
—
and yet he is supposed to be a
practitioner of law and representative of justice. The irony
cannot be more obvious.
Besides the talents of the press and the law, those who
dominate the conversation in the newspaper office include the
Latin professor MacHugh, an intellectual in the field of
Classics and education. Sarcastically addressed by Crawford as
“bloody old pedagogue” (Joyce, 1986: 104), the professor is
portrayed as a shabby scholar with “frayed stained shirtcuffs”
(108) and “soiled,” “unglazed linen collar” (116). But what
characterizes him when he first appears in the episode is his
ravenousness: he busies himself in eating. As Bloom enters the
office, MacHugh murmurs “biscuitfully” (102), listening to
Ned Lambert’s reading of the Dawson speech on the paper.
The professor makes disparaging remarks on the speech, and
meanwhile eats biscuits avariciously: “He ate off the crescent
of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered, made
ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand” (102). Bloom
then inquires about the speech, and “the professor said
between his chews” (103). Hungering for food rather than
knowledge, showing greediness instead of learnedness,
MacHugh undermines what we expect of a scholar and
educator: he appears to be more a ravenous animal than a
learned intellectual.
An unquestionably oral being, MacHugh is busily
engaged not only in eating but also in talking. He begins his
lecture on Rome after O’Molloy makes a casual remark on
Imperium romanum
: “We mustn’t be led away by words, by