Sweet Lemony Wax
It was a nice walk around Dublin City today.
Surprisingly mild for the end of January
A very interesting place to visit is Sweny’s (pharmacy) in 1 Lincoln Place Dublin 2
It is mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Photo: Peter Chrisp
-Standing
outside the church in Lotus Eaters, Bloom checks his watch and figures
that he still has plenty of time before the funeral:
"How goes the time?
Quarter past. Time enough yet.
Better get that lotion made up. Where is
this?
Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place.
Walking southward along Westland row to its end, and crossing the
perpendicular Lincoln Place, he enters Sweny's pharmacy under a façade
that says "Chemist" and "Druggist-
This business closed in 2009, but the physical shop has been lovingly preserved and repurposed by Joycean volunteers.
Surprised
to have found it so easily, we opened the two half doors and I put my head over the threshold and into the shop.
Half in, I heard someone reading some pages from Ulysses.
The reader stopped.
All present looked in our direction and beckoned us in.
We entered.
Stood awkwardly in the crowded space.
Thought about leaving.
Someone gestured and proffered cushioned seats behind one counter.
So nice.
We were glad of them.
Deus nobis hæc otia fecit
(Latin) a god has made these comforts for us.
And they handed us two copies of Ulysses and told us the page number they were reading aloud.
We joined in and Noreen and myself read an excerpt too.
Bloomsday boaters in abundance.
The character of the shop has not changed since Leopold Bloom bought a bar of lemon soap there while on an errand for his wife Molly.
The errand: to buy his wife her favourite face cream.
"On
Thursday, June 16, 1904, (Bloom) calls into Sweny Chemist Druggist, on Lincoln
Place, to buy his wife Molly her favourite face cream. Drawn to the
sweet wax smell, he buys a cake of Sweny's lemon soap:
"… and I'll take one of those soaps. How much are they?
"Fourpence, sir."
Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax…
He strolled out of the shop… the coolwrappered soap in his left hand."
Noreen's Lemon Soap
There are some prescriptions left unfilled in some of the many dark drawers behind you I was told.
I nodded.
The place reminded me of my trinket cabinet in the studio back home.
Like Leopold Bloom, Noreen, bought a bar of lemon soap.
To take back to Chicago on Tuesday.
I brought home to my wife Mary too,
A small jar of her favourite face cream.
A sweet (but not lemony) floral fragrance.
Nora Barnacle, James Joyce on their way to be married and Fred Monro, 1931
No comments:
Post a Comment