Hamilton Long's
Hamilton Long's
In Brief
As Bloom steps out of St. Andrew's church at 10:15, he
decides to get some lotion made up for Molly at Sweny's, and
then casts his thoughts to another nearby pharmacy: "Hamilton
Long's, founded in the year of the flood." This pharmacy had
several shops in the Dublin area, but the closest one to
Bloom's location on Westland Row, and to the Huguenot cemetery
that he thinks is "near there," was at 107 Grafton Street. It
is shown in the accompanying photograph.
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Gifford and Slote note that Thom's listed Hamilton,
Long, & Co., Ltd. as "state apothecaries, perfumers, and
manufacturers of mineral waters." The large signs on the
facade of the Grafton Street building described it as a
"medical hall and compounding establishment."
No annotators—or critics, to my knowledge—have said a word
about "founded in the year of the flood." Unless and
until someone pegs the establishment of the company to some
year in which Ireland saw terrible flooding, this phrase must
be taken as Bloom's little joke about the tendency of
pharmaceutical shops to stay put. As he puts it in the
preceding sentences of Lotus Eaters, "Chemists
rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to
stir." Hamilton Long's may not have been around since
the landing on Mount Ararat, but they have certainly stayed
put, doing business at multiple locations in the Dublin area
to the present day.
