Sweny's
Sweny's
In Brief
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"—traditional
language in the 19th century. This business closed in 2009,
but the physical shop has been lovingly preserved and
repurposed by Joycean volunteers.
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When Sweny's opened in 1853, pharmacies were very new and the
causes of most diseases were poorly understood, so medicines
consisted of traditional herbs and a few chemicals and
minerals known to produce strong effects in the human body,
chiefly laxative and analgesic. Manufacturing was in no way
standardized, professionalized, automated, or regulated.
Pharmacists compounded cures from
stocks housed on the premises in various jars, boxes,
and drawers, sometimes following physicians' prescriptions but
often engaging in entrepreneurial experimentation. They
measured ingredients on heavy scales with little brass
weights, crushed them in the "Mortar and pestle"
mentioned in Lotus Eaters, mixed them with liquids,
and poured the mixtures into bottles or rolled and sliced them
into pills. Some products purported to treat particular
ailments, but cure-alls and health-promoting "tonics" were
legion.
Pharmacies also captured the kind of trade that today is
handled by the cosmetics counters of department stores. They
compounded soaps, hair oils, skin lotions, and perfumes, and
Joyce's narrative notes that Sweny's also carries a stock of
"sponges and loofahs." Bloom comes to Sweny's seeking more of
Molly's skin lotion, which has been manufactured in the shop:
"But the recipe is in the other trousers....When was it
I got it made up last?...First of the month it must have been
or the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions
book."
The "chemist" flips through page after page of his book, prompting Bloom to tell him that the mixture contained "Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin," and also "orangeflower water," and finally "white wax." It seems clear that a lot of business was generated, in medicines as well as cosmetics, by appealing to customers' sense of smell. Almond products have a pleasing aroma, and "benzoin," like the opoponax of Molly's perfume, is an aromatic resin derived from an Asian tree (it is often used in perfumes). Prompted by the thought that "That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have," Bloom decides also to buy a bar of lemon soap.
In addition to these and other olfactory impressions ("Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to have," "the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs"), Joyce studded his snapshot of Sweny's with a couple of vivid visual details. Before he enters Sweny's Bloom thinks of chemists in general, "Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir," which Gifford glosses (without citing a source) as referring to "Large hanging jars of colored liquid used to decorate (and advertise) chemists' shops." A bit later, inside the shop, Bloom observes "All his alabaster lilypots," which Slote glosses with a definition from the OED: "an ornamental jar decorated with a representation of a lily." I have not discovered photographs or drawings of these two kinds of ornamental jars.
Today, tourists in Dublin can retrace Bloom's steps, walking
into a shop which has retained some of the trappings of the
old pharmacy but which now pays the rent by selling used books
and bars of lemon soap. Readings of Joyce's fictions take
place throughout the week, some of them in French and Italian,
and visitors are encouraged to take a seat in the cramped
space and join in. Sweny's is a must-stop for Joyceans
visiting Dublin. Although registered as a charity, it receives
no money from the government and relies upon a group of
energetic volunteers to keep things going. Rents are rising
all the time in Dublin, and financial contributions are
welcomed:
