Chapeau and Hats Off!

Post Fifteen

To call Bloom an ad-man, a Maddison Avenue mad man, is to stretch a point. He’s no Don Draper. He sells a bit of newspaper space to local businesses keen to persuade Dubliners to part with hard earned cash. Yet he thinks like an ad-man, he appraises adverts as he goes through the day and significantly he’s cottoned onto the fact that sex sells, so he may yet have a career in the business; despite Molly’s pleas that he get a steady job. He would no doubt have approved of the natty strapline, If You Want To Get Ahead, Get A Hat, which apparently first appeared in the 1940s and has been rolled out on a regular basis ever since.

Bloom of course wears a hat. It might be a bowler we are not sure. At least not as sure as Joseph Strick was for the 1967 movie in which Milo O’Shea models a fine specimen. For at least early on in Calypso and Lotus Eaters we know it simply as a generic hat. As well as protecting Bloom from weather, clement and inclement, it is also a very useful secret repository for hidden notes and business cards.

Stephen’s headgear is rather more illuminated. Mulligan describes it as his ‘Latin quarter hat’ as he flings it to him in Telemachus. In Proteus Stephen thinks of it as his ‘Hamlet hat’ towards which the passing cockle-picker shoots a glance. We assume it to be black with a widish brim that may be manipulated as bohemian style dictates. Buck Mulligan sports a Panama, de rigour summer wear and indicating a more superior style altogether. Dapper too, like Blazes Boylan’s straw boater which in common with Bloom’s hails from John Plasto hatter, of number one, Brunswick Street.

Martin Cunningham and other mourners appropriately adorn silk, heresiarchs flee St. Michael, mitres awry and there’s an interesting phantasmagorical chap in Nighttown, mysterious in his sombrero. But enough of this, its 1904 Dublin, blokes wore hats. No big deal. Emphasis on blokes because this is the male version of the Ulysses Hat Blog; female and androgynous versions remain in gestation.

What might be of interest is what occurs when hats leave heads and I offer a mere four examples for your delectation

1.      Mr. Leopold Bloom wanders into the maternity hospital in Holles Street to enquire of the wellbeing of Mrs. Purefoy now in her third day of labour. Bloom enters; respectful, full of ruth, greets Nurse Callan, also full of ruth. Two decent sympathetic beings. Bloom naturally removes his hat. If we are to believe what Jimmy Joyce wrote in his explanatory letter of this unfathomable Oxen of the Sun episode (and it’s his book so why wouldn’t we?), the hospital is the womb and Bloom entering it represents the ejaculate so he removing his hat allows the sperm unfettered access to do its business. Just why Joyce considered the hospital to be the womb and Bloom the spermatozoon is the whole point of the Oxen of the Sun episode but that explanation with only a sideways glance to hats, is not for now.

2.      Mr. John Henry Menton holds his silk hat inside the gate of Glasnevin cemetery after paying last respects to the buried Paddy Dignam whom he employed in his solicitors office; until he sacked him. The Hades episode has already given us the measure of this nasty bitter man and we are intrigued as Bloom approaches. He points out that he has a crease in his hat probably having sat on it during the service. Some say that this is Bloom asserting some superiority by pointing out this chink in Menton’s armour. I don’t think so, rather Bloom is doing what comes naturally to him, the decent thing though it is accompanied by mischievous thought.

3.      Mr. Stephen Dedalus is punched to the ground by Private Carr. Bloom comes to his aid which includes retrieving Stephen’s Latin quarter/Hamlet hat as it rolls towards the wall. There Bloom sees an eleven year old boy and you know who he is. If you don’t, read the book, you’re in for a treat.

4.      Mr. Charles Stuart Parnell, uncrowned King of Ireland until he wasn’t, also loses his hat. It is knocked off in a scuffle at the offices of the United Ireland newspaper. Again it is Bloom, retriever Bloom, to the rescue and is rewarded with a ‘thank you’ just as some fifteen years later in 1904, Menton squeezes same words through gritted teeth. Parnell’s gratitude is it seems heartfelt, though we only have Bloom’s recollection as evidence of that and decent chap though he may be, he is prone to a little fantasy.

There we have it. No mind-blowing hat busting conclusions but no taking the pith helmet either, just some tall tales for tall hats.

Chapeau.

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