Looking in the
window, Bloom sees "A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of
creams for a
christian
brother" and thinks that the teacher must be buying them
as a "school treat" for his students. Then he reads the sign
announcing that the British crown has officially sanctioned the
business: "
Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the
King." Such licenses were, and still are, liberally
granted to makers of high-quality products as marketing boons.
Bloom takes this one in a comically literal spirit and imagines
His Majesty ("
God. Save. Our." noble king, he imagines in
his mind's ear) "
Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes
white." In
Circe King Edward VII shows up doing
exactly that. The fantasy is goofy but also fitting, considering
Edward's
insatiable appetites
and copious supply of baby fat.
Some candies, similar to gummy bears, are still sold under the
name "jujubes." The name goes back at least to the beginning of
the 18th century, having been applied then to candies made from
gum arabic, sugar, and fruits from the
Ziziphus jujuba tree,
called red dates, Chinese dates, or jujubes. I have not run
across any records suggesting what exact sort of jujube candies
might have been sold in 1904.
Lemon's confectionery opened in 1842 and lasted well into the
era of mass-produced sweets, finally going out of business in
1984. The candies were produced by its factory on Millmount
Avenue in Drumcondra. Bloom thinks of "
Pineapple rock, lemon
platt, butter scotch," the first and last of which need no
explanation. Lemon platt, also mentioned in the fourth sentence
of
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is glossed
by Gifford as a "Candy made of plaited sticks of lemon-flavored
barley sugar," while Slote cites the definition in the OED: "A
flat sugar-stick, flavoured with lemon."
Today, new businesses occupy all the buildings on the first
block of O'Connell Street, but above the ground-floor signage
for the Foot Locker at number 49 one can still see remnants of
the Lemon's shopfront. A sign with several letters missing
proclaims "The Confectioners Hall," and a colored shield
records the street number and the date of establishment. In
1988 Irish sculptor Robin Buick honored the shop with the
first of 14 bronze sidewalk plaques that let pedestrians
follow in Bloom's Lestrygonians footsteps.
