“Your hat is a little crushed”

Leopold Bloom and John Henry Menton have a history. “I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls,” Menton tells Ned Lambert. It was the night that Bloom and Marion (Molly) Tweedy first met, at a party at Mat Dillon’s. Menton danced with Molly that night, and he wonders why she ever married the likes of Bloom: “She had plenty of game in her then.” Attending the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom spots Menton, Dignam’s one-time employer. From the “Hades” episode:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

This moment reminds me of the familiar scene in group meetings of all kinds: one person makes a suggestion and it’s ignored. Another person then makes the same suggestion and it’s suddenly a great idea.

After the snub, Bloom thinks: “Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way.”

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)