Cast 86: page 63, line 240.
A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame’s school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then? What does she say?
This is from Episode 5. Bloom has walked down Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, then south along Lime Street, west along Hanover Street, and south again to the post office (♦)at Westland Row Station, where he picks up the letter being held for him from his secret correspondent Martha. After that he doubles back along Lombard Street, turns from Great Brunswick Street into Cumberland Street, and arrives near Meade’s timberyard(★). He has slipped into a back lane so he can read the letter in secret. These are his thoughts.
Only now have I noticed that, for some reason, he takes a rather roundabout route to the post office.
1. Sill — windowsill or doorsill?
“Tabby” means a striped cat.
“Pity to disturb them” refers, I think, both to the children playing marbles on the ground and to the cat dozing in the warmth.
So what exactly is the “sill”?
Looking it up, it seems to mean the flat horizontal base at the bottom of either a window or a door.
a flat piece of wood, stone, etc. that forms the base of a window or door.
— Cambridge Dictionary
The lower part of a window is a windowsill; the lower part of a door is a doorsill. Cats usually sleep on windowsills, of course, but because the cat is being mentally paired with the children playing marbles outside, I am inclined to imagine a doorsill here.
2. Mohammed and the cat
Mohammed is said to have had a cat named Muezza. One day, when he was about to go out to prayer, he found Muezza asleep on the sleeve of the garment he intended to wear. Rather than wake the cat, he cut off the sleeve and went to prayer with one sleeve missing.
I tried to track down the source of this story, but it is not entirely straightforward. From what I could find, it may actually belong to Ahmad al-Rifa'i, founder of the Rifaʿi order. It is said to appear in Siyar aʿlam al-nubalaʾ by Al-Dhahabi.
The anecdote runs roughly like this: one Friday, al-Rifaʿi woke to find it was already time for prayer, but a cat was asleep on his robe. He asked his wife for scissors, cut away the part of the robe under the cat, and went out to pray. When the cat later woke and wandered off, he asked for thread and had the robe sewn back together. Seeing that his wife was displeased, he told her not to worry: nothing had been lost, and only good had come of it.
In just two lines, Joyce gives us both Bloom’s kindness and his habit of storing away odd scraps of knowledge.
3. The marble game
What exactly are the children playing with when the text says “marbles”?
As toys, marbles in the nineteenth century were made from marble, ceramic, or clay. Mass production of clay marbles in the United States dates from the 1890s, and machine-made glass marbles appear in America in 1903. So for Dublin in 1904, I suspect the children are more likely to be playing with stone, ceramic, or clay marbles than with modern glass ones.
Bloom, too, remembers playing marbles as a child. He attended a juvenile school run by Mrs Ellis.
Why with satisfaction?
Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.
（U585.1495）
4. Where the flower goes
Bloom is just about to open Martha’s letter when he notices that a flower has been pinned to it. One of the pleasures of Ulysses is that tracing the movements of Bloom’s small possessions can be almost as satisfying as tracing the movements of the characters themselves. So let me follow the route of the letter and the flower.
Episode 5
Bloom receives Martha’s letter at the post office and puts it into his “sidepocket,” presumably the side pocket of his coat. （U59.65）
As he walks, he opens the envelope inside the pocket, takes out the letter, and crushes the envelope into a little ball.
Something is pinned to the letter. （U59.76–）
On Brunswick Street, he takes the letter from his pocket and slips it inside the newspaper he is carrying, The Freeman’s Journal, which he must have bought somewhere earlier in the episode. （U93.221）
At Meade’s timberyard, he opens the letter wrapped in the newspaper and reads it. This is the present passage.
After reading it, he removes the flower that has been pinned to the letter and places it in his “heartpocket,” presumably the breast pocket of his coat. （U64.260–） The letter goes back into the side pocket. （U64.267）
He fingers the letter again in his side pocket, pulls out the pin, and throws it away into the street. （U64.275–）
After that, the flower remains for a long time in Bloom’s breast pocket, while the letter stays in the side pocket.
Episode 15
In Nighttown, on Mecklenburg Street, when he is questioned by the nightwatch, Bloom takes the flower out of his breast pocket. （U372.738）
Episode 17
The letter from Martha, which has remained in the side pocket all this time, is finally put away by Bloom after he gets home, into a locked drawer of the sideboard. （U593.1840–）
The flower was probably enclosed because Bloom is corresponding under the pseudonym Henry Flower.
The novel never tells us what finally becomes of the flower.
For the method behind this blog, see ⇒ Here
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