89 (U437.3009) BELLO: (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling

 Cast 89. Page 437, line 3009.

　BELLO: (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?

Episode 15. The brothel-keeper Bella Cohen has become masculinised into Bello, while Bloom has been transformed into a woman.

It is suggested that about ten years earlier, around 1895, Bloom dealt in second-hand clothes and theatrical costumes, and that at the Shelbourne Hotel he bought old garments and black underclothes from a Mrs Miriam Dandrade.

O yes! Mrs so Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express.

（U132.350）

It is also hinted elsewhere that Bloom once dressed himself in Mrs Dandrade’s underclothes, and Bello’s speech here clearly builds on that suggestion.

The long list Bello reels off appears to consist of imaginary names of Mrs Dandrade’s lovers or “clients.”

The names themselves do not seem to carry especially deep significance.

Laci Daremo is a pun on the Italian phrase “Là ci darem la mano” (“There I shall give you my hand”). It comes from the duet in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (Act I, Scene 9), in which Don Giovanni seduces Zerlina. It is also one of the songs Molly Bloom is due to sing on the concert tour being organised by her lover Boylan.

The Gordon Bennett Cup was an international motor race held six times between 1900 and 1905. It was founded by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the wealthy Paris-based owner of the New York Herald. In the time of the novel, the next race was due to take place in Germany on the day after 16 June 1904.

Henri Fleury is a variation on Henry Flower, the pseudonym Bloom uses in his secret correspondence with Martha Clifford.

“Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?” is a playful variation on the phrase “It is enough to make a cat laugh,” meaning something outrageously funny. Apparently the expression was popularised by advertising for the 1893 Broadway production of Charley’s Aunt, the farce by the English playwright Brandon Thomas.

Advertisement for the Sydney production of Charley’s Aunt (Everyone’s, 1931)

You can see the phrase “enough to make a cat laugh.”

Vol.12 No.576 (4 March 1931) (nla.gov.au)

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