As the funeral procession in Hades approaches the
River Liffey from Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street, crosses
the river, and proceeds north along O'Connell Street, it
passes by monumental statues of four great Irish leaders (Smith O'Brien, O'Connell, Gray, and Mathew), a "foundation
stone" where the statue of a fifth great Irish leader (Parnell) was eventually
to be erected, and the immense towering statue of a great
English leader (Nelson).
With a kind of faint retrospective comedy, these six majestic
monuments are preceded by an unprepossessing one whose honoree
seems to have passed out of collective memory. Bloom thinks, "Sir
Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?"
Sir Philip was an Irish surgeon of the first half of the 19th
century (1777-1858). He conducted a private practice but also
worked at several hospitals in Dublin and founded a children's
hospital to help treat poor children from the Liberties. His academic
accomplishments were many: he taught anatomy in various
capacities, wrote a treatise on the eyes of birds, and founded
the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, serving repeatedly as
its president. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy (a
very prestigious learned society of academics), and a Fellow
of the Royal Society (the even more highly prestigious
London-based scientific society). He served three terms as
president of the Dublin College of Surgeons.
In 1862 a fountain designed by sculptor John Kirk was erected
in Crampton's honor in the middle of the circus formed by the
intersection of Great Brunswick Street, College Street, and
D'Olier Street, just south of the O'Connell bridge over the
Liffey. The design was exceedingly odd: a heavy triangular
stone plinth with water basins in the Roman fashion,
surmounted by metal sculptures of large birds (reflecting
Crampton's interest in the subject) and a bust of Sir Philip,
with a metal flower-like stalk rising high above the bust.
Dubliners derisively called it the "pineapple" or the
"artichoke." It was removed in the 1950s because its pieces
were coming apart (Yvonne Whelan, Reinventing Modern
Dublin: Streetscape, Iconography, and the Politics of
Identity, UCD Press, 2003).
In Lestrygonians, when Bloom is repulsed by the
squalid conditions of the Burton restaurant, he thinks with
distaste of the unhygienic conditions of communal eating
arrangements like those he experienced in the City Arms hotel, and connects
them with those water basins on the fountain: "Suppose that
communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with
porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the
street.... My plate's empty. After you with our incorporated
drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain.
Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on
a new batch with his."
