There is another parasitic race, also of pure blood, but Indo-European, not Semitic, whose preservation appears almost as “providential” as that of the Jews, and whose union is even more exceptional because it is not bound either by revelation or indeed by any form of faith—the Gypsy.
[13] Not to mention Wolff and Palgrave the travellers, and Monseigneur Bauer, Père Hermann, and Père Marie de Ratisbonne, the converts.
CHAPTER II
OPINION OF THE JEW IN ENGLAND
Of all Europeans, the Englishman, who boasts of being a staunch friend to the people “scattered and peeled,” and whose confident ignorance and indiscriminate philanthropy are bestowed upon them equally with the African negro, knows least of the customs and habits of his protégés, and especially of those of Jews in foreign countries. The neglect of things near to us must be the reason why we know so little of the inner life of Jewry: there are, however, other concomitant causes.
In our native land the Hebrew lives protected, and honoured, in fact, as one of ourselves. We visit him, we dine with him, and we see him at all times and places, except perhaps at the Sunday service. We should enjoy his society but for a certain coarseness of manner, and especially an offensive familiarity, which seems almost peculiar to him. We marvel at his talents, and we are struck by the adaptability and by the universality of his genius. We admire his patience, his steadfastness, and his courage, his military prowess, and his successful career in every post and profession—Statesman and Senior Wrangler, Poet and Literato, Jurist, Surgeon, and Physician, Capitalist, Financier, and Merchant, Philosopher and Engineer, in fact in everything that man can be. When we compare the Semitic Premier with his Anglo-Saxon rival, it is much to the advantage of the former: while jesting about the “Asian mystery,” we cannot but feel that there is something in the Asiatic which we do not expect, which eludes our ken, which goes beyond us.
Those familiar with the annals of old families in England are aware of the extent to which they have been mixed with Jewish blood, even from the days when religious prejudice is mistakenly represented to have been most malign. Indeed, of late centuries our nation has never prided itself, like the Portuguese and the Iberians generally, in preserving its blood “pure and free from taint of Jew and Infidel.” The cross perpetually reappears in outward form as well as in mental quality. Here and there an old country house produces a scion which to all appearance is more Jewish than the Jews themselves. A peculiar characteristic of the blood is an extreme fondness for show, for colour, for splendour and magnificence in general. The rich Jew must display his wealth; like the Parsee, he makes and spends whilst his rivals the Greek and the Armenian make and hoard. In certain continental cities where he now reigns supreme he renders society impossible to the Christian. The Messrs. G. Muir Mackenzie and O. P. Irby—The Turks, the Greeks, and the Slavons (London: Bell & Daldy, 1867)—will show how at Salonika[14] the French Consul Marquis de—— could not join in any of the festivities. The dinner-table was not respected unless it glistened with gold and silver plate borrowed and lent for the occasion. His wife could not appear without a new dress on every occasion, and therefore she stayed at home. A toilette from Paris twice a week not only ministers to the womanly enjoyment of the wearer, and to the sensuous pleasures of the beholders, but also shows that the house is wealthy and that the firm has spare money to throw away. It is, in fact, an advertisement of the most refined description. Ladies meeting in parties of three and four over what our grandmothers called “a dish of tea” must appear décolletées and in diamonds. The rivière must disfigure the beautiful neck and bosom of the bride. At the theatre those boxes are most valued where the light falls strongest upon the precious stones, and where costly textures and valuable laces stand out to the greatest advantage. And behind this splendour of show lies cunning of a high order. The grand liveries are used once a week upon Madame’s “day”; at other times the lackeys are en déshabille. The costly carriage horses work till noon in carts and drays transporting the irritamenta malorum which support the equipage of the afternoon. And so in everything. The Hebrew race is so marked in its characteristics that it has ever been the theme of over-praise or of undue blame, like those individuals concerning whom society cannot be neutral; and of late years the transitions of public opinion which usually moves slowly have been comically abrupt.
The Jew of popular English fiction is no longer Moshesh, a wretch who believes in one God and in Shent-per-Shent as his profit, whose eyes, unlike those of Banquo, are brimming full with “speculation.” The Fagin of young Dickens only a quarter of a century ago has now become the “gentle Jew Riah” of old Dickens, a being remarkable for resignation and quiet dignity, a living reproach to the Christian heathenry that dwells about him. The great feminine actresses of the world, we are told by a charming authoress, are all Jewesses. Tancred; or, the New Crusade, to mention nothing of meaner note, teaches us to admire and love the modern “Roses of Sharon,” those exquisite visions that are read to rest by attendants with silver lamps, and who talk history, philosophy, and theology with the warmth of womanly enthusiasm, tempered by the pure belief of a bishop of the Church of England, the learning of a German professor, and the grace of Madame Recamier. Miriam has become, in fact, a pet heroine with novel writers and novel readers, and thrice happy is the fascinating young Christian who, like “that boy of Norcott’s,” despite his manifold Christian disabilities, can win her hand and heart.
Of the middle and lower classes of Jews the Englishman only hears that they are industrious, abstinent, and comparatively cleanly in person; decent, hospitable, and as strict in keeping the Sabbath as the strictest Sabbatarians could desire—perhaps, if he knew all, he would not desire so much. He is told that they are wondrous charitable in their dealings with those of the same faith, always provided that some mite of a religious difference does not grow to mountain size. The papers inform him how munificent and judicious is their distribution of alms, how excellent are their arrangements for the support of their paupers, who are never exposed to the horrors of the parish and the poor-house, and who are maintained by their co-religionists, though numbering in London at least 16·50 per cent. out of a total exceeding thirty thousand souls.[15] And he everywhere reads of Charities, public, private, and congregational; of Hospitals and Almshouses; of Orphanages, Philanthropic Institutions; of Pensioners’ and Widows’ Homes; Friendly Societies; of Doles of Bread and Coal and Raiment; of Lying-in Houses and Infant Asylums; of Burial Societies, male and female; of arrangements for supplying godfathers and godmothers managed by Benevolent Societies, Boards, Institutions, Committees, and Consistories. Like their charities, the educational system may be divided into three heads: Schools, public and private; Rabbinical and Theological Institutions; and Literary and Scientific Associations.
He—the ordinary Englishman—may be dimly conscious that the Jew is the one great exception to the general curse upon the sons of Adam, and that he alone eats bread, not in the sweat of his own face, but in the sweat of his neighbour’s face—like the German cuckoo, who does not colonize, but establishes himself in the colonies of other natives. He has perhaps been told that all the world over the Jew spurns the honest toil of the peasant and the day labourer; that in the new Jewry of Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane, in the Marais, in the Ghetto, in the Juden Strasse, and in the Hárat el Yahúd (Jewish quarters) of Mussulman cities, his sole business is quocumque modo rem—sordid gains—especially by money-lending, and by usury, which may not be practised upon a fellow Jew, but which, with the cleanest of consciences, is applied to the ruin of the Gentile. He has heard that where Saxon and Celt ply pick and pan, the Hebrew broker and pedlar buy up their gains and grow rich where the working-men starve in the midst of gold. He sees that the “Chosen People” will swarm over the world from California to Australia, wherever greed of gain induces them to travel. “To my mind,” says a popular writer, “there are few things so admirable and wonderful in this life as the ‘getting on,’ as it is vulgarly called, of the Hebrew race.