Part 59 (1/2)
”He ought to talk to the man,” persisted Mrs. Samuels.
”But we don't even know who he is,” said Percy Saville, ”probably Edward Armitage is only a _nom-de-plume_. You'd be surprised to learn the real names of some of the literary celebrities I meet about.”
”Oh, if he's a Jew you may be sure it isn't his real name,” laughed Sidney. It was characteristic of him that he never spared a shot even when himself hurt by the kick of the gun. Percy colored slightly, unmollified by being in the same boat with the satirist.
”I have never seen the name in the subscription lists,” said the hostess with ready tact.
”There is an Armitage who subscribes two guineas a year to the Board of Guardians,” said Mrs. Montagu Samuels. ”But his Christian name is George.”
”'Christian' name is distinctly good for 'George,'” murmured Sidney.
”There was an Armitage who sent a cheque to the Russian Fund,” said Mr.
Henry Goldsmith, ”but that can't be an author--it was quite a large cheque!”
”I am sure I have seen Armitage among the Births, Marriages and Deaths,”
said Miss Cissy Levine.
”How well-read they all are in the national literature,” Sidney murmured to Addie.
Indeed the sectarian advertis.e.m.e.nts served to knit the race together, counteracting the unravelling induced by the fas.h.i.+onable dispersion of Israel and waxing the more important as the other links--the old traditional jokes, by-words, ceremonies, card-games, prejudices and tunes, which are more important than laws and more cementatory than ideals--were disappearing before the over-zealousness of a _parvenu_ refinement that had not yet attained to self-confidence. The Anglo-Saxon stolidity of the West-End Synagogue service, on week days entirely given over to paid praying-men, was a typical expression of the universal tendency to exchange the picturesque primitiveness of the Orient for the sobrieties of fas.h.i.+onable civilization. When Jeshurun waxed fat he did not always kick, but he yearned to approximate as much as possible to John Bull without merging in him; to sink himself and yet not be absorbed, not to be and yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote in human mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to John Bull generally a.s.similating Jeshurun away. For such is the nature of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own way and you make a new man of him; persecute him and he is himself again.
”But if n.o.body has read the man's book,” Raphael Leon ventured to interrupt at last, ”is it quite fair to a.s.sume his book isn't fit to read?”
The shy dark little girl he had taken down to dinner darted an appreciative glance at her neighbor. It was in accordance with Raphael's usual anxiety to give the devil his due, that he should be unwilling to condemn even the writer of an anti-Semitic novel unheard. But then it was an open secret in the family that Raphael was mad. They did their best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to earnest reasoned opinions.
”But we know enough of the book to know we are badly treated,” protested the hostess.
”We have always been badly treated in literature,” said Raphael. ”We are made either angels or devils. On the one hand, Lessing and George Eliot, on the other, the stock dramatist and novelist with their low-comedy villain.”
”Oh,” said Mrs. Goldsmith, doubtfully, for she could not quite think Raphael had become infected by his cousin's propensity for paradox. ”Do you think George Eliot and Lessing didn't understand the Jewish character?”
”They are the only writers who have ever understood it,” affirmed Miss Cissy Levine, emphatically.
A little scornful smile played for a second about the mouth of the dark little girl.
”Stop a moment,” said Sidney. ”I've been so busy doing justice to this delicious asparagus, that I have allowed Raphael to imagine n.o.body here has read _Mordecai Josephs_. I have, and I say there is more actuality in it than in _Daniel Deronda_ and _Nathan der Weise_ put together. It is a crude production, all the same; the writer's artistic gift seems handicapped by a dead-weight of moral plat.i.tudes and highfalutin, and even mysticism. He not only presents his characters but moralizes over them--actually cares whether they are good or bad, and has yearnings after the indefinable--it is all very young. Instead of being satisfied that Judaea gives him characters that are interesting, he actually laments their lack of culture. Still, what he has done is good enough to make one hope his artistic instinct will shake off his moral.”
”Oh, Sidney, what are you saying?” murmured Addie.
”It's all right, little girl. You don't understand Greek.”
”It's not Greek,” put in Raphael. ”In Greek art, beauty of soul and beauty of form are one. It's French you are talking, though the ignorant _ateliers_ where you picked it up flatter themselves it's Greek.”
”It's Greek to Addie, anyhow,” laughed Sidney. ”But that's what makes the anti-Semitic chapters so unsatisfactory.”
”We all felt their unsatisfactoriness, if we could not a.n.a.lyze it so cleverly,” said the hostess.
”We all felt it,” said Mrs. Montagu Samuels.
”Yes, that's it,” said Sidney, blandly. ”I could have forgiven the rose-color of the picture if it had been more artistically painted.”