Abstract
The emancipation debate in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe pivoted on the questions of commercial morality and national characteristics. If Jews were judged harshly for their economic practices of usury and hard dealing, as indeed they were by most of the hypocritical and morally obtuse Christian world, then the issue became one of nature or nurture: could Jews be educated away from their odiously money-obsessed culture or were Jews, as a nation or race, innately avaricious? Was the answer liberalizing Bildung or harsh measures to punish, control, contain, and if necessary expel the immoral Jews? That the Jewish commercial morality was no worse than that of the Gentiles among whom they did business was a minority opinion that failed to push the debate away from the two customary positions. In literature and popular culture the figure of the Jewish moneylender symbolized what was wrong with Jews.
From the cradle, the Jew directs his unvaried walk to the market; and when, after his insipid round in the regions of huckstery and barter, he descends at length into the grave, we see him rise again, like a true type of the insect below, in the same form, and with the same grovelling propensities, which before excited our pity and contempt.
An Essay on the Commercial Habits of the Jews (1809).1
Our greatest enemies cannot deny this truth, “That the human character is intirely the effect of education.” This, which in all civi-lized countries forms the future man, has the same influence on the Jew as the Gypsy, and if found defective both will alike be triflers and fall into insignificancy.
Levy Alexander, Memoirs of the Life and Commercial Connections, Public and Private, of the Late Benj Goldsmid, Esq, of Roehampton (1808).2
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Notes
Levy Alexander, Memoirs of the Life and Commercial Connections, Public and Private, of the Late Benaminj Goldsmid, Esq, of Roehampton; Containing a Cursory View of the Jewish Society and Manners. Interspersed with Interesting Anecdotes of Several Remarkable Characters (London: Levy Alexander, 1808), 28.
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, ed. W. Gunther Plaut (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), 1501.
C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, ed., A Rabbinic Anthology (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 450.
Derek J. Penslar, Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001), 54.
Jonathan Karp, The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638–1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 17–19.
J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), and Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) are two major studies that articulate his thesis.
James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 122.
Janet Adelman, Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in “The Merchant of Venice” (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 110–11.
Matthew Biberman, Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 3.
“Introduction,”, Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare, ed. Christopher Spencer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 29–32. Shapiro says there were forty performances in thirty-five years, Shakespeare and the Jews, 214.
John Gross, Shylock: Four Hundred Years in the Life of a Legend (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992), 51.
Michael Ragussis, Theatrical Nation: Jews and Other Outlandish Englishmen in Georgian Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 112.
Richard Cumberland, The Jew; or, Benevolent Hebrew: A Comedy (Boston: John West, 1795).
For commentary on Lessing’s Die Juden and Nathan der Weise, see Michael Scrivener, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in the Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1776–1832 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007), 150–54. A good modern translation of the play: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, trans., ed., intro. Ronald Schechter (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004).
Richard Cumberland, The Jew: A Comedy (London: C. Dilly, 1794), 6.
Richard Hole, “An Apology for the Character and Conduct of Shylock,”, Essays, By a Society of Gentlemen, At Exeter (Exeter: Trewman and Son, 1796), 552.
Judith W. Page, Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004), 68–69.
George Farren, An Essay on Shakespeare’s Character of Shylock, Originating in An Examination of the Laws and Customs of Moses, and of the Primitive Christians, with Reference to Enumerations of Population, and the Rate of Interest of Money (London: Pelham Richardson, 1833), 20–21.
Mark L. Schoenfield, “Abraham Goldsmid: Money Magician in the Popular Press,”, British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature, ed. Sheila A. Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 37–60.
This section appeared first in a slightly different form and is published here with permission. “The Philosopher and the Moneylender: The Relationship between William Godwin and John King,”, Godwinian Moments: From Enlightenment to Romanticism, ed. Robert M. Maniquis and Victoria Myers (University of Toronto Press, 2010), 333–62.
The reliably informative sources on John King are Todd M. Endelman, Iain McCalman, and David B. Ruderman. Endelman’s “The Chequered Career of ‘Jew’ King: A Study in Anglo-Jewish Social History,”, From East and West: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750–1870 ed. Frances Malino and David Sorkin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) 151–81,
situates King in the context of Anglo-Jewish history, while McCalman’s discussion in Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 35–38, 66–67,
positions King in relation to the “unrespectable” radicalism of the 1790s and early nineteenth century. Ruderman’s Jewish Enlightenment in An English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 144–46,
locates King in the specifically Anglo-Jewish context of deist and politically radical thought. On King’s giving money to the treason trial defendants, see John King, Mr. King’s Apology; or a Reply to his Calumniators (London: Thomas Wilkins, 1798), 36–37.
For the relationship between Robinson and King, as well as Robinson and Godwin, see Paula Byrne, Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson (New York: Random House, 2004), 31–37 and 253 (King), 321–23 and 390 (Godwin).
William St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1989), 353.
C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London: Henry S. King, 1876), 1:146–47, 155–57.
John Taylor, Records of My Life (New York: Harper, 1833), 423–25. Taylor was not the only memoirist who fondly recalled the King dinners that Godwin frequented. Captain Gronow (1794–1865) recalls King as a man of wit and elegant taste, whose dinners were attended by the rich, powerful, and artistic, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816).
See The Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow, Being Anecdotes of the Camp, Court, Clubs and Society, 1810–1860, ed. John Raymond (London: Bodley Head, 1964), 110–13.
John King, Letters from France (London: M. Jones, 1802), 161–66. Godwin and Holcroft were inseparable and passionate friends until Mary Wollstonecraft entered Godwin’s life in 1796, after which the friendship cooled. In 1802 they resumed their friendship, but in 1805 they became bitterly estranged over Godwin’s Fleetwood; they reconciled shortly before Holcroft’s death. See St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 207, 275–78.
[John King], Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite, and His Answers to Them (London: J. Fielding and J. Stockdale and J. Sewell, 1781).
On the cultural norms relating to courtesans and actresses in the eighteenth century, see Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 80–114.
John King, Thoughts on the Difficulties and Distresses in Which the Peace of 1783, Has Involved the People of England; on the Present Disposition of the English, Scots, and Irish, to Emigrate to America; and on the Hazard They Run (without Certain Precautions) of Rendering Their Condition More Deplorable. Addressed to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox 5th ed. (London: T. Davies, J. Southern, W. Deane, 1783).
William Godwin, “The History of the Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham,”, Political Writings I, ed. Martin Fitzpatrick, vol. 1 of Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, 7 vols., gen. ed. Mark Philp (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1993), 32. This edition is hereafter cited as PPW, with volume and page numbers.
For Sampson Perry, see Michael T. Davis, Iain McCalman, and Christina Parolin, eds., Newgate in Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Prison Literature in the Age of Revolution (London and New York: Continuum, 2005), 116–19.
Godwin too is seen as a Girondin by Mark Philp in Godwin’s Political Justice (London: Duckworth, 1986), 100.
The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854), ed. Mary Thrale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 174.
St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, 353; Scrivener, “‘Zion Alone is Forbidden’: Historicizing Antisemitism in Byron’s The Age of Bronze,” Keats-Shelley Journal, 43 (1994): 87 n. 31.
William Godwin, St. Leon ed. and intro. William D. Brewer (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006) 36.
N.a., Authentic Memoirs, Memorandums, and Confessions. Taken from the Journal of His Predatorial Majesty, The King of the Swindlers (London: W. Hatton, n.d. [1798]). King sued the publisher John Parsons and won a judgment of 50 pounds. See Israel Solomons, “Jew King,” Notes and Queries 11 (June 5, 1915): 437–38. Most of the material in Authentic Memoirs seems genuine, especially the diary extracts, but the editor’s summaries are moralistic and prejudiced.
Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 68–90.
For Cagliostro, see Iain McCalman, The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
On Woolston, see James A. Herrick, The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: The Discourse of Skepticism, 1680–1750 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 77–101.
See also William H. Trapnell, Thomas Woolston: Madman and Deist? (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994).
The full prayer is in William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (London: Samuel Palmer 1724), 120–21.
King’s citing of it is in David Levi, Dissertations on the Prophecies of The Old Testament, 2 vols., rev. and intro. John King (London: John King, 1817), 1:xii–xiii.
Joanna Southcott, An Account of the Trials on Bills of Exchange, Wherein the Deceit of Mr. John King and His Confederates, Under the Pretence of Lending Money, Is Exposed, and Their Arts Brought to Light (London: S. Rousseau, 1807).
For Levi, see Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment, 57–88, and Michael Scrivener, “British-Jewish Writing of the Romantic Era and the Problem of Modernity: The Example of David Levi,”, British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature, ed. Sheila Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 159–78.
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© 2011 Michael Scrivener
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Scrivener, M. (2011). The Moneylender. In: Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780–1840. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120020_5
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