Note #4 The Return of George W.M. Reynolds

Note #4 The Return of George W.M. Reynolds by R.E. Prindle In the twenty-first century when the public mind was focused on exorcizing the past the search was to correct or eliminate unapproved statements and thoughts from literature. This attitude was nothing new. In the nineteenth century censorship was concerned with sexual matters. In the explosive time of the 21st century anything goes as far as pornography. For this time one can be disqualified for life over racial matters. In 1837 the seemingly immortal Charles Dickens created a criminal character by the name of Fagin in his Oliver Twist. Fagin was a Jew. As he tried to explain in his defence when he was accused of defaming the Jews, in 1837 the underworld of the nineteenth century was run by Jews. In other words, he was depicting reality. He was simply citing underworld facts. Dickens was made to humble himself and since his works were reproduced in numberless editions he agreed that in future editions he would scrub references to Fagin as a Jew. Historically, after the French Revolution of the eighteenth century had emancipated the Jews, the conflict between Jews and Europeans shifted in their favor. As the nineteenth century advanced they began to dominate all social and financial areas. This was universally recognized and resented. The question was alert. One of the English writers who early realized and wrote about it was the best selling author of the nineteenth century. No, it wasn’t Charles Dickens, it was an author who was wildly popular until the first world war. His name was George W.M. Reynolds. He wrote an entire 500 page allegory about the situation, much disguised in his fabulous novel The Necromancer, readily available today. In addition and openly in about 1854-55 when the attack on Dickens was gaining intensity the following extract from his novel published by the Wildside Press, The Fortunes of the Ashtons, Vol. 1, page 201: Quote: In one of the principal thoroughfares, so narrow, so crowded, which constitute the City of London, stood the immense establishment of Mr. Samuel Emanuel, the great clothier. The reader will not require to be informed that this individual was of the Hebrew race; nor if we be compelled to say anything to his disparagement, it must not be presumed that we are holding him up as an invariable type of his nation. It is nothing of the sort. We yield to no one, we may without vanity affirm, in enlightened opinions with respect to the Jews, and we have the conviction that there are many excellent persons amongst them as well as many admirable traits in their national character. [Here we must acknowledge that Reynolds anticipates the twentieth century psychologist Sigmund Freud in his Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego in which Freud definitely states that groups such as his own Jews do have identifiable traits, while to be in a group by definition is having similar traits. How could a group be considered a group without identifying traits? I have found Reynolds to be an excellent psychologist.] But, there ae good and bad of all kinds and species in this world—good and bad Christians,, good and bad Musselmans, good and bad Buddhists, and therefore why not bad Israelites as well as good ones? We will even go farther and we will affirm that within the range of our own experience have met persons professing Christianity, of a viler stamp of rascality, and capable of more unmitigated scoundrelism, that ever we discovered a Jew to be guilty of. Unquote. Thus, at this time we can see to what a pass society, English society, had come because of the extreme Jewish sensitivity. I have to believe that in this openly broaching of the question that George W.M. Reynolds is coming to the defense of Charles Dickens and indirectly defending freedom of speech that is being encroached on by the Jews. Reynolds might well have asked why the Jews should be given a favored position free from any censure? In accurately describing English society which consisted of several races and nationalities, various Anglo-Saxon tribes, Normans, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Jewish, Gypsy and we might as well throw in the French Huguenots why should the Jews be excused from the generality and given a special and higher position. How could English society be accurately portrayed without them. How could their deeds and practices be ignored. Indeed they would have complained of neglect had that been the case as they have complained in the nineteenth and twentieth and twenty -first centuries. I ask how can a historian write accurate history if an historian is required to self-censor to favor a particular race, while at the same time that race has the privilege of censoring the conduct of all others? In the twenty-first century a writer is required to self-censor any accurate depictions of Jews, Moslems, Negroes, Women and Sexual Deviants, and actual madmen. Indeed, one is forbidden to write a factual account of something that happened to one’s self lest it should offend those sensitive perps. One must censor one’s very own life. If so, history and many other Liberal Arts studies become meaningless. In Reynolds’ case he was no pansy as was Dickens who cut his jib to suit the Jews. Fagin was an accurate depiction of a Jewish criminal, in fact, he was not the worst of the lot while the whole lot had a very negative impact on society. Indeed the Jews were disproportionately represented in the criminal ranks as they were in financial circles. This is a historic fact. It cannot be denied. Perhaps after his daring confession of faith Reynolds, because he was more than capable of defending himself, was not taken on by the Jews. Perhaps also the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of his works after 1914 was because he was banned by Jewish vengeance. There is increasing evidence that a hundred years on after his expulsion he is being rehabilitated and recognized as the great literary artist he is. There is much to be learned from his writing. George W.M. Reynolds was very nearly sui generis.