A Note and Aside On George W.M. Reynold's Mysteries of Old London

A Note And Aside On George W. M. Reynolds Mysteries Of Old London:  Days Of Hogarth

by

R.E. Prindle

 

While Old London isn’t as widely read as George’s two masterpieces it is a very interesting book.  It is an historical examination of the eighteenth century period of Duke of Wharton and his Mohocks.

A comprehensive review will follow later, this note examines an interesting passage while other notes may follow.  In a review of the whole, one frequently omits significant observations or ideas.  In this quote that is very remarkable for its time (1848) Reynolds examines weaving in a manner that neither Dickens or Ainsworth could touch.

The quote occurs on page 14 of the British Library reprint while George is setting up his story.  Chapter 5, The Two Apprentices.

It has been well said that man is the noblest work of God; but it is not equally easy to decide which is the noblest work of man.  Though in contrast with the wondrous achievements of Almighty Power, the efforts of the human race are as nothing- though the most complicated, the most perfect results of mortal ingenuity are mean and  contemptible when placed in comparison with the stupendous creations of the Divine Architect- nevertheless the earth is covered with monuments, which excite our astonishment and our admiration at the intelligence, the power, and the perseverance of man!

But of all the acts which in their application, constitute the distinctions between social and savage life- between a glorious civilization and an enduring barbarism- that of Weaving is decidedly one of the chief.  For though the savage may affect the finery of shells and flowers- though he may study external adornment by means of natural products most pleasing in his sight- and though he may even conceal his nakedness with leaves, or defend himself from the cold by the hides of animals- yet is only in those portions of the globe where civilization has been the tutress of the human race, that comfortable clothing is known.  And for this we are indebted to the LOOM which we may therefore look upon as at least one of the noblest works of Man!

How much of her prosperity,- how much of her greatness does England now owe to that achievement of human ingenuity!  Amongst all the departments of National Industry, none is more ennobling in its tendency to commercial progress, than the art of weaving!  Alas! That War should ever impose its barbarism in a way of the pursuit of Peace!  For while Peace aspires to make our homes happy and increase our comforts, thus augmenting the enjoyments of life- War- hideous barbaric War- snatches our industrious mechanics from their looms, and our agricultural labourers from their plowshares, to place them in the ranks of armies or on the decks of fleets.  And, what gain we from War after all?  Glory- yes, plenty of glory; aye- and plenty of taxation also!  For taxation is a vampire that loves to feast on the blood of a Nation’s heart, and to prey upon the vitals of an industrious population.  It is an avaricious, grasping, griping fiend that places it finger on every morsel of food which enters into the mouth, on every article of clothing which covers the person, and on everything which is pleasant to behold, hear, taste, feel or smell!  It interferes with our warmth- our light- our locomotion- the very paper which diffuses knowledge!  It roams over the land to claim its share of the produce of our fields and our manufactures:  and it awaits on the key of our seaports for the unlading of vessels bringing things from abroad.  The moment that the industry or the intelligence of man originates something new, the fiend Taxation overshadows it with its loathsome bat like wing.  It plunges it fang into the rich man’s dish and the poor man’s porringer: but the poor man suffers the more severely from this rapacious robber because he has but one porringer, whereas the rich man has many dishes.  Oh!  Insatiate is that Fiend; for he attends the deathbed when the will is made, and  in the spiritual court when it is proven:- he has his share of the price paid for the very marble which covers the grave of the deceased-; and it is only there- in the grave-  that the victim of Taxation can be taxed no more.

 

As the chapter is entitled The Two Apprentices and as they are apprentice weavers I suppose that touches off George’s tirades against war and taxation.  His interpretation of the role of weaving in civilization manages to bring in a sort of evolutionary discussion of clothing.  Just as a note of interest Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus appeared about this time, and that is a discussion of clothes so the popular imagination may have been drawn to the importance of clothes in these marvelous years of the Dandies, of which George was one, and the early years of discovery leading to the opening of the European mind.

George elsewhere brings up the arrival of the silk weaving on English shores as, as he says, forty thousand Huguenots exiled from France arrived in England and set up the industry.

The novels are full of interesting historical facts as George was a very well read guy.

A Personal Aside

 

I have now read nineteen titles of Reynolds’ novels.  The major ones twice.  The third and fourth series of Mysteries of London only once, all of the novels up to and including 1850. I own most of the rest.  There is one novel that John Dicks lists titled Louisa, the Orphan, to which I can find no other reference.
Apparently George was really appreciated on the other side of the Atlantic in the US.  Unable to get enough of George, publishers had writers write numerous titles under his name and this was being done into the1890s.  I recently purchased a book titled the Countess of Lascelles or Self-Sacrifice, Part I, a sequel Bertram Vivian also in two parts published by Hurst and Company.

Here is a partial list of title, only a partial list, written and published in the US well into the eighties and nineties by a host of publishers:  Caroline of Brunswick, Lord Saxondale, Count Christoval, Eustace Quentin, Banker’s Daughter, The Opera Dancer, Child of Waterloo, Robert Bruce, The Gypsy Chief, Wallace, Hero of Scotland, Isabella Vincent, Duke Of Marchmont,  Life in Paris, Countess and the Page, Edgar Montrose, The Ruined Gamester, Clifford and the Actress, Queen Joanna, Ciprina or the Secrets of a Picture Gallery.  I recently purchased a title called The Countess of Lascelles, a sequel to Bertram Vivian and which is followed by the two volumes of The Doom of the Burkers.  Bertram, Lascelles and Burkers is a six volume series built around the same characters, all written in the US.

This is very strange because George W. M. Reynolds was apparently very famous in his day in the US but has been totally forgotten in the history of American literature.  How could this be?  A firm, T.B. Peterson of Philadelphia published more that a dozen titles under Reynolds name some legit and some not. And that was in the 1880s.  Another mystery to be investigated.  Why is Reynolds’ popularity in US literature totally forgotten?

Now is the time for a little recapitulation.

The range of George’s interests and the seeming depth of his knowledge is quite astounding.  One wonders what his sources were. I’ve mentioned many of his more obvious influences even doubling in some cases such as the Pickwick Papers as sources.

One title I have come across in six volumes is Charles Knight’s amazing title, London.  I think it is pretty clear that Reynolds read the work.  It was originally published serially then issued in book form when enough articles accrued to bind from 1841-1844.  These were years when Reynolds wrote no novels although remaining active journalistically.  I have the Cambridge University re-issue.  I can do no better than to quote the Cambridge intro:

The publisher and writer Charles Knight (1794-1873) was apprenticed to his printing father but later became a journalist and the proprietor of various periodicals and magazines, which were driven by his concern for education of the poor.  As an author, he published a variety of works, including The Old Printer and the Modern Press (also issued in the [Cambridge] Series.  He claimed that this six volume work on the architecture and history of London, published between 1841 and 1844, was neither a history nor a survey of London, but looked at the Present through the Past and the Past through the Present.  It relies on the skills of eminent artists to bring both the present and the past of London to life, and it is arranged thematically rather then chronologically or geographically.  This is a fascinating account of what was the greatest city in the world.

The articles are by several different authors that lovingly describe the attributes of London past and present.  George may have read the articles and then examined the sites himself in these four years in which he obviously absorbed much of the information he includes in his novels.  Some details fascinated him.  In Old London he mentions the Fleet Ditch which was uncovered in the 1720s.  

The Fleet Ditch is what was once a stream that was turned into a muddy, foul ditch by the advance of civilization.  It was later covered so that it flowed under the city itself.  George mentions it here in Old London and then opens his The Mysteries of London with a description when Eliza Sydney was pitched into it by the criminals.

As fascinating as his stories are, acquiring background information then makes the stories more intelligible while opening vistas of what the deeper meanings of the works are.  Fathoming the depths of Reynolds mind is important, getting the references.  So while I began writing knowing little but the stories, I have worked to develop an understanding of what George saw and was describing.

The struggle or effort goes on.  I am now about to begin reading the works of Reynolds mature years, those after 1850, while I have to reread The Mysteries of London, third reading, and The Mysteries of the Court of London, also third reading.  It appears that the edition most people are reading of Mysteries of the Court is that published by the Oxford Society (of which there is no knowledge) in England and the Richard F. Burton Society in Boston, USA.  It is an expurgated and partially revised edition.  Apparently Reynolds was more racy and explicit in the original. In his The Parricide he gets really raunchy.  Thus for the third reading I would like to obtain the original.

Just as Mysteries of London had a third and fourth series it is possible that John Dicks actually published a third and fourth series of Court of London.  In five volumes each they were titled The Crimes of Lady Saxondale and The Fortunes of the Ashtons.  Thus the Oxford edition of 1900 consists of twenty volumes containing all four series.

It seems apparent that the latter two series were not the product of Reynolds’ pen.  They must have been written by others.  It seems to me that Reynolds does the same thing as Charles Knight did, that is employ other writers to write according to his plan.  Thus he might also have done as Alexander Dumas did and put his name on others writing.  Certainly Court of London does not seem long enough to have taken eight years to publish it.  The four series of The Mysteries of London are equally massive as the The Court of London and they took only four years to publish. The massive first two series must have been completed by 1846 leaving the shorter two series to finish the series by 1848 when Court began.  Thus it is probable that Dicks went on publishing Saxondale and The Ashtons after Reynolds finished with George IV and the Regency.  Reynolds says that he then abandoned George IV and the Monarchy years.

It seems to me that Reynolds does the same thing in relation to the Past and Present as Charles Knight did in his London and, indeed, that is the approach I am taking in my Time Traveling series. 

Knight’s work in a way forms a template for Reynolds novels that in the main are historical combining the past and present.  The current novel under consideration, The Mysteries of Old London pertain to the early eighteenth century just after the reign of Queen Anne and the beginning of the four Georges.  More particularly does it involve the beginnings of the Hell Fire Clubs of the next hundred years from 1720-21.  George specifically mentions that this story begins in 1721 and deals with the period of the historical Duke of Wharton and his Mohocks who terrorized the after dark streets of London during the period.  Reynolds character Jem Ruffles certainly represents aspects of the Duke of Wharton as well, probably, of the arch criminal Johnathan Wild.

One of the studies of Charles Wright is of the locality of Spitalfields which was associated with weaving, silk weaving to be specific.  The association began with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by order of Louis XIV by which the Huguenot sect was expelled.  The Huguenots were Protestants who had evolved out of the Albigensian faiths of Provence and who were nearly exterminated in the thirteenth century.  The Huguenots evolved from the earlier belief systems of the Albigensians and were in direct conflict with the Catholic Church.  They were harder to deal with than the Albigensians and were constantly at war with Northern government of France.  In the fifteenth century under Charles IX a truce was made with the Huguenots and their  being invited to Paris to celebrate.  This was a ruse and trick of Charles and the Huguenots were set upon by the Catholics and murdered in the celebrated St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.  The remnant remained in their stronghold in Gascony in the South of France ruled by Henri of Bearn.  Charles was murdered and replaced by his brother Henri III.  At Henri  III”s death he was succeed by Henri of Bearn, the Huguenot, who became Henri IV.  He negotiated the Ediict of Nantes giving his Huguenots the protection of the crown.  A little under a hundred years later the Edict was revoked by Louis XIV resulting in the displacement of their silk weaving industry to Spitalfields in London.

This history of the Huguenots was covered by Alexander Dumas in his novels of the Valois kings of France written in the mid forties that Reynolds would have read.  Thus the mention of the Huguenots and Spitalfields in the quote from Old London.  Reynolds repeatedly gives brief accounts of the various London districts such as Spitalfields following the Wright method of uniting the past and the present.  Since his info is so similar to that of Wright one of his key readings must have been Charles Wright’s London.

Of course, Reynolds tramped the streets of all those districts he mentions and probably talked to old timers who may have remembered far back.  As Wright lived to the 1870s one wonders whether Reynolds and he had any talks.

In the ending of the Oxford edition of the first two series of Court of London Reynolds says that he has tired of writing about George IV and chose not to follow him into his reign as monarch.  He says he has other projects to follow.  If those projects were Lady Saxondale and the Ashtons then he probably did hire other writers to compose the text according to his plan.  Otherwise where the latter two series came from is a total mystery.  The Mysteries of the Oxford Edition need clearing up.

A Review Part IV: The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

A Review

The Prague Cemetery

By

Umberto Eco

Review by

R.E. Prindle

Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetery, 2010, Houghton, Mifflin

Part IV

Prior to Prague the only thing of Eco’s I’d ever read was Foucault’s Pendulum which while interesting was not a great novel. Since reading Prague I have read the Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana and Baudolino. These are fairly interesting novels while giving some idea of Eco’s themes and variations. Thus one sees that religious frauds, hoaxes or forgeries depending on how you view them, are a fixation of Eco’s. He likes the rustle of paper. In the above two novels he treats of their manufacture with some sophistication that he seems to have lost in his treatment of the Protocols which novel is neither full nor penetrating. Therefore I can only conjecture that despite Jewish hysterics and condemnations Eco was pleased to reinforce the Jewish versions of the situations he treats as we are being led to believe by current news reports that anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide. I don’t see it that way but then I don’t fear it. Then again as Eco is a philo-Semite the novel may be a bit of a fraud itself. Why shouldn’t Umberto join in?

What I do see is the continuing Jewish attempt to subvert Western Science accelerating. For instance the Paideia organization of Sweden’s move to fill Europe with what its founder, Barbara Spectre calls ‘Jewish knowledge.’ She neglected to tell us just what the Jewish knowledge as opposed to ‘European knowledge’, Science in another word, might be.

Before getting into Eco’s vision of the late nineteenth century which centers around Semitic superstition and Aryan Science it might pay to review the emergence of Science from the Enlightenment to the Protocols concentrating on the nineteenth century.

The nineteenth century witnessed the unfolding of the Aryan mind, certainly the most astonishing event in the intellectual history of mankind. First it may be instructive to differentiate between technology and Science. I haven’t always been clear on the difference and I know most of the people I know aren’t. Confusion of the two is common.

The Africans, of course, have always lacked even the most rudimentary technology. They couldn’t even pile one stone atop another. The Chinese are often mentioned as being scientifically advanced two thousand years ago but sterile since. As evidence of ‘science’ the discovery of gunpowder and paper are triumphantly paraded before our eyes. Those are two technological advantages that were probably obtained by happenstance and not by scientific investigation. In the first place gunpowder is easy to discover and so limited in application that the stuff is meaningless and virtually useless without further technological advances requiring some thought. Even then, a cannon is a sort of scattergun lacking the advance of a rifled bore which is where science comes in.

In the Bible it mentions that at Hebrew sacrifices in order to prove the presence of the god the priest waved his hands over the burning sacrifice and mouthed some magical incantations making the flames flare signaling the god’s acceptance of the sacrifice. Obviously the priest had thrown a handful of gunpowder or something just like it into the flames. Of course, the Chinese wrapped the paper they discovered around the gunpowder and made firecrackers. Whoopee! I’m sure that gunpowder was discovered many times and in many places soon being forgotten as an amusing useless toy.

As for paper the Egyptians had papyrus which depends on having the papyrus reed but they found its perfect technological application. As I understand it Chinese paper was made from the long bamboo fibers which being processed for whatever purpose the wet fibers were piled up and perhaps being idly pounded with a rock it was realized that the flat sheet of fibers could be used to wrap gunpowder. That’s sarcastic, son. I’m sure the felt making process was discovered the same way. But there is no science there, merely a technological application of refuse.

Not having bamboo or cotton, the paper making process awaited the proper materials. There is no cause for revering Chinese intelligence because of their use of paper and gunpowder. Their technology was sufficiently advanced.

However the Chinese never were able to discover that water is a chemical compound being two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. The Chinese didn’t even know about hydrogen and oxygen. That is Science not technology. African or Chinese mental potential has been unfolded or realized for some time. The same holds true for the Semitic mind- Jewish and Arab. The Aryan mind was the last to begin to realize its potential which, like it or not, is of a higher order.

This realization began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Prior to that all the human species were more or less at the same intellectual level of advancement. Thus moving from its earlier attained base, in the nineteenth century the Aryan mind just blossomed far surpassing previous levels in intellectual evolution. All the physical and psychological sciences advanced at a very rapid pace until today in the twenty-first century Nature has been revealed in its entirety or near entirety. Once that is achieved I don’t know how learning can go beyond Nature. We would truly have to make a leap into the supernatural.

Thus the capacity for Science is part and parcel of the Aryan mind not shared by other human species. If others have since made contributions the contribution was made to Aryan Science once the other had come into contact with it. The above is an inescapable fact.

My problem with The Prague Cemetery is that Eco doesn’t actually acknowledge the different levels at which the Semitic mind of the Jews and the Aryan mind are functioning. He doesn’t seem to understand or at least express the fact that the two minds are differently constituted. Even Barbara Spectre of Padeia understands that the two different types of knowledge exist- Jewish magical knowledge and Aryan Scientific knowledge. She knows the difference and she wants by legal fiat to make the two equal.

OK. So when did this difference become apparent. Freud notes three signal discoveries which he says shook man’s confidence. Most likely he means Jewish self-confidence as the discoveries invalidated magical thinking of any kind. The first was Kepler’s proclamation that the earth was not the center of the universe which was realized in the sixteenth century, the second was Darwin’s mid-nineteenth proclamation of Evolution which demonstrated that mankind was not unique and the third was Mesmer’s revelation of the unconscious. In truth, science sent religion sent reeling.

The incompatibility of Jewish knowledge only became apparent with the end of the Middle Ages beginning with the Enlightenment. Prior to that all religious thinking was on one level. Jews and Catholics may have disputed religious issues but they were both using the same knowledge and approach.

But then the Aryan scientific knowledge not only shot ahead of Jewish and Christian religious knowledge but invalidated everything they believed. This was a very serious dislocation of the intellect. Further, the Semitic mind found it impossible to compete on the scientific level while it took them until about the year nineteen hundred to even get the drift. Thus with Jewish Emancipation c. 1789 into the Aryan scientific reality anti-Semitism was born although it wouldn’t be known as that until after 1875 when the German Wilhelm Marr coined the term.

As scientific knowledge developed in Western Europe the Jews of the West- England, France and Germany- acclimated themselves to the scientific learning while imitating Westerners in clothes and manners.

In the compacted Pale of Settlement in which the bulk of Jewry was located the traditional Jewish culture resisted scientific ideas that were slow to penetrate while being stoutly resisted by the Rabbis who realized that Science was antithetical to ‘Jewish knowledge’, that is to say, the Talmud.

Beginning in 1871 and the coming of the steamship mass migration from the Pale to the United States was organized. Emigration was developed then organized to the point where the complete transfer of the Jewish population from the Pale to the US (New Orleans and Galveston as ports of entry) was to begin in 1914. Obviously the plan was aborted by the Great War and was unable to be resumed post-war due to American resistance.

Now, the complexion of the Jewish intellect was changed beginning in 1896 when Theodor Herzl created the concept of Zionism. While the Jews of the Pale were slow to accept Science they were quick to embrace Zionism, thus from 1900 to 1914 the concept of Zionism was introduced to the United States, or as the Jews called it, The New Promised Land.

The conflict between post scientific Aryans and Jews thus began in earnest in the eighteen-sixties when Adolphe Cremieux took a hand in founding the Alliance Israelite Universelle while increasing in virulence into the seventies, eighties and nineties and the decade and a half before the Great War. Emigration from Europe to the US lessened the pressure within Europe but increased it from the outside- the US.

Even though resisted in the US by ‘nativists’ the Jewish cause was forwarded by Liberals. This was a curious situation which has baffled my understanding for some time but I may now have a probable explanation. There are past analogies with these events and attitudes. In speaking of the intellect of Spain during its long history Henry Thomas Buckle, the English historian, betrays the Liberal dichotomy in assessing national character. He displays the need of the Liberal character to exalt the other while condemning it’s own.

He describes the invasion of Spain and its near conquest by the Moors from the eighth to fifteenth centuries without negative comment. He then describes the near millennial warfare to reclaim Spain by the Spaniards. There is a hint of distaste as Buckle describes the reconquest. Then in 1492 after nearly a thousand years of incessant warfare the Spaniards reconquered the last Moslem stronghold.

Having conquered, the Spaniards had to control the conquered peoples that included both Moslems and Jews. Now, when the Moslems invaded the country, the Jews, as per their custom had opened the gates of the cities for the Moslems. Not only does this not offend Buckle but he doesn’t mention it. You may compare that with the current situation in which the Jews have prepared the triumph of China over the West. They are currently attempting to establish a foothold for themselves in China which will probably involve a transfer of population.

Now, because you have defeated an enemy’s army in the field doesn’t mean you have defeated the enemy. Over a millennium one assumes that the populations of Jews and Moslems had increased immensely. There might have been many millions of each. While the Jews characterize the Moslem Era in Spain as a golden age of The Land Of The Three Religions, the poetry may be misleading. There must have been a very uneasy relationship between the three as the Christians within Moslem lines must have worked against Moslem interests to further the steadily increasing Reconquista while Jews tried to play both sides. Therefore the Spaniards would have been fools to trust the good intentions of the defeated Moslems and Jews. One only has to consider the conquered Poles reaction to the Russian occupation to understand the threat.

The Spaniards therefore offered the two religions the choice between becoming Christians, that is say, loyal Spaniards, or expulsion. The numbers here get a little hazy but Buckle says that only 150,000 Moslems elected to leave while anywhere between 60K and 600K Jews chose to emigrate. That means there must have been millions who chose to change their collars. Of course these were put under close surveillance and Spain entered the hell of the Inquisition and undying infamy.

Having finally won back their kingdom, if you choose to see it that way or, having conquered their enemies in the historical free play of might, Buckle chooses to portray the expulsion and forced conversion as a huge injustice on the part of the Aryans thus acknowledging this curious sentimental division of his own people into two groups; on the one hand the Pure Liberals, and on the other the Impure Beasts. This is a very curious belief in the virtue of the other- Jews and Moslems in this case- and the vice of his own people which he and Liberals place below the other embracing the latter and condemning the former. As I say this is a curious state of mind coloring all subsequent Euroamerican history from the Liberal sanctification of the African in Africa and their counterparts in the US. This attitude is so extreme that having condemned the Aryans of the Rhodesias and South Africa to abandon control they now sit placidly, one might say cheering, as the Aryans are massacred by the Africans.

Now, while Buckle and the Liberals essentially reject the Reconquest by the Spaniards as either worthy or necessary, in the exact same situation of what the Mexicans call a reconquista of Aztlan modern Liberals support the Mexican Reconquest which has puzzled most of us. In that sense Newt Gingrich who passes as an Aryan Conservative is actually an anti-Aryan Liberal and cannot be thought of otherwise.

While the Mexicans have a historical ‘right’ to invade whomever they please, they wish to base their invasion, Reconquest as they call it, on a moral or legal right as did the Spaniards in their reconquest.

In fact they have no legal or moral right. As with the Moslems invading and conquering Spain, the Spaniards invaded and conquered the Aztec nation which was very small occupying but a small portion of Southern Mexico. The Spaniards then occupied what became Northern Mexico, Texas, the Southwest and California and that but very sparsely. Texas and the Southwest plus Northern Mexico were more or less parts of Comancheria and Apacheria. So the Spaniards of Mexico were essentially occupying lands under the control of the Comanche and Apache peoples as well as lesser tribes.

Having established a very sparse presence in the territories, other settlers from the East and North drifted into these territories. As they became more numerous they became dissatisfied with Mexican authorities just as the Mexican had become dissatisfied with that of the Spaniards. As the Mexicans had a natural or historical right to revolt against the Spaniards so the dissidents of the territories had a right to revolt against the Mexicans which they in their turn did. Thus the revolutionaries of Texas threw off the Mexican yoke proclaiming themselves the sovereign and independent country of Texas but at no time were they associated with the United States although at a later date they did choose to associate themselves with the US as was their sovereign right.

As you can see one revolution is as valid as another. It only requires the will to separate.

In California also the Bear flag was raised in which Californian rebels threw off he Mexican yoke with much less difficulty than the Texans as the Mexican presence was very thin and a military presence nearly non-existent. That was the Bear Flag Revolution. If the Mexican Revolution from Spain was valid then so were the Texan and Californian Revolutions from Mexico. The Mexicans have no legal or moral claim to the four Southwest States although if they wish to exercise their historical ‘right’- i.e. the Hunnish invasion of Europe- it is up to the US which has legally acquired title to the States from their lawful citizens, to stop them.

However the Liberals of the exact same mindset of Buckle take the side of the Mexicans against both themselves and the hated internal enemy, the Conservatives or Aryan other. The latter is now labeled a terrorist group by the Liberal government.

A very curious situation in which any legal or moral arguments are disregarded in favor of inner wishful thinking.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and trace the American Liberal mental state back to the Norman Conquest of England. After the conquest the Normans disenfranchised the Anglo-Saxons and made slaves of them. The more remote eastern counties of Angles resented this the most and never forgave the Normans which resulted in the Anglian revolt against Charles I as a Norman representative.

The New England colonists among whom this Liberal feeling arose came from East Anglia and thus rather than the Northeast American States being termed New England they should be titled New Anglia.

Their hatred of the Norman settlers of the South then led to the Civil War. After that war the Liberals sought to humiliate their old enemies qua Normans by subjecting them to the semi-savage authority of the Negroes.

Thus, while Liberals care nothing for Negroes they embrace them on the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the same as Buckle and the Moors, Jews or anyone else who hates Aryans. The Liberals turn over the ‘Normans’ or Aryans to these ‘minorities’ to use as they wish, even passing hate laws to disenfranchise the Aryans and empower the ‘minorities.’ That’s called the transformation of society. That’s as close as I can come to this curious Liberal attitude at the moment. If not the truth it must be very close to it. Buckle himself must have been of Anglo-Saxon descent.

To return to Eco: While it is true that Herman Goedsche wrote his Jewish graveyard scene set in Prague during the sixties this would have been a very peripheral event making little or no impression at the time. The fictional story became prominent only in retrospect after 1905. Thus, while I don’t wish to criticize Eco I think he should have maintained perspective making Goedsche ancillary to the Franco-Prussian war which certainly dwarfed any scene in anyone’s novel let alone a fictional meeting of Jewish conspirators in an ancient cemetery with far less cachet than the Pere Lachaise.

It might have been better to concentrate on Drumont and the French reaction to the Jewish cultural conflict that led to the Dreyfus Affair to demonstrate how and why the Aryans became alarmed by the Jewish culture war against them. It is no coincidence that the German concept of Kultur become prominent at that time. Eco could have presented a much more balanced version of the Dreyfus Affair rather than merely echoing the hysterical Jewish version. Also, of course, there was no need to mention Freud except as a future development of Anglo-European psychology and psychiatry.

That said, Eco succeeded in creating a fine ambience in which to set his excellent creation, Simone Simonini. I found him lifelike and I was genuinely interested in his career. The Jekyll-Hyde personality split was nicely handled although more attention might have been paid to the adventures of each half and how they interacted creating difficulties for the other. There was no need to create mystification in the reader’s mind as I’m sure we all got it from page one.

For those who have read Sue and Dumas, Eco’s indebtedness to both was clear. Eco was able to capture the ambience and horror of Sue quite well. The bodies under Simonini’s house was lifted almost intact from Sue’s Mysteries of Paris.

By the way, I erred in saying Les Mysteres Du Peuple hasn’t been translated into English. The prominent Jewish-American socialist, Daniel De Leon translated the story in the years after 1900. However as the novel was published in twenty-one fascicles of 200-300 pages under the names of the lead characters of each fascicle it took awhile to make the association. Most of the fascicles have been published by print on demand publishers.

With the rich resource of two characters in one, of which one is as virtuous as Jekyll and the other verging toward the amorality of Hyde, Eco could have exploited the conflict of morality between the two halves having the Priest working to foil, the efforts of Simonini, perhaps even exposing him as a police agent to the revolutionaries and as a double agent to the authorities.

I guess, what I’m saying is that while I found the story engrossing I was annoyed because the potentialities were not more fully exploited. I mean, why mention the criminal turned police inspector, Vidocq, if you aren’t going to develop him somewhat. Vidocq was a terrifically interesting person. A great memoir written by him too. As I said, it wouldn’t have hurt to have followed Dumas’ example and had a team researching and organizing while Eco wrote it up.

Since I’ve felt constrained to read Eco’s novel corpus I may add to this at a later date.