George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged by Emma Laybourn
Chapter Forty-two
“If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the nations – if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land – if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years?”
Deronda had lately been reading that passage of Zunz, and he felt in contrast when visiting the Cohens that they bore no obvious stamp of distinction in sorrow or in any other form of aristocracy. Ezra Cohen was not clad in the sublime pathos of the martyr, nor was he a symbol of the great Jewish tragedy; and yet was there not something typical in the fact that a life like Mordecai’s – a frail incorporation of the national consciousness – was nested in the self-congratulatory prosperity of the Cohens?
Glistening was the gladness in their faces when Deronda reappeared among them. Cohen hinted that although the diamond ring, left a little longer, would have bred more money, he did not mind that compared with the pleasure of his family, who had “talked of nothing else” since the agreeable young gentleman’s first visit.
Young Mrs. Cohen was sorry that baby was asleep, and glad that Adelaide was not yet gone to bed, entreating Deronda to go into the parlour to see “mother and the children.” He willingly accepted, having provided himself with presents; a set of paper figures for Adelaide, and an ivory cup and ball for Jacob.
The grandmother was playing with the children. When Deronda entered and seated himself, he observed that the door to Mordecai’s quarters was now closed; but he wished to show his interest in the Cohens before disclosing his stronger interest in their singular inmate. It was not until he had Adelaide on his knee, and was making the paper figures dance on the table, while Jacob was already practising with the cup and ball, that Deronda said–
“Is Mordecai in just now?”
“He’s in the workroom there,” said Mrs. Cohen, nodding toward the closed door.
“The fact is, sir,” said Cohen, “we don’t know what’s come over him this last day or two. He’s always what I may call a little touched, you know” – Cohen pointed to his own forehead – “not quite rational; but he’s mostly regular and industrious so far as a poor creature can be. But lately he’s been moving like a sleep-walker, or else sitting as still as a wax figure.”
“It’s the disease, poor dear creature,” said the grandmother, tenderly. “I doubt whether he can stand long against it.”
“No; I think it’s only something in his head,” said Mrs. Cohen the younger. “He’s been turning over writing continually, and when I speak to him it takes him ever so long to hear and answer.”
“You may think us a little weak,” said Cohen, apologetically. “But we wouldn’t part with him if he was a still worse encumbrance. It isn’t that we don’t know the long and short of matters, but it’s our principle.”
“Oh, Mordecai carries a blessing inside him,” said the grandmother.
“He’s got something the matter inside him,” said Jacob, correcting his grandmother. “He said he couldn’t talk to me, and he wouldn’t have a bit o’ bun.”
“So far from wondering at your feeling for him,” said Deronda, “I feel something of the same sort myself. I talked to him recently at Ram’s book-shop – in fact, I promised to call for him here, that we might go out together.”
“That’s it, then!” said Cohen, slapping his knee. “He’s been expecting you, and it’s taken hold of him. I suppose he talks about his learning to you. It’s uncommonly kind of you, sir.”
Jacob said obligingly, “I’ll call Mordecai for you, if you like.”
“No, Jacob,” said his mother; “open the door, and let the gentleman go in himself. Hush! don’t make a noise.”
Jacob turned the handle of the door noiselessly, while Deronda went to stand on the threshold. The small room was lit only by a dying fire and one shaded candle. On the board under the window, various objects of jewellery were scattered: books were heaped in the corner. Mordecai sat with his back to the door, a watch propped on a stand before him. He was in a state of expectation as sickening as that of a prisoner listening for deliverance, when he heard Deronda’s voice saying, “I am come for you. Are you ready?”
Immediately he turned without speaking, seized his fur cap, and moved to join Deronda. In a moment they were both in the sitting-room, where Jacob seized him by the arm and said, “See my cup and ball!” It was a sign of the relieved tension in Mordecai’s mind that he could smile and say, “Fine, fine!”
“He’s come to life again,” said Cohen in an undertone. Then in his usual voice, “Well, sir, we mustn’t detain you; but I hope this isn’t the last time we shall see you.”
“Shall you come again?” said Jacob. “See, I can catch the ball.”
“He has clever hands,” said Deronda, looking at the grandmother. “Which side of the family does he get them from?”
But the grandmother only nodded towards her son, who said promptly, “My side,” while Jacob began to stamp about, singing.
Deronda thought, “I shall never know anything decisive until I ask Cohen point-blank whether he lost a sister named Mirah when she was six.” The decisive moment was not yet easy for him to face. Still, he felt more kindly towards these people than at first, seeing their gentle treatment of the consumptive workman.
“The Cohens seem to have an affection for you,” said Deronda, as soon as he and Mordecai had left.
“And I for them,” was the answer. “They have the heart of the Israelite within them, though they are as the horse and the mule, without understanding beyond the narrow path they tread.”
“I have caused you some uneasiness, I fear,” said Deronda, “by my slowness in fulfilling my promise. I wished to come yesterday, but it was impossible.”
“I trusted you. But it is true I have been uneasy, for the spirit of my youth has been stirred, and this body is not strong enough to bear the beating of its wings. I am as a man bound and imprisoned through long years: behold him set free, and he weeps, he totters, his joy threatens to break the tabernacle of flesh.”
“You must not speak too much in this evening air,” said Deronda, feeling painfully responsible. “We are going to the Hand and Banner, I suppose, to be private there?”
“No, this is the evening of the club I spoke of, and we might not have much time alone until late, when all the rest are gone. Perhaps we had better seek another place. But I am used to that one. In new places the outer world presses on me and narrows the inward vision. And the people there are familiar with my face.”
“I don’t mind the club if I am allowed in,” said Deronda. “What sort of club is it?”
“It is called ‘The Philosophers.’ They are a few poor men given to thought; but none so poor as I am. We are allowed to introduce a friend who is interested in our topics. Each orders beer or some other drink, in payment for the room. I have gone when I could, for there are other Jews who come, and I have seen a faint likeness between these poor philosophers and the Masters who handed down the thought of our race. The heart pleases itself with faint resemblances.”
“I shall be very glad to sit among them, if that will suit you,” said Deronda, relieved at the prospect of an interval before he went through the strain of his next private conversation with Mordecai.
In three minutes they were in the little parlour, where the gaslight shone through a haze of smoke on to a striking scene. Half-a-dozen men of various ages, between twenty and fifty, all shabbily dressed, most of them with clay pipes, were listening with a look of concentrated intelligence to a man in pepper-and-salt clothes, with blonde hair and broad forehead, who, holding his pipe in his left hand, and beating his knee with the right, was just finishing a quotation from Shelley:
“As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round.”
The entrance of
“I have brought a friend who is interested in our subjects,” said Mordecai. “He has travelled and studied much.”
“Is the gentlemen anonymous? Is he a Great ‘Unknown?’” said the quoter of Shelley, with a humorous air.
“My name is Daniel Deronda. I am unknown, but not in any sense great.” His smile caused a general indistinct murmur, equivalent to a “Hear, hear.”
“You are welcome, sir.”
Deronda sat down on the opposite side to Mordecai and the other men, several of whom seemed probably of Jewish descent.
Miller, the quoter of Shelley, was an exceptional second-hand bookseller who knew the insides of book, with grand-parents who called themselves German, and possibly far-away ancestors who denied themselves to be Jews; Buchan, the saddler, was Scotch; Pash, the watchmaker, was a small, dark, vivacious Jew; Gideon, the optical instrument maker, was a red-headed Jew easily passing for an Englishman of unusually cordial manners: and Croop, the shoemaker, was probably Celtic. Only three were obviously English: the wood-inlayer Goodwin, open-faced and pleasant-voiced; the florid laboratory assistant Marrables; and Lily, the pale, neat copying-clerk, whose light-brown hair was set up in a small parallelogram above his forehead.
Certainly a select company, not likely to amuse any gentleman in search of crime or low comedy. Deronda, even if he had not been made grave by his ponderings about Mordecai, would not have found food for laughter in the talk of these men, who had probably snatched knowledge as we snatch indulgences, making the most of scant opportunity. He looked around him with a quiet air of respect, and offered the contents of his cigar-case. That he made a decidedly winning impression on the company was proved by their being as much at ease as before, and quickly resuming their interrupted talk.
“This is what I call one of our touch-and-go nights, sir,” said Miller, who seemed to act as a sort of moderator. “Sometimes we stick pretty close to the point. But tonight our friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress; and we got onto statistics; Lily, there, saying we knew well enough before counting that in the same state of society the same sort of things would happen, and numbers give us no instruction, only setting us to consider the causes of difference between different social states; at which we went off on the causes of social change, and when you came in I was going upon the power of ideas, which I hold to be the main transforming cause.”
“I don’t hold with you there, Miller,” said Goodwin, the inlayer. “For either you mean so many sorts of things by ideas that I get no knowledge by what you say, any more than if you said light was a cause; or else you mean a particular sort of ideas, and then I go against your meaning as too narrow. For, look at it in one way, all actions men put a bit of thought into are ideas – say, sowing seed, or making a canoe, or baking clay; and such ideas can’t go apart from the material that set them to work. It’s the nature of wood yielding to the knife that raises the idea of shaping it. Such ideas as are mixed straight away with all the other elements of life are powerful along with ’em. The slower the mixing, the less power they have. And as to the causes of social change, I see it this way – ideas are a sort of parliament, but there’s a commonwealth outside that doesn’t know what the parliament is doing.”
“But some of the least practical ideas beat everything,” said Pash. “They spread without being understood, and enter into the language without being thought of.”
“They may act by changing the distribution of gases,” said Marrables; “Instruments are getting so fine now, men may come to register the spread of a theory by changes in the atmosphere and corresponding changes in the nerves.”
“Yes,” said Pash, his dark face lighting up impishly, “take the idea of nationalities; I dare say the wild asses are snuffing it, and getting more gregarious.”
“You don’t share that idea?” said Deronda, finding a piquant incongruity between Pash’s sarcasm and the strong stamp of race on his features.
“Say, rather, he does not share that spirit,” said Mordecai, turning a melancholy glance on Pash. “Unless nationality is a feeling, what force can it have as an idea?”
“Granted, Mordecai,” said Pash good-humouredly. “And as the feeling of nationality is dying, the idea is no better than a ghost.”
“A sentiment may seem to be dying and yet revive into strong life,” said Deronda. “Nations have revived. We may live to see a great outburst of force in the Arabs, who are being inspired with a new zeal.”
“Amen, amen,” said Mordecai, looking at Deronda with delight and recovered energy.
“Maybe,” said Pash, “but in Europe the sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last a little longer where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The whole current of progress is against it.”
“Ay,” said Buchan, in a rapid, cool, Scotch tone, “ye’ve done well to bring us round to the point. Ye’re all agreed that societies change in the long run. Now, I would beg t’ observe that we have got to examine the nature of changes before we call them progress. And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in the direction of progress? if not, how shall we discern which change is progress and which not? and thirdly, how can we act upon the course of change so as to promote it where it is beneficial, and divert it where it is harmful?”
But Lily immediately said–
“Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws of development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to them are necessarily progressive.”
“I really can’t see how you arrive at that certainty about changes by calling them development,” said Deronda. “There will still be degrees of wisdom in hastening or slowing; there will still remain the danger of mistaking an undesirable tendency for an inevitable law.”
“That is true,” said Mordecai. “Woe to the men who see no place for resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a new unfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with the elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a people grows and is knit together in joy and sorrow, in thought and action; it absorbs the thought of other nations, and gives back the thought as new wealth to the world; it is a power and an organ in the great body of the nations. Though memories may wither, and love may be faint for the lack of them, who shall say, ‘The fountain of their life is dried up, they shall forever cease to be a nation?’ Not he who feels the life of his people stirring within his own. His very soul is resistance, and is as a seed of fire that may enkindle multitudes, and make a new pathway for events.”
“I don’t deny patriotism,” said Gideon, “but we all know you have a particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai’s way of thinking, I suppose.” Here Gideon turned to Deronda. “I’m a rational Jew myself. I stand by my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for keeping up our worship in a rational way. I am for getting rid of our superstitions and exclusiveness. There’s no reason now why we shouldn’t melt gradually into the populations we live among. That’s the order of the day in point of progress. I would as soon my children married Christians as Jews. And I’m for the old maxim, ‘A man’s country is where he’s well off.’”
“That country’s not so easy to find, Gideon,” said Pash, with a grimace. “You get ten shillings a-week more than I do, and have only half the number of children.”
Deronda inwardly wondered at Mordecai’s persistence in coming to this club. To meet continually the fixed indifference of men familiar with his enthusiasm must be like a slow martyrdom. But Mordecai gave no sign of shrinking: he cared more for the utterance of his faith than for its immediate reception. With a fervent feeling, he answered Pash:–
“Let every man keep far away from the brotherhood and inheritance he despises. Thousand
“Not exactly, Mordecai,” said Pash, “if you mean that I think the worse of myself for being a Jew. What I thank our fathers for is that there are fewer blockheads among us than among other races. But perhaps you are right in thinking the Christians don’t like me so well for it.”
“Catholics and Protestants have not liked each other much better,” said the genial Gideon. “We must wait patiently for prejudices to die out. Many of our people are on a footing with the best, and there’s been a good filtering of our blood into high families. I am for making our expectations rational.”
“And so am I!” said Mordecai with quick eagerness. “But what is it to be rational? It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that consecrate change: the past becomes my parent and the future stretches toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of kindred that makes the families of men rich and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the palm? When it is rational to say, ‘I know not my father or my mother, let my children be aliens to me, that no prayer of mine may touch them,’ then it will be rational for the Jew to say, ‘I will seek to know no difference between me and the Gentile, I will not cherish our nationality – let the Hebrew cease to be, and let all his memorials be as dead as ancient wall-paintings. Let his child learn Greek by rote – let him learn to speak of nobility in that immortal tongue! For the Jew has no memories that bind him to action; let him laugh that his nation is degraded; let him hold the monuments of his law, the energy of the prophets, the fortitude of martyred generations, as mere stuff for a professorship. The business of the Jew in all things is to be even as the rich Gentile.’ ”
Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a moment’s silence. Not one member of the club shared his point of view; but his personality and speech had a strong dramatic effect upon them. Deronda reflected on what must have been the tragic pressure of outward conditions hindering this man from influencing the minds of others – like a poet among people of a strange speech, who may have a poetry of their own, but have no ear for his.
The cool Buchan was the first to speak. “I submit,” said he, “that ye’re travelling away from the questions I put concerning progress.”
“Say they’re levanting, Buchan,” said Miller, who liked his joke. “Never mind. Let us have a Jewish night; we’ve not had one for a long while. Let us take the discussion on Jewish ground. We’ve no prejudice here; we’re all philosophers; and we like our friends Mordecai, Pash, and Gideon, as well as if they were no more kin to Abraham than the rest of us. We’re all related through Adam, and if you look into history we’ve all got some discreditable forefathers. So I mean no offence when I say I don’t think any great things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. I think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don’t want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow. However, I hold with the philosophers of the last century that the Jews have played no great part as a people, though Pash will have it they’re clever enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I ask, why haven’t they done it?”
“For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country don’t get themselves or their ideas into Parliament,” said the ready Pash; “because the blockheads are too many for ’em.”
“That is a vain question,” said Mordecai, “whether our people would beat the rest of the world. Each nation has its own work, and is a member of the world. But it is true, as Jehuda-ha-Levi first said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the reverence which lifts the needs of our animal life into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak.”
“They’re not behind any nation in arrogance,” said Lily; “and if they have got in the rear, it has not been because they were over-modest.”
“Oh, every nation brags,” said Miller.
“Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a stand-still people,” said Lily. “They stick obstinately to the past. They have no development in them.”
“That is false!” said Mordecai, leaning forward. “Let their history be known and examined; let the seed be sifted, let its beginning be traced to the weed of the wilderness – the more glorious will be the energy that transformed it. Where else is there a nation whose religion and law and moral life mingled and made one growth – where else a people who enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hated with a hatred as fierce as a forest fire? Our race struggled like heroes to keep their place among the nations; but when the plough and the harrow had passed over their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with the blood of the sowers, they said, ‘The spirit is alive, let us make it a movable habitation, so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may possess a hope built on an unchangeable foundation.’ They said it and they wrought it. The Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it. The native spirit of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed of knowledge to be enlarged and illuminated with fresh interpretation. But the exile was forced afar among brutish people, where the consciousness of his race was dimmed. What wonder that multitudes of our people are ignorant, narrow, superstitious? What wonder?”
Mordecai’s excitement had risen, though his voice, which had begun with unusual strength, was getting hoarser.
“What wonder? The night is unto them, they have no vision; the sun is gone down over the prophets; their observances are as nameless relics. But which among the Gentile nations has not an ignorant multitude? They scorn our people’s ignorant observance; but the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance. In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel be a reality. Let our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the world – which will plant the wisdom of our race. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.”
Mordecai’s voice had sunk, but was not the less impressive. His extraordinary excitement was certainly due to Deronda’s presence: it was to Deronda that he was speaking, and the moment had a solemnity for him which rallied all his powers.
Not that he looked at Deronda: he seemed to see nothing immediately around him. His former words came to Deronda’s mind, but now with gathered pathos:– “You must hope my hopes – behold a glory where I behold it.” Before him stood a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, under the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, but throwing his soul’s desire into his far-off inward vision with a passion often wanting in the healthy young.
All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down, and none unkindly; but the most kindly was the most prompted to speak in opposition. This was the genial Gideon, who said–
“You have your own
“As plain as a pike-staff,” said Pash, with an ironical laugh. “You pluck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark and shave off the knots; put it where you will, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throw it on the bonfire.”
“No,” said Mordecai, “I praise no superstition, I praise the living fountains of enlarging belief. What is growth, completion, development? You began with that question, I apply it to the history of our people. I say that the effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentiles? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and soiled; but there is a jewelled breastplate. Let the wealthy men, the learned, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the counsellors who carry Hebrew blood in their veins – let them say, ‘we will unite in a labour hard but glorious, like that of Moses and Ezra, a labour which shall be worthy of the long anguish of our fathers.’ There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old – a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be a community in the East which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom: there will be a neutral land set for the halting of enmities. I know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement move among our people, and the work will begin.”
“Ay, we may safely admit that, Mordecai,” said Pash. “When high-flying professors convert to your doctrine, difficulties will vanish like smoke.”
Deronda, inclined to take the side of those on whom the arrows of scorn were falling, said–
“If we look at the history of efforts which have made great changes, it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless in the beginning. Take the unity of Italy, which we are sure soon to see accomplished. Look into Mazzini’s account of his first yearning to restore greatness to Italy; everything seemed against him; his countrymen were ignorant or indifferent, governments hostile, Europe incredulous. Of course the scorners often seemed wise. Yet you see the prophecy lay with him. As long as there is a remnant of national consciousness, there may be a new stirring of memories and hopes to inspire action.”
“Amen,” said Mordecai, revived by Deronda’s words. “What is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a power without understanding. Let the torch of community be lit! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, but who have a national hearth. Will any say ‘It cannot be’? Baruch Spinoza had not a faithful Jewish heart, yet he confessed that he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead? Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and Rome, which have inspired revolutions and enkindled the thought of Europe? These were an inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver in millions of human frames.”
Mordecai had stretched his arms upward as he spoke. Gideon was moved, and replied more mildly than before.
“It may seem well enough to make so much of our memories and inheritance, Mordecai,” he said; “but there’s another side. It isn’t all gratitude and harmless glory. Our people have inherited a good deal of hatred and rancour. How will you justify keeping one sort of memory and throwing away the other?”
“I seek nothing for the Jewish nation but good,” said Mordecai. “Our religion does not hate anything but wrong. But what wonder if there is hatred in the breasts of Jews, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Let the central fire be kindled again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think of their sacred land as a republic where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order, purified and enriched by the experience of the ages. It is only two centuries since a vessel carried over the ocean the beginning of the great North American nation. What had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a better? A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art and wisdom. So will a new Judaea, poised between East and West – a covenant of reconciliation. Will any say that the angel of progress has no message for Judaism? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose them. Shall man deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future of the world. Let us choose our full heritage and claim the brotherhood of our nation. The vision is there; it will be fulfilled.”
With the last sentence, which was no more than a whisper, Mordecai let his eyelids fall. No one spoke. The dawn of fulfilment brought to his hope by Deronda’s presence had wrought Mordecai’s mind into a state of impassioned conviction, and he had found strength in his excitement to pour forth the unlocked floods of emotive argument, with a sense of haste.
But now there had come with his fatigue a sort of thankful wonder that he had spoken – a contemplation of his life as a journey which had at last reached this destination. After a great excitement, the ebbing strength of impulse is apt to make us aloof from our active self. Mordecai’s mind was wandering along the paths of his youth, and all the hopes which had brought him hither.
Everyone felt that the talk was ended, and made a general movement to disperse. Soon the room was empty of all except Mordecai and Deronda. “Good-nights” had been given to Mordecai, but he had not heard them; he remained rapt and motionless, and Deronda waited for him to stir.