ABSTRACT
When Shylock’s daughter Jessica ran off with a Christian, she took her father’s precious jewels. That, says Howard Jacobson in his analysis of The Merchant of Venice, was the unforgivable crime. Yes, take the lover of whom your father disapproves; yes, take the lover who despises your family’s religion, if that is the lover you want; but don’t steal. That is what Jessica did. I think it is also what my Jewish grandmother did. She was declared dead by her orthodox Jewish family for marrying my grandfather, William Beckett, on 18 September 1893, at St James’s Church in Islington, north London, according to the rites of the Established Church. None of her family attended her wedding. So far as anyone knows, she never saw any of them again. She was born Eva Solomon, but the name in her marriage certificate is Eva Dorothy Salmon. Her father was named as Mark Salmon; his real name was Mark Solomon, and all her brothers and sisters called themselves Solomon. For good measure, she lied about her age too: she was born in 1868, not 1869. This may have been so that she would appear to be a few months younger than her husband, when in fact she was a few months older.
