ABSTRACT
Anthony Trollope wrote several dozen novels in which no Jewish characters appear – leaving a generous supply of others in which, to give a quick sampling, we hear about “a nasty, greasy, lying, squinting Jew preacher; an imposter,” 1 “a greasy Jew adventurer out of the gutter,” 2 “a nasty, stuck-up, greasy Jew,” 3 “an impudent low Jew,” 4 a “small, and oily, and black-haired, and beaky-nosed” man who speaks with a “lisping fiendish sound” and who is “[o]f the modern Hebrews a most complete Hebrew,” 5 and “a thin, black-browed, yellow-visaged woman with ringlets and devil’s eyes, and a beard on her upper lip, – a Jewess.” 6 They are “[a]n accursed race,” 7 and members of “an alien nation; a nation expressly set apart and separated from all people – a peculiar nation distinct from all others.” 8 As one Madame Zamenoy puts it in Nina Balatka , “Oh, I hate them! I do hate them! Anything is fair against a Jew.” 9
Such hostility would hardly seem to fit the persona Trollope creates with his genial narrator – guiding us, nudging us along, playing the part of the wise and warm-hearted friend. A 2001 “Talk of the Town” piece in The New Yorker , about a lecture at the New York Bar Association co-sponsored by the Trollope Society, ends with the exasperated speaker wondering why Trollope, despite his obvious anti-Semitism among other unappealing qualities, manages to snooker such a devoted group of readers. “Some of it is a fetish about England – an extraordinary love of Englishness,” he decides. “Trollope can get away with murder. He can do no wrong. But then you do just sink into the arms of Trollope.” 10
Often, of course, readers still admire the work of authors who are known to have especially repellent views. It is arguably not so difficult to praise, say, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “The Waste Land,” no matter how prickly or prejudiced we believe its author to be. But Trollope’s fiction succeeds to the extent that he seems to let us embrace his personality, not escape it. If we become convinced that Trollope’s vaunted worldliness and tolerance are a mask for ignorance and narrow-mindedness, we may find it difficult to read him with any pleasure at all.
