I, Dynamo

17. The View From Prindle’s Head

by

R.E. Prindle

As it is now time to deal with the career of Joseph ‘Suss’ Oppenheimer the reformer of Jewish customs and mores beginning about 1740. I will have to deal with the consequences of his career out of historical order, that is the consequences extend to 1945 and the end of WWII.

As there appears to be nothing written in English about Suss I will rely on the translation of the German novel titled Jud Suss by the Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger that was published in 1925.

Just as a note, here one has to keep the different nationalities in mind. The Jews were acting a nation or people with their own goals and methods in mind. The wished to subordinate all European government to their rule as well as Great Britain and the US. They had an international government operating across all other nations. This is a fact that must be accepted. Thus one speaks of Germans, English, Russians and hence Jews. They are resident in all nations. The Jewish nation merely lives among the various nations and peoples. They must take responsibility for their actions.

Feuchtwanger originally wrote Suss’ story as a play staged in 1916. The play was staged then withdrawn. As the play as well as the novel is pro-Jewish and anti-German I’m sure it was a wise move. He then turned the play into the novel of the same name in 1925. This was the height of the Jewish attempt to take over Germany according to Suss’ methods. The translation was then published in England where it met with great success. It was then made into an English propaganda movie also titled Jud Suss in 1933, in the US it was titled Power, in the same year Samuel Untermyer declared war on Germany on behalf of the Jewish people.

While the novel and its movies, both Jewish and German are important perhaps the name Lion Feuchtwanger is unfamiliar to most. Certainly few are aware of the importance of the man. As an historian, prior to reading Jud Suss I had seen the name mentioned frequently but I knew little further about him. Feuchtwanger, while not logorrheic did write a corpus. Most of it is historical concerning the greatness of the Jews. He wrote a trilogy, 1500 pages, around the character of Josephus and the Jewish-Roman wars of the first and second centuries AD. He also wrote a longish novel titled Success about the political situation in Weimar Bavaria in the twenties published in 1930.

This was before the Jewish-German hostilities of the thirties and forties, so while Hitler was mentioned there is no inkling of the holocaust and Hitler is seen as a crank and not a threat. Perhaps it was the times and the Jewish propaganda machine that credits Feuchtwanger with the mantle of the greatest historical novelist. He isn’t even close to that, not even a contender. Nevertheless Jud Suss was a best seller in Germany and abroad. My copy from the English reprint publisher Hutchinson bills itself and the 158th thousand. Perhaps for propaganda effect itself.

Suss is told in a fantasia style, mythologizing the story. Suss was what was known as a Court Jew serving the Duke Karl Alexander of Wurttemberg, the companion State of Bavaria to the East and Alsace to the West. It is south of Frankfort in Hesse-Cassell which was the operational capital of the Jews in the West.

I am sure that few people in the West know anything of Suss Oppenheimer if they have ever heard the name. Little known outside of Germany, I have found no study of him in English. While the book and movies have historical validity they are not documentaries. There is some invention in them however apart from emphasis the stories closely follow the facts. If you’re Jewish your interpretation will differ from the German. That’s a matter of interpretation.

Feuchtwanger himself had access to Jewish accounts that are perhaps not accessible to non-Jews, in any event the story line conforms to historical results. What Feuchtwanger has actually done is to write a manual for gaslighting societies. Suss was a master gaslighter while his employer, Duke Karl Alexander was an old soldier. He was a very successful warrior but his profession didn’t prepare him to deal with a smooth politician like Suss whose religion and nationality placed him in conflict with that of the Duke. He followed the Jewish agenda, for instance, Jews were forbidden in Wurttemberg but Suss enticed the Duke to allow them admission much to the disgruntlement of the population.

Used to having military subordinates who obeyed orders the Duke expects the same from Suss. Suss however is subversive to the core. The Duke has no familiarity with numbers while Suss was a master arithmetician.

Suss cultivates a fancy or luxurious tastes in the Duke while suggesting military grandeur that was well beyond the Dukes imagination. All these fantasies were very expensive and while the Duke has an organic connection to the his land and people while Suss doesn’t. To Suss land and people are merely props for exploitation. His policies such as taxing the people for the use of the roads, making every road a toll road, destroys the economic balance, impoverishing the citizens.

Thus, Suss becomes the Duke’s financial support. As Nathan Rothschild will be made to say in the American film The House of Rothschild: Money! The only weapon I have is money.

In sexual competition Suss who studies the arts of seduction alienates the Duke’s wife from him and she joins Suss’ gaslighting. Constantly demeaned and belittled the Duke turns to drink. Suss in order to do the things he wants encourages the drinking while obtaining powers of attorney so that he can act in the Duke’s name gaining the benefits while being able to fix the blame on the Duke. In the end the Duke goes apoplectic and dies.

At that point the Wurttemberg authorities are able to arrest Suss and charge him with the crimes that had been committed against them and the State. Suss counters an airtight alibi. He had a power of attorney and therefore was acting with the Duke’s authority so that the Duke was responsible for all Suss’ acts. The Germans obsessed with legal restrictions, Suss is about to get away with his crimes, but there was an old legal statute that held Jews who had intercourse with German women were subject to the death sentence. Suss had no argument against that, guilty as hell. As a lesson to the Jews as to methods for corrupting men and States the method is one that has been well taken and followed ever since.

Now, as a transitional figure, Feuchtwanger pits Suss against the traditional old fashioned Jews, Isaac Landau and Rabbi Gabriel. Landau was the actual Court Jew of Vienna. He is the living caricature of the Jew, side curls, caftans and all. He is content to wield the power while remaining obscure. Suss is a Western Jew longing to shine amongst the goyim in the Western grand style as the Rothschilds would so ably do.

In the end Landau still lives while Suss’ body is hanging high swinging in a cage, the highest gibbet ever erected. Landauer’s triumph was short lived as the Rothschilds soon took center stage. Suss had shown the upcoming generation the way.

Jewish affairs were multi-varied, at the same time Suss was active in Wurttemberg to the East the Jews in Alsace were wielding usury like master knife throwera. They had that State in thrall. If they plundered Spain a few centuries earlier they owned the souls of the Alsatians. With compound interest working against the Alsatians, they were as good as slaves.

The French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews to full citizenship was on the horizon in 1791. With that freedom to operate openly the conflict between Jewish mores and French mores gave the Jews every advantage. There is little doubt that France would have been in the position of Alsace within a decade or two. The conflict between the two nations escalated until Napoleon became the Emperor and had to grapple with the problem.

European civilization had been rapidly evolving since the Renaissance and increasing freedom from the Catholic/Jewish straight jacket. In the eighteenth century it took its tentative moves into modern institutions. In 1720 the Scot, John Law, had succeeded in introducing the concept of paper currency in France. The notion was based on the idea that money could equal a nation’s gross national product and at first it was stunningly successful but as the novelty was not understood the method ran out of control and crashed.

The English enviously watching from across the channel dreamed up the South Seas Company that was thought to develop an immense business not unlike the East India Company. Thus, expectations were divided into shares that quickly traded at immense value and then just as quickly crashed. Nevertheless new systems emerged from the wreckage as the modern banking system and the stock exchange slowly took shape. The Jews understood the new systems perfectly.

Subsequent to the two Bubbles the Industrial Revolution evolved from new scientific and technological knowledge, most notably in the emergence of the railroad which would change the face of the land and create immense new sources of wealth largely based on paper money as there wasn’t enough gold to go around.

These developments slowly changed the social balance of power that manifested itself in the explosion of the French Revolution. The Revolution marked the rise of the Bourgeoisie that was securely in place by the passing of the Napoleonic period.

The Jewish avatars of this new order were the Rothschilds who rose phoenix like from the ashes of the Suss period. As I indicated the principalities of Wurttemberg, Alsace and Hesse-Cassel were the heart of Jewish operations of Europe. Suss had briefly captured Wurttemberg while in Alsace to the East Jewish usurers repeating the earlier Spanish success of bringing the whole of that State into their debt.

The German Margrave of Hesse who was no mean usurer himself had amassed a huge fortune in financial obligations. One of his methods had been to lease his male citizens to other States as soldiers. According the Feuchtwanger Suss had tried to get Karl Alexander to do the same but he refused.

As is well known the Rothschild father, Mayer, had sent his five sons to different European capitals as bankers. Remember Mayer’s attributed statement in the House of Rothschild that his only weapon was money and he intended to use it. Sending his sons out as bankers was that move. Once they found banking , that is, usury on a massive and legal scale the family was on solid ground. What Mayer’s intent was in dispensing his sons wasn’t dwelt on but judging from the results it was the political domination of Europe, the realization of the Jewish goal of world dominion.

Nathan I, who went to England to engage in the burgeoning textile business of the Industrial Revolution knew nothing of textiles, hence failed, but failing there he followed the maxim, ‘by any means necessary’. He turned to criminal activities and became a very successful smuggler gaining some useful knowledge that would stand him in good stead soon.

Then Napoleon invaded Hesse-Cassell in hot pursuit, some people say, of the Margrave’s million which he assuredly meant to appropriate for himself. The Margrave, no doubt thinking that all things must pass, looked to secrete his chests of obligations and as luck would have it he settled for Mayer Rothschild as his agent. What a boon, what a boon. Mayer took the riches and turned them to account sending a big bundle of cash to the failed textile merchant but successful smuggler, his number one son, Nathan I who immediately set himself up as a banker. What reputation Nathan made in textiles and smuggling isn’t known but it would seem certain that when he showed up in the City with millions it must have been somewhat of a surprise. Ill dressed and eccentric but with marvelous skills in usury, which is almost to say, banking, trained to the philosophy ‘by any means necessary’, Nathan couldn’t help but succeed and succeed he did in a most spectacular way. When Napoleon failed a decade later, when the dust had settled and the smoke had cleared Nathan all but owned the bank of England. He was the George Soros of his day.

Well and good but Europeans still had the Jewish problem that Emancipation and Napoleon’ efforts had only exacerbated. Henry Ford tried to do the same about a hundred years later but with no more success than Napoleon. They didn’t understand the problem while the problem had grown and grown.

After 1806 and his conquest of Central Europe Napoleon furthered the emancipation of the Jews from the French Revolution of 1791. He sent his Minister of the Interior, Champigny a letter in 1806 outlining his program: (following the Wikipedia entry)

[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of the Jewish people to practice a great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it, to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…. Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will come to leave Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.

You see how little Napoleon understood the Jews. Had the term been available at the time the Jews would have called Napoleon an anti-Semite. His program was exactly what the Catholic Church’s had been for about 1500 years and in which they failed miserably. That is, converting the Jews. A little over a hundred years on, after Henry Ford’s failed attempt, the German Chancellor Adolph Hitler would review all the failed efforts to incorporate the Jews into society and in answer to a Jewish call to exterminate the Germans and raze Germany to the ground, call the for the Final Solution. That didn’t work either.

Napoleon, thus, was no psychologist or ethnologist. He makes the mistake of thinking that all people’s interest and sentiments can be changed by fiat. The French learned nothing from Napoleon’s mistakes as they are now finding it impossible to integrate Moslems and Africans and make Frenchman of them. As they failed miserably at integrating the Jews two hundred and some years later one may find a hint at the outcome of this experiment.

Lest Napoleon’s opinion of the Jews be mistaken, in another letter of 1808 to brother Jerome Napoleon he said this: (Still Wikipedia

I have undertaken reform to reform the Jews, but I have not endeavored to draw more of them into my realm. Far from that, I have avoided doing anything which would show esteem to the most despicable of mankind.

Indeed, as if to acknowledge this opinion: (still Wikipedia)

In 1808, Napoleon rolled back a number of reforms. (Under the so-called decret infame, or Infamous Decree of 17 March 1808) declaring all debts with Jews to be cancelled, reduced or postponed. The Infamous Decree imposed a ten year ban on any kind of Jewish money-lending activity. Similarly, Jewish individuals who were in subservient positions—such as a Jewish servant, military officer-or wife- were unable to engage in any kind of money-lending activity without the explicit consent of their superiors. Napoleon’s goal in implementing the Infamous Decree in 1808 was to integrate cultures and customs into those of France.

This caused so much financial loss that the Jewish community nearly collapsed.

Thus it can be seen that the central problem was the Jewish practice of usury. Nor was usury forced on them as why should it be, it is the most lucrative business short of drug dealing ever devised by human minds. The Jews embraced usury. They were usurers from biblical times on. Jesus chased the money lenders from the temple porch. You may be sure that the Jews were enraged at losing that most lucrative of all businesses.

By usury Jews were able to control the money and hence the people. As society developed and nationalism became more developed, central banks came into existence. All nations borrowed and the loans were immense and secured by the taxes of the countries. Thus Jews managed to control the central banks and the entire currency. Governments then had to apply to the banks, that is the Jews for loans, they thus became more important than the governments themselves.

While attacking that Jewish activity Napoleon could only have a surer victory while restoring himself to full sovereignty. Indeed, the Florentines of Italy had already faced up the problem by instituting a municipal pawn shop lending at reasonable rates thus bypassing on that level the Jewish usury industry. France would also create a State run pawn shop. However, if a world be borrower had no alternative he could ‘go to the Jews’ and obtain money at exorbitant rates.

In England, of course, no such laws were passed giving Jewish usurers full license to handle the currency.

With the rise of the great banking organizations and the stock exchanges some order was brought into the currency, while laws began to be passed regulating maximum interest rates.

Napoleon believed he could integrate an alien culture and people into the dominant French culture thus converting the Jews into authentic Frenchmen. He merely gave the Jews entry into the dominant culture in which they could impose their customs and culture while piously claiming to be French. Within very few decades, fighting only with money as their weapon, the Jews would have more magnificent castles than the French nobles who had been stripped of all their prerogatives by the revolutions of 1791, 1830 and 1848. As the monetary royalty then, the commons and debased nobility were sheep that had been sheered. France, in all but name, belonged to the Jews.

It was then, sometime after the Father Thomas affair in Syria of 1840 that alarmed writers began to write exposes of the Jewish threat that were immediately countered with defamatory anti-Semitist charges. The Jews became adept at organizing incidents that strengthened their hold on the various nationals as the reactions would be defamed as anti-Semitism. That includes the famous Dreyfus Affair of France of the 1890s.

To return to Feuchtwanger and Jud Suss. As mentioned in 1933 Feuchtwanger managed to have a movie of made of Jud Suss, while in 1934 the American Jews made a movie romanticizing Mayer Rothschild and his sons called The House of Rothschild. That movie is withheld from distribution as a DVD while it is available on the internet. Both movies are strictly Jewish propaganda and given the timing and circumstances anti-German especially as the Jews had declared war against Germany in 1933. US boycotts and other forms of discrimination enacted by the Roosevelt administration followed.

The situation was so fraught with danger that the anti-war faction in Congress strengthened the neutrality laws to prevent the Roosevelt administration from taking military actions. Roosevelt and his Jewish coterie found ways to get around the laws, that is, violate them. The US of Roosevelt had virtually joined the Jewish war against Germany.

One must assume that the Germans were affronted, we don’t have to assume, we know they were affronted by these movies. Both were essentially acts of war. More concerning that issue further on.

Let us now return to 1808. It is true that Napoleon enfranchised the Jews, that is, emancipated them as he conquered Central Europe. This was much against the objections of the conquered States which had long negative experience with the Jews and very likely recognized their hostile intents. Indeed, the Zionist movement would arise in Vienna. When Napoleon was conquered and sent into permanent exile on St. Helen’s in the middle of nowhere the Central and Eastern States tried to reimpose Jewish disabilities but with ill success. Now empowered, Jewish hostilities increased apace enveloped in the Communist movement.

In the US movie The Rothschilds, Mayer Rothschild expresses his hatred toward Europe and states more than once that the only weapon the Jews have in the fight is money. In viewing the film it is often difficult to distinguish the portrayal of the Rothschilds from overt ‘anti-Semitism; even though the movie is authorized.

Nathan Rothschild I delegated to England has been quoted to say: I care not which politicians run the country so long as I control the currency. Money was essential to the Jewish campaign. Nathan Rothschild had captured control of English currency, and the Jews did what they liked with British politics. His brother James had done the same with the French currency.

In England from being a ‘persecuted’ people they won pre-eminence until a Jew, Benjamin D’Israeli disguised as Church of England, was the prime Minister and the entire Rothschild family owned the largest and most magnificent of estates.

James Rothschild in France, while not being Nathan, was establishing a Jewish dynasty that would endure from 1815 until the French people disenfranchised them in mid-twentieth century by confiscating their bank.

The revolutionary period from 1791 to 1830 was both a critical period in world history and the ascension of the Jews. In France the Jews integrated themselves into the government early and they knew what to do to advance themselves further. The aristocracy was dispersed as a political force, neatly disenfranchised in the Revolution of 1830 during which the monarchy lost the right to absolute power. In 1830 the French finally disposed of the Barbary Pirates who had raided the Med coast for slaves and booty for hundreds of years since the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. Thus security was assured the coast. As part of the conquest of the Barbary Coast France annexed Algeria. They subjected the Algerians making Frenchman the dominant caste. Algeria had a substantial Jewish population who were subjects of the Algerine Moslems.

A French Jew named Adolph Cremieux who was one of the most important Jews of the nineteenth century forced a law through making the Algerine Jews French citizens thus elevating them in a moment over the Moslems. You may be sure that they took full advantage of their position to revenge themselves. Thus putting the French into even worse odor as conquerors.

Thus the Jews constantly pushed the envelope. They had an unrecognized superior position. They played a semi-autonomous role. While posing as the various nationals they claimed all the rights of citizens while at the same time maintaining their own legal and moral code in opposition to the citizens of the home country. They were quick to deny any criticism labeling any such as ‘anti-Semitism.

Thus a very strong tension developed as national analysts wrote books exposing and detailing Jewish machinations. And this would continue to develop until the confrontation of the Second Thirty Years War of 1914-1945.

More importantly Jewish religious pretentions were successfully challenged by the emergence of the scientific method and its results. The European mind was advancing far beyond the Jewish magical mind.

During the Catholic centuries in which the Jewish and European minds were centered on the Arien Age magic of the Jewish bible, the two mentalities were equal or at least on the same evolutionary level. The rise of Science invalidated Jewish magic while elevating the European mind far above it. Thus in the attempt to deal with Science the Jewish religion split into many sects until the beginnings of Zionism in 1797 began to direct Jewish magic to the undermining of science by infecting it with that magic.

Jewish power would find a savior in the United States of America, that while insignificant at the turn of the century became the dominant world power. Hence the Jewish version of the Jud Suss movie was named Power in the US. Once the Jews realized this, they quickly sent millions to colonize the US. They were successful by 1913 as when they elected Woodrow Wilson they became co-governors. At that point they were able to sway European affairs at will.

Continue to 18. The View From Prindle’s Head

13. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle

by

R.E. Prindle

The deeper one gets into Reynolds the more deep it gets. The question becomes how did perhaps, after Walter Scott, the greatest English novelist of his or any other time get swept under the historical rug or in contemporary terms disappear down the memory hole. While I can only claim to have begun my study I am overwhelmed by George’s narrative abilities.

In my study I have been introduced to various writers of George’s period of which I had only known by name such as William Harrison Ainsworth, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Lever, Captain Marryat, Dickens and Thackeray of course, and none can compare to him. This was a stellar cast in English literature, too. Of succeeding writers such as Trollope, Eliot, Collins, Mrs. Gaskell and a host of others appear as epigone to my mind. Apart from, perhaps, Thackeray, Reynolds is easily the most prolific.

He did however have one tragic flaw, if he liked something he read he either emulated or appropriated it. While perhaps not so obvious now as it was glaring at that time. A key example will appear in this essay, that of Georges appropriation of Harrison Ainsworth’s Ride of Dick Turpin from his novel Rookwood.

A word on Harrison Ainsworth as background. Ainsworth in his time was as famous as either Dickens or Reynolds with Dickens only, so far, surviving the test of time. This is difficult for me to understand. Dickens makes for painful reading. Ainsworth was prolific and had an extended career although dim at the end. He was from Manchester and a Midlands, almost regional author. He made his fame on what were called Newgate novels. Like others he was active as a magazine editor having an eponymous magazine, Ainsworth’s to showcase his writing. He was a very social type who enjoyed his fellowship of writers. He ran a literary salon out of his house in Kensal Green to which Reynolds was not invited.

As a writer, after Rookwood published in 1832 which established his reputation he was most successful from 1838 to 1845 when he issued his string of historical novels based on English history. These are quite good. Competent with flashes but not quite genius level. His account of the plague year of 1665 and London fire of 1666 is outstanding. His later career had its ups and downs but his histories of the John Law currency scandal in France and the South Sea Bubble in England are well worth reading.

Reynolds took up his pen in 1844 to successfully launch his career with his Masterwork, The Mysteries of London as Ainsworth’s masterly historical novels were appearing one after another. In reading both authors I sometimes have trouble distinguishing which author I’m reading; so, after several failed attempts, excluding his Dickens appropriation of Mr. Pickwick with his Pickwick Abroad, Reynolds probably adjusted his style to that of Ainsworth. While Ainsworth’s style is flat and Dickens slightly archaic I find Reynolds’ to be quite modern. While Ainsworth’s style is flat, mostly surface, Reynolds has an amazing depth as he strives for every nuance to bring his characters to life. Of course, his style changes slightly with the advancing years.

While I have not read every thing I have read much of the oeuvre and except for his historical novels which form a large part of his corpus he places his contemporary novels in the years from 1826 into the forties. He seems to set up those novels from 1826 into the forties, and then to their conclusions. As his mind was fixated on that period, other than age, a possible reason for his ceasing to write novels about 1860 was that his novels became dated. Strangely even though his works were selling very well when he stopped novel writing he sold his copyrights to his printer John Dicks and never looked back. By that time he was very well off, dying in the seventies with twenty thousand pounds in the bank.

Ainsworth himself in his later years after 1860 also struggled to appeal to contemporary readers. The late fifties to the break time of 1860 was when the Romantic period faded and Auguste Comte’s Positivism commanded and that was finished by Herbert Spencer. Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859 leading the scientific succession from Comte and Spencer. Spencer sat astride the succession.

The role of psychology was developing rapidly during the thirties, forties, and fifties and Reynolds who was deeply interested in human maturation was no mean psychologist. He is quite remarkable. The principal work I am studying here is Series III of the Mysteries of the Court of London.

The final two series have nothing to do with the Court but the title must have been worth something so he continued it much as Stiff attempted to do when Reynolds left Stiff’s Mysteries of London. I first came upon Reynolds through the first two series of The Mysteries of the Court of London that bowled me over. Gradually as my interest expanded I discovered the Valancourt edition of The Mysteries of London that really excited my interest. And then I came across a bibliography of his work that is as inclusive as any but still misses a number of his titles, many of them virtually unknown. Even with his two major works, the Mysteries the first two series of each are well known and until recently the latter two volumes of each are, if not unknown, neglected. Wildside Press began to publish Lady Saxondales’s Crimes of the Court but gave up after a combined edition of the first two volumes of the 1900 Oxford Society edition, presumably from lack of interest although they did publish all five volumes of the fourth series, The Fortunes of the Ashtons. Those volumes are out as remainders. When those have been gone through the volumes will be scarce.

The whole series of the Court was serialized from 1848 to 1856. I think most readers, as few as they may be, believe that Series I & II occupy that whole space and I did also. Actually the first two Series were finished sometime in 1852, Lady Saxondale would have been from perhaps l853-54 and the Ashtons from 1855 and 1856. Dicks then published all four series in eight volumes.

For as popular as Reynolds was said to be it seems odd that copies of early printings are impossible to find except in American editions that are slightly less difficult to find mostly in the odd volume. So for the two Mysteries one has to rely on The Oxford Society edition. They publish the four series in five volumes each instead of two as with Dicks.

This Oxford Society itself seems to have disappeared without a trace. Scholars in England have been unable to locate it, yet they published the last edition of the Mysteries of the Court while combining with the Richard Francis Burton Society of Boston. The edition was in multiple forms and apparently a fairly large number. The title page says that it was published for members of the Society but they had a deluxe edition of a thousand copies, a flexible leather covered ‘paper back’ edition and an edition of apparently ten volumes combining two volumes each listed as London and Boston. Either the Oxford Society Membership was very large or the publishers merely published under that name as no evidence of the society is known. In any event Reynolds sales continued until WWI when nearly all memory of him vanished under the Guns Of August.

As a note for those not familiar with Richard Francis Burton he was a noted Ethnologist and Anthropologist as well as one of the most famous of explorers that opened Europe to the world. His expeditions take a prominent place in the opening of Africa while his studies of Moslem literature have still a prominent place in Ethnic studies. His most famous work is A Secret Pilgramage to Mecca and Medina when he is alleged to have been the first European to penetrate to the Kabah. I have been able to learn nothing of the Burton Society of Boston.

There is no biography extant about Reynolds. Dick Collins’ short essay published as a preface in the Valancourt Edition of Reynolds’ title The Necromancer being the closest we have. However, Dick Collins points out that George was a highly auto-biographical writer so that armed with the few acts and hints Collins puts out it is possible to get a probable history of the writer.

This is possible because as he is an astute psychologist his works can be seen as essays in self-analysis. In Vol. III the depiction or analysis of Lady Saxondale is central from her first crime to the dissolution of her character. The maturations of all the characters are thoroughly examined while Freud would not have been disappointed in the results. I know, because I’m not. So, sometime in late 1853 Reynolds began the third series of the Court of London

Reynolds was a revolutionary. During the forties he had been a central participant in the evolutionary Chartist Movement of England. He does not seem to have been involved in Marxism. I have found no reference to the Communist Manifesto of 1847. Reynolds career as a violent revolutionist collapsed after the failed Revolution of 1848 in which he played a prominent part in England. He first became a revolutionist when he arrived in France in 1830. His analysis was that the violence of that revolution cleared away ancient customs allowing for a brave new world. From 1830 for the eighteen years to 1848 he was an active revolutionist using his literature to subvert the existing order. His major role in the 1848 revolution was his literary agitation against the Crown and the Aristocracy. All of his writing is subversive. As a violent revolutionist he did not endear himself to the other Chartist leaders.

One of his problems other than advocating violence was that he always had financial schemes that were probably on the edge of legitimacy. Accounts of such schemes fill his pages. His sons were later convicted for employing financial schemes. Con men abound with the most vile criminal figures in every book. Crime is the central theme of Lady Saxondale’s Crimes, indeed, crime is the last word in the title. Lady Saxondale tries to solve all her problems with criminal acts that get her in deeper and deeper blasting nearly all those around her.

Reynolds frequently mentions crimes committed in youth and how they are redeemed by virtue in maturity. Undoubtedly he is referring to himself. An interesting example in Crimes is Lady Bess who will figure in this analysis. Following his regular method she and her brother were orphans. Reynolds and his brother were orphaned. Their father died when Reynolds himself was eight and his mother died when he was sixteen. Orphans and sixteen year olds ramble through his pages.

His first book was written in 1832 when he was eighteen and published in 1835. It was a record of a crime he committed that scarred him for life. His mother died in March of 1830 and George was placed in the guardianship of his father’s best friend Duncan McArthur. He is the McArthur of Reynolds third name. He was a naval doctor living in Walmer. Dick Collins thinks it not unlikely that McArthur bought bodies from Resurrection Men. It was from these men that doctors obtained bodies for dissection and scientific experiments. Once again such doctors have prominent places in his novels. If Reynolds was aware of this and if McArthur indoctrinated him in these practices that he describes so well Georges’ mind was profoundly affected. Perhaps McArthur had an anatomical museum such as the one that Dr. Ferney has in Crimes that George describes so minutely.

George’s father probably appointed his friend as guardian to give his sons male guidance in case of his death. If so, he made the wrong choice. In another place, his novel the Steam Packet, George has a character, probably an alter ego and an orphan declare that his character hated his guardian who was overbearing and brutal who also was executor of his parents will and would never tell how much the legacy was or what it consisted of. In the dispute about how much George inherited if there was a will then it must have substantial enough for McArthur to possibly appropriate it for his own purposes which as executor he could do. In the absence of details one can only speculate but there does seem to be an issue here.

When George wrote his first version of the novel in 1832 he may have felt it too early to the crime depicted to publish so he waited for three years and then probably rewrote or edited it, as he had had time to think the material over.  The novel titled A Youthful Impostor involves a sixteen year old youth who is a cadet at the English military academy at Sandhurst in Berkshire as was Reynolds. Thus his obsession with sixteen year olds. One time coming back to the school from London to Hounslow his character was accosted on the road by two highwaymen as a third watched. After being bandied by the two, the third who watched from a distance thought he would be ideal for a swindling operation he had in mind. The Youth is recruited. In real life this would have been between September and December 1830. In the novel the swindle goes well and the youth is treated to a couple months of the highlife before the swindle goes sour. In real life this must have been the time that George became familiar with Long’s Hotel. Long’s was the posh hotel in London. Reynolds refers to it frequently in his novels.

The bubble must have burst in December so that Reynolds fled to the Continent to avoid prosecution. Then began his exile of five years. Collins believes that Reynolds was involved in criminal activities such as using loaded dice. As George believes that adult honesty redeemed criminal activity he must be referring to himself.

Fresh from a criminal milieu then, this sixteen year old set out to conquer the world by any means necessary. George is so familiar with con games, cheats and sponging that one thinks he must have experienced such activities. I think George did. He was especially solicitous of the gendarmes in Pickwick Abroad so that one imagines that he was quite familiar with them and probably saw first hand the insides of the jails he so minutely describes.

On the other hand George was a curious guy. He came, he saw, and picked a few pockets.

And so, Lady Bess of Crimes who had lost sight of her brother, she was told he was dead, is reunited with him; he is horrified to find that she is a lady highwayman living a life of crime. This is Geroge speaking through Lady Bess now, that when, she explained to her brother, when she was thrown destitute out on the world she had two evil choices, one was to sacrifice her chastity and live a life of degradation and shame from which she could never recover or take up a life of crime while retaining her precious chastity and therefore remain pure while the crimes she was committing could be readily forgiven an hence with her chastity secure she could reenter society as she will when the orphans are discovered to be of noble parentage on the bastard side.

So, while George had erred as the Youthful Impostor his own life had been redeemed by his success as an author and publisher. His crimes in his mind were swept under the rug. A little sophistry goes a long way. Sexual purity, by the way, obsesses George.

Reynolds writing also encompasses several genres from fairy tales to history to true romance, to crime and others. Per its title, Lady Saxondale’s Crimes is primarily a crime and mystery novel with a lot of romance. He does have an audience to maintain and this is the way he does it. Remember the episodes are published on a weekly basis so he has to follow a Perils of Pauline type cliffhanger formula.

The starting point for Lady Saxondale that develops into quite a string of crimes began when she presents her elderly husband with an heir to the title. From a first marriage he has a ne’er do well son name Ralph Farefield who is depending on his inheritance to bail a wastrel life out. When Lady Saxondale’s son is born who displaces him, Ralph determines to remove the baby. This introduces the criminal character Chiffin the Cannibal who is quite reminiscent of the Resurrection Man of Mysteries of London. The chief difference here is that Chiffen is a creation of George’s imagination rather then erupted from his subconscious as did Tony Tidkins, the Resurrection Man. While Tidkins was organic Chiffin has the manufactured feel, however quite good.

Having now read a few million of Georges twenty million plus words I am getting more comfortable with Reynolds’ mind. It now becomes apparent that he is creating his own universe. For instance, this is the first time I’ve noticed him do this, he takes a character from another novel and works him in. I had just finished his million worder Mary Price before beginning Crime. In Mary Price he introduces a ne-er do well strolling player by the name of Thompson who was still alive at novel’s end. In that novel we now learn he had become involved in a valuable secret that Harietta (Lady Saxondale) needs. Mary Price was begun in 1850 running concurrently with the second series of Mysteries of the Court. The first series of that novel terminated and was published in book form in 1853. The last we saw of Thompson he was in prison on some charge of flim flam. He was obviously an obscure personage as no one in Saxondale has ever heard of him nor is he known to be dead or alive.

Lady Saxondale actuates a dragnet at some expense to locate him. I imagine that if Reynolds could have planned his whole oeuvre consciously in 1844 he might have composed a huge panoramic novel. Subconsciously he has, as the novels can be integrated but with shifting casts of characters. Tony Tidkins, the Resurrection Man could have been kept alive thus appearing here obviating the need for Chiffin. The two characters are quite close with Chiffin doing some resurrection work.

Well, Ralph the Heir employs Chiffen to abduct and murder the infant which he promises to do. Circumstances prevent the murder. Lady Saxondale, Harriet is determined that Ralph shall not inherit. She sets out to find the child. The astute reader intuits that she will not find it but will find a substitute. The difficulty here is that the real baby has a strawberry birthmark on his shoulder. Harriet was an aristocrat you know; in those day an aristocrat could do and get away with anything they willed. Harriet appealed toa Dr. Ferney to create the strawberry on the substitute.

A reader familiar with Reynolds knows doctors, medical matters, are an obsession with him. This probably refers back to his guardian, Duncan McArthur. He creates many and Dr. Ferney, along with Tidkins, the Resurrection man, is perfect of his kind. Now, of course the reader can guess the baby is a duplicate but that’s about all. It’s pretty clear that one of the characters is going to be the real baby. Which one. George keeps his audience guessing, strings the issue out. However, Ferney’s depiction is wonderful. According to biographer Dick Collins, Georges guardian who you will remember had been his father’s best friend, Duncan McArthur had been a doctor in Walmer, Kent who also bought bodies from resurrection men. Collins speculates that George had even worked with Duncan, perhaps even accompanying him on a removal. At any rate George’s description of Dr Ferney seems really detailed, the kind of detail you can only get by having been involved.

George’s doctors always have a museum of embalmed body parts, the random head collection and the obsession with creating life. These doctors appear regularly. The description of Ferney’s collection is magnificent. Of course, Ferney falls deeply in love with Harriet having met her while grafting the strawberry on the substitute. Ferney’s crime haunts him carrying that frightful secret as a burden.

Ralph becomes desperate when he learns of the discovery of the child or replacement. He now has to murder the replacement, in the process he is discovered by Harriet and murdered in the crypt of the Saxondale private chapel. This is because Harriet has a vial of newly discovered chloroform acquired from Dr. Ferney. One whiff of which lays you out. She gave Ralph a whiff and shoved him into the pool and walks out locking the door behind her. Nobody ever visits the chapel so she thinks she is cool.

At this point she has launched herself into a life of hideous crimes that will unfold one after the other. If you think Harriet was alone in her crimes you are mistaken. There will be many crimes and many criminals. For the most attractive of them George reinvents the wonderful Lady Lade, Letitia Lade, from the first series of the Court of London. In that novel she was an associate of Tim Meagles who was a very close buddy of George IV as a young man. She was known as an Amazon and Diana the Huntress. Appellations of Lady Bess. She wears men’s clothes as does Lady Bess. Meagles was based on the relationship of the real life Beau George Brummell with George IV.

George Reynolds introduces Lady Bess, also known as Elizabeth Paton. She is a difficult character, as we will learn she was the sister of Francis Paton, presumably orphans, but we will learn further on that they are the natural children of Lord Everdean who mated with Lady Everton, a married lady to produce them out of wedlock. Lord Everdean finds it expedient to leave England for a decade or but when Lady Everton’s husband dies he returns to reconcile with that widowed Lady. He also reunites with his two children. He can forgive Lady Bess for her criminal activities because she has jealously guarded her virginity so that she is pure.

Lady Bess while not hardened ran with and commanded a ferocious gang led Chiffin the Cannibal. Bess is a lady highwayman. Reynolds is associated with the Newgate Calendar school of Penny Dreadful writers along with Ainsworth although neither really fits that description. The Newgate Calendar was a series of brief histories of famous crimes and criminals that writers mined for their own stories.

Reynolds is very familiar with the Newgate Calendar and especially likes the character of the highwayman, perhaps because of his youthful encounter. He also favors female characters dressed in men’s clothes. Lady Bess fits all his preferences. As her story begins she along with Chiffin are holding up a stages coach quite close to where she lives. Her victims are two lawyers, Marlow and Malton who will figure prominently in the novel. Things go wrong when Marlow punches Lady Bess and knocks her down thus capturing her. She talks them into taking her to her house, where she lives for crying out loud, to tidy up. Incredible as that sounds she has a hutch of carrier pigeons so that she pens a note in code, attaches it under a wing and sends it off. It seems that there is a criminal network that is connected by carrier pigeon from London to Dover.

Hang in now, don’t leave me, George, as I pointed out, was much influenced by Harrison Ainsworth. Ainsworth wrote a novel in 1832 titled Rookwood. This was one of the first Newgate novels from which he selected as a hero the legendary highwayman, Dick Turpin. In it Turpin commits a crime in London and to foil detection he set out on a wild non-stop ride to York two hundred miles distant. He rides his wonder horse Black Bess, hence Lady Bess is a tribute, at top speed the two hundred miles in eight hours, a seemingly impossible feat. That means he can claim to have been in York when the crime was committed in London. Confederates could claim that he had been seen in York during those eight hours.

Ainsworth’s depiction of Dick Turpin’s ride created a sensation while making his reputation. George was one of those in the admiring crowd. As ever George lifted the story, which was obvious to everyone, much as he had Dickens Mr. Pickwick for his own Pickwick Abroad. While it might appear that George was plagiarizing, and I suppose he was, he apparently wanted to emulate, or appropriate, that which he admired. Hence Lady Bess does a ride from London to Dover in five and half hours.

Now, Dick Turpin’s great horse, Black Bess, dropped dead after her grueling race of eight hours. George Reynolds’ objected to that in Lady Bess’ case although in Crimes of Lady Saxondale he has Count Christoval make a dash from Madrid to Barcelona, 300 miles, in an effort to save a man from hanging, in which the horse does drop dead at the end of the run. In his The Necromancer he has the devil, Danvers’, make a run from London to the Isle of Wight over hill and dale and water with no ill effects to his magic horse.

Lady Bess’ pigeon post is set up on a start, two relays and a finish system. Thus, while the two lawyers, Marlow and Malton, are waiting Lady Bess sends off her pigeon to the first relay station. Pigeons apparently fly sixty miles an hour thus arriving before Lady Bess.

The lawyers hear her horse clatter off realizing that they have been hoodwinked. Now Turpin was followed by a posse who were delayed by changing horses so the lawyers rode off after Bess but are no match for her. The first relay station prepares a horse for her so that she can jump off hers and remount within seconds. That station then sends the pigeon on to the second station signaling that Bess is on the way. The second station repeats sending the final message to the terminal point the Admiral Hotel in Dover.

Ainsworth had Turpin and Black Bess clatter noisily through towns; George notices this error so he has Bess ride around towns to avoid notice which she can do because she knows the whole of Kent like the back of her hand. Arriving at Dover at daybreak (4:00 AM in England at that season and latitude) she checks into the Admiral hotel whose owners are in cahoots and have prepared an alibi and set it up. Unlike the desperate characters of London who look and act vicious, these criminals in Dover maintain the appearance of respectability and hence can function within the law as well as without. When Marlow and Malton arrive and try to bring charges the magistrates blow them off as Bess couldn’t have been in two places at once. Bess wins that one

To follow the Lady Bess thread of the novel a little further, she had been separated from her brother Frank Paton a few years earlier. She had lost track of him but then she spots him walking down the street. He was wearing the livery of Lady Saxondale whose footman he was. Bess rescues him from service, which was considered an indignity, but he is aghast when he learns she is a criminal. Here George indulges in a little sophistry. In order to reconcile Frank she explains that when they were separated she had no means, having only the choice of sacrificing that greatest jewel that woman possesses, that is her virginity, and become a kept woman or worse or turning to crime which was a much lesser evil than becoming frail and living off her body. Frank thinks for a couple minutes and agrees. I offer no opinion of my own.

Some adventures intervene until their father, unknown to them, Lord Eagledean returns to England, tracks them down along with their mother who, it may be kept in mind, was seduced from virtue byhim making her a frail twice over. Eagledean is fabulously wealthy, we are talking millions of pounds, a multi-billionaire in today’s money, so the two orphans are now fabulously wealthy while being elevated to the nobility. Nice trick, Lady Bess becomes Elizabeth and amazingly drops her whole criminal psychology. She had maintained that jewel of womanhood so that probably redeemed her criminal career while making her acceptable to Eagledean.

Lord Eagledean is an enigmatic character. While he maintains that he is a virtuous, highly principled person who is highly censorious of other people’s conduct his methods hover around the unethical into hypocrisy. It is difficult to determine what Reynolds wants readers to think of the man. Is it Reynolds’ art that he preaches the contrast between Eagledean’s word an his actions so as to let the reader form his own opinion of the man or is he unaware of the contrast but wants the reader to take him at his word. Eagledean’s activities do take place at a very complex point in the story in which the ethics of all the characters have become ambiguous in their morality. This part of the story is actually quite frightening. It takes place in the latter half of vol. IV and there’s still five or six hundred pages to go.

In 14. I will begin an analysis of the principal character of the Crimes of Lady Saxondale. As guilty as Lady Saxondale became she is hardly more culpable than every other character in the novel. Indeed, Lady Saxondale’s Crimes is one long study of criminality of one degree or another. I think you will find the climax invigorating. It will take some effort on my part to capture the essence of Reynolds’ mind.

14. Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle follows.