History In Its Fullness
November 15, 2021
History In Its Fullness
Origins Of World War One And Two
by
R.E. Prindle
In Flanders Fields
By John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If we break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Prologue.
The above verse was written to honor those fallen in WWI, known as the Great War before WWII. The carnage was terrible. Between seven and eleven million soldiers would die many of them buried in the immense military cemetery of Flanders Fields. As many as forty million Europeans as a direct consequence: A true holocaust and a preliminary to a worse twenty years later, I do not refer to the collateral deaths of the six million.
Oh, sure. ‘History’ tells us that an Austrian Prince was assassinated and that was the cause of the war. That’s a sort of historical white lie. The Prince’s assassination catalyzed the war but it didn’t cause it. The primary cause was racial enmity and the origin was the execution of a Jewish political criminal in 1740.
Because of that execution a series of bloody revolutions occurred killing millions more. 1789,1830,1848. After the ’48 failed the revolutionists determined that a change of tactics was necessary. Then began an asymmetric war of assassination and agitation. Dozens of prominent politicians and significant people hit the ground over the next 50-60 years. The conspirators meant to have a war and by 1914 they had it. The assassinated Prince was the excuse but not the cause.
What caused the war? Race. A long train of events that began, for our purposes on the lone figure of a man hanging from the gallows in an iron cage thirty full feet from the ground. A heinous execution for a multitude of heinous crimes. That man was named Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, by race a Jew. Let us trace the clues that link Suss as the cause of the genocidal two European wars of the twentieth century.
1,
Grievance on Grievance
All EuroAmerican history has been falsified due to the historical sin of omission. While all the actions of all nations but one have been taken into account the deeds of the Jews have been omitted or, at least, misrepresented. Yet the Jews have been most influential of all the nations. That’s an anomaly that demands explanation.
They have and had the smallest population while having no homeland other than the whole of Europe and North America throughout which they were scattered. Sound contradictory? It’s not. While spread primarily over the two continents the Jews maintained a tightly knit group of, essentially, conspirators. They existed under two legal systems, theirs and the gentiles with theirs being supreme in their eyes. The Gentiles had only one which put them to the disadvantage. The Jews could claim two loyalties but theirs took precedence in their eyes.
Their prophet or failed messiah, Sigmund Freud, proclaimed the method of group psychology and its analysis so that any coherent groups’ activities, patterns, can be determined and analyzed. Their psychology is based on the notion of being completely distinct from all other races while their sense of superiority is based on the notion that they were the selector’s choice of all the peoples God created. That is God, himself, did this. As above, so below. God would sometimes come down and have a chat with them. At one time he chatted and pilpuled with his favorite, Abram.
The problem was that no other people believed this story hence they didn’t give the Jews the respect that they thought they commanded. Hence, further, a grievance. One history of the Jews is a list of their grievances. There were many, many, and all had to be revenged. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. God didn’t go along with this last item. He admonished his people that revenge was his prerogative. Revenge belongs to me, saith the Lord. The Jews have disregarded that injunction, preferring their own adage.
Thus the grievance list and their remedy grew. The preferred remedy was genocide. Kill them all. Perhaps first on the list were the Amalekites. For the trivial offence of not allowing the long Jewish train of migrants roaming the desert to pass through their tiny country they were exterminated man, woman and child. No one has seen an Amalekite for thousands of years now.
The particular grievance with the Amalekites was settled rather quickly but as we will see some took perhaps a couple thousand years one that ended in Flanders Fields.
Speaking of more recent grievances that can be grouped under WWI and II let us choose a beginning point of 1290 which was the time that they were expelled lock, stock, and barrel from the Kingdom of England. Woah, that one wasn’t forgotten and it took to world wars to resolve that. Soon after King Philip Le Bel of France expelled his Jews in 1307.
The Jewish relations with the Germans had always been troubled. First they expelled, then let back in, then expelled again. A very frustrating experience. Of course, it was always the fault of the English, French or Germans, never their own activities. The Catholic Church had inadvertently given them a monopoly on usury when it forbade Europeans to loan at interest. Not a realistic ban, on the score of giving the monopoly to the Jews or in developing the economy.
The Jews had taken full advantage of the privilege and were well on the way to confiscation of the wealth of the continent when Napoleon put a stop to it. The Jews lost their monopoly but retained their souls.
Time, the tides and evolution wait on no man, so over these years and centuries we’re discussing, European society developed at a very rapid rate. Might not seem so if you were living during those centuries but it was.so.
The last major expulsion of the Jews took place in 1492 when the Visigoths reconquered the final bit of Moorish territory of Granada. The Victorious Visigoths gave the Moors and Jews the choice of accepting Christianity or being expelled. Many stayed and many left. But after England, France and Germany Spain was the last straw. This was one grievance too far so condign vengeance was declared. This meant one thing: Genocide. The Jews would seethe for four hundred years until…Der Tag.
In the interim there was a lot of life to live. Some twenty-six years in 1517after Spain, the Catholic priest, Martin Luther would rebel against the Church posting his 96 theses and setting off a train of disasters that would result in modern Europe. The Central European religious war as ferocious. Catholics vs. Protestants. This was the famous Thirty Years War that nearly depopulated Germany. You can believe that Central Europe was shattered, the economic system destroyed by 1648 when peace was finally established. Peace of a sort.
Central Europe was impoverished, principalities were small yet political and economic matters were European wide. The aristocrats savagely suppressed serfs, common people, denying them of educations. Only one people could operate over across the borders of Europe and that people was the Jews. So, a relationship developed between the rulers and Jews. The Court Jews provided the essential services of acquisition and distribution. A temporary institution grew up know as Court Jews. They were dependent on the rulers but operated between the rulers and the peoples as a semi-autonomous people but solely able to accumulate wealth..
The factors, or merchants skinned the rulers, their profits were fabulous. In many cases a factor might have an equally fabulous personal establishment as the rulers, sometimes better. Thus, though always separate this separation was more conspicuous as the war ravaged Germans began to rebuild from scratch. Then along came Suss in the 1730s in the German State of Wurttemberg. Here’s our culprit. Suss singlehandedly changed the equation between the Court Jews, he being one, and the rulers. Previously to Suss the rulers had the upper hand. When the factors flaunted their wealth too conspiculously the rulers simply repudiated their debts leaving the factors roaming the streets.
Repudiating the debt may sound extreme but so was the greed of the factors. Their activities was essentially a transfer of the wealth from the rulers to themselves. All the money was ending up in their hands. So an economic redistribution of the wealth was necessary, one might say inevitable.
Enter Suss. The wily Suss, the clever Suss. He was the Court Jew, or factor, for Duke Karl Alexander of the largish State of Wurttemberg in Southern Germany next to Bavaria. Within a very short time, his tenure was only four years he inveigled what we would call a Power of Attorney from the Duke to function essentially as a co-ruler. Within the space of a few years he committed enormous crimes appropriating the wealth of the Wurttembergers for his own use enraging the citizens. Then the Duke unexpectedly died. Suss was arrested tried and executed in an ignoble fashion. This infuriated the Jews already smarting from all the expulsions. Suddenly a plan gelled in their minds.
In the seventeenth century Cromwell of England readmitted the Jews to England. In the late eighteenth century Napoleon emancipated the Jews. That is they allowed to function as citizens without disabilities. But Napoleon demanded a quid pro quo, essentially that the Jews would amalgamate with the French to become one culture but retaining their ‘religion.’ Needless to say, the Jews took the emancipation but reneged on amalgamating with the French. But, how could they? In their terms they were a separate and peculiar people.
Now, about 1800 is when Europe’s troubles really began. After emancipation the Jews immediately set out to revolutionize Europe, that is, to become the rulers.
The Napoleonic emancipation was meant to cover all Europe. Emancipation was complete in the French territories but advanced more slowly beyond the French borders. By mid-century it was more or less complete. Then a new player entered the field, that being the United States of America. Refugees from the ’48 flooded into the US and prospered. Post-Civil War they were well established. Technological inventions opened vast new fields for them. For an instance, the sewing machine changed the way people obtained their clothes. The machines made mass production possible so that when hordes of Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe began what amounted to an invasion, the masses of people could find ready employment.
In imitation of the Freemasonic Order, in 1843 the Jews created the Order of the B’nai B’rith which was strictly limited to Jews. Once established the Order became international and was exported to Europe and soon had lodges in all countries. Now coordination of activities became a simple matter from centers of conspiracy. In 1895 the psychologist Sigmund Freud joined the Vienna Lodge where he lectured the faithful on his findings to psychologically manipulate masses, whole countries..
Unlike the goyim the Jews did not reject his findings but embraced them. It was in the B’nai Brith lodge that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were composed during the first Zionist convention in 1897. Freud and Zionism were the steroids needed to produce the Russian Revolution of 1903-05 and the Soviet Revolution of 1917.
Two other events in the wake of Suss formed the Revolution. One was the birth of Meyer Amschel Rothschild of Frankfort just above Stuttgart, Wurttemberg. Suss was from Frankfort, the center of Jewish conspiracy in Europe. After establishing himself as the Duke’s alter ego he spent much time in Frankfort organizing his people. From there he toured London and Paris before meeting his fate. Meyer must have been raised on stories of Suss. He accordingly made plans. As he had five sons, his legendary five arrows, he indoctrinated them in the plan to conquer Europe. As they came of age he sent them to five European capitals from which as kings of usury they controlled or influenced the currencies.
The two most important countries were, of course, France and England, the West of Europe. His son, Nathan, was sent to England while the youngest James went to Paris, the two most important posts.
Being outside Continental Europe England was not affected by the emancipation, in fact English Jews had never been under European style disabilities although along with the Catholics and Dissenters they had limited civil disabilities that put an arms length between themselves and the English. Two nations.
Remember that in addition to Suss France, England and the German principalities had all expelled the Jews and those expulsions had to be avenged.
In 1804 an English avenger was born in the person of Benjamin Disraeli. He was tutored by his father Isaac to be a man of vengeance. To avoid the civil disabilities Isaac himself gave the appearance of rejecting Judaism so that he could find success as a writer at which he succeeded. So that his son Benjamin could function as an English citizen with full rights he had Ben baptized. So while he remained racially stoutly Jewish he could function as a Christian and a mole. When Benjamin came of age he began writing tracts that passed as novels. From1826 to 1836 he established a reasonably good reputation as a novelist. In 1837 he was elected to Parliament. The mole was in place.
Now, Nathan Rothschild who founded the English branch of the clan arrived in England in 1795 with the intent to prosper in the burgeoning textile industry. He failed to make his mark and so went through a rough period during which he became a successful smuggler and apparently made some money which led him to become a banker. His muse was sitting on his shoulder so that in 1807 he scored a coup that gave him some substantiality. By this time his brother James was establishing himself in France, Paris.
Napoleon involved himself in a war in Spain so that the English intervened through Portugal to aid the Spanish. The English General Wellington became strapped for cash to pay the troops and to obtain supplies. Nathan supplied the gold which then had to be sent to Spain.
Even though Napoleon had emancipated the Jews making them French citizens with full rights, and even though part of that deal was that the Jews would give up their evil ways and become truly amalgamated with the French, Nathan and James conspired to use Nathan’s smuggling skills to move the gold through France to Spain helping the English to defeat Napoleon. That avenged themselves a little on France but not enough.
Then in 18i4 as Napoleon and Wellington faced off on the battlefield of Waterloo Nathan performed perhaps the greatest coup in history. He realized that the English currency could be manipulated to his advantage if he could get the news of victory or defeat first. He did. He knew it was victory but circulated the verdict as defeat amongst the City stock brokers. A panic ensued, stock prices plummeted and as they did Nathan Rothschild bought every share he could so that when the official news of victory arrived Nathan had captured the currency of England. He was then far and away the richest man in England. His muse had caressed him; he was on the way and didn’t have to look back. England belonged to the Jews but there was still the problem of civil disabilities and the English were not going to grant them easily and they never did during Nathan’s lifetime. It would take his fully capable son Lionel to do that in collaboration with Benjamin Disraeli in1858..
Whither Europe?
As the nineteenth century began the future was momentous for Europe including North America. An asymmetric war was in process. The Europeans blinded themselves to the actual situation. Disraeli mentioned once that there was a tussle going on between the Rothschilds and the Secret Societies. Robert Blake in his biography of Disraeli scoffs at the notion, as probably Dizzies contemporaries did, thinking that he was deluded. However, Disraeli was receiving information from two different sources, the European conventional sources in which he was directly involved and influencing and the Jewish/Rothschild sources. He thus had a tremendous advantage among the Parliamentarians using sources they didn’t have while at the same time giving inside information to the Rothschilds for whom he served as a mole. A telling anecdote is that on a mission to Paris he was introduced to James Rothschild, the French patriarch. James casually mentioned to Dizzy: I believe you know my nephew, meaning Lionel. Hearing that Dizzy could lean back and feel comfortable. He was included.
He thus had obligations to fulfill. Europeans always wondered how the Jews were so well informed, seeming to have the news before it even took place. They always had men in high places, some were bought while the Jewish officials just shunted the info over. The mistake the French made in the Dreyfus Affair of the nineteens was to accuse him of channeling info to the Germans. The route was Dreyfus to the Synagogue and from there to the Germans or whoever the Synagogue thought fit. So it was with Johnthan Pollard in the US during the latter part of the twentieth century. Pollard funneled reams of material to the Israelis and they used it to their advantage regardless to whom. The info was disastrous for the US Intelligence agencies so much so that Pollard, a Jew, was given a life time sentence. Needless to say, his people got him out after twenty-five years and he went to Israel with whatever else he knew.
The Jews thought that anyone who would put their enemy into positions, such as Prime Minister or inside Intelligence Agencies, must be crazy and they were right.
Disraeli, himself, was a very nasty piece. Naturally, as a foreigner, and Jews were considered foreigners, Disraeli endured slights and affronts. He was asked what he did to retaliate. He said he never carried a grudge, he said that he just brushed them off. He noted their names and wrote them on a piece of paper, put the paper in a box, which must have been chock full and when he looked in the box again, he found that his offenders had disappeared. One can’t know exactly what he meant by that, whether by magic they had slipped from notice or they had serious ‘accidents’ and crossed the bar. I can only speculate but when his closest associate, George Bentinck, died shortly after reaching his and Disrraeli’s objective he disappeared so that Disraeli was able to seize leadership of the party. I think Disraeli’s life was filled with such coincidences. You simply didn’t want to stand in his way.
The same goes for his fellow Jews. If someone was in the way they were eliminated in one way or another. Hence the horrendous list of assassinations after the ’48 and into the war years of WWI and WWII which make up a thirty years war. The asymmetric war then was on. The Jews, the instigator knew it, but the Europeans were slow to catch on. The Jewish bete noir, Germany, was the only country who caught on or at least said they did.
Why Germany? The answer is Jud Suss. Because of Jud Suss, Germany had to perish. After a hundred fifty years or so, the scab covering Suss came off. As the Jews became more confident of taking Germany in the nineteen twenties the issue of Suss was revived by the Jews. They had blood in their eyes. While little information about Suss exists in the West, Lion Feuchtwanger wrote a historical novel in 1926 called simply Jud Suss, that met with great success while Selma Stern wrote a short book about the rise of the Court Jew emphasizing Suss’ career. Then in 1930 Feuchtwanger found financing and made a movie of his book also titled simply, Jud Suss; in the US it was titled Power. In addition in the US a movie was made glorifying the Rothschilds. These movies were meant to vilify the Germans.
This set off a fire storm among the National Socialists. They countered with an excellent movie on the Suss theme and then a magnificent film called The Rothschilds. Evidently in an attempt to set the record straight.
I have said that the Jews wanted to destroy Germany and the Germans lock stock and barrel. This will be unbelievable I believe to readers. However, and this is not interpretation, there was a genocidal plan to wipe the Germans and Germany from the earth that is well documented. In 1940 the plan was released through the American Jewish Committee by its operative Theodore Kaufman in a pamphlet called Germany Must Perish. This was not some off the wall publication but was distributed country wide, reviewed widely, even in Time Magazine and incorporated into Roosevelt’s post-war plans. You can buy Kaufman’s book, it’s still available.
The plan was the if you castrated all the German men, Germans would ‘disappear’ within a generation. And then German industry was to be destroyed completely and turned into a pastoral territory divided amongst the surrounding countries. This is not to be pooh poohed and taken lightly. The National Socialists did not take it lightly. I don’t know how confident they were of winning this massive war but they must have realized that with the Soviet Union on their East and the US, England and France on the West under the influence of the Jews their situation was perilous. So, this threat of genocide from the Jews was not to be taken lightly. Genocide was part of their history. Ask the Amalekites.
I don’t believe that their plan before this genocidal threat was received was to genocide the Jews, but after it was received they definitely decided to eliminate them before the Jews eliminated them. That’s called a pre-emptive strike, which the Jews always employ, and self-defense. The ugly truth comes out. The Suss execution bugged the Jews so much that the US compelled Germany to pardon Suss in the aftermath of the war. The Suss affair dominated Jewish thinking from 1740 to 1940, or 50. Germany and the Germans were almost completely destroyed in vengeance. England, the Soviet Union and the US were merely tools in the hands of the Jews.
To return to Disraeli.
To understand Disraeli one must place him in the proper perspective. He is not English, could never be English. If you’ve seen the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, compare Disraeil with the spaceman Klaatu. Klaatu looks human but he comes from an entirely different planet, a whole different mindset. He cannot think like a human. He is a stranger in a strange land as was Disraeli. His people occupied a space between the English and say, the Gypsies. He knew what the English knew and he knew what the English didn’t know. He operated in two different worlds.
Here is a quote from Disraeli’s last novel, Endymion, that illustrates the difference. Disraeli is talking about the Three Glorious Days of the July Revolution in France in 1930, Chapter VII:
Quote
The men who have won ‘three glorious days’ at Paris, want neither civilization nor religion. They will not be content till they have destroyed both.
‘It is possible,’ he continued. ‘that they may be parried for a time; that the adroit wisdom of the house of Orleans, guided by Talleyrand, may give this movement the resemblance, and even the character, of a middle class revolution. It is no such thing; the barricades were not erected by the middle class. I know these people; it is a fraternity, not a nation. Europe is honeycombed with their secret societies. They are spread all over Spain. Italy is entirely mined. I know more of the southern than the norther nations; but I have been assured, by one who should know, that the brotherhoods are organized throughout Germany and even in Russia. I have spoken to the Duke about these things. He is not indifferent, or altogether incredulous, but he is so essentially practical that he can only deal with what he sees. I have spoken to the Whig leaders. They tell me that there is only one specific, and that a complete one—constitutional government; that with representative institutions, secret societies cannot exist. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that with these secret societies representative institutions will disappear. And so they have today.
Unquote.
Roughly a hundred forty years later, that is as I write in 2021, representative institutions have all but disappeared under the influence of these secret societies. The whole notion of Republics passed through Democracy into Synarchy and that is the actual state of society today. A minority of delirious fanatics is running society.
At another time Disraeli was quoted as saying that a struggle was going on between the Rothschilds and the secret societies. Once again he was scoffed. But who should know better than he? Apparently the English secret service was not so developed as to infiltrate these secret societies. Their blindness allowed a whole new counterculture to develop that today controls the EU and the US.
The Rothschilds knew and they did have the sense to infiltrate the secret societies and indeed to take them over and turn them to Jewish uses. This still will not be believed today as researchers are dismissed as crack pot Conspiracy Theorists. There is no theory involved; it is historical fact.
So Disraeli was working in constitution government while, as he says, he knew the people he was talking about. This raises the question, how did he know them and what was his association with them. As he said that there was a struggle between them and the Rothschilds did the latter use him as an agent to deal with them? There is something here that needs to be explained. He is the most preeminent of men and he couldn’t get his message across but was allowed to run the constitutional government. Things can’t get much stranger than that.
He was routinely denounced as untrustworthy and he was untrustworthy. He repeatedly worked against English interests and in favor of Jewish interests obviously as was explained in his novel of 1847 Tancred. Few people actually read Tancred although it was in their interest to do so. Endymion was more widely read but Disraeli was dead by that time.
He was known as an expansionist and every expansion he secured weakened the British Empire a little more. He obtained a useless appendage in Cyprus that drained England (and Ireland) of more men.
Some of this is too incredible to be true. Such an incident was the acquisition of the Suez Canal Company’s shares.
A little background. None of the biographers that I have read seem to realize the connection between Disraeli and the Rothschilds. It is totally impossible that they wouldn’t have recognized that they were kindred spirits. Disdraeli himself worshipped the Rothschilds. It is highly improbable that Isaac D’Israeli and Nathan Rothschild didn’t collaborate in some fashion. Isaac’s 1933 The Genius of Judaism would indicate that. Isaac is talking about what he considers the very genius of the spirit of Judaism, without reference to any genius of individual Jews. He is also trying to break down the resistance of the English to Judaism.
Nathan Rothschild named his headquarters New Court. That is, a counter court to the Court of England. In other words he Jews were in a contest to replace the English Court. Isaac’s book is moving in the same direction. The appearance of his book in 1933 is an indication that he thought the plan was advancing. By1933 also Isaac would have thought that he could recommend Benjamin as someone to be accepted and encouraged.
Benjamin as a successful author of scandalous ‘novels’ had called attention to himself. Now after 1933 he began a number of unsuccessful attempts to enter Parliament, shifting from party to party and ideology to ideology until he was finally selected in 1937. He was permanently lodged there for the rest of his life.
Nathan died in 1936 succeeded by his son Lionel who was almost the same age as Disreali. As a member of Parliament then he was befriended by Lionel and the two began cooperating but Disraeli was necessarily the junior party. His three 1840s novels, Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred give the plan away while in his character Sidona he lauds Lionel to the skies. Even when he became the Prime Minister, a chief of England he acknowledged Lionel as his superior.
This was no more evident than in the Suez incident. To enlarge the field of action: The Rothschilds acted in concert while the English and French branches of the family were the linchpins. Nathan’s brother James in Paris died in 1866 succeeded by his sons Gustave and Alphonse. The French under De Lessups had built the canal. The canal itself was not for sale but the Suez Canal Company that operated the canal concession had issued shares, the majority of which were owned by the French, the remainder by the Khedive of Egypt. The Khedive had fallen on hard times and wanted to sell his shares for four million pounds.
It is impossible that Lionel and the Gustave and Alphonse were not in communication with each other, perhaps even to buy the shares themselves; if so they realized the impracticability of the notion.
Parliament went into recess. At this precise moment Disraeli thought it was imperative for England to acquire the shares, however as Parliament was out of session the funds could not be voted on. As Disraelj apparently thought it was imperative to get the shares acting on his own authority he went to Lionel and asked him to loan the four million pounds to England.
Disraeli, the Prime Minister of England, went to a mere usurer, which technically was all Lionel was, to ask him to loan the four million. Now, maybe I’m wrong but as Prime Minister Disraeli took precedence over a mere money merchant. Disraeli was offering the deal of a lifetime, better even than Nathan’s coup.
The Jews always talk as though they are thorough Englishmen, Germans, what have you, patriotic to the core. Lionel, coolly looked at Disraeli and asked ‘What’s your collateral?’ This is an English Patriot asking. Disraeli laughed, ‘The British Empire.’ So, this doofus Benjamin Disraeli signed a loan agreement putting the entire British Empire up as collateral for a mere four million pounds. At that point, if Parliament came back in session and refused to honor Benjamin’s act the Jews would have owned the British Empire. As soon as Parliament resumed they voted the four million and retired the loan.
But, for a few weeks loan, this patriotic Englishman, Lionel Rothschild, charged 15% at an annualized rate. One hundred thousand pounds.
Think about it, Disraeli put the Empire in jeopardy to merely buy a commercial company. As with all his foreign affairs the canal led to the assumption of the Egyptian government by England thus spreading the military even thinner. Egypt led to the Ang;lo-Egyptian Sudanese condominium and that led to military operations in the Sudan. It was a sad day when Disraeli became Prime Minister.
Conclusion
Benjamin Disraeli died in 1881 just after he had published his last work, titled Endymion. In reading this it should be apparent that there was the constitutional government, for the aware it is also clear that there were clandestine plotters or, in another name, Secret Societies. History is not made up of only the former but a combination of the latter as well. Given human psychology it is inevitable. Disraeli repeatedly insisted upon it in his book and who was in a better position to know. He even tells you that he familiar with Southern secret societies even going so far as to say that Italy was mined with them.
In Endymion he gives an example involving Napoleon III in England, where he was compelled to go in disguise lest he be assassinated as the French government feared his doing what he did, that is seizing the government and making himself dictator. This book is a good fictional account of how things worked. If you look beyond the fictional paraphernalia the general method is true.
This work was published in 1880 when Disraeli was nearing death. So it has a more relaxed reminiscent feel. It has none of the frenzy of Tancred or the wild exuberance of Coningsby. The book is a roman a clef so most of characters reflect real people. Disraeli himself is Endymion, the beautiful boy toy of Greek mythology. The Neuchatels, New Castles that match Nathan’s New Court are the Rothschilds at the apex of their glory in 1880.
Eighteen- eighty would be a pivotal point in English and European history. The old generation, of which Disraeli was part was dying off. The scene had shifted from the revolutionary mode of 1789, 1830, 1848 and perhaps 1870 to one of assassination and random bombing. Included as a secret society is the freemasonry of Judaism, the Freemasons themselves, the Jesuits and the labor movement. Those groups are above ground but tightly knit confederations who also function clandestinely.
The passage I quote centers around the career of Napoleon III prior to his election as Premier in France and his later usurpation of the government of France. Bonapartism was not a dead letter in this Napoleon’s life. It was feared that he would try to establish a regime which after many trials and tribulations he did. He spent most of his early life in England. According to Disraeli the Jews were instrumental in putting him in office.
According to Disraeli in this portrayal, Lous Napoleon (III) attended Eton school where Endymion was his fag, or servant. At that time he was going by the name of the Count of Otranto, At this time he is the mysterious Colonel Albert, then Prince Florestan and ultimately Napoleon.
The speaker here is Sidney Wilton who was Napoleon’s guardian.
I quote:
‘My unhappy ward,’ said Mr. Wilton; ‘you know, of course, something about him..’
‘Well, I was at school and college,’ said Waldershare, ‘when it all happened. But I have just heard that you had relations with him.’
‘The most intimate; and there is the bitterness. There existed between his mother Queen Agrippina and myself ties of entire friendship. In her last years and in her greatest adversity she appealed to me to be the guardian of her son.
He inherited all her beauty and apparently al her sweetness of disposition. I took the greatest pains with him. He was at Eton, and did well there. He was very popular; I never was so deceived in a boy in my life. I thought him the most docile of human beings, and that I had gained over him an entire influence. I am sure it would have been exercised for his benefit. In short, I may say it now, I looked upon him as a son, and he certainly would have been my heir; and yet all this time, from his seventeenth year, he was immersed in political intrigue and carrying on plots against the sovereign of his country, even under my own roof.’
‘How very interesting!’ said Walershare.
It may be interesting to you; I know it cost me. The greatest anxiety and sorrow, and even nearly compromised my honour. Had I not a large hearted chief and a true man of the world to deal with, I must have retired from the government.’
‘How could he manage it? said Waldershare.
‘You have no conception of the devices and resources of the secret societies of Europe,’ said Mr. Wilton. ‘His drawing master, his fencing-master, his dancing master, all his professors of languages, who delighted me by their testimony to his accomplishments and their praises of his quickness and assiduity, were active confederates in bringing about events which might have occasioned an European war. He left me avowedly to pay a visit in the country, and I even received letters from him with the postmark of the neighbouring town; letters all prepared beforehand. My first authentic information as to his movements was to learn, that he had headed an invading force, landed on the shores which he claimed as his own, was defeated and a prisoner.’
‘I remember it,’ said Waldershare. ‘I had just then gone up to St. John’s and I remember reading it with the greatest excitement.’
All this was bad enough,’ said Mr. Wilton, ‘but this is not my sorrow. I saved him from death, or at least a dreadful imprisonment. He was permitted to sail to America on his parole that he would never return to Europe, and I was required, and on his solemn appeal I consented, to give my personal engagement that the compact should be sacred. Before two years had elapsed, supported all this time, too, by my bounty, there was an attempt, almost successful, to assassinate the king, and my ward was discovered and seized in the capital. This time he was immured, and for life, in the strongest fortress of the country; but secret societies laugh at governments, and though he endured a considerable imprisonment, the world has recently been astounded by hearing that he has escaped. Yes; he is in London and has been here, though in studied obscurity, for some little time.
Unquote.
You will notice that England and Europe sent their hardcases to the US. The US was the great dumping ground of Europe, especially after the ’48 when hordes of revolutionaries descended on NYC, spreading out from there. Collateral damage of that event was that it transformed the US.
As Disraeli points out operatives can infiltrate anywhere. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia they immediately sent operatives into every Western capital. While the Soviet Union was not a secret they used secret operatives who infiltrated every move of any government. Deep operators entirely disguised, posing as good hearted souls trying to make the world a better place intervened to get minimal sentences or even none.
In 1917 a fully operational system in place, surfaced. In later twentieth century the great Jewish spy Johnathon Pollard was hired in the intelligence apparatus and transferred reams of material to his home base in Israel before his screen was penetrated. His material completely disrupted the US’ foreign relations to benefit an Israel that was receiving billions of dollars of aid per year.
The US was devastated so much so that they give Pollard a life sentence over the pleas and protestations of both US and Israeli Jews. It took twenty-five years of incessant agitation but Pollard was finally released to freedom. He presently resides at his home in Israel where he is handsomely rewarded.
These clandestine groups and secret societies have to be taken seriously. Add to this Disraeli’s racial outlook of which he was fully convinced. I quote another passage from Endymion, pp. 360-61 that fully and emphatically emphasizes his view:
Quote:
There is another great race which influences the world, the Semite. Certainly when I was at the Congress of Vienna, I did not believe that the Arabs were more likely to become a conquering people than the Tartars, and yet it is a question at this moment whether Mehemet Ali, at their head, they may not found a new empire in the Mediterranean. The Semites are unquestionably a great race, for among the few things in this world which appear to be certain;, nothing is more sure than that they invented our alphabet. But the Semites now exercise a vast influence over affairs by their smallest though most peculiar family, the Jews. There is no race gifted with so much tenacity, and such skill in organization. These qualities have given them an unprecedented hold over property and illimitable credit. As you advance in life, and get experience in affairs, the Jews will cross you everywhere. They have long been stealing into our secret diplomacy, which they have almost appropriated; in another quarter of a c century they will claim their share of open government. Well, these are races, men and bodies of men, influenced in their conduct by their particular organization and which must enter into all the calculations of a statesman. But what do they mean by the Latin race? Language and religion do not make a race—there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood.
Unquote.
Then and now, you couldn’t possibly state it more clearly except possibly with technological discoveries not known in Disraeli’s time.
The man is not always accurate. Mehemet Ali was an Albanian and not a Semite. Europeans acting in concert easily frustrated any plans he had.
Disraeli says that, ‘they have been stealing into our secret diplomacy, which they have almost appropriated.’ So, does anyone really believe that Dreyfus the Frenchman convicted for espionage in the nineties wasn’t guilty? Of course he was. Does anyone not believe that Johnathan Pollard, twentieth century US didn’t ‘appropriate’ reams and reams of secrets and give them to Israeli? A question not worth asking. How can one not believe that Disraeli was not cooperating with the Rothschilds?
‘An unprecedented hold over property and illimitable credit…’ Might as well say they own the world. Disraeli’s enthusiasm gets away from him but he quite rejoices in matters that Jews today deny.
This essay cuts off at 1880 when Disraeli and his generation disappeared. Lionel died in 1879, James was already gone in 1866 while civilization transited from one mind set to another.
Matters are being led however to the first phase of the Great Thirty Years War of 1914-1945 that Falk predicted.
Pt. X, Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle: G.W.M. Reynolds, TheNecromancer
December 12, 2019
Part X, Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
A Review
Geo. W.M. Reynolds’ The Necromancer
by
R.E. Prindle
Reynolds’ writing system was such that he could write each installment of the Mysteries of the Court of London in seven hours leaving the rest of the week open. Thus he had a seven hour work week leaving time to do a myriad other things including writing other books. He says his mind was bursting with ideas. He had a powerful compartmentalized mind so that he could keep two or three novels going at the same time so that in the year of 1851 he wrote his installments for the Court of London and The Seamstress, Pope Joan, Kenneth and the Necromancer, the last two extending into 1852. We are going to examine here his very fine novel, The Necromancer, or perhaps one might rename it the Magician.
If as seems evident that every novelist is writing his own life whether consciously or unconsciously, it is also true that the novelist reflects his own time. Ostensibly the Necromancer takes place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but I think we can abstract a story about what was happening currently in his day. This will require much background work.
As is uppermost in every twenty-first century White mind the question of is the author in any way anti-Semitic, non, Feminist, a racist, and as it is expressed a Homophobe. We are going to explain the Necromancer as an explanation of Semitism in the England of Reynolds and ignore the other bete noirs. You have been forewarned.
Whether you consider Semites, that is Jews, as a religion, a nation, a people or whatever they are an economic, political and social force working solely for Jewish interests to the exclusion of all others. Jews consider themselves a nation and a people. The period from 1814 through the nineteenth century saw the rise of the Jewish people as the pre-eminent people of Great Britain. The rise was especially prominent from 1815 to 1860, the period most important of Reynolds novelist life.
It is not possible that he didn’t note the situation and if he didn’t mention it directly, which he doesn’t, then there must be a reason. Why would he have to resort to a parable such as The Necromancer? The answer was that even at that time there were penalties to writing ethnographical studies such as Reynolds’ that did not show Jews to critical advantage.
If one found it necessary to include Jewish characters they must be portrayed in the most benevolent light. Reynolds does mention Jewish characters but in a peculiar way. He lauds them as long suffering, unfairly victimized as a people but then he invariably displays them as what are called anti-Semitic stereotypes. Thus the pawn broker in Wagner, the Wehr Wolf.
He is depicted as a totally inoffensive person, obsequious to the extreme as a persecuted member of the bedeviled people. After these laudatory comments Reynolds then pictures a character bearing all the so-called Semitic tropes. He changes the stones on the pawned diamonds to paste, which Reynolds justifies by his peoples ages long persecution, as well as other criminal acts. It would seem that Reynolds knew the score.
The odd thing, since Jewish activity was at a height is that Reynolds makes no reference to Jewish economic or banking activities. Let us do a brief survey of where matters stood at the time. In 1815 Nathan Rothschild seized control of English currency and the Bank of England.
To explain:
A famous European and Jewish canard is that of father Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his five arrows, that is, his five sons. They were dispatched to European capitals to form a powerful network covering the continent and England. Nathan Rothschild was sent to Manchester to engage in the booming textile industry. Nathan was no businessman and could not succeed in textiles. He therefore turned to crime becoming a smuggler which would turn out to fortuitously make his fortune.
In 1806 Napoleon was conquering the German States, moving in on the Margrave of Hesse-Cassel. The Margrave was fabulously wealthy. He wanted to conceal his wealth from Napoleon who was more than eager to appropriate it. The Margrave then employed his Court Jew, Mayer Amschel Rothshild, to conceal it. Mayer sent a substantial portion of it to Nathan who by this time was floundering around as a banker. The money immediately established Nathan as a financial force. At that time the British were engaging Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsular War. Wellington the British general in the Peninsula needed cash desperately but the usually inventive English didn’t know of a secure way to get the money to him. Nathan was then used to transport the money. Using his, by this time, well developed smuggling skills in conjunction with his brother arrow, James, in Paris, they delivered the mail.
This was known to the French authorities as Fouche, the very clever Minister of Police, was aware of exactly how it had been done. The method is well demonstrated in the German Movie, The Rothschilds. So Nathan and his fellow Jews scored a bundle on that caper.
Nathan’s most outstanding feat that brought England to its knees was his capture of the currency after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. He spread the rumor that Napoleon had won Waterloo causing a stupendous sell off that drove prices far down. While others sold Nathan bought. Then his special couriers raced to London to carry news of the English, or allied, victory. Prices bounced back but by then using the fabulous wealth of the Margrave of Hesse Nathan owned huge amounts of securities that he sold at magnificent profit thus securing the base of the Rothschild dynasty, still going strong eight generations on.
To report this astonishing feat in history tends to mitigate the reaction of the Brits when they learned how they had been diddled out of the ruling of their country for Rothschild had pulled an astonishing cheat. Reynolds who was very well informed across the board must have known this but was constrained from portraying it for fear of Jewish retaliation which even was formidable.
We are now moving to the 1840s and Nathan who had passed was succeeded by Lionel Rothschild as the scion of the family. A most formidable and dangerous antagonist.
At this time young Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) was attempting to establish himself as a literary wizard before entering politics. He had already written many novels when in 1844 he wrote Coningsby, Sybil in 1845 and Tancred in 1847. In Coningsby he laid bare the Jewish influence in European affairs when he wrote that the world was actually governed by different people behind the scenes than the public imagined. Thus he led the reading public to believe that the apparent rulers were mere operatives of others, that is, the Jews.
These three political novels made more of a stir than his earlier romances had so that it seems reasonable that Disraeli, Coningsby at least, had been read by Reynolds by 1851. In Coningsby Disreali lauds his Jewish mastermind as the most astounding human being since Adam. The character was based on the real life Right Honourable Lionel Freiherr Rothschild. (1808-1879) Named Sidonia in the novel.
Lionel, Lion-el means Lion of the Lord or God, what we might say, Defender of the Faith in Christian terms.
The Jews since Nathan had owned the State of England but they as a different religion from the Anglicans suffered political and religious disabilities. It was Lionel’s mission to remove them in which mission he was successful.
In 1847 he was the first Jew to be elected to Parliament. This was success but it would also have absorbed Lionel as just another member. He wanted more. He in essence did not want to be absorbed as an English member of the House of Commons but as an autonomous Jew. To be sworn in he had to take an oath of Christian formulation. This he refused to do wishing to be sworn in as a Jew.
In order to accommodate him this would have required a changing of the rules with long term consequences. Accordingly Lord Russell introduced a Jewish Disabilities Act to change the rules. In 1849 when the Act failed the German-Jewish Baron Lionel Rothschild resigned his seat. But still determined he won a bye election to keep his campaign going. Returning he still refused to swear on the New Testament demanding the Jewish or Old Testament. The oath still required him to say: ‘Upon the true faith of a Christian.’ He refused to do so on the grounds that Christianity was not the true faith, Judaism was. Once again he was compelled to resign his seat.
In 1852 he tried to bull his way through but once again was denied. Finally in 1858 Lionel Rothschild forced through the oath changes. Refusing to be bareheaded as required by English custom he demanded to wear his yarmulke or skull cap and instead of saying ‘on the true faith of a Christian’ he was allowed to say ‘so help me Jehovah.’
Thus he became the first Jewish member of the House of Commons but the first Jew in the House rather than an English member of the Jewish faith. Thus in this long battle to be seated Lionel changed the nature of the country into a country of Englishmen and nearly autonomous Jews. Already in control of English currency the Jews would now aspire to political power while moving freely through society ostensibly equal but actually superior having all English rights as well as autonomous Jewish rights that were denied the English.
Thus Disraeli’s astonishing Sidonia/Lionel cleared the way for Disraeli to serve in the Commons but also to become the Prime Minister; the intermediary between the English people and their Sovereign.
These activities were not carried on in a vacuum or beneath the observance of interested parties of which Reynolds was one. While he was only observing the struggle up to 1851-52 when he wrote the Necromancer the writing was on the wall. No doubt Reynolds had read Disraeli’s Coningsby and had watched Lionel Rothschild’s maneuvering. Being a novelist it was easy for him to shadow forth the denouement that occurred in 1858.
My reading of the Necromancer reflects Reynolds’ version of what was happening. Thus his protagonist Lionel Danvers is Lionel Rothschild. As an historical novelist he then creates a fictional history of the Danvers/Rothschild story. He combines the five arrows into one. As was commonly thought at the time the Jews were Satanic thus Danvers had sold his soul to Satan for a period of a hundred fifty years so and with the due date imminent it was necessary for Danvers to honor his commitment to Satan to redeem his soul.
Danvers existed under several names and guises as he was able to shape shift to any age at any time. Thus at various periods he was the middle aged Walter, a mature Lionel Danvers and a boyish Reginald or Conrad.
Even though he had sold his soul to the devil, Satan had given him an escape clause in that if he could find six virgins who would do anything for him, even die, he would take those six souls in exchange for Danvers’. For some reason I always read Danvers in the French form of D’enfer. Thus Danvers becomes The Lion Of the Lord of Hell. Whether correct or not it certainly fits.
Now, Lionel Danvers to use that name of his existence, had all the wealth of Europe at his command. While ostensibly an English Lord he spent all his time on the continent where he had the greatest concentrations of wealth in addition to his very large holdings in England. For him money had no other meaning than to buy power in whatever form it took by any means necessary.
In his Walter incarnation, his first, as the clearest example, Walter shows up in Genoa where he befriends the scion of the Landini trading family. He then bestows, not as a loan but for safe keeping interest free, an incredible fortune that Landini can use without any restrictions for his own benefit on the condition that whenever Danvers appears the Landinis are to return his money in full on demand or they become his slaves.
Naturally the Landinis being astute traders enjoy enormous success for several generations. Even though Danvers has never returned they still maintain his fortune. Each successor has been made aware of his obligation so that not only the trust is available ready to honor at any time but also interest. However suddenly the worst fortune descends on them and all their deals begin to sour, whole argosies are lost at sea. Danvers chooses this moment to return and demand his money. The demand can’t be honored.
But, the Landinis have a beautiful virgin daughter, Bianca. Danvers courts her, wins her heart and they set a date to be married. In the meantime, as debtors to Danvers, the Landinis have become his slaves. They are ordered to go to London and start a jewelry house, which they do.
Before leaving the marriage is arranged between Walter and Bianca. Before the marriage Danvers carries Bianca off to no one knows where. They both just vanish. Bianca becomes the first of the virgins sacrificed to Satan by Danvers. But, of course, the details that can be revealed here are mysteries to the reader.
Bianca had been abducted to Danvers ruined castle on the Isle of Wight. In the secret chamber where Danvers murders the women a score card is on the wall in fiery letters, thus Bianca becomes virgin soul #1, five more to go.
As the story opens Lionel Danvers is sacrificing his fifth, Clara Manners.
One of the deepest mysteries in this astonishingly deep book is the problem of Musidora Sinclair who Lionel has selected as his sixth victim. He seems to have had a singular attachment to the girl. Musidora had been a charming girl but at the age of seventeen she became of a very icy temperament unmoved by anyone or anything. As it turns out Lionel had attempted to lead her to his secret chamber, she lived on the Isle of Wight, but she got cold feet on the way to the chamber and fled. This event turned her heart cold. Now, after having despatched Clara Manners he decides to try again to make Musidora his final victim.
I take Musidora to mean Golden Song or music. Whether right or wrong, she is.
Lionel now has a problem because Musidora won’t allow him near her. Fortunately Lionel has a plan B. He will impersonate King Henry VIII, during whose reign the story takes place at this point, and wed her. Unfortunately her beauty overwhelms him and he impregnates her (another mystery) thus destroying her virginity. Even Lionel Danvers was not so stupid that he didn’t know that it was impossible to diddle Satan.
For Reynolds the story of the impersonation of Henry III is the central point of the story. Between Nathan and Lionel Rothschild a shadow government had been forming in England. While Queen Victoria was the apparent ruler at this time the actual rulers were, as Disraeli had written, other than the seeming rulers. Lionel lived till 1879 when he died at the age of seventy.
Granting that Disraeli was accurate then whatever power the shadow rulers had at the time, their power has gone on increasing to the present day when Evelyn Rothschild wields the power behind the throne. Prior to the Communist Revolution of 1917 Rasputin was deemed the power behind the Russian throne. He was also thought to be conspiring with the Germans. As it happened Rasputin had a Jewish secretary and we must suppose that the secretary had ties to other Jewish revolutionaries so that he was able to pass information to them much as Dreyfus had done in France in the 1890s.
In all probability the German agents Rasputin was thought to be conspiring with was actually being done by his Jewish secretary. The secretary would have been very intimate with Rasputin and would have had strong control over what information Rasputin received while having access to all or most of Rasputin’s info and plans. Thus Through Rasputin the Jews would have been able to influence the Czarina and through the Czarina the Czar.
In the US during the same period, the Wall Street speculator Bernard Baruch would become the actual co-president of Woodrow Wilson free to issue commands on his own authority subject only to correction by Wilson himself and he and Wilson were of like minds. So, at the crucial time of the Revolution both Russia and the US were subject to Jewish discipline.
Be that as it may, is it any coincidence that Lionel Danvers and Lionel Rothschild bore the same Christian name? I think not. Reynolds is trying to tell us something. So Lionel Danvers having circulated rumors that he was dead or on the continent set about to realize his lust on the body of Musidora Sinclair while posing as Henry VIII.
It will be remembered that at this time Henry was seeking a divorce from his Spanish wife Catherine, but it had not yet been achieved. Danvers has to fool Musidora into believing he, impersonating Henry, had succeeded in obtaining that divorce. First Danvers has to lure Musidora from her retreat on the Isle of Wight. He has a relative couple of Musidora living in the royal city of Greenwich invite Musidora to come for and extended visit to their castle. Then he finds a probable excuse for Henry to be a guest of the Earl and Countess Grantham, Musidora’s relatives.
There is some hint that Danvers magically transformed himself into a duplicate form of Henry. I don’t think that was necessary. At this point in history but few people would have seen Henry. So, all that Danvers would have had to have done is bought some clothes royalty would have worn and developed the persona. Of course Musidora knew Danvers well as a young girl and ought to have been able to identify his voice. But, this is Reynolds’ story and the disguise was complete although their was some uncertainty accepting face values.
Nevertheless Henry/Danvers showered Musidora with expensive gifts including a set of very expensive diamonds. It will be remembered that the Landinis from Genoa had been running a jewelry shop in London for about a hundred years.
Eventually, with continued prodding from the Granthams, who were completely fooled, Danvers/Henry break Musidora down and she agrees to marry the faux monarch. However suspicions remain and the strictest safeguards are taken. Musidora demands to see the papal bull nullifying Henry’s marriage to Catherine which matter was not resolved at the time.
Danvers has one forged. As three papal seals are needed Danvers obtains authentic seals.
As a political operative he has suborned numerous members of Henry’s household putting them on the payroll and so has one obtain seals from an authentic papal communication. The officiating priest is fooled and really has no choice but to marry Musidora and Danvers/Henry. Danvers cannot allow Musidora to circulate or talk about her marriage so he swears her to secrecy about the whole affair.
Nevertheless Henry learns of the fraud and swears his informers to secrecy because he doesn’t want the public to know that a shadow King Henry is loose in the kingdom. Reynolds here is describing the actual political condition in England that a second monarch is running the kingdom by secretive measures. This answers to Disraeli’s claim that others than the seeming rulers are directing affairs.
In fact Disraeli himself will become Prime Minister and facetiously and destructively make Victoria the Empress of India. Disraeli was ostensibly a Christian having changed from Judaism to Anglican at the age of thirteen. Thirteen is when a Jewish lad takes his Bar Mitzvah becoming a young man with a man’s prerogatives. It is very likely the change to Anglicanism was deceitfully made with political motives in mind. Disraeli became a Jew disguised as a Christian.
While there may be some objectors to my analysis one should note that Sir Piers Dunhaven the father of the second female victim had once had an extensive property in Cumberland but he had lost most of his property to usury. As Christians were forbidden usury it follows that Jews using their monopoly in usury had stripped Sir Piers of his property. There are subtle hints such as this to Lionel Danvers nationality.
What we have here then is an allegory of the subjection of England by the Jews according to Reynolds. On that level this is the shadow meaning of the novel.
On another level this is a near perfect Gothic novel. One is reminded of The Mysteries of Udolpho by Mrs. Radcliffe. As he was an old admirer of Mrs. Radcliffe I’m sure that Reynolds had Udolpho in mind as he wrote this. The story is also first class mystery and would beat out Willkie Collins for longest mystery story. And, Reynolds keeps the mystery going to the very end. Who could have guessed that Marian Bradley, Danvers last possible chance to beat the devil was his and Musidora’s daughter? Didn’t see that one coming did we?
The story is plotted out perfectly. When we are shown the glowing signboard with the illuminated names and the blank spaces we have to wonder. That was the first mystery and the finest first mystery explained. This list of victims also gave Reynolds his opportunity to tell six tales and he loves to tell those tales.
Then there is the mystery of Danvers and where he gets his inexhaustible supply of money. His fortunes, not just a fortune but fortunes, come from over all Europe and England. An historical question often asked is how do Jews when expropriated and expelled out of one locality show up in a new one and immediately, as it seems, regain their wealth. The solution to that one is easy—usury. Aware that they may be expelled on short notice they kept jewels and portable wealth sewn into garments so that they could leave on amoment’s notice to resurface as wealthy elsewhere.
The Catholic Church and its opinion on money making money, that is usury, which is the objection to loaning on interest, penalized its own adherents and enfranchised the Jews who it politically disenfranchised. Interest in those days wasn’t six or seven percent either. Usury laws only came into existence much later. In those days interest was as much as fifty percent compounded daily or more so you can see how the money lenders, Jews, cornered the money supply wherever they were. The Danvers unlimited, renewed wealth must have come from usury, that is, legalized theft.
And Danvers applied his wealth artfully. The ruse of entrusting money to someone to be reclaimed whenever on no notice is a sure way to entrap the party. Reynolds was no dummy when it came to understanding ruses and ploys. He studied hard. The ploy that the Marquis of Leveson used to entrap Venetia Trelawney was classic.
The Marquis wanted sex from Venetia that she didn’t want to give. Not unlike Danvers, Leveson had unlimited funds that he didn’t mind losing so long as he obtained his desire. So he presented Venetia with a magnificent string of pearls. He told her he would redeem one or all at a time at a thousand pounds each on demand and with the last pearl she was his. Venetia then accepted what she thought was a guarantee that she would never be in want and never have to succumb.
However the wily Marquis set a series of matters in motion to compel Venetia to redeem the pearls. Borrowing from Eugene Sue’s Wandering Jew he has accomplices debauch the formerly steady husband of Venetia so that he turns to dissipation and gambling thus having to be bailed out frequently. Venetia soon has to bed the Marquis. The mysteries are usually tragic stories if you compassionate with the characters.
In this novel, while none of the characters has the memorability of the Resurrection Man from Mysteries of London, the whole ensemble of characters all work well together to create a memorable story.
The Necromancer is one of series of Satanic novels that Reynolds wrote from 1847 to 52. The first being Wagner the Wehr Wolf, 1846-47, Faust in 1847, The Bronze Statue in 1849-50 and then the Necromancer in 1851-52. Each is a beat the devil attempt on the part of the protagonist. Satan is a tough customer and none succeed.
The end of Danvers is a classic much exploited in novels and movies. Lionel (Walter, Reginald and Conrad) has lived for a hundred fifty years. When his attempt on the sixth maiden fails and Satan comes to receive his due, Danvers shrivels from a handsome young man into a withered old man bursts into flames and disappears.
I don’t know whether Reynolds was the first to use this dodge or not, but it becomes a classic dodge thereafter.
The estimable critic Dick Collins considers the Necromancer to be his favorite Reynolds. While I have now read twenty-five volumes of Reynolds I can’t place the volume ahead of the massive novels of The Mysteries of London, The Mysteries of the Court of London, nor, for that matter, The Mysteries of Old London. The last has a special place in my esteem; yet, as I have said, The Necromancer as a super-natural Gothic novel I think it may be near perfection. I’m sure that Mrs. Radcliffe would have been pleased with George’s effort.
Par XI of Time Travels With R.E Prindle follows.
Pt. II Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
May 20, 2019
Pt. II: Time Traveling With R.E. Prindle
G.W.M Reynolds On Vice And Virtue
by
R.E. Prindle
This essay will concentrate on the novels, Robert Macaire or, The French Bandit In England, The Mysteries Of London, Faust, and Wagner, The Wehr Wolf. Their respective dates were 1840, 1844-48, 1845-46 and 1846-47. As can be seen the latter two novels are encompassed by the dates of The Mysteries Of London and they must be related to the greater novel- two side excursions, so to speak.
We know that Reynolds went out on his own in a foreign country at the age of sixteen, going immediately to take up residence in France with a fair sized sum of money in his pocket inherited from his father as he hints in his novel Faust; then in 1833 at the age of nineteen he inherited a bit more through his mother. He was a natural scholar so that he studied extensively in many fields including literature and history. For such a young man, twenty-five and twenty-six in 1839-40 he writes with an astonishing, indeed, unbelievable maturity and knowledge both experientially and from study. Apart from being fictionalized his history seems to be accurate.
He is especially interested in vice and virtue in humanity. The configurations of his interest were formed by his reading of the Marquis de Sade; he read and internalized de Sade’s novels Justine, Juliette and Philosophy of the Boudoir. While de Sade, from whom the term Sadism is derived, is probably known by name only to most. I append here a short biography so that the reader knows how I understand him. De Sade was born in 1740 and died in 1814, the year Reynolds was born so we may assume that de Sade was still something of a sensation when Reynolds hit Paris in 1830.
De Sade’s fame as the source of the term Sadism was well earned although somewhat stale in the 21st century as films and novels have far surpassed his exploits. There is no longer anything to astonish in his novels. His problems began when his parents denied him marriage to the woman of his choice thus causing an extreme reaction. His reaction was so extreme and notorious, causing his parents such grief, that they had him imprisoned where he began writing his novels. Released by the French Revolution, which was crazier than himself, he functioned well. Napoleon, not so tolerant, had him committed to the famous insane asylum of Charenton. This aided immeasurably in making him a cult figure which he remains to this day.
He committed his grief to two most read novels, Justine and Juliette. He posited as a universal reality that a life of virtue led to unhappiness, pain and failure as characterized by Justine; and a life of libertinage and self-indulgence characterized by Juliette led to happiness and self-fulfillment.
When Reynolds read de Sade’s novels between 1830 and 1837 isn’t known. My guess is that he read them sooner than later and the antitheses between virtue and vice worked in him as he began writing.
Author of Mysteres de Paris and The Wandering Jew
An echo of Justine and Juliette can be found in the Mysteries of London. Reynolds transposes the sexes and has two male brothers Eugene and Richard Markham as protagonists. They are associated with two trees. (The symbolism of the two trees isn’t yet clear to me.) A financial disaster hits the Markham family leaving it and them destitute. Eugene, following the path of Juliette’s example opts for a life of crime to repair his fortunes while Richard decides to pursue virtue. They are to meet by the trees twenty years on to compare results.
This gives Reynolds the means to display his knowledge of vice and virtue. He certainly seems to know the ways of criminality. This investigation is continued in the first two novels written in conjunction with Mysteries titled Faust and Wagner the Wehrwolf. The first of his crime novels was Alfred de Rosann, quite astonishing as a novice novel, I will deal with it later, followed by Grace Darling, the Heroine of the Ferne Islands and the Robert Macaire or the French Bandit In England. After a hiatus of two years from 1842 to 1844 when he wrote nothing Mysteries began. Faust and Wagner were written in succession.
The third of his crime novels was Robert Macaire or the French Bandit In England.
One imagines that Reynolds first heard of the famous French bandit at the theater either in 1833 or ’35 or perhaps he saw both. Macaire was a famous French highwayman, but as Reynolds has Macaire tell his sidekick Bertrand, times were changing and the place of the highwayman was becoming as obsolete as buggy whips would in the twentieth century. Thus while Macaire was involved in stagecoach situations his milieu was shifting to swindling and financial crimes. The future was clear. Reynolds has his ear to the ground.
Published in 1840 Macaire was his third effort following Pickwick Abroad. By this novel he has pretty well learned his craft although his powers will grow exponentially by Mysteries. Macaire is tightly plotted and well written with every evidence of Reynold’s powerful mind. It shows little evidence of de Sade, clear evidence, even borrowing, from Frederic Soulie. Soulie was a French writer of ghastly crime/horror fiction who was, at least, an early model for Reynolds.
As in Mysteries of the Court of London an inspiring incident carried throughout the story ends it. The novel involves an enmity between the practitioner of virtue, Charles Stanmore, and the follower of vice, Robert Macaire. Close to the plots of de Sade’s Justine and Juliette.
The novel opens with Macaire in France holding up a stage containing Stanmore and killing two people while sadistically tying Stanmore to one of the large wheels. If the horse hadn’t remained still as Stanmore remarks he would surely have been killed by the revolving wheel. A sadistic crime in itself.
Papers taken from Stanmore tell of a banker in England who looks ripe for the plucking so Macaire and Bertrand head for England. It is not clear how these two desperadoes pass themselves off as businessmen, especially the clownish Bertrand but they do and Pocklington, the English businessmen invites them in, indeed, ask them to take up residence while in London. He has a beauteous sixteen year old niece, Maria, who falls head over heels for the forty some year old Macaire. As she is to inherit a large fortune Macaire plays the swain.
It so happens that Stanmore also has his eyes on Maria so he develops an inveterate hatred of his rival not realizing that the French bandit and Macaire are the same. Now, it also happens that Stanmore’s father had disappeared on a journey to Lyons in France where he was to establish a new business five years previously. He had waylaid by Macaire, robbed and murdered in a town thirty some miles from Paris on the way to Lyons as will appear later in the story. Macaire was acting as a member of an organized ring of criminals to which he still belongs being one of the leaders.
After mentioning that Macaire is posing as the financial agent named LeBeau who he learns is now on his way to London the two bandits determine to kill him before he arrives to prevent his ruining their plans. Using old skills they waylay his stage on his way to London, brutally drag him from the stage and stab him to death. These two are thoroughly evil men. This is important because while Reynolds is contrasting virtue and vice, he also holds that virtue and vice are equally mixed in a person so that after a life of vice, Macaire will very improbably turn to a life of virtue. But, Reynolds believes he can and it’s his story.
Stanmore becomes suspicious of Macaire and more especially Bertrand so he returns to France to investigate them. His findings lead him to an inn in the town in which his father was murdered. He is directed to the out of the way inn in which the murder occurred. The innkeeper intends to kill Stanmore for his money, but the latter overhears the plot being discussed and in the ensuing struggle kills the innkeeper. Questioning the innkeeper’s wife about his father she points out the place in the inn where Stanhope’s father’s body was immured. Concentrating on opening the wall Stanhope fails to notice that the wife has set the building on fire and fled.
The wife runs for some woods where Stanmore overtakes her. Then borrowing an incident from Frederic Soulie (pronounced Souliay) he ties the woman to a tree while he goes back to main road and inn and forgets her in the rush of events. By the time he gets back to her she is dead, half eaten by varmints.
Macaire has to return to France to account for Lebeau’s absence. Macaire gets into financial schemes and is recognized by the police and arrested. He would have been a goner except for his criminal network. Having pulled off a couple successful escapades Macaire does the necessary repairing to the gang’s den to distribute their share of the booty. This gets an immediate reward when his confederates help him escape from two different prisons.
This brings up the question of Reynolds’ own relationship to the law. Reynolds provides such exact descriptions of various prisons, police quarters, court affairs and prison customs that one wonders how he obtained his knowledge and familiarity. As a newspaperman he would have perhaps entered the various criminal retreats but that doesn’t seem a satisfactory explanation. Dick Collins, an eminent researcher of Reynolds and the period of Penny Dreadfuls gives Reynolds a questionable character.
Collins seems to have ransacked official sources for his information but fails to reference them. In addition to cheating at dice, that rather indicates that Reynolds was one of the shifty hangers on in Paris that he mentions in Pickwick Abroad.
Collins says: Quote: It is alleged- on poor evidence- that Reynolds stayed at the expensive Long’s Hotel in Bond Street and was arrested for trying to steal jewelry to pay the bill.
Unquote.
And there were a series of bankruptcies. One in France in which he was arrested in Calais trying to flee. Then in England in 1939 he spent six months in the Queens Bench Prison for unpaid debt. After becoming a leader in the Chartist movement he displeased the leadership because of unnamed financial schemes. So, let us say that Reynolds was probably flexible in his attitude toward strict probity. One does get that feeling.
One wonders then, was Reynolds personally aware of these criminal hangouts; did he actually mingle with them? His knowledge seems too precise for sheer invention. Also he seems too complimentary of the gendarmes who he says have absolute integrity and are the only upright characters in his novels. Was he trying to stay on their good side just in case?
In any event his descriptions of the prisons from which Macaire escapes are described in minute detail. Having once been caught in the meshes of the French police Macaire seems doomed to remain there as the police are hot on his trail after his last escape.
Now, at the inn at which Macaire had murdered his father, a beautiful young orphan girl, Blanche de Longville, had been placed there by Macaire who for some reason had been made her guardian. She had captured Stanmore’s heart, making him forget Maria, and resulting in a marriage. They were living in a posh area in Paris.
Macaire, quite desperate to escape finds his way to Stanmore and Blache’s mansion to throw himself on her mercy after maltreating through her teen years, expecting what that mercy might be wasn’t clear. Stanmore returns home to find police combing the area and Macaire, his arch enemy, in his wife’s boudoir. However Blanche manages to placate him explaining that if Macaire escapes the police and finds his way to Switzerland he is going to change his ways and end his days as the archetypal French bandit.
So, this Macaire, who had robbed him, possibly condemned him to death by tying him to the carriage wheel, actually murdered and robbed his father, beat him out for the love of the delectable Maria and other crimes too numerous to mention as well as heading up organized crime in France, throws himself on the mercy of Stanmore.
Well, love conquers all, doesn’t it? Rather than offend his wife, Blanche, Stanmore forgives all, gives Macaire traveling money, lets him out the back door and directs the police in the opposite direction, and sententiously pats himself on the back for redeeming a hardened criminal. Reynolds has Macaire living out his days living quietly in Switzerland and that redeems his murders and crimes, for you see good and evil are equally mixed in men. No one is totally bad.
His next novel, Master Timothy’s Bookcase concluded his first period and after a two year hiatus when, one presumes, Reynolds was recharging his batteries, perhaps searching for a more successful approach, organizing himself for the grand charge he began his magnum opus The Mysteries of London, that was a great compendium of crime. He was in fact inspired by Eugene Sue’s Mysteres de Paris but Mysteries of London doesn’t reflect much derivation from that work, however, this was apparently because he couldn’t fit much of it into his story.
Wonderful details preyed on his imagination so that at the same time he was writing Mysteries he also wrote two longish novels, Faust in 1845-46 and Wagner the Wehr Wolf in 1846-48.
Faust is rather an extraordinary novel. Here his inspiration was derived from the European myth of the man who sold his soul to Satan. He combines this story with the story of the German criminal organization called the Holy Vehm. As an adjunct to all he gives an exciting account of the Borgias, Pope Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucretia, or Lucreza as he spells it, Borgia. An amazing novel.
In this novel Reynolds extends his field from France and England to encompass Central Europe—Germany, Austria, Carniola and Italy. Eventually he will draw a circle from England into the Mediterranean touching the Africa of Homer’s Lotus Eaters, through the Dardanelles to Mingrelia or ancient Colchis where the Golden Fleece was kept through the Crimea thus encircling historic Europe. Interesting conception.
Whether he visited these parts during his period in France isn’t clear and his details are fairly sketchy although fairly sharp for Italy. Carniola is an Alpine province of Austria along with Styria and Corinthia. Reynolds probably chose this province for a couple of reasons, the first because as no one had probably heard of it, it was therefore exotic and secondly because a ferocious sexual pervert who lived there in a castle as recorded by de Sade in his novel Juliette. This guy was so incredible that even de Sade hastened away.
Murder, crime and gore in profusion, Reynolds seems in a frenzy to outdo de Sade, Frederic Soulie and Eugene Sue combined and a fine job he does of it too.
Eugene Sue in his magnificent Wandering Jew, that great Armageddon, as his story unfolds the great march of Cholera out of the East that advances at the rate of thirty miles a day closes in on the Paris of 1830 and its revolution of that year. Sue knew how to erase millions of people at a time. What a story, and it goes on for over a thousand pages. Now, if Reynolds did reach Paris in 1830 he must have witnessed the devastation caused by the Cholera epidemic or, at the very least, its aftermath which would have been a topic of conversation. If as Collins suspects he arrived in 1833 he still would have heard stories of the great Cholera terror. If the hints in Reynolds novel, Grace Darling, are correct he places the time of that novel in 1833 so he might likely have still been in England at that time. His descriptions of the Revolution of 1830 in Alfred de Rosann are so sketchy that he may not have arrived in France in 1830 on the heels of the action as he claims.
In Faust he replicates the Cholera epidemic of Sue when Faust orders Satan to create an immense bubonic plague in Vienna and Europe that like the Cholera epidemic rises in the East and rolls over Europe. Thus the spectre derived from Sue’s Rodin makes its appearance in Reynolds. Further both the Cholera and bubonic plague are accurate history. Reynolds’ Faust takes place from 1480 through the first decade of the sixteenth century. Reynolds is very careful with his dates so that events actually occurred in the years he indicates. The bubonic plague he mentions occurred between 1500 and 1503. Interestingly he doesn’t blame fleas from rats in Genoa but, like the Cholera, has it arrive from the East. Current theories indicate that that may have been the case. The first plague of mid-fourteenth century swept through Europe so quickly that there must have been another source than ship rats. In the first place no crew would have been immune to the flea bites hence the Med would have been filled with ghost ships while the spread would have been slower and the diffusion more easily traced. Reynolds always appears to have read and thought deeply.
Faust is essentially a historical novel so that the eruption of Vesuvius in 1485 is accurate but the accuracy of the description of the actual eruption must be fictional. The eruption was however a major one.
So also Reynolds account of the Borgias is historically accurate allowing for description and motives to be interpretations. The villains of Sue’s Wandering Jew are the religious sect of the Jesuits, Reynolds replaces them with the German organization of the Holy Vehm whose description is accurate given a little novelistic license. What we have here, then, in this story is a magnificent contrast between virtue and vice, good and evil. The contrasts are carried out on many levels. The Vehm operates as a government within the government just as the Jesuits were a church within the church. In this case the Austrian government is upright but the Holy Vehm is not. Faust once he has sold his soul to Satan is the representative of a blend of virtue and vice with vice having the upper hand. Faust as the story develops is guilty through his machinations of the deaths of millions. As the representative of vice Faust’s counterpart is Otto Pianella who represents undivided virtue. Faust’s wife represents virtue, or Justine, while Faust’s mistress, Ida, Otto’s sister, represents Juliette or vice. Of course, she is as nothing compared to the mighty Lucreza Borgia, the scariest woman who ever lived.
Reynolds while considered a feminist is, actually, a realist. In general, he deplores the manner in which women are treated but he isn’t so silly as to believe all women are above reproach, thus one has a variety of female types. Lucreza Borgia in the novel is a willful completely evil woman while Nisida in the next novel, Wagner the Wehr Wolf is a ‘strong’ woman but a blend of good and evil. Thus, Reynolds avoids the sappy feminist sentiment of the present.
He was perhaps overawed b Lucreza’s ruthless exercising of her will so that there is no good mixed with her evil. Lucreza was not going to go to Switzerland and while away her time after the Borgias’ power was destroyed.
Mortally offended by de Sade’s dictum that vile living always succeeds on this Earth while virtue always leads to unhappiness, in this novel practicing virtue succeeds while vice fails. Perhaps in Sue’s breathtaking Armageddon in which all the characters but one are immolated, Reynolds changes the end so that each virtuous character lives happily in the end while all the vicious characters die or end unhappily.
The Holy Vehm is destroyed, Ida checks out early, the Borgias seemingly on the way to success are thwarted, first their power is broken, then as fugitives Caesar Borgia after a number of failures is killed in an ignominious battle in Spain while Lucreza suffers a horrible death at the hands of her husband on the island of Lissa belonging to the Duke of Ferrara near Venice. This is one of the most terrifying depictions in the novel. Disregarding Lucreza’s terrible reputation the Duke of Ferrara espouses her with the assumption that she will reform her wicked ways, that is, give up vice.
Apparently, she has until Otto Pianella and his family are marooned on the way back to Vienna by snowstorms in the Julian Alps of Carniola. They put up on Lissa which comes to Lucreza’s attention. She arrests Otto and places him in the Iron Coffin. I won’t replicate the entire story that Reynolds makes as suspenseful as possible, but the Iron Coffin is a large room made of iron shaped like a giant coffin. The walls are moveable and gradually compress down to the size of an actual coffin in which the victim is entombed, where he gradually dies of starvation and dehydration.
As Otto’s situation grows dire Satan appears offering him the Faustian deal. No, no, says Otto, never, never, I put my faith in a higher power. So, in a choice between vice or virtue Otto remains true to God, or virtue. Well, one of Lucreza’s retinue finks to the Duke who is outraged that Lucreza has violated her oath so, at the last moment he releases Otto, justifying Otto’s trust in God, while condemning Lucreza to what would have been Otto’s fate. Thus, the terrible end of the truly vicious Lucreza Borgia.
Now, we are down to Faust himself. Faust had driven a lousy bargain with Satan receiving only twenty-six years of seeming prosperity and unlimited power. Now both hands of the clock, or clysidra, clocks hadn’t been invented yet, are pointing straight up. Remembering Reynolds’ description of the 1485 eruption of Vesuvius Satan takes Faust to the edge of the boiling caldera and after a lengthy triumph and lecture Satan pushes Faust in.
De Sade is repudiated, the results of Justine’s and Juliette’s lives are reversed and Reynolds triumphs over the Marquis de Sade.
While the main novel, The Mysteries Of London, raged on in its contests of virtue and vice, Reynolds began another rather lengthy novel he titled Wagner the Wehr Wolf.
And why not? While good and certainly interesting it doesn’t quite toe the mark made by Faust. Faust was well above the average while Wagner is closer to average but still with all of Reynolds’ inventiveness.
Too few people die and Nisida the villainess is a pale reflection of Lucreza Borgia, but still no slouch as a ‘strong’ woman. Nor is there a Jesuit Order or the Holy Vehm, just a highly organized criminal gang that is terrorizing Florence Italy. Reynolds may have lifted that idea from Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo and the gang in the Italian catacombs. The main story takes place in Florence but changes location to more exotic places including Constatinople, name not yet changed to Istanbul, and Sicily.
Reynolds’ geography embraces a rather large area from England, France, Central Europe, the Balkans, Italy to just off the coast of Africa to include the Greek Islands, Western Anatolia and Mingrelia on the East Coast of the Black Sea, formerly the Colchis of the Argonauts then turning west to the Crimea following in the tracks of the Argonauts and that pretty well encompasses the parameters of historical Europe. One wonders how Reynolds is writing all these novels, maintaining a growing family, keeping up on his reading and accumulating fairly detailed historical studies and he wrote several historical novels, Faust being one.
The adoption of a fantastic Werewolf story seems strange, but then, James Malcolm Rymer, his contemporary Penny Dreadful author was scoring big with his novel Varney The Vampire and would soon after write the classic story of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney Todd, a hit musical fifty years ago was the barber who turned his customers into sausages and sold them to another set of customers. Who would believe cannibalism in nineteenth century England?
Varney the Vampire, an incredibly long novel must have nudged Reynolds’ interest in that supernatural direction so he chose to explore another of the great medieval myths or legends of Medieval Europe, that of the Wehr Wolf. So, really, this era produced the subject matter for the next hundred and fifty years or so, Frankenstein, Faust, Varney the Vampire, Sweeney Todd and Werewolves and organized crime. The Curse of the Mummy would come later.
Wagner has a highly organized criminal gang that is central to the story maintaining its connection to the main frame of Mysteries of London. It is a true underworld inhabiting caverns deep into the earth. Whether meant intentionally or not by Reynolds its lower levels rest next to the lower levels of the Catholic nunnery that has an extensive underground. The doings in the nunnery in its underworld are as criminal as those of the criminals only a few feet awaythrough the rock. The two worlds are blended when the crime world is attacked, and the walls accidentally broken through and down. Thus, both the criminal underworld and the equally criminal nunnery were destroyed.
Reynold’s religious interests are intriguing. At this time in his life Reynolds was thirty-two. The Mysteries had solved his financial problems to this moment so his mental comfort zone was probably elevated. He had every reason to believe he could continue his success although the success of his future blockbuster, Mysteries of the Court of London might have astonished even him. At any rate he was relieved of youthful anxieties; he was successfully launched.
How he developed, or found time to develop his religious ideas isn’t obvious to me. Collins alleges that he did write a book of biblical criticism in 1833 when he was only 19 years old and would have had to have been in London at that time. At this point he has the North European abhorrence of the Catholic Church although an apparent strong belief in the existence of God or a deity, however, that could have been a front so as not to offend the reading public. His attitude toward the Moslem world seems to be a tolerant affection. Wagner makes a visit to then Constantinople, now Istanbul, a mere twenty-five years after the Christian capital fell to the Moslems. He forms connections and in order to free Florence from the dominion of the criminal gang he marches a Moslem army to Florence to do it. I must say I read that episode with a certain amount incredulousness.
One imagines that his fantasy was that he could unite the two worlds. The novel was placed in the years following 1516, a mere twenty-four years after the Moorish expulsion from Spain and the completion of the Reconquista. The Moslem slave raids probably hadn’t begun and from this time to 1830 when the French annexed Algeria and wiped out the Corsairs, the Moslem predations on the Mediterranean coast was constant. Eugene Sue’s The knight of Malta is a good representation of the situation and reads as well as Reynolds.
Sue, as Reynolds, was entranced with Byron’s epic poem The Corsair; the sentiments seem to coincide with their own. Indeed, The Knight of Malta can be read as Byron’s poem in novelized form. The opening lines of Byron establish the mental state:
Quote:
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their sway—
Our flag the scepter all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Unquote.
To a large extent The Corsair forms a part of the mental equipment of all these early Victorian authors.
In addition to Christian and Moslem concerns one considers his evaluation of the Jews as an independent nation living in and on its host; this is difficult because Westerners have been indoctrinated and conditioned to believe that Jews are innocent victims. They are not, not in Hellenic times, not in Roman times and not in Medieval times and certainly not now. During early Christian times they were given the greatest boon that could be imagined: the monopoly of loaning money at interest. Christians, the Catholic Church, laid its congregation at the feet of the Jews to be exploited.
Do not believe that the Jews became money lenders because they were forced to. They have always been money changers. They did so on the porches of the temple where Jesus overturned their tables as sacrilegious. As usurers, even the simplest mind could easily figure out that the entire money supply must inevitably be in their hands. Nor did they loan on reasonable terms but at expropriatory rates of forty or fifty percent for a single day. The West was impoverished so that in Florence first, a State pawn shop was instituted to save both the State and its people financial grief. Other cities followed Florence’s example.
Thus Reynolds introduces us to the Jewish money lender, Issachar. Now, both Reynolds and Dickens had had their run in with Jewish damage controlmen. Dickens was disciplined over his Jewish character in Oliver Twist, Fagin. Reynolds had been dressed down for some remarks in Grace Darling.
Jewish emancipation from the rule of the Catholic Church had begun in France by Napoleon after 1800, by 1840 it was working its way through Central Europe. The Jews qua Jews didn’t become powerful until after Napoleon’s defeat and Nathan Rothchild’s capture of the English currency in 1815. As a result of England’s victory the Rothschilds were in the early stages of consolidating their power. Naturally one of the first steps was controlling the press and publishing, at that time the only effective means of disseminating information. By the time of Wagner Disraeli had published most of his novels and was becoming a power in the State. Both Dickens and Reynolds had heeded their chastening, Dickens submissively and Reynolds with his usual cheek.
Issachar is portrayed as the archetypal Yiddish money changer living in dirty squalid quarters but above the physical portrayal of the usual Jewish caricature he is lauded as the long suffering noble victim, a man of virtue unfairly maligned and Jews so for millennia. Thus Reynolds has fulfilled his obligation to laud the Jews. He describes Issachar as a man of integrity however Issachar is the biggest cheat and crook alive. Nisida’s mother had pawned the family diamonds with Issachar, however, Issachar without hesitation steals the diamonds replacing them with paste. The father being something of an expert immediately discovers the imposture. Issachar justifies himself in some unsatisfactory way and Reynolds blithely goes on about the long suffering Jews.
It is generally thought therefore that Reynolds was genuinely sympathetic to the Jews. I’m not sure that’s true. I think he was just doing to wise thing so he could go on publishing.
For story continuation, we have Wagner, a ninety year old man, living deep in the Black Forest of Germany with his beauteous grand-daughter. Reynolds is very keen on sixteen year old beauties. They abound in his stories. According to Dick Collins Reynolds married his wife Susannah when she was seventeen. Collins says Reynolds may have been her second husband, she having already been taken to wife at 14.
Clara, Wagner’s granddaughter and main support, disappeared one day no one knew where. Wagner is unable to support himself and about to expire when a demon appears offering to restore him to youth. This a much better deal than Satan offered Faust in the previous novel. All Wagner has to do is spend one day a month as a wolf. He knows the day because his fate is based on the lunar calendar. The contract ends when Wagner fails to honor it. As can easily be seen this, on the face of it is good deal, what makes it a great deal is Wagner also gets a substantial guaranteed annual income. Wagner may be old but he is no fool; he signs the deal.
Now a sprout of forty with cash in hand Wagner need no longer skulk about the woods of the Black Forest where all things strange happen. Anyone who is up with German stories of this period knows there are so many desperadoes haunting these woods that they are no place for a fun loving young Wehr Wolf. Wagner hies himself to Florence, Italy where the climate agrees with his clothes.
There he runs into his granddaughter Clara. It wasn’t easy to pass himself off to her as his grandfather but like any young guy of independent means Wagner is a smooth talker.
He then finds some digs and runs into Nisida, the daughter of a Lord who, in fact, turns out to be the reason that Clara disappeared from the Black Forest. He has persuaded the virtuous and beautiful Clara to abandon her virtue and become his secluded mistress. Daughter Nisida learns this determining to kill Clara and therein hangs the tale.
Reynolds throws in the description of some of Wagners transformations which are exciting and well done. On his monthly rampage Wagner merely tears through the countryside like a tornado.
The other part of interest is at the end when Wagner establishes contact with the Rosicrucian Order in Sicily. This perhaps establishes Reynolds’ own religious position. He is a Rosicrucian. He is said to have been a Deist so that fits. I rather accept that Rosicrucianism was his faith. Having studied the religion somewhat I consider myself a Rosicrucian also if one needs a label. And we all do.
Between 1844-48 then Reynolds has launched his career successfully with his Mysteries of London, worked through his French period and examined a major legend of Germany and Central Europe.
In Part III I will deal with Dickens early output in relation to Reynolds.
Immigration, Al Smith And The 1928 Election
February 24, 2019
Immigration, Al Smith, And The 1928 Election
by
R.E. Prindle
People don’t seem to realize that time and changes pass quickly. What was applicable yesterday will not apply to today or tomorrow. Nothing changes society more rapidly than immigration. While attention is applied to race and religion it might better be applied to manners and mores. Whether you think immigration is good or bad immigration changes reality very quickly while all one’s reactions are predicated on a vanished state of affairs.
The cultural changes, that is manners and mores had been occurring at a rapid rate during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century driven by immigration. By 1921 and 1924 unlimited indiscriminate immigration had been limited to more or less controllable numbers. Nevertheless the damage had been done. While the attempt was made to limit the most different mores and manners by favoring Northern European immigrants it was too late. The two chief groups of immigrants, the Irish and the Jews had acculturated enough to challenge the traditional English and Protestant supremacy.
Thus, led by Al Smith, a Catholic Irishman who surrounded himself with Jews the two nationalities were ready to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority. Note that the Jews are considered a distinct nationality with their own manners and mores acting in their own interests. He, Al, or they chose the inappropriate moment to challenge the Anglo-Protestant majority as the country was in a period of roaring prosperity, had two presidents, Harding and Coolidge and were to be followed by Herbert Hoover who in the circumstances there was no chance of defeating. And so it was that Herbert Hoover became the last ‘American’ president. Hoover was followed by Roosevelt to whom the Jews transferred their alliance while the Irish were forgotten. Thus the Liberal and Jewish combination have written all histories and distorted the old American contribution to founding the US.
Now, in the 1928 election the Jewish-Irish faction could not accept their loss on any other grounds than the bigotry of Anglo-American voters. In fact, Al Smith was merely a New York City machine politician who, used to campaigning in New York chose as his theme song ‘The Streets of New York’ and spoke with a heavy New York City accent. His manners and mores were those of his home town. To the rest of the country those manners and mores were humorous.
The New York accent alone would have made him unpalatable to the rest of Americans who thought that NYC had an economic stranglehold on America. And then the to thrust The Streets of New York into their faces was sheer folly.
Being Catholic, of course, didn’t help Al with the Protestants but it surely was a charm for the Catholics who were the largest religious denomination in America. But there appears to have been no block voting along religious lines. The Economy ruled.
Whether Al’s Irish background swung the electorate against him is open to conjecture but I would put more weight behind that than the religion. At that point, 1928, there was still a strong antipathy between the Anglos and the Irish. Even in 1956 in my home town the antipathy was noticeable. Apart from Jack Kennedy’s being a Democrat and offensive because of his father’s criminal background his Catholicism and nationality was a factor in my voting against him in 1960. The Irish came over to what they call the New Island in large numbers during the potato famine in Ireland in the eighteen forties and beyond. There was immediately a huge conflict between them and the Anglos in which bloody battles were fought largely aggravated by the Irish. Thus the Irish-English conflict was carried to American shores.
With the Irish came the notion that immigrants rights were superior to nativist rights. Hence the political organization known as the Know Nothing Party that arose to oppose Irish violence was demonized out of existence for its efforts to protect American manners and mores and some kind of control of their destiny. They lost that control as the Irish formed a sort of competing government called Tammany that seized control of NYC and retained it until Jimmy Walker the last Tammany mayor was booted out of the country in the early thirties. It was as though the Irish had control of London.
The Irish were then replaced by the Jews who seized both NYC and New York State. As an immigrant group, the Jews, although the smallest national supplier of immigrants also came as the highest percentage of their nation and thus had equality of numbers with the other national immigrants. There were more Jews in NYC than in any other city of the world. The only place with a higher number was the Russian Pale of the Settlement that covered millions of square acres.
The vast majority of Jews arrived from 1890 to 1914. Like the Irish the Jews created a national enclave, or colony, in NYC. By 1913 they were able to effect a socialist revolution by electing Woodrow Wilson as presidient. This revolution, for such it was, has been unrecognized by Jewish and Liberal historians but the Wilson Administration, turned out in 1920, after a hiatus of the twelve years of the Republican Interregnum would morph into the fully fledged socialist presidency of Franklin Roosevelt beginning in 1932 and ending only with his death in 1945. Thus Roosevelt was the undeclared president for life.
So, Al Smith represented the end of Irish dominance in the affairs of NY and the hope of national dominance in a Jewish-Irish coalition. If that attempt had succeeded immigrants would have seized control of the United States of America. An entire new set of manners and mores would have replaced those of the original settlers. Immigration has adverse consequences like it or not.
While there was a conflict then between the Catholic and Protestant religions and between the English and Irish and Jewish nationalities the election itself was determined on the basis of extreme economic prosperity that Republicans could claim as their own and, indeed, it was called the Coolidge Prosperity after the middle Republican president of the Interregnum- Harding, Coolidge, Hoover.
Then came the deluge. Collectivism replaced Individualism and Socialism replaced Laissez-faire, which had been the system of the nineteenth century Gilded Age. A new set of manners and mores appeared based on an immigrant ideal with its symbol of Ellis Island.
A similar transition is occurring today.
I, Dynamo 