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The letters Eliza Davis wrote to Charles Dickens, from 22 June 1863 to 8 February 1867, and after his death to his daughter Mamie on 4 August 1870, reveal the increasing self-confidence of English Jews.1 In their careful and accurate comments on the power of Dickens's work in shaping English culture and popular opinion, and their pointed discussion of the ways in which Fagin reinforces antisemitic English and European Jewish stereotypes, they indicate the concern, as Eliza Davis phrases it, of "a scattered nation" to participate fully in the life of "the land in which we have pitched our tents.2"
It is worth noting that by 1858 the fits and starts of Jewish Emancipation in England had led, finally, to the seating of Lionel Rothschild in the House of Commons. After being elected for the fifth time from Westminster he was not required, due to a compromise devised by the Earl of Lucan and Benjamin Disraeli, to take the oath on the New Testament as a Christian.3 And Eliza and her husband, James Phineas Davis, had in 1860 become the inhabitants of Tavistock House, purchasing it that year from Charles Dickens. In the eyes of the law, English Jews now received the same treatment, privileges and rights as Christian English folk.
Yet the Jews were not exactly at ease in England.
During the negotiations for his house, Dickens mentions to a friend, that "the purchaser of Tavistock will be a Jew Money Lender."4 Three days later he writes, "If the Jew Money Lender buys (I say 'if' because of course I shall never believe in him until he has paid the money.)". A month later he writes to Arthur Stone, "I hope you will find the Children of Israel, good neighbours" (Letters 9: 307).
Slighting remarks, these. Yet Dickens also adds, that "Mrs. Davis appears to be a very kind and agreeable woman. And I have never had any money transaction with any one, more promptly, fairly, and considerately conducted than the purchase of Tavistock House has been" (Letters 9: 306-07). Praising Eliza Davis, Dickens overcomes the thrown-off comments he had made. Obtuse and unthinking, they derive from the lurking antisemitism and fear-ridden Jewish stereotyping of his era and culture.
That stereotype Eliza Davis confronts...