(1838-)
alter Besant, born in Portsmouth, England, in 1838, did not begin his career as a novelist till he was thirty years old. His preparation for the works that possess so certain a maturity of execution, with as certain an ideal of performance, was made at King's College, London, and afterwards at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took mathematical honors. Abandoning his idea of entering the Church, he taught for seven years in the Royal College of Mauritius. Ill health compelled his return to England, and he then took up literature as a profession. His first novel he had the courage to burn when the first publisher to whom he showed it refused it.
Walter Besant.
But the succeeding years brought forth 'Studies in Early French Poetry,' a delicate and scholarly series of essays; an edition of Rabelais, of whom he is the biographer and disciple, and, with Professor Palmer, a 'History of Jerusalem,' a work for which he had equipped himself when secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Mr. Besant was also a student in another special field. He knew his Dickens as no other undergraduate in the University knew that branch of polite literature, and passed an examination on the 'Pickwick Papers' which the author declared that he himself would have failed in. By these processes Mr. Besant fitted himself mentally and socially for the task of story-telling. The relations of a man of letters to the rest of the world are comprehensively revealed in the long list of his novels.
From the beginning he was one who comes with a tale "which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner"; nor is the charm lessened by the sense of a living and kindly voice addressing the hearer. His novels are easy reading, and do not contain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine, one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.
It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance, made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week, and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-boy,' 'My Little Girl,' 'With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butterfly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet.' The latter story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardianship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a family whose features are familiar to the readers of 'Little Dorrit' and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these pages,--pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of virtues.
Mr. Rice died in 1882, and 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings, where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible story" has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.
'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and 'The World Went Very Well Then' (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale, the reader would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.
Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of modern charlatanism as shown in 'Herr Paulus,' of the "woman question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor.'
In the 'Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallucination; in the story of 'The Inner House' the plummet of suggestion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.
The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat conventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of 'The Master Craftsman' to the 'Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.
It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals, although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in 'All in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate.' In reading Besant we are constantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification in eccentricities.
In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the publishers.
OLD-TIME LONDON
From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': Harper and Brothers
The London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa. It had no cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms. This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the people to carry on their old life and their trade in their own way, the Roman and British architecture--no new thing, but a style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the climate--would certainly have remained. That, however, was not the case. The Englishman developed his house from the patriarchal idea.
First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived, fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings. It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths, which in great houses were embroidered and painted; perches of various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons, the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc., were hung up. The lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burning under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at the door.
The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft, and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased, lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There, among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.
The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the "noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or supper, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the summer.
In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vegetables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also had (these were introduced probably at the time when they commenced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips, parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names, which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead. The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of drinking wine.
In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or upper chamber. This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall. The arrangement may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall, as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blankets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxurious as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours of night.
The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room or suite of rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their women. For the first time, as soon as this room was added, the women could follow their own vocations of embroidery, spinning, and needlework of all kinds, apart from the rough and noisy talk of the men.
The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century, were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and the ladies' bower.
There was also the garden. In all times the English have been fond of gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be. "It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory, lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let there be beds enriched with onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions. The garden is also enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffodil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to have anise, mustard, and wormwood.... A noble garden will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and figs." The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts their arriving at ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he hoped would be some day achieved.
The indoor amusements of the time were very much like our own. We have a little music in the evening; so did our forefathers. We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but the dancing was done for them. We go to the theatres to see the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs, he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as disreputable as when we find him later on with his ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together; so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word, as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we remain the same.
Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated, wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments, baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races. They were also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness that London was always on the winning side.
The growth of the city government belongs to the history of London. Suffice it here to say that the people in all times enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of Europe. The history of municipal London is a history of continual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and to extend it and to make it impregnable. Already the people are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength. They refuse to own any other lord but the king himself; there is no Earl of London. They freely hold their free and open meetings, their folk-motes,--in the open space outside the northwest corner of St. Paul's Churchyard. That they lived roughly, enduring cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suffered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were always in danger of fevers, agues, "putrid" throats, plagues, fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,--three schools only for the whole of London,--all this may very well be understood. But these things do not make men and women wretched. They were not always suffering from preventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out of the flames; they were not always fighting. The first and most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that he should enjoy the produce of his own labor. All these things the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much as in these days they can be possessed. His city has always been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all men who worked lived in plenty.
The households, the way of living, the occupations of the women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments, carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special art. Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an overweening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair, and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their pretty cheeks. If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],--the owner or winner of the loaf,--the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its distributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters of it. When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in great numbers forsook the world for the cloister. And here they began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on correspondence--specimens of which still exist--in that language. Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue, embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of the later Saxon times.
This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daughters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery. Theirs were the lower walks--to spin the linen and to make the bread and carry on the housework.
THE SYNAGOGUE
From 'The Rebel Queen': Harper and Brothers
"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé,
Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer."--LAMARTINE.
"Are you ready, Francesca?"
Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for Sabbath and Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all times in the matter of dress, but especially on a summer day, which affords opportunity for bright color and bright drapery and an ethereal appearance. This morning she was full of color and light. When, however, she found herself confronted with Francesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so faultless, and her black-lace hat with its single rose for color, Nelly's artistic sense caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for nothing that one learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another; she who knows music can feel for dress. "Oh!" she cried, clasping her hands. "That's what we can never do!"
"What?"
"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives me the new fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street copy me--poor things!--and the dressmaker comes to talk things over and to learn from me. I make everything for myself. And they call me clever! But I can't get near it; and if I can't nobody can."...
A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west, with a flat façade and round windows that bore out the truth of the date--1700--carved upon the front. A word or two in that square character--that tongue which presents so few attractions to most of us compared with other tongues--probably corroborated the internal evidence of the façade and the windows.
"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turning to the right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along the whole side of the building. On the other side was another gallery. In front of both was a tolerably wide grill, through which the congregation below could be seen perfectly.
"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell--there were not many women present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently they will sing. They sing beautifully. Now they're reading prayers and the Law. They've got to read the whole Law through once a week, you know." Francesca looked curiously through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place, the first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if for an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cupboard in the wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round the inclosure, although the morning was fine and bright. At the west end a high screen kept the congregation from the disturbance of those who entered or went out. Within the screen was a company of men and boys, all with their hats and caps on their heads; they looked like the choir. In front of the choir was a platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the back of the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment provided with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table stood the Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black hair and full black beard, about forty years of age. He wore a gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on his head he had a kind of biretta. Four tall wax candles were placed round the front of the platform. The chairs were occupied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk beside the Reader. The service was already begun--it was, in fact, half over.
Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and four feet broad. Bands of black or blue were worked in the ends, which were also provided with fringes. "It is the Talleth," Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a turban above it, not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the synagogue east and west. The place was not full, but there were a good many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca. Like many young persons brought up with no other religion than they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind. She knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds; never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir from side to side; nor was it a monotone with a drop at the end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in some Anglican services. This Reader, with a rich, strong voice, a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service--it must have been extremely fatiguing--upon himself, chanting it from beginning to end. No doubt, as he rendered the reading and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Carthaginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes. It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record--not a monotonous chant. Francesca knew nothing of the words; she grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on one side and English on the other. Besides, the man attracted her--by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She closed her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice and the emotions which it expressed.
There was no music to help him. From time to time the men in the congregation lifted up their voices--not seemingly in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out with one accord. This helped him a little, otherwise he was without any assistance.
A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of the Law, sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice went up and down and rolled along the roof and echoed along the benches of the women's gallery. Now the Voice sounded a note of rejoicing; now, but less often, a note of sadness; now it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then the people shouted with him--it was as if they clashed sword on shield and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when men go forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as of one who consoles and soothes and promises things to come; now it was a note of rapture, as if the Promised Land was already recovered.
Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting wrapped in their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice thundered and rolled? I know not. Such was the effect produced upon one who heard this Voice for the first time. At first it seemed loud, even barbaric; there was lacking something which the listener and stranger had learned to associate with worship. What was it? Reverence? But she presently found reverence In plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this ancient service she missed the note of humiliation. There was no Litany at a Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement; there was no appearance of penitence, sorrow, or the confession of sins. The Voice was as the Voice of a Captain exhorting his soldiers to fight. The service was warlike, the service of a people whose trust in their God is so great that they do not need to call perpetually upon Him for the help and forgiveness of which they are assured. Yes, yes--she thought--this is the service of a race of warriors; they are fighting men: the Lord is their God; He is leading them to battle: as for little sins, and backslidings, and penitences, they belong to the Day of Atonement--which comes once a year. For all the other days in the year, battle and victory occupy all the mind. The service of a great fighting people; a service full of joy, full of faith, full of assurance, full of hope and confidence--such assurance as few Christians can understand, and of faith to which few Christians can attain. Perhaps Francesca was wrong; but these were her first impressions, and these are mostly true.
In the body of the synagogue men came late. Under one gallery was a school of boys, in the charge of a graybeard, who, book in hand, followed the service with one eye, while he admonished perpetually the boys to keep still and to listen. The boys grew restless; it was tedious to them--the Voice which expressed so much to the stranger who knew no Hebrew at all was tedious to the children; they were allowed to get up and run into the court outside and then to come back again; nobody heeded their going in and out. One little boy of three, wrapped, like the rest, in a white Talleth, ran up and down the side aisle without being heeded--even by the splendid Beadle with the gold-laced hat, which looked so truly wonderful above the Oriental Talleth. The boys in the choir got up and went in and out just as they pleased. Nobody minded. The congregation, mostly well-to-do men with silk hats, sat in their places, book in hand, and paid no attention.
Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worshipers, who reminded Francesca of Browning's poem of St. John's Day at Rome. For they nudged and jostled each other; they whispered things; they even laughed over the things they whispered. But they were clad like those in the open part in the Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no reverence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were like the children, their neighbors,--just as restless, just as uninterested, just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer and the more ignorant part of the community. They came here and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do; because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of their People.
The women in the gallery sat or stood. They neither knelt nor sang aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood when it was proper to stand. They were like the women, the village women, in a Spanish or Italian church, for whom everything is done. Francesca, for the moment, felt humiliated that she should be compelled to sit apart from the congregation, railed off in the women's gallery, to have her religion done for her, without a voice of her own in it at all. So, I have heard, indignation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when they reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.
The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down. Then the Choir began. They sang a hymn--a Hebrew hymn--the rhythm and metre were not English; the music was like nothing that can be heard in a Christian Church. "It is the music," said Nelly, "to which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:" a bold statement, but--why not? If the music is not of Western origin and character, who can disprove such an assertion? After the hymn the prayers and reading went on again.
There came at last--it is a long service, such as we poor weak-kneed Anglicans could not endure--the end. There was a great bustle and ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the Roll of the Law; they wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they hung over it a silver breastplate set with twelve jewels for the Twelve Tribes--in memory of the Urim and Thummim. Francesca saw that the upper ends of the staves were adorned with silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang one of the Psalms of David--but not in the least like the same Psalm sung in an English Cathedral--bearing the Roll of the Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the railing and inclosure at the east end.
The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer--it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph--he ended his part of the service.
And then the choir sang the last hymn--a lovely hymn, not in the least like a Christian, or at least an English hymn--a psalm that breathed a tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One needed no words to understand the full meaning and beauty and depth of that hymn.
The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs and folded them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few minutes, gradually melting away. As for the men under the gallery, who had been whispering and laughing, they trooped out of the synagogue all together. Evidently, to them the service was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a form, to the baser sort?
The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the stairs. Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself--- all those wonderful things above enumerated--Francesca wondered what it meant to a girl who heard it every Sabbath morning. But she refrained from asking. Custom too often takes the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry out of the verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere--in other forms of faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not seen him in the congregation, probably because it is difficult to recognize a man merely by the top of his hat.
"Come," he said, "let us look around the place. Afterwards, perhaps, we will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on the site of the one erected by Manasseh and his friends when Oliver Cromwell permitted them to return to London after four hundred years of exile. They were forced to wear yellow hats at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse, like many other abominable laws. When you read about mediaeval laws, Francesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were seldom carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was weak. Who was there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat? The police? There were no police. The people? What did the people care about the yellow hat? When the Fire burned down London, sparing not even the great Cathedral, to say nothing of the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in splendor to the first. At that time all the Jews in London were Sephardim of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Spanish, just as there are Askenazim who speak nothing among themselves but Yiddish. Come with me; I will show you something that will please you."
He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the first. There were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved passages, a suggestion of a cloister, an open space or square, and buildings on all sides with windows opening upon the court.
"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have seen something like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and a few bright hangings and a black-haired woman at the open windows, and perhaps a coat of arms carved upon the wall, it would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a strange place to find in the heart of London."
"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we saying yesterday? Spain places her own seal upon everything that belongs to her--people, buildings, all. What you see here is the central Institute of our People, the Sephardim--the Spanish part of our People. Here is our synagogue, here are schools, alms-houses, residence of the Rabbi, and all sorts of things. You can come here sometimes and think of Spain, where your ancestors lived. Many generations in Spain have made you--as they have made me--a Spaniard."
They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they passed the synagogue, there came running across the court a girl of fifteen or so. She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair was curled round her shapely head; her figure was that of an English girl of twenty; her eyes showed black and large and bright as she glanced at the group standing in the court; her skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed in a grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind--a picture to be remembered.
"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might have worn to grace the triumph of David the King."