The theme has appeared in various forms in English literature, besides in fiction where it has been most prominent. A comedy[155] was published in 1797, by Andrew Franklin, though the wanderer is here used only as a hoax. Wordsworth has a poem entitled The Song of the Wandering Jew, and Shelley was fascinated by the legend, as we see from the fact that he used it three times. One of his first poems, a long dramatic attempt, written at eighteen, is The Wandering Jew, a fevered poem showing the same weaknesses that his Gothic romances reveal, yet with a hint of his later power. The Wandering Jew appears as a definite character in both Queen Mab and Hellas, in the first Ahasuerus being summoned to testify concerning God, while he appears in the latter to give supernatural vision of events. In both poems he is very old, for in the first it is said:
“His port and mien bore marks of many years....
“Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth,” while in the latter he is described as being “so old he seems to have outlived a world’s decay.” Shelley follows the German version, as used in a fragment he picked up torn and soiled in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whose author he did not know.
Mr. Eubule-Evans, in a long dramatic poem of considerable power,[156] tells the story of Theudas, who could be released from his doom of immortality if only he would repent, but he will not. He renews his youth every forty years, growing suddenly from a decrepit man to a handsome, gifted youth, which naturally suggests complications of human love-affairs. Other elements of supernaturalism are used, as angels, demons, and so forth while the Æons and the Intermedii (whoever they are!) appear as chorus.
The Wandering Jew, a Christmas Carol,[157] retells the story with variations and with some power. The Jew here is shown to be very old and feeble, clad in antique raiment, with stigmata of the wounds on hands and feet. He is symbolic of the Christ, of His failure to win men.
“For lo, at last I knew
The lineaments of that diviner Jew,
That like a Phantom passeth everywhere,
The world’s last hope and bitterest despair,
Deathless, yet dead!
And lo! while all men come and pass away
That phantom of the Christ, forlorn and gray,
Haunteth the earth, with desolate footfall.”
The Wandering Jew is seen definitely once in Gothic fiction, in Lewis’s The Monk, where a mysterious stranger, bearing on his forehead a burning cross imprinted, appears and is spoken of as the Wandering Jew. He is unable to stay more than fourteen days in any one place but must forever hurry on. Rev. T. Clark[158] gives a bird’s-eye view of history such as a person of the long life and extensive migrations of the wanderer would see it.
The idea of a deathless man appealed strongly to Hawthorne, who plays with the theme in various passages in his works and notebooks. In A Virtuoso’s Collection, where Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, is door-keeper and where the collection includes a letter from the Flying Dutchman to his wife, together with a flask of the elixir of life, the virtuoso himself is none other than the Wandering Jew. He speaks of his destiny and says that human prayers will not avail to aid him. The touch of his hand is like ice, conveying a sense of spiritual as well as physical chill. The character appears also as one of the guests in A Select Party, of whom the author remarks: “This personage, however, had latterly grown so common by mingling in all sorts of society and appearing at the beck of every entertainer that he could hardly be deemed a proper guest in an exclusive circle.” This bit of satire illustrates how common the theme had become at that time in fiction.
There are various threads of narration tangled up with the Wandering Jew motif. He is said by some writers to have supernatural power to heal disease, while by others he is thought to be the helpless bearer of evil and death. Eugène Sue in his novel represents him as carrying the plague, knowing his awful destiny, yet, while wildly regretting it, powerless in the clutch of fate. Here he appears as a voluntary agent of good toward the Rennepont family and an involuntary minister of evil in other ways. An anonymous story[159] uses the same idea of the plague association but carries it further, for here the wanderer is not a personality but the plague itself, passing like a doom over the world, which shows how far that phase of the legend has gone.
The legend has been utilized variously to impress religious truths. Charles Granville[160] writes a symbolic story with a definite religious message. The idea of the immortal wanderer is represented as the concept of a part of humanity urged by an earnest longing which dominates their whole life and thought, the desire that a new kingdom of God might come. The book is a social satire, an appeal for the coming of a real democracy, real justice and genuine spirituality. George Croly[161] has for his purpose the proving that Christ’s second coming is near at hand. Lew Wallace, who himself uses the theme of the Wanderer, thought this book one of the half dozen volumes which taken alone would constitute a British literature. We are likely to find ourselves questioning Wallace’s judgment in the matter, for while the novel is interesting and has a sermon impressed with some interest, it is by no means a great piece of literature. Salathiel is pictured as a young, enthusiastic, passionate Jew striving to defend his country against the woes that threaten her. His life is given in detail immediately following his unpardonable sin, and his definite career ends with the destruction of Jerusalem, though his immortality is suggested at the close. The book describes many supernatural happenings, the miraculous phenomena accompanying the death of Christ and manifestations following the fate of the city.