‘Ivanhoe’: a tilt at antisemitism

Walter Scott (1771-1832) outsold and outworked most of his literary contemporaries. Ivanhoe was one of three novels that came to market within twelve months (there were 27 novels in all). Print runs of his poetry ran into thousands and of his novels into tens of thousands of copies in an era when books were relatively far more expensive than today. Critics marvelled at his output. John Ruskin praised Scott, writing his chapter or two before breakfast – not retouching. Goethe, whose early works Scott had translated and introduced to the English-speaking world, admired him as “the beau ideal of a poet”.

But Scott also had detractors. William Thackeray mocked Ivanhoe as a costume novel. This carping had a blind spot: Ivanhoe has no precedent in English literature as an account of medieval Jewish repression.

Let us rehearse the storyline.

The plot of Ivanhoe is conventional. The hero faces obstacles, proves his valour, and woos and wins the woman he adores. In keeping with the genre, Ivanhoe offers readers a numerous and colourful cast, including celebrities such as Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood. So far, so predictable. But the key backers of Ivanhoe in the plot are two social outsiders, Isaac of York and his daughter Rebecca.

Ivanhoe, returning to England incognito and penniless, intervenes when he witnesses other travellers harassing Isaac. He senses what is going on:

There was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and mot unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. The kings of the Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their examples in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind.

Isaac helps equip Ivanhoe to enter jousts, and after Ivanhoe is hurt badly and at risk of succumbing, Rebecca nurses him back to health:

But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. … It is besides, probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.

Rebecca for her medical expertise is put on trial for witchcraft, for which there is no shortage of witnesses:

The circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern days, divided into two classes – those which were immaterial, and those which were actually and physically impossible. But both were, in those ignorant and superstitious days, eagerly credited as proofs of guilt.

Rebecca’s champion in the ensuing trial by combat is Ivanhoe and so she is spared burning at the stake. Thus the story ends — happily for Ivanhoe, who weds his first love Rowena, but less happily for Isaac and Rebecca, who leave England for Spain.

How does Ivanhoe come across today?

William Hazlitt criticised Scott for wanting facts and worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style. But facts were more than a makeweight for Ivanhoe. 1820, its year of publication, was a sensitive moment for Jewish emancipation in England. Public debates over granting Jews equal civil rights with gentiles were gathering pace and it took until the early 1830s until they reached the House of Commons. Scott must have had these debates in mind when he gave this unvarnished account of Jewish repression:

It is a well-known story of King John, that he confined a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Jew was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant’s object to extort from him. 

As regards the allegation of drooping style, Scott expands on antisemitism in episodes that have Isaac threatened with torture, and Rebecca with rape. Isaac’s captor menaces him:

Doest thou think that I … will blanch from my purpose for the outcries or screams of one single wretched Jew? … Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou has acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion.

Scott’s style not only was graphic, but well-nigh cinematographic. Isaac’s tormentor exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty, Ivanhoe’s demeanour to Rebecca was cold, composed, and collected.  Does this not read like a close-up on screen?

The deeper import of Walter Scott’s work was more consequential to musicians than to writers. Novels by Scott were turned into operas by Donizetti, Rossini, and Bizet. And half a century after Ivanhoe, Richard Wagner chose a medieval setting to project societal antagonism, in the Ring cycle. But where the Ring cycle now ranks as prescient social analysis – G.B. Shaw thought it was as good as a soundtrack to Das Kapital – Ivanhoe’s contribution to exposure of antisemitism ranks no higher than as a prime sample of adventure stories. Read today for its realistic treatment of antisemitism, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe ranks ahead of William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The story of Shylock and Jessica plays out in distant Venice; their tribulations take place in court; and Shylock finally converts to Christianity. Isaac and Rebecca are settled in England; face torture, rape, and execution; and finally leave the country. Isaac and Rebecca are closer to us than Shylock and Jessica.

Ivanhoe deserves a rerating in the canon of English classics.

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