Nina Balatka | Page 3

height, but was well made in
every limb, with small feet and hands, and small ears, and a well-turned
neck. He was very dark--dark as a man can be, and yet show no sign of
colour in his blood. No white man could be more dark and swarthy than
Anton Trendellsohn. His eyes, however, which were quite black, were
very bright. His jet-black hair, as it clustered round his ears, had in it
something of a curl. Had it been allowed to grow, it would almost have
hung in ringlets; but it was worn very short, as though its owner were
jealous even of the curl. Anton Trendellsohn was decidedly a handsome
man; but his eyes were somewhat too close together in his face, and the
bridge of his aquiline nose was not sharply cut, as is mostly the case
with such a nose on a Christian face. The olive oval face was without
doubt the face of a Jew, and the mouth was greedy, and the teeth were
perfect and bright, and the movement of the man's body was the
movement of a Jew.
This is not the typical description of the romantic hero of a Victorian
novel. Even so, Trollope's description of Anton is less derogatory than
his description of Ezekiel Brehgert, a character in a later novel, _The
Way We Live Now_:
He was a fat, greasy man, good-looking in a certain degree, about fifty,
with hair dyed black, and beard and moustache dyed a dark purple
colour. The charm of his face consisted in a pair of very bright black
eyes, which were, however, set too near together in his face for the
general delight of Christians. He was stout fat all over rather than

corpulent and had that look of command in his face which has become
common to master-butchers, probably by long intercourse with sheep
and oxen.
The case for Trollope being anti-semitic is harder to support, however,
when one considers the behavior of his Jewish characters. Brehgert,
whose physical description above is stereotypic, is one of the few
characters in The Way We Live Now whose actions are completely
honorable. Trollope wrote 16 novels before Nina Balatka; only two of
those contain Jewish characters. The first, who plays a minor role in
Orley Farm (1862), is Soloman Aram, an attorney--a Victorian
Rumpole --known for defending the accused at the Old Bailey. His skill
is needed to defend Lady Mason against a charge of perjury, much to
the distaste of her Christian advisors. He acts with dignity and shows
great consideration for the personal comfort of Lady Mason during her
trial. The second Jewish character in Trollope's novels was Mr. Hart, a
London tailor who runs for a seat in Parliament in Rachel Ray (1863).
This served no purpose in the plot; the situation probably was included
because legislation to allow Jews to serve in Parliament had been
passed only five years before, and the issue was still one of public
discussion. Mr. Hart's appearance is brief; he speaks only one or two
lines, and the reader is not told enough about him to judge his character.
Trollope describes him thus:
. . . and then the Jewish hero, the tailor himself, came among them, and
astonished their minds by the ease and volubility of his speeches. He
did not pronounce his words with any of those soft slushy Judaic
utterances by which they had been taught to believe he would disgrace
himself. His nose was not hookey, with any especial hook, nor was it
thicker at the bridge than was becoming. He was a dapper little man,
with bright eyes, quick motion, ready tongue, and a very new hat. It
seemed that he knew well how to canvass. He had a smile and a good
word for all--enemies as well as friends.
In that novel, Trollope, himself, comments on prejudice and bigotry:
. . . Mrs. Ray, in her quiet way, expressed much joy that Mr. Comfort's
son-in-law should have been successful, and that Baslehurst should not

have disgraced itself by any connection with a Jew. To her it had
appeared monstrous that such a one should have been even permitted to
show himself in the town as a candidate for its representation. To such
she would have denied all civil rights, and almost all social rights. For a
true spirit of persecution one should always go to a woman; and the
milder, the sweeter, the more loving, the more womanly the woman,
the stronger will be that spirit within her. Strong love for the thing
loved necessitates strong hatred for the thing hated, and thence comes
the spirit of persecution. They in England who are now keenest against
the Jews, who would again take from them rights that they have lately
won, are certainly