Oh you're welcome. Take care! :wave:Quote:
Originally Posted by Carousel
Printable View
Oh you're welcome. Take care! :wave:Quote:
Originally Posted by Carousel
There was a bit in the second book that slapped me in the face:
When the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver's cries, hurried to the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely able to articulate the words 'The Jew! the Jew!'.
Oliver had had a waking dream that Fagin and Monks had been looking into the window of his room.
imo, it is as well that Dickens responded to Mrs Davis' upbraiding of him, or his reputation would have been more damaged. I wonder how that conversation came to be reported.
I read this in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. This was actually said by a Jewish buyer and seller of clothes.
'It is very seldom,' my informant stated, 'very seldom indeed, that a Jew clothes man takes away any of the property of the house he may be called into. I expect there's a good many of 'em,' he continued, for he sometimes spoke of his co-traders as if they were not of his own class, 'is fond of cheating - that is, they won't mind giving 2s. for a thing that's worth 5s. They are fond of money, and will do almost anything to get it. Jews are perhap the most money-loving people in all England. There are certainly some old-clothes men who will buy articles at such a price that they must know them to have been stolen. Their rule, however, is to ask no questions, and to get as cheap an article as possible. A Jew clothes man is seldom or never seen in liquor. They gamble for money, either at their own homes or at public houses. The favourite games are tossing, dominoes, and cards.'
Fagin is a bit more culpable than that obviously. It is not just that he does not ask questions, and he fences more than clothes.