Nota bene: These musings arise from an amalgam of my own reading, reflection, and intuition, after decades of acquaintance with Rafael Sabatini’s writings, and long years of research into his life, together with much reading. But set down in much weakness of body, in my 71st year, when memory is not what it once was.
Israel
Suarez is a Jewish moneylender, a character in the novel, The Gates of Doom, a favourite Rafael Sabatini novel. He made so vivid an impress on my mind that I
can no more forget him than I can forget the leading trio of characters. Dismiss all thought of “stereotype Jewish
moneylender”. This man is so wonderfully
different; his character is striking because of its
forcefulness more than for his eccentricities..
Read
what Rafael Sabatini writes of him, instantly spurning the stereotype, then in
typical Rafael fashion mocking the stereotype by seeming to concede it only to
negate that emphatically:
Israel Suarez was none of your
gabardined, bewhiskered, cringing Jews, over-conscious of belonging to a
despised race. Himself proud of his Jewish blood, he had naught but contempt
for those who despised it. Being enormously wealthy and knowing the power of
wealth, he used that power remorselessly, and upon none so remorselessly as
upon those who dared to show their scorn of him on the score of race. To these
he repaid contempt with contempt, insult with insult; and since he had the
power on his side, his contempt and his insult usually proved the more hurtful
and crushing in the end.
In appearance he had almost the
air of a man of fashion, saving perhaps that with his natural taste for Oriental splendour he rather overdressed the part.
. . .
this Spanish Jew was a somewhat extraordinary and compelling personality. . . .
Obviously he was not a man with whom it would be safe to trifle. Save for a trouble with the aspirate, the "w"
and the "th," his English was fluent and good. [my emphasis]
The
name, Israel Suarez, is not uncommon, as an online search will show. But why did Rafael come up with an Iberian
character? Not all Jews settled in
England came from Iberia.
Home
in 1886 was Rua do Mirante 9A. In 1886
the Liceu Particular do Porto, at Rua da Conceição 64, had for its director
Jacob Bensabat, teacher of English, French, and Italian (author of ‘teach
yourself’ textbooks for these, and possibly co-author of a similar book for
German). This liceu was a short walk away from the Rua do Mirante, which may
have been a reason to enrol Rafael in it.
In
1888 the Sabatinis lived at Rua Cancela Velha 15, a street renamed Rua
Guilherme da Costa Carvalho (after the 1974 revolution). This street adjoins
the Câmara do Porto, and is in the centre of the city.
Although there was another liceu, the Liceu Nacional do Porto at Rua São Bento da Vitória 14, it was much further away from the Rua do Mirante for Rafael aged 11. By the time he lived at Rua Cancela Velha 15 he was a little older and may have made his way an even greater distance to the Liceu Nacional. (But was it necessary? Will we ever know?)
Other thoughts floated into my mind as I reflected on Bensabat the
fictional character. He is made a
tailor. Rafael's paternal grandfather
had a tailoring establishment. *Jesse
Knight, in Jesi/Iesi for a Sabatini event in 2001 was told that a local notion
(without proof to substantiate it) held that the Sabatinis were descended from
Spanish Jews fleeing in the persecution begun by Torquemada.
Rafael
would seem to have put stereotyped Jewish characters into Scaramouche the Kingmaker, but that is a case apart. The moneylender ‘brothers’ calling themselves
Frey were historical characters who may have been Jews as they claimed, both
scoundrels. In the novel they had to be
simplified not to add another complication to an already very complex
plot. These characters, whether in
history or in the novel, could not be more different from the memorable Israel
Suarez, a person to be respected, as Lord Carteret does.
* Jesse
F. Knight
From
‘Israel’ and ‘Jacob’ to ‘Emanuel’ even if spelled shorn of the double ‘m’.
Dr. Emanuel Blizzard is another striking name, and the surname was
probably used as early as 1901 in the rejected & lost story The Resuscitation of Jack Haynes,
rewritten and published in 1907 as The
Risen Dead. (Rafael tended to hold
on to some names, not always remembering not to overuse them!) That story grew into The Gates of Doom. - More in the next instalment.
Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.
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