

E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



NINA BALATKA

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE







INTRODUCTION


Anthony Trollope was an established novelist of great renown when _Nina
Balatka_ was published in 1866, twenty years after his first novel.
Except for _La Vendee_, his third novel, set in France during the
Revolution, all his previous works were set in England or Ireland and
dealt with the upper levels of society: the nobility and the landed
gentry (wealthy or impoverished), and a few well-to-do merchants--people
several strata above the social levels of the characters popularized by
his contemporary Dickens. Most of Trollope's early novels were set in
the countryside or in provincial towns, with occasional forays into
London. The first of his political novels, _Can You Forgive Her_, dealing
with the Pallisers was published in 1864, two years before _Nina_. By the
time he began writing _Nina_, shortly after a tour of Europe, Trollope
was a master at chronicling the habits, foibles, customs, and ways of
life of his chosen subjects.

_Nina Balatka_ is, on the surface, a love story--not an unusual theme for
Trollope. Romance and courtship were woven throughout all his previous
works, often with two, three, or even more pairs of lovers per novel.
Most of his heroes and heroines, after facing numerous hurdles, often
of their own making, were eventually happily united by the next-to-last
chapter. A few were doomed to disappointment (Johnny Eames never won
the heart of Lily Dale through two of the "Barsetshire" novels), but
marital bliss--or at least the prospect of bliss--was the usual outcome.
Even so, the reader of Trollope soon notices his analytical description
of Victorian courtship and marriage. In the circles of Trollope's
characters, only the wealthy could afford to marry for love; those
without wealth had to marry for money, sometimes with disastrous
consequences. By the time of _Nina_, Trollope's best exploration of
this subject was the marriage between Plantagenet Palliser and Lady
Glencora M'Cluskie, the former a cold fish and the latter a hot-blooded
heiress in love with a penniless scoundrel (_Can You Forgive Her?_
1865). Yet to come was the disastrous marriage of intelligent Lady
Laura Standish to the wealthy but old-maidish Robert Kennedy in _Phineas
Finn_ and its sequel.

But _Nina Balatka_ is different from Trollope's previous novels in four
respects. First, Trollope was accustomed to include in his novels his
own witty editorial comments about various subjects, often paragraphs
or even several pages long. No such comments are found in _Nina_.
Second, the story is set in Prague instead of the British isles. Third,
the hero and heroine are already in love and engaged to one another
at the opening; we are not told any details about their falling in
love. The hero, Anton Trendellsohn is a successful businessman in his
mid-thirties--not the typical Trollopian hero in his early twenties, still
finding himself, and besotted with love. Anton is rather cold as lovers
go, seldom whispering words of endearment to Nina. But it is the fourth
difference which really sets this novel apart and makes it both a
masterpiece and an enigma. That fourth--and most important--difference
is clearly stated in the remarkable opening sentence of the novel:

     Nina Balatka was a maiden of Prague, born of Christian parents,
     and herself a Christian--but she loved a Jew; and this is her
     story.

Marriage--even worse, love--between a Christian and a Jew would have
been unacceptable to Victorian British readers. Blatant anti-semitism
was prevalent--perhaps ubiquitous--among the upper classes.

Let us consider the origins of this anti-semitism. Jews were first
allowed into England by William the Conqueror. For a while they
prospered, largely through money-lending, an occupation to which
they were restricted. In the 13th century a series of increasingly
oppressive laws and taxes reduced the Jewish community to poverty, and
the Jews were expelled from England in 1290. They were not allowed to
return until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell authorized their entry over
the objections of British merchants. Legal protection for the Jews
increased gradually; even the "Act for the More Effectual Suppressing
of Blasphemy and Profaneness" (1698) recognized the practice of Judaism
as legal, but there were probably only a few hundred Jews in the entire
country. The British Jewish community grew gradually, and efforts to
emancipate the Jews were included in various "Reform Acts" in the first
half of the 19th century, although many failed to become law. Gradually
Jews were admitted to the bar and other professions. Full citizenship
and rights, including the right to sit in Parliament, were granted in
1858--only seven years before Trollope began writing _Nina Balatka_. By
this time wealthy Jewish families were growing in number. This upward
mobility and increasing economic and political power no doubt made the
British upper classes envious and resentful, fuelling anti-semitism.

Trollope chose to have _Nina_ published anonymously in _Blackwood's
Magazine_ for reasons which he described in his autobiography:

     From the commencement of my success as a writer... I had
     always felt an injustice in literary affairs which had never
     afflicted me or even suggested itself to me while I was
     unsuccessful. It seemed to me that a name once earned carried
     with it too much favour...  The injustice which struck me did
     not consist in that which was withheld from me, but in that which
     was given to me. I felt that aspirants coming up below me might
     do work as good as mine, and probably much better work, and yet
     fail to have it appreciated. In order to test this, I determined
     to be such an aspirant myself, and to begin a course of novels
     anonymously, in order that I might see whether I could succeed in
     obtaining a second identity,--whether as I had made one mark by
     such literary ability as I possessed, I might succeed in doing so
     again. [1]

Why did Trollope start his "new" career with a novel whose central theme
was a subject of distaste at best--more likely revulsion--to the vast
majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself
led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was
not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, _The Macdermots
of Ballycloran_, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels,
the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving
birth to an illegitimate child.

Certainly _Nina_ was well-suited for the experiment because of it's
different setting and subject matter. Perhaps further to disguise his
authorship, Trollope wrote _Nina_ in a style of prose that reads almost
like a translation from a foreign language.

The experiment did not last long enough to test Trollope's hypothesis.
Mr. Hutton, critic for the _Spectator_, recognized Trollope as the author
and so stated in his review. Trollope did not deny the accusation.

One cannot discuss _Nina Balatka_ without addressing the question, was
Trollope himself anti-semitic? A careful reading of his works does not
provide a clear answer. Jews appear in some of his books and are referred
to in others, often as disreputable characters or money-lenders. They are
seldom mentioned by his Christian characters with respect, probably
realistically reflecting the sentiments of the classes he wrote about.
Some of his greatest villains in his later novels--Melmotte in _The Way
We Live Now_ (1875) and Lopez in _The Prime Minister_ (1876)--are rumored
to be Jewish, but Trollope never unequivocally identifies them as Jewish.
Perhaps his Christian characters expect them to be Jewish because they
are foreigners and villains.

However, if one ignores the dialogue of his characters, even the
descriptive and editorial comments by Trollope himself at first seem
anti-semitic. He consistently uses "Jew" as a pejorative adjective
instead of "Jewish." His descriptions of the appearance of Jewish
characters are usually unflattering and stereotypical. Even Anton
Trendellsohn, the hero of _Nina Balatka_, is described as follows:

     To those who know the outward types of his race there could be no
     doubt that Anton Trendellsohn was a very Jew among Jews. He was
     certainly a handsome man, not now very young, having reached some
     year certainly in advance of thirty, and his face was full of
     intellect. He was slightly made, below the middle 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 those who think most of
     the faith of a Christian. The most deadly enemies of the Roman
     Catholics are they who love best their religion as Protestants.
     When we look to individuals we always find it so, though it
     hardly suits us to admit as much when we discuss these subjects
     broadly. To Mrs. Ray it was wonderful that a Jew should have been
     entertained in Baslehurst as a future member for the borough, and
     that he should have been admitted to speak aloud within a few
     yards of the church tower!

_Nina Balatka_ presents a sharp contrast between the behaviors of the
Jewish and Christian characters. Nina and her father Josef Balatka
live on the edge of poverty; he was cheated out of his business by his
Christian brother-in-law, who is now wealthy. Josef's only source of
money was to sell his house to Anton Trendellsohn's father, who for many
years has allowed Josef and Nina to remain in the house without paying
any rent. Nina's Christian relatives use every form of deceit in their
attempt to turn Anton against Nina. Nina's Aunt Sophie spews invective
in every direction. She tells Nina, "Impudent girl!--brazen-faced,
impudent, bad girl! Do you not know that you would bring disgrace upon
us all?" To Nina's father she says, "Tell me that at once, Josef,
that I may know. Has she your sanction for--for--for this accursed
abomination?" To her husband she says, "Oh, I hate them! I do hate them!
Anything is fair against a Jew." And during a meeting with Anton she
exclaims, "How dares he come here to talk of his love? It is filthy--it
is worse than filthy--it is profane."

Anton's family also opposes the marriage, but Anton's father's behavior
toward Nina is in sharp contrast to that of her aunt:

     The old man's heart was softened towards her. He could not bring
     himself to say a word to her of direct encouragement, but he
     kissed her before she went, telling her that she was a good girl,
     and bidding her have no care as to the house in the Kleinseite. As
     long as he lived, and her father, her father should not be
     disturbed.

Anton, being more a businessman than a lover, at times behaves
insensitively toward Nina. Otherwise, throughout the novel, the Jewish
characters act with honesty and kindness. Even the Jewish maiden who
wants to marry Anton does not scheme to break up his engagement to Nina
but rather befriends Nina and eventually saves her life. One has to
wonder whether Trollope intended this contrast to induce his readers to
reconsider their prejudices. Consider his perception of his duty as a
writer:

    ... And the criticism [of my work offered by Hawthorne],
     whether just or unjust, describes with wonderful accuracy the
     purport that I have ever had in view in my writing. I have always
     desired to 'hew out some lump of the earth', and to make men and
     women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us,--with not
     more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness,--so that my
     readers might recognise human beings like to themselves, and not
     feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. If I
     could do this, then I thought I might succeed in impregnating the
     mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that honesty is the best
     policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails; that a girl
     will be loved as she is pure, and sweet, and unselfish; that a man
     will be honoured as he is true, and honest, and brave of heart;
     that things meanly done are ugly and odious, and things nobly done
     beautiful and gracious... There are many who would laugh at the
     idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility,--those, for
     instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin, and those
     also who think it to be simply an idle pastime. They look upon the
     tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the
     wicked pleasures of a wicked world. I have regarded my art from so
     different a point of view that I have ever thought of myself as a
     preacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one which I could make both
     salutary and agreeable to my audience. I do believe that no girl
     has risen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was
     before, and that some may have learned from them that modesty is
     a charm well worth preserving. I think that no youth has been
     taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to
     manliness; but some may perhaps have learned from me that it is
     to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit. Such are the
     lessons I have striven to teach; and I have thought that it might
     best be done by representing to my readers characters like
     themselves,--or to which they might liken themselves. [1]

Given Trollope's philosophy, it is reasonable to believe that the
actions of his characters should speak louder than their words. If
so, Trollope might well have been holding up a mirror to his audience
that they might examine their own prejudices. Unfortunately, we shall
never know.


     [1] Anthony Trollope. _An Autobiography_. Oxford University Press,
         Oxford, 1950.


                                            Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
                                            Midland, 2003

               Copyright (C) 2003 Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
               This Introduction to _Nina Balatka_ is protected by
               copyright and/or other applicable law. Any use of the
               work other than as authorized in "The Legal Small Print"
               section (found at the end of the book) is prohibited.







NINA BALATKA




VOLUME I




CHAPTER I


Nina Balatka was a maiden of Prague, born of Christian parents, and
herself a Christian--but she loved a Jew; and this is her story.

Nina Balatka was the daughter of one Josef Balatka, an old merchant
of Prague, who was living at the time of this story; but Nina's mother
was dead. Josef, in the course of his business, had become closely
connected with a certain Jew named Trendellsohn, who lived in a mean
house in the Jews' quarter in Prague--habitation in that one allotted
portion of the town having been the enforced custom with the Jews then,
as it still is now. In business with Trendellsohn, the father, there
was Anton, his son; and Anton Trendellsohn was the Jew whom Nina
Balatka loved. Now it had so happened that Josef Balatka, Nina's
father, had drifted out of a partnership with Karil Zamenoy, a wealthy
Christian merchant of Prague, and had drifted into a partnership with
Trendellsohn. How this had come to pass needs not to be told here, as
it had all occurred in years when Nina was an infant. But in these
shiftings Balatka became a ruined man, and at the time of which I write
he and his daughter were almost penniless. The reader must know that
Karil Zamenoy and Josef Balatka had married sisters. Josef's wife,
Nina's mother, had long been dead, having died--so said Sophie Zamenoy,
her sister--of a broken heart; of a heart that had broken itself in
grief, because her husband had joined his fortunes with those of a Jew.
Whether the disgrace of the alliance or its disastrous result may have
broken the lady's heart, or whether she may have died of a pleurisy, as
the doctors said, we need not inquire here. Her soul had been long at
rest, and her spirit, we may hope, had ceased to fret itself in horror
at contact with a Jew. But Sophie Zamenoy was alive and strong, and
could still hate a Jew as intensely as Jews ever were hated in those
earlier days in which hatred could satisfy itself with persecution. In
her time but little power was left to Madame Zamenoy to persecute the
Trendellsohns other than that which nature had given to her in the
bitterness of her tongue. She could revile them behind their back, or,
if opportunity offered, to their faces; and both she had done often,
telling the world of Prague that the Trendellsohns had killed her
sister, and robbed her foolish brother-in-law. But hitherto the full
vial of her wrath had not been emptied, as it came to be emptied
afterwards; for she had not yet learned the mad iniquity of her niece.
But at the moment of which I now speak, Nina herself knew her own
iniquity, hardly knowing, however, whether her love did or did not
disgrace her. But she did know that any thought as to that was too
late. She loved the man, and had told him so; and were he gipsy as well
as Jew, it would be required of her that she should go out with him
into the wilderness. And Nina Balatka was prepared to go out into the
wilderness. Karil Zamenoy and his wife were prosperous people, and
lived in a comfortable modern house in the New Town. It stood in
a straight street, and at the back of the house there ran another
straight street. This part of the city is very little like that old
Prague, which may not be so comfortable, but which, of all cities on
the earth, is surely the most picturesque. Here lived Sophie Zamenoy;
and so far up in the world had she mounted, that she had a coach of
her own in which to be drawn about the thoroughfares of Prague and its
suburbs, and a stout little pair of Bohemian horses--ponies they were
called by those who wished to detract somewhat from Madame Zamenoy's
position. Madame Zamenoy had been at Paris, and took much delight
in telling her friends that the carriage also was Parisian; but, in
truth, it had come no further than from Dresden. Josef Balatka and
his daughter were very, very poor; but, poor as they were, they lived
in a large house, which, at least nominally, belonged to old Balatka
himself, and which had been his residence in the days of his better
fortunes. It was in the Kleinseite, that narrow portion of the town,
which lies on the other side of the river Moldau--the further side,
that is, from the so-called Old and New Town, on the western side of
the river, immediately under the great hill of the Hradschin. The
Old Town and the New Town are thus on one side of the river, and the
Kleinseite and the Hradschin on the other. To those who know Prague,
it need not here be explained that the streets of the Kleinseite are
wonderful in their picturesque architecture, wonderful in their lights
and shades, wonderful in their strange mixture of shops and palaces--
and now, alas! also of Austrian barracks--and wonderful in their
intricacy and great steepness of ascent. Balatka's house stood in a
small courtyard near to the river, but altogether hidden from it,
somewhat to the right of the main street of the Kleinseite as you pass
over the bridge. A lane, for it is little more, turning from the main
street between the side walls of what were once two palaces, comes
suddenly into a small square, and from a corner of this square there is
an open stone archway leading into a court. In this court is the door,
or doors, as I may say, of the house in which Balatka lived with his
daughter Nina. Opposite to these two doors was the blind wall of
another residence. Balatka's house occupied two sides of the court,
and no other window, therefore, besides his own looked either upon it
or upon him. The aspect of the place is such as to strike with wonder a
stranger to Prague--that in the heart of so large a city there should
be an abode so sequestered, so isolated, so desolate, and yet so close
to the thickest throng of life. But there are others such, perhaps many
others such, in Prague; and Nina Balatka, who had been born there,
thought nothing of the quaintness of her abode. Immediately over the
little square stood the palace of the Hradschin, the wide-spreading
residence of the old kings of Bohemia, now the habitation of an
ex-emperor of the House of Hapsburg, who must surely find the thousand
chambers of the royal mansion all too wide a retreat for the use of his
old age. So immediately did the imperial hill tower over the spot on
which Balatka lived, that it would seem at night, when the moon was
shining as it shines only at Prague, that the colonnades of the palace
were the upper storeys of some enormous edifice, of which the broken
merchant's small courtyard formed a lower portion. The long rows of
windows would glimmer in the sheen of the night, and Nina would stand
in the gloom of the archway counting them till they would seem to be
uncountable, and wondering what might be the thoughts of those who
abode there. But those who abode there were few in number, and their
thoughts were hardly worthy of Nina's speculation. The windows of
kings' palaces look out from many chambers. The windows of the
Hradschin look out, as we are told, from a thousand. But the rooms
within have seldom many tenants, nor the tenants, perhaps, many
thoughts. Chamber after chamber, you shall pass through them by the
score, and know by signs unconsciously recognised that there is not,
and never has been, true habitation within them. Windows almost
innumerable are there, that they may be seen from the outside--and such
is the use of palaces. But Nina, as she would look, would people the
rooms with throngs of bright inhabitants, and would think of the joys
of happy girls who were loved by Christian youths, and who could dare
to tell their friends of their love. But