Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment

<plain_text><page sequence="1">Jewish Historical Studies, volume 41, 2007 Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment* STEPHEN MASSIL This paper concerns the significance, in terms of the place of Anglo-Jewry in the culture of the time, of two Hebrew grammar books, one by Richard Grey1 and the other by Haim Vita Bolaffey,2 found together in the library of the architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837) in his Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. Sir John Soane The labyrinthine architectural background of the Museum is a fit setting for a subject that focuses on the working of the Enlightenment as it stimu? lated Anglo-Jewish culture in Hanoverian and Regency London. Soane, the son of a brick-maker grown to the height of fame as a professional architect, was an 'incomer' to a similar extent to those Jewish acquaintances he encountered through the broadening of intellect and cultural opportunity over the period 1753 to 1858. The books in Soane's library are a mute testa? ment to the more public workings of the acculturation of the Jews and the growing sense of awareness of people like Soane that Jews had a claim to a place in the cultural ferment of the enlightenment and of the art and culture * Based on a Presidential paper presented to the Society on 3 November 2005. 1 R. Grey, A new and easy method of learning Hebrew without points. To which is annexed, by way of praxis, the Book of Proverbs, divided according to the metre: with the masoretical reading in roman letters, the interlinear version of Santes Pagninus, &amp;c. A grammatical analysis . . . The whole design d for the more speedy and perfect attainment of the Hebrew tongue. By Richard Grey (London: printed by W. Bowyer for J. Stagg, 1738) ESTC 165832. There is or was a copy at Jews' College, London. 2 H. V. Bolaffey, An easy grammar of the primceval language, commonly called Hebrew, entitled [ Or ah miyshor] or, the 'straight path1 to real knowledge, fully exemplified by instructive and elegant extracts.Also, to render it complete, an appendix, showing how to read Hebrew works. . . . With notes, philological and illustrative. By H. V. Bolaffey . . . (London: printed for Hatchard and G. &amp; W. B. Whittaker, 1820) xvi, 491, [1], 16 p., engraved frontispiece plate; 21.2 cm (8 in). Frontispiece signed 'R. Nixon. 1820', described by the author as 'my friend the Rev... a private artist' (p. 15). The Hebrew title is from Psalm 27:11. 99</page><page sequence="2">Stephen Massil of society at large. That two of Soane's assistants were Jews gives the subject a piquancy and is suggestive of the growing sense of opportunity in English professional society for young Jews of talent at the time. These were George Basevi (apprenticed 1810-16) and David Mocatta (1821-7),3 through whom Soane was personally acquainted with both Isaac DTsraeli and Moses Mocatta, their sponsors respectively. How their acquaintance developed, so far as social convention allowed or even more warmly, is also an undercurrent of this paper. Perhaps the most prominent Jew among Soane's early acquaintance was John Braham, a guest and recitalist, along with Nancy Storace (whom Soane knew from Italy in 1778, before she became famous as Mozart's first Susanna4), in his country house at Pitzhanger in Ealing, if not also at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Soane's home, which also housed his practice and museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was in a professional quarter close to the theatres of Covent Garden and the Freemasons, looking westwards to Whitehall and Grosvenor Square, south to Somerset House and the Royal Academy and Royal Society, north to the new squares of Bloomsbury and with a view to the fields beyond, and east to the coaching houses of Holborn and the City, the Bank and St Paul's. Within the Museum, Soane's collections are inte? gral: the books, pictures, sculpture - Hogarth, Garrick and Shakespeare in texts and images, the famous sarcophagus ? all refer to each other across their genres and inspiration. The library could be said to have been Soane's earliest field of collecting, influenced by early access to the library of Sir William Chambers and the gifts of the Bishop of Derry while in Italy. Yet this has until recently been neglected in comparison with the scholarly attention accorded his museum in general, his pictures, sculpture, glass and even ceramics in particular. Yet a recent exhibition catalogue has opened the way to a fuller appreciation of Soane's library and the place of his books in the context of his museum and his mind.5 The provenance of Richard Grey's book is untraced, and the reasons why Soane might have acquired it fit the context of appropriate reading for an eighteenth-century gentleman of learned interests.6 Soane was professor (in succession to George Dance, junior) at the Royal Academy and served for forty years as architect to the Bank of England 3 A. T. Bolton, Architectural education a century ago: being an account of the office of Sir John Soane, R.A., . . . with special reference to the career of George Basevi (London [1906]), Appendix, 17 and 18. 4 David Conway has been studying their correspondence held at the Sir John Soane Museum. 5 E. Harris and N. Savage, Hooked on Books: The Library of Sir John Soane, Architect, 1733-1837 (London 2004). See also E. Harris, 'Sir John Soane's Library: "O, Books! Ye Monuments of Mind'", Apollo 338 (April 1990) 242-7. 6 See G. Darley,7?/w Soane: An Accidental Romantic (New Haven and London 1999). 100</page><page sequence="3">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment (1788-1828) as well as other bodies (the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Freemasons' Hall, commissioned in 1813 at the behest of the Duke of Sussex). He was famous for the Dulwich Picture Gallery (1812) and his own mausoleum with its long iconic aftermath, was civic architect in Whitehall and so forth, and had a private-house practice including patrons among the directors of the Bank. Besides all these, Soane was a founder member of the Royal Institution, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Athenaeum, a Proprietor of the Surry Institution, a Freemason, a Middlesex justice and a Bloomsbury vestryman. As a self taught man who had been apprenticed firstly to Dance, architect to the Corporation of London, and reputed 'prince of book collectors', he was approached on all sides as a generous subscriber to hospitals, charities and other causes (where his name is found at the highest premiums). These interests encompass Newtonian science in particular, Deism, Diderot's Encyclopedie, Buffon's natural history, Rousseau, Picart's Ceremonies, the classics of ancient and European literature, Shakespearean treasures and Napoleon's effects. He had an extensive collection of architectural texts, promoted both for his architectural practice and his assistants' instruction and for his students at the Academy, as well as works relating to the arts, topography, travel and antiquities. There are sixteen Bibles (one of former Huguenot ownership), missals, Deistic texts, Dodsley's Oeconomie of human life (inscribed by his wife, Elizabeth Soane) and sermons. A Hebrew grammar, therefore, does not come amiss, hence perhaps Richard Grey's grammar in the ground-breaking role I have identified for it. Soane's interests were wide, but he did not deliberately set out to acquire books of Jewish content or concern. There was no reason for him to do so. Rather, 'Jewish' matters were a natural part of the intellectual baggage of the era. Soane was a child of the Enlightenment and deliberately sustained a programme of reading. There follows a brief review of works of Jewish content and reference that might be inevitable in such a collection, showing how this library conveys a Jewish presence as part of the nature of reading and collecting in Soane's time. There are also the names of Jews among subscribers to the published works of the period. Jewish Books in the Library of Sir John Soane Besides the Bible, and the book of Psalms in particular, a number of books feature Hebrew or concern Jewish subjects. The Threnodia (on the death of Prince William of Gloucester) of 1700 includes verses in Hebrew,7 and 7 Threnodia academiae Cantabrigiensis in immaturum obitum illustrissimi ac desideratissimi principis 101</page><page sequence="4">Stephen Massil w$r.? Nf?W M EasV tfl O? ffEBR?W, POINTS. ?ft" eadino in Rman Letters, - .&gt;.7 f Hl Vmsi^n of Jfarfa Pagihm, tfc. J^atical Analysis. DTJSS C?ia?f nd Jkphoitoiy. ^JOBAUB GR BT, D. D. tyy?f AB*? in NtrtUmptmJbirt. . * Hiiao*. A LONDON, Plate i The title-page of Grey's Hebrew grammar: ^4 New and Easy Method of Learning Hebrew Without Points, 1738. (Courtesy the Trustees of the Sir John Soane's Museum.) there are reports of the Jews' Hospital (Neveh Tzedek) of 1806.8 For its associations Soane bought Dr Isaac Schomberg's copy of Hogarth's Works (a portfolio of seventy-four proof engravings published between 1732 and 1764, which he had from the painter in 1764) at Christie's Nicholas Revett Gulielmi Ducis Glocestrensis, Cantabrigiae: Typis academicis, 1700, with three Hebrew poems by P. Allix, G. Clarke and S. Ockley. See D. K. Money and J. Olszowy, 'Hebrew Commemorative Poetry in Cambridge, 1564-1763', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society X, pt 5 (1995) 571. 8 Rules and regulations for the management of the Jews' Hospital Mile End, called. ..[Neveh Tsekek] Founded 17th February, A.M. 5566, and opened 28th June, A.M. 5567 (London 1808, also copies of 1813 and 1814). 102</page><page sequence="5">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Plate 2 The title-page and frontispiece of Bolaffey's Hebrew grammar: An Easy Grammar of the Primeval Language, 1820. (Courtesy the Trustees of the Sir John Soane's Museum.) (1720-1804) sale (lot 113, June 1804) for ?29 8s. Isaac Sch?mberg, who had died in 1780, was identified as one of the 'principle [sic] scholars' of the Merchant Taylors' School.9 Soane acquired Hogarth's Oxfordshire Election Series paintings of 1754-5, originally owned by David Garrick, at the auction following the death of Garrick's widow in 1822. At the eye of the storm in the first picture, glimpsed through the window at the back, is a placard depicting Lord Newcastle caricatured as a Jew. This refers to the 'Jew Bill' of 1753 and the furore accompanying its passage and repeal. The painting was not just a passing jibe, for the Oxfordshire election was contested (the first to be so in the county for probably thirty years) by the personalities and protago 9 F. R. Nixon, The History of Merchant-Taylors' School, with five lithographic views (London 1823). 103</page><page sequence="6">Stephen Massil nists in the machinations that led to the repeal of the Bill as the first busi? ness of Parliament following the King's Speech in November 1753. Of the two Tory candidates, Dashwood was the chief spokesman for the parlia? mentary opposition to the Bill. For the Whigs, Lord Parker, son of Lord Macclesfield, who had drafted the Calendar Reform legislation of 1751, was an associate of Richard Nugent, a proponent of the Bill. Hogarth's handling of the 'Jew Bill' is detailed in Ronald Paulson's analysis of the Election Series and Hogarth's personal view of 'good' and 'bad' Jews in his Hogarth.10 Soane had two sons, of whom George, the younger, was a man of the theatre and a writer. His The Hebrew: A drama, in five acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane of 1820, was early off the mark as a theatrical travesty of Scott's Ivanhoe of 1819. Another melodrama of the same date was Henry Milner's The Jew of L?beck; or the heart of a father: a serious drama in two acts. Written by H. Milner. . . First performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, on Wednesday, May 12, 1819. The music composed by Mr. T. Cooke. Milner was noted less for serious drama than for his own melodramatic adaptations of Scott and Byron. The dedication is to Stephen Kemble. Henry Kemble is listed among the cast, as is Harriet Smithson. Soane paid 2s for this.11 Of grammatical works Soane had a copy of London's first subscription volume, John Minsheu: Hegemon eis tas glossas. Id est, Ductor in linguas, the guide into tongues, published in London 'apud Ioannem Browne bibliopo lam. And are to be sold at lohn Brownes shop, a booke-seller, 1617.' This was acquired for Soane by his elder son John for ?5 in January 1812,12 but there is no evidence to indicate the immediately previous or subscribing owner of this copy. Soane had too many copies of the Bible to list here, but editions of Ezekiel and Daniel and Newtonian chronologies of the Bible reflect his architectural and professional interests. Soane has two copies (one from Robert Adam's sale) of Jer?nimo de Prado's Hieronymi Pradi et Joannis Baptistae Villalpandi e Societate Jesu in Ezechielem explanationes et apparatus urbis, ac templi Hierosolymitani. Commentariis et imaginibus illustratus opus tribus tomis distinctum quid vero singulis contineatur, quarta pagina indicabit {Romce: ex typographia Aloysii Zannetti, 1595-1605). Volumes I and II contain the commentaries on Ezekiel by Pradus and Villalpandus respec? tively, and volume III contains Villalpandus's detailed history of the city of Jerusalem (part 1) and an exhaustive mathematical investigation of the 10 R. Paulson, Hogarth, vol. 3: Art and Politics, 1750-1/64 (New Brunswick, N.J. 1993) 164-9. 11 Soane Library PC93 (5). 12 Soane Journal 5, 221. 104</page><page sequence="7">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Hebrew units of measurement (part 2). The Book of Daniel likewise figures in Richard Beere's A dissertation on the ijth and 14th verses of the 8th chapter of Daniel; containing strong and cogent arguments, to prove that the final restoration ofthe Jews, to the Holy Land, is to take place in... iygi.. .As also, a second epistle to the chief priests and elders of the Jews . . . together with an elucidation of a former epistle to them; in answer to the objections of Mr David Levi. . . By the Rev. Richard Beere, printed in 1790 in London for the author and sold by Parsons, Stewart, Ash. This contains criticism of David Levi's Letters to Dr Priestley. There are two further volumes relating to debates recently explored by David Ruderman. The first is Jacob Barnet's Remarks upon Dr. Priestley's Letters to the Jews, upon his Discourse on the resurrection of Jesus, and upon his Letters to the members of the new Jerusalem; introductory to an address to the Jews, written by Jacob Barnet, a converted Jew, printed in London and 'sold by R. Hindmarsh, printer to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Sold also by Mess. Rivington; Wood; Egerton; Edwards; and Robson, 1792' (which includes a prospectus for 'An address to the Jews, by Jacob Barnet'). The second is Beere's An epistle to the chief priests and elders of the Jews. Containing an answer to Mr. David Levi's challenge, to Christians . . . respect? ing the accomplishment of the prophecy, predictive of the time of the first coming and crucifixion of the Messiah. . . . Together with an accurate chronology of the world, printed in London by D. Brewman and sold by J. Parsons, Nunn and G. Sael in 1789. There are also two copies of Newton's The chronology of ancient kingdoms amended; to which is prefixed a short chronicle from the first memory of things in Europe, to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. By Sir Isaac Newton, both printed in 1728 in London for J. Tonson, J. Osborn and T. Longman and sold by Alexander Symmer and William Monro, booksellers in Edinburgh. Both contain plans of Solomon's Temple. Matters of anthropological and ethnographic interest surface in Bernard Picart's Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde repre sentees par des figures dessinees de la main de Bernard Picard, published in Amsterdam by J. F. Bernard in 1723-43, and the fourth edition, 'with an alphabetical index of the principal matters', of Martin Benjamin's Bibliotheca technologica: or a philological library of literary arts and sciences. Viz. I. Theology . . . XXV. Miscellanies, printed in 1776 in London for the author and sold by W. Owen, in which Judaism is one among many topics of Enlightenment interest. An early work that studies the rites and ceremonies, customs and prac? tices of the Jews within the wider study of antiquities is Thomas Goodwin (1586/7-1642), Romance historic? anthologia recognita &amp; aucta. An English exposition of the Roman antiquities, Moses and Aaron: civil and ecclesiastical 105</page><page sequence="8">Stephen Massil rites, used by the ancient Hebrews; observed, and at large opened, for the clearing of many obscure texts throughout the whole Scripture. Seven books of the Attick antiquities, containing the description of the city's glory, government, division of the people, &amp;c. In one entire volume, printed in 1686 in London and sold by Awnsham Churchill. Dedications are signed 'Tho. Godwyn' and 'F. Rous'. Moses and Aaron was first published in 1625; the first edition of Archaeologiae Atticae ('in libri tres') was first published in 1637; an augmented edition in 'libri septem' by Zachary Bogan was first published in 1654; Romance historice anthologia recognita et aucta had been first published in 1614. There is a general title-page for the three works, each of which has its own title-page, signatures and pagination. The general one reads 'Moses and Aaron: civil and ecclesiastical rites, used by the ancient Hebrews; observed, and at large opened, for the clearing of many obscure texts throughout the whole Scripture. . . . The twelfth edition. By Thomas Godwyn . . .', with the imprint London, printed for R. Scot, T. Basset, J. Wright, R. Chiswel, B. Griffin, G. Conyers, and M. Wotton. 1685. The second reads Archceologce Atticce libri septem. Seven books of the Attick antiq? uities ... By Francis Rous,... With an addition... By Zachary Bogan... The ninth edition . . ., with the imprint London, printed by Miles Flesher, for Richard Davies, and to be sold by Henry Clements, bookseller in Oxford, 1685. And the third Romance historice anthologia recognita &amp; aucta. An English exposition of the Roman antiquities: wherein many Roman and English offices are parallel'd, and divers obscure phrases explain d. For the use of Abingdon School. Revised and corrected, the 14th edition, with the imprint London: Printed by J. Darby, for Richard Chiswell, 1685. The text is in English with small sections in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. This was bought from Thomas Boone for is 6d on 20 December 1809 (Soane Museum Spiers Box) and is inscribed in ink on the general title-page 'J. Soane'. Besides the grammars mentioned at the beginning of this paper, there is a copy of Edward Man waring, Stichology: or, A recovery of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew numbers: Exemplified in the reduction of all Horace's metres, and the Greek and Hebrew poetry. By the Reverend Edward Manwaring, printed in London for the author in 1737. Diderot's Encyclopedic, printed in thirty-five volumes over 1751-80, mentioned above, also reflects in various ways on the history of the Jews and the standing of contemporary Jewry.13 But in all these instances it is difficult to judge how closely Soane would have read them and, in respect of any Jewish strands, how far he followed any particular line. What the Encyclopedic cannot explain is the impetus for one of Soane's bibliographical curiosities: an example of French disputes over the status and 13 See P. Blom, Encyclopedic: The Triumph of Reason in an Unreasonable Age (London 2004). io6</page><page sequence="9">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment tolerance of the Jewish faith in the current of the eclaircissement, or French Enlightenment. Published in 1752 in London and referring to the publication in Paris of Reflexions decisives sur le juda'isme, 1751,14 this document is an unidentified No. j. Suite des reflexions demonstratives de la verite dans Vapologie ou defence du peuple juifi selon son etat present.15 This is the wording on the first page - there is no actual title-page - but it is not possible to know of what it is 'No. 3'. It is bound with a collection of tracts and pamphlets, and the volume as a whole may have been acquired for one of these other works. Soane's library is a remarkable repository of French publishing in London. There are two editions of William Whiston's Josephus,16 the first acquired in June 1796, as Soane wrote in his 'Notebook': 'Walked to Bells in Oxford Street &amp; ordered him to send Josephus on Thursday. Paid 10s. 6d on 7 June 1796 ('Bells' was Joseph Bell of 148 Oxford Street). Both editions include a plan of the Temple of Jerusalem. One of the chief manuscript treasures of the museum is a fifteenth century illuminated manuscript of'Jewish Antiquities', which was exhib? ited in 'Illuminating the Renaissance' at the Royal Academy, London, in 2003 as 'Master of the Soane Josephus and Assistants: "Antiquites judaiques et la guerre des juifs", translation of "Antiquitates Judaicae et bellum Judaicum", books 15-27, translated ca. 1478-80'.17 Of contemporary writing on Jewish history, Soane's library has the second edition of Henry Hart Milman's The History of the Jews in three volumes, published in London by John Murray in 1830, forming numbers V, VI, and IX in Murray's Home Library; in other words, part of a subscription to the Home Library series. This also brought him Francis Palgrave's History of England, volume I: The Anglo-Saxon Period, published in 1831, number XXI in the series. Soane and Francis Palgrave, still going by the name of Francis Cohen, 14 Published 'par M.F.G.K.D.CE.A.' (Paris: Quillard pere, 1751). 15 No. 3. Suite des reflexions demonstratives de la verite dans Vapologie ou defence dupeuple juifi selon son etat present. Contre un livre annoncee dans le Mercure de Janvier de lapresente annee ... et selon Vextrait qui en est donne dans ce Mercure meme. Ce livre est demontre faux, comme fonde sur le faux principe, sur Voublie &amp; contresens universel de la verite, et du mot de verite (Londres: chez P. Vaillant &amp; T. Changuion, dans le Strand, 1752) 52 pp. 16 Josephus, The genuine works of Flavias Josephus, the Jewish historian. Translated from the original Greek, according to Havercamp's accurate edition (London: printed by W. Bowyer for the author, and are to be sold by John Whiston, bookseller, 1737). Josephus, The works of Flavias Josephus, the learned and authentic Jewish historian and celebrated warrior. In four volumes (Edinburgh: printed for John &amp; James Robertson and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme &amp; Brown, London, 1814). 17 See E. G. Millar, 'Les manuscrits ? peintures des bibliotheques de Londres', Bulletin de la Societe Frangaise de Reproductions des Manuscrits a Peintures, annees igi4-iQ20 (1920) 9-14. T. Kren and S. McKendrick (eds) Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (London 2003) 292-4. 107</page><page sequence="10">Stephen Massil were both elected FRS on 15 November 1821, and Soane may have met him subsequently on Royal Society business, as also Benjamin Gompertz (FRS, 1819), Isaac Lyon Goldsmid (FRS, 1828) and Nathaniel Wallich (FRS, 1829). Wallich (1786-1854), a botanist, Danish by birth and active most of his career in the service of the East India Company, was in London in 1829-32 seeing his Plantae Asiaticae Rariores of 1830-2 through the press. He was a surgeon and had become MD of Marischal College in 1819, but principally served as Superintendent of the East India Company's Botanical Garden in Calcutta and of the Asiatic Society's Oriental Museum there. Among Wallich's sponsors at the Royal Society, Soane knew Thomas Hardwicke and Everard Hume, at least.18 Soane could also have met Moses Montefiore (FRS, 1836) and other Jews, newly created members of the Athenaeum after 1825, and he certainly knew of Nathan Rothschild. Palgrave, future Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, might have had an archivist's interest in Soane's works for the New State Paper Office, planned and built during 1829-31. The library holds, besides the three annual reports of the Jews' Hospital mentioned earlier, reports of other hospitals and their prospectuses, which Soane may have come by in a professional capacity or as a potential subscriber, and not as one directly involved in their affairs. The 'Temple of Solomon' figures variously in Newton and others, as shown above, and that of Ezekiel specifically in Solomon Bennett's (1762-1839) The Temple of Ezekiel of 1824, printed by A. J. Valpy. The latter, like Bennett, subscribed to Bolaffey's Grammar}9 Moses Mocatta (whose name is in fact absent from Bennett's published list of subscribers) gave this copy to Soane with a letter (framed in mourning black) dated 19 July 1824: 'My Dear Sir Having subscribed to two copies of a work entitled the 'Temple of Ezekiel' may I request your acceptance of one of them. On perusal I find its pages filled with architectural delineations &amp; descriptions which from the antiquity &amp; interesting nature of the subject possibly may aid your professional or literary researches.' In 1824 this gift would have come too late to affect the substance of Soane's presentation of his theme; he had ceased to deliver lectures in person after the 1819-20 cycle and Mocatta can have heard about them presumably only from his son's reading of them in the office. 18 K. E. Collins, Go and Learn: The International Story of Jews and Medicine in Scotland (Aberdeen 1988) 37. See also D. Rose, 'Dr Nathaniel Wallich: A Brief Life', The Garden CVI (May 1981) 196-200. 19 S. Bennett, The Temple ofEzekiel: viz an elucidation of the 40th, 41st, 42nd, &amp;c chapters. . . consistently with the Hebrew original; and a minute description of the edifice, on scientific principles. Illustrated by a ground-plan and bird's-eye view. . . By Solomon Bennett, R.A. of Berlin (London, 'Published by the author; R. Hunter and M. Solomon', 1824). io8</page><page sequence="11">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Soane's practical interests in the design of the Temple of Jerusalem may be surmised from his work on the design of an 'Ark of the Masonic Covenant' which, as Superintendent of Works at Freemasons' Hall, he had masterminded for the great ceremony of the reunification of the English Grand Lodges in December 1813.20 Soane's 'Ark' was devoid of any Christian symbolism under the inspiration of the Duke of Sussex who, as Grand Master, was concerned to eliminate residual 'Christian' symbolism from Masonic practices and that the reunion of the Lodges should be confirmed and celebrated in new building works. The 'Ark', to be the repository of the new Covenant between the two Lodges in 1813, was retained as the focus of Freemasons' Hall until the fire of 1883 and shares several features of his sepulchral works and the design for his own tomb, finally revived in the K6 version of the telephone kiosk designed by Gilbert Scott in 1933. This Ark can be related to the obelisk Dance had erected in America Square, and Soane may have carried his early professional memories of Dance's drawing-board to this end (see plate 3 below). Soane's library has two copies of John Wood's The origin of building: or, the plagiarism of the heathens detected, printed in 1741 in Bath by S. and F. Farley and sold by J. Leake; M. Lewis in Bristol; W. Innys, C. Hitch, R. Dodsley, J. Pine and J. Brindley in London. It also has an original manu? script copy of 1737-8. One of the copies was from Sir William Chambers's library and contains extensive annotations by Chambers. Soane was faithful to his masters and derived his focus and ideas from them, and Wood (whose errors Chambers was at pains to expose) and his antiquarian interests including sacred architecture, were of interest to Soane for his lectures at the Academy. David Watkin, in his comprehensive edition of these lectures, shows a fairly extensive set of references to the Mosaic Temple and Soane's particular reliance on Prado and Villalpandus for his most thorough animadversions on the subject.21 Solomon Alexander Hart (1806-81) of Plymouth was the first Jewish student of art at the Royal Academy in 1823 (elected ARA in 1835, RA in 1840). Having produced a 'Recollection of Sir Thomas Lawrence' (who was President in 1828), he submitted drawings of the Plymouth Synagogue in 1830 and 1831. Hart became Professor of Art in 1854 and Librarian in 1864. Soane never had an opportunity to design a synagogue himself, but through his apprenticeship with George Dance in 1768-70 might have studied the work on which Dance had been engaged just before, in 1765-6, which was an 20 See D. Burford, 'The Ark of the Masonic Covenant', Ars Quatuor Coronatorum CV (1992, 1993)203-15. 21 D. Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge 1996). 109</page><page sequence="12">Stephen Massil extension to 'Moses Hart's School' of 1722.22 The Synagogue ('Hart's School') was rededicated in August 1766, when one of the wardens was Naphthali Hart Myers. It was superseded by the young James Spiller's Great Synagogue of 1788-90. Spiller, a protege of Soane, exhibited his drawings at the Academy, but before Soane became Professor of Architecture. Drawings of synagogues in Soane's collection include an intaglio print of the 'Entrance to a Jews Synagogue', formerly the Bricklayers' Hall, Leadenhall Street, published in 1811 (Soane Drawings 58.1.18), and George Dance's 'Duke Street, Synagogue' (Soane Drawings 18.4). The presence of these books, although few and narrow in their range, in a professional library founded by acquisitions during the Grand Tour, helps give the lie to the British Museum's exclusion of Jewish content from its 'Enlightenment Gallery'. As regards the Soane Museum itself, some of the fireplaces of both 12 and 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields are now fitted with Chinese tiles of the same period and design as those that furnish the synagogue of Cochin (and other places en route) and have been discussed in that context.23 Their presence owes nothing to Soane, however, since it was James Wilde, an orientalist by training and the curator of the day, who acquired the stock and installed some of them in 1891. Enlightenment interest in Egyptology, leading to the frenzied collecting of antiquities of the Pharaohs, reached one of its peaks in the most flamboy? ant of Soane's acquisitions and one of the principal treasures in his museum, the Sarcophagus of Sethi I (reigned 1294-1279 BCE). It was bought on reversion from the British Museum for ?2000 and installed in the sepulchral chamber beneath the dome in May 1824, when the King's Library at the British Museum was still under construction. Sethi I was the father of Ramses II and was thus the Pharaoh who received Moses from the bulrushes at the beginning of Exodus. However, the sarcophagus and its place in the Museum are not usually considered in the light of that shaft of association with Jewish history. Richard Grey and the Enlightenment It is against this background that I shall look now at the two Hebrew grammar books in Soane's library that are the central subject of this paper. Richard Grey (1694-1771) was born in Newcastle and attended Lincoln College, Oxford. He became secretary to Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and 22 D. Stroud, George Dance (London 1971) 77-8. 23 R. Kerr, 'Hidden Treasure at Sir John Soane's Museum', Apollo (November 2002) 23-9. no</page><page sequence="13">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment advanced in the Church, becoming Rector of Hinton in Northamptonshire. Grey devoted himself to writing religious works, although his best-known work was Memoria Technica, or a new method of artificial memory of 1730, which met with widespread favour and continued as a source until the 1860s. His Hebrew grammar was published in 1738 (the year of the publication of D'Boissier Tovey's Anglia Judaic a), and was only the second new grammar in England since Roger Clavering's 'Dikduk leshon ha-kodesh be-kotser : A compendium of Hebrew grammar' Oxford, 1705. The first Hebrew grammar to be printed in New England had appeared in 1735 and reprints of London works followed. Grey's book became influential and was circulated later as the basis of other grammars, drawn on notably in Stephen Sewall's An Hebrew grammar, collected chiefly from those of Mr. Israel Lyons, teacher of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge; and the Rev. Richard Grey, D.D. Rector of Hinton in Northamptonshire. To which is subjoined a praxis, taken from the sacred classics, and containing a specimen of the whole Hebrew language; with a sketch of the Hebrew poetry, as retrieved by Bishop Hare (published in Boston, 'New-England' and printed by R. and S. Draper, 'for the honorable and reverend president and fellows of Harvard-College', in 1763. It remained long in print and a third edition was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Hilliard and Metcalf, for the University, in 1812. Sewell (spelled 'SewalP on the title-page, 1734-1804) was a professor of Hebrew and oriental languages at Harvard. Grey's grammar is set on the solid ground of Christian Hebraism, hark? ing back to Leusden, Buxtorf and Pagninus and their tradition. But he is conscious of 'the late general neglect of studying the Hebrew learning, towards the revival whereof there appears at present a good disposition'.24 He follows the scholarship of Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester, who had published a new metrical translation of the Psalms in 1736 for a Latin read? ership, which had a lasting influence.25 Grey followed this enthusiasm with an edition of Job in the same register, which provoked opposition from a more traditionally minded divine, William Warburton, the future Bishop of Gloucester. This more contemporary understanding of the quality of bibli? cal Hebrew, Grey explains, 'is not written, like most of that in modern languages in rhyme, nor does it consist like that of Greek and Latin poets in a just number of feet depending upon the quantity of syllables, but like that which we call in English blank verse'.26 The work with which Grey's grammar is conjoined is that of Israel Lyons (1700-70) of Cambridge, whose grammar originated independently 24 Grey (see n. i) preface. 25 F. Hare, Psalmorum liber in versiculos metrice divisus... ('Londini: typis Gul. Bowyer, impensis S. Buckley &amp; T. Longman', 1736). 26 R. Grey (see n. 1) 5. III</page><page sequence="14">Stephen Massil as The Scholar s instructor, or Hebrew Grammar, published in 173s.27 It was a great stimulus to the renewal of interest in the study of Hebrew, which Grey seems to have recognized. Lyons, and more particularly his son Israel Lyons, have been studied in a recent paper by Lynn Glyn,28 while Naomi Cream has published research29 on the Reverend Solomon Lyon and his grammar, A theological Hebrew grammar and lexicon, which was first published in 1815.30 However, the second of the two Hebrew grammars discussed here is not Lyon's Grammar or Hyman Hurwitz's Elements of the Hebrew language of 1807, which went through several editions and became A grammar of the Hebrew language in 1835. Others at this date were stimu? lated, just as in the earlier generation of Lyons and Grey, by Hurwitz, Lyon and Bolaffey and the momentum of the Christian enterprises of the British &amp; Foreign Bible Society and the publishing programme of Samuel Bagster. Instead, my second grammar is Bolaffey's Easy grammar of the primaeval language of 1820. A knowledge of Hebrew was useful mainly for studying the Hebrew Bible and rabbinical writings (and the production of Hebrew grammars), and was cultivated by clergymen graduates of the universities where Hebrew was an established part of the curriculum (at some colleges it was a precondition of entry). Elie Bouhereau, a Hebraist himself and Archbishop Marsh's librarian in Dublin, in 1707 sought not a gentleman of Trinity College Dublin to instruct his son Jean in Hebrew, however, but a local Jew (even in Dublin in 1707). It seems that an ability to teach Hebrew was not to be expected from all its students: Glyn remarks that 'Professors of Hebrew at Cambridge did not necessarily dirty their hands with teaching their subject, and it was left to the likes of Lyons, or suitably qualified clergymen, to fill the gaps'.31 Perhaps Bouhereau, as a Huguenot, was inclined to support a fellow immigrant in need of employment.32 The name of 27 I. Lyons, [Moreh talmidim] The scholar's instructor: an Hebrew grammar . . . (Cambridge, printed at the University Press, 1735). - [4], 52 pp. 28 L. B. Glyn, 'Israel Lyons: A Short but Starry Career - the Life of an Eighteenth-Century Jewish Botanist and Astronomer', Notes &amp; Records of the Royal Society London LVI no. 3 (2002) 275-305. The paper was presented as a lecture to this Society in 2003. 29 N. Cream, 'Revd. Solomon Lyon of Cambridge, 1755-1820', Trans }HSE XXXVI (2001) 31-69. 30 S. Lyon, A theological Hebrew grammar and lexicon entitled A key to the Holy Tongue [Mafteach leshon ha-Kodesh]. In two parts (Liverpool: 'Printed by G. F. Harris's Widow and Brothers', 1815). See also Cream (see n. 29) 60 for Lyon's title-page. 31 Glyn (see n. 28) 277. 32 See R. Whelan, 'Marsh's Library and the French Calvinist Tradition: The Manuscript Diary of Elie Bouhereau (1643-1719)', in M. McCarthy and A. Summers (eds) The Making of Marsh's Library: Learning, Politics and Religion in Ireland, 1630-1730 (Dublin 2004) 209-34. See also W. Horbury, 'Christian Hebraism in the Mirror of Marsh's Collection', in ibid. 256-79. 112</page><page sequence="15">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Bouhereau's Hebrew tutor is unknown and the arrangement appears to have lasted for only a few months before Jean was secured a post in Marsh's Library. In his preface to the comprehensive catalogue of Hebrew manu? scripts at Cambridge University,33 Stefan Reif deals with the university study of the language and describes how Hebrew verse appeared regularly and exercises in writing Hebrew poetry were a feature of academic life. An examination of these exercises indicates a substantial body of works, and names include an extended list of authors, including the Regius professori? ate but also men not otherwise thought of as Hebraists. The article mentions that 'another stimulus to Hebrew poetic activity at Cambridge was the presence of a very popular and skilful Hebrew teacher, Israel Lyons' and promises further discussion 'below', which is disappointingly not delivered.34 But although primarily concerned with Cambridge exam? ples of what are, in effect, congratulatory, occasional and mortuary verse (on royal weddings, thanksgiving for the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 and the victories of 1759 in particular - Minden, Ticonderoga and Quebec - in the Seven-Years' War, it also makes several comparisons with similar efforts and publications at Oxford35 and the extent of such verses in other languages (Arabic, Turkish, Malay and Persian, Syriac, Syro-Palmyran and so forth). Israel Lyons and Solomon Lyon, among others, satisfied the need to provide extra-curricular Hebrew instruction at the Universities, at Eton, St Paul's, later at the Merchant Taylors' and perhaps elsewhere. As long ago as 1905, Simeon Singer and later Israel Abrahams wrote papers on Jewish writers of occasional verse, typically for royal and national occasions in the long period before the Emancipation, but their names do not figure in the compilation by Money and Olszowy.36 The more militant Hebraism was energized by the Enlightenment inves? tigation of biblical texts in Anglican England as exemplified by Bishop Hare and Grey and by the endeavours of Benjamin Kennicott. These were confronted by a new Jewish intelligence, identified by David Ruderman's Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key (which remains unreviewed in these Transactions),31 whose subjects opened up intellectually in the period immediately following his survey. Ruderman draws up a convincing 33 S. C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library: A Description and Introduction, assisted by S. Reif and incorporating earlier work by S. M. Schiller-Szinessy, H. M. J. Loewe and J. Leveen, and including palaeographical advice from E. Engel (Cambridge 1997) 1-35. 34 Money and Olszowy (see n. 7) 553. 35 Ibid. 551-2. 36 S. Singer, 'Jews and Coronations', Trans JHSE V (1902-5) 79-114; I. Abrahams, 'Hebrew Loyalty under the First Four Georges', Trans JHSE VIII-IX (1915-17) 103-30. Money and Olszowy (see n. 7). 37 D. B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton 2000). "3</page><page sequence="16">Stephen Massil account of the independence of intellectual endeavour of a small coterie of Jews active in London in the second part of the eighteenth century, and into a period dominated by the Napoleonic Wars and the Regency. They pursued their scholarship, and their interaction with gentile polemicists in an English setting, independently of the Haskalah ('Jewish Enlighten? ment') and Continental influences. Ruderman opens with a study of Raphael Baruh (died in 1800) and his contention with Kennicott, and his main protagonists are David Levi (1742-1801), Abraham ben Naphtali Tang (died 1778), Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber Levison (1741-97), Jacob (Henrique) de Castro Sarmiento (1691-1762), Eliakim ben Abraham (known as Jacob Hart; 1756-1814) and Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717-91). Also included are figures like Dr Ralph Sch?mberg (1714-92), Abraham van Oven (who died in 1778, the year he published his Hebrew translation of Dodsley's Oeconomy of Human Life38), Isaac DTsraeli (1766-1848) and David Nieto (1654-1728), all of whom are viewed in a secondary light. All these men had Continental origins but, as Ruderman establishes, their thought and fields of disquisition were shaped by the Enlightenment in English intellectual circles of the era, which was rooted in Newtonian science. They encountered it in coffee-houses and bookshops such as Lackington's in Finsbury Square, London, or later at Ackermann's in the Strand. It was at James Lackington's home in Chiswell Street that Henry Lemoine (1756-1812) was in the habit of taking supper with David Levi and other literary men.39 The Masonic lodges provided another venue, and their endeavours were upheld through correspondence. Ruderman gives strength to the view that there was an Anglo-Jewish intel? lectual humus from which a distinctive philosophy and method grew prior to the arrival of maskilim (Enlightenment leaders) and the fuller weight of the Continental (specifically, German) Haskalah. He emphasizes the monolingualism of Anglo-Jewry and the primacy of Christian Hebraism in England, so that Anglo-Jewish education, tuition and the study of prayer were conducted primarily in English, not Hebrew. Reference to the Bible was mediated at first through the chapter and verse of the King James Version. The presence of Jews in the libraries of Britain has been assumed to be limited to only two representative figures from the eighteenth to early in the nineteenth century - Mendes Da Costa at the Royal Society in 1763 and Francis Palgrave at the Public Record Office in 1838 - prior to the recruit? ment of the German giants at the British Museum and the universities (although later in this paper I mention a third). I attribute the fact that there 38 R. Dodsley, The Oeconomy of Human Life . . . A new edition. With a translation into Hebrew, by Abraham van Oven (London 1778). 39 See The Gentleman s Magazine LXXXII, pt I (1812) 673. ii4</page><page sequence="17">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment were no other Jewish librarians in that era to the limited nature of Jewish education at the time and to university restrictions. Isaac D'Israeli, Ricardo and others were sent to Amsterdam, for instance, to improve their school? ing. But a study of the grammar books and of the careers of those acting as Hebrew tutors at the universities and at Eton shows that the process goes further back than Ruderman posits (he only footnotes Israel Lyons40). There may be no librarians to boast of, but there are editions of grammar books which had an impact on the general culture and these provide evidence of the continuing presence of Jews in the mainstream of English intellectual endeavour. It is therefore surprising that the new Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum, informed by the English Enlightenment in the middle of the eighteenth century, makes no reference to Jews or to the question that so vexed Kennicott and the polemicists, namely the transmission of the Hebrew scriptures, and particularly the keri and the ktib (words in the Masoretic text of the Bible that are to be read other than the way they are written). Nor does it allude to Grey's grammar 'without points' (indication of vowels) which comes through as a major focus in the discussion of language in the polemics of Ruderman's coterie and their opponents. David Katz draws attention to one of the questions taxing both the Royal Society and Anglican scholars of the time - the Jews of China41 - whose knowledge of Hebrew was assumed to be clear of rabbinic and Masoretic 'contamina? tion', an issue not resolved until the investigations of Consul James Finn of Jerusalem in the nineteenth century.42 The year 1753, which saw the foun? dation of the British Museum, was also the year of the 'Jew Bill' and that in which Kennicott published his proposal,43 the year that Sir Hans Sloane died and that Sir John Soane was born. It can now be seen that a gentle? man's library such as Soane's, where the wider reaches of Enlightenment publishing and thinking extended effortlessly, demonstrates a contrary view. The Enlightenment Gallery is underpinned by a collection of essays which also make no reference to Jews and Jewry.44 Among them there is one devoted to religion, in which the place of Christianity in the world view of the English Enlightenment is discussed, but this further submerges the 40 Ruderman (see n. 37) 76. 41 D. Katz, 'The Chinese Jews and the Problem of Biblical Authority in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century England', English Historical Review CV (1990) 899-907. 42 J. Finn, The Jews in China: Their Synagogue, their Scriptures, their History, &amp;c. (London 1843). 43 B. Kennicott, The state of the printed Hebrew text of the Old Testament considered. A dissertation in two parts (Oxford 1753). 44 K. Sloan (ed.) with A. Burnett, Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century (London 2003). "5</page><page sequence="18">Stephen Massil 'Jewish' component of the Judeo-Christian world order.45 It is only in the epilogue to the chapter on languages, the decipherment of scripts (in partic? ular of hieroglyphics and cuneiform) and 'the curse of Babel', that there is any reference to Hebrew.46 It comes in the form of an oblique notice on the involvement of Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks of Dublin in the decipherment of the trilingual inscriptions of Darius I at Bisitun, marking for the author, Clive Cheeseman, the supersession of the Enlightenment age of enquiry by the more scientific era that followed. 'With Rawlinson and Hincks we finally leave the Enlightenment behind and enter a new age. Like Champollion they were heirs of eighteenth-century learning (Hincks literally, as son of the Professor of Hebrew in Belfast [at the Academical Institution, built to designs by Soane]) but by specialization and sophistica? tion they helped move matters forward.'47 Now, in a prominent gallery displaying the volume of eighteenth-century thinking and exploration, backed up by substantive essays on what moved that thinking, one wonders what to make of the notion of a 'Professor of Hebrew', when the language has received no prior mention at all. Indeed, by the date when the King's Library was installed in the space at the British Museum now called the Enlightenment Gallery, there was a Professor of Hebrew in London. This was a Jew, Hyman Hurwitz, of Highgate and University College, whose appointment suggests that what the Enlightenment presaged had indeed come to pass. Haim Vita Bolaffey Bolaffey (1778/9-1835), the main focus of this paper, is difficult to trace beyond the inclusion of his name in Lucien Wolfs 'Anglo-Jewish Worthies', tabled in the second issue of the Jewish Year Book in 1897, which gives his birth date only.48 A date of death is provided by Cecil Roth, but this must be corrected from the Bevis Marks Records (see below). His arrival in England is recorded at the top of the Bevis Marks 'Aliens List' of 1803, under the name of Hananiah Abolafiah, aged twenty-five, who came from Florence 'to follow his profession'. He first landed in Gravesend in 1798, and his current address is given as 6 Crispin Street, Spitalfields.49 By 45 J. Williams, 'Sacred history? The difficult subject of Religion', ibid. ch. 20, 212-21. 46 C. Cheeseman, '"The Curse of Babel": The Enlightenment and the Study of Writing', ibid, ch. 19,202-11. 47 Ibid. 211. 48 Jewish Year Book, / #97 (London 1897) 135. 49 See V. D. Lipman, 'Sephardi and Jewish Immigrants in England in the Eighteenth Century', Migration and Settlement, igjo (1971) 37-62, App. A, 47. n6</page><page sequence="19">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment origin, and in contrast with Ruderman's group, Bolaffey (along with Haham Meldola; see below) represents a Continental influence drawn from Italy and the Sephardi spectrum. Far less is known about him than about Solomon Lyon of Cambridge, described by Naomi Cream, who mentions, for instance, Lyon's research in the library of the Royal Institution.50 This is, I believe, the first reference to a visit to a library by a Jewish scholar in England, at least since Jewish converts entered the Bodleian in Oxford early in the seventeenth century. One question, submerged throughout Ruderman's book under the presumption that his scholars used libraries, is which ones did they visit? The Bodleian is an obvious choice, perhaps, besides the British Museum, after 1759. Bolaffey is indeed linked with Lyon in Lewis's The Jews of Oxford as 'two more productive teachers, in terms of books', but he does not explore Bolaffey further.51 Hyamson consolidates his career, referring to him as a teacher in the congregational school. Amongst his writings are included an anthem to be sung by the boys belonging ... to the charitable institution denominated Shaare Tikvah, and 'The Order of Service to be performed on the day of the Anniversary of the Synagogue of Jews' Hospital', an Ashkenazi charity. Bolaffey also translated into English Haham Raphael Meldola's 'Form of devotional service . . . for the renewal of the dedication of the Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation in Bevis Marks, London ... on Friday evening, 27 Elul A.M. 5585'.52 Among his claims was that of teaching Hebrew at Eton College. A curious controversy in which he got himself involved was with Rachel Fanny Antonina Lee, who called herself the Baroness Despenser. She was born about the year 1774, a natural daughter of the Lord Despenser. Mrs Lee was a woman of striking beauty and outstanding intellectual gifts. However she also suffered from mental derangement, as is shown by the pamphlet on her relations with Bolaffey which she published in 1824. Bolaffey, who described himself as 'Professor of Languages, Author of the Hebrew Grammar etc.', had trans? lated into English a somewhat incoherent 'A Hebrew Epistle or a Circular Epistle to the Hebrews' which she had written in Hebrew.53 Mrs Lee in her later charges against him accused him of tricking her out of a twenty-pound 50 Cream (see n. 29) 54. 51 D. M. Lewis, The Jews of Oxford (Oxford 1992) 8. 52 Form of devotional service, thanksgiving and singing for the renewal of the dedication of the Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation in Bevis Marks, London, to be performed on Friday evening, 27 Elul A.M. 5585. Composed by the Rev. Dr R. Meldola, Chief Rabbi; and translated by H. V. Bolaffey, author of the Hebrew Grammar, &amp;c. (London 1825); see App. 2 below for the inscription in Hebrew in the British Library's copy. 53 R. F. A. Lee, The Translation of the Hebrew epistle of Antonina Despenser, &amp;c: entitled Lgeret ha Kolel 'elha-Lvrim or, a circular epistle to the Hebrews, by H. V. Bolaffey (London 1821). ii7</page><page sequence="20">Stephen Massil note and also of claiming against her through his solicitors two years' salary which were not due to him.54 The controversy with Mrs Lee brings in another figure, Solomon Bennett, whose book on Ezekiel was referred to earlier. He appears to have 'engraved seals for this lady'.55 In parallel with Hyamson's account, Cecil Roth discusses Bolaffey along with Michael Bolaffi, whom he identifies as some sort of kinsman, and as 'brother-in-law to Haham Meldola' who came to London in 1806.56 Roth suggests that they may have come over together as 'his first traces are about the same year'. However, he must surely be mistaken stating that it is Raphael Bolafia, servant to Rev. Meldola, who came as his attendant (arriv? ing at Harwich in 1806 and resident in Bury Street).57 Roth goes on: [Bolaffey] seems to have set up as tutor in Hebrew at Eton and at Oxford. In 1820 he published two grammatical works, The Aleph-Beth, or the first step to the Hebrew language, London, 36pp.,58 and the Easy Grammar. Later he appears as tame Hebraist to the eccentric Rachel Antonina Lee, sot disante Baroness Despenser, and translated her absurd Circular Epistle to the Hebrews into Hebrew, his version appearing with the original (London, 1822). But he very soon quarrelled with his patroness, an unedifying exchange of recrimi? nations taking place, in the course of which he was accused of apostacy (he was once, she said, a Roman Catholic Priest), theft, and other misdemeanours (the Baroness' Declaration about Bolaffey's conduct [published in London in 1824] is amusing if nothing more). The accusations were certainly exagger? ated, as about this time Bolaffey had produced an anthem to be recited by the boys belonging to the congregational school [London 1820?] . . . and in 1825 translated into English the form of service composed by . . . Meldola, for the anniversary of the dedication of Bevis Marks Synagogue. Signor H. V. Bolaffey, 'teacher of languages at Oxford', died on 13th March, 1836 [the date is that of the notice in the Gentleman s Magazine of March 1836;59 for the actual date see below]. Roth's dismissive tone as regards Mrs Lee can be justified by the fact that in 1807, early in her career, she published her account of a well-known 54 A. M. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England: A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community, 1492-1951 (London 1951; repr. 1991) 214-15. 55 A. Barnett, 'Solomon Bennett, 1761-1838: Artist, Hebraist and Controversialist', Trans JHSE XVII (1953) 92. 56 C. Roth, 'Two Livornese Jews in England: Michael Bolaffl, Musician, and Hayim Vita Bolaffey, Linguist', Trans JHSE XVI (1952) 223-5. 57 Lipman (see n. 49) 49. 58 H. V. Bolaffey, The Aleph-Beth; or the first step to the Hebrew language (London 1811 [not 1820]). 59 The Gentleman s Magazine (March 1836) 444. n8</page><page sequence="21">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Oxfordshire cause celebre: A vindication of Mrs. Lee's conduct towards the Gordons. Written by herself. A few years after the fracas with Bolaffey she was again in print accusing two Gentile men in similar terms.60 The Duke of Wellington's exhortation in similar circumstances, 'publish and be damned', was clearly the order of the day. In a footnote Roth says: T suspect but cannot demonstrate that Hayim Vita Bolaffey is identical with Hannanel Abolaffiah, teacher in languages, who was born in Florence in 1779, and came to England with his wife Grace in 1798, details of whom and whose family may be found in the muniments of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in London.'61 That was in 1952, since when the 'muniments' have furnished several volumes of the Bevis Marks Records wherein the marriage of 'Hananya de David Bollaffia' and Grace de Samuel Bendelack is recorded on 5 Nissan 5572 (1812), the last marriage recorded before Pesach that year,62 and the births of their children David (December 1812), Samuel (1816; died 1889), Joshua (1819) and Miriam (1827).63 What does not quite square is the further reference to Hanaiah Bolaffey as the deceased father of Rebecca Bolaffey aged twenty seven at her marriage to John de Abraham Bensilum on 10 March 1869.64 However, the death of Grace de Hanniah Bolaffey in 1868 appears in the same volume as the death of Bolaffey on 4 December 1835.65 Bolaffey's sister Stella was married to Rabbi Meldola in 1796 (their first child born in 1797 was named David). A further address at which Bolaffey is recorded as having lived, after leaving Spitalfields, was above the premises of the firm of Fribourg &amp; Treyer, tobacconists, established in 1720 at 34 Haymarket (the premises were rebuilt in about 1750 and survive, the firm itself having closed in the 1980s). Raphael Loewe suggests (in a private communication) that a well known unidentified engraving of a 'Jewish musician' is actually Bolaffey, but this may depict Michael Bolaffi, musical director to the Duke of Cambridge (shades of Isaac Nathan), cited by Roth as the other Bolaffey from Livorno, mentioned above. Bolaffey's Oxford career emerges glowingly from his own Preface: 'The materials of the following sheets were read as Philosophical Lectures in the 60 R. F. A. Lee, A statement, including charges against Mr. Henry Yorke (London 1825) and A statement concerning charges against Mr. T. Marshall, clerk to Mr Airey of High Wycombe (London 1828). 61 Roth (seen. 56)225. 62 L. D. Barnett (ed.) Bevis Marks Records II (London 1949) item 1499. 63 Miriam Rodrigues-Pereira and Chloe Loewe (eds) Bevis Marks Records V (London 1993) items 59, 63, 66 and 76. 64 G. Whitehill (ed.) Bevis Marks Records III (London 1973) item 525. 65 M. Rodrigues-Pereira and C. Loewe (eds) Bevis Marks Records VI (London 1997) items 7581 and 5727. ii9</page><page sequence="22">Stephen Massil University of Oxford early in 1808. . . . This honour I received from the Rt. Rev. Dr Parsons, Lord Bishop of Peterborough who was then Vice Chancellor; and am much indebted to all the heads of Houses who have most handsomely afforded me every encouragement to give lectures in their respective colleges ever since that time. . . . They were originally designed for the initiation of classical young men into the study of Hebrew: the plan of a grammar was suggested, as being more extensively useful; and in this shape they are now respectfully submitted to the judgment of the Public.'66 The publication was noticed by Raphael Meldola:' I as Chief Rabbi... 47, Mansell Street, May 3rd 1821, to H. V. Bolaffey, Philological Professor of Oriental Languages, &amp;c, Oxford'.67 Bolaffey also alludes to the enthusiasm expressed in the public prints: 'The handsome manner in which his humble performances have been received by a liberal public', citing the Monthly Review for 1811 and the Christian Remembrancer for September 1819.68 The grammar is offered to 'two sorts of readers . . . The first consists in erudite persons who have already acquired a more or less considerable knowledge of the Hebrew Language, to them the author submits his labours with that due deference with which his satisfaction in having discovered in the massoretic plan important principles and having invented an ameliorated method of teaching it, should be announced'. As to Eton, Bolaffey appears in the annually printed school lists from 1818 to 1821 as an 'extra master' teaching Italian and Spanish. 'The subjects taught by extra masters were not compulsory and were studied in the boys' own time; French, dancing, fencing and drawing appear in the same list. Hebrew is not listed as an extra at that period but of course if a boy wished to learn it privately he could make arrangements to do so, just as some boys arranged music lessons.'69 Bolaffey's modest efforts secured him contemporary reference in A biog? raphical dictionary of the living authors of Great Britain and Ireland, published in London in 1816: 'Bolaffey, H. V. Hebrew master, lately lecturer in the Talmudical College, Heneage Lane. Author of The Aleph Beth, or First Step to the Hebrew Language. i2mo. 1811.' Other Jewish writers of the day included in this dictionary are Solomon Bennett, J. D'Israeli (with an extensive list of his publications, including those he had published anonymously), David Ricardo, Hyman Hurwitz, Solomon Lyon and his daughter Emma, Isaac Brandon, Joshua Montefiore (formerly a resident of St Lucia, notary public in the city of London), Henry Jacob (editor of the third edition of Lyons's Hebrew grammar, of 1810, described 66 Bolaffey (see n. 2) Preface, p. 7. 67 Ibid. ix-x. 68 Ibid. [1]. 69 Private communication from Eton College Archivist. 120</page><page sequence="23">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment as a 'Private Tutor') and Nahum Joseph (a converted Jew and teacher of the Hebrew language, who had edited for the Bishop of St David's Robertson's 'compendious' Hebrew Dictionary of 1814). A later venue for Bolaffey's so-called 'Philological Academy', in 1824, can be found among the addresses given in Antonina Despenser's effusions - Mitre Chambers, 157 Fenchurch Street - and confirmed by another publication of 1827.70 That is so far all there is to report about Bolaffey, except that I believe that an inscription in his hand is extant in the British Library copy of the 'Devotional service for the renewal of the dedication of Bevis Marks' of 1825, discussed below in Appendix 2. His Easy grammar can tell us more. Its publishers are Hatchard (neigh? bourly for a resident of the Haymarket) and the firm of Whittaker, one of the stalwarts of Paternoster Row at the heart of the London book trade. The printer is Marchant of Fenchurch Street - a highly respectable stable all round. It has a dedication to Joseph Hart Myers, MD, a subscribers' list (discussed below in Appendix i)71 and a frontispiece. The dedication and list alone indicate what might have been the reception given such a work, addressed both to the wider intellectual public headed by the Duke of Sussex and the heads of colleges and schools, and to the elite of the Jewish community and its institutions such as the Shaare Tikvah School, 'by the recommendation of Moses Mocatta Esq., its President, and I. Lindo, Vice President'. Solomon Lyon dedicated his grammar to the Duke of Sussex, but the Duke, at the head of Bolaffey's subscribers' list, would have recog? nized in Myers, I suggest, the leading Anglo-Jewish intellectual of the day, alongside Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, Isaac DTsraeli, Francis Palgrave and the Gompertz brothers, whose reputations flourished later. The most famous Jew of all was probably Daniel Mendoza ? or Shylock in Kean's perform? ance or Rebecca, most topically, in Scott's Ivanhoe of 1819 - George Soane's theatrical travesty notwithstanding. Dr Myers (1758?1823) was American-born; his grandfather, Joseph Myers, was apparently of a New York family.72 His father, Naphtali Hart Myers (1711-88), who married Hester, the daughter of Susannah and Simon Jacob Moses (of Bury Street, who died in 1764), during a visit to London in 1754, but was active with the Shearith Yisrael Congregation and known as a benefactor to the Touro Synagogue in the 1750s and 60s. He was naturalized in New York in 1764,73 but then settled permanently in 70 J. Pigot &amp; Co., Pigot and Co. 's metropolitan new alphabetical directory for 1827 (London 1827). 71 Bolaffey (see n. 2) v-xvi. 72 See C. Roth, The Great Synagogue London, i6go-ig40 (London 1950) 160. 73 M. S. Giuseppi (ed.) Naturalizations of foreign protestants in the American and West Indian colonies (pursuant to Statute 13 Geo. I I.e. 7) (London 1921) 38: Naphtali Hart Meyers, 121</page><page sequence="24">Stephen Massil London and became President of the Great Synagogue. N. H. Myers and Naphtali Franks, his fellow president, acting on behalf of the Great Synagogue, are documented in the records of Sir John Fielding's policing of crimes and delinquencies, in particular at the time of the 'Chelsea Affair'.74 Naphtali Myers died 'at his residence in John Street, America Square' in 1788, as confirmed by his will, which was proved in November 1788, citing 'a gentleman of John Street, Crutched Friars'.75 As a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (now the RSA) where he appears in the lists of its members from 1772 {List of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. London, January 23, 1772, London. Printed by order of the Society. By W. Adlard and J. Browne, in Fleet-Street) he was prominent enough to be reported among the notables buried in what Daniel Lysons in his Environs of London calls the 'Dutch Jews cemetery' at Stepney.76 Naphtali Myers had moved from 14 Mark Lane77 to John Street, America Square, in 1774, his son and family continuing to live there until Joseph's own death. America Square, a smart City address in a development of 1766?72 by George Dance, junior, architect to the Corporation of London in recent succession to his father, comprised the first example in London of crescent, circus and square in a modest imitation of John Wood's innovative developments in Bath at the time.78 The square itself, less novel than the crescent and circus, was modelled more on Grosvenor and Cavendish Squares in the West End and was graced by an obelisk, which was depicted by Dibdin in about 1850 and survived until 1950, resembling nothing less than the model for the 'Ark of the Covenant' that Soane designed for the Freemasons' Hall in 1813. Joseph Hart Myers had a sister Rebecca79 and a brother Simeon (born in 1763) of Cheltenham, who both died in 1803. Simeon married a gentile wife Merchant, 27 April 1764. See also W. Fencak, Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1634-1800 (Ann Arbor 2005) 52-4; and E. Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654-1820, 'The Jewish People in America' vol. I (Baltimore 1992) 64. 74 A. R. L. Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding (London 1935) 259-66. 75 The Gentlemans Magazine LVIII pt 2 (1789) 938. PROB 11/1172 (PCC). For further details see Appendix 3. 76 D. Lysons, The Environs ofLondon: being an historical account of the towns, villages, and hamlets, within twelve miles of that capital; interspersed with biographical anecdotes (London 1792-6) IIL482; corroborated by B. S?sser, 'Inscriptions in the Alderney Road, London Ei Cemetery, 1697-1853', Studies in Anglo-Jewish History V (London 1996) 7. 77 The new complete guide to all persons who have any trade or concern with the city of London, and parts adjacent 14th ed. (London 1774). 78 Stroud (see n. 22) 84-6. Thomas Colman Dibdin (1810-93), 'View of America Square', pencil sketch, c. 1850. (Guildhall Library Main Print Collection, Pr.21 /AME(i) V9010129.) 79 Rebecca Hart Myers, of Southwark, spinster, Will proved 4 March 1803. Prob.11/1389 (PCC). 122</page><page sequence="25">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Plate 3 View of America Square in the Minories with the obelisk. Sketch, r.1850, by Thomas Colman Dibdin (1810-93). (Courtesy Guildhall Library. Corporation of London.) and has descendants in New Zealand.80 Joseph completed his education in London and, following a medical career, started studies under William Hunter at the Windmill Street School and Dr George Fordyce at Essex Street, the Strand, before proceeding to Edinburgh in 1775. According to Kenneth Collins, he graduated in 1779 with a thesis on diabetes, 'Dissertatio medica inauguralis, de diabete'.81 'Diabetes is a disease that has always interested Jewish physicians', states Jacob Rader Marcus, referring to Myers in his United States Jewry, iyy6-ig8s.S2 Myers has been presented as a precursor of Scottish Jewry, by A. Levy,83 but while his antecedents and family background have been delineated, it is unclear in which circles Bolaffey might have met him. Thus the dedication is an important factor. Lyon's dedication to the Duke of Sussex followed the more normal course of acknowledging royal patronage. This is not the place to consider 80 Simeon Hart Myers, Will proved 14 November 1803. Prob 11/1401 (PCC). 81 K. E. Collins, 'Jewish Medical Students and Graduates in Scotland, 1739-1862', Trans JHSE XXIX (1988) 87; Collins (see n. 18) 41,43-7 and 173-4. 82 J. R. Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776-1085 (Detroit 1991) L202-3. 83 A. Levy, 'The Origins of Scottish Jewry', Trans JHSE XIX (i960) 138--9. 123</page><page sequence="26">Stephen Massil Plate 4 'The Physicians of the Medical Society of London'. (Reproduced in Trans JHSE XIX [i960] opp. p.104, from a version in Alfred Rubens's collection.) the image and symbolism of the Duke, who gained a significant place in the hearts of Anglo-Jewry of the era down to the foundation of Sussex Hall itself in the 1840s in his memory.84 For Bolaffey, Myers was precisely the most significant Anglo-Jewish professional intellectual whom an author might wish to honour by a dedica? tion in a mixed subscription list of this sort. Furthermore, he had a distin? guished reputation for his management of the Jewish schools of the day. Myers travelled widely on the Continent, as a disciple of William Hunter, to broaden his medical studies, and in 1787 was admitted to the 84 See D. Katz, The Jews in the History ofEngland, 1483-1850 (Oxford 1994) 373-4; P. R. James, 'The Grand-Mastership of H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex, 1813-43', Ars Quatuor Coronatorum LXXV (1962) 37-45; M. Gillen, Royal Duke: Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843) (London 1976); G. Cantor, 'Sussex Hall (1845-1859) and the Revival of Learning among London Jewry', TransJHSE$$ (2002) 105-24. 124</page><page sequence="27">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Royal College85 and became a Fellow of the Medical Society of London. He appears as a leading figure in a much discussed group portrait of the digni? taries of the Society, a version of which is in Alfred Rubens's collection.86 It seems that he took a back seat as Librarian to the Society,87 so is briefly mentioned in recent histories of that Society.88 In this public persona Myers is often cited as 'Physician to the Portuguese Hospital &amp;c. &amp;c.', becoming physician to the Aldersgate Street Dispensary (at Shaftesbury House, 36 Aldersgate). In association with John Coakley Lettsom, a Quaker also of transatlantic origin, and others, Myers was part of the breakaway group from the Medical Society that formed the Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1805, which became in due course the Royal Medical Society. He was one of Lettsom's colleagues, with others in the Humane Society,89 in the venture to establish the Sea-Bathing Infirmary at Margate in 1701. With Lettsom too, Myers solicited funds for a naval orphanage and was a presence at the Crown &amp; Anchor in the Strand where the Committee of the Naval Asylum used to meet in 1800-01. The Goldsmids were also active supporters of this committee.90 One of the more widely used of the medi? cines at the Dispensary was the eau medicinale, a fashionable nostrum for gout which Myers was persuaded to take up on a systematic basis and found beneficial, 'with a certain alleviation'. Its basis was Colchicum (from the autumn crocus) which remains a source from which modern colchicine is still derived and used to treat gout, a long-lasting tribute to Myers and his colleagues.91 Within the London Jewish community Myers's standing, to which his father's high reputation at Shearith Yisrael perhaps contributed, was such that he was requested by the Mahamad to act as physician to the poor of the congregation in 178592 and to reorganize the Talmud Torah, Shaare Tikvah in 1788. He was one of those under the leadership of the Goldsmids who established the Jews' Hospital, Mile End, in 180693 and was its first Physician, alongside Joshua van Oven as Surgeon, which is Endelman's sole 85 W. M?nk, The roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London : compiled from the Annals of the College and from other authentic sources, II: 1701 to 1800 (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861) II, 376. 86 Trans JHSE XIX (i960) opp. 104. 87 F. Hickey, 'The Library of the Medical Society of London, 1773-1969' (typescript, Aberystwyth, College of Librarianship, 1969) xi, 51. 88 P. Hunting, The Medical Society of London, 1773-2003 (London 2003) 56, 66, 76 and 83. 89 Ibid. 66. 90 G. L. Green, The Royal Navy and Anglo-Jewry, 1740-1820: Traders and Those who Served (London 1989) 80. 91 Hunting (seen. 88)76. 92 Levy (see n. 83) 139. 93 Illustration The Gentlemans Magazine pt I (Dec. 1819) 489. 125</page><page sequence="28">Stephen Massil reference to him.94 But he was also active with the Talmud Torah of the Great Synagogue, figuring therefore in the histories of the Jews' Free School, from which he retired through ill-health as its President in 1815;95 Gerry Black remarks on him as the first of the Vice-Presidents inscribed on the School's foundation stone 'laid on 10 May 1821'.96 James Picciotto refers to an effort by Benjamin Goldsmid and Myers to secure financial support for David Levi's publishing programme in the 1790s, but Ruderman does not substantiate this.97 Myers, along with Van Oven, is also one of several Jewish subscribers to Isaac Delgado's New English translation of the Pentateuch of 1789, but I have yet to find his name in other such lists.98 Myers married Leah, daughter of Michael Jacobs, at the Great Synagogue in May 1792,99 and they had two daughters: Rebecca (1793) and Miriam (1794).100 Rebecca Myers, described in the marriage register as 'daughter of the Warden', married Isaac, the son of Levy Barent Cohen, in 1818101 but died in 1819. Miriam is listed as a subscriber to Bolaffey. Myers died - still a victim of the gout - in 1823.102 Myers's relations with Bolaffey, and his connections in general, merit further research and I have hopes of identifying some of his patients. He appears, for instance, in Judith Montefiore's honeymoon diary of 1812 - her marriage to Montefiore being the first that was celebrated at Bevis Marks after the Omer in June 1812 - in which she records on 17 June that 'Dr Myers paid us a visit of congratula? tion. We were deprived of the pleasure of his company on account of the recent death of his mother Mrs Thackary who died at the age of 82'.103 94 T. M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830 (Ann Arbor 1999) 236. 95 S. S. Levin, 'The Origins of the Jews' Free School', Trans JHSE XIX (i960) 97; see also Katz (see n. 84) 366-8, 373-5. 96 G. Black, JFS: A History of the School (London 1998) 38. 97 J. Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History. Revised and edited, with a prologue, notes, and an epilogue by Israel Finestein (London 1956) 243; private communication from D. Ruderman. 98 I. Delgado, A New English translation of the Pentateuch: being a thorough correction of the present translation wherever it deviates from the genuine sense of the Hebrew expressions . . . proving the validity of such emendations by critical remarks and illustrations . . . together with a comment on such passages as cannot be sufficiently understood by a mere translation (London 1789); see also Ruderman (see n. 37) 226-8. 99 A. Shire (ed.) Great Synagogue Marriage Registers, 1791-1830 (Crediton 1999) 5/3, 1792. 100 Great Synagogue Birth Registers (Crediton 1999) 15 (item 19) 1793, and p. 21 (item 1) 1794. 101 Shire (see n. 99) 180/33,1818. 102 The Gentleman s Magazine 1 June 1823, p. 187. See Appendix 3 for the wills of Doctor Joseph Hart Myers, Doctor of Medicine of John Street America Square, City of London, 3 July 1823, PROB 11/1673 (PCC); and of Leah, his widow, of St Marylebone, 17 October 1832, PROB 11/1806 (PCC). 103 L. Wolf (ed.) 'Lady Montefiore's Honeymoon', Essays in Jewish History by Lucien Wolf; with a memoir, edited by Cecil Roth (London 1934) 244-5. 126</page><page sequence="29">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment The subscribers Lists of subscribers, such as those in Lyon and Bolaffey, reveal social group? ings. Bolaffey's list is shorter than Lyon's and, as well as dedicating his book to Myers, has a higher proportion of Jewish names, 94 out of 204. Bolaffey covers the public schools as well as the universities, has both Chief Rabbis and also the Reverend Solomon Lyon, as well as a skein of Anglo-Jewish notables, including George Basevi and G. H. Noehden 'of the British Museum', author of a German grammar. One of the better-recorded is the cousin of Don Pacifico, who endowed almshouses for Sephardi inmates at the southeast corner of London Fields in 1851.104 Dr Emanuel de Asher Pacifico (1765-1851) graduated from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1817 and is noted as being recommended by Myers to a practice in Bury Street.105 He was also active among the first directors of the Allied Building Society. He married Sara de Jacob Israel Brandon at Bevis Marks in 1799 (who died in 1855),106 daughter of Jacob Israel Brandon, also a subscriber. A 'Mr Pasifico' is recorded as a subscriber to Daniel Mendoza's new edition of The memoirs ofthe life of Daniel Mendoza, published in London in 1816, alongside a dozen or so Jewish names including Isaac Nathan, Mr Samuda, Abraham da Costa and Abraham Goldsmid. Another Bolaffey subscriber, David Abarbanel Lindo (1772-1852), may have paid his subscription with his daughter Abigail's precocious grammatical interests at heart. Two other names indicating the varied networks of association under? pinning such a subscription scheme are J. B. Lousada and Samuel Cardozo, who appear also as stewards at a Masonic function in 1833 as 'John Baruh Lousada: Lodge of Antiquity; Samuel Cardozo, P.M. Moira Lodge'.107 A detailed comparison of the Lyon and Bollafey subscription lists reveals more, but particularly relevant are the names of the various masters of Eton and the Merchant Taylors', which show Bolaffey's pretensions in publish? ing in this context, and indicate his personal connections, as suggested by the Reverend Robert Nixon, 'friend and private artist',108 who contributed the engraved frontispiece (though the square Hebrew capitals are ascribed to Bolaffey himself). 104 private communication from Derek Taylor, lecturing to the Society on Don Paciflco in 2007. T. F. T. Baker, 'Hackney: Miscellaneous Institutions', A History of the County ofMiddlesex: Volume 10: Hackney (London 1995) 28 and 74. 105 Collins (see n. 18) 174. 106 will of Emanuel Paciflco of Burton Crescent, Russell Square, London, Middlesex, 5 September 1851, PROB 11/2139 (PCC). L. D. Barnett (ed.) Bevis Marks Records, II (1949) 1329. 107 'Anniversary Festival of the Royal Masonic Institution for Boys in March 1833', Soane Archives VI.M.2/8. 108 Bolaffey (see n. 2) 15. 127</page><page sequence="30">Stephen Massil Robert Nixon The career of Robert Nixon (1759-1837) is as elusive as that of Bolaffey. He gains admittance to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in connec? tion with his brother, the much better-known watercolourist and caricatur? ist John Nixon (d. 1818), whose works surface at increasing prices in auction houses (Christie's in November 2005 showed 'Bob Nixon's Study at Foots Cray, Kent'109). But Robert exhibited as an 'Honorary Exhibitor' in his own right at the Society of Artists and at the Royal Academy several times between 1792 and 1808110 and features occasionally in Joseph Farington's Diary}11 He was an FSA, became an FRS in 1801 and was curate at Foots Cray from 1784 until about 1805. There he figured in local affairs and played a part inj. M. W. Turner's early career: Turner did his first oil painting in Nixon's atelier at Foots Cray - 'A view of Mount Snowdon painted at Foots Cray' (now in Australia having been taken there by F. R. Nixon in 1843).112 Nixon also recommended him to J. F. Rigaud who facilitated Turner's entry to the Royal Academy schools in 1798. Robert Nixon is best known as the father of Francis Russell Nixon (1803-79), the first Anglican Bishop of Tasmania, who is relevant here since he became a pupil at Merchant Taylors' in the years before Bolaffey published his grammar. Bolaffey's list of subscribers records the headmas? ter and four other masters of the school, as well as the former headmaster Thomas Cherry (d. 1822). The possibility remains that Bolaffey retained a peripheral role in the instruction of Hebrew at the Merchant Taylors' as at Eton, but this cannot be confirmed from the extant records. Support for Hebrew at the school emerges only twenty years later, through the benefac? tion of Sir Moses Montefiore (liveryman of the Worshipful Company) in the Hebrew medal that he instituted in 1838. More to the point is that Robert Nixon, after leaving Foots Cray for London around 1809, set up as a schoolmaster in Burr Street, East Smithfield, as is indicated through a note on the back of a picture by John Nixon, Dusk on the Banks of Loch Lomond: 'A pupil of the Rev. Bob Nixon, Burr Street'. The picture was sold at Christie's in 1973, whose catalogue includes an additional work showing a pupil at the school (otherwise not recorded).113 The same London address 109 Christie's London British Art on Paper (17 Nov. 2005) Lot 13. 110 A. Graves, A dictionary of artists who have exhibited works in the principal London exhibitions from 1760 to i8gj (London 1895). 111 K. Garlick and A. Macintyre (eds) Diaries of Joseph Farington, I7gj-i82i; 17 vols (New Haven and London 1978-98), see index volume. 112 J. Kerr (ed.) Dictionary of Australian Artists (Melbourne 1992) entry on Nixon. 113 Christie's London Important English Drawings and Watercolours sold by order of the Governor and Directors of the French Hospital of La Providence: original drawings and sketches by John Nixon (6 Nov. 1973) Lot 44, p. 18. 128</page><page sequence="31">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment is given in the obituary of Nixon's second wife Cordelia in the Gentleman 's Magazine of 16 May 1818. It may be presumed that Bolaffey and Nixon became friends as fellow schoolmasters in Crutched Friars. Robert's last appearance in Farington's diaries concerns his letter of 29 June 1818 to the Academy General Meeting putting himself forward for the post of Professor of Ancient Literature in succession to Dr Charles Burney and offering to give the lectures gratis. He was declined in favour of the Rt Reverend William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography records Nixon's death at Kenmure Castle in New Galloway in November 1837. Bolaffey and Soane Soane's copy of the grammar is distinguished by bearing this tipped-in inscription: My dear Sir From the short conversation we had the other day I perceive that you take a considerable degree of interest in the Hebrew language. &amp; altho I am aware you may never venture to encounter the difficulty of its attainment yet I cannot but think you may desire some Gratification from turning over the pages of the enclosed Grammar, for this purpose I trust you will give it a place in your Library. The curious observations it contains on the origin &amp; progress of Languages perhaps you will find worthy your attention. I remain with great regards Yours truly M. Mocatta. 11 Nov. 1822. Russell Squ. Number 33 Russell Square is not so far up Southampton Row that the 'short conversation' might have been held anywhere in the vicinity of High Holborn on their respective ways towards the City, where Soane would have been heading for his office at the Bank of England and Moses Mocatta his seat at the Stock Exchange. Soane's 'Notebooks' record calls on Mocatta on 1 and 4 October 1814, on both occasions Mocatta being away from home.114 The conversation could even have been held in the Bank's precincts, since the firm of Mocatta and Goldsmid at 1 Exchange Buildings, Threadneedle Street, was an agency for bullion and Soane would have been fully acquainted with daily comings and goings of the Bank's agents and associates. Their connection was in fact more specific, because in 1821 Moses Mocatta's son David was apprenticed to Soane for six years, so acquaintance would have been cultivated if only over the arrangements for this. In 1875 David Mocatta became a Trustee of Sir John Soane's 114 Soane Archive 'Notebook' 121. Jewish festivals fell at this period, and Mocatta may have been otherwise occupied. 129</page><page sequence="32">Stephen Massil Museum.115 Mocatta was specifically granted Friday afternoon dispensa? tions and the 'Hebrew holidays', while George Basevi, who is listed among the subscribers to Bolaffey's grammar and whose father lived in Montague Place off Russell Square, also graduated from Soane's office (1810-16). Basevi's uncle Isaac D'Israeli likewise dealt with Soane over the apprentice? ship, dining at 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields as early as 7 May 1813.116 A courte? ous correspondence was conducted between Lincoln's Inn Fields and Gray's Inn (formerly 6 Bedford Row, since renumbered 22 Theobald's Road), Bloomsbury Square (from 1818) and later Bradenham, Buckinghamshire, over gifts of copies of Curiosities of Literature and Soane's Description of his Museum, as late as 1836. Isaac D'Israeli, in thanking Soane for The Description on 14 August 1836, remarked that 'Your Museum is permanently magical, for the enchantments of Art are eternal. Some in poems have raised fine architectural Edifices, but most rare have been those who have discovered when they had finished their House, if such a House can ever be said to be finished, that they had built a Poem.' This apprecia? tion of Soane's endeavours is glossed by Arthur T. Bolton who refracts D'Israeli's system of education for his son through 'his theory of "Poietes", a recognition of the creativeness of the poet as a supreme quality of mankind. Isaac sees in Soane's house evidence of this creative quality, and probably no more appreciative letter was ever received by the architect.'117 Moses Mocatta was not alone in his inscriptions when presenting books for Soane's delectation. Like many others of Soane's friends, associates and agents John Taylor (1757-1832) wrote in a book to Soane on 27 October 1821: T luckily saw on a stall this second volume of Mandevil [The Fable of the Bees, 1755] which I immediately secured for you. Its exterior is not very brilliant, but its contents are valuable and they will be your chief concern.' Taylor, as it happens, was an author/publisher in his own right. The subscription list to the edition of his Poems on Various Subjects of 1827 includes an early reference to Mrs Rothschild, subscribing in her own right, and this book duly appears along with Rothschild's subscription copy of Lyon's Grammar in the Rothschild catalogue of 1835.118 Moses Mocatta (1768-1857), a broker and active in the communal affairs of the Mahamad, himself had literary and scholarly leanings which emerged in publications later in his life.119 He figures in Bolaffey's subscription list 115 Bolton (see n. 3). 116 Ibid. Soane Archive: Mrs Soane Notebook 8, 7 May 1813. 117 A. T. Bolton, The Portrait of Sir John Soane, R.A. (London 1927) 529; xviii. 118 J. Taylor, Poems on Various Subjects (London 1827). 'Catalogue of books belonging to the principal library of Baron N. M. de Rothschild', Rothschild Archive London (1835) 000/162. 119 M. Mocatta, The Wisdom of Solomon: A selection from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in Hebrew, with a corrected version on parallel lines (London 1834); Archbishop of Cranganor, The Inquisition 130</page><page sequence="33">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Plate 5 The bookseller's ticket of Abraham Berlandina of 101 Leadenhall Street (enlarged). (Courtesy the Trustees of the Sir John Soane's Museum.) in his capacity at the Shaare Tikvah School, and perhaps his star pupil in the study of Hebrew was his niece Abigail Lindo (1803-48). The copy of Bolaffey's Easy Grammar that Mocatta, a subscriber, went out to buy for Soane in November 1822 carries the ticket of'A. Berlandina Bookseller &amp; Bookbinder 101 Leadenhall Street'. This is Abraham Berlandina (1786?1830), but I cannot trace him through the standard trade and bibliographic sources, raising again the question of 'mainstream' bibliography's coverage of non-mainstream sources, such as immigrant and non-metropolitan sources. I have requested the new British Book Trade Index to place an inquiry concerning Berlandina in case other researchers come across the label. (It is always a consideration to know how far such 'standard' sources reference. My father's book on immigrant furni? ture-makers augmented the number of furniture-makers in a quite narrow area of'furniture-makers' in London by a hundred per cent for the period in question.)120 Berlandina can be identified through the Bevis Marks Records and Judaism: A sermon addressed to Jewish martyrs on the occasion of an auto da fe in Lisbon, 1705. Also a reply to the sermon [by David Nieto], first published by Carlos Vero, trans. M. Mocatta (London 1845); Isaac ben Abraham Troki, Hizzuk emunah, or Faith strengthened: the Jewish answer to Christianity, trans. M. Mocatta (London 1851). 120 E.g. British Book Trade Index (to 1851); E. Howe, List of London Bookbinders, 1648-1815 (London 1947); C. Ramsden, London Bookbinders, 1780?1840 (London 1956, repr. 1987); W. Todd, Directory of Printers and Others in Allied Trades (London 1972). www.bbti.bham.ac.uk. i3i</page><page sequence="34">Stephen Massil where the family is well attested: his grandfather, Abraham de David Berlandina, married Simha de Ishac Levy on 14 Tishri 5496;121 his father, David de Abraham Berlandina (died 1815),122 married Sara de Selomoh Farro (died 1839) on 1 Ellul 5541;123 he himself was born on 3 February 1786,124 the second son of David Berlandina; and his burial at the Novo is recorded on 14 March 1830.125 Family members figure in the records throughout the nineteenth century. Still, nothing is known of his business and tenure, the extent of his stock and whether it concentrated on Hebrew books. He is recorded as a governor of the Honen Dalim Charity in the 'Laws' of 1824.126 And he was a subscriber to Bolaffey's grammar. Enough has been said here to show that Jewish cultural life in the Regency and late Hanoverian period may be traced through the regular inclusion of the names of Jews in subscription lists to books, charities and public institu? tions and their attendance at the lectures of the Royal Institution, at the Surrey Institution in Blackfriars, the Crown &amp; Anchor off the Strand and other venues, and through membership of such societies as the Royal Asiatic Society. The financial strength of individuals from the days of Solomon de Medina and Sampson Gideon to the Goldsmids, Mocattas, Levy Barent Cohen and N. M. Rothschild had long given the Jews of England a presence in the English commercial and social scene. Jews had become fellows of the Royal Society from an early date and were prominent in music and boxing. The negative images of pedlars and those caught in the criminal records is also well known. The Athenaeum extended membership to wealthy Jews perhaps more for the financial boost than the enhancement of its cultural pretensions. One might summarize the cultural context in the following terms. Richard Grey's Hebrew grammar was intended to stimulate a new approach to the study of Hebrew for the better understanding of the sacred texts in the context of the 'enlightenment', and for its day modernized the study of Hebrew for the arguments with both Deists and conservative scholars. David Ruderman shows how Anglo-Jewish intellectuals faced up to and debated the Anglican and Newtonian character of the Enlightenment 121 Bevis Marks Records II (1949) 561. 122 Will of David Berlandina, Merchant of Goodmans Fields, Middlesex; 23 February 1816 (PROBn/1577). 123 Bevis Marks Records II (1949) 1152 124 Ibid. V (1993) 21. 125 Ibid. VI (1997) 5526. 126 N. Laski, Laws and Charities of the Spanish &amp; Portuguese Jews1 Congregation of London (London 1952) 157. 132</page><page sequence="35">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Bolaffey, too, was seemingly both at ease in Jewish circles - Sephardi and Ashkenazi - and supported by Anglican cler? gymen and academics of the universities and the public schools. Anglo Jewish scholarship can be said to have attained an equal footing at the moment of the founding of University College London and the appoint? ment of Hyman Hurwitz to a professorship. Lionel Kochan's final book, covering the period 1650-1819, concludes at a defining moment on the Continent.127 This was the founding of the 'Verein f?r Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden' and the promotion of the German Haskalah through the Wissenschaft des Judentums, an outcome of the Napoleonic Wars and its after-effect for Jewry. Sir John Soane's experi? ence as a young neoclassical architect making a career and as professor at the Royal Academy, unable because of the Napoleonic War from 1793 to 1815 to repeat his travels to Italy or to send his assistants and pupils abroad, highlights a predicament of Anglo-Jewry at this period. Within English culture, Anglo-Jewish culture throughout the eighteenth century had largely gone unremarked. The Bevis Marks 'Aliens Register' records Bolaffey's arrival in 1798, the same year as the young Nathan Rothschild was sent from Frankfurt to Manchester, but immigration was much curtailed at this period and wars preoccupied the country. True, Jews of England had ventured into European politics at an early date - widespread international representations were delivered about the expulsion of the Jews of Prague in 1735. Jewish loyalty at the time of the 1745 Rebellion, when Huguenot militias demonstrated and Sampson Gideon underwrote the national debt in the emergency of the day, at the celebrations of the Seven Years War and in communal solidarities at the time of American independence, constituted significant moments of settlement and accept? ance. Jewish attitudes, loyalties and solidarities were noted at all these times. In 1795 several Jewish names appeared among the loyalist signatories of the various constitutional declarations published, such as the Declaration of the merchants, bankers, traders, and other inhabitants of London. The chair? man on that occasion was Samuel Bosanquet, one of the directors of the Bank of England, while Joseph Hart Myers was a signatory along with Abraham Mocatta, Jacob Montefiore, Joseph Gompertz, Barent Gompertz, Abraham Goldsmid, Hyam Elazar Cohen and Jacob Montefiore. Soane was also one of the signatories.128 The adherence of the Jewish community and the national perception of this took on a new force particularly at the time of combined rejoicing and lament over the news of Trafalgar. There were 127 L. Kochan, The Making of Western Jewry, 1600-1819 (London 2004). 128 Declaration of the merchants, bankers, traders, and other inhabitants of London, made at Grocers' hall, December 2nd, 1795- with a list of the names and places of abode of the subscribers thereto (London 1795). 133</page><page sequence="36">Stephen Massil public fasts, recruitment of volunteers, publication of sermons, and in 1805 Haham Meldola and Chief Rabbi Hirschell coordinated a Jewish response to public events and HirschelPs sermon was published in the public prints. The Anglo-Jewish presence became better appreciated in a way that had not been so before. Furthermore, because the war inhibited travel, immi? gration and contact with the Continent, Anglo-Jewish cultural and intellec? tual life continued under its own momentum ahead of the Haskalah and the arrival of Continental maskilim, taking some of the forms illustrated in this paper and contributing to a new appreciation of the standing of Jews in the Emancipation debates of the 1830s and after. Appendix 1 The Subscription Lists in Solomon Lyon's Theological Hebrew Grammar of 1815 and H. V. Bolaffey's Easy grammar of 1820 Naomi Cream discussed the subscription list of Solomon Lyon in her paper of 2001.129 Its more than 300 names include those of Spencer Percival, assassinated three years before the book appeared, and of magnates in Jamaica and Surinam whose subscriptions must have been collected some time previously, suggesting that it took perhaps years to have the book published. The fact that it appeared in Liverpool and was supported by provincial subscribers indicates Lyon's lack of influence with London publishers, and suggests how the West Indian contacts, whose trade would have passed through that port, came to be involved. Some 75 names of Jewish subscribers make up a quarter of the list. But it is headed by the Prince of Wales and the three royal dukes, and the book is dedicated to the Duke of Sussex. Oxford, in particular, is well represented (some 88 names from the Chancellor down), as are Cambridge and others; the clergy number 170. Cream wonders about the copy subscribed by the East India Company, now at the British Library, but this perhaps indicates the interest of some? one in the Indian Service - Madras or Calcutta - active with the British &amp; Foreign Bible Society (the first printing in Hebrew type in Madras dates from 1814) or perhaps someone at Haileybury, the School set up in 1806 by the East India Company for educating its civil servants. Bolaffey's list is shorter than Lyon's and, as has been pointed out, although it is headed by the Duke of Sussex, the book is dedicated to Dr Myers. The proportion of Jewish subscribers is higher, 94 out of 204. Oxford again scores highly with 19, while Cambridge has 5 and Eton 13. 129 Cream (see n. 29) 57-8, ill. 60. 134</page><page sequence="37">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment Dr Keate, who appears in both lists, had the management of Lord Douro's education, the Duke of Wellington's heir at Eton in 1818-24, known to have studied Hebrew. Cream would like to think that he at least started with Lyon. Some bishops appear in both lists, although they are not neces? sarily the same men. Lyon includes two Irish bishops and a larger number in total. Both contain the Dean of Windsor. Bolaffey has rabbis Meldola, Hirschell and Lyon himself (with an address in 'Princes Street'), although he may not have lived long enough to receive the book before his death, reported in the Gentleman s Magazine as having taken place in August 1820 (giving his address as Gerrard Street130). Bolaffey's frontispiece gives a date of publication as December 1820. Another of the Eton schoolmasters is Edward Charles Hawtrey, later Headmaster and Provost (1834-62). Other familiar names include: Basevi (Bolaffey) Rothschild, Montefiore, Goldsmid (both) Myer's second daughter (his first, Rebecca, having died in 1819) Moses Mocatta and Isaac Lindo of the Shaare Tikvah School (Lindo was not the Freemason who had been nominated Junior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge, newly rededicated, at the end of 1813 and presumed to be from Barbados, born in 1784 and died in 1841 at St Thomas's) Isaac D'Israeli Dr Pacifico Joshua van Oven Longueville Clarke, MA, FRS, of Lincoln's Inn (He became FRS on 17 February 1820: 'Loftus Longueville Clarke Esqr MA of Trinity Hall Cambridge now residing in Greenwich Park Kent, of eminent Literary &amp; Philosophic Acquirements, being desirous of becoming a Member of this Society, we do hereby from our personal knowledge recommend him as highly deserving of that honour' (Royal Society Archives: Certificates of Election and Candidature EC/1820/02). At the Royal Society in about 1840 he gave a Bengal residence as his address. He is named as the husband of Maria Hart Myers in her mother's will (see n. 102 and Appendix 3) J. De Pinna, Esq., notary and translator F. R. Nixon and G. R. Nixon, the sons of the Revd Robert Nixon, pupils at the Merchant Taylors' School Six women, including Miss M. Myers S. M. Samuel, also of America Square 130 The Gentlemans Magazine II (Aug. 1820) 283; see Cream (see n. 29) 64. 135</page><page sequence="38">Stephen Massil Appendix 2 The MSS inscription in the British Library copy of the Kol Rinah The inscription in Hebrew is on the end leaf preceding the eight-page Hebrew section of the work entitled Kol Rinah, the form ofdevotional service, thanksgiving and singing for the renewal of the Dedication of the Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation in Bevis Marks, London, to be performed on Friday evening, 27 Elul A.M. 5585. Composed by the Rev. Dr. R. Meldola, Chief Rabbi; and translated by H. V. Bolaffey, author of the Hebrew Grammar, ?5V. (London: J. Wertheimer, 1825) 8, 8 p. It translates as 'A gift from the authors to a dear and devoted friend, the Hakham, our teacher and Rabbi, Yehi'el Le'on, God keep him and redeem him'. Plate 6 Inscription in Haham Meldola's Kol Rinah, 1825, translated by Haim Vita Bolaffey. (By permission of the British Library. Shelfmark 1975. d. 11.) Raphael Loewe writes: I have compared the Hebrew inscription with Meldola's signatures in our volume of kethubboth ['marriage contracts'] copies. I would say that the callig? raphy of the inscription could possibly be a more formal, i.e. careful version of that of Meldola's signatures. The text of the kethubboth (some at least of which were probably inserted in the record by Meldola himself during his period of office) is always in a less formal rabbinic hand. However, it appears that Bolaffey was Meldola's brother-in-law and is likely to have received the same kind of early Hebrew education in Italy as Meldola. As a Hebrew teacher, he might be expected to have cultivated at least an elegant rabbinic hand - which that of the inscription certainly is - even if he had no training as a sop her and could not have done as well in square Hebrew. A feature of the Hebrew in the inscription strikes me as unlikely to 136</page><page sequence="39">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment have emanated from someone as familiar with traditional style as Meldola must have been. This further suggests to me that it was composed not by him but by Bolaffey and if that was in fact the case, it enhances the probability that it is Bolaffey's writing. What sticks out as untraditional, a Europeanism which to speakers of modernized Hebrew would not raise any eyebrows, is the reference to 'the authors' {hamehaberim). I have never seen such a formula and it is, strictly speaking, inaccurate - the reference is to the author of the original and his translator. In such a situation what I - and, I think, Meldola - would have written, is mimenu baal hashir / piyyut umetargumo, the first word, mimenu, being first person plural. It is the fact that me 'et hamehaberim ? 'from the authors' implies a third person plural which I feel makes it jarring to ears conditioned by the cadences of rabbinic (and indeed biblical) Hebrew. I suspect that Bolaffey, like many others, would have endorsed the fallacy that what sounds right in one language cannot be awkward in another.131 So who was 'Rabbi Yehi'el Le'on'? His name is not known to present-day scholars of the late eighteenth century in the Italian communities of Tuscany and Livorno where, one presumes, Bolaffey and Meldola would have enjoyed the tutelage of a friendly hakham. However, no sale of such a man's library has been noted in the London book trade of the mid-nine? teenth century. The work appears in Joseph Zedner's Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in the Library of the British Museum of 1867 and seems to have been acquired by the library before 1857, but its provenance is untraced.132 Appendix 3 Hart Myers Family Wills The wills of Naphtali Hart Myers and his family give details of connections and interests which otherwise escape the historical record, making it possi? ble to muster the particulars of their lives in America Square and to demon? strate in another form the themes of this paper. Sir John Soane, who was at pains to govern the matrimonial endeavours of his sons and granddaugh? ters, would have sympathized with Joseph Hart Myers in his 'mature reflections' on the circumstances of his second daughter's marriage. The following selected details of the wills helpfully illuminate themes on which the paper has touched. 131 private communication, 22 November 2005 (slightly edited). 132 J. Zedner (ed.) Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in the Library of the British Museum (London 1867)478. 137</page><page sequence="40">Stephen Massil A) The will of Naphtaly Hart Myers, Gentleman, of John Street, America Square, Crutched Friars, City of London, 1788, offers Jewish pieties in the anticipation of death and is dated 'in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King George the third'. We learn that his mother, the New York widow of Joseph Myers, came to London in 1764 and is buried at Mile End. He wishes to be buried alongside her. He makes provision for his 'second son Simon' in the sum of ?2000 a year, and an annuity of ?50 for his daughter Rebecca. He records a long-term settlement in favour of his wife Hester and his children, disposed in regular dividends. He makes bequests to certain friends and his servants for mourning, and leaves money to be invested for the Great Synagogue on condition his name is 'read out on the New Moon of the Month of Adar'. He makes bequests through his son Joseph Hart Myers as Treasurer of the Orphan School of the Synagogue, and a sum to the Churchwardens of St Olave's Parish. He also provides for charitable donations to be made to the Jewish poor at his funeral. The substantive disposition of his house, furniture and plate, and leases are left to his son Joseph, including 'all my lands and houses of what nature and kindsoever and wheresoever situate lying and being in the colony of Connecticut in North America his heirs and assigns for ever ... appointing him sole executor. The will is dated September 1785. Proved November 1788 [PROB 11/1172 (PCC)]. B) The will of Simeon Hart Myers, of Cheltenham, shows his primary concern to be his wife Catherine Peard, nee Winsloe. Set up by his father's bequest of ?2000 per annum, besides other dividends, he enjoys some status in Cheltenham as the leaseholder of the notable Grove Cottage,133 and has jewellery, horses and carriages to dispose of. He also has a son, John Matthew Powell Myers (born 1801). His executors are his father-in-law the Revd Richard Winsloe of Taunton, and George Tharkrah of St Thomas's Street, Southwark, whom he empowers as Trustees on behalf of his son and widow. Proved November 1803 [PROB 11/1401 (PCC)]. C) The will of Rebecca Hart Myers, Spinster of Tooley Street, Southwark, is brief, less than two pages. She leaves her household goods, 'linen, cloathes and leather boots' to her friend Frances Lyall, Spinster, sole executrix (who is living with her) and her furniture and plate to Elizabeth Crutchfield, followed by some small bequests to friends, and for mourning. Proved March 1803 [PROB 11/1389 PCC]. The wills of both Simeon and of Hester Hart Myers go some way to 133 W. Buckle, Cheltenham Directory (Cheltenham: Printed by J. Shenton, at the Mercury Press, 1800). 138</page><page sequence="41">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment explain the background to Hester's second marriage to the 'Mr Thackray', mentioned by Judith Montefiore (as above, footnote 103). Hester Thackrah, married to John Thackrah of Southwark, made her will in 1804. The relationship of George Thackrah of St Thomas's Street and John Thackrah of Tooley Street, South wark, gentleman, and of Ashworth in the County of Middlesex, remains undetermined. But Hester records the continuance of the settlement prefigured in her former husband's will (as above) which she indicates had been devised by her father Simon Jacobus Moses as her own marriage settlement in 1754. She also confirms trusts to the benefit of her grandson John Matthew Powell Myers and the two daughters of Joseph Hart Myers. Proved August 1812 [PROB 11/1536 (PCC)]. D) The will of Joseph Hart Myers, Doctor of Medicine, of John Street, America Square, City of London, 1823, ensures the payment of all debts and expenses from his estate and the payment of any legacy duties, as well as any costs and charges as might arise. He leaves 'all my household goods and furniture, wines and liquors, carriage, plate, linen, china, books, jewellery, paintings and pictures to my wife Leah Hart Myers'. To his 'highly esteemed and valued son-in-law, Isaac Barnet Cohen of Albany Chambers my diamond breast pin to wear in remembrance of me'; ?500 to his nephew John, mourning rings to [his brother-in-law] Phineas Moses Samuel and his wife Catherine; to Mr Moses Hart of Bermondsey Street, Southwark, and his 'servant Sarah Cornwell ?20'; to his dear child Maria 'my Grand piano fforte134 and the sum of ?2,000' (to be paid within four calendar months of his decease). There is a long section relating to the investment of sums from rents, investments and dividends and the setting up of Trusts for his daughter's benefit (to the extent of ?4000), which in case she should marry should not in any way be available to the paying off of any debts such a person might have, but 'to be at her own absolute and entire disposal', to be discharged by her 'receipt'. The intention of the will is to ensure that Maria's inheritance should be substantial and not subject to the depredations of a debt-ridden husband, that it should benefit her and any children she might have, and that there should also be shares in the residual estate for his nephew John (now aged 22) and for Leah's niece. This will was witnessed by John Pickering of Fishmongers Hall and John Davie of 5 Church Street, Trinity Minories, and is signed and dated 30 April 1822. 134 Broadwood piano, no. 6596 of 1815. Surrey History Centre Broadwood Archive 2185/JB/29/8/1 p. 223. 139</page><page sequence="42">Stephen Massil A codicil dated 22 April 1823 reports how, 'Having now maturely weighed the late event of my daughter's marriage', the legacies and disposi? tions in her favour are revoked and instead a yearly annuity of ?200 for her 'use and benefit solely and beyond the controul of her husband', is to be paid half-yearly. Nonetheless, any issue of her marriage are to be supported in the event of her death by a share of the annuity for their education and maintenance. Failing survival of any grandchildren and so forth, Myers, beyond supporting his wife in her viduage, now leaves more to his nephew John and immediate sums to Sarah Samuel, daughter of his brother-in-law Phineas Moses Samuel and his wife Catherine of Christopher Street, Finsbury Square. Not previously mentioned, but presumably one who had helped him to his more mature resolution after the 'event', 'My friend Joshua van Oven, surgeon', is to receive 'as a small memento of my regard my gold watch and chain'. He maintains his prime concern to benefit the children yet to be born, but must have died from his disappointment in his daughter's defection as well as the gout. The Executors are the banker Augustus Robert Hankey of Fenchurch Street, his brother-in-law Jacob Josephs of Cullum Street, and son-in-law Isaac Cohen. Proved on 3 July 1823 [PROBn/1673 (PCC)]. E) The will of Leah Hart Myers of St Marylebone (2 York Terrace, Regent's Park) states that: T desire to be buried in the ground which I have purchased adjoining the grave of my late lamented husband and that a stone be placed over my grave similar in every respect to that ... of my said husband's grave and that my funeral be conducted as near as possible in the same way as his. ...' She refers to her late husband's death in June 1823, leaving sole surviving issue Maria, 'intermarried with Longueville Clarke Esquire, Barrister, now resident in Calcutta'. There is a lengthy passage explicating ways of carrying through her husband's intentions and the ways in which residues of the estate are to be maintained in the interests of her daughter, in a modest way (always to ensure that she has independent use of the funds disbursed in her interest), and the shares for her nephews and nieces. The individual gifts, mourning tokens and wear, care of servants, even benefits for the nurse, and the trans? mission of gifts received in her own generation, make for touching remem? brance of past mentors and social connections of her husband and herself. Her brother Jacob Jacobs ('to him all my books') is one of her executors, as is her son-in-law Isaac Cohen, to whom she leaves 'my silver cup having on it the name of Mrs Benjamin Goldsmid and request he will accept it and have my name put thereon ... To my niece Sarah Cohen my set of cameos and also my long red India shawl which I have heard her admire ... To my nephew John Samuel I bequeath the silver cup presented by my late 140</page><page sequence="43">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment lamented mother with an inscription to her (short-lived) grandson Naphtali Hart Myers [b. 1796] to my nephew Horatio Samuel my square silver snuff box given to me by my brother, and I bequeath to my niece Rebecca Samuel my silver reticule having a round top being the larger of the two ... and I bequeath to each of these my said four nephews and nieces the sum of nine? teen pounds nineteen shillings for a ring or some other trifle to be purchased and kept in remembrance of me and bequeath to my own daugh? ter Maria Roberta Clarke my sapphire brooch set with brilliants to my grandson Myers Clarke my gold ?? and instruments, and to my grandson Joseph Clarke my best silver [sub stamp?] which belonged to my late husband &amp; also give to both my said grandchildren the sum of nineteen guineas and I direct that the legacy duty and several specific and pecuniary legacies herebefore bequeathed to my nephews and nieces and grandchil? dren be paid out of the residue of my estate ... and bequeath to my nephew John Cohen my gold pen given me by his uncle John Samuel and to my grand niece Juliana Cohen I bequeath the silver porcupine given me by her father ...' She also remembers her servants John and Sarah Perry with moneys and effects, and John Turner. She intends to ensure that there are Trusts to manage two-thirds of her estate for the benefit of her grandchildren (and any further issue of her daughter) who survive her daughter's death, and if there be none then the Trusts are to fall to the benefit of her four aforementioned nephews and nieces by her late sister Catherine and her husband Phineas Moses Samuel. Sarah, who is favoured in Joseph Hart Myers's will, has married a Cohen in the interim. Thomas Hankey, Banker of the Fenchurch Street firm, is also named as an Executor and the will is signed on 12 May 1832, witnessed by William Chapman of High Street, Marylebone, and Edmund White of 59 York Terrace, Regent's Park. A codicil dated 14 September 1832 provides for the case of the death of her daughter and failure of her issue 'under the powers given me by the Will of my late husband ... [Then] all she has power to dispose of shall be held in trust for her nephews and nieces in equal shares'. This is followed by two brief codicils, leaving a further ?300 to her brother (16 September) and 'decent mourning for Maria Bradley' who is presumably attending her on her sickbed at this period, 26 September. Proved 17 October 1832 [PROB11/1806 (PCC)]. It is from this will that we learn the name of Maria's husband. He was one of the subscribers to Bolaffey's 'Grammar' (Appendix 1): Loftus Longueville Tottenham Clarke Esqr of Lincoln's Inn (a Cambridge MA, of Trinity Hall, FRS, 1820, then resident at Greenwich Park, Kent). Clarke, a Barrister in the Supreme Court in Calcutta, married Maria Hart Myers in 141</page><page sequence="44">Stephen Massil summer 1822. Bonds of security were signed for both parties by the Revd Thomas Brook Clarke, Vicar of Dinton, of Upper Phillimore Place, and physician Edward Fryer of Charlotte Street at their point of departure for Bengal on 5 July 1822.135 In Calcutta they were to reside firstly at Colvin Ghat, later at 3 Esplanade Row.136 They had six children between 1823 and 1830, but it appears that only two sons survived to adulthood: Charles Myers Longueville Clarke, born 27 June 1826 (baptized 8 August), educated at Harrow School, late of the 101st Royal Bengal Fusiliers, retired in 1871 as Lieutenant-Colonel, settled in London, dying at his residence in Penywern Road, Earls Court, in 1904. He changed his name by deed-poll in 1870 from Longueville Clarke to 'De Longueville'.137 Their second surviv? ing son, Joseph Cuthbert Longueville Clarke, was born on 17 June 1827 and died, a Captain, in the Indian Mutiny, 1857.138 Maria managed to arrange a return to London, by taking out a bond for her journey on 29 June 1832, in time to see her mother before she died.139 The story of Joseph Hart Myer's efforts to forestall in America Square such events as were to be played out in Henry James's Washington Square, and his care to secure his daughter's fortune from a debt-ridden husband, is undercut by the fact that Longueville Clarke, as an undergraduate at Trinity Hall, had a reputation as a hard-working student and is quoted as saying 'I have been cut by almost everyone because I won't get drunk or gamble'. He went so far as to form a club of'hard-reading' men who met twice a week to eat oysters, cold beef and pie.140 In Calcutta, however, he figures in Macaulay's jaundiced correspondence as 'Mr. Longueville Clarke, who aspires to be the O'Connell of Calcutta ... [among] the lawyers here a miserable set of fellows ? most of them sots and debauchees, perpet? ually engaged in discreditable quarrels, and hardly ever admitted into good society. Turton's character is blasted ... the cleverest amongst them. Next to Turton is Longueville Clark. I suppose that I need say no more.'141 Professionally he appears to have been esteemed by his colleagues, and he 135 IOR Refs: Z/o/i/o: Miscellaneous Bonds 3517 and 3518. 136 A. G. Roussac, Calcutta Directory, 1837, (Calcutta: 1857) pt. IX, p. 216. 137 Private communication from the Archivist of Harrow School. She reports an obituary in The Times, 3 June 1904, p. 9. 138 The military registration records relating to the two brothers are to be found at the British Library IOR/L/MIL/9/211/1/29-37 1952056 and 38-44 1952056. 139 IORRef: Z/o/i/11: Miscellaneous Bonds 8598. 140 Robert Kenny, This College-studded Marsh: A Humorous History of the Cambridge Colleges (Cambridge 1990). His Cambridge career is recorded in J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses. A biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to iqoo, Part II, 1940. 141 Thomas Pinney (ed.) The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay (Cambridge 1974-81) 3:1834-41, 177. Letter dated Calcutta, 25 July 1836, to Thomas Flower Ellis. 142</page><page sequence="45">Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment was active in establishing the amenities of libraries, Medcalfe Hall, and the ice-house of Calcutta. His death is recorded at the Royal Society's Anniversary Meeting of November 1863.142 This is a long way from Soane and his two books of Hebrew grammar. It is also a long way from the birth of Joseph Hart Myers in New York in 1758 to the death of his grandson in Oudh in 1857, as recorded in the Memorial at Harrow School - 'Sacred to the memory of Joseph C. Longueville Clarke Lieut in the 67th Bengal Native Infantry &amp; 2nd in Command of the 3rd Oude Infantry who was murdered by the mutineers during the Indian Revolt of 1857 at the age of 28 yrs.' 142 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 13 (1863) 21. 143</page></plain_text>