Society of Virtue at Rome, The.
An Emily Faithfull Publication,
With Significant Jewish Content
[Faithfull, Emily]. Goldschmidt, M. The Society of Virtue at Rome… Reprinted from the “Victoria Magazine.” London: Emily Faithfull, Victoria Press, 1868.
8vo.; black and white frontispiece illustration of gathering of men, original tissue guard offset but present; pages 1-16 lightly, evenly yellowed, others fresh and bright; purple cloth flexible boards, stamped in black; spine with white handwritten title typical of an ex-library copy (but this is not indicated elsewhere); covers darkened. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; previously published in Faithfull’s Victoria magazine. Apparently extremely scarce: the Library of Congress has no copy, nor any record of any other books by the same author.
An interesting effort which combines feminism (in the form of Emily Faithfull and her Victoria magazine, in which a version of this text first appeared, and her Office for the Employment of Women, which is listed on the colophon page as the printer of this volume) with the subject of Judaism (which takes up a chapter in the book, to be discussed below). The Society of Virtue at Rome… is an idiosyncratic memoir of a salon of male and female philosophers and social scientists who shared an interest in the classics, ancient philosophy, and Hegelian thought. From the first sentence Goldschmidt takes great pains to distinguish The Society of Virtue at Rome from a German society with a similar name which purportedly “contributed to the overthrow of Napoleon”; according to Goldschmidt, the society that is the subject of this book “is, was, and has ever been a total stranger to politics” (Introduction, p. B).
Despite these protestations, there were some implicitly political aspects of The Society, including its inclusion of both women and non-Christians as members in defiance of contrarian social pressure. Goldschmidt devotes a chapter entitled “Rabbi Akiba” to the participation of Jews in the group, discussing an individual Jewish member of The Society and Jewish legends, a Jew’s place in modern society, and other contemporary issues. In part:
About a particular Jewish member:
Among the members of The Society was a Danish poet, a Jew. As in the social intercourse of Danish life no difference, as a rule, is felt between Jew and Christian, and as the poet had the same intellectual interests, spoke the same language, evinced the same feelings as his countrymen, the artists at Rome, no one ever seemed, with regard to him, to think of any difference of creed or race, although the thought, perhaps, was not always far from the mind… (p. 53)
In telling the story of Rabbi Akiba, Goldschmidt describes the Jews’ historic and modern-day plight:
…From the fall of Bethan, the Jews not only entirely lost their country, but all over the Roman empire they were considered a dangerous, seditious tribe, incapable of becoming faithful citizens, deserving only harsh and brutal treatment. No people ever clung with greater fondness and tenacity to its native soil, and no people was ever more violently torn from it and more fearfully trodden under foot… (p. 61)
As he or she does not look up in any of the usual sources, little is known about the author, M. Goldschmidt, besides his/her previous work listed on the title page. These titles (The Jew of Denmark, and Homeless, no dates given) confirm the author’s continued interest in Judaic history and in the plight of the underclass. These interests are amply represented in The Society of Virtue at Rome…, a scarce and eccentric book well worth reading as an item in the feminist Judaica canon.
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