The Jewish question
Sir: Frederic Raphael, in his ranting review of Bryan Cheyette's study of anti-Semitism in English literature, reveals something of his own ignorance of both topics (Books, 26 February). Denouncing pre-1945 authors who ascribed to the Jews a fiendish plot to destroy civilisation as they knew it, he includes a vindictive gibe at John Buchan, whom he cites as claiming that major Euro- pean powers were mysteriously useless against 'a little white-faced Jew in a bathchair with an eye just like a rattlesnake' (hats off to John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir).
It is certain that Raphael cannot have read Buchan, or he would have known the context from which the quotation is drawn. The passage is correctly quoted from the first chapter of The Thirty-Nine Steps, when the American secret agent Scudder reveals his grand conspiracy theory to Richard Hannay. Thus, we note at the outset that the words are not those of John Buchan, but of a subsidiary character in his novel, who is murdered a dozen pages later. Though no reason exists for supposing that Buchan identified himself with the hero of the novel, it is worth noting too that Han- nay is sceptical of Scudder's extravagant
LETTERS
claim: 'I could not help saying that his Jew- anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.'
Nikolai Tolstoy
Court Close, Southmoor near Abingdon Berkshire
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