Public German, Private Jew: The Secret Identity of Berthold Lindau in Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes

In his 1909 bibliographical preface to A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells calls the novel his "most vital work." In the expanded "Autobiographical" preface, he confesses "a tenderness for [Berthold Lindau] which I feel for no other in this book" and a reverence for what he calls the character's "inherent nobleness."¹ George Arms calls Lindau "the spokesman" for many of Howells' views² while Everett Carter notes how Howells indicated that Lindau should be seen as "almost the protagonist."³ Obviously, there can be little dispute about Lindau's importance in the novel or his place in the author's affections. Critics, however, seem divided among those who, like Arms, view him as a spokesman for Howells and others who consider him a violent revolutionary. I believe that Lindau's anarchistic qualities have been vastly overstated, mostly because they echo the other characters' fear of immigrants. Moreover, based on a careful reading of the text and the long forgotten illustrations from the novel's earliest printings, I will explore the clues, both coded and explicit, that establish Lindau's specifically Jewish identity and discuss some of the reasons Howells disguised this point in the text. The picture of Lindau that emerges has interesting implications for the ways the novel is traditionally read as well as offering some new perspectives on Howells' relationships with Jews.

Generally speaking, criticism of Lindau has fallen along three distinct lines of inquiry: those who see him as a spokesman for Howells' socialism,⁴ those who view him as a source of parody,⁵ and others who see him as an advocate of violence.⁶ However, I think there is another dimension to explore in regard to Lindau's function in the novel: the voice of the immigrant and, more significantly—and as the serial illustrations show most explicitly—Howells intended Lindau to be Jewish at the same time he deliberately sought to avoid attaching any specific religion to Lindau, possibly as a result of the criticism he received regarding the serial publication of The Rise of Silas Lapham.

As noted by Arms and others, the title comes from Shakespeare's King John and alludes to what Arms calls "the invaders":

And all the unsettled humors of the land,Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntariesWith ladies faces and fierce dragons' spleens,Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,To make a hazard of new fortunes here.In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spiritsThan now the English bottoms have waft o'erDid never float upon the swelling tideTo do offence and scathe in Christendom.⁷

As Arms says, "Humorously the title alludes to the removal of the Marches from Boston to New York. More sardonically, it points to Dryfoos as a nouveau riche and to the economic exploitation of America insofar as it lived in him."⁸ At the same time, however, the title points to the vast numbers of immigrants making their ways across the Atlantic in unprecedented numbers in the 1880s, many of them from Germany. Lindau himself is a "fiery voluntary" from the Revolutions of 1848, whose proudly borne birthright could be his accent and immigrant status. Although he is mocked by Fulkerson and misunderstood by Mrs. March, more than any other character Lindau isn't afraid to speak his mind. In fact, his speech is directly responsible for most of the significant action of the novel. I see Lindau as giving voice to all the "foreign faces and tongues" (299) that prevail in Greenwich Village and elsewhere throughout the city as he is the only immigrant with any significant role. Further, as we will see later, when Lindau "does offence" to Dryfoos at the dinner party, Dryfoos places it in terms that show it is not Lindau's politics as much as it is the fact that he is an immigrant. More importantly, Dryfoos sees that offence as one done to Christianity. That New York and indeed the United States are vastly Christian is exemplified throughout...