Here in Bad Homburg, Germany, Eliot would receive inspiration for a scene in the beginning of Daniel Deronda where Daniel sees Gwendolen recklessly gambling at a Continental spa. In 1872, Eliot took a trip to the “German Spa of Bad Homburg” and witnessed a similar situation involving Lord Byron’s great-niece losing heavily while gambling, thus giving her the idea for the scene in the novel. It is interesting to discover more how these themes of gambling correlate to Eliot’s perspective of Jews. It appears that, for Eliot, “Jews came to represent the eternal moral judges of human failings.” Understanding Eliot’s upbringing and interests plays a vital role in understanding the storylines and themes she incorporates into her novels, such as in Daniel Deronda. She took a deep interest in religion particularly as an “intellectual and cultural discourse” mostly after losing her own faith, with a focus on Jewish history.
I was fascinated with a bit of the history of gambling during the Victorian Era, and came across an article written by J. Jeffrey Franklin, which actually referenced another one of Eliot’s novels, Middlemarch. There is a theme coursing through both Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch (as well as a lot of other Victorian literature at this time) offering the idea that “the discourse of money to be a primary vehicle for the progressive or liberal ideologies of the ascending middle class” (Franklin 899). Particularly in regards to Eliot’s trip to Germany, it was interesting to find that Germany opened its first casino around the 1760s, but that the idea of a “gambling club” (Franklin 919) didn’t really become fashionable until about the early 1860s. This really shows that, while it took a little while to catch on, gambling would become a major social event. Below is a picture of gambling spa in Bad Homburg around the time that Eliot would have visited.
The Gambling Table of the Bad Homburg Casino, Germany
Works Cited:
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Modern Library, 2002.
Franklin, J. Jeffrey. “The Victorian Discourse of Gambling: Speculations on Middlemarch and the Duke's Children.” ELH, vol. 61, no. 4, 1994, pp. 899–921. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2873363. Accessed 19 Apr. 2021.
Image Cited:
Icas94, De Agostini /. “The Gambling Table of the Bad Homburg Casino, Germany.” Agefotostock, 10 Dec. 2018, www.agefotostock.com/age/en/details-photo/the-gambling-table-of-the-bad….