BOOKS
325
financial delegation). Why does Ravelstein choose this apparently
unlikely model?
Well, there's the question of the Jews-literally the Jews, meaning the
men who headed both the French and the German financial delegations,
the former the villain and the latter the hero of Keynes's account of the
negotiations. Then, the Jews as European scapegoats, available for par–
ody and vicious assault by the assembled leaders, especially, as Ravel–
stein likes to point out, Lloyd George (Eric Partridge traces the
expression "He's a real pisser" to this remark of Clemenceau's about
Lloyd George:
"Ah, si je pouvais pisser comme il parle.").
And finally
the Jews as modern history's untouchables. All of these things, especially
the last, matter a great deal to Ravelstein and Chick as they cast an
assessing eye on the dour end of an astonishing century, a century that,
Ravelstein says, has universally declared that Jews have no right to live.
Athens and Jerusalem are the points of reference for Ravelstein's life,
and as he approaches death Jerusalem grows in importance. Still, I don't
think any of this is the main reason for invoking Keynes .
Keynes's memoir begins by laying out the problem confronting the
officials engaged in the Peace Conference. The Prime Minister, Lloyd
George, intended to do all of the actual negotiations himself, without
interference from any of his officials. Consequently, as Keynes tells it, no
one was quite certain what if anything was happening or even when the
conference would begin. But you couldn't wait too long because "the
rooms in the Hotel Majestic were reputed to be of unequal excellence,
and he who arrived last might fare worst."
When I eventually reached Paris early in January
1919,
it was as I
had expected, and no one yet knew what the Conference was doing
or whether it had started. But the peculiar atmosphere and routine
of the Majestic were already compounded and established, the typ–
ists drank their tea in the lounge, the dining-room diners had dis–
tinguished themselves from the restaurant diners, the security
officers from Scotland Yard burnt such of the waste paper as the
French charwomen had no use for, much factitious work circulated
in red boxes, and the feverish, persistent and boring gossip of that
hellish place had already developed in full measure the peculiar
flavour of smallness, cynicism, self-importance and bored excite–
ment that it was never to lose.
This is the model. The main point, I gather, is that there can't be a
better example of prose as the stamp of a certain cultural and world
