Judah Benjamin (was Disraeli Quote on PQHN)

[Stephen Goranson]

Poore, vol. 1, pages 438/439:

Senator Judah Peter Benjamin was a dapper little gentleman, with a small
waist, who was always faultlessly dressed, and who was one of the hardest
working members of the Senate. born a British subject on one of the West India
[sic] Islands, he became a citizen of the /[439] United States by domicile
very early in life. His boyhood was spent in a small fruit-shop kept by his
father at Charleston, but wealthy Hebrews aided him in obtaining an education,
and his indomitable will enabled him in due time to enter upon the practice of
law at New Orleans, There, where nearly all legal proceedings were then
duplicated in French and English, his perfect familiarity with both languages,
with his ability and eloquence, soon enabled him to amass a fortune. He
married a Gentile, but he was always satistied with the Hebrew faith. One day
when a Senator of German extraction taunted him with being a Jew, he said, in
his silvery tones: "The gentleman will please remember that when his half-
civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in the forests of Silesia, mine
were the princes of the earth." The Senate was quite effectually silenced.

best,
Stephen Goranson


Quoting Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Disraeli Quote on PQHN
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
> > The earliest mention I've found on Proquest for the Judah Benjamin story
> > is in a New York Times "Queries and Answers" column of July 10, 1921, in a
> > response to a query about the Disraeli quote.  An earlier source is given
> > for the Judah Benjamin version: "Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the
> > National Metropolis" by Benjamin Perley Poore (Philadelphia, 1886).
>
> Bartlett's gives the Poore reference, but I have looked at that book and
> am unable to find it there.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
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> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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