In his January 1927 review "Charleston, Hey! Hey!" Eliot says of
John Rodker that he is "up to the minute, if anyone is; we feel sure
that he knows all about hormones, W. H. R. Rivers, and the Mongol in
our midst." Later that year, in a September letter to Bonamy
Dobree, he jokes that he is preparing a little book entitled _The
Bolovian in Our Midst_, "proving that there was Bolovian blood in
some of the leading figures of the day." (The latter description is
Robert Crawford's; I have not seen the letter in question).
I know I have seen this phrase ("the Mongol in our midst") before,
and I would bet it has to do with the racist rhetoric of that branch
of modern anthropology that associated more "primitive" cultures with
evolutionary inferiority and prattled about degeneration, but I
can't find the references anywhere. Can anyone refresh my memory?
Who popularized the phrase "the Mongol in our midst"?
Thanks in advance,
Greg
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Greg Foster | "Fine art is the refinement,
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