character--the story of a young painter, Matt Strang, who comes from
Nova Scotia to London, self-centered, afire with ambition, but it is
not till, broken by disillusion and failure, he withdraws from the
babble and dazzle of art circles and social swaggerings, returns to
the obscurity of his own home and subserviates his hopes to his wife’s
happiness that he finds himself and is able to do the great work he had
dreamt of doing. There is more of the ironic, satirical Zangwill in
“The Mantle of Elijah”; he places his scenes in the days of Palmerston,
but drives home a big-minded gospel that is as badly needed in the
politics of these days as it was then. Broser, a strong, self-confident
political leader, rises to power by breaking his promises and changing
his convictions as often as necessary and is acclaimed the savior of
his country, but he has a wife, Allegra, whose conscience is not so
accommodating, who cannot abandon her principles whenever he abandons
his, and in the hour of his triumph she leaves him, to devote herself
to working for the cause that, in the interests of his career, he had
betrayed.
Nearly twenty years later Zangwill gave us “Jinny the Carrier,” a very
charming story of mid-Victorian life and character in rural Essex;
but his finest, most memorable work in fiction has been done as the
interpreter of his own people. This he is in “Children of the Ghetto,”
in the whimsical grotesque, broadly and grimly humorous tales of “The
King of Schnorrers,” that glorious Hebrew mendicant Manasseh Bueno
Barzillai Azevedo da Costa, and in the masterly little stories of light
and shadow that make up the “Ghetto Tragedies” and “Ghetto Comedies.”
He has his unique place in letters as the novelist of London’s modern
Jewry. Aldgate, Whitechapel, Hoxton, Dalston, all the roads and byways,
mean lanes and squalid squares there and thereabouts are a world large
and varied and crowded enough for his purposes. His pride of race glows
as surely in such stories of the children of his fancy, the poor of the
Ghetto, their profoundly simple piety, their patience, self-sacrifice,
humble endurance, human kindness, as in his subtle studies of those
real, yet scarcely more real in seeming, “Dreamers of the Ghetto,”
Heine, Lasalle, Spinoza, and other such seers and prophets of
latter-day Israel. But he is too much of an artist to suppress anything
of the truth, and dealing with his own people, actual or imaginary, he
shows them starkly as they are, their vices as well as their virtues,
their avarice, meanness, hypocrisies, as well as their generosity and
loyalties. He is steeped in the Jewish tradition, and fills in the
atmosphere and intimate detail of his pictures with most meticulous
realism; he is ready enough to ridicule obsolete racial bigotries
and ancient customs that have lost their meaning, but is sensitively
reverent to the beauty and mystic significance of all old ceremonies
and practices that still embody the essential spirit of the faith.
Nowhere has the soul of the London Jew (and the rich Jew who lives
in the West has not been overlooked) been more sympathetically or
impartially unveiled than in Zangwill’s novel and tales of the Ghetto.
His tragedies are touched with comedy, his comedies with tragedy; if
I were limited to three of his short stories, I would name “They that
Sit in Darkness,” “Transitional” and “To Die in Jerusalem,” for their
delicate art and simple directness of narrative, among the greatest in
the language.
How many plays Zangwill has written altogether I do not know; but he
began in 1892 with “Six Persons,” a comedy, and in the last decade or
so has written more plays than stories. “Merely Mary Ann,” a tale of a
quaint little lodging-house slavey, came out first as a short novel,
then was adapted to the stage and had a popular success in both forms.
He dramatized “Children of the Ghetto”; and “Jinny the Carrier” was
a domestic drama before it was a novel. But his bigger work in this
kind is “The Melting Pot,” “The War God,” “The Next Religion,” “The
Forcing House” and “The Cockpit.” Each of them is inspired with a high
and serious purpose. The first is a moving plea for race-fusion: the
Jews are not a nation but a race; they become absorbed into the nation
where they make their home, and you are shown how David Quixano, in
America, “God’s crucible, where all the races of Europe are melting and
re-forming,” is moulded into a patriotic American with a passionate
ideal of freedom. “The War God,” with its appeal for international
goodwill and its scathing indictment of the crime and folly of war
is a prophetic commentary on much that has befallen the world since
1912; “The Forcing House” is a tragi-comedy of revolution, which has
its parallel in Bolshevik Russia; “The Cockpit” is the tragi-comedy,
edged at times with bitterest satire, of the restoration of a Queen
who, bent on ruling by love, is thwarted and brought to disaster by her
ministers, who have a family likeness to ministers everywhere; and “The
War God” (1911) was recognized as the noblest, most impressive drama
that had been seen on the London stage for years.
If Zangwill’s road has sometimes been difficult, one reason is that
he has never gone with the crowd, never been afraid to go against the
view of the majority. More than once he has got himself into trouble
through championing unpopular causes. When it needed courage to come
out openly in favor of Woman’s Suffrage, he supported it in the press
and on the platform; for he is as witty and can be as devastating with
his tongue as with his pen. And with all these activities he has found
time to do a lot of spade work as President of the International Jewish
Territorial Organization, which aims at establishing Jewish Colonies
wherever land can be found for them, and time to give practical service
in Leagues and Committees that are doing what is possible to build up
the peace and universal brotherhood that politicians are too busy to do
more than talk about. From which you may take it that he does not put
all his sympathies into the printed page, does not write one way and
live another, but that his books and his life are of a piece, and if
you know them you know him.
INDEX
A
Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 103
_Ariel_, 313
Austen, Jane, 33, 273
B
Ballantyne, R. M., 103
Barr, Robert, 315
Barrie, Sir James, 153, 235, 243
Bateman, Miss Isabel, 208
Bateman, Leah, 183
“Beachcomber,” 75
Beardsley, Aubrey, 153
Beaumont and Fletcher, 13
_Beeton’s Annual_, 86
_Belgravia_, 86
Bell, J. J., 243
Bell, Dr. Joseph, 86
Belloc, Hilaire, 13, 19, 244
Belloc-Lowndes, Mrs., 274
Bennett, Arnold, 23-29, 104, 273
Benson, Stella, 274
Beresford, J. D., 33-39, 44
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 254
Blake, William, 67, 193
Blomfield, Sir Arthur, 4
_Bookman_, 75
Bottome, Phyllis, 274
Braddon, Miss, 223, 225
Brontë, Charlotte, 76, 273, 277
Brown, T. E., 74
Browning, 8, 113, 255
Buchan, John, 43-50
Bunyan, John, 78
Burgin, G. B., 316
Burke, Thomas, 114
Burns, Robert, 43
Byrne, Donn, 53
Byron, 3, 83
_Bystander_, 238
C
Caine, Sir Hall, 263
Carlyle, Thomas, 99
Clare, John, 66
Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 123, 274
Crabbe, George, 33
Crackanthorpe, Hubert, 123
Chamberlain, Austin, 114
_Chambers’s Journal_, 4
Chaucer, 255
Chesterton, Cecil, 18
Chesterton, G. K., 13, 14, 167, 235, 244
Cholmondeley, Mary, 274
Coleridge, 73, 93
Collins, Arthur, 237
Collins, Wilkie, 263, 264, 266
Colmore, George, 274
Compton, Edward, 183
Compton, G. C., 183
Conrad, Joseph, 273
_Cornhill Magazine_, 76, 87
Cowen, Louis, 314
Crashaw, 33
D
_Daily Graphic_, 136
_Daily Mail_, 67, 68
Danby, Frank, 223
Dane, Clemence, 274
Daniel, Samuel, 109
Dark, Sidney, 305
Darwin, 309
Davies, W. H., 63-69, 255
de la Mare, Walter, 73-80, 95, 255
de Mattos, Texiera, 176
De Morgan, William, 186, 268, 279
Dickens, 8, 66, 113, 154, 157, 158, 167, 186, 204, 263, 273, 284, 297
Disraeli, Benjamin, 178, 208, 223
Donne, 33
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 83-89
Doyle, John, 85
Doyle, Richard, 86
Drinkwater, John, 93-99
Dudeney, Mrs. Henry, 274
E
Edalji, George, 84
Egerton, George, 123
Eliot, George, 5, 273
_English Review_, 76
Erckmann-Chatrian, 13
Evans, C. S., 44
Eyles, M. Leonora, 274
F
Farnol, Jeffery, 103-109
Fielding, Henry, 273
Findlater, Mary and Jane, 274
FitzGerald, Edward, 193
France, Anatole, 164
Frankau, Gilbert, 223
Freud, Professor, 189
G
Galsworthy, John, 113-119, 274
George, W. L., 297
Gibson, W. W., 96, 193, 195
Gissing, George, 123, 284, 288, 289
Goldring, Douglas, 297
Goldsmith, 33
Gosse, Edmund, 274
Grahame, Kenneth, 44
Grand, Sarah, 274
_Granta_, 244
Greenwood, Frederick, 5
H
Haggard, Sir Rider, 123
Hammerton, J. A., 314
Hardy, Thomas, 3-10, 73, 193, 194, 195, 235, 263, 273
Harraden, Beatrice, 274
Harris, Augustus, 236, 237
Hawkins, Sir Anthony Hope, 123-129
Hawley, Hughson, 104
Hay, Ian, 243
Henley, W. E., 153
Herbert, George, 33
Herrick, 33, 74
Hodder-Williams, Sir Ernest, 44
Holland, Clive, 224
Howard, Keble, 173, 174
Hunt, Violet, 274
Hutchinson, A. S. M., 133-139
I
_Idler, The_, 315
Ingram, Roger, 44
J
James, Henry, 53, 223, 303
Jameson, Storm, 274
Jenkins, Herbert, 44
Jerome, J. K., 127, 315
Jerrold, Douglas, 123
Joyce, James, 279
K
Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 143-150, 274
Keats, 3, 8, 74, 77, 193
Kingsley, Charles, 33
Kipling, Rudyard, 15, 123, 153-159, 193, 195, 196
Knoblauch, Edward, 29
L
Lamb, Charles, 74
Lang, Andrew, 87, 206
Lawrence, C. E., 44
Le Galliene, Richard, 53
Locke, W. J., 163-169, 177, 235
Lucas, E. V., 244
Lynd, Robert, 75
Lyons, A. Neil, 235
Lytton, Lord, 207
M
Macaulay, Lord, 83, 309
Macaulay, Rose, 274
McKenna, Stephen, 173-179
Mackenzie, Compton, 183-189, 297
Malet, Lucas, 274
Mann, Mary E., 274
Markino, Yoshio, 104
Marlowe, Christopher, 255
Marvell, Andrew, 213
Masefield, John, 193-200, 255
Mason, A. E. W., 203-209
Matz, B. W., 44
Maugham, W. S., 213-219
Maxwell, John, 224
Maxwell, W. B., 223-229
Meredith, George, 253, 263, 297
Merrick, Leonard, 233-239
Methuen, Sir Algernon, 44
Meynell, Viola, 274
Milne, A. A., 243
Milner, Lord, 46
Moore, George, 114, 123
Mordaunt, Elinor, 274
Morris, William, 99
Morrison, Arthur, 123, 217
Munro, Neil, 235, 243
N
Nelson, Thomas & Sons, 43
Newman, Cardinal, 15
Noyes, Alfred, 253-259
O
Onions, Oliver, 123
Oppenheim, E. Phillips, 263-269
P
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 308
Palmer, Cecil, 44
Parker, Sir Gilbert, 123
Paston, George, 183
Payn, James, 87, 267
_Pearson’s Magazine_, 135, 136
Phelps, Dr. Lyon, 275, 277
Phillips, F. C., 237
Poe, 76
Pope, Alexander, 193
Priestly, Joseph, 14
Pugh, Edwin, 123, 217
_Punch_, 34, 86, 134, 244, 245, 249, 313
R
_Rapid Review_, 135
Reid, Mayne, 103
Richards, Grant, 225
Richardson, Dorothy, 274, 279
Ridge, W. Pett, 123, 217
Robins, Elizabeth, 123
_Royal Magazine_, 135
S
Sadleir, Michael, 44, 273
Sassoon, Siegfried, 193
Scott, Mrs. C. A. Dawson, 274
Scott, Dixon, 194
Scott, Sir Walter, 103
_Scraps_, 135
Shakespeare, 97, 159, 183
Shaw, G. Bernard, 68, 153, 223
Sheridan, R. B., 207
Sidgwick, Ethel, 274
Sims, G. R., 237
Sinclair, May, 273-279
Slater, Oscar, 84
Smith, Adam, 43
Smith, Alexander, 94
Smith, Sydney, 83
Smith, W. H. & Son, 34
_Society_, 313
_Spectator, The_, 47
Spender, J. A., 74
Spenser, Edmund, 74
Squire, J. C., 274
Starr, Meredith, 297
Stern, G. B., 274
Sterne, Lawrence, 33
Stevenson, R. L., 103, 123, 153, 155
Swift, 17, 77, 243, 244
Swinburne, 100, 255, 256
Swinnerton, Frank, 44, 283-289
Symonds, John Addington, 183
T
_Temple Bar_, 87
Tennyson, 8, 74, 113, 193, 194, 255
Thackeray, 8, 113, 186, 188, 273, 297
Thomas, Edward, 78, 79
_Times Literary Supplement_, 75
_To-day_, 315
Trollope, Anthony, 23, 113, 117, 188, 223, 296-298
Trollope, Frances, 223
W
Walpole, Horace, 299
Walpole, Hugh, 293-299
Watson, Frederick, 44
Watson, Sir William, 255
Watt, A. P., 238
Waugh, Alec, 44
Waugh, Arthur, 44
Webb, Mary, 224
Webling, Peggy, 274
Wells, H. G., 123, 153, 235, 274, 288, 303-310
West, Rebecca, 274
_Westminster Gazette_, 35, 75
Weyman, Stanley, 103, 114, 124, 125
Whitman, Walt, 256
Wilde, Oscar, 153, 217
Willcocks, M. P., 274
Woolf, Virginia, 274
Wordsworth, 69, 76, 193
Wyllarde, Dolf, 274
Y
Young, Edward, 33
Z
Zangwill, I., 313-319
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 107: “a like wizard” changed to “like a wizard”
Page 137: “old ideals of feminity” changed to “old ideals of femininity”
Page 159: “where ordinnary folks” changed to “where ordinary folks”
Page 259: “under their miscroscopes” changed to “under their
microscopes”
Page 278: “short shory” changed to “short story”
Page 285: “critized each others” changed to “criticized each other’s”
Page 286: “this bouyant” changed to “this buoyant”
Page 295: “the successsive books” changed to “the successive books”