Talk:The Grey Wig (collection)

Information about this edition
Edition:	New York & London: The Macmillan Company, 1903.
Source:	https://archive.org/details/greywigstoriesno00zang and Project Gutenberg (first 3 stories excepted)
Contributor(s):
Level of progress:
Notes:	Thanks to "Suzanne Shell, M. M. Moffet, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)" (May be a slightly different ed, since there are minor changes.
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Reviews

• The Outlook, 21 March 1903: Some of these tales are very short; one or two run to the length of the novelette. Most of them relate more or less directly to the social problems of womankind. Mr. Zangwill always writes cleverly, but not always does he have a story worth telling. Here he is as far as possible from dealing with the kind of subjects which made "The King of Schnorrers" and "The Children of the Ghetto" so delightful, but while one may prefer that earlier work, it is impossible not to recognize ability and versatility in some of these stories.

• The Bookman, May 1903: The incessant interplay of fun and melancholy which is one of the salient characteristics of the genius of Israel Zangwill finds personified reflection in the heroine of the "Serio-Comic Governess," the closing novelette in his latest volume, The Grey Wig. Zangwill could say with Heine that he "cannot speak of his own pain without the thing becoming ludicrous," and he could say with his serio-comic governess that life is to him "too horribly amusing."

While at the theatre the governess found the melodrama she was seeing "killingly comic as soon as she understood that it was serious," and "it was not till a comic opera came along that she was able to take the theatre seriously." This is precisely the way the author seems to be impressed by what is going on on the stage of life. He cannot paint the ludicrous without tinging it with sadness—with the deep-rooted sadness of the Jewish race; nor can he give vent to his human sympathies without having the tragic note drowned in the uncontrollable rush of his humour. Sometimes excellent literature will thus be injured by the impetuous, overbearing flow of his wit. When the art of creating lifelike images is coupled with the gift of being unremittingly clever, an occasional falling out between the two Muses is only too natural. Sometimes an exquisite piece of dialogue is turned into burlesque, marring the artistic illusion of the entire scene by the epigrammatic genius of the author forcing a Zangwill joke into the mouth of a character that is distinctly not a Zangwill. There are not many Zangwills in this world of ours, at any rate, and the brilliancy which adorns the speech of his creations is sometimes suggestive of the effulgence of a woman whose manner of wearing her diamonds betrays the fact that they are not hers.

The title story of the collection under review, which is also one of the best the author has given us, suffers from this discrepancy between character and diction in several notable instances. This is especially to be regretted, because the story is brimful of unspoken comedy of the higher order; of that sort of mirth which is above the mere coincidence of sound, which cannot and need not be put in the form of words because it springs from the inherent meaning of the situation. In this respect the underlying situation of The Grey Wig is one of the strongest Zangwill has conceived since his inimitable King of Schnorers established his place in literature as "easily the wittiest Jew after Heine," as Mr. Howells has put it. And yet, while the tale is full of irresistible fun, the human interest which gives it vitality is touching in the highest degree. If, like Heine, Zangwill is a painter of "laughing tears," he equally resembles the German poet in the force with which he depicts the tearful laughter of the human comedy; and in this sense The Grey Wig is a little masterpiece.

It must be owned, too, that while the epigrammatic repartee which bears the name of unepigrammatic persons may interfere with the artistic effect of the individual passages in which it occurs, the vividness of the general picture remains undimmed. The two impecunious Frenchwomen who have grown grey and decrepit under their brown wigs, and who are now pinching and scrimping and putting themselves into all sorts of tragicomic positions in their effort to save up the price of a grey wig, which they are to wear by turns, are convincing, marvellously individualised living creatures. The story palpitates with life and, upon a whole, is instinct with reality.

What has here been said as to the occasional piece of typically Zangwillian humour which finds its way into the speech of people who are not meant to be humorous has no bearing upon the last story in the volume. The serio-comic governess, who was created in the image of her Maker, is certainly intended to be bubbling over with cleverness and felicity of expression. So the shower of epigram and "fine writing" which comes from her lips is in perfect harmony with the fundamental traits of the whole character. Her prayer, which is the result of one of those moods of hers when she pays for "all this fever and gaiety by fits of the blackest melancholy," is in a certain respect as characteristic of herself as it is of her author and of Heinrich Heine:

. . .Oh, Holy Mother of God! . . . You will say cling to the cross, but is not my whole life also a crucifixion? I am rent in twain. . . . Oh, Holy Mother, make me at one with myself. Send me the child's heart and I will light a hundred candles to you. Or do you now prefer electricity? Oh, Maria mavourneen, I cannot pray to you, for there is a mocking devil within me and you will not cast him out.

It is this mocking devil whose special predilection is the direction of epigram which sometimes spoils a bit of the most lifelike dialogue in Zangwill's works.

The volume contains the author's newest and oldest stories, including—"for the sake of uniformity of edition," so we are told in brief prefatory note—two novelettes that have seen the light before, but are now out of print. Of these The Big Bow Mystery is a fair-sized novel, in fact, and has had quite a large circulation on both sides of the water.

The other short stories in the collection are each as full of the brilliancy and the force of delineation which marks everything Zangwill does.

Abraham Cahan.