PROFESSIONAL TIPS– Israel Zangwill

by Leigh Lundin

I finally got around to an often overlooked classic, The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (downloadable here or here). The title comes from its setting in Bow, England, not the American West or a cosy of Little Bo Peep in a large pink ribbon. Perhaps the story might have been more clearly titled Bow’s Big Mystery, but I won’t attempt to match wits with Israel Zangwill, who wields an abundance. He steeps his writing in sly observations and asides. He often writes obliquely like Chaucer, saying one thing while implying something very different. You see a hint of his humor when he defends using William Gladstone as a character in the story on the grounds that Gladstone is "largely mythical."

Like many other authors of the era, Zangwill wrote stories in installments for newspapers and magazines. As you’ll note, he claims to eliminate suspects one by one as readers try to deduce the guilty party, finally settling upon the last remaining character readers have yet to guess. (I wondered if the writers of Twin Peaks took him seriously.)

In the mechanics of writing, Zangwill barely gives a nod to paragraphs, as if writing so intently, he occasionally remembers to break for a paragraph when he dips his pen in the inkwell. But he’s funny and he gives the essential writing tip for mystery writers.

Of Murders and Mysteries by Israel Zangwill

As this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or favor. The Big Bow Mystery seems to me an excellent murder story, as murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it contains more humor and character creation than the best. Indeed, the humor is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create. Humor is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a somber note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humors, and mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic.

The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy.

Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the dénouement is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been robbed of his breath under false pretenses. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new circumstance upon his reader at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard.

The only person who has ever solved The Big Bow Mystery is myself. This is not paradox but plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later, during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper, anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him with a more original piece of fiction.

I might have refused, but there was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work seriously, though the Morning Post subsequently said the skit was too labored, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say something by way of acknowledgement.

Thereupon I wrote a letter to the paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:

To the Editor of The Star. Sir: Now that The Big Bow Mystery is solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your readers who have favored him with their kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask this more especially because great credit is due to them for enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself.

When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of the characters got ticked off as innocent— all except one, and I had no option but to make that character the murderer.

I was very sorry to do this, as I rather liked that particular person, but when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do? You can’t let anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen the course most consistent with the dignity of my profession.

Had I not been impelled by this consideration I should certainly have brought in a verdict against Mrs. Drabdump, as recommended by the reader who said that, judging by the illustration in The Star, she must be at least seven feet high, and, therefore, could easily have got on the roof and put her (proportionately) long arm down the chimney to effect the cut.

I am not responsible for the artist’s conception of the character. When I last saw the good lady she was under six feet, but your artist may have had later information. The Star is always so frightfully up to date.

I ought not to omit the humorous remark of a correspondent, who said: "Mortlake might have swung in some wild way from one window to another, at any rate in a story." I hope my fellow-writers thus satirically prodded will not demand his name, as I object to murders, "at any rate in real life."

Finally, a word with the legions who have taken me to task for allowing Mr. Gladstone to write over 170 words on a postcard. It is all owing to you, sir, who announced my story as containing humorous elements. I tried to put in some, and this gentle dig at the grand old correspondent’s habits was intended to be one of them. However, if I am to be taken "at the foot of the letter" (or rather of the postcard), I must say that only to-day I received a postcard containing about 250 words. But this was not from Mr. Gladstone. At any rate, till Mr. Gladstone himself repudiates this postcard, I shall consider myself justified in allowing it to stand in the book.

Again thanking your readers for their valuable assistance, Yours, etc.

One would have imagined that nobody could take this seriously, for it is obvious that the mystery-story is just the one species of story that can not be told impromptu or altered at the last moment, seeing that it demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate dovetailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, New Zealand: "The chain of circumstantial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing." After that I made up my mind never to joke again, but this good intention now helps to pave the beaten path.

I. Zangwill

London, September, 1895.

Note

The Mystery which the author will always associate with this story is how he got through the task of writing it. It was written in a fortnight—  day by day— to meet a sudden demand from The Star, which made "a new departure" with it.

The said fortnight was further disturbed by an extraordinary combined attack of other troubles and tasks. This is no excuse for the shortcomings of the book, as it was always open to the writer to revise or suppress it. The latter function may safely be left to the public, while if the work stands— almost to a letter— as it appeared in the "Star," it is because the author cannot tell a story more than once.

The introduction of Mr. Gladstone into a fictitious scene is defended on the ground that he is largely mythical.

I. Z.

About Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (21 January 1864 — 1 August 1926) was an English humourist and writer. Zangwill was born in London to a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia. His father, Moses Zangwill, came from what is now Latvia. His mother, Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill, came from what is now Poland.

Zangwill was educated in Plymouth and Bristol. At age nine, Zangwill enrolled in the Jews’ Free School, a school for immigrant children in Spitalfields in east London. The school supplied clothing, food, and health care for students, and offered a strict course of secular and religious studies. At this school, young Israel excelled and taught part-time, moving up to become a full-fledged teacher. Still teaching, he studied for his degree from the University of London, earning a BA with triple honours in 1884. Later, the school named one of its four houses Zangwill after him.

Israel Zangwill, part of a talented family, dedicated his life to championing the oppressed. His brother was also a writer, the novelist Louis Zangwill. His son became the prominent British psychologist, Oliver Zangwill. In later life, Zangwill’s friends included well-known Victorian writers such as Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells.