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The Master : Reclaiming Zangwill's Only Künstlerroman
Lilian Falk
English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 44, Number 3,
2001, pp. 275-296 (Article)
Published by ELT Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/366570/summary
[47.253.82.149] Project MUSE (2025-09-30 20:08 GMT)
The Master. Reclaiming Zangwill's
Only Künstlerroman
Lilian Falk Retired
St. Mary's University Halifax, Nova Scotia
ISRAEL ZANGWILL'S STATUS as an important writer is firmly
established. His weakest works are falling out of sight, while his best
confirm his claim to fame. The Big Bow Mystery ( 1892) is recognized as a
pioneering work in the locked-door genre of mystery. The King of
Schnorrers (1894) merrily reappears in new editions every decade or so,
often with the original illustrations by George Hutchinson, propelled, as
it seems, by its own comedie energy. As for Children of the Ghetto, its
standing as an undisputed classic has been recently consolidated by
Meri-Jane Rochelson's scholarly new edition (1998). All three are read-
able; all three are still read, not by scholars only, but also by the general
public: the first for its suspense, the second for its humour, the third for
its portrait of a peculiar people.1
At the same time, other works recede into shadows. Among them
The Bachelors' Club (1891), still funny, but too strained; Jinny the Car-
rier (1905), too slow-moving; and The Master (1895), too ponderous, too
discouraging because of its small print, dense pages, heavy prose-style,
and its scarcity in all but the larger university libraries.2 Yet these too
can attract attention in unexpected ways. Jinny touches on a modern
concern because it deals with the question of a woman earning her own
living in a male-dominated society. A joke from The Bachelors'Club has
made its way into the popular film You've Got Mail, where Tom Hanks,
playing the part of a bachelor encumbered by two lively bratty children,
explains that the little boy is really his uncle, which indeed he is.3 What-
ever the provenance of this joke in the film, Zangwill readers will recog-
nize it from the story "A New Matrimonial Relation" in The Bachelors'
Club. They may even recall the amusing drawing which accompanied
the story.4 Like the illustrations to The King of Schnorrers, this drawing
was also done by George Hutchinson, at one time Zangwill's favourite il-
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lustrator. And even The Master has seen a revival of interest: it is being
read and reread by scholars interested in poet Elizabeth Bishop
(1911-1979) ever since new research revealed a connection between this
novel and Bishop's great-uncle, George Hutchinson.5
The connection to George Hutchinson was not known to London
critics, or even to Zangwill's British and American biographers. It was
known in Nova Scotia to friends and relatives of Hutchinson, and arti-
cles about it were published in several little-known journals, and then
forgotten again. But now that the connection has become more widely
known, The Master can be reexamined in a new light. It is now possible
to treat The Master seriously as a source of knowledge about George
Hutchinson and his family, and to treat the detailed descriptions of life
in Nova Scotia in the 1860s and 1870s as authentic. Conversely, it is also
possible to reexamine the novel's structure, so as to observe Zangwill's
way of fashioning a serious work of fiction out of the facts of George
Hutchinson's early life, his family background and his career. While re-
views in 1895 were mostly directed against the novel's excessively or-
nate prose, it now makes sense to concentrate on the novel's substance
rather than on its style.
The plot is straightforward. The hero, Matt Strang, a poor boy grow-
ing up in rural Nova Scotia, yearns to become a famous painter in Lon-
don. After the death of his father at sea, young Matt goes to work to
support the family and to save money for his trip to England. In London
he meets with many hardships; sick and destitute he returns to Canada.
Here he meets with more bad luck and is sent to prison for debt. Upon his
release he marries Rosina Coble, the prosaic daughter of a prosperous
merchant. Matt settles with his wife in London, but although he
achieves success, happiness still eludes him. He falls in love with a beau-
tiful, cultured woman with whom, he thinks, he could attain true happi-
ness and fulfillment of his artistic ideals. On the brink of abandoning his
wife and children and transgressing against his basic sense of decency,
he is recalled to his senses by a chance meeting with his childhood
sweetheart from Nova Scotia. He gives up his dream of happiness, re-
turns to his unloved wife and peevish children, and renounces his posi-
tion as celebrated painter. He decides to dedicate his art to depicting the
harsh everyday life of London's working class among whom he will now
make his home.
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FALK : ZANGWILL
The story-line is engaging; most scenes have dramatic power.
There is usually a clear sense of place and time as the story progresses;
the main character remains sympathetic and for the most part convinc-
ing. The pretensions of London's artistic circles are criticized without
mercy, the despotic rule of the Royal Academy is challenged—but all this
was not sufficient to please the reviewers in the spring and summer of
1895. They perceived a good story with a serious theme, but were so per-
turbed by the book's unwieldy prose that they almost unanimously de-
clared The Master to be a good book spoiled by its own verbosity and
stylistic flourishes. As if by a common decision, the reviewers offered a
crop of metaphors from horticulture, carpentry (or metallurgy), and biol-
ogy to suggest how the novel may be improved in style to be worthy of the
author's intent. The Athenaeum suggested pruning, the Dial recom-
mended both pruning and "working over with a file from first to last,"
while H. G. Wells in the Saturday Review came up with the memorable if
grim image of a bug called "reduvius" which has the unsavoury habit of
surrounding itself in an impenetrable cocoon of grimy particles.6
It is indeed true that reading The Master requires an effort reminis-
cent of trying to read a novel in an unfamiliar language. The result may
be very rewarding, but the effort tends to be tedious. Still, some pas-
sages, especially in the beginning, create a clear feeling of place and at-
mosphere, as in the novel's opening scene, where we see Matt and his
younger brother waking early on a winter morning to the loud voices in
their home:
Within the lonely wooden house weather-boards and beams cracked; without,
twigs snapped and branches crashed; at times Billy heard reports as loud as
pistol-shots.
Matt curled himself more comfortably and almost covered his face in the
blanket, for the cold in the stoveless attic was acute. In the grey half-light the
rough beams and the quilts glistened with frozen breaths. The little square
window-panes were thickly frosted, and below the crumbling rime was a thin
layer of ice left from the day before, solid up to the sashes, and leaving no in-
finitesimal dot of clear glass, for there was nothing to thaw it except such heat
as might radiate through the bricks of the square chimney that came all the
way from the cellar through the centre of the flooring to pop its head through
the shingled roof.7
We might desire a shorter and clearer sentence in place of the last one
and we could do without the metaphor of the chimney which pops its
head through the roof, but apart from this the scene is well established;
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there is a sense of the cold inside and out; there is also a feeling of isola-
tion caused by the freezing of the windows. The attic itself is clearly situ-
ated with regard to the rest of the house: the chimney links the attic
vertically with the cellar and with the roof. The noises reach the boys
from the lower part of the house while they seek comfort in each other's
presence. Readers are drawn into this scene: we know where we are as
we wait to learn the meaning of the strange noises.
On the other hand, elsewhere the book abounds in examples of long
and dreary sentences woven into very long paragraphs. The following is
a description of Matt's first impressions of London after he arrives there
as a young man of twenty:
But the Titanic city awoke strange responses in his soul: something in him vi-
brated to the impulse of the endless panorama. Often his fingers itched for
the brush, as if to translate into colour and line all this huge pageant of life;
for the spell of youthful poesy was still on his eyes, and if he could not see Lon-
don as he had seen his native fields and sky and ocean, all fresh and pure and
beautiful, if in the crude day its sordid streets seemed labyrinths in an under-
world, unlovely, intolerable, there were atmospheres and lights in which it
still loomed upon his vision through the glamour of fantasy, and chiefly at
night, when the mighty city brooded in sombre majesty magnificently trans-
figured by the darkness, and the solemn river stretched in twinkling splen-
dour between enchanted warehouses, or shadowed itself with the inverted
architecture of historic piles, or lapped against the gray old Tower dreaming
of ancient battle.8
When, in their turn, modern scholars took up a discussion of The
Master, the question of the novel's readability was not one of their pri-
mary concerns. Elsie Bonita Adams offers an analytical discussion of the
novel, stressing its importance as a vehicle through which Zangwill was
able to explore the theme of an artist's growth and development through
several stages: his exuberant youth, early manhood when circum-
stances almost made him despair of becoming an artist, and finally his
attainment of the stature of a true artist, which he reaches through
much suffering and sacrifice of his personal happiness.9 Joseph Udel-
son, like Adams, also concentrates on what the novel has to say about art
and the individual artist, and the artist's position in society. He also ex-
presses the view that the novel was intended "as a serious contribution
to the contemporary debate raging over the function of the artist in soci-
ety. In The Master Zangwill is aligning himself with Max Nordau, in de-
nouncing the Pre-Raphaelite's bohemianism, Emile Zola's naturalism,
and Oscar Wilde's 'art for art's sake' movement."10 Indeed, the question
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FALK : ZANGWILL
of the artist's function in society was dear to Zangwill's heart, and in The
Master the problem is dealt with in terms of a personal dilemma, its
resolution dependent on the artist's background and life history. The
more recent, biographical approach to The Master is included in Rochel-
son's discussion of Zangwill's novels in the Dictionary of Literary Biog-
raphy. In addition to presenting the views of early reviewers and modern
scholars, Rochelson speaks of the possible link between the life of George
Hutchinson and that of the novel's hero, Matt Strang, and she also says
that the novel is due for a réévaluation.11
In order to proceed towards a réévaluation, it will be useful to
consider the views of several earlier Nova Scotian writers. Two major es-
says appeared in Nova Scotia early in the twentieth century, and addi-
tional references to the novel appeared in print more than once. In Nova
Scotia there lingered a feeling that a rather remarkable Nova Scotian
book was created by a famous British novelist who possessed a vast
amount of intimate knowledge of Nova Scotian life in all its aspects.
However, the first two essays on the topic (apart from an even earlier
newspaper article) were published in journals with limited circulation,
so that writers who came later were led to new speculations, without
knowledge of the pieces already published.12
The first literary discussion which touched on the topic came from
the pen of Archibald Macmechan, a professor at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, himself a writer of fiction. In "Halifax in Books" (1906) he
quoted a long description of Halifax from The Master, with the added ex-
planation that "Matt is the hero of the story, the country boy of genius
who becomes a great painter in London. His prototype is George
Hutchinson, a Folly Village boy, whose father was master of a small ves-
sel and was lost at sea."13 Macmechan, apparently aware that Zangwill
had never visited Nova Scotia, adds "Zangwill never saw Halifax and
must have relied upon descriptions."14 In 1906, barely eleven years since
the publication of the novel, it seems that knowledge about the hero's
prototype, George Hutchinson, was limited to mere essentials.
Some twenty years later, another lover of Nova Scotian literature
spoke out about The Master. Judge Aza J. Crockett of Pictou wrote an es-
say about books which he considered indispensable for a village library
in Nova Scotia, "My Invisible Nova Scotia Library." The good judge gave
free expression to his feelings of admiration and his curiosity:
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... I have some books by authors who are not Nova Scotians or even Canadi-
ans. What thoughts and questionings arise as I turn to The Master, that ex-
traordinary book of I. Zangwill's—a book that fascinates one so much. How
did Zangwill ever come to know so much and so intimately about the life and
aspirations of a Nova Scotia boy from the marshes of Masstown? Was he ever
here, or did someone tell him... ? I am told that the Nova Scotia boy with the
yearnings to express himself in the art of painting became one day a great
painter in London, and spent a week with the famous author in a house-boat
on the Thames, and that The Master is the result.15
The judge continues: "Those with instincts of the higher critic, after an
examination of the style, confidently point out what portions were writ-
ten by the artist and what was the work of the brilliant literary genius,
and you may still find in Nova Scotia homes portraits the proud posses-
sors of which will inform you that there is a work of the artist whose boy-
hood and youth are depicted so realistically in this Nova Scotia
romance."16 Neither Macmechan nor Judge Crockett expressed disap-
proval of the novel's prose style. As for the pleasant speculation that
parts of the book were actually written by the artist, there appears to be
no support for such a notion.
If Judge Crockett refrains from naming the artist, the omission
does not seem to stem from ignorance. His friends, the owners of the por-
traits, would naturally name the painter, but the judge was trying to rec-
ommend the book as a novel, not for its biographical content, so the
painter's name was not relevant to his discussion. On the other hand,
naming the "brilliant literary genius" appears to have afforded the judge
a good deal of satisfaction, though it seems that neither Macmechan nor
Crockett knew very much about Zangwill or about Zangwill's other
books. A mere glance at The Bachelors' Club or The King of Schnorrers
would have revealed to them the connection between Hutchinson and
Zangwill. Neither of them mentions the further puzzle that the great in-
terpreter of Nova Scotian setting and atmosphere was a London-born
Jew. Neither of them is aware of what the initial "I" in Zangwill's name
stands for. But between them, they passed on to future readers of The
Master three important points, which would have eliminated many a
subsequent misunderstanding, had the two essays gained wider reader-
ship: Macmechan revealed the artist's name, Judge Crockett pointed to
a time spent together by Zangwill and Hutchinson in a houseboat on the
Thames and, very importantly, they named the location where the artist
grew up. Folly Village, Great Village, and Masstown were a cluster of vil-
lages on the Cobequid Bay near Truro in Colchester County in Nova Sco-
280
FALK : ZANGWILL
tia. Masstown was originally known as "Cobequid," the name used by
Zangwill for Matt's home village. Great Village remains the current
name of the village where the painter George Hutchinson spent his
youth.
There is no indication that Judge Crockett was familiar with
Macmechan's article. It was to become a constant feature of the atten-
tion paid to The Master in Nova Scotia: those who were subsequently in-
terested in The Master and brought it anew to public attention were
themselves unfamiliar with information already published by their
predecessors. Notably, when the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of
Canada came to create a plaque in honour of the Halifax-born artist Gil-
bert Stuart Newton R.A. (1794-1835), the plaque, unveiled in 1952, pro-
claimed Newton to have been the prototype of Israel Zangwill's novel
The Master. One notes that Zangwill's first name thus stands revealed.
But the plaque errs in linking Zangwill's novel with Newton. The histo-
rian responsible for the wording of the plaque was Provincial Archivist,
the late Dr. D. C. Harvey. As Sandra Barry demonstrates in the essay
"What's in a Name? The Gilbert Stuart Newton Plaque Error,"17 Dr. Har-
vey and his advisors decided on the wording of the plaque without suffi-
ciently checking into the background of the novel: beguiled by the
prospect of linking two illustrious names, that of a famous British writer
and of a Halifax-born artist who became a member of the Royal Acad-
emy, they assumed a connection where there was none. The plaque is
displayed on the facade of a public building in Halifax.
Once more, when John Bell included a selection from The Master in
his anthology Halifax: A Literary Portrait (1991), he suggested that
Zangwill's contact was with a certain Michael Williams (1878-1950),
author of an autobiographical work The Book of High Romance (1919).18
That contact, however, as Bell himself notes, belongs to the period after,
and not before, the publication of The Master.19 In his book Williams
mentions a letter of encouragement which he received from Zangwill
twenty-five years earlier and which he cherished for a long time after-
wards.20 It would have been natural for Williams, then an aspiring
young writer living in Halifax, to write to Zangwill upon reading the se-
rialized version of The Master and it was characteristic of Zangwill's
generous nature to reply. But there are no grounds for any further specu-
lation. Thus it was the lot of the writers and historians who had an inter-
est in The Master, including Bell (1991) and myself (1993), to be unaware
of the information already available. Bell, it seems, was even unaware of
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the existence of the historic plaque. For me the plaque served as a
starting-point for a new investigation, which led back to the artist
George Hutchinson.21
Since then, extensive new research on the life of American-born
poet Elizabeth Bishop and on her Nova Scotian relatives has brought a
significant amount of information on George Hutchinson, who was
Bishop's great-uncle, brother of Bishop's Nova Scotian grandmother
Elizabeth (Hutchinson) Bulmer. As recorded by Sandra Barry in her
book on Bishop,22 George Hutchinson was born in Saint John, New
Brunswick, in 1852, and brought up in Folly Village, adjacent to Great
Village, in Nova Scotia. His father, a ship's master, died at sea when
George was in his early teens. According to family tradition, young
George wished to become a painter and at an early age he travelled to
London to study painting. In 1874 Hutchinson was married to Eleanor
Jones in London. The following year the young couple travelled to Nova
Scotia, where their two children, Benjamin and Mary, were born. The
couple returned to England with the children and, according to the cen-
sus of 1881, settled in Paneras Road, where their third child, a girl, was
born. At this time Hutchinson enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools,
winning a prize of £50 for drawings from life. The announcement of the
prize was picked up by the local press: the Novascotian reported the hon-
our with pride.23 George Hutchinson died in retirement in England in
1942. He was survived by his second wife.
In the 1881 census Hutchinson reported his occupation as portrait
painter. He was not a successful portrait painter. The few portraits
which have been preserved in Nova Scotia—presumably executed dur-
ing his visits to his home province—are painted in harsh colours and do
little to illuminate the character of their subjects. And yet he was the
winner of a prestigious prize for drawing figures from life: his true talent
lay not in portrait painting but in drawing black and white cartoons and
humorous illustrations.
It was Hutchinson's talent for illustrating that brought him in con-
tact with Zangwill. Their close cooperation began in 1890 when
Hutchinson became a regular contributor of drawings and caricatures to
Puck and Ariel of which Zangwill was a de facto editor, becoming the offi-
cial editor in 1891.24 From then on, for at least six years, their relation
remained close, and their cooperation mutually satisfactory. Hutchin-
son drew the illustrations to The Bachelors' Club in 1891, to The King of
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FALK : ZANGWILL
Schnorrers in the Idler in 1893/94, and to the feature "My First Book" by
Zangwill, also in the Idler in 1893. "My First Book" is a miniature
merry-go-round of mutual compliments: Zangwill ascribes the success
of The Bachelors' Club, at least in part, to George Hutchinson's deft illus-
trations; George Hutchinson expresses his feelings of friendship in
drawing a comic portrait of Zangwill titled "Mr. Zangwill at Work" that is
still one of the more appealing informal sketches of the "brilliant literary
genius. ¿°
There is external evidence that Zangwill was particularly anxious
about the success of The Master. Ernest Samuels, in his biography of
Bernard Berenson, reports that in September 1894 Mary Costelloe
wrote to Berenson from England that Israel Zangwill brought her a
manuscript of The Master to read, seeking her critical opinion. She un-
hesitatingly reported to Berenson that she found the book "abominable,"
adding in passing that she found the author "loathsomely ugly." She ap-
parently conveyed her view to Zangwill in greatly modified form for he
expressed an appreciation of her critique and proceeded with the publi-
cation of The Master in book form.26 Also, as Joseph Leftwich recalls,
Zangwill was fond of saying even many years later on that The Master
was his favourite book.27 Leftwich also reports that Zangwill was
pleased with the notice in the Leeds Mercury which said that The Master
was superior to Children of the Ghetto.28 Evidently the reviewer at the
Leeds Mercury was able to disregard such things as a solemn river, twin-
kling splendour and enchanted warehouses, and to cut to the heart of
the story. And that story still has power to engage readers' sympathies.
When read not with the eyes of Mary Costelloe or H. G. Wells but
with the eyes of the reviewer at the Leeds Mercury, or possibly of a reader
in the year 2001, The Master has merits that can recommend it and even
render it fascinating. One striking aspect of the novel is Zangwill's suc-
cess in creating a fully rounded character, a young dreamer, timid, yet
fully trusting in his own talent as a painter, a romantic who is driven by
his experience of cruel poverty into a marriage of convenience, an ideal-
ist who betrays his ideals to please the crude taste of London society, an
admirer of refinement and beauty who gives up his chance of fulfilling
his dreams of love when these dreams stand in conflict with an even
higher ideal—obedience to the voice of conscience.
Matt Strang, the novel's hero, is a man who never ceases to exam-
ine his own motives or to pass judgement on his own conduct. But rather
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than coming out as a prig, Matt is likeable for he is described with the
kind of indulgent affection that writers usually reserve for their own
reminiscences of boyhood and youth. At the beginning of the novel Matt
is a very young boy—we first see him as he is awakened from a dream by
loud noises in the family home. This is an intimate moment which fixes
the reader's close relation to Matt. It is also a moment which symboli-
cally establishes the dichotomy between dreams and reality—a dichot-
omy which rules Matt's life in youth and in adulthood.
Matt is instantly more real to the reader than even the young Es-
ther Ansell of Children of the Ghetto. The Master opens with the name
"Matt" repeated twice by Billy, Matt's younger brother, whereas Esther's
name appears the first time not as "Esther" but as "Esther Ansell," a for-
mality which distances her from the reader. Also, because she is intro-
duced as a small figure walking rapidly through a crowd in a dark cold
street, the reader must follow her from a distance. The narrative pro-
gresses for a while before Esther's feelings are made known at all.29 To
be sure, there are sound artistic reasons for the initial distance. First we
see Esther as a part of a crowd, and only gradually we are allowed to fo-
cus on her as an individual. But in the meantime the opportunity for
reader-subject intimacy is lost, and subsequently not readily estab-
lished. Not so with Matt. We first see him and hear him as he wakes up in
the morning; we hear Billy calling him by his childhood name, we sym-
pathize as Matt tries to fall asleep again, and we are made privy to a
dream which recommences as Matt drifts back to sleep. And we are
never to lose the intimacy thus established.
Another striking aspect is Zangwill's choice to convey images of
landscape, both in Nova Scotia and in England through the eyes of
young Matt rather than through the eyes of the narrator. The beauty of
Nova Scotia and the dismal aspect of overcrowded, soot-covered London
are rendered primarily through Matt's consciousness—the conscious-
ness of an intuitive artist. What Matt sees are not simply the woods,
fields, the expanse of water, sunsets and clouds or an urban landscape.
What he sees are pictures—sights which he longs to paint. Again, read-
ers are brought in close union with the boy: we rarely get glimpses into
the landscape except through Matt's eyes. As well, people and their way
of life, with their manner of speech and their actions, are presented
through Matt's eyes, at first with a young boy's naive vision, later with a
young man's growing awareness which brings with it bitter disenchant-
ment.
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FALK : ZANGWILL
Even more remarkable is the novel's insistence on fusing the con-
sciousness of an artist with the consciousness as well as the morality of a
Nova Scotian. For Matt is a Nova Scotian through and through; his Nova
Scotian childhood and youth dominate his personality even more deci-
sively when he is away from his native province. When he finds himself
in London, he is naturally handicapped in practical matters by being a
stranger, but, morally and artistically, he is always guided and sustained
by memories of his native province. The abiding paradox of Matt's devel-
opment as a man and artist lies in the fact that he comes to London to
learn, but he finds, gradually and by painful steps, that his true learning
had taken place when he was still a boy in Nova Scotia. Of course, he
needed to go to London to find out precisely that. Exile teaches people to
recognize true moral values.
Matt's development as an artist is the crux of this novel. Whatever
happens to him either advances him on the road to becoming an artist, or
hampers him. In spirit he is an artist from birth. His life experiences
help him actualize his artistic potential. His progress as an artist is
much clearer than that of Esther Ansell. We know that Esther is a bright
child and a lover of stories. But we do not know when and how she be-
came a writer. When we find out, in the second part of the novel, that she
is the author of an important book, we learn nothing of the process which
led to that moment. With Matt, however, we take part in every painful
step leading to his becoming a painter.
The novel is divided into three parts or "Books." Matt is about
thirteen-years-old when we first meet him; however, since chapter two is
a retrospect harking back to three years prior to the novel's opening
chapter, we get an additional glimpse of Matt as a boy often. Apart from
this flashback, the novel progresses in a chronological order. Book One
describes Matt's youth on the farm in Cobequid Village near Truro in
Nova Scotia. In Book Two he is seen arriving in London to begin his stud-
ies at the age of twenty. He stays in London for fifteen months before re-
turning to Nova Scotia. In Book Three he goes to London again,
accompanied by his wife. When the novel concludes, he is close to thirty,
the father of two children, no longer young, now a man fully conscious of
his own limits as well as of his moral and artistic obligations. Thus there
are no gaps in the narrative: Matt's life and the process of maturing as
man and artist are fully accounted for.
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The novel, so clearly inspired by Hutchinson's life story, uses
authentic details of family and village life in Book One, begins to diverge
from historic facts in Book Two, and makes a radical departure from
Hutchinson's story in Book Three. But disappointingly, as the novel
moves from the hero's youth to maturity, from a pastoral setting to ur-
ban setting, its dramatic and descriptive powers decrease, it loses mo-
mentum, and towards the very end takes on certain characteristics of
melodrama. The dialogue, likewise, is at its best when it renders the na-
tive idiom of Nova Scotia, and becomes stilted in the abstract discus-
sions about art, life, and morality in the later parts of the book. The
characters in Book Three speak and behave more like artificial creations
than like the authentic persons we encountered in Book One and Two.
Even Matt himself seems less authentic as an adult than he was as a boy
and later as a very young man in Books One and Two.
Book One, which introduces young Matt, is the most captivating
and closest to facts: Matt's father dies at sea as did Hutchinson's father.
Matt has an older sister, Harriet, two younger brothers, Billy and Teddy,
and still younger siblings. George Hutchinson had an older sister, Eliza-
beth, two younger brothers, John Robert and William Bernard, and a
much younger sister, Mary (a two-year-old child who is mentioned in
chapter one). Matt's widowed mother marries Deacon Hailey soon after
her husband's death; Hutchinson's mother also married soon after she
became a widow. Matt's sister, Harriet, marries her beau shortly after
the death of the father: Hutchinson's sister, Elizabeth, also married
early. Hutchinson was a witness at his sister's wedding in 1871 but he
left for England some time after.30 As the narrative follows real events,
the prose remains vigorous and the young protagonist's feelings are viv-
idly conveyed.
Book One creates a well-defined microcosm with Matt at its centre.
The atmosphere of the poor household is well projected, as is the sense of
isolation of the village whose only contact with the large world is
through the rural mail delivery, which, as often as not, brings bad news
instead of the coveted good ones; a community which must provide its
own amusements in the form of mudding or other frolics, where the mu-
sic is provided by the only musician "Ole Jupe" the Black fiddler, where
rent must be paid to an exacting and unscrupulous proprietor, where
even back-breaking work brings meagre earnings, and where a young
boy with the soul of an artist feels that he must strike out or else suffo-
cate in an environment which has no use for art or artists.
286
FALK : ZANGWILL
Book Two begins with Matt's arrival in England. Here the descrip-
tion of the naive twenty-year old who, upon arriving at Southampton,
proceeds directly to London in order to lose no time, and upon arrival in
London goes directly to the National Gallery in order to see, at last, great
paintings by great artists without further delay—this description of the
young "respectably clad steerage passenger... clean-shaven except for a
dark-brown moustache, which combined with the little tangle of locks on
his forehead to suggest the artistic temperament"31 could easily be
based on a photograph of George Hutchinson at twenty. The narrative of
Matt's first experiences in England is convincing, and in a general sense
is still close to the story of Hutchinson's own arrival in England. It is
known that Hutchinson was about twenty or so when he left home and
crossed the Atlantic. Matt meets with bitter disappointments and with
great hardships in London and in near despair is forced to return to
Nova Scotia at the end of a fifteen-month stay. Hutchinson also returned
to Nova Scotia after staying in England for about two or three years.
Still, the fictional narrative diverges from facts in several important de-
tails, of which Matt's marriage to Rosina Coble has the most serious con-
sequences for the novel's central conflict, which is not resolved until the
very end. The characters of Matt's uncle Matthew and cousin Herbert do
not have a parallel in the Hutchinson story—at least not at the present
state of biographical research. Yet they play an important part in the fic-
tional narrative: they represent the kind of indifference, cynicism, loss of
conscience and loss of true values which Matt will have to confront and
combat to save his own soul at the time of his great spiritual crisis before
the novel's end.
Book Two also gives an interesting example of the way Zangwill
has marshalled the intersection of fact and fiction. Chapter eight of Book
Two, "Gold Medal Night," describes a formal ceremony at the Royal
Academy at which Herbert is awarded a gold medal for a painting which
he would have never successfully finished if it had not been for the will-
ing help of Matt who takes no credit for his brush strokes at all, but sits
humbly through the ceremony, cold, hungry, and excruciatingly bored by
the President's seemingly endless address. In reality it was Hutchinson,
as already mentioned, who won the Academy award—not a medal, but
the much more useful cash. That award was presented to Hutchinson by
Academy President, Sir Frederic Leighton, in December of 1885. The
scene in chapter eight gives a wicked satirical representation of Leigh-
ton even though the president is not named and the presentation to Her-
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ELT 44 : 3 2001
bert, given the internal chronology of the novel, belongs roughly in 1873,
while Leighton did not become president until 1878. Still, the satire
would have been recognizable to all who were aware of Leighton's noto-
riously long biennial Academy Addresses. Interestingly, early reviewers
shied from mentioning this irreverent portrait of the majestic man, who
in 1895 still held the post of President of the Academy.
From the ending of Book Two onwards The Master leaves behind
the true story of George Hutchinson and proceeds along a path of fiction.
Matt's wife Rosina is the daughter of a well-to-do Halifax merchant,
whereas Hutchinson's first wife, Eleanor, was the daughter of a gas-
fitter from Clapham, and most probably as poor as Hutchinson himself.
Hutchinson's wedding took place in a church in Lambeth—and both
groom and bride gave the working-class Kennington Road as their ad-
dress.32 Making Rosina a Nova Scotian, and placing the wedding in
Halifax, ensured that her image could not be confused with Hutchin-
son's real-life wife. There is no ground for supposing Eleanor mean,
stingy or petty; she was no Rosina in any sense.
But the petty, penny-pinching Rosina, hopelessly prosaic and de-
void of any appreciation of her husband's artistic temperament, becomes
the pivot for the conflict which dominates Book Three of the novel. She
does not figure in the novel as a character whose inner life is capable of
change or development—her main function in the narrative is to repre-
sent those realities of life which Matt perceives as obstacles to the at-
tainment of his destiny as an artist. Matt hires a studio in a fashionable
part of London in order to be able to work in peace and to be away from
Rosina. He paints to please his rich clients so that he may become free of
his dependence on Rosina's money—a dependence that embittered his
soul almost since the beginning of his married life.33 When he gains
fame and becomes accepted among the London elite, he no longer admits
to being a married man. It is among the glittering elite that he meets
Eleanor Wyndwood who seems to him the ideal of womanhood. The ide-
alized Mrs. Wyndwood is one of the novel's least convincing characters.
We know her only through Matt's adoring eyes. In Matt's eyes, she is the
embodiment of grace and elegance which his soul had been longing for.
In the novel's quasi-epilogue it is made clear that her true character did
not deserve Matt's adulation.34 Readers may be led to reflect at that
point on the curious paradox that Matt, the gifted observer of the human
form and of human physiognomy, is not a good judge of character. Many
of his disappointments stem from this particular failing.
288
FALK : ZANGWILL
In order to develop, and then to resolve the conflict in Matt's life,
Book Three departs radically from George Hutchinson's life. Whereas
Matt becomes a much sought-after society painter, Hutchinson was no
more than a reasonably successful illustrator and cartoonist. Hutchin-
son did not have to flee his success in order to achieve peace of mind: his
success waned of its own accord, especially with the advent of photogra-
phy which soon began to be favoured by magazine editors as a cheaper
and more attractive method of illustration than etching, drawing, and
painting. Just a few years later, in 1896, Hutchinson, apparently dis-
couraged by lack of commissions, again went to Nova Scotia hoping to
earn money by painting and giving art lessons. In 1898 he was back in
London once more, sharing quarters with Zangwill on a houseboat at
Twickenham Ferry.
The Master excels in construction and overall plan. Matt's calling
in life is clear from the very beginning. His desire to paint is made plain
from the very first chapter of the book, as is his talent. His very name,
Matthew, suggests not only the Parable of the Talents in Matthew
25:14-30, and, by association, the use of the same parable as a metaphor
in Milton's famous sonnet "On His Blindness," but also the Hebrew
meaning of the name, "the gift of God." The novel's action follows Matt's
movement from his home village to the great city where he suffers de-
feat, from that city back home, and once more to the great city where he
eventually reaches the height of fame he had so eagerly desired, only to
find out that fame without artistic integrity is hollow, and that fame and
success must be given up for true fulfillment to become possible. Poor
George Hutchinson—he knew much of struggle and disappointment,
and very little of heady success, which he would have been most likely to
embrace eagerly. The story of the success is not Hutchinson's story; it is
rather an abstract construct—Zangwill's own projection of the meaning
and the burden of being an artist. Matt's internal struggle and its resolu-
tion which depends on his renunciation of all hope of happiness is power-
fully evoked in the novel's final chapter, and is no less dramatic than the
description of Hannah Jacobs's renunciation of her beloved David in the
last chapter of Book One οι Children of the Ghetto.
Hutchinson was not a romantic in pursuit of an ideal. In 1893 he
was past forty, a family man, busy securing orders for illustrations. He
was never choosy about what work he did, so long as it would pay the
rent and put food on the table. His published drawings in Puck, Ariel, the
Idler and the boys' magazine Chums testify to his readiness to draw
289
ELT 44 : 3 2001
whatever was marketable. Clearly, the adult Matt Strang, the hero of
Book Three, the artist struggling with his conscience and pondering the
meaning and purpose of Art, is no longer based on Hutchinson; rather he
takes on some characteristics of Zangwill himself.
When Matt becomes a successful painter and gains a place in Lon-
don's fashionable society, he acquires the tastes of a man-about-town,
frequents elegant artistic gatherings, and becomes attracted to women
of intelligence and beauty. In 1893 it was Zangwill, not Hutchinson, who
was basking in fame; it was Zangwill who developed a taste for good
company, well-cut clothes, and an elegant hat and cane. It was Zangwill
who became attracted to intelligent, cultivated women, one of whom
would eventually become his wife some ten years later. It was Zangwill,
not Hutchinson, who would be thirty years old in 1894. It was Zangwill
who needed to examine the direction his career was to take. He was the
artist who must decide how he will use his one talent—in the service of
higher ideals, or in pursuit of success. In Book Three the departure from
George Hutchinson's life-story is extreme; except in his outward appear-
ance, the hero is no longer modelled on George Hutchinson. Rather, he
becomes something new: a man of Hutchinson's background, faced with
Zangwill's adult dilemmas. Matt Strang, the lionized painter of Book
Three, is a new creation.
A comparison of Zangwill's formal portrait reproduced in Dreamer
of the Ghetto35 with the amateur photograph of Hutchinson included in
Remembering Elizabeth Bishop36 shows a number of differences be-
tween the two men. Hutchinson, a lanky figure with a head of hair which
could still be described as a "tangle of locks," a big moustache and a ro-
guish expression, dressed in rumpled tweeds, comfortably reclined in a
canvas chair with his dog on his knee, bespeaks a man at ease, satisfied
with life at the present moment, oblivious of the sufferings of the world
and not troubled in the least by any abstract conflict between moral obli-
gations and personal happiness.
Zangwill's portrait, on the other hand, shows a man meticulously
dressed, but not necessarily comfortable. The pose is rigid. Although the
portrait is taken indoors, the sitter is wearing stiff, cumbersome outdoor
attire. The portrait bespeaks the subject's awareness of his own social
position with its concomitant obligations, a sense of responsibility, an in-
ner seriousness. There is no smile in this portrait or in any one of the
other commonly reproduced Zangwill portraits. Zangwill's eyes seem to
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FALK : ZANGWILL
focus on the vision of austere Duty. Matt's ultimate decision, to put his
art in the service of society, if it is to be understood as a reflection of
Zangwill's own choices with regard to his career, may be taken to signify
Zangwill's musings on his own choices for the future, or even, as an ex-
planation in retrospect, of the reasons why he accepted Judge Sulzberg-
er's challenge to write a "Jewish Robert Elsmere" three years earlier.37
That Zangwill chose to borrow, so to speak, Hutchinson's boyhood,
even though he did not intend to use Hutchinson's later career in the
novel, shows that the plan for the novel was carefully laid. The boy, Matt,
is a very appealing protagonist in the first part of the novel. His home in
Nova Scotia provides a romantic backdrop. His early struggles in Lon-
don are made the more bitter by the fact that he is alone in the uncaring
metropolis, callously treated by his unfeeling uncle, and by his egotistic
cousin Herbert. When much later Matt becomes the darling of London
elite, his tall figure, his moustache, tangled locks and artistic appear-
ance make him a natural object of adoration of the beautiful Eleanor,
and make his own struggle against temptation as passionately romantic
as the novelistic convention of the time permitted. This is not to say that
the book was constructed only for the purpose of examining abstract
ideas. Evidently the Nova Scotian boyhood of his friend held a fascina-
tion for Zangwill and may have served as a stimulus for creating this in-
tricate novel.
In one of his stories, "The Clearing House of Memory," Zangwill in-
vents a scenario where people can trade their own unwanted memories
for those of others.38 To trade the memories of a childhood confined to
London's East End for those of a boy roaming barefoot among the open
fields of Nova Scotia—this is a very appealing proposition. To describe
with such passion, and in such vivid detail, scenes which he had never
seen, must mean that Zangwill came to love those scenes which he heard
described by his friend. It is also extremely likely that Zangwill not only
heard the descriptions but also had ample opportunity to see Hutchin-
son's sketches of the scenes in Folly Village and vicinity. Early in their
acquaintance Zangwill must have seen Hutchinson's "Winter Sketches
in Nova Scotia" published in the Illustrated London News in January
1889. Much later, when the two friends shared a houseboat on the river
Thames, Zangwill would see Hutchinson at work, sketching and paint-
ing scenes from nature and possibly scenes from memory also.
291
ELT 44 : 3 2001
The houseboat story is true, if little known to Zangwill's admirers
then as now. The boat, named The Swan, belonged to Zangwill; it was
moored at Twickenham Ferry for a sufficiently long time to be remem-
bered with nostalgia by old-timers such as Arthur M. Young, a sometime
contributor to the Idler, and regular visitor at literary gatherings at the
nearby "White Swan" (still a popular riverside drinking place) facing Eel
Pie Island. In the Christmas issue of the Illustrated London News in
1923 Young wrote: "I call to mind the time when ... nearly on the same
mooring where the floating boathouse now is, that splendid artist
[George Hutchinson], one of our first 'black and white' men, had, in con-
junction with Zangwill, the eminent novelist and playwright, the Swan
houseboat. Here would foregather many of the greatest men in litera-
ture, music and art of the day."39 What Judge Crockett believed to have
been a week spent together on the boat was apparently a more prolonged
arrangement by which Zangwill and Hutchinson shared the houseboat.
Hutchinson was most probably left in charge when Zangwill was busy in
town, but both men evidently shared the quarters when Zangwill
wanted to get away from the pressures of city life and enjoy the pleas-
ures of tranquillity on the river combined with the company of beer-
imbibing men of arts and letters. Among those frequenting the literary
gatherings, Young mentions Swinburne, the "decadent" poet par excel-
lence, and Henry Vizetelly, the man who outraged the guardians of pub-
lic morality by publishing Zola's works in English.40 The jolly crowd at
the "White Swan" was evidently quite Bohemian. The riverside idyll
came to an end in January 1898. In a letter dated January 16, Hutchin-
son wrote to Zangwill from the "Swan" houseboat describing a gale
which had nearly destroyed the boat two weeks earlier, and requesting
Zangwill's consent to the sale of the wreck at the low price often or fif-
teen pounds. Many years later, writing to Zangwill from Ipswich in 1911,
Hutchinson recalled again, with warm feelings, the old days of the
river-boat.41
A close reading of The Master does indeed lead to the conclusion
that Zangwill chose to side with those who thought it imperative to link
art and morality, as observed by Udelson, and as also argued more re-
cently by William J. Scheick in relation to The Big Bow Mystery.42 How-
ever, the book does not support a unified theory of morality. In spite of
the abstract deliberations which occupy many pages of The Master, the
matter is treated as a deeply personal moral dilemma to be solved by the
artist as a responsible individual. The Nova Scotian Matt Strang has an
292
FALK : ZANGWILL
intuitive understanding of the demands of art: for him, art demands na-
tive talent, dedication to one's craft, courage, honesty, humility. When,
after a period of public success and private mortification, Matt wrestles
with his conscience, he receives unexpected guidance from his Nova Sco-
tian friend, Ruth Hailey, who has already turned her own life into one of
serving a higher cause—in her case, the cause of Women's Rights. Matt
is a man of conscience, but it is a private conscience. Although often
called a "puritan" by his cousin and even by the narrator, Matt is neither
a church-goer nor an adherent of any religious persuasion. When Matt
returns to his studio in Camden Town, his decision seems to foreshadow
the kind of career choice which some years later (in 1911) was to be put
into action by no lesser a painter than Walter Sickert (1860-1942), also a
friend of Zangwill's, who moved his studio to Camden Town and created
the "Camden Town Group" of avant-garde Impressionist artists. So al-
though there is much deliberation about art and artists in Book Two and
Three, the novel cannot be easily shown to champion one school of
thought over another, except that it speaks vehemently against the
stranglehold exercised by the Royal Academy. True creativity, new tech-
niques, Impressionism, technical innovations, all are judged on individ-
ual merit, not on their adherence to a specific school, and an artist's
moral mettle is judged on the basis of both his private and his public
life-choices.
As for the relationship between Zangwill and Hutchinson, it can be
said once more that a warm, comfortable friendship between them ex-
isted, in spite of, or possibly because of, the great difference in their back-
ground, upbringing, and temperament. The letters from Hutchinson to
Zangwill that survive were written in 1896 (from Nova Scotia), in 1898
(from the houseboat), and in 1911 (from Ipswich), when Hutchinson
found himself in one of his all too frequent financial difficulties. The let-
ter from Nova Scotia is especially interesting, as it reports on the enthu-
siastic reception of The Master by Hutchinson's own sister and her
family in Great Village. Hutchinson appears happy with the good recep-
tion, and rather peeved at an American critic who had cast doubt on the
accuracy of the description of shad-spearing (in chapter two of Book
One). The letter includes an invitation to Zangwill to come out for a visit.
The remaining letters to Zangwill are equally friendly and frank in such
matters as Hutchinson's professional and financial setbacks, and his
less than happy life with his second wife, Lily, in the 1911 letter. In 1909
Lily wrote to Zangwill for help "not knowing where to turn," and in the
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ELT 44 : 3 2001
one instance where a carbon copy of Zangwill's letter to Lily survives, we
see Zangwill's genuine concern with Hutchinson's well being.43
It was not foreign to Zangwill's creative process to model his charac-
ters on people he knew: in Children of the Ghetto, Melchitsedek Pinchas
is generally acknowledged to be based on the poet Naphtali Herz Imber;
Moses Ansell is thought to represent Zangwill's own father; Esther An-
sell is thought to be Zangwill's alter ego. In The Master, Zangwill wove a
romance in which he combined the early struggles of his Nova Scotian
artist friend with his own meditation on the meaning of living up to one's
potential as an artist.
The result is an intriguing blending of one artist's life-story with
the author's own reflections on the consequences of accepting a higher
calling and dedicating one's life to a high ideal. A novelist's choice to proj-
ect the story of his own life onto the character of a painter was to be re-
peated by Somerset Maugham in his novel Of Human Bondage in 1915,
and by others as well. The Master has the merits of a well-constructed
linear plot, a sympathetic main character and for the most part well-
delineated secondary characters, vividly described scenes set in rural
Nova Scotia and visually appealing scenes set in parks, art galleries, and
artists' studios in London, Paris and Florence. It has humour and all the
elements of a popular romance—missing one thing only, a crisp literary
delivery. This is a weakness which cannot easily be remedied and it was
identified correctly by the earliest reviewers. To reintroduce the book to
modern readers a new attractive edition would be needed at the very
least. Modern readers are well schooled in visualizing a novel in terms of
cinematic images, something which this novel's visual quality naturally
invites. At present however, the only possible access to The Master is
through its own exuberant stylistic thickets. Still, the effort, when un-
dertaken, is well repaid.
Notes
1. An early version of this paper was presented at "Symbiosis," a conference on Anglo-
American literary relations, at the University College of St. Mark and St. John in Plymouth, UK, in
March 1997.
2. Israel Zangwill, The Master (London: William Heinemann, 1895). All references will be to
this edition. A German translation by H. H. Ewers was published as Der Meister: Ein Künstler-Roman
(Berlin: S. Cronbach, 1910), hence my title, A copy of the German translation is in the National and Uni-
versity Library in Jerusalem.
294
Falk : zangwill
3. You've Got Mail. Director Nora Ephron. Warner Brothers. USA, 1998.
4. Zangwill, "A New Matrimonial Relation," Chapter 9, in The Bachelors' Club, 214-32 (Lon-
don: Henry and Co., 1891), illustration, 221.
5. See Sandra Barry, Elizabeth Bishop: An Archival Guide to her Life in Nova Scotia (Hant-
sport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1996). Among recent studies of Elizabeth Bishop, Barry's book is
particularly relevant to the present discussion. I owe thanks to Sandra Barry for generously sharing
with me information on Hutchinson and on his family background.
6. Athenaeum (18 May 1895), Dial ( 1 July 1895); the review by H. G. Wells, "Mr. Zangwill's 'Ma-
ster,'" Saturday Review (18 May 1895) is quoted at length in Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (De-
troit: Gale Research, 1985), 16:441-42.
7. The Master, 5.
8. Ibid., 126.
9. Elsie Bonita Adams, Israel Zangwill (New York: Twayne, 1971), 65-67.
10. Joseph H. Udelson, Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill (Tusca-
loosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), 124.
11. Meri-Jane Rochelson, "Israel Zangwill," Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Re-
search, 1999), 197: 302-15; 310-311.
12. The newspaper article was published in Truro Daily News, 17 November 1896. It and the two
essays by Macmechan and by Crockett are discussed by Sandra Barry in "What's in a Name? The Gil-
bert Stuart Newton Plaque Error," Acadiensis, 25:1 (Autumn 1995, Fredericton, New Brunswick),
99-116.
13. Archibald Macmechan, "Halifax in Books " Acadiensis 6:3 (July 1906, Saint John, New
Brunswick), 201-17.
14. Ibid., 216.
15. Aza J. Crockett, "My Invisible Nova Scotia Library," Dalhousie Review (Halifax, Nova Sco-
tia), 6 (1926/1927), 449-508.
16. Ibid., 450-506.
17. Barry, "The Gilbert Stuart Newton Plaque Error" (1995), see note 12 above.
18. John Bell, ed., Halifax: a Literary Portrait (Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia: Pottersfield
Press, 1991), 102-106.
19. Ibid., 102.
20. Michael Williams, The Book of High Romance (New York: MacMillan, 1918/19), 37.
21. Lilian Falk, "A Nineteenth Century Literary Representation of Nova Scotia Dialect," Papers
from the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, 17 (Halifax,
Nova Scotia: Saint Mary's University, 1993), 33-39.
22. Barry, Elizabeth Bishop, 31-33.
23. Novascotian (Halifax, Nova Scotia), 30 January 1886.
24. Udelson, Dreamer of the Ghetto, 73.
25. Zangwill, "My First Book," Idler, 3 (February-July 1893), 629-41. Mr. Zangwill at Work (Lon-
don: Chatto and Windus, 1893), 639.
26. Ernest Samuels, Bernard Berenson: the Making of a Connoisseur (Cambridge, Massachu-
setts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979), 200-201.
27. Joseph Leftwich, Israel Zangwill (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957), 134.
28. Ibid, 296.
29. Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto. Meri-Jane Rochelson, ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press 1998), 73.
30. For detailed history of Hutchinson's family see Barry, Elizabeth Bishop, 29-39.
31. The Master, 1Î .
295
ELT 44 : 3 2001
32. This Information comes from the Family Records Centre, London, UK, in 1999.
33. The Master, Book Three, chapter I, 283-87.
34. The Master, Book Three, chapter X, 453-60; especially page 455.
35. Udelson, Dreamer of the Ghetto, 111. Zangwill is about 33-years-old in this photograph.
36. Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography (Am-
herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). Photograph no. 8, captioned "George Hutchinson,
Elizabeth Bishop's great-uncle." Hutchinson is about 54-years-old in this photograph. Photographs are
between page 186 and 187.
37. See Udelson, Dreamer, 81.
38. Zangwill, "The Clearing House of Memory," The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fanta-
sies (London: William Heinemann, 1894).
39. Arthur M. Young, "Tales of the Thames," Illustrated London News, 24 December 1923 (Rich-
mond Cuttings, Vol. 12, #67). Richmond Public Library, Local Studies Collection, London Borough of
Richmond upon Thames. This information was obtained in April 1997.
40. Ibid.
41. Hutchinson to Zangwill. Letter from the "Swan" houseboat, Twickenham Ferry, 16 January
1898. (Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, File A 120/391).
42. William J. Scheick, "Murder in My Soul": Genre and Ethos in Zangwill's The Big Bow Mys-
tery,"ELT, 40:1, 1997.
43. The Hutchinson file at the Central Zionist Archives (A120/391) has six items, all attesting to
the friendship between these two men. I owe thanks to Dr. Meri-Jane Rochelson for telling me about the
existence of these letters which constitute a most important documentary basis for reconstructing the
Hutchinson-Zangwill relation.
296
