The Old Maids' Club

J. A. Hammerton, Israel Zangwill

Description

“The Old Maids' Club” is a 1892 novel by British author Israel Zangwill (1864–1926). Wonderfully illustrated throughout and not to be missed by fans and collectors of Zangwill's work. Zangwill was a leading figure in cultural Zionism during the 19th century, as well as close friend of father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In later life, he renounced the seeking of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Other notable works by this author include: “Dreamers of the Ghetto” (1898), “Ghetto Tragedies” (1899), and “Ghetto Comedies” (1907). This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an introductory chapter from “English Humourists of To-Day” by J. A. Hammerton.

Sujets

• Women's club
• Smart Women

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781528790062
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB
WITH A CHAPTER FROM English Humorists of To-day BY J. A. Hammerton
By
ISRAEL ZANGWILL
With Illustrations By
F. H. TOWNSEND

First published in 1892


This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library


INTRODUCTION
THE READER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MY BOOK
MY BOOK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE READER




Contents
Israel Zangwill
CHAPTER I THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE, PLUS OTHER THINGS
CHAPTER II THE HONORARY TRIER
CHAPTER III THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK
CHAPTER IV THE CLUB GETS ADVERTISED
CHAPTER V "THE PRINCESS OF PORTMAN SQUARE"
CHAPTER VI THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE
CHAPTER VII THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN
CHAPTER VIII MORE ABOUT THE CHERUB
CHAPTER IX OF WIVES AND THEIR MISTRESSES
CHAPTER X THE GOOD YOUNG MEN WHO LIVED
CHAPTER XI ADVENTURES IN SEARCH OF THE POLE
CHAPTER XII THE ARITHMETIC AND PHYSIOLOGY OF LOVE
CHAPTER XIII "THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE"
CHAPTER XIV THE OLD YOUNG WOMAN AND THE NEW
CHAPTER XV THE MYSTERIOUS ADVERTISER
CHAPTER XVI THE CLUB BECOMES POPULAR
CHAPTER XVII A MUSICAL BAR
CHAPTER XVIII THE BEAUTIFUL GHOUL
CHAPTER XIX "LA FEMME INCOMPRISE
CHAPTER XX THE INAUGURAL SOIREE


Illustrations
Israel Zangwill
Latter-Day Love.
"Take care! You're sitting on an epigram."
"I just saw the flowers drive up."
A Family Reunion.
The Millionaire.
Miss Primpole was flirting with a seductive Spaniard.
How the Duchess wanted to appear.
Bazaar proposal of Marriage.
At the winning Post.
"Ba, ba, ba, boodle-dee."
Go away, or I'll kick you Down Stairs.
Coming Down from the Clouds.
Talked to her of books and men and one woman.
The Confession of Ellaline.
So ran my Innocent Maiden Dream.
Rejected Addresses.
Lowering the Beer.
Drew up the Advertisement.
Platonic Love.
Driven to Drink.
He scuttled from the Establishment.
I accepted the strange invitation.
"Read it aloud," she said. "It comforts me."
The Present and the Future.
Tom Brown, the Supreme Thinker.
"Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?"
"She told me she couldn't sleep till she had read it."
"He I loved was dying in Greenland."
"Is that the uniform of the Old Maids' Club?"
Wee Winnie on her Travels.
"I asked them to have a chop at the club with me."
"Dearest, is you," he said with ghastly playfulness.
The public curiosity amounted to frenzy.
He was willing to become a Mormon.
I encircle him with my arms and speak with my lips.
"There's a prescription against starvation."
The office boy edits the paper.
I pulled the paper from the dead hand.
I can never be more than a kleptomaniac.
Amicably said, "Stop please."
The poet plays his last card.
The Old Maid arrives.




Israel Zangwill
This picture though it is not much Like Zangwill, is not void of worth It has one true Zangwillian touch It looks like nothing else on earth.
Oliver Herford Confessions of a Caricaturist,
Perhaps some one will suggest that Mr. Israel Zangwill is a humorist only as one whom "we loved long since and lost awhile," because of late years — indeed, for more than a decade — little that is entirely humorous has come from his pen. On the other hand, he has never been a humorist who inspires affection: he is somewhat too intellectual for that. There is no novelist who, with greater justice, takes himself and his art more seriously than Mr. Zangwill has done since, in 1892, he wrote that masterpiece of modern fiction, Children of the Ghetto ; yet, as he began his literary career as a humorous writer and is beyond question one of our masters of epigrammatic wit and intellectual point—de—vice, he may with sufficient reason be included in any survey of modern humour. Moreover, despite the high and serious purpose of all his later work, his attendant imps of mirth are ever at his elbow, and we find him with welcome frequency acknowledging their presence in the writing of even his soberest stories.
Born to Jewish parents in London forty—three years ago, Mr Zangwill shares the distonction of such celebrities as Napoleon and Wellington in not knowing his birthday. He is aware that the year was 1864, but the day would seem to have been "wropt in mystery." He has, however, got over the difficulty by choosing his own birthday, and for this purpose he selected February 14. "It is not merely." he says, "that St. Valentine's Day is the very day for a novelist," but he has a dog "whose pedigree has been more carefully kept" than his own, and it bears the name Valentine from having been born on the saint's day, master and dog can celebrate their birthday together. This canine favourite he has thus addressed in verse:
Accept from me these birthday lines— If every dog must have his dog, How bless'd to have St.Valentine's!
But, asked on one occasion to give the date of his birthday, Mr.Zangwill replied, expressing his inability to do so, and suggested that the inquirer might "select some nice convenient day, a roomy one, on which he would not be jostled by bigger men."
As he is eminently original in his personality as well as in his work, it is not surprising to know that during his boyhood his favourite reading was not found among the conventional classics, but that he loved to rove in the strange realms of fiction created by writers whose names will be found nowhere in the annals of bookland; the fabricators of cheap boy's stories to wit. Yet his scholastic training was eminently respectable, as he was the most successful scholar of his time at the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields, and before he was twenty—one he had graduated B.A. at the London University with triple honours.
J. A. Hammerton English Humorists of To-day, 1907


Isr ael Zangwill


.


CHAPTER I
THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE, PLUS OTHER THINGS
The Old Maids' Club was founded by Lillie Dulcimer in her sweet seventeenth year. She had always been precocious and could analyze her own sensations before she could spell. In fact she divided her time between making sensations and analyzing them. She never spoke Early English—the dialect which so enraged Dr. Johnson—but, like John Stuart Mill, she wrote a classical style from childhood. She kept a diary, not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication only. It was labelled "Lillie Day by Day," and was posted up from her fifth year. Judging by the analogy of the rest, one might construct the entry for the first day of her life. If she had been able to record her thoughts, her diary would probably have begun thus:—
" Sunday, September 3rd: My birthday. Wept at the sight of the world in which I was to be so miserable. The atmosphere was so stuffy—not at all pleasing to the æsthetic faculties. Expected a more refined reception. A lady, to whom I had never been introduced, fondled me and addressed me as 'Petsie-tootsie-wootsie.' It appears that she is my mother, but this hardly justifies her in degrading the language of Milton and Shakespeare. Later on a man came in and kissed her. I could not help thinking that they might respect my presence; and, if they must carry on, continue to do so out of my sight as before. I understood later that I must call the stranger 'Poppy,' and that I was not to resent his familiarities, as he was very much attached to my mother by Act of Parliament. Both the man and the woman seem to arrogate to themselves a certain authority over me. How strange that two persons you have never seen before in your life should claim such rights of interference! There must be something rotten in the constitution of Society. It shall be one of my life-tasks to discover what it is. I made a light lunch off milk, but do not care for the beverage. The day passed slowly. I was dreadfully bored by the conversation in the bedroom—it was so petty. I was glad when night came. O, the intolerable ennui of an English Sunday! I divine already that I am destined to go through life perpetually craving for I know not what, and that I shan't be happy till I get it."
Lillie was a born heroine, being young and beautiful from her birth. In her fourth year she conceived a Platonic affection for the boy who brought the telegrams. His manners had such repose. This was followed by a hopeless passion for a French cavalry officer with spurs. Every one feared she would grow up to be a suicide or a poetess; for her earliest nursery rhyme was an impromptu distich discovered by the nursery-maid, running:
Woonded i crawl out from the battel, Life is as hollo as my rattel.
And her twelfth year was almost entirely devoted to literary composition of a hopeless character, so far as publishers were concerned. It was only the success of "Woman as a Waste Force," in her