Chapter II: Part 2

June Forsyte, with her decided chin and managing ways, is the antithesis of Irene, strong only in her softness. It is easy to understand how this very contrast would have switched Bosinney’s love from one to the other, but the change itself is not very convincingly brought about. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that Bosinney himself is not a success. He is the representative of the contrast group; property to him is nothing, he spends his time and talent—in the end risking his career—on the house which is Soames Forsyte’s. On the other hand, it is his sudden knowledge that another also owns the woman of whom he had thought himself the sole possessor that drives him to madness and suicide. Property makes its appeal even to him.

There is throughout the book a depth of gloom, as if the shadows of great possessions lay over it. None of the characters is really attractive, except, perhaps, old Jolyon Forsyte; there is something subtly caddish about them all, and the author’s lack of sympathy sours the whole. Studied in the light especially of his novels, it is a strange error to call Galsworthy “detached.” The side he takes is always apparent, in spite of what he says on the other, and his lack of sympathy with the human representatives of the opposite point of view is often so great as to put them out of drawing. Fine as the Forsytes are, they would have been much finer if the author had penetrated in some degree beneath their outer skin, shown sympathy with the springs of their nature as well as understanding of their mental attitude. His sympathies in _The Man of Property_ are undoubtedly with Irene Forsyte and with Bosinney—though it would seem that this character sometimes repelled and baffled even his creator.

On the whole there is something haunting about the book—something in the gloom of its ending which makes us shudder after it is closed. Property triumphs. Bosinney is beaten and killed by the Man of Property, and Irene is brought back to the slavery from which she revolted.

“Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa-cushions, she had a strange
resemblance to a captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against the
wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as
though she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no
longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.”

Thus the curtain rings down on Irene Forsyte, crushed under the heel of prosperity, robbed of her love by a sudden awakening of the sense of property in the heart of the man she had thought clean of it....

_The Country House_ also deals with a class, and it is the country equivalent of the Forsytes. The Pendyces are big country proprietors, but the property is to them a good deal more than material possession. It is their Position in the county that they think of, their Standing; Dignity is with them almost as important as Land, and more important than Money. Also they are not quite so much a type as the Forsytes—in certain broad characteristics they may be found in dozens of country manors, but in others they are unique. They do everything with the greatest amount of unnecessary trouble to themselves and other people. “Pendyce,” says Paramor to Vigil, when discussing the threatened divorce, “he’d give his eyes for the case not to come on, but you’ll see he’ll rub everything up the wrong way, and it’ll be a miracle if we succeed. That’s ’Pendycitis’!”

Even George, who in some ways breaks free from the family tradition, is afflicted by it. It is largely owing to Pendycitis that he loses Helen Bellew. He tires her with that dogged quality of his, which spares neither himself nor her, but sends him plodding and muddling on in the face of impossible circumstances. He cannot yield, and he is not really strong—he is a Pendyce; and it is with luxurious relief that she finds herself free of him at last.

Helen Bellew is only lightly sketched in, her presence is almost always merely physical. She has many of the outward essentials of the Galsworthy heroine, that particular dower of ripe, seductive, yet delicate, beauty which we find in Irene Forsyte, Audrey Noel, and Olive Cramier. But she is heartless—which those others are not—and hence we seem to find a certain reluctance on the author’s part to probe into her. What is heartless cannot be truly beautiful, according to his creed, and he wants us to realise how beautiful Helen Bellew was, so that she became a force, a moulding-stamp, to the hard, unimpressionable George Pendyce.

The real heroine of _The Country House_ is George’s mother, Margery Pendyce, and she is, practically without exception, the most charming character in Galsworthy’s novels. She is the Mother—not the Mother in her elemental form, but the Mother as civilisation and education and pain have made her; not very different from the primitive type, perhaps, but dainty with a score of sweet refinements. Quieted by her long subjection in the school of Pendyce, she yet has the invincible courage of gentleness; accustomed for years to yield where her own comfort and happiness only are concerned, she takes an impregnable stand at last when her children’s welfare is at stake. There is something heroic in this gentle, soft-gowned, lavender-scented figure, moving so peacefully among her roses, caring so dutifully for her household and her husband, and then suddenly putting them all from her, to take her place beside her outcast son.

“I have gone up to London to be with George” (she writes simply to
Pendyce), “you will remember what I said last night. Perhaps you did
not quite realise that I meant it. Take care of poor old Roy, and
don’t let them give him too much meat this hot weather. Jackman knows
better than Ellis how to manage the roses. Please do not worry about
me. Good-bye, dear Horace; I am sorry if I grieve you.”

Margery Pendyce is the chief of the contrast group in this novel; with her is Gregory Vigil, the idealist, who looks at the sky when it would be better if he looked at the street and saw where he was going. Unselfishness, quietness, and idealism are the contrasts of Pendycitis. The Reverend Hussell Barter, who is a kind of clerical Pendyce, is one of Galsworthy’s most successful attempts at humour. He is drawn with many a memorable satiric flick, and doubtless this is a reason why he succeeds, for Galsworthy’s humour without irony is apt to be trivial.

Another striking character is the Spaniel John—here Galsworthy has succeeded in giving a dog a very definite personality. John is not only a dog, he is a spaniel—the distinct psychology of the spaniel works in him, and we could never think of him as a terrier or a collie. Indeed the author has taken as much trouble over the Spaniel John as over any character in the book, and been as successful.

THE NOVELS
II

One can say without much fear of contradiction that after _The Man of Property_ the finest of Galsworthy’s novels is _Fraternity_. Indeed it comes as near being a perfect work of art as any novel ever written. There have been many novels with a stronger appeal, a wider comprehension, a greater depth and force, but few of which it can be said that they fulfil more completely the canons of novel-writing. And this is to be understood not only of the letter but of the spirit—_Fraternity_ is no mere triumph of technique, it is a moving, human and beautiful story, about people who are real, if drawn in pale colours, and situations which are Life, in spite of their elusiveness.

In its perfection of balance, _Fraternity_ reminds one of the plays. There is a central situation, flanked by two contrasting groups. It is not of mere industrial or moral significance, nor is it the satirisation of any particular class; it is a problem which has always occupied human minds, and will do so till the end of time—the problem of the rich and the poor. It is embodied in old Mr Stone, with his great unfinished—and, we suspect, ever to be unfinished—work on Brotherhood. “Each one of us has a shadow in those places—in those streets.” Mr Stone is one of Galsworthy’s finest achievements. In him the author shows what few have even attempted to show, the infinite pathos of moral greatness. There is no denying the greatness of Mr Stone, in spite of his mental kink, and his pathos is as evident. He is alone, it is his own doing; he cannot, if he would, bind himself up with others. He writes of Fraternity, but in life he never touches a brother’s hand—he does nothing to unite those two brothers whose embrace he writes of, and his own life is equally remote from either. They come near him, they put out tentative, appealing hands—and with a wistful sigh he turns to his book.

The Classes are represented by the two Dallison families, the Masses by the Hughes, Creed, and the little model. It is remarkable how tightly the whole fabric is drawn together—Hilary and Stephen Dallison have married two sisters, Bianca and Cecilia, and their Shadows live together under the same roof. We know what would be, with an average novelist, the result of such an effort at concentration, but nothing could be more natural, more inevitable, than the knitting up of these groups.

The little model is not a common Galsworthy type; in fact, she stands almost alone in his novels. Quiet and soft she undoubtedly is, like most of his women, but the meek vulgarity of her little mind is something new. She is drawn with a wonderful sympathy, as indeed are all the characters in the book; for in _Fraternity_, Galsworthy does not seem to have been so much struck by the irony of his theme as by its pathos. There is one beautiful account of her, leaving Hilary’s house, which sheds a tender light like a spring sunset over her figure, making it at once terribly pathetic and terribly young.

“She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though
to show her gratitude. And presently, looking up from his manuscript,
he saw her face still at the railings, peering through a lilac bush.
Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school. Hilary got up,
perturbed. The sight of that skipping was like the rays of a lantern
turned on the dark street of another human being’s life. It revealed,
as in a flash, the loneliness of this child, without money and without
friends, in the midst of this great town.”

The Hughes group is in its units to be found in many of Galsworthy’s works: the bullying husband, gross, selfish, an animal—but an animal broken—the meek wife who complains and nags, but has at the bottom of her heart an unreasoning dog-like quality which will let her make no effective efforts for freedom; the poor old man, fallen on evil days, yet with a philosophy, and a self-respect which is almost pride. Galsworthy never sees the poor and outcast in an aureole of false idealism. If he sadly confesses that the classes do not know how to help the masses, he also confesses that the masses do not know how to help themselves. If the Dallisons are timid and inefficient, Hughes is an undeserving brute, and Mrs Hughes a scold who is largely responsible for her own ills. The little model is forlorn, but she is also designing. The result is that an atmosphere of deep depression hangs over _Fraternity_. One might say that its moral was “For rich is rich and poor is poor, and never the twain shall meet”—except in the unfinished book of a cranky idealist.

“Like flies caught among the impalpable and smoky threads of cobwebs,
so men struggle in the webs of their own natures, giving here a start,
there a pitiful small jerking, long sustained, and falling into
stillness. Enmeshed they were born, enmeshed they die, fighting
according to their strength to the end; to fight in the hope of
freedom, their joy; to die, not knowing they are beaten, their
reward.”

_The Patrician_ is scarcely equal to _Fraternity_. In it the bitterness, which seemed to have slumbered for a while, awakes, and helps to distort the picture. Also in no novel, I think, is more obvious Galsworthy’s lack of sympathy with certain of his characters. The book suffers in having for its central figure a man whom the author admires but does not really understand. Lord Miltoun is a noble conception, but Galsworthy does not get to the bottom of his struggle. One feels all the way through that he admires him, but cannot sympathise with him, and the result is that the real grounds of Miltoun’s actions are seldom displayed. We never penetrate beneath the surface of this character, whose inner mind we nevertheless would know rather than many whose workings are shown us.

There is also a group, the Valleys group, whom Galsworthy is passionately wanting to treat fairly, but for whom he cannot conceal a bitterness not unflavoured with contempt. Lord Valleys, his wife, his sons, his daughters, are drawn with a painstaking effort to hide his real feeling towards them, but the effort often breaks down; even Barbara, splendid and brave, has a repelling hardness in which stick one or two ironic arrows of her creator. Courtier, who represents the Other Point of View, is sometimes rather vaguely drawn, and suffers in the opposite way to Miltoun, for Galsworthy, while apparently sympathising with his attitude, does not seem to have the same admiration for his character.

The only person in the book who is both admired and understood is Mrs Noel. Here we have a very appealing figure, tragic yet quiet, courageous yet soft, made for love, vibrant with passion, full of an infinite delicacy and self-respect. Self-respect is an unfailing characteristic of Galsworthy’s good women; he has no sympathy with the woman who in times of stress loses her personal dignity, and forgets all those little trivial refinements of body which are part of her greatness. Audrey Noel “incorrigibly loved to look as charming as she could; and even if no one were going to see her, she never felt that she looked charming enough.” He realises that for a woman who respects herself it is not enough to be merely clean and tidy, she must be as beautiful as circumstances will allow—it is not vanity but her dignity which demands it. Mrs Noel appeals because her courage is so infinite, and because it is so essentially a woman’s courage, a thing of gentleness and soft endurance, not of the stiff but of the smiling lip.

There is a certain unsatisfactoriness in the tragedy of her relations with Miltoun. He falls from his ideal, but only half-way, so to speak—the rest of his difficulty is solved by her abnegation. One is given the impression, in spite of much talking between the characters, that the vital heart of the matter has never been reached. “If the lark’s song means nothing—if that sky is a morass of our invention—if we are pettily creeping on, furthering nothing—persuade me of it, and I’ll bless you.” That desperate cry of Miltoun seems to give more of the essence of his struggle than any arguments about Religion and Authority. One feels that both were only names on lips—it was not merely a respect for authority that made Miltoun first deny himself Audrey, and then when he had taken her, believe himself bound to throw aside his public life. The appeal of Authority is not made convincing enough, the appeal to Religion not spiritual enough, for a man of Miltoun’s type—one sees him acting, generally at least, according to the dead letter of both; one knows there must have been a quickening spirit behind to drive such a man, but one is not shown it.

_The Dark Flower_ is in some ways a departure from his usual methods. It lacks the central problem, with its balanced and contrasted groups. It is not a study of a situation nor of a class; it is a study of passion. There has always been plenty of passion in Galsworthy’s books; he is not a cold writer, and though his central idea is often social or intellectual, in his treatment of it he never loses sight of the fact that human emotions are stronger than human intellects, and play a more important part in all situations, no matter how purely technical and general these may appear. But in _The Dark Flower_, passion is not an incident or a moulding force, it is the central theme. We are shown its growth in three different stages—its first kindling in the heart of a boy, its consummation in the young man and woman, its last flicker in the man who sees old age approaching and to whom youth calls.

To carry out his idea Galsworthy is forced to put aside much of that compactness which is so effective in his other novels. Indeed _The Dark Flower_ is really three separate stories, of which the hero, Mark Lennan, is the connecting link. A really fine character might have held these three episodes together, but Lennan is vaguely drawn. He is most convincing as boy and middle-aged man; in the central part he is swamped in the vehemence of his own love. Indeed the passion of Lennan and Olive Cramier is far the greatest thing about them—taken apart from it they are both a little colourless. Olive is much less life-like than Audrey Noel, Irene Forsyte, and others of her kind; she is vague and shadowy beside the heroines of the two other episodes, Anne Stormer and Nell Dromore.

These women are in many ways the best-drawn characters in the book. Anne Stormer, caught on the fringe of middle age by the gust of her passion for a boy of eighteen, swept by it, rocked by it, but conscious all the time of its hopelessness with regard to herself, its cruelty with regard to him, in the end gives him up to the little girl of his own age, with whom he climbs trees, and in whose presence he forgets the dark flower whose scent in her bosom had given him his first staggering draught of life. She is a character fine through her pathos, through the inevitableness of her renunciation, which is not made from any high spirit of courage or self-sacrifice, but simply because she must.

Very different is Nell Dromore, who sends the mocking cry of youth after Lennan when, having passed through the storm of his love for Olive Cramier, and married his boyhood’s playfellow, Sylvia Doone, he sees old age creeping towards him, passionless and adventureless. She is an extraordinary study of mingled abandonment and innocence. She leads him on by methods which would not disgrace a courtesan if they had not about them all the delicious shamelessness of a child. In the end he has the strength to wrench himself from her, knowing that she brings him but a false hope, for which his wife’s broken heart must pay. Sylvia, though winning and sweet in the first episode, is rather shadowy here, where she has such an important part. No doubt her ineffectiveness is to a certain extent deliberate, but for all that it should not be unreal, or we lose sight of it as a force in Lennan’s struggle.

On the whole it must be said that Galsworthy is at his best when most characteristic, and here, where he turns to the methods of the more ordinary novelist, he loses some of his strength. There are, however, some impressive scenes in the book, and he has again shown his peculiar successfulness in dealing with youth and young love. There are delightful pictures of the boy Mark, in which his growing, half-understood infatuation is never allowed to drown the frankness of his youth; and the scenes between him and Sylvia remind us of similar scenes in _Joy_.

In _The Freelands_, Galsworthy reverts to the more characteristic mood; indeed the book is reminiscent—in a stimulating, legitimate way. Its structure reminds one of _The Man of Property_, and its environment of _The Country House_. As in the first of these the web was spun over the framework of the six brothers Forsyte, so here we have the four brothers Freeland to serve as pegs—and they live in circumstances that recall the Pendyces and their problems. Not that they are all four country people—Felix is a successful author and lives at Hampstead, and John is in the Home Office; but the family meets at Becket, where Stanley who has made a fortune by exporting ploughs, has an estate, and Tod, the eccentric and revolutionary, lives the simple life, freehold.

Then there is the old mother, one of those tender, sturdy, odd patricians whom the author can draw so clearly, and there is the young generation as represented by Nedda, Felix’s inquiring daughter, and Tod’s anarchistic Derek and Sheila—also the wives of three Freelands, especially Tod’s Kirsteen.

These characters are not considered so much in relation to each other as in relation to the central problem, which is The Land—and The Land with Galsworthy is, of course, not the good earth but the slaves that toil on it. He studies the labouring man in connection with his employers, the petty tyrannies of Manor, Parsonage, and Farm. Bob Tryst is evicted because his marriage with his deceased wife’s sister displeases the Squiress, Lady Malloring, and the poor Gaunts are hounded from pillar to post because the daughter has “got into trouble.” Galsworthy pillories Feudalism, which he sees rampant over English rusticity, and parts of _The Freelands_ read like a Gladstone League pamphlet.

However, to any one who loathes “the People,” whether of fields or streets, the central interest of _The Freelands_ is Galsworthy’s study of a modern English family. He is rather fond of this especial study—we have it in _The Man of Property_, _The Country House_, and _The Patrician_; we see it hovering near _Fraternity_. The combinations and permutations of blood relationship seem to interest him enormously—the modern push and individualism, half attacking, half combining with old-fashioned ideas of kinship and unity. He shows how the family Idea survives, in spite of actual disruptions, and can outlive even an utter lack of common life, interest, or sympathy—so that the unloved brother must come somehow before the loved stranger, simply because he is One of the Family. It is probably a lurking of the primitive clan instinct, and one would like to see it treated of even more thoroughly than Galsworthy has done. It is interesting to watch him with these Freelands, linked by their family tie, and also, in this case, by the wise, kindly, foolish old mother of them all—who is, however, Tod’s in particular.

In other matters _The Freelands_ makes its predecessor, _The Dark Flower_, stand out even more as an exception or parenthesis. In his latest novel we have all his early, usual traits: all his old defects of too general a characterisation, too careful a balance, too deliberate a sacrifice of the artist to the moralist, but at the same time the virtues of these defects—restraint, craft, and purpose, and, besides, those intrinsic qualities which are the real building-stuff of his work.

The characters of these four brothers, their wives and children and associates, are drawn with a firm touch lightened by much satire of the kinder sort. There is that sense and grasp of beauty which we find so inevitably in Galsworthy’s treatment of even the stuffiest theme. We have, too, a sense of aloofness which, if it is sometimes irritating, is occasionally majestic, and lit by warm, sudden flashes of penetration into characters one would have thought, by other signs, to be beyond his sphere of understanding. The book may not be so good as _Fraternity_, it is certainly not so great as _The Man of Property_, but it is, nevertheless, among the best he has given us, which is encouraging, since it is, though only temporarily, one hopes, the last.

THE SKETCHES

_Villa Rubein_ and four short stories under the title of _A Man of Devon_ were published anonymously. All early efforts, they are not on a line with Galsworthy’s later work, but they have about them a certain beauty and individuality which makes them worth considering. Perhaps their chief characteristic is delicacy: they are water-colours, in many ways exquisitely conceived and shaded, but perhaps a trifle pale and washed out, a trifle—it must be owned—uninteresting.

_Villa Rubein_, describing with much sensitive charm the life of a half-Austrian household, is full of tenderness, but lacking somehow in grip. The characters are more attractive than most of Galsworthy’s—in fact, in no work of his do we meet such a uniformly charming group of people. They are sketched, even the less pleasing, with an entire absence of bitterness, and the heroine, Christian, and her little half-German sister are delightful in their freshness and grave sweetness. Miss Naylor and old Nic Treffry are also drawn with a loving and convincing hand. The book seems to have been written in a mellow mood which passed with it. Yet we pay for any absence of bitterness, propaganda or pessimism, by a corresponding lack of force. It must be confessed that Galsworthy is most effective when he is most gloomy, most penetrating when he is most bitter, most humorous when he is most satirical.

The short stories call for no special comment except _The Salvation of a Forsyte_, where we meet for the first time Swithin Forsyte, later to figure in _The Man of Property_. We are introduced to an early adventure of his, which is treated with some technical skill and an impressive irony. The tale has grip, and is not far off French excellence of craft. The other stories are too long for their themes, which, if not actually thin in themselves, are dragged out in the telling.

Of very different stuff are the four volumes of sketches—_A Commentary_, _A Motley_, _The Inn of Tranquillity_, and _The Little Man_. In these, except, perhaps, in the last, we have some of Galsworthy’s best work, much of it equal, in its different way, to the finest of the plays and novels.

_A Commentary_ deals chiefly with the life of the very poor, showing the intimacy of the author’s knowledge, and the depths of his sympathy. Some of the sketches are indictments of the social order which favours those who have money and tramples those who have none. _Justice_, for instance, is a fresh exposure of the oft-exposed inequality of the divorce laws where rich and poor are concerned. _A Mother_ is a piteous revelation of those depths of horror and humiliation which form the daily life of many. Continually, in the plays and in the novels, Galsworthy reveals the utter brutishness of some of these submerged ones. He never attempts to enforce his social ethics by glorification of those he champions. Such men as Hughes, in _Fraternity_, or the husband, in _A Mother_, are absolutely of the lowest stuff and, it would seem, unworthy of a hand to help them out of the mud in which they roll. But here lies the subtlety of the reproach—it is the social system with its cruelties and stupidities which is responsible for this. There is something more forceful than all the sufferings of the deserving in this grim picture of utter degradation, the depths of bestialism into which mismanaged civilisation can grind divine souls.

In other of the sketches we are shown the opposite side of the picture—the selfishness of the prosperous, their lack of ideals and imagination. Now Galsworthy becomes bitter; with a steely hardness he describes the comfortable life of the upper middle classes, of the fashionable and wealthy. The bias of _A Commentary_ is obvious throughout, and throughout propaganda takes the first place. The fragments are held together by the central idea, which is the exposure—ironic, indignant, embittered, infinitely pitying—of the inequalities between the poor and the rich. True, there is atmosphere, style, a sense of character; but in _A Commentary_ the artist takes second place.

_A Motley_ is, as the title implies, a collection linked up by no central view-point. Character sketches, episodes of the streets and of the fields, reflections on life, art, manners, anything, and all widely different in style and length, crowd together between the covers, without any definite scheme. They show extraordinary powers of observation and intuition, and at the same time a certain lack of grip, which is always the first of Galsworthy’s weaknesses to come to light in a failing situation. Some of the sketches are too slight, over-fined. On the other hand, some have true poetry and true pathos in their conception. The style is more polished, the pleading less special, the knowledge less embittered than in _A Commentary_. Particularly successful is _A Fisher of Men_, in which Galsworthy is at his best, giving us a sympathetic and tragic picture of a type with which we know he has little sympathy—there is no bitterness here, just pathos. _Once More_ is a study of lower-class life slightly recalling _A Mother_, but here again is far more tenderness, due partly, no doubt, to the wistfulness of youth that creeps into the story. Then there are sketches of life and the furtive love of the London parks; no one has realised more poignantly than Galsworthy all the tragedy of hidden meetings and hidden partings with which our public places are filled.

_The Inn of Tranquillity_ is also a mixed collection, and in it we see far more of Galsworthy the poet and the artist than of Galsworthy the social reformer. There are in the book fragments of sheer beauty which would be hard to beat anywhere in modern prose. Take, for instance, the painting of dawn in _Wind in the Rocks_:

“That god came slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to
top; then, of a sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a
gap of the valley walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground
before him, and censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles,
releasing their perfumed steam. Throughout these happy ravines where
no man lives, he shows himself naked and unashamed, the colour of pale
honey; on his golden hair such shining as one has not elsewhere seen;
his eyes like old wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand
across the invisible strings, for there had arisen the music of
uncurling leaves and flitting things.”

Take also just this sentence from _A Novelist’s Allegory_: “those pallid gleams ... remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up against the black stuffs of secrecy.”

Galsworthy allows himself to play with words, blend them, contrast them, savour their sweet sound and the roll and suck of them under the tongue ... he becomes a poet in prose. But it is not only words that make his poetry. He seizes aspects of beauty and gives them to us palpitating, fresh from their capture, a poet’s prey. Such is _Riding in Mist_, a consummate study of the misty moor, damp, sweet, and dangerous. There is, too, a wonderful sense of locality in _That Old-Time Place_—it throbs with atmosphere.

But we have many studies besides of words and place. There is _Memories_, in which Galsworthy uses his real understanding of dog-nature, faithful and true. There is _The Grand Jury_, in which he shows the fullness of his sympathy for the human dog, the bottom dog, so generally and necessarily ignored by laws which are inevitably made for the upper layer of humanity. We have, too, some illuminating comments on the world of letters. In _About Censorship_ there is fine irony, and in _Some Platitudes Concerning the Drama_ plenty of illumination. Indeed, in this article we are given a plain enough statement of the rules which evidently govern Galsworthy’s own work. For instance: “A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the interplay of circumstance on temperament and temperament on circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea.” There could be no clearer definition of the plan governing _Strife_ and _The Silver Box_. The pronouncement on dramatic dialogue, too, applies admirably to much of Galsworthy’s own achievement:

“The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying
itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere
machinery of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from
character, relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of life.
From start to finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace;
clear, of fine texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and
strength of a design to which all must be subordinated.”

In his last book of sketches—_The Little Man and other Satires_—Galsworthy has made a deliberate sacrifice of beauty. He has left the luminous Italian backgrounds of _The Inn of Tranquillity_, the rustling English twilights of _A Motley_, for the midnight lamp on his study table. This is why, perhaps, _The Little Man_ depresses me. Galsworthy has not stood the test—he has grown bitter. His satire is more akin to that of Swift than Samuel Butler, but without Swift’s redeeming largeness, his tumbling restlessness. Galsworthy’s bitterness is the well-bred bitterness of the pessimist at afternoon tea; Swift is the pessimist in the tavern, raging round and breaking pots.

However, an author’s point of view is not a fair subject for criticism, any more than the shape of his head; he probably cannot help it. But it may be deplored.

The most striking thing about the book itself is the subdivision titled _Studies in Extravagance_. Here we have some remorseless, if only partial, truth—the fierce glow of the searchlight, more concentrated though more limited than the wide shining of the sun. We have _The Writer_, _The Housewife_, _The Plain Man_, etc., all pierced through to their most startling worst. Galsworthy will make no concessions—he will not show us a single motherly redeeming virtue in that woman of schemes and covert horribleness whom he presents as a possible variety of British matron. So too with his Writer—those flickers of amiable naivety which occasionally humanise the writers most of us know are shut out from this portrait of an ape playing with the ABC. It is clever, fierce, vindictive, and partly true.

There are some gentler sketches in the book—for instance, the name-piece, in which we have a really witty and typical picture of an American, with his God’s own gift of admiring good deeds he will not do himself. There is also _Abracadabra_, in which the satire is fundamentally tender, and with little significant bitterness—though in time one comes to resent Galsworthy’s inalienable idea that every woman is ill-used in marriage. There is also such genuine wit, terseness, and point in _Hall Marked_ that one can afford to skip the humours of the parson’s trousers. _Ultima Thule_ is more in _The Motley_ and _Commentary_ vein. We are glad to meet the old man who could tame cats and bullfinches. But why sigh over him so much? He was happy and to be envied, even though he lived in a back room on a few farthings. This misplaced pity is becoming irritating in Galsworthy. His earlier works—_Strife_, _The Man of Property_—are innocent of it, but lately it has grown to be a habit with him. He cannot resist the temptation to weep over everyone whose clothes are not quite as good as his own.

It is scarcely surprising that a writer with Galsworthy’s sense of words and atmosphere should have written a book of verse—the only surprise is that his solitary experiment in poetry should not have been more successful. When we remember the exquisite prose of his plays, novels and sketches, the admirable description, the sense of atmosphere, not forgetting also the genuine poetry of much of _The Little Dream_, we are surprised not to find in _Moods, Songs and Doggerels_, anything of permanent quality, or worthy to stand beside his other work. There are some delightful songs of the country, of Devon, one or two little fragrant snatches, like puffs of breeze. But the more ambitious pieces, the _Moods_, are for the most part wanting in inspiration. They are just prose, and not nearly such fine prose as we have a right to expect from Galsworthy. One or two stand out as poetry, and these are mostly studies in atmosphere, such as _Street Lamps_:

“Lamps, lamps! Lamps ev’rywhere!
You wistful, gay, and burning eyes,
You stars low-driven from the skies
Down on the rainy air.

You merchant eyes, that never tire
Of spying out our little ways;
Of summing up our little days
In ledgerings of fire—

Inscrutable your nightly glance,
Your lighting and your snuffing out,
Your flicker through the windy rout,
Guiding this mazy dance.

O watchful, troubled gaze of gold,
Protecting us upon our beats—
You piteous glamour of the streets,
Youthless, and never old!”

GALSWORTHY THE ARTIST

Galsworthy is an artist before he is a social reformer. It is a mistake to consider him chiefly from the second point of view; for he is not so much a thinker spreading his propaganda by artistic methods as an artist whose excellence is grounded in ideas. _Strife_, for instance, was not written to expose the evils of our present industrial system so much as from the impulse to create, grounding itself in an economic problem—which the artist displays and analyses, just as others, and he at other times, would display and analyse any problem of love, manners, life, or human nature, in the name of “plot.”

For this reason his propaganda interferes very little with his art. Moreover, it is a general propaganda, which lends itself more directly to artistic purposes than a particular one. It would be far more difficult, for instance, to write a human and artistic novel on the evils of leaded glaze than it would be to write one on the selfish stupidity of which leaded glaze is the result. Galsworthy does not attack, at least in force, any definite abuses, he attacks those cruel and stupid powers which are at the bottom of them all—the love of property for property’s sake, the false respectability of the unassailed, the lack of comprehension of one class for another, Pharisaism, materialism, selfishness, and cowardice. He is the champion of the bottom dog, whether human or animal. He pleads passionately for sympathy with the abused and downtrodden and outcast. His throbbing pity vitalises his propaganda, so that it not only ceases to constrict his art, but positively enriches it.

When he is at his best we find a perfect blending of art and idea. The second is bound up in the first, an essential part of it. As he himself says in _Some Platitudes concerning Drama_: “A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of day.”

This ideal is completely fulfilled in _Strife_ and _The Silver Box_, also in _Fraternity_, _The Man of Property_, and some of the sketches—hence it is in these that we must look for his best work. Now and then the idea carries away the artist, warping his vision, and we have instances of special pleading, such as _Justice_, _The Fugitive_, and _The Island Pharisees_.

In a sense Galsworthy’s propaganda is a part of his technical equipment. He uses it chiefly in laying his bases; the solidity and centralisation of his work is due largely to the economic and social ideas on which he rears the structure of human passion and frailty. He does not make Shaw’s mistake of using dialogue, rather than situation, as a means of propaganda, neither does he rely much on character. His moral is inherent in his situations, and he fails only when he lets it stray from the basic idea into the super-structure of character and dialogue.

As an artist pure and simple his chief assets are a sense of situation, a sense of atmosphere, and the power of presenting both beautifully. His sense of character is not particularly wide or profound. He deals with types rather than individuals, and the same types repeat themselves a trifle monotonously. Though he has great gifts of intuition, and occasional penetrating flashes, he does not work much below the surface. It is astonishing, when one considers the force and passion of so much of his work, to realise that it is all got from surface-workings—not that he ever suggests the shallow or superficial, it is simply a reluctance to dig.

Take, for example, Miltoun, in _The Patrician_; here he has attempted to draw a character whose actions spring from the inmost recesses of his being, and the result is a certain unconvincingness marring a fine achievement, for Galsworthy can penetrate only in swift spasms of intuition, and the delineation of a character like Miltoun’s requires no spasmodic descent, but a perpetual working in the buried and profound. Galsworthy is a psychological analyst of some skill; he is sensitive to psychological variations, but he catches these only in their exterior manifestations, and the result is not so much a lack of profundity as a lack of grip. For this reason his characters, charming as they sometimes are, interesting as they always are, never succeed in being absolutely Life—we never come to know them really intimately, they are more acquaintances than friends.

This surface-working in character is liable to impair situation, since the two are interdependent. Galsworthy is a master of situation, but occasionally, when the depths ought to be sounded, we are put off with a consummate skill of arrangement, a perfection of combination and interplay. This is so splendidly done that it is generally not till afterwards that we realise the lack, and this only because Galsworthy’s work so often leaves an after-taste of aloofness, that, as every lover of Galsworthy knows he is not aloof, one sees that something must be wrong with the art which gives such an impression.

Critics speak of Galsworthy’s detachment, but the true lover knows this is not so. The sense of aloofness is due partly to his scrupulous fairness in examining every point of view, partly to an exaggerated restraint, and a shrinking from analyses which are not purely intellectual. One often wishes that he would give himself rein. It is not from lack of power that he holds himself in, it seems to be rather from a certain shyness, a fastidious shrinking from troubling the depths or breaking the gates. On the rare occasions he gives himself freedom, we are struck by the force and vitality of it all. Strange as it may seem in one who has been so often accused of coldness, he is masterly in conveying the charged atmosphere of passion. It is true that he writes with restraint, with almost too much restraint, but he has a wonderful power of suggesting the heavy sweetness of passion, its joys, its languors, its delicacies rather than its ferocities.

Take, for example, the scene in _The Man of Property_, when Irene returns to her husband, after having for the first time met Bosinney as a lover:

“He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the
colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse
she wore. She was breathing fast and deep, as though she had been
running, and with every breath perfume seemed to come from her hair,
and from her body, like perfume from an opening flower.... He lifted
his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside. ‘Don’t
touch me!’ she cried. He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away. ‘And
where have you been?’ he asked. ‘In heaven—out of this house!’ With
those words she fled upstairs.... And Soames stood motionless. What
prevented him from following her? Was it that, with the eyes of faith,
he saw Bosinney looking down from that high window in Sloane Street,
straining his eyes for yet another glimpse of Irene’s vanished figure,
cooling his flushed face, dreaming of the moment when she flung
herself on his breast—the scent of her still in the air around and the
sound of her laugh that was like a sob?”

Next to a sense of situation Galsworthy must be granted a sense of atmosphere. This is due to the extraordinary sensitiveness he brings into his work, as distinct from penetration.

“Strong sunlight was falling on that little London garden, disclosing
its native shadowiness; streaks and smudges such as Life smears over
the faces of those who live too consciously. The late perfume of the
lilac came stealing forth into the air faintly smeethed with
chimney-smoke. There was brightness but no glory, in that little
garden; scent, but no strong air blown across golden lakes of
buttercups, from seas of springing clover, or the wind-silver of young
wheat; music, but no full choir of sound, no hum.”

This passage from _Fraternity_ shows Galsworthy’s peculiar grasp of subtleties, those pseudo-expressions of emotion in Nature, which only the sensitive can find in their less obvious aspects. For the more obvious aspects, he has not so much attention. He deals little with storms and furies, with nature as a power. Nature to him is rather an influence, a thing of crafty workings; and he loves above all others hours of pale sunlight, faint dawn, or, more still, twilight languid and hushed, full of troubled perfumes:

“All things waited. The creatures of night were slow to come forth
after that long bright summer’s day, watching for the shades of the
trees to sink deeper and deeper into the now chalk-white water;
watching for the chalk-white face of the sky to be masked with velvet.
The very black plumed trees themselves seemed to wait in suspense for
the grape-bloom of night. All things stared, wan in that hour of
passing day—all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.”[1]

-----

Footnote 1:

_The Dark Flower._

-----

In the matter of style, Galsworthy is not a purist. One finds a split infinitive spoiling a procession of beautiful words, and one occasionally loses patience over a squad of panting verbless sentences all beginning with “And.” But he has a gift worth more than grammatical perfection, and that is a real sense of words. In their combinations, contrasts, and values, he marshals them with a poet’s strategy. He loves those words which hold their meanings as soldiers their weapons; one sees him apportioning the place of honour in a sentence, ranking the subordinates. He is so absolute a craftsman that we see in his occasional lapses more of a deliberate disregard than ignorance, and certainly nothing of the slipshod.

His dialogue in the plays is masterly—not always so effective in the novels. He is at his best in the dialogue of the lower classes. Sometimes, even in the plays, the conversation of his “gentlefolk” is apt to be stilted or to drag. On the other hand, the speech of the poor is always both spontaneous and significant. He has a wonderful power of economy in words. Throughout the plays, and in the most memorable dialogues in the novels, there is not a word too much, and yet there is nothing jerky or scrappy in the general impression.

Galsworthy is not a writer who owes much to outside influence. The first thought of “influence” in his case calls up ideas of French and Russian literature, but it would be surer to say that the resemblance is due to French and Russian qualities in the author’s outlook and state of mind than to discipleship either unconscious or deliberate.

Certainly he has that infinite pity, almost reverence, for suffering which characterises Russian ideas. But the same pity and reverence are not expressed in the large, straightforward manner of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, but with Gallic subtlety and irony, recalling Flaubert. The writer with whom he has greatest affinity, to whom he may be said to be to a certain extent indebted, is Turguenev. In Turguenev we see the meeting ground of French and Russian art. There is the breadth, the tenderness, the mysticism of the Slav, mingling with the Frenchman’s sense of humour and sense of form. Every writer who sets store on form must expect to be credited with French influences. English art is essentially naïve in technique. Galsworthy has few, if any, English affinities. But, on the other hand, he has anglicised the foreign influences. The Russian pity is shorn of its mysticism, the French irony of its gaiety. These two combinations are characteristic of the countries of their origin, and Galsworthy splits them, choosing the pity and the irony, leaving the mysticism and the gaiety—thus asserting both his personality and his race.

Galsworthy is a pessimist—not in the spirit of fire and revolt, but in the spirit of an artist, sad, rather hopeless, and compassionate. Everywhere he sees ills—the trampling of the weak and poor, the conflict of instinct and civilisation, the pariahdom of the enlightened, the tyranny of unimaginativeness, hypocrisy and greed. He suggests no remedy—in fact, he insists continually on the difficulty of finding any remedy which shall be at once permanent and adequate—he just exposes the sore, and shows at the same time his burning pity for it, kindling our own.

But if he realises with painful vividness the evil and sorrow of life, and if a certain tired hopelessness and dislike of interference keep him from dreaming a brighter future, his eyes are not blind to beauty, to tenderness, and charm. Though his fine characters are almost always in revolt, though his beauty is always softened with pathos, his rare humour twisted with satire, we must acknowledge that he has a true sense of the splendour, the loveliness, and the fun of life. He sees them, so to speak, through a mist of tears, but he does not miss them altogether. It is because he is so much more than a social reformer, because he is an artist and a sensitive, that he cannot glibly set down remedies for the world’s wrongs. The genuine reformer is never content with pointing out the evils of a system, he has an improving plan. Galsworthy only shows us the shadows, with the lights that lie beside them, not those lights which shall scatter them at last. He is an artist, and the artist’s vision is not of the future, but of to-day. [Blank Page]

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GALSWORTHY’S PRINCIPAL WRITINGS

[The date is given of the first edition of each book. “New edition” signifies a revision of text, change of format or transference to a different publisher.]

[A] From the Four Winds [stories] (_Unwin_). 1897.

[A] Jocelyn (_Duckworth_). 1898.

[A] Villa Rubein (_Duckworth_). 1900.

[A] A Man of Devon [and other stories] (_Blackwood_). 1901.

The Island Pharisees (_Heinemann_). 1904. New edition, 1908.

The Man of Property (_Heinemann_). 1906. New editions: 1907. (_Hodder
and Stoughton_). 1911. (_Heinemann_). 1915.

The Country House (_Heinemann_). 1907. New edition, 1911.

A Commentary (_Richards_). 1908. New edition (_Duckworth_). 1910.

Fraternity (_Heinemann_). 1908.

Plays. Volume I. [The Silver Box; Joy; Strife] (_Duckworth_). 1909.

Villa Rubein [and other stories] (_Duckworth_). 1909. New edition, 1911.
[This contains the stories previously issued in the two volumes
enumerated above, “Villa Rubein” and “A Man of Devon.”]

The Silver Box [separate issue] (_Duckworth_). 1910.

Joy [separate issue] (_Duckworth_). 1910.

Strife [separate issue] (_Duckworth_). 1910.

Justice [play] (_Duckworth_). 1910.

A Motley (_Heinemann_). 1910.

The Patrician (_Heinemann_). 1911.

The Little Dream [play] (_Duckworth_). N.D. [1911.]

The Pigeon [play] (_Duckworth_). 1912.

Moods, Songs and Doggerels (Heinemann). 1912.

The Inn of Tranquillity: Studies and Essays (_Heinemann_). 1912.

The Eldest Son [play] (_Duckworth_). 1912.

Plays. Volume II. [The Eldest Son; The Little Dream; Justice]
(_Duckworth_). 1912.

The Fugitive [play] (_Duckworth_). 1913.

The Dark Flower (_Heinemann_). 1913.

The Mob [play] (_Duckworth_). 1914.

Plays. Volume III. [The Fugitive; The Pigeon; The Mob] (_Duckworth_).
1914.

Some Slings and Arrows from John Galsworthy. Selected by Elsie E. Morton
(_Elkin Mathews_). 1914.

Memories [an illustrated reprint of a single study from “The Inn of
Tranquillity”] (_Heinemann_). 1914.

The Little Man, and other Satires (_Heinemann_). 1915.

A Bit o’ Love [play] (_Duckworth_). 1915.

The Freelands (_Heinemann_). 1915.

Footnote A:

These four books were written under the pseudonym “John Sinjohn.”

AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Island Pharisees (_Putnam_). 1904. New edition, 1908.

The Man of Property (_Putnam_). 1906.

The Country House (_Putnam_). 1907. New edition (_Scribner_). 1914.

Villa Rubein (_Putnam_). 1908.

A Commentary (_Putnam_). 1908.

Fraternity (_Putnam_). 1909.

Plays: First Series (_Putnam_). 1909.

Joy [play] (_Scribner_). 1910.

A Motley (_Scribner_). 1910.

Justice [play] (_Scribner_). 1910.

The Patrician (_Scribner_). 1911.

The Little Dream [play] (_Scribner_). 1911.

The Pigeon [play] (_Scribner_). 1912.

Moods, Songs and Doggerels (_Scribner_). 1912.

The Eldest Son [play] (_Scribner_). 1912.

The Inn of Tranquillity (_Scribner_). 1912.

Plays: Second Series (_Scribner_). 1913.

The Fugitive [play] (_Scribner_). 1913.

The Dark Flower (_Scribner_). 1913.

The Mob [play] (_Scribner_). 1914.

Plays: Third Series (_Scribner_). 1914.

Memories [an illustrated reprint of a single study from “The Inn of
Tranquillity”] (_Scribner_). 1914.

The Little Man, and other Satires (_Scribner_). 1915.

A Bit o’ Love [play] (_Scribner_). 1915.

The Freelands (_Scribner_). 1915.

INDEX

_About Censorship_, 93
_Abracadabra_, 96

Barclay, Florence, 10
Barker, Granville, 18
Bennett, Arnold, 10, 12
_Bit o’ Love, A_, 16, 37, 44–47