Part 4
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.