1. Mr. Galsworthy’s
Secret Loyalties

i

IN the autumn of 1922 New York began to witness a play by John Galsworthy, called Loyalties. Not only the extreme smoothness of the acting by a London company but the almost unblemished perfection of the play as drama excited much praise. Because, of the two principals, one was a Jew and the other was not, with consequent enhancement of the dramatic values in several scenes, it was said (by those who always seek an extrinsic explanation) that Loyalties simply could not have avoided being a success in New York. The same type of mind has long been busy with the problem of Mr. Galsworthy as a novelist. It read The Man of Property and found the book explained by the fact that the author was a Socialist. Confronted with The Dark Flower, it declared this “love life of a man” sheer sentimentalism (in 1913 there was no Freudianism to fall back on). And the powerful play called Justice was accounted for by a story that quiet Mr. Galsworthy had “put on old clothes, wrapped a brick in brown paper, stopped in front of a tempting-looking plate-glass window” and let ’er fly. On being “promptly arrested,” he “gave an assumed name, and the magistrate, in his turn, gave Galsworthy six months. That’s how he found out what the inside of English prisons was like.”

A saying has it that it is always the innocent bystander who gets hurt; but the fate of the sympathetic bystander—and such a one John Galsworthy has always been—is more ironic. That peculiar sprite, George Meredith’s Comic Spirit, reading all that has been written about Galsworthy would possibly find some adequate comment; but Meredith is dead and the only penetrating characterisation that occurs to me is: “Galsworthy’s the kind of man who, if he were in some other station of life, would be a splendid subject for Joseph Conrad.”

In the middle of Loyalties a character exclaims: “Prejudices—or are they loyalties—I don’t know—criss-cross—we all cut each other’s throats from the best of motives.” Well, in a paper written in 1917 or earlier and included in their book, Some Modern Novelists, published in January, 1918, Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett, discussing Galsworthy’s early novels put down a now very remarkable sentence, as follows:

“Mr. Galsworthy does not see how two loyalties that conflict can both be right; and he is always interested in the larger loyalty.”

So interesting and significant a statement, buried as seed, might easily sprout as novel or play. I have no atom of evidence that Mr. Galsworthy ever saw the comment; but if he read it and forgot (buried?) the words, then Loyalties was written in their effectual disproof. For in this drama, as in all his novels, as in all his other dramas, Mr. Galsworthy is constantly seeing and portraying how conflicting loyalties both are right; he is never interested in the larger loyalty and cannot keep his eye on it through consecutive chapters or through a single act; he is forever presenting the two or more sides and taking none. He once said: “I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to learn in life is that we can’t have things both ways.” He should have added:“—and I have never learned it!”

ii

“Learned,” of course, in the sense of “accepted,” of becoming reconciled to the fact. It did not need Mr. St. John Ervine to tell us that “Mr. Galsworthy is the most sensitive figure in the ranks of modern letters”; for of all modern writers the author of Loyalties and The Forsyte Saga is the most transparent. He is transparent without being in the smallest degree luminous; he refracts, but he does not magnify—a prism through which we may look at society.

Compare him for a moment with Mr. Conrad. Mr. Conrad is by no means always transparent; his opacity is sometimes extraordinary, as in The Rescue; and yet from the midst of obscure sentences, like a gleam from those remarkably deep-set eyes, something luminous will shine out, both light and heat are given forth. “In a certain cool paper,” explains Galsworthy, “I have tried to come at the effect of the war; but purposely pitched it in a low and sober key; and there is a much more poignant tale of change to tell of each individual human being.” But even when telling the more poignant tale, as in Saint’s Progress, the coolness is noticeable, like the air of an April night; the key is still sober, pitched low; and the trembling passion of a melody proclaimed by violins is quickly muted. Such is his habitual restraint, so strong is his inhibition, that when we hear the orchestral brasses, as we do once or twice in Justice and Loyalties, it shocks us, like a rowdy outburst in a refined assembly or a terse sentence in Henry James. But it is nothing, nothing. Mr. Galsworthy has momentarily achieved a more perfect than usual transparency; he has suddenly surrendered to the pounce of another of those multitudinous loyalties which give him no peace and the secret of which, except for its continual disclosure in his works, he would most certainly carry with him to the grave.

For he does not talk. No! “You are nearer Galsworthy in reading his books than in a meeting.” Another keenly observant person summed up Galsworthy’s conversational resources in the one word: “Exhausted!” St. John Ervine: “Whatever of joy and grief he has had in life has been closely retained, and the reticence characteristic of the English people ... is most clearly to be observed in Mr. Galsworthy.... How often have we observed in our relationships that some garrulous person, constantly engaged in egotistical conversation, contrives to conceal knowledge of himself from us, while some silent friend, with lips tightly closed, most amazingly gives himself away. One looks at Mr. Galsworthy’s handsome, sensitive face, and is immediately aware of tightened lips!... But the lips are not tightened because of things done to him, but because of things done to others.” Mr. Galsworthy, in a personal letter: “The fact is I cannot answer your questions. I must leave my philosophy to my work generally, or rather, to what people can make out of that work. The habit of trying to tabloid one’s convictions, or lack of convictions, is a pretty fatal one; as I have found to my distaste and discredit.” He conducts his own cross-examination, in new books, new plays. He acknowledges, with quiet discontent, the claims upon his sense of loyalty of a dog, a jailbird, two “star-crossed lovers,” the wife of a possessive Forsyte, a De Levis unjustly used. His pen moves, with a bold stroke, across the paper; another secret is let out; his lips tighten. He is serene and indignant and completely happy.

Why not? “My experience tells me this: An artist who is by accident of independent means can, if he has talent, give the Public what he, the artist, wants, and sooner or later the public will take whatever he gives it, at his own valuation.” And he speaks of such artists as able to “sit on the Public’s head and pull the Public’s beard, to use the old Sikh saying.” Nothing else is worth while—for an artist. “The artist has got to make a stand against being exploited.” But if the artist should exploit himself, or anything more human or individual than that impersonal entity, the Public, Mr. Galsworthy’s mouth would become grim again; his loyalty would be forfeited, I think. There might be a larger cause, but his concern would be with the other fellow. And however hard you might press him for a verdict, he would bring in only a recommendation for mercy.

iii

The Galsworthys have been in Devonshire as far back as records go—“since the flood—of Saxons, at all events,” as John Galsworthy once put it. His mother came of a family named Bartleet, whose county for many centuries was Worcestershire. The boy, John, was born in 1867 at Coombe, in Surrey. “From the first,” continues the anonymous but authorised sketch I am quoting, “his salient characteristics were earnestness and tenacity. Not surprisingly brilliant, he was sure and steady; his understanding, not notably quick, was notably sound. At Harrow from 1881-1886 he did well in work and games. At New College, Oxford, 1886-1889, he graduated with an Honour degree in Law. After some further preparation he was called to the bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1890. It was natural he should have taken up the law, since his father had done so. ‘I read,’ he says, ‘in various chambers, practised almost not at all, and disliked my profession thoroughly.’

“In these circumstances he began to travel. His father, a successful and unusual man in both character and intellect, was ‘not in a position to require his son to make money’; his son, therefore, travelled, off and on, for nearly two years, going, amongst other places, to Russia, Canada, British Columbia, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, and South Africa. On a sailing-ship voyage between Adelaide and the Cape he met and became a fast friend with the novelist Joseph Conrad, then still a sailor. We do not know whether this friendship influenced Galsworthy in becoming a writer; indeed, we believe that he has somewhere said that it did not. But Galsworthy did take to writing, published his first novel, Jocelyn, in 1899, Villa Rubein in 1900, A Man of Devon and Other Stories in 1901.” Jocelyn has been dropped from the list of Galsworthy’s works, Villa Rubein was revised in 1909, The Island Pharisees, a satire of English weaknesses which appeared in 1904, was revised four years later; and it was not until the publication of The Man of Property in 1906 that our author succeeded in sitting on the Public’s head and twining his fingers firmly into the Public’s whiskers.

This was the first volume of the then-unplanned Forsyte Saga and it led Conrad, who had two years previously dedicated to Galsworthy what remains his greatest novel (Nostromo), to write an article in which he said:

“The foundation of Mr. Galsworthy’s talent, it seems to me, lies in a remarkable power of ironic insight combined with an extremely keen and faithful eye for all the phenomena on the surface of the life he observes. These are the purveyors of his imagination, whose servant is a style clear, direct, sane, illumined by a perfectly unaffected sincerity. It is the style of a man whose sympathy with mankind is too genuine to allow him the smallest gratification of his vanity at the cost of his fellow-creatures ... sufficiently pointed to carry deep his remorseless irony and grave enough to be the dignified vehicle of his profound compassion. Its sustained harmony is never interrupted by those bursts of cymbals and fifes which some deaf people acclaim for brilliance. Before all it is a style well under control, and therefore it never betrays this tender and ironic writer into an odious cynicism of laughter and tears.

“From laboriously collected information, I am led to believe that most people read novels for amusement. This is as it should be. But whatever be their motives, I entertain towards all novel-readers the feelings of warm and respectful affection. I would not try to deceive them for worlds. Never! This being understood, I go on to declare, in the peace of my heart and the serenity of my conscience, that if they want amusement they shall find it between the covers of this book. They shall find plenty of it in this episode in the history of the Forsytes, where the reconciliation of a father and son, the dramatic and poignant comedy of Soames Forsyte’s marital relations, and the tragedy of Bosinney’s failure are exposed to our gaze with the remorseless yet sympathetic irony of Mr. Galsworthy’s art, in the light of the unquenchable fire burning on the altar of property. They shall find amusement, and perhaps also something more lasting—if they care for it. I say this with all the reserves and qualifications which strict truth requires around every statement of opinion. Mr. Galsworthy will never be found futile by anyone, and never uninteresting by the most exacting.”

Twelve years after the appearance of The Man of Property, in the volume Five Tales (1918), was included a long short story, Indian Summer of a Forsyte. The year 1920 saw publication of the novel, In Chancery, and another long short story, Awakening; and the following year brought the novel, To Let. These five units, separately in the order named or together in the same chronological order in the thick volume called The Forsyte Saga, compose a record of three generations of an English family which has very justly been compared to the Esmonds of Thackeray. The Forsytes and their associates and connections are indeed “intensely real as individuals—real in the way that the Esmonds were real; symbolic in their traits, of a section of English society, and reflecting in their lives the changing moods of England in these years.” The motif is clearly expressed by certain words of young Jolyon Forsyte in The Man of Property:

“‘A Forsyte is not an uncommon animal. There are hundreds among the members of this club. Hundreds out there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!... We are, of course, all of us slaves of property, and I admit that it’s a question of degree, but what I call a “Forsyte” is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property. He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on property—it doesn’t matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or reputation—is his hallmark.... “Property and quality of a Forsyte. This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons and habitats of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity”.... They are half England, and the better half, too, the safe half, the three-per-cent half, the half that counts. It’s their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, but turn them all to use, where should we be?’”

One of Galsworthy’s severest critics, St. John Ervine, calls The Forsyte Saga “his best work,” and breaks the force of many strictures to declare: “The craftsmanship of To Let is superb—this novel is, perhaps, the most technically-correct book of our time—but its human value is even greater than its craftsmanship. In a very vivid fashion, Mr. Galsworthy shows the passing of a tradition and an age. He leaves Soames Forsyte in lonely age, but he does not leave him entirely without sympathy; for this muddleheaded man, unable to win or to keep affection on any but commercial terms, contrives in the end to win the pity and almost the love of the reader who has followed his varying fortunes through their stupid career. The frustrate love of Fleur and Jon is certainly one of the tenderest things in modern fiction.”

iv

Grove Lodge, The Grove, Hampstead, London, N. W. 3, is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Galsworthy; if you have occasion to telephone, call Hampstead 3684. The approach to the house is described by Carlton Miles in the Theatre Magazine (December, 1922):

“The Galsworthys live at the bottom of a long, rambling lane called The Grove, in that part of Hampstead that looks calmly down on the crowded chimneypots of northwestern London. To reach the house you must climb a steep hill from the underground station and pass the stone building in which Du Maurier wrote Peter Ibbetson and to whose memory it bears a tablet. A few minutes’ walk in one direction and you are in Church Row with the historic cemetery in which Du Maurier and Beerbohm Tree rest side by side. Follow the Grove walk and you arrive on Hampstead Heath, black with thousands of workers on Bank Holiday, overlooking the little row of cottages where Leigh Hunt and his followers established their ‘Vale of Health.’ But, having passed the Du Maurier home, you turn fairly to your left, descend a winding pathway that takes you by the Admiral’s House—designated by large signs—erected 159 years ago by an aged commander who built his home in three decks and mounted it with guns. The guns have vanished but the Admiral’s House still is one of the sights of Hampstead.

“At the end of the lane a small grilled iron gate shuts off the world from a green yard and a low white house, whose rambling line suggests many passageways and sets of rooms. A sheltered, secluded spot, the place above all others where Galsworthy should live. Peace has been achieved in five minutes’ walk from the noisy station. ‘The Inn of Tranquillity.’

“A turn down a long hallway, up a short flight of steps—a bright, flower-decked livingroom, a tea table, a dark-eyed, low-voiced hostess, a clasping of hand by host and a bark you interpret as cautious approval from Mark, the sheepdog, lying on the hearth rug. Mark is named for one of Galsworthy’s characters”—Mark Lennan in The Dark Flower?— “... moments flee before you dare steal a look at the middle-aged gentleman sitting quietly in his chair, striving with gentle dignity to place you at the ease he feels not himself.

“Tall, grey-haired he looks astonishingly like his photographs. Reticent to a degree about his own work, he talks freely and with the utmost generosity about that of others. Opinion, formed slowly, is determined. The face, with its faint smile, looks neither disheartened nor sad, yet sometime it has met suffering. Like most Englishmen the eagerness of youth has not been crushed.... There is nothing chill about the novelist. He is the embodiment of easy, gracious courtesy. Conversation is far from intimidating, a long flow of material topics with now and then an upward leap of thought. And it is this swift flight that betrays his mental withdrawal. As clearly as if physically present may be seen the robed figure of his thoughts, standing behind him in his own drawingroom. You wonder what may be their burden. About him is the veil of remoteness.”

His humility, adorned by his presence and made disarming by what is certainly the most beautiful head and face among the living sons of men, does not always save him from the charge of coldness when manifested impersonally and at a distance. Where nearly all men and women give essential particulars of their lives, not to mention the human touch of their preferred recreations, Mr. Galsworthy, in the English Who’s Who, besides the long list of his publications, states only the year of his birth, his residence, and his membership in the Athenæum Club. This would hardly support Mr. Ervine’s declaration that the Galsworthy sensitiveness “is almost totally impersonal”; and instead of being “startled to discover how destitute of egotism Mr. Galsworthy seems to be” the close student of mankind might be led to speculate upon the variety of egotism he had just encountered. “It may even be argued,” pursues Mr. Ervine, cautiously, “that his lack of interest in himself is a sign of inadequate artistry, that it is impossible for a man of supreme quality to be so utterly unconcerned about himself as Mr. Galsworthy is.” With due respect to Mr. Ervine, this is nonsense. Whatever Mr. Galsworthy may lack, it is not interest in himself. He has achieved countless satisfactory channels for the extrusion of that interest through other and imaginary men, women and beasts—that is all.

v

It is as if he had long ago said to himself, as perhaps he did: “I am myself, but myself isn’t a subject I can decently be concerned about or expose an interest in. Let me forget myself in someone—in everyone—else!” And since then, if he has ever repented, the spectacle of George Bernard Shaw, and particularly the horridly fascinating spectacle of Herbert George Wells, have been before him, to serve as awful warnings and lasting deterrents. Mr. Wells, in ever-new contortions, like a circus acrobat whose nakedness was gaudily accentuated by spangles, began seeing it through with Ann Veronica and is still exposing the secret places of his heart, while dizzy recollections of marriage, God and tono-bungay yet linger. Mr. Shaw has gone back to ... evolution.

“I was,” Mr. Galsworthy has said in an uninhibited moment, “for many years devoted to the sports of shooting and racing. I gave up shooting because it got on my nerves. I still ride; and I would go to a race-meeting any day if it were not for the din, for I am still under the impression that there is nothing alive quite so beautiful as a thoroughbred horse.” His devotion to dogs and other dumb animals is frequently spoken of as it extrudes in Memories, Noel’s protection of the rabbit in Saint’s Progress and “For Love of Beasts” in A Sheaf. These shifting loyalties were—what were they if not admirable realisations of the Self? But let those who still believe Mr. Galsworthy selfless but read the prefaces to the new and very handsome Manaton Edition of his works. For these volumes he has provided sixteen entirely new prefaces. I quote from the announcement of the edition:

“These”—prefaces—“are peculiarly interesting, for in them he frankly criticises his work; in some cases, too, they reflect the response of readers as he has sensed it. In others he tells of the thought in his mind while writing, and of the changes through which the thought has gone in the process. Again, he speculates on the art of writing in general, on the forms of fiction, on emotional expression and effect in the drama. In short, as he phrases it, ‘in writing a preface, one goes into the confessional.’

“Of The Country House he says: ‘When once Pendyce had taken the bit between his teeth, the book ran away with me, and was more swiftly finished than any of my novels, being written in seven months.’

“‘The germ of The Patrician,’ he begins the preface to that volume, ‘is traceable to a certain dinner party at the House of Commons in 1908 and the face of a young politician on the other side of the table.’

“In the preface to Fraternity he says: ‘A novelist, however observant of type and sensitive to the shades of character, does little but describe and dissect himself.... In dissecting Hilary, for instance, in this novel, his creator feels the knife going sharply into his own flesh, just as he could feel it when dissecting Soames Forsyte or Horace Pendyce.’”

The italics are my own and I think they are permissible.

Probably not enough attention has hitherto been paid to Mr. Galsworthy as a writer of short tales, but that may be because no collection of his stories has shown his talent so roundly as does the new book Captures. This opens with the well-known story “A Feud” and offers also such variety and such virtuosity in the short story form as “The Man Who Kept His Form,” “A Hedonist,” “Timber,” “Santa Lucia,” “Blackmail,” “Stroke of Lightning,” “The Broken Boot,” “Virtue,” “Conscience,” “Salta Pro Nobis,” “Heat,” “Philanthropy,” “A Long Ago Affair,” “Acmé,” “Late—299.” In this book, as in similar collections, there must be put to Mr. Galsworthy’s credit his frequent practice of the Continental notion of the short story—the sketch, the impression, the representation of a mood which we find in French and Russian literature and which the American short story too often sacrifices for purely mechanical effects.

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