AGAINST FORSYTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 20, 24 January 1936, Page 16

AGAINST FORSYTES

GALSWORTHY'S BLOWS

A LIFE-LONG CRUSADE

THE PERSONAL ASPECT

Probably to the majority of English readers the name of John Galsworthy stands for the Forsyte Saga—and especially its marvellous presentation of well-to-do Victorianism in the eighties of last century, writes J. B. Firth in the "Daily Telegraph."

That certainly is my own case, though I do not forget the many admirable Forsyteless novels and those challenging dramas—"The Silver Box," "Strife," "Escape," "Justice," and "The Skin Game," in which the author, as it were, not merely probed the conscience ,of his audiences but laid the fine whipcord of his lash across their backs. In his biography, "The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy," Mr. H. V. Marrot has made conscientious use of his almost too abundant material. Most authors who reach the topmost heights begin to write early. Galsworthy did not start till he was twenty-eight, and he said that even so he had started too soon. At Harrow his distinctions were athletic; at Oxford he was satisfied to be considered the best-dressed man in New College and a popular member of the best university clubs. He moulded himself apparently on Whyte-Mel-ville's heroes, and his talk was of horses and "form." Next he lounged away a year or two in legal chambers, and was called to the Bar, and lest he should be enmeshed in a love affair with a girl, one who, in his own wjDrds, "would not have done at all," his wise father packed him off on sundry long voyages to distant parts—a thoroughly Forsyteian procedure, it may be remarked, which answered in Galsworthy's case particularly well. It brought him into contact with Conrad, then first mate of the Torrens, sailing in the South Seas, and also, as Galsworthy put it, "it preserved me for Her." ESTABLISHED ROUTINE. All this, I say, was thoroughly Forsyteian, and Galsworthy—born with a silver spoon in his mouth—seemed to be following the established routine of a briefless barrister with wealthy commercial connections, and to be developing trie ordinary tastes of the young man of the' period. Then one day at a railway bookstall a friend casually remarked to him,* "Why don't you write? You are just the person." Such an idea, he says, had never occurred to him, but the seed thus dropped fell on good and fruitful ground. Moreover, it was a woman who dropped it —the same woman who afterwards became his wife and caused him to describe himself as "the most happily married man in the world." That was in 1895, and the literary apprenticeship he then entered upon lasted about ten years. Those years were also "the most spiritually stressful" of his life, and his whole outlook changed. Why? Because he found himself brought up hard against one of the most stubborn of Victorian conventions and prejudices—the sanctity of marriage. The only woman in the world for him was already unhappily married to one of his cousins. His revulsion, therefore, against the Forsyte system was by no means impersonal. He felt that it mortally hurt John Galsworthy, and denied him the happiness which he craved. So they broke the chains and freed themselves —to the accompaniment of what family tempests is not disclosed, but their violence can be imagined from the fact that the Forsytes of "The Man of Property" are Galsworthy family portraits, drawn to a recognisable outward likeness and ■with their characters depicted with more than spiritual fidelity. I had always suspected that Old Jolyon and "the Aunts" and Timothy and the rest were portraits—improved, of course, and touched up, as is the way of photographers, but still portraits. , ■ SISTER'S RECOGNITION. So it is no surprise that one_ of his sisters, after reading the MS. of "The Man of Property," begged John not to publish it, because he was "too lifelike." "Do you really think it matters?" he replied. "Apart from yourself, Mab, and Mother (who perhaps had better not read the book), who really knows enough or takes enough interest in us to make it more than a twodays' wonder that I should choose such a subject? Who knows enough even to connect A. with 1., especially as I have changed her hair to gold. ... "Think for a moment! To spot old Jolyon you must know intimately the whole cradle—the family circle—otherwise he may be any man of eighty, especially as it is i phase of Father that was never shown to the world— not even to the family." Galsworthy had been writing for eleven years "without making a penny," as he said, "or any name to speak of." Then "The Man of Property" . took the reading world by storm. "The end is terrific," said Conrad. It was. Galsworthy had become a crusader. "I desire to defeat Forsyteism," he wrote, "and the only way to do this is to leave the Forsytes masters of the field. The only way to cap the purpose of the book, which was to leave property as an empty shell —is to leave the victory to Soames." This was a master stroke of ironic genius. Galsworthy resolved all Forsyteism, i.e.. the Victorian upper class code and system, into its ultimate elements of Property and Possession. It became with him an obsession—a monomania. It cropped up in his private letters. In the midst of a lyrical description of the joys of his country life at Wingstone, on the edge of Dartmoor, he speaks of "the disgusting feeling that attaches to ownership." A GENEROUS MAN. Yet Galsworthy himself contrived to show that ownership, property, and possession could be turned to rare and beautiful uses—in no sense "disgusting." He made the most generous use of the money which flowed in upon him; his firm rule being, according to Mr. Marrot, to live on half his income and give the rest away. But most he hated any idea or suggestion of property and possession in connection with marriage. Formal ties were repugnant to him because he felt bound by stronger bonds which still left him gloriously free. To a correspondent he wrote:—

"Marriage stands by mutual love — by a feeling between man and woman that they want to go on together, and for this very reason marriage is in no danger. It is no service to marriage to bolster it up by talk of vows. It knows its own mind; it knows its own strength, it knows that the more men and women recognise the utter and fundamental reason of its existence, the stronger and cleaner it will be. It knows that the less it is scared by cruelty and suffering the more attractive it becomes.

Galsworthy, though a crusader, had no definitely constructive creed. That is made plain in a letter written in

1909 after the publication of "Fraternity": "You ask for some glimpse of a road leading definitely away from the morass of unfraternity. There is no definite road. There is only a feeling in the heart

"Though I'm continually charged with not showing the way to heaven, I believe that I do set up a process in people's spirits which makes them rather more alive to the Pharisaism, sense of property, intolerance, and humbug which stand in the way of sympathy between man and man." A MANLY ENGLISHMAN. In other words, Galsworthy was no philosopher with a regular system of life, only a kindly, friendly fellowtraveller determined to travel light, think his own thoughts, do what good he could, and enjoy the bounteous blessings of this life, if only because he was entirely sceptical about the reality of any others to follow. So far as he had a credo, it lies in this short passage: "To do his bit and be kind! It is by that creed, rather than by any mysticism, that man finds the salvation of his soul. His religion is to be a common or garden hero, sans thinking anything of it: for of a truth this is the age of conduct." Conduct without Belief! Whether that is an adequate norrr.a Vivendi for the majority this is no place to discuss. John Galsworthy found it enough for him, and this record of a life of thirty years and more of uninterrupted and unspoilt success and happiness, generous devotion to humanitarian causes, and chivalrous endeavour for the suffering, the oppressed, and the under-dog gives us a noble figure of a manly Englishman. Galsworthy grew mellower with the years as the objects of his compassion multiplied. Moreover, he possessed everything he could desire but child-, ren. His life at Bury (Sussex, not Lancashire) was a wonderful harmdny. The tortures of a composition which his friend Conrad endured he knew nothing of. He created with the effortless ease of Sir Walter. Just a writing-pad and an inkpot and a J pen, and a sunny room or a garden chair, which at intervals he would move further into the sun as the shadows crept over the grass— and he wanted no more. He was as regular at his morning task as Trollope; he played village cricket till he ■was sixty, and friendships followed him all the days of his life. HARDY'S ACTION. It is pleasant to read of Thomas Hardy following with keen interest the fortunes of the Forsytes, and talcing "The White Monkey" to bed with him in case he was wakeful. "The first time," wrote Mrs. Hardy, "I have ever known him have a novel by his bed, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and the Psalms and books of that kind being kept there as a rule." Galsworthy's comments on current events are infrequent, but much to the point. When Gilbert Murray failed to be elected to Parliament in 1924 he wrote: —"I am glad you are not in Parliament. It is a sink—of what I am not quite sure, but certainly a sink." During the Great War he made the following entry in his diary:— "I say to myself: 'If I were young and unmarried I should certainly have gone! There is no doubt about that!' But there is a great doubt whether if I had been of military age and married to A. I should have gone. Luckily for my conscience I really believe my,game shoulder would not stand a week's training without getting my arm into a sling. However, I suppose there is no one yet in training as short-sighted as I am. Still I worry —worry—all the time—bald and grey and forty-seven and worrying. Funny!" There he spoke for thousands of others whose case resembled his own.

I have only touched upon a few fragments of this absorbing book, which will revive memories of the great loss of English literature suffered by the untimely death of John Galsworthy "at the age of sixty-five. The account of his last illness and his stubborn refusal to see a doctor until his mortal malady was far advanced! is very painful. It was the last uneradicated prejudice of a Forsyte.