How a Novelist Works

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6625, 11 August 1931, Page 3

How a Novelist Works

CREATING CHARACTERS. LONDON. Delivering the Romanes Lecture in the Sheldonian Theatro at Oxford recently, Mr John Galsworthy revealed how tho characters in his novels come into being. ' .v -■ “I sink into my morning chair/ 7 he said, a blotter on my knee, the last words or deeds of some character in ink before my eyes, a pen in my hand,, a pipe in my mouth, and nothing in my head. I sit. I don't intend; I:don’t [expect; I don’t even hope. Tread over the last pages. ... “Gradually my mind seems-to leave the chair,.and be where my character is acting or speaking, leg raised waiting to come down, lips opened ready to say something. Suddenly my pen jots down a movement or remark, . another, another, and goes on doing this, haltingly, perhaps, for an hour or two. “When the result is Tead through it surprises one by seeming to come out of what went before, and by ministering to some sort of possible future. Those pages, adding tissue to'characterfe have been supplied from the storecupboard of tho subconscious, in response to the appeal of one’s conscious directive sense, and in service to the saving grace of one’s theme, using thal word in its widest sense.” Characters Which Live, Arguing that few novels outlive their own generation, Mr Galsworthy stated that the few novels of old time to which wo still turn with gusto are almost always those in which a character or characters have outlived their period. How far would Thackeray be known to-day but for Bocky Sharp, Major Bendennis, Colonel Neoveome, Esmond Beatrice, or Barry Lyndon? With Dickens, ho said, we associate practically nothing but a galleyful of strangoly living creatures; George Eliot retains precarious foothold through her. children, Silas ■■ Marner, Adam- Bede, and Hetty; and it is the character-creations of Jane Austen that still keep her memory fresh despite her unending parochialism. When his task is finished it is always comforting to a novelist, Mr Galsworthy said, to know that by Tho creation of character he contributes to the organic growth of human ethics.. “If, indeed, a novelist has any use in the world, apart from affording entertainment, it is through revealing power of his created characters.” If one had to give the palm to a single factor in tho creation of character it would, in Mr Galsworthy’s opinion, go to sly, dry humour, the sort of humour which produced the Dou and Sancho, Falstaff, Major Peadenms, Becky' Sharp, ' Sam Weller, and Micawber.