LITERARY PERSONALITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18457, 21 July 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERARY PERSONALITIES.

SQHH GALSWORTHY.

BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK. '■

In attempting a personal description of almost any living poet or novelist, it '£ becoming : stf'ff a customary ; .thing to; say ho -does nou look 'in the least ■'.-. like. an author that I am beginning to feel a consuming curiosity to know ) what an author looks like,, and what can cause him /to look so entirely different from men of other professions that you can tell him for one at a fiance;. : !' ■ ..

':.; In my own experience the worst, 'poetry nowadays is written -, by .-men., of /tl'& ". most picturesquely poetical appear.>,v:..ce and the best by ' men who are ; stout, s. or bald, /or of ah; otherwise commonplacft/ter uhattitic-' live exterior. Nor among 'tiw litevcry persons I : have xoet do I ':r«rs.sUJhi;r meeting oven one norelist of.' fljfiissfi who looked it. How: this myth of the ideal author, the splendid creature aarryiug his credentials in his face, came into being is not within my knowledge. : :/: ; : An old gentleman of my acquaintance who had. ; in his time, sets eyes on Dickens, assured me that he was an insignificant, little person who- might have passed for ;/«,/ retired sea-captain. Thackeray rather resembled a • prize ' fighter who had gone flabby. ■ Trollope, with his paunch and massive beard, suggested the country squire. Browning would not have seemed out of plac? as a bank manager, and though Tennyson was said to look a typical poet he really looked much more like a typical stage brigand.

In a word no two authors look alike. As a race,- tL?7 have even up trying to achieve "a superficial riniiormity by growing long hair. When they have &uy, they ;ut it to an orthodox length. A few cultivate the moustache; not many indulge in whiskers; the majority are clean shaven; and in this they are not peculiar, for the same, in the same proportions, may be said of their readers. Therefore, when at a recent dinner a lady sitting next to me surveyed John Galsworthy, who was seated opposite, and remarked, "You could guess he was an author— looks so like one," I anxiously inquired, "Which one?" and was, perhaps not undeservedly, ignored*.}'-" "'-..' If she had said he looked like an indefinite intellectual; that his countenance was ■modelled' on noble and dignified Huw i that it expressed at " once stowia \ " jtwi'd benignity. I could have uttdentood . and agreed with her. But these 1 qualities Are, so far from being infallibly t';o bh'tfcri&ai of the author that t>-y ■ are seldom . apparent in him. With his firm statuesque features, his grave; immobility, his air of detachment and distinction, the calm deliberation of his voice and gesture, Galsworthy embodies rather What ;we have come to regard as the. legal temperament. It is not difficult to imagine him in wig and gown pleading earnestly, impressively, butt without passion, or, appropriately rtibed, summing up from ; the : bench s>:2rilv»:.;- conscientiously;, ■}' and with the ro.osJ punctilious impartiality. ; : ■'}~:•:

. wkfl, ; tfUVsworthy Method. ■ '. j Consequently, it was without" surprise I heard the other day, for the first time, that Galsworthy had studied for the Bar and became, in his early years, a barrister, though he did not practice. Nor is this legal strain to be traced only m his personal aspect and bearing f it asserts itself as unmistakably and often with considerable effectiveness throughout . his novels and plays. He has the lawyer respect for fact and detail; he must have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and this gives his;stones a certain aridity; a hardness as, well as , clearness of : outline. ;: The ; ways of ; the impressionist are not his ways; ha omits -, nothing, but is ; precise, as .exact in : de vidopiig plot; and chtratier as a lawyer i« in Keying up a case., ",' ..''■,' - sb'■>•'..-/ ; nfe satisfied merely to paint j)or-;,-. treats /fi:i^irienvan(i-,woliien.;; ? .he analyse®:?; thiai id itieviousiy, :• lel^a ,= **pa .*m little . th ;: -v '■■'.-i-'^ V &'em- TT.d their families and v ; frier* vkile £* Kcd and; dress and : furni'^re,-4^fw th*VVi£;.their,domestio relations, iii : their business activities, inventories their I virtues and:; vices and material surroundings with a completeness that leaves nothing unexplained and affects th«. reader with an extraordinary sense of the reality of it all. If he is recording a funeral he will take care to tell you •'the hearse started at a foot pace the carriages moved slowly '■ after: -";:•; You micht have been trusted to assume that this would be the order of the procession, but nothing is assumed; ( the thing has got to be described just as it happened. You are th*n told who was In, each; carriage, and note is made of the thirteenth • carriage **hich i<&Um •* the vary end containin'j nobody at all." ' , __, ' ■• " Tha*> if toe Galsworthy method. ■ vlnen he relates, in "The Man tf; Property that the voung.wchiteci, Bosinney,;, is building a "house in the country to tM Forsythe ho does not slur thin and con-, tent himself with generalities, •,but acquaints yon with the size, design and cost) of the house, its architectural peculiarities and the point: is that all these particulars are strictly relevant and serve to reveal more intimately the characters and idiocyncrasies of Bosinney and of Soarnes, and have their significance in the unfolding of that poignant tragedy of boames wife. '■' Successor al Anthony Trollop*. 'As the historian of later 'i : Victorian upper middle-class life in England, Galsworthy is the legitimate successor of Anthony Trollope. He is as true a realist as Trollope without the reticence imposed on the Victorian writer by his period • but Trollop's style was exuberant, slipshod, obese, hke himself, and Galsworthy's, like himself, is lean, subdued, , direct, chary of displaying emotion; he observes a close economy in the use of words, despite the length of his books. la common with most of his contemporary novelists, Trollope was something of a moralist; he handled from a sensible, man-of-the-wond point of view divers religions, financial and domestic problems of the time that lent themselves to his purposes as a teller Of stories. But the problems that interested him were those that had to be faced by the well-to-do and the respectable he had no particular sympathy, for the lower orders, and little but} contempt, goodhumoured or otherwise, for the vulgar folk who had earned their own money, climbed up from th«i depths,; and were awkwardly trying to breathe and flutter in the refined air of good society. > ' He had a nice feeling for sentiment, and lapsed carelessly into sentimentality. Galsworthy is generally too controlled and selfconscious to do that. But if his irony and satire are keener-edged . than his predecessor's, his sympathies are broader and deeper. He is a humanitarian whose sense of brotherhood extends" to birds and the animals described as dumb. On the one hand, he understands and has compassion for the : under-dog, y the poor, the humble; and on the other, t'.bugh he can smile, as in the three novels that make up his 'greatest achievement, "The Forsyte Saga," and elsewhere ; smile with a sardonic humour—at:the.outlook and, pretensions of those .;■-.' old « and ; prosperous families who mova in the best circles and, comfortably materialistic,:*>*js in placa of a sense of brotherhood. i Zacqc w,n ineradicable sense of ,}property iii. their; wiw-s, money, houses, he is not blmd.to j the finer human qualities that undtvlie (their inherited social dofete?''''.:' In two of his dramas, .. "Ste.'-V ■•■ and "The Skin Game," he handles ' the eternal struggle between capital and labour, and the conflict of Interests between a wealthy carvenu and an impoverished patrician. with such an honest balancing oi wrongs and rights, such sedulous impartiality, that you can scarcely say at the "end whioh side retains most of his sympathy. He takes life too seriously, it seems, to be able to write stories or plays for their own sake; he writes them to expose moral or, economic Qvfla at hia ti&ta, to advocate

reforms in : ;our; social organisation,: ; the crude barbarity of our prison system; the tyranny ;; of the marriage law;; \- the ] hypocrisies of , religion and orthodox morality; the *i vanity., of riches j : the ; fatuity ~of■ }} all class 1 inequalities. ;; With; him the creation of character,: tho fashidfiing of a tale of individual love, rivalry, jimbition, toiumph or disaster, are generally ; mora or less subordinate to communal or national issues such as these. :■■ It is characteristic of Galsworthy's reticence that he published his fir tit threei: or four novels under the pseudonym of John Sinjohn; and of >: the ; genuineness of ; his democratic idealn that ;-;! when he was offered a knighthood he declined it. He was 31 when his "first novel, : "Jocelyn,' ., was published; and 39 when, in the one year, 1906, : ho: made a ir *al, beginning .as a novelist with "Tho Man;! of Property, 1 and 'as a dramatist with "The Silver Be *."> - The keynote of his work ,is its profound sincerity. : Art and zeal for reform seldom run in double-harness,, but thoy do when Galsworthy drives.