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The Short Stories of John Galsworthy

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SOURCE: An excerpt from The Short Stories of John Galsworthy, Haskell House, 1966, pp. 43-6, 56-60, 143-46.

[Below, Smit explores stylistic aspects of certain stories by Galsworthy and discusses his contributions to the development of the short story genre.]

Stories belonging to the older school were more or less rounded off, had a beginning, contained dramatic action, and ended at a definite point, in a word contained plot.

With the earlier fiction we are well aware that the events narrated are over and done with. The first paragraphs rouse our curiosity, and from that moment the plot progresses with a singleness of purpose to the conclusion. The shapeless short story of the present age is a far different matter. Modern writers, especially the followers of Tchehov,

have tried to effect an illusion of present time, to produce a feeling of immediacy.

Using every device of artifice to generate an atmosphere of the real they have attempted to seduce the reader with a vivid sense of intimacy. Time and place grow up around the reader just as they surround the characters throughout the sequences of reading or action (Derek Stanford, "Elements of Modern Fiction," in Modern Reading 12).

Life because of its innumerable aspects seems blurred and devoid of all form. As experience is continuous writers of the modern school depict only a segment of existence and style it "a slice of life."

This concentration on the living minute—this desire to create the very texture of the moment in hand has been suggestively termed "Actualism" by the American critic Carl Grabo.

Galsworthy cannot be regarded as an exponent of the Actualist school. It seems that he wanted to prevent certain critics from calling him old-fashioned when he gave a quotation from Don Quixote as the motto to his collection of short stories Captures: "Soft and fair, Gentleman, never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last."

It is as he wanted to say: "Do not look for new wine in old bottles. Expect no modernity."

As the leader in The Times put it on Galsworthy's death, he did not have "any particular tricks, any discomforting theories about style or method." We have already seen that Galsworthy knew and highly appreciated the short stories of Tchehov and Katherine Mansfield. In contradistinction to numbers of writers who thought that the modern method was easy, he realised that is was very difficult.

[In] Candelabra we read:

Writers may think they have just to put down faithfully the daily run of feeling and event, and they will have a story as marvellous as those of Tchehov. Alas! things are not made "marvellous" by being called so, or there would be a good many "marvellous" things to-day. It is much harder for a Westerner than for a Russian to dispense with architecture in the building of a tale, but a good many Western writers now appear to think otherwise.

I don't wish to convey the impression of insensibility to the efforts and achievements of our "new" fiction; which has so out-Tchehoved Tchehov that it doesn't know its own father. Very able and earnest writers are genuinely endeavouring with astounding skill to render life in its kaleidoscopic and vibrational aspects; they are imbued too with a kind of pitiful and ironic fatalism which seems to them new perhaps, but which is eminently Tchehovian, and can be found also in the work of many other writers whom they affect to have outgrown. There is that which is genuinely new in the style and methods of some of these adventuring new fictionists, but I do not think there is anything new in their philosophy of life.

They have thrown over story and character, or rather the set and dramatic ways of depicting story and character; but they are no more philosophically emancipated than their forebears, Turgenev, De Maupassant, Flaubert, Henry James, Meredith, Hardy, France, Conrad.

There are but few short stories by Galsworthy written in the modern undramatic manner.

"The Japanese Quince" is one of them. Some people find the story difficult to understand, see no point in it.

One reader who wrote to Galsworthy that she did not know what to make of the story received the following reply.

Dear Madam,

"The Japanese Quince" attempts to convey the feeling that comes to all of us—even the most unlikely—in the spring. It also attempts to produce in the reader the sort of uneasy feeling that now and then we run up against ourselves. It also is a satire on the profound dislike which most of us have of exhibiting the feelings which Nature produces in us, when those feelings are for one quite primitive and genuine. And there are other aspects. No wonder it puzzled you—when I come to think of it.

Yours very truly,
John Galsworthy.

The story which was intended to express a certain mood begins and ends "in medias res"; it presents us with, to use the expression again, a slice of life. The initial sentence shows us Mr. Nilson opening the window of his dressing-room. Thinking that the peculiar sensation he experienced might be indigestion he decided to take a stroll in the Gardens.

The bushes budding in the sunshine emanated a faint sweet lemony scent. A blackbird burst into song.

There was the bird perched on a little tree.

He stood staring curiously at this tree, recognising it for that which he had noticed from his window. It was covered with young blossoms, pink and white, and little bright green leaves both round and spiky; and on all this blossom and these leaves the sunlight glistened. Mr. Nilson smiled; the little tree was so alive and pretty! And instead of passing on, he stayed there smiling at the tree. "Morning like this!" he thought: "and here I am the only person in the Square who has the to come out and !

But he had no sooner conceived this thought than he saw quite near him a man with his hands behind him, who was also staring up and smiling at the little tree. Rather taken aback, Mr. Nilson ceased to smile, and looked furtively at the stranger. It was his next-door neighbour, Mr. Tandram, well known in the city, who had occupied the adjoining house for some five years.

The two gentlemen exchanged some trivial remarks, and once more gazed up at the blossom.

And the little tree, as if appreciating their attention, quivered and glowed. From a distance the blackbird gave a loud, clear call.

Mr. Nilson dropped his eyes. It struck him suddenly that Mr. Tandram looked a little foolish; and, as if he had seen himself, he said: "I must be going in. Good morning!"

When Mr. Nilson had reached the door of his house he cast another look at the tree.

"The sound of a cough or sigh attracted his attention. There, in the shadow of his French window, stood Mr. Tandram, also looking forth across the Gardens at the little quince tree." And then the story ends: "Unaccountably upset, Mr. Nilson turned abruptly into the house, and opened his morning paper."

In Caravan this short story is coupled with "The Broken Boot," a little tragi-comedy on a theme which Galsworthy repeatedly treated viz. the irony of life.

A down and out actor meets a rich friend who treats him to a grand dinner. With great bravado he manages to hide his split boot, the symbol of his poverty from his friend's eyes. The actor sits in the restaurant till the waiter asks leave to clear the table.

"Certainly—I'm going."

Some young women who have recognised him, look up. "Elegant, with faint smile, he passed them close, so that they could not see, managing—his broken boot."

We are not told if the actor's luck took a turn, whether happier times ever came for him. The story ends here in the middle of things, its author has given us a slice of the poor actor's life.

"The Bright Side," a very touching story, ends with the words with which the heroic cockney woman tries to console her husband as he returns home, grey and bent, broken by his long internment.

"Once More" has a very similar ending.

After one of his escapades the young husband of a flower-girl comes home, frozen and starved. The flower-seller had been furious at the thought of him spending his money with some woman about town.

She could have seized and twisted back his head. In fancy she was already doing this, putting her eyes close to his, setting her teeth in his forehead—so vividly that she had the taste of blood in her mouth.

But when she saw him, a poor helpless creature "she pulled his head down on her breast, and with all her strength clutched him to her. And as the fire died, she still held him there, rocking him and sobbing, and once more trying to give him of the warmth of her little body."

Other stories giving segments of life and ending in medias res are "Late 299," "The Juryman" and "Manna". . . .

Michael Joseph [in his Short Story Writing for Profit, 1923] states that the plot is the skeleton of the story and quotes Gilbert Frankau where he says that before a short story-writer begins he must have a clear idea of his tale.

A complete visualization of the story he means to tell, of the characters who play their part in it and of the local colour in which those characters play their part, is absolutely necessary. A writer must be able to see in his mind's eye the whole story. It must be as visible to him as the wood of his writing-desk or the walls of his study.

When discussing the climax in the short story Joseph points out that some authors prefer to write their endings first, which plan has the merit of fixing the desired final impression and of enabling the writer to balance the remainder of the story. An artistically perfect short story must be well balanced; and the balance of a story undoubtedly hinges on the climax.

Now Leon Schallt [in his John Galsworthy: A Survey, 1929] states that the creative procedure of Galsworthy was entirely unconscious, almost occult one might say.

In Mr. Schalit's survey it says:

Galsworthy does no preliminary work, never prepares a scenario to a play, or a plan, or a summary to a short story or novel. ... He never knows in advance how he is going to end. . . . The end is there when inspiration ceases. He believes that the whole imaginative process is far more subconscious than conscious, at least in his own case. This disposes of the contention of many critics, that this or that of Galsworthy's works is constructed, a pure matter of intellect.

W. H. Hudson (An introduction to the Study of Literature) mentions that the great novelists Scott, Thackeray and Trollope, did not have any distinct plan when they commenced a new work.

They left the story to unfold itself as it went along. Galsworthy told of a similar proceeding when he delivered the Romanes Lecture in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, taking for his subject The Creation of Character in Literature.

After first treating of biography and of drama he came to discuss the novel and said:

The vitality and freedom of character creation derives, as a rule, from the subconscious mind instinctively supplying the conscious mind with the material it requires. In attempting an illustration of that process you must forgive my being personal for a moment. I sink into my morning chair, a blotter on my knee, the last words or deed 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. I read 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 read through it surprises one by seeming to come out of what went before, and by ministering to some sort of possible future.

Galsworthy was thinking more especially of his novels when he spoke these words but the fact remains that his personal friend Leon Schalit wrote that Galsworthy never prepared a plan or a summary for a short story.

There must have been exceptions to this rule.

In certain instances Galsworthy must have had an idea, if not the certainty, of how a tale was going to end.

When Mr. Joseph said that some writers preferred to write the ending of the story first he undoubtedly had in mind the so-called surprise-ending, stories with what Galsworthy labelled "sting in the tail" (Foreword to Caravan).

Galsworthy did not favour this kind. There are but two examples viz. "Acme" and "Blackmail."

In the surprise-ending story the climax, dénouement and conclusion are identical. The effect is gained by keeping the reader in the dark (or at least in suspense) until the end of the story.

The "point" of the story is given in the last line and the story has evidently been written to illustrate it. It must be deemed an impossibility to begin a tale of this type without knowing how it is going to end. The same would seem to apply to the after-dinner stories and expanded anecdotes, as everything depends on and leads up to the surprising "sting in the tail."

"The Patriot," for example, is the sort of good story Galsworthy picked up at a gathering of lawyers as worth treasuring, and casting into a shapely form.

"Had a Horse" is a joke which by Galsworthy's love of horses and racing was made into a long-short story. He evidently so loved the telling of it that it grew under his pen and fingers to an almost inordinate proportion for an anecdote. Galsworthy, however, must have known all along how the joke would end.

In the cases where they are not reminiscences pure and simple, the stories which have a so-called loose plot will have been started without Galsworthy knowing where they would lead him.

The story is composed of a number of detached incidents having little or no connection among themselves. The unity of the narrative does not depend on the action but on the person of the story-teller who binds the scattered elements together.

"Quality" and "The Man Who Kept His Form" both open with an early memory of the writer's schoolboy days. In the latter story the name chosen for the hero, that of Bartlet (Mrs. Galsworthy's maiden name) and the records kept at Galsworthy's former college prove that at any rate part of "The Man Who Kept His Form" is autobiographical. As in the stories "The Choice" and "Ultima Thule," both with an "underdog" as hero, seven meetings, seven episodes are described.

Galsworthy summons up remembrances of things past and makes the flight of time subserve the ends of art.

Time for him is Time with the scythe, Time the destroyer, the thief of youth.

He relates the stories of his friends—in "The Choice" of a crossing-sweeper, in "Quality" of a shoemaker.

When the story begins shadows already hang over both; the crossing-sweeper has before him the alternative of the workhouse or the river; the shoemaker, still prosperous, is beginning to suffer from the competition of machine-made goods.

Business or pleasure removes the narrator from the scene; in time he returns to find his friends a little older, a little poorer, a little nearer the breaking-point. Again, after doing all in his power to relieve them, he goes away, returning once more to find the process of mortification a degree or two advanced. And with the wanderer's seventh visit they are dead, and their place knows them no more.

The oldest story of this type is "A Knight," (1900). "Courage" followed in 1904. Other examples are "A Strange Thing," "The Nightmare Child," "Compensation" and "The Dog It Was That Died."

Although Galsworthy hardly ever (never?) wrote out a synopsis for a tale beforehand it cannot be denied that the best of his short stories, especially those called "long-short", show the plot of a well-built play with a careful exposition, development, crisis and resolution.

The exposition is the most important part in Galsworthy's stories. His interest is primarily in the characters and in the surroundings of which they form part. Both are depicted at great length. Indeed, in "The Neighbours" the exposition takes up three quarters of the story. Once the scene has been set, the action soon leads to the crisis that is sometimes only just hinted at. Thus in "The Neighbours," Galsworthy instead of the murder describes the glamorous heat of the sense-bewitching night.

The plot-idea develops from character and environment. It is clear that Galsworthy preferred this development of plot from character to the development of character from plot. He did not provide his readers with stories containing plenty of action and incident, in which stories character is of secondary importance.

The short story provides little or no scope for the development of character, which was not the strong point of Galsworthy the novelist. Many of his tales are just intensely dramatic situations. Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith found fault with this fact in Galsworthy's novels.

She said: "He likes to take a situation, examine it from characteristic and conflicting points of view, and show the effect it has on different lives, but he never attempts to develop it, to start a chain of events from it, mould characters by it."

This is not the place to go into Miss Kaye-Smith's criticism that Galsworthy left his characters at the close of a novel much as we knew them at the beginning. In a tale at any rate the unfolding of a situation, with its effects on character and corresponding reactions provides us with the singleness of purpose, with the totality of impression, which is one of the characteristics of the short story.

Many a reviewer praised the crude and sensational plots in Galsworthy's From the Four Winds, the book which he ordered to be destroyed, as nobody should be allowed to read his "first sins."

In his "Platitudes Concerning Drama" Galsworthy wrote:

The demand for a good plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the person of the play to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!"

There is no reason why—mutatis mutandis—one should not read "short story" instead of "the play" in this quotation. The idea remains the same.

The conclusion of all this is that Galsworthy's tales show no particular inventiveness of plot. To use Mr. E. J. O'Brien's terminology and division, they are character-type stories rather than plot-stories. . . .

In the early stages of novel-writing there is little or no description to be found. No attempt is made to give a realistic reproduction of things actually seen, there are no references to the faces, figures and dress of the characters, there is no painting of their homes and surroundings.

Sir Thomas Malory in his Morte d'Arthur is satisfied with the bare statement that a certain knight was riding through a wood, and then passes on at once to the adventure that he met with there.

This paucity of description remains throughout the stretch of many years. Thus we find no descriptive passages at all in Defoe's novels. After Sir Walter Scott, however, most writers have taken great pains to give their readers a clear image of the characters and a detailed picture of their surroundings.

This fidelity of representation, the insistence upon details called realism, we also find in Galsworty's writings.

Whenever a new personage appears Galsworthy gives a full description of his features and figure—in the case of a minor character a clever thumb-nail sketch is given.

As the story goes on many little traits are added to the initial description and the reader is constantly reminded of the character's physiognomy and characteristics, but all these details are given indirectly.

When once the characters have been introduced to us by the author they are further only shown us via the eyes of others—the description is now indirect.

Megan, the country-girl in "The Apple Tree," will serve as a good example.

We see her first as she is outlined against the sky, carrying a basket; the sky is visible through the crook of her arm.

The wind, blowing her dark frieze skirt against her legs, lifted her battered peacock tam-o'-shanter; her greyish blouse was worn and old, her shoes were split, her little hands rough and red, her neck browned. Her dark hair waved untidy across her broad forehead, her face was short, her upper lip short, showing a glint of teeth, her brows were straight and dark, her lashes long and dark, her nose straight; but her eyes were the wonder—dewy as if opened for the first time that day.

In the evening Garton, one of the two walkers who have met the lass Megan, descants on the Celts and on "the exquisite refinement and emotional capacity of that Welsh girl."

Ashurst, Garton's friend, does not listen, thinking, as he is of the girl's face. "It had been exactly like looking at a flower, or some other pretty sight in Nature."

Garton suggests going to the kitchen in order to see some more of her. If Galsworthy gives us a full description of the characters when they are introduced, he does the same with every new scene. Galsworthy depicts the kitchen for us, a white-washed room with rafters, to which smoked hams are attached. There are flower-pots on the windowsill, and guns hanging on nails, queer mugs, china and pewter, and portraits of Queen Victoria. A long, narrow table of plain wood is set with bowls and spoons, under a string of high-hung onions. Two sheepdogs and three cats lie here and there. The men are gathered round the recessed fireplace. The women are preparing the meal.

Seeing them about to eat, the two friends withdraw.

They are sorry to leave the "colour in the kitchen, the warmth, the scents". Their being together for days on end has made them rather moody.

Garton's remarks about Megan irritate Ashton. In his irritation he throws up the window and leans out. The description that follows of the dusk is very true, natural and convincing.

Galsworthy makes use of the device he so often employs of not only telling us what his characters see but also what they hear, feel and smell, he describes all their sensations.

In the gathering dusk Ashurst sees everything dim and bluish, the apple-trees are but a blurred wilderness. The air smells of woodsmoke from the kitchen fire. From the stable comes the snuffle and stamp of a feeding horse. As the young man holds out his hand, he can feel the dew on the upturned palm. Suddenly he hears Megan putting her cousins to bed overhead. After a skirmish of giggles and gurgles, a soft slap, a laugh so low and pretty that it makes him shiver, silence reigns.

The next impression the reader gets of Megan is from a conversation Ashurst carries on with her. We see her then only from his point of view.

He is so full of the girl that he cannot help telling an old farm-labourer how she had put a poultice on his hurt leg.

"She'm a gude maid wi' the flowers. There's folks zeem to know the healin' in things."

Ashurst smiles. "Wi' the flowers!" A flower herself.

The next persons to augment our knowledge of Megan are the two little boys at the farm. They tell Ashurst how a gipsy bogle sits on a rock in the trout-stream at the back of the farm.

"Megan zays 'e zets there

"D'yu think 'e might want to take me away? Megan's feared of 'e."

"Has she seen him?"

"No. She's not afeared o' yu."

"I should think not. Why should she be?"

"She zays a prayer for yu."

"How do you know that, you little rascal?"

"When I was asleep," she said: "God bless us all, an' Mr. Ashes. I yeard 'er whisperin'."

The spring is working in Ashurst's blood. Every now and then "with the sensation a cat must feel when it purs" he becomes conscious of Megan's eyes—those dew-grey eyes—fixed on him with a sort of lingering soft look.

Then one Sunday in the orchard under the pink clusters of the apple blossom he comes upon her, standing there quite still, very pretty, with her fine, dark hair, blown loose about her face, and her eyes cast down.

Yielding to a swift impulse, he kisses Megan's forehead. Then he is frightened—she goes so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lie on her pale cheeks. One moment he is proud at having captured "this pretty, trustful, dewy-eyed thing." The next he thinks of what the world would say. He sees her aunt's shrewd face hardening, the gipsy-like cousins coarsely mocking and distrustful. And the village pub!—the gossiping matrons he passes on his walk; and then—his own friends—Garton's smile—so ironical and knowing! Disgusting! When she has been deserted the girl comes to Torquay to look for him. Ashurst sees her there on the sea front.

Megan—Megan herself! was walking on the far pathway, in her old skirt and jacket and her tam-o'-shanter, looking up into the faces of the passers-by. . . . moving, not with her free country steps, but wavering, lostlooking, pitiful—like some little dog which has missed its master and does not know whether to run on, to run back—where to run.

Ashurst begins to follow the little sad figure, but almost at once checks himself.

The little spot of faded colour, her tam-o'-shanter cap, wavered on in front of him; she was looking up into every face, and at the house windows. Had any man ever such a cruel moment to go through?

He has begun to love an aristocratic girl who radiates an atmosphere as of some old walled-in English garden, with pinks, and corn-flowers, and roses, and scents of lavender and lilac, an atmosphere of healthy, happy English homes.

To go back to the farm and love Megan out in the woods, among the rocks, with everything around wild and fitting—that, he knew, was impossible, utterly. To transplant her to a great town, to keep, in some little flat or rooms, one who belonged so wholly to Nature—the poet in him shrank from it.

What Galsworthy wrote concerning Irene in the preface to The Forsyte Saga also applies here. The figure of Megan is never present except through the senses of other characters.

Megan is mostly seen through the eyes of Ashurst who notices her every movement and change of colour. The image thus gradually obtained is so life-like that one visualizes the pathetic figure and commiserates with her as she wanders along the front, watching for her lover; Megan in her delicate chastity and her despairing search.

Beauty cast her veil over Megan's death as she did over Ophelia's in Hamlet.

'Er was lyin' on 'er face in the watter. There was a plant o' goldie-cups growin' out o' the stone just above 'er 'ead. An' when I come to luke at 'er face, 'twas luvly, butiful, so calm's a baby's—wonderful butiful et was.—'T was June then, but she'd a-found a little bit of appleblossom left over somewheres, and stuck et in 'er air.

To Galsworthy the eye verily was the mirror of the soul. When Ashurst had surprised Megan, had accidentally seen her pretty act of devotion as she kissed his pillow at the hollow made by his head the night before, the girl

put her hands up to her cheeks, but her eyes seemed to look right into him. He had never before realised the depth and purity and touching faithfulness in those dewbright eyes . . .

Ashurst, who is somewhat of a dreamer, has large remote grey eyes which sometimes fill with meaning and become almost beautiful. Megan's shrewd aunt has a quick, dark eye, like a mother wild-duck's, and something of the same snaky turn about her neck.

The farm-hand Joe is jealous of Ashurst.

His blue eyes with their flaxen lashes—they look like those of a young and angry bull—stare fixedly at his rival.

The lame farm-labourer's eyes have the upward look which prolonged suffering often brings.

In a single sentence Galsworthy makes the eyes convey the emotional significance of a whole character.

Old Heythorp, "A Stoic," looks at his secretary.

Only from those eyes could one appreciate the strength of life yet flowing underground in that well-nigh helpless carcase—deep-coloured little blue wells, tiny, jovial, round windows.

The convict's eyes ("The Prisoner") are incarnate tragedy—all those eternities of solitude and silence he had lived through, all the eternities he had still to live through before they buried him in the grave-yard outside, are staring out of them.

Galsworthy knew the art of compressing much significance in a few words. Very often a single exclamation, a look, a smile or some other little gesture reveals as in a flash the whole history or typical traits of a character.

A little detail symbolizes all that has gone before, condenses the events of a long period of time.

"The Workers" contains a striking example.

. . . there passed between his whitish eyes and the grey eyes of his wife one of those looks which people who have long lived together give each other. It had no obvious gleam of affection, but just the matter-of-fact mutual faith of two creatures who from year's end to year's end can never be out of arm's length of one another.

Other examples are:

All those months of hatred looked out of their eyes, and their hands twitched convulsively. ("A Feud")

Whole centuries of antagonism glared out of their eyes ("A Reversion to Type")

Sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking. It was a summary of their lives together ("A Man of Devon")

Galsworthy often showed the inner significance of a gesture, of a look. Two recruiting officers have done their best among a crowd of farm-labourers.

Hackneyed words, jests, the touch of flattery changing swiftly to chaff—all the customary performance, hollow and pathetic; and then the two figures re-emerged, their hands clenched, their eyes shifting here and there, their lips drawn back in fixed smiles. They had failed and were trying to hide it. ("The Recruit")

Galsworthy painted his dramatis personae at the outset of his stories, he began by giving us portraits, but every time they re-appeared on the scene he referred again to their features or to their carriage and frequently added a little trait. He clearly visualized the people that throng his books but never forgot that if the readers were to retain these pictures reference must continually be made to their outward appearance.

It has already been pointed out that this is done indirectly. The author does not intrude himself, the references are, as it were, inserted, casually. Everything, the painting of the character's exterior, the gestures betraying what goes on beneath it, contributes towards the reader obtaining a lifelike image and true conception of the person depicted.

Galsworthy did not overlook the fact that environment is an important factor in life. The girl Megan is as much the product of her surroundings as Zachary Pearse, the man of Devon, is of his. The country they live in, their farms and kitchens are realistically described.

The importance Galsworthy attaches to soil, descent and surroundings is best seen in "The Neighbours" where description forms three quarters of the story.

First the landscape is depicted, a patch of moorland with a pagan spirit stealing forth through the wan gorse, gliding round the stems of the lonely, gibbet-like fir trees which peep out amongst the reeds of the white marsh.

The two cottages are then described and in the third place their inhabitants.

They were all four above the average height, and all four as straight as darts. The innkeeper, Sandford, was a massive man, stolid, grave, light-eyed with big fair moustaches, who might have stepped straight out of some Norseman's galley. Leman was lean and lathy, a regular Celt, with an amiable, shadowy, humorous face. The two women were as different as the men. Mrs. Sandford's fair, almost transparent cheeks coloured easily, her eyes were grey, her hair pale brown; Mrs. Leman's hair was of a lustreless jet-black, her eyes the colour of a peaty stream, and her cheeks had the close creamy texture of old ivory.

Sandford—"that blond, ashy-looking Teuton" was feared—no one quite knew why.

To see this black-haired woman, with her stoical, alluring face, (Mrs. Leman) come out for a breath of air, and stand in the sunlight, her baby in her arms, was to have looked on a very woman of the Britons. In conquering races the men, they say, are superior to the women; in conquered races, the women to the men. ... No one ever saw a word pass between her and Sandford. It was almost as if the old racial feelings of this borderland were pursuing in these two their unending conflict. For there they lived, side by side under the long, thatched roof, this great primitive, invading male, and that black-haired, lithe-limbed woman of older race, avoiding each other, never speaking.

The bewitching paleness of the glamorous night hides the murder from the reader's eyes. The remainder of the story, the end, consists of Leman's, the lean and lathy Celt's confession.

In the country the simple, unspoiled people live nearer to nature; they bear the imprint of their surroundings.

In the town man has lost contact with the soil and has become sophisticated.

Instead of being a product of their surroundings it is they who print their personalities on the furnishing and decoration of their houses. The apartments of a towndweller mirror the character of their inhabitant.

There are rooms which refuse to give away their owners, and rooms which seem to say: "They really are like this." Of such was Rosamund Lame's—a sort of permanent confession, seeming to remark to anyone who entered: "Her taste? Well, you can see—cheerful and exuberant: her habits—yes, she sits here all the morning in a dressing-gown, smoking cigarettes and dropping ink; kindly observe my carpet. Notice the piano—it has a look of coming and going, according to the exchequer. This very deep-cushioned sofa is permanent, however; the water-colours on the walls are safe, too—they're by herself. Mark the scent of mimosa—she likes flowers, and likes them strong. No clock, of course. Examine the bureau—she is obviously always ringing for "the drumstick," and saying: "Where's this, Ellen, and where's that? You naughty gairl, you've been tidying." Cast an eye on that pile of manuscript—she has evidently a genius for composition; it flows off her pen—like Shakespeare, she never blots a line. See how she's had the electric light put in, instead of that horrid gas; but try and turn either of them on—you can't; last quarter isn't paid, of course; and she uses an oil lamp, you can tell that by the ceiling. ("A Stoic")

In "The Indian Summer of a Forsyte" Irene's tasteful rooms and Old Jolyon's treasures and pictures are described.

Keith Darrant's study with its rich furnishings, the leather-bound volumes and oak-panelled walls reflect the successful solicitor.

The opening sentences of "The First and the Last" evince Galsworthy's love of description. The delineation of Darrant's study might have come from the pen of Oscar Wilde who revelled in depicting luxurious interiors. The first six sentences contain some twenty references to colour. The green shade of the reading-lamp lets fall a dapple of light over the Turkey carpet and over the deep blue and gold of the coffee service on the little old stool with its Oriental embroidery.

In red Turkish slippers and his old brown velvet coat, he was well suited to that framing of glow and darkness. A painter would have seized avidly on his clear-cut, yellowish face, with its black eyebrows twisting up over eyes—grey or brown, one could hardly tell, and its dark grizzling hair still plentiful, in spite of those daily hours of wig. . . .

Although the history of the short story may be traced back to the birth of civilisation, the development of the short story proper is a comparatively late one. Indeed, as a conscious expression of art its history begins little more than a hundred years ago with the American authors Irving, Hawthorne and Poe. In England Kipling was unquestionably the leader of the older generation of short story writers; among the great exponents of the 20th century English short story rank authors as Katherine Mansfield, Ethel Colburn Mayne, Stacy Aumonier and A. E. Coppard. John Galsworthy is also a master of the short story but in surveys of its history his name is frequently overlooked. Galsworthy is primarily regarded as a novelist and a dramatist. His novels and dramas have all been subjected to various studies but his short stories have so far been comparatively neglected.

What may be the reason that, for instance Evelyn M. Albright in her excellent study The Short Story gives no attention to John Galsworthy?

It will be for posterity to decide if, and through which of his works, Galsworthy shall live on in the annals of literature.

Although his fame and popularity have already greatly waned in Great Britain, it seems safe to state that owing to the stimulus Galsworthy gave to the early 20th century drama he will be remembered as also for the "fashion" he set in writing family chronicles.

Did Galsworthy contribute to the development of the modern short story?

Undoubtedly he exerted influence but this was not of the same importance as his leadership in other literary spheres. . . . Galsworthy has given us some splendid examples of the short story, that he has enriched the world's literature with unforgettable tales as "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" and "The Apple Tree."

He had his own style; all his writings exude the special Galsworthy flavour, but he was not an innovator and did not stimulate a certain school or set a new mode of short story writing.

Kipling influenced Galsworthy's very first literary efforts, the short stories contained in From the Four Winds (1897).

In 1920 Galsworthy had all the remaining copies of this volume "his first sins" destroyed.

Of far greater moment than the influence of Kipling on Galsworthy's first immature attempts was the lasting influence of Tchehov, Turgenev and de Maupassant.

To Turgenev and de Maupassant Galsworthy "served that spiritual and technical apprenticeship which every young writer serves, guided by some deep kinship in spirit to one or other of the old past-masters of his craft" (Castles in Spain).

"Turgenev possessed my mind and soul at about the age of thirty" (Forsytes, Pendyces and Others).

Ward complains that it is a great pity that we cannot be ourselves, that our minds must be a patchwork of a thousand and one other minds.

Though we travel the world over, we inevitably become composite creatures, intellectual mosaics made up of pieces gathered here, gathered there.

Like everybody else Galsworthy also underwent some influences but the resulting pattern of his "intellectual mosaics" was something entirely individual. The circumstances of his life, his education, his surroundings, friends and last but not least his wife made Galsworthy into what he was; all the influences were blended into something specifically his own. Could anyone else have written the splendid Five Tales? And is it at all impossible that these stories will probably be wider read by later generations than for instance the Forsyte series?

Galsworthy's short stories reveal more of Galsworthy the artist and the man than his other works do. Most of his dramas are too much bound up with the sociological problems of his time to be of lasting interest and will very likely be forgotten. His short stories may prove to be of lasting value, and assure Galsworthy a place among the immortal names of English literature.

One of the reasons for the present popularity of the short story is that in the stress and rush of modern times people have not leisure enough nor the peace of mind to read lengthy novels. Man has grown impatient of those "great still books" (as Tennyson called them), over which readers were glad to linger in more leisurely ages.

Very few people will in years to come find time to read the complete history of the Forsyte family as given by Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga and subsequent trilogies.

To become acquainted with the Forsytes the reader may, however, turn to the short stories in On Forsyte 'Change and get an excellent idea of Galsworthy the chronicler.

For Galsworthy's expressions of lyrical beauty he will read "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" and "The Apple Tree," both captivating prose poems and probably the best pieces of all Galsworthy's writings. The concise form of the short story, with few characters and a simple uncomplicated plot, permits of perfection. In the novel on a large scale, with its various plots, its profusion and multicolours, in the drama with its elaborate construction, a writer can rarely appreach the ideal. It may be that true perfection is only attainable in this shorter form, in the short story, of the brief lyrical poem or song.

Arthur Waugh once stated that for some not altogether inexplicable reason short story writing seemed to be generally alien to the English literary temperament.

For the very qualities which constitute the essence of the short story—restraint, austerity, selection, the prevailing and controlling moral idea—for these the typically impetuous and fecund English temperament has neither the time nor the disposition. The short story is an essay in discipline and interruption, in which everything depends upon construction, the delicate choice and arrangement of effects, the gradual development and revelation of the idea—in short, upon artistry and soul. And it is a plain fact that the average English novelist cannot take his art seriously enough to master the methods of elimination and production essential to the writing of a satisfactory short story.

Curiously enough all the characteristics necessary for the perfect short story writer as enumerated by Arthur Waugh are found in Galsworthy. The restraint, the austerity, the moral idea, the self-discipline, the delicate choice and arrangement of effects, the artistry and the soul—they are all there.

"Indian Summer of a Forsyte" and "The Apple Tree" also contain ample proof that the criticism of those who maintain that Galsworthy had no poetical feeling is unfounded. Throughout his literary career Galsworthy was a subject for arguments—he was called cynically impartial and indifferent, bloodless and inhuman; he was regarded as a relentless, insidious special pleader, sentimental, narrow and biased, as a great artist, with the breadth and depth of vision that only the great can attain, as an honest but not very clear-sighted purveyor of fictions of the second class.

It is impossible that Galsworthy can have been all these very diverse beings. Now it is in his short stories that Galsworthy can be studied to the greatest advantage. In them we find his whole personality revealed and it is there that we can find the material to refute unfounded criticism.

There are many veins in Galsworthy's temperament. Passionless reflections on all the pros and cons of a case; the thoroughness and objectivity of the lawyer, sometimes carried to excess; the impulse to justice in the best sense of the word, and curiously mixed with it a great compassion for all who are weaker, or scurvily treated by man or nature.

The application of the term sentimentality to Galsworthy's works and life implies merely a lack of near acquaintance with either one or the other;. . . Galsworthy was not a dry and aloof man devoid of any humour.

We saw that in a subtle way Galsworthy imparts atmosphere to his short stories by stating what his senses undergo. Sight, touch, hearing, taste and especially smell are the means by which Galsworthy obtained that sensation of reality. He had a special genius for suggesting the spirit of passion. Over many short stories there is a strange brooding sense of a summer evening, an atmosphere of the passionate perfumed dusk which blots out the figures of the lovers, even as they hide their love from the eyes of the world.

In his short stories Galsworthy attained what Conrad referred to in the preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus":

To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile—such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished—behold—all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile—and the return to an eternal rest.

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The Short Stories of Galsworthy and Other Studies

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