New Tales of the Forsyte Clan
[In the following laudatory review of On Forsyte 'Change, Hutchison commends the insightful and familiar nature of the stories in the collection.]
The nineteen stories in John Galsworthy's new volume are so many episodes, farcical, grave, satirical, as the case may be, in the lives of that Forsyte clan the history of which has for so long been the major occupation of England's distinguished novelist. No doubt there are persons who have never heard of the Forystes, but with these the present writer refuses to converse. He merely informs them that in On Forsyte 'Change they will find a collection of some of the very best short stories they have encountered in recent years, varied of mood and perfect in execution. And that they had best, after reading them, familiarize themselves with the book's background, namely, the history of the Forsytes, as contained in The Forsyte Saga and A Modern Comedy. By so doing not only will they find that the present stories suddenly enrich and broaden and grow immensely more humane, but they will become acquainted with a family they have always known and yet never quite known.
If evidence were lacking (as evidence is not) of the reality of the scores of persons that walk in and out of the Forsyte pages, from The Man of Property to Swan Song, the appearance of On Forsyte 'Change would convince the most skeptical. For in doing these addenda—or whatever one wishes to call the stories of the book—Mr. Galsworthy gives ample proof that, although he had buried the greatest of the clan, namely, Soames, not only could he not part company with the people he had created, but, and more significant, they refused to part company with him! It makes one realize why the Forsyte novels appeared one after another, six of them, over a period of years. Every individual lived, moved, had his corporeal and spiritual (and sometimes less than spiritual) existence as truly as the flesh and blood members of one's immediate family and group of friends. And, astounding robots of a writer's imagination, once set in motion, they took life into their own hands and reduced their originator to the rank of amanuensis. Yet there was a limitation to their activities. John Galsworthy was master of their fate to the extent that it was his to say what of their chronicle should go between any set of covers. One sees now how much he left out—Aunt Juley's courtship, the reduction to vassalage of "Nicholas-Rex" by his gently spoken wife, June's first lame duck, young Jolyon's escapades at Cambridge. In the march of the major narrative these little side affairs could not find place. Mr. Galsworthy either wrote them and put them aside, or he did not write them out; they stayed in his memory; and now, with others, they come together to fill in the picture.
The first story, "The Buckles of Superior Dosset," is the least impressive. And the reason is clear. In going back to Dorsetshire and the founding of the family, Galsworthy, in his chronicle, was interested solely in indicating how deep in the soil the roots of the Forsytes penetrated. The present story, if it accomplishes anything, makes more insistent that idea, but it contributes not a great deal more except, perhaps, further evidence as to Forsyte honesty and solidity.
The reviewer may not dwell on each separate piece. The second is a delicately ironic fragment (the year is 1860, but the irony is of all dates) in which Young Jo is taken by his father to the British Museum to see the Egyptian mummies. And dad, half asleep over his cigar, remembers going back to Dorset to find a railway running where his mother's grave had been and her bones scattered none knew where. And suddenly the youngster makes him see that that is just what had been done to the Egyptians.
"Hester's Little Tour" is next; just such a frightened half-moment of romance as must have come to thousands of the Victorian maidens who were the spinster aunts of the present generation. And this is followed by "Timothy's Narrow Squeak," as it came to be called on Forsyte 'Change. Timothy was one of the major persons of the chronicle, and with this story the preset collection acquires the reality missed by its predecessors. Timothy lived with Galsworthy as the others did not. The "narrow squeak" (in 1850) was when Timothy wrote a proposal of marriage to a young woman, but refrained from handing her the letter when he saw her driving alone with a man in a hansom cab. It is impossible to stop over each vignette. But "Revolt at Roger's" is a charming story of children—it has to do with the Francie and Eustace—as sensitive a reading of the child mind and heart as one may wish to find. And "Dog of Timothy's" is such a whimsical account of an ingratiating stray as could come only from such a lover of dogs as John Galsworthy. It is the laughing complement to the dog's death so movingly done in the Saga. And it is shrinking Aunt Juley who beards her tyrannical brother and insists that the homeless canine shall remain. Galsworthy, in these sly contributions to the Forsyte history, takes especial delight in giving the subdued middle-century females a fling at rebellion. And the very furtiveness of his sallies in this direction makes the wit more relishable. The all but complete omission of Irene from the collection suggest that Galsworthy feared he might disturb the delicacy of his earlier handiwork if he added thereto. Yet in the handful of pages of "The Peacock Cry," when Soames parts with his dignity to stand outside Irene's window two weeks before their marriage, one is brought to a fuller realization of the possible depth of Victorian passion (and passion for possession) than even the chronicle conveyed. The tragedy of Soames, however much he brought it on himself, is become more poignant, more deserving of sympathy.
Blotted against the lamp-post he stayed unmoving, aching for a sight of her. With his coat he blotted the whiteness of his shirtfront, took off his hat and crushed it to him. Now he was any stray early idler with cheek against lamp-post and no face visible, any returning reveler.
In "Francie's Fourpenny Foreigner," an Italian violinist whom Francie for the moment thinks of marrying, is a passage which throws light on the whole Forsyte history. It is not impossible that the author, when first he planned his work, jotted it down in rough form as a guide. If so, then the double trilogy to which the full narrative grew is cumulative evidence of a psychological reading never deviated from. Francie, knowing well the disapproval of her father, writes her mother of her intention, adding that "she was going to sleep at her studio till father had got over the fit he would certainly have."
There again she went wrong in her psychology [writes Galsworthy], incapable, like all the young Forsytes, of appreciating exactly the quality which had made the fortunes of all the old Forsytes. In a word, they had fits over small matters, but never over large. When stark reality stared them in the face they met it with a stare of a still starker reality.
The two war pieces, "A Forsyte Encounters the People" and "Soames and the Flag," the latter the most truly masterly of them all, are of Galsworthy's best. The passage just quoted, besides its function in the story in which it appears, is also a sort of beam flashed ahead on these two pieces. Perhaps the stark reality of the war could not be met, even by a Forsyte, with a reality more stark; but it was met with a stare that did not waver. Both pieces go deep; and both make the reader appreciative of something in human beings he may not always have recognized. It will be the guess of many that John Galsworthy, now that he has come down so far in the gossip on Forsyte 'Change, will again put his ear to the ground and listen to what they say of Fleur, and Mont, and Jon, and, of course, of Soames in his later days. The record will be eagerly awaited. To the readers of the Saga and the Comedy they who people the pages have ever been as real as for their creator. It is pleasure unalloyed whenever they walk.
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