Fragments and Remainders of Galsworthy's Writing
[Below, Hutchison provides a generally positive review of the stories included in Forstyes, Pendyces, and Others.]
Perhaps the striking thing about this collection of crumbs from the abundant board set by John Galsworthy is the proof of the degree to which this paramount delineator of persons and manners lived with and among the characters of his creation. Few authors, we fancy, ever dwelt with a single family for so many years as Mr. Galsworthy dwelt with the Forsyte clan.
Take only the year 1906, when Soames, who was to live in the novelist's pages for twenty years, made his first bow in The Man of Property. Nearly contemporaneous was The Country House, not primarily concerned with Forsytes. Yet, Mr. Galsworthy could not get this under way without their assistance. On the third page of four subsequently deleted introductory chapters we meet James Forsyte, and soon we find ourselves also in the company of his brother George, and of both Old and Young Jolyon. With these excised pages, grouped under the title "Danaë" (Danaë Bellew, née Thornworthy), Mrs. Galsworthy opens her anthology from the unpublished sheets left by her husband. Those who feel that The Country House is also among his distinguished works will wish to see this omitted beginning.
Following this fragmentary group come eight short stories never before published, with the exception of "The Doldrums," which appeared in the not generally available volume, From the Four Winds. Aside from the fact that the mate in the story is none other than Joseph Conrad, who was first officer of the sailing ship Torrens, on which, when a young barrister, Galsworthy made a voyage, the story is a remarkably moving sea tale. It is somewhat marred by Galsworthy's attempt to reproduce phonetically the foreign accent which was doubtless Conrad's at at that date, otherwise the brief picture of the opium-ridden ship's doctor dying miserably "because the breeze came too late" is probably just as fine a thing, inherently, as Conrad himself could have made it at the time. The date of "The Doldrums" is 1896. All the other pieces, with one exception, were written between 1922 and 1927.
"Water" is the first of these tales, and unquestionably the most subtle of them. Henry Cursitor, who writes publicity for the Rangoon Wayside Waterworks Trust, headquarters London, is so much a born promoter that when it is evident that the R. W. W. W. T. is going on the rocks, not from the water under it but because of the water within, he follows the pipe-dream of an Australian who would develop for irrigation a subterranean river in the torrid bush. Too late Cursitor discovers it a pipe-dream—when he finds his guide floating off on a wreath of opium smoke. But on his return the Londoner falls in with a man who wants to develop Basque copper. So off he gets at Gibraltar to follow another dream.
"Told by the Schoolmaster" is as pathetic a tale of the war as one is likely to meet, and also as original. The story is developed with mastery. It is a tale of patriotism, love and intense ignorance in a losing conflict with the harsh, if necessary, justice of wartime discipline.
We are glad to have seen these short stories, each and all. If they add nothing to the stature of John Galsworthy, they take nothing away, albeit none is quite up to the high standard of those he preserved in the omnibus volume Caravan. Unfortunately, not so much is to be said for the remainder of the book.
To be sure, all that Mr. Galsworthy had to say about authors and their works is pertinent; often of more than ordinary critical value. But most of his comments are to be found elsewhere. Of course, the merit of an inclusion here lies in the fact that Mrs. Galsworthy has brought together those most important, thus giving a fairly comprehensive view of his critical range and an insight into this novelist's attitude toward literature. What he has to say of Dickens, Tolstoy and Hudson is the most arresting.
The third part is made up of four unpublished dramatic fragments.
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