John Galsworthy

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A review of Captures

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SOURCE: A review of Captures, in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 1130, September 13, 1923, p. 602.

[In the following mixed review, the critic maintains that the stories comprising Captures possess the characteristic beauty of Galsworthy 's writing, but lack incisiveness and intensity.]

Mr. Galsworthy's sixteen new stories, here collected [in] Captures, are neither unworthy of him nor yet on a level with his best work. They are characteristic. But one feels that in writing them he allowed himself a certain relaxation: they are deficient not in truth but in intensity. He has always surveyed life with the cool and ironic detachment which is the natural refuge of the man who feels acutely. In The Forsyte Sage his detachment was a desperately maintained pose, more dreadful and moving than could have been the least restrained partisanship. But here the detachment is rather that of a certain fatigue. The outlines of his persons are not less true, but they are less incisive. Rupert K. Vaness was a hedonist—"Life moved round him with a certain noiseless ease or stood still at a perfect temperature like the air in a conservatory round a choice blossom which a draught might shrivel." But he was still "the sort of man of whom one could never say with safety whether he was revolving round a beautiful young woman or whether the beautiful young woman was revolving round him." He was fifty-five when he concerned himself with Miss Monroy, and expounded to her his philosophy of life. She had a keen enough wit to take it literally:—

"Your philosophy is that of faun and nymph. But can you play the part?"

"Only let me try." Those words had each a fevered ring that in imagination I could see Vaness all flushed, his fine eyes shining, his well-kept hands trembling, his lips a little protruded.

Then came a laugh, high, gay, sweet.

"Very well then; catch me!" I heard a swish of skirt against the shrubs, the sounds of flight; an astonished gasp from Vaness, and the heavy thud, thud of his feet following on the path through the azalea maze. I hoped fervently that they would not suddenly come running past and see me sitting there. My straining ears caught another laugh far off, a panting sound, a muttered oath, a far-away coo-ee! And then, staggering, winded, pale with heat and with vexation, Vaness appeared, caught sight of me and stood a moment—baff! Sweat was running down his face, his hand was clutching at his side, his stomach heaved—a hunter beaten and undignified.

This is the coolness of acquiescence; and one's consciousness of it is only increased when Mr. Galsworthy ends by remarking that he "was sorry—very sorry, at that moment, for Rupert K. Vaness." The addition would once have been unnecessary; and Mr. Galsworthy has never been the man to underline where underlining is not needed.

There is a similar coolness in all these pieces. In one, two farmers quarrel and one of them as a result suffers the loss of his son. In another a good soldier suffers every undeserved misfortune until at last he is driving a taxi about the streets of London. In a third a man emerges from a term of penal servitude, morally undeserved, hardened so as to be sufficient to himself and impervious to all other persons. In a fourth ["Had a Horse"] an inferior bookie, who knows nothing of horses save their form on paper, accidentally acquires one and cannot bear that it should be run otherwise than to win. In all these Mr. Galsworthy records with all his old exquisite sympathy, with all of his old discernment of what is fine and beautiful in the gross characters whose grossness he used to hate. The grace, the sympathy, the economy are still there: the fervour, visible only in the immense restraint which kept it from unseemly displays, is gone. Has Mr. Galsworthy despaired of shaming the Forsytes—he never wished to destroy them, he loved them too much—out of their evil courses in the world? These tales are, we say again, characteristic; and there is always a certain beauty in the fatigue and relaxation of a warm passion. Possibly Mr. Galsworthy is entering into the Indian Summer of his art. At all events his readers, though they may find here something that is a little perplexing, will find nothing that can dissatisfy them.

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