Before We Visit the Goddess: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

This is an amazingly woven together tale of four generations of women, that looks to begin with as if it were stories barely connected together via characters, but comes together surprisingly towards the end, surprisingly not only in the way it does after meandering all around like a river in no hurry to flow to the ocean and takes its time turning around every which way, but also because by then one had given up on almost the most endearing character - and too, the way it becomes suddenly the story of four generations of women intertwined not only by their mother to daughter links but also by their individual struggles suddenly linked in a whole.

More surprising, and satisfying, than anything at this coming together of the generations is how the great grandmother suddenly is a personality of her own again, rather than a pathetic poor woman in a village who managed to send her daughter to city to college - albeit a huge part of the satisfaction is the letter the grandmother wrote to her granddaughter being not lost after all, but read by bother mother and daughter, bringing them together as never before, and more than the two at that. This letter uniting the four generations, and making the younger two aware of the older two left behind in India, as part of their own selves, is perhaps the gem that sets the piece off in its finale.
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April 24, 2016.
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The Cabin: by Donna Mabry.

To those that have read her Manhattan, KS series, this is just another delightful addition in the series, perhaps. To someone new is another matter.

One cannot deny being attracted by the cover with its lovely little log cabin surrounded by large shady trees glorious in a red-golden fall, but the real hook sinks into one with the young woman defying her large scary odious cousin and brother in-law along with her father and literally running away, into woods until she finds the cabin she spots serendipitously, like the little girl in the story of three bears. Only, this girls is not so little, and she is running away from a Mormon marriage involving, as usual, marrying a cousin who is much older, and is married to more than one wife already to boot, among them her younger sister too, whose travails are all too known to her.

From then on it is a regular fairy tale, albeit not quite for children, replete with a hero, heroine, good guys and a terrible villain who keeps threatening them with murder and acting on it till end. Ends satisfyingly well, like a fairy tale ought to, too.
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April 26, 2016.
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Rogue Lawyer: by John Grisham.

Grisham goes deeper into the Southern law, courts, prisons, and murky landscape of lives and workings of criminals, small and not so small. The protagonist is a lawyer who takes cases not taken by other lawyers due to their notoriety, and fights for justice in cases where scapegoats have been found all too easily without efforts on part of law and order authorities to find the real culprits.

But it isn't all about rosy cavalier stories, it involves much of the real murky depths in every sense of the phrase. There are those that took to crime because it attracted them, and they are into it quite openly, but finally caught only because they got too arrogant - like Link who stands to lose everything around middle age when he ought to know better than to kill a judge for a ruling that went against him. His waiting for execution and how it ends so unexpectedly is a very surprising story, in itself and as part of the Grisham repertoire, both. As is the story of Tadeo, the young fighter who went into a rage and wouldn't admit he was wrong.

Come to think of it, so is the story of the young woman, daughter of the policeman, kidnapped, and the man arrested several months after she went missing. This one takes so many turns, every one unexpected, and is far too close to reality to not frighten and revolt at the same time, in how the criminals mostly escape, but is reassuring in that many girls are saved.

Of course, the endearing parts are about the personal life of the protagonist, his family such as it is, and his attempts to keep on at being a good father, albeit the author makes a successful job of not turning the reader against the strident lawyer divorced from the protagonist who attempts to stop him from seeing his son. Unless one is a total misogynist, that is.

All in all, satisfactory for Grisham fans without his earlier exhilarating finales where good one, although good wins here too, more often than not. When the protagonist drives off, promising perhaps never to return this time, one just knows he isn't giving up on his son, or the poor clients who need him, for that matter.
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April 21, 2016.
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This book is Grisham's foray into rough unsavoury world of not just criminals but characters whom normal muddle class prefers to stay away from, who might nevertheless not be criminal, even though they seem mist convenient to pin a crime on when it's not easy to find the real culprit.

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"My name is not listed in any phone book. I do not maintain a traditional office. I carry a gun, legally, because my name and face tend to attract attention from the type of people who also carry guns and don’t mind using them. I live alone, usually sleep alone, and do not possess the patience and understanding necessary to maintain friendships. The law is my life, always consuming and occasionally fulfilling. I wouldn’t call it a “jealous mistress” as some forgotten person once so famously did. It’s more like an overbearing wife who controls the checkbook. There’s no way out.

"These nights I find myself sleeping in cheap motel rooms that change each week. I’m not trying to save money; rather, I’m just trying to stay alive. There are plenty of people who’d like to kill me right now, and a few of them have been quite vocal. They don’t tell you in law school that one day you may find yourself defending a person charged with a crime so heinous that otherwise peaceful citizens feel driven to take up arms and threaten to kill the accused, his lawyer, and even the judge."

"When I finished law school, jobs were scarce. I reluctantly took a part-time position in the City’s public defender’s office. From there I landed in a small, unprofitable firm that handled only criminal defense. After a few years, that firm blew up and I was on my own, out on the street with plenty of others, scrambling to make a buck.

"One case put me on the map. I can’t say it made me famous because, seriously, how can you say a lawyer is famous in a city of a million people?"

"I am defending a brain-damaged eighteen-year-old dropout who’s charged with killing two little girls in one of the most evil crimes I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. My clients are almost always guilty, so I don’t waste a lot of time wringing my hands about whether they get what they deserve. In this case, though, Gardy is not guilty, not that it matters. It does not. What’s important in Milo these days is that Gardy gets convicted and sentenced to death and executed as soon as possible so that the town can feel better about itself and move on. Move on to where, exactly? ... This place has been moving backward for fifty years, and one lousy verdict will not change its course. I’ve read and heard it said that Milo needs “closure,” whatever that means. You’d have to be an idiot to believe this town will somehow grow and prosper and become more tolerant as soon as Gardy gets the needle."

"I’m being paid by the State to provide a first-class defense to a defendant charged with capital murder, and this requires me to fight and claw and raise hell in a courtroom where no one is listening. Gardy was essentially convicted the day he was arrested, and his trial is only a formality. The dumb and desperate cops trumped up the charges and fabricated the evidence. The prosecutor knows this but has no spine and is up for reelection next year. The judge is asleep. The jurors are basically nice, simple people, wide-eyed at the process and ever so anxious to believe the lies their proud authorities are producing on the witness stand."

"The state police are providing protection during the trial, but I get the clear impression these guys are just not into it. They view me the same way most people do. I’m a long-haired roguish zealot sick enough to fight for the rights of child killers and the like.

"My current motel is a Hampton Inn located twenty-five minutes from Milo. It costs $60 a night and the State will reimburse me. Next door is Partner, a hulking, heavily armed guy who wears black suits and takes me everywhere. Partner is my driver, bodyguard, confidant, paralegal, caddie, and only friend. I earned his loyalty when a jury found him not guilty of killing an undercover narcotics officer. We walked out of the courtroom arm in arm and have been inseparable ever since. On at least two occasions, off-duty cops have tried to kill him. On one occasion, they came after me.

"We’re still standing. Or perhaps I should say we’re still ducking."

Reminds one of a film, The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey and Josh Lucas, former playing such a lawyer, but not this story. 

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"Lunch is always a treat. Since it’s not safe to leave the courthouse, actually the courtroom itself, Gardy and I eat a sandwich by ourselves at the defense table. It’s the same box lunch fed to the jurors. They bring in sixteen of them, mix them up, draw ours at random, and take the rest to the jury room. This was my idea because I prefer not to be poisoned. Gardy has no clue; he’s just hungry. He says the food at the jail is what you’d expect and he doesn’t trust the guards. He eats nothing there, and since he’s surviving only on lunch, I asked Judge Kaufman if the county could perhaps double up and give the boy two rubber chicken sandwiches, with extra chips and another pickle. In other words, two box lunches instead of one. Denied.

"So Gardy gets half of my sandwich and all of my kosher dill. If I weren’t starving, he could have the entire box of crap.

"Partner comes and goes throughout the day. He’s afraid to leave our van in one spot due to the high probability of slashed tires and cracked windows. He also has a few responsibilities, one of which is to meet occasionally with the Bishop.

"In these cases where I’m called into a combat zone, into a small town that has already closed ranks and is ready to kill one of its own for some heinous crime, it takes a while to find a contact. This contact is always another lawyer, a local who also defends criminals and butts heads weekly with the police and prosecutors. This contact reaches out eventually, quietly, afraid of being exposed as a traitor. He knows the truth, or something close to it. He knows the players, the bad actors, and the occasional good one. Since his survival depends on getting along with the cops and court clerks and assistant prosecutors, he knows the system.

"In Gardy’s case, my deep-throated pal is Jimmy Bressup. We call him the Bishop. I’ve never met him. He works through Partner and they meet in strange places. Partner says he’s about sixty with long, thinning gray hair, bad clothes, a loud, foul mouth, an abrasive nature, and a weakness for the bottle. “An older version of me?” I asked. “Not quite,” came the wise reply. For all his bluster and big talk, the Bishop is afraid of getting too close to Gardy’s lawyers.

"The Bishop says Huver and his gang know by now they’ve got the wrong guy but have too much invested to stop and admit their mistakes. He says there have been whispers from day one about the real killer."

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Apart from this client and the practice, Sebastian Rudd has a son whose mother he likes and meets regularly so as to keep visiting rights civil, a mother whose estate and will has a clout, and a fighter - Tadeo Zapate - he owns a quarter of.

At the fight he went to after meeting Judith, the mother of his son, he was accosted by the daughter of a woman on the jury.

"“What’s Glynna thinking these days?” I ask cautiously. She could be wearing a mike. Nothing surprises me.

"“She thinks they’re all a bunch of liars.” We’re still walking, slowly, going nowhere, each afraid to look the other in the eyes. I am stunned to hear this. Reading her body language and knowing her background, I would bet the farm that Glynna Roston would be the first to yell “Guilty!”"

"I take the nearest stairway to a lower level, and as soon as I’m safely away from her, I duck into a restroom and replay what she said. I still can’t believe it. That jury, along with the rest of the town, convicted my client the day he was arrested. Her mother, Glynna Roston, gives every indication of being the model Milo citizen—uneducated, narrow-minded, and determined to be a heroine for her community in its time of need. Monday morning will be interesting. At some point, after we resume testimony, I’ll get the chance to glance into the jury box. So far Glynna has not been afraid to return my looks. Her eyes will reveal something, though I’m not sure what."

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"Jack Peeley is a former boyfriend of the mother of the two Fentress girls. Their father was long gone when they were murdered, and their mother’s apartment was a revolving door for local tomcats and slimeballs. Peeley lasted about a year and got the boot when she met a used-tractor dealer with a little cash and a house without wheels. She moved up and Peeley moved out, with a broken heart. He was the last person seen near the girls when they disappeared. Early on, I asked the police why they did not treat him as a suspect, or at least investigate him, and their lame response was that they already had their man. Gardy was in custody and confessing right and left.

"I strongly suspect Jack Peeley killed the girls in some sick act of revenge. And, if the cops had not stumbled onto Gardy, they might have eventually questioned Peeley. Gardy, though, with his frightening appearance, satanic leanings, and history of sexual perversion, became the clear favorite and Milo has never looked back."

Sebastian Rudd took Tadeo Zapate and his brother Miguel to the pool joint known to be frequented by Peeley and the two fighters picked a fight, successfully.

"“Got it,” Tadeo says eagerly from the backseat. He thrusts his right hand forward and it is indeed covered with blood. Peeley’s blood. We stop at a burger place, and I carefully scrape it clean.

"It’s midnight before we make it back to the City."

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"The monster who killed the Fentress girls bound their ankles and wrists together with their shoelaces, then threw them in a pond. During Jenna’s autopsy, a single strand of long black hair was found wrapped up in the laces around her ankles. Both she and Raley had light blond hair. At the time, Gardy had long black hair—though the color changed monthly—and not surprisingly the State’s hair analysis expert testified that there was a “match.” For over a century, true experts have known that hair analysis is wildly inaccurate. It is still used by authorities, even the FBI, when there’s no better proof and the suspect has to be nailed. I begged Judge Kaufman to order DNA testing with a sample of Gardy’s current hair, but he refused. Said it was too expensive. We’re talking about a man’s life.

"When I was finally allowed to view the State’s evidence, of which there was virtually none, I managed to steal about three-quarters of an inch of the black hair. No one missed it.

"Early Monday morning, I ship by overnight parcel the hair and the sample of Jack Peeley’s blood to a DNA lab in California. It will cost me $6,000 for a rush job. I’ll bet the ranch I find the real killer."

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The juror's daughter filed an affidavit with a notary public accusing Sebastian Rudd of improper contact, and he was called in the chambers of judge Kaufman who, al on with prosecutor Huver, confronted him. Rudd had a field day, demanding a hearing to confront the juror and the daughter, and promising this would be his weapon on appeal. He won, had a hearing, the juror was dismissed and replaced, and Huver was exposed having done the preparation and notarisation of the accusation. Rudd was thrown in jail for the night, which he promised would help his case on appeal. He called Judith for help. He got a visitor.

"The Bishop stands and we shake hands. We’ve spoken on the phone but never met. I thank him for coming but caution him about doing so. He says screw it—he’s not afraid of the locals. Plus, he knows how to lie low and stay under the radar. He also knows the police chief, the cops, the judge—the usual small-town crap. He says he’s tried to call Huver and Kaufman to tell them they’ve made a big mistake, but he can’t get through. He’s leaning on the police chief to put me in a better cell. The more we talk, the more I like the guy. He’s a street fighter, a worn-out, frazzled old goat who’s been knocking heads with the cops for decades. He hasn’t made a dime and doesn’t care. I wonder if I’ll be him in twenty years.

"“How about the DNA tests?” he asks.

"“The lab will get the samples tomorrow and they’ve promised a quick turnaround.”

"“And if it’s Peeley?”

"“All hell breaks loose.” This guy is on my side, but I don’t know him. We chat for ten minutes and he says good-bye.

"When I return to my cell, my two new friends have spread the word that there’s a criminal lawyer in here with them. Before long, I’m yelling advice up and down the block."

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"We plow ahead. I call my alibi witnesses, who tell the truth, and Huver makes them look like criminals. Such is the lunacy and unfairness of the system. Huver’s witnesses, the ones testifying on behalf of the State, are cloaked with legitimacy, as if they’ve been sanctified by the authorities. Cops, experts, even snitches who’ve been washed and cleansed and spruced up in nice clothes, all take the stand and tell lies in a coordinated effort to have my client executed. But the witnesses who know the truth, and are telling it, are discounted immediately and made to look like fools.

"Like so many, this trial is not about the truth; it’s about winning. And to win, with no real evidence, Huver must fabricate and lie and attack the truth as if he hates it. I have six witnesses who swear my client was nowhere close to the scene when the crime was committed, and all six are scoffed at. Huver has produced almost two dozen witnesses, virtually all known to be liars by the cops, the prosecution, and the judge, yet the jurors lap up their lies as if they’re reading Holy Scripture."

"At midnight, I’m lying across my lumpy motel bed, 9-millimeter by my side, when my cell phone beeps. It’s the DNA lab in San Diego. The blood Tadeo brutally extracted from the forehead of Jack Peeley matches the strand of hair the murderer left behind in the shoelaces he tightly bound around the ankles of Jenna Fentress, age eleven."

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This book is divided in several sections. First was about an innocent man about to be declared guilty despite not only lack of evidence but indications to the contrary, only because of his personal style and lifestyle, so to speak. Next is about Link Scanlon, a man who always wanted to be what he successfully did become, a top mobster.

He's on death row because a judge, along with his wife, were killed by a criminal after Link had expressed a wish that the judge was dead. The story picks up on the eve of execution, when the lawyer is visiting Link and the appeals are doing the final round, and there are bombs exploding in courthouses after appeals are denied.

"Judge Nagy was the one Link killed. He, Link, didn’t actually pull the trigger; instead he sent word down the line that he wanted Nagy dead. A career hitter called Knuckles got the assignment and carried things out in splendid fashion. They found Judge Nagy and his wife in bed, in their pajamas, bullet holes in their heads. Knuckles then talked too much and the cops had a wire in the right place. Knuckles was on death row too, for about two years, until they found him with Drano packed in his mouth and throat. The cops quizzed Link but he swore he didn’t know a thing about it.

"What was Judge Nagy’s offense? He was a tough law-and-order type who hated drugs and was famous for throwing the book at traffickers. He was about to sentence two of Link’s favorite henchmen—one was his cousin—to a hundred years each, and this upset Link. It was his town, not Nagy’s. He, Link, had been wanting to knock off a judge for years; sort of the ultimate takedown. Kill a judge, walk away from it, and the world knows you are indeed above the law.

"After his defense lawyer was murdered, folks thought I was a fool to take his case. Another bad outcome for Link, and they might find me at the bottom of a lake. But that was six years ago, and Link and I have gotten along just fine. He knows I’ve tried to save his life. He’ll spare mine. What would he gain by killing his last lawyer?"

"“Have you heard?”

"“Heard what?”

"“Ten minutes ago, a bomb went off in the Old Courthouse, same courtroom Link got convicted in.”"

"Link, though, has money and wants to be buried in solid black. He’s wearing a black linen shirt with long sleeves buttoned at the wrists, black denim jeans, black socks, and black running shoes. It’s not nearly as stylish as he thinks, but at this point who cares about fashion?

"Finally he says, “I thought you were going to save me.”

"“I never said that, Link. I even put it in writing.”

"“But I paid you all that money.”

"“A fat fee is no guarantee of a good outcome. That’s in writing too.”"

"Link says, “Here it is.” He lifts the remote, increases the volume.

"It’s a breaking story—a bomb just exploded in the stately courthouse where the Fifteenth Circuit does its work."

"CNN finally connects the dots, and suddenly my client is the hour’s hottest story. They flash a mug shot of Link, a much younger version, as they interview the prosecutor who sent him away. From across the desk, Link curses under his breath, though he’s still smiling. None of my business, but if I were inclined to plant bombs, this guy’s office would be at the top of my list.

"His name is Max Mancini, the City’s chief prosecutor and a true legend in his own mind. He’s been popping off in the press all week as the countdown grew louder. Link will be his first execution, and he wouldn’t miss it for anything. Frankly, I’ve never understood why Link chose to rub out his own defense lawyer instead of going after Mancini. But I won’t ask.

"Evidently, Link and I are on the same page. Just as the reporter is wrapping up the interview, there is a loud noise somewhere in the background, behind Mancini. The camera pulls back and it’s clear to me that they’re standing on the sidewalk outside his downtown office.

"Another explosion."

"The courtroom was bombed at precisely 5:00 p.m.; the Fifteenth Circuit, precisely at 6:00; the prosecutor’s office, precisely at 7:00.

"As we approach 8:00 p.m., many people who’ve had the misfortune of crossing paths with my client are nervous. CNN, now in full unbridled frenzy, is reporting that security has been beefed up around the Supreme Court Building in Washington. Their reporter on the scene keeps showing us a few offices with lights on and we’re supposed to believe the justices are up there, hard at work, debating the merits of Link’s case. They are not. They’re all safely at home or at dinner. One of their clerks will deny our petition any minute now.

"The Governor’s Mansion is crawling with state police, some armed from head to toe in full combat regalia, as if Link might decide to mount a ground assault. With so many cameras around, so much drama everywhere, our handsome governor couldn’t help himself. Ten minutes ago he dashed out from his bunker to chat with the reporters, live of course. Said he wasn’t frightened, justice must go on, he’d do his job without fear, et cetera, ad nauseam. He tried to act as though he’s really wrestling with the reprieve issue, so he’s not ready to announce his decision. He’ll save it for later, say around 9:55. He hasn’t had this much fun in years."

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His final appeal was denied by supreme court in D.C. at 8:15.

"The prison has a food storage warehouse on the west side of its vast complex and a vehicle maintenance facility on the east side. The buildings are about three miles apart. At 8:30, both mysteriously catch on fire, and the prison goes berserk. Evidently, there are a couple of news helicopters in the area. They are not allowed to fly over Big Wheeler, so they’re hovering above farmland next door, and thanks to their long-range lenses we’re able to watch the excitement courtesy of CNN.

"As Link toys with his coconut pie and plays gin rummy, the anchor wonders why the State doesn’t speed up his execution before he burns down the prison. A stuttering spokesperson with the governor’s office tries to explain that the rules and laws do not allow this. It’s 10:00 p.m., period, or as soon thereafter as possible."

"At 8:45, a bomb goes off in the administration building, not far from the warden’s office."

The warden rushes in.

"Two nervous guards grab Link, lift him up, search him, find his cell phone, then throw him back into his chair. His face does not change expression."

The warden demands Rudd's phone, Rudd says that's against the rules.

"From behind the warden, a guard yells into the room, “There’s a riot in Unit Six!”"

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"At 9:30, all electricity at Big Wheeler is cut off—a complete blackout. They would later trace the power failure to a utility pole that got chainsawed in two. The backup generator for Unit Nine—death row—failed to start because its fuel injectors had been vandalized."

Link escaped through the roof, helped by his guys who threw a rope out of the false ceiling.

"At 9:30 that night, there were two news helicopters buzzing around the fringes of Big Wheeler. The prison officials and police had warned them to stay away, but they were close by. In a show of muscle, the state police flew in two of its own helicopters to secure the airspace over the prison, and this proved helpful when the trouble started. It also proved distracting. There was a tremendous amount of smoke hanging over the prison as six different fires were blazing at one time. Witnesses said the noise was deafening—four helicopters in the area, dozens of emergency vehicles with sirens, radios squawking, guards and police yelling, guns being shot, fires roaring. On cue, and with impeccable timing, Link’s small black helicopter arrived from nowhere, descended through the clouds of smoke, and snatched him off the roof of Unit Nine. There were witnesses. Several guards and prison employees saw the helicopter as it hovered for a few seconds, dropped a line, then disappeared back into the smoke with two men swinging from the lifeline. A guard in a tower at the unit managed to fire a few shots but hit nothing.

"One of the State’s choppers gave chase, but was no match for whatever brand and model Link leased for the night. It was never found; no record of it was ever traced. It flew low to avoid radar; air traffic control did not see it. A farmer sixty miles away from Big Wheeler told authorities he saw a small helicopter land on a county road a mile from his front porch. A car met it, then both disappeared."

"There was a possible but unconfirmed sighting in Mexico.

"I haven’t heard from my client and don’t really expect to."

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Sebastian Rudd accompanies Partner to Roseburg to visit Jameel, Partner's son.

"I walk to a window that looks out upon a vast yard lined with double rows of chain link. Hundreds of inmates, all in prison whites, are killing time as guards look down from a tower.

"Young and black, almost all of them. According to the numbers, they’re in for nonviolent drug offenses. The average sentence is seven years. Upon release, 60 percent will be back here within three years.

"And why not? What’s on the outside to prevent their return? They are now convicted felons, a branding they will never be able to shake. The odds were stacked against them to begin with, and now that they’re tagged as felons, life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense.

"Our prisons are packed. Our streets are filled with drugs. Who’s winning the war?

"We’ve lost our minds.""

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Old couple in suburbs, Doug Renfro and wife, were woken up at 3 a.m. and heard shots; Doug went to defend home with his gun, and was shot; his wife was shot as she came from the bedroom, and died. Doug hadn't realised it was home invasion by police, who'd arrived in green and brown camouflage, with a tank, expecting to bust a drug peddler.

Police later realised they'd made a mistake; it was Lance, the teen next door who was using the Renfro internet without their knowledge. But police planned to prosecute Doug anyway, and publicised him as drug peddler.

Sebastian Rudd contacted the children, since Doug was in hospital and guarded by the police, and explained the need to file civil lawsuits. That done, he won the first two motions, stopping the city from freezing Doug's assets and getting him bail.

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Judith needed Sebastian Rudd to take care of the son on a night when he's to be at a fight, which she didn't know; this turns out to be the night when, despite Tadeo being the better fighter, the referee delivers the verdict in favour of the other fighter, Crush. Tadeo beat up both, fights broke out in the audience, and Sebastian saw Partner taking the child out of the room safely. But there was a photograph in the Chronicle and Judith called to say she was returning by next day and would terminate Sebastian's rights.

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The judge dealing with civil lawsuit for Doug Renfro speeded up by holding depositions in his chambers, where Rudd made them extensive, so everything was on record before the two trials proceeded.

The judge in the criminal case against Doug was statute bound and coukdnt dismiss the case, but after the jury had heard everything, the verdict was unanimous in favour of Doug, and the foreman asked why the policeman who shot Mrs Renfro wasn't on trial for murder. 

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Juliana Kemp was kidnapped from a parking lot, and there was no ransom note nor any trace of the abductor who had used a stolen vehicle and left no fingerprints or DNA when abandoned it. But she'd been pregnant and city had two lives to worry about. Arch Swagger was arrested and demanded Sebastian Rudd, who noted that he did not say he wasn't guilty. After giving a check for half the initial amount, which didn't clear, he called at four a.m. to say where the body was buried - under a vasectomy ad billboard on the highway in the cornfield - and that he had lost the surveilling cops, and was on the run.

Reardon called Rudd to his office, Swanger had left a message to say Rudd knew where the girl was; Roy Kemp, the father of the girl, came in. Sebastian Rudd explained that the cheque from swagger hadn't cleared and that meant he wasn't his lawyer, but the disclosure about the location made by swagger was under the assumption of a legal relationship as client and lawyer, and besides, there was no reason to believe Swanger was telling the truth.

Starched was kidnapped from the restroom of the park where Sebastian Rudd had taken him boating, and one day later Reardon was sent as a messenger to Rudd to say the boy was ok, and would be returned as soon as Rudd told them where Jiliana Kemp was supposed to be; Rudd confronted Reardon with the alternate scenarios, either he tells and is disbarred, or he doesn't tell, in which case were the cops who had abducted his son going to harm him? Reardon said roll the dice.

Rudd capitulated and told them, and they found nothing, but did return Starcher, who had had a very good time. Later Rudd was accosted by Fango, messenger from Link, asking for the money back, and Fango hinted that next time Starcher was kidnapped it might not turn out well. Rudd knocked him down, out cold. There was another thug, and Partner knocked him down. Neither pressed charges when they came to.

Partner called from a hospital, the van had been blown up as he was starting it. They guessed it was Link. Rudd told partner, after he'd brought him home, to contact Miguel and ask him for protection, since Rudd was representing Tadeo free, and Miguel could get the message across to Fango and the other thug, Razor. Rudd made it clear they should be only made it clear, not physically harmed.

Doug Renfro couldn't stand living in the house any more, and Sebastian Rudd managed to get the city settle the civil suit with an apology in a press conference from the mayor, dismissal of all police officers involved and the chief, plus two million dollars tax free for Renfro who was uncertain where he'd go but wanted to leave country. 

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"“Say, Rudd, I hear you got in a scrape with a couple of Link Scanlon’s thugs in the courthouse last week. Witnesses say you poleaxed both of them, knocked ’em cold. Too bad you didn’t put a bullet between their eyes. Wish I coulda seen it. Hard to believe you got the balls to slug it out with a couple of leg breakers.”

"“Your point?”

"“I figure Link sent word to you that he wants something, probably money. We know about where he is; we just can’t get to him. We think he’s broke and so he sends a coupla goons to put the squeeze on you. For some reason you don’t want to be squeezed. They push, you coldcock them in broad daylight outside a courtroom. I like it.”

"“Your point?”

"“Do you know these two guys? I mean, their names?”

"Something tells me to play dumb. “One is called Tubby, no last name. Don’t know the other. Got time for a question?”

"“Oh sure.”

"“You’re Homicide. Why, exactly, are you concerned with Link and his thugs and me having some fun with them?”

"“Because I’m Homicide.” He whips open a file and shows me an eight-by-ten color photo of two dead bodies in some sort of trash heap. They’re lying facedown, with their wrists tied tightly behind them. The backs of their necks are caked with dried blood. “Found these two stiffs in the city landfill, wrapped in an old piece of shag carpet. The bulldozer shoved it down a small embankment and Tubby and Razor rolled out. Tubby is Danny Fango, on the right there. Razor, on the left, is Arthur Robilio.”"

"“So what, Reardon? You think I rubbed these guys out because they jumped me in the courthouse?”

"“I don’t know what I’m thinking right now, but I got these two Boy Scouts on the slab and nobody knows nothing. As far as I know, you were the last person to get in a fight with them. You seem to enjoy operating down in the gutter. Maybe you got some friends down there. One thing leads to another.”"

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Swanger called Rudd and said hed meet him in thirty minutes to tell him where Jiliana Kemp was, she was alive. Sebastian Rudd went, and was told Jiliana was in a racket where kidnapped girls like her were forced into prostitution, strip clubs and baby selling, after getting them addicted to drugs, and she couldn't escape without help; Swanger expected Rudd to get him the reward money.

Tadeo's trial had no chance without some deal, and Rudd used the information from Swanger to get one so that Tadeo could serve five years in a reasonable place and still have a future, rather than fifteen years in a hard place only to turn into a professional killer. He finally got the deal, called Swanger, and eventually met him. Swanger said she'd been moved to Atlanta.

"“They’re in a big strip mall where there’s traffic, lots of cars and people come and go. Atlas Physical Therapy is the name of the company, but it’s nothing but an upper-end brothel. No number in the phone book. Therapists on call. Appointments only, no walk-ins. Every customer has to be referred by another customer, and they—the head therapists—know who they’re dealing with. So if you’re a customer, you park in the lot, maybe step into the Baskin-Robbins for an ice cream, stroll along the sidewalk, then duck into Atlas. A guy wearing a white lab coat says hello and acts real nice, but under the coat is a loaded piece. He pretends to be a therapist, and he does in fact know a lot about broken bones. He takes your money, say $300 cash, and leads you back to some rooms. He points to one, you walk in, and there’s a small bed and a girl who’s young and pretty and almost naked. You get twenty minutes with her. You leave through another door and no one knows you’ve had your therapy. The girls work all afternoon—they get the mornings off because they’re up late—then they load ’em up and take ’em to the strip clubs where they dance and do their routines. At midnight, they take ’em home, to a fairly nice apartment complex where they’re locked down for the night.”

"“Who is they?”

"“They are the traffickers, some extremely nasty guys. A gang, a ring, a cartel, a disciplined band of criminals, most with ties to eastern Europe, but some local boys as well. They abuse the girls, keep them terrified and confused and hooked on heroin. Most people in this country don’t believe there’s sex trafficking in their cities, but it’s there. It’s everywhere. They, the traffickers, prey on runaways, homeless kids, girls from bad families looking for escape. It’s a sick business, Rudd. Really sick.”"

The raid succeeded, Jiliana Kemp was flown home to her parents and was crying, she didn't know where her baby was, and several other girls were freed; the guys caught talked. But Swanger disappeared.

"The sex-trafficking story runs for pages, and the FBI operation is obviously still in progress. Arrests are being made across the country. So far, about twenty-five girls have been rescued. There was a shooting in Denver but no serious injuries."

Tadeo refused the deal Rudd had worked hard to get, he was confident he'd convince the jury of his innocence, and once free he'd find another lawyer! The judge and the public prosecutor tried to persuade Tadeo, without success. Miguel attempted to bribe a juror, and to make Rudd pay for it, and threatened him when Rudd refused.

Tadeo was convicted unanimously, and Miguel was arrested for bribing.

"At ten I check my phone. Every Zapate in town is looking for me: mother, an aunt, a sister, and Tadeo and Miguel from jail. Seems they need me now. I’m fed up with these people, but I know they’re not going away.

"Two reporters are calling. Mancini wants to have a drink. Why, I have no idea.

"And there is a voice mail from Arch Swanger. Condolences on the big loss. How in hell?

"I need to leave town. At midnight, I load the van with some clothes, the golf clubs, and half a case of small-batch bourbon. I flip a coin, head north, and last for two hours before I almost fall asleep. I stop at a budget motel and pay forty bucks for one night. I’ll be on a golf course, somewhere, by noon, all alone.

"This time I’m not sure I’m going back."

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April 21, 2016.

January 21, 2020 - January 26, 2020.

ISBN 978 1 473 62289 0
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The Complete Works of John Galsworthy; by John Galsworthy.

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The Complete Works of John Galsworthy; by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.amazon.in/Complete-Works-John-Galsworthy-ebook/dp/B00B02XKWW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1507796388&sr=1-3-fkmr0&keywords=The+Complete+Works+of+John+Galsworthy+published+by+the+library+of+Alexandria

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20100887-the-complete-works-of-john-galsworthy

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I began reading Galsworthy in February 2004, shortly after coming across A televised version of The Forsyte Saga, and this volume was begun after I finished Forsyte Chronicles. 

The review below follows the order of this book, 

 https://www.amazon.in/Complete-Works-John-Galsworthy-ebook/dp/B00B02XKWW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1507796388&sr=1-3-fkmr0&keywords=The+Complete+Works+of+John+Galsworthy+published+by+the+library+of+Alexandria,

after giving reviews of books in. Forsyte Chronicles, which cover most of Forsyte tales. 

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Forsyte Chronicles:-

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This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.

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The Forsyte Saga:-

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The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.

When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008.

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The Man of Property:-

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The Man Of Property, with its very apt title, begins with Soames Forsyte, the man of property who not only inherited but is very good in acquisition of property and taking care of it. As such he has virtues necessary to society, honesty and prudence and more, but lacks in those that cannot be taught and must be developed by sensitivity - those dealing with heart. He has no comprehension of those, and proceeds to acquire the object of his passion, his first wife Irene, pretty much like he would any other property - with steady and unrelenting pursuit and some crafty methods that make it difficult for her to stay the course of not acquiescing. In this however he is wrong, and the marriage goes sour long before he would acknowledge it, with his total bewilderment and lack of understanding of his beautiful and sensitive, artistic, intelligent wife - he expects her to settle down and do her duty, and be happy with all that he can provide for her in ways of house and clothes and jewellery and stability, but she is made of a different mettle and is not one to see herself or any other woman as an object of male property.

She might have continued the slow death within, forced to do so by her husband reneging on his promise of letting her go free if she were not happy, had it not been for the architect Bosinney, fiance of her niece by marriage June Forsyte the daughter of Young Jolyon, first cousin of Soames. Bossinney has sensitivity to match and recognise and appreciate Irene, and more - he falls in love with her, even as he is contracted to design and construct a house for the couple far away from the city where Irene may find solitude and peace and come to terms with her lot, or so her husband Soames plans mistakenly. The house is beautiful, but the love of the architect for the woman who the house is meant for is not to be bought or killed, and tragedy begins to unravel the lives involved, Irene and June and Bosinney - and Soames.

Young Jolyon, the son of Old Jolyon who disapproves of his son's second marriage and has not till date seen his new grandchildren by the woman who used to be in employ of his first wife before they fell in love, is a presence that comes to fore slowly in this, with art - he is an artist, and Irene appreciates beauty as much as he appreciates her in all her qualities - and the relationship and a recognition mutual to both. She seeks his help in the support and strength that his daughter needs from him now, with June too proud to be friend of Irene any more after the revelation of Bosinney and Irene being in love.

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Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-

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Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.

Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.

He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.

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In Chancery:-

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In Chancery continues with young Jolyon and Irene and Soames, the beautiful new house designed and constructed for Irene being now put up for sale by Soames who is tenacious in his not giving up on her in spite of her leaving him. Irene connects with Jolyon, partly due to Soames bringing an action against him for alienation of his wife's affections and then far more due to their being well matched, and they are together in spite of Soames trying various tactics - threat of divorce (a far more lethal weapon in that era), refusal to give a divorce when they wish for it, and so forth. Finally the divorce goes through and two children are born, Jon to Irene and Jolyon and Fleur to Soames and Annette, a French young woman he finds in an inn and marries.

The new house is in chancery as are the people in this interim period and old Jolyon has bought it partly due to James, his brother and father of Soames, telling old Jolyon he owes it to Soames and to the Forsytes, seeing as how young Jolyon is responsible for the quandary Soames is in. Old Jolyon however is as much in love with Irene as most of the clan, and when once he finds her sitting in a corner of the property he assures her of his lack of disapproval of her finding refuge in the home built for her by her lover.

Jolyon helps Irene as his father's wish, and his own, having been appointed executor to the bequest of his father for her, and in the process comes to not only protect her from the husband who wishes her to return (so she can give him a son and heir, after all they are still married twelve years after she left), but also comes to be her friend, her companion and more. He does not admit his love, but she understands it, and their days together are spent in the same beauty that she did with his father until they are thrown together far more due to the persecution of her husband who would divorce her and marry a young woman he has fixed his sights on so he can have a son after all - he is now near fifty and his father James is dying, hankering for a son for Soames. But divorce laws were then difficult and Soames is unwilling to pretend an affair, so his choice is to name Irene and Jolyon, which neither of them oppose irrespective of facts.

It is the news of death of Jolly, son of Jolyon, that throws them together finally when both younger children of Jolyon along with Val Dartie the son of Winifred have gone to Boer war and June has joined Holly as nurse, and Jolyon in his grief for his son that he thinks he did not give enough of the love in his heart for him to has only Irene to console him with her compassion.

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Interlude: Awakening:-

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Little Jolyon, Jon, awakens to the beauty that surrounds him, the beauty that is his mother, and the love personified that is his father, even as his days are spent in play about the home Robin Hill that is now his parents' in more than one sense - his grandfather bought it from her ex-husband the first cousin of Jo, Young Jolyon, the father of Jon, after the architect Bosinney who was her first love died and she fled from her husband. Jon knows nothing of the history, and his blissful life is carried on the wings of imagination where he plays out every possible scenario from every book he reads, so his half sister Holly returning with her husband and second cousin Val from South Africa (where they married during Boer war and stayed to raise horses) finds him painted blue head to toe, playing by himself in the garden.

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To Let:-

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To Let goes on with lives of the various families, and chiefly of young Jolyon and his now wife Irene and their home at Robin Hill, with his other children and their various cousins and uncles being part of the story. Soame's nephew Val Dartie falls in love with young Jolyon's daughter by his second marriage, Holly, and the two second cousins manage to marry and be happy in spite of an initial lack of acceptance by the clan due to their being not only second cousins but also related to parties feuding majorly about Irene's divorce of one and marriage to other cousin.

This has the unfortunate consequence of encouraging the other pair of second cousins, Jon and Fleur, in thinking they may make it a success as his sister and her first cousin did. This time however things are very different, and Jon's parents are as unlikely to approve of this match as Soames initially is. Soames gives in due to his heart being completely ruled by his daughter, and goes so far as to plead with Irene for his daughter's happiness, offering to never interact in their lives for sake of overall peace. But Irene cannot risk it, and Jon is sensitive to her and his father's point of view when he comes to know of their history.

He would be in a quandary but for the similarity of Fleur with her father in claiming him as her father had claimed his mother, and this repels him. Fleur's lack of comprehension in her loss is matched by her father's when he lost a wife he had a very slim chance to have a life with. And the beautiful home of Irene is now to let even as they leave to go as far away as they can from this place and this history.

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On Forsyte Change:-

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On Forsyte 'Change is a collection of stories about various members of the clan, children and grandchildren of Jolyon Forsyte ("Superior Dosset") who came with his ten children to London, immediately post death of his wife in her tenth childbirth, spanning a time from their coming to London to well into the first world war. Galsworthy wrote these pieces after the second part of the Forsyte Chronicles, that is, Modern Comedy, to connect through time lapse between the Forsyte Saga and Modern Comedy, but it really covers far more.

The lyrical beauty of countryside and awakening of various Forsytes to beauty and to individual rights along with their occasionally coming into contact with public and their trials and secret joys or escapades form part of most of this, some delightful and some poignant. The success of it all is, having finished all that Galsworthy wrote about the Forsytes one wants more.

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A Modern Comedy:-

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The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.

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The White Monkey:-

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The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.

Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.

Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.

So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.

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Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-

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Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.

Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.

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The Silver Spoon:-

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The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.

Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.

Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!

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Interlude: Passers By:-

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The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.

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Swan Song:-

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If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.

Monday, August 12, 2013.

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End of the Chapter:-

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In the third trilogy of Forsyte chronicles the story centres on cousins of Michael Mont, mainly on his mother's side, the Charwells who are socially somewhere bordering on landed gentry and aristocracy, unlike Forsytes who made their way up from farmer to various money making professions (solicitor, investment manager, builders, stockbrokers and more) to artists and gentry of leisure. Being upper caste in England amounts to being bred and brought up to notions of service to the country and accordingly the Charwells are occupied with work dealing with law, church, and so on, when not with actual landownership including caring for the tenants and other residents of the land. Mostly the three parts focus on Dinny, Elizabeth Charwell, an attractive young woman of Botticelli beauty with a sensitive heart and capable mind who cares for not only her own family and clan but anyone around who might need her, and does the care taking actively with initiatives, meeting people and speaking to them, and more.

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Maid In Waiting :-

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In Maid in Waiting, Dinny who is the person the title is after, is busy rescuing her brother and an uncle and other related people from various tangles to do with love, empire, standards of behaviour to do with scientific expeditions and treatment of people and animals, love, mental illness and more. She is unable to consider a brighter prospect for herself with either of the two very suitable beaux who fall in love with her, and would not make a match yet.

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Flowering Wilderness:-

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In Flowering Wilderness she meets and falls in love with Wilfrid Desert, a friend of her cousin Michael who had fallen in love with Fleur in the White Monkey and left for east to disentangle himself, and Wilfrid is in love with her just as much, except that unfortunately he has been in a circumstance where forced to choose between life and conversion he had chosen life and thus disgraced all of his countrymen, endangering them to future kidnappings and disdain from those under British rule. This cannot be considered suitable for Dinny by her family and clan, and the story cannot be kept quiet, not the least due to the pride and sense of uncertainty Desert has about his own actions, and it ends up in her heart breaking with him leaving for east once again.

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Over the River :-

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In One More River Clare, the younger sister, returns home from Ceylon after a brief duration of married life, determined not to suffer any more her husband's sadist behaviour. Since she is young and beautiful, there is the expected entanglement with a young man falling in love with her, only she is unable and unwilling to consider any physical contact for now, and is not in love for a while until her own status is clear. But her husband is more than willing to take all possible steps including a divorce court where she is accused of adultery while she is unable to go into why she left him due to her delicacy about exposing her married life and its unsavoury character, and she comes to appreciate her young lover only when threatened with possibility of losing him. Dinny and the clan stand by her, and in the meanwhile another suitor appears for Dinny, who she is able to accept only post news of her first lover being dead and buried in far east on an expedition up a river, a news that makes her seriously ill. It all ends well with both sisters set well with their respective men and the clan at peace, and Fleur has been of borderline help at crucial moments, not the least with her father's money coming in handy to pay for legal costs of the divorce.

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One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.

The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013.

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The Dark Flower:-

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The dark flower as a concept used in the title and elsewhere in the work by the author is symbolic of passion, not represented by any particular flower but by the dark colour representative of the dark area where a person's reason and other sights of consciousness fail to guide one, and a dark force pulling and pushing one takes over.

Galworthy here takes stages of an artist's life, symbolised by three seasons (he refrains from exploring winter as a season for passion, leaving one to imagine that one is finally settled into one's marriage and not available any more for passion outside it), and the passion is of the variety not likely to come to a happy solution all around, hence dark all the more.

Over and over there is characterisation of English life as that bound by "good form" when freed from other bindings such as those of religion, and thus not allowing the freedom one speaks of or assumes for a person and especially an artist or thinker when it comes to passion.

The tale begins with an involvement of spirit between young Mark Lennan and his teacher's wife Mrs. Stormer whose husband, a don at Oxford, is far too dry and intellectual to answer his wife's needs of love and adoration but is rather more likely to deal with it by humour and standing aside in spite of awareness of it. Sylvia, the young fair girl Mark has protected and known since his childhood, solves the dilemma for the older woman (who is really young by the standards of today but was a century ago looking at her last chance for romance, passion, beauty in life at mid thirties), by simply coming to her attention as a younger person on the horizon who might not be an equal opponent but is simply younger.

Mark is not involved with Sylvia romantically yet, and goes on to become an artist, and happens to subsequently meet and become involved deeply with a young married woman desperately unhappy in her marriage in spite of wealth and respectability, with most of the involvement consisting of an innocent - by today's standards - togetherness and a passionate awareness of one another that is clear to everyone around. With a husband who is just as passionately in love with the wife as Mark being in the picture, and violently jealous one at that, it is bound to end in a separation, and one expects a chase when the young woman in question make sup her mind to go away with Mark. But the end of this part comes rather suddenly and shocks one, being so at odds with what generally one is led to expect of an English spirit. Then again, of course, the husband is characterised long before that by the wife's uncle musing about his being an adopted heir to his father and hence an unknown factor, unlike Mark whose very deep propriety in his following the form is observed and satisfactorily so by the uncle.

The autumn chapter brings a stormy turmoil of an involvement with an illegitimate daughter of a schoolmate to Mark's life and threatens to destroy the peace of his now wife Sylvia's life and mind, and while he is tossed about in this storm seemingly far more, the concern and responsibility for Sylvia who is more than only a wife but rather the innocent person he is used to protecting since she was small, brings him to port to safety. The end is abrupt, since one is rather led to expect a chapter on winter, but perhaps the author could not imagine passion in winter and made subtle allusions to Sylvia asleep by fire to indicate that would be the winter of life of Mark Lennan.

A slight lessening of quality of Galsworthy comes about by the usual excuse to the passion inappropriate to age being led by the woman in question, and while it might be likely in the first it is a very transparent excuse in the last, a bit reminiscent of the far more unpleasant Nabokov. It is always possible of course, only, with the striking beauty of the young girl in question, one wonders if it is due to her being an illegitimate and therefore hidden daughter of a not very high caste English man that she is thrown on the society of a man in his mid forties and being the one to take a lead in the affair, declaring her passion and holding on and so forth rather than being one to be surprised by his declaration of love and considering it for reasons of her situation in life. It does not quite fit except as an excuse for his passion to be reconciled with his status - he cannot offer her marriage and a safe home and respectability, being married - and thus must be propositioned rather than the one to lead. Thin excuse, at that.

Spring and Summer are haunting parts, with autumn rather more troublesome and stormy with one wishing he would sooner come to his senses. Perhaps it could not be otherwise in any way, but with quality of Galsworthy's works in general one goes in expecting him to do better, and is a bit disappointed. Still, all in all perhaps it forms a work preparatory for the far more satisfying and wonderful Forsyte Saga and Forsyte Chronicles, and perhaps it ought to be read before them, not after.

Sunday, October 20, 2013.
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Monday, October 21, 2013.

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The Freelands:-

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Galsworthy, amongst other worthy intellectuals of the day -such as George Bernard Shaw - realised all too well the economic and social questions of the day, and caste system of the European continent was one, land and its ownership and usage towards luxuries of the owners detrimental to the general populace of the land and the world on a larger scale being one of the chief keys of the problems, with attitudes of those in power in dire need of change, conscience and consciousness of rich and poor alike in dire need of light being a factor such intellectuals could do something about. So they, in general, and Galsworthy in particular, wrote about it. Freelands is centered on this question, the very title and the name of the upper caste landowner family or clan telling us of the issue and its importance.

It is not that easy when most rich won't give up their privilege for sake of betterment of the poor, and most poor cannot afford even a peaceful strike, is the reality now as it was then. It is not easy to change the minds and attitudes, to wake up the power of the populace, and more. Power and energy of youth is needed, but it is sacrificed easily and blindly by those in power and blamed by the powerless for the consequences of the heavy handed and expected retaliation of power against poor hapless.

Blossoming of young, of love and consciousness, of waking up to the light and to realities of life under easy circumstances is not easy; under such struggle that needs one's life's blood it is life threatening unless there are enough caring and understanding elders who would act promptly.

The questions discussed here are mentioned elsewhere, in second part of Forsyte Chronicles (sequel to to Forsyte Saga) for example, where it is a bit more macroscopic view and from the point of view of upper caste and its exemplary behaviour along with the obligations inherent in being upper caste, and this latter takes a larger stage in the third part of the Forsyte Chronicles. In the Freelands the point of view is from an intellectual of the upper caste and centre stage is given to those in tune with land, nature, poor, in spite of being of the upper caste. Here the author can deal with the problems in their more dire nature.

Monday, November 4, 2013.

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Beyond:-

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Reading Galsworthy brings a kaleidoscope effect after a while with themes and characters familiar yet not quite the same, and of course the every living beauty of countryside.

In Beyond he centres it on the father and daughter duo, the daughter born of love and claimed jealously by the father post death of the mother and the husband of the mother, with great care to avoid any blame for the mother but only until he could claim the daughter. The theme explored is love and marriage, togetherness and solitude, in marriage and in a live in situation.

A virile male might corner a young woman as a great serpent would a rabbit, and gain her hand in marriage or her body for his pleasure, but love is another story. If she is not in love with him, all the social propriety and financial security and all her compliance with his needs will yet not make him happy; nor will another younger woman with all her beauty and her being desperately in love with him if he is not in love with her.

Gyp's father is able to live on his memories of the only love he ever had, Gyp's mother, whom he saw but rarely during the one short year they had together; his life is devoted to his daughter and he is happy in his memory of his love, his integrity and faith with his love and his creed, his utter love for his daughter.

Gyp has inherited the integrity and the nobility of character, and the immense capacity for intense love, but love has its own life and cannot be summoned like water on tap. She is cornered and unable to escape the attentions of the handsome artist Fiorsen, but with all her will to go forth is still unable to love him, and is only able to comply with his needs and take care of him and home. This is not good enough for the artist who knows what love is and knows too that the wife does not quite love him, he does not have her heart. His dalliance with a beautiful young dancer brings danger and shame to the women and no solution for him, either, until it is too late for him to have another option - and even then it is a falling backward into something available rather than appreciation of what he has or had.

Gyp finds love unexpectedly after she has left her husband for sake fo protecting their daughter - the husband couldn't care less for anyone other than Gyp, and not only antagonises her relatives and what few friends she might have, but is callous enough that he terrorises their daughter and hurts her physically while she is still a baby - and Gyp lives in an era when separation was social stigma enough, divorce difficult and often impossible if the partner did not comply. She realises her love is all to her, is fortunate enough to be given her daughter back after being kidnapped by the husband to blackmail her into returning, but the interlude of her bliss with love is short lived albeit as deep and complete as her father's.

It is not that the man who loves her is short of courage to love, or any the less in love, or likely to tire of her, or any of the possible dire disturbances to love and bliss whether marriage is possible or not. It is that even with the best of all circumstances - her father supports her socially, she cares not a fig for other society, she is financially independent, they live in seclusion in country and he works three days a week in town - still, there are other possibilities of a wedge, and he is young enough to not avoid it soon enough.

As the author clarifies, the distant cousin is familiar enough that her society is not avoided before it is too late and not close enough to be a sisterly repugnant association, and while Summerhay sees the justice of Gyp's need of him avoiding the cousin and other such temptations, he does not see how he can or why he should, since his love and faithfulness are entirely with Gyp, the love of his life.

This tragedy could in life draw on and exhaust the people concerned; the author's narrative turns to another twist reminiscent of Summer part of The Dark Flower, and Gyp remains the fortunate tragic heroine albeit not quite as artificially forced so as Anna Karenina - she has read it and cannot understand why Anna is unhappy due to social stigma and forced reclusion status, she is all too happy to be not required to be social and to comply with necessities of formality, happy to be with her love and with nature, books, music, and her daughter. She thinks unhappiness of Anna Karenina is forced as moral lesson to comply with social need, and in this she is not incorrect. But life and love and one's nature is another story, and such happiness or love as one may find might be disturbed by a thousand factors in as may ways, albeit it has little to do with being married or single or living together in perfect situation where only the two people matter.

One keeps being reminded of various other works of the author, and the similarity of characters or their situations - Soames and Fleur of Forsyte Saga and its sequel, Charwell sisters of Forsyte Chronicles, Summer part of The Dark Flower, and bit of The Country House as well, with a ghost of Irene in background (art, music, taste, integrity of a sort, passive softness, ...) - and yet here too the characters and their story do manage to make a mark individually.

Monday, November 11, 2013.

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Villa Rubein:-

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Villa Rubein seems to be an early work of Galsworthy, with Tyrol rather than England as the background. He attempts to write characters and families more cosmopolitan European than purely English, but it is more halfway than successful an attempt, and other than a few mixed dialogues - chiefly from the stepfather to the main female the story centres on - it amounts to a caricature of the said stepfather who is only good enough to bluster and really neither commands love nor respect from his stepdaughter or her maternal relatives whose house he lives in, nor at that much from his own daughter who is much younger, except as a matter of duty taken for granted.

There is portrayal of beauty of country and nature here too that blooms so very much through his later works, the latter being mostly of English countryside, but here the portrayal falls very short of how very beautiful Alps surroundings generally can be. Galsworthy truly belongs to England and does not quite flourish elsewhere.

Here the central theme is young love and art vs money, business vs career of vocation, work vs life assured with inheritance, and again it seems he tried it out first in this and later developed it into various other works. One surprising declaration and admission here is of the fact that it is those that have made money that care for it far more than those who have chosen to work for a living in a career of art due to a spiritual need of working for art. It is but logical that this be so, since one that makes money does not do so by a couldn't-care-less attitude towards money but only with great devotion of time and spirit towards earning and saving it, and while it is a fact perhaps known in life to all, it is but hardly ever admitted so in most works of literature in so matter of fact a way, refreshing in its simplicity.

Most different from his other works however - other than the placing out of England - is the little more explicit mention of the happenings of the time. Galsworthy is so given to love and beauty of nature and satirical portraying of upper caste England that one tends to almost forget he lived in an era of tumultuous happenings and thinking, when old traditional castes and their hold was not merely being questioned as in England but was elsewhere being violently rocked and even thrown away, and here one gets a glimpse of a character involved in past in a movement that shapes his life and endangers his love, even though the mention of the movement and its actual facts is left only to be guessed at by the reader familiar with history of the times. All very tangential and elusive, but still, it is there unlike his other works.

Monday, November 18, 2013.

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My Father Man of Devon:-

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Love is a much used and little understood reality, with various people experiencing perhaps different things and in attempting to identify the beautiful yet terrifying mystery seek to give it a known name.

Not so Pasience, whose name is really Patience but pronounced and spelt in an original way from times before English language got uniform spellings due to print - (although, for that matter, accents and diction and entire dialects differ still across the small nation, and even more so through the rest of the English speaking world, evidence of George Bernard Shaw's witty truth casually given in his Pygmalion as description of US and Britain being two nations separated by a common language - and who encountering a York accent for the first time has not been baffled?) - Pasience who is young, restless, talented at playing violin that she makes sing her heart's music, spirited, and without a woman's guidance or a father's stronger protection or even company of her own age, so that she is eager to experience life beyond what is known to her in her grandfather's company. When she meets men, she has no mysterious veil over her heart, only a yearning for she knows not what, world, life, and she chooses that man amongst all that she sees - she has more than one choice, and young males with varying prospects that are confronted with her are all alike under her spell so she really has her choice of those around - she chooses not the one that is likely to give her all she wishes but one that promises the adventure, lacking the wisdom and guidance to see the difference.

A marriage so made in haste can end in any number of good or bad ways, or mediocre as most unfortunate marriages do anyway. Here the tragedy is partly due to times and rest spurred on by the youth of the girl who has only an old grandfather to look after her and to guide and contain her vital spirit.

As usual Galsworthy treats readers to beauty of the surrounding country, this time the land and coast and sea at Devon. It must be a hard heart that reads this and won't wish to see it for oneself and experience the beauty so hauntingly portrayed here.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

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A Knight For My Mother:-

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One is reminded of the prelude to the film Gone With The Wind as one reads this - not due to any possible similarity, which there is none, but the spirit of the central character (not the protagonist) of this story that is celebrated in that prelude, about gentlemen and code of conduct.

A man may be a soldier all his life, and unable to find employment, with starvation to death a real possibility that is avoided only by an ex comrade of a way of yore - and here is a real connection with Gone With The Wind, that particular war in the life of this gentleman from South Carolina happens to be the Civil War in US - and a chance encounter with such a comrade who happens to be English meeting and saving his life in London, and giving him a partnership in a business suited to both, a shop selling equipment related to - and a training school attached to the shop, training people in - fighting.

It is love that brings him down, and what is more love for the daughter of his partner, not due to opposition of the father or unwillingness of the young girl, but far more complex. And this is where Galsworthy excels, in bringing our ways of youth, love, passion and complications thereof. The young wife strays to a young stranger who is a student of the school, elopes with him, and the gentleman can only let her be. She comes to grief, the young man having left her and the childbirth taking her life.

And the gentleman, having lost his business due to his partner being cheated, and almost all his money too, is now living in penury because he is supporting the young daughter his wife died after giving birth to, struggling to send her half his income every year and living the life of a gentleman the best way possible to him without money. It is the taste and the code that are paramount.

And it is the code that he follows to the end of his life.

Saturday, November 23, 2013.

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To My Brother Hubert Galsworthy

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Salvation of a Forsyte:-

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Forsytes have been connected to the Villa Rubein story with the business partnership of a Forsyte (James, the father of Soames?) with Nicholas Treffery, in a way the hero of Villa Rubein what with his nightlong ride to rescue the love of life of his niece from her stepfather's threat of setting police on him.

Now, the connection is via a passion of Swithin, twin of James Forsyte, for a young Hungarian girl when he himself is not quite young, and having never been social or charming or attractive, is no great catch either. But the girl is young, and generous and sincere as youth will be when encountering someone who is attracted to one, and this is her great fault and reason for downfall. If only she were grown up or knew in some other way that the way to secure respect for herself is to be less generous, less caring of someone else's pain or any feelings, she might have had a different and perhaps safer life. Then again, it might have led to Swithin marrying her and perhaps she escaped the deadly boredom of a Forsyte clan life by being herself, young and sincere and natural as a flower.

Swithin cannot help his own passion, and goes after her when her father has taken the family off for a return to his country from Salzburg where they met, but then has a typical Forsyte moment - of an indignation that perhaps her family intends that he marry her, which he finds is quite unnecessary and out of the question, especially since she is not only without a dowry (it goes without mention here but is a silent factor in all dealings of Forsyte with the family) but has also "yielded to him".

Needless to say he, like most males before and since, does not see that the "yielding" on her part implies he was a thief and an attacker that she fell prey to, rather than looking at it as her gift of love to his passion; he assumes - like most males before and since - that it is his birthright to so take advantage of a woman or girl however young and innocent, and that he therefore is free of any need or obligation to marry her.

That he thereby forfeits any possibility of a future of a life for himself does not occur to him either then or until perhaps the very moment of his death, perhaps not then, but so it is. He lives - and dies - alone, attended only by his valet, never mind the huge clan and daily visits by his twin brother, and recalls on his deathbed the love he escaped by literally running away from it. He closed all possibilities of opening his heart to love ever after when he did that, and became a fossil of a Forsyte prototype instead of allowing love in his life and blossoming.

Thus do one's own choices make for rewards or otherwise of one's own.

Monday, November 25, 2013.

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To My Sister Mabel Edith Reynolds

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The Silence:-

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Galsworthy in this last offering to his family, this time for his sister, tells a tale about a world of mostly male endeavours of yore, although it is difficult to imagine even a century later that it would have changed much in that, and gives a glimpse of a world partly changed in that the colonial era is no more, but largely still the same in that while men do the work of the gritty sort and other men must manage not only the work but the men that do it, their thoughts and feelings taken into account as much as their living and working conditions for the betterment of the place, and yet make a profit for the shareholders of the company, all the while also writing as copiously to the bosses as they might desire to maintain the myth that they too care and have a hand in the day to day welfare and management of the work and the men.

It is this last bit, the writing and pretending, that the Cornishman central to the tale cannot abide, and his reluctance to do so that they won't let be, never mind he has turned the mines from desolate vacant bleak place to thriving glamourous place to be and paying a whopping twenty percent for the company at that, and managing all sorts of trouble single handedly on the paltry salary of a manager - paltry compared to the men who pay him and dictate his terms, certainly. When finally forced to do so he obliges with a lengthy missive and snaps.

This tale is told sensitively through a childhood friend of the manager who visits him occasionally in course of his own work, and to emphasise the sensitivity of it all, there is the oblique connection to Forsytes - who symbolise the moneymaking trade and industry caste of England and indeed of Europe - with the sensitive Old Jolyon Forsyte on the board of the company, refraining from the badgering of the manager who excels at his work but not at kowtowing to the bosses.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

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Saint's Progress:-

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Galsworthy touches real ground of the time and place in this work more than his usual - which is beautiful dreamy landscapes and problems of heart, of individual travails of love, and of individual rights, especially those of women, and conflicts thereof with social norms and rules. All of which appears here too, in a central way and surrounding every character, every other problem. But the main theme is something we all are familiar with - the devastating and at the same time liberating effect of the first world war on lives, especially in Europe.

The first and foremost effect was the growing awareness amongst the young who paid the greatest price for the war with their lives and love and marriages and more, of future and children and limbs and lives disrupted, that one really could not trust norms of expectations any more, one could not trust time and social rules and life, and life was to be snatched here and now whatever way possible. Young people refused long engagements and if they did not, often they paid the price with the boy dead and the girl left alone for life. Lucky were the brides that conceived before their men went to the war. Not so lucky were everyone else.

So young couples denied a quick marriage could part with death looming, or snatch a few moments of love before that, and the latter resulted in what the then society stupidly called war babies. Babies and innocent no matter what and in this situation so were the parents, and the real guilt of stupidity lay with those elders that refuse to let them marry before the boy went to the war. Young were correct in this and the elders wrong in every way.

This work is about the devastating effect of just such a situation on a family and other people related one way or another to it - the young girl in love and the young boy about to leave for the war in a couple of weeks, the priest father of the girl who considers a quick marriage unwise and refuses to consider it and expects them to come to their senses and wait, the death of the boy very soon in the trenches and the pregnancy of the girl (who is wisely pointed out by a cousin that this means she has not lost her love after all, and has him with her as the child), the effects of this on the girl and much more so on her father the priest who is the titular saint that progresses from refusal to see facts and horror of the situation to fierce protective attitude for his daughter and her baby son, to more.

Nature's beauty here is not missing, but rather more of London in wartime than of English countryside, the usual favourite of Galsworthy. And he shows his mastery in this too, with poignancy of the story reflected in the moonlit Thames and the dark parks and the flowering trees of London.

Monday, December 16, 2013.

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The Island Pharisees:-

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Richard Shelton is an unusual young man for his milieu of the upper class English at the height of wealth and power of British Empire - he questions the assumptions, not as a philosophical exercise to be conducted when one is at the study table or a conference for a debate or a lecture or posing at a gathering of intelligentsia, but simply as and when they are challenged by life, by meeting someone outside one's own circle or social connections or general caste.

So he meets poor, indigent, during his normal course of travel and life, where he is not even gone out of his way, and notices others of his social level or caste avoiding looking at them, and understands them thinking "really one should not be put upon like this, these people should know better than to force themselves on conscience of decent people, they should work and save ..." or something along those lines. He however hears them, listens and understands them as fellow humans in a difficult situation, temporarily or otherwise, through circumstance and fate, but not necessarily their own fault.

In this he is setting forth on a path that would take him away from them - his caste and circle, that is - and their approval, and more. He does not limit himself to thinking silently, and behaving like others of his caste so as to not alarm them, to do them some justice - he helps the poor, the indigent, and meets them in his own or their rooms, and carries on a dialogue that does take him away from his own.

It would be revolutionary enough if it were not for the engagement he has recently entered into, with a young pretty girl of his own caste. And she firmly belongs to where she is and has been brought up into. This is normal, natural, and one cannot fault her for not willing to step out of the comfort of her wealth and the thinking that keeps it rather than endangering it by admitting poor as equal humans.

Shelton has attempted to do his best along her requirements - not meeting until the wedding is one, which he can hardly stand, so he visits her parents' home instead, so as to see her in environment where she is safe in reputation if not necessarily from her own or his desire. But his strange behaviour meanwhile has become known, and her family including her are alarmed, and she as they question his behaviour, his thinking, his deviation from what "everyone" considers normal, and so forth. Each one of her set has a different approach in this, they are not of a mould, but of a set enough in that he does stand to incur disapproval if not changed in a hurry. and he is divided at best, uncomfortable in a deep way, not in accord with them.

Or her. And while she does not bother with philosophy or politics or psychology or meeting fellow humans of poorer castes, she understands all this, and that he or his poor friend whom her family has tried to help are really looking down on her set.

The limit of her fortitude and discomfort - which she is battling increasingly closer at border of - she reaches when a woman in the neighbourhood who happens to be object of disapproval of everyone else of her set - everyone who is decent, as far as Antonia goes - is sympathised with by Shelton, instead of the cold disapproving distant manner appropriate; it is a difference of demeanour, not offer of help or physical details, but it is enough for her to realise the distance is unbreachable.

The woman so disapproved of has committed the social sin for the time or until the time, of leaving her own husband and coming to live with another of the set, and this is unforgivable even if there has been a divorce and a fresh marriage - her set is discussing how the new man in her life stands to lose everything for certain, and can only hope to read and write, rather than meet people and make any use of his excellent horses.

So Antonia breaks up with him and then recants on grounds of her not breaking her promise, but he on his part cannot envisage a miserable life with someone pretty and young whom he desires with no meeting of minds, and assures her in writing that she need not worry - the break is mutual. It is the beginning of his losing caste.

Island Pharisees, because theirs is an unspoken code that goes to preserve their own welfare and wealth, let the world pay for it all - the local poor, those of Europe, or of colonies; misery take the hindmost is only natural for the set.

There is a breathtaking subtlety about this that matches that of his - the author's - best work, although it is his characteristic in general. The protagonist's journeys on foot across the English countryside and his travails parallel his tremendous journey of thought that takes him much further but without his noticing it quite so much, much like a fast plane or a ship on still water with infinite horizon will lull one into not noticing quite how far one has come. The author refuses to give extreme colours to the contrasting circumstances, or extreme behaviour - it is all very civilised, but nevertheless the young man at the centre of it all manages to discern undercurrents, understand what he is supposed to, and the dawn of his consciousness is as silent, as subtle and yet swift as dawn of a day.

Thursday, May 1, 2014.

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The Country House:-

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One reads The Forsyte Saga trilogy, and wants more, and goes on to search out the rest of the tale about the characters one is so involved in by now, Irene and Jon most of all. Irene remains elusive and if anything more so than through the first trilogy, but one gets more of people related to Forsytes, and of beauty of England and some insights of social life and political state of the country and the world of that era. One finishes Forsyte Chronicles, three trilogies, nine books each of which is further three parts, and two in each trilogy connecting the parts. And one wants more. So one goes on to other writings of Galsworthy.

And one is not disappointed. Only, rather than go forth, one gets a view, an insight into how Forsyte Saga and Chronicles came to be the finished, polished, elusive portraits of the time and life veiled with a very English poetic mist wafting over the whole tale.

The Country House is set as the title would tell one in a country house, primarily, and the village life in general of that time, the mindsets still entrenched in the traditions and caste system of that time and place, but the people evolving at their own speeds of comfort.

A woman unwilling to live with her husband is at the centre of this work, with the peripheral people vivid as usual with the author. How her decision to separate affects people, how her involvement impacts on them, how they deal with the questions of divorce and involvement and questions of whether a woman may leave her husband and still be respectable, is the work.

There is the rector who is unable to deal with his wife's tenth confinement and the question of whether she will survive it, and with her contempt and pity for him hidden well until her moment of agony when she still smiles at him and tells him to go for his usual walk - and he never connects it in his conscious mind to his condemnation of the woman divorcing her husband for moral reasons. The opposite are the squire and his wife and son, each of whom deals with the same woman in a different way, but more humane and more civil. And the heartening part is, the husband she separated from is not automatically held up as free of guilt and full of innocence - rather, everyone including the rector is quite honest about how he is no better than the wife but merely has more rights to possess the woman since he is the man.

This admission of the skewed basis therefore makes them able to look at the whole question in a more honest way, and to go as far as he or she might with comfort with one's inner core, into the question of a woman's being a person in her own right rather than a mere possession and chattel bound and branded by her husband's right to her.

Not that these questions are now universally solved to satisfaction of justice much less satisfaction of everyone, especially those not willing to grant a personhood of a woman, but that era was the beginning of such questioning and thought in Europe. Tolstoy solved it by having Anna Karenina miserable with her choice of going away with her lover, unable to love her daughter by her lover, pining for the son she has by the husband she is unable to live with, and unable to feel secure in her love, committing suicide at the end symbolic of her choice of love over respectability of unhappy marriage stifling her heart - the choice that was a social suicide for her.

Galsworthy is kinder and more honest in that he does not attempt to satisfy all regressive or closed minds, much less authorities of the kind that attempt to rule personal lives by impersonal laws same for all, but rather shows a whole spectrum of people that deal with these questions in different ways, thus freeing the reader to think and feel and explore one's own heart and mind and thought, while looking at the portrayal by the author.

Thursday, October 17, 2013.
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Monday, October 21, 2013.
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Thursday, May 1, 2014.

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Fraternity:-

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Galsworthy does not cease to amaze. This work is perhaps more amazing in some ways, even when compared to his most famous Forsyte series.

Fraternity begins almost as an afterthought of a yawn, with a small gathering of various persona at an English uppercaste but not quite aristocrat family, two couples where two sisters are married to two brothers and the father of the sisters lives with one of the couples, while the other has a daughter almost engaged to a cousin on her mother's side who is serious about helping the poor. The father, Stone, is writing a book titled Universal Brotherhood of Man, and is dead serious about the whole thought of how humanity is a fraternity. And then the other half he has included not quite explicitly emerges to be a serious omission in terms of thought.

Stone is living with the daughter who is an artist and proud and sensitive - and has lost love of her life, her husband, by expecting much and not letting him know but wait, and baffle him. She is a painter and the young model she used lately needs help, employment, guidance, and more. So the young model is set up as a help for Stone's project to help him copy his fresh works everyday. She lives renting a room in proximity with the seamstress who is employed by the sisters, and the brutish husband of the seamstress begins to be proprietory about the model, and his dark brooding about her occupation in the family and possible connection with the husband of the artist is the beginning of the trouble.

In a society where decency is above all, progressive thought conflicts with old tradition and fraternity of humanity is not in accord with castes where a low caste poor young woman could only be a servant of one sort or another to an upper caste male. The gentleman is sympathetic, and would rather help the young woman, since she has no other guardian, but he fails to see the various complications such innocent help sets in motion - her dependence on him, his being attracted, the jealousy of the poor brute married to the seamstress, the disturbing of balance in his marriage, and more.

Galsworthy takes it to critical planes with some home truths via the young daughter of the family visiting the poor in company of her suitor, and a couple of small and not so small events. Before one knows it is all at a critical stage, and one wonders how it could have come so far with such decent people merely being sympathetic to poor. Decency of people involved does not help any, however, when it comes to it - what does help is the old tradition, caste, where a gentleman may not consort with a woman of low caste. He is not acting on tradition however, he has instincts too finicky, and there is no other way of defining them than in terms of what is called caste.

Much told and many questions but all in the almost impressionistic tradition of words painting a Monet in literature, where one sees only a gentle mist and not much of strong lines, but a picture of a society in churning of times where empire is graduating to a commonwealth of republics and caste is giving way, with tragedies of dire sort in the turmoil depicted with force that hit one and one wonders how the mist overlaying could have hidden it all so - and that is Galsworthy.

Monday, March 23, 2015

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The Patrician:-

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Beauty of nature, of England and of London, of humans that appreciate it and take it for granted, live it, and imbibe it in different ways in their own lives and their own psyche - and are coming from different castes socially and economically, brought up with, different sets of circumstances, leading to different values and conclusions about life and people - and their interactions that bring joy and pain to more than those that they encounter.

Pure Galsworthy, all of it.

If there is beauty and love and expectation, as is usual in Galsworthy, there is going to be expectation too, and in this the book falls short only in that it stops halfway compared to what one is led to expect if one read Forsyte Chronicles before this. Which a generic reader is likely to have.

But if one has read more than only the superlative Forsyte Chronicles, one is likely also to have realised that that work was probably a more matured, later achievement, while the other works are all leading up to it. This work is probably half way in that it does not lack finesse, but stops short of courage to bring about a satisfactory resolution to the love thwarted by circumstances. Then again, those were the realities of the day and it is probably a good thing to face how it was, even as times were changing. So some were able to go forth in the Forsyte best fashion while others, like even the majority of Forsyte clan, were not quite that fortunate.

One will recognise the various characters here as earlier sketches of what matures in Forsyte Chronicles, but it is nevertheless wonderful to go through this, and of course, the lyrical portrayal of beauty of nature as the characters live through it, walk in it, is always lovely, and never same.
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Friday, September 18, 2015.

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The Burning Spear:-

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One gets used to a certain pattern in reading an author's works, and generally Galsworthy is no exception to that - a reader reasonably begins to expect a diffused albeit not hidden description of beauty of England through his works, apart from questions of social status, English caste system, status of women, and more. His women are perhaps not strident in speaking but very eloquent in silently standing up for themselves and their rights not yet granted them by society. His upper caste isn't the caricature of a leftist author that whips the lower ones or starves them, but rather people who have an idea of noblesse oblige that they were brought up to or those not yet quite there.

And then one arrives at this work, a different one! Who knew Galsworthy could write a book to match a P.G. Wodehouse work in being so hilarious!

This one is difficult to describe in that it is like a one person play on stage where the artist is portraying everything ridiculous about various things one normally sees the humour of privately but suffers publicly, not because these things are always ridiculous but because often enough they are the scarecrows rather than valiant figures one is naturally inclined to revere. Duty to country, war, patriotism, roles of upper castes as defined in England and Europe in guiding the lower classes, and more than anything else, speeches and articles, are all out there held up to a mirror with the figure of a sincere but clueless man of upper classes out to do his bit in every way he can think of. The only other author who could and did hold up such a mirror was George Bernard Shaw, and he did it through various plays of his.

Not that any of these virtues are less than noble, but that lacking thought and perspective, those indulging in attempts do become a bit ridiculous. Not as much as the protagonist here, of course, who is a flawless stream of hilarious attempts to go from one effort to other and next in his quest to be of use during war and do his duty, while really being unaware of just how comic and more he is.

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Thursday, October 12, 2017.

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Five Short Tales:-

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................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538377326

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................................................................................................

The First and Last:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4022553518

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Very reminiscent of Camille, but different on the whole. Honour vs name, honesty vs security, love vs caution, ... !

May 26, 2021 - May 26, 2021.

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A Stoic:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4028144544

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Reading this, there are two thoughts that come soon. One, it's missing the descriptions of beauty of nature that one is accustomed to from Galsworthy. Two, only Galsworthy could get complete sympathy from a reader for the protagonist, especially when the two are quite different in most ways imaginable within humanity. Nevertheless, the old man's character and story, very touching!

It's not far to imagine that this work is one of those where Galsworthy was stepping between a novel and a play, and some works of his are presented both ways. In other times, this work and Strife would be integrated, along perhaps with a few others, into one - the two old chairmen are not very dissimilar. 

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This bit seems familiar from another work of Galsworthy, where the said young girl is centred:- 

" ... he was forty before he had his only love affair of any depth—with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. ... "

Was he personally familiar with the characters? 

" ... Old Heythorp saw her to her rest without regret. He had felt no love for her whatever, and practically none for her two children—they were in his view colourless, pragmatical, very unexpected characters. His son Ernest—in the Admiralty—he thought a poor, careful stick. His daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little as need be of each other. She was provided for under that settlement he had made on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether unexpected crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had bestowed on that son of his "under the rose." The boy, who had always gone by his mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent to some relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish; presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming over from Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably pretty woman, like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned up one morning at the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," accompanied by her two children—for he had never divulged to them his private address. And since then they had always been more or less on his hands, occupying a small house in a suburb of Liverpool. He visited them there, but never asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in fact his daughter's; so that his proper family and friends were unaware of their existence."

"And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"—and, of course, he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per cent., settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And the more he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin, didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short over it!"

" ... That settlement was drawn and only awaited signature. The Board to-day had decided on the purchase; and all that remained was to get it ratified at the general meeting. Let him but get that over, and this provision for his grandchildren made, and he would snap his fingers at Brownbee and his crew-the canting humbugs! "Hope you have many years of this life before you!" As if they cared for anything but his money—their money rather! ... "

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May 28, 2021 - May 29, 2021.

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The Apple Tree:-

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................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4029928667

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Here Galsworthy is back with beauty of nature, this time weaving it into the story of young love that's told in a flashback as a man is startled when he recalls being at the spot he's resting at, on his silver wedding anniversary. It's a typical tale of a city youth of upper strata who happens on a farmhouse and falls in love with the innocent rustic young beauty, but when he goes to put his promise in action, meets people of his own set and realises he'd never marry his first love. 

Galsworthy goes at length in his thoughts, emotions and wavering, his questioning and berating himself, before acting. 

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May 29, 2021 - May 30,  2021.

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The Juryman:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4030664376

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About awakening of a man surrounded by beautiful things he's earned and is happy with - including his wife - to a deeper need, of human companionship; and his struggle to communicate it. 

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May 30, 2021 - May 30,  2021.

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Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... 

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Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.

Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.

He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.

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Wednesday, September 30, 2015.

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Studies and Essays, Complete

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CONTENTS 

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 1. 

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL 

SHEEP-SHEARING 

EVOLUTION 

RIDING IN MIST 

THE PROCESSION 

A CHRISTIAN 

WIND IN THE ROCKS 

MY DISTANT RELATIVE 

THE BLACK GODMOTHER 

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2. 

QUALITY 

THE GRAND JURY—IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME 

GONE 

THRESHING 

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 

ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS 

MEMORIES 

FELICITY 

STUDIES AND ESSAYS CONCERNING LETTERS 

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 

MEDITATION ON FINALITY 

WANTED-SCHOOLING 

REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE 

THE WINDLESTRAW 

CENSORSHIP AND ART 

ABOUT CENSORSHIP 

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4032152984

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 

MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

SHEEP-SHEARING

EVOLUTION

RIDING IN MIST

THE PROCESSION

A CHRISTIAN

WIND IN THE ROCKS

MY DISTANT RELATIVE

THE BLACK GODMOTHER

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4038352639

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................................................................................................

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 

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The Inn of Tranquillity, by John Galsworthy. 

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A chance glimpse of the place, and its owner, later brings an epiphany, about universe, to the protagonist, as the visitors lay resting in sun, shaded by olive trees, on a cliff overlooking the sea. ................................................................................................

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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MAGPIE OVER THE HILL by John Galsworthy.  

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"And so I lay, hearing their sober talk and gazing at their sober little figures, till I awoke and knew I had dreamed all that little allegory of sacred and profane love, and from it had returned to reason, knowing no more than ever which was which."

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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SHEEP-SHEARING by John Galsworthy. 

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The protagonist muses over universe after watching sheep being sheared. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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EVOLUTION

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About the effect of industrial age on people dependent on work of an older era, when they have lived hand to mouth and aren't young enough to change. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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RIDING IN MIST by John Galsworthy.  

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A vivid account of the ride in mist, being lost, and safe again, that Galsworthy makes picturesque. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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THE PROCESSION by John Galsworthy.  

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Galsworthy sees beauty in a procession of protest by poorly dressed - and poor - women working in industry. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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A CHRISTIAN by John Galsworthy.  

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Galsworthy questions precepts and forms of the faith, specifically when a woman suffering in her marriage is concerned. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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WIND IN THE ROCKS by John Galsworthy.  

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Having climbed in alps above Italy, author is brought to contemplation of fragility of life. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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MY DISTANT RELATIVE by John Galsworthy.  

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An upper class man who argues against dole. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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THE BLACK GODMOTHER by John Galsworthy.  

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About the dreadful way stray dogs are treated. 

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May 31, 2021 - May 31,  2021.

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................................................................................................

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2. 

QUALITY 

THE GRAND JURY—IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME 

GONE 

THRESHING 

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE 

ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS 

MEMORIES 

FELICITY 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
Studies and Essays: Quality and Others, by John Galsworthy. 

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................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4036377610

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QUALITY by John Galsworthy. 

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Who but John Galsworthy would, not only wax poetic, but make the reader feel one with it, about a topic such as boots, and making thereof? And yet, of course, it's much more. One immediately recalls his piece on plight of old drivers of hansom cabs in an era when taxis were prevalent and horse drawn vehicles only chosen by elderly women, and this belongs with that, telling of quality bootmakers who made superior pieces to fit each client individually, while larger corporations took over the market via advertising and cheaper products. 

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June 01, 2021 - June 01, 2021.

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THE GRAND JURY—IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME 

by John Galsworthy. 

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"PANEL I"

"It was exactly as if, without word said, we had each been swearing the other to some secret compact to protect Society. As if we had been whispering to each other something like this: "These women—of course, we need them, but for all that we can't possibly recognise them as within the Law; we can't do that without endangering the safety of every one of us. In this matter we are trustees for all men—indeed, even for ourselves, for who knows at what moment we might not ourselves require their services, and it would be exceedingly awkward if their word were considered the equal of our own!" Not one of us, certainly said anything so crude as this; none the less did many of us feel it. Then the foreman, looking slowly round the table, said: "Well, gentlemen, I think we are all agreed to throw out this bill"; and all, except the painter, the Jew, and one other, murmured: "Yes.""

"From the movement of her fingers about her heart I could not but see that this grief of hers was not about the money. It was the inarticulate outburst of a bitter sense of deep injustice; of all the dumb wondering at her own fate that went about with her behind that broad stolid face and bosom. This loss of the money was but a symbol of the furtive, hopeless insecurity she lived with day and night, now forced into the light, for herself and all the world to see. She felt it suddenly a bitter, unfair thing. This beastly little man did not share her insecurity. None of us shared it—none of us, who had brought her down to this."

"PANEL II"

" ... How, in every wave was a particle that had known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle of the hot sunlight stealing up that bright water into the sky, the microcosm of all change and of all unity!"

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June 01, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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GONE by John Galsworthy. 

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"The dead do not suffer from their rest in beauty. But the living—-!"

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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THRESHING by John Galsworthy. 

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"Thus to work in the free air for the good of all and the hurt of none, without worry or the breath of acrimony—surely no phase of human life so nears the life of the truly civilised community—the life of a hive of bees."

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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THAT OLD-TIME PLACE by John Galsworthy. 

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About an old time building in New Orleans that housed the slave market in old times. 

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS by John Galsworthy. 

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Romantic about sea gulls. 

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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MEMORIES by John Galsworthy. 

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About a dog, from puppy days on. 

" ... Yet always, even in his most cosseted and idle days, he managed to preserve the grave preoccupation of one professionally concerned with retrieving things that smell; and consoled himself with pastimes such as cricket, which he played in a manner highly specialised, following the ball up the moment it left the bowler's hand, and sometimes retrieving it before it reached the batsman. When remonstrated with, he would consider a little, hanging out a pink tongue and looking rather too eagerly at the ball, then canter slowly out to a sort of forward short leg. Why he always chose that particular position it is difficult to say; possibly he could lurk there better than anywhere else, the batsman's eye not being on him, and the bowler's not too much. As a fieldsman he was perfect, but for an occasional belief that he was not merely short leg, but slip, point, midoff, and wicket-keep; and perhaps a tendency to make the ball a little "jubey." But he worked tremendously, watching every movement; for he knew the game thoroughly, and seldom delayed it more than three minutes when he secured the ball. And if that ball were really lost, then indeed he took over the proceedings with an intensity and quiet vigour that destroyed many shrubs, and the solemn satisfaction which comes from being in the very centre of the stage."

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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FELICITY by John Galsworthy. 

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A feast of nature's beauty description from Galsworthy. 

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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STUDIES AND ESSAYS CONCERNING LETTERS 

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY 

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA 

MEDITATION ON FINALITY 

WANTED-SCHOOLING 

REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE 

THE WINDLESTRAW 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
Studies and Essays: Concerning Letters, by John Galsworthy. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4038354864

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

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When a lantern holder is blamed for every consequence of light of his lantern enabling people to see. 

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

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Galsworthy clarifies drama of his day vs that of Shakespeare, explaining why latter is superior. 

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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MEDITATION ON FINALITY

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"In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating of all natural phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed her effects, that the result is a framed and final work of Art. For there, between two high lines of plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought thrones of the innumerable gods, couchant, and for ever revering, in their million moods of light and colour, the Master Mystery."

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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WANTED-SCHOOLING

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"Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our first stories; we have something in us that we feel we must express. This is the beginning of the vicious circle. Our first books often have some thing in them. We are sincere in trying to express that something. It is true we cannot express it, not having learnt how, but its ghost haunts the pages the ghost of real experience and real life—just enough to attract the untrained intelligence, just enough to make a generous Press remark: "This shows promise." We have tasted blood, we pant for more. Those of us who had a carking occupation hasten to throw it aside, those who had no occupation have now found one; some few of us keep both the old occupation and the new. Whichever of these courses we pursue, the hurry with which we pursue it undoes us. For, often we have only that one book in us, which we did not know how to write, and having expressed that which we have felt, we are driven in our second, our third, our fourth, to warm up variations, like those dressed remains of last night's dinner which are served for lunch; or to spin from our usually commonplace imaginations thin extravagances which those who do not try to think for themselves are ever ready to accept as full of inspiration and vitality. ,,, "

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June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE 

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Galsworthy and Mikes noticed the same difference between British vs continental European sensìbilities, from opposite sides of a fence. 

"We are, I think, too deeply civilised, so deeply civilised that we have come to look on Nature as indecent."

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June 02, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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THE WINDLESTRAW

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""There are certain playwrights taking themselves very seriously; might we suggest to them that they are in danger of becoming ridiculous . . . ."

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June 02, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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CENSORSHIP AND ART 

ABOUT CENSORSHIP 

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
Studies and Essays: Censorship and Art, by John Galsworthy. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4038243071

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 

ABOUT CENSORSHIP 

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

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ABOUT CENSORSHIP 

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Galsworthy questions censorship of plays, envisaging a parallel censorship of literature, art, politics, religion and more. He obviously thought it all equally - and obviously - ridiculous. This piece is dated 1909. 

After a couple of decades, world showed the horror come true, on a scale beyond that already set by inquisition and colonial racism, slavery and misogyny, feudal caste systems of lands other than India, and more. 

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June 03, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

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Galsworthy discusses question of What is Art. 

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June 03, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4055842378

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CONTENTS: 

First Series: 

The Silver Box 

Joy 

Strife 

Second Series: 

The Eldest Son 

The Little Dream 

Justice 

Third Series: 

The Fugitive 

The Pigeon 

The Mob 

Fourth Series: 

A Bit O' Love 

The Foundations 

The Skin Game 

Six Short Plays: 

The First and The Last 

The Little Man 

Hall-marked 

Defeat 

The Sun 

Punch and Go 

Fifth Series: 

A Family Man 

Loyalties 

Windows

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First Series: 

The Silver Box 

Joy 

Strife 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4040175632

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PLAYS - FIRST SERIES: 

THE SILVER BOX 

JOY 

STRIFE

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Theme of this first series, in first and last of the plays, seems to be depiction of how justice is skewed by prevalent caste systems of the ambient society, whether feudal or related to financial status in other ways, gender, and more. 

The middle one is more complex, along the lines developed in first part of the Forsyte Saga. 

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THE SILVER BOX 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4039834876

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The Silver Box, by John Galsworthy. 

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Abusive husbands are horrible enough without added trials and travails their wives must face when they make a scene and make the wife lose face socially; but when such a man steals from home of his wife's employer, and suspicion falls on her, because people are unaware he was there, it's much too much. 

Galsworthy pairs the offenders across castes - Jones stole from young Barthwick after the latter had snatched a young woman's reticule, and latter has to face his father when the woman comes for her money, even as Mrs Jones is suspected of the theft her husband committed. 

And, as if her travails weren't enough, Barthwick senior the employer opines Mrs Jones ought not consider leaving her husband, despite being abused physically. To him, that would be immoral of her!  He claims being liberal, but only wishes to avoid prosecuting Jones when chances are his son would be implicated! 

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And if these injustices weren't enough, there are the lives children on street because their mother abandoned the family, the father being out of work. 

"BARTHWICK. [Speaking behind his hand.] A painful case, Roper; very distressing state of things. 

"ROPER. Hundreds like this in the Police Courts."

Galsworthy must have seen such circumstances around commonly, as must everyone of the era; few wrote about it. Most were busy singing paens of glory of the empire that looted India while millions starved to death there. 

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Jones catches young Barthwick out. 

"JONES. May I ask the gentleman a question? 

"MAGISTRATE. Yes—yes—you may ask him what questions you like. 

"JONES. Don't you remember you said you was a Liberal, same as your father, and you asked me wot I was? 

"JACK. [With his hand against his brow.] I seem to remember—— 

"JONES. And I said to you, "I'm a bloomin' Conservative," I said; an' you said to me, "You look more like one of these 'ere Socialists. Take wotever you like," you said."

But when Jones refers to Jack stealing the woman's reticule, which is brought out by the court officials, he's hushed. 

"JONES. [Stopping and twisting round.] Call this justice? What about 'im? 'E got drunk! 'E took the purse—'e took the purse but [in a muffled shout] it's 'is money got 'im off—JUSTICE!"

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And, Jack having gone scot free while Jones is imprisoned, Barthwick is too short of courage to do justice even to Mrs Jones and her children.  

"[The Court is in a stir. ROPER gets up and speaks to the reporter. JACK, throwing up his head, walks with a swagger to the corridor; BARTHWICK follows.] 

"MRS. JONES. [Turning to him zenith a humble gesture.] Oh! sir! 

"[BARTHWICK hesitates, then yielding to his nerves, he makes a shame-faced gesture of refusal, and hurries out of court. MRS. JONES stands looking after him.]"

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June 03, 2021 - June 04, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 121 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1911) 

ASIN:- B0084B3H16

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JOY 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4040168066

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Joy, by John Galsworthy. 

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Here Galsworthy is close to the very first book in his Forsyte Saga, and in Forsyte Chronicles, with the exception that the young woman involved is the daughter, Joy, of the married woman here, instead of the niece by marriage that she was in Forsyte Saga - Forsyte Chronicles. 

Joy is slightly more fortunate in being loved, unlike the niece in Forsyte Saga - Forsyte Chronicles, who lost her fiance to her aunt, and remained single. 

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"DICK. But it does. The thing is to look at it as if it was n't yourself. If it had been you and me in love, Joy, and it was wrong, like them, of course [ruefully] I know you'd have decided right. [Fiercely.] But I swear I should have decided wrong. [Triumphantly.] That 's why I feel I understand your Mother."

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"JOY. [In a whisper.] Dick, is love always like this? 

"DICK. [Putting his arms around her, with conviction.] It's never been like this before. It's you and me!"

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June 04, 2021 - June 04, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 92 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published June 1st 2004) 

Original Title:- Joy 

ASIN:- B0084B3PUE

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Strife, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4022293963

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The play, published in 1909, begins with a discussion amongst management about strikes, and the conversation begins by one asking for a screen for the fire, which, another points out, the strikers wouldn't need. Galsworthy might have written thus with experience of both worlds, in an era when industrial world was beginning to deal with labour consciousness about rights on the rise, at least right to survival. 

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"Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for seven hundred pounds, and has n't one hundred thousand pounds been gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger. It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it can. That's Capital! A thing that will say—"I'm very sorry for you, poor fellows—you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time. That's Capital! ... I looked into his eyes and I saw he was afraid—afraid for himself and his dividends; afraid for his fees, afraid of the very shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid—like children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of the leaves. I ask you, men—[he pauses, holding out his hand till there is utter silence]—give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you back to London. The men have nothing for you!" [A murmuring.] Give me that, an' I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London all you want."

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"There is only one way of treating "men"—with the iron hand. This half and half business, the half and half manners of this generation, has brought all this upon us. Sentiment and softness, and what this young man, no doubt, would call his social policy. You can't eat cake and have it! This middle-class sentiment, or socialism, or whatever it may be, is rotten. Masters are masters, men are men! Yield one demand, and they will make it six. They are [he smiles grimly] like Oliver Twist, asking for more. If I were in their place I should be the same. But I am not in their place. Mark my words: one fine morning, when you have given way here, and given way there—you will find you have parted with the ground beneath your feet, and are deep in the bog of bankruptcy; and with you, floundering in that bog, will be the very men you have given way to."

"A woman has died. I am told that her blood is on my hands; I am told that on my hands is the starvation and the suffering of other women and of children. 

"EDGAR. I said "on our hands," sir. 

"ANTHONY. It is the same. [His voice grows stronger and stronger, his feeling is more and more made manifest.] I am not aware that if my adversary suffer in a fair fight not sought by me, it is my fault. If I fall under his feet—as fall I may—I shall not complain. That will be my look-out—and this is—his. I cannot separate, as I would, these men from their women and children. A fair fight is a fair fight! Let them learn to think before they pick a quarrel!"

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"SCANTLEBURY. [Behind his hand to TENCH.] Look after the Chairman! He's not well; he's not well—he had no lunch. If there's any fund started for the women and children, put me down for—for twenty pounds."

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"ROBERTS. Then you're no longer Chairman of this Company! [Breaking into half-mad laughter.] Ah! ha-ah, ha, ha! They've thrown ye over thrown over their Chairman: Ah-ha-ha! [With a sudden dreadful calm.] So—they've done us both down, Mr. Anthony? 

"[ENID, hurrying through the double-doors, comes quickly to her father.]  

"ANTHONY. Both broken men, my friend Roberts!"

"[ANTHONY rises with an effort. He turns to ROBERTS who looks at him. They stand several seconds, gazing at each other fixedly; ANTHONY lifts his hand, as though to salute, but lets it fall. The expression of ROBERTS'S face changes from hostility to wonder. They bend their heads in token of respect. ANTHONY turns, and slowly walks towards the curtained door. Suddenly he sways as though about to fall, recovers himself, and is assisted out by EDGAR and ENID; UNDERWOOD follows, but stops at the door. ROBERTS remains motionless for several seconds, staring intently after ANTHONY, then goes out into the hall.]"

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May 24, 2021 - May 26, 2021.

Purchased August 12, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 84 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1909)

ASIN:- B0084B3MXO

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May 24, 2021 - May 26, 2021.

June 03, 2021 - June 04, 2021. 

June 04, 2021 - June 04, 2021. 

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Plays: Second Series: 

The Eldest Son 

The Little Dream 

Justice 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4045137926

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The Eldest Son, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4041838715

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This play in its theme is similar to another one, The Silver Box, by Galsworthy, in that there are two young men across caste lines whose crime is same, but result different due to status; the difference in the two plays is the nature of the crime, and every other circumstance and more. 

Here it's not about theft, but about marriage, or rather, refusal or inability to marry even when there's a baby coming, and how society looks at such conduct. The latter, while it should be, is far from independent of the social caste of the couple, and that's mostly the point. 

Galsworthy has solved it a tad close to convenient but attempting to save some grace, by the angry father of the girl giving her courage through his pride, to refuse the young master's "offer of marriage", which the young boy has made not only firmly but stuck to despite his almost whole family attempting to dissuade him; nevertheless, one has to wonder why the lot weren't amenable to the young boy's scheme of marrying and relocating to Canada, why they thought it was tragic, why they thought the marriage must fail. In the social setup of rigid castes in England or Britain, they could be predicting correctly; but in say, California, it wouldn't have mattered. Or even in the snobbish Southrn society, where the girl would be considered more of a lady than in Britain, while his antecedents would be serving him better than his ability to earn, the latter unproved as long as he lived in Britain. 

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June 04, 2021 - June 05, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 68 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published September 1st 1964) 

Original Title

The Eldest Son: A Domestic Drama in Three Acts 

ASIN:- B0084B3L1C

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The Little Dream, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4022510726

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A charming play, not only reminding one of alpine air and snow clad peaks, wildflowers and streams, clear air much more. 

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May 26, 2021 - May 26, 2021.

Purchased August 12, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 31 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published September 26th 2004) 

ASIN:- B0084B3RZC

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Justice, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4045129527

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Calder, a new junior clerk in the How law office, has changed a cheque from nine pounds to ninety pounds, expecting it to be blamed on the clerk he'd replaced, who's migrated to Australia. He's caught squarely because the cheque book was in pocket of How junior who was out of town, and the change from nine to ninety pounds was recorded on the stub as well, so the person who migrated coukdnt hsve done it. 

But the day he was caught was the night he expected to get out of town with Ruth Honeywell and her children, trying to save her from her abusive husband who's threatened to slit her throat. 

Galsworthy has a defence lawyer pleading, apart from circumstances, a weak character for the poòr young man; which makes one wonder. Would they portray him as a weak character in the rough West if, under same circumstances, he stole the money, to help the woman he loved so she could flee with him and escape the murderous husband? Or would he be seen as a hero, even, to be helped further by a stronger hero? 

Perhaps Galsworthy said it in a nutshell through the defence lawyer who says:- 

" ... Gentlemen, Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself. Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which at the worst was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons? ... "

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June 05, 2021 - June 07, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 97 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1910) 

Original Title Justice 

ASIN:- B0084B3U6I

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May 26, 2021 - June 07, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 196 pages 

Published March 24th 2011 

(first published July 17th 2006) 

ASIN:- B004TP12PY

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Third Series: 

The Fugitive 

The Pigeon 

The Mob 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4049278083

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Plays: Third Series: 

The Fugitive 

The Pigeon 

The Mob 

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The Fugitive, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4047061150

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Here again Galsworthy goes into the theme of marital incompatibility that he began Forsyte Saga with, where stolid and prosaic has married sensitive without the former understanding the forthcoming disaster. 

Here, unlike in Forsyte Saga, the latter had no clue, either. But in Forsyte Saga, having a premonition and hesitation, leading to putting conditions asking for freedom if it didn't work, didn't work for Irene as she'd hoped, either - her then husband simply insisted on his rights, refused separation and even refused to respect separate rooms, and the wife had no legal or physical recourse if she had no financial independence. 

As in the previous play in the Complete Works of John Galsworthy, the tragic end here hurts deeply, the turn impressing on one just how inexorably helpless an innocent was rendered by the grinding of wheels that chose to go over anyone who stepped out of chains. 

And yet, this social setup wasn't about morals, as evident by the goings on in upper castes right up to the royals, from at least Henry VIII onwards till date - and especially during the times this play was written, as evident from history of the era, and exposed in at least Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw. 

So the victimisation of women took place when they chose to go against the supposed morality by demanding a separation from a husband, but only if they did so without first ensuring a more powerful protector of sorts, whether a blood relative or another lover. 

It's not that different from the setup depicted in the autobiographical work of Tehmina Durrani, at that. 

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"TWISDEN. Yes! Mrs. Dedmond! There's the bedrock difficulty. As you haven't money, you should never have been pretty. You're up against the world, and you'll get no mercy from it. We lawyers see too much of that. I'm putting it brutally, as a man of the world. 

"CLARE. Thank you. Do you think you quite grasp the alternative? 

"TWISDEN. [Taken aback] But, my dear young lady, there are two sides to every contract. After all, your husband's fulfilled his."

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"MALISE. [Twisting the card] Let there be no mistake, sir; I do nothing that will help give her back to her husband. She's out to save her soul alive, and I don't join the hue and cry that's after her. On the contrary—if I had the power. If your father wants to shelter her, that's another matter. But she'd her own ideas about that. 

"HUNTINGDON. Perhaps you don't realize how unfit my sister is for rough and tumble. She's not one of this new sort of woman. She's always been looked after, and had things done for her. Pluck she's got, but that's all, and she's bound to come to grief. 

"MALISE. Very likely—the first birds do. But if she drops half-way it's better than if she'd never flown. Your sister, sir, is trying the wings of her spirit, out of the old slave market. For women as for men, there's more than one kind of dishonour, Captain Huntingdon, and worse things than being dead, as you may know in your profession."

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"MALISE. Had a very bad time? 

"CLARE. [Nodding] I'm spoilt. It's a curse to be a lady when you have to earn your living. It's not really been so hard, I suppose; I've been selling things, and living about twice as well as most shop girls."

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Prevalent social atmosphere forced a change to the wordings of the play, one supposes! 

"CLARE. [Hardly above a whisper] Because—if you still wanted me— I do—now. 

"[Etext editors note: In the 1924 revision, 11 years after this 1913 edition: "I do—now" is changed to "I could—now"— a significant change in meaning. D.W.]"

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June 07, 2021 - June 08, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 101 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published February 1913) 

ASIN:- B0084B3S4W

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The Pigeon, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4047376716

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About charity, religion, heart, practical facts, ..... and human nature that refuses to fit into definitions, boundaries, principles, or even practical necessities! 

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"FERRAND. Ah! Monsieur, I am loafer, waster—what you like—for all that [bitterly] poverty is my only crime. If I were rich, should I not be simply veree original, 'ighly respected, with soul above commerce, travelling to see the world? And that young girl, would she not be "that charming ladee," "veree chic, you know!" And the old Tims—good old-fashioned gentleman—drinking his liquor well. Eh! bien—what are we now? Dark beasts, despised by all. That is life, Monsieur. [He stares into the fire.]"

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"FERRAND. [Eagerly.] Monsieur, it is just that. You understand. When we are with you we feel something—here—[he touches his heart.] If I had one prayer to make, it would be, Good God, give me to understand! Those sirs, with their theories, they can clean our skins and chain our 'abits—that soothes for them the aesthetic sense; it gives them too their good little importance. But our spirits they cannot touch, for they nevare understand. Without that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of orange."

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"FERRAND. Monsieur, of their industry I say nothing. They do a good work while they attend with their theories to the sick and the tame old, and the good unfortunate deserving. Above all to the little children. But, Monsieur, when all is done, there are always us hopeless ones. What can they do with me, Monsieur, with that girl, or with that old man? Ah! Monsieur, we, too, 'ave our qualities, we others—it wants you courage to undertake a career like mine, or like that young girl's. We wild ones—we know a thousand times more of life than ever will those sirs. They waste their time trying to make rooks white. Be kind to us if you will, or let us alone like Mees Ann, but do not try to change our skins. Leave us to live, or leave us to die when we like in the free air. If you do not wish of us, you have but to shut your pockets and—your doors—we shall die the faster."

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June 08, 2021 - June 08, 2021. 

Purchased August 12, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 87 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1912) 

Original Title 

The Pigeon: A Fantasy in Three Acts 

ASIN:- B0084B3SGK

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The Mob, by John Galsworthy. 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4049273255

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That Galsworthy was revolutionary in his thinking for his times, at least, is known to anyone who read his most famous Forsyte Saga, and is acquainted with the strictures against women then; but that he was so ahead of his times as to see through blinkers of colonial prejudices that most so called progressive and liberal intellectuals of West failed to do, is astounding. 

The finale here is strongly reminiscent of the scene in All Roads Lead to Calvary, by Jerome K. Jerome, where a soldier turned conscientious objector after having fought in the war halfway through and wounded, his change of mind due to the carnagè rather than personal injury, is torn to shreds by a civilian mob in his hometown in a frenzy.  

Galsworthy portrays effectively the turning of a supposedly civilised country into a mob when attempting to put down another, small nation, even more so when it's another culture, another race. This play could be about any of the wars fought in such an endeavour, or even about the massacre at Amritsar by Dyer, which was not approved by the then British government of India - Dyer was sent home in disgrace for massacre of unarmed civilians who had no chance to escape from the enclosed garden as he blocked the one gate with a tank, ordering soldiers to open fire till everyone died, every child and woman and old person as well - but his fellow officers, especially their wives, sympathised with Dyer, had a grand farewell organised for him, and as for the British government back in Britain, they promoted him! 

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"SIR JOHN. We didn't begin this business. 

"MORE. What! With our missionaries and our trading? 

"THE DEAN. It is news indeed that the work of civilization may be justifiably met by murder. Have you forgotten Glaive and Morlinson? 

"SIR JOHN. Yes. And that poor fellow Groome and his wife? 

"MORE. They went into a wild country, against the feeling of the tribes, on their own business. What has the nation to do with the mishaps of gamblers?"

"THE DEAN. Does our rule bring blessing—or does it not, Stephen? 

"MORE. Sometimes; but with all my soul I deny the fantastic superstition that our rule can benefit a people like this, a nation of one race, as different from ourselves as dark from light—in colour, religion, every mortal thing. We can only pervert their natural instincts."

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"SHELDER. There are very excellent reasons for the Government's policy. 

MORE. There are always excellent reasons for having your way with the weak. 

"SHELDER. My dear More, how can you get up any enthusiasm for those cattle-lifting ruffians? 

"MORE. Better lift cattle than lift freedom. 

"SHELDER. Well, all we'll ask is that you shouldn't go about the country, saying so. 

"MORE. But that is just what I must do. 

"[Again they all look at MORE in consternation.] 

"HOME. Not down our way, you'll pardon me. 

"WACE. Really—really, sir—— 

"SHELDER. The time of crusades is past, More. 

"MORE. Is it? 

"BANNING. Ah! no, but we don't want to part with you, Mr. More. It's a bitter thing, this, after three elections. Look at the 'uman side of it! To speak ill of your country when there's been a disaster like this terrible business in the Pass. There's your own wife. I see her brother's regiment's to start this very afternoon. Come now—how must she feel?"

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"MORE. [Turning on him] Mr. Home a great country such as ours—is trustee for the highest sentiments of mankind. Do these few outrages justify us in stealing the freedom of this little people? 

"BANNING. Steal—their freedom! That's rather running before the hounds. 

"MORE. Ah, Banning! now we come to it. In your hearts you're none of you for that—neither by force nor fraud. And yet you all know that we've gone in there to stay, as we've gone into other lands—as all we big Powers go into other lands, when they're little and weak. The Prime Minister's words the other night were these: "If we are forced to spend this blood and money now, we must never again be forced." What does that mean but swallowing this country? 

"SHELDER. Well, and quite frankly, it'd be no bad thing. 

"HOME. We don't want their wretched country—we're forced.

"MORE. We are not forced. 

"SHELDER. My dear More, what is civilization but the logical, inevitable swallowing up of the lower by the higher types of man? And what else will it be here?"

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"MORE. [Above the murmurs] My fine friends, I'm not afraid of you. You've forced your way into my house, and you've asked me to speak. Put up with the truth for once! [His words rush out] You are the thing that pelts the weak; kicks women; howls down free speech. This to-day, and that to-morrow. Brain—you have none. Spirit—not the ghost of it! If you're not meanness, there's no such thing. If you're not cowardice, there is no cowardice [Above the growing fierceness of the hubbub] Patriotism—there are two kinds—that of our soldiers, and this of mine. You have neither!"

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June 08, 2021 - June 09, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 81 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published June 1914) 

Original Title:- 

The Mob : a Play in Four Acts 

ASIN:- B0084B3XR4

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ASIN BOO84B3SGK belongs to The Pigeon, by John Galsworthy, publication by Public Domain; Goodreads did not yield that in search, and this edition of 

Plays: Third Series: The Fugitive -- The Pigeon -- The Mob

by John Galsworthy 

got created by mistake, despite that original existing in Goodreads catalogue and having been bought on Amazon as long ago as 2013. Why did Goodreads not bring up the book when searched by ASIN?

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June 07, 2021 - June 09, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition 

Published March 24, 2011. 

(first published July 20th 2006) 

Original Title:- Plays: Third Series: 

The Fugitive -- The Pigeon -- The Mob 

ASIN:- B004TP07AA

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Fourth Series: 

A Bit O' Love 

The Foundations 

The Skin Game 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4055830431

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Plays: Fourth Series: 

A Bit O' Love, 

the Foundations, 

the Skin Game; 

by John Galsworthy. 

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Fourth Series: 

A Bit O' Love 

The Foundations 

The Skin Game 

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A Bit O' Love, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4050928679

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Galsworthy begins this play with a curate, desperately in love with his wife and trying his utmost to do good in a small village where most people (and not just women - and girls -), gossip, losing his wife to the love she had for another man, a doctor in a nearby small town. 

Her plight is not different from what Galsworthy has dealt with in various works, caught as she is in a marriage without love that she tried to convince herself she could make work; it's his character that's different from the run-of-the-mill husband enforcing his will, trapping the wife in marriage, or at least insisting she stays away from her love or he would destroy the guy. Here the good curate lets her go, promising not to hurt them, however much in pain he is himself at the break. 

What's even tougher than his devastation is the craziness of the reactions from most of the villagers, and even more so their actions. What's a saving grace is decency of the few. 

Galsworthy attempts in this play to spell out the villagers' speech with its dialect. It's distracting when reading. Perhaps he could have made two versions, one properly spelt for reader and another for performance personnel. 

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June 09, 2021 - June 10, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 71 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1894) 

ASIN:- B0084B3Y3W

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The Foundations, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4052806018

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THE FOUNDATIONS (AN EXTRAVAGANT PLAY)

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Delightful, the first act, what with Little Anne and almost everyone else! This is despite the  bomb found in the  wine cellar, too. 

The second act brings us the possible one responsible, not so delightful. The gas man leaving a selfmade bomb in the wine cellar of the house he serviced, a home of a family with at least one child, is horrible enough; his bragging about it to his old mother whom he's unable to support, even as he drinks the bottle of port he stole from that cellar, is enough to bring disgust on himself. 

Until he gets to speaking political philosophy,  thst is - then he's a character out of a play by George Bernard Shaw! From Alfred Do little on, his speech could fit half a dozen of them. 

The mother, old Mrs Lemmy, is another story. 

But Galsworthy returns to the spirit after the second act, and after a great third act, one is left as curious as Little Anne at the end. 

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June 10, 2021 - June 11, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 97 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1920) 

Original Title 

The Foundations 

ASIN:- B0084B3XKQ

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The Skin Game, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4055819654

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About the new wealth of trade and industry, encroaching on old landed gentry, but without the breeding or bringing up to understand the noblesse oblige creed of looking after the tenants, or of carrying out promises. 

And as they blunder on, goading the neighbourhood beyond endurance, they forget others can play those games too, only, they've not done so for a while. 

"HILLCRIST. I'd forgotten their existence. [He gets up] What is it that gets loose when you begin a fight, and makes you what you think you're not? What blinding evil! Begin as you may, it ends in this —skin game! Skin game! 

"JILL. [Rushing to him] It's not you, Dodo; it's not you, beloved Dodo. 

"HILLCRIST. It is me. For I am, or should be, master in this house! 

"MRS. H. I don't understand. 

"HILLCRIST. When we began this fight, we had clean hands—are they clean' now? What's gentility worth if it can't stand fire?"

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June 10, 2021 - June 13, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 116 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1920) 

Original Title 

The Skin Game 

ASIN:- B0084B3X4W

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June 09, 2021 - June 13, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 258 pages

Published March 24, 2011 

(first published July 20th 2006) 

ASIN:- B004TOWDWG

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Six Short Plays: 

The First and The Last 

The Little Man 

Hall-marked 

Defeat 

The Sun 

Punch and Go 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4057729519

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Six Short Plays, by John Galsworthy. 

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Six Short Plays: 

The First and The Last 

The Little Man 

Hall-marked 

Defeat 

The Sun 

Punch and Go 

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The First and the Last, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4022553518

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Very reminiscent of Camille, but different on the whole. Honour vs name, honesty vs security, love vs caution, ... !

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May 26, 2021 - May 26, 2021.

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 55 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1919) 

Original TitleThe First and the Last 

ASIN:- B0084B2ZXM

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The Little Man, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4057302293

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To begin with, Goodreads information page for the book claims it was "(first published June 15th 1997) "; this seems nonsense. 

Galsworthy was writing early twentieth century, and if he wrote at the end or if something were discovered as late as 1997, that would be news. 

A very quick search for a first edition tells you of one published 1915, so this work was obviously first published then or earlier. 

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Galsworthy attempts a delightful comedy in this spoof with typecast rather than caricatures of nationalities in a few characters brought together on a journey and dealing with circumstances. 

The most delightful of the lot are the Dutch and English. 

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June 13, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 32 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 

June 15th 1997) ???

(1915, or earlier)

ASIN:- B0084B2YCY

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Hall Marked, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4057615235

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She has saved their dogs from the fight they might have carried on to grievous end, is attractive and well situated and competent; but, uncertain if she's married, they leave her home with barely a thank you, without being civil to the new neighbour - all because she forgot her wedding ring in the bathroom when she cleaned herself after tending to their wounded dog! 

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June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

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Defeat, by John Galsworthy. 

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Humanity, during wartime, back home and between strangers. 

"GIRL. Defeat! Der Vaterland! Defeat!. . . . One shillin'! 

"[Then suddenly, in the moonlight, she sits up, and begins to sing with all her might "Die Wacht am Rhein." And outside men pass, singing: "Rule, Britannia!"]"

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June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

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The Sun, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4057639733

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When a soldier comes home to find he's too late, his girl has been with another who came home wounded and is willing to fight for her - only, the one who came late isn't only unwilling to fight, but is unwilling to let anything spoil his happiness about being back safe, which spoils it for the one itching to fight! And for her, too. 

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June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

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Punch and Go: A Little Comedy by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4057719694

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About travails of work required to make theatre performance work, before performers come on stage; about beauty and love passing, unseen, unnoticed, while an academic attempts writing about it; about a producer, financier or theatre owner insisting on a piece with lower taste, in name of giving public what they want. 

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June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

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May 26, 2021 - June 14, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 79 pages 

Published May 16th 2012 

(first published 1921) 

Original Title 

SIX SHORT PLAYS 

(MODERN PLAYS S) 

ASIN:- B008473NT6 

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Fifth Series: 

A Family Man 

Loyalties 

Windows

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Plays : Fifth Series, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4061150629

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PLAYS - FIFTH SERIES: 

Fifth Series: 

A Family Man 

Loyalties 

Windows

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The title as such, claimed by by Goodreads to be published only in 2006, may have not existed in 1922, when all the plays included herein were published; but it's unlikely that it existed only after internet, and is likely an incorrect claim. 

The plays herein are as serious a look at social faults as it can get, not necessarily set out in order of their degree of gravity. Antisemitic attitude and social misbehaviour thereby are s serious as racism, but commonly ignored ills are subjugation and victimisation of women, far more ubiquitous and far more serious. 

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A Family Man : in three acts, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4059376669

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About institution of marriage and how it has dehumanised most people, especially women, subjugated socially to males. 

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June 14, 2021 - June 15, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 88 pages 

Published May 12th 2012 

(first published 1922) 

Original Title 

A Family Man: In Three Acts 

ASIN:- B0082WRF1U

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Loyalties, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4059533791

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Galsworthy deals with the subtle and not so subtle ways of antisemitism in higher society in England, with theft of large sum by a member of the set perpetrated in a country house against another is seen as a nuisance created by the victim of the theft who happens to be Jewish. 

This is very like a female being ostracised socially and even punished by Vatican if she complained or protested against a bishop for his raping a nun. 

Needless to say victims of lesser status stand no chance for justice, with most societies and institutions functioning in effect as old boys network. 

"ENOUGH", anyone? 

Fortunately, the ethical code of professionals in law does not allow sticking to the guilty knowingly. 

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"WINSOR. Colford! [A slight pause] The General felt his coat sleeve that night, and it was wet. 

"COLFORD. Well! What proof's that? No, by George! An old school-fellow, a brother officer, and a pal. 

"WINSOR. If he did do it— 

"COLFORD. He didn't. But if he did, I'd stick to him, and see him through it, if I could."

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"LADY A. Oh! Why did I ever ask that wretch De Levis? I used to think him pathetic. Meg did you know——Ronald Dancy's coat was wet? The General happened to feel it. 

"MARGARET. So that's why he was so silent. 

"LADY A. Yes; and after the scene in the Club yesterday he went to see those bookmakers, and Goole—what a name!—is sure he told Dancy about the sale. 

"MARGARET. [Suddenly] I don't care. He's my third cousin. Don't you feel you couldn't, Adela? 

"LADY A. Couldn't—what? MARGARET. Stand for De Levis against one of ourselves? 

"LADY A. That's very narrow, Meg. 

"MARGARET. Oh! I know lots of splendid Jews, and I rather liked little Ferdy; but when it comes to the point—! They all stick together; why shouldn't we? It's in the blood. Open your jugular, and see if you haven't got it. 

"LADY A. My dear, my great grandmother was a Jewess. I'm very proud of her. 

"MARGARET. Inoculated. [Stretching herself] Prejudices, Adela—or are they loyalties—I don't know—cris-cross—we all cut each other's throats from the best of motives."

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"WINSOR. [Suddenly] It's becoming a sort of Dreyfus case—people taking sides quite outside the evidence. 

"MARGARET. There are more of the chosen in Court every day. Mr Graviter, have you noticed the two on the jury? 

"GRAVITER. [With a smile] No; I can't say— 

"MARGARET. Oh! but quite distinctly. Don't you think they ought to have been challenged? 

"GRAVITER. De Levis might have challenged the other ten, Miss Orme. 

"MARGARET. Dear me, now! I never thought of that."

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"WINSOR. The General knows something which on the face of it looks rather queer. Now that he's going to be called, oughtn't Dancy to be told of it, so that he may be ready with his explanation, in case it comes out? 

"TWISDEN. [Pouring some tea into the saucer] Without knowing, I can't tell you. 

"WINSOR and MARGARET exchange looks, and TWISDEN drinks from the saucer. 

"MARGARET. Tell him, Charles. WINSOR. Well! It rained that evening at Meldon. The General happened to put his hand on Dancy's shoulder, and it was damp. 

TWISDEN puts the saucer down and replaces the cup in it. They both look intently at him. 

"TWISDEN. I take it that General Canynge won't say anything he's not compelled to say. 

"MARGARET. No, of course; but, Mr Jacob, they might ask; they know it rained. And he is such a George Washington. 

"TWISDEN. [Toying with a pair of tortoise-shell glasses] They didn't ask either of you. Still-no harm in your telling Dancy."

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"TWISDEN. [Nodding] Mr Gilman, your conduct has been most prompt. You may safely leave the matter in our hands, now. Kindly let us retain this note; and ask for my cashier as you go out and give him [He writes] this. He will reimburse you. We will take any necessary steps ourselves."

"RICARDOS. [Desperately] The notes were a settlement to her from this gentleman, of whom she was a great friend. 

"TWISDEN. [Suddenly] I am afraid we must press you for the name of the gentleman. 

"RICARDOS. Sare, if I give it to you, and it does 'im 'arm, what will my daughter say? This is a bad matter for me. He behaved well to her; and she is attached to him still; sometimes she is crying yet because she lost him. And now we betray him, perhaps, who knows? This is very unpleasant for me. [Taking up the paper] Here it gives the number of another note—a 'undred-pound note. I 'ave that too. [He takes a note from his breast pocket]. 

"GRAVITER. How much did he give you in all? 

"RICARDOS. For my daughter's settlement one thousand pounds. I understand he did not wish to give a cheque because of his marriage. So I did not think anything about it being in notes, you see.

"TWISDEN. When did he give you this money? 

"RICARDOS. The middle of Octobare last. 

"TWISDEN. [Suddenly looking up] Mr Ricardos, was it Captain Dancy? 

"RICARDOS. [Again wiping his forehead] Gentlemen, I am so fond of my daughter. I have only the one, and no wife."

"RICARDOS. Sare, I trust you.—It was Captain Dancy."

"TWISDEN. I must keep this note. [He touches the hundred-pound note] You will not speak of this to anyone. I may recognise that you were a holder for value received—others might take a different view. Good-day, sir. Graviter, see Mr Ricardos out, and take his address."

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"COLFORD. Guilty or not, you ought to have stuck to him—it's not playing the game, Mr Twisden. 

"TWISDEN. You must allow me to judge where my duty lay, in a very hard case. 

"COLFORD. I thought a man was safe with his solicitor. 

"CANYNGE. Colford, you don't understand professional etiquette. 

"COLFORD. No, thank God! 

"TWISDEN. When you have been as long in your profession as I have been in mine, Major Colford, you will know that duty to your calling outweighs duty to friend or client. 

"COLFORD. But I serve the Country. 

"TWISDEN. And I serve the Law, sir."

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May 28, 2021 - 

June 15, 2021 - June 15, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 114 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1922) 

Original Title Loyalties 

ASIN:- B00849YDOI

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Windows, by John Galsworthy. 

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4061132335

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Human nature, ideals, chivalry, practicality of running a household, philosophy, need of love, wolves preying on innocent, .... 

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June 15, 2021 - June 16, 2021. 

Purchased June 14, 2013. 

Kindle Edition, 72 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1922) 

Original Title Windows 

ASIN:- B00849YCGM

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June 14, 2021 - June 16, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 296 pages 

Published March 24th 2011 

(first published July 20th 2006) 

ASIN:- B004TP34EQ

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May 24, 2021 - June 16, 2021. 

Purchased June 08, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 150 pages 

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published January 1st 1920) 

ASIN:- B0084ADTG0

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https://www.amazon.in/Complete-Works-John-Galsworthy-ebook/dp/B00B02XKWW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1507796388&sr=1-3-fkmr0&keywords=The+Complete+Works+of+John+Galsworthy+published+by+the+library+of+Alexandria

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20100887-the-complete-works-of-john-galsworthy

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February 2004 - 

November 07, 2020 - June 16, 2021.

Purchased August 12, 2013

Kindle Edition 

Published December 27th 2012 

by Library of Alexandria 

ASIN:- B00B02XKWW

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150883529

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20100887-the-complete-works-of-john-galsworthy

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