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A Motley, by John Galsworthy.
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A collection of portraits and sketches.
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CONTENTS
A PORTRAIT
A FISHER OF MEN
THE PRISONER
COURAGE
THE MEETING
THE PACK
COMPENSATION
JOY OF LIFE
BEL COLORE
A PILGRIMAGE
THE KINGS
APOTHEOSIS
THE WORKERS
A MILLER OF DEE
A PARTING
A BEAST OF BURDEN
THE LIME TREE
THE NEIGHBOURS
THE RUNAGATES
A REVERSION TO TYPE
A WOMAN
THE “CODGER”
FOR EVER
THE CONSUMMATION
THE CHOICE
THE JAPANESE QUINCE
ONCE MORE
DELIGHT
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A PORTRAIT
The sense of beauty, and a comfort of dependability even more than of admiration, that suffuses this portrayal, along with that of a looking up taken for granted, at once brings two things to mind. One feels certain he knew the subject intimately - his father? a grandfather? - and one wonders if this wasn't the original of Jolyon Forsyte in the Forsyte Saga, although the country estate there was built by Soames, his cousin.
June 25, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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A FISHER OF MEN
"If, in his walks, he came across a truant, some fisherman or farmer, he would always stop, with his eyes fastened on the culprit’s face:
"“You don’t come to church now; how’s that?”
"Like true Cornishmen, hoping to avoid unpleasantness, they would offer some polite excuse: They didn’t knaw ezactly, zur — the missus ‘ad been ailin’; there was always somethin’ — like — that! This temporising with the devil never failed to make the rector’s eyes blaze, or to elicit from him a short dry laugh: “You don’t know what you’re saying, man! You must be mad to think you can save your soul that way! This is a Christian country!”
"Yet never after one of these encounters did he see the face of that parishioner in his church again. “Let un wait!” they would murmur, “tidden likely we’m gwine to his church t’be spoke to like dogs!”"
"His whole form gave the impression of a dark tree withered and eaten by some desiccating wind, like the stiff oaks of his Cornish upland, gnarled and riven by the Atlantic gales."
"In truth his dealings with them had become notorious throughout the district. A petition, privately subscribed, and presented to the bishop for his removal had, of course, met with failure. A rector could not be removed from his living for any reason — it had been purchased for him by his father. ... "
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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THE PRISONER
Reading this, one needs an effort to remember this was published before WWII.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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COURAGE
"“I was afraid of it even when I did it. Seven children!” Once more he looked at me: “And since! — sometimes — sometimes — I could—” he broke off, then burst out again:
"“Life is hard! What would you have? I knew her husband. Could I leave her to the streets?”"
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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THE MEETING
This reminds one so strongly of the architect in love with Irene in Forsyte Saga, wonder if Galsworthy built it - the part about their meetings - from this.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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THE PACK
"“IT’S only,” said H., “when men run in packs that they lose their sense of decency. At least that’s my experience. Individual man — I’m not speaking of savages — is more given to generosity than meanness, rarely brutal, inclines in fact to be a gentleman. It’s when you add three or four more to him that his sense of decency, his sense of personal responsibility, his private standards, go by the board. I am not at all sure that he does not become the victim of a certain infectious fever. Something physical takes place, I fancy... I happen to be a trustee, with three others, and we do a deal of cheeseparing in the year, which as private individuals we should never dream of.”
"“That’s hardly a fair example,” said D., “but on the whole, I quite agree. Single man is not an angel, collective man is a bit of a brute.”"
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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COMPENSATION
"These “Italians” are the Chinese of the West. The conditions of life down there being impossible, they are driven out like locusts or the old inhabitants of Central Asia — a regular invasion. ... The end they have in view is to scrape together a treasure of two or three hundred pounds and go back to Italy rich men. ... "
He worked hard, eating little and spending nothing, in Ostend. The night before leaving, all his saving was stolen.
"The police did nothing — why should they? If he had been a Rothschild it would have been different, but seeing he was only a poor devil of an Italian who had lost his all — !
"Tchuk-Tchuk had sold his stall, his stock, everything he had, the day before, so he had not even the money for a ticket to Brussels. He was obliged to walk. He started — and to this day I see him starting, with his little hard hat on his beautiful black hair, and the unsewn ends of his tie. His face was like the face of the Devil thrown out of Eden!
"What became of him I cannot say, but I do not see too clearly in all this the compensation of which you have been speaking."
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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JOY OF LIFE
About a little poor girl singing and dancing on a city sidewalk for herself.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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BEL COLORE
A sketch of a moment in Italy.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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A PILGRIMAGE
About poor small children opposite Albert memorial, seen from a bus.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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THE KINGS
Contrasting pictures of two pairs mothers and babies, one on a pavement before a house, other upstairs in the house.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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APOTHEOSIS
About abominable treatment of noble creatures for cheap entertainment of humans.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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THE WORKERS
This sketch of an elderly poor seamstress has been worked by the author into one of his plays.
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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A MILLER OF DEE
A man who murdered his wife so "they couldn't take her from him"!
June 26, 2021 - June 26, 2021.
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A PARTING
Galsworthy begins by writing about autumn, and expecting paens to beauty, one is startled instead when he goes on another tack.
" ... The pale candles of life are flickering, waiting to resign, and join darkness."
Perhaps that's the major difference between England, or all of Europe, on one hand, and New England on the other - Europe bursts into beauty at spring, but New England has Beauty through the year with an ever crescending tempo, with a handful of days of a down spirit, between a blazing beauty of autumn past and a brilliant peace of snow clad landscape with its amazing silence.
Europe, caught in its Northern latitudes cycle of far more extreme roller coaster of light and dark, lacks the New England exuberance of assured beauty of seasons, only making it up in her far longer twilights.
And yet, Galsworthy rises next moment to heights of hovering to a free spirituality, escaping a firmament of an imposed faith that the bringing up in West bestows.
"On such a day the sky is the greatest comfort a man can have; for though he feels terribly that it will never part, and let his eyes peer on and on till they see the top of eternity, still it is high, free, has a semblance of immortality, and perhaps is made up of all the spirit breath that has abandoned dead leaves and the corpses of men."
Galsworthy goes on to write of a scene he witnessed in the park that reminds one, not so much of Irene and the architect of Forsyte Saga, as of James Hilton's And Now Goodbye.
The two authors were living simultaneously for a while, although not exactly contemporary in the sense of similar in age.
"The sky had changed. It was still high, but as grey as a dove’s wing; sunless, compounded of unshed tears. And a little cold, talking wind had risen, so that when a leaf fell, it fled away, turned over, fluttered, and dropped. In this wind people hurried as though it were telling them things they wished not to hear; and the numbers of little birds balancing on the bared boughs seemed very silent; one could not tell whether they were happy."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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A BEAST OF BURDEN
A journey Galsworthy shared in Europe with a Flemish WWI soldier rejoining his army.
"I tried to reassure him, but he shook his head; and after a long pause, said again: “C’est mè qui a une mère, c’est mè qui est seul à la maison. C’est elle qui n’a pas le sou.” Tell me — his eyes seemed to ask, why are these things so? Why have I a mother who depends on me alone, when I am being sent away to die?"
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE LIME TREE
"“Ah!” I thought, “when will you reveal your soul to me? Are you ‘the essential tree’ when you are cool and sweet, vaguely seductive, as now, or when you are being whirled in the arms of the wind and seem so furiously alive? When shall I see your very spirit?”"
"A lime-blossom loosened by the bees and the wind, had drifted across my lips; its scent was in my nostrils. There was nothing before me but the fields and the moor, and, close by, the lime tree. I looked at her. She seemed to me far away, coldly fair, formal in her green beflowered garb; but, for all that, I knew that, in my dream, I had seen and touched her soul."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE NEIGHBOURS
"IN the remote country, Nature, at first sight so serene, so simple, will soon intrude on her observer a strange discomfort; a feeling that some familiar spirit haunts the old lanes, rocks, wasteland, and trees, and has the power to twist all living things around into some special shape befitting its genius.
"When moonlight floods the patch of moorland about the centre of the triangle between the little towns of Hartland, Torrington, and Holsworthy, a pagan spirit steals forth through the wan gorse; gliding round the stems of the lonely, gibbet-like fir-trees, peeping out amongst the reeds of the white marsh. That spirit has the eyes of a borderer, who perceives in every man a possible foe. And in fact, this high corner of the land has remained border to this day, where the masterful, acquisitive invader from the North dwells side by side with the unstable, proud, quick-blooded Celt Iberian."
Yesterday another tale of a husband murdèring a wife because he's insecure and has an inferiority complex.
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE RUNAGATES
"That foreign thing which had come into the village, had brought with it changes as subtle as the play of light."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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A REVERSION TO TYPE
"“‘It would be interesting to know, sir,’ said the other, ‘when you’re fighting for life, what is the good of those “tickle points of niceness”?’ The Classicist looked at him: “‘You would wish, I should imagine, to “play the game,” sir?’
"“‘With my enemy’s sword through the middle of me?’"
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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A WOMAN
"One by one we slunk off the stoep, and left her, sobbing her heart out before the house."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE “CODGER”
"He must be grown up now, pursuing some path of life open to “codgers” in commerce, Church or State, and radiating that atmosphere of calm insuperable “tuskiness” peculiar to his breed."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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FOR EVER
"The knots of emigrants kept multiplying round us. There was no animation, no hurry, no eagerness, no grief. A strange long patience was on them all. ... "
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE CONSUMMATION
"Harrison went abroad, and began his sixth book. He named it “The Consummation,” and worked at it in hermit-like solitude; in it, for the first time, he satisfied himself. He wrote it, as it were, with his heart’s blood, with an almost bitter delight. And he often smiled to himself as he thought how with his first book he had so nearly hit the public taste; and how of his fourth the critic had said: “This is art. I doubt if you will ever do anything better than this.” How far away they seemed! Ah! this book was indeed the “consummation” devoutly to be wished.
"In the course of time he returned to England and took a cottage at Hampstead, and there he finished the book. The day after it was finished he took the manuscript and, going to a secluded spot on the top of the Heath, lay down on the grass to read it quietly through. He read three chapters, and, putting the remainder down, sat with his head buried in his hands.
"“Yes,” he thought, “I have done it at last. It is good, wonderfully good!” and for two hours he sat like that, with his head in his hands. He had indeed exhausted his public. It was too good — he could not read it himself!
"Returning to his cottage, he placed the manuscript in a drawer. He never wrote another word."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE CHOICE
About a sweeper who'd been forced out of his plumbing trade due to age, poverty and ill health, but chose to keep working until forced into infirmary.
"The death of the dog, and the cold damp autumn that year, told heavily on the old man, but it was not till mid-November that he was noted one morning absent from his post. ... "
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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THE JAPANESE QUINCE
Typical English behaviour between neighbours not previously introduced?
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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ONCE MORE
"Two days before, her husband had left her, saying that he was not coming back, but this had not dismayed her, for with the strange wisdom of those who begin to suffer young, she had long ago measured her chances with and without him. She made more than he did in their profession of flower-selling, because sometimes a “toff” gave her a fancy price, touched perhaps by the sight of her tired, pretty face, and young figure bent sideways by the weight of her baby. ... "
Familiar from another little sketch by the author - that one, comparing the two pairs of mothers and babies - this is a slightly extensive version of the flower woman's travails.
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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DELIGHT
"I looked at my friend; he was trying stealthily to remove something from his eyes with a finger. And to myself the stage seemed very misty, and all things in the world lovable; as though that dancing fairy had touched them with tender fire, and made them golden.
"God knows where she got that power of bringing joy to our dry hearts: God knows how long she will keep it! But that little flying Love had in her the quality that lies in deep colour, in music, in the wind, and the sun, and in certain great works of art — the power to set the heart free from every barrier, and flood it with delight."
June 27, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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June 25, 2021 - June 27, 2021.
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