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FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Stories)
(The Forsyte Chronicles);
by John Galsworthy.
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Quoted from Foreword, by Ada Galsworthy, published 1935:-
"Danaë, the first item, formed originally the opening of the novel
that is now known as The Country House. In it we meet many who, later
on, become our intimate acquaintances: Here are Forsytes — old Jolyon,
young Jolyon, James, George; here are Mr. Horace Pendyce and Gregory
Vigil from The Country House ... "
"‘The Doldrums,’ lifted bodily from the volume From the Four Winds
(which is no longer accessible to the general reader), may have a
special interest, it is felt, not from its value as a piece of writing
— its date — 1896 — should perhaps disarm criticism on that score — as
from the fact that it gives true and striking portraits of Conrad (at
that time first mate of The Torrens, a sailing ship of the English
Merchant Service), and of the narrator, Galsworthy, a young barrister
studying Navigation with a view to its application to intricate cases
at the Admiralty Bar, a branch of the legal profession towards which
he was at that time so ingenuously headed. Neither of the two men had
then any intention of taking Literature as a profession (though Conrad
had a rough and unrevised MS. with him, which in due course was shaped
into Almayer’s Folly). The subject of ‘The Doldrums,’ it may be noted,
was enacted under their eyes, the opium-ridden doctor dying on that
voyage and being buried at sea."
Also interesting, and hence quoted, the following, by
author:-
"CAVEAT
"IT has become the fashion for authors to preface their books with
the words: ‘None of the characters in the novel are drawn from life.’
They might with advantage enter a more important caveat: ‘The Author
should not be identified with the views expressed by any of his
characters.’
"J.G."
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CONTENTS
Danaë
Water
A Patriot
Told by the Schoolmaster
The Smile
The Black Coat
The Mummy
The Gibbet
Memorable Moments
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Danaë
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A sense of dejavu comes slightly after the overwhelming nostalgic feeling of meeting characters familiar from Forsyte Chronicles and other Galsworthy works - dejavu because, if one has read his plays, the opening scene here is familiar from his Strife. He wrote the play by changing names, to create fresh characters, one imagines. One is happier instead, getting more of world of Forsytes and others.
Here, too, there are characters too complex to carry to the play, and so Strife has the daughter married to the Secretary who in turn is a simpler, good, person.
And this piece, amazingly, has some of his finest writing, in terms of character sketching and much more; amazingly, because he didn't see it fit to work it out and publish it in his lifetime! Or did he intend this, but was surprised his time ended suddenly?
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Is there a discrepancy here, perhaps due to author forgetting he wrote this, or - more likely - this collection being left unpublished by him intentionally, as raw, merely not destroyed?
"She had been born on Valentine’s Day, with a little cloud of golden fluff on her head; and Anthony, with whom the birth synchronised with a piece of commercial good fortune, in vague recollections of Ovid, suggested the name of Danaë. And in gratitude for recollection of their existence in forgetful days, the Pagan gods had visited Danaë in some sort.
"It is to her first lover, George’s cousin, young Jolyon Forsyte — the only, and now-reinstated son of old Jolyon Forsyte — that we owe the recognition of this fact. The painter (his medium was watercolour) who now lived with his father, his second wife, and their two children in the house at Robin Hill, met his old flame again, for the first time twenty years after the rupture of their engagement."
Wasn't the second Mrs young Jolyon already dead before the family joined old Jolyon at Robin Hill, the estate planned by Soames for Irene , his first wife?
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"But young Jolyon had effected a permanent cure — he returned not to his first love; Danaë at sixteen and Danaë at thirty-six were not the same; the dew had dried off the petals of the rose, and it was the dew that had brought him fluttering to drink. He had inherited philosophy, had acquired the ironical eye. She was nothing now to him but a specimen of horticulture. The rose was full-blown; the lines too rounded, the perfume too intoxicating; nor did the love experiences of his life tend to encourage experiment. Yet like a connoisseur, inhaling the cigar of his own past, he came often to spend an hour in her society, praising Fortune gently that she had jilted him, and from her little daughter Thyme catching strange hints of the Danaë of his youth. The Danaë of his youth, before Vigil had known her, or Jaspar Bellew, or his cousin George! The girl with the unimaginably quick, gay eyes, and clear voice, insatiable by dance, song, or laughter, insatiable of the gaze of men; insatiable of life, as life itself. At fifteen she had plucked the hearts out of men by the score, not cruelly, but all in the day’s work; had wished them all well when she did so, and would have rewarded them, no doubt, had it but been practicable. He remembered begging to be allowed to pay her little bills, remembered her gay refusal; and how, when by sheepish devices he managed to pay them after all, she had only threatened him with her finger and laughed again. The girl who, a fortnight after telling him in secrecy that she would be his wife, went out riding for a whole day with another man, and to his reproaches, returned the answer: “I said — some day, Jo. Don’t you want me to enjoy myself?”
"And, seeming to find that he did not, he had broken away with heart badly torn; besides himself, she was engaged at that time to one other man at least."
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"To a man like Gregory Vigil, however, Danaë Bellew was as clear as the colour of her hair. She incarnated for him all that was adorable in woman, the more so that it had become a superstition with him that she was his good angel, keeping him from himself, and that he was hers, performing for her the same function. In his relations with her he kept this ever in view. It is doubtful in fact whether he could safely have had relations with a woman without the aid of this superstition. He had never married, because of her; it would have seemed to him a sacrilege....
"And now that he was alone with her in this drawing-room, scented with the perfume of those lilies given by another man, he walked up and down like some caged animal, with his long, soft stride and his eyes sometimes far off, sometimes fixed upon her lustrously.
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" ... Asleep or awake, Anthony produced in his grandson a state of inaction. And, ambushed from habit behind an armchair, he watched those slumbers, as in some old picture a young Faun watches Silenus asleep, red-faced and silver-haired, from behind a tree. Nor was the background unlike that of Pagan mythology, for Anthony had brought to this somewhat temporary perch much old English furniture, the relics of Squire Baldwin Thornworthy’s ancestral mansion ‘up to Bovey’; and with the old English furniture something of the atmosphere which belonged to the hard-riding, port-drinking, free-loving days of the Squire, when the country was orthodox and Christian to a man, in the loyal belief that the British temperament was the ideal, original soil for Christian seed, and good hard hitting in Commerce, camp, and Church, the first teaching of Christ. Comparatively few were left now, and those nearly all on the Stock Exchange, who, like Anthony — orthodox Churchmen — disputing nothing, passed the purely Pagan lives of that older and more Christian epoch. Comparatively few, now that the country laboured in the early — and as yet unconscious — throes of an attempt to disgorge a religion which had never suited it, but lain undigested, contributing little if any nourishment to the system, and against whose fundamental flavour every fibre of the national stomach had ever revolted."
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"Through his sensations he divined the essence of Vigil’s nature, perceived that he was mysteriously, tragically bound from birth to death to see that others did and thought like himself.
"And, looking at Danaë, quite a shiver of pity went through young Jolyon, for a man whom he really liked, but could not sit in the same room with. A quaint piece of irony, it seemed, that Vigil should have fixed his affections on this woman, of all others! And he looked at her with interest, with a faint aversion, as a man might look at a jewel full of soft light, that nothing can scratch or change.
"It would have pleased him to paint her thus, glowing with colour, a smile on her lips. To an artist (though his medium was water-colour and Danaë’s personality demanded oils) she could not fail to be interesting, a piece of Nature’s prodigality; and now that the turn of the wheel had removed from young Jolyon the necessity of making money by his pictures, he found a ready market for them, and his devotion to the pursuit had increased by leaps and bounds."
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"“Do you really imagine, Sol, that we who never sit down under an affront, whose chief boast is that we can make our own and keep our own, and give as good as we get; whose clergy are the first to insist on the punishment of offenders, and on the conformity of all the world to this point of view — do you imagine we can seriously be considered Christians? No, my boy, we are peculiarly in the spiritual condition of the society at whom Christ preached, and if he appeared again amongst us we should crucify him, with of course those modern refinements that have resulted, not from his teaching, but from scientific inventions and discoveries. I ask you, who is more unpopular at the present day than the ‘peace at any price’ — never-say-a-word-for-himself — man? We’re not Christians a bit; we’re humbugs; and only humbugs in words. At heart we’re more Pagan than any other people but the Americans.”"
"“I don’t altogether agree with you, Jo,” he said; “I’m always astonished at the number of people who are prepared to sacrifice everything to their convictions. What do you say to that?”
"“Three things. First, the proportionate number is not large. Second, it is not so much an evidence of Christianity as of fanaticism, which of course is part but not the whole of Christianity. Third. It’s almost always coupled with the desire to force those sacrifices and convictions on other people.”"
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So true of most leftists, equality spouting idealists, altruists, missionary zealots, .... -
"“Is he a humbug?”
"“Not at all. He doesn’t mean what he says, but that’s not his fault.”
"“How?”
"“He talks about men being equal. It’s the outward sign of the ideal he believes that he believes in; what he really believes in is Sim Harnutt, which is of course as much as to say that he doesn’t believe in other men; in other words, that other men are not his equal. Besides, he has an obvious contempt for University creatures and capitalists like us.”"
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July 10, 2021 - July 12, 2021.
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Water
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A businessman in London has a visitor who's found a huge underground river in Australian desert.
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" ... Fellows with their noses slightly on one side, and blue eyes upturned and shining, were anathema to Henry Cursitor — their optimism had no sense of the immediate, which experience had told him was the only real obstacle to progress, including his own. If he had an enemy, it was the tightness of money. Considering that money must know by now that it would ultimately be found it was absurdly, heart-breakingly close and evasive. It seemed to enjoy playing with the hearts, nay the lives, of those whose only wish was to water the soil of business, promote the steady flow of industry. Since, a quarter of a century ago, his father’s permanganate of potash Works had offered Henry Cursitor, briefless barrister, a seat on the Board, he had clung to Direction, going down on ship after ship, simply owing to the tightness of money. It seemed to have a grudge against him for having so often got the better of it, for having raised it here and there, seen it earn stirring dividends, then slowly slip into the deep, raised it again, and set out on a fresh ship."
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" ... Cursitor coldly studied his appearance. He seemed to be about forty, and had on a blue suit, of a shade which suggested the Colonies, over a shirt of a deeper blue, with its own collar, which still more suggested the Colonies. ... "
" ... The fellow might be cracked, or again he might not, for he certainly had the look of the bush — the peculiar, half-vacant intensity of great dangerous spaces, and supreme loneliness. ... "
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" ... And then a doubt — a swift doubt. Had the fellow ever struck that rift at all, ever brought his line up, ever dropped it into any rich underground river? Was not that all a pipe-dream too, so strong and seizing that it had destroyed perception of reality? Gazing intently at that yellow ecstatic face Cursitor thought: ‘I shall never know for certain — never know whether I haven’t been utterly spoofed by a man who didn’t know that he was spoofing.’ The thought was too wounding. Bad enough to be spoofed by a sandstorm, to have had for nothing this laborious, perilous experience, of which he would never be able to speak, for fear of being taken for a fool! ... "
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"Leaning over the taffrail of the S.S. Orinoco three months later, Cursitor watched Vesuvius growing small. He had not raised a penny. The “Rangoon W.W.W.T.” had made no appeal to Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, and in the light of the Mediterranean sunset there seemed nothing in front of him.
"“Yes, sir,” said a voice behind him, “as I was saying last night, that Basque region simply stinks of copper. If I could raise the money to unwater a mine I know of not a hundred miles from Bilbao, I could make my fortune. There’s copper there, running up to seventeen and more per cent, and easily worked.
"” Oh!” said Cursitor: “How did it get flooded?” They got off at Gibraltar."
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July 12, 2021 - July 12, 2021.
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A Patriot
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About a German spy in England caught during WWI.
Hilarious!
And, simultaneously, opposite in many diverse ways.
Imagine an opalescent work of art, changing colours as one looks.
This story is this author's that impossible work, with myriad colours of an opal, seen simultaneously.
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July 12, 2021 - July 12, 2021.
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Told by the Schoolmaster
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About a young couple, not yet of age as WWI came.
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"ALL the rest of that night, after Mrs. Roofe had got Betty back into the cottage, I sat up writing in duplicate the facts about Jim Beckett. I sent one copy to his regimental headquarters, the other to the chaplain of his regiment in France. I sent fresh copies two days later with duplicates of his birth certificates to make quite sure. It was all I could do. Then came a fortnight of waiting for news. Betty was still distracted. The thought that, through her anxiety, she herself had delivered him into their hands nearly sent her off her head. Probably her baby alone kept her from insanity, or suicide. And all that time the battle of the Somme raged and hundreds of thousands of women in England and France and Germany were in daily terror for their menfolk. Yet none, I think, could have had quite the feeling of that child. Her mother, poor woman, would come over to me at the schoolhouse and ask if I had heard anything.
"“Better for the poor girl to know the worst,” she said, “if it is the worst. The anxiety’s killin’ ‘er.”
"But I had no news and could not get any at headquarters. The thing was being dealt with in France. Never was the scale and pitch of the world’s horror more brought home to me. This deadly little tragedy was as nothing — just a fragment of straw whirling round in that terrible wind.
"And then one day I did get news — a letter from the chaplain — and seeing what it was I stuck it in my pocket and sneaked down to the river — literally afraid to open it till I was alone. Crouched up there, with my back to a haystack, I took it out with trembling fingers.
"“DEAR SIR, “The boy Jim Beckett was shot to-day at dawn. I am distressed at having to tell you and the poor child his wife. War is a cruel thing indeed.”
"I had known it. Poor Jim! Poor Betty! Poor, poor Betty! I read on:
"“I did all I could; the facts you sent were put before the Court Martial and the point of his age considered. But all leave had been stopped; his request had been definitely refused; the regiment was actually in the line, with fighting going on — and the situation extremely critical in that sector. Private considerations count for nothing in such circumstances — the rule is adamant. Perhaps it has to be — I cannot say. But I have been greatly distressed by the whole thing, and the Court itself was much moved. The poor boy seemed dazed; he wouldn’t talk; didn’t seem to take in anything; indeed, they tell me that all he said after the verdict, certainly all I heard him say was: ‘My poor wife! My poor wife!’ over and over again. He stood up well at the end.”"
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July 12, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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The Smile
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About a judge, pursued and shaken by a smile of contempt.
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" ... At that distance, the smile, endowed as if with enchantment, had been more irritating, baffling, damnably quizzing than ever. It was such contempt of Court as he had never known; yet what could he do? He was exposed to her impudence whenever he sat in public, so long as she might wish. It was absurd! And yet — there was something behind — some cursed meaning that he could not reach. Had he said anything foolish in his judgment yesterday? He took up the report a second time. No! Nothing but what he would say again this minute; he agreed with every word of it! Well, if he couldn’t commit her for contempt of Court, he must ignore her."
"The woman missed no single one of the ten days that followed; for two to three hours, morning or afternoon, she sat in his Court and smiled whenever he gave her a chance; and that was often, for when a rider has a weak spot, out of sheer nervousness he always falls on it."
Easter vacation in Brighton, she was there.
"He was awakened by voices. Two women were talking somewhere close to him.
"“And he doesn’t know me from Eve — isn’t it priceless! My dear, I’ve had the time of my life. From the moment he said that Kathleen shouldn’t have the child, sneered at her, wouldn’t have it that Charles pursued her, I made up my mind to get back on him. He — he — of all men! Why, do you know that twenty-seven years ago, in my first marriage, when I was twenty-three, slim and pretty as an angel — my dear, I was, though you mightn’t think it — he — he — a barrister he was then, and quite a buck — made violent love to me; even wanted me to go off with him. And I should have, my dear, if it hadn’t been that Kathleen was on the way! He — he! He’s clean forgotten that he ever was flesh and blood! And now! Oh, my God! What a humbug! What a humbug, in his precious wig! Hallo!”"
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July 13, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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The Black Coat
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About the destitution of an old general émigré, living and working in Europe.
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"THE old general, émigré, and member of the old-time Russian nobility, who had commanded a division in the Great War, sat on a crazy chair before a feeble fire in his garret in the heart of Europe. ... "
"It was the General’s custom to light a fire on Sunday evenings, when it was at all financially possible; ... smoking what of tobacco he had brought away with him, and thinking of the past. The present he never thought of at such times; it did not bear the process, for his present, day by day, consisted in walking before a dustman’s cart, ringing a bell to announce its coming to the inhabitants of the street; and for this he received so little that he was compelled also, to keep soul within body, to wash omnibuses in a garage near by. These avocations provided him with the rent of his garret and two meals a day; and while engaged in them he wore dingy overalls which had once been blue, and took his two meals at a workmen’s café. On Sundays he stayed in bed till evening, when he would rise, wash and shave himself with slow and meticulous care; then, donning his old black coat and carefully creased trousers, would go forth and walk the two miles to the flat of his friends, where he was sure of a meal and a little wine or vodka, and could talk of the old Russia.
"This is what he had been doing for fifty-two weeks in the year during the past five years, and what he counted on doing for the rest of his natural life. How he gained his living was perfectly well known to his friends, but since it was never spoken of by him, none of them would have considered it decent to mention it. Indeed, on those Sunday evenings there was a tacit agreement not to speak of one’s misfortunes. Old Russia, politics, and the spirit of man held the field, together with such other topics as were suitable to a black coat. And not infrequently there would rise, above the ground bass droning through the lives of émigrés, the gallantry of laughter."
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" ... He had finished and was ready to go forth, when he remembered his black coat. One must fold and put it away with the camphor and dried lavender in the old trunk. He took it hastily from the back of the crazy chair, and his heart stood still. What was this? A great piece of it in the middle of the back, just where the tails were set on, crumbled in his hands — scorched — scorched to tinder! The wreck dangled in his grip like a corpse from a gibbet. Great God! His coat — his old black coat! Ruined past repair. He stood there quite motionless. It meant — what did it mean? And suddenly, down the leathery yellow of his cheeks, two tears rolled slowly. His old coat; his one coat! In all the weeks of all these years he had never been able to buy a garment, never been able to put by a single stiver. And, dropping the ruined coat, as one might drop the hand of a friend who has played one a dirty trick, he staggered from the room and down the stairs. The smell — that bitter smell! The smell of scorching gone stale! ... "
" ... Sunday came. He did not get up at all, but turned his face to the wall instead. He tried his best, but the past would not come to him. It needed the better food, the warming of the little wine, the talk, the scent of tobacco, the sight of friendly faces. And holding his grey head tight in his hands, he ground his teeth. For only then he realised that he was no longer alive; that all his soul had been in those few Sunday evening hours, when, within the shelter of his black coat, he refuged in the past. Another, and another week! His friends were all so poor. A soldier of old Russia — a general — well-born — he made no sign to them; he could not beg and he did not complain. But he had ceased to live, and he knew it, having no longer any past to live for. ... "
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"The rest is a paragraph from a journal:
"“The body of an old grey-haired man was taken from the river this morning. The indications point to suicide, and the cast of features would suggest that another Russian émigré has taken Fate into his own hands. The body was clothed in trousers, shirt and waistcoat of worn but decent quality; it had no coat.”"
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July 13, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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The Mummy
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About a confirmed lifelong bachelor who'd preferred sport to effort, enlisting to marriage, and finally brought to destitution due to having never earned, having no inheritance.
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July 13, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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The Gibbet
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"And I remembered with a shudder how those young men had looked at me as I passed, and suddenly it came to me: I was watching the execution of MY generation. There it swung, gibbeted by the youths and maidens whom, through its evil courses, it had murdered. And seized with panic I ran forward up the street straight through the fabric of my dream, that swayed and rustled to left and right of me."
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July 13, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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Memorable Moments
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Enchanting memories of a boyhood.
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July 13, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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July 10, 2021 - July 13, 2021.
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