Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG: Complete Works of John Galsworthy

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Complete Works of John Galsworthy

- Delphi Classics,

by John Galsworthy. .

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One must say, one is disappointed that the claim of the title is incorrect- at least one work, the play titled Escape, is missing here; it's doubly disappointing, because one expects Delphi to be complete when Delphi claims so.

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I began reading Galsworthy in February 2004, shortly after coming across A televised version of The Forsyte Saga, and was amazed at the discovery - the subtle palette, the lack of injustice to the characters that caused grief to others but weren't malicious or vicious, only human with some less than lofty, wide character or nature. The way he portrayed the whole clan, each individual separate and yet fitting into the whole, most of them.

And of course, the vision of beauty glimpsed fleetingly, yet remaining like a fragrance throughout - the beautiful irene with her spirit, the love between her and the architect who designed the estate bought by her husband - which was freely borrowed by Ayn Rand for her Fountainhead and spliced with words of Frank Lloyd Wright, his philosophy of architecture and his descriptions of his work - it was all enchanting.

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All the more shocking, then, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level that clearly led to Nazi, not only philosophy, but conctprete design to enslave the world, where he says, in Another Sheaf:-

" ... A certain school of thought insists that this tremendous taxation after the war, and the consequent impoverishment of enterprise and industry, can be avoided, or at all events greatly relieved, by national schemes for the development of the Empire’s latent resources; in other words, that the State should even borrow more money to avoid high taxation and pay the interests on existing loans, should acquire native lands, and swiftly develop mineral rights and other potentialities. ... "

The only difference being - true to their history of crusades - German mind began with, not other continents, but Europe, as the object of conquest, invasions and enslaving; and German efficiency achieved in a short time with explicit brutality what other colonial powers had done in their empires oversees hidden from eyes of public in Europe and pushed successfully under the rug, justified with holding the rest of the world as subhuman, which was in turn justified by glorification of pale colours of physical Europe that was merely result of centuries, millennia of life lived in dark mist of the time.

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Shocking, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level ... unexpected, to say the least!

And then one comes across his little piece, THE NATURE OF GOD, and one marvels he didn't realise his soul and mind were so close to, so much a part of, India!

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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

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

was begun after I finished Forsyte Chronicles.

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The review below follows, first, the order of contents of The Complete Works of John Galsworthy published by the Library of Alexandria, after giving reviews of books from in Forsyte Chronicles -- which cover most of the Forsyte tales - and including reviews of books from other remaining Forsyte tales as per timeline.

Remaining reviews, of contents from this book, the Delphi Classics edition, mostly follow the order of contents of this book, the Delphi Classics edition.

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The contents of the Delphi Classics edition are as given first below, copied from the book, the Delphi Classics edition. Contents list, as given on Goodreads for this edition, is incorrect .

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Contents (from book)

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The Forsyte Books

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First Saga: The Forsyte Saga

THE MAN OF PROPERTY

INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

IN CHANCERY

AWAKENING

TO LET

Second Saga: The Modern Comedy

THE WHITE MONKEY

A SILENT WOOING

THE SILVER SPOON

PASSERS BY

SWAN SONG

Third Saga: End of the Chapter

MAID IN WAITING

FLOWERING WILDERNESS

OVER THE RIVER

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Short Story Collections

ON FORSYTE ’CHANGE

FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS

A Novella

SALVATION OF A FORSYTE

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The Novels

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JOCELYN

VILLA RUBEIN

THE ISLAND PHARISEES

THE MAN OF PROPERTY

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

FRATERNITY

THE PATRICIAN

THE DARK FLOWER

THE FREELANDS

BEYOND

INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

SAINTS PROGRESS

THE BURNING SPEAR

TATTERDEMALION

IN CHANCERY

AWAKENING

TO LET

THE WHITE MONKEY

THE SILVER SPOON

SWAN SONG

MAID IN WAITING

FLOWERING WILDERNESS

OVER THE RIVER

The Novellas

A MAN OF DEVON

A KNIGHT

SALVATION OF A FORSYTE

THE SILENCE

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The Short Story Collections

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FROM THE FOUR WINDS A COMMENTARY A MOTLEY

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY

MEMORIES

THE LITTLE MAN AND OTHER SATIRES

FIVE TALES

CAPTURES

ON FORSYTE ’CHANGE

FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Stories)

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The Short Stories

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LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

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The Plays

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INTRODUCTION TO GALSWORTHY'S PLAYS by Leon Schalit

INDEX OF PLAYS

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The Poetry Collections

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EARLY POEMS

DEVON AND OTHER SONGS FOR MUSIC

IN TIME OF WAR

FOR LOVE OF BEASTS

THE ENDLESS DREAM

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The Poems

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LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

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The Non-Fiction

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A SHEAF

AOTHER SHEAF

ADDRESSES IN AMERICA

CASTLES IN SPAIN

STUDIES AND ESSAYS THE CREATION OF CHARACTER IN LITERATURE

FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Essays)

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS

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The Essays

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LIST OF ESSAYS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF ESSAYS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

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The Criticism

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JOHN GALSWORTHY: AN APPRECIATION by Peter Thomason

JOHN GALSWORTHY by Joseph Conrad

A GLANCE AT TWO BOOKS by Joseph Conrad

GALSWORTHY: A SURVEY by Leon Schalit

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Order of Reviews

Contents from Library Of Alexandria edition

Remaining contents from Delphi Classics edition

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Forsyte Chronicles:- Forsyte Books

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The Forsyte Saga

The Man of Property

Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte

In Chancery

Interlude: Awakening

To Let

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On Forsyte Change

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A Modern Comedy

The White Monkey

Interlude: A Silent Wooing

The Silver Spoon

Interlude: Passers By

Swan Song

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End of the Chapter

Maid In Waiting

Flowering Wilderness

Over the River

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Novels

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The Dark Flower

The Freelands

Beyond

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Villa Rubein And Other Stories

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Villa Rubein

My Father Man of Devon

A Knight For My Mother

To My Brother Hubert Galsworthy

Salvation of a Forsyte

To My Sister Mabel Edith Reynolds

The Silence

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Saint's Progress

The Island Pharisees

The Country House

Fraternity

The Patrician

The Burning Spear

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Five Short Tales

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The First and Last

A Stoic

The Apple Tree

The Juryman

Indian Summer of a Forsyte

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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

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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:

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First Series:

The Silver Box

Joy

Strife

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Second Series:

The Eldest Son

The Little Dream

Justice

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Third Series:

The Fugitive

The Pigeon

The Mob

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Fourth Series:

A Bit O' Love

The Foundations

The Skin Game

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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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Fifth Series:

A Family Man

Loyalties

Windows

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Further Contents

from

Delphi Classics edition

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Novels

Jocelyn

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The Short Story Collections

FROM THE FOUR WINDS

A COMMENTARY A MOTLEY

CAPTURES

FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Stories)

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The Non-Fiction

TATTERDEMALION

A SHEAF

ANOTHER SHEAF

ADDRESSES IN AMERICA

CASTLES IN SPAIN

STUDIES AND ESSAYS

THE CREATION OF CHARACTER IN LITERATURE

FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Essays)

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS

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The Poetry Collections

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Collections

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EARLY POEMS

DEVON AND OTHER SONGS FOR MUSIC

IN TIME OF WAR

FOR LOVE OF BEASTS

THE ENDLESS DREAM

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Reviews

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Reviews

- (in order, from) -

Library of Alexandra edition

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Forsyte Chronicles

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150888324

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4142113581

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538349405

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150892151

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538299399

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150894162

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150895110

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150895789

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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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February 2004 - February 05 2016,

Purchased May 06, 2013.

Kindle Edition, Public Domain, 609 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1921)

Original Title The Forsyte Saga

ASIN:- B0084AHD30

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On Forsyte Change

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150896877

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538533564

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150912336

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150914782

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538299578

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150914782

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150924417

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538458688

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538470821

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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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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538435483

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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

( U.S. edition titled "One More River")

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538475014

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In Over The River ( U.S. edition titled 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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Wednesday, August 28, 2013.

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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 Forsyte Chronicles

by John Galsworthy

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February 2004 - August 28, 2013.

Purchased August 12, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 418 pages

Published December 14th 2011

ASIN:- B006MHXRBO

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February 2004 - August 28, 2013.

Purchased August 12, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 2650 pages

Published August 29th 2010

by Di Lernia Publishers

ASIN:- B0041D89VO

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Novels

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The Dark Flower

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150935021

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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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Sunday, October 20, 2013.

Monday, October 21, 2013.

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 487 pages

Published May 17th 2012

ASIN:- B0084AKILY

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The Freelands

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150938324

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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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Monday, November 4, 2013.

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle edition, 152 pages

Published May 17, 2012.

ASIN :- B0084A7CFE

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Kindle Edition, 358 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1915)

Original Title The Freelands

ASIN:- B0084A7CFE

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Beyond

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150944458

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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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Monday, November 11, 2013.

Purchased June14, 2013

Kindle Edition, 173 pages

Published May 17th 2012

ASIN:- B0084A6VFG

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Villa Rubein, And Other Stories

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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Villa Rubein:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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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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Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 261 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1900)

Original Title Villa Rubein

ASIN:- B0084A891U

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My Father Man of Devon:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150952272

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Villa Rubein, And Other Stories

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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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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Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 261 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1900)

Original Title Villa Rubein

ASIN:- B0084A891U

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A Knight For My Mother:-

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150955306

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Villa Rubein, And Other Stories

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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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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Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 261 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1900)

Original Title Villa Rubein

ASIN:- B0084A891U

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To My Brother Hubert Galsworthy

Salvation of a Forsyte:-

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150906248

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

Villa Rubein, And Other Stories

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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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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Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 261 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1900)

Original Title Villa Rubein

ASIN:- B0084A891U

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To My Sister Mabel Edith Reynolds

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The Silence

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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

Villa Rubein, And Other Stories

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538485466

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

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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Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 261 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1900)

Original Title Villa Rubein

ASIN:- B0084A891U

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Saint's Progress

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150961212

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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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Thursday, May 1, 2014.

Saint's Progress

by John Galsworthy

Purchased August 12, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 193 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1919)

ASIN:- B0084A7V50

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The Island Pharisees

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150961853

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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.

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

The Island Pharisees by John Galsworthy

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

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

Thursday, May 1, 2014.

Purchased July 12, 2021

Kindle Edition, 421 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1904)

Original TitleThe Island Pharisees

ASIN:- B0084AZ1HA

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

The Country House:-

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150963601

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

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

Thursday, October 17, 2013.

Monday, October 21, 2013.

Thursday, May 1, 2014.

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 252 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1907)

Original Title The Country House

ASIN:- B0084AZ1A2

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

Fraternity

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150965459

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

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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Monday, March 23, 2015

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 148 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1909)

Original Title Fraternity

ASIN:- B0084AZ4Q8

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

The Patrician

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1538478278

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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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Friday, September 18, 2015.

Purchased June 14, 2013

Kindle Edition, 250 pages

Published May 17th 2012 (first published 1911)

Original TitleThe Patrician

ASIN:- B0084AYYWI

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

The Burning Spear

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2150858380

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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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October 12, 2017

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 129 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1919)

Original Title

The Burning Spear:

Being the Experiences

of Mr. John Lavender

in Time of War

ASIN:- B0084B3FS6

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

Five Short Tales

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

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

The First and Last:-

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Apple Tree:-

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

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

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

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:-

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

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

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Wednesday, September 30, 2015.

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February 2004 - May 30, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 186 pages

Published May 17th 2012

ASIN:- B0084A7V5U

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

Studies and Essays, Complete

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

The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy

by John Galsworthy

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4153998470

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

Studies and Essays, Complete

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

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

Studies and Essays, Complete by John Galsworthy

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4054353441

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CONTENTS

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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

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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

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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

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CENSORSHIP AND ART

ABOUT CENSORSHIP

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

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Inn of Tranquillity

by John Galsworthy

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4031741373

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STUDIES AND ESSAYS By John Galsworthy

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."

—ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LIFE

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Studies and Essays: The Inn of Tranquility, and Others

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

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

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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

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THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY

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.

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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MAGPIE OVER THE HILL

by John Galsworthy.

"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."

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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SHEEP-SHEARING by John Galsworthy.

The protagonist muses over universe after watching sheep being sheared.

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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EVOLUTION

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.

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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RIDING IN MIST

by John Galsworthy.

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

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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THE PROCESSION

by John Galsworthy.

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

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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A CHRISTIAN

by John Galsworthy.

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

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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WIND IN THE ROCKS

by John Galsworthy.

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

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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MY DISTANT RELATIVE

by John Galsworthy.

An upper class man who argues against dole.

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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THE BLACK GODMOTHER

by John Galsworthy.

About the dreadful way stray dogs are treated.

May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

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May 31, 2021 - May 31, 2021.

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 56 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1931)

Original Title

The Inn Of Tranquility, Verses New & Old

ASIN:- B0084B3EU0

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

CONCERNING LIFE, Part 2.

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QUALITY

THE GRAND JURY—IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME

GONE

THRESHING

THAT OLD-TIME PLACE

ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS

MEMORIES

FELICITY

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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."

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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

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

FELICITY by John Galsworthy.

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

A feast of nature's beauty description from Galsworthy.

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 44 pages

Published May 12th 2012

(first published September 24th 2004)

Original Title:-

Studies and Essays: Quality and Others

ASIN:- B0082ZK18Q

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY

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

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

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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

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

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

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

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

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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

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

MEDITATION ON FINALITY

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

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

"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."

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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

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

WANTED-SCHOOLING

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

"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. ,,, "

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 02, 2021.

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

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

REFLECTIONS ON OUR DISLIKE OF THINGS AS THEY ARE

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

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."

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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

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

THE WINDLESTRAW

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

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

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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

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

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

June 02, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 38 pages

Published May 16th 2012

ASIN:- B0083ZE1QS

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

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

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

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

ABOUT CENSORSHIP

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

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.

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

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

June 03, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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

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

VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

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

Galsworthy discusses question of What is Art.

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

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

June 03, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

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

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

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

June 03, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 48 pages

Published May 16th 2012

(first published October 1st 2008)

Original Title

Censorship and Art

ISBN:- 1419112449 (ISBN13: 9781419112447)

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

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

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

May 31, 2021 - June 03, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 012.

The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy

by John Galsworthy

Kindle Edition, 151 pages

Published May 17th 2012

by Public Domain

ASIN:- B0084ADN91

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

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

THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY

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

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

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

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

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

Reviews

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

First Series:

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

The Silver Box

Joy

Strife

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

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

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

PLAYS - FIRST SERIES:

THE SILVER BOX

JOY

STRIFE

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

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.

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

THE SILVER BOX

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

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

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

The Silver Box,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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!"

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

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.]"

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

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

June 03, 2021 - June 04, 2021.

Purchased June 14, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 121 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1911)

ASIN:- B0084B3H16

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

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

JOY

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

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

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

Joy,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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.

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

"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."

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

"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!"

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

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

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

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

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

STRIFE

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

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

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

Strife, by John Galsworthy.

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

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.

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

"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."

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

"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!"

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

"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."

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

"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

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

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

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

May 24, 2021 - June 04, 2021.

(June 03, 2021 - June 04, 2021.

June 04, 2021 - June 04, 2021.

May 24, 2021 - May 26, 2021.)

Purchased June 08, 2021

Kindle edition, 258 pages

Published March 24, 2011.

(first published 2000)

Original Title

Plays Of John Galsworthy:

The Silver Box / Joy / Strife

ASIN:- B004TOYSZQ

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

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

Plays: Second Series:

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

The Eldest Son

The Little Dream

Justice

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

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

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

The Eldest Son, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Little Dream,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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? ... "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Third Series:

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

The Fugitive

The Pigeon

The Mob

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

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

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

Plays: Third Series:

The Fugitive

The Pigeon

The Mob

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

The Fugitive,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

The Pigeon,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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

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

"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.]"

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

"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."

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

"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

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

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

The Mob,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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!

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

"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."

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

"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?"

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

"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?"

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

"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!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fourth Series:

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

A Bit O' Love

The Foundations

The Skin Game

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

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

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

Plays: Fourth Series:

A Bit O' Love,

the Foundations,

the Skin Game;

by John Galsworthy.

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

Fourth Series:

A Bit O' Love

The Foundations

The Skin Game

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

A Bit O' Love,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

June 09, 2021 - June 10, 2021.

Purchased June 08, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 71 pages

Published May 17th 2012

(first published 1894)

ASIN:- B0084B3Y3W

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

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

The Foundations, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

THE FOUNDATIONS (AN EXTRAVAGANT PLAY)

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Skin Game, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six Short Plays:

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

The First and The Last

The Little Man

Hall-marked

Defeat

The Sun

Punch and Go

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

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

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

Six Short Plays, by John Galsworthy.

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

Six Short Plays:

The First and The Last

The Little Man

Hall-marked

Defeat

The Sun

Punch and Go

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

The First and the Last,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Little Man, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Hall Marked,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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!

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

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

June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021.

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

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

Defeat,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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!"]"

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

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

June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021.

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

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

The Sun,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021.

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

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

Punch and Go: A Little Comedy

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Fifth Series:

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

A Family Man

Loyalties

Windows

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

Plays : Fifth Series, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

PLAYS - FIFTH SERIES:

Fifth Series:

A Family Man

Loyalties

Windows

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

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.

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

A Family Man : in three acts,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loyalties,

by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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.

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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

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

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

Windows, by John Galsworthy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fifth Series

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

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

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

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

Complete Plays of John Galsworthy

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

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

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

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

Reviews

- (remainder, from) -

Delphi Classics edition

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

Jocelyn

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

At the very outset it reminds one of Beware Of Pity, and one wonders if Stefan Zweig was influenced by Galsworthy, or were both acquainted with a couple in real life that moved them to write. But then again, there is an air of similarity with some other works of other authors, too. The very famous D. H. Lawrence work, Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example; or for that matter, Age Of Innocence, too, and there couldn't have been a common acquaintance there in the latter case.

And, a tad later, there's a whiff of similarity with a work by Balzac as well, before it turns to an almost indulgence of pain and guilt. Would that be a Russian influence? For, factually, there was no guilt involved, as such, except perhaps a lack of alacrity bordering on negligence.

This is a very early work of the author, and that shows in the vast difference between this and later works in terms of subtlety. Here one gets the theme almost immediately and then the only suspense is about consequences.

One of the surprises is the vague references to the circumstances of his marriage, which neither seem to admit had any love or attraction involved, and a complete lack of explanation as to how it came about.

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

"When he left Oxford, he was in the position of a man with no decided leanings or dislikes in regard to a profession, with more than sufficient means, and with a nature which required the spur of necessity or of some vital interest to force it to exertion. He spent some years in travelling, generally with sport as an object; and then came his marriage. He had never been quite able afterwards to understand how it had come about; it had been a matter of friendship, of sentiment, of compassion; but there it had been for ten years an accomplished fact, bringing with it a life from which all purpose seemed to be barred.

"He had pursuits; for instance, he occasionally went over to Monte Carlo and gambled mildly, he made annual shooting trips to Algeria or Morocco, and he was continually yachting round the coast; but of work, nothing; of love — nothing!

"There had never been anything really in common between him and his wife. Certainly, he was always gentle and courteous to her, but there was in her a vein of spirituelle, expansive espièglerie, which was somehow beyond him; it did not hit with the grey and reserved temper of his mind, with his deeply-rooted indolence.

"A man of refinement, of no vulgar instincts, of certainly the greater logical reasoning power, he had yet always found himself un peu bête in her presence, just a little commonplace — it was irritating.

"He admitted to himself indeed, almost from the first, that his marriage had been a mistake, but he did not cease to have a great admiration for his wife’s personality, for her courage and patience under suffering, for her wide sympathies, and the wit and charm of her manner. He regarded her with the eye of a stranger as a very desirable and delightful woman; he knew her to be the wrong one for himself.

"He saw her side of the question also — it was a habit of his to see the other side — and he pitied her."

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

" ... Irma had a free and unenvious admiration for the girl’s supple life and beauty; Jocelyn could not help being attracted by the elder woman’s wit, and she had a sincere compassion for her weary suffering. They had always a sense of pleasure in each other’s company, though, in spite of having lived for two months in the same hotel, they had not seen much of one another. The Legards’ villa was some five miles distant, but Mrs. Legard always wintered in Mentone to be near her doctor.

"Jocelyn bent down over the couch, and laid the saffron-centred roses against the breast of the white dress."

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

June 16, 2021 - June 20, 2021.

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

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

From the Four Winds.

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4073616190

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

Reminds one of W. Somerset Maugham stories, most of which are set in colonial Southeast Asia, at the outset. Except Galsworthy jumps in with a dialogue proceeding unlike the Maugham stories that take it slow, building atmosphere and setting up characters. But then this was an early work.

Generally the tales involve characters who have lived and worked in the colonial regions, from southern tropical regions of Southeast Asia (from straits of Malaya to Fiji and extending it to South Pacific), Australia, Canada or Southern parts of Africa, - and effect thereof on their lives, their psyche.

At the end, or much before, one is left with an impression that he collected these tales of life in the course of his travels.

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

CONTENTS

THE RUNNING AMOK OF SYNGE SAHIB

DICK DENVER’S IDEA

ASHES

TALLY HO BUDMÂSH

THE DOLDRUMS

THE CAPITULATION OF JEAN JACQUES

THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.

A PRAIRIE OYSTER

ACCORDING TO HIS LIGHTS

THE DEMI-GODS

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

THE RUNNING AMOK OF SYNGE SAHIB

This one reminds, apart from Maugham's South Sea tales, of another one read over two decades ago, involving a white man in Borneo and a native wizard of magic.

" ...His eyes were blazing and glaring with a sort of green light like a wild cat’s. That devilish silver streak was his Malay kriss, and he brandished it like one possessed. I’ve seen Malays run amok twice — once in Bangkok, and once in Sumatra — and if Synge wasn’t at that moment a Malay, and a Malay amok, I’m a German Jew. He didn’t look mad, only mad murderous. ... "

June 20, 2021 - June 20, 2021.

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

DICK DENVER’S IDEA

" ... The ship was bound for the West Indies; he discoursed of the islands and his own experiences there, and she listened, with an evident interest in spite of her fears. Never yet was woman (or man either, for the matter of that) uninterested when Dick Denver talked, which he did but seldom; his voice, as he might have phrased it himself, was ‘kind of seductive. ... "

Extraordinary tale of gallantry from a stranger to a much harassed wife of a guy who couldn't resist a challenge.

June 20, 2021 - June 20, 2021.

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

ASHES

This would be confusing enough without the added challenge of alternating reading this with reading White Nights simultaneously. As it is one begins to wonder if one is finally experiencing the spell of Russian literature that one heard one's colleagues talk so devotedly about - they didn't call it a spell, they were too devoted - whereby all other literature pales. It takes a determined reading to begin to suspect that it's not ones own state but the author's when he wrote this, likely his having been strongly influenced by Russian literature in his early years.

To add to the confusion, this one begins with a young Pole amongst older Russian and other characters, with a setting of dinner and gambling in a 'place'. This one is set obviously not in the remote lonely corner of the colonial era of the first story, but more of a town or city. Like the preceding stories, this one too is seemingly set in "straits", (which seems to mean all of South China Sea, up to Fiji , and not just the straits of Malaya indicated by Google maps); seemingly, until he mentions Cabbé Roquebrune, which gives neighbourhood of Menton in Southern France on Google maps; could the name have been then used for a spot in French colonial part of Southeast Asia? Finally a sentence clears it -

"The little bay near Cabbé Roquebrune — that little bay that recalls so greatly the far-away lagoons of the blessed South Seas."

The story retains its mystery to the end - was there, in fact, a murder, committed by the protagonist? Or was he shot by the villain?

June 20, 2021 - June 21, 2021.

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TALLY HO BUDMÂSH

This one involves a colonial pair, a little British boy and a "Hindu" manservant, with a story beginning set in Piccadilly. But Galsworthy has the boy speak a dialect that's of Chinese, not Indian, servants of the colonial era speaking English, so one wonders why. Explanation comes soon.

"Foo Ching, the Chinese cook of the steamer which had two days before achieved the honour of safely bearing from India, and landing one ‘Tally Ho,’ baptismally known as Geoffrey Standing Blount, was that young man’s latest bosom friend, and at that time mainly responsible for the eccentricities of his speech."

Delightful tale of a little boy from Northwest Frontier Provinces, lost in London, until one finishes - and can no longer ignore the empire and it's grip on the colony looted, bringing down from a prosperous land to a state of starvation in two centuries, while breeding a new caste of British rulers, portrayed herein the boy and the general, the club and the major.

June 21, 2021 - June 21, 2021.

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THE DOLDRUMS

"‘I think,’ said the mate slowly—’ I don’t know, of course, — but I think you have seen what very few people have seen. I think there is a time, you know, which comes between life and death. It is perhaps the twilight of the body you know, and the dawning of the soul, — it is that breathless space which these old crafts of our bodies have to go through, you know, where there is no life, and not yet death, — the Doldrums of our individualities hanging in the wind.’ There was a long silence."

June 22, 2021 - June 22, 2021.

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THE CAPITULATION OF JEAN JACQUES

Two escaped convicts care for the child they abducted as a hostage.

June 22, 2021 - June 22, 2021.

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THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.

Ghastly tale of a murder of an Englishman in Southern Africa by a half native Boer who left his victim to be devoured by jackals.

What's far more ghastly is the certainty that the jackal follows the murderer with, of finding the easier and better feast than the animals of the camp.

Were murders in Africa, between European and halfcaste, so common, with victims left for wild beasts to finish off?

June 22, 2021 - June 22, 2021.

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A PRAIRIE OYSTER

Story about shipwreck survivors in Morocco, told on a train journey through Canada on the Northwest prairie stretch.

June 22, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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ACCORDING TO HIS LIGHTS

Perhaps in his time in England, the introduction by Galsworthy was clearer.

"What was his offence? The law called it by an awkward name having consequences; these consequences the law applied to a man who had come back of his own accord from Australia to ‘face the music,’ as he phrased it. ..."

Today, one has to wonder, was one automatically imprisoned for having "come back of his own accord from Australia"?

One forgets it was an open prison until post WWII.

June 23, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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THE DEMI-GODS

And accidental release from separation for a pair?

June 23, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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June 20, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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

A commentary, (1900),

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4077342398

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Most of these pieces are a social commentary. Hence the title.

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CONTENTS

A COMMENTARY

THE LOST DOG

DEMOS

OLD AGE

THE CAREFUL MAN

FEAR

FASHION

SPORT

MONEY

PROGRESS

HOLIDAY

FACTS

POWER

THE HOUSE OF SILENCE

ORDER

THE MOTHER

COMFORT

A CHILD JUSTICE

HOPE

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A COMMENTARY

"See the way the poor live — like pigs, crowded all together; to any one who knows, it’s awful! An’ morals — something dreadful! How can you have morals when you’ve got to live like that — let alone humanity? You can’t, it stands to reason. Talk about democracy — government by the people? There’s no sense in it; the people’s kept like pigs; all they’ve got’s like pig-wash thrown ‘em. They know there’s no hope for them. Why, when all’s done, a workingman can’t save enough to keep ‘imself in his old age. Look at me! I’ve lost my arm, all my savin’s was spent when I was gettin’ well; I’ve got this job now, an’ very glad to get it — but the time’ll come when I’ll be too old to stand about all weathers; what’ll happen? I’ll either ‘ave to starve or go into the ‘Ouse — well, that’s a miserable ending for a man. But then you say, what can you do? That’s just it — what can you do? Where’s the money to come from? People say Parliament ought to find it, but I’ve not much ‘opes of them; they’re very slow. All my life I’ve noticed that. Very slow! Them fellers in Parliament, they’ve got their positions and one thing and another to consider, the same as any other people; they’re bound to be cautious, they don’t want to take no risks, it stands to reason."

"“Look at all this class of comfortable people. They don’t see things the same as I do, an’ I don’t know why they should. They’re comfortable themselves. It stands to reason they’re not goin’ to think about such things. They’ve been brought up to believe the world was made for them. They never see no other people but their own sort; same as workin’ people never see no other but workin’ people."

June 23, 2021 - June , 2021.

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THE LOST DOG

" ... Turning to me he said: “Can you give me a job, sir? I don’t mind what I do.”

"His face was in mourning for a shave, his clothes were very ragged, and he was so thin that there seemed hardly any man behind those ragged clothes. He smelt, not indeed of whiskey, but as though bereaved of it; and his blue and watery eyes were like those of a lost dog."

"“I am a lost dog.”

"“Ah! but I am told daily by the just, the orderly, the practical, who have never been lost or hungry, that I must not give to casuals. You know yourself it would be pure sentiment; you know yourself it would be mere luxury. I wonder you can ask me!”

"“I am a lost dog.”"

June 23, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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DEMOS

"“Well, she’s my wife, ain’t she?” He put his hands on the handles of his barrow as though to take it away from one who could not see his point of view, wheeled it two yards, and stopped.

"“It’s no matter what I done to her. Look ‘ere!” He turned his fish-white face, and his dead eyes came suddenly to life, with a murky, yellow glare, as though letting escape the fumes within his soul. “I ought to ha’ put her to bed with a shovel long ago; and I will, too, first chance I get.”"

June 23, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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OLD AGE

Heartbreaking story of starvation due to poverty in old age, of a couple in England, having raised six children and hence no savings.

June 23, 2021 - June 23, 2021.

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THE CAREFUL MAN

" ... When asked at lunch of which sweet he would partake, he would answer: “A little of both, thanks”; for nothing seemed to him in life so great a pity as to take one thing to the exclusion of another. ... "

"His feeling about money was that he ought to have enough, in order to have no feeling about money; and, to attain this vacuum, he mechanically restrained his wants, still more his wife’s — for, not being so beautifully adjusted as himself, when she wanted things, she wanted them."

"Dogma of any sort, of course, he found offensive — you were committed by it, and to be committed was both repulsive and absurd."

" ... But, having a regard, a veneration, for the figure of John Bull — that myth who never modified his views, but held on fast to his ideals in spite of all the dogs of war — he preferred, whenever he was forced to act, to say that he had acted on his principles — and so, in truth, he had, for the deepest of his principles was the intimate belief that there was no such thing as principle.

"This it was that gave him his pre-eminence in politics, for, seated in the very centre of the seesaw, being the first to feel and answer to, he was the least affected by, its motion. By shifting just a little, and instinctively, he kept the whole machine together, having all the time a quiet contempt for the two ends that would keep swinging to the skies or bumping on the ground. Nothing could be done without him in that House, because he was so plentiful; and very little with him."

"Take him for all in all, he was not original in mind, and yet he was no flunkey, serving mortal masters; he served a nobler one than they — the great god Opportunity. But it was not safe to tell him this, for though there was no reason in the world why he should dislike its being known that he acted in accordance with his nature, somehow he did not like it. This was, no doubt, an instance of his care."

" ... They appreciated, too, his sterling worth — without him they felt the country would improve too fast."

June 23, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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FEAR

"“I suppose it’s human nature not to take me on, seein’ the state I’m in,” the little baker said. “I don’t want to be a trouble to no one, I’m sure; I’ve always kept myself, ever since I was that high,” he put his hand out level with his waist; “and now I can’t keep myself, let alone the wife and child. It’s the coming to the end of everything — it’s the seeing of it coming. Fear — that’s what it is! But I suppose I’m not the only one.”

"And for that moment he seemed comforted by this thought that there were thousands of other working creatures, on whose shoulders sat the grinning cat of mortal illness, all staring with him at utter emptiness — thousands of other working creatures who were dying because fear had made them work too long. ... "

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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FASHION

"Resented while you gathered being; brought into the world with the most distinguished skill; remembered by your mother when the whim came to her; taught to believe that life consists in caring for your clean, well-nourished body, and your manner that nothing usual can disturb; taught to regard Society as the little ring of men and women that you see, and to feel your only business is to know the next thing that you want and get it given you — You have never had a chance!"

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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SPORT

"Sometimes we did not shoot at such small stuff, but waited for the roedeer. These dun familiars of the wood were very shy, clinging to the deepest thickets, treading with gentle steps, invisible as spirits, and ever trying to break back. Now and then, leaping forward with hindquarters higher than its shoulders, one of them would face the line of beaters, and then would arise the strangest noises above the customary sounds and tappings — cries of fierce resentment that such fine ‘‘game” should thus escape the guns. When the creature crossed the line these cries swelled into a long, continuous, excited shriek; and, as the yells died out in muttering, I used to feel a hollow sense of disappointment."

"It was but the finish of the hunt, the hunt that we had started, one or other of us, some fine day, the sun shining and the blood hot, wishing no harm to any one, but just a little sport."

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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MONEY

"His fears went deeper than mere facts; they were religious, as it were, and founded in an innermost belief that, by money only, Nature could be held at bay."

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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PROGRESS

"“I was married at twenty, on eight shillin’ a week; you won’t find them doing such a thing as that these days — they want their comforts now. There’s not the spirit of content about of forty or fifty years agone. All’s for movin’ away an’ goin’ to the towns; an’ when they get there, from what I’ve heard, they wish as they was back; but they don’t never come.”"

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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HOLIDAY

"Fill every cranny of your houses so that no moment of silence or of solitude can come to any one of you. And if, by unhappy chance, in their parks you find yourself alone, lie neither on your back, for then you will see the quiet sunlight on the leaves, the quiet clouds, and birds with solitude within their wings; nor on your face, or you will catch the savour of the earth, and a faint hum, and for a minute live the life of tiny things that straddle in the trodden grasses. Fly from such sights and scents and sounds, for fear lest terror for your fate should visit you; fly to the streets; fly to your neighbours’ houses; talk, and be brave! ... "

June 24, 2021 - June 24, 2021.

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FACTS

"He took care that this reading should not stimulate his thoughts. He wanted facts, and the fact that the day’s facts were swallowed by the morrow’s did not disturb him, for the more facts he read the better he was pleased."

"Two days before the 12th of August he would take his guns and wife to Scotland, where he rented annually a piece of ground inhabited by grouse."

"Any particularly fine creature that he shot he would have stuffed, so that the fact might be remarked for ever.

"Once, or perhaps twice, each year, malaise would come on him, a feeling that his life was not quite all he wished, a desire for something that he could not shape in words, a conviction that there were facts which he was missing. At these times he was almost irritable, and would say: “Mistake for a man to marry, depend on it — narrows his life.” And suddenly one day he would know what he wanted, and, under pretext perhaps of two days’ sport, would go to Paris. The fact accomplished, of irregularity, that he would not have committed in England for the world — was of advantage to his soul, and he would return, more regular than ever."

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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POWER

"Well aware that his was an occupation tending to the constriction of the mind, he had early made a practice of keeping it elastic by reading, argument, and a habit of presenting every case in every light, before pronouncing judgment; indeed, he would often take another person’s point of view, and, having improved on it, show that it was not really what the person thought it. Only when he was contradicted did a somewhat ugly look come into his eyes, and a peculiar smile contract his straight lips between his little fair moustache and his little, carefully kept, fair beard. At such moments he would raise his hands — red, and shapely, though rather large — as though about to press them on the head or shoulders of the presumptuous person. For, certain as he was that he always took all points of view before deciding any matter, he knew he must be right. But he was careful not to domineer in any way, recognising that to domineer was peculiarly unbecoming in a bureaucrat."

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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THE HOUSE OF SILENCE

" ... Above his mug and plate of shining tin, his stiff, black-bristled brush and a piece of soap, is raised a little pyramid of godly books; no sound or scent, no living thing, no spider even, only his sense of humour comes between him and his God. But nothing whatever comes between him and his walking up and down, his listening for sound, his lying with his face pressed to the floor; till darkness falls, that he may stare at it, and beg for sleep, the only friend of prisoners, to touch him with her wings. ... "

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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ORDER

"“Do you flog much?”

"He stared. You are lacking — he seemed to say — in delicacy.

"“Very little,” he answered, “only when it’s necessary.” And unconscious that he had proclaimed the spirit of the system that he served, the spirit of all systems, he drew his heels together, as though saluting discipline."

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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THE MOTHER

"Though not yet nine o’clock, she had already done the work of her two rooms, lighted the fire, washed the youngest boys, given the four at home their breakfast, swept, made one bed — in the other her husband was still lying — and to that husband she had served his tea. She had cut the mid-day ration of the two eldest boys, and, wrapping it in paper, had placed it on the window-sill in readiness for them to take to school; had portioned out the firing for the day, given the eldest boy the pence to buy the daily screws of tea and sugar, washed some ragged cloths, mended a little pair of trousers, put on her hat without consulting the cracked looking-glass, and hurried forth. And, since a penny was important to her, she had walked."

" ... And while on her knees she scrubbed and polished, a certain sense of pleasurable rest would come to her; gazing into the depths of brass that she had made to shine, she thought of nothing. On some mornings she worked a little stiffly. This was when her husband, returning from late discussion at his public-house, had struck her with his belt, to show he was her master. On such mornings she was longer polishing the brass, often forced to clean it twice, having put her eyes too close to it. And she would think, over and over again: “He didn’t ought to hit me, he didn’t ought to treat me like he does, and me the mother of his children.” Thus far her thoughts would carry her, but — she was a simple soul — they carried her no further; nor did it ever penetrate her mind that her sons, born to and brought up by a drunken father, would some day carry on the glorious traditions of his life. ... "

" ... And yet, all those hours, while her sons were sleeping, there was at work a strange poison in her soul, a dull fever of revolt, in preparation for the blows that would be given her if he came in drunk — a sort of perverse spirit, vouchsafed by Providence, bringing those blows nearer, almost inviting them, yet keeping her alive beneath them. ... "

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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COMFORT

"THEY lived in a flat on the fifth floor, facing a park on one side, and, on the other, through the branches of an elm tree, another block of flats as lofty as their own. It was very pleasant living up so high, where they were not disturbed by noises, scents, or the sight of other people — except such people as themselves. For, quite unconsciously, they had long found out that it was best not to be obliged to see, or hear, or smell anything that made them feel uncomfortable. ... "

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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A CHILD

"Down in the grass the tiniest green flames were burning, a sign of the fire of flowers that would leap up if the sun would feed them.

"And on a seat there sat a child.

"He sat between his father and his mother, looking straight before him. It was plain that the reason why he looked so straight before him was that he really had not strength to care to look to right or left — so white his face was, so puny were his limbs. His clothes had evidently been designed for others, and this was fortunate, for they prevented the actual size of him from being seen. He was not, however, what is called neglected; his face was clean, and the utmost of protection that Fate and the condition of his parents had vouchsafed was evidently lavished on him, for round his neck there was a little bit of draggled fur which should have been round the neck of her against whose thin and shabby side he leaned. This mother of his was looking at the ground; and from the expression of her face she seemed to think that looking at the ground was all life had to offer."

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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JUSTICE

"“For this is what I want you to fully understand: A man of means may drive his wife to loathe him, provided he stop short of certain definite things — for the Law does not allow him to be ‘cruel’ to her; he may entertain himself with other women provided that she does not know, for the Law does not allow him to be ‘faithless’; he may be, in fact, at heart a ruffian or a rascal, but — having means — if she leave him for another, he can, unless he has bad luck, be sure of his decree. Thus, it did not really matter whether you were false to her, so long as she did not know; it was almost superfluous to be so kind; what really mattered was that, either, as a working man with thirty shillings a week, you had sixty to a hundred pounds — or, as a penniless pauper, you had seven to fifteen."

"‘ ... If all the clerks and working men, and all those wives of clerks and working men — to whom, like you, divorce was due by almost general consent, and was indeed by almost general consent deemed of a desperate importance — were enabled to obtain it at a price within their means, several thousand more divorces would each year be granted in this country. This would have a disastrous effect upon the statistics of the marriage tie. Public Opinion, formed, you must remember, exclusively amongst your betters (for on such subjects working men are, and always have been, dumb), formed exclusively by such as can afford to pay for their decrees — this great Public Opinion would feel that a backward step was being taken on the path of moral rectitude. It would feel that, in granting what you, the People, in your dumbness and short sight might be tempted to think was common justice, it would be sacrificing the substance of morals to the shadow. The immorality to which you and your like under the present law are, and ever will be, forced, need never lie open to the light of day, never become a matter of statistics, and offend the Public Eye. What is not a matter of statistics can do no damage to the country’s morals or the country’s name. Public Opinion is itself secure in the enjoyment of the rights and privileges granted by the law, and it has decided by a simple sacrifice to conserve the moral fame of all. There must — it reasons — be a sacrifice; then let us sacrifice those without the means to pay! It is an accident that they, in their thousands, are not included in ourselves; some must suffer that we may all be moral!’"

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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HOPE

"“An ‘ard life!” he had been heard to say when groundsel was scarce, customers scarcer, and the damp had struck up into his shrivelled leg. This, stated as a matter of fact, was the extent of his general complaint, though he would not unwillingly descant on the failings of his groundsel, his customers, and leg, to the few who could appreciate such things. But, as a rule, he stood or sat, silent, watching the world go by, as in old days he had watched the waves drift against his anchored fishing-smack; and the look of those blurred-blue, far-gazing eyes of his, in their extraordinary patience, was like a constant declaration of the simple and unconscious creed of man: “I hold on till I drop.”"

"In the crowded highway, beside his basket, he stood, leaning on his twisted stick, with his tired, steadfast face — a ragged statue to the great, unconscious human virtue, the most hopeful and inspiring of all things on earth: Courage without Hope!"

June 25, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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June 23, 2021 - June 25, 2021.

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

A Motley,

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4080842109

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

The Little Man and Other Satires,

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4082610863

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Touching pieces, especially the last one.

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CONTENTS

THE LITTLE MAN

HALL-MARKED

THE VOICE OF — !

THE DEAD MAN

WHY NOT?

HEY-DAY

STUDIES OF EXTRAVAGANCE

I. THE WRITER

II. THE CRITIC

III. THE PLAIN MAN

IV. THE SUPERLATIVE

V. THE PRECEPTOR

VI. THE ARTIST

VII. THE HOUSEWIFE

VIII. THE LATEST THING

IX. THE PERFECT ONE

X. THE COMPETITOR

ABRACADABRA

HATHOR: A MEMORY

SEKHET: A DREAM

A SIMPLE TALE

ULTIMA THULE

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THE LITTLE MAN

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

The Little Man, by John Galsworthy.

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Also published as a play, 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

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

Hall Marked, by John Galsworthy.

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Also published as a play.

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June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021.

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

THE VOICE OF — !

About a stage performance surpassing the previous circus, cut off by a voice seemingly from gallery.

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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THE DEAD MAN

"“Your Worship, I’m very badly in want of food; will you allow me to beg in the streets?”

"“No, no; I can’t. You know I can’t.”

"“Well, your Worship, may I steal?”

"“Now, now; you mustn’t waste the time of the court.”

"“But, your Worship, it’s very serious to me; I’m literally starving, I am indeed! Will you allow me to sell my coat or trousers—” Unbuttoning his coat, the applicant revealed a bare chest. “I’ve nothing else to—”

"“You mustn’t go about in an indecent state; I can’t allow you to go outside the law.”

"“Well, sir, will you give me permission, anyway, to sleep out at night, without being taken up for vagrancy?”

"“Once for all, I have no power to allow you to do any of these things.”"

"“Well, then, I ask you, sir: In the eyes of the law, am I alive at all?”

"“That is a question, my man, which I cannot answer. On the face of it, you appear to be alive only if you break the law; but I trust you will not do that. I am very sorry for you; you can have a shilling from the box. Next case!”’"

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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WHY NOT?

" ... I had only to get at the percentage of divorce to marriage. Well, being a bit of an actuary, I was very soon able to calculate my proper scale of premiums. These are payable, you know, on*the same principle as life-insurance, and work out very small on the whole. ... "

"“I was very anxious to have got out a policy which took in also the risk of breach of promise; but at present I haven’t been able to fix that up. Up till marriage, of course, the whole thing is in flux, and there’s too much danger of collusion. ... "

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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HEY-DAY

A discussion about civilisation.

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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STUDIES OF EXTRAVAGANCE

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

I. THE WRITER

Satirical piece about a writer.

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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II. THE CRITIC

"He often thought: “This is a dog’s life! I must give it up, and strike out for myself. If I can’t write better than most of these fellows, it’ll be very queer.” But he had not yet done so. He had in his extreme youth published fiction, but it had never been the best work of which he was capable — it was not likely that it could be, seeing that even then he was constantly diverted from the ham-bone of his inspiration by the duty of perusing and passing judgment on the work of other men.

"If pressed to say exactly why he did not strike out for himself, he found it difficult to answer, and what he answered was hardly as true as he could have wished; for, though truthful, he was not devoid of the instinct of self-preservation. He could hardly, for example, admit that he preferred to think what much better books he could have written if only he had not been handicapped, to actually striking out and writing them."

June 28, 2021 - June 28, 2021.

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III. THE PLAIN MAN

"When the plain man was shocked it was time to suppress the entertainment, whether play, dance, or novel. ... All this ‘flim-flam’ about art, and all that, is beside the point. The question simply is: Would you take your wife and daughters? If not, there’s an end of it, and it ought to be suppressed.” ... "

"He often spoke of science, medical or not, and it was his plain opinion that these fellows all had an axe to grind; for HIS part he only believed in them just in so far as they benefited a plain man. The latest sanitary system, the best forms of locomotion and communication, the newest antiseptics, and time-saving machines — of all these, of course, he made full use; but as to the researches, speculations, and theories of scientists — to speak plainly, they were, he thought, “pretty good rot.”"

"On the woman’s question generally he had long made his position plain. He would move when the majority moved, and not before. And he expected all plain men (and women — if there were any, which he sometimes doubted) to act in the same way. ... He often said to his wife: “One thing’s plain to me; we shall never have the suffrage till the country wants it.” But he rarely discussed the question with other women, having observed that many of them could not keep their tempers when he gave them his plain view of the matter."

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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IV. THE SUPERLATIVE

" ... Indeed, there was no one whom he held in greater contempt than a man who had arrived. It was to him the high-water mark of imbecility, commercialism, and complacency. For what did it mean save that this individual had pleased a sufficient number of other imbeciles, hucksterers, and fatheads, to have secured for himself a reputation? ... "

" ... Save this Nietzsche he admitted perhaps no philosopher into his own class, and was most down on Aristotle, and that one who had founded the religion of his country."

"He was a connoisseur of music, and nothing gave him greater pain than a tune. Of all the ancients he recognised Bach alone, and only in his fugues. Wagner was considerable in places. Strauss and Debussy, well — yes, but now VIEUX JEU. There was an Esquimaux. His name? No, let them wait! That fellow was something. Let them mark his words, and wait!"

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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V. THE PRECEPTOR

" ... And as for truth — the question of that did not arise, if one believed. What one believed, what one was told to believe, was the truth; and it was no good telling him that the whole range of a man’s feeling and reasoning powers must be exercised to ascertain truth, and that, when ascertained, it would only be relative truth, and the best available to that particular man. ... "

"He was one of those who seldom felt the need for personal experience of a phase of life, or line of conduct, before giving judgment on it; indeed, he gravely distrusted personal experience. He had opposed, for instance, all relief for the unhappily married long before he left the single state; and, when he did leave it, would not admit for a moment that his own happiness was at all responsible for the petrifaction of his view that no relief was necessary. Hard cases made bad law! But he did not require to base his opinion upon that. He said simply that he had been told there was to be no relief — it was enough."

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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VI. THE ARTIST

" ... They were brave, much braver than he was conscious of being; clean-thinking, oh, far more clean-thinking than a man like himself, necessarily given to visions of all kinds; they were straightforward, almost ridiculously so, as it seemed to one who saw the inside-out of everything almost before he saw the outside-out; they were simple, as touchingly simple as those little children, to whom Scriptures and post-impressionism had combined to award the crown of wisdom; they were kind and self-denying in a way that often made him feel quite desperately his own selfishness — ... "

" ... he always permitted himself just one eccentricity, changing it every year, his mind being subtle — not like those of certain politicians or millionaires, content to wear orchids or drive zebras all their lives. ... "

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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VII. THE HOUSEWIFE

" ... After this little incident she took the trouble to go and open her New Testament and look up the story of a certain woman. There was not a word in it about women not throwing stones; the discouragement referred entirely to men. Exactly! No one knew better than she the difference between men and women in the matter of moral conduct. Probably there WERE no men without that kind of sin, but there were plenty of women, and, without either false or true pride, she felt that she was one of them. And there the matter rested."

"In disposition sociable, and no niggard of her company, there was one thing she liked to work at alone — her shopping, an art which she had long reduced to a science. The principles she laid down are worth remembering: Never grudge your time to save a ha’penny. Never buy anything until you have turned it well over, recollecting that the rest of you will have turned it over too. Never let your feelings of pity interfere with your sense of justice, but bear in mind that the girls who sell to you are paid for doing it; if you can afford the time to keep them on their legs, they can afford the time to let you. Never read pamphlets, for you don’t know what may be in them about furs, feathers, and forms of food. Never buy more than your husband can afford to pay for; but, on the whole, buy as much. Never let any seller see that you think you have bought a bargain, but buy one if you can; you will find it pleasant afterward to talk of your prowess. Shove, shove, and shove again!"

"It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better. Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists, socialists and society people, might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt among them! They were but as gadflies, buzzing and darting on the fringes of her central bulk. To those flights, to that stinging she paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the words of her favourite Tennyson: “They may come, and they may go, but — whatever you may think — I go on forever!”"

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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VIII. THE LATEST THING

One expects a satire about a fashionista, but is surprised to find instead a barely veiled vitriolic diatribe - by Galsworthy, of all people - against a woman, so poisonous the darts that it seems personal. Here are some less vicious quotes.

" ... One had merely to be oneself, a full nature, giving and taking generously. Greed was a low and contemptible attribute, especially in woman; a woman wanted nothing more than — everything, and the best of that. And it was intolerable if one could not have that little. ..."

"To such an idealist, the very colours of the rainbow did not suffice, nor all the breeds of birds there were; her life was piled high with cages. Here she had had them one by one, borrowed their songs, relieved them of their plumes; then, finding that they no longer had any, let them go; for to look at things without possessing them was intolerable, but to keep them when she had got them even more so.

"She often wondered how people could get along at all whose natures were not so full as hers. Life, she thought, must be so dull for the poor creatures, only doing one thing at a time, and that time so long. What with her painting, and her music, her dancing, her flying, her motoring, her writing of novels and poems, her love-making, maternal cares, entertaining, friendships, housekeeping, wifely duties, political and social interests, her gardening, talking, acting, her interest in Russian linen and the woman’s movement; what with travelling in new countries, listening to new preachers, lunching new novelists, discovering new dancers, taking lessons in Spanish; what with new dishes for dinner, new religions, new dogs, new dresses, new duties to new neighbours, and newer charities — life was so full that the moment it stood still and was simply old “life,” it seemed to be no life at all."

" ... She had flung open all the doors of life, and was so continually going out and coming in, that life had some considerable difficulty in catching a glimpse of her at all. Just as the cinematograph was the future of the theatre, so was she the future of women, and in the words of the poet “prou’ title.” To sip at every flower before her wings closed; if necessary, to make new flowers to sip at. To smoke the whole box of cigarettes straight off, and in the last puff of smoke expire! And withal, no feverishness, only a certain reposeful and womanly febrility; a mere perpetual glancing from quick-sliding eyes, to see the next move, to catch the new movement — God bless it! ... "

" ... She had been born to dance the moon down, to ragtime. The moon, the moon! Ah, yes! It was the one thing that had as yet eluded her avidity. That, and her own soul."

One suspects, for the first time, that not only Irene Forsyte, but Fleur Forsyte, too, was modelled on someone the author knew; only, not as a daughter or perhaps even a beloved daughter figure. But then, Jolyon Forsyte had a far more complex relationship with Fleur Forsyte than merely an uncle and niece one.

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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IX. THE PERFECT ONE

"And what was he? Well — perfect! Perfect for that high, that supreme purpose — the enjoyment of life as it was. And, aware of his perfection — oh, well aware! — with a certain blind astuteness that refused reflection on the subject — not caring what anybody said or thought, just enjoying himself, taking all that came his way, and making no bones about it; unconscious, indeed, that there were any to be made. He must have known by instinct that thought, feeling, sympathy only made a man chickeny, for he avoided them in an almost sacred way. To be “hard” was his ambition, and he moved through life hitting things, especially balls — whether they reposed on little inverted tubs of sand, or moved swiftly toward him, he almost always hit them, and told people how he did it afterward. He hit things, too, at a distance, through a tube, with a certain noise, and a pleasant swelling sensation under his fifth rib every time he saw them tumble, feeling that they had swollen still more under their fifth ribs and would not require to be hit again. ... He hit any one who disagreed with him, and was very angry if they hit him back. He hit the money-market with his judgment when he could, and when he couldn’t, he hit it with his tongue. ... He hit women, not, of course, with his fists, but with his philosophy. Women were made for the perfection of men; they had produced, nourished, and nursed him, and he now felt the necessity for them to comfort and satisfy him. When they had done that he felt no further responsibility in regard to them; to feel further responsibility was to be effeminate. The idea, for instance, that a spiritual feeling must underlie the physical was extravagant; and when a woman took another view, he took — if not actually, then metaphorically — a stick. He was almost Teutonic in that way. ... "

"Sometimes he dreamed of the time when he would have to ride for God and the king. But he strongly repelled, of course, any suggestion that he had been brought up to a belief in “caste.” At his school he had once kicked a small scion of the royal family; this heroic action had dispersed in his mind once for all any notion that he was a snob. “Caste,” indeed! There was no such thing in England nowadays. Had he not sung “The Leather Bottel” to an audience of dirty people in his school mission-hall, and — rather enjoyed it. It was not his fault that Labor was not satisfied. It was all those professional agitators, confound them! He himself was opposed to setting class against class. It was, however, ridiculous to imagine that he was going to hobnob with or take interest in people who weren’t clean, who wore clothes with a disagreeable smell — people, moreover, who, in the most blatant way, showed him continually that they wanted what he had got. No, no! there were limits. ... "

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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X. THE COMPETITOR

" ... He never knew what he was learning, but he knew that he beat other boys. ... "

June 29, 2021 - June 29, 2021.

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ABRACADABRA

"Though quite normal about sticking pins into a body, making the lives of calves and dogs burdensome, giving fizzy magnesia to cats, fetching stray souls down with a booby-trap, and other salutary pastimes, she would dissolve into tears and rush away if anybody played Chopin, or caught and killed a butterfly; and, if one merely shot a little bird with a catapult, would dash up and thump him. When she fought she was like a tiger-cat, but afterward would sit and shake uncontrollably with most dreadful dry sobs. So there was no relying on her."

"I recollect the Quaker coming in one day, full of health and happiness, and putting his affectionate hand on her shoulder. To me — not to the Quaker, from whom many things were hidden — it was apparent that she flinched, and when his back was turned I saw in a mirror that she was actually trembling all over, and on her face an expression as if she saw before her suffering from which she could not possibly escape. It was clear that the quivering, lilylike creature had been brought almost to her last gasp by the physique and principles of that healthy, happy Quaker. It was quite painful to see one for whom life seemed so terribly too much."

June 29, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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HATHOR: A MEMORY

Galsworthy describes a figure from ancient Egypt.

"Far from earthly lust; divine cow with the crescent horns — Hathor of the old Egyptians!..."

And goes on to give a vivid account of present state of Egypt where males watch belly dancers for an evening's entertainment before going to town for night.

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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SEKHET: A DREAM

"Sekhet! She who devours the evil souls in the underworld! She with the dark head of a lioness and the dark body of a naked woman; one leg striding, hands clenched to her sides, and eyes, not woman’s and not lion’s, staring into the darkness, looking for her next meal! There she stands by day, by night, ever in the blackness, watching! No wonder the simple folk think she eats their children!"

Galsworthy attempts to make sense of ancient Egypt Gods and Goddesses with a dream.

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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A SIMPLE TALE

" ... ‘I shall never find one who will let me rest in his doorway. ... "

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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ULTIMA THULE

"“I don’t like boys,” he said, without preliminary of any sort. “What do you think they were doing to this poor old cat? Dragging it along by a string to drown it; see where it’s cut into the fur! I think boys despise the old and weak!” He held it out to me. At the ends of those little sticks of arms the beast looked more dead than alive; I had never seen a more miserable creature."

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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June 13, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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

Captures,

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4097763619

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

Touching stories.

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CONTENTS

A FEUD

THE MAN WHO KEPT HIS FORM

A HEDONIST

TIMBER

SANTA LUCIA

BLACKMAIL

THE BROKEN BOOT

STROKE OF LIGHTNING

VIRTUE

CONSCIENCE

SALTA PRO NOBIS

PHILANTHROPY

A LONG-AGO AFFAIR

ACME

LATE — 299

HAD A HORSE

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A FEUD

" ... Snip had not liked, any more than his master, that thin, spry, red-grey-bearded chap’s experimental ways of farming, his habit of always being an hour, a week, a month earlier than Bowden; had not liked his lean, dry activity, his thin legs, his east-wind air. Bowden knew that he would have shot Steer’s dog if he himself had been the third person bitten by it; but then Steer’s dog had not bitten Bowden, Bowden’s dog had bitten Steer; and this seemed to Bowden to show that his dog knew what was what. ... "

" ... To the casual eye Steer was much more up-to-date and ‘civilised’; to one looking deeper, Bowden had been ‘civilised’ much longer. He had grown protective covering in a softer climate or drawn it outward from an older strain of blood."

"The news that New Bowden had ‘joined up’ reached the village simultaneously with the report that Steer had ‘shot’ him in London for three hundred pounds and costs for breaking his promise to Molly Winch. The double sensation was delicious. Honours seemed so easy that no one could see which had come off best. It was fairly clear, however, that Molly Winch and the girl Pansy had come off worst. And there was great curiosity to see them. This was not found possible, for Molly Winch was at Weston-super-Mare and the girl Pansy invisible, even by those whose business took them to Bowden’s yard. Bowden himself put in his customary appearance at ‘The Three Stars,’ where he said quite openly that Steer would never see a penny of that money; Steer his customary appearances at church, where he was a warden, and could naturally say nothing. Christmas passed, and the New Year wore on through colourless February and March, when every tree was bare, the bracken’s russet had gone dark-dun, and the hedgerows were songless."

" ... Neither of the neighbouring enemies showed by word or sign that they saw any connection between gain and loss; but the schoolmistress met them one afternoon at the end of March seated in their carts face to face in a lane so narrow that some compromise was essential to the passage of either. They had been there without movement long enough for their mares to have begun grazing in the hedge on either hand. Bowden was sitting with folded arms and an expression as of his own bull on his face. Steer’s teeth and eyes were bared very much like a dog’s when it is going to bite."

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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THE MAN WHO KEPT HIS FORM

"It was during one of my Odysseys in connection with sport that I saw him again. He was growing fruit on a ranch in Vancouver Island. Nothing used to strike a young Englishman travelling in the Colonies more than the difference between what he saw and what all printed matter led him to expect. When I ran across Ruding in the club at Victoria and he invited me to stay with him, I expected rows of line trees with large pears and apples hanging on them, a Colonial house with a broad verandah, and Ruding in ducks, among rifles and fishing rods, and spirited horses. What I found was a bare new wooden house, not yet painted, in a clearing of the heavy forest. His fruit trees had only just been planted, and he would be lucky if he got a crop within three years. He wore, not white ducks, but blue jeans, and worked about twelve hours a day, felling timber and clearing fresh ground. He had one horse to ride and drive, and got off for a day’s shooting or fishing about once a month. He had three Chinese boys working under him, and lived nearly as sparingly as they. He had been out of England eight years, and this was his second venture — the first in Southern California had failed after three years of drought. He would be all right for water here, he said; which seemed likely enough in a country whose rainfall is superior to that of England."

"“Aren’t you ever coming home?” I asked when I was taking leave.

"“When I’ve made good here,” he said, “I shall come bark and marry.”"

" ... Some enterprising gentleman, interested in real estate, had reported the discovery of coal seams, which greatly enhanced the value of Bear Ranch and several neighbouring properties. Ruding was offered a big sum. He took it, and had already left the neighbourhood when the report about coal was duly disproved. Ruding at once offered to cancel the price, and take the agricultural value of the property. His offer was naturally accepted, and the disgust of other owners who had sold on the original report may be imagined. More wedded to the rights of property, they upheld the principle ‘Caveat emptor,’ and justified themselves by calling Ruding names. With his diminished proceeds he bought another ranch on the mainland."

" ... If only I could have established a blood tie! Ruding would have taken help or support from his kinsfolk — would have inherited without a qualm from a second cousin that he’d never seen; but from the rest of the world it would be charity. ... "

" ... From my club doorway I saw him resume his driver’s seat, the cigarette still between his lips, and the lamplight shining on his lean profile. Very still he sat — symbol of that lost cause, gentility."

June 30, 2021 - June 30, 2021.

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A HEDONIST

"Everyone who goes to Charleston in the spring, soon or late, visits Magnolia Gardens. ... I used to sit paralysed by the absurdity of putting brush to canvas in front of that dream-pool. I wanted to paint of it a picture like that of the fountain, by Helleu, which hangs in the Luxembourg. But I knew I never should."

June 30, 2021 - July 01, 2021.

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TIMBER

"They did not cut down the elm-tree under which they found his body, with the rest of the sold timber, but put a little iron fence round it, and a little tablet on its trunk."

July 01, 2021 - July 01, 2021.

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SANTA LUCIA

" ... Among the congregation to whom he had that morning read the lessons he had noted, for instance, that old blackguard Telford, who had run off with two men’s wives in his time, and was now living with a Frenchwoman, they said. What on earth was he doing in church? And that ostracised couple, the Gaddenhams, who had the villa near Roquebrune? She used his name, but they had never been married, for Gaddenham’s wife was still alive. And, more seriously, had he observed Mrs. Rolfe, who before the war used to come with her husband — now in India — to The Cedars to shoot the coverts in November. Young Lord Chesherford was hanging about her, they said. That would end in scandal to a certainty. Never without uneasiness did he see that woman, with whom his daughter was on terms of some intimacy. Grass widows were dangerous, especially in a place like this. He must give Agatha a hint."

" ... The very — ! He stood staring into a tangled garden through the fog of forty-five years, resting his large prayer-book with its big print on the top rail of the old green gate; then, looking up and down the road like a boy about to steal cherries, he lifted the latch and passed in."

"Two nights he had sat here, waiting, sick with anxiety and longing. A third day he had watched outside the villa, closed, shuttered, abandoned; not a sound from it, not a living thing, ... "

" ... What had he been thinking of before? Oh, ah! The Rolfe woman and that young fool Chesherford. Yes, he would certainly warn Agatha, certainly warn her. They were a loose lot out here!"

July 01, 2021 - July 02, 2021.

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BLACKMAIL

A man attempting to blackmail a faithful husband and failing, succeeds in planting a seed of doubt.

July 02, 2021 - July 02, 2021.

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THE BROKEN BOOT

" ... He gathered himself and rose. The young women were gazing up. Elegant, with faint smile, he passed them close, managing — so that they could not see — his broken boot."

July 03, 2021 - July 03, 2021.

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STROKE OF LIGHTNING

"“If she didn’t love me,” he said, “I could bear it. But she does. Well! So long as I can see her I shall stand it; and she’ll come — she’ll come to me at last.”"

July 03, 2021 - July 03, 2021.

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VIRTUE

"‘Glad I didn’t go into that girl’s house, anyway,’ he thought. ‘I would have felt a scum!’ The only decent thing about it all had been her look when she said: “Ow! thank you!” That gave him a little feeling of warmth even now; and then — it, too, chilled away. Nothing for it! When he had done sitting there, he must go home!"

July 03, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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CONSCIENCE

"This devilling was quite an art, and, not unlike art, poorly enough paid. Still, not bad fun feeling you were the pea and the chief only the shell — the chief, with his great name and controlling influence. He finished pencilling, O.K.’d the sheets, thought, ‘Georgie Grebe! what the deuce shall I write about?’ and went back to his room.

"It was not much of a room, and there was not much in it except Jimmy Counter, smoking a pipe and writing furiously.

"Taggart sat down too, lit his own pipe, took a sheet of paper and scrawled the words ‘Georgie Grebe Article’ across the top."

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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SALTA PRO NOBIS

" ... The spy-woman in her charge, a dancer with gipsy blood they said — or was it Moorish? — who had wormed secrets from her French naval lover and sold them to the Germans in Spain. At the trial they said there was no doubt. And they had brought her to the convent saying: “Keep her for us till the fifteenth. She will be better with you than in prison.” To be shot — a woman! It made one shiver! And yet — it was war! It was for France!"

"Morning, cold and grey, a sprinkle of snow on the ground. They came for the dancer during Mass. Later a sound of firing! ‘ With trembling lips the Mother Superior prayed for the soul dancing before her God...

"That evening they searched for Sister Marie, and could not find her. After two days a letter came.

"“Forgive me, my Mother. I have gone back to life.

"“MARIE.”"

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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PHILANTHROPY

"Why had he helped them? What did he care so long as he got rid of man, woman, and dog?"

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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A LONG-AGO AFFAIR

" ... He pressed the palms of his hands to the turf. A glorious summer — something like that summer of long ago. And warmth from the turf, or perhaps from the past, crept into his heart, and made it ache a little. Just here he must have sat, after his innings, at Mrs. Monteith’s feet peeping out of a flounced dress. Lord! The fools boys were! How headlong and uncalculating their devotions! A softness in voice and eyes, a smile, a touch or two — and they were slaves! Young fools, but good young fools. And, standing behind her chair — he could see him now — that other idol, Captain MacKay, with his face of browned ivory — just the colour of that elephant’s tusk his uncle had, which had gone so yellow — and his perfect black moustache, his white tie, check suit, carnation, spats, Malacca cane — all so fascinating! ... And that day on the river, when she made much of him, and Captain MacKay attended Evelyn Curtiss so assiduously that he was expected to propose. Quaint period! They used the word courting then, wore full skirts, high stays; and himself a blue elastic belt round his white-flannelled waist. ... "

" ... Betrayed with a kiss! Two idols in the dust! And did they care what he was feeling? Not they! All they cared for was to cover up their tracks with him! But somehow — somehow — he had never shown her that he knew. Only, when their dance was over, and someone came and took her for the next, he escaped up to his little room, tore off his gloves, his waistcoat; lay on his bed, thought bitter thoughts."

" ... Wonder what became of those two? Victorian Age! Hatches were battened down in those days! But, innocent — my hat!’"

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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ACME

"“Hallo!” he said. “I went into a thing they call a cinema last night. Have you ever been?”

"“Ever been? Do you know how long the cinema has been going? Since about 1900.”

"“Well! What a thing! I’m writing a skit on it!”"

" ... Skit! By George! He had written a perfect scenario — or, rather, that which wanted the merest professional touching-up to be perfect. I was excited. It was a little gold-mine if properly handled. Any good film company, I felt convinced, would catch at it. Yes! But how to handle it? Bruce was such an unaccountable creature, such a wild old bird! Imagine his having only just realised the cinema! If I told him his skit was a serious film, he would say: “Good God!” and put it in the fire, priceless though it was. And yet, how could I market it without carte blanche, and how get carte blanche without giving my discovery away? I was deathly keen on getting some money for him; and this thing, properly worked, might almost make him independent. I felt as if I had a priceless museum piece which a single stumble might shatter to fragments. ... "

"“You live out of the world — you don’t realise what humdrum people want; something to balance the grey ness, the — the banality of their lives. They want blood, thrill, sensation of all sorts. You didn’t mean to give it them, but you have, you’ve done them a benefit, whether you wish to or not, and the money’s yours and you’ve got to take it.”

"The cat suddenly jumped down. I waited for the storm to burst.

"“I know,” I dashed on, “that you hate and despise the film—”

"Suddenly his voice boomed out:

"“Bosh! What are you talking about? Film! I go there every other night.”"

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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LATE — 299

"“If I’d been breakable, your prison would have broken me all right. ... "

July 04, 2021 - July 04, 2021.

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HAD A HORSE

"An error to suppose that men conduct finance, high or low, from greed, or love of gambling; they do it out of self-esteem, out of an itch to prove their judgment superior to their neighbours’, out of a longing for importance. George Pulcher did not despise the turning of a penny, but he valued much more the consciousness that men were saying: “Old George, what ‘e says goes — knows a thing or two — George Pulcher!”"

"‘Jimmy’ inclined to the bold course. He kept saying: “The mare’s a flyer, George — she’s the ‘ell of a flyer !”

"“Wait till she’s been tried,” said the oracle.

"Had Polman anything that would give them a line?"

"“Tell Mr. Shrewin how she went.”

"“Had a bit up my sleeve. If I’d hit her a smart one, I could ha’ landed by a length or more.”

"“That so?” said ‘Jimmy’ with a hiss. “Well, don’t you hit her; she don’t want hittin’. You remember that.”

"The boy said sulkily: “All right!”

“Take her home,” said Polman. Then, with that reflective averted air of his, he added: “She was carrying eight stone, Mr. Shrewin; you’ve got a good one there. She’s The Hangman at level weights.”

"Something wild leaped up in ‘Jimmy’ — The Hangman’s form unrolled itself before him in the air — he had a horse — he dam’ well had a horse!"

"The longer you can bet on a race the greater its fascination. Handicappers can properly enjoy the beauty of their work; clubmen and oracles of the course have due scope for reminiscence and prophecy; bookmakers in lovely leisure can indulge a little their own calculated preferences, instead of being hurried to soulless conclusions by a halfhour’s market on the course; the professional backer has the longer in which to dream of his fortune made at last by some hell of a horse — spotted somewhere as interfered with, left at the post, running green, too fat, not fancied, backward — now bound to win this hell of a race. And the general public has the chance to read the horses’ names in the betting news for days and days; and what a comfort that is!"

"“She could ‘a won,” muttered ‘Jimmy.’

"“Not she, my boy; there’s two at least can beat ‘er.”

"Like all oracles, George Pulcher could believe what he wanted to."

"They were staring at her, following her. No wonder! She was a picture, his horse — his! She had gone to ‘Jimmy’s’ head."

"“Calliope!”

"He saw his mare shoot out — she’d won!"

"Not having laid against his horse, he had had a good race in spite of everything; yet, the following week, uncertain into what further quagmires of quixotry she might lead him, he sold Calliope.

"But for years betting upon horses that he never saw, underground like a rat, yet never again so accessible to the kicks of fortune, or so prone before the shafts of superiority, he would think of the Downs with the blinkin’ larks singin’, and talk of how once he — had a horse."

July 05, 2021 - July 06, 2021.

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June 30, 2021 - July 06, 2021.

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Tatterdemalion

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4102080390

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A collection, at least in first part, of heartbreaking tales.

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CONTENTS

PART I.—OF WAR-TIME PAGE

I. The Grey Angel

II. Defeat

III. Flotsam and Jetsam

IV. The Bright Side

V. Cafard

VI. Recorded

VII. The Recruit

VIII. The Peace Meeting

IX. "The Dog It Was That Died"

X. In Heaven and Earth

XI. The Mother Stone

XII. Poirot and Bidan

XIII. The Muffled Ship

XIV. Heritage

XV. 'A Green Hill Far Away'

PART II.—OF PEACE-TIME

I. Spindleberries

II. Expectations

III. Manna

IV. A Strange Thing

V. Two Looks

VI. Fairyland

VII. The Nightmare Child

VIII. Buttercup-Night

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PART I.—OF WAR-TIME PAGE

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I. The Grey Angel

"Each newcomer to the wards was warned by his comrades that the English angel with the grey hair was to be taken without a smile, exactly as if she were his grandmother."

July 06, 2021 - July 06, 2021.

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II. Defeat

" ... And even for a woman “of a certain type” her position was exceptionally nerve-racking in war-time, going as she did by a false name. Indeed, in all England there could hardly be a greater pariah than was this German woman of the night."

" ... On this moonlight night by the banks of the Rhine — whence she came — the orchards would be heavy with apples; there would be murmurs, and sweet scents; the old castle would stand out clear, high over the woods and the chalky-white river. There would be singing far away, and the churning of a distant steamer’s screw; and perhaps on the water a log raft still drifting down in the blue light. There would be German voices talking. And suddenly tears oozed up in her eyes, and crept down through the powder on her cheeks. She raised her veil and dabbed at her face with a little, not-too-clean handkerchief, screwed up in her yellow-gloved hand. But the more she dabbed, the more those treacherous tears ran. Then she became aware that a tall young man in khaki was also standing before the shop-window, not looking at the titles of the books, but eyeing her askance. ... "

"This young man, Captain in a certain regiment, and discharged from hospital at six o’clock that evening, had entered Queen’s Hall at half-past seven. Still rather brittle and sore from his wound, he had treated himself to a seat in the Grand Circle, and there had sat, very still and dreamy, the whole concert through. It had been like eating after a long fast — something of the sensation Polar explorers must experience when they return to their first full meal. For he was of the New Army, and before the war had actually believed in music, art, and all that sort of thing. With a month’s leave before him, he could afford to feel that life was extraordinarily joyful, his own experiences particularly wonderful; and, coming out into the moonlight, he had taken what can only be described as a great gulp of it, for he was a young man with a sense of beauty. When one has been long in the trenches, lain out wounded in a shell-hole twenty-four hours, and spent three months in hospital, beauty has such an edge of novelty, such a sharp sweetness, that it almost gives pain. And London at night is very beautiful. He strolled slowly towards the Circus, still drawing the moonlight deep into his lungs, his cap tilted up a little on his forehead in that moment of unmilitary abandonment; and whether he stopped before the book-shop window because the girl’s figure was in some sort a part of beauty, or because he saw that she was crying, he could not have made clear to any one."

This has been also written and published as a play, fourth in

Six Short Plays

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

"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!"]"

June 14, 2021 - June 14, 2021.

July 06, 2021 - July 07, 2021.

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III. Flotsam and Jetsam

The title reminds one, more than anything, of a W. Somerset Maugham story, set in colonial plantations of Southeast Asia. There the similarity ends, as strongly reminded by the opening paragraph.

"The tides of the war were washing up millions of wrecked lives on all the shores; what mattered the flotsam of a conscripted deep-sea Breton fisherman, slowly pining away for lack of all he was accustomed to; or the jetsam of a tall glass-blower from the ‘invaded countries,’ drifted into the hospital — no one quite knew why — prisoner for twenty months with the Boches, released at last because of his half-paralysed tongue — What mattered they? What mattered anything, or any one, in days like those?"

July 07, 2021 - July 07, 2021.

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IV. The Bright Side

"A little Englishwoman, married to a German, had dwelt with him eighteen years in humble happiness and the district of Putney, where her husband worked in the finer kinds of leather. He was a harmless, busy little man with the gift for turning his hand to anything which is bred into the peasants of the Black Forest, who on their upland farms make all the necessaries of daily life — their coarse linen from home-grown flax, their leather gear from the hides of their beasts, their clothes from the wool thereof, their furniture from the pine logs of the Forest, their bread from home-grown flour milled in simple fashion and baked in the home-made ovens, their cheese from the milk of their own goats."

Travails of the simple family when war broke out in 1914, more so with sinking of Lusitania.

July 07, 2021 - July 07, 2021.

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V. Cafard

"... And the face of his mother came before him, as he had seen her last, just three years ago, when he left his home in the now invaded country, to join his regiment — his mother who, with all his family, was in the power of the Boche. He had gone gaily, and she had stood like stone, her hand held over her eyes, in the sunlight, watching him while the train ran out. Usually the thought of the cursed Boches holding in their heavy hands all that was dear to him, was enough to sweep his soul to a clear, definite hate, which made all this nightmare of war seem natural, and even right; but now it was not enough — he had “cafard.” He turned on his back. The sky above the mountains might have been black for all the joy its blue gave him. The butterflies, those drifting flakes of joy, passed unseen. ... "

July 07, 2021 - July 07, 2021.

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VI. Recorded

"He looked straight at me, and his eyes — Celtic-grey, with a good deal of light in them — stared, wide and fixed, at things beyond me, as only do the eyes of those who have seen much death. There was a sort of burnt-gunpowder look about their rims and lashes, and a fixity that nothing could have stared down."

" ... He had irregular ears, and no feature that could be called good, but his expression was utterly genuine and unconscious of itself. When he sat quiet his face would be held a little down, his eyes would be looking at something — or was it at nothing? — far-off, in a kind of frowning dream. But if he glanced at his babies his rather thick mouth became all smiles, and he would make a remark to his wife about them. ... "

"Oh! I’ve seen things — enough to make your ‘eart bleed. I’ve seen a lot of them country people. Cruel it is! Women, old men, little children, ‘armless people — enough to make your ‘eart bleed. I used to think of the folk over ‘ere. Don’t think English women’d stand what the French and Belgian women do. Those poor women over there — wonderful they are. There yu’ll see ’em sittin’ outside their ‘omes just a heap o’ ruins — clingin’ to ‘em. Wonderful brave and patient — make your ‘eart bleed to see ‘em. Things I’ve seen! There’s some proper brutes among the Germans — must be. Yu don’t feel very kind to ’em when yu’ve seen what I’ve seen. We ‘ave some games with ‘em, though” — he laughed again: “Very nervous people, the Germans. If we stop firin’ in our lines, up they send the star shells, rockets and all, to see what’s goin’ on — think we’re goin’ to attack — regular ‘lumination o’ fireworks — very nervous people."

"Very soon after that we arrived at where he changed, and putting on his goatskin, his cap, and overcoat, he got out behind his wife, carrying with the utmost care those queer companions, his baby and his rifle.

"Where is he now? Alive, dead? Who knows?"

July 07, 2021 - July 07, 2021.

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VII. The Recruit

" ... He could of course read no papers, a map was to him but a mystic mass of marks and colours; he had never seen the sea, never a ship; no water broader than the parish streams; until the war had never met anything more like a soldier than the constable of the neighbouring village. But he had once seen a Royal Marine in uniform. What sort of creatures these Germans were to him — who knows? They were cruel — he had grasped that. Something noxious, perhaps, like the adders whose backs he broke with his stick; something dangerous like the chained dog at Shapton Farm; or the big bull at Vannacombe. ... "

"His dumb sacrifice passing their comprehension, had been rejected — or so it seemed to him He could not understand that they had spared him. Why! He was as good as they! His pride was hurt. No! They should not get him now!"

July 07, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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VIII. The Peace Meeting

Ironies, subtle and profuse, abound throughout this sketch, of a meeting held in church, of citizens proposing peace talks to end the years of massacre during WWI, and broken up by young, calling them traitors for proposing dialogue with Germans.

Galsworthy didn't live long enough to know the overwhelming irony of the young being correct in their assessment of Germans, however concerned the elderly were for young lives everywhere.

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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IX. "The Dog It Was That Died"

Once again, in reading this portrayal of a half German family in England, one becomes very aware that the author might have missed, completely, how short he fell of realities, in portraying British press and some of the people as hate-filled, however innocent most of their victims; Galsworthy died in 1933, and missed the rise of horror that Germany was turned into, and the heights of heroic stoicism and patience through years of a determined fight that most common British displayed during WWII.

"I am not sure what paper first took up the question of interning all the Huns; but I fancy the point was raised originally rather from the instinct, deeply implanted in so many journals, for what would please the public, than out of any deep animus. At all events I remember meeting a sub-editor, who told me he had been opening letters of approval all the morning. “Never,” said he, “have we had a stunt catch on so quickly. ‘Why should that bally German round the corner get my custom?’ and so forth. Britain for the British!”

"“Rather bad luck,” I said, “on people who’ve paid us the compliment of finding this the best country to live in!”

"“Bad luck, no doubt,” he replied, “mais la guerre c’est la guerre. You know Harburn, don’t you? Did you see the article he wrote? By Jove, he pitched it strong.”"

" ... I wrote to young Holsteig and asked him to come and lunch with me. He thanked me, but could not, of course, being confined to a five-mile radius. Really anxious to see him, I motorbiked down to their house. I found a very changed youth; moody and introspective, thoroughly forced in upon himself, and growing bitter. He had been destined for his father’s business, and, marooned as he was by his nationality, had nothing to do but raise vegetables in their garden and read poetry and philosophy — not occupations to take a young man out of himself. Mrs. Holsteig, whose nerves were evidently at cracking point, had become extremely bitter, and lost all power of seeing the war as a whole. All the ugly human qualities and hard people which the drive and pressure of a great struggle inevitably bring to the top seemed viewed by her now as if they were the normal character of her fellow countrymen, and she made no allowance for the fact that those fellow countrymen had not commenced this struggle, nor for the certainty that the same ugly qualities and hard people were just as surely to the fore in every other of the fighting countries. The certainty she felt about her husband’s honour had made her regard his internment and subsequent repatriation as a personal affront, as well as a wicked injustice. Her tall thin figure and high-cheekboned face seemed to have been scorched and withered by some inner flame; she could not have been a wholesome companion for her boy in that house, empty even of servants. I spent a difficult afternoon in muzzling my sense of proportion, and journeyed back to Town sore, but very sorry."

"“The man recovered from the bite,

"The dog it was that died.”"

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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X. In Heaven and Earth

Another one, like some of his other stories about WWI, by John Galsworthy, that comes across as somewhat like a painting by Picasso where nose and other parts of face are placed incorrectly.

"“Just think of it!” he said: “The same creatures who are blowing each other to little bits all the time, bombing babies, roasting fellow creatures in the air and cheering while they roast, working day and night to inflict every imaginable kind of horror on other men exactly like themselves — these same chaps are capable of feeling like that about shooting a wretched ill cur of a dog, no good to anybody. There are more things in Heaven and Earth — !”"

He's remarking about men being emotional over dogs while being brutal to humans; in all fairness, British were civilised in treatment even of German prisoners of war, while Germans was brutal with all civilians, and animals, as they went through Europe. This is true of both WWI and WWII.

Truth of his statement lies, not where Galsworthy places it in European arena of WWI much less WWII, but in British treatment of India.

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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XI. The Mother Stone

"Ray said: ‘You let me take this stone away with me!’ And the old Boer went on smokin’, and he said: ‘One stone’s the same as another. Take it, brother!’ And Ray said: ‘If it’s what I think, I’ll give you half the price I get for it.’

"“The old Boer smiled, and said: ‘That’s all right, brother; take it, take it!’

"“The next morning Ray left this old Boer, and, when he was going, he said to him: ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I believe this is a valuable stone!’ and the old Boer smiled because he knew one stone was the same as another."

"“And Ray went down to Cape Town, and took the stone to a jeweller, and the jeweller told him it was a diamond of about 30 or 40 carats, and gave him five hundred pound for it. So he bought a waggon and a span of oxen to give to the old Boer, and went back to Jointje. The niggers had collected skinfuls of stones of all kinds, and out of all the skinfuls Ray found three or four diamonds. So he went to work and got another feller to back him, and between them they made the Government move. The rush began, and they found that place near Kimberley; and after that they found De Beers, and after that Kimberley itself.”"

"“Without that game of marbles, would there have been a Moer-Klip — without the Moer-Klip, would there have been a Kimberley — without Kimberley, would there have been a Rhodes — without a Rhodes, would there have been a Raid — without a Raid, would the Boers have started armin’ — if the Boers hadn’t armed, would there have been a Transvaal War? And if there hadn’t been the Transvaal War, would there have been the incident of those two German ships we held up; and all the general feelin’ in Germany that gave the Kaiser the chance to start his Navy programme in 1900? And if the Germans hadn’t built their Navy, would their heads have swelled till they challenged the world, and should we have had this war?”"

"“Well,” he said, “Ray told me the old feller just looked at him as if he thought he’d done a damn silly thing to give him a waggon; and he nodded his old head, and said, laughin’ in his beard: ‘Wish you good luck, brother, with your stone.’ You couldn’t humbug that old Boer; he knew one stone was the same as another.”"

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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XII. Poirot and Bidan

Galsworthy used the name Poirot in another story too, which was slightly confusing there - especially for Agatha Christie's readers - since it was without context.

" ... Though he was several years younger than oneself, one always thought of him as “Old Poirot” indeed, he was soon called “le grand-père,” though no more confirmed bachelor ever inhabited the world. He was a regular “Miller of Dee,” caring for nobody; and yet he was likeable, that humorous old stoic, who suffered from gall-stones, and bore horrible bouts of pain like a hero. In spite of all his disabilities his health and appearance soon became robust in our easy-going hospital, where no one was harried, the food excellent, and the air good. He would tell you that his father lived to eighty, and his grandfather to a hundred, both “strong men” though not so strong as his old master, the squire, of whose feats in the hunting-field he would give most staggering accounts in an argot which could only be followed by instinct. A great narrator, he would describe at length life in the town of Nancy, where, when the War broke out, he was driving a market cart, and distributing vegetables, which had made him an authority on municipal reform. Though an incorrigible joker, his stockfish countenance would remain perfectly grave, except for an occasional hoarse chuckle. ... Bidan (Prosper) prospered more rapidly even than himself. That grey look was out of the boy’s face within three weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he could say, with his dreadful Provençal twang, that he felt “très biang.” A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes, and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his limbs seemed almost to have lost their joints, they wambled so. He had no muscle at all. Utter anæmia had hold of all his body, and all but a corner of his French spirit. Round that unquenchable gleam of gaiety the rest of him slowly rallied. With proper food and air and freedom, he began to have a faint pink flush in his china-white cheeks; his lids no longer drooped, his limbs seemed to regain their joints, his hands ceased to swell, he complained less and less of the pains about his heart. When, of a morning, he was finished with, and “le grand-père” was having his hands done, they would engage in lively repartee — oblivious of one’s presence. We began to feel that this grey ghost of a youth had been well named, after all, when they called him Prosper, so lyrical would he wax over the constitution and cooking of “bouillabaisse,” over the South, and the buildings of his native Aix-en-Provence. ..."

"Once, I regret to say, when spring was beginning to come, Bidan-Prosper returned on “le grand-père’s” arm with the utmost difficulty, owing to the presence within him of a liquid called Clairette de Die, no amount of which could subdue “le grand-père’s” power of planting one foot before the other. ... "

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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XIII. The Muffled Ship

"The landing went on till night had long fallen, and the band was gone. At last the chatter, the words of command, the snatches of song, and that most favourite chorus: “Me! and my girl!” died away, and the wharf was silent and the ship silent, and a wonderful clear dark beauty usurped the spaces of the sky. By the light of the stars and a half moon the far harbour shores were just visible, the huddled buildings on the near shore, the spiring masts and feathery appanage of ropes on the moored ship, and one blood-red light above the black water. The night had all that breathless beauty which steeps the soul in a quivering, quiet rapture....

"Then it was that clearly, as if I had been a welcomer standing on land in one of the wharf gaps, I saw her come — slow, slow, creeping up the narrow channel, in beside the wharf, a great grey silent ship. ... "

July 08, 2021 - July 08, 2021.

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XIV. Heritage (AN IMPRESSION)

" ... And if a place be beautiful, and friendliness ever on the peace-path there, what more can we desire? And yet — how ironical this place of healing, this beautiful “Heritage!” Verily a heritage of our modern civilisation which makes all this healing necessary! If life were the offspring of friendliness and beauty’s long companionship, there would be no crippled children, no air-raid children, none of those good fellows in blue with red ties and maimed limbs; and the colony to which the Bishop spoke, standing grey-headed in the sun, would be dissolved. Friendliness seems so natural, beauty so appropriate to this earth! But in this torn world they are as fugitives who nest together here and there. ... "

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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XV. 'A Green Hill Far Away'

"Was it indeed only last March, or in another life, that I climbed this green hill on that day of dolour, the Sunday after the last great German offensive began? A beautiful sun-warmed day it was, when the wild thyme on the southern slope smelled sweet, and the distant sea was a glitter of gold. Lying on the grass, pressing my cheek to its warmth, I tried to get solace for that new dread which seemed so cruelly unnatural after four years of war-misery.

‘If only it were all over!’ I said to myself; ‘and I could come here, and to all the lovely places I know, without this awful contraction of the heart, and this knowledge that at every tick of my watch some human body is being mangled or destroyed. Ah, if only I could! Will there never be an end?’

"And now there is an end, and I am up on this green hill once more, in December sunlight, with the distant sea a glitter of gold. And there is no cramp in my heart, no miasma clinging to my senses. Peace! It is still incredible. No more to hear with the ears of the nerves the ceaseless roll of gunfire, or see with the eyes of the nerves drowning men, gaping wounds, and death. Peace, actually Peace! The war has gone on so long that many of us have forgotten the sense of outrage and amazement we had, those first days of August, 1914, when it all began. But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall.

"In some of us — I think in many who could not voice it — the war has left chiefly this feeling: ‘If only I could find a country where men cared less for all that they seem to care for, where they cared more for beauty, for nature, for being kindly to each other. If only I could find that green hill far away!’"

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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PART II.—OF PEACE-TIME

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I. Spindleberries

"The radiance and the meandering milky waters; that swan against the brown tufted rushes; those far, filmy Downs — there was beauty!

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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II. Expectations

"Nevertheless they retained their faith that some day they would get ahead of Providence and come into their own."

"After all there was her reversion! They would come into it some day."

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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III. Manna

"His barked-out utterances, ‘I want a pound of butter — pay you Monday!’ ‘I want some potatoes — pay you soon!’ had sounded too often in the ears of those who had found his repayments so far purely spiritual. ... And yet it was impossible to let him and his old mother die on them — it would give too much pleasure ‘over the way.’ And they never dreamed of losing him in any other manner, because they knew his living had been purchased. Money had passed in that transaction; the whole fabric of the Church and of Society was involved. His professional conduct, too, was flawless; his sermons long and fiery; he was always ready to perform those supernumerary duties — weddings, baptisms, and burials — which yielded him what revenue he had, now that his income from the living was mortgaged up to the hilt. ... "

"‘You say you found the loaf under the cart. Didn’t it occur to you to put it back? You could see it had fallen. How else could it have come there?’

"The rector’s burning eyes seemed to melt.

"‘From the sky. Manna.’ Staring round the court, he added: ‘Hungry — God’s elect — to the manna born!’ And, throwing back his head, he laughed. It was the only sound in a silence as of the grave."

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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IV. A Strange Thing

"She nodded. “I suppose you can say that. They made me bring an order against him. He wouldn’t pay up, so he went and enlisted, an’ in tu years ‘e was dead in the Boer War — so it killed him right enough. But there she is, a sweet sprig if ever there was one. ... "

" ... The blowing flames and the blue smoke were alive and beautiful; but behind them they were leaving blackened skeleton twigs.

"“Yes,” I thought, “but in a week or two the little green grass-shoots will be pushing up underneath into the sun. So the world goes! Out of destruction! It’s a strange thing!”"

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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V. Two Looks

"“Neither of those women cried. The wife stayed there by the bed. I got the other one away to her carriage, down the street. — And so she was there to-day! That explains, I think, the look you saw.”"

July 09, 2021 - July 09, 2021.

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VI. Fairyland

"It was about three o’clock, this November afternoon, when I rode down into “Fairyland,” as it is called about here. The birch-trees there are more beautiful than any in the world; and when the clouds are streaming over in rain-grey, and the sky soaring above in higher blue, just-seen, those gold and silver creatures have such magical loveliness as makes the hearts of mortals ache. The fairies, who have been driven off the moor, alone watch them with equanimity, if they be not indeed the birch-trees themselves — especially those little very golden ones which have strayed out into the heather, on the far side of the glen. “Revenge!” the fairies cried when a century ago those, whom they do not exist just to amuse, made the new road over the moor, cutting right through the home of twilight, that wood above the “Falls,” where till then they had always enjoyed inviolable enchantment. They trooped forthwith in their multitudinous secrecy down into the glen, to swarm about the old road. In half a century or so they had it almost abandoned, save for occasional horsemen and harmless persons seeking beauty, for whom the fairies have never had much feeling of aversion. And now, after a hundred years, it is all theirs; the ground so golden with leaves and bracken that the old track is nothing but a vague hardness beneath a horse’s feet, nothing but a runnel for the rains to gather in. ... Now the fairies have got it indeed, they have witched to skeletons all the little bridges across the glen stream; they have mossed and thinned the gates to wraiths. With their dapple-gold revelry in sunlight, and their dance of pied beauty under the moon, they have made all their own.

"I have ridden many times down into this glen; and slowly up among the beeches and oaks into the lanes again, hoping and believing that, some day, I should see a fairy take shape to my thick mortal vision; and to-day, at last, I have seen."

"For just a moment I could see that spirit company, ghosts of the ferns and leaves, of butterflies and bees and birds, and four-footed things innumerable, ghosts of the wind, the sun-beams, and the rain-drops, and tiny flickering ghosts of moon-rays. For just a moment I saw what the fairy’s eyes were seeing, without knowing what they saw."

July 09, 2021 - July 10, 2021.

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VII. The Nightmare Child

" ... Behind healthy relationships between human beings, or even between human beings and animals, there must be at least some rudimentary affinity. That’s the tragedy of poor little souls like Em’leen. Where on earth can they find the affinity which makes life good? The very fact that they must worship is their destruction. It was a soldier — or so they said — who had brought her to her first grief; I had seen her adoring the judge at the trial, then the handsome uniformed Sister. And I, as the village doctor, was a sort of tin-pot deity in those parts, so I was very careful to keep my manner to her robust and almost brusque."

July 10, 2021 - July 10, 2021.

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VIII. Buttercup-Night

" ... The moment I got into that field I felt within me a peculiar contentment, and sat down on a rock to let the feeling grow. In an old holly-tree rooted to the bank about fifty yards away, two magpies evidently had a nest, for they were coming and going, avoiding my view as much as possible, yet with a certain stealthy confidence which made one feel that they had long prescriptive right to that dwelling-place. Around, far as one could see, was hardly a yard of level ground; all hill and hollow, long ago reclaimed from the moor; and against the distant folds of the hills the farm-house and its thatched barns were just visible, embowered amongst beeches and some dark trees, with a soft bright crown of sunlight over the whole. A gentle wind brought a faint rustling up from those beeches, and from a large lime-tree which stood by itself; on this wind some little snowy clouds, very high and fugitive in that blue heaven, were always moving over. But I was most struck by the buttercups. Never was field so lighted up by those tiny lamps, those little bright pieces of flower china out of the Great Pottery. They covered the whole ground, as if the sunlight had fallen bodily from the sky, in millions of gold patines; and the fields below as well, down to what was evidently a stream, were just as thick with the extraordinary warmth and glory of them."

" ... Climbing over the bank at the far end, I found myself in a meadow the like of which — so wild and yet so lush — I think I have never seen. Along one hedge of its meandering length were masses of pink mayflower; and between two little running streams quantities of yellow water iris—”daggers,” as they call them — were growing; the “print-frock” orchis, too, was all over the grass, and everywhere the buttercups. Great stones coated with yellowish moss were strewn among the ash-trees and dark hollies; and through a grove of beeches on the far side, such as Corot might have painted, a girl was running with a youth after her, who jumped down over the bank and vanished. Thrushes, blackbirds, yaffles, cuckoos, and one other very monotonous little bird were in full song; and this, with the sound of the streams, and the wind, and the shapes of the rocks and trees, the colours of the flowers, and the warmth of the sun, gave one a feeling of being lost in a very wilderness of Nature. Some ponies came slowly from the far end, tangled, gipsy-headed little creatures, stared, and went off again at speed. It was just one of those places where any day the Spirit of all Nature might start up in one of those white gaps which separate the trees and rocks."

"When dawn comes, while moonlight is still powdering the world’s face, quite a long time passes before one realises how the quality of the light has changed; and so, it was day before I knew it. Then the sun came up above the hills; dew began to sparkle, and colour to stain the sky. That first praise of the sun from every bird and leaf and blade of grass, the tremulous flush and chime of dawn! One has strayed far from the heart of things that it should come as something strange and wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if I simply could not be there at this hour which so belonged to them. And to me, too, they seemed strange and new — with that in them “which passeth show,” and as of a world where man did not exist, or existed only as just another sort of beast or bird.

"But just then began the crowning glory of that dawn — the opening and lighting of the buttercups. Not one did I actually see unclose, yet, of a sudden, they were awake, and the fields once more a blaze of gold."

July 10, 2021 - July 10, 2021.

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June 15, 2021 -

July 06, 2021 - July 10, 2021.

Purchased August 12, 2013.

Kindle Edition, 316 pages

Published March 30, 2011

(first published May 1st 2001)

ASINB004UJKML4

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FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Stories)
(The Forsyte Chronicles);
by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4109381974

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Forsytes, Pendyces and Others.

Short stories and essays selected by Ada Galsworthy

Unknown Binding – 1 Jan. 1935

by John Galsworthy (Author), Ada Galsworthy

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4139508714

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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 10, 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

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

About a judge, pursued and shaken by a smile of contempt.

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

" ... 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

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

About the destitution of an old general émigré, living and working in Europe.

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

"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."

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

" ... 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. ... "

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

"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

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

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

A Sheaf,

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4113228805

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CONTENTS

MUCH CRY — LITTLE WOOL

ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS

REVERIE OF A SPORTSMAN

THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD

ON PERFORMING ANIMALS

VIVISECTION OF DOGS

HORSES IN MINES

THE DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

AIGRETTES

CONCERNING LAWS

ON PROCEDURE IN PARLIAMENT

THE NATURE OF LAWS

PASSING

THE MODERN STOIC: AN ILL-NATURED DUOLOGUE.

ON PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

THE SPIRIT OF PUNISHMENT

AN UNPUBLISHED PREFACE

ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN

GENTLES, LET US REST!

APPEAL TO THE PRESS

ON SOCIAL UNREST

ON PEACE

THE WILL TO PEACE

PEACE OF THE AIR

THE WAR

VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

CREDO

FRANCE

REVEILLE

FIRST THOUGHTS ON THIS WAR

THE HOPE OF LASTING PEACE

DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN

OUR LITERATURE AND THE WAR

ART AND THE WAR

TRE CIME DI LAVAREDO

SECOND THOUGHTS ON THIS WAR

TOTALLY DISABLED

CARTOON

HARVEST

AND — AFTER?

PRELUDE

FREEDOM AND PRIVILEGE

THE NATION AND TRAINING

HEALTH, HUMANITY AND PROCEDURE

A LAST WORD

THE ISLANDS OF THE BLESSED

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MUCH CRY — LITTLE WOOL

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

ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS

Obvious! - and yet - just a century ago, it wasn't.

"Honour" killings still continue, for that matter!

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

"“Gold-fish!”

"I looked at him very doubtfully; one had known him so long that one never looked at him in any other way.

"“Can you imagine,” he went on, “how any sane person can find pleasure in the sight of those swift things swimming for ever and ever in a bowl about twice the length of their own tails?”

"“No,” I said, “I cannot — though, of course, they’re very pretty.”"

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

"“Does a man ever mean to be cruel? He merely makes or keeps his living; but to make or keep his living he will do anything that does not absolutely prick to his heart through the skin of his indolence or his obtuseness.” —

"“I think,” I said, “that you might have expressed that less cynically, even if it’s true.”

"“Nothing that’s true is cynical, and nothing that is cynical is true. Indifference to the suffering of beasts always comes from over-absorption in our own comfort.”
................................................................................................

"“Well,” I said, at last, “in England, anyway, we only keep such creatures in captivity for scientific purposes. I doubt if you could find a single instance nowadays of its being done just as a commercial attraction.”

"He stared at me.

"“Yes,” he said, “we do it publicly and scientifically, to enlarge the mind. But let me put to you this question. Which do you consider has the larger mind — the man who has satisfied his idle curiosity by staring at all the caged animals of the earth, or the man who has been brought up to feel that to keep such indomitable creatures as hawks and eagles, wolves and panthers, shut up, to gratify mere curiosity, is a dreadful thing?” To that singular question I knew not what to answer. At last I said:

"“I think you underrate the pleasure they give. We English are so awfully fond of animals!”"
................................................................................................

"“Pigeons are so complacent.”

"My friend smiled in his dubious way, and answered:

"“Do you know the ‘blue rock’?”"

"My friend, the joke is this: To the man who lets no little bird away to freedom comes much honour, and a nice round sum of money! Do you still think there is no connection?”"

"“The sportsman is necessary to the expansion of Empire. Besides, you must remember that one does not expect high standards at Monte Carlo.”"

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

"“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, “that any woman of gentle instincts, who knows that the ‘aigrette,’ as theycall it, is a nuptial plume sported by the white egret only during the nesting season — and that, in order to obtain it, the mother-birds are shot, and that, after their death, practically all their young die from hunger and exposure — do you mean to tell me that any gentlewoman, knowing that, wears them? Why! most women are mothers themselves! What would they think of gods who shot women with babies in arms for the sake of obtaining their white skins or their crop of hair to wear on their heads, eh?”

"“But, my dear fellow,” I said, “you see these plumes about all over the place!”

"“Only on people who don’t mind wearing imitation stuff.”"

"“That is very clever,” I said, “but how about the statistics of real egret plumes imported into this country?”

"He answered like a flash: “Oh, those, of course, are only brought here to be exported again at once to countries where they do not mind confessing to cruelty; yes, all exported, except — well, those that aren’t!”

"“Oh! “I said: “I see! You have been speaking ironically all this time.”

"“Have you grasped that? “ he answered. “Capital!”

"After that we walked in silence.

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

"“But surely,” I said, “if we can’t do anything to help the poor things we had better keep our ears from hearing.”

"“And our eyes shut? Suppose we all did that, what sort of world should we be living in?”

"“Very much the same as now, I expect.”

"“Blasphemy! Rank, hopeless blasphemy!”

"“Please don’t exaggerate!”

"“I am not. There is only one possible defence of that attitude, and it’s this: The world is — and was deliberately meant to be — divided into two halves: the half that suffers and the half that benefits by that suffering.”"

"“You acquiesce in that definition of the world’s nature? Very well, if you belong to the first half you are a poor-spirited creature, consciously acquiescing in your own misery. If to the second, you are a brute, consciously acquiescing in your own happiness, at the expense of others. Well, which are you?”"

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

"But we had reached my rooms.

"“Before I go in,” I said, “there is just one little thing I’ve got to say to you: Don’t you think that, for a man with your ‘ sense of proportion,’ you exaggerate the importance of beasts and their happiness?”

"He looked at me for a long time without speaking, and when he did speak it was in a queer, abstracted voice: “I have often thought over that,” he said, “and honestly I don’t believe I do. For I have observed that before men can be gentle and broad-minded with each other, they are always gentle and broad-minded about beasts. These dumb things, so beautiful — even the plain ones — in their different ways, and so touching in their dumbness, do draw us to magnanimity, and help the wings of our hearts to grow. No; I don’t think I exaggerate, my friend. Most surely I don’t want to; for there is no disservice one can do to all these helpless things so great as to ride past the hounds, to fly so far in front of public feeling as to cause nausea and reaction. But I feel that most of us, deep down, really love these furred and feathered creatures that cannot save themselves from us — that are like our own children, because they are helpless; that are in a way sacred, because in them we watch, and through them we understand, those greatest blessings of the earth — Beauty and Freedom. They give us so much, they ask nothing from us. What can we do in return but spare them all the suffering we can? No, my friend; I do not think — whether for their sakes or our own — that I exaggerate.”

"When he had said those words he turned away, and left me standing there."

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July 13, 2021 - July 14, 2021.

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REVERIE OF A SPORTSMAN

"Sport" being hunting, shooting, ... not for need, but entertainment.

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"I should think every beast and bird I ever shot, or even had a chance of killing, must have been there, and all whispering: “ Look at him! The ferocious brute! Oh, look at him!”

"Animal lover, as every true sportsman is, those words hurt me. If there is one thing on which we sportsmen pride ourselves, and legitimately, it is a humane feeling toward all furred and feathered creatures — and, as every one knows, we are foremost in all efforts to diminish their unnecessary sufferings."

"“He certainly ate me,” he said; “said I was good, too!”

"“I do not believe” — this was the first hare speaking—” that he shot me for that reason; he did shoot me, and I was jugged, but he wouldn’t touch me. And the same day he shot eleven brace of partridges, didn’t he?” Twenty-two partridges assented. “And he only ate two of you all told — that proves he didn’t want us for food.”

"The hare’s words had given me relief, for I somehow disliked intensely the gluttonous notion conveyed by the quail that I shot merely in order to devour the result. Any one with the faintest instincts of a sportsman will bear me out in this."

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July 14, 2021 - July 14, 2021.

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THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD

Descriptions of the horror are avoidable for vegetarians.

Wonder if nazi death camps were brought to mind of anyone else, reading this during years, decades, post WWII.

The recommendations here by the author, based on continental slaughterhouse practices, were NOT followed at Auschwitz et al, needless to say.

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" ... We should never stand the horses and dogs and cats we make such pets of being killed when their time comes in the manner in which we kill our sheep and pigs. And partly the law stands idle because in the case of horses and dogs and cats there is no large leagued interest, such as that of the meat trades, unconvinced of the need for improvement."
................................................................................................

"But the animal is not given the benefit of the doubt. Whatever the degree of consciousness of animals awaiting slaughter (sometimes for a whole hour) just divided by a door which, all regulations to the contrary, is far from always shut, whether they know or not that it is death which awaits them, any spectator accustomed to animals in their normal state has only to look at their eyes, as they stand waiting, to feel sure that they are in fear of something."

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

" ... But to say that it does not matter whether we needlessly hurt the sheep or pig because they are going to die anyway is really to say that no suffering matters, however unnecessary, since we must all die and it will be all the same a hundred years hence. ... "

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

" ... I blame no one, for I am not in a position to — the charge of callousness falls heavily on my own shoulders, who have eaten meat all these years without ever troubling as to what went before it. ... "

" ... And let those who would attack this plea train their guns on the Report of the Admiralty Committee, 1904. For I have but conveniently summarized the unanimous verdict of able and disinterested men, who, officially appointed to examine the whole matter, held many sittings, heard many witnesses, saw with their own eyes, and made their own experimental investigations. ... "

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July 14, 2021 - July 14, 2021.

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ON PERFORMING ANIMALS

Arguments of this piece apply just as well to lives of women, to the social norms applied and enforced, the must-dos and restrictions, whatever the culture or status.

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

" ... I have only a certain knowledge of human and animal natures, and a common sense which tells me that wild animals are more happy in freedom than in captivity — domestic animals more happy as companions than as clowns. ... "

" ... I admit at once that animals have no more rights than have babies under the age when they may be said to have duties (on which rights, we are told, depend), that animals have no more rights than imbeciles, or those who are deaf, dumb, and blind. ... Once admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering, and you have destroyed the very basis of human society, as we know it in this age. ... "

"Nothing so endangers the fineness of the human heart as the possession of power over others; nothing so corrodes it as the callous or cruel exercise of that power; and the more helpless the creature over whom power is cruelly or callously exercised, the more the human heart is corroded. ... "

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July 14, 2021 - July 14, 2021.

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VIVISECTION OF DOGS

Amazing, when a hunting based civilisation capable of caring - naturally - so much for horses and dogs, necessary to human survival in Nordic civilisation dependent on hunting, nevertheless that civilisation heaps disrespect and worse on a far higher, far more ancient treasure of a civilisation for caring for the cattle vital to agrarian life in tropics.

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July 14, 2021 - July 14, 2021.

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HORSES IN MINES

This obviously applies to most family situations, including some where the male isn't breadwinner, since most wives and children, and often grownup daughters as well, lack power to fight back sheer physical brutality, physically or socially.

"Apart from the aberrations of human brutes, who flourish as well above ground as below, cruelty in these days is not deliberate, but requires for its existence three primary fostering conditions: the first, an overdriven or irritated state of nerves; the second, secrecy; the third, a helpless object."

"It is no more desirable for human beings than for animals to have to spend their lives underground; and what men can put up with animals certainly can. But men have at all events some choice in the matter, and they do spend half the week at least on the surface."

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July 14, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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THE DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

Just as justifiable as binding and consequent maiming of feet, and similar and far worse damages caused by corsets.

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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AIGRETTES

Horrible, until one considers Churchill starving to death millions in India by stealing the harvest and saying it was of no consequence if millions died in India; FDR even sent ships filled with grain to help India, which Churchill didn't allow forth past Australia.

" ... That English women — English ladies — after years of revelation concerning this dismal matter, should continue to support by their demands the killing of myriads of beautiful birds at breeding season is the most discouraging instance I know of the blindness of the human creature whose vanity is threatened."

"“The evidence has been such as to show conclusively, in the opinion of the Committee, that not only are birds of many species slaughtered recklessly, but also that the methods employed for slaughter are such as in many cases, and especially in that of egrets, to involve the destruction of the young birds and eggs.

"“Birds are, as a rule, in their finest plumage at the time of nesting, and have been shown to be especially the prey of hunters at that season.”"

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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CONCERNING LAWS

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

ON PROCEDURE IN PARLIAMENT

John Galsworthy points out social ills of U.K., chiefly those resulting from industrialisation that affect the poor.

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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

THE NATURE OF LAWS

Galsworthy has answers to the sputprious arguments about it being not business of law to make men moral.

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

" ... In a democratic society, such as ours, only public opinion, or, I would rather say, the true secret consensus of general thought, makes laws possible — I am speaking of laws against inhumanity. And laws so made are but constant reminders to every one that public opinion is against such and such a thing. Laws were made against murder and rape because public feeling against such acts became so strong that, until the laws were made, normal individuals did not rest till they had torn to pieces persons who acted in such abnormal abnormal ways. ... "

"But pass a law to penalize the moderate smacking of small naughty children, it will simply be disregarded, because nine out of ten people do not see any harm in either their neighbours or themselves moderately smacking their imps."

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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PASSING

Passing of bills against cruelty to the helpless ...

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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

THE MODERN STOIC: AN ILL-NATURED DUOLOGUE.

"First, what gives you the right to say these sufferings are necessary to society, and to interfere with our attempts to reduce them so far as we can? Secondly, what makes you an authority at all on the nature and degree of suffering?”"

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July 15, 2021 - July 15, 2021.

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ON PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT

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

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Galsworthy argues against solitary confinement, but fails to see two or three separate things connected to it.

One, obviously, is about what precisely can a just and fair punishment be for heinous crimes against humanity, even if it's only rape, murder, or paedophile crimes, not amounting to massacres or genocides or terrorism.

Germans, after WWII, argued against death sentences even for heinous crimes, and also against imprisonment of war criminals, claiming that such offenders need "education", and neither death sentence nor life imprisonment serve any purpose, and are no different from murder.

Another is where the author speaks of "the warped"; since his time, studies in DNA and related studies in criminology have come to realise that a greater than normal proportion of offenders, amongst those having committed most heinous and violent crimes, consist of males with an extra y chromosome; but so far, the only effect of this realisation has been, contrary to expectations in interest of victims, that of concern that such males, unless already convicted of such crimes, ought not to be recipients of any prejudice against them!

Second, often life for a housewife amounts to solitary confinement with no possible escape. Men are likely to brush aside this, since they are not likely to be in that position, but it's no different from claiming that working for ones own family deserves no financial reward consideration and is no sacrifice, and so forth.

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

"I think of it like this: Every now and then, seldom enough but still too frequently, we come across children, in all classes, who, from the age when they begin to act at all, show that there is something in them warped, distorted, inherently inimical to goodness. It is in them, of them, a taint in their blood, a lesion of their brain. They grow up. They are not insane, but they have a blind spot, a place in their souls or internal economy — or whatever you like to call it — that some mysterious, rather awful, hand has darkened. They are doomed from their birth by reason of that blind spot sooner or later to become criminals, that is, to commit some action which is not consonant with the actions of those who are born without this blind spot; some are not found out, some are. When found out they are known as ‘the criminal type.’ They form a portion, not perhaps a very large one, of our convicts. Can those, who have had the good fortune to be born like their fellows, punish these unfortunates for the sake of punishing them, for the sake of avenging society? I cannot bring myself to think so.

"“These are not, however, the bulk of our convicts. The greater part of them are those who are born more or less normal, but with what is called a weak character. I don’t know if you have ever been much amongst those classes which supply the vast proportion of our criminals; if you have, you will recognize, as I do, what a wonderful thing it is that so small a proportion of them become criminals. You will have seen the very dreadful struggle they have against luck from the time when they begin to know anything. You will feel, as I do, that keeping their heads above water is, and must be, touch and go with them from day to day; they’ve just a plank between them and going down, and a very little extra sea (it runs high all the time) tips that plank over. Many of them are bred in slums and garrets where the only real God is Drink. When they go under, they are suddenly up against the most inexorable thing in life, Law and Order, to whose mercilessness every citizen subscribes in self-defence, whether he will or no. When they have paid their debt to Law, they emerge into the same conditions against which they were too weak by nature to stand up before, with the one weapon they had, character, either gone or gravely damaged. It is not remarkable that they go down again, and then again, and so on, until they become ‘ enemies of society.’"
................................................................................................

"I — could not get an admission from any prisoner that the suffering they underwent in separate confinement deterred them from coming back to prison. The two reasons they assigned for coming back to prison were:

"(1) — That they had so little chance outside.

"(2) — Drink.

"It is obvious, however, that the separate period is almost universally regarded as much the worst part of the sentence."

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July 15, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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

THE SPIRIT OF PUNISHMENT

Here, the opening statement by the author,

"In the matter of our administration of justice there is a very simple question to be asked by every man of his own conscience: What do I believe is the object of punishment? Until this question has been asked and coherently answered by the community it is obviously as mad to apply punishment as for a man to set out to dine with a friend of whose address he has no knowledge."

reminds one of one by him in a previous piece, THE NATURE OF LAWS.

Presumably, adult and juvenile criminals receive more consideration by the author than "small naughty children", because of a subconscious awareness of the ever present possibility of being in the former, but never in the future in the latter, position!

This is even more obvious when hearing pious opposition from Germans about death sentence for even serial paedophile rapists and murderers, and - of course! - war criminals, who in their opinion - were only suffering because Germany lost the war!

It's the same reason that drunken - male, mostly - drivers killing toddlers got very rarely punished beyond a rap on knuckles by - mostly male - judges, until MADD - Mothers Against Drunken Drivers - was organised, and fought for justice. Or, for that matter, rape cases were very rarely given justice, always with a doubt cast against the victim, until Boston Globe fought back with "If she said 'no, it's rape".

Or is it worse, and actually about a subconscious foundation of ownership of the children- and wife - by the male?

"Now, whatever sentimental relation there be between punishment and our deep instincts of equity, the object of ‘punishment is the protection of society and the reformation of the offender."

Former is necessary and possible, and the whole point of law enforcement machinery; latter, cannot be guaranteed, especially at expense of the former.

"The protection of Society includes the adjustment of punishment so as not to leave on the mind of the injured person a crude sense of injury unhealed by retribution. It includes the removal from individuals of the desire to take the law into their own hands. It is necessary to preserve in punishment a due element of deterrence. The State and those who administer its functions have no business with anything but the scientific application of the best means to do all this, and reform the offender."

This is ignoring the necessity of protection of possible victims in future and ignoring also the impossibility of guaranteed reform.

"Crime is disease — if not in the medical, in the moral sense of the word. ... "

Hospitals need ICU and other isolated sections.

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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AN UNPUBLISHED PREFACE

"The characteristics of all prison life, at all events in England, are silence and solitude, physical or spiritual; and this cell scene was selected to convey as nearly as the limitations of the stage permitted, these commonest characteristics of detention.

"For the truth of this picture of Blind Justice as a whole I rely on the testimonial of that theatre attendant, employed out of charity, who, having been prosecuted, sentenced, imprisoned, and released, knew, let us hope, more of the matter spiritually, than those who criticize. After the play on the first night, to the question of his manager, “Well, is it true?” he looked up from his sweeping, and said: “Every word of it, sir.”"

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN

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GENTLES, LET US REST!

Funny, how the author was far more specific and erudite when championing cause of animals, or even criminals, but here goes into abstruse discussion regarding equity and societal developments. Reminds one of his pronouncement regarding "smacking" of "small naughty children". He wouldn't legislate against it!

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"This is to state no crazy creed, that because equality is mathematically admirable, equality should at all times and in all places forthwith obtain. Equality, balance, is a dream, the greatest of all visions, the beloved star — ever to be worshipped, never quite reached. And the long road towards it travels the illimitable land of compromise. It would have been futile, as it was in fact impossible, to liberate slaves, when the consciousness of the injustice of slavery was present only in a few abnormal minds, and incommunicable by them to the mind of the surrounding society of the time. The process is slow and steady. ... "
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" ... Women, who can be divorced for one offence, must, before they obtain divorce, prove two kinds of offence against their husbands."

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" ... But it has yet to be proved that women are, in a wide sense of the word, more emotional than men; and, even conceding that they are, why forget that they will bring to the consideration of international matters the solid reinforcement of two qualities — the first, a practical domestic sense lacking to men, and likely to foster national reluctance to plunge into wild-cat wars, the second, a greater faculty for self-sacrifice, tending to fortify national determination to persist in a war once undertaken. It is well known that during the American Civil War the women of the Southern States displayed a spirit of resistance even more heroic than that of their men folk. ... "

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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APPEAL TO THE PRESS

"All political and social movements in this country depend for vitality on catching the eye and the thought of the community. And we may draw one of two alternative morals from that prolonged silence of the Press towards woman’s suffrage which originally brought about the campaign of violence: Either, that men having possession of the organs of public opinion, deliberately kept them closed to the discussion of the political rights of women — a supposition, I should prefer not to entertain. Or, that reports of violence and sensationalism are more sought after than tales of reason and sobriety! Whichever the moral drawn, it is very discreditable to public feeling in this country."

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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ON SOCIAL UNREST

Few admit existence of caste in West, or indeed anywhere except in India; so much so, few reflect to see that the very word is of European, not Indian, origins. Galsworthy is amongst the rare that acknowledge, not just see facts.

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" ... In my day at a public school — and I have no reason at all to hope that, whatever be the exceptions, the general rule has greatly changed — the Universe was divided into ourselves and “ outsiders,” “bounders.” “chaws,” “cads,” or whatever more or less offensive name best seemed to us to characterise those less fortunate than ourselves. It is true that we applied the name mainly to the lower ranks of Capital rather than to actual Labour, but this was only because we lived so far away from industrial workers that we never even thought of them. Such working folk as we actually came into personal contact with we never dreamed of associating with any such offensive thought in our minds or speech on our tongues; but, generally, the working man did not exist for us except as a person outside, remote, and almost inimical. From our homes, t ouched already by this class feeling, caught up from political talk by chance overheard, we went to private schools, where the teaching of manners, mainly under clerical supervision, effectually barred us from any contaminating influence; so that if by chance we encountered the “lower class” boy we burned to go for him and correct his “cheek.” Thence we were passed into the great “caste” factory, a public school, where the feeling became, by mere process of being left to itself, as set and hard as iron. It is true that a levelling process went on among the boys themselves, so that a duke’s son was no more accounted of than a stockbroker’s, but nevertheless all learned to consider themselves “the elect.” Of ten public schoolboys, seven have come from “caste-” infected homes and private schools, and have active prejudice already. The remaining three may still be open-minded or indifferent; of these, two will infallibly follow the sway of the herd instinct; one may perhaps develop a line of his own, or adhere to the influence of a home inimical to “caste,” and become a “ smug” or Radical. In result, failing definite sustained effort to break up a narrow “caste” feeling, the public school presents a practically solid phalanx of the fortunate, insulated against real knowledge of, or sympathy with, the less fortunate. This phalanx marches out into the professions, into business, into the universities, where, it is true, some awaken to a sense of wider values — but not too many. From the point of view of any one who tries to see things as they are, and see them as a whole, there is something terrific about this automatic “caste” moulding of the young. ..."

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"Since, in relation to the foregoing, four objections, at all events, are bound to be made, let me make them myself, and answer them too. First: It is not the public school and ‘varsity man who is lacking in sympathy and good-will towards Labour; it is the self-made capitalist, or the grammar school man. The truth is that, with exceptions, they all are lacking. But the defect is more dangerous and insidious within “the caste” than without; for not only is “the caste “ homogeneous, and far more influential in every way, but it veils its lack of sympathy in this very pretension of having sympathy. ... "

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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ON PEACE

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THE WILL TO PEACE

Galsworthy opens this, published in Daily Mail in 1909, with

"I WAS walking in the district known as Notting Dale looking for signs of the Millennium, when I saw on a poster these words: “Why England and Germany must go to war.”"

And proceeds to describe those looking at it along with him, evoking contempt and disgust, with a clear intention that this will rub off on the poster, the topic, and generally on everyone in his country in favour of such a war. Having tricked the reader, he then proceeds to argue more openly, with clear contempt for any argument he imagines for the war, not mentioned.

But he lived through that war, and well into rise of Nazism. He ought to have known Germany was responsible for escalating a local tragedy in Sarajevo into a global war with millions dying for better part of a decade. Did he ever change his mind about blaming England for it? Judging by his writings through that war, no he didn't.

Would he have known better after Nuremberg trials and the evidence of atrocities?

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In fact he quotes the argument for war that belongs, not to allies, but German regimes, both times:-

“War is an evil, but it is necessary; for the human race is divided into breeds, distinct from one another, and plunged into struggle from their births up. Only in each country’s jealous preservation of itself can we look for the welfare of the whole. There is no avail in dreams of peace; no use in preparation for it; men have always killed each other for their own advantage and always will; if they did not so kill their neighbours they could not themselves survive. Life is so conditioned; there is not enough for all. We know, therefore, that this war must come. We see it coming. We have fastened our eyes on it. We cannot get out of its way. We must offer ourselves up in holy sacrifice before this bloody, predestined monster.”

And if one knows about pursuit of Alexandra of Battenberg by her first cousin the Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom she refused, preferring another cousin - the then Tsarevich, Nicholas - and the subsequent sending of Lenin by Kaiser Wilhelm II into Russia by using a German diplomatic privilege of a German train going deep into Russia without examination by Russian authorities, which resulted ultimately into not only the bloodbath in Russia that helped Germany but also had Alexandra and Nicholas murdered with all their children and many other close relatives, ... well, the only blame England could accept was not showing alacrity enough - and men enough - to save them and Russia.

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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PEACE OF THE AIR

Galsworthy argues for scorching all possible development of warfare in air, which presumably amounts to scorching all possibilities of air travel and more, just so air and skies are left innocent.

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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THE WAR

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VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Galsworthy prays against war.

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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CREDO

"And so I hold that without tarnishing true honour, endangering civilization present and to come, and ruining all hope of future tranquillity, my Country could not have refused to take up arms for the defence of her little neighbour Belgium’s outraged neutrality, which she had solemnly guaranteed.

"I claim from the trend of events, and of national character, during the last century that in democracy alone lies any coherent hope of progressive civilization or any chance of lasting peace in Europe, or the world.

"I believe that this democratic principle, however imperfectly developed, has so worked in France, in Britain, in the United States, that these countries are already nearly safe from inclination to aggress, or to subdue other nationalities that have reached approximately their stage of development.

"And I believe that while there remain autocratic Governments basing themselves on militarism, hostile at heart to the democratic principle, Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the nightmare menace of wars like this — the paralysis that creeps on civilizations which adore the god of force."

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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FRANCE

"France! You, of all Countries, have the gift of Living Form, of a coherent grace, like that of your own flower of light, or such as haunts La Gioconda, listening to life."

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July 16, 2021 - July 16, 2021.

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REVEILLE

"While I stood thus watching, the sun rose, and, above the plain clad in the hues of spring, the heaven brightened to full morning. Amazed, I saw that the stars had not gone in, but shone there in the blue."

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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FIRST THOUGHTS ON THIS WAR

Galsworthy remarks on the prayers at the war for victory, vanquishing the enemy and so on, and contrasts it with the supposed creed.

" ... When this war is over and reason resumes its sway, our dogmas will be found to have been scored through for ever. Whatever else be the outcome of this business, let us at least realize the truth: It is the death of dogmatic Christianity! Let us will that it be the birth of a God within us, and an ethic Christianity that men really practise!"

Only - did he think this was the first war in Europe, or the first instance of brutality in name of the religion for that matter that he thinks is gentle, even without declared war? Was he unawsre of the inquisition, the burning of Jean D'Arc at stake, the papal orders to assasinate Queen Elizabeth I, and much much more?

Or - did he think colonial empires were acquired by missionaries by merely praying, and were run too by smiles and prayers, with no looting and massacres of subjects by conquistadores regimes?

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"If only autocracies — masquerading or naked — go down in the wreckage of this war!

"The superstition that unmilitarized nations suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart has perished in the forty-fourth year of its age, at the siege of Liège, blown away by the heroism of a little unmilitary nation!"
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It's ironic how much of the last part of following was so wrong.

"The Russian people is not Russia, unless it should become so in this war. There has hitherto been an almost absolute divorce between the essentially democratic nature of the Russian and the despotic methods by which Russia is governed. We English and French, fighting not only for our lives, but for democracy, for the decent preservation of treaty rights, and a humanity that we believe can only flourish under democratic rule, find it somewhat ironical that we have with us a despotism. And there is a profound reason why it has been and will be difficult for Russia to change its form of government. The emotional, uncalculating Russian has little sense of money, space, or time; he falls an easy prey to those sterner, more matter-of-fact than himself. Bureaucracy attracts the hard and practical elements of a population; there are, or were, many of Teutonic origin manning Russian officialdom. And Russia is so huge; democratic rule will find it difficult to be swift enough; in decentralization there is danger of disruption. Nevertheless, we” welcome the help of Russia, for, if France and we were beaten, it would not only be our own deaths, but the death of democracy and humanism in Europe — perhaps in the world. The tide of democracy sets from the West. It must permeate Germany before it reaches Russia. Out of this war many things may come. If Fate grant that military despotisms fall in any country, they may well fall in all, and our ally, Russia, gain at last a Constitution and some real measure of democratic freedom, some real coherence between the Russian people and Russian policy."

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Galsworthy repeatedly, consistently, overestimate West and Christianity, and its consequent other side of the coin too shows in his writings, identifying East and other religions, other cultures with dark, ignorant, despotic forces.

" ... The moon and stars would be shining over the battlefields, the wind rustling the trees there, the earth sleeping in dark beauty. So would it be all over the Western world. The peace of God doth indeed pass our understanding!"

Yet he fails to recall that, supposedly historic figure of Jesus was from East as seen from Europe, while his executioners were despotic Roman empire; just as he fails to see that subjugation of India doesn't testify to democracy of England.

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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THE HOPE OF LASTING PEACE

Notice the complete obliteration of nations, cultures, lands subjugated by european colonial empires:-

"And in considering how far the principle of nationality should be exalted, one must remember that it is in the main responsible for the present state of things. In truth, the principle of nationality of itself and by itself is a quite insufficient ideal. It is a mere glorification of self in a world full of other selves; and only of value in so far as it forms part of that larger ideal, an international ethic, which admits the claims and respects the aspirations of all nations. Without that ethic little nations are (as at the present moment) the prey — and, according to the naked principle of nationality, the legitimate prey — of bigger nations. Germany absorbed Schleswig, Alsace-Lorraine, and now Belgium, by virtue of nationalism, of an overweening belief in the perfection of its national self. Austria would subdue Serbia from much the same feeling. France does not wish to absorb or subdue any European people of another race, because France, as ever, a little in advance of her age, as already grounded in this international ethic of solid respect for the rights of all nations which belong, broadly speaking, to the same stage of development. The same may now be said of the other Western democratic Powers, Britain and America, “To live and let live,” “To dwell together in unity,” are the guiding maxims of the international ethic, by virtue of which alone have the smaller communities of men — the Belgiums, Bohemias, Polands, Serbias, Denmarks, Irelands, Switzerlands of Europe — any chance of security in the maintenance of their national existence. In short, the principle of nationality, unless it is prepared to serve this international ethic, is but a frank abettor of the devilish maxim: “Might is right.” All this is truism; but truisms are often the first things we forget. —"

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Galsworthy forgets, as Germans would love everyone else to, that German population outside ger9was direct result of German expansionism of over a millennium, when they turned conveniently to East instead of going to Jerusalem during crusades, massacred Prussian people wholesale and had Germans settle the land.

" ... What is a nation? Shall it be determined by speech, by blood, by geographical boundary, by historic tradition? The freedom and independence of a country can and ever should be assured when with one voice it demands the same. It is seldom so simple as that. Belgium, no doubt, is as one man, Poland is one man in so far as the Poles are concerned, but what of the Austrians, Russians, Germans settled among them? What of Ireland split into two camps? What of the Germans in Bohemia; in Alsace; in Schleswig? ... "

This was almost successfully repeated and was the very purpose of German expansion during WWII, begun precisely to colonise Europe and the rest of the world. Hence, too, the expulsion of all Germans from every nation East post WWII - none wished a repetition of the excuse of German population amongst them being cause of another war to annex their parts or whole.
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Again, ignoring world outside Europe, almost on par with a belief that they deserve colonial slavery without any consideration, almost on par with animals as in a zoo, or pets at best, with some used for work:-

"In my belief the best hope for lasting peace, the chief promise of security for the rights and freedom of little countries, the most reasonable guarantee of international justice and general humanity, lies in the gradual growth of democracy, of rule by consent of the governed. When Europe is all democratic, and its civilization on one plane — instead of as now on two — then and then only we shall begin to draw the breath of real assurance."

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"Representative Governments must answer for their actions to their fellow-men. Autocratic Governments need only answer to their gods. The eyes of representative Governments are turned habitually inwards towards the condition of the people whom they represent. The eyes of autocratic Governments may indeed be turned inwards, but what they usually see of the people whom they do not represent is liable to make them turn outwards. In other words, they find in successful foreign adventure and imperialism a potent safeguard against internal troubles."

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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DIAGNOSIS OF THE ENGLISHMAN

" ... Englishman. Ignorance in Central Europe of his character tipped the balance in favour of war, and speculation as to the future is useless without right comprehension of his nature."

Galsworthy sings paens of public school sustem and its effects, though restricted to English upper castes.

" ... THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. — This potent element in the formation of the modern Englishman, not only in the upper but of all classes, is something that one rather despairs of making understood — in countries which have no similar institution. But! Imagine one hundred thousand youths of the wealthiest, healthiest, and most influential classes, passed, during each generation, at the most impressionable age, into a sort of ethical mould, emerging therefrom stamped to the core with the impress of a uniform morality, uniform manners, uniform way of looking at life; remembering always that these youths fill seven-eighths of the important positions in the professional administration of their country and the conduct of its commercial enterprise; remembering too, that, through perpetual contact with every other class, their standard of morality and way of looking at life filters down into the very toes of the land. This great character-forming machine is remarkable for an unself-consciousness which gives it enormous strength and elasticity. Not inspired by the State, it inspires the Stated The characteristics of the philosophy it enjoins are mainly negative, and, for that, the stronger. “Never show your feelings — to do so is not manly, and bores your fellows. Don’t cry out when you’re hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell no tales about your companions and no lies about yourself. Avoid all ‘swank,” side,’ ‘swagger,’ braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at.” (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, except in his Press, habitually understates everything.) “Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play games hard, and keep the rules of them, even when your blood is hot and you are tempted to disregard them. In three words: PLAY THE GAME” — a little phrase which may be taken as the characteristic understatement of the modern Englishman’s creed of honour, in all classes. ... "

Wonder if he thought Dyer was an aberration? The Queen's late husband publicly stated, on his last visit to India, that Dyer had told him that only a few people died (as he, Dyer, barricaded the gate of the enclosed garden in Amritsar with a tank and had soldiers open fire on unarmed civilians of all ages and genders, until they were dead - was that an example of "not exaggerating" fostered by Public schools?

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" ... You hail a porter; if you tell him you have plenty of time, he muddles your things amiably with an air of, “It’ll be all right,” till you have only just time. But if you tell him you have no time — he will set himself to catch that train for you, and catch it faster than a porter of any other country. Let no foreigner, however, experiment to prove the truth of this, for a porter — like any other Englishman — is incapable of taking a foreigner seriously (after a year of war he is not even yet taking the Germans seriously); and, quite friendly, but a little pitying, will lose him the train, assuring the unfortunate that he can’t possibly know what train he wants to catch."

"The Englishman makes constant small blunders; but few, almost no, deep mistakes. He is a slow starter, but there is no stronger finisher, because he has by temperament and training the faculty of getting through any job he gives his mind to with a minimum expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. ... The Englishman’s proverbial “ hypocrisy” — that which I myself have dubbed his “island Pharisaism” — comes chiefly, I think, from his latent but fearfully strong instinct for competition which will not let him admit himself beaten, or in the wrong, even to himself; and from an ingrained sense of form that impels him always to “save his face”; but partly it comes from his powerlessness to explain his feelings. ... "

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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OUR LITERATURE AND THE WAR

Repeatedly, Galsworthy finds war distasteful, however justified the involvement of England (he agrees with that); and for him, an artist or writer can only be inspired by beauties of nature at peace.

" ... the war is likely to have little deep or lasting influence on literature. ... "

He ignores, or perhaps is unaware of, all great works of lliterature that do not fit into his idea.

Some celebrated works of lliterature were in the process of gestation even as his life came to an end - Hemingway, for example. Margaret Mitchell was writing her one stupendously celebrated book then, and without the U.S. civil war it wouldn't exist.

But Mahabharata is ancient literature from treasures of an ancient culture still alive and flourishing, and while it does not advise war - God Krishna does his utmost to avoid it every time possible, until forced at end by intractable villains into agreeing to battle - the epic does laud heroic figures, contrary to pronouncements by Galsworthy, and there is no greater work of literature.

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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ART AND THE WAR

For someone who championed cause of women's rights, human rights, and so on, Galsworthy was either not well informed or quite inconsistent in his opinion about artists whose lives and conduct wasn't in accord with his thinking.

"MONSIEUR RODIN — perhaps the greatest living artist — has lately defined art as the pursuit of beauty, and beauty as “ the expression of what there is best in man.”"

Rodin's treatment of women in his life, even of his son, was abominable; and as to being greatest, it's a matter of opinion - perhaps most people find it convenient to follow public opinion, or that of the latest fashion minority, but Rodin was certainly not the greatest if one considers Impressionists.

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" ... Art for art’s sake — if it meant what it said, which is doubtful — was always a vain and silly cry. ..."

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" ... Tolstoi, in limiting art to such of it as might be understanded of simple folk, served his purpose of attacking the extravagant dandyisms of æstheticism, but fell lugubriously short of the wide truth. .... "

" ... Not, of course, that the size of his public is proof of an artist’s merit. The public of all time is generally but a small public at any given moment. Tolstoi seems to have forgotten that, and to have neglected the significance attaching to the quality of a public. ... "

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Wrong, again.

"When the war is over, the world will find that the thing which has changed least is art. There will be less money to spend on it; some artists will have been killed; certain withered leaves, warts, and dead branches will have sloughed off from the tree; and that is all. The wind of war reeking with death will neither have warped nor poisoned it. The utility of art, which in these days of blood and agony is mocked at, will be rising again into the view even of the mockers, almost before the thunder of the last shell has died away."

A great turmoil did take place post, and even during, WWI, but far more was to come; and world culture has changed since WWII in myriad ways that only scientists could hsve foreseen.
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" ... The greatness of Blake is the greatness of his simpler work. Though, in this connection, it is as much affectation to pretend that men are more childish than they are, as to pretend that they all have the subtlety of a Robert Browning. ... "

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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TRE CIME DI LAVAREDO

Over and over, Galsworthy overgeneralises his perception and statements from him become incorrect because he fails to see they might not be true, or even coerect, outside Europe.

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"You three rock mountains above Misurina of the Italian Tyrol — how many times have we not climbed up, to lie on your high stony slopes, steeping our eyes in wild form and colour, wherefrom even a dull spirit must take wings and soar a little! Width of thought is surely born, in some sort, of majestic sights — cloud forms, and a burning sky, rock pinnacles, and wandering, deep-down valleys, the gray-violet shadows on the hills, the frozen serenity of far snows. All the outspread miracle there lies fan-shaped to the south, south-east, south-west, having that warmth which so makes the heart rejoice the moment one passes over and looks southward from any mountain. What traveller does not feel strange loveliness steal up into his soul from southern slopes? Domodossola below the Simplon; Val d’Aosta beyond the Matterhorn; Bormio beneath the Stelvio; and many another holy place. It is not merely charm and mellowness — the South can be savage as the North — it is some added poignancy of form and colour, and a look of being blessed.

"Tre Cime di Lavaredo! Music comes drifting up your slopes, from pasture far down enough to give magic to cow-bells."
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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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SECOND THOUGHTS ON THIS WAR

Galsworthy sees Germany!

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"Germany calls the war “this English war;” we English as fervently believe it a Prussian war, having deep root in Prussian will, and history. One thing is certain: At the last moment the world, desperately balancing, was thrust over the edge of the abyss by a sudden swoop of the Prussian war party.

"“Pourtales (German Ambassador to Russia) called Sazonoff’s attention in the most serious manner to the fact that nowadays measures of mobilization would be a highly dangerous form of diplomatic pressure; for in that event the purely military consideration of the question by the General Staffs would find expression, and that if that button were once touched in Germany the situation would get out of control.” (Count Szapary, Austrian Ambassador to Russia. Austrian Book, No. 28.)"

" ... I cannot but think that, when peace comes and Prussian Junkerism is held harmless for a span, Junkerism in general will have a better chance of pushing up its hydra heads than it had before this war. ... "

" ... States still can seize here or seize there, if they be strong enough, but we emphatically deny that they should do so on principle, as the new German philosophy seems to teach, and set the robber’s ideal, the robber’s fashion of morality, for the individuals who compose those States. ... "
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"Our enemy now proclaims that his objective is the crushing of Britain’s world-power in the interests of mankind.

"Are we justified in retaining if we can what, in a by no means unstained past, we have acquired, or should we hand over our position, well and ill-gotten, to this new claimant, with his new culture, for the benefit of the world?"

" ... Germany, after being petrified with surprise at our intervention, now accuses us of having planned the war and deliberately attacked her. It is divinely easy to claim things both ways when you are at war. ... "

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"“A war of exhaustion.” How often we use those words! They are current in all the belligerent countries, and in all they are unreally used, as yet. But they are, I fear, literally true. It is a war which — save for some happy chance — can hardly end till one group or the other have no longer the men to hold their lines. The sway of the fighting is of no great moment; it does not seem to matter where precisely the killing, maiming, and capturing go on, so long as they do go on with a certain mathematical regularity. A year or so hence, when the total disablement is nearer twenty than ten millions, the meaning of the words will be a little clearer, and they will probably only then be used by the side whose united population is still more than twice that of the other side. ... "
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" ... The Teuton of all men requires the Christian, or shall we say the humanistic, ethic, to modify something science-ridden, overbearing, and heady in his soul. The Teuton, before the new philosophy of self-expansion at all costs laid hold on him, was welcome, from his many great qualities, in a world of other men. But his was the last nature that could afford to succumb wholesale to the faith that his race was the only race that mattered. If he could see himself he would realize that the very thoroughness and over-exaltation of his nature made it ruinous for him to tamper with this particular ideal, for he was bound sooner or later to run it to death, to the danger and alarm of all other races. ... "

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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TOTALLY DISABLED

"They who lie helpless are no longer quite bodies, for the essence of body is movement; already they are almost spirits. It is as if, in passing, one looked at minds, nearly all in the heyday of consciousness and will."

"To you, women of Great and Greater Britain, it has fallen to raise on Richmond Hill this refuge and home for our soldiers and sailors totally disabled. Where thirty-two are now lying there will soon be two hundred more. Nearly all my life I have known the spot on which this home will stand; and truly, no happier choice could have been made. If beauty consoles — and it can, a little — it is there in all the seasons; a benign English beauty of fields and trees and water spread below, under a wide sky."

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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CARTOON

This was published, verbatim, under the title "Gibbet", in Tatterdemalion.

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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HARVEST

" ... There is no solace in the thought that death is nothing! — save for those who still believe they go straight to Paradise. ... "

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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AND — AFTER?

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PRELUDE

Prophetic!

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"The strength of a League for Peace will depend before all on the conduct of each separate nation. We in this country cannot control the faith, conduct, or stability of the other members of the League; we can control our own.

"However it ends, this war must leave the bitterest feelings. League for Peace or none, there will remain for this country a menace from without.

"If Germany were what is called “crushed” — a queer notion in connection with sixty-five millions of people — she would smoulder with such a fire of vengeance that a victorious British nation, slumbering in dreams of security, waxing fat and swollen-headed, would in a few years time be in as great danger as ever. If Germany be merely shorn of her pretensions and forced back within her former boundaries, then, unless good fortune bring her a social revolution and the comparative blessings of Democracy, Germany may be much the same as she has been, a soldier-ridden State, quickly or slowly gathering force, to reforge the iron machinery of the Prussian soul, and lead the armoured dance again. Stung to the quick by memory of mistake, knowing that she misjudged our nature and our power, she will not make mistake a second time. However ardently the successful may desire to forget — it takes two to bury the hatchet. Let no one think that Germany will forget."

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July 17, 2021 - July 17, 2021.

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FREEDOM AND PRIVILEGE

It's unclear whether Galsworthy is deluded, trying to convince himself and others despite evidence to the contrary, or simply misinformed or worse.

"WHAT is this thing called the British Empire? A family of children, ruled by a Mother, or a gathering of kinsfolk under the roof of one ideal? Is it in reality an Empire or a Confederacy? It has been the first, if is fast becoming the second. Imperialism is governed for good or ill by the principle that underlies it.

"At the time of the American War of Independence British government stood for the principle of Domination; even so late as the Boer War there is much doubt whether, for the moment at least, it stood for anything very different. A great change has come. The British Empire stands now, as it never yet stood, for the principle “Live and let live”; for coherence through common ideals and affections, rather than for coherence through force. ... "

Even if that was written before the massacre at Amritsar of unarmed civilians of all ages and genders, by Dyer using a tank to barricade the only exit of an enclosed garden, still India was ruled by force and worse, as evident by the celebrity treatment given Dyer by his then fellow Brits in India (and promotions he got back in Britain) although he was reprimanded and sent home by the then British government of India; for that matter, decades later the visit to India (post demise of Princess of Wales), of the queen Elizabeth II with her husband, was marred by his casually minimising the heinous act of Dyer, stating he was told by Dyer that it wasn't a gig deal, that only a few hundred were killed under the rifle fire he'd ordered opened.

" ... In this war we have not ceased to assert that, besides the preservation of our own safety, we fight for the independence of little countries, and the rights of nations to settle their own affairs. ... "

Galsworthy champions causes of animals, and criminals without consideration of their offense, and the above assertion does not take into account the great nation of India and the treatment accorded India by British, while he talks of British championing case of small nations; at the very least, its racism on par with worst of slaveowner confederate South where a horse or mule was valued more than a slave. (A horse thief was liable to execution by law in almost all states, well into mid twentieth century, while a slave could be whipped or shot by anyone "white", with no risk of even a reprimand)!

" ... By this declared championship, unless we wish to bring down poetic justice on our heads, we have consecrated the principle of Freedom within the confederacy of the British Empire; we have abrogated the right of coercion. ... "

If there was more than slight partial truth therein, India should have had freedom - without partition - immediately after WWII. As it is, British had no intention of setting India free - and stopping the enormous looting and theft causing deaths of millions by starvation - until, due to army raised by Bose reaching India's borders, there were revolts in naval docks, which suddenly frightened Brits into an abrupt flight ignoring the deaths of another few millions caused by the partition they enforced, just so they could have use in perpetuity of free military bases for west for use against USSR; that India was forever thereby saddled with a terrorist factory at the border, helped by West for the said use of the military bases, was a convenient side benefit for Brits, as revenge against India for having stopped the loot by British.

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And here's another example of the fraud perpetrated by British hypocrisy.

" ... Only of its own free will can Ireland ever be made one. If the halves be not forced, they will become one the faster. ... "

If Ireland were not occupied and looted by British, there would be no Dublin verses Ulster, and using religion to pretend that Irish do not want to unite, thst a part of Ireland wants British occupation to continue, is plain fraud.

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Another instance of hypocrisy here.

" ... Will not the first act of justice be the giving of the vote to women on the same terms as to men — with, perhaps, some limitation of age to equalize numbers, since the preponderance of women is brought about mainly by the less dangerous nature of their lives?... "

Why, when women risked life and health in childbirth and endured physical, legal, financial, emotional and verbal duress from husbands, fathers, and society in general, did anyone ever come up with how and what to deprive males of, aged or otherwise, as a compensation?

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July 18, 2021 - July 18, 2021.

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THE NATION AND TRAINING

Galsworthy discusses conscription, and interim training of boys.

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"“‘ According to the main statistical sources of information the very serious fact emerges that between 70 and 80 per cent, of the boys leaving elementary schools enter unskilled occupations. Thus, even when the boy ultimately becomes apprenticed or enters a skilled trade, those intervening years from the national point of view are entirely wasted. Indeed the boy, naturally reacting from the discipline to which school accustomed him, usually with abundance of spare time not sufficiently utilized, and without educative work, is shaped during these years directly towards evil. ‘ (Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, Part VI., Chap. VII.)”

"Now, if the richer classes of this country could be brought face to face with a sight of their own boys from fourteen to eighteen planted in this morass that boys of the poorer classes have as a matter of course to struggle through, they would marvel that the poorer classes have not long ago demanded that it be drained. Working-class parents have not demanded this chiefly because the boy from fourteen to eighteen has meant so many scanty shillings in the family pocket. When shillings are scarce one more or less seems vital. ... In the withdrawal too, of so large a number of boys from the labour market lies some chance of solving a problem that will begin to loom as soon as Peace comes: How to find places for the women whom the war has accustomed to work and wages? By this withdrawal, also, old and unemployed men would benefit; we shall want all the help we can get to minimize the unemployment that will sooner or later follow the war. ... "
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"But there is another aspect of this matter worth more than passing attention. If the war ends victoriously, Great Britain will bulk very large, dangerously large, in the eyes of the world. The German cry is: “Great Britain is the tyrant; the Fleet of England is the menace, threatening every country!” No effort will be left untried to din that whisper into every ear, to implant that suspicion in every mind. ... "

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July 18, 2021 - July 18, 2021.

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HEALTH, HUMANITY AND PROCEDURE

Galsworthy speaks of need to pay attention to slums in England, and feeding the children therein adequately.

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" ... The old-fashioned idea that children must go hungry or be fed so as to grow up rickety because their parents (being “rotters” already) must not be rotted further is a doctrine devoid both of common sense and compassion. ... "

Whoever heard of anyone being rotten enough to have so rotten a philos6???!!!!

" ... Working-class mothers who neglect to feed their children better than themselves are but exceptions, nor will a sounder system of State-help seriously alter the deepest instinct of human nature. The heroism of British soldiers in the trenches is no greater than the lifelong heroism of British mothers in the slums struggling against want. ... "

"The estimated number of school children in England and Wales being fed by the State in 1911 — 1912 was 230,000 out of a school population of 5,357,367. The estimated number of this school population showing signs of malnutrition is variously given at from 10 to 20 per cent. Taking it at 15 per cent., or 800,000 children, we have more than half a million school children wanting meals and not getting them. ... "

Hence the media being okay the whole horror, with clampdown on Churchill stealing India's harvest resulting in millions starving to death, and further, his not only declaring India dying by starvation was ok, but refusing to let the ships filled with grain - sent by FDR to help India when millions died - further than Australia, enhancing this crass statement about India dying of starvation was of no importance? No wonder he was a good match with the third partner amonst allies in WWII!

" ... But when the children under school age who need food and are not getting it, are added to this number, the proportions of this national folly and inhumanity stagger the brain. It does not yet seem to be grasped that these children, who are fighting not only against insufficiency of proper food, but against bad air and bad housing, grow up with so much per cent, knocked off their national value. A stitch in time is supposed to save nine. A pound spent on the age of growth brings back many pounds from the age of stability. To those few who ride the doctrine of Liberty to the death of national health it may simply be said: So long as you have no hope of repealing compulsory education, you have no right to let children receive it in an unfit condition. Education and decent nourishment are inseparable; and decent nourishment is as necessary in the years that come before as in the years of schooling. No! In reality the principle is now rooted, and, like other things, it’s all a question of money. But a country with a capital of £16,000,000,000 and an income of £2,100,000,000 cannot really afford to allow this state of affairs to continue — especially after the gold-letting of this war. ... "

Any thought there about how much of that 21,000,000,000 was looted from India, letting millions of India starve to death as a direct consequence?

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"What is it going to be — after — unless our measures in regard to food, to housing, and to drink, are heroic? For heroic measures we shall need a keener sense of justice, a larger humanity, than we have ever had. ... Man has only a certain capacity for feeling; one expects callousness now towards civil inhumanities. But must that callousness last after peace has come? If so, we are in a bad way."

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July 19, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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A LAST WORD

"One must resolve — resolve that this new unity shall stand not only the strain of war, but the greater strain of the coming Peace. After — will come the test. Having guaranteed our country for the moment from destructive powers without, shall we at once redeliver it to the destructive powers within — go gack to strife over Ireland, the Suffrage, the Welsh Church, and the Second Chamber? Or, preserving our new-found unity, settle generously and in a large spirit those distressful matters, and pass on to the real work — to a wider and freer view of Empire, to the right training of the nation, the right feeding of the nation, to securing for each man, woman, and child a solid foundation of health and hope; to the restoration of the land and of our food supply; to clearance of mutual suspicions, and the stablishing of a new trustfulness between Labour and Capital; to the banishment of inhumanity; the freeing of the eyes of Justice; and interment of the privileges of class?"

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July 19, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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THE ISLANDS OF THE BLESSED

Funny, the English never grasped the fact that their invading, occupying and looting other lands was never accepted, much less seen as benefic, by others so occupied - and while many brits were surprised thst, say, India did not see England as "mother country" (as John Galsworthy seems to take for granted that everyone did, as does the charter of commonwealth for thst matter), except those brought up as per Macaulay policy of turning a privileged few into brown replicas of the English and teaching them a view of the universe as per acceptable to England - they, the English including Galsworthy, are surprisingly oblivious to the real feelings of, not only Irish, but even Scots and Welsh, who never stopped feeling, not only occupied and looted, but abused continuously, as well.

And while Scots hsve barely refrained from declaring independence - English are not known to admit the loot, much less refund it or apologise for massacres - Welsh have, on the other hand, resurrected the language they were penalised for centuries for speakin .

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"I SUPPOSE there are Britons who have never seen the sea; thousands, perhaps — unfortunate. But is there a Briton who has not in some sort the feeling that he is a member of a great ship’s crew? Is there one who never rejoices that his Land sails in space, unboarded, untouched by other lands? It must be strange to be native of a country where, strolling forth, one may pass into the fields or woods of another race. ... "
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"This love of country is so deep and sacred that we cannot utter it; let us not forget that it is as deep and sacred to the natives of other lands!"

Including those occupied - and even the ones swallowed - by England, not merely those of Europe, friends or otherwise.

"Looking back into the dark of history, how quaint is our origin — offspring of invading robbers, wave after wave, for some two thousand years before the Norman Conquest! If these be not in truth the blessed islands that the ancients dreamed of, they seem to have been sufficiently attractive. ... "

Hence, of course, the English need too declare that Aryan were not original inhabitants of India but invaders, like other invaders of these last two millennia, just so majority of India would be robbed of righteous feeling of belonging!

" ... Who our Neolithic forerunners were, whence they came, or whether they were here before our isles cut loose from the mainland and set out on an endless voyage, we shall never, I suppose, know. A strain of their blood, more than we think perhaps, must still be alive within us; the rest of it is freebooting fluid — Celts and Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, all robbers; blent at last — and in Ireland not yet quite blent — to the observance of honour among thieves."

India, on the other hand, does know who we are; invaders and migrants are a minority despite two millennia of strenuous efforts to the contrary by the invaders, which continue in shape of foreign funding of press and political opposition in india to denigrate India continuously.

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" ... I hold the theory — how far scientifically tenable I know not — that the continued vitality of a race depends on two main conditions: the presence of many strains of blood not too violently differing one from the other, and the absence of too much sun. I hold that nations may become too inbred; or may have the sap dried out of them by heat. In Britain we cannot yet have reached the point of perfect fusion — are not in danger for a long time of becoming too inbred. Nor can the sun be called a desperate peril. We are “game,” as they say, for centuries yet; unless — ! For our besetting danger is another."

If that bit about sun is honest, why were English going out desperately, not only occupying India in face of opposition by India, but going to Africa all over the continent looting it and "settling" other continents by massacring natives thereof? California isn't lacking sun in any way on most days, nor is Australia. Why not allow their natives the lands that sap them?

As for the breeding, why carp about other cultures having definite breeding policies, and why hold spawns of English on other lands as lesser breed?

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July 19, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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July 13, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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Another Sheaf,
by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4126552174

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Galsworthy continues thoughts, as WWI comes to end, about whatcomes next.

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CONTENTS

THE ROAD

THE SACRED WORK

THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE SOLDIER-WORKMAN

THE CHILDREN’S JEWEL FUND

FRANCE, 1916–1917

AN IMPRESSION

ENGLISHMAN AND RUSSIAN

AMERICAN AND BRITON

ANGLO-AMERICAN DRAMA AND ITS FUTURE[C]

SPECULATIONS[D]

INTRODUCTORY

WHEAT

HOLDINGS

INSTRUCTION

CO-OPERATION (SMALL HOLDINGS)

CO-OPERATION (ALLOTMENTS)

VALEDICTORY

GROTESQUES

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THE ROAD

A dream, a vision? About the coming of WWI, or it's end?

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"The road stretched in a pale, straight streak, narrowing to a mere thread at the limit of vision — the only living thing in the wild darkness. All was very still. It had been raining; the wet heather and the pines gave forth scent, and little gusty shivers shook the dripping birch trees. In the pools of sky, between broken clouds, a few stars shone, and half of a thin moon was seen from time to time, like the fragment of a silver horn held up there in an invisible hand, waiting to be blown.

"Hard to say when I first became aware that there was movement on the road, little specks of darkness on it far away, till its end was blackened out of sight, and it seemed to shorten towards me. Whatever was coming darkened it as an invading army of ants will darken a streak of sunlight on sand strewn with pine needles. Slowly this shadow crept along till it had covered all but the last dip and rise; and still it crept forward in that eerie way, as yet too far off for sound.

"Then began the voice of it in the dripping stillness, a tramping of weary feet, and I could tell that this advancing shadow was formed of men, millions of them moving all at one speed, very slowly, as if regulated by the march of the most tired among them. They had blotted out the road, now, from a few yards away to the horizon; and suddenly, in the dusk, a face showed."

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July 19, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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THE SACRED WORK

Restoration of the veterans to health.

"The sacred work fights the creeping dejections which lie in wait for each soul and body, for the moment stricken and thrown. It says to Fate: “You shall not pass!”"

"Each comrade who for his Motherland has, for the moment, lost his future is a miniature of that shattered temple.

"To restore him, and with him the future of our countries, that is the sacred work."

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" ... That loveliness which is the creation of the æsthetic human spirit; that flowering of directed energy which we know as civilisation; that manifold and mutual service which we call progress — all stand mutilated and faltering. ... "

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"Consider what it means to fall suddenly out of full vigour into the dark certainty that you can never have full strength again, though you live on twenty, forty, sixty years. ... The Russian “Nichevo” — the “what-does-it-matter?” mood — besets you. Fate seems to say to you: “Take the line of least resistance, friend — you are done for!” ... "
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" ... Of little use to man or nation would be the mere patching-up of bodies, so that, like a row of old gossips against a sunlit wall, our disabled might sit and weary out their days. If that were all we could do for them, gratitude is proven fraudulent, device bankrupt; and the future of our countries must drag with a lame foot."

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"The sacred work is not departmental; it is one long organic process from the moment when a man is picked up from the field of battle to the moment when he is restored to the ranks of full civil life. ... "
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July 19, 2021 - July 19, 2021.

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THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE SOLDIER-WORKMAN

About estimating effects of war on men who fought, and what future they shall expect, or forge, in view of events in Europe, as Galsworthy wrote this in 1917; he does not mention Russia, the revolution, or the falling of monarchies across much of Europe, with most great ones vanishing into being allowed to live as ordinary citizens, escaping fates that befell most of Romanovs.

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"Talking with and observing French soldiers during the winter of 1916–1917, and often putting to them this very question: How is the war going to affect the soldier-workman? I noticed that their answers followed very much the trend of class and politics. An adjutant, sergeant, or devout Catholic considered that men would be improved, gain self-command, and respect for law and order, under prolonged discipline and daily sacrifice. A freethinker of the educated class, or a private of Socialistic tendencies, on the other hand, would insist that the strain must make men restless, irritable, more eager for their rights, less tolerant of control. Each imagined that the war would further the chances of the future as they dreamed of it. If I had talked with capitalists — there are none among French soldiers — they would doubtless have insisted that after-war conditions were going to be easier, just as the “sans-sous” maintained that they were going to be harder and provocative of revolution. In a word, the wish was father to the thought."
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"First, what will be the physical effect of the war on the soldier-workman? Military training, open-air life, and plentiful food are of such obvious physical advantage in the vast majority of cases as to need no pointing out. And how much improvement was wanted is patent to any one who has a remnant left of the old Greek worship of the body. It has made one almost despair of industrialised England to see the great Australians pass in the streets of London. ... One-half of us regard good looks as dangerous and savouring of immorality; the other half look upon them as “swank,” or at least superfluous. Any interest manifested in such a subject is confined to a few women and a handful of artists ... If that training had stopped short of the fighting line it would be physically entirely beneficial; as it is, one has unfortunately to set against its advantages — leaving out wounds and mutilation altogether — a considerable number of overstrained hearts and nerves, not amounting to actual disablement; and a great deal of developed rheumatism.

"Peace will send back to their work very many men better set up and hardier; but many also obviously or secretly weakened. ... "

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" ... If the army life of the soldier-workman stopped short of service at the front one might say at once that the effect on his mind would be far more disastrous than it is. The opportunity for initiative and decision, the mental stir of camp and depôt life is nil compared with that of service in the fighting line. And for one month at the front a man spends perhaps five at the rear. Military life, on its negative side, is more or less a suspension of the usual channels of mental activity. By barrack and camp life the normal civilian intellect is, as it were, marooned. On that desert island it finds, no doubt, certain new and very definite forms of activity, but any one who has watched old soldiers must have been struck by the “arrested” look which is stamped on most of them — by a kind of remoteness, of concentrated emptiness, as of men who by the conditions of their lives have long been prevented from thinking of anything outside a ring fence. ... Far be it from this pen to libel the English, but a feverish mental activity has never been their vice; intellect, especially in what is known as the working-class, is leisurely; it does not require to be encouraged to take its ease. Some one has asked me: “Can the ordinary worker think less in the army than when he wasn’t in the army?” In other words: “Did he ever think at all?” The British worker is, of course, deceptive; he does not look as if he were thinking. ... But actual physical exertion, and the inertia which follows it, bulk large in military service, and many who “never thought at all” before they became soldiers will think still less after! ... "

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" ... The recuperative powers of youth are so great that very many of our younger soldiers will unrust quickly and at a bound regain all the activity lost. Besides, a very great many of the younger men will not go back to the old job. But older men, though they will go back to what they were doing before more readily than their juniors, will go back with diminished hope and energy, and a sort of fatalism. ... "

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"For years no one has built houses, or had their houses done up; no one has bought furniture, clothes, or a thousand other articles which they propose buying the moment the war stops. ... and, above all, we must positively grow our own food in the future. ... "

Was John Galsworthy aware of harvest being stolen by Brits in India, causing millions of Indians to due of starvation, which British government thought was of no account and only necessary to clamp down on media reporting it?

" ... indeed, unless we have some really attractive land scheme ready we may lose a million by emigration alone. ... "

Funny, for decades - most of two centuries if not longer - policy of landholding classes through Britain, and British landholders of Ireland, was to starve and squeeze out the poor and force them to emigrate, whether by encouraging them with fares paid, or otherwise!

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Galsworthy foresaw the depression, if not the Wall street crash.

" ... But in all the great countries of the world, even America, the peoples will be faced with taxation which will soak up anything from one-fifth to one-third of their incomes, and, even allowing for a large swelling of those incomes from war savings, so that a great deal of what the State takes with one hand she will return to the investing public with the other, the diminution of purchasing power is bound to make itself increasingly felt. When the reconversion of machinery to civil ends has been completed, the immediate arrears of demand supplied, shipping and rolling-stock replaced, houses built, repairs made good, and so forth, this slow shrinkage of purchasing power in every country will go hand in hand with shrinkage of demand, decline of trade and wages, and unemployment, in a slow process, till they culminate in what one fears may be the worst “times” we have ever known. Whether those “times” will set in one, two, or even six years after the war, is, of course, the question. ... "

And here's a clue to mindset of supposedly liberal, progressive intelligentsia amongst Europe, such as John Galsworthy.

Seriously???!!!!

Galsworthy advocates invasion by England of more of lands outside Europe, to squeeze them and let the locals starve to death, while he's strenuous about advocating Britain defending rights of small nations, which then presumably applies only to those of Europe and those populated by those of European descent?

Rank, rabid racism? Or worse, a foreshadow of the Nazi thought thst emerged soon enough? How was the latter different in applying to Europe what Galsworthy preaches British do to rest of the globe?

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Notice what he isn't willing to admit explicitly:-

" ... The soldier-workman will go back, I believe, to two or three years at least of good wages and plentiful work. But when, after that, the pinch begins to come, it will encounter the quicker, more resentful blood of men who in the constant facing of great danger have left behind them all fear of consequences; of men who in the survival of one great dislocation to their lives, have lost the dread of other dislocations. The war will have implanted a curious deep restlessness in the great majority of soldier souls. Can the workmen of the future possibly be as patient and law-abiding as they were before the war, in the face of what seems to them injustice? ... "

Notice what he isn't willing to admit explicitly - it's that, whether by contamination of thought through news spreading, or because such thinking might be right after all (the fear of upper classes as defined by wealth, property, land possession, and aristocracy set up merely through royal whims, with a royalty topping the pyramid via a superstition about royal blood!), the European- and much more so English - upper castes were quaking in thrir boots, for fear of a revolution arriving in their own lands!

They had survived the french revolution, got rid of Napoleon who was after all a people's leader who conquered most of Europe and had aristocracy of Europe bend before him as much as the conquered and most of other royals did until his fall, and had seen France go firmly democratic, finally, with royalty thrown out for good; and as Galsworthy wrote this, Russia had followed suit in a revolution just as bloody, with news trickling out, of the royals, and generally most Romanov and others of aristocracy of Russia who had not managed to flee, having been massacred.

So what Galsworthy isn't saying explicitly here, is that upper castes of England were quaking in their boots, even as over half of European royalty was dismissed from their posts, and most countries let them live without the ownership of the countries.

Galsworthy elaborates:-

" ... The enemy will again be Fate — this time in the form of capital, trying to down them; and the victory they were conscious of gaining over Fate in the war will have strengthened and quickened their fibre to another fight, and another conquest. The seeds of revolution are supposed to lie in war. They lie there because war generally brings in the long run economic stress, but also because of the recklessness or “character” — call it what you will — which the habitual facing of danger develops. The self-control and self-respect which military service under war conditions will have brought to the soldier-workman will be an added force in civil life; but it is a fallacy, I think, to suppose, as some do, that it will be a force on the side of established order. It is all a question of allegiance, and the allegiance of the workman in time of peace is not rendered to the State, but to himself and his own class. To the service of that class and the defence of its “rights” this new force will be given. In measuring the possibilities of revolution, the question of class rides paramount. Many hold that the war is breaking down social barriers and establishing comradeship, through hardship and danger shared. For the moment this is true. But whether that new comradeship will stand any great pressure of economic stress after direct regimental relationship between officer and man has ceased and the war is becoming just a painful memory, is to me very doubtful. But suppose that to some extent it does stand, we have still the fact that the control of industry and capital, even as long as ten years after the war, will be mainly in the hands of men who have not fought, of business men spared from service either by age or by their too precious commercial skill. Towards these the soldier-workman will have no tender feelings, no sense of comradeship. On the contrary — for somewhere back of the mind of every workman there is, even during his country’s danger, a certain doubt whether all war is not somehow hatched by the aristocrats and plutocrats of one side, or both. ... "

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July 19, 2021 - July 20, 2021.

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THE CHILDREN’S JEWEL FUND

About need of Infant Welfare Centres in Britain, due to infant mortality and worse.

" ... Each year in this country about 100,000 babies die before they have come into the world; and out of the 800,000 born, about 90,000 die. Many mothers become permanently damaged in health by evil birth conditions. Many children grow up mentally or physically defective. One in four of the children in our elementary schools are not in a condition to benefit properly by their schooling. What sublime waste! Ten in a hundred of them suffer from malnutrition; thirty in the hundred have defective eyes; eighty in the hundred need dental treatment; twenty odd in the hundred have enlarged tonsils or adenoids. Many, perhaps most, of these deaths and defects are due to the avoidable ignorance, ill-health, mitigable poverty, and other handicaps which dog poor mothers before and after a baby’s birth. ... "

The title is explained at the end.

" ... Mothers, and you who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their chance, bless them with a gem — light their lanterns with your jewels!"

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Galsworthy writes:-

"It is written also:—”After the war a very large increase in the birth-rate may be looked for.” For a year or two, perhaps; but the real after-effect of the war will be to decrease the birth-rate in every European country, or I am much mistaken. “No food for cannon, and no extra burdens,” will be the cry. And little wonder! This, however, does not affect the question of children actually born or on their way. If not quantity, we can at all events have quality."

Presumably he is thinking only about the British, not about those of the colonies whether the ones he considers human or otherwise, and also not those of Europe. If he was aware of the German propaganda about German babies starving to death due to allies demanding reparations (although Germany spend huge amounts of gold for this propaganda, and more for propaganda to destabilise France via spread of extreme leftist agitations), he's not mentioning it.

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"On the general question of improving the health of mothers and babies I would remind readers that there is no great country where effort is half so much needed as here; we are nearly twice as town and slum ridden as any other people; have grown to be further from nature and more feckless about food; we have damper air to breathe, and less sun to disinfect us. ... "

And yet, in Sheaf, he opined that British Isles had the excellent circumstances of not too much sun thst saps health! That was written, and published, only shortly before this, too.

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July 20, 2021 - July 20, 2021.

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FRANCE, 1916–1917

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AN IMPRESSION

Galsworthy visited France at a hospital travelling Southast from Valence, and writes about places and people. Its unclear if it's shortly after the war, but would seem so.

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" ... If there are qualities common to all they are impressionability and capacity for affection. This is not the impression left on one by a crowd of Englishmen. Behind the politeness and civilised bearing of the French I used to think there was a little of the tiger. In a sense perhaps there is, but that is not the foundation of their character — far from it! Underneath the tiger, again, there is a man civilised for centuries. Most certainly the politeness of the French is no surface quality, it is a polish welling up from a naturally affectionate heart, a naturally quick apprehension of the moods and feelings of others; it is the outcome of a culture so old that, underneath all differences, it binds together all those types and strains of blood — the Savoyard, and the Southerner, the Latin of the Centre, the man from the North, the Breton, the Gascon, the Basque, the Auvergnat, even to some extent the Norman, and the Parisian — in a sort of warm and bone-deep kinship. They have all, as it were, sat for centuries under a wall with the afternoon sun warming them through and through, as I so often saw the old town gossips sitting of an afternoon. The sun of France has made them alike; a light and happy sun, not too southern, but just southern enough."

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" ... If I were asked for a concrete illustration of self-respect I should say — the Frenchwoman. It is a particular kind of self-respect, no doubt, very much limited to this world; and perhaps beginning to be a little frayed. We have some Frenchwomen at the hospital, the servants who keep us in running order — the dear cook whom we love not only for her baked meats, proud of her soldier son once a professor, now a sergeant, and she a woman of property, with two houses in the little town; patient, kind, very stubborn about her dishes, which have in them the essential juices and savours which characterise all things really French. She has great sweetness and self-containment in her small, wrinkled, yellowish face; always quietly polite and grave, she bubbles deliciously at any joke, and gives affection sagaciously to those who merit. A jewel, who must be doing something pour la France. And we have Madame Jeanne Camille, mother of two daughters and one son, too young to be a soldier. It was her eldest daughter who wanted to come and scrub in the hospital, but was refused because she was too pretty. And her mother came instead. A woman who did not need to come, and nearly fifty, but strong, as the French are strong, with good red blood, deep colouring, hair still black, and handsome straight features. ... Wine is too plentiful in France. The sun in the wines of France quickens and cheers the blood in the veins of France. But the gift of wine is abused. One may see a poster which says — with what truth I know not — that drink has cost France more than the Franco-Prussian War. French drunkenness is not so sottish as our beer-and-whiskey-fuddled variety, but it is not pleasant to see, and mars a fair land. ..."

" ...We were in Lyon when the Russian Revolution and the German retreat from Bapaume were reported. The town and railway station were full of soldiers. No enthusiasm, no stir of any kind, only the usual tired stoicism. And one thought of what the poilu can be like; of our Christmas dinner-table at the hospital under the green hanging wreaths and the rosy Chinese lanterns, the hum, the chatter, the laughter of free and easy souls in their red hospital jackets. ... One old couple, in a ferblanterie shop, who had lost their eldest son and whose other son was at the front, used to try hard not to talk about the war, but sure enough they would come to it at last, each time we saw them, and in a minute the mother would be crying and a silent tear would roll down the old father’s face. Then he would point to the map and say: “But look where they are, the Boches! Can we stop? It’s impossible. We must go on till we’ve thrown them out. It is dreadful, but what would you have? Ah! Our son — he was so promising!” ... "

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" ... Quite a recent development in the life of Arles, they say, that marvellous Roman building, here cut down, there built up, by Saracen hands. For a thousand years or more before the Romans came Arles flourished and was civilised. What had we mushroom islanders before the Romans came? What had barbaric Prussia? Not even the Romans to look forward to!"

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" ... The most æsthetic, and perhaps most humiliating, sight that a Westerner could see we came on there: two Arab Spahis walking down the main street in their long robe uniforms, white and red, and their white linen bonnets bound with a dark fur and canting slightly backwards. Over six feet high, they moved unhurrying, smoking their cigarettes, turning their necks slowly from side to side like camels of the desert. Their brown, thin, bearded faces wore neither scorn nor interest, only a superb self-containment; but, beside them, every other specimen of the human race seemed cheap and negligible. God knows of what they were thinking — as little probably as the smoke they blew through their chiselled nostrils — but their beauty and grace were unsurpassable. And, visioning our western and northern towns and the little, white, worried abortions they breed, one felt downcast and abashed.

"Marseilles swarmed with soldiers; Lyon, Valence, Arles, even the smallest cities swarmed with soldiers, and this at the moment when the Allied offensive was just beginning. ... "

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" ... A certain school of French novelist, with high-coloured tales of Parisian life, is responsible for his country’s reputation. Whatever the Frenchman about town may be, he seems by no means typical of the many millions of Frenchmen who are not about town. ... "

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" ... We noticed in our hospital that whenever we had a Parisian he introduced a different atmosphere, and led us a quiet or noisy dance. ..."

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July 20, 2021 - July 20, 2021.

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ENGLISHMAN AND RUSSIAN

Unlike the piece about France, based on interactions with French as Galsworthy visited and travelled in France towards end of WWI, this one seems based almost entirely on his reading Russian literature, with some perhaps correspondence with someone who could inform him a little of Russian thought on the topic.

The opening paragraph, exquisitely written, reminds one a little of what W. Somerset Maugham said about Russian literature, but only at the beginning - where Maugham was exasperated with Russian emotional extravagance, as he thought it, Galsworthy is all praise, appreciciating the Russian soul as he discovers it through the Russian literature.

Wonder if it was difference of personalities, or simply the quantity of the Russian literature they read.

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" ... The political arrangements of a country are based on temperament; and a political freedom which suits us, an old people, predisposed to a practical and cautious view of life, is proving difficult, if not impossible, for Russians, a young people, who spend themselves so freely. .... "

Where does Galsworthy, or anyone, get the justification for such a statement as that? Surely one ought to know one's knowledge of another culture has limitations, and that Russia has a long history of human habitat! If her political history is less known to West, still, being invaded and worse by Mongols repeatedly over more than a millennium coukdnt have helped matters!

"I suppose what Russians most notice and perhaps envy in us is practical common sense, our acquired instinct for what is attainable, and for the best and least elaborate means of attaining it. ... "

That may be an Englishman's thinking, but did he hsve any Russian confirm it? That it seems to be the perfect other side of English perception of the two characters and their differences, as Galsworthy expresses -

" ... What we ought to envy in Russians is a sort of unworldliness — not the feeling that this world is the preliminary of another, nothing so commercial; but the natural disposition to live each moment without afterthought, emotionally. Lack of emotional abandonment is our great deficiency. Whether we can ever learn to have more is very doubtful. But our imaginative writings, at all events, have of late been profoundly modified by the Russian novel, that current in literature far more potent than any of those traced out in Georg Brandes’ monumental study. ... "

- need not make it true of Russian perception thereof, if at all any Russian did bother to think about it, thst is - which is doubtful, given the desperate efforts to survive that a life in Russia seems to involve more than elsewhere.

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" ... In other words, the Russian passion for understanding has tempered a little the English passion for winning. ... "

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July 21, 2021 - July 21, 2021.

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AMERICAN AND BRITON

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" ... I am told that an American officer said recently to a British staff officer in a friendly voice: “So we’re going to clean up Brother Boche together!” and the British staff officer replied “Really!” No wonder Americans sometimes say: “I’ve got no use for those fellows.”"

Which might have contributed to the difficult9 encountered by FDR in trying to get U.S. behind him in coming to help in WWII!

" ... In a huge, still half-developed country, where every kind of national type and habit comes to run a new thread into the rich tapestry of American life and thought, people must find it almost impossible to conceive the life of a little old island where traditions persist generation after generation without anything to break them up; where blood remains undoctored by new strains; demeanour becomes crystallised for lack of contrasts; and manner gets set like a plaster mask. ... "

Galsworthy forgets, those in U.S. that bothered at all about England were those whose ancestors, if not they themselves, had escaped the islands, going to the enormous travails of sailing across ocean to a new land and raising a log cabin while trying to find food. They didn't forget why they'd left, and certainly didn't forget in a hurry. Boston tea party is celebrated in U.S. for good reason, for that matter.

" ... The English manner of to-day, of what are called the classes, is the growth of only a century or so. There was probably nothing at all like it in the days of Elizabeth or even of Charles II. ... "

Really, isn't that rather extreme wishful thinking? What's very likely is that the upper castes then weren't quite as polished as they liked to think they were in Galsworthy's times, but that's probably all.

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" ... When Americans hear Englishmen speaking critically of their own country, let them note it for a sign of complete identification with that country rather than of detachment from it. ... I pretend to no proper knowledge of the American people; but, though amongst them there are doubtless pockets of fierce prejudice, I have on the whole the impression of a wide and tolerant spirit. ... And there is, of course, a particularly noxious type of travelling Briton, who does his best, unconsciously, to deflower his country wherever he goes. Selfish, coarse-fibred, loud-voiced — the sort which thanks God he is a Briton — I suppose because nobody else will do it for him."

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" ... It would distress the average Briton to confess that he wanted to be understood, had anything so natural as a craving for fellowship or for being liked. ... We are, deep down, under all our lazy mentality, the most combative and competitive race in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of the American. This is at once a spiritual link with America, and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better men than Americans. Whether we are really better than French, Germans, Russians, Italians, Chinese, or any other race is, of course, more than a question; but those peoples are all so different from us that we are bound, I suppose, secretly to consider ourselves superior. ... "

"" ... but those peoples are all so different from us that we are bound, I suppose, secretly to consider ourselves superior. ... ""???!!!!

" ... One can hardly overrate the intimacy which a common literature brings. ... "

Didn't Idi Amin speak English when he derided U.K., post WWII and post stripping of U.K. of most of colonies, as a small nation?

" ... The tie of language is all-powerful — for language is the food formative of minds. ... "

Therein roots of Macaulay policy, designed to butcher soul of India.

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" ... Some years before the war an intelligent and cultivated Austrian, who had lived long in England, was asked for his opinion of the British. “In many ways,” he said, “I think you are inferior to us; but one great thing I have noticed about you which we have not. You think and act and speak for yourselves.” If he had passed those years in America instead of in England he must needs have pronounced the same judgment of Americans. Free speech, of course, like every form of freedom, goes in danger of its life in war-time. The other day, in Russia, an Englishman came on a street meeting shortly after the first revolution had begun. An extremist was addressing the gathering and telling them that they were fools to go on fighting, that they ought to refuse and go home, and so forth. The crowd grew angry, and some soldiers were for making a rush at him; but the chairman, a big, burly peasant, stopped them with these words: “Brothers, you know that our country is now a country of free speech. We must listen to this man, we must let him say anything he will. But, brothers, when he’s finished, we’ll bash his head in!”"

" ... Accustom people to be nose-led and spoon-fed, and democracy is a mere pretence. The measure of democracy is the measure of the freedom and sense of individual responsibility in its humblest citizens. ... "

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Here's a convenient reification of the worst - not only slavery, but colonial subjugation and looting of lands and worse :-

"A scientist, Dr. Spurrell, in a recent book, “Man and his Forerunners,” diagnoses the growth of civilisations somewhat as follows: A civilisation begins with the enslavement by some hardy race of a tame race living a tame life in more congenial natural surroundings. It is built up on slavery, and attains its maximum vitality in conditions little removed therefrom. Then, as individual freedom gradually grows, disorganisation sets in and the civilisation slowly dissolves away in anarchy. ... "

By that definition, Mongols civilised Europe, with repeated desperate attempts to do so!

Notice also the epithets, hardy instead of uncivilized, wild, vicious, brutal; tame replacing gentle, civilised, .... the change favouring British empire, rather, European powers with colonies (freed at time of WWI or otherwise)!

But then consider Mongols invading, conquering, destroying and enslaving most of Asia and Europe, for centuries, in repeated waves; and nòw, as per Galsworthy, credit European civilisation to Mongol devastation wreaked in Europe!

" ... Moreover, all past civilisations have been more or less Southern, and subject to the sapping influence of the sun. Modern civilisation is essentially Northern. ... "

Galsworthy seems not only to use the word Southern when he means tropical, but confuse the reasons for ill health of ordinary British that he laments. It isn't town proliferation, as much as precisely the lack of sun that he extols, which results in poorer people being unable to bathe or wash as often as necessary for cleaner bodies, much less be able to wear fresh clothes and wash them every time after wear. In climates much colder than Britain, equations of health change, but damp and not so vigorously cold as, say, Russia or New England, England remains in the region where it seems it's town life that mars health.

As for the rest, not only U.S. isn't quite as northern as U.K., with her Southern half being in places quite tropical or desert heat, or worse, but also, Galsworthy didn't live into the times when awareness dawned about heavy and untamed, thoughtless industrialisation of the richer nations is leading to global warming endangering human civilisation and earth. The year of the very dangerous pandemic of 2020 spread from China, leading to a shutdown in most of the world, has almost immediately resulted in cleaner air and water, and a raised water table as well, which just proves the point - what Galsworthy praises above, the modern industrial civilisation of latitudes closer to poles than to equator, can only depend on using fossil fuels or at least has done so far, and as a result endanger the earth's balance of climate.

Millennia of ancient civilisations, naturally, had to flourish in lands blessed with sun, and with forestation.

" ... What, for instance, will happen to Russia if she does not succeed in making her democracy genuine? A Russia which remains anarchic must very quickly become the prey of her neighbours on West and East."

Anyone with that naive a thinking must surely be aghast at subsequent events, which already unfolded during lifetime of Galsworthy.

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" ... Whatever their faults — and their offences cry aloud to such poor heaven as remains of chivalry and mercy — the Germans are in many ways a great race, but they possess two qualities dangerous to the individual conscience — unquestioning obedience and exaltation. ,,, "

Did he, during his lifetime, realise that was prophetic?

"I do not believe in formal alliances or in grouping nations to exclude and keep down other nations. ... "

That could have, at the very least, have more than one state eye him askance, if not refuse him visa outright, post WWII.

" ... It is childish to claim for Americans or Britons virtues beyond those of other nations, or to believe in the superiority of one national culture to another; they are different, that is all. ... "

And yet he supported British coloninisation of other lands, just to loot them.

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July 21, 2021 - July 21, 2021.

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ANGLO-AMERICAN DRAMA AND ITS FUTURE[C]

Just over a century ago, just after WWI, Galsworthy wrote what has since been thought and said about, not only the then English drama or theatre, but Hollywood and Indian films, television serials, and more.

"Sincerity in the theatre and commercial success are not necessarily, but they are generally, opposed. It is more or less a happy accident when, they coincide. This grim truth cannot be blinked. Not till the heavens fall will the majority of the public demand sincerity. And all that they who care for sincerity can hope for is that the supply of sincere drama will gradually increase the demand for it — gradually lessen the majority which has no use for that disturbing quality. The burden of this struggle is on the shoulders of the dramatists. It is useless and unworthy for them to complain that the public will not stand sincerity, that they cannot get sincere plays acted, and so forth. If they have not the backbone to produce what they feel they ought to produce, without regard to what the public wants, then good-bye to progress of any kind. If they are of the crew who cannot see any good in a fight unless they know it is going to end in victory; if they expect the millennium with every spring — they will advance nothing. Their job is to set their teeth, do their work in their own way, without thinking much about result, and not at all about reward, except from their own consciences. Those who want sincerity will always be the few, but they may well be more numerous than now; and to increase their number is worth a struggle. That struggle was the much-sneered-at, much-talked-of so-called “new” movement in our British drama."

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Galsworthy shocks one.

" ... Can we call Synge, or St. John Hankin, or Shaw, or Barrie serious? Hardly!... "

What? Is thst jealousy speaking, from someone perhaps less of a celebrity in the times they shared, for someone so completely undervalued in his time and since, and yet so much better known? But no, it turns out, he's merely redefining the word serious, albeit in a confused way. Because no matter what sliver of sense you restrict the word to, several of George Bernard Shaw's plays are far more serious than anything else contemplated, much less written, in English.

" ... Yet they are all of this new movement in their very different ways, because they are sincere. The word “serious,” in fact, has too narrow a significance and admits a deal of pompous stuff which is not sincere. While the word “sincere” certainly does not characterise all that is popularly included under the term “new drama,” it as certainly does characterise (if taken in its true sense of fidelity to self) all that is really new in it, and excludes no mood, no temperament, no form of expression which can pass the test of ringing true. ... "

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"Art is not art unless it is made out of an artist’s genuine feeling and vision, not out of what he has been told he ought to feel and see. For art exists not to confirm people in their tastes and prejudices, not to show them what they have seen before, but to present them with a new vision of life. And if drama be an art (which the great public denies daily, but a few of us still believe), it must reasonably be expected to present life as each dramatist sees it, and not to express things because they pander to popular prejudice, or are sensational, or because they pay."

And so there are those that pander to low taste and expectations for better financial guarantee, while the opposite camp carries the flag of this definition of art, and twisting it out of all semblance of reality, merely attempt shocking public senseless, and often succeed! They get the awards, fame, ....

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Galsworthy says something true about literature and art in general.

"The greater public will by preference take the lowest article in art offered to it. An awkward remark, and unfortunately true. But if a better article be substituted, the greater public very soon enjoys it every bit as much as the article replaced, and so on — up to a point which we need not fear we shall ever reach. Not that sincere dramatists are consciously trying to supply the public with a better article. A man could not write anything sincere with the elevation of the public as incentive. If he tried, he would be as lost as ever were the Pharisees making broad their phylacteries. He can only express himself sincerely by not considering the public at all. People often say that this is “cant,” but it really isn’t. There does exist a type of mind which cannot express itself in accordance with what it imagines is required; can only express itself for itself, and take the usually unpleasant consequences. This is, indeed, but an elementary truth, which since the beginning of the world has lain at the bottom of all real artistic achievement. ... "

It would seem Ayn Rand read it, and used it in fountainhead as something her hero Roark said to a client about the home he designed and built for him, which the client was pleased with, but Roark informed him thst he had no thought about the client or his needs while designing the place!

That ridiculous poseurship of someone, who spliced Galsworthy to Frank Lloyd Wright in creating her Fountainhead and charming people, would be negligible except she impressed teenagers into adapting it, who then use her sentences and copy the attitude, without the substance to back it up - as we found when we attempted working with an architect to build us a home we coukdnt live in.

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" ... In Britain it is a little difficult to persuade people that the writing of plays and novels is work. ... "

Try finding someone who takes your occupation seriously, whatever your occupation, if you aren't willing to drop it as and when required to cater to family, guests, relatives, .... and please everybody with obedience, charm, ... if you are of the gender needed in quantity if the humanity is to survive, but is overlooked most often if physically assaulted, murdered, robbed, insulted, starved, or denied any other rights that cannot be denied to men.

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" ... And as to the form of Mr. Shaw — who was once compared with Shakespeare — why! there is none. And yet, what form could so perfectly express Mr. Shaw’s glorious crusade against stupidity, his wonderfully sincere and lifelong mood of sticking pins into a pig!"

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" ... It is my strong impression that sincere dramatists in America are going to have an easier time than they had before the war, but that with us they are going to have a harder. My reasons are threefold. The first and chief reason is economic. However much America may now have to spend, with her late arrival, vaster resources, and incomparably greater recuperative power, she will feel the economic strain but little in comparison with Britain. Britain, not at once, but certainly within five years of the war’s close, will find that she has very much less money to spend on pleasure. ... "

From all accounts, the reality was quite different, and there's reason the post-war decade was termed "roaring twenties", until the Wall Street crash and subsequent depression, and later the rise of horror of fascism and nazis, further bringing WWII and discovery of genocide deliberately planned and almost completely executed.

Galsworthy furthermore completely ignores the then small object on the horizon, cinema, that grew to overshadow every other form of entertainment until television could compete with colour and large screens and remotes and superior technology. Theatre soon became not only more expensive and therefore unaffordable to middle class and poor, unless it was lesser quality provincial, but thereby a matter of snobbery for those who would look down on cinema as mass entertainment and therefore unworthy, just as a few decades later there were those who prided in listening to radio in preference to watching what they termed idiot box.

Now, with proliferation of cable channels and internet, the scenario is vastly different.

" ... The trouble in Britain — and I daresay in every country — is that the percentage of people who take art of any kind seriously is ludicrously small. ... "

Flip side, those who'd admit to artistic superior quality of entertainment presented in new forms was rare; snobbery still often consists of looking down on popular and successful films, and television serials. Then the flip again that worships success, as long as those behind have paid, ignoring quality.

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" ... But I am pretty certain that there is no chance for a drama of truth and beauty there for many years to come, unless we can get it endowed in such a substantial way as shall tide it over — say — the next two decades. What we require is a London theatre undeviatingly devoted to the production of nothing but the real thing, which will go its own way, year in, year out, quite without regard to the great public; and we shall never get it unless we can find some benevolent, public-spirited person or persons who will place it in a position of absolute security. ... "

State support did that as it did for art, at least in U.K. and Europe.

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"... Those who have seen the paintings of the Italian artist Segantini will understand what I mean. There have been many painters of mountains, but none whom I know of save he who has reproduced the very spirit of those great snowy spaces. He spent his life among them till they soaked into his nerves, into the very blood of him. All else he gave up, to see and feel them so that he might reproduce them in his art. ... "

Galsworthy, probably most of English world, was unaware of the extremely talented Roerich family, whose paintings of Himaalayan ranges are an experience to see - even though they not only travelled in India before and after their journey through Himaalayan regions to Tibet and further Northeast, but settled in India and have museums of their life and work, apart from other several museums display some of them.

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July 21, 2021 - July 21, 2021.

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THE LAND, 1917

Galsworthy seems to see realistically, for once, with his perception almost prophetic!

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"If once more through ingenuity, courage, and good luck we find the submarine menace “well in hand,” and go to sleep again — if we reach the end of the war without having experienced any sharp starvation, and go our ways to trade, to eat, and forget — What then? It is about twenty years since the first submarine could navigate — and about seventeen since flying became practicable. There are a good many years yet before the world, and numberless developments in front of these new accomplishments. Hundreds of miles are going to be what tens are now; thousands of machines will take the place of hundreds.

"We have ceased to live on an island in any save a technically geographical sense, and the sooner we make up our minds to the fact, the better. If in the future we act as we have in the past — rather the habit of this country — I can imagine that in fifteen years’ time or so we shall be well enough prepared against war of the same magnitude and nature as this war, and that the country which attacks us will launch an assault against defences as many years out of date.

"I can imagine a war starting and well-nigh ending at once, by a quiet and simultaneous sinking, from under water and from the air, of most British ships, in port or at sea. I can imagine little standardised submarines surreptitiously prepared by the thousand, and tens of thousands of the enemy population equipped with flying machines, instructed in flying as part of their ordinary civil life, and ready to serve their country at a moment’s notice, by taking a little flight and dropping a little charge of an explosive many times more destructive than any in use now. The agility of submarines and flying machines will grow almost indefinitely. And even if we carry our commerce under the sea instead of on the surface, we shall not be guaranteed against attack by air. The air menace is, in fact, infinitely greater than that from under water. I can imagine all shipping in port, the Houses of Parliament, the Bank of England, most commercial buildings of importance, and every national granary wrecked or fired in a single night, on a declaration of war springing out of the blue. The only things I cannot imagine wrecked or fired are the British character and the good soil of Britain.

"These are sinister suggestions, but there is really no end to what might now be done to us by any country which deliberately set its own interests and safety above all considerations of international right, especially if such country were moved to the soul by longing for revenge, and believed success certain. ... "

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"Britain’s situation is now absurdly weak, without and within. And its weakness is due to one main cause — the fact that we do not grow our own food. To get the better of submarines in this war will make no difference to our future situation. ... "

"At the end of the war I suppose the Channel Tunnel will be made. And quite time too! But even that will not help us. We get no food from Europe, and never shall again. Not even by linking ourselves to Europe can we place ourselves in security from Europe. Faith may remove mountains, but it will not remove Britain to the centre of the Atlantic. Here we shall remain, every year nearer and more accessible to secret and deadly attack.

"The next war, if there be one — which Man forbid — may be fought without the use of a single big ship or a single infantryman. It may begin, instead of ending, by being a war of starvation; it may start, as it were, where it leaves off this time. And the only way of making even reasonably safe is to grow our own food. If for years to come we have to supplement by State granaries, they must be placed underground; not even there will they be too secure. Unless we grow our own food after this war we shall be the only great country which does not, and a constant temptation to any foe. To be self-sufficing will be the first precaution taken by our present enemies, in order that blockade may no longer be a weapon in our hands, so far as their necessary food is concerned."

"Our justifications for not continuing to feed ourselves were: Pursuit of wealth, command of the sea, island position. Whatever happens in this war, we have lost the last two in all but a superficial sense. Let us see whether the first is sufficient justification for perseverance in a mode of life which has brought us to an ugly pass.

"Our wonderful industrialism began about 1766, and changed us from exporting between the years 1732 and 1766 11,250,000 quarters of wheat to importing 7,500,000 quarters between the years 1767 and 1801. In one hundred and fifty years it has brought us to the state of importing more than three-quarters of our wheat, and more than half our total food. Whereas in 1688 (figures of Gregory and Davenant) about four-fifths of the population of England was rural, in 1911 only about two-ninths was rural. This transformation has given us great wealth, extremely ill-distributed; plastered our country with scores of busy, populous, and hideous towns; given us a merchant fleet which before the war had a gross tonnage of over 20,000,000, or not far short of half the world’s shipping. ... "

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Antisemitism evoked none too subtly here.

"We have a green and fertile country, and round it a prolific sea. Our country, if we will, can produce, with its seas, all the food we need to eat. We know that quite well, but we elect to be nourished on foreign stuff, because we are a practical people and prefer shekels to sentiment. We do not mind being parasitic. ... "

One, obviously, is the mention of shekel, a currency presumably of West Asia, most likely from ancient times, familiar to West due to connect via church, but definitely not one used in Europe in last few centuries; two, the explicit albeit veiled denunciation of a preference for moneymaking and explicit and not veiled exaltation of growing food, via agriculture and fishing, both are very thinly veiled antisemitism evoking references. (Jews were barred from land ownership in most of Europe through centuries, and hence went into either trade or - when they could afford to - intellectual activities.)

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" ... People in small country towns, I admit, have little or no more beauty than people in large towns. This is curious, but may be due to too much inbreeding. ... "

And yet they failed to see that the very intricate rules and laws of the arranged marriage system of India, preventing marriages between fifth to seventh degree of cousinhood (in female and male lines respectively), bolstered by not only whole clans attending functions but also detailed accounts of families kept by family priests, who not only conduct functions and ceremonies but also help with making matches - are all in all a far superior system, over its extreme opposite, that of matches arranged between cousins as Queen Victoria and her relatives and descendents did, or marriages within small neighbourhoods which is the only alternative, for most peole, if one must take what one finds at certain age?

Or was it merely racism clubbed together with colonial imperialism that blinded them to virtues of India?

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July 22, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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SPECULATIONS[D]

Galsworthy's thoughts about future, art, effects of technology, ....

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Galsworthy may not have realised quite how much of this, following, relates to Britain looting India.

" ... The history of the last hundred and fifty years, especially in England, is surely one long story of ceaseless banquet and acute indigestion. Certain Roman Emperors are popularly supposed to have taken drastic measures during their feasts to regain their appetites; we have not their “slim” wisdom; we do not mind going on eating when we have had too much."

That, definitely relates to Britain Göring on looting India well past British needs.

" ... Consider the town-ridden, parasitic condition of Great Britain — the country which cannot feed itself. If we are beaten in this war, it will be because we have let our industrial system run away with us; because we became so sunk in machines and money-getting that we forgot our self-respect. No self-respecting nation would have let its food-growing capacity and its country life down to the extent that we have. ... "

Hence the stealing of India's harvest and ignoring millions in India die of starvation as a direct result.

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" ... We can try to ban certain outside dangers internationally, such as submarines and air-craft, in war; and, inside, we might establish a Board of Scientific Control to ensure that no inventions are exploited under conditions obviously harmful."

Galsworthy really did not comprehend Germany, despite the infamous Cousin Willy sending lenin deep into Russia in a diplomatic sealed German train, resulting in getting his cousin Ali's and her young family murdered along with mist of her married clan, the Romanovs - and all this, because she chose to marry her other cousin, Nicholas, instead of accepting Willy,even though she and Willy shared a grandmother Queen Victoria!

" ... But this is a very vital matter, and the suggestion of a Board of Scientific Control is not so fantastic as it seems. Certain results of inventions and discoveries cannot, of course, be foreseen, but able and impartial brains could foresee a good many and save mankind from the most rampant results of raw and unconsidered exploitation. The public is a child; and the child who suddenly discovers that there is such a thing as candy, if left alone, can only be relied on to make itself sick."

He had no clue! About science, technology, and effects on life, even though he lived at the era of when it all went forth explosively, and he praises industrial progress and it's effect, the then status of British empire, freely.

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He had no clue!

"Let us stray for a frivolous moment into the realms of art, since the word art is claimed for what we know as the “film.” This discovery went as it pleased for a few years in the hands of inventors and commercial agents. In these few years such a raging taste for cowboy, crime, and Chaplin films has been developed, that a Commission which has just been sitting on the matter finds that the public will not put up with more than a ten per cent. proportion of educational film in the course of an evening’s entertainment. Now, the film as a means of transcribing actual life is admittedly of absorbing interest and great educational value; but, owing to this false start, we cannot get it swallowed in more than extremely small doses as a food and stimulant, while it is being gulped down to the dregs as a drug or irritant. Of the film’s claim to the word art I am frankly sceptical. My mind is open — and when one says that, one generally means it is shut. ... "

The rest of it, one may allow, even if one can ask if he insisted a more than ten percent sermon, say, as part of every theatrical performance! But to name and brand Charlie Chaplin as example of non art bad superficial entertainment!

Then again, he didn't understand Shaw either, so -

" ...The film, of course, is in its first youth, but I see no signs as yet that it will ever overcome the handicap of its physical conditions, and attain the real emotionalising powers of art. The film sweeps up into itself, of course, a far wider surface of life in a far shorter space of time; but the medium is flat, has no blood in it; and experience tells one that no amount of surface and quantity in art ever make up for lack of depth and quality. ... "

He had no clue! It's pretty much akin to a shepherd in England pontificating about RAF flights.

"When our Tanks first appeared they were described as snouting monsters creeping at their own sweet will. I confess that this is how my inflamed eye sees all our modern machines — monsters running on their own, dragging us along, and very often squashing us."

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" ... On America, after the war, the destiny of civilisation may hang for the next century. If she mislays, indeed, if she does not improve the power of self-criticism — that special dry American humour which the great Lincoln had — she might soon develop the intolerant provincialism which has so often been the bane of the earth and the undoing of nations. If she gets swelled-head the world will get cold-feet. ... "

" ... I remember sitting on a bench overlooking the Grand Canyon of Arizona; the sun was shining into it, and a snow-storm was whirling down there. All that most marvellous work of Nature was flooded to the brim with rose and tawny-gold, with white, and wine-dark shadows; the colossal carvings as of huge rock-gods and sacrificial altars, and great beasts, along its sides, were made living by the very mystery of light and darkness, on that violent day of spring — I remember sitting there, and an old gentleman passing close behind, leaning towards me and saying in a sly, gentle voice: “How are you going to tell it to the folks at home?” America has so much that one despairs of telling to the folks at home, so much grand beauty to be to her an inspiration and uplift towards high and free thought and vision. Great poems of Nature she has, wrought in the large, to make of her and keep her a noble people. ... "

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July 21, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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THE LAND, 1917

Galsworthy looks at what he calls town-blight of U.K., and suggests remedies.

"(1) Such solid economic basis to the growth of our food as will give us again national security, more arable land than we have ever had, and on it a full complement of well-paid workers, with better cottages, and a livened village life.

"(2) A vast number of small holdings, State-created, with co-operative working.

"(3) A wide belt-system of garden allotments round every town, industrial or not.

"(4) Drastic improvements in housing, feeding, and sanitation in the towns themselves.

"(5) Education that shall raise not only the standard of knowledge but the standard of taste in town and country."

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" ... For vulgarity is the natural product of herd-life; an amalgam of second-hand thought, cheap and rapid sensation, defensive and offensive self-consciousness, gradually plastered over the faces, manners, voices, whole beings, of those whose elbows are too tightly squeezed to their sides by the pressure of their fellows, whose natures are cut off from Nature, whose senses are rendered imitative by the too insistent impact of certain sights and sounds. Without doubt the rapid increase of town-life is responsible for our acknowledged vulgarity. The same process is going on in America and in Northern Germany; but we unfortunately had the lead, and seem to be doing our best to keep it. Cheap newspapers, on the sensational tip-and-run system, perpetual shows of some kind or other, work in association, every kind of thing in association, at a speed too great for individual digestion, and in the presence of every device for removing the need for individual thought; the thronged streets, the football match with its crowd emotions; beyond all, the cinema — a compendium of all these other influences — make town-life a veritable forcing-pit of vulgarity. ... "

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July 22, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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THE LAND, 1917

III

Galsworthy discusses government policy and measures to correct the situation of land, food, towns and returning soldiers.

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"On demobilisation we have the chance of our lives to put men on the land. ... To put men on the land we must have the land ready in terms of earth, not of paper; and have it in the right places, within easy reach of town or village. Things can be done just now. We know, for instance, that in a few months half a million allotment-gardens have been created in urban areas and more progress made with small holdings than in previous years. I repeat, we have a chance which will not recur to scotch the food danger, and to restore a healthier balance between town and country stocks. ... "

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" ... Only five generations have brought us to the parasitic, town-ridden condition we are in. The rate of progress in deterioration will increase rapidly with each coming generation. We have, as it were, turned seven-ninths of our population out into poor paddocks, to breed promiscuously among themselves. ... Consider what that would mean to the breeding of the next generation. In such extra millions of country stock our national hope lies. What we should never dream of permitting with our domestic animals, we are not only permitting but encouraging among ourselves; we are doing all we can to perpetuate and increase poor stock; stock without either quality or bone, run-down, and ill-shaped. ... "

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" ... In Mr. Prothero’s history of English farming occur these words: “A Norfolk farmer migrated to Devonshire in 1780, where he drilled and hoed his roots; though his crops were far superior to those of other farmers in the district, yet at the close of the century no neighbour had followed his example.”"

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" ... Every town, no matter how quickly it may be developing, is always surrounded by a belt of dubious land — not quite town and not quite country. When town development mops up plots in cultivation, a hole can be let out in an elastic belt which is capable of almost indefinite expansion. ... "

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July 22, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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THE LAND, 1918

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INTRODUCTORY

Galsworthy begins by painting his dream of Britain as he hopes it would be in 1948. This was written and published in 1918, as per dated above.

He reckoned without the Germans, of course.

Germans, on the other hand, took much of this seriously, post WWII, and whether they read Galsworthy or not, have the idyllic planned landscape with garden patches outside towns rented to town populations that one can see them working on at weekends, for example.

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" ... Every little girl has been taught to cook. ... "

Perpetuating stereotypical slavery of female chained to kitchen and thus necessarily prey to male!

Why didn't he include boys (and for that matter say child, instead of mentioning gender at all)?

Because males should only do paid work, while females must mop up all unpaid work, at anyone's and everyone's bidding, taken as command?

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" ... let us be practical by all means; for in the practical measures of the present, spurred on by that thought, inspired by that vision, alone lies the hope and safety of the future.

What are those measures?"

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July 22, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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WHEAT

Galsworthy begins by reversing, without saying so, the process of turning farms into grassland which was begun in early era of exploration, with small farmers and so on pushed off the land by large landowners, encouraging the former to emigrate to colonies if not to towns to work in industries, and increasing the landholdings if the wealthy, used only for pleasure.

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" ... A hundred acres under potatoes feeds 420 persons; a hundred acres under wheat feeds 200 persons; a hundred acres of grass feeds fifteen persons. ... "

This, if understood and said explicitly, is the argument used by environmentalists now in favour of a predominantly if not completely vegetarian lifestyle, as opposed to the meat-heavy diet of Nordic latitudes of pre-industrial era.

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" ... “In the United States the amount exported tends to fall. The results are so marked that we find American agricultural experts seriously considering the possibility of the United States having to become a wheat importing country in order to feed the rapidly growing population.” When she does, that wheat will come from Canada; and “there are several other facts which lead one to question the statement so frequently made that Canada will shortly be the Empire’s granary....” He thinks that the Argentine (which trebles her population every forty years) is an uncertain source; that Russia, where the population also increases with extreme rapidity, is still more uncertain; that neither India nor Australia are dependable fields of supply.

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"We are no longer, and never shall again be, an island. The air is henceforth as simple an avenue of approach as Piccadilly is to Leicester Square. If we are ever attacked there will be no time to get our second wind, unless we can feed ourselves. And since we are constitutionally liable to be caught napping, we shall infallibly be brought to the German heel next time, if we are not self-supporting. ... grow four-fifths instead of one-fifth of our supply, and all else will follow."

Instead, Britain stole harvest of India, causing death by starvation of millions in India, and merely clamped down on media; to justify his statement that millions dying in India was of no consequence whatsoever, Churchill then refused to allow the ships filled with grain sent by FDR for India, stopping them at Australia, so millions starving to death in India should not be helped, as a matter of policy.

Thus was shortly before he finalised the plan for partition of India, leading to deaths of several more millions in India, as a price for letting go of India because U.K. coukdnt afford to repay what Britain owed India- and so West could have use of the free military bases for war against USSR, then still an ally they couldn't have won WWII without, but nevertheless intended to chop up because USSR wasn't allowing rapacious exploitation of her land by West, a la colonial era of European powers using rest of the world.

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July 22, 2021 - July 22, 2021.

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HOLDINGS

Galsworthy discusses landholdings, sizes, and need to act in time.

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"For instance, the great development of small holdings in Germany is mainly responsible for the plentiful supply of labour on the land there; ... "

Presumably the entire dependence on humongous machinery in U.S., to deal with every aspect of farming, is due to the large sizes of farms and comparatively scarce population in the huge land.

"A rough census taken in 1916 among our soldiers gave the astounding figure of 750,000 desirous of going on the land. ... "

Astounding? Why, isn't land ownership the very basis of caste in Europe? And therefore, those who wish to stop being nobody, naturally they'd wish to own a bit of the land they live on, even more so than everywhere else - after all, to own a home, possibly a garden, is a natural universal wish, and to own land is an extension thereof!

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"I am told that Germany has seen to this matter. She does not mean to be starved in the future; she intends to keep the backbone of her country sound. She, who already grew 80 per cent. of her food, will grow it all. She, who already appreciated the dangers of a rampant industrialism, will take no further risks with the physique of her population. ... "

Surprise, surprise! No, eventually too, Germany went for industrialisation on a large scale, post WWII, and not only during the era between the two wars when the Nazi plan unfolded was to invade, conquer and colonise all of Europe and most of the world, enslaving the local populations and using their lands to grow food for Germany, starving the locals to death and resetting the lands with Germans- in short, aping everything already done by other colonial powers or Europe, except for doing it Europe in the first place.

" ... We who did not grow one-half of our food, and whose riotous industrialism has made far greater inroads on our physique; we who, though we have not yet suffered the privations of Germany, have been in far more real danger — we shall talk about it, say how grave the situation is, how “profoundly” we are impressed by the need to feed ourselves — and we shall act, I am very much afraid, too late."

No, there was India to steal harvest from, over and above the two centuries of looting her, so millions could be starved to death, apart from U.S. and Canada who supplied grain!

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July 22, 2021 - July 23, 2021.

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INSTRUCTION

"I who have lived most of my time on a farm for many years, in daily contact with farmer and labourer, do really appreciate what variety and depth of knowledge is wanted for good farming. It is a lesson to the armchair reformer to watch a farmer walking across the “home meadow” whence he can see a good way over his land. One can feel the slow wisdom working in his head. A halt, a look this way and that, a whistle, the call of some instruction so vernacular that only a native could understand; the contemplation of sheep, beasts, sky, crops; always something being noted, and shrewd deductions made therefrom. It is a great art, and, like all art, to be learned only with the sweat of the brow and a long, minute attention to innumerable details. You cannot play at farming, and you cannot “mug it up.” One understands the contempt of the farmer born and bred for the book-skilled gentleman who tries to instruct his grandmother in the sucking of eggs. The farmer’s knowledge, acquired through years of dumb wrestling with Nature, in his own particular corner, is his strength and — his weakness. Vision of the land at large, of its potentialities, and its needs is almost of necessity excluded. The practical farmers of our generation might well be likened unto sailing-ship seamen in an age when it has suddenly become needful to carry commerce by steam. ... "

Magnify that a millionfold, and there is India verses conquistadores colonial invaders looking down their noses at deep treasures of ancient knowledge of every kind, and deciding to break India just so Brits could benefit - Macaulay policy!

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" ... In America, where they contemplate a labour shortage of 2,000,000 men on their farms, they are using boys from sixteen to twenty-one, when their military age begins. Can we not do the same here? Most of our boys from fifteen to eighteen are now on other work. But the work they are doing could surely be done by girls or women. ... They might be given specialised schooling in agriculture, the most important schooling we can give our rising generation, while all of them would gain physically. By employing women on the land, where we can employ boys of from fifteen to eighteen, we are blind-alleying. Women will not stay on the land in any numbers; few will wish that they should. Boys will, and every one would wish that they may. ... "

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July 23, 2021 - July 23, 2021.

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CO-OPERATION (SMALL HOLDINGS)

"Perhaps it would be right to say that for the large farms it is due to the first, and for the smaller farms (three quarters of the arable land in Germany) to the second. For it is only through co-operation that the advantages of farming on a large scale are made possible for smaller farmers. The more important of those advantages are the regulated purchase of all raw materials and half-finished products (artificial manures, feeding stuffs, seeds, etc.), better prices for products, facilities for making use, in moderation, of personal credit at a cheap rate of interest, together with the possibility of saving and putting aside small sums of interest; all these advantages of the large farmer have been placed within the reach of the small farmers by local co-operative societies for buying, selling, and farming co-operatively, as well as by saving and other banks, all connected to central associations and central co-operative societies.

"“Over two million small farmers are organised in Germany on co-operative lines.”[E]

"Nearly two million small farmers co-operated in Germany; and here-how many? The Registrar returns the numbers for 1916 at 1,427 small holders."

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" ... One of the chief complaints of small holders in the past has been that large holders regard them askance. The same, perhaps, applies to the attitude of the small holder to the allotment holder. That is all bad. ... "

Western caste system, after all.

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July 23, 2021 - July 23, 2021.

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CO-OPERATION (ALLOTMENTS)

"The growth of allotment gardens is a striking feature of our agricultural development under stimulus of the war. They say a million and a half allotment gardens are now being worked on. That is, no doubt, a papery figure; nor is it so much the number, as what is being done on them, that matters. Romance may have “brought up the nine-fifteen,” but it will not bring up potatoes. Still, these new allotments without doubt add very greatly to our food supply, give hosts of our town population healthy work in the open air, and revive in them that “earth instinct” which was in danger of being utterly lost. The spade is a grand corrective of nerve strain, and the more town and factory workers take up allotment gardens, the better for each individual, and for us all as a race."

" ... There is always a ring of land round a town, like a halo round the moon. As the town’s girth increases, so should that halo; and even in time of peace, larger and larger, not less and less, should grow the number of town dwellers raising vegetables, fruit and flowers, resting their nerves and expanding lungs and muscles with healthy outdoor work."

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July 23, 2021 - July 23, 2021.

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VALEDICTORY

" ... Fixing its eyes on measures which should redeem the evils of the day, it did not see that those evils were growing faster than all possible remedy, because we had forgotten that a great community bountifully blessed by Nature has no business to exist parasitically on the earth produce of other communities; and because our position under pure free trade, and pure industrialism, was making us a tempting bait for aggression, and retarding the very good-will between nations which it desired so earnestly."

Galsworthy forgets the treatment meted out to India, even apart from starving millions of Indians to death by British who stole harvest of India; there was the infamous chopping off of thumbs of weavers of India, because Indian weaves were superb, and India wasn't tempted yet into substitution of the inferior cloth from British factories for Indian product.

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" ... A Britain fed from overseas can only be an Imperialistic Junker, armed to the teeth, jealous and doubtful of each move by any foreigner; prizing quantity not quality; indifferent about the condition of his heart. Such a Britain dare not be liberal if it will."

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"The other day a Canadian free trader said: “It all depends on what sort of peace we secure; if we have a crushing victory, I see no reason why Britain should not go on importing her food.”

Europe is still doing that, with vegetables grown exclusively for export to Europe -in Africa, by African workers on the farms, while the locals population cannot benefit from any of it!

" ... Does any man think that a momentary exhaustion of our enemy is going to prevent that huge and vigorous nation from becoming strong again? ... "

Indeed!

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July 23, 2021 - July 23, 2021.

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GROTESQUES

"The Angel Æthereal, on his official visit to the Earth in 1947, paused between the Bank and the Stock Exchange to smoke a cigarette and scrutinise the passers-by."

Galsworthy expounds his thinking via a dialogue.

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Galsworthy sounds impressed with Gandhi:-

"“To my thinking,” answered his dragoman, “instead of endeavouring to increase money when we found ourselves so very bankrupt, we should have endeavoured to decrease our wants. The path of real progress, sir, is the simplification of life and desire till we have dispensed even with trousers and wear a single clean garment reaching to the knees; ... Our ambition should have been to need so little that, with our present scientific knowledge, we should have been able to produce it very easily and quickly, and have had abundant leisure and sound nerves and bodies wherewith to enjoy nature, art, and the domestic affections. The tragedy of man, sir, is his senseless and insatiate curiosity and greed, together with his incurable habit of neglecting the present for the sake of a future which will never come.”"

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" ... I sometimes wonder whether we shall survive until your visit in 1984.”"

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" ... The final victory of the Laborious Party, in 1930, saw them, still propelled by their rump, committed, among other things, to a pure town policy. They have never been out of power since; the result you see. Food is now entirely brought from overseas, largely by submarine and air service, in tabloid form, and expanded to its original proportions on arrival by an ingenious process discovered by a German. The country is now used only as a subject for sentimental poets, and to fly over, or by lovers on bicycles at week-ends.”"

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"“Is London, then, not a town?” asked the Angel playfully.

"“London?” cried his dragoman; “a mere pleasure village. To which real town shall I take you? Liverchester?”

"“Anywhere,” said the Angel, “where I can get a good dinner.” So-saying, he paid the rural population with a smile and spread his wings."

"“As you will, sir,” replied his dragoman; “there is no difference between night and day, now that they are using the tides for the provision of electric power.”"

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"“See!” he said, indicating the other supper-takers with a circular movement of his beard, “they are consumed with laughter. The habit of fox-trotting in the intervals of eating has been known ever since it was introduced by Americans a generation ago, at the beginning of the Great Skirmish, when that important people had as yet nothing else to do; but it still causes laughter in this country. A distressing custom,” he wheezed, as they resumed their seats, “for not only does it disturb the oyster, but it compels one to think lightly of the human species. Not that one requires much compulsion,” he added, “now that music-hall, cinema, and restaurant are conjoined. What a happy idea that was of Berlin’s, and how excellent for business! Kindly glance for a moment — but not more — at the left-hand stage.”"

"“Are there no plays, no operas?” asked the Angel from behind his glass.

"“Not in the old and proper sense of these words. They disappeared towards the end of the Great Skirmish.”

"“What food for the mind is there, then?” asked the Angel, adding an oyster to his collection.

"“None in public, sir, for it is well recognised, and has been ever since those days, that laughter alone promotes business and removes the thought of death. You cannot recall, as I can, sir, the continual stream which used to issue from theatres, music-halls, and picture-palaces in the days of the Great Skirmish, nor the joviality of the Strand and the more expensive restaurants. I have often thought,” he added with a touch of philosophy, “what a height of civilisation we must have reached to go jesting, as we did, to the Great Unknown.”

"“Is that really what the English did at the time of the Great Skirmish?” asked the Angel.

"“It is,” replied his dragoman solemnly."

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" ... A school, which first drew breath before the Great Skirmish began, has perfected itself, till now we have whole tomes where hardly a sentence would be intelligible to any save the initiate; this enables them to defy the Watch Committees, with other Philistines. We have writers who mysteriously preach the realisation of self by never considering anybody else; of purity through experience of exotic vice; of courage through habitual cowardice; and of kindness through Prussian behaviour. They are generally young. We have others whose fiction consists of autobiography interspersed with philosophic and political fluencies. These may be of any age from eighty odd to the bitter thirties. We have also the copious and chatty novelist; and transcribers of the life of the Laborious, whom the Laborious never read. Above all, we have the great Patriotic school, who put the national motto first, and write purely what is good for trade. In fact, we have every sort, as in the old days.”"

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" ... We shall now consider the positively moral. At the time of the Great Skirmish these were such as took no sugar in their tea and invested all they had in War Stock at five per cent. without waiting for what were called Premium Bonds to be issued. They were a large and healthy group, more immediately concerned with commerce than the war. But the largest body of all were the negatively moral. These were they who did what they crudely called ‘their bit,’ which I may tell you, sir, was often very bitter. I myself was a ship’s steward at the time, and frequently swallowed much salt water, owing to the submarines. But I was not to be deterred, and would sign on again when it had been pumped out of me. Our morality was purely negative, if not actually low. We acted, as it were, from instinct, and often wondered at the sublime sacrifices which were being made by our betters. Most of us were killed or injured in one way or another; but a blind and obstinate mania for not giving in possessed us. We were a simple lot.” The dragoman paused and fixed his eyes on the empty hearth. “I will not disguise from you,” he added, “that we were fed-up nearly all the time; and yet — we couldn’t stop. Odd, was it not?”"

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"“Since we attended the Divorce Court,” remarked the Angel with deliberation, “I have been thinking. And I fancy no one can be really kind unless they have had matrimonial trouble, preferably in conflict with the law.”

"“A new thought to me,” observed his dragoman attentively; “and yet you may be right, for there is nothing like being morally outcast to make you feel the intolerance of others. But that brings us to private morality.”

"“Quite!” said the Angel, with relief. “I forgot to ask you this morning how the ancient custom of marriage was now regarded in the large?”

"“Not indeed as a sacrament,” replied his dragoman; “such a view was becoming rare already at the time of the Great Skirmish. Yet the notion might have been preserved but for the opposition of the Pontifical of those days to the reform of the Divorce Laws. When principle opposes common sense too long, a landslide follows.”"

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"In the centre, of course, are situated the enormous majority of the community, whose view is that they have no view of what ‘the good’ is.”

"“None?” repeated the Angel Æthereal, somewhat struck.

"“Not the faintest,” answered his dragoman. “These are the only true mystics; for what is a mystic if not one with an impenetrable belief in the mystery of his own existence? This group embraces the great bulk of the Laborious. It is true that many of them will repeat what is told them of ‘the good’ as if it were their own view, without compunction, but this is no more than the majority of persons have done from the beginning of time.”"

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Racism, colonial imperialism, religious dogma snobbery, all in one easily achieved without effort, when one looks down ones nose and ridicules something one couldn't hope to comprehend, even if it's simplicity itself - or, possibly, precisely because it's simple, since West requires incomprehensible and twisted notifications before they'd deign to respect something - treasure of wisdom and knowledge of ancient India!

" ... Does the theory of reincarnation still obtain?”

"“I do not wonder, sir, that you are interested in the point, for believers in that doctrine are compelled, by the old and awkward rule that ‘Two and two make four,’ to draw on other spheres for the reincarnation of their spirits.”

"“I do not follow,” said the Angel.

"“It is simple, however,” answered his dragoman, “for at one time on earth, as is admitted, there was no life. The first incarnation, therefore — an amœba, we used to be told — enclosed a spirit, possibly from above. It may, indeed, have been yours, sir. Again, at some time on this earth, as is admitted, there will again be no life; the last spirit will therefore flit to an incarnation, possibly below; and again, sir, who knows, it may be yours.”"

" ... “The last group, on the far left, to which indeed I myself am not altogether unaffiliated, is composed of a small number of extremists, who hold that ‘the good’ is things as they are — pardon the inevitable flaw in grammar. They consider that what is now has always been, and will always be; that things do but swell and contract and swell again, and so on for ever and ever; and that, since they could not swell if they did not contract, since without the black there could not be the white, nor pleasure without pain, nor virtue without vice, nor criminals without judges; even contraction, or the black, or pain, or vice, or judges, are not ‘the bad,’ but only negatives; and that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

"“I gather,” said the Angel, “that these think there is no purpose in existence?”

"“Rather, sir, that existence is the purpose. For, if you consider, any other conception of purpose implies fulfilment, or an end, which they do not admit, just as they do not admit a beginning.”"

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"“Love is commonly reputed by some, and power by others, to be the keys of happiness,” said the Angel, regardless of his grammar.

"“Duds,” broke in his dragoman. “For love and power are only two of the various paths to absorption, or unconsciousness of self; mere methods by which men of differing natures succeed in losing their self-consciousness, for he who, like Saint Francis, loves all creation, has no time to be conscious of loving himself, and he who rattles the sword and rules like Bill Kaser, has no time to be conscious that he is not ruling himself. I do not deny that such men may be happy, but not because of the love or the power. No, it is because they are loving or ruling with such intensity that they forget themselves in doing it.”"

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" ... I will not disguise from you, however, that we are far from perfection; and it may be that on your next visit, thirty-seven years hence, we shall be further. ... "

Why thirty seven?

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July 19, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

Purchased June 12, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 348 pages

Published March 24, 2011.

(first published 2007)

ASIN:- B004TQBTUG

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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4132137746

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AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY

" ... Not so great a thinker or poet as Emerson, not so creative as Hawthorne, so original in philosophy and life as Thoreau, so racy and quaint as Holmes, he ran the gamut of those qualities as none of the others did; and as critic and analyst of literature surpassed them all."

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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AMERICAN AND BRITON

Mostly a reworded speech, at most, if not verbatim, from his writings in Another Sheaf, and generally his thoughts on the theme, expressed throughout his essays.

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS CLUB, NEW YORK

"I WONDER whether you in America can realise what an entrancing voyage of discovery you represent to us primeval Anglo-Britons. I prefer that term to Anglo-Saxon, for even if we English glory in the thought that our seaborne ancestors were extremely bloodthirsty, we have no evidence that they brought their own women to Britain in any quantities, or had the power of reproducing themselves without aid from the other sex!"

So Anglo-Saxons were invaders, not migrants? Sounds much more plausible.

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"It will not have escaped you, at all events, that for four years the various branches of the English-speaking peoples have been credited with all the virtues — a love of liberty, humanity, and justice has, as it were, been patented for them on both sides of the Atlantic, and under the Southern Cross, till one has come to listen with a sort of fascinated terror for those three words to tinkle from the tongue."

Rabbit-proof Fence, anyone? Or is he speaking of liberty etc, only as applied to European races?

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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FROM A SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK

" ... daylight town belongs to the Sciences, the night-lit town to the Arts. ... "

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

About sanitation, town verses country, gadarening, and more.

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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TO THE LEAGUE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION, NEW YORK

" ... What is the Ultima Thule of our longings? I suppose one ought to say, roughly, that the modern ideal is: Maximum production of wealth to the square mile of a country — an ideal which, seeing that a man normally produces wealth in surplus to his own requirements, signifies logically a maximum head of population to the square mile. And it seems to me that the great modern fallacy is the identification of the word wealth with the word welfare. Granted that demand creates supply, and that it is impossible to stop human nature from demanding, the problem is surely to direct demand into the best channels for securing health and happiness. And I venture to say that the mere blind production of wealth and population by no means fills that bill. We ought to produce wealth only in such ways and to such an extent as shall make us all good, clean, healthy, intelligent, and beautiful to look at."

"I would have all educational institutions financed by the State, but give all the directing power to heads of education elected by the main body of teachers themselves. I would not have education dependent on advertisement or on charity. I would not even have newspapers, which are an educational force — though you might not always think so — dependent on advertisements. ... "

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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TALKING AT LARGE

"The division deep and subtle between those who have fought and those who have not — concerns us in Europe far more than you in America; for in proportion to your population the number of your soldiers who actually fought has been small, compared with the number in any belligerent European country. And I think that so far as you are concerned the division will soon disappear, for the iron had not time to enter into the souls of your soldiers. ... Perhaps only of the Briton may one still invent the picture which appeared in Punch in the autumn of 1914 — of the steward on a battleship asking the naval lieutenant: “Will you take your bath before or after the engagement, sir?” and only among Britons overhear one stoker say to another in the heat of a sea-fight: “Well, wot I say is—’E ought to ‘ave married ‘er.” ... "

" ... I hope it will never be forgotten that five million Britons were volunteers ... then he was plunged into such a hideous hell of horrible danger and discomfort as this planet has never seen; came out of it time and again, went back into it time and again; and finally emerged, shattered or unscathed, with a spirit at once uplifted and enlarged, yet bruised and ungeared for the old life of peace. Imagine such a man set back among those who have not been driven and grilled and crucified. What would he feel, and how bear himself? On the surface he would no doubt disguise the fact that he felt different from his neighbours — he would conform; but something within him would ever be stirring, a sort of superiority, an impatient sense that he had been through it and they had not; the feeling, too, that he had seen the bottom of things, that nothing he could ever experience again would give him the sensations he had had out there; that he had lived, and there could be nothing more to it. I don’t think that we others quite realise what it must mean to those men, most of them under thirty, to have been stretched to the uttermost, to have no illusions left, and yet have, perhaps, forty years still to live. There is something gained in them, but there’s something gone from them. The old sanctions, the old values won’t hold; are there any sanctions and values which can be made to hold? A kind of unreality must needs cling about their fives henceforth. This is a finespun way of putting it, but I think, at bottom, true."

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"The American Civil War was very long and very dreadful, but it was a human and humane business compared to what Europe has just come through. ... The spiritual point is this: In front of a man in ordinary civilised existence there hovers ever that moment in the future when he expects to prove himself more of a man than he has yet proved himself. For these soldiers of the Great Carnage the moment of probation is already in the past. They have proved themselves as they will never have the chance to do again, and secretly they know it. ... Human nature is elastic, and hope springs eternal; but a climax of experience and sensation cannot be repeated; I think these have reached and passed the uttermost climax; and in Europe they number millions."

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" ... I have observed that the rest of us, through reading about horrors, have lost the edge of our gentleness, and have got into the habit of thinking that it is the business of women and children to starve, if they happen to be German; ... families to be broken up if they happen to be aliens; and that a general carelessness as to what suffering is necessary and what is not, has set in. ... For sheer ferocity there is no place, you will have noticed, like a club full of old gentlemen. I expect the men who have come home from killing each other to show us the way back to brotherliness! ... "

"On the other hand one has often travelled in these last years with extreme embarrassment because our soldiers were so extraordinarily anxious that one should smoke their cigarettes, eat their apples, and their sausages. The marvels of comradeship they have performed would fill the libraries of the world."

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"In 1910, walking in Hyde Park with a writer friend, I remember saying: “It’s the hereditary autocracies in Germany, Austria, and Russia which make the danger of war.” He did not agree — but no two writers agree with each other at any given moment. “If only autocracies go down in the wreckage of this war!” was almost the first thought I put down in writing when the war broke out. Well, they are gone! They were an anachronism, and without them and the bureaucracies and secrecy which buttressed them we should not, I think, have had this world catastrophe. ... "

Was he surprised to hear of fascism et al, which never were veiled either in intentions or putting them into practice immediately?

" ... What then can be done to increase in the average voter intelligence and honesty, public spirit and independence? Nothing save by education. The Arts, the Schools, the Press. It is impossible to overestimate the need for vigour, breadth, restraint, good taste, enlightenment, and honesty in these three agencies. ... The burden is very specially on the shoulders of Public Men, and that most powerful agency the Press, which reports them. ... Report, I would almost say, now rules the world and holds the fate of man on the sayings of its many tongues. If the good sense of mankind cannot somehow restrain utterance and cleanse report, Democracy, so highly vaunted, will not save us; and all the glib words of promise spoken might as well have lain unuttered in the throats of orators. ... "

There is prophesy, almost, of Shirer and Hitler, respectively, foreshadowed in those sentences about reporter and orator.

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"Now take the function of the artist, of the man who in stone, or music, marble, bronze, paint, or words, can express himself, and his vision of life, truly and beautifully. Can we set limit to his value? The answer is in the affirmative. We set such limitation to his value that he has been known to die of it. And I would only venture to say here that if we don’t increase the store we set by him, we shall, in this reach-me-down age of machines and wholesale standardisations, emulate the Goths who did their best to destroy the art of Rome, and all these centuries later, by way of atonement, have filled the Thiergarten at Berlin and the City of London with peculiar brands of statuary, and are always writing their names on the Sphynx.

"I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to learn in life is that we can’t have things both ways. If we want to have beauty, that which appeals not merely to the stomach and the epidermis (which is the function of the greater part of industrialism), but to what lies deeper within the human organism, the heart and the brain, we must have conditions which permit and even foster the production of beauty. The artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of mankind, must eat to live. Now, if we insist that we will pay the artist only for what fascinates the popular uneducated instincts, he will either produce beauty, remain unpaid and starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare sumptuously every day. ... "

" ... We think too much of politics and too little of education. We treat it almost as cavalierly as the undergraduate treated the Master of Balliol. “Yes,” he said, showing his people round the quadrangle, “that’s the Master’s window;” then, picking up a pebble, he threw it against the window pane. “And that,” he said, as a face appeared, “is the Master!” Democracy has come, and on education Democracy hangs; the thread as yet is slender."

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Galsworthy discusses democracy, Bolshevism, air war, explosives, ... League of Nations.

" ... No one who, like myself, has recently experienced the sensation of landing in America after having lived in Europe throughout the war, can fail to realise the reluctance of Americans to commit themselves, and the difficulty Americans have in realising the need for doing so. But may I remind Americans that during the first years of the war there was practically the same general American reluctance to interfere in an old-world struggle; and that in the end America found that it was not an old-world but a world-struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike snatching chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and to shun departure from the letter of cherished tradition; but things do not stand still in this world; storm centres shift; and live doctrine often becomes dead dogma."

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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July 24, 2021 - July 24, 2021.

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CASTLES IN SPAIN

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4135860951

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CONTENTS

Castles in Spain. An Address

Where We Stand

International Thought

On Expression

Reminiscences of Conrad

Time, Tides, and Taste

Foreword to “Green Mansions.”

A Note on Sentiment

Preface to Conrad’s Plays

Burning Leaves

After Seeing a Play in 1903

Six Novelists in Profile

Books as Ambassadors

Faith of a Novelist

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Castles in Spain. An Address

Castles in Spain denotes dreams, brought to life or otherwise; Galsworthy discourses here on civic matters.

Galsworthy speaks of short term of life of a civic body, and consequent difficulty of clearing up towns into models for all residents, which would take longer.

Brings to mind So Well Remembered, by James Hilton, who portrayed just such a visionary as Galsworthy here expounds the need of, and his life's achievement of seeing his vision come through.

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Galsworthy discusses his era as opposite to older ages when cathedrals and pyramids were built, assuming a similarity of purpose in all older constructions.

Much of the underlying assumptions are questionable, at the very least. Assumptions of last century about pyramids and other great structures around the world, presumed tombs or places of human sacrifices by the then explorers, are likely to have been nothing of the sort, and are now thought far older than imagined previously, built by technology yet incomprehended rather than, as presumed, by slave labour kept very poor. Such assumptions were by those whose immediate roots were in slave labour cultures, either explicitly or otherwise those of colonial empires.

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" ... The old builders of pyramids, mosques and churches built for no physical advantage in this life. They carved and wrought and slowly lifted stone on stone for remote and, as they thought, spiritual ends. We moderns mine and forge and mason-up our monuments to the immediate profit of our bodies. ... "

"Sons of Darkness and Children of Light, both have worshipped a half-truth. The ancients built for to-morrow in another world, forgetting that all of us have a to-day in this. They spent riches and labour to save the souls of their hierarchy, but they kept their labourers so poor that they had no souls to save. They left astounding testimony to human genius and tenacity, but it never seems to have ruffled their consciousness that they fashioned the beautiful with slavery, misery, and blood."

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Galsworthy is unaware of the horrible irony.

" ... Before the industrial era set in, men used to make things by hand; they were in some sort artists, with at least the craftsman’s pride in their work. Now they press buttons, turn wheels; don’t make completed articles; work with monotony at the section of an article — so many hours of machine-driving a day, the total result of which is never a man’s individual achievement. ... "

It isn't that its about past and his era, either. It's that, when faced with superior handicraft and handbook weaves of India, where British wanted to sell their cheape factory products instead, they - the Brits - achieved their aims by chopping off fingers of weavers and other artisans instead, driving a whole land- until then wealthy and famous for her superior craft - into desperate poverty.

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Another huge irony here.

"The tendency of modern “Production” is to centre a man’s interest not in his working day, but outside of it — at least, in the lower ranks of industry. The old artificers absorbed culture, such as it was, from their work. In these days culture, such as it is, is grafted on to the workman in his leisure, as antidote to wheel-driving. ... "

And thus the superiority of ancient caste system of India, which was based on categorisation of work, NOT on possession of land or titles bestowed by a royalty. Work defining and forming a person's very nature, character and spirit, was, has always been the comprehension behind the idea. By not relating race, or wealth and possessions, to caste, as elsewhere, Indian thinking separated people from possesssions where a question of spirit comes, and kept those as incidental matters, not trivialised, but nor essential.

In fact, royals weren't set apart in India, much less presumed possessing divine blood; theirs was the caste of warriors and protectors, to which belonged every soldier, fighter and guard, charged with protection of anyone helpless, unarmed and in need of protection. Nor were marriages of royals limited within caste, much less within royalty.

In fact, the very name of India, in India, is Bhaarata, after an ancient king Bharata, whose mother was not a royal.

The word India, given by outsiders who had to cross a river Indus to get to India, was never India's name for India, by any community of India- thus the fraud of Aryan migration theory, invented by Brits to justify their own invasion and colonisation and loot. Aryans belonged to India, as indicated by India's not being named after the river Indus in any language of India.

The word India, given derives from the name Indus of a river whose real name, Indian, is Sindhu, which literally means ocean, indicating that the civilisation in and of India watched as an ocean between India and Asia was terminated and a river flowed there instead as Himaalayan ranges rising out of that ocean were seen, all recounted in Indian ancient history as known in India, until Macaulay policy of turning a nation into a broken land of slaves by breaking her soul was adopted and brought inyo execution by British.

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"Beauty, alone, in the largest sense of the word — the yearning for it, the contemplation of it — has civilised mankind."

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Prophetic, even though the prophesy here split - WWII had unimaginable genocide and much, much more; at the end, nuclear power, without which it may have gone on!

" ... The Great War was a little war compared with that which, through the development of scientific destruction, might be waged next time. ... "

And again -

"The next war will be fought from the air, and from under the sea, with explosives, gas, and the germs of disease. It may be over before it is declared. The final war necessary for the complete extirpation of mankind will be fought, perhaps, with atomic energy; and we shall have no occasion to examine the moon, for the earth will be as lifeless."

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" ... We never get ahead of time. For instance, we have just let slip a chance to revitalise the country life of England. At demobilisation we might have put hundreds of thousands on the land, which needs them so very badly. And we have put in all not so many as the war took off the land. Life on the land means hard work and few cinemas; but it also means hearty stock for the next generation, and the power of feeding ourselves on an island which the next war might completely isolate. A nation which never looks ahead is in for rude awakenings."

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July 25, 2021 - July 25, 2021.

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Where We Stand

Galsworthy discusses civilisation and aims thereof, and whether it's been arrived at, after WWI.

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" ... Without agreeing on any ethical definition we may admit that the most civilised state will be that wherein is found the greatest proportionate number of happy, healthy, wise, and gentle citizens. ... "

That, in India, is referred to as "RaamRaajya", "The Regime of God (and King) Raama", for thst is how its memory lingers in deep subconscious of India.

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"The march of mankind is directed neither by his will, nor by his superstitions, but by the effect of his great and, as it were, accidental discoveries on his average nature. The discovery and exploitation of language, of fire, of corn, of ships, of metals, of gunpowder, of printing, of coal, steam, electricity, of flying machines (atomic energy has still to be exploited), acting on a human nature which is, practically speaking, constant, moulds the real shape of human life, under all the agreeable camouflage of religions, principles, policies, personages, and ideas. After the discovery and exploitation of gunpowder and printing, the centuries stood somewhat still, until, with coal, steam, and modern machinery, a swift industrialism set in, which has brought the world to its recent state."

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"Prussian “will to power” did not cause, it followed and crowned with thorns, the rising wave of German industry and wealth. And outstanding personalities such as Gladstone and Bismarck are rather made outstanding by the times they live in, then make those times outstanding."

Hence the short-lived nature of their memories - unlike memories of, say, Buddha and other Divine Avataars, or Pythagoras and Euclid and Galileo and other great thinkers and artists. Einstein will be remembered, royal and other ruling political persons not so much.

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Prophetic, again -

"The war has not changed human nature ... It has destroyed some autocracies and created others which threaten fresh tyrannies of the part over the whole. It has revolutionised Russia, probably for ever; and has wasted the youth and wealth of Europe to such a degree as to shift the real storm-centre of the world to the Pacific Ocean and the three unexhausted countries lying east and west thereof. ... "

If he meant U.S., Japan and China, the last one rose much later, post WWII, and not for good; or did he mean something South of U.S., or Australia? The last is still technically a dominion, though, a century later, albeit by choice.

" ... It has exaggerated the conception of nationalism and, on the whole, lowered that of individual liberty."

Unclear how WWI did the former, at least; latter, one may relate to Russian revolution, but honestly, that again points at his concept of humanity being strictly restricted to Europe- for he isn't seeing enslavement of colonial subjects by Europe, or treatment of "native" locals anywhere in colonies and ex colonies where European settlers were citizens in his era and "native" locals were not given that status.

In fact, the very word "native" being treated as a pejorative is still so much a norm, decades after colonial era is mostly over, that one cannot believe Europe reads at all, or U.S. or other European ancestry lands for that matter, much less think - if they read, theyd be aware of Shaw's discourse making mincemeat out of such attitude in his Apple Cart; if they thought, they'd realise the truth of it, whether they read it or not.

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" .. It has greatly advanced the emancipation of women, and loosened family life. ... "

Galsworthy supported women's suffrage and emancipation in that he wrote about a woman's right to opt out of a marriage she was unhappy in; but he is quite unaware of how, by juxtaposing the two halves of that sentence, he's firmly supporting women's enslavement to what's euphemistically called family, but is in reality male ownership, not only of property and home, but of children and women therein, and worse - men assuming rights while another male is not in sight, is most often not even seen as inappropriate, on the contrary, even when situations are close to that of Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire, with or without the actual rape.

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" ... Only a wildered pelican here and there croaks of the need to concentrate national attention on chaining the tides and using water-driven electricity, on opening up oil-deposits, or converting coal into oil. Coal is a curse, if there is any way of doing without it. For, with all its usefulness, its smoke has done more to destroy health and happiness than any of our great discoveries. And, even if it were rendered smokeless, it has still to be extracted, and millions of men in this beautiful world must work below ground. ... And why this fatalistic attitude about coal? Simply because we are still in the rut made by an exploited discovery acting on average human nature: we know that we have huge unextracted stores of coal; many of us own coal-mines or shares therein; more of us make a living by extracting coal: our rulers depend on the votes of a coal-worshipping community; we want wealth quickly; in sum, we are human beings and prefer each of us his own immediate profit to what will benefit us all in the future. ... "

And things are only worse, despite grown awareness about environmental concerns and related health concerns, now exponentially worse, and not just in U.K. but in U.S. too, a century later.

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" ... America and Japan are going our way fast, becoming town-ridden, industry-mad communities. The next great war will probably begin between them. ... "

Slightly incorrect, that's all; they ended it, instead. Begun by, again, Germany.

" ... Even the Chinese are now infected by the Western idea of maximum wealth to the square mile. Their “advanced” men are saying, “We must adopt Western methods or we cannot compete with Western industry.” ... "

China geared up later, but is now polluting U.S. West coast, via Chinese East coast pollution wafting all the way across Pacific - and more!

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"The teaching profession should be honoured before all others ... "

That, precisely, was Indian caste system! And yet, European colonial invaders trampled it underfoot, England because of following Macaulay policy, and Portuguese one step further, executing hundreds simply for being the caste that's teacher among other professions! Arrogance of religious superiority complex? Or merely racism?

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July 25, 2021 - July 25, 2021.

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International Thought

About concerns regarding destructive powers and political uncertainty, need of international understanding and law, and whether it's enforceable.

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Slightly off, there -

" ... science more hopeful of perfecting poison gas than of abating coal-smoke or curing cancer; ... "

Galsworthy forgets, mist people work for a living, and those with independent means rarely took to hard work, of mind and more, of science with no guarantees of success, fame, or return on expenses, even in his time - with very few exceptions like Rutherford. Now this is even more so - British royals are revered as intellectual if one is "interested" in "history " and "architecture", which generally amounts to curiosity about ones own ancestors and buildings the family owns!

But although military usages pay immediately and better, cancer research does go on - what's funny is if Galsworthy thought the two were alternative options of careers for any individual at any stage after high school, when most careers are open, but culture usually dictates choices. In U.S., this might mean football or rock music for a male, and not much beyond a hope of surviving well for a girl, even now. Those with wealthy parents who pay for education are most likely to go into a moneymaking path, law or business management, if bright enough to get in.

Those that choose science are likely to have been abused through school as "nerds, geeks", bullied in every way, and labeled unpopular.

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" ... Sport, which still keeps a flag of idealism flying, is perhaps the most saving grace in the world at the moment, with its spirit of rules kept, and regard for the adversary, whether the fight is going for or against. ... "

Galsworthy is speaking of cricket as taught and played in public schools of U.K., - he'd be shocked if he saw Concussion, or read the Grisham novel about baseball and injuries caused by intention. But closer to his time and home and sport, there was the English team vicious enough to victimise a superior team, Australia, with bodyline bowling - ball deliberately aimed at body of batsmen; Bradsman was amongst the victims, fortunately not damaged as he could have been, and Patodi (senior) (who then played for England, this being before independence of India) was the only player to resign in protest made explicitly.

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" ... Destructive science has gone ahead out of all proportion. It is developing so fast that each irresponsible assertion of national rights or interests brings the world appreciably nearer to ruin. Without any doubt whatever the powers of destruction are gaining fast on the powers of creation and construction. In old days a thirty years’ war was needed to exhaust a nation; it will soon be (if it is not already) possible to exhaust a nation in a week by the destruction of its big towns from the air. The conquest of the air, so jubilantly hailed by the unthinking, may turn out the most sinister event that ever befell us, simply because it came before we were fit for it — fit to act reasonably under the temptation of its fearful possibilities. The use made of it in the last war showed that; and the sheeplike refusal of the startled nations to face the new situation, and unanimously ban chemical warfare and the use of flying for destructive purposes, shows it still more clearly. No one denies that the conquest of the air was a great, a wonderful achievement; no one denies that it could be a beneficent achievement if the nations would let it be. But mankind has not yet, apparently, reached a pitch of decency sufficient to be trusted with such an inviting and terribly destructive weapon. ... "

As WWII showed, Battle of Britain and London Blitz hsd to be fought when inflicted by Germany, but the only remedy was bombing of Berlin and other German cities, for one; banning air war would be of no use with enemy ready to flout such bans. Chemical weapons were, and indeed have Noreen, banned for decades; but China is letting loose biological weapons around the world by creating them in laboratories and simply denying, and acting outraged about WHO demands of inspection, while continuously claiming huge swathes of territories around on land and sea, occupying others, and generally worse.

Gandhian preaching only succeeds with good guys stepping back when attacked - which has, for decades, resulted in the enemy attacking non stop, killing, and worse, genocides unacknowledged and not taken cognisance thereof. Imagine media clampdown on Nazi atrocities and genocide, for sake of Gandhian principles; well, that's been practiced where India is concerned.

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" ... If neither Science nor Finance will agree to think internationally, there is probably nothing for it but to kennel-up in disenchantment, and wait for an end which can’t be very long in coming — not a complete end, of course, say a general condition of affairs similar to that which existed recently in the famine provinces of Russia."

Would that be "famine" in Ukraine for reasons identical to the Ireland "potato famine"?

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Why Galsworthy thinks that the professionals he describes would free of political ideology, or temptations of material nature, is hard to see. Its even harder to see why hed think they'd all agree with him.

" ... The exchange of international thought, which alone can save us, is the exchange of thought between craftsmen — between the statesmen of the different countries; the lawyers of the different countries; the scientists, the financiers, the writers of the different countries. We have the mediums of exchange (however inadequately made use of) for the statesmen and the lawyers, but the scientists (inventors, chemists, engineers) and the financiers, the two sets of craftsmen in whose hands the future of the world chiefly lies, at present lack adequate machinery for the exchange of international thought, and adequate conception of the extent to which world responsibility now falls on them. If they could once realise the supreme nature of that responsibility, the battle of salvation should be half won."

International relationships forged between such professionals survived WWII only when money mattered more. Where ideology mattered often enough it was a choice between nation and relationships.

Easy to see this - if one isn't born and brought up German, one only has to visit Germany and chance to hear a German speak of a non German scientist of the time who didn't help "because he was a friend of Einstein", which is stated in a tone not accusatory as much as convicting the scientist unfriendly to Nazi Germany after Einstein was forced to flee!

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" ... Any real work of art, individual and racial though it be in root and fibre, is impersonal and universal in its appeal. Art is one of the great natural links (perhaps the only great natural link) between the various breeds of men, and to scotch its gentling influence in time of war is to confess ourselves still apes and tigers. ... "

Wonder what Galsworthy would say about the Nazi projects related to art, thievery thereof, and destruction on huge scale when losing the war. Wish he could see The Monuments Men!

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July 25, 2021 - July 25, 2021.

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On Expression

AN ADDRESS

"Expression is my subject; and no mariner embarking on the endless waters of the Atlantic in a Canadian canoe could feel more lost than the speaker who ventures on a theme so wide and inexhaustible. ... "

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"In short, expression, whether of laws, psychology, episode, or feeling, should be humane, and refrain from torturing the wits of mankind."

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"The mention of slang bends the mind almost insensibly towards the great American language; for some, as you know, have claimed that the Americans already have a language of their own. Let us avoid hyperbole. If Americans, with some exceptions, speak American, they still write English, and generally very good English. ... "

"We English have quite as much divergence between our spoken and our written language, with this difference perhaps: Americans who talk in jargon often write good English; but Britons who speak the wondrous treble called cockney, and the blurred ground-bass of the Yorkshire and Lancashire towns, rarely express themselves at all in written words. And yet dare we condemn cockney — a lingo whose waters, in Southern England, seem fast flooding in over the dykes of the so-called Oxford accent, and such other rural dialects as are left?"

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"Yet none of us would have The Ancient Mariner — that almost perfect narrative poem — expressed in prose: it is unthinkable.

"“The moving Moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide; Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside—”"

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Was John Galsworthy truly unable to see the genius of Charlie Chaplin when cinema was still in its infancy, and sound was yet to arrive?

" ... When seeing a play, I am curiously absorbed in the dialogue — the interest, emotions, and suspense aroused by it. However birds may sing, streams flow, and thunders roll, on the stage; however luridly, austerely, symbolically, classically, or realistically the scene be architectured, I am seeking the human figure and the words of his mouth — the “Out, out, brief candle!” And this is unfortunate, because dramatic expression through mere words seems to be going out of fashion. Cinema, revue, ballet, puppet show, and the architectural designer — all are in conspiracy to lower its importance. When enjoying a film, a ballet, a book by Mr. Gordon Craig I become uneasy. What if words are doomed — merely to be used to fill in the interstices of architecture, the intervals between jazz music, or just written on a board! What if the dramatist is to become second fiddler, a hack hired and commissioned! Shakespeare remarked: “The play’s the thing!” We echo the saying, feel virtuous, and take our tickets for “The Three-Cornered Hat,” “Lilac Time,” “Charlie Chaplin,” and “The Follies”; or, bemoaning the absence of British drama, sit down to wait for a National Theatre."

Now, the paragraph quoted seems so out of sync! Old fashioned snobs still tom-tom a theatrical performer, with diction of a conquistadores lingo, stylised dialogue delivery and little else; those not yet enamoured of being poseurs, though, know that that has nothing to do with expressing a thought, an emotion, much less porstraying a character. Cinema has come closer to life than theatre could ever be, and grown tremendously as an art, using every possible art, and sense - with exception of touch, smell and taste of course - to convey a story, a philosophy and more.

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" ... English language is the word-coin of well-nigh one hundred and seventy million white people, spread over nearly half the land surface of the earth. It is the language of practically every sea; the official tongue of some three hundred and fifty million brown and black and yellow people; the accredited business medium of the world; and more and more taught in South America, Japan, and some European countries. ... "

"brown and black and yellow"??!!!

Fact is, Europe skin tone ranges from uncooked to medium rare, while in lands with sun being less rare, life lived in light has skins develop tones from medium rare to well done to roasted. Nature adapts, and babies are born with nature anticipating needs of the skin to absorb the amount of light expected, from precious little to brilliant to blinding, so humans are protected, with skins suited to confitions.

One would think a meat eater would understand thus, having known how his food changes colour depending on amount of time it's in pan on fire! Science has, meanwhile, understood that pale skins are bordering albino, a disease, not a flattering that the so called whites think it is - and of course, no human is "white", as birds and animals can be; no bride in white in church has given illusion of or looked naked!

Who hasnt seen just how much golden are the supposed white are after a couple of generations in California? Indian brides joining their spouses in Europe or U.S. are several shades paler, returning to the genetic truth of ancestry, on the other hand, just as Indian babies often quite pink in infancy are suitably tanned before teenage is over, boys so more than girls.

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"The most beneficent task which the League of Nations could perform would be the conjuring of an arrangement to this end from the peoples of the earth. The ideal course is an adoption by agreement of a single second language to be taught in all countries. And I regret profoundly that there seems little likelihood of any such consummation."

Would he have been quite so eager if he had realised the likelihood of this language being Hindi or Arabic instead? Or would he then argue for non native speakers of this language not be treated as second tier, on par with the native English speakers treating others?

" ... The Napoleonic wars left French the predominant medium of mental exchange. French is still perhaps the leading speech in Europe. But French will never now spread effectively by natural means beyond Europe and North Africa. The decline of Europe, the expansion of the British Empire, the magnetism and ever-increasing power of America, are making English the real world-language. Its tide was never before so high. This is a solemn thought for us who believe in our mother tongue and all it stands for — our hopes, our learning, our customs, our history, and our dreams."

Germany meanwhile being central to Europe silently hopes it would be German instead, which seemed a real likelihood during WWII years, and is back to possibility now post EU expansion into East Europe with Germany literally at center and most neighbouring countries more conversant with the language, several in fact using it or a variation of it amongst their own in their lands.

Then there's Spanish, what with lands across South Atlantic being predominantly Spanish speaking; Chinese, with the population of China still over a third of the world, and other candidates - including Bengali, apparently now the third most spoken language, with its rich literature.

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"For us private English folk who directly or indirectly are concerned with the welfare of the English language, there seems to be the duty of never losing sight of its world destiny. Surely we are not entitled to the slippered, unbraced word-garb of stay-at-homes; we need the attire of language braced and brushed, and fit to meet all glances. For our language is on view as never language was.

"I often wonder, if only I didn’t know English, what I should think of the sound of it, well talked. I believe I should esteem it a soft speech very pleasant to the ear, varied but unemphatic, singularly free from guttural or metallic sounds, restful, dignified, and friendly. I believe — how prejudiced one is! — that I would choose it, well spoken, before any language in the world, not indeed as the most beautiful, but as the medium of expression of which one would tire last. Blend though it be, hybrid between two main stocks, and tinctured by many a visiting word, it has acquired rich harmony of its own, a vigorous individuality. It is worthy of any destiny, however wide."

Prejudiced indeed!

" ... As with the lover of flowers who, through the moving seasons of the year, walks in his garden, watching the tulip and the apple blossom, the lilac, the iris, and the rose bloom in their good time, and cannot tell which most delights his eyes, nor when his garden reaches its full sweetness, so it is with us who love good English. Chaucer, Shakespeare, the makers of the Authorised Version, Defoe, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Burke, or Bright, you cannot crown the English of any one of these and say “Here the pinnacle was definitely reached.” ... "

Best was yet to come when he wrote this, or just about beginning to, but it isn't clear if he was aware of the peak. And no, it was none of those he mentions.

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July 25, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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Reminiscences of Conrad

About Joseph Conrad.

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"Many writers knew my dead friend, and will write of him better than I; but no other writer knew him quite so long, or knew him both as sailor and novelist.

"It was in March 1893 that I first met Conrad on board the English sailing ship “Torrens” in Adelaide Harbour. He was superintending the stowage of cargo. Very dark he looked in the burning sunlight ... He seemed to me strange on an English ship. For fifty-six days I sailed in his company."

" ... I, supposed to be studying navigation for the Admiralty Bar, would every day work out the position of the ship with the captain. On one side of the saloon table we would sit and check our observations with those of Conrad, who from the other side of the table would look at us a little quizzically. For Conrad had commanded ships, and his subordinate position on the “Torrens” was only due to the fact that he was then still convalescent from the Congo experience which had nearly killed him. Many evening watches in fine weather we spent on the poop. Ever the great teller of a tale, he had already nearly twenty years of tales to tell. Tales of ships and storms, of Polish revolution, of his youthful Carlist gun-running adventure, of the Malay seas, and the Congo; and of men and men: all to a listener who had the insatiability of a twenty-five-year-old.

"When, seven or eight years later, Conrad, though then in his best period and long acclaimed a great writer by the few, was struggling, year in year out, to keep a roof over him amidst the apathy of the many who afterwards fell over each other to read him in his worst period, I remember urging him to raise the wind by tale-telling in public. He wouldn’t, and he was right. Still, so incomparable a raconteur must have made a success, even though his audience might have missed many words owing to his strange yet fascinating accent.

"On that ship he talked of life, not literature; and it is not true that I introduced him to the life of letters. At Cape Town, on my last evening, he asked me to his cabin, and I remember feeling that he outweighed for me all the other experiences of that voyage. ... "

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Galsworthy quotes a part of a letter from Conrad, laudatory about writing of Henry James.

Wasn't it Henry James whose explicit and very derogatory account of a dalliance was quoted from a work of his by a woman pointing out at the vicious nature of the writing of some of the male celebrated authors towards half of humanity, which has never been of the slightest account towards any negative consideration of their worth but has added hugely to violence against women instead, accounted or otherwise?

Was Galsworthy aware of such writings, and did he merely ignore it all? If so, what price his own support of women's rights, lives, dignity? Part time stance?

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"It was the sea that gave Conrad to the English language. A fortunate accident — for he knew French better than English at that time. He started his manhood, as it were, at Marseilles. In a letter to me (1905) he says: “In Marseilles I did begin life thirty-one years ago. It’s the place where the puppy opened his eyes.” He was ever more at home with French literature than with English, spoke that language with less accent, liked Frenchmen, and better understood their clearer thoughts. And yet, perhaps, not quite an accident; for after all he had the roving quality which has made the English the great sea nation of the world; and, I suppose, instinct led him to seek in English ships the fullest field of expression for his nature. England, too, was to him the romantic country; it had been enshrined for him, as a boy in Poland, by Charles Dickens, Captain Marryat, Captain Cook, and Franklin the Arctic explorer. ... "

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" ... Conrad was critically accepted from the very start; he never published a book that did not rouse a chorus of praise; but it was twenty years before he was welcomed by the public with sufficient warmth to give him a decent income.

"Chance, in 1914 — an indifferent Conrad — at last brought him fortune. From that year on to the end his books sold well; yet, with the exception of The Secret Sharer and some parts of Victory, none of his work in that late period was up to his own exalted mark. Was it natural that popular success should have coincided with the lesser excellence? ... "

" ... The shining work of his great period was before their time; it places him among the finest writers of all ages. Conrad’s work, from An Outcast of the Islands to The Secret Agent, his work in The Secret Sharer, in the first chapters of The Rescue (written in 1898), and of some portions of Victory, are to his work in The Arrow of Gold and the last part of The Rescue as the value of pearl to that of mother-of-pearl. He was very tired toward the end; he wore himself clean out. To judge him by tired work is absurd; to lump all his work together, as if he were always the same Conrad, imperils a just estimate of his greatness."

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"A spurt was characteristic of Conrad’s endings; he finished most of his books in that way — his vivid nature instinctively staged itself with dramatic rushes. Moreover, all those long early years he worked under the whip-lash of sheer necessity."

" ... He was always loyal to what he had at heart — to his philosophy, to his work, and to his friends; he was loyal even to his dislikes (not few) and to his scorn. People talk of Conrad as an aristocrat; I think it rather a silly word to apply to him. His mother’s family, the Bebrowskis, were Polish landowners; the Korzeniowskis, too, his father’s family, came, I think, of landowning stock; but the word aristocrat is much too dry to fit Conrad; he had no touch with “ruling,” no feeling for it, except, maybe, such as is necessary to sail a ship; he was first and last the rover and the artist, with such a first-hand knowledge of men and things that he was habitually impatient with labels and pigeon-holes, with cheap theorising and word debauchery. He stared life very much in the face, and distrusted those who didn’t. Above all, he had the keen humour which spiflicates all class and catalogues, and all ideals and aspirations that are not grounded in the simplest springs of human nature. He laughed at the clichés of so-called civilisation. His sense of humour, indeed, was far greater than one might think from his work. He had an almost ferocious enjoyment of the absurd. Writing seemed to dry or sardonise his humour. But in conversation his sense of fun was much more vivid; it would leap up in the midst of gloom or worry, and take charge with a shout."

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"Many might suppose that Conrad would naturally settle by the sea. He never did. He had seen too much of it; like the sailor who when he turns into his bunk takes care that no sea air shall come in, he lived always well inland. The sea was no favourite with one too familiar with its moods. He disliked being labelled a novelist of the sea. He wrote of the sea, as perhaps no one, not even Herman Melville, has written; but dominant in all his writing of the sea is the note of struggle and escape. His hero is not the sea, but man in conflict with that cruel and treacherous element. Ships he loved, but the sea — no. Not that he ever abused it, or talked of it with aversion; he accepted it as he accepted all the inscrutable remorselessness of Nature. It was man’s job to confront Nature with a loyal and steady heart — that was Conrad’s creed, his contribution to the dignity of life. ... He was sardonic, but he had none of the cynicism characteristic of small, cold-hearted beings."

" ... He was not an egoist; he had far too much curiosity and genuine interest in things and people to be that. I don’t mean to say that he had not an interest in himself and a belief in his own powers. His allusions to his work are generally disparaging; but at heart he knew the value of his gifts; and he liked appreciation, especially from those (not many) in whose judgment he had faith.

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" ... Conrad was a most voracious reader, and he was trilingual. A Slav temperament, a life of duty and adventure, vast varied reading, and the English language — those were the elements from which his highly individual work emerged. ... No one could help Conrad. He had to subdue to the purposes of his imagination a language that was not native to him; to work in a medium that was not the natural clothing of his Polish temperament. ... I think perhaps he most delighted in the writings of Turgenev; but there is not the slightest evidence that he was influenced by him. He loved Turgenev’s personality, and disliked Tolstoi’s. The name Dostoievsky was in the nature of a red rag to him. I am told that he once admitted that Dostoievsky was “deep as the sea.” Perhaps that was why he could not bear him, or possibly it was that Dostoievsky was too imbued with Russian essence for Polish appetite. In any case, his riderless extremisms offended something deep in Conrad."

"I saw little of Conrad during the war. Of whom did one see much? He was caught in Poland at the opening of that business, and it was some months before he succeeded in getting home. Tall words, such as “War to end War” left him, a continental and a realist, appropriately cold. When it was over he wrote: “So I send these few lines to convey to you both all possible good wishes for unbroken felicity in your new home and many years of peace. At the same time I’ll confess that neither felicity nor peace inspire me with much confidence. There is an air of ‘the packed valise’ about these two divine but unfashionable figures. I suppose the North Pole would be the only place for them, where there is neither thought nor heat, where the very water is stable, and the democratic bawlings of the virtuous leaders of mankind die out into a frozen, unsympathetic silence.” Conrad had always a great regard for men of action, for workmen who stuck to their last and did their own jobs well; he had a corresponding distrust of amateur omniscience and handy wiseacres; he curled his lip at political and journalistic protestation; cheap-jackery and clap-trap of all sorts drew from him a somewhat violently expressed detestation. I suppose what he most despised in life was ill-educated theory, and what he most hated, blatancy and pretence. He smelled it coming round the corner and at once his bristles would rise. He was an extremely quick judge of a man. I remember a dinner convoked by me, that he might meet a feminine compatriot of his own married to one who was not a compatriot. The instant dislike he took to that individual was so full of electricity that we did not dine in comfort. The dislike was entirely merited. ... "

" ... In Nostromo Conrad made a continent out of just a sailor’s glimpse of a South American port, some twenty years before. In The Secret Agent he created an underworld out of probably as little actual experience. On the other hand, we have in The Nigger, in Youth and Heart of Darkness the raw material of his own life transmuted into the gold of fine art. People, and there are such, who think that writers like Conrad, if there be any, can shake things from their sleeve, would be staggered if they could have watched the pain and stress of his writing life. ... His wife tells me that a sort of homing instinct was on him in the last month of his life, that he seemed sometimes to wish to drop everything and go back to Poland. Birth calling to Death — no more than that, perhaps, for he loved England, the home of his wandering, of his work, of his last long landfall.

"If to a man’s deserts is measured out the quality of his rest, Conrad shall sleep well."

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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Time, Tides, and Taste

"Save as museum pieces in the unvisited rooms of the Past, how very few books live! In the whole range of English literature down to 1800, who, except by professors and their pupils as part of education, is widely read? Shakespeare. Save for some dozen or so still well-thumbed volumes, the others — even Chaucer, Bunyan, Milton, Dryden, Johnson, Defoe, Swift, Fielding, Jeremy Taylor — are but venerable names. Of all the great English writers, poets and novelists of the nineteenth century, who are now really coram populo?

"Dickens, Stevenson, and Mark Twain; with Shelley, Scott, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Trollope, and Tennyson, dipped into; and the readers of such as Byron, Hawthorne, Thackeray, Poe, the Brontes, Marryat, Charles Reade, Browning, Blackmore, Artemus Ward, Whitman, Herman Melville, confined to two or three surviving books apiece. I speak not here of connoisseurs, students, or bookworms, but of the reading public at large."

"And how amusing it is to watch the wheel of criticism turning — to see a Dostoievsky displace a Turgenev, a Tchehov displace both; a Dreiser replace a Norris, a Lewis a Dreiser, Un Tel a Lewis, a Dreiser Un Tel; a Proust displace a France ... "

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" ... For literary fame — not the brand in publishers’ advertisements, nor the bay-leaf grown in cafés, but that which clings on, though blasted every other decade — is mysteriously entwined with public favour, and curiously detached from critical pronouncement. .. "

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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Foreword to “Green Mansions.”

" ... For of all living authors — now that Tolstoi has gone — I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love his writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have a favourite hunting ground, which, in his good-will — or perhaps merely in his egoism — he would wish others to share with him.

"The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: We are, as worlds, rather common tramping ground for our readers, rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are too superficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression; in fact, — like guide or dragoman — we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them the spirit, of the land.”"

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"A really great writer such as this is no more to be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called New York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to all his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty an intimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attraction lie in his spirit and philosophy. ... "

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" ... The book is soaked through and through with a strange beauty. I will not go on singing its praises, or trying to make it understood, because I have other words to say of its author."

" ... Style should not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not master. To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacle to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotion or gratification — this is the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has pre-eminently this double quality. ... "

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" ... His work is a vision of natural beauty and of human life as it might be, quickened and sweetened by the sun and the wind and the rain, and by fellowship with all the other forms of life — the truest vision now being given to us, who are more in want of it than any generation has ever been. A very great writer, and — to my thinking — the most valuable our age possesses."

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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A Note on Sentiment

"Sentiment (so far as literature is concerned) may be defined, I suppose, as the just verbal expression of genuine feeling; it becomes sentimentalism when the feeling is not genuine, or when the expression strikes the reader as laid on with too thick a pen. I find a good instance of the difference in a certain novel of my own, written at a time of stress, and re-read for the first time in calm days six years later. I found it sentimental, and started to revise it. By cutting out thirty thousand words, or just one quarter of the book, without omitting or altering any of the incidents, or eliminating any of the characters, simply by chopping words out of almost every sentence and thereby removing the over-expression, I reduced the sentimentalism to sentiment, so far as I could judge.

"In any definition of sentiment or sentimentalism, reader, in fact, as well as writer, is involved. That there is nothing absolute in the matter will be admitted even by holders of literary opinions canonised in coterie — nothing more absolute than in canonised opinion itself. Time plays skittles with the definitions of sentiment as freely as with the views of the criticaster. ... There are readers, for instance, who hold that literature should not stir emotion in any way connected with life, but only rouse a kind of gloating sensation in the brain, and such readers — the equivalent of the old “aesthetes” — are highly vocal. There is the type of critic, with whom certain sorts of emotional expression, however thickly traced, escape the charge “sentimental” because connected with “the sportsman and the gentleman,” but to whom certain other kinds are “slop,” because not so well connected. There is the complication of the label. Label an author sentimental, and whatever he writes is sentimental, whether it really is or not. And, finally, every writer who expresses feeling at all has his own particular unconscious point of over-expression. Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, even Bernard Shaw — not as a rule laid under this charge — can be sentimental in their own particular ways. The whole subject is intricate; nor is it helpful that what is sentimental to an Englishman is not sentimental to a Frenchman, and so forth."

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" ... But there is danger in too great readiness to pour cold water on the intoxications, whether of self or others. Juice and generosity in verbal expression are possibly more healthy than the under-expression of those afraid to give themselves away. There is a certain meanness in a dry and trained attitude of superiority to emotion, and in that slug-like temperament which prides itself on cold-bloodedness. English training is especially self-conscious.

"At root, perhaps a matter of climate; but in later stages, due to our public schools and universities, which strangely influence at second-hand classes not in direct touch with them. The guiding principle of English life and education is a stoicism discouraging all exhibition of emotion, and involving a high degree of self-control. For practical ends it has great value; for the expression and appreciation of art or literature, extremely little. It warps the critical point of view, removing it from an emotional to an ethical and practical basis. To indulge in emotional expression is bad for manners, for progress, trade, and willpower; and, freely using the word sentimental, we stamp on the habit. But art of any kind is based on emotion, and can only be duly apprehended through the emotional faculties. Letting these atrophy and adopting the posture of “sniff,” we become deaf and dumb to art’s true appeal. To “slop over” is the greatest offence an Englishman can commit. We hold it in such horror that our intellectuals often lose the power to judge what is or is not the adequate expression of feeling. But here again we have extraordinary contradictions. For alongside a considerable posture of “sniff” we have a multitude who wallow in the crudest sentimentalism, an audience for whom it is impossible to lay it on too thick."

" ... Or an advocate who will appeal in the most sentimental terms to the patriotism of a jury will stigmatise as “sentimental” appeals to feeling in cases of vivisection, wife-beating or other cruelties. ... The rule in practical life seems to be that your own feeling is sound, and that of your adversary sentimental. ... In fact, in life at large you may be sentimental without being called so only when you are on the side of the majority. ... One does not perhaps exaggerate in saying that we are all sentimentalists; and the difference between us is that most of us safely over-express popular sentiments, and a few of us riskily over-express sentiments which are not popular. Only the latter earn the title “Sentimentalists.”"

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" ... But, as we have seen, sentimentalism is not sentiment. A man may be sentimental and yet be hard as nails; and America certainly excels in a special brand of hard-headedness. Probably America is in more danger from hard-head than from soft heart."

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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Preface to Conrad’s Plays

"CONRAD’S three plays, One Day More, Laughing Anne, and The Secret Agent are all adaptations from stories, and the two in this volume have, curiously enough, the same main theme — the suffering of a woman capable of self-sacrifice. ... I know — that he had fitful longings to write for the stage. And the fact that he never, in all those years, wrote directly for it is to me proof that his nature recoiled too definitely from the limitations which the stage imposes on word painting and the subtler efforts of a psychologist. The novel suited his nature better than the play, and he instinctively kept to it. If, through unhappy accident, he had begun by writing for the stage, without having first experienced the wider freedom and tasted the more exquisite savour of the novel, he would probably have become one of the greatest dramatists of our time. But we should have lost by it, for as a novelist he was in many respects unique."

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"It is, in some sort, fitting that I should write this little introduction, since that first of his adaptations for the stage was made in my studio workroom on Campden Hill. Conrad worked at one end of it, on One Day More, while, at the other end, I was labouring at The Man of Property. He sat at a table close to the big window, I stood at a desk with my back to him, and now and then we would stop and exchange lamentations on the miseries of our respective lots."

"He wrote from Capri in May 1905: “Another piece of news is that (would you believe it?) the Stage Society wishes to perform Tomorrow” (as it was then called) “next June. Colvin wrote me. Several men, and amongst them G. B. Shaw, profess themselves very much struck.” ... "

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"I do not know when Conrad adapted Laughing Anne from the story Because of the Dollars, and indeed never read it till I came to write this preface. Demanding in its short life three scene-sets, none of them easy, and the last exceptionally difficult in stage conditions, it has as yet, I believe, never been performed. It exemplifies that kind of innocence which novelists commonly have as to what will “go down” on the stage. Conrad probably never realised that a “man without hands” would be an almost unbearable spectacle; that what you can write about freely cannot always be endured by the living eye. Anyone who has passed over the Bridge of Galata in the old days — which, very likely, are the new days too — and seen what the beggars there offered to one’s sense of pity, will appreciate the nausea inspired by that particular deformity. ... "

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" ... Those of us, not many, who work in both forms know, to a degree not possible, perhaps, to those who work in one, or work in neither, the cruel obstacles which the physical conditions of the stage put in the way of the sustained mood. ... "

That's where cinema wins over stage, hands down!

" ... I would say that the stage, as a faithful vehicle of mood, falls as far short of the novel as the cinema falls short of the stage. ... "

Now that's pure drivel! It's hard to know whether he was merely blinded by his feelings, or unable to see the immense possibilities of the new medium, and that technology was improving by exponential leaps, or something else, but drivel it is.

" ... All art admittedly depends on craft, on the sort of devising which we call technique; even the novel, that most liberal and elastic medium, has its own severities, makes its own rigorous demands on ingenuity, dramatic instinct, and selective power — but they are difficulties to be overcome in a strict privacy by the writer steeped in his mood, camped on his theme without interference. In writing for the stage the cramp of a hundred and one extra influences comes into play, device becomes trick work, selection is dictated to by physical conditions beyond control. The confirmed novelist, accustomed to freedom and his own conscience, is often given to impatience, and a measure of contempt towards even his own writing for the stage. That merely means, as a rule, that he does not realise the basic difference between the two forms. And, however good a novelist such an one may be, he will inevitably be a less good dramatist. A form must “enthuse” one, as the Americans say, before one can do it justice. One cannot approach the stage successfully without profound respect and a deep recognition that its conditions are the essentials of an appeal totally distinct from that of the novel."

And those limitations that restrict stage vanish in Cinema! Then, it's merely a matter of this - does one prefer ones own imagination as a reader, to the realities and interpretation by the artists who come together to make a novel into a film?

And the only limitation that can exist, then, is time - films haven't gone beyond four and half hours, while longnovels spanning several decades might not find that length enough to depict all events and contain all characters. So the television serial wins over the film!

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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Burning Leaves

"WHEN autumn comes, and leaves are gathered into little heaps and slow fire set to them, all who have passed the meridian of life are moved by the acrid odour and the trailing blue of the smoke, as if they saw and scented the leafage of their own pasts burning — leafage which was green and smelled of lemons when it burst from the bud. ... "

If he'd spent an autumn in New England, he'd know beauty of Autumn can surpass that of spring!

" ... Out in the open we are framed in the unceasing process of Nature, among plants and birds and animals; in towns bound in mechanical conspiracy to conceal that process; we burn our leaves, and remove the sight of their long decay; we compress slow emotion into swift feeling."

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July 26, 2021 - July 26, 2021.

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After Seeing a Play in 1903

"It is this apt and proper disproportion within us between common-sense and feeling which has produced the masterpieces of our greater modern dramatists. They recognise that men were made for morality and not morality made by men, and that the paramount duty of the playwright is to convey the triumph of the preconceived notion of things in preference to showing the forces of Nature acting and reacting upon human beings; and they give us, week after week and year after year, works which precisely fulfil the requirements of the preponderant common-sense in the body politic, crown and set a seal on that common-sense itself, exalt it to the stars, and bless it with complacency. For our greater modern dramatists are all men of head, men of common-sense, believing to the full in the folly of the artist and the gloom of the interior of desks."

"Men of heart and men of head! Not until we reverse the proportion between these two, not till the moon has shone by day, will our greater modern dramatists believe that the principal things in life are neither marriage nor a position in society, but love and death; that art is rooted in feeling; that inevitability has a certain value; and that the only epic virtue is courage."

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July 27, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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Six Novelists in Profile

Galsworthy discourses on novels, philosophy, art, ... Charles Dickens, Ivan Turgnev, Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad and Anatole France.

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"MY first profile is that of Charles Dickens, who, born in London in 1812, died at Gadshill in 1870. In that early and in some sort great Victorian Age, English novelists — in spite of much generous revolt against particular social evils — solemnly accepted the conventions, morals, standards, ideals, and enterprises of their day; believed with all their hearts that life was worth living; regarded its current values as absolute; had no ironic misgivings, nor any sense that existence is a tragi-comedy. They saw no grin on the face of Fate. They were almost majestically unselfconscious. Dickens was a true child of his age.

"Shakespeare, two hundred and fifty years earlier, was much more introspective and philosophical. ... "

" ... he was English of the English, and from no other writings can England be so well comprehended even now. If some of his characters were little more than names attached to extravagant attitudes of conduct, they show his genius the more in that we accept them as men and women. He had the persuasiveness of great vitality; he wrote with a fine “gusto.” In the pages of Dickens virtue is virtue, vice is vice, seldom “the twain do meet” in the way they meet in all — except our public men. He paints the ethical with a glaring brush; we should charge at the picture as bulls at red if there were any pretence of art about it. But in those days our novelists did not bother about art. The literary gatherings of that period in England confined themselves, I suspect, to jesting, drink, politics, and oysters. Dickens’s great contemporary, Thackeray, indeed, had heard of art, and thought it worthy of a certain patronage; Dickens himself identified it, I fear, with foreigners, and showed it the back door. He was robust, but it is strange to think of him writing as he did when, not two hundred miles away, such an accomplished artist as Prosper Merimée was writing Carmen and The Venus d’llle, Turgenev was writing Smoke and Torrents of Spring, and across the Atlantic Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter and Edgar Poe his Strange Tales. No one would dream of going to Dickens to learn consciously the art of novel-writing; yet all can draw from him subconsciously the foundation of phrase, for he was a born writer, and the foundation of philosophy, though he was no philosopher."

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" ... Under Jane Austen, Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, Scott, Dumas, Thackeray and Hugo, the novel attained a certain relation of part to whole; but it was left for one of more poetic feeling and greater sensibility than any of these to perfect its proportions, and introduce the principle of selection, until there was that complete relation of part to whole which goes to the making of what we call a work of art. This writer was Turgenev, as supreme in the art of the novel as Dickens was artless.

"Ivan Turgenev, born at Orel in Russia in 1818, died at Bougival near Paris in 1883. Critics have usually been preoccupied by his detachment from his native Russian culture, by his variation from the loose-jointed giant Gogol, and the shapeless giant Dostoievsky. Anxiously calling him a Westerner, they have omitted to notice that the West did not influence him so much as he influenced the West. Turgenev achieved his unique position from within himself; he was the finest natural poet who ever wrote novels. It was that which separated him from his great Russian contemporaries, and gave him his distinction and his influence in the West. Russia did not like Turgenev — he had a bad habit. He told the truth. No country likes that. It is considered especially improper in novelists. Russia got rid of him. But if he had never left Russia his work would still have taken the shape it did — because of his instinctive feeling for form. He had a perfect sense of “line moulding and rounding his themes within himself before working them out in written words; and, though he never neglected the objective, he thought in terms of atmosphere rather than in terms of fact. Turgenev, an aristocrat, a man of culture, susceptible to the impression of foreign literatures, devoted to music and painting, a reader and writer of plays and poems, touches Dickens only at three broad but all-important points: the intense understanding they both had of human nature, the intense interest they both took in life, the intense hatred they both felt for cruelty and humbug. Let those who doubt the truth of this last resemblance read Turgenev’s little story Mumu, about the dog of the dumb serf porter Gerasim. No more stirring protest against tyrannical cruelty was ever penned in terms of art. Dickens was the least fastidious of writers, Turgenev one of the most fastidious. Dickens attacked a cruelty, an abuse, an extravagance, directly or by way of frank caricature; Turgenev sank his criticism in objective terms of portraiture. His style in Russian, we are told, is exquisite; even in translations much of its charm and essential flavour lingers. His dialogue is easy, interesting, life-like, yet always significant and revealing; his characters serve the main theme or idea with which he is dealing, but never fail to be real men and women too. His descriptions of Nature are delightful. Byezhin Prairie, A Tryst, Torrents of Spring haunt one with their beauty. The whole of his work is saturated in the halfmelancholy rapture which Nature stirs in a poetic temperament. In his definite prose-poems he was much less of a poet than in his sketches and novels, because self-consciousness destroys true poetry, which is the springing forth of mood and feeling almost in spite of self."

" ... Flaubert, the apostle of self-conscious artistry, never had quite the vital influence that Turgenev exercised on English writers; a certain feeling of enclosure clings about his work, an indoor atmosphere. Against Turgenev that was never charged, not even when, about the year 1907, it became a literary fashion in England to disparage him, because certain of our critics had discovered — rather late, perhaps — a new Russian lamp in Dostoievsky. There was room, one might have thought, for the two lights; but in the literary world it is difficult to light a new lamp without putting out an old one. That is now ancient history, and Turgenev has recovered his name, but not his influence. He is too balanced, and too essentially poetic, for the new age."

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"And so I come to my third profile — that of one who, I am told by some, is still read in his native France, and who, I am told by others, has been laid on the shelf. The great literary achievements of Guy de Maupassant, born in 1850 and dying in 1893, were crowded into a space of but twelve years. His name is popularly associated with the short story, but his full measure, to my thinking, can only be taken through his novels, and tales of medium length like Boule de Suif and Yvette. All his work, long or short, tragic or trivial, is dramatic in essence; and, though he wrote but little for the theatre, he was richly endowed with the qualities that make a great dramatist. In the essentials of style, he is the prince of teachers. The vigour of his vision, and his thought, the economy and clarity of the expression in which he clothed them, have not yet been surpassed. Better than any other writer, he has taught us what to leave out; better than any illustrated for us Flaubert’s maxim: “Study an object till its essential difference from every other is perceived and can be rendered in words.” His work forms a standing rebuke to the confusion, the shallow expressionism, the formless egoism which are not infrequently taken for art. But though disciplined to the finger-nails as a craftsman, he reached and displayed the depths of human feeling. His sardonic nature hated prejudice and stupidity, had in it a vein of deep and indignant pity, a burning curiosity, piercing vision, and a sensitiveness seldom equalled. He was well equipped for the rendering of life."

"His ideal was to make a beautiful thing following his temperament. Since endless controversy rages over the word “beauty,” I shall be forgiven for not plunging into it. But the artist who creates what is living and true has achieved beauty also, in my considered opinion. De Maupassant made many a capture of the shy bird Beauty."

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"It is curious to think that Tolstoi, whose profile is so different, admired him. Born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana in Russia, and dying in 1910 at Astaporo, Leo Tolstoi began to write when he was twenty-four years old, after a full and energetic youth. Tales of Sevastopol, written during the Crimean War, in which he served in the Russian army, brought him instant celebrity. His chief masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, were written between 1864 and 1873.

"Tolstoi is a fascinating puzzle. So singular an instance of artist and reformer rolled into one frame is not, I think, elsewhere to be found. The preacher in him, who took such charge of his later years, was already casting a shadow over the artist-writer of Anna Karenina. There is even an indication of the moralist in the last part of that tremendous novel War and Peace."

"Tolstoi knew his Russian land and the Russian peasant as well, perhaps, as an aristocrat could know them; but he is not so close to the soul and body of Russia as Tchehov, who came of the people, and knew them from inside. The Russia of Tolstoi’s great novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, is now a Russia of the past, perhaps only the crust of that Russia of the past — split and crumbled beyond repair. We are fortunate to have those two great pictures of a vanished fabric."

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"Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski, born in 1857 of Polish gentry who suffered in the rebellion of 1863, shared as a child his parents’ exile, spent his boyhood in Russian Poland, his early manhood in adventure, and became an officer in British sailing ships, laying up strange store of thought, tradition, life, and language. He gave up the sea for literature, some thirty years ago, became naturalised in England, and began authorship under the name of Joseph Conrad. His twenty odd volumes of fiction, in a language not native to him, with a quality of style so rich and varied, form an unique achievement in the history of literature. The bewildering colour and imagery of his early works were toned with the years to a more sober texture; but, taking his work as a whole, no writer of English has exceeded him in sheer power of word-painting. ... Conrad had, beyond all novelists, the cosmic sense. Throughout the long drama of his work, Fate, powerful and mysterious, plays the star part; his human beings, though highly individualised, perform the minor roles. And from this subordination they derive a pathos and poignancy, an epic quality which attaches to those who struggle to the death against that which must beat them in the end. This feeling that Nature is first, Man second — even when he preserves his moral integrity and puts up a great fight, as he often does in Conrad’s novels — this feeling is not forced on the reader by conscious effort, it reaches to him in subtle ways, from the temperament of the novelist.

"The cosmic sense is rare. We are most of us too definitely anthropomorphic to have it; we see even the Deity from the human point of view; have little of the old Greek sense of our position in the scheme of things. L’état c’est nous. We are the scheme and the working thereof. This may be natural, but from the point of view of Father Time, who for some billions of years looked on a world untenanted by human beings, it is rather a parvenu conviction. Mystery enwraps the cause, the origin, the end of life, yea, even of human life. And acceptance of that mystery brings a certain dignity to existence, the kind of dignity we find in the work of Conrad."

"The fascination of his writing lies in a singular blending of reality with romance — he paints a world of strange skies and seas, rivers, forests, men, strange harbours and ships, all, to our tamed understanding, touched a little by the marvellous. Beyond all modern writers he had lived romance; lived it for many years with a full unconscious pulse, the zest of a young man loving adventure, and before ever he thought to become a writer. How many talents among us are spoiled by having no store of experience and feeling, unconsciously amassed, to feed on! How many writers, without cream inside the churn, are turning out butter!"

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" ... In life’s drama Conrad was on the stage, Anatole France, from his birth in 1844 to his death in 1924, sat in the stalls. His was the detached and learned mind. A pure bookman, bred and born in the centre of bookish knowledge, he was erudite as few men have been, and withal — a scourge. His whip was the most elegant and perhaps the most effective ever wielded. He destroyed with a suavity that has never been excelled. He perforated prejudice and punctured idolatry so adroitly that the ventilation holes were scarcely visible, and the victims felt draughts without knowing why. In his long writing career — he began in 1868 and was still writing at his death in 1924 — he only thrice, if I am not mistaken, assumed the rôle of novelist pure. Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Le Lys Rouge and L’Histoire Comique stand out in method from his other work. In them alone is he chiefly student of human character and teller of a tale. In his other books he is first the philosopher and satirist. Even a work of art so remarkable as Thais, a perfect piece of recreation, is in essence critical, and was forged out of a satiric heart. The Bergeret series, though they contain many admirable portraits, was the work of one preoccupied with riddling the prejudices rather than painting the features of human beings. The short masterpiece Le Procurateur de Judée presents an unforgettable effigy of Pontius Pilate, but it was written to clothe in perfection a satiric thought. Poor “Crainquebille” is a very human figure, yet it is rather as a walking indictment of human justice that we cherish and remember him. Even little dog Riquet conveys his tail-fluttering criticism of human habits.

"Anatole France was a subtle and deadly fencer, rather than a trenchant swordsman like Voltaire; his victims still don’t know that they are dead. They read him yet, and call him maître. Unsurpassed for lucidity and supple elegance, his style was the poetry of pure reason. He was very French. We shall never perhaps see again so perfect an incarnation of the witty French spirit. Not without justification did he take the nom de plume of France. ... Born fortunately too late for the glory of being burned or beheaded, he succeeded in being excommunicated by the Vatican. ... L’Affaire Dreyfus brought Anatole France out of the groves of his philosophic fancy, and L’Anneau d’Amethyste was a contribution to Justice almost as potent as Zola’s J’Accuse. ... "

" ... In literature there is never really stagnation; the main current is all the time unobtrusively flowing on. The antics and splashings on the surface are sometimes excessive, sometimes scarcely visible. They are mostly made by little fish, for the big swim in their element with a certain concentration of purpose. ... "

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July 27, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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Books as Ambassadors

"Have not the Bible, the Koran, and Das Kapital, notwithstanding their intentions, divided men more than all other books whatsoever have united them?"

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July 27, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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Faith of a Novelist

"A work of fiction, then, should carry the hall-mark of its author so surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris are, as a rule, the unmistakable creations of those masters. ... "

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July 27, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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July 24, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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THE CREATION OF CHARACTER IN LITERATURE

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4138379016

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" ... Being no philosopher, then, this lecturer advances suspicions rather than conclusions. He suspects the substratum of the human being to be energy, or whatever the fashion of the moment calls it, identical with the energy of which everything else alive is made, so that it has basic touch with every other living thing, and sympathetically receives the impacts therefrom. ... "

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"More fluidly, perhaps, one may think of the sub-conscious mind as a sort of lava of experience, over which the conscious mind has formed in a crust more or less thin, and more or less perforated by holes through which the lava bubbles. And we may think of what we loosely call creative genius as a much more than normal perforation of the crust, combined with a very high aptitude for shaping the emergent lava into the characters of fiction, into pictures, music, or what not. So much, vaguely and tritely, for the make-up of the creative mind."

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" ... It is true that the biographer has not, like the portrait-painter, to resist the magnetic current emanating from one sitting in a flesh which revolts from being unfavourably, or shall we say truthfully, portrayed; but he has, not uncommonly, to steel himself against the susceptibilities of ancestor worship. In fact, when we contemplate the lions in the path of the biographer, we need not wonder if he is sometimes eaten, and not infrequently lost in the jungle. ... The secret of the best biography, as of the best portraiture, lies in a magical blending of sympathy and criticism. When Gainsborough painted his little daughters that they might dwell for ever catching butterflies, hand in hand, in summertime, he gave us a perfect illustration of the touching beauty that may breathe in the art of re-creation; when Boswell wrote his Life of Johnson he revealed to us the amazing possibilities of intimacy in that art."

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"Admitting that a dramatist should know the trend and ending of his drama before he sits down to write it, he will be ill advised if he does not give his characters every chance to dictate to him, within that limit. For, even then, he is not so free as the novelist, and, if an inquiry were taken over the whole range of plays and novels, the surviving creations of character in novels would far outnumber those in plays. One might almost say that plays are recalled as plays, and novels by the characters in them."

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" ... second great drawback to character creation in drama — the physical limitation, set by a stage, to the dramatist’s creative freedom. ... Except perhaps in his first play, he will not easily avoid the feeling that, however intensely he may use his imagination, the imagined creature will not come out on the stage as he imagined it. There is no such thing as ideal casting; casting is a question of more or less right representation. And knowledge of this induces in the playwright a certain looseness of conception and workmanship in order that the garments of character may fit a greater selection of impersonators. Some dramatists are so acutely conscious of this particular limitation that they merely create roles for selected players. This is to super-observe the rules of the medium in which they work, and the process cannot be dignified with the label ‘character creation’."
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"In those few character creations which endure is a quality which can best, perhaps, be described as homespun yet vital; they are vivid from ever revealing themselves without seeming to. ... What the mainspring itself is remains mysterious. Call it, if you will, vital spark, ‘breath of life’. One thing is sure: The enduring characters in literature are ever such as have kicked free of swaddling clothes and their creators. Theirs is a sublime unconsciousness of the authors of their being. They toddle and strut, and hale you with them into the streets, the fields, the sands, and waters of their private pilgrimages, that you may see their stars and share their troubles, laugh with them, love with them, draw with them the breath of their defiances, suffer in their struggles, float out with them into the unconscious when their night comes.

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July 27, 2021 - July 27, 2021.

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FORSYTES, PENDYCES AND OTHERS (Essays),

by John Galsworthy.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4139508714

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Forsytes, Pendyces and Others.

Short stories and essays

selected by Ada Galsworthy

Unknown Binding – 1 Jan. 1935

by John Galsworthy (Author),

Ada Galsworthy (Author).

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CONTENTS

TRIBUTES TO CONRAD

PREFACE TO CONRAD’S PLAYS

HOMAGE TO ANATOLE FRANCE

JOHN MASEFIELD AND HIS NARRATIVE POEMS

NOTE ON ‘THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY’

PREFACE TO ‘GREEN MANSIONS’

NOTE ON W. H. HUDSON

NOTE ON EDWARD GARNETT

FOREWORD TO JEANNE D’ARC

NOTE ON MEGGIE ALBANESI

NOTE ON R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM

FOREWORD TO ‘THE ASSEMBLED TALES OF STACY AUMONIER’

PREFACE TO ‘THE SPANISH FARM’

INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLEAK HOUSE’

PREFACE TO ‘ANNA KARENINA’

THE GREAT TREE

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TRIBUTES TO CONRAD

(SPOKEN AT WARSAW AND CRACOW)

"For thirty years my best and dearest friend in the writing world was your great fellow-countryman, Joseph Conrad Korzeniovski, one who, as you know, loved England well enough to live there, and become a British subject; and one who in his writing brought new blood and life into English Literature. Though he loved England, his love for his native Poland was very great; I have heard him many and many a time talking of it and of his kin over here. I met him first when he was still a sailor, before he had adopted the profession of letters, thirty-three years ago, ... "

" ... travelling over all those years, the early days come back most vividly; when with the earnestness of comparative youth we discussed all things in heaven and earth and some that seemed beyond those spheres; when Conrad was a writer already acclaimed by connoisseurs (as indeed he was from the very first), but struggling to make good in a world which in those days received unfamiliar genius very grudgingly; and I — I was unknown, a prentice writer trying to find his feet in the deep waters of expression. And I remember that even in those midnight discussions, how thickly pictures, facts, reminiscences, tales of his own adventures, impressions of the men and women he had met, starred his talk, so that we never became fogged in the gloom of the abstract and metaphysical, never lost touch with the tides of human nature. It was the great quality of Conrad that with all his sense of the cosmic, of the enveloping mystery of Nature, he kept ever to the touchstone of fact, never became theoretical and misty, never lost grip of human feeling."

"To him nothing that was human was foreign. Through all his work runs this prepossession with the warm human glow of actual life, and with the strange ironies, heroisms, and failings of human nature; it was one of the secrets of the hold he ultimately gained on our affections in England. For we in England are not a theoretical people. Our philosophy is very much a day-to-day concern — we hold by fact. And if there are qualities that we prize beyond others, they are the courage which meets Life as it runs, the common sense which accepts what is and tries to make the best of it, and loyalty to common tasks and ties. ... He was a writer with whom they felt they could put to sea and trust to stand by them. And that is more than one can say of many a writer whose blood is English.

"Partly because he was writing in a language not native to him, marvellously though he used it, he was sometimes too intricate and subtle for the English reader; sometimes, owing to his Slavonic blood, too brooding and conscious of Fate; but at bottom he and we believed in the same virtues of sober courage and positive loyalty, and we were proud that he became one of us."

"Conrad was a writer who especially appealed to painters. I can remember a time in those very early days when, besides the few literary connoisseurs who recognised his genius, most of his admirers in England seemed to be painters. And no wonder, for he literally painted with words in those earlier books. His visualising force was extraordinary, and only equalled by his native power of expression."

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(SPEECH AT THE CONRAD MEMORIAL, CRACOW)

" ... We in England owe a great debt to Cracow in that she gave us one who brought to English Letters something quite new; a richness of colouring, a variety of phrase, and a subtlety of conception such as we had not before he came to us. ... "

"A Slav, thinking equally well in Polish, French and English, but expressing himself wholly in the English language, you can readily see what a strange and important event to English Literature his work has been. ... "

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July 28, 2021 - July 28, 2021.

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PREFACE TO CONRAD’S PLAYS

This is included in, and was reviewed as part of, Castles In Spain.

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July 28, 2021 - July 28, 2021.

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HOMAGE TO ANATOLE FRANCE

" ... There has never been an age that so needed an Anatole France. Deep learning, wide and humane thinking, self-sacrificing craftsmanship, and an exquisite sense of balance, he had all that the age has not."

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July 28, 2021 - July 28, 2021.

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JOHN MASEFIELD AND HIS NARRATIVE POEMS

"When in November appeared that amazing poem, “The Everlasting Mercy,” the chorus of comment was of due warmth and enthusiasm. Now that The English Review of February publishes “The Widow in the Bye Street,” it is the more surprising to me that little notice has been taken of the event. ... "

" ... Though in The Tragedy of Nan John Masefield wrote a play with much beauty and much strength, it seems to me that not until he invented in these two narrative poems a form absolutely his own did he achieve complete felicity in the expression of a temperament unique among living writers. ... These two poems are, I feel, the result of one of these long creative moments. They have the same original form, capturing reality in terms of romance, and a particular quality — not, I think, yet pointed out — which for want of a better word I must call growth. They are not “made” things. They spring, vision by vision, thought by thought, with a certain fateful sureness, out of an overmastering mood. One feels from line to line that they could not be otherwise. And this is the greatest quality in a work of art. They remind one of sculpture, rather rough, but rough with the rugged, ragged, yet utter coherence of life running into its appointed shape. They have the epic feeling, never present in work epically resolved on. ... "

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Galsworthy quotes parts of a poem.

"All the tides triumph when the white moon fills.

Down in the race the toppling waters shout,

The breakers shake the bases of the hills,

There is a thundering where the streams go out,

And the wise shipman puts his ship about,

Seeing the gathering of those waters wan,

But what when love makes high tide in a man?...

"Love is a flame to burn out human wills,

Love is a flame to set the will on fire,

Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.

"Man cannot call the brimming instant back;

Time’s an affair of instants spun to days;

If man must make an instant gold, or black,

Let him, he may, but Time must go his ways.

Life may be duller for an instant’s blaze.

Life’s an affair of instants spun to years,

Instants are only cause of all these tears...."

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"If there be in our time a poem written that has this triumphant dirge-like beauty I have yet to know it."

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July 28, 2021 - July 30, 2021.

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NOTE ON ‘THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY’

(Henry James)

"THIS novel may be likened to a dish of fine tea that, set before a mental epicure, steals his approval with its aroma. It is to be sniffed before drinking, and drunk out of thin china, not at a draught. And the novel has on the faculties the same effect as tea. It stirs them, frees, and cools; it stimulates a gentle perspiration, a sense of curiosity, and of an unconscious intellectual mastery. After sipping this clear and fragrant liquid, we try to unravel subtleties which, when not thus delicately intoxicated, we leave alone."

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"The ‘Lady’ is married to Osmond — to Osmond, the very type of repellent egoism; Goodwood, strong, silent and devoted has kissed her. We are told that his kiss reached her senses; and then that she saw “a very straight path.” Two days later Goodwood is informed by Henriette that Isabel has started for Rome (and Osmond). He is cast down.

"“‘Just you wait!’ said Henriette. Goodwood looked up at her.”"

Suddenly one realises one has seen the film, within last two decades, and the inexplicable riddle of why the girl married the despicable guy, who remained so.

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July 30, 2021 - July 30, 2021.

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PREFACE TO ‘GREEN MANSIONS’

(W. H. Hudson)

This piece was included in Another collection of essays, reviewed recently.

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" ... Why do I love his writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have a favourite hunting ground, which, in his good will — or perhaps merely in his egoism — he would wish others to share with him."

" ... Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there."

" ... Hudson has indeed the gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction of his value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more to be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called New York. ... This unspoiled unity with Nature pervades all his writings; they are remote from the fret and dust and pettiness of town life; they are large, direct, free. It is not quite simplicity, for the mind of this writer is subtle and fastidious, sensitive to each motion of natural and human life; but his sensitiveness is somehow different from, almost inimical to, that of us others, who sit indoors and dip our pens in shades of feeling. Hudson’s fancy is akin to the flight of the birds that are his special loves — it never seems to have entered a house, but since birth to have been roaming the air, in rain and sun, or visiting the trees and the grass. ... "

" ... Somewhere Hudson says: “The sense of the beautiful is God’s best gift to the human soul.” So it is; and to pass that gift on to others, in such measure as herein is expressed, must surely have been happiness to him who wrote Green Mansions. In form and spirit the book is unique, a simple romantic narrative transmuted by sheer glow of beauty into a prose poem. Without ever departing from its quality of a tale, it symbolises the yearning of the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this life — that impossible perfection which we must all learn ... "

" ... Style should not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not master. To use words so true and simple, that they oppose no obstacle to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotion or gratification — this is the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has preeminently this double quality. ... "

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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NOTE ON W. H. HUDSON

"WITH the passing out of W. H. Hudson the English-speaking world, perhaps the wide world, has lost its most unique personality. This is said deliberately out of some little knowledge of personalities and the world. He is quite irreplaceable. Happily, his work preserves for us his rare spirit and strange charm. I, who only knew him for twenty-four years, can of course remember him only as a man of mature age, for he was eighty when he died last month; but I can well credit the impression he made on those who knew’ him in youth and middle age. A very tall man — quite six feet two — with raven-black hair, a cast of feature that always reminded one of an eagle, and wonderful deep brown eyes; a fine horseman, a great walker; absolutely unself-conscious, independent, and original, I have heard old people describe him as the most striking figure they ever saw; indeed, he was that to the end of his days."

"England, the United States, the Argentine go shares in Hudson. His father was of Devonshire stock from — he has told me — Clyst, near Exeter; his mother of a New England family; the land of his birth and upbringing was the Argentine. One never saw him without thinking a little of old Spain, and of Indian horsemen sitting motionless gazing out over great spaces. His talk, which had no brilliancy, was yet the most truly original I have ever listened to, and it is quite wrong to speak of him as “slightly lacking in humour”; his sense of humour was very strong, but as peculiar and individual as everything else about him. No man I have known set less store by this world’s goods; he quite unaffectedly preferred to be poor, and poor he was almost to the end."

" ... The tastes, habits, affections, almost the beliefs, of his last years in Cornwall and London were practically the same as those of the little boy on the pampas seventy years ago. ... "

"I am glad to think he finished his last book. It was to be, if I remember, on a subject very deep — the Nature origins of music. He who had been listening-in to Nature all his life must have heard secrets worth telling us about the beginnings of the first art.

"I am glad to think he died in his sleep without the pang of a good-bye.

"As a rule I do not worship heroes — no rule but has its exception."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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NOTE ON EDWARD GARNETT

"IN the brief, but wide, searching, and sympathetic study of Tolstoy that Edward Garnett has contributed to Constable’s Modern Biographies, he has insisted first and foremost on the necessity for remembering the many-sidedness of Tolstoy, for not losing sight of the war between the artist and the moralist, that was always being waged, and the fusion of them that was always going on in his colossal spirit. ... If, to remembrance that Tolstoy’s vitality was terrific, that his love of sheer truthfulness has never been surpassed, we add Dostoievsky’s dictum that he was “one of those Russian minds which can only see that which is before their eyes,” we begin to get understanding of a nature that ever lived and worked at full pressure, and was never at peace. We begin to realise how — just as all Nature is the result of the clash and fusion of opposing principles, so was the great nature and work of him whom, however one may love and admire Turgenev, and stand amazed at Dostoievsky, I, at all events, must think the greatest of the Russians."

"During the past twenty years and more Edward Garnett has “discovered” more talent, helped more aspiration, and fought more battles for the cause of good literature than anyone who can be named; and he has done it nearly all in the dark, and all for love of the real thing. He has never turned aside, never been swayed a hair’s breadth by the tides of popular feeling; he has had his own vision and been true to it. Often and often he has howled in a wilderness the unknown names of those now seated in high places. ... Criticism, of course, is very much an affair of temperament, and according to our natures we must all differ, but what makes one man a real critic and another only a licensed pronouncer of opinions is just that exceedingly rare faculty of ploughing up your surface afresh, and watering it with hope, ready for each new book, always believing that you are going to find something good, something that will crown letters with delight, and, revealing the springs of life, make for the enrichment of art and knowledge. Edward Garnett has, it seems to me, always wanted to find something good, always made himself ready; but he has never compromised with his instincts, never persuaded himself that what he did not like was good, or feared to justify and champion what he did like. It is twenty years since that quiet little revolution in English fiction began with our first knowledge of the Russians, through Constance Garnett’s translations of Turgenev, and Edward Garnett’s prefaces thereto. Now, the peculiar quality, the one quality in which the Russians excel all other writers of fiction, is spiritual truthfulness, a sort of natural power of putting forth impressions and experience unstained by self-consciousness. It is this quality which Edward Garnett seems to have been born to nurse and foster; and his incessant championship in the face of the solemn oppositions and false romanticism has vitally contributed to the sincerity and revealing force of modern English fiction. He has been the lifelong enemy of inflation, the lifelong friend of truth delicately recorded. ... "

" ... From time immemorial it has been the fashion of British fiction, fortified by British criticism, to think that it does not much matter how a thing is said, a story told, so long as it is told. Into this fashion Edward Garnett’s instinctive horror of inflation and irrelevance has cut with a depth that few perhaps realise. The value of a real critic is not to be measured by his actual writings, but by the force of his personality, persistently expressed in many ways that do not leap to the eye. ... It is a lighthouse hardly seen by the landsmen public, known only to us navigators of the shoals and crosscurrents of fiction."

" ... However much we fiction writers are inclined to shut our eyes to what may be destructive of our pet luxuriances, every now and then we open them, and there is the lamp, only visible to us, perhaps, but none the less invaluable for that."

"Truly, it is an odd comment upon the values of life, that, when a man is self-forgetful, when his love for what he does surpasses his love for himself, he is generally found to be more or less effaced. Here is one who has never beaten upon a tenpenny drum. How many are there, I wonder, who know his real worth!"

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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FOREWORD TO JEANNE D’ARC

(Play by Edward Garnett)

"Forewords do not sell books; on the contrary — they only irritate critics. Why, then, publishers should be so anxious to obtain them, no one knows, certainly not this writer.

"I will confine my words to the Trial of Jeanne d’Arc. I am told that this play was described as a ‘misfire.’ If you go to a play, no matter what the subject, hoping to be made to laugh, if you expect a dramatist to convert the most tragic of historical themes into a vehicle that shall bear him to greater heights of popular esteem, if indeed, whatever the ailment, you desire ‘the mixture as before,’ then, I suppose, the trial of Jeanne d’Arc was a ‘misfire.’"

"Admitting that the audience, at the few performances which were given, was always of a serious temper, it was impressive to watch their attitude throughout. The word ‘misfire’ had not occurred to them. They sat in a sort of comfortless reverence, and though I should have expected them to say now and again: ‘I seem to have heard that before,’ or: ‘Enough about these voices,’ they did not. They were not amused, but they were absorbed and carried back into the atmosphere of the time."

"Watching the play, I realised, as never before, how fatal to the full current of emotion constant change of scene can be; and the last scene was ruined by the procession to the execution passing in front of the group who have been watching its formation. Essential that we should see that procession beyond, and as it were, with their eyes. In spite of these defects the staging on the whole was good, and plunged one far back into medievalism; it preserved the single-hearted emotion of the play clear and tense from start to finish; and thereby one received a coherent view of the gallant and tortured Jeanne. I will confess that the culmination moment came after the play was over, when the actress re-appeared to take our plaudits. While she stood there, silent and suffering, the still dignity of her young face and figure was a perfect tribute to the sincere and sustained emotion that the play had exacted from her. A dramatist for once had known when to stop."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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NOTE ON MEGGIE ALBANESI

"MEGGIE ALBANESI: I only saw her play seven parts in all ... and yet her death gives me a sense of eclipse. It is as if the Dark Remover had filched the brightest, steadiest little lantern of all."

" ... She had a curious and unique faculty of emotional truth. I never saw her (and I watched her through some sixty rehearsals) fumble, blur, or falsify an emotional effect. She struck instantaneously and as if from her heart, the right note of feeling. Those who have had much to do with play production alone will understand how excessively rare such a quality is. ... "

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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NOTE ON R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM

"The short story is a form of fiction in which but few English have excelled, and none have reached the super-eminence of de Maupassant or of Anton Tchehov. It is a form in which, for perfection, an almost superhuman repression of the writer’s self must go hand in hand with something that one can only describe as essence of writer — a something unmistakable but impalpable, and not to be laid finger on. In the perfect short story one is unconscious of anything but a fragrant trifle, so focused and painted before our minds, that it is as actual, and yet as rounded, as deep in colour, as fine in texture as a flower, and which withal disengages a perfume from — who knows where, that makes it a carnation not a rose, a Maupassant and not a Tchehov.

"Now Cunninghame Graham sometimes — as in Hegira, A Hatchment, and other stories — approaches this perfection. I am not sure that he ever quite reaches it, for a reason that, curiously, is his real strength as a writer. Very much of an artist, he is yet too much of a personality ever to be quite the pure artist; the individuality of the man will thrust its spear-head through the stuff of his creations. I may be wrong, but I cannot honestly recall any story of his in which his knight-errant philosophy does not here and there lift its head out of the fabric of his dreams, if not directly, then through implicit contrast, or in choice of subject. ... "

"The bent of his soul, and the travels of his body have inclined him to those parts of the earth — the pampas, Morocco, Spain, Scotland — where there are still gleams at all events of a life more primitive, more aesthetically attractive, and probably saner than our own ... "

"With his style I personally have sometimes a fault or two to find, but I recognise in it to the full those qualities of colour, vibration, and sense of the right word that alone keep life beating in a tale. Without high power of expression philosophy is of little use to any artist, weighting his pockets till he is sitting in the road instead of riding along it with his head up, as this writer always does. He has a manner, and a way with him, valuable at a time when certain leading writers have little or none at all. And he has a passion for the thing seen, that brings into his work the constant flash of revelation. He makes us see what he sees, and what he sees is not merely the surface.

"Withal he is a gallant foe of oppression, of cruelty, of smugness, and fatty degeneration; a real tonic salt to the life of an age that needs it."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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INTRODUCTION TO ‘BLEAK HOUSE’

WAVERLEY EDITION (Charles Dickens)

"What strikes me particularly, coming fresh again to this early love, is the utter readableness of it all. It remains untouched by all the literary water that has flowed since. There is, I suppose, within the covers of this book, no rule or canon of what we call aesthetics that is not forty times violated. There is neither line nor shape; neither coherent inevitability, nor moral discovery. The plot is coincidental and melodramatic; the characters for the most part caricatures. Moralising stalks unashamed, the humour is often blatant, and the pathos has been dipped in treacle. The style has no peculiar grace. All the little gods of art blush all over their little faces at every other page. And yet — ! The sheer fecundity of it; the sheer vitality; the sweep and range; the compelling, strange, haphazard felicity! ... Search these pages, you will find nothing that does not come out of a fine and generous heart, a heart that hated meanness, and hated cruelty — those twin and only real vices of mankind; and you will find nothing that, however queerly said, was not worth saying. The instinctive wisdom of it all; the marvellous way in which the finger of the writer’s mood traverses the trappings and the wrappings, and finds the true pulsation and heart-beat of things!

"Though by the pen of Dickens England was created — an England more living, on the whole, than the real article — it sometimes seems to me that there never was an English writer so un-English. That dryness in our blood and bones, which comes of a wet climate; our thin and cranky stiffness; our horrid terror of neighbours’ eyes — he had them not. He was in flux; a volcano ever active; and the mountains he threw up had more variety of shape than all the hills of all our other writers of fiction put together."

" ... That he was always less successful with his angelic conceptions is only to say that the heroic is a theme for poetry, and not for prose. The novelist who looks up to his characters can never make them live. ... They have no wings, and for that are the nearer to heaven. Is “the beautiful character” — so generally female — ever convincing? I do not think I know of one in the whole range of fiction. Perhaps, one should rather phrase it thus: Is there a single character in all fiction, who rivets and enchants us, unless his or her foibles, as well as virtues, have been seen and painted? I have yet to find that extraordinary fowl. The presentation of heroism is a too subtle thing to be achieved by the frontal attack — its glow is soon damped-down by worship. It must capture you unawares by fugitive gleams; it must peer at you mysteriously from out of the clay. ... "

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Galsworthy quotes a passage from Dickens.

"‘My instructions are, that you are to move on. I have told you so five hundred times.’

"“‘But where?’ cries the boy.

"“‘Well! Really, constable, you know,’ says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt; ‘really that does seem a question. Where, you know?’

"“‘My instructions don’t go to that,’ replies the constable. ‘My instructions are that this boy is to move on.’”"

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"When I was a boy, reading him with passion, I but vaguely glimpsed his glorious tourney; now that I know the world a little and have seen God’s own Bumbles, I never tire of standing by the roadside with a humble hat in hand, to see his gallant and great spirit ride past."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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PREFACE TO ‘ANNA KARENINA’

"TOLSTOY is a fascinating puzzle. So singular an instance of artist and reformer rolled into one frame is not, I think, elsewhere to be found. The preacher in him, who took such charge of his later years, was already casting a shadow over the artist-writer of Anna Karenina. There is even an indication of the moralist in the last part of that tremendous novel: War and Peace. About his work, in fact, is an ever-present sense of spiritual duality. It is a battlefield on which we watch the ebb and flow of unending conflict, the throb and stress of a gigantic disharmony. ... "

"In choosing a single novel to label with those words so dear to the confectioners of symposiums, ‘The greatest ever written,’ I would select War and Peace. In it Tolstoy rides two themes, like a circus-rider on his two piebald horses, and by a miracle reaches the stable door still mounted and still whole. The secret of his triumph lies in the sheer interest with which his creative energy has invested every passage. The book is six times as long as an ordinary novel, but it never flags, never wearies the reader; and the ground — of human interest and historical event, of social life and national life — covered in it, is prodigious. A little, but not much, behind that masterwork, comes Anna Karenina. Also of stupendous length, this novel contains, in the old prince, in his daughter Kitty, in Stepan Arkadyevich, Vronsky, Levin, and Anna herself, six of Tolstoy’s most striking characters. He never drew a better portrait than that of Stepan Arkadyevich — the perfect Russian man of the world; the writer of this preface has known the very spit of him. The opening chapters, describing him at an unkind moment in his fortunes, are inimitable. As for the portrait of Anna’s husband, Alexey Alexandrovich — it inspires in us the feelings that he must have inspired in Anna. The early parts of this great novel are the best, for I have never been convinced that Anna, in the circumstances shown, would have committed suicide. It is as if Tolstoy had drawn her for us with such colour and solidity in the beginning, that we cannot believe she is not in the end dismissed by him rather than by herself. Anna, in fact, is a warm pulsating person, with too much vitality to go out as she did. The finish strikes one as voulu, as if the creator had turned against his creature; and one forms the opinion that Tolstoy started on this book with the free hand of an unlimited sympathy and understanding, but during the years that passed before he finished it, became subtly changed in his outlook over life, and ended in fact a preacher who had set out as an artist. It is, however, no uncommon flaw in writers to misjudge the vitality of their own creations. An illustration of the same defect is the suicide of Paula in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. Ladies with her sort of past have too much vitality to put a period to themselves, except in plays and novels. With this reservation Anna Karenina is a great study of Russian character, and a great picture of Russian society — a picture that held good, with minor variations, up to the war.

"Tolstoy’s method in this novel, as in all his work, is cumulative — the method of an infinity of facts and pictorial detail; the opposite of Turgenev’s, who relied on selection and concentration, on atmosphere and poetic balance. Tolstoy fills in all the spaces, and leaves little to the imagination; but with such vigour, such freshness, that it is all interesting. His style, in the narrow sense, is by no means remarkable. All his work bears the impress of a mind more concerned with the thing said than with the way to say it. ... To have life and meaning, art must emanate from one possessed by his theme. The rest of art is just exercise in technique, which helps artists to render the greater impulses when — too seldom — they come. ... "

" ... His native force is proved by the simple fact that, taking up again one of his stories after the lapse of many years, one will remember almost every paragraph. ... "

" ... In the light shed by history and more recent analysts we must be permitted to doubt whether Tolstoy really understood the Russian peasant, whom he elevated into a sort of arbiter of life and art. Perhaps he understood them as well as an aristocrat could; but he is not so close to the soul and body of Russia as Tchehov, who came of the people and knew them from inside. In any case, the Russia of Tolstoy’s great novels: War and Peace and Anna Karenina, is a Russia of the past, perhaps only the crust of that Russia of the past — now split and crumbled beyond repair. How fortunate we are, then, to have two such supreme pictures of the vanished fabric!"

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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THE GREAT TREE

"WHEN the human spirit, joyful or disconsolate, seeks perch for its happy feet, or stay for flagging wings, it comes back again and again to the great tree of Shakespeare’s genius, whose evergreen no heat withers, no cold blights, whose security no wind can loosen.

"Rooted in the good brown soil, sunlight or the starshine on its leaves, this great tree stands, a refuge and home for the spirits of men.

"Why are the writings of Shakespeare such an everlasting solace and inspiration?

"Because, in an incomprehensible world, full of the savage and the stupid and the suffering, stocked with monstrous contrasts and the most queer happenings, they do not fly to another world for compensation. They are of Earth and not of Heaven. ... "

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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July 28, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

Forsytes, Pendyces and Others.

Short stories and essays selected by Ada Galsworthy

Unknown Binding – 1 Jan. 1935

by John Galsworthy (Author),

Ada Galsworthy (Author)

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000X9Z9OU

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GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4147083605

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A collection of a large number of small and large pieces of writings, addresses, letters, and so on.

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Shocking, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level ... unexpected, to say the least!

And then one comes across his little piece, THE NATURE OF GOD, and one marvels he didn't realise his soul and mind were so close to, so much a part of, India!

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CONTENTS

THE WRITING OF APPEALS

PERFORMING ANIMALS

A TALK ON PLAYING THE GAME WITH BIRDS AND ANIMALS

ANIMALS AND BIRDS: A STOCKTAKING

EXTINCTION OF WILD ANIMALS

AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC

ANSWER TO TWO QUERIES

ENGLAND’S GREEN BEAUTY

BIOGRAPHICAL

ON BROADCASTING

ON BOOK PRODUCTION

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

WAR FILMS AND THE GRIM REALITY

CINEMA. CAPTIONS

CINEMAS

GENERAL CRITICISM

CRITICISM

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM

CREATIVE CRITICISM

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (1)

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (2)

CRITICISM OF “SATIRES”

ON THE OBJECT OF CIVILISATION

FOUR COBWEBS FOR NEW BROOMS

MEMORANDUM OF EVIDENCE OF JOHN GALSWORTHY BEFORE THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT TO EXAMINE INTO THE WORKING OF THE CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS

CHILDREN AND WAR

BROADCAST: THE NATIONAL CHILDREN ADOPTION ASSOCIATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA

ON SOME DRAMAS

DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

DISSATISFACTION

ON DOSTOIEVSKY

THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

THE DESECRATION OF DOWNLAND

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

TO A PRESS CRITIC OF “ESCAPE”

CONDITION OF ENGLAND

FORSYTE SAGA

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

FAVOURITE BOOK AND PLAY

THE NATURE OF GOD

POEMS OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

HANDWRITING

HAUPTMANN AND GALSWORTHY

HERO WORSHIP

THE CAGING OF HAWKS

WORN-OUT HORSE TRAFFIC

HARMONY

THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE

THREE YEARS AVERAGE

PROVIDING FOR TWO YEARS AHEAD

INSTINCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM

THE GOOD SERVANT

IRELAND

IF I ONLY KNEW....

JUSTICE

LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

LIBRARY CENSORSHIP

COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WORLD PEACE

MUSIC

THE WHITE MONKEY

HORSES IN MINES

THE NAVV IN WAR

THE NOVEL

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

PRISON REFORM

AN INTERVIEW

PLAYWRITING

MESSAGE TO PLAYGOERS

PROSTITUTES

ON PLAYWRITING

THE PRESS

APPEAL FOR PLAYING FIELDS

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

ON PIT PONIES

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

POLITICAL ATTITUDE

REVEILLE

HARMONY — RELIGION

REMUNERATION

RESEARCH

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

SOCIALISM

SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

CRITICISM OF “SAINT’S PROGRESS”

TWO MINUTES’ SILENCE

SEX IN FICTION

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

THEISM AND HUMANISM

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

THE PUBLICS TASTE IN LITERATURE

HONEST THINKING AND TRUE REPORT

LITTLE THEATRES

SOCIAL UNREST

THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

VIVISECTION OF DOGS

ON WRITING

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

WELFARE CENTRES

STATE OF THE WORLD

LIVERPOOL ZOO PROJECT

MR. GALSWORTHY AND ZOOS

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THE WRITING OF APPEALS

"As a Member of the National Committee I have seen accounts from neutrals and Belgians which have convinced me at all events to the point of backing my conviction to the tune of some hundreds of pounds. One cannot of course, see for oneself.

"I am very sorry my letter of appeal gave you the impression that I was asking for our children’s pennies. I meant by the wording of it to ask only for the children’s efforts by way of sports or entertainments, and to ask for the ‘Public’s pennies. The children in our village are giving sports, for which they will have prizes and a tea, and the money (if any) will come from the spectators."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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PERFORMING ANIMALS

" ... I do not well see how any amount of inspection and the granting of licenses is going to do away with the greater part of a wretchedness that comes from forcing creatures away from a more or less natural to highly unnatural conditions of life; nor can I see how, for the purposes of granting licenses, satisfactory evidence is ever going to be obtained that training (which is and must be a quite private affair between trainer and animal) is not accompanied by cruelty.

"In a word, I would like to see the “animal show” abolished in this country. It is too ironical altogether that our “love of animals” should make us tolerate and even enjoy what our common sense, when we let it loose, tells us must in the main spell misery to the creatures we profess to love."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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A TALK ON PLAYING THE GAME WITH BIRDS AND ANIMALS

Galsworthy argues against chaining dogs, zoos, caging birds, letting pets loose when people go for holidays, using furs and feathers, and other cruelties to animals.

Funny, he doesn't find meat industry cruel, only argues for instant killing out of sight of other animals.

"I haven’t time to refer to the slaughter of animals for food, or to vivisection. I can only hope you will look into these matters for yourselves and decide whether you don’t think that both need reform."

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July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

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ANIMALS AND BIRDS: A STOCKTAKING

" ... To sit in a garden or to walk or ride in woods and fields, watching the movement of creatures that do not run on wheels, or listening to songs neither mechanically nor sophisticatedly produced is as water to a thirsty plant. There is, then, in my feeling about animals and birds — and probably in that of all animal lovers — a considerable dash of gratitude for refreshment quietly given. And this gratitude, of which we can make no direct expression, because those who give rise to it would not understand, finds its natural vent in our revolt at seeing them ill-treated, and in our wish that they should be free and happy."

So far, so good. But then he tries to extend the argument, and is trapped.

" ... To shoot partridges would now be to me as little agreeable as to kill the chickens that I eat. But so long as I do eat chicken and game there would be falsity in protesting against others shooting game birds. Nor can I get out of this impasse by becoming vegetarian; for vegetarianism involves a liberal destruction of life — rabbits and rats and birds — to say nothing of slugs and insects. ... "

This is the typical way meat eaters attempt justifying going on doing so while professing love of all animals - by blaming vegetarian lifestyle as equally harmful to animals, somehow, with convoluted arguments; or some such ridiculous arguments.

It's not as if farmers protect their crop from rabbits, stags or other wild creatures, by trapping or killing them, just so vegetarian human's interests are served, and their alone; whatever vegetarians eat, is eaten, of course, by meat eaters as well; and farmers are forced to protect crops for their own interest, financial and otherwise..

Here he does so immediately.

" ... I can be, however, and am, definitely against two blood sports, hare-coursing and stag-hunting; for these creatures, both destructive to crops, can be kept in bounds by shooting, yet, being edible and (in the case of stags, at least) ornamental, are not liable to complete extinction; ... "

And even more ridiculous-is following.

" ... I will not go otter-hunting and I will not go fox-hunting, for I have come to dislike the feeling of being one of a pack, and the closing in on a hunted beast. But that is a private revolt and does not in itself give me the right to protest. ... "

Ridiculous, because, after all, the animals eaten on large scale have done nothing to deserve being killed, either. But notice his getting out of it negatively.

"Since I was once a “sportsman,” I think I understand pretty well the feelings of — say — a Master of Fox or Otter hounds. He feels himself to be a sort of trustee for the traditional way of keeping down the numbers of two very destructive animals, sly, hardy and courageous, who themselves live by hunting; a way which gives a great deal of healthy open-air exercise and pleasure to a great many people, and to a great many horses and hounds; which fosters the breeding and careful treatment of those horses and hounds, who to him are the hub of animal creation and for whom he has a genuine love. He feels, too, that his fox or otter hunting promotes a kind of human fellowship of which, incidentally, he is the head; that it toughens the temper, the courage and the muscles of the “field,” and carries on what might be called the spirit of “Old England.”"

That could just as well justify antisemitism, slavery, genocides, KKK, and white slavery.

" ... He probably thinks and possibly with truth, that neither fox nor otter greatly feel the stress of being hunted until their powers begin to fail, and from that point on to the end he would say is but a few minutes. And he cannot see the force of abolishing the whole process of which he is trustee, for the sake of avoiding those few distressful minutes in the life of a creature that preys on others. ... "

Again, that could just as well justify antisemitism, slavery, genocides, KKK, and white slavery.

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He's clueless about science, of course.

" ... Certain results from experiments on animals, such as the cure for hydrophobia, cannot, I suppose, be denied; and, generally speaking, if it can be proved that experiments on animals under anæsthetics, followed by instant death, are essential to the preservation of human life, I see no logical case against them. But, generally speaking, can it be proved? The vivisectionists say: Yes; the anti-vivisectionists say: No. How is a layman to decide? ... "

Who ever thought it should be decided by lay persons? Might as well let children have a vote on dinner, with chocolate being alternative to vegetables and sugar to meat or bread! Does he not realise that decisions of scientific work and procedures must be left for scientists to decide?

Or would he also be okay being forced to have "faith" in flat earth, geocentric model of universe, because common layman cannot grasp heliocentric model with a spheroid globe of earth spinning and revolving, and if a pole were fixed across its centre, those at opposite ends being with their feet towards one another?

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" ... Well, if I were an English Mussolini, I would to-morrow by a stroke of the pen, abolish the following practices, believing that in so doing I was interpreting the real sense and feelings of the English people as a whole, and that the abolitions would be observed: ... "

So he WAS aware of rise of fascism, and of Hitler too, probably; just not enough to be horrified at them and the ideologies?

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Curious how things go round.

" ... Why, for instance, except that money has been invested in them, should we continue to use horses for traction purposes in towns? The practice is hard, to say the least of it, on horses, and is a real disturbance to traffic, considering the extreme length of horse-drawn vehicles and their slow unwieldiness. There might be hardship in abolishing the practice out of hand, but there could be no hardship in providing for its gradual extinction. That extinction, in fact, is long overdue, and I cannot imagine why a people so concerned about the congestion of its streets has not seen to it before now. ... "

Now, of course, use of animals for transport is almost nil in most of the first world, but use of fossil fuels is about to lead all life to extinction; and in less developed parts of the earth, traffic consists of a huge mixed variety of vehicles small and large, including using of animals. Are horses better off in West for being not used for drawing carriages? No, they're slaughtered for glue, unless used for race tracks. Is thst better than being used to draw carriages, or riding?

"I get from birds and animals increasing pleasure; I feel with them increasing kinship; and I would I could do more for them."

Most of the world, however, wouldn't care for most species if not useful. Horses in West are one example. Chinese food is another - it uses no dairy products, presumably because it wasn't understood thst cattle need protection in hot climates, and so were finished off. India on the other hand is largely vegetarian, with those who do eat meat doing so far less in quantities and frequency; but the huge reliance on dairy products, by themselves and as part of cuisine, both, keeps the health of population sustain on similar minimal diet.

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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EXTINCTION OF WILD ANIMALS

"I HAVE read Sir Albert Gray’s letter in your issue of to-day with great appreciation. The threatened extermination of the great beasts of the earth through trade and sport cries out for protest.

"I have recently become the fortunate possessor of a beautiful book called: Stalking Big Game with a Camera in Equatorial East Africa, by Marius Maxwell. It is printed by the Medici Company. Mr. Maxwell’s recorded adventures are most interesting and his photographs really noble. They show the elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and buffalo, with sundry other beasts and many birds, at close quarters in their natural surroundings. The book beats Zoos and Museums hollow. But its great use is the lead it gives to sportsmen and naturalists. This new form of stalking requires all the cunning and more than all the courage and coolness of a Selous; it brings home more pleasure and more information, and it leaves these wonderful creatures alive. Man with his foot on a dead gorilla or elephant is a dismal object in spite of the modest worth the camera reproduces on his face. ... "

Meanwhile his nation drive several species of wildlife to extinction in India, and used others ill, all the while professing themselves superior to locals at caring for animals - thus justifying to themselves shooting horses (in their ownership) dead before leaving India!

"Sportsmen are generally “animal lovers,” and often have a horror of the trader and the methods he adopts to secure his skins. But the sportsman has a weaker case than the trapper, and a less genuine title to the name “animal lover,” because he professes regard for the beast he slays, while the trapper does not; and he does not slay for a living while the trapper does. Only when the sportsman goes stalking with a camera, keeping his gun for self-defence in a last resort, will he earn our respect and gratitude."

"Sportsmen are generally “animal lovers,”"!!! Well, wild beast of prey are, one can be sure, just as much lovers of humanity!

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC

"It is a naked and uncompromising truth that to assess the real great Public’s taste is quite beyond the power of any writer; he may discover formulas to suit a certain section of the Public, and go on turning out an article to pattern; but that way lies rank mediocrity or worse.

"The real great Public, the Public of the future as well as of the present, can only be reached by a very single-minded attention to doing the best work one can, guided by one’s own conscience, and by the conscience of nobody else...."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ANSWER TO TWO QUERIES

"As to women of the “underworld” — ... Any glib assumption of superiority is detestable, and I suppose I am always consciously or unconsciously up against it."

"My purpose in writing? I haven’t any conscious purpose except to express myself, my feelings, my temperament, my vision of what life is. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ENGLAND’S GREEN BEAUTY

The Spectator.

November 3rd, 1928.

" ... though there were in all the world no such lovers of beauty in Nature as the beauty-loving Englishman and woman, there was perhaps no country where beauty lovers were so few. ... "

" ... The average Englishman has little love of and no pride in the English country-side. This, my unhappy conviction, is based on a variety of palpable evidence, such as the disgusting condition in which any average English crowd will leave any English country-side or open space; the outrageous liberties which the English public allows English builders to take, as a matter of course, with English landscape; the way in which English holiday makers herd together by the sea or in the country, as if terrified of the peace and beauty they are supposed to be seeking; and the general sentiment of the town child taken for a holiday into the country — that the country is all very well, but that the streets are better; and what are town children but fathers and mothers of townsmen and women?"

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" ... Lip-service is paid to sentiment by most politicians and public men, and at heart very likely they often feel what they say, but when it comes to the stoppage of what brings in or creates material wealth, a sort of paralysis comes over the legislative machine, and cogs get the upper hand. ... Beauty goes to the wall as easily as does humaneness, if monetary interests are threatened."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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BIOGRAPHICAL

"I was born in 1867 at Coombe, in Surrey. I was educated at Harrow 1881-1886, and New College, Oxford 1886-1889, where I took an honour (M.A.) degree in Law; I was called to the London Bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1890. I read in various Chambers, practised almost not at all, and disliked my profession thoroughly.

"I was travelling most of 1891-1893 in Russia, Canada, British Columbia, (incidentally New York), Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, and South Africa (since then I have made the acquaintance of Europe). ... "

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" ... My first novel Jocelyn, was published in 1899. Villa Rubein in 1900. A Man of Devon and other Stories in 1901. (These two books were afterwards revised and re-issued in one volume in 1909.) The Island Pharisees (written and re-written three times) was published in 1904. This book was again very heavily revised for its new edition in 1908. Between 1899-1904 I acquired some first-hand knowledge of the conditions of Capital and Labour, which served me later in the play Strife. The Man of Property was written 1903- 1905, the last part of it in Italy, and published in 1906. The Silver Box, written in a month at the beginning of 1906, was produced at the Court Theatre, London, that same year (September); it was my first play. The Country House was written in London, Devonshire, and Tyrol between March and November 1906, and published 1907. ... Joy was written December 1906 to January 1907, and produced September 1907 at the Savoy Theatre. Strife written March, April, May 1907, was not played till February 1909. The studies which form the collection known as A Commentary were written during 1907 and the Spring of 1908, and were the outcome of what a man must see if he keeps his eyes open (a rather rare habit) in London. In 1907 and 1908 too was written Fraternity, published February 1909. With the writing and publication of The Patrician in March 1911, I reach the end of an attempt to survey the spirit and limitations of the four main sections or strata of English upper-class Society — the rich man of business, the squire, the cultured, and the aristocrat.

"The play Justice, pondered over for two years, was written in five weeks, August and September 1909. ... "

"The Little Dream was written in 1909, played at Manchester April 1911, and published in Scribner’s magazine May 1911. Incidentally I am no climber but a great lover of mountains, and especially of the Tyrol."

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"I write for my wife. Each of my books is dedicated to her. I write for her entertainment, and I owe it to her that I became an author.

"I had only one friend who was a writer, and that was Joseph Conrad. It would never have occurred to me to write plays. It was my wife who advised me to try my hand as a playwright, and she was so persistent that at last I began to write for the theatre."

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"We must get back to the land, and instead of building new factories we should go in more for agriculture and intensive cultivation of the soil. That would put an end to the disagreeable position we are in now of having to import nearly all our foodstuffs from abroad. And emigration to the Colonies should be given every possible encouragement."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ON BROADCASTING

" ... during the crisis a great contribution to the nation’s equanimity has been made by broadcasting. As a medium it is at once more effective and immediate than the Press."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ON BOOK PRODUCTION

"IN view of present economic conditions we seem to be threatened with a standstill in the matter of book production, or alternatively, with a price which will put it out of the power of the public to buy books in anything like the old quantities. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

" ... Braille books with their embossed type cost money — so much money that unless we make them practically free they are out of reach of those who most want them."

Fortunately, now there are audio books. Unfortunately, they are too expensive, especially if someone is either not upper middle class in U.S., or belongs to another country, where a dollar can feed a family of ten, at least for a day.

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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WAR FILMS AND THE GRIM REALITY

Galsworthy questions the purpose of war films and of official government aid for production of war films.

"When the war ended, and for some years after, no adults wanted to hear of war again, because they knew what it was — from beginning to end a hideous and bloody nightmare; a thing neither glorious nor sporting; one long confusion of suspense, hardship, sacrifice and horror. When it ended, relief was such that strong men wept.

"And now we have war films supported by the Governments that were at war. The American film, Convoy, the German films, Emden, When Fleet Meets Fleet, and The Official War Film; the forthcoming French film, Verdun; and our own Armageddon, Ypres, Mons, The Somme, Zeebrugge, Battles of Coronel and Falklands, produced with the assistance of the Army Council and the Admiralty."

" ... Films must pay their way; and ordinary knowledge of human nature assures us that they could not possibly pay their way in any country if they really got on the nerves of their audiences.

"Reproduction of one millionth part of the horror and misery which every day of the war brought would be enough to ensure the utter failure of any of these films. They are, therefore, in no sense educational, for they cannot tell anything even remotely like the truth. Indeed, to tell the truth about war in a film would be quite impossible."

Well, perhaps not in his day, but later on some realistic films did get not only produced but seen, appreciated and get success as well as acclaim.

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CINEMA. CAPTIONS

"DEAR SIR, I am returning the scenario of Loyalties finally revised.

"Barring small points I have passed this version as it stood; but I have rewritten all the early “captions.” They wanted it badly.

"May I have an assurance from the — Film Co that this version as revised by me will not be departed from except for film exigencies. And further that the captions will remain as now written. If they wish to add further captions or alter any, will they please refer them to me first."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CINEMAS

"When the film was silent I came to look on it with tolerance and once in a way with gratitude as a form of entertainment, and certainly with admiration as a means of education, but with alarm as a means of propaganda. It had a certain power when very ably and restrainedly handled of exciting aesthetic emotion. It had a very real and rather dangerous power of holding the eye even at its worst. It could sway you while you looked on, but when you came away (with the rarest exceptions) you were wholly unmoved. And this I think was partly because you were conscious of its enormous faking power; and partly because the eye was held at such a pace that the mind did not stir in concord. ... So far as I have seen “talky” films at present, they have seemed to me silent films spoiled. ... "

This came to be the attitude of snobbery adopted towards films, television and so forth, while older firms of the same - theatre, street theatre, ... - were adopted by the same snobs as more suitable for intellectuals, not realising that those earlier forms had suffered the exact same disdain and worse when they were all there was.

Mansfield Park, anyone?

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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GENERAL CRITICISM

" ... You say: “He is not above writing to order” (italics mine) “serials which will appeal to the many thousands who build up the circulation of popular American magazines.” Whether or not I am above it, I never in my life have written anything “to order.” This is in no sense a proof of virtue, it is due to my not being dependent on my pen for bread and butter. I never consider the destination of anything I write (whether novel, play or story) until after it is written. Then, as a rule, I give it to my agent who markets it. If my agent concludes any negotiation for sale of a story before he receives it, he makes it clear, first, that there may be no story to deliver, and, secondly, that it must be taken (or left) just as it is — absolutely without alteration; and no consideration of suiting any particular public ever comes into play, nor has any suggestion of that sort ever been made to me. I do not know where you get your impression from — possibly from the inexcusable habit certain magazines have of advertising that “so-and-so” is writing especially for them. In my case that would always be a false statement. I do not write especially for anybody, or for any public. ... All my work, however indifferent, has been the best, according to my own taste and judgment, that I could do at the time. ... "

" ... “And he did not spend his apprentice years at the feet of Pinero, he spent them in the commercial theatre where plays are drawn up according to box office specifications.” I never had any apprentice years, I never had anything at all to do with the theatre till in February and March 1906 I wrote The Silver Box, being at the time in a mood of revolt against the artificiality of such plays as I had seen. You imply very kindly that I am a master of stagecraft. I’m sure I don’t know whether that’s true, but if it is, I have gradually muddled out a mastery for myself. I am in no sense a student of drama, nor a great playgoer, nor a believer in learning the job of playwriting except by practice. As to “box-office specifications” — if I knew anything about them, I suppose I should not have had in London only two commercial successes out of my fifteen long plays produced there. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CRITICISM

"July 12th, 1916.

"DEAR SIR, Thank you for your letter from which I note that you have read the letter of my article — certainly not its spirit — and consider me “an enemy of Society.” This is very mild. Last Saturday I was called “an old and cunning reptile” by a gendeman from the Victoria Docks who found another of my writings displeasing. If such ebullitions of fearless goodwill lighten your spirits in these dark days, I can but rejoice.

"To THE REV: —"

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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THE VALUE OF CRITICISM

" ... From one who, out of sheer love of Letters and without self-indulgence, appraises our novels, our poetry or our plays, we can take the rough with the smooth and be grateful. But authors are always restive, and rightly restive, under criticism, unless they feel it is the genuine outcome of a love and knowledge of good literature."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CREATIVE CRITICISM

" ... The vital distinction is this: the interpretative artist is absolutely tied to the terms of the work he is interpreting; whereas the very essence of creation consists in that roving, gathering, discovering process of the mind and spirit which goes before the commencement of a work of art. This process is untrammelled by anything except the limits of the artist’s own personality. It is not an answer to say that the artist is trammelled by the limits of his experience just as much as the interpretative artist is trammelled by the terms of the work he is interpreting — for this reason: Of experience one is unconscious, one works amongst it intuitively, it has become part of oneself, it is not there in black and white, in definite line and shape, before us, as is the work with which the interpretative artist has to deal. ... Probably the best concrete instance of the two types of mind would be Leonardo da Vinci, who made in La Gioconda the finest piece of creative painting in the world and Walter Pater, who reproduced her, in the best piece of creative criticism, I think, ever written. No one could doubt, I think, that those two natures were as wide as the poles apart."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (1)

"January 6th, 1912.

"In The New Age of January 4th, your dramatic critic quotes a sort of recommendation of my play Strife which has been issued by the Drama League of America, and makes on it the following comment. “The name of the mastermind who was guilty of this primitive effort is not disclosed. Perhaps Mr. Galsworthy was responsible for it. If so, there should be something on the Statute-book to prevent authors from endeavouring to increase their incomes by publishing their plays in headlines that improve no one — not even the six silliest persons in a community.”

"May I just say that I knew nothing whatever of the recommendation till I saw it quoted a few days ago in the Daily News. I am sorry that your dramatic critic should have thought his insinuation so probable as to have justified him in making it."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (2)

"July 21st, 1915.

"I am sorry, but the paragraph in your issue of the 19th, about my play Strife has no relation whatever to fact. My acquaintance with the conditions of a strike was by no means as superficial as all that. The protagonist for Capital was not a Welsh Coal Owner, and moreover has been dead some years; no character was drawn from any London Welshman; nor did Mr. Granville Barker know that I was writing the play till it was put into his hands finished.

"Finally the play was not conceived as a study of industrial conditions, but as a conflict between headstrong natures and the usual tragedy and waste thereof."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CRITICISM OF “SATIRES”

"May 15th, 1915.

"DEAR SIR, My new book The Tittle Man and other Satires — a misnomer, according to some who assert that they bite too deep to be called satires, and to others who allege that they do not bite deep enough to come within that definition — is a collection of short studies in various forms. Whether, as one critic remarks, they are “pure comedy,” or, as another contends, their “excellent and melancholy” author “requires attention from the comic spirit,” God knows. You pays your money and you takes your choice."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ON THE OBJECT OF CIVILISATION

Beginning at a low note of common, every day reporting - this one is reporting a speech by Galsworthy - it goes up with a dig, to make one smile, and then suddenly ends with a punch in the solar plexus.

"Reporter’s Summary.

"Speaking yesterday at the opening of the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition of Modem Art, Mr. John Galsworthy said that art was the only really progressive spiritual uplift of human life."

" ... At present the arts were railed off; the public poked buns at them at the end of its umbrella, and watched their antics. There was a disposition now among leaders of labour to ask that beauty should be brought into the lives of the people. That was a good sign, for it was the first need of every country. In an age which tended more and more to make a god of blind production it was essential that the beauties of art should leap to the eye.

"Of old the best artists were employed to decorate the monasteries and churches which people then frequented.

"Why could not the best painters and sculptors to-day be asked to decorate the schools, colleges, hospitals, theatres, museums, yes, even the public houses, the clubs and the railway stations? We wanted more real beauty where we could all see it every day. If we went on blindly producing without cultivating the instinct for beauty we should go steadily downhill. And if we did not improve our conception of the dignity of human life we should head straight for another world war."

Shivers down the spine!

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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FOUR COBWEBS FOR NEW BROOMS

Galsworthy opines on laws that need reform.

"1. Breach of Promise.

"2. The Divorce Laws.

"3. Solicitation.

"4. Prosecutions for attempted Suicide."

The last one is clearly silly. The first, Galsworthy is merely outraged that women could use it in his day.

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" ... But women are no longer slaves; emancipated now, and the equals of men, they cannot have it both ways.

Not quite true, and society still thinks less of a woman not married, widowed or divorced, whether or not her country gives her equal legal rights. A woman jilted is still seen as an object sullied, while a man jilted is seen merely as a boy that a cat has escaped by screeching and scaring him.

"Between the devil and the deep sea — the State and the Church — the sanctity of marriage is indeed in a poor way. You draw back from a marriage which you are convinced will not be sacred, but which, according to the Church, will be too sacred to dissolve, and you are promptly cast in damages by the State."

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"The opposition to reform now comes almost entirely from the Church. The Church, like the State, is entitled to its belief. But the delay in reform caused by Church opposition is only accentuating the following state of mind: “If I marry and it turns out wrong, which seems not unlikely, I shall be living a disharmonic and degrading life, which can only be ended by a dishonouring process; and, if I chance to be tied to a murderer or lunatic, cannot be ended at all. The changes of this mortal life are many — why then marry? Any union is as sacred or as little sacred as a marriage contracted under such conditions. But there is still worldly convenience to be had from marriage — more respectability, less social trouble. Well! I’ll chance it, and marry! That is the growing attitude towards marriage. ... The respect for marriage declines day by day. The position is as ironical as it can be."

Funny, didn't England separate from yoke of Rome, chiefly, due to an annulment that Rome refused? Since Queen Elizabeth I founded Church of England after her father divorced several of his queens, wouldn't it be more hones if church in U.K. didn't conform to views of Rome, at least on this specific issue?

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" ... A public servant did a public service the other day when he dared take off his hat to a woman, make a few remarks to her, and get prosecuted for it. ... The law against solicitation for man or woman should be confined to cases where woman or man makes direct complaint to a police constable. A policeman who actually witnesses solicitation could be instructed always to ask the person solicited whether he or she complained. The practice of arresting people for speaking to other people, no matter with what object, unless complaint is made, is thoroughly dangerous. ... "

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" ... No one attempts suicide without intending to succeed, unless he does it hysterically for the purpose of advertisement, which he would not get if he were not prosecuted. ... Besides, a person so driven as to seriously attempt suicide has already suffered enough. Anyone with the mere rudiments of compassion and imagination must see that. And certainly, to keep it a prosecutable offence does not help, but rather lessens, our feeling that suicide is a surrender, an unworthy confession of defeat. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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MEMORANDUM OF EVIDENCE OF JOHN GALSWORTHY

BEFORE THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED

BY THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

TO EXAMINE INTO THE WORKING OF

THE CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS

"I think that the mere idea of this Censorship often deters fastidious minds who would in reality run little or no risk from its attentions, and that it rouses in the exuberant mind a perverse desire to rim amuck at it."

"I have also to state that I have read the following plays, which have either been censured or in whose cases, verbal or written intimation has been given by the Censor that they had better not be presented for licence: The Oedipus Rex (Sophocles); The Cenci (Shelley); Monna Vanna (Maeterlinck); Ghosts (Ibsen); Maternité (Brieux); The Three Daughters of Monsieur Dupont (Brieux); Mrs. “Warren’s Profession (Shaw); Waste (Barker); The Breaking Point (Garnett); Bethlehem (Housman). I consider that all these plays are essentially moral, and some of great dramatic and artistic merit, and I do not see why any single one of them should not have been presented here.

"For this conclusion I give the following reasons: The first night audience at a play is always a picked and hardened audience. The general Public is at once informed by the Press of the nature of a play. People do not go to plays without either reading or hearing what sort of play it is; and those persons who deliberately go to theatres from prurient motives would be most disagreeably disappointed by witnessing a performance of any of these plays."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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CHILDREN AND WAR

"When a child is outraged or done to death in time of Peace the whole nation is stirred. In wartime, millions of children are outraged and done to death in manner not the same but as horrible. On them are forced slow starvation, illness, deformities, orphanage, death from disease, gas and bombs. From them is rived all fatherly control so that in many cases they become little criminals. Undernourished and stunted physically and morally they are taken from school prematurely and set to war work. The effects of war are felt by them for years after war is over — often for the rest of their lives. Fortunate are those hundreds of thousands who, but for war, would have been born and are not. The sufferings of children through wars in the past are likely to be far exceeded in wars to come, when the very pulses of the nations will be stopped by havoc wrought from the air on crowded centres of population and the wholesale destruction of docks and factories."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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BROADCAST: THE NATIONAL CHILDREN ADOPTION ASSOCIATION

"The destitute or unwanted child is a fairly pathetic thing. Many of such children are irregularly born. I think you will agree that there is nothing more offensive to good feeling than the old-fashioned habit of looking down on an irregularly born child. However strongly a person may condemn irregular unions, to suppose that the innocent offspring of them are not the equal of children born in wedlock is surely a survival from the Dark Ages."

" ... It is and always has been shamefully unjust that the innocent children of illegal unions should suffer under stigma of any kind. And this Bill might well end with the following Clause: ‘It shall be an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment for any person to inflict indignity on such a child because of the circumstances of its birth, which are hereby declared to be beyond its control.’” The Association I appeal for, helps healthy children whether regularly or irregularly born, if unwanted or destitute — that is the point; and such a work must have your whole sympathy just as it has mine. This Children Adoption Association has an office at 19 Sloane Street, London, and a hostel called Tower Cressy in Aubrey Road, Campden Hill, London. The Founder and Director is Miss Clara Andrew. Its Chairman the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn, its President H.R.H. the Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, and the most active of its Vice-Presidents is Mrs. Stanley Baldwin. It is registered as an Association not for profit."

" ... Since it started in August 1917 the Association has proved successful in 2,200 adoptions. It secures adoption not only in Britain, but in Canada, South Africa and Australia. A very important point to my way of thinking: “Most of the children for adoption are under the age of twelve months, but adopters have them for a month at least before they sign any agreement form. Almost invariably the child wins the heart of the adopter; very few children come back. Many adopters return for a second, a third, a fourth child.” Adoption is promoted only as a last resort, in preference to institutional life for the child; and the Association never attempts to take a child from its natural mother if she is able and willing to look after it."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA

" ... English drama from the beginning of the last century up to the last few years, has been almost entirely in the hands of the actor. It has been written for the actor; and Drama written for the actor is sterile from its very conception. Until therefore the actor could be raised from the dead into that life of interpretation which should have been his from the beginning, there was no room on the English stage for anything but histrionics, divorced from life, from ideas, and from all real feeling. ... development (only just beginning) of the English drama. That development will continue along the lines of interpretation and not of histrionics. Stars will fall from the firmament into the waters of truth; drown if they are dross, resurge if they are gold, endowed with a finer lustre. The knell of strutting has sounded. Thanks to the advent of writers who are sufficiently out of touch with theatrical life, and sufficiently in touch with real life and real literature; thanks too to the rise of repertory or semi-repertory theatres, many actors and actresses have already risen from the dead to ornament their calling. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ON SOME DRAMAS

" ... Each of the plays The Silver Box, Strife, Justice and The Pigeon of course, incarnates a main idea—”The S.B.” that “one law for the rich another for the poor,” is true, but not because Society wills it so, rather, in spite of Society’s good intentions, through the mere mechanical wide-branching power of money. ... "

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

" ... How far indeed are we removed from savages, when we can blindly follow a custom so thoughtless and tormenting, so stupid and ugly, as this?"

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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DISSATISFACTION

"“One is always dissatisfied the day after the production of a play, no matter what its reception (in this case not a bad one). The Thing has gone out for better or worse — generally worse, and there is an end of illusion; an end to one’s own vision, and frequently a taste of ashes in the mouth, and a sense that one has not succeeded in conveying to more than a handful the sense and heart of the matter.”"

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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ON DOSTOIEVSKY

"August z6th, 1932.

"DEAR SIR,

"I will answer your questions in order and as best I may:

"1. If I were still reading Dostoievsky I have no doubt that I should find him an interesting (and in some sort irritating) writer.

"2. I doubt whether he is a universal influence for the novelist. In morals and philosophy he was a dissolvent. Against dissolution there is always reaction.

"3. On the whole he is not so great a man as Tolstoy, either as an artist or as a thinker.

"4. He was very unbalanced, but his insight was deep and his fecundity remarkable. I think he will live."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

"Most people who think at all have recognised by now that European wars of the future, if there be such, will be fought from the air.

"They will consist of unpreventable attempts to wipe out with explosives and gas the crowded centres of population, docks, and factories; these attempts will probably be unheralded, and will almost certainly be successful.

"Armies and navies will be paralysed by lack of supply, and perhaps not even used — the nerve centres on which they rely having been destroyed. If we consider what England will be without London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield; France without Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles; Germany without Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and the Essen district; Italy without Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, Venice, Florence; and what civilisation will be like with these countries in utter rags, we have some idea of the aftermath of a new great war."

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August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

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THE DESECRATION OF DOWNLAND

" ... If a portion of the Downs can be appropriated to the purposes of a sporting speculation, there is no reason why any of England’s beauty should be sacred, and we may put up the shutters and declare its Green Mansion to let."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

"A GOOD grounding in the literature of one’s native tongue is the most enjoyable and the most useful part of education. Not because our literature is superior to other literatures, but because in reading one’s own language the mind and the imagination are freer; and take in a store of general nourishment excluded by the concentration necessary for mastering any foreign language. He who speaks his own language musically, writes it well, and knows its masterpieces, is educated."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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TO A PRESS CRITIC OF “ESCAPE”

It's a startling experience, reading this piece, about supposedly a play by the author, titled "Escape". Startling, because it all seems half familiar, but not quite; one goes back to the index, looks at the list of plays, and it isnt there!

Why is it half familiar?

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" ... You suggested that I was stretching probability unfairly in order to create sympathy for Matt, because I didn’t let the trippers offer him tea. Forgive me, but trippers of that kind, who have by the way finished their tea, would never dream of offering a strolling fisherman with a “sniffy way of talking” — in other words a gentleman — refreshment. Why should they? It never entered my head that they would; and one can’t reject unscrupulously what doesn’t come into one’s head. This is England and we don’t intrude ourselves on strangers, especially when we have no indication that they are hungry or thirsty — for all the trippers knew, he might just have had his tea. And, forgive me again, but I cannot see that their not offering him tea could have any effect whatever on his chances of being captured. ... "

" ... I suggest that a man who has escaped from Germany, and who escapes from Dartmoor is not one who takes things lying down; and that there is no perversion whatever of human nature in the scene as described and acted. ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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CONDITION OF ENGLAND

"THE world has changed so much that in so far as England is concerned, conditions are almost the reverse of what they were 50 years ago. England, like many other countries, is more or less standing on her head. You must remember that you always have to give England time. She realises things slowly; and as becomes the oldest stable state politically speaking, she moves with great deliberation. She has never begun to realise the extent to which conditions have changed. I think it will take her ten to fifteen years to find her footing in these new waters. But she will find it all right. Our climate has not changed, neither has our temperament."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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FORSYTE SAGA

"The MS. lacks The Man of Property for to my great regret now I destroyed that MS. (with other early MSS.) in changing houses in 1913. It was in an awful state, and I was ashamed of its untidiness, and also unconscious then, that I was destroying what had apparently (or rather would have) great monetary value."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

"The fallacy of the old notion that Free Will and Determinism are antagonistic lies simply in the failure to perceive that — however certain it was from the beginning that a man shall act in such a way — it is never known by that man in what way he is going to act until after he has acted. There is absolutely no deadening to the springs of individual action in a philosophic Determinism, which perceives that simple truth of individual free will before the event — Individual free will in accordance with an implanted — often failing — but ever renewing instinct for creation and perfection."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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FAVOURITE BOOK AND PLAY

" ... And there you’re in a difficulty, because you probably haven’t read any of my books or plays."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE NATURE OF GOD

"DEAR MADAM, I am sorry that I have the bad habit of not enquiring too closely into the nature of God — a word which stands, for me, for the only way we have of expressing the ultimate and very wonderful Mystery of why we are all here. Surely to no sane person, pressed back to his last defences of definition can it stand for anything else?

"Since I do not believe, and do not see how anyone can, that the Universe ever had a beginning or will ever have an end, your question as to the making of things is hardly intelligible to me. The idea of a God limited to our idea of ‘the good man’ expressed to the power of x is to me the purest darkness."

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Shocking, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level ... unexpected, to say the least!

And then one comes across his little piece, THE NATURE OF GOD, and one marvels he didn't realise his soul and mind were so close to, so much a part of, India!

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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POEMS OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

"The few lines that Mr. Paramor quotes in The Country House have always seemed to me hard to beat as a summary of what keeps most of us going under the wear and tear of life. The beauty of those lines consists in the fact that they emotionalize and inspire, without any of the flummery and trimmings which most poets and preachers would have added."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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HANDWRITING

"When I look at any considerable screed from my pen it always seems to me as if I had half a dozen handwritings; and yet I suppose no one but myself would see any difference between them."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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HAUPTMANN AND GALSWORTHY

" ... I have never had the good fortune to read a word of Gerhart Hauptmann’s works, and that the only two plays of his that I have seen are Die Versunkene Glocke (in German, which I unfortunately cannot understand when spoken on the stage), and a version of Hannele, both of which, I imagine, your reviewer will agree are very far removed from my method. Of Die Weber I do not even know the plot, except that it is about a strike."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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HERO WORSHIP

"My ideas about hero worship are rather incoherent. I am not very good at it, and yet I do feel that natures which have no capacity for it are dry goods.

"It is one of those cases I fear where distance lends enchantment. A dead hero is worth a good many live ones — he has become the incarnation of qualities: it is this in him that, I think, one worships.

"Hero worship for the living (as in your case with Miss R — ) is much more the magnetic attraction of personality, the effect of charm, than it is what I should call hero worship proper."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE CAGING OF HAWKS

"DEAR SIR, I read in yesterday’s Standard that a hawk had flown into your house at Tiverton in pursuit of a sparrow, and been captured. Unless you are truly charitable you will certainly set me down as a meddler and probably a crank for venturing to write to you on the subject. In all probability you have already freed the hawk, and this letter is a waste of your time, but if you have not and should by any chance have the intention of trying to tame the creature I beg you most earnestly to reflect on what captivity means to a hawk or any of the large soaring birds. To keep such a bird caged is to keep on one’s premises a piece of solid permanent suffering.

"Travelling in California last spring I had occasion to stay at an hotel where they always had a caged hawk for the edification of the guests. It was — they said — a new one practically every year, for the birds soon moped themselves to death. Watching the eagles and hawks in our Zoo, where, of course, they have a maximum of freedom and company as compared with private caging, I have often thought what living tragedies they looked. One thinks of a hawk as a cruel bird, not as a creature that deserves compassionate treatment. He is not however cruel, no more so than a sparrow or a robin that darts on a worm as the hawk darts on little birds. He is merely getting his living instinctively in the only way open to him."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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WORN-OUT HORSE TRAFFIC

"SIR, On May 21st I was present with some thousands of other people at an Albert Hall Meeting to protest against the continuance of the worn-out horse traffic, ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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HARMONY

" ... I feel that the pointing out of disharmony is at least as much the business of the artist, especially the novelist and play-right, as attempts, which almost always fail, to provide cut and dried harmonies.

"The Vision of harmony is the theme of poetry, rather than of those more searching, critical, and disturbing mediums the novel and the play."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

" ... I get to hate more and more the whole industrial system. What is it but a huge process of manufacturing wants? Man should have few wants. ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

"A living wage is guaranteed, a vast number of articles are thereby rendered unproducible in competition with foreign goods; to remedy this either there is an instant diminution of employment or a protective tariff is necessary, thence a general heightening of the rate of living, thence a deduction throughout of the capital available for enterprise, thence a general diminution of the demand for labour, besides incidentally bringing the living wage back to where it was below the living wage level. And so in each province of economics."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE

"I should like to see all school-children taught, throughout their school life, that no paper or rubbish of any kind should be left about in streets or country places. This is indeed a case where ‘a little child could lead them’; for, apparently no one else, not even the King, can! ... "

"I should like to see all school-children definitely taught to be kind to animals and birds. ... "

" ... I should like to see English architects devote themselves to English architecture, which, dying prematurely in the early years of the nineteenth century, is now due to rise again in terms of its best self.

"I should like to see the processes by which coal smoke is ultimately to be abolished, hurried on with, and a law then passed to prohibit coal smoke altogether in factory and home. ... "

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"I should like to see Art more closely related to reality, by liberal employment of artists to decorate public buildings, railway stations, shops, hotels, hospitals, theatres, and factories; ... "

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"I should like to see the death penalty commuted in all cases where murder was not committed in cold blood.

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"I should like to see much more serious attempts made to get children to pronounce their vowels correctly."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THREE YEARS AVERAGE

"SIR, In November, 1916, I wrote a short letter to The Times deprecating the three years average system, since income-tax had become so heavy. ... "

" ... Just as income-tax is deducted from dividends on stocks, so shall we professional men learn to reserve or ear-mark the necessary portion of our earnings as we go along, to meet the taxes on them. We shall cut our coats according to our cloth, and not leave the income-tax (and super-tax) on the year 1925 to be paid out of the income of 1926. The present system encourages us to go it blind and hope for what rarely turns out the best. In every way it is a thoroughly vicious system, and its longevity as amazing as that of the octogenarian witness who had never been to bed sober. I am happy to see that the London Chamber of Commerce has joined in appealing against it."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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PROVIDING FOR TWO YEARS AHEAD

"The abolition of the three years’ period was a great boon, but surtax is still assessed not on this year’s but on last year’s return, and this is an abiding and vicious incubus. It may not fall so hardly on businesses, but it is paralysing to a professional man who cannot tell from year to year what his next year’s income is going to be. ... "

" ... By all means put by to meet the current year’s liabilities, but to put by against not only the current year’s but the next year’s liabilities (as one must now) is to clog the wheels of industry and of social improvement. ... "

"A single graduated income-tax, assessed on the last completed year’s income, is the only wise and fair way of levying, and I cannot imagine why it is not adopted, unless on the principle: “Oh! He’s a surtax-payer; tease the rich brute. ... ”

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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INSTINCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM

" ... instinctive individualism, and vital instinct, the value of life to ourselves, the subconscious sense that we are as valuable to life as life is to us, which keeps us going."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE GOOD SERVANT

"Statesmen who used this imagination would have averted the coal strike or at least by earlier action have prevented the after-strike unemployment and distress in the coalfields, which are now engaging belated attention. No statesmen, using their imaginations, would hesitate to tackle the slums, emigration, and Empire settlement on a large scale."

"The House of Commons has succumbed to the idea that it is elected to follow, not to lead. It has abjured the function of foresight. ... The two things that mattered beyond all in this country after the war, were — to continue the revival of Agriculture, and to maintain a force in the Air equal to that of the strongest Power. Both were sacrificed to custom and to vested interests — the one because a town population cannot see the importance of Agriculture, and the other because to ordinary short sight the Army and Navy still seemed more important than the Air Service. The one thing that mattered in 1925 when the coal strike loomed before us was to reorganise the coal industry completely. Imagination failed and the nettle was not grasped."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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IRELAND

"I hope Shaw will tell you all that the only possible way of dealing with Ireland now is to make an agreement with America to stop arms or recruits going into Ireland for either side; and, having done that, and removed all the army from North and South that we can conveniently lay hands on, to remove also all our soldiers, sailors and such police as will not take service under Irish authorities, and say to the Irish (North and South): Now, settle your affairs; we wish you well, and we’re sorry we’ve made such a mess of it hitherto. Whatever they then did would not be so bad as what we shall otherwise be let in for, and the damage we shall do ourselves in the eyes of the world — especially the American world. The substance of the future lies in our hearty co-operation and friendship with America — the rest is shadow. But I suppose we shall grasp the shadow and miss the substance."

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"DEAR MADAM, How charming a letter of request! If I could tell myself or anyone could tell me what my political convictions are now or have been in the past I should be the better able to sign a letter saying I would vote against them in the matter of Ireland."

"I would sign a letter saying that I would vote against any Government which initiated or tolerated reprisals involving the property or lives of innocent people. ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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IF I ONLY KNEW....

"THE Editor of The Triad has kindly asked me to write a short article on how to set about being a writer. If I only knew! My friend Arnold Bennett is the source to which he should have gone.

"I suspect that my own experiences are of little or no use to would-be writers, but such as they are they shall be at the disposal of those who read The Triad."

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" ... If one has been brought up at an English Public School and University, is addicted to sport and travel, has a small independent income, and is a briefless barrister, one will not take Literature seriously, but one may like to please her of whom one is fond. I began. In two years I wrote nine tales. They had every fault. Kiplingesque, crudely expressed, extravagant in theme, deficient in feeling, devoid of philosophy, with the exception of one or two perhaps, they had no temperament. I put them together and sent them, at the recommendation of my one literary friend, Conrad, to a certain publisher. With praiseworthy caution he would only publish them if I paid, and he sent me an estimate. I thought it a pity to waste either time or them, and accepted it. They were published. In the meantime I had begun to write a novel, and to be conscious of what are called “a feeling for character” and a “sense of atmosphere.” It was, however, a bad novel; it was not what is called “written.” The technique limped; the characters had stringhalt; and the clothing sentences were redundant or deficient. It was accepted by another publisher on what is known as deferred royalties — so deferred, in fact, that nothing came my way.

"I had now been writing four years, and had spent about a hundred pounds on it. About that time I began to read the Russian Turgenev (in English), and the Frenchman de Maupassant in French. They were the first writers who gave me, at once real æsthetic excitement, and an insight into proportion of theme and economy of words. Stimulated by them I began a second novel, Villa Rubein. It was more genuine, more atmospheric, better balanced, but still it was not “written.” The form in which it now survives underwent two thorough revisions some seven years later. It was published on the same sort of terms — again I got nothing; and I proceeded to write the four long-short stories which are now bound up with Villa Rubein. From the writing of these I got more excitement and satisfaction than hitherto; they were nearer being “written” than anything I had yet done, but they too had to be severely dressed down before they were re-issued with Villa Rubein, some years later. ... "

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"In 1906 therefore, before The Man of Property had appeared, I had been writing nearly eleven years without making a penny or any name to speak of. The Man of Property had taken me nearly three years, but it was “written.” My name was made, my literary independence assured, and my income steadily swollen."

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"The first moral is that some writers at least are not born.

"The second moral is that such writers need either an independent income, or another job while they are learning to “write.”

"The third moral is that he who is determined to “write” and has the grit to see the job through, can “get there” in time.

"The fourth moral is that the writer who steadily goes his own way, never writes to fulfil the demands of public, publisher, or editor, is the writer who comes off best in the end.

"The fifth moral is that to begin too young is a mistake. Live first, write afterwards. I had seen unself-consciously a good deal of life before I began to write, but even at twenty-eight I began too young. The spiritually stressful years of my life came between then and 1904. That is why The Island Pharisees and The Man of Property had in crescendo so much more depth in them than the earlier books.

"The sixth moral is that a would-be writer can probably get much inspiration and help from one or two masters, but in general, little good and more harm from the rest. Each would-be writer will feel inspired according to his temperament, will derive instruction according to his needs, from some old or living master akin to him in spirit. And as his wings grow stronger under that inspiration he will shake off any tendency to imitation.

"I think that exhausts the morals of my experience."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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JUSTICE

"I should prefer not to discuss the artistic aspects of my play. It can be seen and read, condemned or applauded.

"All I want to say is, that in it I do not attack any department of the administration of Justice.

"I yield to no one in my admiration of the fine qualities of our Judges. I believe that all Prison officials, as a body, are animated with a high sense of duty and conscientiousness. I regard the Police with respect. I am convinced that the Public of this country is on the whole the most humane in the Western world."

Indeed, "Public of this country is on the whole the most humane in the Western world."" Might be true, as long as the recipients were restricted to the Western world, strictly! Or the "on the whole" was noticed as strictly true.

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"DEAR Mrs. C, So many thanks for your charming letter. What nice news of Thomas Hardy. But he will be doing a rare thing indeed if he can make adequate dramatic versions of his novels. It is an art I don’t understand, and indeed rather distrust. Still he may succeed."

"Thank you, yes, I am writing — a novel. But when — if ever — it is finished I promise myself a holiday — the first for five years. A writer never gets a holiday — at least not one of my temperament; and soon I shall have forgotten how. I don’t want to get quite like the cabhorse in the Pickwick Papers."

"When one sits in a Court and watches, one wonders how on earth in those few minutes of a trial even an inkling can be gained by a Judge of the roots of the crime he judges; especially when by constant repetition all the feelers and nerves (by which a man alone can really seize on what is going on in other men) are necessarily blunted, when the very nature of his whole business, under the fearful pressure of time and of the strain that is on him, tends to force everything into grooves, categories, precedents. ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA

This is worthy of notice especially in this era.

Galsworthy was invited on June 13, 1919, by some who he addresses as Messieurs before continuing in English, to join “Clarté”, and he responds in June 1919.

" ... That I am intensely a believer in writers “throwing themselves into the battle of ideas with their reason free from all prejudices, and with all their pity” I trust that the whole of my work shows.

"But there are certain wide considerations which make me doubtful of the wisdom of a deliberate banding together of writers, especially of creative writers, for deliberate propaganda purposes. I would draw your attention to the fact that the great influence which creative writers undoubtedly wield rests on two main factors: First, their untrammelled creative power, and the human attraction inherent in it; secondly, the faith which the Public — unconsciously, if you will — has in their independence. The moment they band themselves and give themselves a label they lose all the more subtle and far-reaching part of their influence. And however much they may declare themselves “free of all party” and above all prejudice, they cannot escape being “classed” by the average mind, and must at once encounter an opposition which did not formerly exist to the influence of their imaginings. I will take an illustration from your list of names. The influence of Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Matilde Serao, H. G. Wells, and Israel Zangwill, if known by the public to have banded themselves together for a definite crusade, will be in sum less than the influence of those six writers each independently fighting the good fight in their creative work. At least, from my knowledge of human nature, this is my very decided conviction.

"I would next draw your attention to the fact that so far from “the thing of beauty” being useless in these days, it is things of beauty — real deep spiritual beauty — which must of necessity be born in the utmost freedom without direct propagandic impulse — which alone can give new life and spring to a most machine-driven, press-ridden, and in many ways hateful age.

"Next I would say this: The writer who has real creative power, and real subtle influence (for the influence of the manifesto is really little-worth) is naturally lonely; he works more freely, and with greater force in conditions of spiritual solitude than in an environment of joined-hands. He flourishes, as it were, on a sense of being alone. Opposition, originality, arrogance if you will, are part of his make-up."

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"I would say a word on the danger of focussing so much free spirit and good will in a definite organ which, however wide in its views, is bound to be labelled “Socialist” or “Bolshevist” or some stupid name by the average mind, and therefore will be read only by an audience of the converted. The mere fact that its contributors have big literary names, will not widen its circulation among those who really need to read it. I am afraid that experience shows that free spirit and generous feeling forced into a single public channel becomes combative and ceases to be infective. But we cannot bludgeon the public into feeling with us, we can but inoculate them without their suspecting the process.

"The last sentence of your memorandum shows I think quite clearly the danger that “Clarté” (and its adherents) will soon be labelled, and become as it were a “party” organ: “Il est indispensable que nous ayons avec nous toute l’élite intellectuelle du gauche!”"

" ... And I humbly hope that, if not a definite member of your society (for the reasons I have given) I shall be able to give a helping hand to the ideals you strive for, and to write with pity and tolerance and freedom from prejudice, and even to paint things truthfully as I see them."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE HOUSE OF LORDS

" ... Of course if the Veto Bill be pure tactics, and the official intention be living and firm to create a new Second Chamber equal between the parties, my objections all fall to the ground. But I haven’t gathered from the speeches in the Lords and the country that there is any intention of doing this; and neither Morley nor Churchill with whom I have talked seem to entertain the idea at heart. ... "

" ... For the hereditary House of Lords I have less than a word to say."

" ... If I were (which God will take care I am not) in Parliament, I should have to espouse those measures which seemed the shortest cuts to proportion and justice, but on meeting my opponent in the Lobby I should never be able to refrain from seeing that he represented the realities of existence every bit as much as I did — though his face were the reverse of the medal."

" ... Don’t write and say: Trust Asquith, though I admit that it’s the best practical answer that can be made. But we know — don’t we? — how the political utterance repeated and repeated in the end comes to wag the party dog. It’s human nature not to go back on your uttered words. Some day I’ll come down and talk, if you won’t come up."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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LIBRARY CENSORSHIP

Very similar arguments and debates today about films, internet content, even art, except - forces are greater with those selling questionable content, simply due to far greater financial gains involved.

But then, tobacco too was a similar battle, until a couple of decades ago, with banners of rights of individual choice invoked in favour of those selling death; that pornography, terrorism et al endangers lives, chiefly of women and children, is now forced under the rug by those selling it, just as in case of guns, liquor, or two decades ago, smoke.

Galsworthy lived when fascism was rising. Now, labels are false.

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"SIR, There seems on the face of it no reason why the libraries should not deal exactly as they like with the books that we authors write, and it is idle to abuse them for acting according to their lights; but there seems to be every reason for us authors to consider whether we who supply the goods are prepared inertly to watch a secret tribunal of middlemen, however well-intentioned, assessing without check the moral value of our wares."

" ... Honest writers are, must be, the best critics of decency in literature, since they judge it, not only from without as citizens, but from within as artists, feeling what is essential and what is not. To the library censors indecency in literature is a question of harm to themselves and their daughters: to us it is that indeed, but it is also the profanation of an ideal, a tarnishing of art, a dirty huckstering business. ... Whether any masterpiece has yet been stigmatised or semi-strangled is beside the point. At any moment it may be, for if this secret censorship, or discretion as the libraries prefer to call it, be left to flourish without check, it must assuredly grow with every year more high-handed and less respectful towards originality. But it is not, in fact, so much a question of the harm done to books that do appear, especially when they are by well-known authors, as of the strangling at birth of books by young authors that publishers decline, and will increasingly decline, to publish, for fear of the ban; and still more, far more, of the strangling in authors, day by day as they write, of the due expression of their thought from the same fear."

" ... The great public would not care one rap, would even applaud, if Resurrection, Tom Jones, Ghosts, Madame Bovary, Jude the Obscure, and many another masterpiece were to-morrow to be banned for ever. The great public of to-day and the libraries that do but represent the great public cannot (I say it with due respect for their zeal and good intentions) be trusted to tell a hawk from a handsaw, and if something is not done there will not be a dog’s chance in this country for any outspoken work of art in five or ten years’ time.

"But what can be done? Let us recognise that nothing can be done to interfere with the discretion of the libraries to send out what books they choose to those subscribers who put them into the fiduciary position of selectors of their literature. Nothing whatever can be fairly said against the free use of this discretion; it is a purely private matter between the libraries and their customers, between a trustee and a cestui-que trust. Nothing can even be asked till the matter has passed from this fiduciary stage to being simply a question of the free display, or not, of books to the public gaze in the libraries and the bookshops that belong to them — that is to say, most of the bookshops in the kingdom. At present if a book is put into Class C it is altogether banned, in other words, not stocked or procured at all; if put into Class B it is stocked, but not sent out on the library’s own initiative, and not freely displayed or fairly put forward in libraries or the shops that belong to them, as are the unbanned books that form Class A. This is the really serious point of the whole question. ... "

"The suggestion is this: Let there be a vote taken of authors (preferably through the machinery of the Authors’ Society) and a small committee annually elected from among us, to deal specially with this question. Let the libraries consent, whenever they have decided to ban a book, to submit the fate of that work to this committee (except in so far as their fiduciary relations with their customers are concerned — since these, as I have said, can obviously not be touched). ... "

"If some such corrective be not adopted by authors as a more or less coherent body and accepted by libraries, recognising the integrity of writers in this country as a whole, there will remain, so far as I can see, nothing for it ultimately but the establishment by authors and publishers of joint libraries of their own. ... "

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WORLD PEACE

"“I am waiting for a word in favour of that peace-promoter, the adoption in common of a second language.

"“The most beneficent task, which the League of Nations could perform would be the conjuring of an arrangement to this end. The ideal course is an adoption, by agreement, of a single second language to be taught in all countries. And I regret profoundly that there seems little likelihood of any such consummation."

If only he could hear what French and German speakers think of English speakers!

" ... we should love our mother tongue as we love our country, and try to express ourselves with vigour, dignity and grace.”"

Applies equally to every other language, especially those with rich literature, and every other country, especially those with a rich culture and a treasure of ancient tradition of knowledge.

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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MUSIC

"GOOD music is one of the few signs of civilisation that can’t be quarrelled with."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE WHITE MONKEY

"August 30th, 1924.

" ... This is a novel which is being now serialised, and will not be published till October 20th about."

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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HORSES IN MINES

Galsworthy writes, spurred by an accident in a mine during the strike; his views have been covered before, at least once.

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August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

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THE NAVV IN WAR

" ... The Navy may defend ships in the far seas, or even to within a hundred miles or so, but if those ships can’t discharge their cargoes, all that defence goes for nothing from the point of view of feeding the population of this island."

" ... The Navy and the Air Force are not of course antagonistic except in so far as the old sea power doctrine hypnotises the English into thinking that it can by itself save and feed them."

" ... A propos of Land Policy, I don’t think we can be entirely self supporting; but we might well be three quarters instead of not quite half; which would make all the difference in the world to our national position, and to our safety in case of another Great War.

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE NOVEL

"The Highway. Summer, 1924.

"If you ask a novelist what is a good novel, the only answer he can truly make is: “My own novel on the day that I finish it.” And if you ask him what is a bad novel, he will reply: “That same novel a fortnight later.” It is, in fact, no good asking a novelist such a question. You can ask him whether this or that named novel is good, and expect some sort of rational reply, generally in the negative if the author is alive. Just as horses run in all shapes, so do novels. ... "

"The beauty of the novel lies in its infinite variety, its elasticity, and its breadth. This is why, on the one hand, so many bad novels are written for every one that is good; and on the other hand, why it is never likely to be superseded as the main form of imaginative literature."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

The Observer. September 9th, 1917.

"While quite out of sympathy with the ideas and attitude of Conscientious Objectors, I can but repeat my conviction that the spirit of the Conscription Act is being contravened in deference to an outburst of natural hate. If it is going to become our habit thus to indulge gusts of feeling, however natural, God help us all in the rancorous and bitter future that is coming!"

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

This piece is undated, and specific names left out.

"SIR, From time to time, at not too rare intervals, the reading Citizens of all Countries are startled and horrified by accounts of the ill-treatment of political prisoners in this, that or the other Country. And it has seemed to one who wishes to think well of every Country that it may be of possible service to draw attention to an aspect of this matter which appears to have eluded the vigilance of Governments.

"Nothing in the whole world more alienates the sympathy of foreigners from a given Country than knowledge that it is guilty of inhumanity in the treatment of its political (or religious) prisoners. As soon as such inhumanity becomes known the attempts of the given Country by way of diplomacy or propaganda to popularize itself or its régime are automatically and completely stultified. It is, I think, an admitted truth that nothing was more potent in damaging and retarding the growth and importance of the Roman Catholic Church than the horrors of the Inquisition. The example could be multiplied indefinitely. Cruelty has a way of recoiling on the Body that inflicts it. And any Government which thinks it can ill-treat political or religious prisoners and at the same time popularize its Country and régime is grievously and manifestly in error. Nor will the plea by a Government of ignorance of such ill-treatment avail the Country it governs, any more than the plea by directors of a hospital, that they were ignorant of malpractices therein will prevent the public from boycotting that hospital."

"To appeal to humanity is nowadays, it seems, an unctuous futility, but appeal to Common Sense and self-interest has still a certain potency; and I would repeat that nothing in the world is so blighting to a Country’s interests and reputation as the knowledge that it ill-treats its political or religious prisoners.

Was this about India? About Bhagat Singh?

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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PRISON REFORM

"The Daily Mail. July 25th, 1910.

"There is no word so fitted to the scheme of Prison Reform which the Home Office has just put before the country as common sense. And since common sense is rather rare, the country will be grateful.

"It has been neither sensible nor decent that youthful offenders should be made familiar with prison except in the very last resort.

"It has been ridiculous that persons fined should be put in prison before a reasonable time has been given for the payment of the fine."

"The official defence of separate confinement has had three main pleas, (i) That before it existed prisoners would ask for it. But this is going back to the dark age when there was no classification in prisons nor science of any sort except that of manufacturing the criminal. (2) That they prefer it. Which is true, indeed, of a small proportion of convicts — generally educated men, the class of prisoner naturally best understood and sympathised with and best able to express their feelings, so that their opinions have acquired an exaggerated importance as against those of the great majority of convicts, who, uneducated, have less resource in themselves against solitude, less power of voicing their sufferings, and far less dread of encountering their fellow-prisoners. (3) That it is a deterrent. But how is it possible that a period of separate confinement always coming at the beginning of a long term of imprisonment, during which the monotony and general conditions of prison life obliterate all sharp sensation of any sort, can be deterrent? And even if there remain a lurking deterrence it is purchased at the far too high cost of the deterioration of mental fibre which long periods of seclusion work in nine men of ten. ... "

" ... The habitual offender is commonly a man of strong individuality, which is forced by prison life under the surface into a dangerous, secret channel of its own; and those who laugh at what may help to break up that sullen desperation have simply not appreciated the fact that this very thing is one of the chief causes of recidivism."

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"March 31st, 1910. My DEAR MADAM,

"Thank you for your letter. As to the proposal of a demonstration in favour of Prison Reform at the Duke of York’s Theatre, I feel certain that it will be impracticable. Apart from other reasons, it would — to tell you the truth — be introducing a principle which I personally should much regret to see introduced: The principle of directly mingling political and social matters with dramatic art. ... "

"The moment such a demonstration took place in a theatre, where a play such as mine — a presentation of life, and its significance — was being performed, a great blow would be struck at the influence of drama as an impartial revealer. An enormous amount of quiet (and perhaps noisy) opposition to all drama, except such as was mere frivolity, would be aroused.

"I am touched by the keenness of your feeling, but, I repeat, it would never do to hold such a demonstration. The theatre is not and ought never to be the place for social and political demonstrations no matter on what subject. What you would gain in emotional effect you would lose in a dozen other ways."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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AN INTERVIEW

"Great Thoughts. December 4th, 1913.

"“The great thing needful in the discussion of such a subject as the present is to divest oneself of all sentimentality and to regard punishment from both the scientific and the strictly common-sense point of view; to hold the balance between the intellectually feeble person who would abolish all punishment and the equally impossible idiot who sentences a man to six weeks’ hard labour for sleeping under a hedge. I maintain that punishment should hold in it the elements of deterrency, reformation, and good, healthy, righteous vengeance. ... "

"Mr. Galsworthy, as will be shown, goes much farther in the direction of humanitarianism than I should do. What is required is, in my opinion, not that punishment should be abolished, as the humanitarian sentimentalist urges, but that it should be more equally adjusted so as to fit the crime for which it is administered.

"I asked Mr. Galsworthy, first of all, his opinion on our present penal system."

" ... Very much has been accomplished in America, especially by Governor West, who has adopted the system of trusting to the men’s honour. Very likely such a system would not be suited for our crowded districts, but in Oregon or Nevada it is completely successful. He puts all his men on their honour not to escape when they go out to work, and they don’t. His influence is his personality. ..."

"“But surely you agree that the agents of the white slave traffic should be subjected to the lash?” I asked."

" ... The contention of the flogging party is based on the belief that the knowledge that this power can and will be exercised in the case of this particular offence will so deter offenders that in the end flogging will not be necessary. And as far as that goes, I was only this afternoon talking to a man in the thick of criminal matters, who had just had a conversation with a convict on this very subject, and the convict had frankly said, ‘I have met many of these bullies, and they don’t care a straw for prison and go back to the same life the very day they are released.’ “Well, that fact has to be faced, for doubtless it is perfectly true, and the consequences of this particular exploitation of women by these men are so frightful that I can’t bring myself to feel we are wrong to try this experiment. I think we ought, but I do think it wants very careful handling and very careful watching by the Press and the Public and the Legislature.” ... "

" ... The element of deterrence is almost synonymous with that of revenge, since it implies a degree of severity, but the State must be cold and impartial, with no tinge of personal animus. Revenge belongs to the injured person, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean anything to me. It is a purely individual feeling; and it is very dangerous to foster in the minds of servants of the Law the notion that they may give way to their feelings. ... "

Topic of the interview changed hence to bringing up children, social changes, and so on.

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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PLAYWRITING

Galsworthy responds to a query from someone regarding his plays.

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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MESSAGE TO PLAYGOERS

"HAVING supper one night some years ago in the Restaurant of our leading hotel I looked at the other side of the room and saw Allan Monkhouse whom I knew sitting with two ladies and a gentleman. I scribbled a note and sent it over by a waiter: “I can’t see from here but if it is Mr. Galsworthy ask him to send me a message for the Conference of Playgoers’ Club meeting at Bristol to-morrow which I am attending.”

"It was the eve of the production of one of Mr. Galsworthy’s less well-known plays The Mob. I saw them with their heads together and I soon received the following missive:

"“Seek Joy; avoid Strife; do Justice; and give a wide berth to The Mob.”

"The message was warmly welcomed on the morrow when I read it to, amongst others, the late Henry Arthur Jones, our chief guest, and Mr. J. T. Grein, our President, happily still with us."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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PROSTITUTES

"December 7th, 1906.

"DEAR SIR, I have received your circular. I would willingly become a subscriber to any such object were the law on this subject altered, and the treatment of these unfortunate women brought into correspondence with humanity and common sense.

"They are, with few exceptions, compelled to the life of vice by the appetites of men, they are kept in a life of vice by the appetites of men, and for men to apply to them the present rough, summary, and inadequate police court treatment, is repugnant to instincts of fair play and reason.

"Until therefore the law devises some special machinery more suitable, more effectual, and more merciful for dealing with these women I do not feel that I can subscribe to any movements that will bring the rigours of the law as it stands into greater force against them.

"I venture to think that your Council might endeavour to obtain an alteration in the law, in accordance more or less with the following suggestions:

"1. That on being arrested, women of this class should be taken not to police stations but to ‘homes’ of which there should be one in every police district.

"2. That their cases should be heard by the Magistrate the first thing on his arrival at the Court in the presence of the Press, and anyone personally interested, but with the General Public excluded.

"1. That if the charge is made out, instead of being fined (which is futile) or imprisoned (which is barbarous) they be sent to the Home attached to the District in which the charge is heard, for a period of not less than three weeks, nor more than three months; well treated, well fed, and given every opportunity of learning some honest work."

"I submit that it is the brutality of the present treatment that deters policemen from putting the law into force, for every manly mind must be haunted by the unfairness and hypocrisy of punishing in the other sex that which their own sex has brought about. I venture to think that a large silent body of the public holds this view; and I should be glad if you will kindly draw your Council’s attention to this letter."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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ON PLAYWRITING

"THE two hardest things to do are to write a real play, and to carve a real duck. ‘Use a club and avoid the joints’ may suit the latter, but the real play needs more sensitive handling."

"For any other views I have on the subject, see a paper called: ‘Some platitudes concerning Drama,’ in The Inn of Tranquillity; and a paper called ‘The new spirit in the Drama,’ in A Sheaf, Vol. II, not yet published.

"I ought to say that — according to a well-known American critic — though ‘a great playwright,’ I have ‘no sense of the theatre.’

"The idea behind my play The Roof is surely plain as the proverbial pikestaff: Simply that the human being comes out strong under pressure; that the human soul needs trial to show itself at its best. Old as the hills, of course, but worth fresh illustration, I should have thought, at any time.

"The form of the play, simultaneous incidents, as used in The Roof is, I think, new. It was adopted as the best, perhaps the only means, of showing a number of human beings intimately in their normal state before bringing them together under the pressure of a common danger.

"Before this play was criticised, twenty thousand members of the general public saw it in one week at the Golder’s Green Hippodrome with apparent enthusiasm, and since it has been criticised, or, I should prefer to say, attacked by certain pens, all available testimony seems to show that such members of the public as have had the courage to go in spite of adverse criticism, have enjoyed it."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE PRESS

"The Leicester Mercury. January 31st, 1924.

If there be a more important trusteeship than that vested in the modern journal, I have yet to hear of it. A Journal, as it seems to me, has the paramount duty of keeping its NEWS untinctured by proprietorial or editorial opinion. If the modern reader, who so often reads nothing else, cannot rely on the absolute truth of the news he reads, he has no foundation for the formation of that individual judgment which is the rock basis of a sound democracy. It follows that all newspaper proprietors and editors who allow personal prejudice to colour NEWS, either by way of perversion or suppression, are guilty of a breach of trust. The colour and opinions of a journal should be confined strictly to its editorial and contributional columns. This is such a platitude that, like most platitudes, it runs the risk of being richly neglected."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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APPEAL FOR PLAYING FIELDS

"SIR, The Duke of York’s appeal for a cool million to provide playing fields for all who haven’t got them is what schoolboys call ‘a great scheme.’"

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

Galsworthy is again astounding, in setting down his thought in reply to a letter asking for his philosophy of life.

"Philosophically, all I can perceive about life is this: There are two Principles — the Principle of Unity and the Principle of Variety — at work in an universe that never had a beginning and will never have an end."

But he fails to quite comprehend what he's realised, or fails to comes to terms with the fact of having gone far beyond the faith imposed in growing years, and attempts to reconcile his realisation with the church teaching, by bringing in the holy ghost and co.!

"I think most modern unrest and despair come from the gradual discovery (speeded up of late) that there are no definite rewards or hopes to be had out of the future. All teaching and philosophy have dwelt on the future — and the future has gone phut. ... "

Whether he fails to realise it, or to admit it, is unclear; but tacitly being as much of an empire man as he was, and therefore racist, often not very subtle, he failed to admit that it wasn't about faith, but Perception, and the culture England was trying to smash to smithereens for sake of looting and enslaving it, had the treasure of knowledge that Europe had lost chances of finding, centuries ago when roman empire transformation into church took place.

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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ON PIT PONIES

"IF it be said in answer to this letter that it is no more desirable for human beings than for animals to have to spend their lives underground and that what men can put up with, animals well may — I reply: Men have at all events some choice in the matter, and they do spend half the week at least on the surface. Further, they will surely not contend that the fact of having, themselves, to suffer from the unnatural conditions of their lives, constitutes a reason for causing animals any unnecessary suffering. Such a contention would be against both reason and generosity. My plea from first to last is not against necessary, but against unnecessary suffering, which we all desire to see reduced to its irreducible minimum."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE

"The Times. February, 1914."

Galsworthy writes about

"Sweating of women workers. Insufficient feeding of children.

"Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life — as mean a thing as can well be done.

"Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.

"Consignment of paupers (that is of those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor, the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.

"Export of horses worn-out in work for Englishmen — save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.

"Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies that would drive men, so treated, crazy.

"Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life, the jewel above price.

"Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by obsolete methods that none but the interested defend.

"Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our gentlewomen."

He goes further to say

"One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of Parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. Almost any one of them is productive of more suffering to innocent and helpless creatures, human or not, and probably of more secret harm to our spiritual life, more damage to human nature, than, for example, the admission or rejection of Tariff Reform, the Disestablishment or preservation of the Welsh Church, I would almost say than the granting or non-granting of Home Rule — questions that sop up ad infinitum the energies, the interest, the time of those we elect and pay to manage our business.

In mentioning "granting or non-granting of Home Rule" - presumably to India - and citing it as unimportant, however, he's exposing the racism that's consequence of empire mindset.

"And I say it is rotten that, for mere want of Parliamentary interest and time, we cannot have manifest and stinking sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body.""

He's aware of the absurdity, but defends it.

"It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the sense of proportion and humour in daring to compare the Home Rule Bill with the caging of wild song birds. But if the tale of hours spent on the former since the last new thing was said on both sides be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on the latter, the mocker will yet be mocked."

And he fails to see that denying Home Rule with inadequate arguments was due to Brits being unwilling to stop looting India, while it's defenders coukdnt say anything more!

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

"In fine, I think civilisation not yet ripe for so sweeping a change. There is some semblance of dignity in taking life for life by a swift act. There is none in slowly squeezing the life of the murderer away.

"But with all my heart I do advocate the abolition of hanging and the guillotine. Let the murderer have the chance of putting a cup of laudanum to his own lips; and, if he will not, let him be sent from amongst us without an act of butchery degrading to our best instincts."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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POLITICAL ATTITUDE

"MY DEAR MADAM, Thank you for your charming letter. I am politically a free lance, and must remain so. That carries with it the penalty of not presuming to patronise or lecture those gathered together in any camp."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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REVEILLE

"July, 1918.

"DEAR MR. S., I am sending you for review a copy of Reveille the Government’s Quarterly, devoted to disabled sailors and soldiers (once called Recalled to Life and now renamed and reconstituted) of which I’m now editor. It’s published on August 8th. ... The Government publishes Reveille, and neither editors nor contributors are paid. It’s pure National Work, and I know you will feel that it’s very necessary."

But again, colonizing racism of his empire mindset comes forth in an unnecessary slight in the reference to India.

"And I did seem to notice in America that there was a good deal of space and not much time, and that without too great danger of becoming Yogis people might perhaps sit down a little longer in front of things than they seemed to do."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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HARMONY — RELIGION

"What juts out too far from the point of Harmony, of Balance, ceases to exist."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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REMUNERATION

"June 3rd.

"DEAR MR. B., I think the enclosed has been sent in error. I did not wish for any remuneration for my two articles on “The Labour Unrest.” I prefer never to take payment for writing letters or articles on matters of public interest. Will you therefore kindly cancel the cheque, which I return."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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RESEARCH

There's a grain of logic, much muddled thinking, and huge quantity of arrogance here, when he equates novelists with scientists.

"Dec. 3rd, 1929."

" ... I hope you will forgive me for claiming that the pursuit of knowledge is not confined to scientists; it is even practised by such as novelists who seek knowledge of the human mind. Some novelists believe (I fancy) that they may do anything, however below the belt, which will give them knowledge. I do not agree with them. Some journalists believe that they may violate every decency for the sake of knowledge. Again I do not agree with them. Coming to science itself: Chemists — under the plea “at all costs we must find out everything” are developing poison gas to such an extent that if — which God forbid, but man will probably not — there come another war, the human race, or that part of it involved, will cease to (dis)grace the earth. My point is that this “Pursuit of Knowledge” has been advanced by certain interested sections of mankind, till it has become for them an inviolable fetish instead of what it really is: a rule of conduct serviceable to life as a whole. ... "

Really, Galsworthy, to put quotation marks around “Pursuit of Knowledge” as if it were a trashy phrase elevated only for fashion! Where would he be if his novels had to by in form of stone tablets?

" ... You yourself are admitting that, when you say that “no experiments ought to be done at all that involve needless or severe suffering.” I feel that there is no more dangerous fetish now being worshipped than this “knowledge at all costs” doctrine. In every branch of life there must be rules suitable to human nature at its then state of development, to keep conduct within bounds. ... "

Would he feel that way, if someone he loved needed surgical procedure to save life, and he had to sign away all his objections to scientific experiments before the surgery could commence? Or worse, if he were required to sign refusing benefits of all scientific developments and experiments to his loved once, in perpetuity ?

" ... But for this I see no reason whatever why a novelist should not seduce a girl of fifteen or torture his mother-in-law that he may have increased knowledge of the human soul to give the world (except that fortunately he would be quodded for it). Some vivisectors would not hesitate to inflict the most horrible tortures in the name of their fetish, if the law did not forbid it; and even under such prohibition as there is one cannot but feel that a good deal of lingering suffering is inflicted; and I am quite certain that the number of experiments permitted is indefensibly great."

And he's writing all this, knowing he couldn't possibly comprehend Einstein's work!

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

" ... It is this superiority which dogs religious forms, this placing before the ordinary man forms which we ourselves do not at heart believe in, that revolts me. And further, I am sure that the ordinary man does not really want these forms, these symbols. It is a profound and very wide mistake to think he does. He wants the ginger-bread without the gilt. He wants his own most decent and fine instinct to be glorified, made glamorous, and he will only get this from watching and being infected by the ideals of chivalry and humanity practically exemplified in the lives around him. ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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SOCIALISM

"January 24th, 1910.

"DEAR SIR, By what process of reasoning or right you call me a Socialist I do not know. As a matter of fact I am not one. ... "

"As to the House of Lords, I have no feeling against them for rejecting the Budget. I merely think that it is bad for the country that there should be a second Chamber which is composed, for the very great majority, of men, who are bound by their interests, upbringing, and convictions always to be on the side of the Conservative party. I do not blame them for following their convictions, I merely state what I regard as an unfair and harmful state of things. ... "

"I fear that our ideas on such subjects will never tally, and so with all good feeling, I will ask you to be so kind as not to continue this correspondence, which will only vex us both."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

" ... This power of mopping up all subconscious knowledge and having a sort of free access to the subconscious store of the world, and the power of reproducing it more or less coherently, may be — as it seems to me — the mediumistic gift; that, and that only."

How does Galsworthy plan to prove the part consisting of the last two words, without a faith that no other possibilities existed?

"Knowing you, I should say yours was one of the most striking instances I ever read, but I don’t think it disposes of that possible explanation."

Yes, that "I don’t think it disposes of that possible explanation." attitude is used mostly one way by most of a non-scientist bent, often enough even if they technically and professionally work in science - because it's far easier to flow with fashion of the time, even in thinking, than to be vigorous about scientific standards applied to one's thinking at all times.

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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CRITICISM OF “SAINT’S PROGRESS”

"I very seldom (practically never) use an incident out of real life, just as it was, in my books, because if one does, for some reason known I expect to critics, it always appears untrue. The incident you allude to, however, happened, exactly as described, to my wife. It was she, not Noel, who took the poor charwoman in to the swell chemists in Regent Street with half a dozen swell women there, and a sympathetic young chemist almost ashamed of his sympathy, because of the looks on the faces of his clients, and this in 1916. ... But that is just it with human nature and society in all generations — our own as much as others — first impressions and quick natural repugnances guide conduct because too often there isn’t time to recover from them. I think if you were to use your eyes and nose and feelers generally, as novelists have to do, you would discover that under superficial difference human nature changes hardly at all, wars or no wars, revolutions or no revolutions, age in age out; and that the great majority of the well-washed (angels always excepted) revolt from the unwashed."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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TWO MINUTES’ SILENCE

"I HAVE never seen so swift a “fall” as this year. One night of frost and the leaves turned gold; one tearing gale and half of them were scattered. Now they lie in drifts on the grass and the elms are bare. Armistice Day comes when it should; it commemorates a “fall” even swifter and more complete. The life of man is three score years and ten; in four short years fell the flower of a generation."

" ... Nine million others fell because they too served the faith within them. And they fell because the world went mad. It had indulged the thought of madness so long, that madness came as fruit comes from blossom; so madness will come again if the thought of it be indulged.

"Not in the same way will it come; not with the long drawn-out death of young men. It will come swiftly, indiscriminately, falling as a murrain from the sky on all alike; on men, on women, children and the sick; on every form of culture and everything that we with long labour have made beautiful. Under it will die religion and art, comfort and security."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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SEX IN FICTION

" ... It is, I am beginning to understand, desperately difficult for men to realise that in women a general capacity for love and sensual pleasure may go hand in hand with a violent repulsion to the touch of one particular man. There is a tendency apparently in all men to take such aversions on the part of women almost to heart — almost personally — it is the thick-skinned conceit of the male animal, I suppose, that accounts for this. ... "

"I am by no means deficient in appreciation of sense — tout au contraire as the Frenchman said when asked if he had lunched on the Channel boat. But appreciation of sense, and toleration of sense satisfied on one side at the expense of another are not quite the same thing; ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

"WHO is the most tragic figure in World-history?

"“The Unknown Soldier,” in his millions from all time. Because he has no say in his own fate."

How does anyone prove That? Who is to decide that just because someone is an average person in status, that person has no say in one's fate, and is forced by those stationed above, ordering the said fate?

For that matter, who did control their own fate between 1913 and 1920? Nicholas and Alexandra?

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Galsworthy on one of his top concerns, dealt with more than once in his essays and so forth.

"AN OPEN LETTER TO THE HOME SECRETARY

"The Nation. May 8th, 1909."

"Now, Sir, in regard to the object of solitary confinement we have surely no need to go behind the finding of your Committee:

"“It would appear that the main object of the separate” (closed cell) “confinement had come to be deterrence.... In effect this is the purpose which it must be regarded as now designed to serve.”

"In regard to its nature we have, as surely, no need of other description than its supporter’s, the late Sir Edmund Du Cane’s: “An artificial state of existence absolutely opposed to that which Nature points out as the condition of mental, moral, and physical health.”

"The questions arising, then, are two:

"(a) — Is this practice of solitary confinement, in fact, deterrent?

"(b) — Has a civilised nation the right to retain offenders for months in a state of existence absolutely opposed to mental, moral, and physical health, even for the purpose of deterrence?"

He goes into it at length, as usual.

" ... With regard to those who either in penal servitude or in hard labour sentences, have already undergone solitary confinement, it is to be noted that mere severity of punishment has never been proved to be a factor of deterrence. ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THEISM AND HUMANISM

"It may interest you to hear, crudely set forth, what a very different type of mind from that of the theologian and philosopher, makes of what is at best an inscrutable mystery."

"In short, God is within us, within the trees, the birds, and inanimate matter — within everything. And there is no God outside us."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

" ... I point out that whereas you, from my writing, have formed some (probably erroneous) opinion that you wish to communicate with me in correspondence I have no means of deciding whether I wish to communicate with you. ... that there is no such thing as absolute truth; ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE PUBLICS TASTE IN LITERATURE

"I THINK that the state — whatever it may be — of the public’s literary appetite has no connection whatever with the production of imaginative literature of high quality. The imaginative writer who counts is a man with a heart, a soul, and a brain, and is never created by the demand for him. I do not, therefore, think that it matters what the public taste for the moment may be."

So much for his support of women's suffrage! He's wiped out of existence all writers not male, of his time and before, by restricting himself to "The imaginative writer who counts is a man ", "demand for him", and at the very least women writers are as invisible to his mind as those of Arab ruled world are to males in general. Jane Austen, Bronte sisters, George Eliot, George Sand, .... Agatha Christie! That's just in Europe, too!

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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HONEST THINKING AND TRUE REPORT

"Words are actions in an age when words reach, as they do now, millions of minds which have no means of testing them. False words, and reckless words, are treacheries. It takes all sorts to make a world, and the honest thought of every temperament is welcome, if spoken and written with sobriety, in no mean mood. But in manipulated news and argument, or in sentimental riot, lies the most deadly danger to mankind."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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LITTLE THEATRES

Galsworthy really thought well of himself, categorizing his self as a playwright with Shaw and Strindberg!

"November 14th, 1927.

"I HAVE always wished ‘Little Theatres’ well. And this is natural because, take them all round, they are good to what I may call the ‘illegitimate’ dramatist, such as Shaw, Strindberg, and myself — dramatists who have broken with tradition, and taken liberties with the Box Office. Besides, there is a kind of gallantry about ‘Little Theatres’ — they rush in where the angels fear to tread. ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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SOCIAL UNREST

" ... You will not find, I think, in the whole of my writings one single sneer or carp at true sympathy, love, or tolerance. ... "

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

" ... War is (for England) a hateful expedient to avoid an even more hateful end. A very commonplace view, you see."

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August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

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VIVISECTION OF DOGS

Galsworthy responding to a letter about vivisection.

"I have no hostility to science — none. On the contrary. There comes however a balancing point where the spirit must be considered, and it is quite obvious, I think, that those investigators who are wedded to the vivisection of dogs have either not sufficient belief in the value of their discoveries or not sufficient love of mankind to undergo any personal sacrifice for the sake of their convictions. And if they have not, I deny their right to sacrifice our comrade the dog. Considering that one experiment on the living human body would be worth five hundred on the bodies of dogs, we may fairly assume no extravagant faith, or no extravagant love, on vivisectors’ part.

"Yes, my dog was — he is dead now — a prime factor in my life. In talking of ‘good faith’ I notice that you merely deny my contention, that when faith exists (as it exists in the dog) faith ought to be kept on the part of man, who has deliberately implanted that faith in his partner.

"Yes, I would consider that the lemur should be subjected to vivisection sooner than the dog — between lemur and man there is no faith, no love. There is no faith, no love between any other animal and man, save possibly the horse — to some extent; and the elephant, both of which are fortunately too expensive."

It all sounds natural, logical, except this - there is only verbal difference of expression here, between what Galsworthy says regarding canines, and anyone describing how India feels about cattle.

To label West's emotional attachments to their pets - canine, feline - or animals regularly used - horses, mules, etc. - as natural, faithful, and so on, while branding an agricultural ancient culture in tropical lands as superstitious or unimportant or worse, is merely racism steeped in ignorance.

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And the following applies equally to any injury caused to cattle for benefit to humans, including slaughter for food.

" ... And admitting my contention that the dog has earned for himself a consideration from man analogous in kind to that which man has for his own species it would follow that if we approve of cutting up and inoculating the dog, not for his individual benefit, but for our benefit and for that of his fellow dogs, we must also approve of cutting up and inoculating our children and ourselves, not for our individual benefit, but for the benefit of the race, especially having regard to the immeasurably more direct results which science would secure from vivisections and inoculations on the human body. ... "

As does this -

"My plea being simply that men cannot make friends of dogs and then treat them as if that relationship did not exist, I am not concerned to discuss the disputed question of whether or no benefit does arise from experiments on dogs; ... "

He's described the relationship with dogs in detail, but most of the West (and others not of India) quite ignore the relationship born of humanity's regular dependence on dairy food consumption after stopping breastfeeding of babyhood; this ignoring is not from ignorance, but deliberate pushing it aside, both from craziness of ingratitude to another species, and a vicious subconscious following Macaulay policy of breaking down the spirit of India, so as to benefit by her demise.

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Again, following applies to cattle, with substitution of slaughter for vivisection.

"After all, we have not only bodies but spirits, and when our minds have once become alive to ethical doubt on a question such as this — (there are 870,000 signatures to a Petition for the total exemption of dogs from vivisection) — when we are no longer sure that we have the right so to treat our dog comrades, there has fallen a shadow on the human conscience that will surely grow, until, by adjustment of our actions to our ethical sense, it has been remedied."

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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ON WRITING

Galsworthy responds to letters from various people, about his writing.

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" ... I do not even believe that a man can select from out of, as it were, his temperament, the particular forces driving him to write. He writes with his whole nature, made up of a thousand currents and cross-currents of feeling, philosophy, and aspiration. He writes to express, to body forth a kind of mirrored reflection of this very complex thing, himself. I do not know that I have ever even analysed myself in this respect, and I think it would be bad for me to begin now. There is something destructive in a cut-and-dried examination of the creative process; that bird is shy enough at all times, and might cease suddenly to lay any eggs if it were subjected to too much scrutiny.

"Then again you ask me: ‘Does the modern novelist exercise any appreciable influence on national evolution?’ I have no doubt that he exercises a vast influence, but I have a doubt whether that influence is appreciable. I mean that nothing perhaps is more intricate and subtle, and less capturable for the purpose of weighing in the scales, than the shafts of thought and feeling which go out into the minds of the readers of fiction. It is as if a man, passing down a street, were to try and gather in his hands all the reflections and feelings he has gained from what he has seen, felt, heard, and smelt, during that passage. The reader of fiction passes down the streets of imaginary life — who knows what he gathers, and what he lets go by? The novel is the most pliant and far-reaching medium of communication between minds (that is, it can be), just because it does not preach, but supplies pictures and evidence from which each reader may take that food which best suits his growth. It is the great fertilizer, the quiet fertilizer of people’s imagination. You cannot appreciate and weigh the influence it has, except in the case of novels frankly propagandist, which, paradoxical as it may seem, have (in my opinion) the least real influence. To alter a line of action is nothing like so important as to alter or enlarge a point of view over life, a mood of living. Such enlargement is only attained by those temperamental expressions which we know as works of art, and not as treatises in fiction-form. The purpose of all art is revelation and delight, and that particular form of art, the novel, supplies revelation in, I think, the most secret, thorough, and subtle form — revelation browsed upon, brooded over, soaked up into the fibre of the mind and conscience. ... "

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" .. I think my first advice to you would be: Don’t be in a hurry to get into print. Unless a man has lived and felt and experienced and generally found out what life means, he has nothing to say that’s worth hearing. Writers generally begin too young, and very few who begin very young come to anything.

"It’s not a question of learning to write, it’s a question of having a real philosophy and something to say worth saying."

" ... Learn French well and read Prosper Merimée and Maupassant (say three years hence); their economy of words and clearness is wonderful. Read Anatole France also three years hence. Read the Russian Turgenev (Constance Garnett’s translation, Wm. Heinemann), not for his style, because it suffers in translation, but for the way he sees human life, and constructs his stories. Read Walter Pater and Stevenson, but beware of their tendency to preciosity. Read Dickens, and Samuel Butler. Practise writing verse; it helps towards a good prose style. ... "

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" ... The essence of a scientific discovery, as of a psychological discovery, is the expression of it; the mustering and shaping of the evidence to the conviction of the reader. Express, there - fore, and be great! If the world won’t be convinced to-day it doesn’t follow that it won’t be convinced in plenty of time for you to be buried in Westminster Abbey. There are no short cuts to greatness anyway; and I don’t see how any man can express another man’s idea. Even a scientific thought must be apparelled by the thinker.

"As to the idea itself — it may be all you say — I am no scientist; but neither I nor anyone else can even begin to express an opinion of any value until you have supplied us with the concrete body of it."
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" ... My method is purely negative — because I personally so hate to have a thing rammed down my throat. I so hate to put any compulsion, and so fundamentally believe in people doing things of their own accord — and therefore I am rarely, if ever, credited with the desire to diffuse peace and good will, and mutual tolerance and understanding, by which alone is there any salvation for society; all the same, if you read me in the light of this, you will see that I am always showing up the evil of the reverse — the only way open to one of my temperament. I cannot preach the direct lesson — moreover I think no artist should."

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"DEAR MRS. D., I began reading your friend’s manuscript last night: and I have corrected the first chapter, as an object lesson in style. From this the authoress will get various hints, if she cares to compare as she goes along. By the time I had finished that chapter I discovered the identity of the chief character, and I don’t feel that I can go on reading the MS. after what you have told me, having a slight acquaintanceship with the original. So I’m returning it, unread except for the prologue and first chapter. Your friend has this to consider: Does she wish to become an artist, or does she merely wish to ventilate her case? I am only interested if the first is her wish. If that be the case, she should, by altering locality, nickname, appearance, etc., disguise the individual. She should also look on him not as an individual but as a type. ... I can hardly judge from what I have read whether she has real talent but I think it possible."

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" ... I make a maximum use of what few things I do observe, or rather of what few things get through my eyes into my feelings; and I try to reject all observation that does not bear on character and theme. ... "

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" ... To get rid of the commonplace without employing the extravagant or violent is to achieve ‘quality’ — the commonplace and the extravagant are both easy — that and that alone is why they always lack quality, which simply means the eschewing of the path of least resistance. ... "

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"I read the story you sent. I should call it felicitous and false. For the purpose of what you want to know it is probably lucky that it is that way rather than the opposite. You have (for your age) a considerable glibness, cleanness in the use of words — good! Only this is in itself for you a great danger, because you will never do what you want to do, until you write with your feelings, testing every word for truth to yourself and to life. And the rush of words which is evidently natural to you tends to make you spin out, what you have not felt and tested for truth. I recommend you to read the Russians, especially Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Tchekov ... and de Maupassant’s novel Pierre et Jean, in the French with its preface. ... The chief failing of the American mind, I think, is a love for short cuts. There are no short cuts to Art. It is all sheer hard work of the brain, but above all of the spirit. You cannot make what is worth reading out of what was not worth feeling or seeing. Don’t be in a hurry to write — write because you must. ... "

"Again, don’t despair, but go at it quietly, resolutely, and burn what you’re not satisfied with — and don’t let your facility, and all that it means, ruin your sincerity. And the best of good fortune to you."

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

"The militants have placed the whole movement in a position of stalemate, and there I’m afraid it will remain.

"They affect to despise Churchill’s speech; but Churchill’s speech to anyone sufficiently impartial to see coolly, exactly sums up the psychology of the situation. You are not going to convert this nation of rude sober-headed men of property — for they all, potentially, own women — into Don Quixotes or even into fair-minded men, by throwing bits of iron at their leaders. It will be worse when the Conservatives come in. ... Force is only of use when it is real force, when it gives the impression that behind it there is a latent incalculable driving power that will, if it be not assuaged, suddenly come into being and carry everything away. The latent incalculable driving force in this Woman’s question, is the great haunting idea of Justice unfulfilled — slow and sure. ... They were driven to militancy because the Press would not report them. The Press is to be captured by the movement apart from militancy, now."

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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WELFARE CENTRES

"The mere male novelist who takes pen to write on infants awaits the polished comment: “He knows nothing of the subject — rubbish, pure rubbish!” One must run that risk."

" ... I have wondered sometimes if it is worth while to save the babies, seeing the conditions they often have to face as grown men and women. But that, after all, would be to throw up the sponge, which is not the part of a Briton. ... "

" ... I would remind readers that there is no great country where effort is half so much needed as here; we are nearly twice as town and slum ridden as any other people; have grown to be further from Nature and more feckless about food; we have damper air to breathe, and less sun to disinfect us. ... "

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"You who wear jewels, with few exceptions, are or will be mothers — you ought to know. To help your own children you would strip yourselves. But the test is the giving for children not one’s own. Beneath all flaws, fatuities, and failings, this, I solemnly believe, is the country of the great-hearted. I believe that the women of our race, before all women, have a sense of others. They will not fail the test.

"Into the twilight of the world are launched each year these myriads of tiny ships. Under a sky of cloud and stars they grope out to the great waters and the great winds — little sloops of life, on whose voyaging the future hangs. They go forth blind, feeling their way. Mothers, and you who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their chance, bless them with a gem — light their lanterns with your jewels!"

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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STATE OF THE WORLD

It's undated, and completely unclear when this was written.

"NEWSPAPERS and films coat the world with a very delusive surface. Judge from this surface and you’d think the world was deteriorating.

"Underneath this surface I believe the world is improving. There is quicker apprehension, wider comprehension, more sense of other people, and a more humane attitude to life than there has ever yet been. But then I am well known to be a pessimist."

Before WWI, perhaps there were reasons to believe this; it might have been so for a few years shortly after, too.

But after 1929? With fascism rising in central Europe, and Italy?

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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LIVERPOOL ZOO PROJECT

"Liverpool Post and Mercury. July 1929.

"PROPOSALS to establish a zoo in Liverpool, which have from time to time been the subject of much controversy, are criticised by Mr. John Galsworthy, the novelist and playwright, in a letter to the Daily Post.

"There have been two recent moves for a zoo. In 1926 a committee was formed at a Town Hall meeting, but their plans fell through when the Council refused to grant a site on the Otterspool estate.

"Last year Mr. H. E. Rogers, the Liverpool naturalist and animal importer announced his intention of establishing a zoo at Mossley Hill to house 500 species of animals."

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" ... And following on the actual capture and the miseries of getting the animal or bird to the zoo, is the lifelong confinement of creatures to whom liberty means as much as it does to men. Indeed, I would say more, because man has mind, and adaptability which mind gives."

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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MR. GALSWORTHY AND ZOOS

"“It is true that the beast if left in freedom, will have the rough and tumble of life to encounter, and may die of it; so may and do any of us who are left to the free competition of life’s turmoil; but is there any one of us — even Mr. Rogers — who can lay his hand on his heart and say that he would rather be nicely looked after in prison? If Mr. Rogers answers: ‘You are not an animal and cannot know whether captivity that galls a man galls an animal,’ I reply, ‘Neither, sir, are you an animal and cannot know that it does not.’ But anyone who owns a dog or cat knows that a shut door is its pet abomination. Shut up your dog or cat for even a few days, if you have the heart to do so, in a small space, and then watch it when it is let loose. You will have no further doubt as to whether an animal sets store by freedom. And dogs and cats have lost half the roaming instinct of wild creatures.

"“That zoos mean a half-dead state to many beasts and birds is, I repeat, just the common sense of the matter. Of course, there are zoos and zoos, and the zoo that Mr. Rogers is interested in may be a very advanced specimen, but the principle of the zoo is only the principle of the travelling animal menagerie (or wild beast show), and of the caged wild bird, stabilised, canonised, and, of course, vastly improved on. ... "

" ... Further, I remain convinced from my own feelings in my unthinking youth and from the popularity of zoos with children — who are not remarkable for clamouring to be educated — that the real force behind the existence of zoos and menageries is the spectacular amusement that they afford and not their educational value.

"“Mr. Rogers says that zoos are in existence everywhere and therefore holy; so was slavery once in existence everywhere and regarded as a divine institution. And that brings me to this: I understand (though I detest) the attitude of mind: ‘These are only beasts and birds, and we men are entitled to imprison and exploit them for our instruction or amusement without considering whether they like it or not,’ but honestly I cannot understand the attitude: ‘I love the living creatures of the world, and because of my interest in them I may treat them as I should hate to be treated myself.’ It comes to this. People do not, or will not, realise that liberty is as vital to the happiness of most beasts and birds as it is to ourselves."

" ... He is mistaken in thinking I should object to the destruction for protective purposes of destructive animals. I have no such objection. My objection is to their imprisonment not for our protection, but for our instruction or amusement. If we are to condemn animals or birds to suffering because Nature has made them get their living by preying on other creatures, what should we not do with ourselves, who get our living in precisely the same way? ... "

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

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July 31, 2021 - August 04, 2021.

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS,

by John Galsworthy.

Hardcover

Published January 1st 1937

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00284TZPC

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The Criticism

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This is remaining part of Complete Works of John Galsworthy - Delphi Classics, by John Galsworthy, after having finished with writings of John Galsworthy. .

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JOHN GALSWORTHY: AN APPRECIATION

by Peter Thomason

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"AN outstanding feature of Galsworthy’s work, both as novelist and playwright, is his sense of balance and of form; linked with this is a profound and shrewd power of penetration."

"A large part of Galsworthy’s work deals with people of leisure, their drama being essentially psychological, not so much the struggle of character against circumstance as the inner strife and reaction of human relationships. But he has also handled working-class characters with remarkable success, not only village types but city crowds and downtrodden, out-of-sight, submerged souls like Mrs. Jones, the charwoman, in his play The Silver Box, or Mrs. Hughes in Fraternity. Still, his work as a whole is chiefly a masterly unveiling of the people we see in the stalls of a theatre. In this respect he fills a place of his own among the writers of to-day."

"As an artist Galsworthy has made an extraordinary advance. Some writers produce a vivid personal work, a masterpiece perhaps quite early, and never reach that level of expression again. Galsworthy is not among these, he found himself gradually."

"In The Man of Property we have the perfectly balanced work of an artist who has found himself, mastered his tools, and come into his own. The book has backbone, its theme and its characters depend on each other and make each other. The writing of it has the fine restraint of real mastery, and also that pervading subtle sense of “personality” which hall-marks a great artist. The novel portrays the upper middle class in England towards the end of the last century, a protected class whose prosperity was founded on its sense of property. Into this close circle he introduces the intangible spirit of beauty — a woman, Irene, Soames Forsyte’s wife. It is her drama, caught and caged by the man of property, and his — trying to possess what he cannot possess, trying to own the heart and soul of another as he owns his dividends, and in despite trying to hold a body when love has fled."

" ... In Chancery, a continuation to The Man of Property, we have the artist in full perfection again, on his own ground, in his own particular vein, and rendering his story as no one else could render it, because it issues, as it were, from the very spirit of his art.

"There follow To Let and the two short studies, Indian Summer of a Forsyte and Awakening, making up the work named The Forsyte Saga.

"Indian Summer of a Forsyte (first published in “Five Tales”) is written with a special tenderness and charm; it epitomises the passing of an age, the age of balance and form and golden leisure. With the death of old Jolyon, the best of that age seems to pass.

"In Chancery is vigorous and exciting and full of fine touches of satire. The “man of property,” Soames Forsyte, and his wife, Irene, have been living apart; but now Soames wants a child to inherit his property; he would marry again. We see his efforts to obtain what he feels to be justice, and the painfulness of our system of rendering justice; and then we see that deep-rooted instinct to hold what is his, mastering even his own interest. He comes in contact with Irene (whom he is seeking to divorce) and, seeing her, wants her back: why should she escape and go to his cousin, who loves her and is willing to rescue her?

"Awakening is a study of a child’s mind. The Forsyte Saga has advanced another step on its march; this is the child of Irene and young Jolyon, and it is the “awakening” to beauty of this gay yet thoughtful little boy; a child’s crisis that is caught and crystallised for us.

"To Let gives the next generation on the threshold of life; the little boy grown to a shy, loving-hearted, sensitive young man, not in the least a prig but really and truly human, one of the most lovable characters in fiction; and we see the child of Soames’ second marriage, a girl, fascinating, provocative, full of the restless longings of modern youth, but with the fundamental Forsyte instinct of possession, and the added hardness of a new age with its self-will and egoism. To Let is the poignant love-story of these two young people separated by the family feud.

"The White Monkey, which continues the Forsyte chronicles with the life of Soames’ daughter to-day, is a very wonderful instance of the way in which a great artist assimilates the spirit of the times. One critic was grieved to find “modern slang” in a Galsworthy novel, but the very fact that this same writer who caught the measured pulse of the last days of the Victorian era so truly, has also caught the rapid pulse of modernism, and has given us a novel reflecting the very heart and mind and mood of youth among a certain class in post-war London, is an immense achievement.

"The Forsyte books as a whole make an epic in English fiction. They are full of humorous and satirical (as well as tragic and beautiful) character studies. Who can forget the portly “Swithin,” or the anxious, long-legged “James,” or the old Aunts, for that matter? And who can forget “Montague Dartie,” the very human “bounder” who married “Winifred,” Soames’ sister? One sees “Monty” for ever with that carnation in his buttonhole, and one doesn’t forget that homecoming, after his wild flutter, or the revealing touch of the cracked shoe! There are also young people besides the two I have mentioned at length: serious, grey-eyed “Holly” with a special charm of her own, and “Jolly” who perished in the South African war; and then “Val Dartie,” and “Michael Mont” — a character who “develops” very considerably."

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JOHN GALSWORTHY by Joseph Conrad

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" ... And the reader of Mr. Galsworthy’s latest volume of fiction, whether in accord or in difference with the author’s view of his subject, would feel that he had read a book.

"Beyond that impression one perceives how difficult it is to get critical hold of Mr. Galsworthy’s work. He gives you to opening. Defending no obvious thesis, setting up no theory, offering no cheap panacea, appealing to no naked sentiment, the author of “The Man of Property” disdains also the effective device of attacking insidiously the actors of his own drama, or rather of his dramatic comedy. This is because he does not write for effect, though his writing will be found effective enough for all that. This book is of a disconcerting honesty, backed by a discouraging skill. There is not a single phrase in it written for the sake of its cleverness. Not one. Light of touch, though weighty in feeling, it gives the impression of verbal austerity, or a willed moderation of thought. The passages of high literary merit, so uniformity sustained as to escape the notice of the reader, expose the natural and logical development of the story with a purposeful progression which is primarily satisfying to the intelligence, and ends by stirring the emotions. In the essentials of matter and treatment it is a book of today. Its critical spirit and its impartial method are meant for a humanity which has outgrown the stage of fairy tales, realistic, romantic or even epic. F

or the fairy tale, be it not ungratefully said, has walked the earth in many unchallenged disguises, and lingers amongst us to this day wearing, sometimes, amazingly heavy clothes. It lingers; and even it lingers with some assurance. Mankind has come of age, but the successive generations still demand artlessly to be amazed, moved and amused. Certain forms of innocent fun will never grow old, I suppose. But the secret of the long life of the fairy tale consists mainly in this, I suspect: that it is amusing to the writer thereof."

" ... Mr. Galsworthy selects for the subject-matter of his book the Family, an institution which has been with us as long, I should think, as the oldest and the least venerable pattern of fairy tale. As Mr. Galsworthy, however, is no theorist but an observer, it is a definite kind of family that falls under his observation. It is the middle-class family; and even with more precision, as we are warned in the sub-title, an upper middle-class family anywhere at large in space and time, but a family, if not exactly of today, then of only last evening, so to say. Thus at the outset we are far removed from the vagueness of the traditional “once upon a time in a far country there was a king,” which somehow always manages to peep through the solemn disguises of fairy tales masquerading as novels with and without purpose. The Forsytes walk the pavement of London and own some of London’s houses.

"They wish to own more; they wish to own them all. And maybe they will. Time is on their side. The Forsytes never die — so Mr. Galsworthy tells us, while we watch them assembling in old Jolyson Forsyte’s drawing room on the occasion of June Forsyte’s engagement of Mr. Bosinney, incidentally an architect and an artist, but, by the only definition that matters, a man of no property whatever.

"A family is not at first sight an alarming phenomenon. But Mr. Galsworthy looks at the Forsytes with the individual vision of a novelist seeking his inspiration amongst the realities of this earth. He points out to us this family’s formidable character as unit of society, as a reproduction in miniature of society itself. It is made formidable, he says, by the cohesion of its members (between whom there need not exist either affection or even sympathy) upon a concrete point, the possession of property."

" ... In their sense of property the Forsytes establish the consciousness of their right and the promise of their duration. It is an instinct, a primitive instinct. The practical faculty of the Forsytes has erected it into a principle; their idealism has expanded it into a sort of religion which has shaped their notions of happiness and decency, their prejudices, their piety, such thoughts as they happen to have and the very course of their passions. Life as a whole has come to be perceptible to them exclusively in terms of property. Preservation, acquisition — acquisition, preservation. Their laws, their morality, their art and their science appear to them, justifiably enough, consecrated to that double and unique end. It is the formula of their virtue.

"In this world o’f Forsytes (who never die) organized in view of acquiring and preserving property, Mr. Galsworthy (who is no inventor of didactic fairy tales) places with the sure instinct of a novelist a man and a woman who are no Forsytes, it is true, but whom he presents as in no sense the declared adversaries of the great principle of property. They only happen to disregard it. And this is a crime. They are simply two people to whom life speaks imperatively in terms of love. And this is enough to establish their irreconcilable antagonism and to precipitate their unavoidable fate. Deprived naturally and suddenly of the support of laws and morality, of all human countenance, and even, in a manner of speaking, of the consolations of religion, they find themselves miserably crushed, both the woman and the man. And the principle of property is vindicated. The woman being the weaker, it is in her case vindicated with consummate cruelty. For a peculiar cowardice is one of the characteristics of this great and living principle. Strong in the worship of so many thousands and the possession of so many millions, it starts with affright at the slightest challenge, it trembles before mere indifference, it directs its heaviest blows at the disinherited who should appear weakest in its sight. Irene’s fate is made unspeakably atrocious, no less — but nothing more. ... "

" ... I myself, for instance, am not so sure of Bosinney’s tragedy. But this hesitation of my mind, for which the author may not be wholly responsible after all, need only be mentioned and no more, in the face of his considerable achievement."

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A GLANCE AT TWO BOOKS by Joseph Conrad

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"I have been reading two books in English which have attracted a good deal of intelligent attention, but neither seems to have been considered as attentively as they might have been from this point of view. The one, The Island Pharisees,” by Mr. John Galsworthy, is a very good example of the national novel; the other, “Green Mansions,” by Mr. W.H. Hudson, is a proof that love, the pure love of rendering the external aspects of things, can exists side by side with the national novel in English letters.

"Mr. Galsworthy’s hero in ‘The Island Pharisees,” during his pilgrimage right across the English social system, asks himself: “Why? Why is not the world better? Why are we all humburgs? Why is the social system so out of order?” And he gets no answer to his questions, for, indeed, in his mood no answer is possible, neither is an answer needed for the absolute value of the book. Shelton is dissatisfied with his own people, who are good people, with artists, whose “at homes” he drops into, with marriage settlements and wedding services, with cosmopolitan vagabonds, with Oxford dons, with policemen — with himself and his love."

" ... Shelton distinctly does not couch his lance against a windmill. He is a knight errant, disarmed and faithful, riding forlorn to an inevitable defeat; his adversary is a giant of a thousand heads and a thousand arms, a monster at once perfectly human and altogether soulless. Though nobody dies in the book, it is really the record of a long and tragic adventure, who tragedy is not so much in the event as in the very atmosphere, in the cold moral dusk in which the hero moves as if impelled by some fatal whisper, without a sword, corselet or helmet.

"Amadis de Gaul would have struck a head off and counted it a doughty deed; Dickens would have flung himself upon pen and paper and made a caricature of the monster, would have flung at him an enormous joke vibrating with the stress of cheap emotions; Shelton, no legendary knight and being no humorist (but, like many simpler men, impelled by the destiny he carries within his breast), goes forth to be delivered, bound hand and foot, to the monster by his charming and limited Antonia. He is classed as an outsider by men in the best clubs, and his prospective mother-in-law tells him not to talk about things. He comes to grief socially, because in a world, which everyone is interested to go on calling the best of all possible worlds, he has insisted upon touching in challenge all the shields hung before all the comfortable tents; the immaculate shield of his fiancee, of his mother-in-law, of the best men in the best clubs. He gets himself called and thought of as Unsound; and there in his social world the monster has made an end of him."

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GALSWORTHY: A SURVEY by Leon Schalit

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" ... Galsworthy had the good fortune to be “born with a silver spoon in his mouth”; he grew up, too, in full freedom, and has the most enjoyable recollections of his youth. For four years he was educated at a private school in Bournemouth. From 1881-1886, he was at Harrow, where he distinguished himself in games, and fairly well in work. Later he went to New College, Oxford, and in 1889 took an honour degree in Law. In 1890 he should have begun active work at the Bar — like his father he was destined for the Law — but the dryness of that profession was deeply repugnant to him, and appears to be so to the present day.

"Instead of practising Law, Galsworthy made a trip round the world and was roving from 1891 to 1893. These years were of supreme importance to his evolution. On the sailing ship “Torrens,” voyaging from Australia to South Africa, he met Joseph Conrad, then a sailor. A friendship arose between the two which was only interrupted by Conrad’s death in 1924. Conrad, the Pole who wrote in the English language, is a phenomenon in Anglo-Saxon literature; but although Conrad and Galsworthy were so dissimilar in every way, they had a great understanding of each other.

"It was not until the year 1895 that Galsworthy — then nearly twenty-eight — almost in spite of himself, began to write. ... "

" ... 1901 bestows on us four characteristic long-short tales: “A Man of Devon”, “A Knight”, “The Silence”, and “Salvation of a Forsyte”, the last of which is certainly the most important. Here, for the first time, a Forsyte (Swithin) makes his appearance; and Galsworthy, the ironist and satirist, begins to emerge."

"“The Island Pharisees” is important, chiefly for its disclosure of the author as a social critic.

"Considering Galsworthy’s work from “Villa Rubein” on, we now discern two spirits within him: that of a lyric poet, wizard of atmosphere, worshipper of beauty, and that of a reasoning, disintegrating critic, ironist and satirist. In the constant blending of these two spirits lies the main charm of his art.

"During 1904 and 1905 Galsworthy made further rapid development, and the social critic becomes the social philosopher. For him, the year 1906 was perhaps the most vitally important of all his writing years, because in it appeared “The Man of Property”, which brought him sudden fame and (though the writer was then unaware of it) was the opening volume of that national epic, “ The Forsyte Saga “, and its continuation, “A Modern Comedy.” It is probably the most powerful novel he ever wrote or will write, and in it he definitely revealed his technique and his individuality. He may have extended his technique in later works, but he has not changed it.

"But the year 1906 also marked his appearance as a dramatist, with his first play, a social comedy, “The Silver Box”, which from the start strikes the keynote of his stage work. It treats of social contrasts and the conflicts arising therefrom. As in the novel, from “The Man of Property” on, so in the drama, from “The Silver Box” on, Galsworthy has, with hardly an exception, remained faithful to a technique rich in contrasts, in restraint, and in the ironic treatment of his subject. Success in the theatre, in spite of plentiful misunderstandings by the public and his critics, has remained true to him; with his increasing maturity it has increased greatly, just as his fame as a novelist assumed very vast proportions after the appearance of “The Forsyte Saga.” In his work generally novelist and dramatist are closely interwoven; whole chapters of the novels and short stories are pervaded with the spirit of the dramatist, while many of the plays have a strain of the novel in them, without thereby losing their dramatic effect."

"Transition to the great novel “Fraternity”, published in 1909, is through the volume “A Commentary”, 1908, a collection of sketches and studies, in which Galsworthy, by his moving descriptions of social misery, stands out as an indicter of Society. Social contrasts are inexorably worked out, with an inflexibly truthful fanaticism. The book foreshadows the despair which overcomes and often threatens to crush us in “Fraternity.” This novel, which exposes the hopelessness of social fraternity owing to the deeply-rooted and unbridgeable contrasts in human nature, is impregnated with a unique and overwhelming melancholy, and obsessed by social conscience; but its characters are constructed with rare plasticity, presented profoundly, and charged with such deliberate irony, that the book is certainly one of the climaxes in Galsworthy’s creative career; while in the handling of contrasts it is, technically, a masterpiece.

"1909 is another important milestone on the road of Galsworthy’s dramatic evolution. In “Strife” he gave us his most powerful and most impartial stage work. The whole play is a great fight and has a certain compelling and fatalistic force. In the following year Galsworthy proclaimed his credo of humanity from the stage through the poignant and accusing drama “Justice.” ... The practical result of this drama in England, a reform in prison life, showed the great impression that it made."

" ... In 1917 appeared his masterly short story, “Indian Summer of a Forsyte”, in continuation of “The Man of Property”, an exquisite poem in prose which alone would assure his immortality. While the imagination of many writers was lamed by the War, or devoted to “war journalism” of doubtful quality, Galsworthy, at this period, penned some of his finest stories, as though he had taken refuge from the brutal reality in the realms of fancy. The “Five Tales”, which appeared in 1918, just before the end of the war, are among his finest inspirations."

"In the meantime a plan for continuing the Forsyte Chronicles had been maturing in the writer, and, in the autumn of 1920, the appearance of the second book, “In Chancery”, was everywhere acclaimed. In this book and in “Awakening”, the brief story of little Jon Forsyte, published shortly afterwards, the fate of the Forsytes is developed in a crescendo of interest. Scarcely a year later, the third volume, “To Let”, followed. With this, Galsworthy completed that monumental edifice, “The Forsyte Saga,” which stands unique in contemporary literature, and has been followed since by a second Forsyte trilogy, “A Modem Comedy.” The “Saga” was — so far — his best and boldest work, and, on its appearance in a single volume in 1922, founded his fame throughout the world. In this gigantic cycle, the action of which is spread over three-and-a-half decades, all the qualities of its writer are fused: the social-philosopher, the ironist, the symbolist, the painter of character, the wizard of atmosphere, the pursuer of truth and beauty, novelist, and dramatist, man and poet. In this brief survey I restrict myself to these remarks on a colossal work which is fully discussed in the following chapters."

" ... Next year gave us that fine character comedy, “A Family Man”, followed in 1922 by Galsworthy’s most successful drama, up to the present, “Loyalties.” No other play of this playwright’s has been performed so frequently in England, America, and Germany. There have been many arguments over this work, and even to-day, perhaps no final verdict can be pronounced. But it is certainly not only the most brilliant of his plays, but that which best reveals all his merits and individuality as a dramatist. Construction, conflict, climax, catastrophe, characterisation, ironic treatment, humour in grave situations — are all masterly. It is again a duel with unbuttoned foils; again as in so many of his dramas, a rebellion of the weaker, of the individual against the closed phalanx of Society. Remarkable that Galsworthy’s two great successes in the novel and the play should so coincide in point of time."

" ... The leading characters of the “Saga” forced the pen into the author’s hand again, with novel developments and a wonderfully lucid humour. “The White Monkey” not only begins the new Forsyte trilogy, “A Modem Comedy,” in which the troubled and complex post-war period is portrayed almost up to date, but in a sense it inaugurates a new style, a light and subtly humorous treatment of serious matters. The delicate ironist has regained the upper hand. “The White Monkey,” and its sequel, “The Silver Spoon,” which appeared in 1926, have a subtler texture, and still more amazing technique; and we are, of course, in closer contact with these two pictures of our own period and culture, and with the last book, “Swan Song”, than we are with “The Forsyte Saga.”

"Towards the end of 1927 appeared two short Interludes of the new cycle, “A Silent Wooing”, and “Passers by”, charming little ironic masterpieces. And then in July, 1928, we have “Swan Song” itself, crowning volume of the “Forsyte” Chronicles, in which all the resources of Galsworthy’s art have been summoned to the formation of a specially subtle and original whole. For the moment it is not possible to compare the merits of “A Modem Comedy” with those of “The Forsyte Saga.” Too short a time has elapsed for the formation of mature judgment. But it may be safely said that with the second trilogy the author has achieved another masterpiece. These two trilogies, complete each in itself — six novels and four short stories all linked together — form a work unique in modern literature, which, moreover, to the Continental reader gives a special insight not only into English character, but into English life and culture."

"Influence on Galsworthy’s work is primarily Russian and French. In his early years he steeped himself particularly in Turgeniev and de Maupassant. Something of Turgeniev’s technique and of de Maupassant’s irony, polish, and reserve, is to be found in Galsworthy’s style of narration. Except Dickens and perhaps Thackeray a little, no English writer has influenced him, unless it be Shakespeare. At any rates Galsworthy’s maturer style and technique is quite novel of its kind; and in drama, too, he has gone his own way, and still goes it, quite uninfluenced by Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, few of whose works he knows."

" ... With few exceptions his characters are drawn from everyday life, are not heroes, not exceptions, not shadows or figments of the brain, but beings of flesh and blood. Most of them belong to the prosperous middle class, some to the aristocracy; there are also plenty of proletarians, and some creative artists. Galsworthy does not aim at producing something “novel,” something “which has never yet been seen,” at all costs; he simply says what he has to say. He has never done homage to a fashion, or to a “trend”; with infallible confidence and calm he has gone on his way recking nothing of “opinions.” ... "

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" ... Most people mistake his reserved manner for dryness and lack of enthusiasm. His great modesty, too — he talks little of himself and his work — has frequently been completely misunderstood. He hates all strong language, the loud, the declamatory, bravado. But I can hardly recall one visit or meeting when Galsworthy did not “thaw.” He is, too, like very few other writers, a past master in the art of listening."

"The world war interrupted all work and efforts to introduce Galsworthy to the German stage and German publishers. It was long before the work of destruction could be made good. And it is significant — that as before the war — it was again Vienna whence Galsworthy’s fame went forth to the German stage and the German publishing world. In the year 1923, “The Dark Flower” appeared; in 1924, the collection of short stories, “A Fisher of Men”, and when, in 1925, “Windows”, and — in particular—” Loyalties”, were produced in Vienna with conspicuous success, the spell was broken. Since 1924, within four years, in rapid succession thirteen large and six smaller volumes have been published in the German language, and nine dramas produced in many theatres.

"It was not until 1923 that I had the opportunity of once more meeting Galsworthy and his wife at Innsbruck, and of that meeting I have retained some of my most delightful recollections. (He loves the Tyrol, and once wrote me that when he was a boy of six, he “read himself almost blind” over the story of Andreas Hofer and the War of Liberation.) He and his wife had done Red Cross work in a French hospital, and felt the war most acutely, but though when I met him again he was nearly fifty-six, he appeared to have grown younger. His tall figure seemed to have become more elastic, his dark blue eyes deeper still; something serene, relieved, harmonious, emanated from him, and the kindliness of his nature radiated a more comforting warmth than ever. A man fully mature, who, although standing above life and its happenings, yet takes an active interest in all human affairs and is in their midst — such was the writer who had finished “The Forsyte Saga”, and had experienced the great success of his plays.

"In the summer of 1925, I was fortunate enough to get to know the place where Galsworthy had formerly lived and worked at the remote village of Manaton in the lovely county of Devonshire, and to pass about ten days with him at “Grove Lodge,” his London home. A great part of his earlier work was written at the farm “Wingstone” at Manaton. (The edition de luxe of his works, published in 1923 and 1924, is called the “Manaton Edition.”) Great peace and seclusion, charm and wealth of colour of the hilly moor, nature inviolate! And not very far away, a deep blue sea, with dark red cliffs. It is there that one understands so well the infinite variety of moods in “The Patrician”, “The Dark Flower”, in the tale “The Apple Tree”, the drama “A Bit o’ Love”, and in a whole series of short stories, sketches and studies; and one feels that — thus — and in no other way could they have been achieved.

"The friendly farmer told me of Galsworthy’s readiness to help — so often abused; of his great love for dogs and horses, of his pleasure in riding, of Mrs. Galsworthy’s particular predilection for flowers and music. Except for the absence of a piano, the rooms in the granite farmhouse which Galsworthy occupied with his wife, the garden, the lawn, and the surroundings of the farm are in much the same condition as the writer left them a few years ago. There, too, stands the “lime tree” to which we owe one of his loveliest sketches. ... "

" ... Chopin is also one of his favourite composers; he loves to be lulled into dreams. For Wagner he has no real sympathy. As to his opinion on the hyper-modems, one has but to peruse the chapter in the “White Monkey” entitled “Music.” During his pre-war wanderings he liked to see and listen to Offenbach’s Operettas. “They take one out of oneself,” he said to me.

"Galsworthy is also an excellent speaker. And, as President of the “ Pen Club,” (which he helped to found) that international society of authors and editors, he presides over the meetings with great tact and skill, smoothes out differences, and works practically for the object of the society — the creation of such a conciliatory atmosphere, mutual understanding, and spiritual peace between the nations, as shall prevent or at least make difficult, the atmosphere of war. Galsworthy would certainly have made a brilliant barrister (vide “Justice”) but for two considerable impedimenta: the fact that he can never speak impromptu, and would hate the life of a lawyer. One can easily imagine him as a statesman, but for those same reasons.

"I have never heard him utter a harsh or intolerant word about anyone, not even about those who have attacked him unjustly or spitefully: their number grows less from day to day. He never attacks anyone personally. He nearly always expresses tolerant and understanding opinions on his colleagues, and he hates scandal, “That miserable, mean thing, the human tongue,” he makes Courtier say in “The Patrician.” And only gross cruelty, barbarity, particularly towards helpless animals, can rouse his anger. He treats dependants with the greatest courtesy and consideration. He has equipoise and mental balance, and applies them both practically and in his writings. ... "

"In conclusion I would like to say something of the consistent way in which the writer works, and of his versatility. Where another would rest on his laurels, Galsworthy, in his exceptional diligence, writes almost every day when not travelling. He works in every place, every weather, in the train — best of all, indeed, in the sun. “Escape” was written in the sun of California. He enjoys, as a rule, the most perfect health, and is, like his work, the picture of latent strength; but owing to a bronchial affection of his wife’s — now happily relieved — they spend the late autumn, winter and early spring, which are so hurtful in England, abroad in the South. In latter years they have been to Sicily, Portugal, Morocco, Arizona, California, South Africa. Accustomed from youth to travel, Galsworthy has seen, observed, experienced much, and come into contact with numberless people. In this way, despite his strongly pronounced Englishry, the international trend in him originated, though most of his works treat exclusively of England and English problems. When one considers that he only began to write, hesitatingly and tentatively, at the age of twenty-eight — so that he has not spent much more than thirty years in literary activity — the extent of his Work is amazing. Twenty-six volumes of novels, stories, sketches, studies, satires, essays, speeches; two volumes of poetry, eighteen full-length dramas, an allegory and six one-act plays (several new short stories have not yet appeared in book form)! And withal, most of them bear the stamp of perfection, of most exhaustive treatment. At the same time he follows all the questions of the day, and studies his problems very conscientiously. He has exceptional poetic imagination, and, in spite of his vast achievement, he is never in haste, and allows everything to mature quietly. His mental steadiness, in conjunction with great faculty for work, and creative instinct, have produced a harvest in all the fields of literary art. That a great novelist should be an almost equally great dramatist, and at the same time have mastery over the lesser forms, is unique in the present day."

" ... As soon as he becomes ironically moved he wants to write. But he forces nothing, he waits till the inspiration comes. He never knows in advance how he is going to end. He says he will wake at night, involuntarily begin to think, and then see a certain way ahead. When walking alone or shaving, plot and characters will “jolt forward.” Helpless as he is to stem such inspirations, he is just as unable to work on beyond the end. The end is there when inspiration ceases. He believes that the whole imaginative process is far more subconscious than conscious, at least in his own case. ... "

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021.

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INTRODUCTION TO GALSWORTHY'S PLAYS by Leon Schalit

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" ... The chief characteristic of the author is his ironical perception of the enmeshment of personality in Society’s institutions; the struggle of the individual against the mass, or overwhelming majority. The individual of to-day is so dependent on his surroundings, “ so much a part of the warp and woof of complicated Society”, that Society becomes his or her fate, such a fate, as, in the ancient Greek Dramatists, the Gods meted out to mortal man. In most of Galsworthy’s works the conflict arises from the rebellion of the individual against Society, some particular case being taken for a typical example."

"For him the task lies in the unrolling of the problem, not in its solution. The unrolling of the problem should serve to make us think and reflect, to make us realise, to awaken our interest in what is hitherto unknown to us, or viewed in a wrong light. W ... "

" ... From the very outset he surrounds his play with a peculiar atmosphere of its own, and maintains it throughout, and this, in each case, has something fateful, something inevitable about it. He does not invent a plot for its own sake, but builds it of the varying human attitudes, towards incident, or event, revealing the characters by argument and contest, from which the central idea emerges sharply defined."

" ... He uses, often with marked effect, the indirect method; unexpressed feeling is incessantly present — simmering under an apparently calm surface. This reserve is sometimes driven to extremes. Reserve, however, is a deeply rooted characteristic of the English, rendering it impossible for them to voice their feelings easily. “The English man and woman of to-day have almost a genius for under-expression,” he says. And in most cases Galsworthy’s plays, when read before being seen, leave a strange impression on the reader, owing to the unusual brevity of expression; it is as though one were faced with a bare framework, and lay figures for characters."

" ... The rehearsing of the plays, naturally, requires a minute study of the psychology of the characters, an ardent diligence, and devotion. Every nuance is important in itself. The deeper sense must be drawn out of the apparently dry-boned technique. At times, this is only to be achieved by an adequate expression, an appropriate gesture. Every dialogue Galsworthy writes is brimful of subtle suggestion, of things only to be read between the lines. Such plays must be interpreted in their own special style. The Producer who does not command a suitable ensemble, and has no enthusiasm for the subtle art of the author, would do better to leave these Dramas alone."

" ... He compresses into one or two sentences in a play what in a novel would be expressed in a number of pages. It is the duty of the actor to press out the last ounce from the sparse words in his performance. Galsworthy says in a Preface: “It might be said of Shaw’s plays that he creates characters who express feelings which they have not got. It might be said of mine, that I create characters who have feelings which they cannot express.” This suggestive manner of treatment, and the singular atmosphere exhaled by the characters themselves, bring something new to the stage. There is practically no single play of Galsworthy which is not a matured product, and, though naturally, all the works of this prolific author have not the same value, there is not one published play which does not bear his hall-mark."

"From the “Silver Box” (1906) to “Escape” (1926) is a considerable journey!"

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August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021.

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

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

The Poetry Collections

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4160105313

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

"A man is the sum of his actions,

of what he has done,

of what he can do, Nothing else"

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

His beautiful imagery, steeped equally in beauty of nature and realities of life, are far more so in his poetry than in his prose. For, when need to make it simpler for comprehension of others has taken flight, as it can when writing poetry, his imagery soars and takes flight.

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

The Collected Poems of John Galsworthy by John Galsworthy

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4160103643

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

Collections

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

EARLY POEMS

DEVON AND OTHER SONGS FOR MUSIC

IN TIME OF WAR

FOR LOVE OF BEASTS

THE ENDLESS DREAM

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

EARLY POEMS

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

The early poems, mostly about love, beauty, et al, are - one feels - about the lovers hiding out at Dartmoor.

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

CONTENTS

REMINDER

ERRANTRY

COURAGE

TRUE DEEDS

LOVE

LOVE (EARLIER VERSION)

BEAUTY

ACCEPTATION

SERENITY

DEDICATION.

THE SEEDS OF LIGHT

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

REMINDER

Budding of spiritual awakening.

"EACH star, to rise, and sink, and fade —

"Each bird that sings its song and sleeps —

"Each spark of spirit fire that leaps

"Within me — of One Flame are made!"

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

ERRANTRY

Spiritual, but slightly different this time - on Earth, in world of humanity, using the spirit so to speak, for humanity!

"COME! Let us lay a lance in rest,

"And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!

"For who would live so petty and unblest

"That dare not tilt at something ere he die;

"Rather than, screened by safe majority,

"Preserve his little life to little ends,

"And never raise a rebel cry!"

And more -

"The echo of our challenging

"Sets swinging all the bells of ribaldry,

"And yet those other hidden bells that ring

"The faint and wondering chimes of sympathy"

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

COURAGE

He captures the essence-

"The ruddy watch-fire of cold winter days,

"We steal its comfort, lift our weary swords,

"And on. For faith — without it — has no sense;

"And love to wind of doubt and tremor sways;

"And life for ever quaking marsh must tread."

"And when Death calls across his shadowy fields-

"Dying, it answers: “Here! I am not dead!”"

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

TRUE DEEDS

Beautiful imagery,

"There is a Lantern of true, silent deeds

"Swinging refulgent in the spacious air,"

"’Tis the presiding sun at every birth,

"The soft consoling moon at every death;

"And in the middle watches of our life

"What is it but the one sweet single star,

"Whose twinkle, like the laughter of dear thoughts,

"Upon the feeble vadings of our hearts

"Sheds ever rays of tender irony!"

But it's unclear if he refers to human "true deeds", or gives it that name in referring to Divine.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

LOVE

Millions of poets and others have attempted describing it, and Galsworthy is different! He doesn't turn to roses or stars, but every bit described here is so true!

"O LOVE! — that love which comes so stealthily,

"And takes us up, and twists us as it will —

"What fever’d hours of agony ‘twill bring!

"How oft we wake and cry:

"“God set me free Of love — to never love again!” And still

"We fall, and clutch it by the knees, and cling

"And press our lips — and so, once more are glad!

"And if it go, or if it never come,

"Through what a grieving wilderness of pain

"We travel on! In prisons stripped of light

"We blindly grope, and wander without home.

"The friendless winds that sweep across the plain —

"The beggars meeting us at silent night —

"Than we, are not more desolate and sad!"

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

LOVE (EARLIER VERSION)

The earlier version isn't lesser, but quite the contrary, has a higher flight in the very first few lines, and is far above the usually understood concept of love - did Galsworthy not realise his mind was grasping a reality far higher?

"LIKE lights that pass, each motion of the mind

"Flies through the world, seeking its fellow thought;

"And if but in the twinkling of his days

"A man shall chance to meet the kindred one —

"Then happiness! No more he needs to burn

"Beside the fire of dearth that pipe, whose smoke

"Prays to the heedless stars of lonely men."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

BEAUTY

"If we but catch the glimmer of her wing,

"Then witchery! We needs must follow her!

"If never on our path she comes along —

"Then are we lost, for always we are blind."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

ACCEPTATION

It's unclear if this is about waiting for his love until she appears.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

SERENITY

"In heaven’s field

"Moon’s scimitar

"Is drawn to shield

"One dreaming star."

Why the similar in describing serenity? Because, while the lovers hid at the remote Wingstone in Dartmoor, he needed to shield her?

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

DEDICATION.

Having read it, it's unclear if this is English at all, or a rose in a private garden in a home in Persia of yore, or a beauty in Spain in an enclosed garden behind high walls of her home.

"THINE is the solitude that rare flowers know,

"Whose beauty holds the charm of secrecy;

"Of all the flowers that in the garden grow,

"None other has thy sweet supremacy.

"For thine’s the oldest secret in the world:

"How to be loved, and still to keep apart —

"Flower full blown, and bud not yet unfurled —

"Gold-fortuned I, whose very breath thou art!"

But then, the reserve of an English mindset would do just as well for a wall!

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

THE SEEDS OF LIGHT

Beautiful and more, most of it.

"ONCE of a mazy afternoon, beside that summer sea,

"I watched a shoal of sunny beams come swimming close to me.

"Each was a whited candle flamelet, flickering in air;

"Each was a silver daffodil astonied to be there;

"Each was a diving summer star, its brightness come to lave;"

"And while I sat, and while I dreamed, beside that summer sea,

"There came the fairest thought of all that ever came to me;

"The tiny lives of tiny men, no more they seemed to mean

"Than one of those sweet seeds of light sown on that water green;"

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August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

August 04, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

DEVON AND OTHER SONGS FOR MUSIC

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

Devon poetry continues with the themes of love and of beauty of nature of his ancestral corner of England, of the prewar occupation of heart. Most do seem ready for music, too, with a rhythm of their own.

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

CONTENTS

GAULZERY (GALSWORTHY) MOOR

LAND SONG OF THE WEST COUNTRY

VILLAGE SLEEP SONG

DEVON TO ME!

THE CLIFF CHURCH: (WEMBURY)

COUNTING THE STARS

THE MOOR GRAVE

THE COVE

MOUNTAIN LOVERS

HIGHLAND SPRING

THE DOWNS

ON A SOLDIER’S FUNERAL

OLD YEAR

WIND

STREET LAMPS

STRAW IN THE STREET

RHYME AFTER RAIN

LET

LOVE’S A FLOWER

ROSE AND YEW

MAGPIE

THE MOON AT DAWN

RHYME OF THE LAND AND SEA

PAST

THE GOLDEN GIPSY

MOUNTAIN AIR

TITTLE-TATTLE

THE FLOWER

VOICE IN THE NIGHT

AVOWAL

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

GAULZERY (GALSWORTHY) MOOR

Moor of his name -

"MOOR of my name, where the road leads high,

"Thro’ heather and bracken, gorse and grass,

"Up to the crown of the western sky,

"A questing traveller, slow, I pass.

"Silent and lonely the darkening moor,"

Loneliness is brought out, but beauty is what it's steepest in, yet!

"And I on the road alone — alone;

"And the south-west wind is beginning to croon,

"And a listening lonely pine-tree sways;

"And behind it is hanging a golden moon

"For a resting sign at the cornerways.

"A thousand years since the stranger came,

"And homed him here, and gave me name."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

LAND SONG OF THE WEST COUNTRY

Very picturesque verses, with the land brought alive, and too the rhythm of traversing it.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

VILLAGE SLEEP SONG

This one is far more successful a lullaby than those one hears generally, except its music isn't clear; but that's the wonder too, it induces sleep as one read it!

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

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

DEVON TO ME!

Having read about his parents and his upper class bringing up in England, reading this poem isn't as misleading as it could have otherwise been - he's wring of the land and the people, in images he names his parents.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

THE CLIFF CHURCH: (WEMBURY)

"I stand fast —

"Let the waters cry!

"Here I last

"To Eternity!"

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

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

COUNTING THE STARS

This one brings back vividly his The Apple Tree, and one understands he wrote it about himself.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

THE MOOR GRAVE

This one again is reminiscent of The Apple Tree, and far more so, being about the grave on the moor. Is the story his own?

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

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

THE COVE

Galsworthy brings alive the hidden cove of a lonely corner of England's coast with wind, rain, waves, and much more.

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

MOUNTAIN LOVERS

Is this one really about Devon? It seems far more alpine!

"And now the clock is set at noon; "The butterflies are kittens black; "And cowbells tumble out a tune

"Which yellow bees do mumble back.

"We’ve climbed the snow into the sky;

"Below, streams run a tinkling race,

"And valleys glisten drowsily, For all the world lies on its face.

"The crystals bubble from the pine,

"And grasses teem with little legs —"

"Blueberries are ripe and warm,

"Sparkle-fairies swim to land;

"Hay is packing to the farm,

"Cows, for milkmaids begging, stand."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

HIGHLAND SPRING

"And solemn gaze young maids, heart-free.

"The white clouds race, the sun rays flare

"And turn to gold the pallid mist;

"With greedy mouth the Spring has kissed

"The wind that links the sky with sea.

"The blue and lonely mountains stare,

"As if to draw the blue above."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

THE DOWNS

"Fairy-spun of the thistle floss;

"And the beech-grove, and a wood-dove,

"And the trail where the shepherds pass;

"And the lark’s song, and the wind-song,

"And the scent of the parching grass!"

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

ON A SOLDIER’S FUNERAL

"The wind shrills high;

"The darkened day is chasing grief

"With lash of blinding rain — and brief

"The footfalls die."

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

OLD YEAR

"The moonlight floods the grass,

"The music’s hushed, and all the festal din;

"The pale musicians pass,

"Each clasping close his green-cased violin.

"Old Year! — not breathing now,

"Along the polished floor you lie alone;

"I bend, and touch your brow —

"The dead year, that has slipped away and gone!

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

August 05, 2021 - August 05, 2021.

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

WIND

Evocative as ever, he describes the wind

"Sweet with scent of clover,

"Salt with breath of sea."

- after he's said

"WIND, wind — heather gipsy,

Whistling in my tree!

"All the heart of me is tipsy

"On the sound of thee!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

STREET LAMPS

Who'd ever think of writing a word, much less a poem, about street lamps! And John Galsworthy goes to write a marvellous one -

"LAMPS, lamps! Lamps everywhere!

"You wistful, gay, and burning eyes,

"You stars low-driven from the skies

"Down on the rainy air.

"You merchant eyes, that never tire Of spying out our little ways,

"Of summing up our little days In ledgerings of fire — Inscrutable your nightly glance,

"Your lighting and your snuffing out,

"Your flicker through the windy rout,

"Guiding this mazy dance.

"O watchful, troubled gaze of gold,

"Protecting us upon our beats —

"You piteous glamour of the streets,

"Youthless — and never old!"

- it keeps a reader marvelling!

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

STRAW IN THE STREET

Again, who'd ever imagine the title for a topic of a poem! And yet, as one reads through

"Straw in the street!

"To wintry sleeping

"Turns all our summer laughter.

"The brooms are sweeping...

There’s naught for me hereafter!"

it brings not only comprehension, but much more, the whole scene alive, summer turned to winter, - and comprehension of all that the verses imply.

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August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

RHYME AFTER RAIN

Beautiful verses, painting the lovely and live portrait of a countryside after rain in April, and singing of spring and life,

"STARRY-EYED is April morn,

"Rainbells glitter on the thorn,

"Birds are tuning down the lane

Patter song of fallen rain."

and transients of it all.

"Gather the sob, gather the song!

"Neither will last, neither will last!

"All is yours, but not for long —

"Life travels fast!"

So beautiful -

"Rainbow’s dipping out to sea,

"Lambs are whispering devilry,

"Leaves are sweet as e’er you’ve seen,

"Sun is golden, grass is green.

"Meadow’s pied with flowers wet,

"Thrushes sing: “Forget, forget!”

"Gather the grey, gather the gleam!

"Neither will last, neither will last!

"Certainty—’tis but a dream!

"Life travels fast!"

one is tempted to quote all of it!

"Winds are merry, sky is blue.

"Spring has laughter, Spring has tears,

"Life has courage, life has fears.

"Gather the tears, gather the mirth!

"Neither will last, neither will last!

"Old Year’s death is Young Year’s birth —

"Life travels fast!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

LET

The title, Let, reminds one of the authors last book, To Let, in the famous trilogy, The Forsyte Saga, and the verses confirm it -

"MY Love lived there! And now

"’Tis but a shell of brick,"

But Irene did leave her home, Robin Hill, thus; not so, John Galsworthy, that is known of - Ada lived with him through his life, and lived after him! So was there someone else, before her?

He continues

"From windows gaily wide,

"Where once the curtained dark

"My heaven used to hide,"

and the impression strengthens that perhaps The Apple Tree, and the Moor Grave, was all real, in his life, even if not exactly as he wrote it.

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

LOVE’S A FLOWER

From the beginning

"LOVE’S a flower, ’tis born and broken,

"Plucked apace, and hugged apart;

"Evening comes, it clings — poor token —

"Dead and dry, on lover’s heart."

to the end

"Love’s a shimmery morning bubble

"Puffed all gay from pipe of noon;

"Spun aloft on breath of trouble —

"Bursts in air — is gone — too soon!"

again one is left with the impression that there was another love in his life.

Unless this - these - were written during the transient phase before Ada be with him.

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

ROSE AND YEW

Beautiful verses, beautiful imagery -

"LOVE flew by! Young wedding day,

"Peeping through her veil of dew,

"Saw him, and her heart went fey —

"His wings no shadows threw."

and very intriguing.

"Love flew by! Young day was gone,

"Owls were hooting — Whoo-to-whoo!

"Happy wedded lay alone,

"Who’d vowed that love was true."

Was this about the first wedding of Ada?

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

MAGPIE

Galsworthy continues with the theme of loss of love,

"Loved to-day — is lost to-morrow!"

asking

"Magpie! flying, flying —

"What have you brought to me?"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

THE MOON AT DAWN

How, why, does a poet look at the beautiful, golden, full moon setting at dawn, and think of a woman cheating, stealing out after a night while her lover sleeps?

What's wrong with John Galsworthy, from time to time?

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August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

RHYME OF THE LAND AND SEA

Mysterious, the whole, as much as the bit

"But her smile — like the wine-red, shadowy sea,"

about "wine-red, shadowy sea,"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

PAST

This one seems about coming to a certain age -

"The stars have twinkled, and died out —

"Fair candles blown!

"The hot desires burn low, and gone

"To ash the fire that flamed anon.

"The stars have twinkled, and died out!"

and while it's beautiful, it is only sad in a familiar sense.

"The leaves are dropping from my tree!

"Dead leaves and flown,

"The vine-leaf ghosts are round my brow,

"For ever frosts and winter now.

"The leaves are dropping from my tree!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

THE GOLDEN GIPSY

(FROM ‘THE LITTLE DREAM’)

"THE windy hours through darkness fly —

"Canst hear them, little heart?

"New loves are born, and old loves die,

"And kissing lips must part!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

MOUNTAIN AIR

"TELL me of Progress if you will,

"But give me sunshine on a hill —

"The grey rocks spiring to the blue,

"The scent of larches, pinks, and dew,

"And summer sighing to the trees,

"And snowy breath on every breeze.

"Take towns and all that you’ll find there,

"And leave me sun and mountain air!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

TITTLE-TATTLE

John Galsworthy is probably addressing those corresponding to the Forsyte clan that was his, as Forsyte clan was that of Jolyon old and young.

"TITTLE-TATTLE! Scandal and japes,

"Gibe, and gossip, and folly’s rattle!

"Ringed to fashion, caught like apes

"In your cage of tittle-tattle!

"Mean your skies, And mean the ways you tread;

"The meanness of your eyes Is never fully fed.

"You that have birth In gold and grovellings!"

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

THE FLOWER

Amazing!

"THERE’S a flower with a cup- A cup of dew;

"Golden god plucked it up

"And gave it you.

"If you shake — let it spill —

"Its pretty rain,

"All the world will not fill It up again.

"Careless death it must die,

"And, like a weed,

"In the sun ever lie Disherited."

He probably meant that about love, but it's so true about so much more!

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

Aug

ust 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

VOICE IN THE NIGHT

(FROM ‘TO LET’)

From "To Let", it can only be about the younger generation.

"VOICE in the night — crying —

"Down in the old sleeping Spanish city,

"Darkened under her white stars;

"What says the voice — its clear lingering anguish?

"Just the watchman telling his dateless tale of safety?

"Just a roadman flinging to the moon his song?

"No. ’Tis one deprived — a lover’s prayer for pity,

"Just his cry: “How long?”"

Holly was married to Val Dartie whom she loved, and June had lost her love a while ago; is this the anguish of Fleur?

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

AVOWAL

(FROM ‘THE ROOF’)

Most beautifully worded appeal that a lover true could make, especially the final words!

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

August 05, 2021 - August 0, 2021.

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

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

IN TIME OF WAR

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

Some penned in anguish, and then Frivols.

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

CONTENTS

VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

THE BELLS OF PEACE

PICARDY

YOUTH’S OWN

WONDER

UNKNOWN

THE PRAYER

I ASK

TIME

FRIVOLS

MR. COLUMMY

HOLIDAY SONG

UNICORNS

LINES WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR’S COPY OF ‘FROM THE FOUR WINDS’ SOLD FOR A CHARITY

DEDICATIONS TO TWO GODSONS

LINES WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF 27 PLAYS BY J. G. GIVEN AS A PRIZE BY THE ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN’ FUND

IN A VOLUME OF 27 PLAYS BY J. G. SOLD ON BEHALF OF A HOSPITAL

IN A COPY OF ‘FOUR FORSYTE STORIES’ SOLD ON BEHALF OF A HOUSING SCHEME

TO PRINCETON

ON ACCIDENTAL EXCHANGE OF OPERA HATS WITH JOHN MASEFIELD

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

VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Most of this is the heartfelt call of most,

"GOD, I am travelling out to death’s sea,

"I who exulted in sunshine and laughter,

"Dreamed not of dying — death is such waste of me! —

"Grant me one prayer: Doom not the hereafter

"Of mankind to war, as though I had died not —"

but the comes the last bit -

"Let not my sinking

"In dark be for naught, my death a vain thing!"

"Make my last breath a bugle call, carrying

"Peace o’er the valleys and cold hills for ever!"

and surely, most soldiers couldn't fight at all if this were their thought, surely they are more into victory for their own side, their country, and security of their loved ones!

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

THE BELLS OF PEACE

Galsworthy begins beautifully -

"LILIES are here, tall in the garden bed,

"And on the moor are still the buds of May;

"Roses are here — and, tolling for our dead

"The Bells of Peace make summer holiday.

"And do they hear, who in their Springtime went?

"The young, the brave young, leaving all behind,

"All of their fate, love, laughter, and content,

"The village sweetness, and the Western wind,"

and goes on to count all the beauty of peaceful land and home they lost; but his view is slightly askance -

"Bells of remembrance, on this summer’s eve

"Of our relief, Peace and Goodwill ring in!

"Ring out the Past, and let not Hate bereave

"Our dreaming Dead of all they died to win!"

It's perhaps that of most who feel more for peace and friendship across borders than most who care for security within, and hence seek to blame it on no simple reality as the actual identity of the aggressor, but would rather see it as a mess caused by every government, or capital.

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

PICARDY

"WHEN the trees blossom again;

"When our spirits lighten —"

. . . .

"When the sweet waters can flow,

"When the world’s forgetting —

"When once more the cattle low

"At golden calm sun-setting;

"Each peaceful evening’s murmur, then,

"And sigh the waters give,

"Will tell immortal tale of men

"Who died that we might live."

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

YOUTH’S OWN

"Since Youth has vanished from our eyes,

"Who of us glad can be?"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

WONDER

Rather simplistic -

"If God laughs when the guns thunder,

"If He yells when the bullet sings —

"Then, bewildered, I but wonder

"The God of Love can love such things!"

- but then, most natural -

"If you must kill me — why the lark,

"The hawthorn bud, and the corn?

"Why do the stars bedew the dark?

"Why is the blossom born?"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

UNKNOWN

Confused, post Darwin's theory, about genesis at al - and far more so, with the WWI causing all but genocide, and in Europe, too -

"You who had worked in perfect ways

"To turn the wheel of nights and days,

"Who coaxed to life each running rill

"And froze the snow-crown on the hill,

"The cold, the starry flocks who drove And made the circling seasons move;

"How came your jesting purpose, when

"You fashioned monkeys into men?"

So, the thinker adult questions the God, of faith he assumes true from preaching he was subjected to as a boy -

"What set you frolicking when we

"Were given power to feel and see?

"Why not have kept the stellar plan

"Quite soulless and absolved from man?

"What heavy need to make this thing —

"A monkey with an angel’s wing;

"A murderous poor saint who reaps

"His fields of death, and, seeing — weeps!"

And, hearing no response, thinks one out for himself!

"And Mother Nature’s fingers strummed,

"And flock of dandelion was blown,

"And yew-trees cast their shadows down;

"Such beauty seemed to you forlorn —

"And lo! — this playboy, Man, was born!"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

THE PRAYER

A trifle Emily Bronte here

"O Lord of Courage grave,

"O Master of this night of Springl

"Make firm in me a heart too brave

"To ask Thee anything!"

Emily Bronte's was superior.

No surprises there!

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

I ASK

Poet here describes beauty of life -

"MY happy lime is gold with flowers;

"From noon to noon the breezes blow

"Their love pipes; and the wild bees beat

"Their drums, and sack the blossom bowers."

- and then, turning to

"Behind the fairest masks of life

"Dwells ever that pale constant death."

questions if it should be simply hidden, forgotten - but with a really bad turn of phrase!

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

TIME

"BENEATH this vast serene of sky

"Where worlds are but as mica dust,

"From age to age the wind goes by;

"Unnumbered summer bums the grass.

"On granite rocks, at rest from strife,

"The aeons lie in lichen rust.

"Then what is man’s so brittle life? —

"The humming of the bees that pass!"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

FRIVOLS

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

MR. COLUMMY

This one begins sounding ridiculous, but as one goes through, a serious portrait of a prototype emerges.

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

HOLIDAY SONG

"Birds are piping, insects hum;

"Take the path of play and laughter!

"Why go caring what comes after?

"Nature’s drum-sticks all a-drum!

"Clowns and Christians count the loss!

"Ope your mouth — let berries tumble!

"Eat no more of pie that’s humble!

"Let your heart play pitch and toss!"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

UNICORNS

"IF I were asked to take my pick

"Of all the creatures fantastic,"

"I should choose white unicorns!"

White?

Not Golden? Not Rainbow-hued? Not even pink?

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

LINES WRITTEN

IN THE AUTHOR’S COPY OF

‘FROM THE FOUR WINDS’

SOLD FOR A CHARITY

"I WROTE this book and certify

"That sh e’s been mine in days gone by.

"In fact the slim and timid tome

"Has only known her parent’s home.

"There, with a slightly elder twin

"She’s stabled been, with kith and kin;

"Thereof, lest any have a doubt

"I write these words, and send her out."

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

DEDICATIONS TO TWO GODSONS

"But we conspirators must be

"And hide up our unworthiness.

"Together we will tread the way

"That leads to mansions in the sky,

"Or, if we don’t, at least we’ll say

"We surely mean to, by and by."

"Small John, I fear when you grow up you’ll say:

"“They gave to me as pilot to the sky

"A silly man who didn’t know the way,

"And couldn’t put me wise — I wonder why?

"He never gave me book morocco-bound,

"Or silver cup with christening date engraved;

"He let me wander round and round and round,

"And quite neglected for to get me saved!”"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

LINES WRITTEN IN A VOLUME

OF 27 PLAYS BY J. G.

GIVEN AS A PRIZE BY THE

‘SAVE THE CHILDREN’ FUND

"Who wins this prize has work cut out,

"The volume is so very stout,

"Indeed ‘twill take many days

"To read these twenty-seven plays.

"But then he/she need not take the thing

"Au sérieux, but have a fling; his

"Present the object to her Ma,

"Or leave it in a motor car.

"June 8, 1932."

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

IN A VOLUME OF 27 PLAYS BY J. G.

SOLD ON BEHALF OF A HOSPITAL

"THE buyer gapes and stammers: “What!

"You mean to tell me I have got

"To read these Plays — to read them all!

"Oh! no — the man’s a criminal,"

"I make the buyer this reply:

"“Far better burned than read, poor buyer,

"So spare your eyes, and feed your fire!”"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

IN A COPY OF ‘FOUR FORSYTE STORIES’

SOLD ON BEHALF OF A HOUSING SCHEME

"When signed editions he goes marketing,

"Priced at as many guineas as he dare,

"And, trusting to the Public’s want of flair,

"Makes major money from a minor thing.”"

"A very peacock-fantail-phoenix, he;

"The more you warn him of his coming fall

"Or tell him that he’s nothing worth at all,

"The more his pinnacle in air he’ll see!”"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

TO PRINCETON

"LORD! I plump for Princeton —

"Peaceful there I be!

"Peace and plump and Princeton

"All begin with P!"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

ON ACCIDENTAL EXCHANGE OF OPERA HATS

WITH JOHN MASEFIELD

"O FRIENDLY hat — hat of my friend!

"And must I pack thee up and end

"That brief encircling halo torn

"From noble Masefield’s peg, and worn

"In ecstasy one hour? Dear hat!

"So much more beautiful than that

"I left behind — from me depart!

"Be crushed once more against his heart!"

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

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

August 06, 2021 - August 06, 2021.

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

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

FOR LOVE OF BEASTS

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

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4159972641

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

Galsworthy writes to and about animals, in this collection, but only in the first few - the rest is about his love of land, beauty of nature, and his travels. Perhaps the title is kept nevertheless because his love of animals was relevant to him, but keeping only those poems would make this collection far too small to publish.

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

CONTENTS

PRAYER FOR GENTLENESS TO ALL CREATURES

TO MY DOG

LOST!

DONKEYS

NEVER GET OUT!

PITIFUL

AKIN

IMPRESSIONS

SILVER POINT

BOTTICELLI’S ‘THE BIRTH OF VENUS’

BOTTICELLI’S TRIMAVERA’

THE CUP

AUTUMN

BY THE SEA PROMENADE

THE FRANCE FLOWER

SWEET OATH IN MALLORCA

AT VALDEMOSA

NOVEMBER

MERLE

DESERT SONG

AT SUNSET

THE PASS OF THE SONG

AUTUMN

DREAM HOUSE

FLOWERS

THE NATIVE STAR

TO LIBERTY

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

PRAYER FOR GENTLENESS TO ALL CREATURES

"And to our hearts the rapture bring

"Of love for every living thing;"

Including those slaughtered regularly, without any mercy?

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

TO MY DOG

But for the title, one would be under the impression it's addressed to a lover, a child, a parent!

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

LOST!

About a lost dog.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

DONKEYS

Very moving, and yet -

"WHEN to God’s Fondouk the donkeys are taken —

"Donkeys of Barbary, Sicily, Spain —

"If peradventure the Deity waken

"He shall not easily slumber again.

"Where in the sweet of the straw they have laid them,

"Broken and dead of their burdens and sores,

"He, for a change, shall remember He made them

"(One of the best of His numerous chores),

"Order from someone a sigh of repentance —

"Donkeys of Syria, Araby, Greece —

"Over the Fondouk distemper the sentence:

"“For God’s own forsaken — the Stable of Peace!”"

Very moving, and yet - nary a thought for those slaughtered regularly, even as their milk is taken for consumption for lifelong sustenance of humans after babyhood.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

NEVER GET OUT!

"I KNEW a little Serval cat —"

"From bar to bar she’d turn and turn,

"And in her eyes a fire would burn —"

"But if by hap a ray of sun

Came shining in her cage, she’d run

"And sit upon her haunches where

"Into the open she could stare,

"And with the free that sunlight share —"

"That catling’s jungle heart forlorn

"Will die as wild as it was born..."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

PITIFUL

About the treatment meted out to animals who aren't pets in West - and horrors thereof, Galsworthy catalogues all but those actually slaughtered, regularly, for no fault of those thus killed.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AKIN

"But if his sentient ardour flow

"For things that pad or fly,

"With you and me — oh! surely know

"He hath affinity.

"America and England breed

"Those who are brothers still,

"For that the beasts they love, and heed

"Bird music on the hill!"

All but those slaughtered regularly??!!!

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

IMPRESSIONS

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

SILVER POINT

Severe, lonely beauty of midwinter of Nordic latitudes.

"Every silver twig up-curled,

"Not a budding leaf unfurled,

"Not a breath to fan the day!

"World aspiring and severe,

"Not a hum of fly or bee,

"Not a song, and not a cry,

"Not a perfume stealing by —

"Stillest moment of the year!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

BOTTICELLI’S ‘THE BIRTH OF VENUS’

He brings it all alive, if one has seen it -

"THE Spring wind fans her hair,

"And after her fly little waves;

"Her feet are shod in pearly shoen,

"And down her foam-white breast do shine

"Petals encarnadine. Her eyes are deaths to care,

"Her eyes of love are tender caves.

"The blossoms blowing on the trees —

"The leafy Spring’s enchanted stir —

"The humming of the golden bees —

"Are but the voice of her!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

BOTTICELLI’S TRIMAVERA’

"HANDMAIDS of the Queen of Love!

"Earth grows white with stars;"

"You alone do dream!

"Maidens of the Queen of Flowers!

"Trees hang orange lamps;

"All the winds are pollen blowing;

"Through the failing golden light"

"Earth below and skies above

"Teach the hour of sweet unresting: —

"All the world is Love!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

THE CUP

This ought to have been part of the Devon poems -

"Here is my Cup;

"A fairy soul,

"With the sun all gold on her curves,

"And the moon milk-white in her bowl!

"As twilight dark,

"Like dew a-shine,

"The goblet she

"Of ev’ry wine!"

The Cup is the very Earth, if it isn't the land of Devonshire!

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AUTUMN BY THE SEA

So different, this autumn, from those we've known - the brilliant sapphire blue skies and bright gold sun, crisp cool breezes and brilliant foliage of reds and golds, of autumn that we have known, in New England!

"And gentle heat’s gold pathway fails

"In autumn’s opal smoke;

"Then long we’ll watch the journey of the soft half-moon —

"A gold-bright moth slow-spinning up the sky;

"And know the dark flight — all too soon —

"Of land-birds wheeling by."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

PROMENADE

He sets out to write of his love walking to him in the park, and does, but the beauty he writes of is of spring in England - and very familiar to those who have seen it, in England or Germany, France or Austria.

"The little bushes puffing green,

"The candles pale that light the chestnut-trees,

"The tulip and the jonquil spies;

The sunshine and the sudden dark;"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

THE FRANCE FLOWER

All too familiar, this, loving the beauty of another land despite loving ones own homeland -

"I love well my English home;

"Yet far thoughts do stealing come

"To throng me like honey-bees,

"Till far flowers my fancy sees —

"’Tis almond against the snows,

"And gentian, and mountain rose,

"And Iris, in purple bright —

"The France flower, the flower of light!"

And the last line sheds light on just how cloudy his homeland is - but there's another little detail before these lines, where he mentions "print frocks"! So that was quite new then!

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

SWEET OATH IN MALLORCA

Galsworthy doesn't tell what oath, exactly, but describes the enchantment of beauty of Mallorca -

"Under the sun among the almond flowers,"

- and more.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AT VALDEMOSA

(MALLORCA, JANUARY 2, 1930)

He certainly brings the beauty alive -

"LEMONS and roses — guide-book said —

"A courtyard, and a simple bed

"Or two, for that romantic pair!"

"But with such wonders for your sight,

"Such scatter of the stars at night,

"Such sunset light upon the hills,

"What need you reck of little ills?"

"The almond, winter-blossoming,

"The buds not waiting for the Spring,

"The olive trees, the tinkling bells

"Of sheep among the asphodels.

"What with the Paradise down there,

"The scent of lemons on the air,

"And all the music that you scored —

"Chopin! I know you were not bored!"

Did Chopin recommend it personally to Galsworthy?

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

NOVEMBER

November he's captured well, and it would seem very similar to that of New England, too, until he says -

"Not till the Spring recapture

"Joy as it flits along,

"Shall we regain the rapture

"Either of scent or song!"

No, in New England the snow brought a festive, elevating beauty that lasted even into spring, often snowfall covering up the earlier blossoms of spring!

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

MERLE

This would make it seem December is dreary in England, unless he speaks of old age -

"THE sea and sky are grey —

"As with the grief of those who’ve mourned;

"Yet through this drear December day

"A lonely merle to song has turned.

"Brave bird, for you no fears!

"Though to the sun you’re strange — as we,

"Across the waste of these last years

"Bereft of all hilarity.

"Then, bird! be voice for all

"The sad who have forgotten song.

"Shake far that trilling lift and fall

"Of notes, and take our hearts along!"

But no, this must have been of war years, of WWI.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

DESERT SONG

True son of England, Galsworthy writes of traversing the desert of Santa Fé, and missing rain.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AT SUNSET

"I’ve seen the beautiful, so clear —

"And it has gone to the heart of me;

"So there’ll be magic ever near

"To me, remembering Tennessee."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

THE PASS OF THE SONG

He's titled it Pass Of The Song, switching the two words to describe the landscape - it's Song Of The Pass to begin with.

"Lone and far, lone and far,

"Till the eye to the summit wins,

"And below, the plains and the mountains are,

"And the lilt of the song begins."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AUTUMN

The bleak landscape he paints in this could only be the Southwest of U.S..

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

DREAM HOUSE

First couple of lines sound like a town dwelling -

"DOWN on our house good shelter falls

"From those high neighbouring white walls,"

But the rest, including

" ... sun’s hot eye

"Cools in the lime-trees, down the sky;"

sounds like his house in Dartmoor.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

FLOWERS

"In my heart the wind is roaming

"Wild, the grass is parched with sadness.

"Spring! my lovely Spring, come soon!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

THE NATIVE STAR

The poet has travelled wide, extensively,

"Yet craved for a salt heaven wide

Above the English sea."

has seen beautiful lands,

"I have been mazed and mazed again

"Where California glows,

"And marvelled at a flowered Spain —

"Her orange and her rose; I’ve dreamed

"Japan, all cherry white;

"Yet would I liefer see

"The Springtime stars of blossom light

"An English apple tree."

And he wonders

"And yet my heart has longed

"For English sound and scent and scene

"Though all my reason knows

"They’ll never be, have never been

"Fit to compare with those."

And answers

"Be not dismayed that each is born

"Under his native star I”"

True! So why go colonizing others' lands, only to loot and deprive them, leaving the sons and daughters of the soil to starve to death??!!!

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

TO LIBERTY

"Bird, my bird, I hear thee singing

"Over the waste, over the foam,

"Clear and high, the far white-winging

"Song of Freedom, flighting home!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August , 2021.

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

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

THE ENDLESS DREAM

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

CONTENTS

PRAISED BE THE SUN!

TO BEAUTY

SPRING

PEACE IN THE WORLD

BURY HILL

SO MIGHT IT BE!

THE MOMENT WAITING

MOON-NIGHT

AMBERLEY WILDBROOKS

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

PRAISED BE THE SUN!

Actually, it is praise to the Sun, in an old fashioned worship offering, admitting a recognition of all that the Sun does for life on Earth.
................................................................................................

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

TO BEAUTY

Galsworthy sings paens to Beauty -

"BEAUTY on your wings — flying the far blue,"

- and gives specific instances of it -

"The gold-cups a-field, the flight of the swallow;

"The eyes of the cow who has calved;

"The wind passing from ash-tree to ash-tree!

"For thee shall I never cease aching?"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

SPRING

"There’s performed in everything

"A miracle of throat and wing.

"Needs but a swallow to flit by

"And print its pattern on the sky.

"Oh! Smell this air!

"The wind it wanders; everywhere

"It plucks a scent. Ah! Exquisite

"The ache of Spring that comes with it!

"And whence it comes, or where it goes —

"The troubling wind of Spring — who knows?"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

PEACE IN THE WORLD

On one hand, a backhanded-

" ... banish far

"The incense and the reeking breath,

"The lances and the fame of war,

"And all the devilments of death."

-and on the other, a vision -

"So shall we see the eyes of Peace,

"And feel the wafting of Her wings."

Attaching incense to war, death and so forth, is that Europe being empire, looking down at colonies, or CoE doing so at Rome?

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

BURY HILL

Almost comparable to a miniature of the Beethoven's symphony Pastoral, in its paen to the beauty of Sussex downs, with sheep and grass and hills down to sea under a clear sky.

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

SO MIGHT IT BE!

Galsworthy wrote his first Interlude in Forsyte Saga with a wish for himself -

"DEATH, when you come to me, tread with a footstep

"Light as the moon’s on the grasses asleep,"

And

"Death, when you come to me, let there be sunlight,"

With

"Flowers in the fields and the song of the blackbird —

"Spring in the world when you fetch me away!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

THE MOMENT WAITING

Galsworthy goes on with beauty of Sussex Downs between sea and sky,

"FOLDED is every sheep, the sunlight’s gone,

"A lonely bird re-takes its evening flight;

"Warmth on the downs, and colour, there is none,

"And yet a Presence — in this lingered light

"Conjured of sky and the green-coated chalk,

"Of air no longer sunlit, and so still —"

but now his vision takes wings, soaring beyond -

"We of the life ephemeral can bow In recognition of eternity.

"Sun and the moon and stars are sequestrate,

"And time — it is not dawn nor noon nor night;

"All is unbounded, and each mortal date

"So little set as thistledown in flight."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

MOON-NIGHT

Galsworthy continues with the wish he wrote up as the first Interlude of the Forsyte Saga -

"THE moon shines full, the elm-trees stand

"Like sentinels, and shadows spill,

"And up that quiet, unearthly land

"The sheepbells with their tinkling fill

"A silence reaching to the sky;

"The rounded farm-stacks that were gold

"Now moon-lit and unreal lie;

"And all is magical and cold.

"But here, beneath my window, one

"Magnolia flower blooms, alight, Moon-glinted, lovely, and alone,

"As fastened in the hair of night,

"And from it to my nostrils creep

"Such spicy odours as might move

"To raptured waking all who sleep,

"The very moon herself, to love."

- hoping

"It will be dream-like, and goodbye

"Will not be harder than it must;

"For life will leave me with a kiss

"Upon my brow of moonlit dust —

"If night be beautiful like this!"

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

AMBERLEY WILDBROOKS

Galsworthy continues on Sussex beauty -

"Here when in winter-time the wild brooks brimmed

"And with their salty flood annulled the earth,

"Till with a lake the dreaming down was rimmed,

"And wandering water-beauty came to birth,

"With floating birds, and the green icy sky,

"And far the sun so pale and pitying shone;"

and connecting it to his end -

"Man is a dreamer, waking for a day,

"Until the wild brooks of oblivion brim;

"’Tis well his waking self should slip away,

"And momentary dreaming comfort him;

"For so he learns, before the long sleep comes,

"That in himself revolves the starry scheme,

"In him the winter’s mute, the summer hums,

"Just as it will be in the endless dream."

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

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

August 07, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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

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

August 04, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

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

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................................................
February 2004 - November 07, 2020 -

June 16, 2021 - August 07, 2021.

Purchased June 13, 2021.

Kindle Edition, 9300 pages

Published February 13th 2013

by Delphi Classics

ASIN:- B00BFJFTFQ

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Saturday, August 7, 2021

Complete Works of John Galsworthy - Delphi Classics, by John Galsworthy.

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