Mr. John Galsworthy is the most sensitive figure in the ranks of
modern men of letters, but his sensitiveness is of a peculiar nature,
for it is almost totally impersonal. One thinks of Dostoievsky
eternally pitying himself in the belief that he was pitying humanity
and particularly that part of it which is Russian; or of Maxim Gorki,
as shown in his vivid and extraordinary study of Leo Tolstoi,[4]
preoccupied with himself to the extent of imagining that Tolstoi, the
aristocrat, related salacious stories in common speech to him, the
peasant, because he imagined that Gorki, being of vulgar origin, could
not appreciate refined conversation:
I remember my first meeting with him and his talk about "Varienka
Oliessova" and "Twenty-six and One." From the ordinary point of
view, what he said was a string of indecent words. I was perplexed
by it and even offended. I thought that he considered me incapable
of understanding any other kind of language. I understand now: it
was silly to have felt offended.
One thinks, too, of Mr. Shaw's lively interest in himself, and of Mr.
Wells's eagerness to remold the world nearer to his heart's desire.
And remembering these men, intensely individual and not reluctant
to speak of themselves, one is startled to discover how destitute
of egotism Mr. Galsworthy seems to be. It may even be argued that
his lack of interest in himself is a sign of inadequate artistry,
that it is impossible for a man of supreme quality to be so utterly
unconcerned about himself as Mr. Galsworthy is. He has written more
than a dozen novels and at least a dozen plays, but there is not one
line in any of them to denote that he takes any interest whatever in
John Galsworthy. The most obvious characteristic of his work is an
immense and, sometimes, indiscriminating pity, but I imagine that the
only creature on whom he has no pity is himself. Whatever of joy and
grief he has had in life has been closely retained, and the reticence
which was characteristic of the English people--I am now using the
word "English" in the strict sense--in pre-war times, but is hardly
characteristic of them now, is most clearly to be observed in Mr.
Galsworthy. And yet there are few among contemporary writers who reveal
so much of themselves as he does. Neither Mr. Shaw nor Mr. Wells, who
constantly expose their beliefs to their readers, do in the long run
tell so much about their characters as Mr. Galsworthy, who never makes
a conscious revelation of himself and is probably quite unaware that
he had made any revelations at all. How often have we observed in our
own relationships that some garrulous person, constantly engaged in
egotistical conversation, contrives to conceal knowledge of himself
from us, while some silent friend, with lips tightly closed, most
amazingly gives himself away. One looks at Mr. Galsworthy's handsome,
sensitive face and is immediately aware of tightened lips!... But the
lips are not tightened because of things done to him, but because of
things done to others.
I remember, more than ten years ago, reading a notice of the first
performance of "Justice" in an English Sunday newspaper in which the
critic, who must have been terribly drunk when he wrote it, attacked
the play, making nine misstatements of fact about it in as many lines.
Those were the days when I took the field on the slightest provocation.
An insult offered to a man of letters for whom I had respect was an
insult offered to me, and I made much trouble for myself by smacking
faces with great ferocity for offences, not against me, but against my
friends and my betters. I wrote a letter to that critic which created
some havoc in his sodden brain, and I then posted a copy of it to Mr.
Galsworthy. He thanked me very civilly for what I had done, and added
that he never replied to criticism of any sort! I was astounded by his
statement and a little dashed. My faith in those days was, crudely,
two eyes for one tooth! Those who struck at me might expect two blows
in return. Like Mrs. Ferguson, in my play, "John Ferguson," I said to
myself, "If anyone was to hurt me, I'd do my best to hurt them back
and hurt them harder nor they hurt me!" I could not bring myself into
line with the meekness of Mr. Galsworthy until I discovered in it a
form of supreme arrogance!... Now that I know him and his work better,
I realize that I was wrong in my estimation of him both as excessively
meek and excessively arrogant. His rule never to reply to criticism,
however unfair, is a sign, not of humility or pride, but of complete
indifference to himself. I can believe in him becoming furious with
one who belittles a dog, but I cannot believe in him displaying any
feeling over one who belittles John Galsworthy.
But when I look at his tightened lips, I feel certain that they are
drawn closely together, not to prevent himself from forgetting his
indifference to himself, but to prevent him from pouring out his anger
at wrong and cruelty suffered by other people. His hatred of injustice
possesses him like a fury, so that I expect to find his hands always
clenched. There are times, indeed, when he allows his feeling for
others, human and animal, to destroy his sense of proportion, and he
will sometimes imagine that people or beasts are suffering a great
deal more of pain than they really are, even that they are suffering
when in fact they are not suffering at all. This is the complaint most
commonly made of him by his critics, that he sometimes exaggerates the
extent to which people and, particularly, animals suffer. When I was
a child, I remember that I often read in sentimental Sunday-school
books of slum children who never smiled and had never seen grass. I
suppose that fundamentally I have a sceptical mind, for even then I
found myself doubting whether there were any children in the world who
had never seen grass. Grass is so persistent!... I knew that a street
had only to be free of traffic for a short while and little blades of
grass would begin to push up from between the cobbles!... It might be
that slum children never smiled--though I was dubious of that--but
all of them must have seen some grass sometime. Then I grew up and
left Ulster and went to England, and for two or three years I lived
on the confines of a slum in South London, where I discovered that my
sentimental authors were sentimental liars, that poor people do not
live lives of incessant misery, that they smile and laugh as often as,
if not more frequently than, rich people, and are fully as happy as
any one else. Happiness and unhappiness are conditions of the spirit,
and provided a man has sufficient food to eat and a decent shelter and
warm clothes, it matters very little whether he be rich or poor. Mr.
Galsworthy is not always as sensible of this as he might be. Like many
idealists he attaches more importance to material things than many
materialists do. He lets himself be too easily persuaded that a thing
is wrong because it looks wrong. If he had walked into the Valley of
Elah on that morning when the fair and ruddy youth, David, encountered
Goliath, he would certainly have run to David's side. What combat could
have seemed more unequal than that? David was young and slender and of
ordinary stature. He wore no armor and his weapons were a sling and
five pebbles casually picked from a brook. Goliath was five cubits and
a span high, and his huge body was covered with heavy armor. There was
a helmet of brass on his head, and there were greaves of brass on his
legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. His weapons were
terrible: the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his
spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. A man walked in front
of him carrying a shield!... No wonder that Goliath mocked at David
and threatened to pick the flesh from his bones and give it to the
birds. He probably felt that one breath from his mouth would blow David
clean out of the valley. Mr. Galsworthy, had he been present on that
occasion, would have said to himself, "Poor David, young and slight
and ill-armed, has no chance whatever against this great hulking,
uncircumcized Philistine!..." The combat certainly was an unequal one,
but the advantage lay, not with Goliath, but with David. The giant had
the outward show of strength, but David had the Power of God in his
right arm, and before that Power Goliath was but a boneless beast. Mr.
Galsworthy makes Stephen More in his play "The Mob," revile the crowd
in these terms:
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.
Neither Stephen More nor Mr. Galsworthy appears to know that these
characteristics of the mob are the characteristics of weak things.
Strong men do not pelt the weak or kick women, nor do they prevent
free speech. It is weak men and timid men and ignorant, frightened
men--politicians and officials and guttersnipes and sinners--who do
these things, because they have neither the courage nor the strength
nor the intelligence to do otherwise. The mob-instinct of unreasoning
chivalry, the natural impulse to take the part of "the little 'un,"
constitutes a very serious danger to Mr. Galsworthy's work: he is
becoming increasingly partisan in his opinions and sympathies, with
the result that his sentiment is in danger of degenerating into
sentimentalism, and he, so commonly considered impartial, is likely to
end in a state of hopeless and wrong-headed bias. He is beginning to
believe that a weak man is right because he is weak. He is forgetting
the truth enunciated, perhaps excessively, by Dr. Stockmann in "An
Enemy of the People" that "the strongest man in the world is the man
who stands absolutely alone." Or if he has not forgotten it, he is in
danger of believing that a minority is always in the right because it
is a minority: a belief which is as fallacious as that which Mr. G. K.
Chesterton sometimes seems to hold, that a majority is always in the
right because it is a majority. The plain and platitudinous truth is
that only those are in the right who are in the right, whether they be
in a majority or in a minority. Weakness, although it may endow a man
with cunning, does not endow him with moral authority. Mr. Galsworthy
at times lets his pity for weakness lead him into seeming to regard it
as a sign of infallible judgment.