He seems to be most impressed, in viewing the human scene, by the sense
of property which he discovers in mankind. In his best work, the novels
of the Forsyte Saga, beginning with "The Man of Property" and ending
with "To Let" one finds him attributing this sense to human beings to a
degree which is, in my belief, entirely excessive. Soames Forsyte, "the
man of property," is portrayed to us as a man who regards all things,
human and otherwise, as things to be owned. His wife is a piece of
property just as a picture or a dog is. When he obtains a divorce from
her and marries a young French girl, Annette, he treats the latter
as a piece of valuable property useful for the purpose of producing
a still more valuable piece of property; and when Annette bears a
daughter to him, he is left exclaiming almost passionately that this
child is _his_, not hers and his, but _his_! All the members of the
Forsyte family, described with great particularity, are possessed of
this sense of property, but it is more highly developed in Soames than
in any of them. Even those members of it, like young Jolyon Forsyte,
who break with the family tradition, concentrate on this property
point. They only differ from the rest of the family in being anti-,
rather than pro-, property. None of them seems to be indifferent to
property. The dominating influence in their lives, either for happiness
or for misery, is property. Mr. Galsworthy states of them that as
they watched the funeral of Queen Victoria, they felt that they were
burying more history for their money than had ever been buried before.
One of the Forsyte women loves the statement of Christ that "In My
Father's house are many mansions" because it comforts her sense of
property. Most of the conflict in the Galsworthy novels springs from
the reactions of the characters to this sense, and it is laboured
to the point of attenuation. The temperamental differences between
Soames and Irene Forsyte in "The Man of Property" are obscurely stated,
and still more obscurely stated in the dramatized version of their
relationship called "The Fugitive," in which Soames and Irene become
George and Clare Dedmond, and Bosinney, the architect-lover, becomes
Malise, the journalist-lover. It is true that the differences which
break a marriage are sometimes the result of fundamental things which
cannot be described with the clarity of the items in an auctioneer's
catalogue; but the business of an artist is to make obscure things
plain and understandable, and the success of his work depends upon the
way in which he impresses his readers with the vagueness and obscurity
of these things and yet at the same time makes them realize how
substantial they are. Soames and Irene Forsyte may not be able to say
why they cannot live together, but Mr. Galsworthy must be able to do so
and he must empower his readers to do so, too. A novelist gives a sense
of inarticulateness in a character, not by making him so inarticulate
that the readers cannot hear or understand a word he is saying, but
by making his inarticulateness articulate. The danger into which many
writers tumble headlong is that they will spend all their energies on
getting the details right and will leave the general effect obscure.
One sees signs of this in Mr. Galsworthy's work. He is so busy endowing
his people with a sense of property that he occasionally omits to endow
them with a sense of humanity. If one compares the Forsyte novels,
say, "In Chancery," with Mrs. Edith Wharton's latest book, "The Age of
Innocence," one discovers that in each case, the theme is concerned
with the institution of the family, with the tribal instinct which
makes the majority of minds seek identity rather than dissimilarity.
But in Mrs. Wharton's book, this tribal instinct is humanly expressed,
whereas in Mr. Galsworthy's it is not. I recognize Mrs. Wharton's
people as human beings, but I am sceptical about Mr. Galsworthy's
people. Old Mrs. Mingott, in "The Age of Innocence," has affinity with
old Jolyon Forsyte in "The Man of Property" and "The Indian Summer of
a Forsyte." (He is the most human figure in the Saga.) But the rest
of the cast in the Forsyte Saga has less relevance to humanity than
the rest of the cast in "The Age of Innocence," and the reason is, I
think, that Mr. Galsworthy has allowed his theory to get the better of
his people, whereas Mrs. Wharton, whatever her theory may be, has kept
her eye very steadfastly on human beings. The Countess Olenska in "The
Age of Innocence" has verisimilitude which is absent from the figure
of Irene Forsyte in "The Man of Property" or Clare Dedmond in "The
Fugitive." We can comprehend Ellen Olenska, but Irene Forsyte utterly
eludes us.
V
One entertains oneself with noting how differently an experience
of life presents itself to Mr. Galsworthy from the way in which it
presents itself to Mr. Bernard Shaw. Mr. Galsworthy sends Falder,
in his play "Justice," to prison and flattens him out. Mr. Shaw
sends Margaret Knox and Bobby Gilbert, in "Fannie's First Play," to
prison and amazingly enlarges their lives. What utterly depresses Mr.
Galsworthy, stimulates and even exalts Mr. Shaw. If Mr. Galsworthy
tortures us to the point at which we wish to rush out of the theatre
and raze Wormwood Scrubbs and Pentonville to the ground, Mr. Shaw
causes us to feel that each of us might be considerably benefitted by a
sojourn there. Mr. Galsworthy sees a gaol as a place where thought is
destroyed or embittered: Mr. Shaw sees it as a place where thought is
provoked and clarified; and between them, a simple-minded person cannot
make up his mind whether to subscribe to the funds of the Howard League
for Penal Reform or to advocate penal servitude for every one in the
interests of Higher Thought. Adversity, says Mr. Galsworthy, knocks a
man down. Adversity, says Mr. Shaw, braces him up. The first statement
may fill a man with pity, but the latter is more likely to make a hero
of him.