[_14 July '10_]
Mr. John Galsworthy, whose volume of sketches, "A Motley," is now in
process of being reviewed, is just finishing another novel, which will no
doubt be published in the autumn. That novels have to be finished is the
great disadvantage of the novelist's career--otherwise, as every one
knows, a bed of roses, a velvet cushion, a hammock under a ripe pear-tree.
To begin a novel is delightful. To finish it is the devil. Not because, on
parting with his characters, the novelist's heart is torn by the grief
which Thackeray described so characteristically. (The novelist who has put
his back into a novel will be ready to kick the whole crowd of his
characters down the front-door steps.) But because the strain of keeping a
long book at the proper emotional level through page after page and
chapter after chapter is simply appalling, and as the end approaches
becomes almost intolerable. I have just finished a novel myself; my
nineteenth, I think. So I know the rudiments of the experience. For those
in peril on the sea, and for novelists finishing novels, prayers ought to
be offered up.
In accordance with my habit of re-reading books which have uncommonly
interested me on first perusal, I have recently read again "A Man of
Property." Well, it stands the test. It is certainly the most perfect of
Mr. Galsworthy's novels up to now. Except for the confused impression
caused by the too rapid presentation of all the numerous members of the
Forsyte family at the opening, it has practically no faults. In
construction it is unlike any other novel that I know, but that is not to
say it has no constructive design--as some critics have said. It is merely
to say that it is original. There are no weak parts in the book, no places
where the author has stopped to take his breath and wipe his brow. The
tension is never relaxed. This is one of the two qualities without which a
novel cannot be first class and great. The other is the quality of sound,
harmonious design. Both qualities are exceedingly rare, and I do not know
which is the rarer. In the actual material of the book, the finest quality
is its extraordinary passionate cruelty towards the oppressors as
distinguished from the oppressed. That oppressors should be treated with
less sympathy than oppressed is contrary to my own notion of the ethics of
creative art, but the result in Mr. Galsworthy's work is something very
pleasing. Since "A Man of Property," the idea that the creator of the
universe, or the Original Will, or whatever you like to call it or him,
made a grotesque fundamental mistake in the conception of our particular
planet, has apparently gained much ground in Mr. Galsworthy's mind. I hope
that this ground may slowly be recovered by the opposite idea. Anyhow, the
Forsyte is universal. We are all Forsytes, just as we are all Willoughby
Patternes, and this incontrovertible statement implies inevitably that Mr.
Galsworthy is a writer of the highest rank. I re-read "A Man of Property"
immediately after re-reading Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment," and
immediately before re-reading Björnson's "Arne." It ranks well with these
European masterpieces.