June Forsyte, with her decided chin and managing ways, is the antithesis of Irene, strong only in her softness. It is easy to understand how this very contrast would have switched Bosinney’s love from one to the other, but the change itself is not very convincingly brought about. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that Bosinney himself is not a success. He is the representative of the contrast group; property to him is nothing, he spends his time and talent—in the end risking his career—on the house which is Soames Forsyte’s. On the other hand, it is his sudden knowledge that another also owns the woman of whom he had thought himself the sole possessor that drives him to madness and suicide. Property makes its appeal even to him.
There is throughout the book a depth of gloom, as if the shadows of great possessions lay over it. None of the characters is really attractive, except, perhaps, old Jolyon Forsyte; there is something subtly caddish about them all, and the author’s lack of sympathy sours the whole. Studied in the light especially of his novels, it is a strange error to call Galsworthy “detached.” The side he takes is always apparent, in spite of what he says on the other, and his lack of sympathy with the human representatives of the opposite point of view is often so great as to put them out of drawing. Fine as the Forsytes are, they would have been much finer if the author had penetrated in some degree beneath their outer skin, shown sympathy with the springs of their nature as well as understanding of their mental attitude. His sympathies in The Man of Property are undoubtedly with Irene Forsyte and with Bosinney—though it would seem that this character sometimes repelled and baffled even his creator.
On the whole there is something haunting about the book—something in the gloom of its ending which makes us shudder after it is closed. Property triumphs. Bosinney is beaten and killed by the Man of Property, and Irene is brought back to the slavery from which she revolted.
“Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa-cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.”
Thus the curtain rings down on Irene Forsyte, crushed under the heel of prosperity, robbed of her love by a sudden awakening of the sense of property in the heart of the man she had thought clean of it....
The Country House also deals with a class, and it is the country equivalent of the Forsytes. The Pendyces are big country proprietors, but the property is to them a good deal more than material possession. It is their Position in the county that they think of, their Standing; Dignity is with them almost as important as Land, and more important than Money. Also they are not quite so much a type as the Forsytes—in certain broad characteristics they may be found in dozens of country manors, but in others they are unique. They do everything with the greatest amount of unnecessary trouble to themselves and other people. “Pendyce,” says Paramor to Vigil, when discussing the threatened divorce, “he’d give his eyes for the case not to come on, but you’ll see he’ll rub everything up the wrong way, and it’ll be a miracle if we succeed. That’s ’Pendycitis’!”
Even George, who in some ways breaks free from the family tradition, is afflicted by it. It is largely owing to Pendycitis that he loses Helen Bellew. He tires her with that dogged quality of his, which spares neither himself nor her, but sends him plodding and muddling on in the face of impossible circumstances. He cannot yield, and he is not really strong—he is a Pendyce; and it is with luxurious relief that she finds herself free of him at last.
Helen Bellew is only lightly sketched in, her presence is almost always merely physical. She has many of the outward essentials of the Galsworthy heroine, that particular dower of ripe, seductive, yet delicate, beauty which we find in Irene Forsyte, Audrey Noel, and Olive Cramier. But she is heartless—which those others are not—and hence we seem to find a certain reluctance on the author’s part to probe into her. What is heartless cannot be truly beautiful, according to his creed, and he wants us to realise how beautiful Helen Bellew was, so that she became a force, a moulding-stamp, to the hard, unimpressionable George Pendyce.
The real heroine of The Country House is George’s mother, Margery Pendyce, and she is, practically without exception, the most charming character in Galsworthy’s novels. She is the Mother—not the Mother in her elemental form, but the Mother as civilisation and education and pain have made her; not very different from the primitive type, perhaps, but dainty with a score of sweet refinements. Quieted by her long subjection in the school of Pendyce, she yet has the invincible courage of gentleness; accustomed for years to yield where her own comfort and happiness only are concerned, she takes an impregnable stand at last when her children’s welfare is at stake. There is something heroic in this gentle, soft-gowned, lavender-scented figure, moving so peacefully among her roses, caring so dutifully for her household and her husband, and then suddenly putting them all from her, to take her place beside her outcast son.
“I have gone up to London to be with George” (she writes simply to Pendyce), “you will remember what I said last night. Perhaps you did not quite realise that I meant it. Take care of poor old Roy, and don’t let them give him too much meat this hot weather. Jackman knows better than Ellis how to manage the roses. Please do not worry about me. Good-bye, dear Horace; I am sorry if I grieve you.”