Then there is the old mother, one of those tender, sturdy, odd patricians whom the author can draw so clearly, and there is the young generation[generation] as represented by Nedda, Felix’s inquiring daughter, and Tod’s anarchistic Derek and Sheila—also the wives of three Freelands, especially Tod’s Kirsteen.
These characters are not considered so much in relation to each other as in relation to the central problem, which is The Land—and The Land with Galsworthy is, of course, not the good earth but the slaves that toil on it. He studies the labouring man in connection with his employers, the petty tyrannies of Manor, Parsonage, and Farm. Bob Tryst is evicted because his marriage with his deceased wife’s sister displeases the Squiress, Lady Malloring, and the poor Gaunts are hounded from pillar to post because the daughter has “got into trouble.” Galsworthy pillories Feudalism, which he sees rampant over English rusticity, and parts of The Freelands read like a Gladstone League pamphlet.
However, to any one who loathes “the People,” whether of fields or streets, the central interest of The Freelands is Galsworthy’s study of a modern English family. He is rather fond of this especial study—we have it in The Man of Property, The Country House, and The Patrician; we see it hovering near Fraternity. The combinations and permutations of blood relationship seem to interest him enormously—the modern push and individualism, half attacking, half combining with old-fashioned ideas of kinship and unity. He shows how the family Idea survives, in spite of actual disruptions, and can outlive even an utter lack of common life, interest, or sympathy—so that the unloved brother must come somehow before the loved stranger, simply because he is One of the Family. It is probably a lurking of the primitive clan instinct, and one would like to see it treated of even more thoroughly than Galsworthy has done. It is interesting to watch him with these Freelands, linked by their family tie, and also, in this case, by the wise, kindly, foolish old mother of them all—who is, however, Tod’s in particular.
In other matters The Freelands makes its predecessor, The Dark Flower, stand out even more as an exception or parenthesis. In his latest novel we have all his early, usual traits: all his old defects of too general a characterisation, too careful a balance, too deliberate a sacrifice of the artist to the moralist, but at the same time the virtues of these defects—restraint, craft, and purpose, and, besides, those intrinsic qualities which are the real building-stuff of his work.
The characters of these four brothers, their wives and children and associates, are drawn with a firm touch lightened by much satire of the kinder sort. There is that sense and grasp of beauty which we find so inevitably in Galsworthy’s treatment of even the stuffiest theme. We have, too, a sense of aloofness which, if it is sometimes irritating, is occasionally majestic, and lit by warm, sudden flashes of penetration into characters one would have thought, by other signs, to be beyond his sphere of understanding. The book may not be so good as Fraternity, it is certainly not so great as The Man of Property, but it is, nevertheless, among the best he has given us, which is encouraging, since it is, though only temporarily, one hopes, the last.
THE SKETCHES
Villa Rubein and four short stories under the title of A Man of Devon were published anonymously. All early efforts, they are not on a line with Galsworthy’s later work, but they have about them a certain beauty and individuality which makes them worth considering. Perhaps their chief characteristic is delicacy: they are water-colours, in many ways exquisitely conceived and shaded, but perhaps a trifle pale and washed out, a trifle—it must be owned—uninteresting.
Villa Rubein, describing with much sensitive charm the life of a half-Austrian household, is full of tenderness, but lacking somehow in grip. The characters are more attractive than most of Galsworthy’s—in fact, in no work of his do we meet such a uniformly charming group of people. They are sketched, even the less pleasing, with an entire absence of bitterness, and the heroine, Christian, and her little half-German sister are delightful in their freshness and grave sweetness. Miss Naylor and old Nic Treffry are also drawn with a loving and convincing hand. The book seems to have been written in a mellow mood which passed with it. Yet we pay for any absence of bitterness, propaganda or pessimism, by a corresponding lack of force. It must be confessed that Galsworthy is most effective when he is most gloomy, most penetrating when he is most bitter, most humorous when he is most satirical.
The short stories call for no special comment except The Salvation of a Forsyte, where we meet for the first time Swithin Forsyte, later to figure in The Man of Property. We are introduced to an early adventure of his, which is treated with some technical skill and an impressive irony. The tale has grip, and is not far off French excellence of craft. The other stories are too long for their themes, which, if not actually thin in themselves, are dragged out in the telling.
Of very different stuff are the four volumes of sketches—A Commentary, A Motley, The Inn of Tranquillity, and The Little Man. In these, except, perhaps, in the last, we have some of Galsworthy’s best work, much of it equal, in its different way, to the finest of the plays and novels.