A Commentary deals chiefly with the life of the very poor, showing the intimacy of the author’s knowledge, and the depths of his sympathy. Some of the sketches are indictments of the social order which favours those who have money and tramples those who have none. Justice, for instance, is a fresh exposure of the oft-exposed inequality of the divorce laws where rich and poor are concerned. A Mother is a piteous revelation of those depths of horror and humiliation which form the daily life of many. Continually, in the plays and in the novels, Galsworthy reveals the utter brutishness of some of these submerged ones. He never attempts to enforce his social ethics by glorification of those he champions. Such men as Hughes, in Fraternity, or the husband, in A Mother, are absolutely of the lowest stuff and, it would seem, unworthy of a hand to help them out of the mud in which they roll. But here lies the subtlety of the reproach—it is the social system with its cruelties and stupidities which is responsible for this. There is something more forceful than all the sufferings of the deserving in this grim picture of utter degradation, the depths of bestialism into which mismanaged civilisation can grind divine souls.
In other of the sketches we are shown the opposite side of the picture—the selfishness of the prosperous, their lack of ideals and imagination. Now Galsworthy becomes bitter; with a steely hardness he describes the comfortable life of the upper middle classes, of the fashionable and wealthy. The bias of A Commentary is obvious throughout, and throughout propaganda takes the first place. The fragments are held together by the central idea, which is the exposure—ironic, indignant, embittered, infinitely pitying—of the inequalities between the poor and the rich. True, there is atmosphere, style, a sense of character; but in A Commentary the artist takes second place.
A Motley is, as the title implies, a collection linked up by no central view-point. Character sketches, episodes of the streets and of the fields, reflections on life, art, manners, anything, and all widely different in style and length, crowd together between the covers, without any definite scheme. They show extraordinary powers of observation and intuition, and at the same time a certain lack of grip, which is always the first of Galsworthy’s weaknesses to come to light in a failing situation. Some of the sketches are too slight, over-fined. On the other hand, some have true poetry and true pathos in their conception. The style is more polished, the pleading less special, the knowledge less embittered than in A Commentary. Particularly successful is A Fisher of Men, in which Galsworthy is at his best, giving us a sympathetic and tragic picture of a type with which we know he has little sympathy—there is no bitterness here, just pathos. Once More is a study of lower-class life slightly recalling A Mother, but here again is far more tenderness, due partly, no doubt, to the wistfulness of youth that creeps into the story. Then there are sketches of life and the furtive love of the London parks; no one has realised more poignantly than Galsworthy all the tragedy of hidden meetings and hidden partings with which our public places are filled.
The Inn of Tranquillity is also a mixed collection, and in it we see far more of Galsworthy the poet and the artist than of Galsworthy the social reformer. There are in the book fragments of sheer beauty which would be hard to beat anywhere in modern prose. Take, for instance, the painting of dawn in Wind in the Rocks:
“That god came slowly, stalking across far over our heads from top to top; then, of a sudden, his flame-white form was seen standing in a gap of the valley walls; the trees flung themselves along the ground before him, and censers of pine gum began swinging in the dark aisles, releasing their perfumed steam. Throughout these happy ravines where no man lives, he shows himself naked and unashamed, the colour of pale honey; on his golden hair such shining as one has not elsewhere seen; his eyes like old wine on fire. And already he had swept his hand across the invisible strings, for there had arisen the music of uncurling leaves and flitting things.”
Take also just this sentence from A Novelist’s Allegory: “those pallid gleams ... remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up against the black stuffs of secrecy.”
Galsworthy allows himself to play with words, blend them, contrast them, savour their sweet sound and the roll and suck of them under the tongue ... he becomes a poet in prose. But it is not only words that make his poetry. He seizes aspects of beauty and gives them to us palpitating, fresh from their capture, a poet’s prey. Such is Riding in Mist, a consummate study of the misty moor, damp, sweet, and dangerous. There is, too, a wonderful sense of locality in That Old-Time Place—it throbs with atmosphere.
But we have many studies besides of words and place. There is Memories, in which Galsworthy uses his real understanding of dog-nature, faithful and true. There is The Grand Jury, in which he shows the fullness of his sympathy for the human dog, the bottom dog, so generally and necessarily ignored by laws which are inevitably made for the upper layer of humanity. We have, too, some illuminating comments on the world of letters. In About Censorship there is fine irony, and in Some Platitudes Concerning the Drama plenty of illumination. Indeed, in this article we are given a plain enough statement of the rules which evidently govern Galsworthy’s own work. For instance: “A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the interplay of circumstance on temperament and temperament on circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea.” There could be no clearer definition of the plan governing Strife and The Silver Box. The pronouncement on dramatic dialogue, too, applies admirably to much of Galsworthy’s own achievement:
“The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere art, denying itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere machinery of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from character, relying for fun and pathos on the fun and tears of life. From start to finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, of fine texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and strength of a design to which all must be subordinated.”
In his last book of sketches—The Little Man and other Satires—Galsworthy has made a deliberate sacrifice of beauty. He has left the luminous Italian backgrounds of The Inn of Tranquillity, the rustling English twilights of A Motley, for the midnight lamp on his study table. This is why, perhaps, The Little Man depresses me. Galsworthy has not stood the test—he has grown bitter. His satire is more akin to that of Swift than Samuel Butler, but without Swift’s redeeming largeness, his tumbling restlessness. Galsworthy’s bitterness is the well-bred bitterness of the pessimist at afternoon tea; Swift is the pessimist in the tavern, raging round and breaking pots.