For nearly two years thereafter, Galsworthy traveled, visiting among other places, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, and South Africa. On a sailing-ship plying between Adelaide and the Cape he met and made a friend of the novelist, Joseph Conrad, then still a sailor. Galsworthy was soon to become a writer himself, publishing his first novel in 1899. Since that date he has written novels, plays, essays, and verse that have made him famous.[55] Through his writings he has become a great social force. In this respect his influence resembles that of Charles Dickens. He has made people who read his books or see his plays acted think about the justice or injustice of institutions commonly accepted without a question. The presentation of his play Justice (1909), moved the Home Secretary of the day, Winston Churchill, to put into effect several important reforms affecting the English prison system.
The Little Man, no less a socializing agency in its way, was produced in New York at Maxine Elliott's Theatre in February, 1917, as a curtain raiser to G. K. Chesterton's play, Magic. The part of the Little Man himself was taken by O. P. Heggie, one of the most intelligent and distinguished actors on the English-speaking stage. J. Ranken Towse, reviewing the performance for the Saturday Magazine of the New York Evening Post, on February 17, 1917, wrote: "Another entertainment of notable excellence is that provided by the double bill at Maxine Elliott's Theatre, consisting of Galsworthy's The Little Man and Chesterton's Magic. Here are two plays of diverse character and superior quality, in which some highly intelligent and artistic acting is done by Mr. O. P. Heggie. Some sensitive reviewers have found cause of offense in Mr. Galsworthy's somewhat fanciful American, but the dramatist has been equally disrespectful in his handling of Germans, Dutch, and English. The value and significance of the piece, of course, are to be looked for, not in its broad humors—which are largely conventional—but in the ethical and moral lesson and profound social philosophy which they suggest and illustrate." It is hard to sympathize with the "sensitive reviewers," though to the native ear, to be sure, the utterances of the American lack verisimilitude. The author of The Little Man has even been humorously reproached with using the speech of Deadwood Dick for his model.
The play was also given quite recently, during the season of 1920-21, as part of the repertory at the Everyman Theatre in London. On the programs invariably appears the note which is prefixed also to this as to every printed version. It explains carefully that this play was written before the days of the Great War. This note bespeaks the playwright's perfect detachment which is, as has been said, "an artistic device, not a matter of divine indifference." Yet the satire does seem to be directed, incidentally at least, against certain familiar national characteristics, for it is the humanity of the Little Man, whose mixed ancestry is described by the American as being "a bit streaky," that puts to shame the various types of human arrogance and indifference with which he is surrounded.
THE LITTLE MAN[56]
SCENE I.—Afternoon, on the departure platform of an Austrian railway station. At several little tables outside the buffet persons are taking refreshment, served by a pale young waiter. On a seat against the wall of the buffet a woman of lowly station is sitting beside two large bundles, on one of which she has placed her baby, swathed in a black shawl.
Waiter [approaching a table whereat sit an English traveler and his wife]. Zwei Kaffee?
Englishman [paying]. Thanks. [To his wife, in an Oxford voice.] Sugar?
Englishwoman [in a Cambridge voice]. One.
American Traveler [with field-glasses and a pocket camera—from another table]. Waiter, I'd like to have you get my eggs. I've been sitting here quite a while.
Waiter. Yes, sare.