“He has many gifts, many qualities—technical ability, imaginativeness, sympathy, experience of life, ideas, ideals; but the one supreme, essential gift—the ability to create living men and women working out their destinies in the grip of fate—is not his. Mr Galsworthy, in fact, remains the second-rate artist he always was.”
− + Sat R 129:590 Je 26 ’20 1050w + − Springf’d Republican p11a Jl 11 ’20 800w
“‘A bit o’ love’ is in Mr Galsworthy’s weaker vein. ‘The skin game’ possesses a greater number of powerful scenes of dramatic conflict than Mr Galsworthy has ever put into a single play. ‘The foundations’ is an utter departure for Mr Galsworthy or any other English playwright. Our stage is almost unfitted at present to handle such a play, but the existence of the manuscript ought to do something towards stimulating the development of a new producing method.”
+ Theatre Arts Magazine 4:348 O ’20 300w
GALSWORTHY, JOHN. Tatterdemalion. *$1.90 (3c) Scribner
20–5770
A collection of stories and sketches, some of them reprinted from Scribner’s Magazine, the New Republic and the Atlantic Monthly. Among the sketches that compose Part 1, Of war-time, are a number presenting unfamiliar aspects of the war period. Two of these, The bright side and “The dog it was that died,” are stories of Germans interned in England. The other titles are: The grey angel; Defeat; Flotsam and jetsam; “Cafard”; Recorded; The recruit; The peace meeting; In heaven and earth; The mother stone; Poirot and Bidan; The muffled ship; Heritage; ‘A green hill far away.’ Part 2, Of peace-time, contains eight stories: Spindleberries; Expectations; Manna; A strange thing; Two looks; Fairyland; The nightmare child; Buttercup-night.
+ Booklist 16:347 Jl ’20 + Ind 104:70 O 9 ’20 180w
“On the side of art ‘Tatterdemalion’ illustrates the Galsworthian qualities which are quite familiar by this time: a mellowness that never degenerates into softness; a virile tenderness of tone; an unobtrusive ease in the progression of the narrative; a diction which is always adequate, often beautiful, but which will not or cannot exploit all its own full resources of either beauty or strength through some inflexibility of inner modulation. Some of the short stories here are, with these definite qualities and their defects, among the best of our time.”