SOAMES FORSYTE: A STUDY

IN CHARACTERIZATION
By
Lynn Lubin Gold, B. A.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of

Graduate Studies and Research in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts.

Department of English
McGill University
Montreal April, 1964
 CONTENTS

Introduction Page i
I. Biographical Material and its Relevance
to the Criticism 1

II. The Man of Proper.,tt: A Possessive Husband 9

III. In Chancery: A Tragicomic Lover 28

IV. To Let: The Unselfish Father 56

V. A Modern Comedy: The Final Portrait 83

A Selected Bibliography 109
 i

Introduction

The atm of this atudy is to examine Galsworthy's

portrait of Soames Forsyte through the course of six novels,
to interpret the changes in that portrait, and to determine
whether Soames really developed, as leading critics suggest,
from a villainous to a heroic character.
Galsworthy wrote his best novel, The Man of
Property, in an uncharacteristically rebellous mood because
of the circumstances of his courtship of Ada. As he grew
older and more tolerant, as he and his wife were accepted
into the society against which they had rebelled, and as
his position in literature became firmly established, he
looked at Soames with increasing insight and compassion.
Because of Galsworthy's balanced technique and
method of understatement, it is easy to miss noticing and
appreciating his objectivity and detachment. Although in
A Modern Comedy he chose to emphasize those characteristics
which he respected in Soames, he did not lose sight of his
original conception of the character; nor did he try to
erase the flaws and ltmitations of Soames's personality in
order to draw an idealized self-portrait. His attitude at
first was bitterly satirical, but with an undertone of

f
 ii

1
sympathy; toward the end, the sympathy and understanding
predominated, but Galsworthy preserved an undertone of
criticism.
I suggest, then, that Soames, despite a softening
and diffusion of his less attractive character traits,
remains basically constant from beginning to end, and that
the changes took place, not in the character, but in the
viewpoint of the author.

A Note on the Text

Galsworthy wrote The Man of Propertx between 1902
and 1905; he published it in 1906. Some years later he made
the following entry in his diary:
W!ngstone. We stayed on at Wingstone till the end of August
Ll9i§7, during which I began the Second Part of The Forsyte
Saga, to be called The Second Flower~. The idea of making
The Man of Propertx the first volume of a trilogy cemented
by Indian Summer of a Forsyte and another short episode came
to ~e on Sunday, July 28th ll91!7, and I started the same
day. This idea, if I can ever bring it to fruition, will
make The Forsyte Saga a volume of half a million words
nearly; and the most sustained and considerable piece of
fiction of our generation at least. • • • But shall I ever

1
Many critics mistakenly believe that Galsworthy
was so bitterly indignant when he wrote The Man of Property
that he detested Soames and treated the character without
tolerance or understanding. I hope to demonstrate that
The Man of Property does not support this belief.
 iii

2
bring it off?
Two years later (1920), ln Chancery appeared;
the other novels and interludes comprising the two
trilogies came regularly thereafter at similar intervals.
The Man of Property, "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" (in Five
Tales, 1918), In Chancery, "Awakening" (1920), and ToLet
(1921) were brought together and published (1922) as In!
Forsyte Saga. The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon
(1926), "Two Forsyte Interludes" (1927), and Swan Song (1928)
appeared as A Modern Comedy (1929). Another trilogy, End of
the Chapter (1934), was published posthumously.
Other Forsyte material includes "The Salvation of
Swithin Forsyte" (in A Man of Devon, 1901), "Cry of Peacock"
and"Soames and the Flag" (both in On Forsyte 'Chge, 1930).
Not all the works listed above are relevant to
this study. Soames Forsyte appears throughout the three
novels (but not the interludes) of The Forsyte Saga, the
three novels of A Modern Comedy and its interlude, '~assers

By, " and in the stories "Cry of Peacock" and "Soames and the
Flag." The third trilogy, End of the Chapter, begins after

2
H. Vincent Marrot, The Life and Letters of John
Galsworthy (London, 1935), p. 443.
 iv

the death of Soames and deals with the family of his son-in-
law rather than with the Forsytes themselves.
Galsworthy's letters, notebooks, and essays
provide invaluable insight into the author's attitudes, a~s,

and difficulties concerning the characterization of Soames.

This material answers many of the questions raised about
these attitudes and proves much of the adverse criticism
directed against Galsworthy to be unfounded; I have quoted
his non-fictional writings wherever pertinent.
 1

I: Biographical Material and its Relevance to the Criticism

If Ada Cooper had not married Arthur Galsworthy,

John Galsworthy would not have written The Forsyte Saga
in its present form, for the period between his first
meeting with Ada, his cousin's wife, and his marriage to ber
constituted the turning point of his life and the most
crucial influence on htm as a novelist. His greatest novel
and its sequels had their origin in his turbulent, intense
emotions during that ttme. ln any consideration of Galsworthy's
work, one cannat ignore the experience nor over-emphasize
its importance. Furthermore, Ada's unwavering faith in his
ability during his apprenticeship in novel-writing, when he
was producing some remarkably bad stories, may very well have
been decisive in making writing his career.
The scandalous aspects of the story, however,
give rise to questions which the critic, like the biographer,
must ask himself. How much should he reveal? What
interpretation should he put upon this material? Most
important, what is his justification for including it; that
is, how does it serve his purpose?
Two years after the death of John Galsworthy,
H. Vincent Marrot published the "official" biography of the
writer. His acknowledgements include an expression of
 2

gratitude to Mrs. Galsworthy for ber '~ntiring assistance

1
and encouragement of many kinds." This statement is a
very small acknowledgement of the extremely close supervision
under which he wrote the book, for Ada Galsworthy approved
every line of the final version.
Marrot gives the facts of the courtship as
follows :
Ada Galsworthy's first marriage was a tragic mistake.
Blameless and helpless, she was livin.& in extreme
unhappiness. Her two loyal friends LGalsworthy's sisters,
Mabel and Lili~{ were doing all they could--which was
little enough; and from them their brother began to learn--
with what distress may be tmagined--the torment that married
misery can be. It was a very ~ducation in pity, and it was
to last for many years. • • .[They met at interv4ls,
gradually drew closer, and at last fell in love~ Then, in
September of 1895, they became lovers, and there begân the
long turmoil of their hearts~-that life 'spun between
ecstasy and torture'--which was to last,through nine mortal
years.- For themselves their course was simple. ConceaLment
was repugnant to both of them, and there was every argument
in favour of open~ss. Every argument, that is, save one,
and that fatal. What of the old man, his father? • • •
could he be expected to accept with composure that which
training and the habit of years must force hfm to regard as
a scandal? • • • At any rate, 'Neither,' wrote one of them,
'would contemplate for one moment doing anything that could
grieve the very declining years of his father, to whom they
were both utterly devoted.' (pp. 101- 102}
Nine years of clandestine meetings followed,
during which ttme Arthur Galsworthy went to South Africa

1
Marrot, p. xiv.
 3

when the Boer War came, and Ada made the gesture of moving
into ber own flat. She remained there for three years until
the death of old'John Galsworthy in December, 1904.
Overwhelmed with deepest grief and joy, they knew that life
was changed, and the period of their bandage over.
They spent a few weeks together at the farm-house
• • • were served, much to their satisfaction, with divorce
petition papers • • • left for Italy • • • were married on
September 23rd--the very day after the expiry of the six
months' nisi period, and settled happily dawn in a little old
bouse in Addison Road. The long ordeal was over.2
Not another word does Marrot say about Arthur
Galsworthy and his marriage with Ada. He gives--is permitted
to give--only the bare bones of the tale. To adduce from
his account the emotional source of the Soames-Irene-
Bosinney story is to exercise all the ingenuity which
fertile imagination and sympathy can supply.
The reasons for the biographer's delicacy and
restraint are self-evident. In the late 1770s Samuel
Johnson wrote:
The necessity of camplying with times, and of sparing
persans, is the great impediment of biography. History may
be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives
can only be written from personal knowledge, whlch is
growing every day less, and in a short ttme is lost for
ever. What is known can seldom be ilmnediately told; and
when it might be told, it is no longer known. • • • It is

2
Marrot, p. 103.
 4

surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolic, and folly,

however they might delight in the description, should be
silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and
unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow,
a daughter, a brother, or a friend.3
Biography is an art, and like all arts bas its

changing rules. The modern biographer's attitude toward the

introduction of embarrassing personal details is vastly
different from what it was in Johnson's time. In a very

recent article, the purpose of which is to defend the living

artist from encroachments upon his privacy and the consequent
impairment of his creativity, Stephen Spender traced this
4
change in attitude over the past two hundred years. The
pre-Strachey biog~apher (John Morley on Gladstone; Forster
on Dickens, Boswell on Johnson, and Johnson on the English
Poets are cited as good examples) regarded himself as a kind
of filter. Entrusted by members of the family with private
papers and other information, his function was to separate
the public from the private and to present "an edited and

censored version of the whole sum of public and private

5
events that goes to make a life." When the public was

3
Samuel Johnson, "Joseph Addison," Lives of the
Poets, Everyman Edition (London, 1925), I, 345-346.
4
Stephen Spender, '~ow Much Should a Biographer
Tell?" Saturday Review, XLVII, iv (January 25, 1964), 16-19.
5
Spender, p. 16.
 5

already in possession of certain awkward facts, the duty of

the biographer was to try to explain them away. There were
exceptions to this practice: when the subject was not a
hero but a villain, when inttmate details were directly
related to a work of art, or when, as in Johnson's Life of
Savage, the biographer gave details in an attempt to excuse
the shortcomings of a man whose public image needed rehabilita-
tion. For the most part, however, biographers believed that
a public figure was entitled to the same privacy regarding
his personal life as any ordinary citizen. Dowden's Life of
Shelley elicited expressions of shock and dismay from
Matthew Arnold, who deplored the scandalous information made
available even though most of it was already vaguely and
partially known, at least to a certain class of the public.
The modern view is different for several reasons.
One, the result of social revolution, is a lack of respect
for members of the upper classes, a respect which at one time
protected them from unfavourable publicity. Another is the
feeling that the modern reader is capable of receiving
private information without distaste, and of liking the

artist despite--or even because of--his personal weaknesses.

A third reason is simply the availability of biographical

material as the result of modern research methods, material

 6

which a hundred years ago might well have remained buried

in "decent obscurity." The most compelling (and defensible}
reason of all is the conviction that the circumstances of
the artist's life are related to his work and that a
knowledge of those circumstances illuminates the public's
understanding and appreciation of the work.
We are inclined to think that everything, however private,
is relevant to the work, the man, and the vocation. We are
moving toward a state of affairs in which the work of a
writer and his biography will merge, as it were, into a
single consciousness. When we know all about the work and
all about the life, both work and life will contribute
meanings to a sum. • • • We cannot draw that boundary
between the relevant public material and the irrelevant
private that seemed so obvious to people before the era of
psychoanalysis. To us, e~erything about an artist is
relevant to his vocation.
Dudley Barker, who has written the most recent
full-length study of Galsworthy, representa the modern point
7
of view. Unlike Marrot, he was free of the widow's
supervision and of the fear of hurting anyone, since all the
persons involved were dead. Furthermore, he had at his
disposa! materials not available to Marrot, information

6
Spender, p. 17.
7
Dudley Barker, The Man of Principle: A View of
John Galsworthy (London, 1963}.
 7

which came from personal talks with Viola and Rudolf Sauter
(Galsworthy' s nephew and his wife, who knew Uohn and Ad a
intimately), Hubert Galsworthy (another nephew), and Mrs.
Wilhelmine Galsworthy, Arthur's second wife. From this
information Barker was able to give--partly through fact and
partly by speculation--a fairly detailed account of the
personality of Arthur, the circumstances surrounding the
failure of his marriage, and an estiœate of the character and
temperament of Ada. This last is somewhat acidulous, even
though Barker is careful to give her credit for ber virtues
and for her aid to the novelist throughout his career. He
allows also that, if her stories about the cruelty and
abuses of ber first husband were exaggerated for the purpose
of gaining sympathy, their importance is not so much a
matter of their truth but of their effect on Galsworthy.
To the extent that the private story is relevant
to an understanding of the novels, the biographer-critic is
fully justified in investigating the details of that story.
How relevant, however, are Barker's inferences concerning
the lovers' motives for waiting until the death of old John?
On the "evidence" that Arthur Galsworthy was convinced they

waited only through fear of losing the patrfmony, and as a

logical deduction from his knowledge of human nature, Barker

 8

concludes that their motives were entirely monetary (p. 67).

Apart from the weakness of his reasoning and of
the authority on which he bases his inference, Barker does
not justify its inclusion. Rad he chosen to demonstrate its
relation to the novels, he could well have done so; what is
most surprising is his failure to discover material in The
Forsyte Saga that he might have used to support his theory--
that is, the young Jolyon-old Jolyon story.
Old Jolyon is most certainly modelled after old
John Galsworthy; young Jolyon is abaost as certainly, in
large measure, a self-portrait of the novelist. When young
Jolyon ran off from his wife and child with a French
governess (the details are never fully revealed), he was not
only disinherited by but estranged from his father--to their
mutual pain and sorrow--for a number of years.
In failing to refer to this story, Barker loses
the opportunity to justify his inference; for, unless 1t can
be demonstrably related to the novels, the whole subject is
an invasion of privacy. If the biographer's aim is to
satisfy the curiosity of the public with scandal and specula-
tion, he must forego his pretentions to a fair and serious
critique.
 9

II. The Man of ~roperty: A Possessive Husband

It is not only in the date of composition that
The Man of Property is separated from the rest of the
Forsyte chronicles. It is commonly considered the best
of Galsworthy's works and the cornerstone of his literary
reputation. It is the most skilfully plotted of all his
novels and the richest in feeling and characterization.
Finally, critics have given most of their attention to this
book.
The figure of Soames Forsyte was, and still is,
taken by many readers to be a villainous character.
Galsworthy's personal involvement • • • warped his treatment
of Soames. Not only is the poor man mocked cold-bloodedly
in his troubles throughout the first volume of the Saga
(except for the last few chapters) but Galsworthy pilloried
him years after, when he returned to write of the Forsytes
and the Victorian world. He depicted with relish Soames's
agonized desire for an heir and the subseiuent irony of his
obtaining only one child and that a girl.
This interpretation was contrary to Galsworthy's
intention and one which the author refuted several times.
He said, in a letter to his sister, "I was very pleased that
you felt sympathy with Soames. 1 have been very much afraid
2
of not doing him justice." Years later, when he came to

l
Drew B. Pallette, ·~oung Galsworthy: The Forging
of a Satirist," Modern Philology, LVI (1958-9), 184.
2
Marrot, p. 182.
 10

write the Preface to The Forsyte Saga, he felt still that

Soames needed defending:
One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the
salt waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to
pity Soames, and to think that in doing so they are in
revolt against the mood of his creator. Far from it! He,
too, pities Soames, the tragedy of whose life is the very
simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without
quite a thick enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of
the fact.3

Soames is anything but a simple character. He is,

for one thing, a symbol of the possessive principle
motivating the upper-middle-class of England. He is the
most Forsyteian of the Forsytes, an honour he shares, perhaps,
with his father, James; he is the embodiment of the need to

possess which regards all things--land, bouses, paintings,

even women--in terms of ownership.
This need to possess is at once a psychological and a social
quality. Galsworthy's psychology at this point probably
strikes a modern reader as curious; but at least it is clear.
He has no recourse to depth psyehology; indeed, such analysis
was hardly available to him in 1903-6, when he was writing
the book. He finds his explanation in heredity • • • • But
at the same time this possessiveness is socially relevant
because, as Young Jolyon explains, the Forsytes are typical.
They represent half of England, the upper half, the
propertied half. Their virtues and their faults are
reflected through the governing class of the island. This

3
The Forsyte Saga (New York, 1936), p. xii.
Subsequent references will be to this edition.
 11

4
is Galsworthy's charge against his society.
This criticism of the ruling class brought against
Galsworthy charges tbat he was a revolutionary, a Socialist;
a traitor to his class. But far from attempting a sweeping
analysis of social structure, with recommendations for its
improvement, he wrote with a much more limited aim and scope
and from a highly personal point of view. An interviewer

once asked him whether preaching a bit through characters

and plots had any part in his writing. He denied that he
wrote with consciously didactic intent.
But I do not ~te without emotion or passion; quite the
contrary. The temperament of a writer must have freedom,
but with restraint, and always without falsifying one's
characters. I do not suppress my temperament, because my
temperament dictates the incidents and characters in which
I have sufficient interest. They reflect indirectly my
emotions and thoughts. Everything is indirect, and the
whole process very subtle. I hate didacticism.5
Possessiveness in Soames is more to be pitied tban
censured, for he is blind to his fault, punished tragically
throughout his life for the fault, and, except for that one
fatal blemish, depicted as a man of many virtues. Wben he

4
Woodburn o. Ross, "John Galsworthy: Aspects of
an Attitude," Studies in Honor of John Wilcox, ed. A. Dayle
Wallace and Woodburn o. Ross (Detroit, 1958), p. 203.
5
Bernice Cosulich, '~ife's Ironies Inspire John
Galsworthy," Literary Digest International Book Review,
IV {April, 1926), 298.
 12

tries to woo Irene back after their estrangement, he asks

ber, ·~at's the matter with me? I ask you a plain
question: Wbat is it?" And he goes on, "I'm not lame, I'm
not loathsome, I'm not a boor, I'm not a fool. What is it?
What's the mystery about me?" (p. 481). It is true: he is
none of those things; he is only. physically distasteful to
ber. '~e could not understand what she found wrong with htm.
It was not as if he drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble,
or swear; was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he
stay out at night? On the contrary" (p. 50). As for his
character, he is fastidious in his person, scrupulously
honest in his business dealings (as well as intelligent and
shrewd), prudent, sane, dependable.
How much of Soames, even as he is in The Man of
Property, is part of the author? The following testimony is
from Galsworthy's pen:
A novelist, however observant of type and sensitive to the
shades of character, does little but describe and dissect
himself • • • • in dissecting Hilary La character in
Fraterniti7 for instance. • • • his creator feels the knife
going sharply into his own flesh, jusg as he could feel it
when dissecting Soames Forsyte. • • •
That the author did not despise his character
cannot be over-stressed, in view of the numbers of critics

6
Quoted in Terence William Leighton MacDermot,
"John Galsworthy," Dalhousie Review, IX (1929·30), 356.
 13

who believe that he did. He may have hated what Soames

stood for, but he was incapable of hating his own creation.
Although Soames sins so greatly against Irene, he sins in
blindness, unconscious of sin. With his lack of imagination,
he is incapable of seeing himself objectively and helpless
to correct faults.te is unaware of. Galsworthy' s method of
showing this characteristic is not to insert a dissertation
on Soames's limited imagination; instead, he gives Soames's
own thoughts, which reveal to the reader his narrowness of

outlook better than any amount of direction from the narrator

could. Presently, an examination of Soames's meditations
will demonstrate the method.
With tongue in cheek, Robert Noel Bradley wrote:
Soames could not help it; he behaved just as most Englishmen
would have behaved, and our judge•s would have commended him.
He exercised his marital rights. • • • We are rather sorry
for Soames, for he really loved his wife. • • • He was not
at ;ault; it was his sense of property that made him do
it.
This is sarcasm, but it contains a truth. By
Soames's standards--the values appropriate to his nature and
class and environment--asserting his marital rights was not
wrong. His blindness is the blindness of his class; it is

7
Robert Noel Bradley, Duality: A Study in the
Psycho-Analysis of Race (London, 1923), pp. 78-79.
 14

his personal and grotesque tragedy to be unable to see

beyond class mores.
The "rape" episode (a term, by the way, inaccurate
although employed by critics; according to English common
law, the cohabitation of a man with his own wife, however
unwilling she may be, does not constitute rape) has given
rise to a curious trend in criticism. Galsworthy made an
earnest effort to present Irene sympathetically; she was, of
course, modelled after Ada. ~·~o ••• knows enough even
to connect A with I, especially as I have changed her hair
8
to gold?") Yet, during the early 1920s critics began to look
at Irene unsympathetically and to soften their hostility
toward Soames. (Chapter IV._ discusses this change of
attitude in more detail.) Hugh Walpole questioned whether
she was really so monstrously ill-treated, since, "playing
the part from first to last of a female cad," she failed to
keep her part of the bargain; he concluded that '~er own
callous selfishness is to one reader at least infinitely more
9
appalling than Soames's possessiveness." An earlier critic
pleaded even more eloquently for Soames:

8
Marrot, p. 182.
9
"John Galsworthy," The Post Victorians (London,
1933), p. 179.
 15

Soames, the man of property, takes this woman, as just as

much his possession as any other rare thing of beauty and
value he has paid its priee for, to enjoy, whenever he may
choose. For that initial act of grossness, he pays and
pays again, throughout a lifetime; pays much more heavily
than, with his nature, he may ever apprehend. Not with
impunity can we ever besmirch the dignity of a human soul.
But, surely, Soames--Forsyte as he is through and through--
could never, even as a lover before marriage, have been much
less Forsytiàn?. That is where the reader, just a little
less Irene's man than Mr. Galsworthy is, feels the first
indication of the 'something wanting' in the delicacy of
discriminatfans which later are the means of making so many
lives rock.
Galsworthy intended the reader to share his utter
condamnation of the act and to see it as a brutal violation
of the fragile, shrinking woman, inexcusable from every
moral, ethical and humanitarian viewpoint. One of the
tidbits which Dudley Barker elicited from Viola Sauter hints
that some such act occurred, according to Ada, between the
Arthur Galsworthys (p. 51). (According to his second wife,
however, Arthur was sexually unaggressive to a degree that
makes the story unbelievable.) If this account were true, or
if the novelist believed it to be true (rather than the
exaggeration of a neurotic, bored, unhappi1y-married woman),
his shock and horror are understandab1e.
One wou1d expect that this affair could only be

10
May Bateman, "John Galsworthy," Catho1ic World,
CXIV (1921•22), 741.
 16

described from the woman's point of view, but, in keeping

11
with his intention of presenting Irene always indirectly,
Galsworthy relates the story through Soames.
Soames is walking in the park one night, thinking
of his coming lawsuit against Bosinney. Suddenly he bas the
'~lood driven from his heart by a low laugh and the sound of
kisses."
Starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness,
the half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some
morbid stimulant. He left the path along the water and
stole under the trees • • • a stealthy inspection of chairs
side by side against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovera, who
stirred at his approach. (p. 242)
He steals along, catching sight of a pair of lovera entwined
in the lamp-light, oblivious; he hurries on, looking and
looking.

11
In the Preface to The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy
says that Irene is never present except through the senses
of other characters. This is literally true, for, although
she does speak, she always bas a companion to hear ber words.
Galsworthy describes ber appearance only through the
observation of another character. He never gives ber
tboughts, as he gives those of Soames or Jolyon. There is
one instance when the reader sees Irene's behaviour without
the medium of an observer; that is, when she and Bosinney
stroll through a copse (in the chapter called ·~rive with
Swithin" in The Man of Property). Bosinney, a character
also presented indirectly, does not count as an observer.
Galsworthy evades the problem of inconsistency by having
Uncle Swithin fall asleep and by sending his ''Forsyte spirit"
dawn into the copse to watch the lovers.
 17

In this search, wbo knows what he thought and what he

sought? Bread for hunger--light in darkness? Who knows
what he expected to find--tmpersonal knowledge of the
human heart--the end of his private subterranean tragedy--
for, again, who knew, but that each dark couple, unnamed,
unnameable, might not be he and she? • • • But shaking
himself with sudden disgust, Soames returned to the path,
and left that seeking for he knew not what. (pp. 242-243)
An unpleasant incident occurred a few days before, ~ben a
gossip hinted to Soames, at a dinner-party, that Irene was
"a great friend" of Bosinney' s. The remark set Soames to
brooding; the words ·~ad roused in hfm a fierce jealousy,
which, with the peculiar perversion of this instinct, bad
turned to fiercer desire" (p. 258). The jealousy, the
evening in the park, the "fiercer desire"--all provide the
incentive for his act, and Irene's having forgotten for once
to lock ber bedroom door provides the opportunity.
The morning after "a certain night on which Soames
at last asserted his rights and acted like a man" (p. 258),
Soames breakfasts alone. Uncomfortable and remorseful, he
tries to reassure htmself with the knowledge that she would
not tell anyone--"it was not the sort of thing that she would
speak about." He continues to think about the "incident,"
attempting to rationalize away the discomfort of the memory:
Those nightmare-like doubts began to assume less extravagant
importance at the back of his mind. The incident was really
not of great moment; women made a fuss about it in books; ·
but in the cool judgment of right-thinking men, of men of
the world, of such as he recollectèd often received praise
 18

in the Divorce Court, he bad but done his best to sustain

the sanctity of marriage, to prevent ber from abandoning
ber duty, possibly, if she were still seeing Bosinney, from--
No, he did not regret it. (p. 259)
If this were all, if Galsworthy bad left hfm in that state of
self-assurance, one would be justified in saying that Soames
was an icy-hearted villain and that his creator detested hfm.
The attitude expressed so far representa everything that was
wrong, in Galsworthy'& eyes, with society' a view of a wife
as a chattel of ber husband. Galsworthy gave his opinion on
the subject in a latter to Sir Arthur Quiller-Coueh.
You use the word sentiment. Now, the longer I live the more
constantly I notice that hatred of suffering, abhorrence of
cruelty, is called sentiment only by those who have never
fathomed, or truly envisaged the nature of tbat particular
suffering or cruelty, and I am going to say quite frankly
tbat thougb you are an older man than myself, of possibly
wider general experience, you can never have looked first
band into the eyes of an unhappy marriage, of a marriage
whose soul bas gone or never was tbere, of a marriage tbat
but lives on the meanest of all diet, the sense of property,
and the sense of convention. You bave never at first-hand--
as I have--seen souls shrivelling in bodies under that
possibly worst form of suffering and worst kind of cruelty
in the world. • • • A more fiendisb spiritual destruction
I would not wisb any man than that be should continue to
possess a woman who revolted at his touch. • • • I speak
strongll~ because I feel strongly, and know what I am talking
about.

He went on to elaborate upon the matter, about whieh he felt

12
Marrot, pp. 382-383.
 19

so intensely and so personally, but it is not necessary to

quote more to demonstrate the strength of his convictions.
Throughout the tfme Soames is telling himself how
unimportant the incident was, and justifying his action,
Irene's sobbing echoes in his ears. He goes to business,
rides the underground, reads his paper, transacts his affairs,
always with that sobbing and the sight of ber tear-stained
face haunting him. The reader must interpret his guilt and
discomfort, which are obviously unconnected with any
realization of the right and wrong of it; Soames does not
feel horror and aversion toward himself because of his act.
It is not merely the distress which an art-collecter feels
at the sight of a damaged painting in his collection. Surely
it is meant to indicate that Soames, obtuse as he is, is not
insensitive and uncaring entirely for Irene's feelings; it
is a hint that she is more than a piece of property to him.
He cannot understand why she cried; yet her weeping gives him
pain.
That his desire for her is something more than
possessiveness is confirmed later by his reflections on the

possibility of divorce. At first it seems to him like

jettisoning his property; "She would no longer belong to htm,

not even in name!" (p. 280). It occurs to him that divorce

 20

will injure hfm professionally and that he will have to sell

the house he bad built for her, and at a loss. When he
realizes, however, that she will pass out of his life, that
he will never see ber again, the knowledge stupefies hfm.
'~e traversed in the cab the length of a street without
getting beyond the thought that he should never see ber
ag ain •1 tt ( p • 280) •
He returns home, discovers that his wife has left
him, and finds in ber jewelry case a note addressed to him.
'I think I have taken nothing that you or your
people have given me.' And that was all.
He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds
and pearls, at the little flat gold watch with a great
diamond set in sapphires, at the chains and rings, each in
its nest, and the tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped
upon them.
Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she
bad done, brought home to him like this the inner signi-
ficance of her act. For the moment, perhap•, he understood
nearly all there was to understand--understood that she
loathed him, that she bad loathed him for years, that for
all intents and purposes they were like people living in
different worlds, that there was no hope for hfm, never
had been; even, that she had suffered--that she was to be
pitied.
In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte
in him--forgpt himself, his interests, his property••was
capable of almost anything; was lifted into the pure ether
of the selfless and unpractical. (pp. 286-287)
Whatever Soames may be, whatever he may become, at
this moment the most superficial reader must feel with him
and must understand that the novelist is looking into the
heart of a man of feeling as well as of property.
 21

The passages describing Soames's courtship of

Irene explain ber magnetism for htm. Galsworthy told part
of the story in The Man of Property and part of it in a short
story written many years later.
On Forsyte 'Change (London, 1930) contained the
story, "Cry of Peacock." In an introductory note to the
reader, Galsworthy apologizes for wearying the public with
still more Forsyte tales and offers two excuses:"that it is
hard to part suddenly and finally from those with whom one
bas lived so long; and, that these footnotes do really, I
think, help to fill in and round out the chronicles of the
Forsyte family." He says also that he wrote those stories
after finishing Swan Song, the last Forsyte novel.
More than twenty years bad passed since the
publication of The Man of Property. Galsworthy' s writings
reflect a gradual change in many of his ideas and attitudes
and a growing confidence in stability and convention.
Dudley Barker associates the changes in Soames Forsyte with
the changes in Galsworthy and his world; as the author and
his wife "came back into the fold" of social convention,
Galsworthy came to regard Soames with deepening sympathy, to
minfmize his faults and dwell upon his virtues, and to
identify htmself with the character almost completely. "Cry

of Peacock" provides a touchstone by which the allegation can

 22

be examined, for it covers material alluded to in The Man of

Property. If the author's tone and attitude toward that
material are different in the two works, the difference will
support Barker's thesis.
The story is brief, some seventeen or eighteen
hundred words, and without a word of dialogue; the episode
takes place entirely in Soames's mind. The time is an
evening two weeks before his marriage to Irene, just after
he bas left a ball. He bas danced six t~es with Irene.
"Irene loved dancing~ It would not be good form to dance
with one' s wife. Would that prevent h~ 1 No, by Jove! 11
When the lover's ardour cools to husbandly caution, however,
Soames stands aside and watches Irene dance with others (in
The Man of Property). '~e danced with no one. Some fellows
danced with their wives; his sense of 'form' bad never
permitted him to dance with Irene since their marriage, and
the God of the Forsytes alone can tell whether this was a
relief to him or not" (p. 176).
Galsworthy deliberately inserted the reference to
dancing in "Cry of Peacock" in order to emphasize the
contrast between Soames's recklessness before marriage and
his prudence after it. In the short story, Soames is a man
possessed. He hastens through the streets in the night
 23

toward Irene's bouse, intending to station h~self outside

it in hopes of catching a gl~pse of ber at the window. He
must be surreptitious; he must not be seen. Would she be
offended if she saw htm stealing by?
If only she bad for hfm the feeling he bad for ber, then,
indeed, she could not mtnd••she would be glad, and their
gaze would cling together across this empty London street,
eerie in its silence with not a cat to mark the meeting of
their eyes. Blotted against the lamp-post he stayed un-
~moving, aching for a sight of her.

She cames to the window for a moment and he bas a

fleeting glimpse of ber before she closes the curtains.
A sensation as of madness stirred in his limbs, he sprang
away • • • he turned not towards his rooms, but away from
them: Paradise deferred! He could not sleep. • • • This
early world of silent streets was to him unaccustomed, as he
himself, under this obsession, would be to all who knew and
saw him daily, self-contained, diligent, a flat citizen • • • •
He felt that he would always remember a town so different
from that he saw every day; and himself he would remember--
walking thus, unseen and solitary with his desire.
He knows that she does not care for him as he cares
for her. He knows that he owes the engagement to ber step-
mother's eagerness to get rid of this beautiful obstacle to
ber own marriage plans. Yet his desire for Irene is so strong
that he wants her on any terms and however unwilling she may
be.
He lies on a park hench and daydreams of her. He
bas wandered past the bouse they will live in and tried to
visualize something of their future inttmacy; he has never
 24

yet seen ber with ber hair unbound.

Ah~ but soon--but soon~ And as if answering the call of
his imagination, a cry--long, not shrill, not harsh
exactly, but so poignant--jerked the blood to his heart.
From back over there it came trailing, again and again,
passionate--the lost soul's cry of peacock in early
morning; and with it there uprose from the spaces of his
inner being the vision that was for ever haunting there, of
ber with hair unbound, of ber all white and lost, yielding
to his arms. It seared him with delight, swooned in him,
and was gone. He opened his eyes; an early water-cart was
nearing down the Row. Soames rose and walking fast beneath
the trees sought sanity.
It is the familiar portrait of a yearning lover, his senses
overwhelmed with desire for his loved one. There is no
suggestion that his desire is more possessive than any other
lover.
In the novel, however, the yearning is interpreted,
or labelled, differently. Soames bas just been shown the
site of Robin Hill.
In spite of himself, something swelled in his breast. To
live here in sight of all this, to be able to point it out
to his friends, to talk of it, to possess it~ His cheeks
flushed. The warmth, the radiance, the glow, were sinking
into his senses as, four years before, Irene's beauty bad
sunk into his senses and made him long for ber. (p. 58)
The Man of Property bas several other scattered
allusions to Soames's courtship. James comments that he
could not convince his son that a penniless girl was not the
best match for him: "Soames was in such a hurry; he got
quite thin dancing attendance on ber" (p. 10). Nicholas
 25

reports that ·~e was half-cracked about ber. She refused

him five times" (p. 19). Soames himself recalls the first
time he saw Irene at a dance. "As Soames stood looking at
ber, the sensati.on that most men have felt at one time or
another went stealing through him--a peculiar satisfaction
of the senses, a peculiar certainty, which novelists and old
ladies call love at first sight" (p. 105). He recalls how
he came back to propose again and again, dogged, tenacious,
heart-sore at each refusal but "steadfast and silent as the
grave" until at last, for a reason he was never able to
discover, she accepted him.
The lover and the husband have different reasons,
evidently, for wanting her. There is no evidence that
Soames as lover is different in the novel and the story. In
neither does he consider Irene as a desirable piece of
property. After several years of marriage, however, the
possessive aspect of his feeling toward ber predominates.
It does not occur to him that ber capacity fbr inspiring
affection is bound up with ber whole temperament and with
the fact that she was "born to be loved and to love." "Her
power of attraction he regarded as part of ber value as his
property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could
give as well as receive; and she gave him nothing~ 'Then

why did she marry me?' was his continua! thought" (p. 50).
 26

He has forgotten the courtship, her reluctance,

the pressures at home that finally made ber yield to him.
He remembers only ber capriciousness; now he cannot under-
stand why his devoted wooing bas not been crowned with a
story-book ending, why they are not living happily ever
after. The madness which possessed him during courtship has
passed. He is again his own man and bas regained his sanity
and lost his selflessness. He bas even.forgotten that he
promised to set ber free whenever she wished. When Bosinney
goes home after having spent an evening at home with the
Soameses, Soames suspects that the young man may be prowling
about outside the bouse, looking at Irene through the
windows. Soames steals to a window and peers out, but sees
no one.
Suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he
beard a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul
barred out of heaven, and crying for its happiness. There
it was again--again! Soames shut the window, shuddering.
Then he thought: 'Ah~ it's only the peacocks,
across the water.' (p. 205)
He does not recall his own wanderings and lurkings
outside Irene's bouse, nor the cry of the peacock he beard
that night long ago; he·could not remember because "Cry of
Peacock" bad not been written. The presence of the theme in
the novel constitutes a curious reversal of chronology, almost
as if it bad been put there in anticipation of its echoes
 27

twenty years later. Galsworthy, most probably, really bad

the experience. He put it into the novel and then, years
later, used it again when he found it there, happily at
band, in The Man of Property.
This comparison does not prove the thesis that
Galsworthy changed. All it reveals is that the author
treated Soames the suitor stmilarly both early and late, and
that Soames the suitor is different from Soames four years
married. The fact that Galsworthy was sympathetic toward
the lover even in The Man of Property, however, weakens the
argument that Soames is quite villainous at the beginning of
the Forsyte chronicles and quite heroic at the end.
 28

III. ln Chancery: A Tragicomic Lover

Between the beginning and the end of the Forsyte

chronicles, Galsworthy's attitudes changed radically.
Although the changes were gradua!, there is a point in the
novels that clearly marks his transition from rebel to elder
critic. For some critics, the apparent point cames at the
end of the first trilogy, since they frequently point out
the differences between the tone of The Forsyte Saga and A
Modern Comedy. Soames 'was something like the villain of
1
the !!.&.!: he is undoubtedly the hero of A Comedy."
One can hardly say that the author bas developed a completely
new style in "A Modern Comedy"; but there is certainly a
much greater brilliancy in its texture. "A Modern Comedy"
is very colourful. Life bas lost the depressing aspect it
wore in the ''Forsyte Saga," we are se~ed with a mellower
wine, and now and then with champagne.
The true change in Galsworthy took place, however,
during the fourteen-year interval between the publication of
The Man of Property and To Let. In Chancery is the
transitional novel, the work reflecting the author's

1
Henry Charles Duffin, '~e Rehabilitation of Soames
Forsyte," Cornhill Magazine, N.S. LXVIII (1930}, 405.
2
Leon Schalit, John Galsworthy: A Survey (New
York, 1929), pp. 86-87.
 29

first conception and his development during the inter-

vening years. The powerfully and passionately felt
figures which bad grown out of his own tormented experiences
still fascinated him, but,:the rebel of thirty-nine was not
the fifty-one-year-old gentleman of letters, mellowed by
professional and social acceptance. His portrayal of Soames
reflects Galsworthy's matured intellect and judgment.
The ending of The Man of Property left an impres-
sion of dramatie finality, but Galsworthy softened the
harshness of that impression in the interlude, "Indian
Summer of a Forsyte." This story carries the tale forward
twelve years. Irene did not remain behind the door which
Soames slammed in Young Jolyon's face; she left Soames that
very night, "slipped out in the night and vanished," and Soames
"had never been able to lay bands on ber again" (p. 316).
She took a little flat in Chelsea, earned a small living
teaehing music, and occupied herself with helping "fallen
women. 11 Soames lived alone in Brighton, accumulating a tidy
estate, eolleeting paintings, and visiting his family. Each
has spent twelve lonely years by the ttme In Chancery opens.
The subject of marriage increasingly occupies

Soames's thoughts. He is "getting on" and bas acquired a

fortune, but has no one to leave it to, 'no real abject for
 30

going on with what was his religion" {p. 368). Above all
el se he wants an he ir, and with this aim bas begun courting
a young French girl, Annette. He chooses ber, not only
because she is healthy and would be a suitable mother for
his son, but also because she is attractive, for Soames is
a man of strong physical passion. ·~e bad tasted of the
sordid side of sex during those long years of forced celiba-
cy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was
fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate" {p. 368).
In this Soames certainly resembles his author. No
one bas ever attempted to investigate Galsworthy's private
sex life aside from the pre-marital relationship with Ada,
and there is no reason for doing so; yet it is inconceivable,
in the light of everything that is known about his character,
upbringing and personality, that he should regard "the
sordid side of sex"--by which he presumably meant prostitu-
tion-wwith anything but disgust. One bas only to read the
fourth act of his play, The Fugitive (1913), to know his
opinion of the man who, through necessity or choice, consorts
with prostitutes. Soames is to be pitied for having been
driven to it against his instinct for fastidiousness and his
sense of order.
Galsworthy devoted many scenes of In Chancery to
 31

the marital problems of Soames's sister, Winifred Dartie.

The sub-plot parallels Soames•s own situation, especially
since Soames acts as legal advisor to Winifred. He bas the
opportunity to meditate and caœment on the position of the
innocent partner in an estrangement, on the distasteful
aspects of divorce, and on the irresponsibility of the press
in publicizing the personal tragedies of private citizens.
Odd that one whose life was spent in bringing to the public
eye all the private coils of property, the domestic
disagreements of others, should dread so utterly the public
eye turned on his own; and yet not odd, for who should know
so well as he the whole unfeeling process of legal regula-
tion. (p. 492)
Galsworthy, like Soames, was trained in the law,
and Soames is expressing views that Galsworthy held. In a
letter to William Archer, Galsworthy characterized the
divorce law as being "based on cynicism, and the lowest
views of human natures. It is, in fine, a barbarous law,
3
which puts a premium on materialism and brutality. u He

stated this opinion over and over, in fiction, letters, and

public addresses.
Similarly, Soames speaks for Galsworthy on the
press. '~e papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to
keep things out. They pretend to be guarding the public's
morals, and they corrupt them with their beastly reports"

3
Marrot, p. 703.
 32

(p. 493). During the crucial period prior to Ada's divorce

from Arthur, Galsworthy wrote to Ralph Mottram that he and
Ada were going abroad for a few months, until they could be
married.
The hydra-headed monster of waiting will be slain, I trust
this month, by what are called 'proceedings' against us in
the so-called Courts of Justice.
When we return, if you still look upon us as
sufficiently respectable, I trust you will come and visit •
• • • Upon the whole I wouldn't if I were you speak of it
till after the case is over, which according to our pleasant
system w!ll doubtless be reported, though I should think
shortly.
Further examples abound, but there is no need to
labour the point. Insofar as Soames speaks for law, order,
reticence, and respectability, he speaks for the autbor.
Whexever the viewpoint of the lover and co-
respondent must be recorded it is Young Jolyon, of course,
who expresses the attitudes and emotions which Galsworthy
bad under similar circumstances. In deciding not to defend
the divorce suit, Jolyon muses as Galsworthy must have done.
Thank Heaven she bad not that maddening British conscien-
tiousness which refused happiness for the sake of refusing~
She must rejoice at this chance of being freeM-after
seventeen years of death in life~ As to publicity, the fat
was in the fire! To defend the suit would not take away the
slur. Jolyon bad all the proper feeling of a FDrsyte whose
privacy is threatened: If he was to be hung by the Law, by

4
Marrot, p. 163.
 33

all means let it be for a sheep~ • • • No, no! To defend

a suit only made a London holiday, and sold the newspapers.
A thousand times better accept what Soames and the gods bad
sent! (p. 585)
Jolyon is frequently the observer and commentator
of In Chancery, and the author expresses much of his own
attitude toward Soames through Jolyon's point of view. It
is an attitude of mixed pity and distaste, as one would
expect of a man who is half-artist and half-Forsyte. Jolyon
is, in fact, as close to a self-portrait as Galsworthy
painted. The author analyzed hiœself in a letter to Edward
Garnett.
The critical essence of the book /The Patricians, which he
was revisi~7-•and it is on that feature that your strictures
were really bent•-consists in an opposition of authority and
dry high-caste" life with the lyrical point of view, with
the emotionalism and dislike of barriers inherent in one
half of my temperament. _In other words this book, like
The M. of P., The C.H. /The Country House7 and Fraternity,
is siœply the,~criticism of one half of myself by the other,
the halves being differently divided according to the
subject. It is not a piece of social criticism--they none
of them are. If it 1 s anything it's a bit of spiritual
examination. • • • The more I consider things the more I
find that I'm only a social critic by accident. I've
neither the method nor the qualities of the social critic.
I've no patience, no industry--only detachment in so far as
I can dispassionately examine myself in contact with life.
My value from first to last as a critic of social conditions
is that there are two men in me, both fairly strong; and
the creative man in me up against the other produces a
critical effect.5

5
Edward Garnett, Letters from John Galsworthy!
1900-1932 (London, 1934), pp. 199-200.
 34

Jolyon's Forsyte half, "authority and dry high-

caste; life," is in continual opposition to the artistic
half, "the lyrical point of view," "emotionalism, 11 and "dis-
like of barriers." In The Man of Property, Jolyon describes
himself to Bosinney, the pure artist, as "a kind of
thoroughbred mongrel."
Now, there's no mistaking you. You're as different from me
as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect specimen of
a Forsyte. His sense of property is extreme, while you have
practically none. Without me in between, you would seem
like a different species. I'm the missing link. (p. 196)
Jolyon can pity, and even envy, the haggard lover.
He, like Galsworthy, bas lived through the agony and
poignancy of waitfng and wishtng for stolen minutes with his
beloved one, and of making the terrible decision to break up
a marriage. Yet he can see Soames's point of view.
Whence should a man like his cousin, saturated with all the
prejudices and beliefs of his class, draw the insight or
inspiration necessary to break up this life? It was a
question of imagination, of projecting himself into the
future beyond the unpleasant gossip, sneers, and tattle that
followed on such separations, beyond the passing pangs that
the lack of the sight of ber would cause, beyond the grave
disapproval of the worthy. But few men, and especially
few men of Soames's class, bad imagination enough for
that. (p. 199)
Jolyon is here describing Soames's basic flaw,
lack of imagination, the flaw that is responsible for the
whole tragedy of Soames' s life from the beginning of The
Forsyte Saga to his death at the end of A Modern Comedy.
 35

Even in the first novel, therefore, Galsworthy

sets up Jolyon as his own dispassionate spokesman.
Galsworthy's original plan, in fact, was to write a series
of three novels on the theme of the '~tter disharmony of the
Christian religion with the English character," with Jolyon
carried through all three novels as commentator. The author
even made some changes in The Man of Property, altering the
6
chronology of Jolyon's life, to accommodate the plan.
Jolyon finds Soames's personality so distasteful ·
that it checks compassion. ''What was there in the fellow that
made it so difficult to be sorry for him?" (p. 411). After
a visit from Soames concerning the possibility of divorce
(for Jolyon is trustee of Irene's affairs), he recalls the
night when Soames slammed the door in his face.
The repugnance he bad then 'felt for Soames--for his flat-
cheeked, shaven face full of spiritual bull-doggedness;
for his spare, square, sleek figure lightly crouched as
it were over the bone he could not digest--came now again,
fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase. 1 1 dislike him,'
he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me. And
that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his
wife.' (p. 419)
Yet, despite his dislike, Jolyon can appreciate
Soames's feelings. "'He really suffers,' thought Jolyon;

6
Garnett, pp. 84-85.
 36

'I've no business to forget that, just because I don't

like him' " (p. 423). After the interview, Jolyon spends
the whole train trip home thinking, not only of Irene in
her lonely flat, but "of Soames in his lonely office, and
of the strange paralysis of life that lay on them both"
(p. 424). Even though he is aware that his feeling for
Irene is·deepening into love, he '~ad something of his
father's balance, ·and could see things impartially" (p. 488).
His principles and feelings have been outraged by Soames's
warning that anyone coming between husband and wife incurs
heavy responsibility; yet he can be detached enough to feel
sorry for the tragic spectacle of a man enslaved by his own
possessive instinct, 'who couldn't see the sky for it, or
even enter fully into what another person felt!" (p. 546).
At times one part of Jolyon dominates and at times
the other. It is an over-simplification to decide, as one
critic does, that he is more artist than Forsyte.
Of all the Forsytes, he is least characteristic of the
breed. Segregated from the healthy, pure-blooded specimens
of that species by his mésalliance, he bas diluted--or
polluted--the Forsyteism in his veins to such a degree that
by the time 'In Chancery' begins he is hardly recognizable
as a Forsyte, except for a certain chinnyness. In him the
sense of property has become more or less rudimentary.
Instead, the sense of beauty, incipient in Old Jolyon, is
the determining characteristic. And when Irene enters his
life, he bas become qualified in every respect, through the
evolutionary pZDcess that has purged his temperament of
every Forsyte taint, to consummate the passionate love of
 37

7
Beauty that permeates his very being.
On the contrary, there is ample evidence that
Jolyon' s sense of property is more than rudimentary. It
is true, for example, that his feeling for Robin Hill is
partly a response to its beauty and dignity; yet, as he
surveys the bouse and land, wondering about its appearance
and owners in years to come, an element of possessiveness
entera his appreciation.
The aesthetic spirit, moving band in band with his Forsyte
sense of possessive continuity, dwelt with pride and
pleasure on his ownership thereof. There was the smack of
reverence and ancestor-worship (if only for one ancestor)
in his desire to band this bouse down to his son and his
son's son. His father bad loved the bouse • • • • These last
eleven years at Robin Hill bad formed in Jolyon's life as a
painter, the important period of success. He was now in the
very van of water-colour art, hanging on the line everywhere.
His drawings fetched high priees. (pp. 402-403)
The sense of possession is linked to Jolyon's love
for his father. Soames, too, bas a deep affection for his
own father which is associated with a "sense of possessive
continuity." In both Soames and Jolyon, these feelings
extend to a desire to bequeath property to their children.
Jolyon's meditation on Robin Hill, furthermore, reveals his
p~easure in the commercial success of his paintings, a crite-

7
Natalie Croman, John Galsworthy: A Study in
Continuity and Contrast (Cambridge, Maas., 1933), p. 33.
 38

rion of the value of art which, in Soames, is scornfully

attributed to Forsyteian crassness and insensitivity.
An obvious difference exista between a man who

collecta paintings with an eye to·profit and an artist who

enjoys being well•paid for his paintings. There is nothing
reprehensible about regarding the artist as worthy of his
hire; even Bosinney bad the rigbt to be paid for his labour,
for even Bosinneys have to eat. Until Jolyon began to make
some money at painting, he could not afford to take the
country jaunts so necessary to a landscape painter. An art

critic once advised him to choose a definite subject for a

series of paintings because, since he lacked an original
style, the public would be more likely to buy "a capital
Forsyte" if it were easily identifiable by subject. The
artist in Jolyon rebelled at the advice, but not the Forsyte.
The words bore good fruit with young Jolyon; they were
contrary to all that he believed. in, to all that he
theoretically held good in his Art, but some strange, deep
instinct moved him against his will to turn them to profit.
He discovered therefore one morning that an idea
bad come to him for making a series of watercolour drawings
of London. How the idea bad arisên he could not tell; and
it was not till the following year, when he had completed
and sold them at a very fair priee, that in one of his
impersonal moods, he found himself able to recollect the
Art critic, and to discover in his own achievement another
proof that he was a Forsyte. (p. 245)
At a similar point in his career (1894-1895),
Galsworthy gave up his legal chambers and all pretensions to
 39

the practice of law in order to devote htmself entirely

to authorship. He met with some opposition from his
family, particularly from his mother, to whom Law was more
respectable than Literature. Although his family was far
too fond of him to expect him to make his living entirely
by writing, their disapprobation must surely have provided
some incentive to prove that he could succeed as a writer.
Even though he did not need money, therefore, financial
success would justify his choice of career.
Galsworthy never knew want at any time in his life;
in fact, from the time his independant income was assured,
he made a practice of unobtrusively giving half his earnings
to charity. His affluence undoubtedly accounts for the
infrequent mention of money in his notebooks and letters;
yet, wherever such references occur, they reflect a
practical and business-like attitude toward money matters.
His first book, From The Four Winds (1897),,was
published at the author's expanse. He offered the manuscript
of his second book, the novel Jocelyn, to Fisher Unwin, who
bad published the first, on terms suggested by Joseph
Conrad. When Unwin could not meet the terms, Galsworthy
withdrew the manuscript and found another publisher, Gerald
Duckworth, who was willing to issue the book at his own risk.

When Galsworthy bad almost finished The Man of

 40

Property, he asked Edward Garnett to send the manuscript,

on completion, to Sydney Pswling, who bad previously
accepted The Island Pharisees for Heinemann's. ·
I am bound by my last agreement to give him the refusal; and
I thought of asking for a fifty pound advance and 15 per
cent royalty rising to 20 per cent after 2000 copies. I
don't see why I should ask Heinemann's less. If they refuse
this and Duckworth cares for it I would give it to him on a
12 per cent or 10 per cent royalt~ with no advance, because
I consider that I owe him money Lbecause JocelYn bad not
sold wel]l • I should want the royalty to increase to 20
per cent after 2000 copies sold.8
Although Galsworthy never pandered to popular taste
in order to assure the sales of his books, there was a
relationship, in his view, between sales and merit. He
complained to Pawling of· the disappointing sales of The '
Country House and of the small number of advance sales of
Fraternity, and rapped the publisher sharply for what he
considered negligent publicity.
I don't understand it. I wonder whether your travellers
take trouble about my books. I never see them on railway
bookstalls anywhere, and hardly ever in a shop window. I
feel that I am the sort of author about whom a,publisher
soon says : noh~ yes--Galsworthy--superior sort of stuff--
will only reach a certain circulation," and then gives it
up. But I don't accept that view of my own writing; it
bas this distinction (among many others) from the work,
say, of James, Meredith, or Conrad--that it is absolutely
clear in style, and not straining the intellect. I feel that
from The Man of Property 5000, to The Patrician 8000, is a

8
Garnett, p. 56.
 41

very discouraging rise. Of course I knaw you will say

you can't make the public buy my books, but that is just the
point. I think you could make them more than you have. I
s~em to feel that both you and Heinemann have become
perhaps discouraged, perhaps a little indifferent. If that
is the case, I bad better know. 9
In his notebook, however, he recorded with
satisfaction that The Patrician (1911) ·~rought in" over two
thousand pounds between English and American publication and
10
serial rights in The Atlantic Monthly.
Galsworthy wrote to Garnett about the closing of
the play Foundations (1917) after a short run and unfavour-
able reviews. '~eople seemed to like it all the same, and
they gave it fifteen curtains on the last performance, and
about ten every night. A few less curtains and a few more
11
seats taken would however have been better for all concerned. 11
Galsworthy's concern about the financial success
of his books and plays runs parallel with Jolyon's interest
in the sales of his paintings. If it was Forsyteiam in
Jolyon, Galsworthy was as much a Forsyte. Jolyon representa
Galsworthy's idea of the artist far more accurately than does

9
Marrot, p. 317.
10
Marrot, p. 317.
11
Garnett, p. 228.
 42

Bosinney, who is an unrealistic abstraction. The author

once wrote that the world was divided for him into "the
Artist and the Non~Artist" and classified himself with the
12
former. The artistic temperament was not inconsistent,
in his opinion, with an interest in money, as the notebooks
and correspondance demonstrate.
Once Jolyon dreamed of a small restless figure
roaming on a great curtained stage. He was not only
observing but inhabiting the figure, which turned out to be
a dual Soames-Jolyon trying to reach a vision of light and
beauty seen through the curtains. The dream disturbed him
badly, "especially that identification of himself with
Soames" (p. 576); the identification is made explicit in
his later interpretation of the dream.
She Liren!l was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to
pass through the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich
stuff of many possessions, the close encircling fabric of
the possessive instinct walling in that little black figure
of hfmself, and Soames--was it to be rent so that he could
pass through into his vision, find there something not of
the senses only? 'Let me,' he thought, 'ah~ let me only
know how not to grasp and destroy!' (p. 592)
One might use these passages to "proven that
Galsworthy was more Forsyte than artist, more conformist
than rebel, more closely identified with Soames from the

12
Marrot, p. 297.
 43

very beginning than he thought. The gift of hindsight,

armed with the formidable ammunition of modern psychiatry,

makes it easy to read into literature a variety of meanings
''unconsciously" divulged by the writer. Whatever his
shortcamings, however, Galsworthy earned and deserved the
epithet, "conscious craftsman," which bas so frequently been
applied to him. There is very little, if anything, in his
writings which is not there by design. If Jolyon is confused
about his own nature, he may well reflect Galsworthy's
confusion or uncertainty about his own; but certainly the
novelist was aware of it and tried to analyze it. Jolyon's
self-analysis, as well as his commenta on Soames, conveys
1

the impression Galsworthy intended to leave with the reader.

Complementing and supplementary Jolyon's observa-
tions on Soames are Soames's own meditations, through which
Galsworthy presents much of the action of In Chancery.
Soames plots to attract Annette and ber mother with a display
of his wealth. He is pathetically disturbed by the renewal
of his passion for Irene. He calculates the effect on his
family of concealing Annette's origins and presenting ber
to them as a French lady from abroad. He yearns for all the
comp.lex satisfactions his second marriage will bring.
What a perfect young thing to hold in one's arms! What a
mother for bis heir ~ And he thought, with a smile, of his
 44

family and their surprise at a French wife, and their

curiosity, and of the way he would play with it and buffet
it--confound them! •.•• 'I will and must be free,'
he thought. 'I won't bang about any longer. I'll go and
see Irene. If you want things done, do them yourself. I
must live again--live and move and have my being. 1 And
in echo to that queer biblicality church-bells chimed the
call to evening prayer. (p. 437)
The knowledge that Jolyon bas been seeing Irene
awakens unexpected jealousy in Soames, who is now uncertain
what he wants, "a child between a promised toy and an old
one which bad been taken away from him." He decides to
visit Annette to reaffirm his decision to marry ber. To his
surprise, he finds himself regarding ber coquetry with cool
detachment; so much bas the mere idea of Irene unsettled him.
His thoughts are a masterpiece of rationalization and
character revelation. "If only Irene bad given him a son,
he wouldn' t now be squirming after women~" "One woman 1 s
much the same as another, after all." He cannot, however,
convince himself that this is true, for Annette does not have
Irene's attractiveness. Realizing this, he reconsidera
reconciliation with his first wife, justifying the idea with
a total inability to understand feelings alien to his own.
'And Irene's my wife, my legal wife. I have done nothing to
put ber away from me. Why shouldn't she come back to
me? It's the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes no
scandal, no disturbance. If it's disagreeable to ber--but
why should it be? I'm not a leper, and she--she's no longer
in love~' Why should he be putto the shifts and the sordid
 45

disgraces and the lur~ing defeats of the Divorce Court,

when there she was like an empty bouse only waiting to
be retaken into use and possession by htm who legally
owned her? (p. 463)
The author here inserts a comment: '~o one so secretive
as Soames the thought of re-entry into quiet possession of
his own property with nothing given away to the world was
intensely alluring." Soames's thoughts then continue. He
is glad he went to see "that girl." He knows now what he
wants. " 'If only Irene will come back I'll be as consider-
ate as she wishes; she could live her own life; but perhaps--
perhaps she would come round to me. ' There was a lump in
his throat" (p. 464).
Soames is conscious of his reasons and attitudes.
At other times the author inserts commenta to clarify for
the reader motives that Soames is unaware of. When, for
instance, Soames decides to buy a jewel for Irene so that he
will have an excuse to visit ber and ask for a reconciliation,
his motives are mix.ed.
Alongside the dry and reasoned sense that it was now or
never with his sel!-preservation, now or never if he were
to range htmself Lsis7 and found a family, went the secret
urge of his senses roused by the sight of ber who bad once
been a passionately desired wife, and the conviction that
it was a sin against common sense and the decent secrecy of
Forsytes to waste the wife he bad. {p. 474)
This passage is irony too overt, comment too
didactic. Galsworthy here violates his more usual, and
 46

better, practice of letting the characters speak for

themselves. Such commenta form the basis of the charge
that he ''mocked" and "pilloried" Soames in The Forsyte
13
Saga. He bas not yet attained the state of mind expressed
in his remark, "As one gets older, one no longer takes such
a serious and tragic view of things; rather one is struck
14
by the irony, the h\DDour in them."
His COIIIDents are, however, sometimes qui te
sympatbetic. When Irene bas refused Soames's overture with
"the brutal truth: I would rather die," Soames stands mute
and stares at ber. "And there intervened in him a sort of
paralysie of speech and movement, the kind of quivering
which cames when a •an has received a deadly insult, and
does not yet know how he is going to take it, or rather what
it is going to do with him" (p. 480). He pockets the jewel
and prepares to leave, and again the author commenta. '~ut

he could not go out. Something within him--that most deep

and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility of letting go,
the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn nature·
of his own tenacity--prevented himu (p. 481).

13
Pallette, p. 184.
14
Schalit, p. 87.
 47

This is not to suggest, of course, that Galsworthy

"sympathizes" with Soames' s attitude, but only that his
commenta reveal an understanding of the man's helplessness
and his blindiless as regards his own limitations. The
author's understanding is implicit ,even in passages showing
Soames through his own e~es.

He often scrutinized his image in these days. He bad never

been a peacock like that fellow Dartie, or fancied himself
a woman' s man, but he bad a certain belief in his own
appearance--not unjustly, for it was well•coupled and
preserved, neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or
excess of any kind. The Forsyte j aw and the concentration
of his face were, in his eyes, virtues. So far as he could
tell there was no feature of him which need inspire dis-
like. (p. 475)
As he cannot believe that the Forsyte chin is not
a virtue, so he cannot believe that Irene would refuse him
unless she bad a new lover. '~er words, 'I would sooner
die!' were ridiculous if she bad not" (p. 489). He will
' '
never understand the kind of woman she is, nor what love
means to her. "Even if she bad never loved him, " he thinks,
"she bad made no fuss until Bosinney came on the scene"
{p. 489). His obtuseness inspires pity even while his views
evoke distaste, and the reader's mixed response derives
entirely from the revelation of Soamesi thoughts, since the
author deliberately withholds comment.
Sadie H. Davies, who examined the original manu-

scripts of the Forsyte chronicles, throws an interesting

 48

15
light on Galsworthy's restraint. She points out a
description of Soames at the end of the second part of In
Chancery. '~alking into the centre of the great empty
drawing-room, he stood still. A wife~ Somebody to talk
things over with. One bad a right ~ Damn it! One bad a
right!" (p. 560). In the original manuscript there is this
additional passage: "'If only, ' he thought, 'if only I bad
a wife waiting for me, that I could talk things over with.
If only Irene stood there and smiled at me." The passage
does not appear in the published version. Davies attributes
the omission to the fact that the reflections ending with
"One bad a right!" are consistent with Galsworthy's and the
reader's idea of Soames.
He wants Irene because she is his property; a useful piece
of property; 'somebody to talk things over with.' His
sense of loneliness is not stressed as the real motive of
the desire. If this is a rationalization then it is not
Galsworthy'& business to say so. He presents his characters
to us as might a behaviorist. There his work finishes. We
do the rest. (LXXXVI, 12-13).
This interpretation of the writer 1 s motives in
omitting the second passage may be an over-simplification,

15
"Galsworthy the Craftsman: Studies in the
Original Manuscripts of the Forsyte Chronicles," The
Bookman (London), LXXXV (October, 1933), 18-20;
LXXXVI .(April, 1934), 12·16a; LXXXVII (October, 1934),
27-31.
 49

for the fact is that Soames's loneliness has already been

stressed many times in the novel and is no secret to the
reader. More than likely, the real reason for the omission
is that Galsworthy believed the reader so well-prepared
already to understand the hidden motive that the explicit
statement would be artistically false, a too-obvious bid for
sympathy.
Soames's greatest motivation is the desire for an
heir. He is not sure whether his desire to marry Annette
is the cause or the effect of that aim; he is increasingly
conscious, however, that "property without anyone to leave
it to is the negation of true Forsyteism" (p. 390). His
longing for a son is intimately related to his affection for
his father and is, in fact, a manifestation of the Forsyte
clannishness. When Jolyon beard that his son, Jolly, bad
died in the war, his greatest pain came from knowing the boy
bad died far from home and family. "And all the deeply
rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential
clinging to his own flesh and blood which bad been so strong
in old Jolyon--was so strong in all the Forsytes--felt

outraged, cut 1 and torn by his son's lonely passing" (p. 593).

A critic described Soames's affectionate treatment

of his father and sister as a fault in characterization, an

11
inconsistency, a failure to bring the particular into
 50

16
complete harmony with the general." He failed to realize
that family feeling is completely consistent with the Forsyte
temperament. Winifred may regard ber husband as a property
of dubious value and Soames may want Irene as a possession.
but both Winifred and Soaœes have a deep and tender feeling
for their own children and their parents, a feeling untainted
with possessiveness. One does not need to own one's relatives,
for they are on one's side, against the world; witness the
bond between Soames and Winifred and between Jolly and Holly,
James's affection for his children, Old and Young Jolyon's
mutual love, the devotion of old Juley and Rester to Timot~y.

No one in the world loves unloveable Soames except his

aunts, parents, and daughter. The others detest or mistrust
17
him.
Soames's relationship with his father is marked by
a complete lack of outward sentiment. Neither is capable
of revealing deep feelings; neither ever offers to discuss
the more intimate problems of life with the other. When

16
Bruce w. McCullough, "John Galsworthy," Repre-
sentative English Novelists (New York, 1946), p. 330.
17
Jolyon, a mongrel Forsyte, dislikes especially
those traits in Soames that he recognizes and deplores in
himself.
 51

James is disturbed by bad news, he looks to Soames for

reassurance, suggesting that Soames visit htm more often.
"Soames nodded; the mask of his countenance betrayed no
understanding, but he went closer, and as if by accident
touched his father's shoulder" {p. 401). After an exchange
of matter-of-fact "aood-nights" Soames goes to his own room.
There, remembering James's age and the pathetic thinness
of his arm, he sits on the edge of bis bed and thinks, "I
want a son, 1 want a son" (p. 401). Soames and James are
bound together with something beyond the power of words,
1
something ~idden deep in the fibre of nations and families--
for blood, they say, is thicker than water--and neither of
18
them was a cold-blooded man." The bond extends to the
coming generations of Forsytes as well. The thougbt of his
father almost always laads Soames to the thouaht of a son.
That evening in Park Lane, watching his father dine, he was
overwhelmed by his old longing for a son--a son, to watch
htm eat as be went down the years, to be taken on his knee
as James on a ttme bad been wont to take him; a son of his
own begetting, who could understand him because be was the
same flash and bloode-understand, and comfort htm, and
become more rich and cultured than htmself because he would
start even better off. To get old--like that thin, grey
wiry•frail figure sitting there--and be quite alone with
possessions heaping up around him; to take no interest in
anything because it bad no future and must pass away from

18
Hermon Oul9, John Galsworthy (London, 1934),
P• 23.
 52

him to bands and mouths and eyes for whom he cared no

jot~ {p. 583)
The author's sympathy is so clear that it is
difficult to understand how anyone could accuse him of
mockery or of depicting ''with relish" Soames' s agonized
desire for a son. The Soames•James relationship, furthermore,
reveals the inconsequence of another charge.
It is, in a sense, a heavy handicap to him, that he sets
himself to picture the minds and spirits of a class of
people whose traditional code is the suppression of any
signs of emotion, but the effect is sometimes almost that
of a deliberate shirking, a fastidious shrinking from
direct emotional clashes. 19
This "effect" can only be the result of careless
or of selective reading. If Soames's behaviour only is
taken into account and his thoughts and the author's
commenta ignored, one would certainly get the impression that
the writer is shrinking from emotion. How far this observa-
tion is from the truth becomes clear in the chapter entitled
"James is Told."
James was convinced, with his habitual pessimism,
that he would not live to see the birth of Annette's child.
All the aunties on Forsyte 'Change prayed, as he approached

19
Elizabeth A. Drew, The Modern Novel (New York,
1926), p. 166.
 53

his ninetieth birthday, that he would live until his grand•

child was hom, "that James might not have to die without
some certainty about things. James did so dislike uncer•
tainty" (p. 621). One's name did count, and Winifred's
children, after all, were called ''Dartie."
When Annette was brought to bed, Soames bad to
decide whether to save ber at the certain cost of the baby's
life or to risk ber life so that the child might be born.
He chose to take the risk, for it was his only chance for
a son; Annette could survive no second childbirth. Both
mother and child lived through the delivery, but, to Soames's
bitter disappointment, the baby was a girl.
Immediately after learning the news, Soames was
called to his father's death-bed.
James' breathing was as if strangled; his eyes were closed.
And in Soames, looking on his father so worn and white and
wasted, listening to his strangled breathing, there rose a
passionate vehemence of anger against Nature, cruel,
inexorable Nature, kneeling on the chest of that wisp of
a body, slowly pressing out the breath, pressing out the
life of the being who was dearest to htm in the world.
(pp. 632-633)
James opened his eyes and asked for news. "A flood of
emotion made Soames' face work so that he could not speak.
Tell htm?--yes. But what? He made a great effort, got his
lips together, and said: 'Good news, dear, good--Annette,
 54

a son' " {p. 633). James sank away again, and Soames sat
beside hfm, warming with his bands a foot which bad escaped
the covers. With a strong sudden cry, the old man died.
No one wept in that room but the hired nurse, a stranger.
Soames went out, ran to his bedroom, "flung himself face
mwn on the bed, and broke into sobs which he stifled with
the pillow" (p. 635).
It is apparent from this account that the character,
not the author, is shrinking from emotional display. Soames
does not cry out, or weep, or lament, in the presence of
others; yet through the author's interpretive comments the
reader is made to feel that it is one of the most emotional
moments in Soames's life. If Galsworthy bad chosen to shirk
the emotionalism, he would have refrained from commenting
and from following Soanes into the bedroom.
The scene bas additional significance. The chapter
is transitional since the lie Soames tells his father bas
certain suggestive powers. Irene bad meanwhile borne a son
at last, but, ironically, to ber second husband, Jolyon, so
that the lie involves the future tangling of Jon and Fleur,
the two Forsyte offspring. Moreover, the ease with which
James is deceived and his gratification at the news stand in
 55

contrast to Soames's present disappointment; in a sense,

however, James's pleasure anticipates the later reversal
of Soames's attitude, when the object of his disappointment
turns out to be bis dearest treasure and the focus of his
life.
 56

IV. To Let: The Unselfish Father

To Let begins with a quotation from Romeo and

Juliet. '~rom out the fatalloins of those two foes/ A pair
of star-crossed lovers take their life." The subject of the
novel is the love affair between Soames's only child, Fleur,
and Irene's only child, Jon. Jolyon no longer serves as
Galsworthy' a spokesman; he plays a minor supporting rôle and
fades into the background. Annette's interest in her
daughter's life is perfunctory, for she is occupied with an
affair of her own; her function in the novel is primarily to
show the contrast between Soames's feelings for ber and
Irene. Soames and Irene, in conflict with Fleur and Jon,
direct the action and determine the conclusion.
Irene's behaviour in ToLet is so unpleasant that
the reader finds his sympathy turning to Soames. After
reading the book, many critics re-examined the preceding
parts of the §!&! and revised their originally favourable
opinion of Irene. Their reaction genuinely puzzled
Galsworthy.
I never know whether to be gratified or not that the relative
virtues and vices of my characters seem to form the staple
of the articles written on them. No one, I think, ever
enjoys both Soames and Irene. If they like Soames they
abuse Irene, and vice versa. this to me seems queer. But
 57

I suppose an author is incapable of liking or disliking

his characters, and so can't understand how they affect
other people. To me they are only badly or well made.
Galsworthy wrote this in 1930, long after Irene's
critics bad bad their say. By then, he bad either forgotten
or chosen to deny his partiality for Irene. Soames is
never free of ber influence throughout the trilogy, and much
of his behaviour resulta from his relationship with ber. A
retrospective look at Irene, therefore, helps to understand
Soames and Galsworthy' s treatment of Soames.
Galsworthy does not allow her, in the first place,
to be blamed for having married Soames. After ber son bas
read Jolyon's letter telling the story of ber first marriage,
Irene says to Jon, "I know that in marrying Fleur' s father
without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage,

Jon, can play such havoc with other lives besides one's
own" (p. 883). She blames herself, at the age of fifty-seven,
for a decision made at twenty. Jolyon's explanation in the
letter is plausible enough, however, to convince the reader
of ber innocence.
You see, Jon, in those days and even to this day • • • most
girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even
if they know what it means they have not experienced it.
That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience,

1
Marrot, p. 800.
 58

whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the

difference and all the trouble. ln a vast number of
marriages--and your mother's was one--girls are not and
cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or
not; they do not know until after that act of union which
makes the reality of marriage. (p. 850)
The reader must accept the possibility of such ignorance,
even though Irene found Soames physically repugnant a full
year before she accepted his proposal.
She bad looked at him over ber slowly waving fan; and he bad
lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist, he pressed his
lips to the flesh of ber arm. And she bad shuddered--to this
day he bad not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so
passionately averse she bad given him. (p. 106)
Given ber unhappy situation, without means and
living with a hostile step~otber, given the tenacity of
Soames's pursuit and ber virginal ignorance, it is possible
to agree with the author that she is blameless.
Within a week, she knew that she bad made a
mistake. ln the face of ber husband's refusal to free ber,
she might simply have left him, but she bad no money, nowhere
to go, and no means of supporting herself. Perbaps she felt
obliged to try to l'ive up to ber part of the bargain even
though Soames, in refusing to free ber on request, bad failed
to keep his promise. With involuntary shrinking that turned
to loathing, she shared ber bed with ber husband for tbree
years.
Then, one night sbe locked ber bedroom door against
 59

him. She chose that particular night, rather than any one
of a thousand nights before, because Soames bad threatened
to sue Bosinney for the extra coat of the bouse. The
next day she visited Bosinney and became his mistress "in
deed as well as thought." From that time on, she slept by
day with Bosinney and by night alone, behind a locked door.
Bosinney' s fiancée, June, might break her heart; Soames might
live in celibacy forever, or manage as best he might with
other women; Irene bad no choice, it seems, but to obey the
call of passion.
If ber reasons for remaining with Soames for three
years are acceptable, ber return to him after the adulterous
act is not. Concern for Soames's position and reputation
did not motivate her. The only possible explanation, in
realistic terms, is that she wanted to retain a position of
respectability and to keep a lover too. David H. Lawrence
said, "Irene seems to me a sneaking, creeping, spiteful sort
of bitch, an anti-Forsyte, absolutely living off the
Forsytes--yes, to the very end; absolutely living off their
2
money and trying to do them dirt."

2
"John Galsworthy," Phoenix (London, 1936), p. 545.
 60

Galsworthy, bad he lived long enough to read Lawrence's

attack, would have been horrified at the suggestion;
Irene was supposed to represent the antithesis of conven-
tional prudence and respect for reputation, position, and
property. Yet Galsworthy offers no explanation of ber
return to Soames, nor of ber choosing to remain with him
until Bosinney's death.
The author's purpose in making ber return is no
mystery. He manipulated the character to suit the plot and,
as he admitted to Garnett, to point a moral.
You, and I think your wife, want me to end the book with a
palpable and obvious defeat of Forsyteism by making the
lovera run away happily.
To my mind (and I desire to defeat Forsyteism) the
only way to do so is to leave the Forsytes masters of the
field. The only way to enlist the sympathies of readers on
the other side, the only way to cap the whole purpose of the
book, which was to leave pro~erty as an empty Shell--is to
leave the victory to Soames.
Perhaps Galsworthy was unaware that he bad failed
4
to provide Irene with an acceptable motive. More probably,

J
Garnett, p. 74.
4
No one bas tried to explain why Ada Galsworthy
stayed with ber first husband after she and John became
lovers; nor does anyone know why ber lover accepted that
situation. ·
 61

he hoped that the sweep of action and force of feeling

would cause the reader to overlook the omission.
Part of the failure cames from his hesitancy to
define Irene as a real person and from his anxiety not to
commit ber to an imperfection.
Irene, or Galsworthy through Irene, makes it seem discour-
teous and unfair to discuss ber at all on the human plane,
for if one were to say that she is selfish, vain and
hypocritical--all without knowing it--her author might put
the accusation out of court by saying: 'You misrepresent
my purpose. You have failed to understand to haw great an
extent, in my mind, Irene is a spirit, an emanation of the
absolute, an idea, and so exempt from terrestrial argument.• 5
The embodiment of Beauty stayed on until ber
husband, wild with jealousy and desire, invaded ber room.
She reported the event to ber lover the next day, but
returned to spend another night at home. Only on the following
day did she pack a trunk and a bag and leave. The twenty-
four hour delay is inexplicable; no real woman, feeling the
shock and horror Irene is supposed to have felt, would have
returned to that bouse for any reason.
Her final return is, of course, fully explained.
Even Soames understands it as an automatic act, the result
of having beard of Bosinney's death. "She bad come back like

5
Menander f.:pseudonYif, "Irene Forsyte," Times
Literary Supplement, Nov. 4, 1944, p. 531.
 62

an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to turn, not

knowing what she was doing" (p. 307). As soon as the shock
wore off, she left again, this time for ever.
After twelve year~, during which time she managed
to support herself, she refused, quite properly, to return
to Soames. She also refused to give htm new evidence for
a divorce so that he might be free to remarry and father a
son. She bad had no lover since Bosinney and would not,
despite a professed desire to help, take a lover to order
for Soames's convenience. He must look to his own life, she
suggested; if he wanted a divorce so badly, she would be
happy to oblige by charging him with adultery. It did not
occur to ber that she bad no reputation to lose, whereas his
entire career was at stake. If she bad bad a lover, she
would have leaped at the chance to be free; since freedom was
worthless to ber, Soames's anguish did not concern ber. To
put the matter crudely, she was willing, because Soames was
repugnant to ber, to punish him for life so long as ber own
tranquility was undisturbed. Only when his continuing
desire for ber began to be frightening, and after ber
affection for Jolyon led to a willingness to remarry, did she
find the idea of divorce appealing. At that point, her
objections to scandal miraculously dissolved; she even
 63

cooperated to the extent of giving Soames evidence of

adultery before the fact (p. 589).
This account of Irene•s behaviour is factual but
at complete variance with the tone of In Chancery. Although
Galsworthy treats Soames with understanding, he does not
criticize Irene for ber obduracy; he was incapable of
criticizing ber at all. His attitude is irritating because
he saw his other characters so very clearly but was apparent-
ly unable to look directly at Irene and to realize what
he had made of ber. In all three novels he makes ber behave
badly and tben tells the reader, through tone and comment
and sometimes a spokesman, that she is acting in accordance
witb ber beautiful nature and ruining lives all around ber
because sbe cannot help being so beautiful and desirable.
As an abstraction and a symbol, sbe is not to be judged by
real laws and real standards of morality; Irene cannot be
brought to account because she is an intangible. Rer
portrait is the chivalrous gesture of Ada's devoted husband,
but it is not convincing characterization.
Galsworthy's vision of Irene is even more distorted
in the third novel than in the second. Sbe destroyed June'•
happiness and was responsible for Bosinney's death (The Man
of Property); she continued to make Soames wretched and
 64

almost succeeded in blighting any hope he might have for

future happiness (In Chancery). In To Let she causes a
number of serious changes in others' lives with just a few
soft words. She shatters Jon's security and plans; Fleur
rebounds into a loveless marriage; Soames is wounded through
Fleur; and the shock of giving the letter to Jon hastens
Jolyon's death. "Don't think of me--think of yourself, 11 she
tells Jon.
How did Galsworthy, a perceptive artist, a man full of
sensitive charity, fail to understand that it is this very
saying of Irene' s which condemns her. Always, with Soames,
with her son, sbe wants her own way, but rejects the
responsibility of taking it. In so far as she is woman, she
is self-deluded, hypocritical, self-pitying. If Galsworthy,
loving her nevertheless, had compassionately criticized her,
she might have been unique, one of the undying women of
fiction • • • but he would recognize no fault in her and,
isolating her from humanity within the ring of his idealism,
deified and killed her.6
Jon does as Irene wants him to, despite her admonition to
think only of himself. In allowing htm to be controlled by
her wUl, she demonstrates a possessiveness exceeding that
of any Forsyte. She is intended to symbolize a large
spirit, but fails to deal with Jon in that spirit.
One must be careful to .distinguish Jolyon' a motive
in writing the letter from Irene's approval of his action.

6
Menander, p. 531.
 65

Jolyon is not possessive toward Jon; he acts only through

consideration of Irene's feelings. It is unfair to condemn
them together, as one critic does.
For what imaginable reason could Jolyon and Irene--the
unpossessive ones, if you please: the devotees of beauty~-­
have conspired to break their boy's heart just because he
loved Soames's daughter? • • • Jolyon and Irene behave like
maniacal monsters of possessive selfishness to their son.7
Galsworthy knew that they might be suspect, for he wrote their
defense in his Introduction:
A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is
the complaint that Irene and Jolyon--those rebels against
property--claim spiritual property in their son Jon. But
it would be hyper-criticism as the tale is told. No father;-and
mother could have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge
of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion
of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not on his
own account, but on Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes
a reiterated: ''Don't think of me, think of yourself!" That
Jon, knowing the facts, can realise his mother's feelings,
can hardly with justice be held proof that she is, after all,
a Forsyte. (p. xiii)
The defense collapses at its weakest point, "facts determine
Jon, not the persuasion of his parents." The text reveals
the statement, intended as the mainstay of the argument, to
be a falsification. After Jon is in possession of "the factsn
(and Jolyon's presentation of the facts is a masterpiece of
special pleading, deliberately designed to elicit sympathy

7
Gerald Gould, "John Galsworthy As A Novelist,"
The Bookman (London), LXV (1923), 135.
 66

for Irene), he bas a conversation with his mother.

LÏreneJ "Do you think you can possibly be happy with this
girl?"
Staring at ber dark eyes, darker now from pain,
Jon answered:
''Yes, oh~ yes--if you could be. 11
Irene smiled.
"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession
are not love. If yours were another case like mine, Jon--
where the deepest things are stifled; the flesh joined, and
the spirit at war! 11
''Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like
ber father, but she's not. I've seen him."
Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon
something wavered; there was such irony and experience in
that smile.
''You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker. 11
That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty
again~ He said with vehemence:
11
She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't
be ar to make you unhappy, Mother, now that Father -1' He
thrust his fists against his forehead.
Irene got up.
"I to ld you that night, de ar, not to mind me. I
meant it. Think of yourself and your own happiness! I can
stand what's left--I've brought iton myself." (p. 883)
The facts have not been eno~ to convince him, and so Irene
bas to bring in a new "fact"--her opinion, based on one
strained meeting, that Fleur is a "taker." That ber
estimate of Fleur's character happens to be accurate does not
justify her bringing it into the discussion, since her
objections are suppos.ed to be based on past history rather
than on conjectures about the future.
Jon rejects the argument, anyway; the only
obstacle is Irene--"1 can't bear to make you unhappy,
 67

Mother." Irene bas only one arrow in her quiver, and she
lets it fly with such subtle misdirection that he does not
know he has been bit. She tells him again, "Don' t think of
me," and adds, with martyred humility, "I can stand what' s
left·-I've brought iton myself." Knowing the tenderness
of his heart and the depth of his love for ber, she has
made sure that he cannot fail to think of her. With a soft
caress, she leaves him to his night-thoughts.
"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession
are not love," she tells him. Soames' s great sin against
Irene was tbat he did not love ber selflessly enough; if he
had, he could not have caused her such pain by refusing to
set ber free. A manifestation of selfless love is the pain
which Jolyon felt when he imagined Jon reading the letter.
''There were things in it which burt him so much, when he
thought of Jon reading them, tbat he nearly tore the letter
up" (p. 853}. Jon's first reaction to the letter is the
thought of his father's pain in writing it; this is selfless
love. Irene's comment on the letter, however, is startling-
ly casual: "It's wonderfully put. I don't see bow it
could be put better. Thank you, dear." She might be
thanking him for writing an invitation to lunch, instead of
a letter that will undermine the foundation of her son's
 68

security and tear hfm away from the girl he loves. The
only feelings which matter are ber own.
Irene, that prig, with the cold, uncharitable heart and
long, venomous memory, overcharged with hate, who brings
misfortune on every person with whom she comes in
contact • • • a morbid miser, hoarding ber body as if it
were a museum piece, and displaying a sense of possessioB
as acute as that of the most acquisitive Forsyte. • • •
Perhaps Ervine's opinion is too strong; a more charitable
view would be that ber love for Jon and ber loathing of
Soames combine to make ber irrational on the subject of
marriage between Jon and Fleur. No other explanation can
excuse ber. Her action is so plainly culpable that Soames's
behaviour shines brightly by comparison.
He is faced with the identical problem: he
hates the idea of the marriage, adores his only child, and
is torn between his instinct to obstruct the union and his
desire to avoid hurting Fleur. Unlike Irene, he loves his
child so unselfishly that he prepares to give ber up for the
sake of ber happiness. His line of action is so right and
decent in itself, and in such contrast to Irene's, that he
9
"gets a double accretion of admiration. 11

8
St. John Ervine, "John Galsworthy," Great
Democrats (London, 1934), p. 283.
9
Duffin, p. 399.
 69

Almost nineteen years have passed since the birth

of Fleur, and Soames is now six.ty-five. He dotes on his
daughter, while recognizing that the power she holds over
him bas made ber wilful. "Six.ty-five~ He was getting on;
but he didn't feel it, for fortunately perhaps, considering
Annette's youth and good looks, his second marriage bad
turned out a cool affair. He bad known but one real passion
in his life--for that first wife of his--Irene" (p. 666).
For many years he bas ceased regretting not having
a son; Fleur "filled the bill in his heart" (p. 667). "Aware
that his expression was softening as he looked at ber, Soames
frowned to preserve the unemotionalism proper to a Forsyte.
He knew she was only too inclined to take advantage of his
weakness" (p. 677). His world revolves about this girl, who
has absorbed the feeling he once had for Irene.
'Too fond of ber!' he thought, 'too fond!' He was like a
man uninsured, with his ships at sea. Uninsured again--as
in that other time, so long ago, when he would wander dumb
and jealous in the wilderness of London, longing for that
woman--his first wife•-the mother of this infernal boy. (p.738)
Galsworthy stresses the resemblance between his absorption
in Fleur and his old passion for Irene more than once. "It
was odd how, with all this ingrained care for moderation and
secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs into
one basket. First Irene--now Fleur" (p. 807).
 70

Fleur's place in his heart leaves little room for

anyone el se, least of all for his second wife·. He bas never
bad any sympathy with Annette's language, bas never understood
her patriotism, and has never loved ber; she '~ad never been
much more than a mistress, and he was getting indifferent
to that side of things!" (p. 807).
A fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and
affectionate enough mother. If only she weren't always so
frankly cynical about the relations begween them! Soames,
who bad no more real affection· for ber than she bad for
him, suffered from a kind of English grievance in that she
had never dropped even the thinnest veil of sentiment over
their partnership • .. .. when from a marriage love bad
disappeared, or been found never to have really existed--so
that it was manifestly not based on love--you must not
admit it. • • • Thus you bad it both ways, and were not
tarred with cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French.
• • • He could never understand what she meant when she
talked of the hypocrisy of the English. (pp. 684-685)
Galsworthy is having a bit of fun at Soames's expense. Poor
Soames, whose first wife could not, and whose second wife
would not, pretend to love him!
When Soames suspects Annette of having a love
affair with Prosper Profond, he reacts almost with indiffer-
ence. Such a suspicion of Irene bad driven him into a
frenzy of jealousy; now he chooses to ignore Annette's
flirting until forced by the danger of scandal to take
action. Even during his courtship of Annette, twenty years
 71

earlier, he had anticipated such a situation without

dismay. '~ears hence I shouldn't be surprised if I have
trouble with her; but I shall be getting old, I shall have
children by then. I shall shut my eyes" (p. 608).
One of Galsworthy's letters throws light on an
important aspect of the Soames-Annette relationship.
Addressed to a French friend, André Chevrillon, the letter
discusses the difference in women's statua in France and
England.
I am not at all sure that the progress of sentimental laxity
in marriage that you speak of in France is any sign of the
emancipation of women from male desire and male design. It
seems to me more likely to be a mere change of channel due
to the paramount power of male convenience, and not to the
principles of a wider humanity, or of a stricter self-
respect. No doubt the French woman is freer witbin the ring
of sex; the give and take is greater-•perhaps more natural,
perhaps less natural--who knowa? For instance, English
women (with very rare ~xceptions) who have lovera don't
remain on marital terms with their husbands; I am told that
this is not at all infrequent here.lO
This belief of Galsworthy's makes it easier for the
reader to understand one scene of To Let. Soames has
received an anonymous letter accusing Annette of ·~arrying

on with a foreigner" and of meeting Profond severa! times a

week. Soames confronta her with the letter and threatens
to eut off ber money unless she breaks with Profond. Not

10
Marrot, pp. 364-365.
 72

only does she refuse to affirm ber innocence, but she

warns Soames not to threaten her or to make any demands;
she promises only to avoid scandalous behaviour. Soames
decides that she is right to assert ber independance and
that he can do nothing.
The instinct of self-preservation warned him to hatten dawn
his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air. Unless
one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.
That night he went into ber room. She received
him in the most matter-of•fact way, as if there had been
no scene between them. (p. 811)
The dramatic climax of The Man of Property was
Soames's forcing himself on Irene and asserting his marital
rights. Echoes of the incident resound, in fact, through
all the Forsyte novels. Its direct effects are Bosinney's
death, Irene's departure and refusal to return, and her
opposition to a union between Fleur and Jon. The indirect
effects of the incident include most of the main plot of
The Forsyte Saga and the Fleur-Jon relationship in A Modern
Comedy. The contrast between such an important, far-
reaching event and the casual few lines describing Soames's
visit to Annette is obviously deliberate.
Superficially, the contrast seems self•explanatory,
especially if the reader is familiar with the views expressed
in the letter. Annette is Frene~; therefore she regards the
 73

question matter-of-factly. Irene is English; it follows

that she is fastidious about sharing herself with two men.
Annette is realistic and earthy, like ber mother; she
probably bas bad no illusions about the sexual side of
marriage from the time Mme Lamotte could first instruct ber
about the realities of life. Irene, on the other band, is
all spirit and idealism; born to be loved, she bas no idea
how one goes about it. Perhaps because this explanation
seems so obvious, no critic bas even bothered to comment on
this particular contrast.
There is, however, a point which does not seem to
fit, a small recurrent comment that casts doubt on the
simplicity of the explanation. Irene is not English in
appearance or temperament. She looks like a heathen goddess
(p. 9), like Titian's ''Heavenly Love" (p. 247), like Venus
(pp. 421, 577, 654). There is not an Englishwoman among
them. "Soames will have trouble with ber • • • she's got a
foreign look" (p. 19). When James looked at ber, "an odd
feeling crept over him, as though he bad come across some-
thing strange and foreign" (p. 73). While travelling in

Spain with his mother, Jon observes: ·~ Southern people

stimulated his admiration for ber type of beauty, which he

bad been accustomed to hear called Spanish, but which he

 74

now perceived to be no such thing. Rer beauty was neither

English, French, Spanish, nor Italian-·it was special!"
(p. 762). As to temperament, "she was one of those women--
not too common in the Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved
and to love" (p. 50. Italics added). Rer reaction to
Soames's intrusion was not attributable to ber English-
ness at all.
It is always tempting to exaggerate an "original"
interpretation and even to distort facts in order to
support a thesis. Certainly Annette is Galsworthy's
somewhat stereotyped idea of a Frenchwoman and behaves just
as he believed a Frenchwoman would behave. It is possible,
however, that Galsworthy at fifty-two or fifty-three regarded
the whole subject with less indignation and more tolerance;
he might even have treated the "rape 11 scene differently if
he bad been writing it in his later years. If he felt then
as strongly as he bad felt in 1905, surely he would have made
more of the Annette•Soames incident than he did, if o nly to
comment on the difference between the two women. Not
wishing to make more of the matter than it warrants, I leave
it with the suggestion that the contrasting·episodes provide

a possible clue to the changes in Galsworthy's attitudes as

 75

time passed.
Galsworthy did comment on the sceneJ but his
remarks concerned Soames's, not Annette's, behaviour.
I am not more absolutely certain than Soames was whether
Annette was actually Profond's mistress. I incline--
like him--to think she was. I think the doubt sooner or
later was inherent in Soames' second married life; and I
am sure the thread woven-in lends an extra closeness to
the story, and complements the character of Soames, by
showing the very different effect such a contingency has on
him in the very different cases of his two marriages.
I think, too, that his indelicacies in that scene with
Annette and after it, are due to "Superior Dosset" out-
cropping in him under pressure, and to the whipping up of
his sense of property.!!l:
Soames is still a man of property and he remains
one to the end. His gradual rehabilitation does not
consist in the author's changing Soames's character but
in Galsworthy's altered interpretation of it and in a shift
of emphasis to Soames's more admirable characteristics.
Soames' s sense of property gradually "takes on the more
respectable guise of an innate sense of law. and order~·a

counterbalance to 'lawlessness' rather than a cage for

12
it." Instead of wanting to own a wife, he longs patheti-
cally for a son.

11
Marrot, p. 511.
12
Duffin, p. 399.
 76

Soames even shows signs of being sensitive to

beauty. Examining a recently-purchased painting which he
knows to be valuable, he believes it to be a bargain because
he can "admire the quality of .the table, the floor, the
chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed expression on ber
face" (p. 628). His collection of paintings representa an
investment to htm, desirable prtmarily for its resale value.
The collecting of pictures, however, fills an emotional
need for him during his twelve lonely years. Increasingly,
aesthetic appreciation enhances his proprietary satisfaction
in his paintings. There is a great contrast between
Galsworthy's early and late attitude toward Soames's r~le

as art collector. In The Man of Properti, Soames talked of

the Barbizon school of painters, which he bad just dis•
covered.
These were the coming men, he said; he should not wonder if
a lot of money were made over them; he bad his eye on two
pictures by a man called Corot, charming things; if he
could get them at a reasonable priee he was going to buy
them••they would, he thought, fetch a big priee some
day. (p. 278)
That they are "channing things," Galsworthy tmplies,
counts for nothing with Soames except insofar as their
charm assures their future value. Soames's habit is to
examine prospective purchases, making notes on the subjects
 77

of the pictures and the nsmes of the painters and

deriving satisfaction from calculating their value rather
than through a response to their beauty (pp. 51~52).

At the time In Chancery begins, Soames's collection

bas grown to considerable size and attracts many dealers
and acquaintances. 'Tor though he was but a taciturn
showman, his quiet collected determinism seldom failed to
influence his guests, who knew that his reputation was
grounded not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of
gauging the future of market values." (p. 367).
His "mere aesthetic fancy" still plays a secondary rôle
in determining his selections, although the acknowledgement
of its existence marks a progression in the author's
attitude.
Finally, To Let contains a passage which not only
closes the gap between art and commerce but justifies the
existence of collectors like Soames.
Soames bad not spent thirty•eight years over his one hobby
without knowing something more about pictures than their
market values. He was, at it were, the missing link
between the artist and the commercial public. Art for
art's sake and all that, of course, was cant. But
aesthetics and good taste was what gave a work of art its
permanent market value, or in other words made it 'a work
of art.' There was no real cleavage. (pp. 734-735)
I do not detect any note of irony in this passage;
 78

on the contrary, it seems to be a genuine expression of

Galsworthy's mature attitude toward the relationship of
art and the public. Soames is no less "possessive" than
before, but Galsworthy can now see uses for, and virtues
in, possessiveness that he was unable--or perhaps able but
unwilling••to recognize formerly.
More dear to Soames than paintings is Fleur, "this
treasured possession of his life" (p. 677). His love for
ber is possessive in the sense that she is his treasure, a
source of comfort to him, and the object of all his frustrated
affection. '~leur's future~ 'I want fair sailing for ber,'
he thought. 'Nothing else matters at my time of life.' A
lonely business•-life! What you bad you never could keep to
yourself~ As you warned one off, you let another in. One
could make sure of nothing!" (p. 808).
His possessiveness, however, is subordtnate to his
concern for ber happiness; "I must put up with things, I
know," he tells Fleur, "to keep your affection" (p. 830).
At Fleur's request that he intervene with Irene, selfless
devotion vanquishes his Forsyteism almost tmmediately.
Why should he help ber to get this boy, who was killing ber
affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the
Forsytes it was foolish! Tbere was nothing to be bad out
of it--nothing! To give her to that boy! To pass her into
 79

the enemy's camp, under the influence of the woman who bad
injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he would lose
this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious
that his band was wet. His heart gave a little painful
jump. He couldn't bear her to cry • • • • If she must have
it for her happiness-she must; he couldn't refuse to help
ber. (pp. 887-888)
He does not decide without a struggle; giving up
Fleur to any man would be hard for him, and his ambiguous
feelings toward Irene further intensify his inner conflict.
"'I don't know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have such
things thrust on me!' "(p. 888).
At this point Galsworthy's treatment of Soames
becomes weakened by vaccillation. The author bas partly
rehabilitated Soames in the eyes of the reader by contrasting
Soames's behaviour to· Irene and his treatment of Fleur's
love affair with Jon. Galsworthy cannot, however, improve
Soames's attitude toward Irene without damaging ber image.
Soames must misunderstand and abuse Irene to the end if she
is to remain sympathetic.
Immediately after making his unselfish decision,
Soames goes to see Irene, and Galsworthy describes him as
'~e who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as
it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting
lawless beauty, incarnate" (p. 889). When Galsworthy deals
with Irene all the careful repair work that bas gone into
 80

Soames's portrayal counts for nothing; the author, the

characters, and the reader are transported to the mood of
The Man of Property. Irene ~s still beautiful and desirable;
Soames remains, not only possessive toward her, but as
obtuse as ever. "Ah~ she bad been a bad lot--bad loved two
men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came
face to face with ber once more" (p. 890). He even
considera "repossessing" some part of Irene through the
union of their children and through the grandchildren they
would have in common as a result of that union (p. 868).
Soames's love for his daughter bas led the reader to believe
that he bas acquired some understanding into the nature of
love, but Galsworthy once more sacrifices Soames for Irene's
sake.
Even now he could not understand why she bad been so
impracticable. She could love other men; she bad it in
ber~ • • • It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked
back, that • • • all this modern looseness bad come out of
ber revolt; it seemed to htm, fantastically, that she had
started it, till all decent ownership of anything bad gone,
or was on the point of going. All came from her~ And now--
a pretty state of things~ Homes! How could you have them
without mutual ownership? Not that he bad ever had a real
home~ But bad that been,his fault? He had done his best.
And his rewards were--those two Lireoe and JolyoBJ sitting
in that Stand, and this affair of Fleur's! (p. 841)

Only near the very end of To Let does the author

 81

permit Soames the ray of understanding that changes his

attitude toward Irene.
Softened by the events of the past week, affected by the
melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came nearer
than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing
the understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of
Beauty bas a spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a
devotion which thinks not of self. After all, he was
near that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps
that made him understand a little how he bad missed the
prize. (p. 916)
It is significant that this knowledge comes to
Soames towards the end of the novel. A review of Galsworthy'&
commenta about Soames shows a progressive self-awareness on
Soames's part. At the beginning, only the author and the
reader share certain knowledge. "Enjoy! The word brought
no puritan terror to Soames; but it brought the terror suited
to his temperament. He bad always been afraid to enjoy to-
day for fear he might not enjoy to-morrow so much 11 (p. 687).
Soames overlooks Annette's flirtation, Galsworthy remarks,
because '~is possessive instinct, subtle, less formal, more
elastic since the War, kept all misgivings underground"
(p. 777). Soames certainly do es not seem to be aware of this
change in his possessive instinct; at least, he attributes
his deliberate "blindness" to his comparative indifference
to his second wife.
 82

As To Let progresses, however, the character

begins imperfectly to be aware of some of his own traits.
"As modern life becsme faster, looser, younger, Soames was
becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in tbought
and language like his father James before him. He was
almost aware of it himself" (p. 885). After Jon bas
rejected Fleur, Soames bas a near-glimpse of himself as he
looked to Irene.
Tbat boy bad given ber up, declared part and lot with the
woman who so bng ago bad given ber father up! Soames
clenched his bands. Given him up, and why? What bad been
wrong with him? And once more he felt the malaise of one
who contemplates himself as seen by another--like a dog
who chances on his reflection in a mirror and is intrigued
and anxious at the unseizable thing. (p. 893)
Finally, in his long meditation at the cemetery at
the very end of the Saga, he bas a last clear insigbt into
his own shortcomings. He bas first reviewed the history of
the Forsyte family and the events of his own life. He sees
htmself as an island of stability in a sea of change, resisting
and surviving the dissolution of "property, manners,and

morals, • • • melody and the old forms of art" (p. 920).

Yet with all this he is troubled by a melancholy craving and
by the awareness that, with all his virtues and solidity,
all his strength and goodness, something is lacking in him
and always will be. "He might wish and wish and never get
it--the beauty and the loving in the world" (p. 921).
 83

V: A Modern Comedy: l'he Final Portrait

Less than six weeks after To Let appeared,

Galsworthy began planning a continuation of the Forsyte
chronicles. At that time (Nov. 8, 1921) he wrote to a
friend of his intentions. "1 am quite lost at present.
Though the Saga is finished--the old Forsytes all gone--
and the long duel over, 1 feel that 1 haven't done with
Fleur; and am trying to gather force to pursue her in the
1
world of to-day and to-morrow."
Fleur is the central character of A Modern Comedy,
but Soames plays almost as prominent a rôle. Galsworthy
stated in the Preface that he intended to portray the post-
war generation against the background of Victorianism that
Soames representa. "1t is against the background of this
more or less fixed quantity that we can best see the shape
and colour of the present intensely self-conscious and all-
2
questioning generation."
Galsworthy did not try to delineate the '~ltiple

1
Marrot, p. 510.
2
A Modern Comedy (London, 1929), p. ix.
Subsequent references will be to this edition.
 84

types and activities of today," for such an attempt would

require mucb more space than three novels afforded; be
tried, instead, to reflect generally the spirit of the
age in Fleur's discontent and restlessness. His prtmary
interest, however, was to continue the story begun witb
the meeting of Soames and Irene in a drawing-room so long
ago, "a tale whicb could but end when its spine snapped,
and Soames 'took the ferry' forty-five years later" (p. xi).
At the end of the Preface, Galsworthy commenta
on Soames.
The cbronicler, catechised (as be often is) concerning Soames,
knows not precisely what he stands for. Taking him for
all in all be was bonest, anyway. He lived and moved and
bad his peculiar being, and, now he sleeps. His creator
may be pardoned for thinking there was something fitting
about his end; for, however far we have travelled from
Greek culture and pbilosopby, tbere is still truth in the
old Greek proverb: "That which a man most loves shall in
the end destroy him." (p. xi)
Soames is tbus identified to the very end as both
man and symbol, althougb the symbolism never subdues bis
personality. He "lived and moved and bad his peculiar being"
as vividly as any character in fiction; yet be is at the
same time the Victorian man of property, the symbol of
possessiveness, and finally, when nemesis overtakes him, the
tragic hero.
 85

·~e measure of Galsworthy's success is the

degree to which he maintains the state of unstable
equilibrium between convincing characterization and
description on the realistic level and poettcal"symbolic
3
undertones and overtones." Soames is most convincing on
both the realistic and symbolic level because Galsworthy
knew him best. The generation the novelist knew least,
that of Fleur and Michael, is lesa convincing because
Galsworthy "constructed its representatives on more purely
theoretical considerations instead of from observation and
4
real insight." The modemism that he hoped to seize
escaped him, for he failed to show an understanding of
the post-var world.
A few dissenting readers find Galsworthy'&
portrait of Fleur•s generation the most successful achieve-
5
ment of A Modem Comedy, presented with "a cool, ironie,
rather sad clarity, wbich t~e may well declare to be

3
David Daiches, ,.John Galsworthy," The Novel
and the Modern World (Chicago, 1939), p. 45.
4
Daiches, p. 46.
5
Mary s. Gretton, "John Galsworthy," Contemporary
Review, CXLIII (1933), 323.
 86

6
the nearest to truth of any contemporary writing."
There is general agreement, however, that A
Modern Comedy is inferior to The Forsyte Sage for one
reason or another. Dudley Barker, for example, finds the
opening chapters of The White Monkey comparatively dull and
the novel coming to life only with Soames's appearance in
the sixth chapter. ''What makes the book," he says, "is
Soames, mousing forw.ard into the modern world with his
Victorian standards, now thoroughly approved by his
creator" {p. 206). Soames's appearances in the new series,
however, only contribute to the general boredom of another
cri tic.
One feels that Mr. Galsworthy is carried forward more by
the momentum already acquired than by any powerful creative
impulse; each book follows iœmediately on the year in which
the action is placed, as if the author were somewhat hastily
and perfunctorily keeping his chronicle up to date. One
grows rather tired of the monotonous reappearances of
Soames in his double rôle of anxious financier and doting
father • • • • One's final impression of the series is a
sense of indeterminateness greatly in contrast with the
sharpness of outline which characterizes the earlier novels.7

6
Arthur Simons Collins, "John Galsworthy," English
Literature of the TWentieth Century (London, 1951), p. 177.
7
Joseph Warren Beach, The Twentieth Century Novel
(New York, 1932), p. 250.
 87

Beach's commenta on A Modern Comedy as a whole

are valid. The plots of the three novels are complex and
rambling, and the reader often loses interest. The fault
is partly because Fleur, the central character, is unsympa-
thetic. Weary of ber petulance, immaturity, and cold-
hearted plotting, the reader finally stops earing whether
she gets what she wants or not.
There is some disagreement among the critics
coneerning Fleur. Galsworthy undoubtedly wanted the reader
to excuse ber faults, while recognizing them, because they
are inherited; ber possessiveness toward Jon and Michael
is parallel to Soames's attitude toward Irene. The flaw,
transmitted from father to daughter, is the retributive
instrument, in fact, of Soames's final tragedy. Galsworthy
persuaded some critics, at least, to like Fleur.
The reader's kindliness toward Fleur, despite all ber
faults, is, of course, largely a tribute to the skill with
which Galsworthy bas portrayed ber • • • • By the time we
have got through the !!&! and the Comedy we have suffered
with ber in ber young heartbreak over Jon; we have stood
by ber side through the agonies of motherhood; we have
trembled for ber soul when she flings ber cap over the
windmill; and we have tasted the salt tears of ber bitter
remorse when Soames is killed. • • • The quality that
serves ber best to win our tenderness is the endearing
childlikegess she carries under all ber surface sophis-
tication.

8
Edward Wagenknecht, "The Selfish Heroine: Thackeray
and Galsworthy," College English, IV (1942-1943), 296-297.
 Anotber reader finds the Fleur-Jon love story
9
one of the tenderest tbings in modern fiction,"
11
related
witb poignancy deepening into a profound sense of pathos.
"And sometbing of the patbetic clings about the youtbful
figure of Fleur, whose very positiveness lends an odd
attraction to ber cbaracter, and makes ber deplorable
10
defeat the more pitiful."
These favourable opinions of Fleur are reminiscent
of the apologies for Irene; Galsworthy bas again created
a character wbam most readers find unsympathetic and bas
then tried to elicit compassion for her. Again be bas
largely failed, for Fleur leaves a final impression of
shallowness and frosty calculation.
If Fleur, as the symbol of her generation, were
really sympathetic, Soames would not appear in such a good
light. While Galsworthy made no basic changes in Soames's
characteristics, he interpreted them more favourably, and
the younger cbaracters suffer by comparison. The motif of

9
St. John Ervine, "John Galsworthy," Some
Impressions of My Elders (New York, 1922), p. 151.
10
Croman, p. 41.
 89

possession links the series, and by studying the changes

in Galsworthy'& treatment of this motif one may trace the
evolution of his mannar and his own development from
11
satirist to social critic and philosopher.
When Swan Song was published in 1928, readers
became aware, if they were not already, that Soames was
different. Some critics suggest that the mellowing affect
of time and the substitution of Fleur for Irene as an
emotional stimulant account for the change. Soames' s
increased stature, however, may have been only relative.
·~ lone Victorian, he dwarfed the scurrying Lilliputians of
the post-war epoch, though he bad eut no special figure
among his contemporaries. This view assumed a different, and
dangerous, aspect in the minds of some who asked, 'After all,
12
was he ever very bad?' 11
Duffin goes on to answer that Soames was indeed very bad;
11
0h, there can be no question about the depth from which
Soames has to rise. Galsworthy rubs him in" (p. 398).
Against this opinion is that of Angus Wilson, at the other

11
Croman, pp. 12·14.
12
Duffin, p. 397.
 90

extreme.
There is no moment, 1 think, at which Galsworthy does not
pull his punches against the Forsytes from the very
start. • • • He is clearly at one with his readers--on the
side of soundness and dividends and Soames with a nice
sense of beauty and whimsy and lovely Lutyens houses.l3
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. One must
qualify both statements by referring to ChapterlZ of this
study, where it is made clear that Galsworthy, even in
The Man of Property, understood and emphasized Soames's
inability to control or to understand his flaws and limita-
tions.
Nevertheless, Soames's flaws become near-virtues
toward the end. Soames becomes the point of rest in a
chaotic, confused, and amoral world. "ln an iconoclastie
society which bas destroyed the ancient code and pilloried
the ancient beliefs, he appears the solitary specimen of a
strong and solid race whose sturdy limbs were braced on the
firm ground of tradition and whose eyes were steady with a
14
sense of continuity."
The miraculous transformation takes place by an

13
''Galsworthy' s 'Forsyte Saga'," New Statesman
and Nation, LI (1956), 187.
14
Croman, p. 47.
 91

infinitely slow process, detail added to detail, leaving no

residue of doubt to mar complete acceptance.
'~e man of property, who in early manhood had hoped to take
beauty by force and love by purchase, at the end gives his
life fighting with all his strength to save beauty from the
ravages of fire, and receives his death-blow in protecting
15
from harm the one creature whom he had unselfishly loved."
A succession of small touches, apparently insignifi-
cant in themselves, bring about Soames's transformation. A

good example is the trivial fact that he takes up golf at

an advanced age. Galsworthy htmself became an enthusiastic
tennis-player in his fifties, although he had previously
considered horse-back-riding a satisfactory and gentlemanly
substitute for the sports he had enjoyed at university. His
account of Soames's introduction to golf not only provides
a humorous touch but also illuminates a side of Soaoes the
reader has not before seen.
A nephew gives Soaoes a set of golf clubs for
his sixty-ninth birthday. Soames is completely puzzled by
the gitt; what is he to do with them at his age? "Annette,
with that French quickness which so often annoyed hiœ,

15
Ould, p. 228.
 92

suggested that he should use them. She was uncomfortable~"

(p. 369). The set of clubs collecta dust until some time
later, when Cardigan, the nephew, demonstrates his "swing"
and challenges Soames to better it.
"Ab surd! " sa id Soames.
But in his room that night he bad stood in his
pyjamas swinging his arma in imitation of Jack Cardigan.
The next day he sent the women out in the car with their
lunch; he was not going to have them grinning at him. He
bad seldom spent more annoying hours than those which
followed. They culminated in a moment when at last he bit
the hall, and it fell into the river three yards from
the near bank. (370)
The next day he is stiff and sore, but infected with what is
now called "golf fever." He joins a golf club and practices
every lunch hour. '~e kept at it with characteristic tenacity,
till by July he bad attained a certain proficiency; and he
began to say to Annette that it would do ber all the good in
the world to take it up, and keep ber weight dawn." He
rationalizes his interest in the game on the grounds that
it is good for his health, since it would be out of character
for Soames to enjoy anything unless it were profitable.
One vice, however, leads to another, for the same
Cardigan sends Soames a box of cigarà which, to his surprise,
please him.

A suspicion, however, that the family bad set Jack Cardigan

 93

on, prevented him from indulging his new sensation anywbere

but in his picture gallery; so that cigars gathered the
halo of a secret vice. He renewed his store stealthily.
Only when he found that Annette, Fleur, and otbers bad
known for weeks, did he relax his rule, and say openly that
the vice of the present day was cigarettes.
"My dear boy," said Winifred, when sbe next saw
him, "everybody' s saying you' re a different man!"
Soames raised his eyebrows. He was not conscious
of any change. (p. 371)
Certainly he is a different man; he bas discovered
that life bolds pleasures in non-productive ways, even tbough
he will always need an excuse to enjoy those pleasures.
An even more significant incident occurs when a
brash young man, trading on a casual acquaintanceship with
Val Dartie, steals a snuff~box from Winifred's bouse and tben
bas the audacity to try to sell it back to Soames.
Soames be gan to stammer. The fellow was
exercising on him a sort of fascination. And suddenly the
whole thing tickled htm. It was rich!
"Well!." he said, taking out two five-pound notes.
''For brass--!"
A thin band removed a slight protuberance from a
side pocket.
"Thanks very much. Here it is! Good-morning!"
The fellow was moving away. He moved with the
same incomparable languor; he didn't look back. Soames
stood with the snuffbox in his band, staring after him.
"Well," he said, aloud, "that's a specimen they
can't produce now," and he rang Winifred's bell. (p. 758)

In the old days Soames would not have paid for his
own property, but would have bad the man arrested without
hesitation. His humour and tolerance are late and graceful
additions to his character.
 94

An incident in The White Monkey illustrates

Galsworthy's method of suggesting changes in Soames
without the character's being aware of them. For no reason
that be knows, Soames, who bas no small children or grand-
children at the time, buys two coloured balloons from a
shabby vendor. " 'You can keep the change,' said Soames
hurriedly, and passed on, astonished. Why on earth he bad
bought thethings, and for more than double their priee, he
could not conceive. Extremely peculiar~" (p. 94). He
cannot admit that the vendor's misery and poverty have
touched his feelings, and so he translates the impulse into
more manageable terms. "And suddenly he realised why. The
fellow bad been humble, mild--to be encouraged, in these days
of Communistic bravura. After all, the little chap was--
was on the side of Capital, bad invested in those balloons!
Trade!" (p. 94).
To the author and the reader it is apparent that
Soames's motives were less objective, more emotional, than
Soames realizes, and he is more likeable for that. In a
similar incident in the same novel, Soames finds employment
for an unfortunate man who bas suffered financial reverses,
but hesitates at explaining his reasons for helping; "to
 95

claim a good motive was repulsive to him" (p. 197).

A critic once remarked that Galsworthy does not
show his pity for Soames by making him weak, timid, or
unattractive, but '~y faithfully recording such characteris-
tics as should, if there were justice in life, permit of his
16
being loved, and yet fail to do so." This is true of
The Man of Property and of most of In Chancery and To Let,
but not of A Modern Comedy, wherein Soames becomes increasing-
ly likeable, if not loveable, to the reader.
Many readers have commented on Galsworthy's growing
affection for Soames.
Mr. Galsworthy's intellect and judgment have undergone a
natural change during the intervening fourteen years. The
wheel bas come full circle, which, in a work of art, is a
desirable thing to happen; and now Mr. Galsworthy's love of
Soames, always inevitable (for it is a law that the creator
must sooner or later love his creations), is to the fullest
extent apparent instead of being concealed.l7
.
The possessiveness which once made Soames a frozen
egotist is now the basis of his generosity and warmth toward
his daughter. The other characters seem to take second place
to him; Galsworthy is most at home with Soames. "They have

16
Ould, p. 202.
17
Edward Shanks, "Mr. John Galsworthy, " London
Mercury, VIII (1923), 401.
 96

grown old together and will doubtless continue to make the

18
best of each other as life partners."
Soames is almost too good, suggests Duffin; he
has run away with Galsworthy' s heart and grown "a grander
19
thing" than his creator intended him to be. This is a
frequently-expressed comment but is not always disparaging.
Hugh Walpole speaks of Galsworthy's creative zest in character-
ization which sometimes caused his characters to take hold of
him, carry him away, and exist independently of their author.
He adds, "It is notorious that Soames took charge of him in
this way--he bas himself acknowledged it--and in Soames he
does what every true novelist longs to do--adds a universal
figure to the small company of immortals" (p. 183).
I have not been able to find any acknowledgement
by Galsworthy that Soames "took charge of him," although the
novelist made a relevant comment in an early letter.

18
Robert Morss Lovett, "More Forsyte Scandal,"
New Republic, XLVIII (1926), 25.
19
P. 405. How Duffin knows Galsworthy's intentions
is a mystery. A developing character is, generally speaking,
better than a static portrait in fiction. It is common for
an author's plans to become more ambitious as his characters
engross him, but it is still the author, not the character,
who wields the pen.
 97

As to character there is always this to be remembered. You

start with a suggestion, you go on working from a figure
(a living figure) for perhaps two or three chapters, then
suddenly you work no longer from that figure, but from what
you have said about him--from your own creation in fact,
which at ~~ery sentence diverges more and more from the
original.
Galsworthy discussed the problem of a "run-away"
character in his lecture, '~e Creation of Character in
Literature."
An expression frequently used concerning books: 'The
character of so and so took charge,' is true enough without
being the whole truth. For a character can obviously never
outrun the limita of his 'creator's' nature, nor take him
beyond his secret sense of shape. Even if that sense of
shape be only a glorification of the shapeless, it is still
there, and beyond it character will not set foot.21
Descriptions of Galsworthy's method of composition
would appear to contradict this assertion. On more than one
occasion, he stated that when he sat dawn to write he bad no
idea what he was about to put on paper. An interviewer
reports.
It is as if he had a motion-picture projection machine within
his brain. The film unreels, and the pictures are as
unexpected to him as to the theater-goer. And he bas no
more control over the progress or cessation of his mental
picture than the person who has purchased a seat in a

20
Marrot, p. 184.
21
Candelabra (New York, 1933), pp. 304-306.
 98

22
theater bas over the operator high over his head.
Statements like this have led detractors to
assume that the novelist was at the mercy of his characters,
forced to adopt whatever plan his subconscious mind dictated,
and as helpless to direct the course of his plots as a mind-
reader at a séance taking dictation from spirits of another
world. This is absurd, of course; Gal~orthy wrote rapidly
and fluently but, particularly in later years, exercised a
23
great deal of care in drastic revision and wholesale deletion.
If his subconscious mind, in whose productions he was
entitled to take some proprietary interest, dictated his
first drafts, then his conscious mind collaborated as editor.
It is as presumptuous to try to evaluate the role of each as
it is unprofitable; in any case, each reader's opinion would
differ.
Rudolf Sauter told an interviewer that toward the
end of Galsworthy • s career, "the author would sometimes make
a remark to him on the state of the world, and the same
comment would appear in Soames•s mouth in copy written during

22
Cosulich, p. 298.
23
Davies, p. 30.
 99

24
the next few days." Unfortunately, Sauter left no
complete record of his conversations with Galsworthy,
although Marrot, who bad access to Sauter's diary, reprints
some of their talks about art. Many of Soames's views on
politics, economies, and society, however, have parallels in
Galsworthy'& letters and essays. The novelist specified
one notable exception: 'Most of the reflections about the
French in the Forsyte books are the reflections of Soames,
who would naturally have the old-fashioned English views;
25
they are not tho se of the au thor."
In 1914 Galsworthy commented on David H. Lawrence's
Sons and Lovera, which he bad just finished reading.
I've nothing but praise for all the part that deals with the
Mother, the Father and the sons; but I've a lot besides
praise for the love part. • • • That kind of revelling in
the shades of sex emotions seems to me anaemic. Contrasted
with Maupassant' s--a frank sensualist's--dealing with such
emotions, it bas a queer indecency; it doesn't see the
essentials, it revels in the unessentials. It's not good
enough to spend t~e and ink in describing the penult~ate
sensations and physical movements of people getting into a

24
Pallette, p. 186.
25
Marrot, p. 610. Galsworthy's letter to Chevrillon
which I quoted earlier, concerning the differences between
French and English women, expresses views that sound very
"old-fashioned" and "English". Perhaps Galsworthy was less
sophisticated than he liked to believe.
 100

state of rut; we all knaw them too well. There's genius

in the book, but not in that part of the book. • • •
LGreat writerA/ on12 use the body, and that sparingly,
to reveal the soul. 6
Lawrence later wrote the bitterest attack on
27
Galsworthy that bas ever appeared in print. One cannot
imagine two more radically different artistic temperaments;
it was inevitable that they should clash on the subject so
important in both their novels--the portrayal of sexuality
in literature.
In The Silver Spoon, Soames takes up a modern novel
and begins to read it, but after the first few pages, which
bore him, he turns to the end and begins to read backward.
"In this way he could skip better, and each erotic passage,
to which he very soon came, led him insensibly on to the one

before it." (p. 503) The book seems rambling and disconnected
to him; he cannot unde+stand why it was written at all, except
to make money, of course.
But was there another purpose? Was the author one of these
'artist' fellows who thought that to give you 'life'--wasn't
that the phrase? they must put down every visit to a bedroom,
and some besides? 'Art for Art's sake,' 'realism'--what did

26
Marrot, p. 724.
27
"John Galsworthy", Phoenix.
 101

they call it? In Soames' comparatively bleak experience

'life' did not consist wholly of visiting bedrooms, so
that he was unable to admit that this book was life, the
whole of life, and nothing but life. (p. 503)
Galsworthy recognized Lawrence's genius but could
not endure his approach to sex; Soames's opinion of the
"advanced" novel reflects Galsworthy' s reaction to the
Lawrentian school of fiction.
The first World War had come and gone, Galsworthy
had become an eminent man of letters, and some of his
attitudes had changed with time. To many readers of his
later novels it seemed that, despite his efforts to maintain
an objective viewpoint, he had become a moralist and
disciplinarian. No longer the pioneer and humanist of old,
he was himself a little set, almost an institution, a
Forsyte. As he changed, says Rolfe Arnold Scott-James, he
changed Soames until the character '~ecame transformed,
ennobled almost, into a reflective elder critic of our time,
28
a guardian of the Samurai honour and dignity of the past."
Dudley Barker carries this opinion so far that he makes a
complete identification between Soames and Galsworthy.
In his view, Soames bec ame "ever more certainly the mou th-

28
Fifty Years of English Literature: 1900-1950
(London, 1951), p. 46.
 102

11
piece of his author," and was not only forgiven by his
author; he was gradually merged with him."
By the time of the general strike of 1926, Soames Forsyte
was no longer pitied or condemned or despised by John
Galsworthy. By then Soames Forsyte was John Galsworthy
and there could be little ahead for the novelist but
honorary doctorates, honours, and the highest public esteem
for his services to Literature. (p. 13)
Certainly Galsworthy drew upon some of his own
ideas and experiences in creating Soames. The Forsytes
are, after all, the Galsworthy&, from Old Jolyon, patterned
after old John Galsworthy, down to generations yet unborn.
Two a1most identical passages which the novelist wrote, one
about the Galsworthys·and the other about the Forsytes,
prove the truth of this statement. At the end of To Let,
Soames meditates on the history of the Forsyte family.
Good solid middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity
to manage and possess • "Superior Dosset, 11 indeed, had
built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted in a doubtful,
period, but so far as he remembered not another of them all
bad soiled his bands by creating anything. • • • Collectors,
solicitors, barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants,
directors, land agents, even soldiers--there they had
been! • • • And yet he sometimes felt as if the family
bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They
seemed unable to make money••this fourth generation; they
were going into art; literature, farming, or the army; or
just living on what was left them--they had no push and no
tenacity. They would die out if they didn't take care.
(The Forsyte Saga, pp. 918~919)
Galsworthy either had a phenomenal memory or kept copies of
all his letters, for the following passage is taken from a
letter written in 1907.
 103

The Galsworthys rising into the middle class for two

generations with all its tenacity, and ability (of a sort),
now seem in the third generation all abroad, as if
melting away again into a more creative Sphere or nothing
at all, muddling out as architects, writers, painters,
enaineers, do nothing at all, a non-practicing barrister,
a musicianly solicitor, one doctor, and a curious dandified
land agent, alone represent the truly middle-class element
and very poorly at that. What will become of t2~ in the
fourth generation? Very few have any children.
The "Galsworthy" passage became the ''Forsyte"
passage almost without revision, indicating that the author
himself identified the two families. Galsworthy devoted a
whole chapter of Swan Song to Soames's investigation of his
ancestry {pp. 1027-1038); Soames finds a field called "Great
Forsyte", and visits the family home and graveyard in Dorset.
He is moved by feelings of kinship with the place with its
air, its atmosphere, its loneliness. ''For a moment he
seemed to understand even himself." Almost he wishes he
could retire to that isolated, even desolate spot, and live
the primitive and uncomplicated life of his ancestors.
Galsworthy wrote the whole chapter out of his own
experience. He himself made a similar trip to Devonshire,
found a field called "Great Galsworthy," and meditated on
his own ancient ancestors and their home. He gave time and

29
Garnett, p. 134.
 104

money for thirty years to investigate his pedigree, for

he had, Marrot reports, "an unusually penetrating sense of
contact with his ancestors" (p. 22).
As for Soames himself, Galsworthy was enough like
him to understand hiœ as he could never understand a totally
different type like Bosinney. The author freely admitted
that his lack of insight into Bosinney's personality was
responsible for his failure to make that character come
alive; he was forced to portray Bosinney indirectly, through
Forsyte eyes, in order to retain the character for purpose
of plot. Galsworthy was so comfortably "inside" Soames,
however, that he was able, not only to depict Soames through
internal monologue, but to use him as a camera on the world
outside him.
Insight into a fictional character and identifica-
tion of oneself with that character, however, are two
different things. Galsworthy preserved a certain measure of
detachment toward Soames even while expressing some of his
own opinions through the character. Soames remains limited
in understanding, pitiable, and sometimes funny to the end
of his life. When the author invites the reader to share
his amusement at Soames's obtuaeness, Galsworthy is not
laughing at himself; nor, when he pities Soames, is he
 105

pitying him for Galsworthian traits but for those charac-

teristics which made Soames different from himself.
Doubtless, Galsworthy was in full accord with Madame De
Stael's sentiment, "To understand makes one very indulgent."
Understanding, however, does not make one blind. Those
critics who see Soames entirely as a self•portrait of
Galsworthy ignore the numerous instances where the author
steps back and regards the character with dispassionate
detaclunent.
Soames's introduction to golf and cigars is one
such example. Another illustration is the memory which
cames to him in his old age of an incident from his school-
boy days.
Nearly sixty years ago! He remembered his first day--a
brand-new little boy in a brand-new little top-hat, with a
playbox stored by his mother with things to eat, and blessed
with the words: ''There, Summy dear, that'll make you popular."
He bad reckoned on having command of that corruption for
some weeks; but no sooner bad he produced a bit of it, than
they bad taken the box, and suggested to him that it would
be a good thing to eat the lot. In twenty-two minutes
twenty-two boys had materially increased their weight, and
he himself. in handing out the contents, bad been obliged
to eat less than a twenty-third. • • • His popularity had
lasted twenty-two minutes, and, so far as he knew, bad
never come back. He bad been against Communism ever
since. (pp. 594~595)

The incident is introduced not only for the sake

of humour, but with the express purpose of illuminating the
character. It throws light on Soames's present and past,
 106

helping to explain and to evoke sympathy for his tragic

incapacity to excite love.
Elsewhere, Soames hears some rooks in a state of
excitement.
He knew little about the habits of birds, not detached
enough from self for the study of creatures quite uncon-
nected with him; but he supposed they would be holding a
palaver about food--worm-currency would be depressed, or
there bad been some inflation or other--fussy as the French
over their wretched franc. (p. 810}
Soames's incapacity to understand "creatures
quite unconnected with him," his association of everything
with the proprietary instinct, and even his basic lack of
sympathy vith his French wife, all emerge from this apparent
digression. Nothing could be less Galsworthian than Soames's
thoughts about the rooks. The author, who habitually
understates, does not comment, but leaves the reader to deduce
30
what he will from the passage.
Wbat misleads the critics is the change of tone
which characterizes A Modern Comedy. Galsworthy wrote The
Forsyte Saga, and especially The Man of Property, in a mood

30
I am indebted to Hermon Ould for pointing out
these two passages--the incidents of the candy-box and the
birds--as examples of Galsworthy's technique of introducing
humorous digressions for the purpose of "forwarding the
story or illuminating a character or a relationship." pp.
141-142.
 107

of indignant and savage satire, barbed irony, and

passionate intensity; his tone in A Modern Comedy is one of
tolerant humour, mellow tranquillity, and a subdued
melancholy. The harshly-drawn Soames of the first novel
became a comically pathetic figure in the second; one
laughs at his ridiculous position when, after a visit to
Irene in Paris, he hears himself described by the detective
as "the other man" in the pending divorce case. With
extraordinary perception, Galsworthy reveals Soames's dumb
animal bewilderment after the divorce, "spiritually
imperceptive and puzzled by his inability to understand,
• • • still utterly confounded by ber complete revulsion
31
from him." By the time Galsworthy wrote A Modern Comedy,
his bitterness bad evaporated and he portrayed Soames, the
same Soames grown old, with greater insight but still with
an undertone of subdued, delicate irony. Only at the end
did he return to the deep emotional tone of the early books,
with the death of Soames. Even then, Galsworthy underlined
the flaw in character which had made Soames's life one of
almost unrelieved tragedy. "Something in him bad repel led
feeling, dried up its manifestation. There bad been no

31
Ervine, Some Impressions of My Elders, pp.
157-158.
 108

magnet in his 'make-up' " (p. 1077). Sir Lawrence Mont,

Michael's father, sums up Soames's character succinctly,
with all its virtues and faults.
"1 respected old Forsyte," he said to his son, while they
returned on foot from the graveyard, where, in the corner
selected by himself, Soames now lay, under a crab-apple
tree: '~e dated, and he couldn't express hûnself; but
there was no humbug about him--an honest man" (p. 1081).
 109

A Selected Bibliography

Barker, Dudley, The Man of Principle: A View of John

Galsworthy. London, 1963.
Bateman, May, "John Galsworthy," Catholic World, CXIV
(1921-1922), 732-747.
Beach, Joseph Warren, The Twentieth Century Novel. New
York, 1932.
Bradley, Robert NÔel, Duality: A Study in the Psycho-
Analysis of Race. London, 1923.
Brash, w. Bardsley, "John Galsworthy," London Quarterly
Review, CLX (1935), 460-471.
Bullett, Gerald, "John Galsworthy: A Diagnosis," New
Statesman., XIX (1922), 265-266.
Chevrillon, André, Three Studies in English Literature,
trans. Florence Stmmonds. London, 1923.
Church, Richard, "Afterthoughts on Galsworthy," London
Mercury, XXXII (1935), pp. 497-498.
Collins, Arthur Simons, "John Galsworthy," English
Literature of the TWentieth Century. London
1951. pp. 176-184.
Conrad, Joseph, John Galsworthy: An Appreciation.
Canterbury, 1922.
Cosulich, Bernice, "Life's Ironies Inspire John Galsworthy,"
Literary Digest International Book Review,
IV (1926), 297-298.
Croman, Natalie, John Galsworthy: A Study in Continuity
and Contrast. Cambridge, Mass., 1933.
Curle, Richard, "John Galsworthy," The Bookman (London),
XLV (November, 1913), 91-97.
 110

Daiches, David, "John Galsworthy," The Novel and the

Modern World. Chicago, 1939. Pp. 33-47.
The Present Age in British Literature.
Bloomington, Indiana, 1958.
Davies, Sadie H., "Galsworthy the Craftsman: Studies in
the Original Manuscripts of the Forsyte
Chronicles, 11 The Bookman (London), LXXXV (October,
1933), 18-20; LXXXVI (April, 1934), 12·16a;
LXXXVII (October~ 1934), 27-31.
Drew, Elizabeth A., The Modern Novel. New York, 1926.
Duffin, Henry Charles,"The Rehabilitation of Soames
Forsyte," Cornhill Magazine, N. s. LXVIII
(1930), 397-406.
Eaker, J. Gordon, "Galsworthy and the Modem Mind, "
Philological Çuarterly, XXIX (1950), 31·48.
Eaton, Harold T., Reading Galsworthy's "The Forsyte Sya. 11
New York, 1936.
Edgar, Pelham, The Art of the Novel. New York, 1933.
Elwin, Malcolm, "Galsworthy and the Forsytes," Old Gods
Falling. London, 1939. Pp. 363-390.
Ervine, St. John, 11John Galsworthy," Some Impressions of
My Elders. New York, 1922. Pp. 113-160.
11
John Galsworthy, " Great Democrats. London,
1934. Pp. 277-298.
"Portrait of John Galsworthy," The Listener,
LIV (1955), 418-419.
Follett, Helen T. and Wilson, Some Modern Novelists. New
York, 1918.
Ford, Ford Madox, "Galsworthy, " The American Mercury,
XXXVII (1936), 448-459.
Frierson, William c., The English Novel in Transition.
Norman, Oklahoma, 1942.
 111

Galsworthy, Ada, Over the Hills and Far Away. London,

1937.
Galsworthy, John, The Forsyte Saga. New York, 1936.
(originally published London, 1922.)
A Modern Comedy. London, 1929.
On Forsyte 'Chagge. London , 1930.
"The Creation of Charaeter in Literature"
(Romanes Lecture: 1931), Candelabra. New
York, 1933. Pp. 291-311.
Gamett, David, 11Some Writers I have Known: Galsworthy,
Forster, Moore, and Wells," Texas Quarterly,
IV, iii (1961), 190-202.
Garnett, Edward, Letters from John Galsworthy: 1900-
1932. London, 1934.
Gould, Gerald, "John Galsworthy as a Novelist," The
Bookman (London), LXV (1923), 133•135.
Gretton, Mary s., "John Galsworthy," Contemporary Review,
CXLIII (1933), 319-325.
Grove, Frederick Philip, "Morality in the Forsyte Saga,"
University of Toronto Çuarterly, XV (1945-1946),
54-64.
Hamilton, Robert, "John Galsworthy: A Humanitarian
Prophet," Quarterly Review, CCICI (1953), 72-80.
HutchinsoQ, Percy, "John Galsworthy in His Most Acidly
Ironical Vein," The New York Times Book Review,
Nov. 13, 1932, p. 5.
Kain, Richard M., rrGalsworthy, the Last Victorian Liberal,"
Madison Çuarterly, IV (March, 1944), 84·94.
Lawrence, David H., "John Galsworthy, " Phoenix. London,
1936. Pp. 539-550.
 112

Lovett, Robert Morss, '~ore Forsyte Scandal," New Republic,

XLVIII (1926), 25.
MacDermot, Terence William Leighton, "John Galsworthy,"
Dalhousie Review, IX (1929-1930), 354-368.
1

Mansfield, Katherine, Novels and Novelists. London, 1930.

Marrot, H. Vincent, The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy.
London, 1935.
Martin, Dorothy, ·~r. Galsworthy as Artist and Reformer,"
Yale Review, XIV (1924), 126-139.
Masur, Gerhard, Prophets of Yesterday: Studies in European
Culture 1890-1914. New York, 1961.
McCullough, Bruce, "John Galsworthy," Representative
English Novelists: Defoe to Conrad. New York,
1946. Pp. 320·335.
Menander fjseudonY!ii, "Irene Forsyte," Times Literary
Supplement, November 4, 1944, p. 531.
Mottram, Ralph H., John Galsworthy L'~riters and Their
Work": no. 38;, Bibliographical Series of
Supplements to "British Book News''!. London,
1953.
Ould, Hermon, John Galsworthy. London, 1934.
Pallette, Drew B., '~oung Galsworthy: The Forging of a
Satirist," Modem Philology, LVI (1958·1959),
178-186.
Pritchett, Victor Sawdon, "Sensitive Toff," New Statesman,
LXV (1963), 273-274.
Ross, Woodbum o., "John Galsworthy: Aspects of an
Attitude," Studies in Honor of John Wilcox, ed.
A. Dayle Wallace and Woodburn o. Ross. Detroit,
1958. Pp. 195-208.
 113

Schalit, Leon, John Galsworthy: A Survey. New York and

London, 1929.
Scott-James, Rolfe Arnold, Fifty Years of English Litera-
ture: 1900-1950. London, 1951.
Shanks, Edward, ''Mr. John Galsworthy," London Mercury,
VIII (1923), 393-404.
Sparrow, John, "John Galsworthy," London Mercury, XXVIII
(1933), 50-55.
Spender, Stephen, ''How Much Should a Biographer Tell?"
Saturday Review, XLVII, iv (Jan. 25, 1964),
16-19.
Stevens, Earl Eugene, "A Study of the Stru.s_ture of John
Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga" Lunpublished
dissertation, University of North Carolina/.
Chapel Hill, 1963.
Swinnerton, Frank, "John Galsworthy," The Bookman (London),
LXXV (December, 1928), 147-151.
Tilby, A. Wyatt, "The Epie of Property," Edinburgh Review,
CCXLI (1925), 271-285.
Wagenknecht, Edward, "The Selfish Heroine: Thackeray and
Galsworthy," Collage English, IV (1942-43),
293-298.
Walpole, Hugh, "John Galsworthy," The Post Victorians.
London, 1933. Pp. 173-186.
Williamson, Hugh Ross, "Notes at Random," The Bookman
(London), LXXXIII (1933), 473-484.
Wilson, Angus, "Galsworthy's 'Forsyte Saga'," New Statesman
and Nation, LI (1956), 187.

Young, Iona_D., "The Social Conscience of John Galsworth.Y."

Lunpublished dissertation, University of Texa~/.
Austen, 1955.