Conclusion to Part I

A kind of initial contradiction in Galsworthy's temperament has to be noted. This anxious, emotional man both loved and feared emotion. An indissoluble blend of happiness and unhappiness, pleasure and pain, both disheartening and invigorating, was to be found in Galsworthy, especially at the sight of the beauty he was forever in search of. This strange commotion can be sensed in every action or literary production of any scale or duration. In conditions of stress, he could become a prey to acute anxiety, the permanent, extreme form of the dull uneasiness he was subject to by nature.

Even mildly neurotic individuals like Galsworthy can endure considerable distress; but certain stabilising factors, forms of behaviour inherited from his family - neither of his parents ever showed any lack of balance - and habits acquired during youth and adolescence made these nervous tribulations bearable. He kept them quiet, and this was possible in that they never seriously affected his capacity to operate normally.

Galsworthy found salvation in action. His great good fortune was to find the type of action that best suited him, literary creation. His seriousness and conscientiousness turned this into an obligation to write. This intellectual labour immediately con­ferred all the benefits of work on him, particularly the greater poise it brought. No one among the millions that knew him as a best-selling author, a leading national figure for at least ten years, suspected the secret drama that gnawed at him. After his death, they learnt of his liaison with his cousin's wife, and their subsequent marriage. Yet even this knowledge of the intimate facts still did not betray his secret, for they were only its outward manifestations. Even those closest to him, who held him in the greatest affection, did not really understand what lay inside him. Perhaps with the lapse of time, it is possible to see him more clearly today.

His temperament made it impossible for him to withdraw into

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A. Fréchet, John Galsworthy© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1982

50 Galsworthy the Man

the ivory tower that his financial resources could have made avail­able. Once or twice, whenever circumstances demanded, he pointed out, perfectly coolly and frankly, that his income did not depend on his literary work. Few writers can say as much; and it is a good thing for literature that some should enjoy the indepen­dence of mind such means procure. There is no way of denying that Galsworthy wrote from a sense of vocation, which was com­pletely disinterested. It does much to enhance his dignity.

Character is destiny, he often said. As an extrovert, he could not avoid plunging into discoveries which, because of his emotional temperament, were bound to affect him deeply. His shyness could not keep him at a distance for long: it was soon replaced by pity, scruples or remorse. He was to be found in places where he might well have been the last person to venture, which caused him un­speakable repugnance, and which most people keep well away from, unless they are forced to go there: hospitals, internment camps, gaols (where he investigated the terrible effects of solitary confinement in private discussions with the inmates), East End slums and slaughterhouses, revolting and sickening establishments at that time. His highly developed sense of smell, for example, was constantly outraged in such places. Yet he never uttered a word of complaint about these experiences. They were part of his secret.

The main motive behind such activities was his compassion, which, as the word indicates, brings observer and victim close together. It is sometimes mistaken for sentimentality - 'a mere parrot cry', Galsworthy said of such an accusation, usually quite unjust. 1 The sentimentalist stands on the sidelines of the game of feelings. Galsworthy was completely committed to what he was doing.

His compassion sometimes knew no bounds, and he realised himself that it occasionally turned him into a sort of latter-day Don Quixote. Both the name and the idea are to be found in The Burning Spear. Obviously, however, he was unable to put names to the windmills he was tilting at so wildly.

His unbounded pity for animals should be remembered. (He once spent a night on a couch in his drawing-room to stop a stray dog feeling lonely.)

Then there was his extreme solicitude towards women. He always took their side in divorce cases. Quiller-Couch reminded him harshly that some women take unfair advantage of men. But for Galsworthy, cruelty was a monopoly of the male sex. He could

Conclusion to Part I 51

not conceive of it in a woman; though, like every Englishman, he recognised his right to exaggerate his case.

These are small frailties, compared with the way his original sense of compassion contributed to the realisation of his personality. How did the process of self-fulfilment begin? The first victim to be rescued was his future wife, Ada. She never forfeited the pre-eminent position this entitled her to, and the privileges that accompanied it. Apart from the other bonds between them, why did Galsworthy feel this debt of gratitude? By arousing his compassion and putting him in the role of saviour, she revealed to him his real and hitherto unsuspected nature. Moments like that are never to be forgotten, and they mould a whole existence. Another even more extraordinary revelation came when Ada en­couraged him to write. After releasing his energy potential, she guided it towards the right outlet. These were two victories she had every reason to be proud of.

Galsworthy's temperament, character and personality have been widely discussed here, while the same aspects of Ada have been left out. Sadly, all that can be said is that nothing is known of her. Many of those that knew her say that Ada was lovely. She was also an excellent pianist. Galsworthy is unlikely to have been insensitive to such charms. In his book The Man of Principle: a View of john Galsworthy, published in 1963, Dudley Barker uses a number of known facts to attack Ada. He argues that she was selfish, capricious, vain and haughty, at times bad-tempered. Then in 1976, the novelist and playwright Catherine Dupre published john Galsworthy: a Biography. It does not provide any new information. The author claims that near the end of his life Rudolf Sauter supplied her with verbal information, which differs in some ways from what he had told me a few years earlier. She quotes no sources for Chapter 7: 'Ada'. According to this chapter, Ada was an illegitimate child, whose father was unknown, and for this reason her childhood was very unhappy. This is supposed to have affected her whole married life. The hypothesis turns suddenly into a thesis, thereby reinforcing the image of Ada already advanced by Barker.

Catherine Dupre even claims that if Galsworthy had been released from her malevolent influence when he met Margaret Morris in 1910, his career would not have ended on 'a failure', and that his work would have been infinitely richer. These are rash claims, and in any case would require very serious study of the novels, which this book fails to do.

52 Galsworthy the Man

There are other points to be put in Ada's defence. She was a great help to her husband in his work, reading and commenting on all his manuscripts, then typing them out - no small task, some idea of which may be given by the thirty thick volumes of the Manaton Edition, and the huge correspondence, not all of which has yet been traced. This role made Ada an early exponent of a job that women are traditionally good at, and is certainly incompatible with laziness, inconsistency or selfishness. It is also a humble job. Galsworthy does report in his diary that he sometimes had to look after her when she had colds, or 'flu, or bronchitis. These are minor indispositions, but if they are chronic they can be an ordeal for sufferers, and they require care and attention.

The case of Galsworthy shows how an uneasy, emotional person can engage enthusiastically in action, if he is an extrovert. It was Galsworthy's nature to fling himself into action, whenever he shared the suffering of those he wanted to help. Given the count­less sufferings of humanity, his task was bound to be endless. The intensity of his sympathy and his complete sincerity made him a practical man. After succeeding in having legislation on solitary confinement amended, he returned from his interview with the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, and began adding up and multiplying, to work out the total number of hours of solitary con­finement that would disappear as a result of the successful cam­paign. In other words, his passion never turned to hatred. He could get angry, furious, with those responsible, but he had no time to hate them. In someone so extrovert, hatred was unlikely anyway. Consideration of his philosophy2 will complete the view of the spiritual life of this serious and dignified man.