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American nights entertainment

Grant M. Overton

Flower_?-- “... moments flee before you dare steal a look at the middle-aged gentleman sitting quietly in his chair, striving with gentle dignity to place you at the ease he feels not himself. “Tall, grey-haired he looks astonishingly like his photographs. Reticent to a degree about his own work, he talks freely and with the utmost generosity about that of others. Opinion, formed slowly, is determined. The face, with its faint smile, looks neither disheartened nor sad, yet sometime it has met suffering. Like most Englishmen the eagerness of youth has not been crushed.... There is nothing chill about the novelist. He is the embodiment of easy, gracious courtesy. Conversation is far from intimidating, a long flow of material topics with now and then an upward leap of thought. And it is this swift flight that betrays his mental withdrawal. As clearly as if physically present may be seen the robed figure of his thoughts, standing behind him in his own drawingroom. You wonder what may be their burden. About him is the veil of remoteness.” His humility, adorned by his presence and made disarming by what is certainly the most beautiful head and face among the living sons of men, does not always save him from the charge of coldness when manifested impersonally and at a distance. Where nearly all men and women give essential particulars of their lives, not to mention the human touch of their preferred recreations, Mr. Galsworthy, in the English _Who’s Who_, besides the long list of his publications, states only the year of his birth, his residence, and his membership in the Athenæum Club. This would hardly support Mr. Ervine’s declaration that the Galsworthy sensitiveness “is almost totally impersonal”; and instead of being “startled to discover how destitute of egotism Mr. Galsworthy seems to be” the close student of mankind might be led to speculate upon the variety of egotism he had just encountered. “It may even be argued,” pursues Mr. Ervine, cautiously, “that his lack of interest in himself is a sign of inadequate artistry, that it is impossible for a man of supreme quality to be so utterly unconcerned about himself as Mr. Galsworthy is.” With due respect to Mr. Ervine, this is nonsense. Whatever Mr. Galsworthy may lack, it is not interest in himself. He has achieved countless satisfactory channels for the extrusion of that interest through other and imaginary men, women and beasts--that is all. v It is as if he had long ago said to himself, as perhaps he did: “I am myself, but myself isn’t a subject I can decently be concerned about or expose an interest in. Let me forget myself in someone--in everyone--else!” And since then, if he has ever repented, the spectacle of George Bernard Shaw, and particularly the horridly fascinating spectacle of Herbert George Wells, have been before him, to serve as awful warnings and lasting deterrents. Mr. Wells, in ever-new contortions, like a circus acrobat whose nakedness was gaudily accentuated by spangles, began seeing it through with Ann Veronica and is still exposing the secret places of his heart, while dizzy recollections of marriage, God and tono-bungay yet linger. Mr. Shaw has gone back to ... evolution. “I was,” Mr. Galsworthy has said in an uninhibited moment, “for many years devoted to the sports of shooting and racing. I gave up shooting because it got on my nerves. I still ride; and I would go to a race-meeting any day if it were not for the din, for I am still under the impression that there is nothing alive quite so beautiful as a thoroughbred horse.” His devotion to dogs and other dumb animals is frequently spoken of as it extrudes in _Memories_, Noel’s protection of the rabbit in _Saint’s Progress_ and “For Love of Beasts” in _A Sheaf_. These shifting loyalties were--what were they if not admirable realisations of the Self? But let those who still believe Mr. Galsworthy selfless but read the prefaces to the new and very handsome Manaton Edition of his works. For these volumes he has provided sixteen entirely new prefaces. I quote from the announcement of the edition: “These”--prefaces--“are peculiarly interesting, for in them he frankly criticises his work; in some cases, too, they reflect the response of readers as he has sensed it. In others he tells of the thought in his mind while writing, and of the changes through which the thought has gone in the process. Again, he speculates on the art of writing in general, on the forms of fiction, on emotional expression and effect in the drama. In short, as he phrases it, ‘in writing a preface, one goes into the confessional.’ “Of _The Country House_ he says: ‘When once Pendyce had taken the bit between his teeth, the book ran away with me, and was more swiftly finished than any of my novels, being written in seven months.’ “‘The germ of _The Patrician_,’ he begins the preface to that volume, ‘is traceable to a certain dinner party at the House of Commons in 1908 and the face of a young politician on the other side of the table.’ “In the preface to _Fraternity_ he says: ‘A novelist, however observant of type and sensitive to the shades of character, _does little but describe and dissect himself_.... In dissecting Hilary, for instance, in this novel, _his creator feels the knife going sharply into his own flesh, just as he could feel it when dissecting Soames Forsyte or Horace Pendyce_.’” The italics are my own and I think they are permissible. Probably not enough attention has hitherto been paid to Mr. Galsworthy as a writer of short tales, but that may be because no collection of his stories has shown his talent so roundly as does the new book _Captures_. This opens with the well-known story “A Feud” and offers also such variety and such virtuosity in the short story form as “The Man Who Kept His Form,” “A Hedonist,” “Timber,” “Santa Lucia,” “Blackmail,” “Stroke of Lightning,” “The Broken Boot,” “Virtue,” “Conscience,” “Salta Pro Nobis,” “Heat,” “Philanthropy,” “A Long Ago Affair,” “Acmé,” “Late--299.” In this book, as in similar collections, there must be put to Mr. Galsworthy’s credit his frequent practice of the Continental notion of the short story--the sketch, the impression, the representation of a mood which we find in French and Russian literature and which the American short story too often sacrifices for purely mechanical effects. Books by John Galsworthy 1900 _Villa Rubein._ Revised Edition, 1909 1904 _The Island Pharisees._ Revised Edition, 1908 1906 _The Man of Property_ 1907 _The Country House_ 1908 _A Commentary_ 1909 _Fraternity_ 1909 _Strife._ Drama in Three Acts 1909 _The Silver Box._ Comedy in Three Acts 1909 _Joy._ Play on the Letter “I” in Three Acts 1909 _Plays._ First Series. Containing _The Silver Box_, _Joy_, and _Strife_. 1910 _Justice._ Tragedy in Four Acts 1910 _A Motley_ 1911 _The Little Dream._ Allegory in six Scenes 1911 _The Patrician_ 1912 _The Inn of Tranquillity._ Studies and Essays 1912 _Moods, Songs, and Doggerels_ 1912 _Memories._ Illustrated by Maud Earl 1912 _The Eldest Son._ Domestic Drama in Three Acts 1912 _The Pigeon._ Fantasy in Three Acts 1913 _Plays._ Second Series. Containing _The Eldest Son_, _The Little Dream_, _Justice_ 1913 _The Dark Flower_ 1913 _The Fugitive._ Play in Four Acts 1914 _The Mob._ Play in Four Acts 1914 _Plays._ Third Series. Containing _The Fugitive_, _The Pigeon_, _The Mob_ 1915 _The Little Man and Other Satires_ 1915 _A Bit o’ Love._ Play in Three Acts 1915 _The Freelands_ 1916 _A Sheaf_ 1917 _Beyond_ 1918 _Five Tales_ 1919 _Another Sheaf_ 1919 _Saint’s Progress_ 1919 _Addresses in America 1919_ 1920 _Tatterdemalion_ 1920 _In Chancery_ 1920 _Awakening_ 1920 _The Skin Game._ A Tragi-comedy 1920 _The Foundations._ An Extravagant Play 1920 _Plays._ Fourth Series. Containing _A Bit o’ Love_, _The Foundations_, _The Skin Game_ 1921 _To Let_ 1921 _Six Short Plays._ Containing _The First and the Last_, _The Little Man_, _Hall-marked_, _Defeat_, _The Sun,_ and _Punch and Go_ 1922 _The Forsyte Saga_ 1922 _A Family Man_ 1922 _Loyalties_ 1923 _Windows._ Comedy in Three Acts 1923 _Plays._ Fifth Series. Containing _Loyalties_, _Windows_, _A Family Man_ 1923 _The Burning Spear_ [first published anonymously in England in 1918] 1923 _Captures_ Sources on John Galsworthy _John Galsworthy: A Sketch of His Life and Works._ Booklet published by Mr. Galsworthy’s publishers, CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 1922. _John Galsworthy._ Booklet published by Mr. Galsworthy’s English publisher, WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 1922. Valuable for its bibliography of the English editions. _J. G._ Pamphlet announcing the Manaton Edition of John Galsworthy’s works. Procurable from CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. This edition contains some hitherto unpublished material and a rearrangement of the plays. _The Prefaces to the Manaton Edition._ Practically the only discussion of his own work by the author. _Some Modern Novelists._ Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett. HENRY HOLT & CO. Chapter X. contains a long and careful critical consideration of Galsworthy’s work up to and including _The Freelands_. _Some Impressions of My Elders._ St. John G. Ervine. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. For a forceful statement from one of those who strongly criticise Mr. Galsworthy’s work, especially for its “indiscriminating pity.” Analyses at length the play, _The Fugitive_. _John Galsworthy._ Carlton Miles, THE THEATRE MAGAZINE, December, 1922. An interview. _A Middle-Class Family._ Joseph Conrad. THE OUTLOOK (London), March 31, 1906. A review of _The Man of Property_. The interested reader should further consult the READER’S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE for the years since 1906. A complete Galsworthy bibliography, to be published in England, is now in preparation by Harold A. Marrot. 2. _The Magic Carpet_ i The Magic Carpet was one which took you far away, whisked you up and through the air (though not sensibly too fast) and brought you into a foreign but delightful country. There are books like that, taking you out of yourself, so that the preoccupation of a moment before is forgotten, tomorrow’s worries are lost, and you exist in a blissful unconsciousness that there can be anything beyond the fine pleasure of this present hour. The “travel book” attempts directly the transfer to some place else; the book of essays, more indirect in its method, is often more successful. Aldous Huxley has been known to us hitherto as a poet and a writer of fiction. Both his poetry and his fiction have been marked with a graceful artifice and that simplicity which comes only from a completed sophistication. His new book, a collection of essays, is distinguished by those qualities. There is something about Huxley’s writing--I don’t know what it is and those who know what it is, can’t tell--which brings a gleam to the eyes of all who love literature for its own sake. In _On the Margin_ Huxley the satirist walks comfortably with Huxley the student. For Aldous Huxley is a very studious young man. Tall, with hair that bushes out from under his broad-brimmed soft hat, he walks with that slight stoop inevitably acquired by those whose heads do not pass readily under all doorways. With his clothes flapping gently around him, his glance peering through thick-lensed spectacles, he advances into a room with the surprising effect of an amiable