The Man of Property by John Galsworthy

Elegant writing about unpleasant people
English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature, largely due to his extensive series of novels and stories known as The Forsyte Chronicles. Within these Chronicles are three trilogies and a number of “interludes.” The Man of Property, published in 1906, is Galsworthy’s first published Forsyte novel and the beginning of the first trilogy, entitled The Forsyte Saga. Later, however, Galsworthy did publish some prequels to this book. One really needs a diagram (see Wikipedia) to sort out the confusing sequence of the series. I am certain, however, that The Man of Property was the first Forsyte novel, so that’s where I started.

The Forsytes are an upper-middle-class English family centered in London. Their ancestors were farmers rather than noblemen, but through generations of workaholic self-made men they have elevated themselves to financial aristocracy. According to one character, who presumably speaks for Galsworthy, what distinguishes the Forsytes is their extreme “sense of property.” Every decision they make is based on a practical assessment of the wealth, luxury, and status it will generate. The only passion indulged is the passion for making money. As third-person narrator, Galsworthy often uses the word Forsyte to refer not only to a member of the family in question but also to an entire class of people. This gets annoying fast, and even more so when the characters themselves use the word Forsyte in the same pretentiously broad and cavalier manner.

The story takes place in the 1880s. The novel opens upon a large Forsyte family gathering, one of several that occur throughout the book. The first chapter bombards the reader with Forsytes, a brood so prodigious it is difficult to tell who’s who and how they’re all related. For help, one can Google Forsyte family trees, but unfortunately many of them contain spoilers such as notations of deaths and divorces, so perhaps it’s better to map out your own.

The central plot of the story centers around a love quadrangle. The main “man of property” to which the title refers is Soames Forsyte. He is married to a very beautiful woman, Irene, who doesn’t love him. His cousin, June Forsyte, is engaged to be married to Philip Bosinney, a struggling young architect. Bosinney’s lack of means already marks him as the object of scorn by many of the Forsytes, and matters get worse when he starts to display an attraction towards Irene. Soames sees what’s coming and, perhaps with the unwise philosophy that one should keep his enemies close, he hires Bosinney to design him a lavish country house. The business dealings between the two soon turn sour, while the affair between Bosinney and Irene escalates. The pair openly cavort with one another at Forsyte family gatherings, while Soames does his best to act like he’s not bothered by it.

Galsworthy is clearly a talented writer with a mastery of the English language who can draw vivid scenery, create multidimensional characters, and deliver social commentary. The behavior of all parties involved in the scandal, however, was unrealistic, and I just didn’t care about any of these characters. I guess I was supposed to sympathize with Irene and Bosinney, but I found them just as despicable as the rest. The only likable character is Young Jolyon, the Forsyte family outcast. At times I felt pity for Irene, but pity and sympathy are two different things. The Forsyte Chronicles will likely appeal to Anglophiles who enjoy BBC television series of the family saga variety. Reading this first novel, however, did not make me want to follow the Forsytes any further.
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Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories, edited by Charles Swain Thomas

Rather tame and genteel for 1918

Margaret Prescott Montague

Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories, published in 1918, is an anthology of fiction originally published in the pages of Atlantic Monthly magazine. Of the 23 authors selected by editor Charles Swain Thomas for this volume, the majority are women, which is a pleasant surprise for a collection published over a century ago. The only readily recognizable name in the contents, however, is Englishman John Galsworthy, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The volume opens with a lengthy introduction by Thomas on the art form of the short story. This is best read last, however, because he spoils the plots of some of the stories included in the book. One could also skip it entirely because Thomas doesn’t say anything of much importance. What makes a good story, in his view? Characters, plot, setting, theme—hardly an earth-shattering manifesto of literary criticism. The best one might get from this essay is a long list of stories and authors that Thomas recommends.

When looking for common themes among the stories in this collection, two are immediately apparent: children and widows. Writers of this era loved to prove their literary ability by writing stories from the perspective of precocious children, and we have at least four examples here. I’m not sure why the adult readers of the Atlantic would want to read such tales, which usually devolve into hokey slapstick (Amy Wentworth Stone’s “Possessing Prudence”) or unrealistic nostalgic fantasies about what childhood should have been like (“Garden of Memories” by C. A. Mercer, “The Marble Child” by E. Nesbit). As for the widows, this collection includes no less than six stories with a widow protagonist and one with a widower, not to mention a few spinsters! Some wallow too much in chicken-soup-for-the-soul melodrama, but a few are actually quite good, particularly the ones set in World War I.

In fact, three of the four stories that deal with the First World War are among the best entries in the book. “Hepaticas” by Anne Douglas Sedgwick is a touching tale of loss on the home front, and “Little Brother” by Madeleine Z. Doty is a realistic wartime adventure story set in Belgium. The one that really sticks out like a refreshing sore thumb, however, is Margaret Prescott Montague’s “Of Water and the Spirit,” a brutally frank depiction of battlefields so littered with blood and gore it would make Hemingway blush. Other than the war stories, the most modern entries in the book feature businessmen, such as the Theodore Dreiser-esque “The Failure” by Charles Caldwell Dobie, the Frank Norris-esque “Business is Business” by Henry Seidel Canby, and the Sinclair Lewis-esque “Mr. Squem” by Arthur Russell Taylor.

The feeling one gets from these Atlantic Monthly selections is that literary taste in Boston was rather tame and genteel compared to the naturalist literature that was coming out of San Francisco and the Midwest at this time. Most of the authors contained herein seem content to emulate Nathaniel Hawthorne rather than break any “Modern” ground. In his introduction, Thomas admits that the editorial staff of the Atlantic purposely avoids “bleak” authors in the vein of Emile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, or Guy de Maupassant because “the mission of the magazine has in general been in the sunlit fields or near the hearthfire’s glow.” With the exception of a few selections discussed above, this book delivers an assortment of pleasant stories that somewhat prudishly harken back to literature of the Victorian era. Even with that in mind, this is a good collection but by no means a great one.

Stories in this collection

Introduction by Charles Swain Thomas

The Preliminaries by Cornelia A. P. Comer 

Buttercup Night by John Galsworthy

Hepaticas by Anne Douglas Sedgwick 

Possessing Prudence by Amy Wentworth Stone 

The Glory-Box by Elizabeth Ashe 

The Spirit of the Herd by Dallas Lore Sharp 

In the Pasha’s Garden by H. G. Dwight 

Little Selves by Mary Lerner 

The Failure by Charles Caldwell Dobie 

Business is Business by Henry Seidel Canby 

Nothing by Zephine Humphrey 

A Moth of Peace by Katharine Fullerton Gerould 

In No Strange Land by Katharine Butler 

Little Brother by Madeleine Z. Doty 

What Road Goeth He? by F. J. Louriet 

The Clearer Sight by Ernest Starr 

The Garden of Memories by C. A. Mercer

The Clearest Voice by Margaret Sherwood 

The Marble Child by E. Nesbit

The One Left by E. V. Lucas 

The Legacy of Richard Hughes by Margaret Lynn

Of Water and the Spirit by Margaret Prescott Montague 

Mr. Squem by Arthur Russell Taylor

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