Family Portraits

In Chancery — By John Galsworthy
The Age of Innocence — By Edith Wharton

In his latest novel, which is a continuation of the Forsyte Saga, Mr. John Galsworthy gives the impression of being in his real right element. There is a peculiar note, a mixture of confidence and hospitality, struck in the first chapter, which seems to come from the happy author warming himself at a familiar hearth. Here, in the very bosom of the Forsyte family, if any man is at home, he is that man. Its ramifications have no terrors for him; on the contrary, the quick, searching, backward glance he takes before setting out upon this book is yet long enough to be a kind of basking which extends to the cousin furthest removed.

A swollen flood of novels has flowed under the bridge since the days of our enthusiasm for ‘The Man of Property’—that large family piece, admirably composed, page 305 closely packed, and firmly related to a background which was never decoration only. ‘In Chancery’ is less solid as a whole—the shell-pink azaleas escape the control of Soames' conservatory and flower a trifle too freely, as they are also a trifle too shell-pink; the tone is softer. It is not because the author is regarding his subject from another angle, but because all that remains from the deep vein of irony in ‘The Man of Property’ is a faint ironic tinge. In ‘The Man of Property’ what the author made us feel the Forsyte family lacked was imagination; in this new novel we feel it still, but we are not at all certain the author intends us to. He has, as it were, exchanged one prize for another—in gaining the walls he has lost his vision of the fortress. It is a very great gift for an author to be able to project himself into the hearts and minds of his characters—but more is needed to make a great creative artist; he must be able, with equal power, to withdraw, to survey what is happening—and from an eminence. But Mr. Galsworthy is so deeply engaged, immersed and engrossed in the Forsyte family that he loses this freedom. He can see Soames and James and the two Bayswater Road ancients with intense vividness; he can tell us all about them—but not all there is to know. Why is this? Is it not because, au fond, he distrusts his creative energy? There is no question of a real combat between it and his mind; his mind is master. Hence we have a brilliant display of analysis and dissection, but without any ‘mystery,’ any unplumbed depth to feed our imagination upon. The Forsyte men are so completely life-size, so bound within the crowns of their hats and the soles of their shoes, that they are almost something less than men. We do not doubt for a moment that it has been the aim of the author to appeal to the imagination; but so strong is the imposition of his mind that the appeal stops short at the senses. Take, for example, the character of old James Forsyte. Is it not amazing how he comes before us so that we see him, hear him, smell him, know his ways, his tricks, his habits as if page 306 he were our grandfather? Yet when we think of him—is it as standing at the window of his house watching the funeral of the old Queen, watching his own funeral and the funeral of his time—or as having his few last hairs stroked by Emily with a pair of silver brushes? These events should be of equal importance, at least; but they are not; the hair-brushing is easily first; and the author dwells on it with loving persistence until he almost succeeds in turning James into a lean, nervous, old, old, dog. Or take the occasion when young Val Dartie came face to face with his father, drunk, in the promenade of a music-hall. Before going out that evening he had asked his mother if he might have two plover's eggs when he came in. And when he does return, shocked, wretched, disenchanted with life, we find our concern for him overshadowed by those two plover's eggs laid out so temptingly with the cut bread and butter and ‘just enough whisky in the decanter,’ and left to languish on the dining-room table. But perhaps these instances are too simple to illustrate our meaning. Let us examine for a moment the figure of Soames Forsyte, who is the hero of ‘In Chancery.’ His desire to have a son makes him divorce the faithless Irene and thus free himself to marry a healthy young Frenchwoman, the daughter of a restaurant keeper. Now Soames, the passionate, suppressed human animal desiring Irene still because she is unattainable, but satisfying himself with the French girl at the last is as solid, as substantial as a mind could make him, but he is never real. He is flesh and blood with a strong dash of clay—long before he is a tormented man; and flesh and blood and clay he remains after the torment is on him. But there never comes that moment when the character is more than himself, so that we feel at the end that what should have happened to him never has happened. He is an appearance only—a lifelike image.

But when we have said that ‘In Chancery’ is not a great novel, we would assure our readers that it is a fascinating, brilliant book.

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In ‘The Age of Innocence,’ a novel of the early seventies in New York, we receive the same impression that here is the element in which the author delights to breathe. The time and the scene together suit Mrs. Wharton's talent to a nicety. To evoke the seventies is to evoke irony and romance at once, and to keep these two balanced by all manner of delicate adjustments is so much a matter for her skilful hand that it seems more like play than work. Like Mr. Galsworthy's novel it is a family piece, but in ‘The Age of Innocence’ the family comprises the whole of New York society. This remote, exclusive small world in itself is disturbed one day by the return of one of its prodigal daughters who begs to be taken back as though nothing had happened. What has happened is never quite clear, but it includes a fabulously rich villain of a Polish Count who is her husband and his secretary, who, rumour whispers, was all too ready to aid her escape. But the real problem which the family has to face is that Ellen Olenska has become that mysterious creature—a European, She is dangerous, fascinating, foreign; Europe clings to her like a troubling perfume; her very fan beats ‘Venice! Venice!’ every diamond is a drop of Paris. Dare they accept her? The question is answered by a dignified compromise, and Ellen's farewell dinner-party before she leaves for Paris is as distinguished as she or the family could wish. These are what one might call the outer leaves of the story. Part them, and there is within another flower, warmer, deeper, and more delicate. It is the love-story of Newland Archer, a young man who belongs deeply to the family tradition, and yet at the same time finds himself wishing to rebel. The charm of Ellen is his temptation, and hard indeed he finds it not to yield. But that very quality in her which so allures him—what one might call her highly civilized appreciation of the exquisite difficulty of her position—saves them from themselves. Not a feather of dignity is ruffled; their parting is positively stately.

But what about us? What about her readers? Does page 308 Mrs. Wharton expect us to grow warm in a gallery where the temperature is so sparklingly cool? We are looking at portraits—are we not? These are human beings, arranged for exhibition purposes, framed, glazed, and hung in the perfect light. They pale, they grow paler, they flush, they raise their ‘clearest eyes,’ they hold out their arms to each other ‘extended, but not rigid,’ and the voice is the voice of the portrait:

‘What's the use—when will you go back?’ he broke out, a great hopeless How on earth can I keep you? crying out to her beneath his words.

Is it—in this world—vulgar to ask for more? To ask that the feeling shall be greater than the cause that excites it, to beg to be allowed to share the moment of exposition (is not that the very moment that all our writing leads to?), to entreat a little wildness, a dark place or two in the soul?

We appreciate fully Mrs. Wharton's skill and delicate workmanship; she has the situation in hand from the first page to the last; we realize how savage must sound our cry of protest, and yet we cannot help but make it; that after all we are not above suspicion—even the ‘finest’ of us!