The Country House by John Galsworthy

I was interested to read something by Galsworthy that wasn’t part of The Forsyte Saga, which I am also reading, so that I had a comparison.

I can’t exactly say that The Country House has been an enjoyable read, because it – intentionally, I hasten to add - made me angry, but it has been interesting. Although not part of The Forsyte Saga, it shares one of the themes of the first book of the saga, Man of Property, in that it is about a divorce. Here, it is the main focus of the book and the legal ramifications of divorce, and its effect upon the three people most closely involved, and their wider family circle, is anatomised.

The country house of the title is inhabited Mr Horace Pendyce, with his wife Margery and their two youngest children. The eldest son, George, lives in London, where he divides his time between his Club and his racehorse; his father considers that he should be a home, learning to manage the estate, but George’s attentions are fixed on Mrs Jasper Bellew, a woman of great beauty with an alcoholic husband. Helen Bellew is a distant cousin of Mrs Pendyce, and is the ward of another cousin, Gregory Vigil.

The book begins with a shooting party given by Mr Pendyce, and the arrival of his guests. Mr Pendyce himself is originally of yeoman stock, his family having married into money and, we are given to understand, his wife is rather better bred than he is. He is an old-fashioned landlord: “It was his individual conviction that individualism had ruined England, and he had set himself deliberately to eradicate this vice from the character of his tenants.” To entertain their guests Mrs Pendyce gives a dance, and it is at this event that the vicar, the Reverend Hussell Barter, sees George kissing Mrs Bellew in the conservatory.

This is 1891, and Mr Barter immediately decides Mrs Bellew is no better than she ought to be, “no more than a common baggage”. So when some time later Vigil suggests that she should divorce her husband, from whom she has been living separately, Mr Barter officiously decides that it is his duty to intervene, on the grounds that Jasper Bellew is one of his parishioners. Helen finds herself being served with divorce papers, with George cited as co-respondent; however, if George will promise never to see Helen again, proceedings will end. George immediately announces that he will deny there has been anything between them, so that the divorce may proceed; the expectation of his family is that, if it does, George and Helen will marry. From this point, the complacent security of the Pendyces is shattered. Horace announces he will have nothing more to do with his son, and cannot bear the though that “that woman” should ever live in his house. Margery, the perfect wife, who has nonetheless never really loved her husband, leaves him to go to London and support her son through the ordeal.

What made me angry while reading this book, perhaps not surprisingly, is the reminder of the injustices perpetrated by our divorce laws until comparatively recently. Helen, who wants a divorce, must dissemble, her lawyer tells Vigil:

“We shall want evidence of certain things. Have you got any evidence?”
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
“I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty,” he said. “Bellew agrees – they both agree.”[…]
Mr Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.
“Did you ever,” he said drily, “hear of what’s called collusion?” [. . .]
“Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted,” he said. “One must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must pose as an injured person. There must be evidence of misconduct, and in this case of cruelty or of desertion. The evidence must be impartial. This is the law.”

So Helen, who is desperately unhappy with her husband, cannot seek a divorce unless she is able to demonstrate that she is the injured party (and there is a reason, which reflects well on her, why she cannot), but her husband, citing George, can start proceedings.

I can’t imagine very many people reading The Country House unless they have a particular interest in the period. It is, of course, well written (Galsworthy won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1932), but it lacks some of the beauty of structure evident in the Saga, although it was published a year later than Man of Property. In fact, I find myself wondering if he felt he had glossed over the miseries of divorce in that, and wanted to present a different viewpoint. If so, he succeeds, both in presenting the hypocrisies of the law, while also drawing a picture of three very different marriages. The novel’s characterisation is good, particularly in displaying the pomposity and inflexibility of Horace Pendyce and the loathsomely self-righteous vicar. Even so, while exposing their faults, he allows some humanity and vulnerability to creep in from time to time, as when the vicar’s wife is giving birth to their eleventh child. I have to admit to nearly giving up quite early on when a (condemnatory) comment on hunting made me wince sharply, and wonder if casual brutality towards animals might be a feature of the book. The carelessness of Pendyce’s love for his dog – and his wife – does indeed emerge: he continually trips over or treads on his poor spaniel, who is unswerving in his love for his master. The pace, just a little slow at first with the introduction of the dramatis personae, picks up, and offers a rewarding read.

The Forsyte Chronicles #1

John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, shortly before his death. The Forsyte Chronicles is a series of nine books, or three trilogies, with additional 'interludes' that round out some part of the story but which were written separately from the full trilogies. So far I've read the first two trilogies, The Forsyte Saga and A Modern Comedy. Since the backdrop of the novels is the changing English society between the late Victorian period and the inter-war years, and there is a generous cast of characters to boot, it's difficult to choose what to focus on. But the main theme of the first trilogy, and one that also has repercussions in the second, is that of property and ownership.

The eponymous Forsytes are a sprawling family who have attained solid upper-middle class status in late-Victorian England. The family fortune was originally founded on building, then trade and now is safely invested. Some of the Forsytes work; some spend their days in their club. So solid, respectable and typical of their ilk are the Forsytes that Galsworthy occasionally extends his use of the word so that it becomes a collective noun:

All Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish Delight; in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would not be recognised, without habitats, composed of circumstances, property, acquaintances, and wives, which seem to move along with them in their passage through a world composed of thousands of other Forsytes with their habitats.

The first trilogy concentrates largely on Soames Forsyte, a lawyer, a man of property (the first volume is titled The Man of Property) and a collector of paintings. He has the misfortune to be in the love to the point of obsession with his beautiful wife, Irene. The souring and disintegration of their relationship is the central theme that runs through the first two books of The Forsyte Saga; but, as he does throughout the Chronicles, Galsworthy uses the particular to explore the general. With reference to Soames and Irene, for example, Galsworthy raises questions about marital roles, women's rights within marriage, the concept of property and ownership, honour and duty, public life versus private life. Since Galsworthy himself was born in 1867 and died in 1933, his writing reflects contemporary issues with which he is likely to have been very familiar.

Soames Forsyte believes in property, and, in common with Victorian law, he believes his wife is his property, just as his paintings are his property. Yet for all that he is married to her, she remains elusive and intangible. As is well known to the family (all family gossip is mediated through Soames' father's house, known as the Family 'Change) Irene is deeply unhappy with Soames. In fact, she married him only on the understanding that if she couldn't love him, he would let her go. This he steadfastly refuses to do. In desperate unhappiness, Irene embarks on an affair with a young architect called Bosinney (who, at the time, is engaged to her niece, June) and Soames is driven to a form of madness. One night, when Irene has unfortunately forgotten to lock her bedroom door, Soames 'asserted his rights and acted like a man'. As a lawyer and a husband he knows that he is quite within his rights to do so. At the same time, as he also knows, such an act is unforgiveable:

Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of the night before,and break down the resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate?
He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands -- of her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt as he stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before silently slinking away...

...One thought comforted him. No one would know -- it was not the sort of thing she would speak about.

Beset with doubts over breakfast, by the time he gets to work Soames has reconciled himself to his actions:

The incident was really not of great moment; women made a fuss about it in books; but in the cool judgement of right-thinking men, of men of the world, of such as he recollected often received praise in the Divorce Court, he had but done his best to sustain the sanctity of marriage, to prevent her from abandoning her duty, possibly, if she were still seeing Bosinney, from --. No, he did not regret it.
Now that the first step towards reconciliation had been taken, the rest would be comparatively -- comparatively--.

Even Soames cannot bring himself to think that rape really will reunite him with Irene.

The immediate consequence is that Irene leaves him, although they are not divorced until some 10 years' later when Soames decides to remarry. Irene then marries Jolyon Forsyte, Soames' cousin, a kind, warm-hearted, generous man with whom she lives happily. Yet the ramifications of Soames' treatment of Irene continue to play out in the next generation, affecting Soames too.

Soames' daughter Fleur falls in love with Irene's son, Jon. Neither of the children knows of their parents' history, and neither can understand why their union is so vehemently opposed. In addition, Fleur is a chip off the old bloke. She is utterly beloved by Soames, who has spoiled her: 'Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with the pronoun "I"'. This characteristic of Fleur's will trip her up time and again as she grasps at what she cannot or should not have. In this case, she cannot have Jon, because Jolyon finally explains to him why the prospective match creates 'feelings of horror and aversion':

Your children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out...'

Jon promptly breaks off the relationship, Fleur is heartbroken and Soames must suffer to watch Fleur denied as a direct result of his own actions so many years ago.