The Patrician, by John Galsworthy

It took me some time to finish reading this. I have any number of excuses for that. I’m a slow reader, or perhaps just thorough. I don’t get enough time to read and, often when I have time I’m just too tired to make sense of it. I am reading other books at the same time, usually weighty non-fiction, necessary for research that I’m doing. Also, Galsworthy is not the kind of author one reads in a hurry. Virginia Woolf once chastised him for spending too many words on “unnecessary details.”

Those “unnecessary details”, however, are what make John Galsworthy unique among a peer group of great writers, including Virginia Woolf. Quite frankly, I think she was jealous of his talent, but I am astounded that in all of the writing and literary courses I am aware of, not one cites John Galsworthy as a benchmark for fine literature. Virginia Woolf’s criticisms aside, John Galsworthy may be the benchmark.

I was first introduced to his work through a short story of his that inspired me many years ago. The story titled, “Quality”, was the finest piece of literary fiction I have ever read, then or now, and ought to be a benchmark for every MFA out there. Galsworthy’s style of weaving plot, character and setting into one flowing tapestry is almost mind boggling in its beauty. Because of his massive vocabulary, he is able to weave rich detail into each and every sentence of each and every paragraph, detail that adds to the reading pleasure, rather than detracts; sorry to disagree with Virginia Woolf.

He is so good at creating a colorful and detailed artwork of the lives of his characters that I didn’t realize until I finished reading “The Patrician”, that I was reading a romance novel. Yes, a romance novel so well written that it can actually be called “literary fiction.” As an author, Galsworthy creates, for me, a benchmark for literary quality that I can only hope to someday attain. The excerpt below is the ending paragraph in which the romance aspect of the novel became clear to me. In this final scene, the main character’s mother is reflecting on all that has occurred in the illicit relationship between her son, Lord Miltoun Caradoc, an aspiring politician, and a married, but estranged woman, Eustice, with whom he has fallen in love. Lady Caradoc has, at last, succeeded in breaking them apart by convincing Eustice to walk away from her true love.

“Light, entering the vast room—a room so high that its carved ceiling refused itself to exact scrutiny—

… Safe? Yes, he was safe! He had done the right—the natural thing! And in time he would be happy! He would rise now to that pinnacle of desired authority which she had dreamed of for him, ever since he was a tiny thing, ever since his little thin brown hand had clasped hers in their wanderings amongst the flowers, and the furniture of tall rooms. But, as she stood—crumpling the letter, grey-white, as some small, resolute ghost, among her tall lilies that filled with their scent the great glass house, shadows flitted across her face. Was it the fugitive noon sunshine? Or was it some glimmering perception of the old Greek saying—’Character is Fate;’ some sudden sense of the universal truth that all are in bond to their own natures, and what a man has most desired shall in the end enslave him?”