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Five Tales
Life calls the tune we dance.”
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
262 pages, Paperback
Published October 19, 2007
5 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
John Galsworthy
2,421 books474 followersLiterary career of English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy, who used John Sinjohn as a pseudonym, spanned the Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian eras.
In addition to his prolific literary status, Galsworthy was also a renowned social activist. He was an outspoken advocate for the women's suffrage movement, prison reform and animal rights. Galsworthy was the president of PEN, an organization that sought to promote international cooperation through literature.
John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."
In addition to his prolific literary status, Galsworthy was also a renowned social activist. He was an outspoken advocate for the women's suffrage movement, prison reform and animal rights. Galsworthy was the president of PEN, an organization that sought to promote international cooperation through literature.
John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 24, 2016
Life! a breath — aflame! Nothing! Why, then, this icy clutching at his heart?
*
And a sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to arrest, whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown; he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended.
*
And an ache for lost youth, a hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped Ashurst by the throat. Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty, one was meant to hold rapture to one’s heart, as this earth and sky held it! And yet, one could not!
*
His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry. Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife’s kisses, but for her understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: “I’ve learnt a lot to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life’s a wonderful thing, Kate, a thing one can’t live all to oneself; a thing one shares with everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It’s come to me that what one has doesn’t matter a bit — it’s what one does, and how one sympathises with other people.
*
Curious thing-life! Curious world! Curious forces in it — making one do the opposite of what one wished; always — always making one do the opposite, it seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the trees. ‘There’s something ironical,’ he thought, ‘which walks about. Things don’t come off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one doesn’t change like that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life’s too big a thing for one! All the same, I’m not the man I was yesterday — not quite!’ [...] ‘Too much for one!’ he thought; ‘Too high for one — no getting on top of it. We’ve got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too much, and not think too much. That’s — all!’
*
And a sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to arrest, whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown; he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended.
*
And an ache for lost youth, a hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped Ashurst by the throat. Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty, one was meant to hold rapture to one’s heart, as this earth and sky held it! And yet, one could not!
*
His body felt appeased, his spirit hungry. Tonight he had a yearning, not for his wife’s kisses, but for her understanding. He wanted to go to her and say: “I’ve learnt a lot to-day-found out things I never thought of. Life’s a wonderful thing, Kate, a thing one can’t live all to oneself; a thing one shares with everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too. It’s come to me that what one has doesn’t matter a bit — it’s what one does, and how one sympathises with other people.
*
Curious thing-life! Curious world! Curious forces in it — making one do the opposite of what one wished; always — always making one do the opposite, it seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the trees. ‘There’s something ironical,’ he thought, ‘which walks about. Things don’t come off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one doesn’t change like that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life’s too big a thing for one! All the same, I’m not the man I was yesterday — not quite!’ [...] ‘Too much for one!’ he thought; ‘Too high for one — no getting on top of it. We’ve got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too much, and not think too much. That’s — all!’
July 29, 2021
......................................................................
......................................................................
Five Tales:-
......................................................................
......................................................................
The First And the Last:-
Very reminiscent of Camille, but different on the whole. Honour vs name, honesty vs security, love vs caution, ... !
................................................
................................................
May 26, 2021 - May 26, 2021.
Purchased June 14, 2013.
Kindle Edition, 55 pages
Published May 17th 2012
(first published 1919)
Original TitleThe First and the Last
ASIN:- B0084B2ZXM
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
A Stoic:-
Reading this, there are two thoughts that come soon. One, it's missing the descriptions of beauty of nature that one is accustomed to from Galsworthy. Two, only Galsworthy could get complete sympathy from a reader for the protagonist, especially when the two are quite different in most ways imaginable within humanity. Nevertheless, the old man's character and story, very touching!
It's not far to imagine that this work is one of those where Galsworthy was stepping between a novel and a play, and some works of his are presented both ways. In other times, this work and Strife would be integrated, along perhaps with a few others, into one - the two old chairmen are not very dissimilar.
................................................................................................
This bit seems familiar from another work of Galsworthy, where the said young girl is centred:-
" ... he was forty before he had his only love affair of any depth—with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. ... "
Was he personally familiar with the characters?
" ... Old Heythorp saw her to her rest without regret. He had felt no love for her whatever, and practically none for her two children—they were in his view colourless, pragmatical, very unexpected characters. His son Ernest—in the Admiralty—he thought a poor, careful stick. His daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little as need be of each other. She was provided for under that settlement he had made on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether unexpected crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had bestowed on that son of his "under the rose." The boy, who had always gone by his mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent to some relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish; presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming over from Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably pretty woman, like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned up one morning at the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," accompanied by her two children—for he had never divulged to them his private address. And since then they had always been more or less on his hands, occupying a small house in a suburb of Liverpool. He visited them there, but never asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in fact his daughter's; so that his proper family and friends were unaware of their existence."
"And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"—and, of course, he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per cent., settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And the more he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin, didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short over it!"
" ... That settlement was drawn and only awaited signature. The Board to-day had decided on the purchase; and all that remained was to get it ratified at the general meeting. Let him but get that over, and this provision for his grandchildren made, and he would snap his fingers at Brownbee and his crew-the canting humbugs! "Hope you have many years of this life before you!" As if they cared for anything but his money—their money rather! ... "
................................................
................................................
May 28, 2021 - May 29, 2021.
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
The Apple Tree:-
Here Galsworthy is back with beauty of nature, this time weaving it into the story of young love that's told in a flashback as a man is startled when he recalls being at the spot he's resting at, on his silver wedding anniversary. It's a typical tale of a city youth of upper strata who happens on a farmhouse and falls in love with the innocent rustic young beauty, but when he goes to put his promise in action, meets people of his own set and realises he'd never marry his first love.
Galsworthy goes at length in his thoughts, emotions and wavering, his questioning and berating himself, before acting.
................................................
................................................
May 29, 2021 - May 30, 2021.
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
The Juryman:-
About awakening of a man surrounded by beautiful things he's earned and is happy with - including his wife - to a deeper need, of human companionship; and his struggle to communicate it.
................................................
................................................
May 30, 2021 - May 30, 2021
................................................
................................................
Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-
Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
.......................................................................
Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-
Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.
Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.
He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
February 2004 - May 30, 2021.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
......................................................................
Five Tales:-
......................................................................
......................................................................
The First And the Last:-
Very reminiscent of Camille, but different on the whole. Honour vs name, honesty vs security, love vs caution, ... !
................................................
................................................
May 26, 2021 - May 26, 2021.
Purchased June 14, 2013.
Kindle Edition, 55 pages
Published May 17th 2012
(first published 1919)
Original TitleThe First and the Last
ASIN:- B0084B2ZXM
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
A Stoic:-
Reading this, there are two thoughts that come soon. One, it's missing the descriptions of beauty of nature that one is accustomed to from Galsworthy. Two, only Galsworthy could get complete sympathy from a reader for the protagonist, especially when the two are quite different in most ways imaginable within humanity. Nevertheless, the old man's character and story, very touching!
It's not far to imagine that this work is one of those where Galsworthy was stepping between a novel and a play, and some works of his are presented both ways. In other times, this work and Strife would be integrated, along perhaps with a few others, into one - the two old chairmen are not very dissimilar.
................................................................................................
This bit seems familiar from another work of Galsworthy, where the said young girl is centred:-
" ... he was forty before he had his only love affair of any depth—with the daughter of one of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a, natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was in the habit of remarking. ... "
Was he personally familiar with the characters?
" ... Old Heythorp saw her to her rest without regret. He had felt no love for her whatever, and practically none for her two children—they were in his view colourless, pragmatical, very unexpected characters. His son Ernest—in the Admiralty—he thought a poor, careful stick. His daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little as need be of each other. She was provided for under that settlement he had made on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether unexpected crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had bestowed on that son of his "under the rose." The boy, who had always gone by his mother's name of Larne, had on her death been sent to some relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish; presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming over from Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably pretty woman, like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned up one morning at the offices of "The Island Navigation Company," accompanied by her two children—for he had never divulged to them his private address. And since then they had always been more or less on his hands, occupying a small house in a suburb of Liverpool. He visited them there, but never asked them to the house in Sefton Park, which was in fact his daughter's; so that his proper family and friends were unaware of their existence."
"And this chance of getting six thousand pounds settled on them at a stroke had seemed to him nothing but heaven-sent. As things were, if he "went off"—and, of course, he might at any moment, there wouldn't be a penny for them; for he would "cut up" a good fifteen thousand to the bad. He was now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per cent., settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And the more he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin, didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short over it!"
" ... That settlement was drawn and only awaited signature. The Board to-day had decided on the purchase; and all that remained was to get it ratified at the general meeting. Let him but get that over, and this provision for his grandchildren made, and he would snap his fingers at Brownbee and his crew-the canting humbugs! "Hope you have many years of this life before you!" As if they cared for anything but his money—their money rather! ... "
................................................
................................................
May 28, 2021 - May 29, 2021.
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
The Apple Tree:-
Here Galsworthy is back with beauty of nature, this time weaving it into the story of young love that's told in a flashback as a man is startled when he recalls being at the spot he's resting at, on his silver wedding anniversary. It's a typical tale of a city youth of upper strata who happens on a farmhouse and falls in love with the innocent rustic young beauty, but when he goes to put his promise in action, meets people of his own set and realises he'd never marry his first love.
Galsworthy goes at length in his thoughts, emotions and wavering, his questioning and berating himself, before acting.
................................................
................................................
May 29, 2021 - May 30, 2021.
................................................
................................................
......................................................................
......................................................................
The Juryman:-
About awakening of a man surrounded by beautiful things he's earned and is happy with - including his wife - to a deeper need, of human companionship; and his struggle to communicate it.
................................................
................................................
May 30, 2021 - May 30, 2021
................................................
................................................
Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-
Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
.......................................................................
Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-
Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.
Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.
He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
February 2004 - May 30, 2021.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
March 26, 2021
Have never read any Galsworthy and just finished, Indian Summer of a Forsyte. What great writing, every sentence worth absorbing. I hope the remaining four are as good. Excellent.
March 18, 2023
Beautifully written
December 13, 2020
Five So-So Tales
The first tale was a really suspenseful, film noir type of story which really had me hopeful for the rest of the book. By comparison, the rest of the tales were a bit of a letdown with the exception of the middle one. Cannot highly recommend this one, but if you must, like I said, go for one and three first.
The first tale was a really suspenseful, film noir type of story which really had me hopeful for the rest of the book. By comparison, the rest of the tales were a bit of a letdown with the exception of the middle one. Cannot highly recommend this one, but if you must, like I said, go for one and three first.
May 16, 2025
I mainly read this collection of short stories or novellas for “Indian Summer of a Forsyte,” a sort of interlude that falls between the first two novels of Galsworthy’s Forsyte trilogy. That story was enjoyable, but I felt that it was already familiar. The basic developments of the story also appear in the second novel, In Chancery, which I had read previously. In the end I enjoyed some of the other stories more, especially the first one, “The First and Last.” This story deals with an older brother who always acts strictly morally but ends up bending and breaking his own code in order to protect his younger brother. It was powerful and worth the read on its own.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews