“The Opposition (Spiritual) in The Country House”

Abstract

Although throughout his life Galsworthy could write in any setting, spending most of his mornings with a J-nib pen and paper wherever he was, the increasing concomitants of success, rehearsals, meetings and social engagements, led him to seek a frequent refuge outside London. For several years after 1906, the Galsworthys spent many long weekends or weeks, especially in winter, at Littlehampton, a resort town, no longer fashionable, on the West Sussex coast. Dorothy Ivens, who visited the Galsworthys there a number of times, has described it: “A small place then, in the off season, moribund, in fact the quietest little seaside town imaginable. An esplanade, bare and empty, boarding houses close shuttered and just one comfortable hotel housing perhaps a solitary old lady.”¹ There were no facilities for swimming, no public buildings of any size and the only recreation consisted of long walks along the sands. At Easter, for several weeks, and once or twice in the late summer or autumn, they would travel further and stay at Wingstone. After they secured the long lease on the guest portion of the house, they stayed for weeks or months at a time and occasionally lent it to friends and relatives when they were away.