The Japanese Quince Summary | Detailed Summary

"The Japanese Quince" is John Galsworthy's short story of the beauty of nature, and its symbolism of perfection in contrast to the sameness of everyday life.

As the story begins, it is a spring morning in 1910 London. A man named, Mr. Nilson, opens the window of his dressing room and experiences "a peculiar sweetish sensation" in the back of his throat, in addition to a feeling of emptiness under his ribs. Mr. Nilson notes the temperature of 60 degrees and sees that the little tree in the garden has begun to blossom.

Mr. Nilson is momentarily exuberant at the thought that spring has arrived, but then turns back to the business of his stocks and his scrutiny of his face in the mirror. Reassured that he is the picture of health, Mr. Nilson dons his frock coat and heads downstairs to retrieve his morning paper. Overcome, once more, with the sweet sensation felt a short time ago, Mr. Nilson walks out of the French doors and into the garden, determined to walk a bit before breakfast.

As Mr. Nilson walks in the park, the feeling he had experienced is not going away, but rather is increasing in intensity. Mr. Nilson tries to recall what recently eaten foods may be the culprit for this feeling, but determines that the source of the feeling must be coming from a lemony scent from some nearby shrubs.

Satisfied with this explanation, Mr. Nilson is ready to resume his morning walk, when the sound of a blackbird draws his attention to a small tree. At closer inspection, Mr. Nilson realizes that this pretty little tree is the same one that he had viewed from his dressing room window. As Mr. Nilson stands smiling at the little tree, he realizes that another man, who also admires the tender blossoming tree, has joined him.

Mr. Nilson recognizes the man as his neighbor, Mr. Tandram. He speaks coolly, not appreciating the interruption. Mr. Nilson regrettably realizes that he and Mr. Tandram have never spoken, and Mr. Nilson awkwardly acknowledges his neighbor. Mr. Tandram responds, and Mr. Nilson detects nervousness in the man's voice that makes Mr. Nilson stop to take closer note of the man.

Mr. Nilson is a little unnerved to see that Mr. Tandram resembles himself in appearance and deportment, even carrying their morning newspapers behind their backs in the same manner.

Both men comment on the little tree and move closer toward it to read the plant tag identifying it as a Japanese Quince. Both men acknowledge that it was the singing of the blackbird that drew their attention to the tree, and Mr. Nilson thinks to himself that he actually likes Mr. Tandram.

The sound of the blackbird calling interrupts the reverie of the men still admiring the little tree, and the two men part company. Mr. Nilson and Mr. Tandram go their separate way to their homes. Mr. Nilson watches Mr. Tandram mount the steps to his home, and Mr. Nilson gazes longingly once more at the little tree where the blackbird has once again taken up its perch.

Mr. Nilson thinks that the Japanese Quince appears to be more alive than a tree and begins to feel that strange sensation in his throat once more. The sound of Mr. Tandram's coughs divert Mr. Nilson's attentions from the little tree, and he realizes that Mr. Tandram is also still admiring the tree. Mr. Nilson feels annoyed at this and enters his home to read his newspaper.

 

Criticism

David Kippen

Kippen is an educator and specialist on British colonial literature and twentieth-century South African fiction. In the following essay, he examines the many symmetrical reflections in Galsworthy’s story and argues that they, together, create a larger rhetorical mirror directed outward at the reader.

At first blush, Galsworthy’s “The Japanese Quince” seems quite simple; however, the story’s superficial simplicity is deceptive. Mr. Nilson, a well-to-do man of commerce walks out, one fine spring day, into the Garden Square adjacent to his home. He ruminates on spring, meets and converses with a neighbor indistinguishable from him in all but name, becomes self-conscious, and returns to his home. Though this summary fails to describe Nilson’s concerns about his heart, which motivate his stroll, and the Japanese quince and blackbird at the story’s linear and gravitational center, it is nonetheless a reasonable summation of what happens. What is remarkable about Galsworthy’s story is clearly not the originality of his plot nor the depth of his characterizations; he is neither an O. Henry nor a James Joyce. What sets “The Japanese Quince” apart is the nearly perfect formal balance between elements within the story, and the story’s mimetic representation of itself in its rhetorical function: the story’s smooth surfaces are intended to mirror its reader.

“The Japanese Quince” can be conveniently divided into two halves. In the first, the story follows Nilson’s motion toward Tandram. In the second, it follows his retreat back into his house, a retreat mirrored by Tandram’s retreat to his home. Now, if one overlooks the preamble to these events in Nilson’s house (I shall have more to say about the preamble later), these halves are evenly balanced in length and thematic shape, mirroring each other’s content and motion as closely as Nilson is mirrored by Tandram. An important effect of this near-perfect symmetry is that it directs the reader’s attention toward the middle, or the fulcrum, upon which the halves balance, toward Nilson and Tandram’s closest point of approach:

Tandram reads the tree’s label: “Japanese Quince!”

“Ah!” said Mr. Nilson, “thought so. Early flowerers.”

“Very,” assented Mr. Tandram, and added: “Quite a feelin’ in the air today.”

Mr. Nilson nodded.

“It was a blackbird singin’,” he said.

“Blackbirds,” answered Mr. Tandram. “I prefer them to thrushes myself; more body in the note.” And he looked at Mr. Nilson in an almost friendly way.

“Quite,” murmured Mr. Nilson “These exotics, they don’t bear fruit.”

Two important things happen in this brief passage, each of which demonstrates that Tandram is not only “like” Nilson, but is a perfect reflection of him. The more obvious point is that both men drop a terminal “g” in their sentences (feelin ‘singin’). Though this might escape the modern American reader, it certainly would not have passed the eye of an English reader — particularly a reader from Nilson’s and Tandram’s class background. In turn-of-the-century London, dropping a terminal “g” was briefly popular among the well-to-do; the intended signification was perhaps similar to wearing the same university tie, or offering a Masonic handshake: it said, “we’re in the same club.” However, within the world depicted in “The Japanese Quince,” the dropped consonants signify an even closer kinship. They are best understood as Galsworthy giving the reader a subtle nudge, in effect saying “notice this — they’re exactly alike!”

Nilson’s and Tandram’s exact likeness is expressed with more subtlety in the same passage, this time in Tandram’s preference of blackbirds to thrushes. Tandram says “I prefer them to thrushes myself; more body to the note,” and Nilson agrees. Interestingly, their agreement goes against the conventional wisdom that says the thrush is a far lovelier singer than the blackbird. Compare, for example, this description from the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica with Tandram’s observation: “the notes of the blackbird are rich and full, but monotonous as compared to those of the song-thrush.” Why, then, do both men prefer the blackbird’s song?

The more obvious answer would be that this unconventional choice underscores that Nilson and Tandram are not similar, but the same. (While it might not say a great deal to observe that two people like cream in their coffee, it says much if they both like it in their beer.) This point has more to yield. Galsworthy could have underscored their likeness with almost any vehicle — as he does with the paper they carry, their outfits, their identical features, even a shared preference for dry toast to buttered — but he chooses to demonstrate it with a shared preference for blackbirds to thrushes. Why?

The blackbird and thrush are both members of the thrush family (turdidae: the blackbird’s Latin name is turdis merula, while the song-thrush is aptly named turdis musicus). For my purposes here, the important distinctions between these closely related birds are two: their coloration and their habit. In each regard, Nilson and Tandram prefer the blackbird to the thrush not because of any viable aesthetic theory, but because the blackbird’s coloration and habit are so like their own. Unlike the thrush, with arresting, colorful brown back and spotted breast, the blackbird’s coloration is — like Nilson’s and Tandram’s — somber and, among birds, conservative. And while the thrush is commonly seen hopping, robin-like, through grass and field in search of snails, the blackbird’s habit is “of a shy and restless disposition, courting concealment, and rarely seen in flocks, or otherwise than singly or in pairs.” These habits, as the story shows, are Nilson’s, too. So rather than being a distinction without a difference, the men’s shared preference for one bird to another demonstrates yet another level at which Nilson’s external world reflects and illuminates his internal reality. (A similar point can be drawn from Nilson’s comment about the Japanese quince: “these exotics, they don’t bear fruit.” The quince family is in fact comprised of two groups, both of which blossom, but only one of which produces fruit — a fruit Nilson and Tandram would certainly be familiar with in the form of quince jam. Again, the preference for the less-spectacular fruiting quince to the magnificent flowering quince again shows the text’s mirroring of Nilson’s unexamined self.)

There is, however, an extremely important distinction to be made between the habits of the blackbird, the quince, and Nilson: while bird and tree recognize and revel in the arrival of spring, he, finally, cannot. At the story’s opening, Nilson feels a “peculiar sweetish sensation” at the back of his throat, “a feeling of emptiness just under his fifth rib” (at his heart). Though the opening page and a half paint a convincing portrait of a man on the verge of a heart attack, the reader soon realizes that it is the coming of spring which has Nilson feeling peculiar. Unlike the blackbird, he cannot burst into song, but instead, must search for a reasonable, preferably medical, explanation for his feelings.

In the final analysis, then, Galsworthy’s portrait is of a pathology: of a living creature unable to recognize the joyous resurrection that spring brings. And taken at this level alone, the story does what it sets out to do quite well. But “The Japanese Quince” also has a rhetorical dimension. Galsworthy’s textual mirror is not confined to Nilson, its apparent subject. Just as the fruiting quince, blackbird, Tandram, and even his own ivory-backed mirror serve to reflect Nilson’s inner and surface selves back to him; just as he recognizes some of these reflections (his face; Tandram) and does not recognize others (blackbird; quince; and finally, the reflection of his own life in the bird’s song), so the text itself mirrors its reader. When the reader looks into this text, Galsworthy asks the reader to see, through the many reflections of Nilson, a reflection of the reader’s better self, a self uncorrupted by the world: a self unafraid to sing.