Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Forsyte Saga
    The Forsyte Saga
    The Forsyte Saga
    Ebook1,343 pages15 hours

    The Forsyte Saga

    By John Galsworthy

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes, they chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper-middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, the family members are keenly aware of their status as "new money". The main character, Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions-but this does not succeed in bringing him pleasure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJan 18, 2021
    ISBN9781515447450
    The Forsyte Saga
    Author

    John Galsworthy

    John Galsworthy (1867–1933) was an English short story writer, novelist, and playwright whose work spanned the better part of four decades. Author of more than seventy books, Galsworthy is best remembered for the Forsyte Saga as well as its follow-up trilogies, a Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. A tireless champion of women’s rights, prison reform, and free speech, Galsworthy turned down knighthood out of the belief that writing was a reward within itself. His works have often been adapted for television and film, and in 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

    Read more from John Galsworthy

    Related to The Forsyte Saga

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Home with Jane

      May 15, 2020

      Home with Jane
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Chapters Unfolding

      Nov 22, 2022

      When first I saw the vast English house that would become my home, I was overawed. An elegant redbrick Victorian vicarage in Oxford, tucked away next to a lake, with a rambling garden and an ancient willow. We toured the property as part of my husban

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Pursuit Of Love: Why Are We Still So Obsessed With The Mitford Sisters?

      May 11, 2021

      Is there any greater example of the Problematic Fave than the Mitford sisters? They were posh, gossipy, fabulous, stylish and politically extreme. Were a couple of them – let’s just say it – outrageously right-wing? Yes. But are we still – myself inc

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'Tombland' Unearths Plots And Tudor-era Political Intrigue

      Jan 14, 2019

      C. J. Sansom's historical mystery series features lawyer Matthew Shardlake – one of the best-drawn leading characters in the entire genre.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Professor’s Wife

      Sep 1, 2020

      The Professor’s Wife
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Quiet on the Set: William Boyd on His Latest Novel

      Nov 18, 2020

      I think of a novelist as a magpie rather than a scholar. Anything bright that catches your eye can be brought into the work. The post Quiet on the Set: William Boyd on His Latest Novel appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Leap Of Faith

      Jul 18, 2024

      Leap Of Faith
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Scion Of One Of Europe’s Most Eminent Families Count Charles De Nicolay Invites Us Inside The Palazzo He And Wife Pola Have Brought Back To Life In The Polish Countryside

      Oct 21, 2024

      Scion Of One Of Europe’s Most Eminent Families Count Charles De Nicolay Invites Us Inside The Palazzo He And Wife Pola Have Brought Back To Life In The Polish Countryside
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      I Walked Off 9 Stone!

      Dec 20, 2022

      Breathing in the fresh air and taking in the beautiful scenery, I felt so proud. It was August 2021 and my husband Chris, then 48, and I were on an epic hike in Newquay. We had already walked several miles through the countryside and along the coastl

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock

      Dec 9, 2020

      I’d gotten what I’d wanted—a room full of books and time enough to read them—but at a cost. The post A Year in Reading: Jesse Paddock appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Fantastic Mr Dahl

      Jul 27, 2022

      Fantastic Mr Dahl
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mariana and Ibarra Are Waiting

      Dec 1, 2021

      Mariana and Ibarra Are Waiting
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Use The Plan

      Jul 4, 2023

      How To Use The Plan
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Ups And Downs Of Boris Johnson

      Jul 27, 2022

      Someone who should know – someone who was once very senior at Number Ten – told me, more than two years ago, that Boris Johnson’s premiership was bound to end in tears. ‘Why’s that?’ I asked. Given that Boris had just secured a thumping big majority

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reflecting On 17 Years Of Love And Laughter ayda Field Williams On Raising Four Children And Why Robbie Is ‘The One’ — Even When He Raids Her Wardrobe

      Jun 26, 2023

      Reflecting On 17 Years Of Love And Laughter ayda Field Williams On Raising Four Children And Why Robbie Is ‘The One’ — Even When He Raids Her Wardrobe
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Camilla The Down To Earth Duchess

      Jul 13, 2022

      Camilla The Down To Earth Duchess
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rebecca

      Aug 18, 2021

      Rebecca
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Live Your Best Life – The Medieval Way

      Aug 29, 2024

      “We are facing a watershed moment,” writes the German historian Annette Kehnel at the start of this engaging book. The world is faced with increasingly limited resources, growing injustice and proliferating horrors at a time when “we find ourselves g

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Forgotten Brontë Sister

      Jan 15, 2020

      The Forgotten Brontë Sister
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘The Librarianist’ Could Stand To Be Stranger

      Aug 21, 2023

      Bookworm protagonists: O, low-hung literary fruit! The post ‘The Librarianist’ Could Stand To Be Stranger appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My Winter with Edith Wharton

      May 9, 2018

      At the turn of the 20th century, novelist Edith Wharton built The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts; a vast, Italianate villa of more than 16,000 square feet, finished according to Wharton’s own characteristically rigorous theories of architectural and

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Writing Back to Guy and Harriet Pringle

      May 11, 2018

      I met Guy and Harriet Pringle in the winter of 1987. In those days, Turkish public television had a rather ingenious arrangement with public radio; they would show the dubbed series, and the radio would play the original soundtrack. I do not remember

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Doctor Who Novelisations

      Jul 13, 2022

      Doctor Who Novelisations
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Breastfeeding Beats Chestfeeding

      Nov 16, 2022

      I sat across the table from the late April Ashley at a pre-pandemic Oldie lunch and thought her amazing. She was a beautiful old lady - she died in 2021 - as she once had been a beautiful young man. She made history as one of the first openly transge

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Autumn Book Reviews

      Mar 6, 2019

      by John Simons Published by Sydney University Press ISBN 9781743325865 $35.00 Obaysch, a hippopotamus captured from the Egyptian Nile and transported to live out his life in a Victorian English zoo, has been much studied and admired. His popularity a

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Who Is Unthinkable? On Imbolo Mbue’s ‘How Beautiful We Were’

      Mar 26, 2021

      1. Fake news has never angered me on a visceral level. I don’t earnestly engage with conspiracists who fret about Satan worshippers or baby-eaters, for instance, and I have always found those who do amusing curiosities. For me, real anger has to impl

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Forsyte Saga

    4/5

    397 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book starts out very slow. A snooty British family, wealthy elites but not aristocratic, more upper-middle class than upper-class, is having issues because one of the girls in the family is engaged to a young architect. The architect is hired to build a house for the girl's uncle, and winds up having an affair with the uncle's young, pretty wife. The story starts out in the late 1800's and society is starting to change towards a world of expanded women's rights and a less rigid class structure, so while the older members of the Forsyte family react with the expected horror and disgust their class ought to feel for scandalous entanglements, the younger members of the family are not so convinced.
      Over the next few years even more scandalous things happen, and at the same time the world around the Forsytes is changing more rapidly.
      This was a long novel, and it felt long for the first 300-400pgs, but the second half was well paced and engaging. I liked the way this book explored how much society changed over the decades leading into WW1. This book was in fact first published just at the end of WW1, so the book's characters can have no real idea how much their world would be changing once the Great Depression and WW2 had their effects.
    • 5/5
      921 pages and I didn't want it to end.
    • 4/5
      A lovely long book. I am glad I finally read this classic. Following three generations of the Forsythe family it provides a look at genteel England from the mid 1800’s to after World War II. I’m still pondering if I am glad the book ended the way it did or another ending would have been preferable. Whatever my opinion is, it is clear the the tight-knit clan was becoming less of an institution as it was replaced by more independent generations.
    • 5/5
      About 40 years after watching the 1960s British television production, I finally have read this trilogy. I didn’t even remember the plot(s) properly. And I would never pretend to appreciate in depth the literary aspects. But the writing is a delight, the characters complex and fascinating. Just outstanding.
    • 4/5
      This version of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy is over 800 pages and consists of 3 books; A Man of Property, In Chancery and To Let as well as 2 short interludes; Indian Summer and Awakening. This is a family saga about money, morals and class at the beginning of the 20th century. The Forsytes are an upper-middle class family that have good expectations of improving their status. While the main focus of the story is on the disintegration of the marriage between Soames Forsyte and his wife, Irene, and the interactions between these two and their families, there are other plots involving this multi-generational family that revolve around the expansion of their wealth and the price paid for this obtainment.

      I have to admit that by the third book I was quite tired of reading about Soames and Irene as well as their overdone “soap opera” plot. While Soames’ journey through life was difficult, I didn’t feel much sympathy for him as I found him quite pompous and rigid. At the same time, I found his wife, Irene too cold and distant to ever feel that I knew her so I couldn’t generate much interest in her story either. In the later books, I did like both Fleur and Jon, but it was easy to see what was going to happen with this relationship so I was never emotionally invested in their story.

      Galsworthy spreads his story over a large canvas that includes all the various members of this family and we learn a little about each member over the course of the three books and many different sub-plots are developed along the way. Personally I much preferred these sub-plots that featured the other Forsytes and while I grew tired of some of the characters I can certainly attest to the appeal of this story with it’s descriptions of wealthy English lifestyles and conventional society morals at the turn on the century.
    • 4/5
      John Galsworthy was born on August 14, 1867 in Surrey, England. Although more popular as a playwright during his lifetime, Galsworthy is now famous for his fiction masterpiece, The Forsyte Saga, which won him a Nobel prize for literature a year before his death in 1933. The saga traces the ups and downs of the upper middle class Forsyte family from the end of the 19th century up until 1920 in a series of three novels and two “interludes”. Think Downton Abbey.

      Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him?

      Unlike Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes, John Galsworthy dissected the lives of the people of his own class. Galsworthy could not tolerate the obsession of his peers with buying and selling. The idea that one could “own” ineffables such as beauty and love, whether as art or a wife, was contemptible to him. He channelled his disgust into the creation of the odious but unforgettable Soames Forsyte, jealous husband of the beautiful Irene (pronounced in the Edwardian style: I-REE-nee). Galsworthy was clearly in love with the character of Irene, making her story of self-determination the unifying thread of the entire tapestry. Indeed it is hard to miss his empathy for women in this series.

      The Forsyte Saga has been serialised twice on television, most recently and lavishly by Granada TV with Damian Lewis as Soames and the elegant Gina McKee as Irene. If the print format seems daunting at 912 pages (Oxford paperback), I highly recommend the audiobook narrated in a beautiful Edwardian drawl by Fred Williams.
    • 3/5
      Wow this book was like my Everest. I think it took me six hours to get interested. It is a story of love and property, haunting and vaguely sad. Irene is a young wife, cursed with nearly supernatural good looks. She does not love her husband who values her only for her the status she brings him. The book follows their tormented relationship and subsequent generations' changing perspectives on what marital love means.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of the Forsytes of England during the Victorian, Edwardian, and post WWI years and specifically about Soames’ marriage to Irene and how it affects the whole family for several generations. It is an interesting look at a family but also about a historical time and changes that occur. Changes in the roles of men and women, changes in transportation, changes in manners. This is a story which is mostly told through inner dialogue as the family has so many secrets and things they won’t talk about. The audio was well done. The narrator had a nice English accent and was able to give the characters their own voice.
    • 4/5
      John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga is made up of 3 novels and 2 short "interludes." The works concern themselves with the family dramas of the Forsyte clan, who we meet in the late 1800s in London. They are upper-class, but recently so, still feeling the sting of having a not-distant-enough ancestor who was a farmer. Galsworthy frequently reminds the reader that the Forsytes are a type, not just an individual family. New money, and those most concerned about acquiring and keeping wealth and property are called "Forsytes," no matter what their name may be. Personally, I think the books would have benefited from less emphasis on that point, but I suppose it seemed like a good idea to have these reminders that the Forsytes were not alone in their attitudes and foibles.

      The family stories are engaging, and each of the many Forsytes have their own distinct personalities, even as they're shaped by the times in which they live. The oldest generation ranges from the reclusive Timothy to the softened-by-age Old Jolyon, to the crotchety James. The middle generation is much different from their elders, both as a reflection of the change in attitudes brought about by the turn of the 20th century and as a reaction to their parents' values. Much of the substance of the series turns on members of the second generation - Soames, his wife Irene, and Young Jolyon in particular. But they also have their turn as the older generation as their children come of age and have ideas of their own about what's important in life. However, one can never really escape the past; some actions have effects that reverberate through the generations, however much one tries to ignore them and move on.

      Although a long read, it was enjoyable and not difficult to follow at all. The family themes of love, duty, forgiveness, second chances, and propriety are set against the backdrop of changing times - not only the turn of the century, but the first World War, the Boer War, and the change of lifestyle brought on by the popularity of automobiles.

      Recommended for: people who liked Pillars of the Earth or Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, people who like to watch miniseries, Anglophiles.

      Quote: "The persistence of the past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty."

      Bonus quote: "This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: 'Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'"
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I ever read. It is very well written. It also is very, very English. The story has no flaws at all. Read this!
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed John Galsworthy's "The Forsyte Chronicles." Best described as a Victorian soap opera, the book (which actually contains three novels and two short stories) follows several generations of the Forsyte family. Money, power, love and death are at the center of the story, as is the changing landscape of London during the Victorian era.

      A word of warning: There is a huge cast of characters in this book and they can be hard to keep track of at first. Don't use the family tree at the front of the book to do so... (even though it is wonderful.) Spoilers abound and I already knew the endings since I'd seen marriages listed in the family tree that were to come later on in the book.)

      So glad I read this one... I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read the remainder of the series at some point.
    • 5/5
      The Forsyte Saga is the epic story that revolves around three generations of the Forsyte family, who have gone from being middle class tradesmen to a wealthy and powerful family. Although very fun for it's depiction of England and London society from the end of the Victorian period through the Edwardian era, the series is a great story about passion, love, jealousy and the interplay between members of a family. The book is actually broken down into 3 novels with 2 short stories in between. Although I enjoyed the first story, 'A Man of Property', I wasn't completely hooked until the second story. Part of the difficulty is the enormous cast of characters. Although I wasn't sure who was who in the first story, by the end of the book, I knew all of their relationships and odd personality quirks. Definitely worth rereading just to enjoy the entire book.

      I did a combination of reading and listening for this saga. I picked up the audio narration performed by Fred Williams. After the first 6 hours, I had to stop and switch to a narration by David Case. What a difference! Williams is basically just reading a very long book. Case performs the different voices of the characters and really captures much of the passion and feeling behind this emotional book.
    • 4/5
      I've been reading this 1000 page novel made up of three novels and 2 short interludes all month and I think I'm going to miss it now that its over. This book follows several generations of the Forsyte family, an upper middle class family in England the end of the 19th cent and through WWI. The Forsytes and their characteristics become a metaphor for the whole upper middle class society.

      The book revolves around the miserable marriage of Soames Forsyte to Irene. Soames treats Irene as his property, and with marriage laws being what they are at the time, in essence she is his property. Soames is possibly the most despicable character I've met in literature. Irene falls in love with a young architect and ends up escaping Soames. In the next book, Soames is back, wanting a child and needing Irene to comply or divorce him. She ends up falling in love with a different Forsyte and marrying him. In the third book, the children of Soames and Irene's subsequent marriages of course fall in love.

      The plot seems soap opera-esque, but it's all so tastefully and artfully done, that it definitely reads like literature. Irene is a main character, but she's so passive that the story just happens around her. But there are strong women characters, like June and Holly, so the book doesn't fall into the annoying trap of no female characters. Soames is despicable, but so fleshed out through the book that he's understandable and therefore even more disgusting. I didn't love the last of the three parts because I found the relationship between the youngest Forsyte generation to be kind of annoying, but I was happy with the ending.

      Overall, I loved the experience of reading this epic novel.
    • 5/5
      Drat. I see I lost the slip of paper where I write page numbers and the little notes for the book report. There are a few numbers scrawled on the inside back cover; page 785 has cricket, 808 the fixed idea, and there's a giant dog-ear folded from the bottom of the page. That would be a chapter I want to read again. I put off finishing it too. The book was left untouched at page 830 for an entire month. Didn't want to finish it. I had been through too much with them, especially the unloveable Soames, and the houses; Robin Hill and Timothy's.

      "His heart made a faint demonstration within him while he stood in full south sunlight on the newly whitened doorstep of that little house where four Forsytes had once lived, and now but one dwelt on like a winter fly; the house into which Soames had come and out of which he had gone times without number, divested of, or burdened with, fardels of family gossip; the house of the 'old people' of another century, another age."

      That house.

      The passage of time is strong in this book and Galsworthy's precision and wit so timeless, I can recognize in Soame's misgivings about motor cars my own dizzy suspicions about cellphones. Whether it's the 19th or 20th century that's turning, things only seem to go faster. This is not going back on the shelf. I'm tucking this dogeared beast under the bedside table so I can reread all my favourite parts.
    • 5/5
      "Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter fully into what another person felt!" This has to be my favorite line of the whole book which was thought by young Jolyon Forsyte about his tragic cousin Soames. It also sums up what the entire long family saga is about, possessions whether they are tangible or human. This book is so brilliant because it has a little bit of everything including family secrets, adultry, forbidden love, gambling, and scandal. It almost sounds like a soap opera but is only so much better. Another brillant part of the book is the fact that all the characters are so human none of them are perfect and each has their own set of flaws. At first I didn't think I was going to like the fact that there was no real hero but I have to say that it makes for some interesting reading. Another thing I liked about Galsworthy's writing of the book is that readers never really know what Irene is thinking, the only interpretations you get from her are what other characters give you. This makes her as elusive as she is described in the book. You either are going to love her or hate her. I found myself hating her at the beginning of the novel because I pitied poor Soames for receiving no love from her but by the time the interlude had occured, I found myself liking her more, especially because of her treatment of Old Jolyon. I started hating and piting Soames more and more, even his own daughter dislikes him. If you like LONG invloved novels with detailed descriptions about time and places you will love this book. It is really one of the great works of the 20th century and I think this author was way before his time. I look forward to reading the other two novels about the Forsyte family in he future.
    • 5/5
      One of those turn-of-the-century novels that feels as though it was written much later. There is a lightness of touch, a preoccupation with interesting events and situations rather than flowery description. Soames is an excellent character; we first encounter him trying to 'look through his own nose'. His difficult relationships with the various women in his life are fascinating. I can see why the TV series was so popular
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this novel. It has a very rich writing style. Rich in the use of language. Rich in the variety of characters and personalities and their interaction. Rich in the plot itself.

      The novel traces the lives and travails of three generations of an English family residing in London at the end of the 19th century through the first couple of decades in the 2oth. It's a story of a wealthy family embedded in the Victorian tradition that sees the transition to modernism among the younger generation. It has a vast number of characters, all family relations which makes it difficult, at the beginning, to keep track of who is who and who is related to whom. My copy has a very handy family tree that helped identify the characters and their relatioins.

      Galsworthy does a great job in depicting the peronalities and emotions of the novel's characters. And they cover the whole range. Some of them are clearly dumb while other are very intelligent. Family and social tradition plays a key role for many of the characters, particularly the older generation. The younger generations, as it always the case, rebel and do not value those traditions necessarily, with dire results for the family.

      I recommend reading this novel- but it requires some time because of it's length. It's entertaining throughout.
    • 4/5
      Classic novel of the emerging British middle class during the Victorian era. It examines the role of women, money, and obsession during Britain's empire era.
    • 5/5
      I just finished the book recently and have wanted to mull it over. I think this book is a genuine masterpiece because of Galsworthy's fabulous aiblity to reflect societal change in a single family tree. As society shifts, so do the Forsytes, at lest the newer generation at the time. Galsworthy's character development is memorable. As with Dickens, there are certain characters who will live on in my memory, such as Irene, Soames, Timothy, and June, just to name a few. Galsworthy is able to adapt not only characters to the changing times but he adapts setting as well, changing sounds and smells to match the changes in the environment. I will always love the way Soames monitored and predicted the times through his assessment of art. Cold and calculating perhaps, yet prescient as well.
    • 3/5
      A social satire starring the Forsyte family. Excellent writing but a little hard to follow sometimes because of the number of characters and situations.
    • 4/5
      Although I dove into this hefty novel thinking it would be not much more than frothy Victorian scandal and romance, I was pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong--the scandal and romance is there, but it did have a bit more to offer than all that. Galsworthy manages to comment on the Victorian British middle class (upper-middle class?) in a way that's still interesting to look in on. Also, the character Irene is expertly handled; we never hear her thoughts and feelings as we do all the other characters, yet she's more or less the center of the story. All the other characters (especially the male ones) revolve around this one person who the reader must size up without the benefit of being told her side of things. I would call the book very well written, if not a little over-the-top or dramatic at moments in terms of sentiment, although this is as much as I expected.

      A plus for me personally, the novel spans something like 40 years and three generations; I'm truly a sucker for the epic story, be it in the form of literature or movies. The ambiance of the late Victorian era, WWI, and the beginning of the Jazz age are all covered, and Galsworthy relates them well. Furthermore, you really, really KNOW the characters when you're done. I was almost sad to leave Soames and the gang behind in the end.

    Book preview

    The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy

    The Forsyte Saga

    by John Galsworthy

    ©2021 SMK Books

    The Forsyte Saga is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

    All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

    Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-2779-7

    Trade Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-6172-0701-3

    E-book ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4745-0

    Table of Contents

    Preface:

    The Man of Property

    Part I

    ‘At Home’ at Old Jolyon’s

    Old Jolyon Goes to the Opera

    Dinner at Swithin’s

    Projection of the House

    A Forsyte Menage

    James at Large

    Old Jolyon’s Peccadillo

    Plans of the House

    Death of Aunt Ann

    Part II

    Progress of the House

    June’s Treat

    Drive with Swithin

    James Goes to See for Himself

    Soames and Bosinney Correspond

    Old Jolyon at the Zoo

    Afternoon at Timothy’s

    Dance at Roger’s

    Evening at Richmond

    Diagnosis of a Forsyte

    Bosinney on Parole

    June Pays Some Calls

    Perfection of the House

    Soames Sits on the Stairs

    Part III

    Mrs. Macander’s Evidence

    Night in the Park

    Meeting at the Botanical

    Voyage into the Inferno

    The Trial

    Soames Breaks the News

    June’s Victory

    Bosinney’s Departure

    Irene’s Return

    Indian Summer of a Forsyte

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    In Chancery

    Part 1

    At Timothy’s

    Exit a Man of the World

    Soames Prepares to Take Steps

    Soho

    James Sees Visions

    No-longer-young Jolyon at Home

    The Colt and the Filly

    Jolyon Prosecutes Trusteeship

    Val Hears the News

    Soames Entertains the Future

    And Visits the Past

    On Forsyte ‘Change

    Jolyon Finds out Where He is

    Soames Discovers What He Wants

    Part II

    The Third Generation

    Soames Puts it to the Touch

    Visit to Irene

    Where Forsytes Fear to Tread

    Jolly Sits in Judgment

    Jolyon in Two Minds

    Dartie Versus Dartie

    The Challenge

    Dinner at James’

    Death of the Dog Balthasar

    Timothy Stays the Rot

    Progress of the Chase

    ‘Here We Are Again!’

    Outlandish Night

    Part III

    Soames in Paris

    In the Web

    Richmond Park

    Over the River

    Soames Acts

    A Summer Day

    A Summer Night

    James in Waiting

    Out of the Web

    Passing of an Age

    Suspended Animation

    Birth of a Forsyte

    James Is Told

    His

    Awakening

    To Let

    Part I

    Encounter

    Fine Fleur Forsyte

    At Robin Hill

    The Mausoleum

    The Native Heath

    Jon

    Fleur

    Idyll on Grass

    Goya

    Trio

    Duet

    Caprice

    Part II

    Mother and Son

    Fathers and Daughters

    Meetings

    In Green Street

    Purely Forsyte Affairs

    Soames’ Private Life

    June Takes a Hand

    The Bit Between the Teeth

    The Fat in the Fire

    Decision

    Timothy Prophesies

    Part III

    Old Jolyon Walks

    Confession

    Irene

    Desperate

    Soames Cogitates

    The Fixed Idea

    Embassy

    The Dark Tune

    Under the Oak-tree

    Fleur’s Wedding

    The Last of the Old Forsytes

    Preface:

    The Forsyte Saga was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called The Man of Property; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that family and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to talk them out.

    So many people have written and claimed that their families were the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes evolve, and Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our noses. As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership.

    Let the dead Past bury its dead would be a better saying if the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.

    But no Age is so new as that! Human Nature, under its changing pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal.

    Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and ‘fall-of’ is in some sort pictured in The Forsyte Saga, we see now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire. It would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes assembled at Old Jolyon’s to celebrate the engagement of June to Philip Bosinney. And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties it was too congealed and low-percented. If these chronicles had been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car, and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema. Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.

    But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men.

    The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.

    One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt waters of the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames, and to think that in doing so they are in revolt against the mood of his creator. Far from it! He, too, pities Soames, the tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact. Not even Fleur loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved. But in pitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think, he wasn’t a bad fellow, it wasn’t his fault; she ought to have forgiven him, and so on!

    And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth, which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in Nature. Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact it never does. And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic—knowing that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the repulsive ell.

    A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property—claim spiritual property in their son Jon. But it would be hypercriticism, as the tale is told. No father and mother could have let the boy marry Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not the persuasion of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon’s persuasion is not on his own account, but on Irene’s, and Irene’s persuasion becomes a reiterated: Don’t think of me, think of yourself! That Jon, knowing the facts, can realise his mother’s feelings, will hardly with justice be held proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.

    But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class. As the old Egyptians placed around their mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have endeavoured to lay beside the figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving Progress.

    If the upper-middle class, with other classes, is destined to move on into amorphism, here, pickled in these pages, it lies under glass for strollers in the wide and ill-arranged museum of Letters. Here it rests, preserved in its own juice: The Sense of Property. 1922.

    The Man of Property

    Part I

    ‘At Home’ at Old Jolyon’s

    Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight—an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family—no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy—evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting—a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent—one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.

    On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.

    This was the occasion of an ‘at home’ to celebrate the engagement of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon’s granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney. In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the corner of her brother Timothy’s green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes. Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea.

    When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died—but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.

    About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard.

    The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted old Jolyon’s ‘home’ the psychological moment of the family history, made it the prelude of their drama.

    The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and—the sniff. Danger—so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual—was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

    Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was Swithin Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the other twin, James—the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called these brothers—like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In his hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that aforesaid appearance of ‘sniff,’ as though despising an egg which he knew he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to the occasion had affected them all.

    Seated in a row close to one another were three ladies—Aunts Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution. She had survived him for many years. With her elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road. Each of these ladies held fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour, some emphatic feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.

    In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself. Eighty years of age, with his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead, his little, dark grey eyes, and an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth. He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.

    Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James, Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much similarity. In turn, each of these four brothers was very different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.

    Through the varying features and expression of those five faces could be marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote and permanent to discuss—the very hall-mark and guarantee of the family fortunes.

    Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in pallid strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was this same stamp—less meaningful perhaps, but unmistakable—a sign of something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another during the afternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man whose acquaintance they were thus assembled to make. Philip Bosinney was known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving obscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester, in a soft grey hat—a soft grey hat, not even a new one—a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. So, extraordinary, my dear—so odd, Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to ‘shoo’ it off a chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat—Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed when it did not move.

    Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious artists—the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded the meaning of the whole matter; for each had asked himself: Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that hat? and each had answered No! and some, with more imagination than others, had added: It would never have come into my head!

    George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat had obviously been worn as a practical joke! He himself was a connoisseur of such. Very haughty! he said, the wild Buccaneer.

    And this mot, the ‘Buccaneer,’ was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it became the favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

    Her aunts reproached June afterwards about the hat.

    We don’t think you ought to let him, dear! they had said.

    June had answered in her imperious brisk way, like the little embodiment of will she was: Oh! what does it matter? Phil never knows what he’s got on!

    No one had credited an answer so outrageous. A man not to know what he had on? No, no! What indeed was this young man, who, in becoming engaged to June, old Jolyon’s acknowledged heiress, had done so well for himself? He was an architect, not in itself a sufficient reason for wearing such a hat. None of the Forsytes happened to be architects, but one of them knew two architects who would never have worn such a hat upon a call of ceremony in the London season.

    Dangerous—ah, dangerous! June, of course, had not seen this, but, though not yet nineteen, she was notorious. Had she not said to Mrs. Soames—who was always so beautifully dressed—that feathers were vulgar? Mrs. Soames had actually given up wearing feathers, so dreadfully downright was dear June!

    These misgivings, this disapproval, and perfectly genuine distrust, did not prevent the Forsytes from gathering to old Jolyon’s invitation. An ‘At Home’ at Stanhope Gate was a great rarity; none had been held for twelve years, not indeed, since old Mrs. Jolyon had died.

    Never had there been so full an assembly, for, mysteriously united in spite of all their differences, they had taken arms against a common peril. Like cattle when a dog comes into the field, they stood head to head and shoulder to shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the invader to death. They had come, too, no doubt, to get some notion of what sort of presents they would ultimately be expected to give; for though the question of wedding gifts was usually graduated in this way: ‘What are you givin’? Nicholas is givin’ spoons!’—so very much depended on the bridegroom. If he were sleek, well-brushed, prosperous-looking, it was more necessary to give him nice things; he would expect them. In the end each gave exactly what was right and proper, by a species of family adjustment arrived at as prices are arrived at on the Stock Exchange—the exact niceties being regulated at Timothy’s commodious, red-brick residence in Bayswater, overlooking the Park, where dwelt Aunts Ann, Juley, and Hester.

    The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the simple mention of the hat. How impossible and wrong would it have been for any family, with the regard for appearances which should ever characterize the great upper middle-class, to feel otherwise than uneasy!

    The author of the uneasiness stood talking to June by the further door; his curly hair had a rumpled appearance, as though he found what was going on around him unusual. He had an air, too, of having a joke all to himself. George, speaking aside to his brother, Eustace, said:

    Looks as if he might make a bolt of it—the dashing Buccaneer!

    This ‘very singular-looking man,’ as Mrs. Small afterwards called him, was of medium height and strong build, with a pale, brown face, a dust-coloured moustache, very prominent cheek-bones, and hollow checks. His forehead sloped back towards the crown of his head, and bulged out in bumps over the eyes, like foreheads seen in the Lion-house at the Zoo. He had sherry-coloured eyes, disconcertingly inattentive at times. Old Jolyon’s coachman, after driving June and Bosinney to the theatre, had remarked to the butler:

    I dunno what to make of ‘im. Looks to me for all the world like an ‘alf-tame leopard. And every now and then a Forsyte would come up, sidle round, and take a look at him.

    June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity—a little bit of a thing, as somebody once said, ‘all hair and spirit,’ with fearless blue eyes, a firm jaw, and a bright colour, whose face and body seemed too slender for her crown of red-gold hair.

    A tall woman, with a beautiful figure, which some member of the family had once compared to a heathen goddess, stood looking at these two with a shadowy smile.

    Her hands, gloved in French grey, were crossed one over the other, her grave, charming face held to one side, and the eyes of all men near were fastened on it. Her figure swayed, so balanced that the very air seemed to set it moving. There was warmth, but little colour, in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes were soft.

    But it was at her lips—asking a question, giving an answer, with that shadowy smile—that men looked; they were sensitive lips, sensuous and sweet, and through them seemed to come warmth and perfume like the warmth and perfume of a flower.

    The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this passive goddess. It was Bosinney who first noticed her, and asked her name.

    June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.

    Irene is my greatest chum, she said: Please be good friends, you two!

    At the little lady’s command they all three smiled; and while they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing from behind the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:

    Ah! introduce me too!

    He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene’s side at public functions, and even when separated by the exigencies of social intercourse, could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were strange expressions of watchfulness and longing.

    At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the piece of china.

    I wonder at Jolyon’s allowing this engagement, he said to Aunt Ann. They tell me there’s no chance of their getting married for years. This young Bosinney (he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage of a short o) has got nothing. When Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into settlement—lucky thing, too—they’d ha’ had nothing by this time!

    Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair. Grey curls banded her forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, had extinguished in the family all sense of time. She made no reply, for she rarely spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but to James, uneasy of conscience, her look was as good as an answer.

    Well, he said, I couldn’t help Irene’s having no money. Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancing attendance on her.

    Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to the group by the door.

    It’s my opinion, he said unexpectedly, that it’s just as well as it is.

    Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew what he was thinking. If Irene had no money she would not be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said—they said—she had been asking for a separate room; but, of course, Soames had not....

    James interrupted her reverie:

    But where, he asked, was Timothy? Hadn’t he come with them?

    Through Aunt Ann’s compressed lips a tender smile forced its way:

    No, he didn’t think it wise, with so much of this diphtheria about; and he so liable to take things.

    James answered:

    Well, HE takes good care of himself. I can’t afford to take the care of myself that he does.

    Nor was it easy to say which, of admiration, envy, or contempt, was dominant in that remark.

    Timothy, indeed, was seldom seen. The baby of the family, a publisher by profession, he had some years before, when business was at full tide, scented out the stagnation which, indeed, had not yet come, but which ultimately, as all agreed, was bound to set in, and, selling his share in a firm engaged mainly in the production of religious books, had invested the quite conspicuous proceeds in three per cent. consols. By this act he had at once assumed an isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with less than four per cent. for his money; and this isolation had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth—a kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself in any way with children.

    James resumed, tapping the piece of china:

    This isn’t real old Worcester. I s’pose Jolyon’s told you something about the young man. From all I can learn, he’s got no business, no income, and no connection worth speaking of; but then, I know nothing—nobody tells me anything.

    Aunt Ann shook her head. Over her square-chinned, aquiline old face a trembling passed; the spidery fingers of her hands pressed against each other and interlaced, as though she were subtly recharging her will.

    The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all—though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours—they quailed before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could they do but avoid her!

    Twisting his long, thin legs, James went on:

    Jolyon, he will have his own way. He’s got no children—and stopped, recollecting the continued existence of old Jolyon’s son, young Jolyon, June’s father, who had made such a mess of it, and done for himself by deserting his wife and child and running away with that foreign governess. Well, he resumed hastily, if he likes to do these things, I s’pose he can afford to. Now, what’s he going to give her? I s’pose he’ll give her a thousand a year; he’s got nobody else to leave his money to.

    He stretched out his hand to meet that of a dapper, clean-shaven man, with hardly a hair on his head, a long, broken nose, full lips, and cold grey eyes under rectangular brows.

    Well, Nick, he muttered, how are you?

    Nicholas Forsyte, with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers and hastily withdrew them.

    I’m bad, he said, pouting—been bad all the week; don’t sleep at night. The doctor can’t tell why. He’s a clever fellow, or I shouldn’t have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills.

    Doctors! said James, coming down sharp on his words: I’ve had all the doctors in London for one or another of us. There’s no satisfaction to be got out of them; they’ll tell you anything. There’s Swithin, now. What good have they done him? There he is; he’s bigger than ever; he’s enormous; they can’t get his weight down. Look at him!

    Swithin Forsyte, tall, square, and broad, with a chest like a pouter pigeon’s in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting towards them.

    Er—how are you? he said in his dandified way, aspirating the ‘h’ strongly (this difficult letter was almost absolutely safe in his keeping)—how are you?

    Each brother wore an air of aggravation as he looked at the other two, knowing by experience that they would try to eclipse his ailments.

    We were just saying, said James, that you don’t get any thinner.

    Swithin protruded his pale round eyes with the effort of hearing.

    Thinner? I’m in good case, he said, leaning a little forward, not one of your thread-papers like you!

    But, afraid of losing the expansion of his chest, he leaned back again into a state of immobility, for he prized nothing so highly as a distinguished appearance.

    Aunt Ann turned her old eyes from one to the other. Indulgent and severe was her look. In turn the three brothers looked at Ann. She was getting shaky. Wonderful woman! Eighty-six if a day; might live another ten years, and had never been strong. Swithin and James, the twins, were only seventy-five, Nicholas a mere baby of seventy or so. All were strong, and the inference was comforting. Of all forms of property their respective healths naturally concerned them most.

    I’m very well in myself, proceeded James, but my nerves are out of order. The least thing worries me to death. I shall have to go to Bath.

    Bath! said Nicholas. I’ve tried Harrogate. That’s no good. What I want is sea air. There’s nothing like Yarmouth. Now, when I go there I sleep....

    My liver’s very bad, interrupted Swithin slowly. Dreadful pain here; and he placed his hand on his right side.

    Want of exercise, muttered James, his eyes on the china. He quickly added: I get a pain there, too.

    Swithin reddened, a resemblance to a turkey-cock coming upon his old face.

    Exercise! he said. I take plenty: I never use the lift at the Club.

    I didn’t know, James hurried out. I know nothing about anybody; nobody tells me anything....

    Swithin fixed him with a stare:

    What do you do for a pain there?

    James brightened.

    I take a compound....

    How are you, uncle?

    June stood before him, her resolute small face raised from her little height to his great height, and her hand outheld.

    The brightness faded from James’s visage.

    How are you? he said, brooding over her. So you’re going to Wales to-morrow to visit your young man’s aunts? You’ll have a lot of rain there. This isn’t real old Worcester. He tapped the bowl. Now, that set I gave your mother when she married was the genuine thing.

    June shook hands one by one with her three great-uncles, and turned to Aunt Ann. A very sweet look had come into the old lady’s face, she kissed the girl’s check with trembling fervour.

    Well, my dear, she said, and so you’re going for a whole month!

    The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure. The old lady’s round, steel grey eyes, over which a film like a bird’s was beginning to come, followed her wistfully amongst the bustling crowd, for people were beginning to say good-bye; and her finger-tips, pressing and pressing against each other, were busy again with the recharging of her will against that inevitable ultimate departure of her own.

    ‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘everybody’s been most kind; quite a lot of people come to congratulate her. She ought to be very happy.’ Amongst the throng of people by the door, the well-dressed throng drawn from the families of lawyers and doctors, from the Stock Exchange, and all the innumerable avocations of the upper-middle class—there were only some twenty percent of Forsytes; but to Aunt Ann they seemed all Forsytes—and certainly there was not much difference—she saw only her own flesh and blood. It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps known any other. All their little secrets, illnesses, engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they were making money—all this was her property, her delight, her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day! If life were slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end.

    She thought of June’s father, young Jolyon, who had run away with that foreign girl. And what a sad blow to his father and to them all. Such a promising young fellow! A sad blow, though there had been no public scandal, most fortunately, Jo’s wife seeking for no divorce! A long time ago! And when June’s mother died, six years ago, Jo had married that woman, and they had two children now, so she had heard. Still, he had forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising young fellow! The thought rankled with the bitterness of a long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart. A little water stood in her eyes. With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them stealthily.

    Well, Aunt Ann? said a voice behind.

    Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked, flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to see through the side of his own nose.

    And what do you think of the engagement? he asked.

    Aunt Ann’s eyes rested on him proudly; of all the nephews since young Jolyon’s departure from the family nest, he was now her favourite, for she recognised in him a sure trustee of the family soul that must so soon slip beyond her keeping.

    Very nice for the young man, she said; and he’s a good-looking young fellow; but I doubt if he’s quite the right lover for dear June.

    Soames touched the edge of a gold-lacquered lustre.

    She’ll tame him, he said, stealthily wetting his finger and rubbing it on the knobby bulbs. That’s genuine old lacquer; you can’t get it nowadays. It’d do well in a sale at Jobson’s. He spoke with relish, as though he felt that he was cheering up his old aunt. It was seldom he was so confidential. I wouldn’t mind having it myself, he added; you can always get your price for old lacquer.

    You’re so clever with all those things, said Aunt Ann. And how is dear Irene?

    Soames’s smile died.

    Pretty well, he said. Complains she can’t sleep; she sleeps a great deal better than I do, and he looked at his wife, who was talking to Bosinney by the door.

    Aunt Ann sighed.

    Perhaps, she said, it will be just as well for her not to see so much of June. She’s such a decided character, dear June!

    Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing thoughts.

    I don’t know what she sees in that little flibbertigibbet, he burst out, but noticing that they were no longer alone, he turned and again began examining the lustre.

    They tell me Jolyon’s bought another house, said his father’s voice close by; he must have a lot of money—he must have more money than he knows what to do with! Montpellier Square, they say; close to Soames! They never told me, Irene never tells me anything!

    Capital position, not two minutes from me, said the voice of Swithin, and from my rooms I can drive to the Club in eight.

    The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied therein.

    Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the beginning of the century.

    ‘Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position of a master-builder.

    Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left over thirty thousand pounds between his ten children. Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as ‘A hard, thick sort of man; not much refinement about him.’ The second generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their credit. The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit of drinking Madeira.

    Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus: I don’t recollect that he ever did anything; at least, not in my time. He was er—an owner of houses, my dear. His hair about your Uncle Swithin’s colour; rather a square build. Tall? No—not very tall (he had been five feet five, with a mottled face); a fresh-coloured man. I remember he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father? He—er—had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea.

    James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that they had come from. He found two old farms, with a cart track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a smaller and greyer chapel. The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round that estuary. A haze hovered over the prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.

    Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the best of a bad job.

    There’s very little to be had out of that, he said; regular country little place, old as the hills....

    Its age was felt to be a comfort. Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: Yeomen—I suppose very small beer. Yet he would repeat the word ‘yeomen’ as if it afforded him consolation.

    They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were all what is called ‘of a certain position.’ They had shares in all sorts of things, not as yet—with the exception of Timothy—in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of 3 per cent. for their money. They collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar. Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis. To have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.

    Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own estimations.

    There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane; Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park Mansions—he had never married, not he—the Soamses in their nest off Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince’s Gardens (Roger was that remarkable Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his four sons to a new profession. Collect house property, nothing like it, he would say; I never did anything else).

    The Haymans again—Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte sister—in a house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a giraffe, and so tall that it gave the observer a crick in the neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke Grove, a spacious abode and a great bargain; and last, but not least, Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived under his protection.

    But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square. He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but they wanted such a price.

    Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.

    Twenty-two years to run? repeated James; The very house I was after—you’ve given too much for it!

    Old Jolyon frowned.

    It’s not that I want it, said James hastily; it wouldn’t suit my purpose at that price. Soames knows the house, well—he’ll tell you it’s too dear—his opinion’s worth having.

    I don’t, said old Jolyon, care a fig for his opinion.

    Well, murmured James, you will have your own way—it’s a good opinion. Good-bye! We’re going to drive down to Hurlingham. They tell me June’s going to Wales. You’ll be lonely tomorrow. What’ll you do with yourself? You’d better come and dine with us!

    Old Jolyon refused. He went down to the front door and saw them into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his spleen—Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene—the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.

    During the drive the silence was broken by Mrs. James.

    Did you ever see such a collection of rumty-too people?

    Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks. It is likely enough that each branch of the Forsyte family made that remark as they drove away from old Jolyon’s ‘At Home!’

    Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground. Like all other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it.

    The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and conversation.

    Yes, said Roger, she’s a good-lookin’ woman, that wife of Soames’s. I’m told they don’t get on.

    This brother had a high forehead, and the freshest colour of any of the Forsytes; his light grey eyes measured the street frontage of the houses by the way, and now and then he would level his, umbrella and take a ‘lunar,’ as he expressed it, of the varying heights.

    She’d no money, replied Nicholas.

    He himself had married a good deal of money, of which, it being then the golden age before the Married Women’s Property Act, he had mercifully been enabled to make a successful use.

    What was her father?

    Heron was his name, a Professor, so they tell me.

    Roger shook his head.

    There’s no money in that, he said.

    They say her mother’s father was cement.

    Roger’s face brightened.

    But he went bankrupt, went on Nicholas.

    Ah! exclaimed Roger, Soames will have trouble with her; you mark my words, he’ll have trouble—she’s got a foreign look.

    Nicholas licked his lips.

    She’s a pretty woman, and he waved aside a crossing-sweeper.

    How did he get hold of her? asked Roger presently. She must cost him a pretty penny in dress!

    Ann tells me, replied Nicholas, he was half-cracked about her. She refused him five times. James, he’s nervous about it, I can see.

    Ah! said Roger again; I’m sorry for James; he had trouble with Dartie. His pleasant colour was heightened by exercise, he swung his umbrella to the level of his eye more frequently than ever. Nicholas’s face also wore a pleasant look.

    Too pale for me, he said, but her figures capital!

    Roger made no reply.

    I call her distinguished-looking, he said at last—it was the highest praise in the Forsyte vocabulary. That young Bosinney will never do any good for himself. They say at Burkitt’s he’s one of these artistic chaps—got an idea of improving English architecture; there’s no money in that! I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it.

    They entered the station.

    What class are you going? I go second.

    No second for me, said Nicholas;—you never know what you may catch.

    He took a first-class ticket to Notting Hill Gate; Roger a second to South Kensington. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:

    ‘Always a stubborn beggar, Nick!’

    And as Nicholas expressed it to himself:

    ‘Cantankerous chap Roger—always was!’

    There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?

    Old Jolyon Goes to the Opera

    At five o’clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.

    The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany—a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to say: ‘Shouldn’t wonder if it made a big price some day!’

    It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for things than he had given.

    In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face. An old clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old master.

    He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year’s end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.

    His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.

    He woke. June had gone! James had said he would be lonely. James had always been a poor thing. He recollected with satisfaction that he had bought that house over James’s head.

    Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the fellow thought of was money. Had he given too much, though? It wanted a lot of doing to—He dared say he would want all his money before he had done with this affair of June’s. He ought never to have allowed the engagement. She had met this Bosinney at the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects. He believed that Baynes, whom he knew—a bit of an old woman—was the young man’s uncle by marriage. After that she’d been always running after him; and when she took a thing into her head there was no stopping her. She was continually taking up with ‘lame ducks’ of one sort or another. This fellow had no money, but she must needs become engaged to him—a harumscarum, unpractical chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties.

    She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him; and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:

    He’s so splendid; he’s often lived on cocoa for a week!

    And he wants you to live on cocoa too?

    Oh no; he is getting into the swim now.

    Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches, stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart. He knew more about ‘swims’ than his granddaughter. But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat. And, knocking the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:

    You’re all alike: you won’t be satisfied till you’ve got what you want. If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it.

    So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.

    I shan’t be able to give you very much, he had said, a formula to which June was not unaccustomed. Perhaps this What’s-his-name will provide the cocoa.

    He had hardly seen anything of her since it began. A bad business! He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness. He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it. Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child. He didn’t see where it was to end. They must cut their coat according to their cloth. He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney with an income of his own. That June would have trouble with the fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money than a cow. As to this rushing down to Wales to visit the young man’s aunts, he fully expected they were old cats.

    And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open eyes, he might have been asleep.... The idea of supposing that young cub Soames could give him advice! He had always been a cub, with his nose in the air! He would be setting up as a man of property next, with a place in the country! A man of property! H’mph! Like his father, he was always nosing out bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar!

    He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking his cigar-case from a bundle fresh in. They were not bad at the price, but you couldn’t get a good cigar, nowadays, nothing to hold a candle to those old Superfinos of Hanson and Bridger’s. That was a cigar!

    The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy. How good his cigars were then! Poor old Nick!—dead, and Jack Herring—dead, and Traquair—dead of that wife of his, and Thornworthy—awfully shaky (no wonder, with his appetite).

    Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left, except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was no doing anything with him.

    Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still! Of all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most poignant, the most bitter. With his white head and his loneliness he had remained young and green at heart. And those Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he went for a stretch along the Spaniard’s Road to Highgate, to Child’s Hill, and back over the Heath again to dine at Jack Straw’s Castle—how delicious his cigars were then! And such weather! There was no weather now.

    When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women, her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet his cigars were then!

    Cigars! He had not even succeeded in out-living his palate—the famous palate that in the fifties men swore by, and speaking of him, said: Forsyte’s the best palate in London! The palate that in a sense had made his fortune—the fortune of the celebrated tea men, Forsyte and Treffry, whose tea, like no other man’s tea, had a romantic aroma, the charm of a quite singular genuineness. About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special ships, at special ports, with special Orientals.

    He had worked at that business! Men did work in those days! these young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word. He had gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes sat up all night over it. And he had always chosen his agents himself, prided himself on it. His eye for men, he used to say, had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all that he had really liked. Not a career for a man of his ability. Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited Liability Company, and was declining (he had got out of his shares long ago), he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that time. How much better he might have done! He would have succeeded splendidly at the Bar! He had even thought of standing for Parliament. How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:

    You could do anything, Jo, if you weren’t so d-damned careful of yourself! Dear old Nick! Such a good fellow, but a racketty chap! The notorious Treffry! He had never taken any care of himself. So he was dead. Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he had been too careful of himself.

    He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in, and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister. The house was too big. After June was married, if she ever did marry this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go into rooms. What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants eating their heads off?

    The butler came to the ring of his bell—a large man with a beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence. Old Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to dine at the Club.

    How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the station? Since two? Then let him come round at half-past six!

    The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one of those political institutions of the upper middle class which have seen better days. In spite of being talked about, perhaps in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing vitality. People had grown tired of saying that the ‘Disunion’ was on its last legs. Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to well-constituted Clubmen.

    Why do you keep your name on? Swithin often asked him with profound vexation. Why don’t you join the ‘Polyglot’? You can’t get a wine like our Heidsieck under twenty shillin’ a bottle anywhere in London; and, dropping his voice, he added: There’s only five hundred dozen left. I drink it every night of my life.

    I’ll think of it, old Jolyon would answer; but when he did think of it there was always the question of fifty guineas entrance fee, and it would take him four or five years to get in. He continued to think of it.

    He was too old to be a Liberal, had long ceased to believe in the political doctrines of his Club, had even been known to allude to them as ‘wretched stuff,’ and it afforded him pleasure to continue a member in the teeth of principles so opposed to his own. He had always had a contempt for the place, having joined it many years ago when they refused to have him at the ‘Hotch Potch’ owing to his being ‘in trade.’ As if he were not as good as any of them! He naturally despised the Club that did take him. The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City—stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers—what not! Like most men of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set small store by the class to which he belonged. Faithfully he followed their customs, social and otherwise, and secretly he thought them ‘a common

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1