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THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY JOHN GALSWORTHY THE ENTIRE GUTENBERG GALSWORTHY FILES
CONTENTS:
The Forsyte Saga:
Volume 1. The Man of Property
Volume 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery
Volume 3. Awakening
To Let
Other Novels:
The Dark Flower
The Freelands
Beyond
Villa Rubein and Other Stories
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence
Saint's Progress
The Island Pharisees
The Country House
Fraternity
The Patrician
The Burning Spear
Five Short Tales
The First and Last
A Stoic
The Apple Tree
The Juryman
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
Essays and Studies:
Concerning Life
Inn of Tranquility
Magpie over the Hill
Sheep-shearing
Evolution
Riding in the Mist
The Procession
A Christian
Wind in the Rocks
My Distant Relative
The Black Godmother
Quality
The Grand Jury
Gone
Threshing
That Old-time Place
Romance--three Gleams
Memories
Felicity
Concerning Letters
A Novelist's Allegory
Some Platitudes Concerning Drama
Meditation on Finality
Wanted--Schooling
On Our Dislike of Things as They Are
The Windlestraw
About Censorship
Vague Thoughts on Art
Plays:
First Series:
The Silver Box
Joy
Strife
Second Series:
The Eldest Son
The Little Dream
Justice
Third Series:
The Fugitive
The Pigeon
The Mob
Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love
The Foundations
The Skin Game
Six Short Plays:
The First and The Last
The Little Man
Hall-marked
Defeat
The Sun
Punch and Go
Fifth Series:
A Family Man
Loyalties
Windows
FORSYTE SAGA--Complete
By John Galsworthy
[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's";
and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour
and flavour; and many interesting double consonants; etc.]
FORSYTE SAGA
I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY
By John Galsworthy
VOLUME I
TO MY WIFE:
I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY
BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST
UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT
SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM COULD NEVER HAVE
BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM.
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 beat 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
by JOHN GALSWORTHY
"........ You will answer
The slaves are ours ....."
-Merchant of Venice.
TO EDWARD GARNETT
PART I
CHAPTER 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 comer 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 him self
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 for tunes.
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!"
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