The Forsyte Saga, Volume 1 Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  The Forsyte Saga

  Volume 1

  John Galsworthy, the son of a solicitor, was born in 1867 and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1890, but a chance meeting with Joseph Conrad, and the strong influence of his future wife, turned him to writing. A collection of short stories, From the Four Winds (1897), was followed by a novel entitled Jocelyn (1898). The Man of Property appeared in 1906 and, together with In Chancery and To Let, completed the first volume of the Forsyte trilogy, The Forsyte Saga, published in 1922. His playwrighting career began in 1906 with The Silver Box, the first of a long line of plays with social and moral themes. The second Forsyte trilogy, which contained The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon and Swan Song, was published as A Modern Comedy in 1929. In 1931 Galsworthy followed the immense success of the Forsyte books with a further collection of stories, On Forsyte ‘Change. The final Forsyte trilogy, containing Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness and Over the River, was published posthumously as The End of the Chapter in 1934. The nine novels in his three Forsyte trilogies are all published by Penguin. A television serial of the Forsyte chronicles, presented by the BBC in 1967, received great critical acclaim in Great Britain and over the world.

  The first President of the PEN Club, John Galsworthy was the recipient of several honorary degrees and other literary honours. He was made an OM in 1929 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He lived on Dartmoor for many years and afterwards at Bury on the Sussex Downs. He died in 1933.

  John Galsworthy

  THE FORSYTE SAGA

  Volume 1

  THE MAN OF PROPERTY

  IN CHANCERY

  TO LET

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  in association with William Heinemann Ltd

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  The Man of Property first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1906

  Published in Penguin Books 1951

  In Chancery first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1920

  Published in Penguin Books 1962

  To Let first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1921

  Published in Penguin Books 1967

  These first three books of The Forsyte Chronicles (nine volumes)

  published together in Penguin Books under the title

  The Forsyte Saga The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. I 1978

  Reprinted under the present title in Penguin Classics 2001

  15

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

  to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

  re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  EISBN: 978–0–141–90796–3

  THE MAN OF PROPERTY

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1 ‘At Home’ at Old Jolyon’s

  2 Old Jolyon Goes to the Opera

  3 Dinner at Swithin’s

  4 Projection of the House

  5 A Forsyte Ménage

  6 James at Large

  7 Old Jolyon’s Peccadillo

  8 Plans of the House

  9 Death of Aunt Ann

  PART TWO

  1 Progress of the House

  2 June’s Treat

  3 Drive with Swithin

  4 James Goes to See for Himself

  5 Soames and Bosinney Correspond

  6 Old Jolyon at the Zoo

  7 Afternoon at Timothy’s

  8 Dance at Roger’s

  9 Evening at Richmond

  10 Diagnosis of a Forsyte

  11 Bosinney on Parole

  12 June Pays some Calls

  13 Perfection of the House

  14 Soames Sits on the Stairs

  PART THREE

  1 Mrs MacAnder’s Evidence

  2 Night in the Park

  3 Meeting at the Botanical

  4 Voyage into the Inferno

  5 The Trial

  6 Soames Breaks the News

  7 June’s Victory

  8 Bosinney’s Departure

  9 Irene’s Return

  Interlude

  TO

  Edward Garnett

  ‘… You will answer

  The slaves are ours…’

  MERCHANT OF VENICE

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  ‘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, 1886, 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 guest
s, 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 ‘at 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 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 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 cheekbones, and hollow cheeks. 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.