The Forsyte Saga, Volume 2
PENGUIN BOOKS
The Forsyte Saga
Volume 2
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 2
THE WHITE MONKEY
THE SILVER SPOON
SWAN SONG
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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The White Monkey first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1924
Published in Penguin Books 1967
The Silver Spoon first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1926
Published in Penguin Books 1967
Swan Song first published by William Heinemann Ltd 1928
Published in Penguin Books 1967
These three books (the fourth, fifth and sixth parts of the nine-
volume Forsyte Chronicles) published together in Penguin
Books under the title A Modern Comedy, The Forsyte Chronicles, Vol. 2 1980
Reprinted under the present title in Penguin Classics 2001
12
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 me publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binging or cover other than that in
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EISBN: 978–0–141–90794–9
THE WHITE MONKEY
Contents
Preface
PART ONE
1 Promenade
2 Home
3 Musical
4 Dining
5 Eve
6 ‘Old Forsyte’ and ‘Old Mont’
7 ‘Old Mont’ and ‘Old Forsyte’
8 Bicket
9 Confusion
10 Passing of a Sportsman
11 Venture
12 Figures and Facts
13 Tenterhooks
PART TWO
1 The Mark Falls
2 Victorine
3 Michael Walks and Talks
4 Fleur’s Body
5 Fleur’s Soul
6 Michael Gets ‘What-for’
7 ‘The Altogether’
8 Soames Takes the Matter Up
9 Sleuth
10 Face
11 Cocked Hat
12 Going East
PART THREE
1 Bank Holiday
2 Office Work
3 ‘Afternoon of a Dryad’
4 Afternoon of a Bicket
5 Michael Gives Advice
6 Quittance
7 Looking Into Elderson
8 Levanted
9 Soames Doesn’t Give a Damn
10 But Takes No Chances
11 With a Small ‘n’
12 Ordeal by Shareholder
13 Soames at Bay
14 On the Rack
15 Calm
TO
Max Beerbobm
PREFACE
IN naming this second part of The Forsyte Chronicles ‘A Modern Comedy’ the word comedy is stretched, perhaps, as far as the word Saga was stretched to cover the first part. And yet, what but a comedic view can be taken, what but comedic significance gleaned, of so restive a period as that in which we have lived since the war? An Age which knows not what it wants, yet is intensely preoccupied with getting it, must evoke a smile, if rather a sad one.
To render the forms and colours of an epoch is beyond the powers of any novelist, and very far beyond the powers of this novelist; but to try and express a little of its spirit was undoubtedly at the back of his mind in penning this trilogy. Like the Irishman’s chicken, our Present runs about so fast that it cannot be summed up; it can at most be snapshotted while it hurries looking for its Future without notion where, what, or when that Future will be.
The England of 1886, when the Forsyte Saga began, also had no Future, for England then expected its Present to endure, and rode its bicycle in a sort of dream, disturbed only by two bogles – Mr Gladstone and the Irish Members.
The England of 1926 – when the Modern Comedy closes – with one foot in the air and the other in a Morris Oxford, is going round and round like a kitten after its tail, muttering: ‘If one could only see where one wants to stop!’
Everything being now relative, there is no longer absolute dependence to be placed on God, Free Trade, Marriage, Consols, Coal, or Caste.
Everywhere being now overcrowded, there is no place where anyone can stay for long, except the mere depopulated countryside, admittedly too dull, and certainly too unprofitable to dwell in.
Everyone, having been in an earthquake which lasted four years, has lost the habit of standing still.
And yet, the English character has changed very little, if at all. The General Strike of 1926, with which the last part of this trilogy begins, supplied proof of that. We are still a people that cannot be rushed, distrustful of extremes, saved by the grace of our defensive humour, well-tempered, resentful of interference, improvident and wasteful, but endowed with a certain genius for recovery. If we believe in nothing much else, we still be lieve in ourselves. That salient characteristic of the English will bear thinking about Why, for instance, do we continually run ourselves down? Simply because we have not got the inferiority complex and are indifferent to what other people think of us. No people in the world seems openly less sure of itself; no people is secretly more sure. Incidentall
y, it might be worth the while of those who own certain public mouths inclined to blow the British trumpet to remember, that the blowing of one’s own trumpet is the insidious beginning of the inferiority complex. Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self. The epoch we are passing through is one which favours misjudgement of the English character, and of the position of England. There never was a country where real deterioration of human fibre had less chance than in this island, because there is no other country whose climate is so changeable, so tempering to character, so formative of grit, and so basically healthy. What follows in this preface should be read in the light of that remark.
In the present epoch, no Early Victorianism survives. By Early Victorianism is meant that of the old Forsytes, already on the wane in 1886; what has survived, and potently, is the Victorianism of Soames and his generation, more self-conscious, but not sufficiently self-conscious to be either self-destructive or self-forgetful. It is against the background of this more or less fixed quantity that we can best see the shape and colour of the present intensely self-conscious and all-questioning generation. The old Forsytes – Old Jolyon, Swithin and James, Roger, Nicholas and Timothy – lived their lives without ever asking whether life was worth living. They found it interesting, very absorbing from day to day, and even if they had no very intimate belief in a future life, they had very great faith in the progress of their own positions, and in laying up treasure for their children. Then came Young Jolyon and Soames and their contemporaries, who, although they had imbibed, with Darwinism and the ’Varsities, definite doubts about a future life, and sufficient introspection to wonder whether they themselves were progressing, retained their sense of property and their desire to provide for, and to live on in their progeny. The generation which came in when Queen Victoria went out, through new ideas about the treatment of children, because of new modes of locomotion, and owing to the Great War, has decided that everything requires re-valuation. And, since there is, seemingly, very little future before property, and less before life, is determined to live now or never, without bothering about the fate of such offspring as it may chance to have. Not that the present generation is less fond of its children than were past generations – human nature does not change on points so elementary – but when everything is keyed to such a pitch of uncertainty, to secure the future at the expense of the present no longer seems worth while.
This is really the fundamental difference between the present and the past generations. People will not provide against that which they cannot see ahead.
All this, of course, refers only to that tenth or so of the population whose eyes are above the property line; below that line there are no Forsytes, and therefore no need for this preface to dip. What average Englishman, moreover, with less than three hundred a year ever took thought for the future, even in Early Victorian days?
This Modern Comedy, then, is staged against a background of that more or less fixed quantity, Soames, and his co-father-in-law, light weight and ninth baronet, Sir Lawrence Mont, with such subsidiary neo-Victorians as the self-righteous Mr Danby, Elderson, Mr Blythe, Sir James Foskisson, Wilfred Bentworth, and Hilary Charwell. Pooling their idiosyncrasies, qualities, and mental attitudes, one gets a fairly comprehensive and steady past against which to limn the features of the present – Fleur and Michael, Wilfrid Desert, Aubrey Greene, Marjorie Ferrar, Norah Curfew, Jon, the Rafaelite, and other minor characters. The multiple types and activities of today – even above the Plimsoll line of property – would escape the confines of twenty novels, so that this Modern Comedy is bound to be a gross understatement of the present generation, but not perhaps a libel on it. Symbolism is boring, so let us hope that a certain, resemblance between the case of Fleur and that of her generation chasing the serenity of which it has been defrauded may escape notice. The fact remains that for the moment, at least, youth is balancing, twirling on the tiptoes of uncertainty. What is to come? Will contentment yet be caught? How will it all settle down? Will things ever again settle down – who knows? Are there to come fresh wars, and fresh inventions hot-foot on those not yet mastered and digested? Or will Fate decree another pause, like that of Victorian times, during which revaluated life will crystallize, and give property and its brood of definite beliefs a further innings?
But, however much or little ‘A Modern Comedy’ may be deemed to reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881, a tale which could but end when its spine snapped, and Soames ‘took the ferry’ forty-five years later.
The chronicler, catechized (as he often is) concerning Soames, knows not precisely what he stands for. Taking him for all in all he was honest, anyway. He lived and moved and had his peculiar being, and now he sleeps. His creator may be pardoned for thinking there was something fitting about his end, for, however far we have travelled from Greek culture and philosophy, there is still truth in the old Greek proverb: ‘That which a man most loves shall in the end destroy him.’
JOHN GALSWORTHY
‘No retreat, no retreat
They must conquer or die
Who have no retreat!’
Mr Gay
PART ONE
Chapter One
PROMENADE
COMING down the steps of ‘Snooks’ Club, so nicknamed by George Forsyte in the late eighties, on that momentous mid-October afternoon of 1922, Sir Lawrence Mont, ninth baronet, set his fine nose towards the east wind, and moved his thin legs with speed. Political by birth rather than by nature, he reviewed the revolution which had restored his Party to power with a detachment not devoid of humour. Passing the Remove Club, he thought: ‘Some sweating into shoes, there! No more confectioned dishes. A woodcock – without trimmings, for a change!’
The captains and the kings had departed from ‘Snooks’ before he entered it, for he was not of ‘that catch-penny crew, now paid off, no sir; fellows who turned their tails on the land the moment the war was over. Pah!’ But for an hour he had listened to echoes, and his lively twisting mind, embedded in deposits of the past, sceptical of the present and of all political protestations and pronouncements, had recorded with amusement the confusion of patriotism and personalities left behind by the fateful gathering. Like most landowners, he distrusted doctrine. If he had a political belief, it was a tax on wheat; and so far as he could see, he was now alone in it – but then he was not seeking election; in other words, his principle was not in danger of extinction from the votes of those who had to pay for bread. Principles – he mused – au fond were pocket; and he wished the deuce people wouldn’t pretend they weren’t! Pocket, in the deep sense of that word, of course, self-interest as member of a definite community. And how the devil was this definite community, the English nation, to exist, when all its land was going out of cultivation, and all its ships and docks in danger of destruction by aeroplanes? He had listened that hour past for a single mention of the land. Not one! It was not practical politics! Confound the fellows! They had to wear their breeches out – keeping seats or getting them. No connexion between posteriors and posterity! No, by George! Thus reminded of posterity, it occurred to him rather suddenly that his son’s wife showed no signs as yet. Two years! Time they were thinking about children. It was dangerous to get into the habit of not having them, when a title and estate depended. A smile twisted his lips and eyebrows which resembled spinneys of dark pothooks. A pretty young creature, most taking; and knew it, too! Whom was she not getting to know? Lions and tigers, monkeys and cats – her house was becoming quite a menagerie of more or less celebrities. There was a certain unreality about that sort of thing! And opposite a British lion in Trafalgar Square Sir Lawrence thought: ‘She’ll be getting these to her house next! She’s got the collecting habit. Michael must look out – in a collector’s house there’s always a lumber-room for old junk, and husbands are liable to get into it. That reminds me: I promised
her a Chinese Minister. Well, she must wait now till after the General Election.’
Down Whitehall, under the grey easterly sky, the towers of Westminster came for a second into view. ‘A certain unreality in that, too,’ he thought. ‘Michael and his fads! Well, it’s the fashion – Socialistic principles and a rich wife. Sacrifice with safety! Peace with plenty! Nostrums – ten a penny!’
Passing the newspaper hubbub of Charing Cross, frenzied by the political crisis, he turned up to the left towards Danby and Winter, publishers, where his son was junior partner. A new theme for a book had just begun to bend a mind which had already produced a Life of Montrose, Far Cathay, that work of Eastern travel, and a fanciful conversation between the shades of Gladstone, and Disraeli – entitled A Duet. With every step taken, from ‘Snooks’ eastward, his erect thin figure in Astrakhan-collared coat, his thin grey-moustached face, and tortoise-shell rimmed monocle under the lively dark eyebrow, had seemed more rare. It became almost a phenomenon in this dingy back street, where carts stuck like winter flies, and persons went by with books under their arms, as if educated.
He had nearly reached the door of Danby’s when he encountered two young men. One of them was clearly his son, better dressed since his marriage, and smoking a cigar – thank goodness – instead of those eternal cigarettes; the other – ah! yes – Michael’s sucking poet and best man, head in air, rather a sleek head under a velour hat! He said:
‘Ha, Michael!’
‘Hallo, Bart! You know my governor, Wilfrid? Wilfrid Desert. Copper Coin – some poet, Bart, I tell you. You must read him. We’re going home. Come along!’
Sir Lawrence went along.
‘What happened at “Snooks”?’
‘Le roi est mort. Labour can start lying, Michael – election next month.’
‘Bart was brought up, Wilfrid, in days that knew not Demos.’