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The Forsyte Saga By: John Galsworthy (1867-1933) |
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Complete
By John Galsworthy
[ED. NOTE: The spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our
"z's"; and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" in colour
and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
Contents: Part 1. The Man of Property Part 2. Indian Summer of a Forsyte
In Chancery Part 3. Awakening
To Let
THE MAN OF PROPERTY 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 I 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 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... Continue reading book >>
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