The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy, by John Galsworthy

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Title: The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: September 27, 2004 [EBook #3254]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PG GALSWORTHY ***

Produced by David Widger, Don Lainson, and Several Project Gutenberg Volunteers

THE ENTIRE PROJECT GUTENBERG GALSWORTHY FILES

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

[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" as in colour and flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]

FORSYTE SAGA

Complete

By John Galsworthy

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