The Forsyte Saga 2: In Chancery

by John Galsworthy

Genres: General Fiction; Classics

Synopsis

The three novels that make up this trilogy have long been recognized as masterpieces of 20th-century literature, and Galsworthy as one of its leading exponents. But don’t let that be the reason you put off listening to this wonderful work. There are passion and lust in these pages, high art and low comedy, and unthinking violence that ride alongside ever-correct manners. Scandal, tragedy, despair, rape, accidental death, marriage, remarriage and a healthy leavening of births all unfold against a rolling backdrop of a world war.

Release date: August 4, 2011

Publisher: Recorded Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

John Galsworthy was born on August 14, 1867, at Kingston Hill in Surrey, the son of John and Blanche Galsworthy and the second
of four children. John Galsworthy senior, whose family came from Devon, was a successful solicitor in London and a man of
‘new money’, determined to provide privilege and security for his family. They idolised him. By contrast, their mother Blanche
was a more difficult woman, strict and distant. Galsworthy commented, ‘My father really predominated in me from the start
. . . I was so truly and deeply fond of him that I seemed not to have a fair share of love left to give my mother’.


Young Johnny enjoyed the happy, secure childhood of a Victorian, upper-middle-class family. Educated at Harrow, he was popular
at school and a good sportsman. Holidays were spent with family and friends, moving between their country houses. After finishing
school, John went up to New College, Oxford to read law. There he enjoyed the carefree life of a privileged student, not working
particularly hard, gambling and becoming known as ‘the best dressed man in College’. But he could also be quiet and serious,
a contemporary describing how ‘He moved among us somewhat withdrawn . . . a sensitive, amused, somewhat cynical spectator
of the human scene’.


The period after university was one of indecision for Galsworthy. Although his father wanted him to become a barrister, the
law held little appeal. So he decided to get away from it all and travel. It was on a voyage in the South Seas in 1893 that
he met Joseph Conrad, and the two became close friends. It was a crucial friendship in Galsworthy’s life. Conrad encouraged
his love of writing, but Galsworthy attributes his final inspiration to the woman he was falling in love with: Ada.


Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper married Major Arthur Galsworthy, John’s cousin, in 1891. But the marriage was a tragic mistake.
Embraced by the entire family, Ada became close friends with John’s beloved sisters, Lilian and Mabel, and through them John
heard of her increasing misery, fixing in his imagination the pain of an unhappy marriage. Thrown together more and more,
John and Ada eventually became lovers in September 1895. They were unafraid of declaring their relationship and facing the
consequences, but the only person they couldn’t bear to hurt was John’s adored father, with his traditional values. And so
they endured ten years of secrecy until Galsworthy’s father died in December 1904. By September 1905 Ada’s divorce had come through and they were finally able
to marry.


It was around this time, in 1906, that Galsworthy’s writing career flourished. During the previous decade he had been a man
‘in chains’, emotionally and professionally, having finally abandoned law in 1894. He struggled to establish himself as an
author. But after many false starts and battling a lifelong insecurity about his writing, Galsworthy turned an affectionately
satirical eye on the world he knew best and created the indomitable Forsytes, a mirror image of his own relations – old Jolyon:
his father; Irene: his beloved Ada, to name but a few. On reading the manuscript, his sister Lilian was alarmed that he could
so expose their private lives, but John dismissed her fears saying only herself, Mabel and their mother, ‘who perhaps had
better not read the book’, knew enough to draw comparisons. The Man of Property, the first book in The Forsyte Saga, was published to instant acclaim; Galsworthy’s fame as an author was now sealed.


By the time the first Forsyte trilogy had been completed, with In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921), sales of The Forsyte Saga had reached one million on both sides of the Atlantic. With the public clambering for more, Galsworthy followed these with
six more Forsyte novels, the last of which, Over The River, was completed just before his death in 1933. And their appeal endures, immortalised on screen in much-loved adaptations
such as the film That Forsyte Woman (1949), starring Errol Flynn. The celebrated BBC drama in 1967 with Kenneth Moore and Eric Porter was a phenomenal success,
emptying the pubs and churches of Britain on a Sunday evening, and reaching an estimated worldwide audience of 160 million.
The recent popular 2002 production starred Damien Lewis, Rupert Graves and Ioan Gruffudd and won a Bafta TV award.


Undoubtedly The Forsyte Saga is Galsworthy’s most distinguished work, but he was well known, if not more successful in his time, as a dramatist. His inherent
compassion meant Galsworthy was always involved in one cause or another, from women’s suffrage to a ban on ponies in mines,
and his plays very much focus on the social injustices of his day. The Silver Box (1906) was his first major success, but Justice (1910), a stark depiction of prison life, had an even bigger impact. Winston Churchill was so impressed by it that he immediately
arranged for prison reform, reducing the hours of solitary confinement. The Skin Game (1920) was another big hit and later adapted into a film, under the same title, by Alfred Hitchcock.


Despite Galsworthy’s literary success, his personal life was still troubled. Although he and Ada were deeply in love, the
years of uncertainty had taken their toll. They never had children and their marriage reached a crisis in 1910 when Galsworthy
formed a close friendship with a young dancer called Margaret Morris while working on one of his plays with her. But John,
confused and tortured by the thought of betraying Ada, broke off all contact with Margaret in 1912 and went abroad with his
wife. The rest of their lives were spent constantly on the move; travelling in America, Europe, or at home in London, Dartmoor
and later Sussex. Numerous trips were made in connection with PEN, the international writers club, after Galsworthy was elected
its first president in 1921. Many people have seen the constant travelling as unsettling for Galsworthy and destructive to
his writing, but being with Ada was all that mattered to him: ‘This is what comes of giving yourself to a woman body and soul.
A. paralyses and has always paralysed me. I have never been able to face the idea of being cut off from her.’


By the end of his life, Galsworthy, the man who had railed against poverty and injustice, had become an established, reputable
figure in privileged society. Having earlier refused a knighthood, he was presented with an Order of Merit in 1929. And in
1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Although it was fashionable for younger writers to mock the traditional
Edwardian authors, Virginia Woolf dismissing Galsworthy as a ‘stuffed shirt’, J.M. Barrie perceived his contradictory nature:
‘A queer fish, like the rest of us. So sincerely weighed down by the out-of-jointness of things socially . . . but outwardly
a man-about-town, so neat, so correct – he would go to the stake for his opinions but he would go courteously raising his
hat.’


John Galsworthy died on 31 January, 1933, at the age of sixty-five, at Grove Lodge in Hampstead, with Ada by his side. At
his request, his ashes were scattered over Bury Hill in Sussex. The Times hailed him as the ‘mouthpiece’ of his age, ‘the interpreter in drama, and in fiction of a definite phase in English social
history’.


The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression
even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever. Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than
the quality of potato from the soil.


The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-contented
and contained provincialism to still more self-contented if less contained imperialism – in other words, the ‘possessive’
instinct of the nation on the move. And so, as if in conformity, was it with the Forsyte family. They were spreading not merely
on the surface, but within.


When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four,
and was cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left. For this apathy there were three causes.
First: the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill – first of the Forsytes to desert the family
grave at Highgate. That burial, coming a year after Swithin’s entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk
on Forsyte ’Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still collected and radiated family
gossip. Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie that it was ‘a jolly good
thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate business’. Uncle Jolyon in his later years – indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable
affair between his granddaughter June’s lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte’s wife – had noticeably rapped the family’s knuckles; and that way of his own which he had always taken had
begun to seem to them a little wayward. The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop out of
the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot. But the whole thing was
an odd business, and when the contents of his will became current coin on Forsyte ’Change, a shiver had gone round the clan.
Out of his estate (£145,304 gross, with liabilities £35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left £15,000 to ‘whomever do you think, my
dear? To Irene!’ that runaway wife of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and – still more amazing –
was to him no blood relation. Not out and out, of course; only a life interest – only the income from it! Still, there it
was; and old Jolyon’s claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once for all. That, then, was the first reason why the burial
of Susan Hayman – at Woking – made little stir.


The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial. Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her
by Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had learned to be such good shots and riders,
as it was believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the fact of owning something really
countrified seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains – though what could have put cremation into her head they
could not think! The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and young Nicholas, and the will
had been quite satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had gone quite smoothly
to the children in equal shares.


The third reason why Susan’s burial made little stir was the most expansive of all. It was summed up daringly by Euphemia,
the pale, the thin: ‘Well, I think people have a right to their own bodies, even when they’re dead.’ Coming from a daughter of Nicholas, a Liberal of
the old school and most tyrannical, it was a startling remark – showing in a flash what a lot of water had run under bridges
since the death of Aunt Ann in ’86, just when the proprietorship of Soames over his wife’s body was acquiring the uncertainty
which had led to such disaster. Euphemia, of course, spoke like a child, and had no experience; for though well over thirty by now, her name
was still Forsyte. But, making all allowances, her remark did undoubtedly show expansion of the principle of liberty, decentralisation
and shift in the central point of possession from others to oneself. When Nicholas heard his daughter’s remark from Aunt Hester
he had rapped out: ‘Wives and daughters! There’s no end to their liberty in these days. I knew that “Jackson” case would lead
to things – lugging in Habeas Corpus like that!’ He had, of course, never really forgiven the Married Woman’s Property Act,
which would so have interfered with him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed. But, in truth, there was no
denying the revolt among the younger Forsytes against being owned by others; that, as it were, Colonial disposition to own
oneself, which is the paradoxical forerunner of Imperialism, was making progress all the time. They were all now married,
except George, confirmed to the Turf and the Iseeum Club; Francie, pursuing her musical career in a studio off the King’s
Road, Chelsea, and still taking ‘lovers’ to dances; Euphemia, living at home and complaining of Nicholas; and those two Dromios,
Giles and Jesse Hayman. Of the third generation there were not very many – young Jolyon had three, Winifred Dartie four, young
Nicholas six already, young Roger had one, Marian Tweetyman one; St John Hayman two. But the rest of the sixteen married –
Soames, Rachel and Cicely of James’ family; Eustace and Thomas of Roger’s; Ernest, Archibald and Florence of Nicholas’; Augustus
and Annabel Spender of the Haymans’ – were going down the years unreproduced.


Thus, of the ten old Forsytes twenty-one young Forsytes had been born; but of the twenty-one young Forsytes there were as
yet only seventeen descendants; and it already seemed unlikely that there would be more than a further unconsidered trifle
or so. A student of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of interest for
your money. Grandfather ‘Superior Dosset’ Forsyte in the early nineteenth century had been getting ten per cent for his, hence
ten children. Those ten, leaving out the four who had not married, and Juley, whose husband Septimus Small had, of course,
died almost at once, had averaged from four to five per cent for theirs, and produced accordingly. The twenty-one whom they produced were now getting barely three per cent in the
Consols to which their father had mostly tied the Settlements they made to avoid death duties, and the six of them who had
been reproduced had seventeen children, or just the proper two and five-sixths per stem.


There were other reasons, too, for this mild reproduction. A distrust of their earning powers, natural where a sufficiency
is guaranteed, together with the knowledge that their fathers did not die, kept them cautious. If one had children and not
much income, the standard of taste and comfort must of necessity go down; what was enough for two was not enough for four,
and so on – it would be better to wait and see what Father did. Besides, it was nice to be able to take holidays unhampered.
Sooner in fact than own children, they preferred to concentrate on the ownership of themselves, conforming to the growing
tendency – fin de siècle, as it was called. In this way, little risk was run, and one would be able to have a motor-car. Indeed, Eustace already had
one, but it had shaken him horribly, and broken one of his eye teeth; so that it would be better to wait till they were a
little safer. In the meantime, no more children! Even young Nicholas was drawing in his horns, and had made no addition to
his six for quite three years.


The corporate decay, however, of the Forsytes, their dispersion rather, of which all this was symptomatic, had not advanced
so far as to prevent a rally when Roger Forsyte died in 1899. It had been a glorious summer, and after holidays abroad and
at the sea they were practically all back in London, when Roger with a touch of his old originality had suddenly breathed
his last at his own house in Princes Gardens. At Timothy’s it was whispered sadly that poor Roger had always been eccentric
about his digestion – had he not, for instance, preferred German mutton to all the other brands?


Be that as it may, his funeral at Highgate had been perfect, and coming away from it Soames Forsyte made almost mechanically
for his Uncle Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road. The ‘Old Things’ – Aunt Juley and Aunt Hester – would like to hear about it.
His father – James – at eighty-eight had not felt up to the fatigue of the funeral; and Timothy himself, of course, had not gone; so that Nicholas had been the only brother present. Still, there had been a
fair gathering; and it would cheer Aunts Juley and Hester up to know. The kindly thought was not unmixed with the inevitable
longing to get something out of everything you do, which is the chief characteristic of Forsytes, and indeed of the saner
elements in every nation. In this practice of taking family matters to Timothy’s in the Bayswater Road, Soames was but following
in the footsteps of his father, who had been in the habit of going at least once a week to see his sisters at Timothy’s, and
had only given it up when he lost his nerve at eighty-six, and could not go out without Emily. To go with Emily was of no
use, for who could really talk to anyone in the presence of his own wife? Like James in the old days, Soames found time to
go there nearly every Sunday, and sit in the little drawing-room into which, with his undoubted taste, he had introduced a
good deal of change and china not quite up to his own fastidious mark, and at least two rather doubtful Barbizon pictures,
at Christmastides. He himself, who had done extremely well with the Barbizons, had for some years past moved towards the Marises,
Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better. In the riverside house which he now inhabited near Mapledurham he had a gallery,
beautifully hung and lighted, to which few London dealers were strangers. It served, too, as a Sunday afternoon attraction
in those week-end parties which his sisters, Winifred or Rachel, occasionally organised for him. For though he was but a taciturn
showman, his quiet collected determinism seldom failed to influence his guests, who knew that his reputation was grounded
not on mere aesthetic fancy, but on his power of gauging the future of market values. When he went to Timothy’s he almost
always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo of pride with which his aunts
would greet it. This afternoon, however, he was differently animated, coming from Roger’s funeral in his neat dark clothes
– not quite black, for after all an uncle was but an uncle, and his soul abhorred excessive display of feeling. Leaning back
in a marqueterie chair and gazing down his uplifted nose at the sky-blue walls plastered with gold frames, he was noticeably
silent. Whether because he had been to a funeral or not, the peculiar Forsyte build of his face was seen to the best advantage this afternoon – a face concave and long, with
a jaw which divested of flesh would have seemed extravagant: altogether a chinny face though not at all ill-looking. He was
feeling more strongly than ever that Timothy’s was hopelessly ‘rum-ti-too’ and the souls of his aunts dismally mid-Victorian.
The subject on which alone he wanted to talk – his own undivorced position – was unspeakable. And yet it occupied his mind
to the exclusion of all else. It was only since the spring that this had been so and a new feeling grown up which was egging
him on towards what he knew might well be folly in a Forsyte of forty-five. More and more of late he had been conscious that
he was ‘getting on’. The fortune already considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had finally wrecked
his marriage with Irene, had mounted with surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had devoted himself
to little else. He was worth to-day well over a hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to – no real object for
going on with what was his religion. Even if he were to relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have
a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was. There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side
to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now had crept out again in this his ‘prime of life’. Concreted
and focused of late by the attraction of a girl’s undoubted beauty, it had become a veritable prepossession.


And this girl was French, not likely to lose her head, or accept any unlegalised position. Moreover, Soames himself disliked
the thought of that. He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of forced celibacy, secretively, and
always with disgust, for he was fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate. He wanted no hole and corner liaison. A
marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few months’ travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated from a past which
in truth was not too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her mother’s Soho restaurant; he could bring her back
as something very new and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at ‘The Shelter’ near Mapledurham. On Forsyte
’Change and among his riverside friends it would be current that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married her. There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain
cachet about a French wife. No! He was not at all afraid of that. It was only this cursed undivorced condition of his, and – and
the question whether Annette would take him, which he dared not put to the touch until he had a clear and even dazzling future
to offer her.


In his aunts’ drawing-room he heard with but muffled ears those usual questions: How was his dear father? Not going out, of
course, now that the weather was turning chilly? Would Soames be sure to tell him that Hester had found boiled holly leaves
most comforting for that pain in her side; a poultice every three hours, with red flannel afterwards. And could he relish
just a little pot of their very best prune preserve – it was so delicious this year, and had such a wonderful effect. Oh!
and about the Darties – had Soames heard that dear Winifred was having a most distressing time with Montague? Timothy thought she really ought to have
protection. It was said – but Soames mustn’t take this for certain – that he had given some of Winifred’s jewellery to a dreadful
dancer. It was such a bad example for dear Val just as he was going to college. Soames had not heard? Oh, but he must go and
see his sister and look into it at once! And did he think these Boers were really going to resist? Timothy was in quite a
stew about it. The price of Consols was so high, and he had such a lot of money in them. Did Soames think they must go down
if there was a war? Soames nodded. But it would be over very quickly. It would be so bad for Timothy if it wasn’t. And of
course Soames’ dear father would feel it very much at his age. Luckily poor dear Roger had been spared this dreadful anxiety.
And Aunt Juley with a little handkerchief wiped away the large tear trying to climb the permanent pout on her now quite withered
left cheek; she was remembering dear Roger, and all his originality, and how he used to stick pins into her when they were
little together. Aunt Hester, with her instinct for avoiding the unpleasant, here chimed in: Did Soames think they would make
Mr Chamberlain Prime Minister at once? He would settle it all so quickly. She would like to see that old Kruger sent to St
Helena. She could remember so well the news of Napoleon’s death, and what a relief it had been to his grandfather. Of course she and Juley – ‘We were in pantalettes then, my dear’ – had not felt it much at the time.


Soames took a cup of tea from her, drank it quickly, and ate three of those macaroons for which Timothy’s was famous. His
faint, pale, supercilious smile had deepened just a little. Really, his family remained hopelessly provincial, however much
of London they might possess between them. In these go-ahead days their provincialism stared out even more than it used to.
Why, old Nicholas was still a Free Trader, and a member of that antediluvian home of Liberalism, the Remove Club – though,
to be sure, the members were pretty well all Conservatives now, or he himself could not have joined; and Timothy, they said,
still wore a nightcap. Aunt Juley spoke again. Dear Soames was looking so well, hardly a day older than he did when dear Ann
died, and they were all there together, dear Jolyon, and dear Swithin, and dear Roger. She paused and caught the tear which
had climbed the pout on her right cheek. Did he – did he ever hear anything of Irene nowadays? Aunt Hester visibly interposed
her shoulder. Really, Juley was always saying something! The smile left Soames’ face, and he put his cup down. Here was his
subject broached for him, and for all his desire to expand, he could not take advantage.


Aunt Juley went on rather hastily:

‘They say dear Jolyon first left her that fifteen thousand out and out; then of course he saw it would not be right, and made
it for her life only.’


Had Soames heard that?

Soames nodded.

‘Your cousin Jolyon is a widower now. He is her trustee; you knew that, of course?’

Soames shook his head. He did know, but wished to show no interest. Young Jolyon and he had not met since the day of Bosinney’s
death.


‘He must be quite middle-aged by now,’ went on Aunt Juley dreamily. ‘Let me see, he was born when your dear uncle lived in
Mount Street; long before they went to Stanhope Gate in December ’47. Just before that dreadful Commune. Over fifty! Fancy
that! Such a pretty baby, and we were all so proud of him; the very first of you all.’ Aunt Juley sighed, and a lock of not quite her
own hair came loose and straggled, so that Aunt Hester gave a little shiver. Soames rose, he was experiencing a curious piece
of self-discovery. That old wound to his pride and self-esteem was not yet closed. He had come thinking he could talk of it,
even wanting to talk of his fettered condition, and – behold! he was shrinking away from this reminder by Aunt Juley, renowned
for her Malapropisms.


Oh, Soames was not going already!

Soames smiled a little vindictively, and said:

‘Yes. Good-bye. Remember me to Uncle Timothy!’ And, leaving a cold kiss on each forehead, whose wrinkles seemed to try and
cling to his lips as if longing to be kissed away, he left them looking brightly after him – dear Soames, it had been so good
of him to come to-day, when they were not feeling very—!


With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs, where there was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor
and port wine, and house where draughts are not permitted. The poor old things – he had not meant to be unkind! And in the
street he instantly forgot them, repossessed by the image of Annette and the thought of the cursed coil around him. Why had
he not pushed the thing through and obtained divorce when that wretched Bosinney was run ove. . .