Man of Property

Man of Property

Project Gutenberg EBook of Man of Property, by John Galsworthy #4
in our series by John Galsworthy #1 in our series of The Forsyte Saga
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Title: Man of Property, by John Galsworthy
Author: John Galsworthy
Release Date: March, 2001 [Etext #2559] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [Most recently updated: April 6, 2003]
Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OF
PROPERT, GALSWORTHY ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]]
Extensive proofing for this edition was done by Fredrik Hausmann

[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
I. THE MAN OF PROPERTY
By John Galsworthy

VOLUME I

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 beat 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