Forsythe

“ I'm no telepath—and they're getting a pretty good idea of what's going on in Forsythe's mind.
"Every once in a while, he gets a real flash of something, and it apparently comes pretty fast. The team is trying to analyze the fine-grain structure of the process now.
"The rest of the time, he simply gives out with the old guff that phony crystal-ball gazers have been giving out for centuries. Even when he gets a real flash, he piles on a lot of intuitive extrapolation. And the farther he gets from that central flash, the less reliable the predictions are." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the more cultivated American tongue, she was “through” at last—through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound economy of a Forsyte. Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting her eye over it all.
To the hired butler (for Roger only kept maids) she spoke about the wine. Did he quite understand that Mr. Forsyte wished a dozen bottles of the champagne from Whiteley’s to be put out? ”

“ Emily, who thought she knew him so well, was alarmed, and went towards the sideboard where she kept some sal volatile. She could not see the tenacious Forsyte spirit working in that thin, tremulous shape against the extravagance of the emotion called up by this outrage on Forsyte principles—the Forsyte spirit deep in there, saying: “You mustn’t get into a fantod, it’ll never do. You won’t digest your lunch. You’ll have a fit!” All unseen by her, it was doing better work in James than sal volatile. ”

“ George Forsyte, of course, was an old chap, but this Profond might be about his own age; Val felt extremely young, as if the Mayfly filly were a toy at which those two had laughed. The animal had lost reality.
“That 'small' mare”—he seemed to hear the voice of Monsieur Profond—“what do you see in her?—we must all die!”
And George Forsyte, crony of his father, racing still! The Mayfly strain—was it any better than any other? He might just as well have a flutter with his money instead.
“No, by gum!” he muttered suddenly, “if it's no good breeding horses, it's no good doing anything. ”

“ He remembered George Forsyte—whose brothers Roger and Eustace had been at Harrow and Eton—towering up on the top of the drag waving a light-blue flag with one hand and a dark-blue flag with the other, and shouting “Etroow-Harrton!” Just when everybody was silent, like the buffoon he had always been; and Eustace got up to the nines below, too dandified to wear any colour or take any notice. H'm! Old days, and Irene in grey silk shot with palest green. He looked, sideways, at Fleur's face. Rather colourless-no light, no eagerness! That love affair was preying on her—a bad business! ”

“ There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the casual spectator as “* * *Titian—remarkably fine,” breaks through the defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows, and holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are things, he feels—there are things here which—well, which are things. Something unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and conscious of his liver. ”

“ Take this message to my niece—a lady waiting in the hall—a lady in grey. Say Mr. Forsyte is not well—the heat. He is very sorry; if he is not down directly, she is not to wait dinner.”
When she was gone, he thought feebly: “Why did I say a lady in grey—she may be in anything. Sal volatile!” He did not go off again, yet was not conscious of how Irene came to be standing beside him, holding smelling salts to his nose, and pushing a pillow up behind his head. He heard her say anxiously: “Dear Uncle Jolyon, what is it?” ”

“ The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better. And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet come out. She owned three canaries, the cat Tommy, and half a parrot—in common with her sister Hester;—and these poor creatures (kept carefully out of Timothy’s way—he was nervous about animals) , unlike human beings, recognising that she could not help being blighted, attached themselves to her passionately. ”

“ The Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues. So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire dislike.
Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only give tangible proof enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in his power to please her, why should she not come back to him? ”

“ Foolish lover! Fogs last until the spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort anywhere; gnawing fear if you bring her out, gnawing fear if you bid her stay at home!
“Serve him right; he should arrange his affairs better!”
So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could have listened at the waiting lover’s heart, out there in the fog and the cold, he would have said again: “Yes, poor devil he’s having a bad time!”
Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He reached his house at five. ”

“ The maid Bilson was in the hall, and in answer to his question: “Where is your mistress?” told him that Mrs. Forsyte had left the house about noon, taking with her a trunk and bag.
Snatching the sleeve of his fur coat away from her grasp, he confronted her:
“What?” he exclaimed; “what’s that you said?” Suddenly recollecting that he must not betray emotion, he added: “What message did she leave?” and noticed with secret terror the startled look of the maid’s eyes.
“Mrs. Forsyte left no message, sir.”
“No message; very well, thank you, that will do. I shall be dining out.” ”

“ But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the copse—in the copse where the spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching ”

“ England more beautiful than she had dreamed. Chance had, in fact, guided the Val Darties to a spot where the South Downs had real charm when the sun shone. Holly had enough of her father's eye to apprehend the rare quality of their outlines and chalky radiance; to go up there by the ravine-like lane and wander along toward Chanctonbury or Amberley, was still a delight which she hardly attempted to share with Val, whose admiration of Nature was confused by a Forsyte's instinct for getting something out of it, such as the condition of the turf for his horses' exercise. ”

“ A Forsyth ought to be big and wise. You see, before this I have never thought of myself as a real true Forsyth—I've always just been Jimmie's daughter. But lately I've been thinking a lot about what a Forsyth ought to be and there are about a million questions I'd like to ask:
1. Ought Mr. Norris to let the Mills sink into a boneyard of antiquity?
2. What is the very most money I could spend all in one lump and can I spend it without telling anyone about it beforehand?
3. There's an empty cottage just below where the Manor road crosses the river and Williams says the Forsyths own it. ”

“ Fleur was smiling. In this age, when young people prided themselves on going their own ways and paying no attention to any sort of decent prejudice, he had said the very thing to excite her wilfulness. Then, recollecting the expression on Irene's face, he breathed again.
“What sort of a quarrel?” he heard Fleur say.
“About a house. It's ancient history for you. Your grandfather died the day you were born. He was ninety.”
“Ninety? Are there many Forsytes besides those in the Red Book?”
“I don't know,” said Soames. “They're all dispersed now. The old ones are dead, except Timothy.” ”

“ Through the massive skylight illuminating the hall at Robin Hill, the July sunlight at five o'clock fell just where the broad stairway turned; and in that radiant streak little Jon Forsyte stood, blue-linen-suited. His hair was shining, and his eyes, from beneath a frown, for he was considering how to go downstairs, this last of innumerable times, before the car brought his father and mother home. Four at a time, and five at the bottom? Stale! Down the banisters? ”

“ But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class. As the old Egyptians placed around their mummies the necessaries of a future existence, so I have endeavoured to lay beside the figures of Aunts Ann and Juley and Hester, of Timothy and Swithin, of Old Jolyon and James, and of their sons, that which shall guarantee them a little life here-after, a little balm in the hurried Gilead of a dissolving “Progress.” ”

“ An acid humour stirred in his Forsyte blood; a subtle pain divided by hair's breadth from pleasure. If only June did not suddenly bring her hornets about his ears! The boy was talking.
“Of course, Auntie June”—so he called his half-sister “Auntie,” did he?—well, she must be fifty, if she was a day!—“it's jolly good of you to encourage them. Only—hang it all!” Soames stole a glance. Irene's startled eyes were bent watchfully on her boy. She—she had these devotions—for Bosinney—for that boy's father—for this boy! He touched Fleur's arm, and said:
“Well, have you had enough?” ”

“ This might not be one in the end—but it was clearly a toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction before a crowd of fashionable free-thinkers—for who thought otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were “dolled” up—seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which had abolished them. Her eyes wandered from the prelate in his robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate) to Val, beside her, thinking—she was certain—of the Mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire. ”

“ In the great warren, each rabbit for himself, especially those clothed in the more expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on foggy days, are driven underground.
One figure, however, not far from Soames, waited at the station door.
Some buccaneer or lover, of whom each Forsyte thought: “Poor devil! looks as if he were having a bad time!” Their kind hearts beat a stroke faster for that poor, waiting, anxious lover in the fog; but they hurried by, well knowing that they had neither time nor money to spare for any suffering but their own. ”

“ He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting—a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent—one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.
On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the ball at Roger’s he had seen too clearly how the land lay—he could put two and two together quicker than most men—and, with the example of his own son before his eyes, knew better than any Forsyte of them all that the pale flame singes men’s wings whether they will or no.
In the days before Jun’s engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast over men. ”