Jollity

“ Jolly. No; what's this? [Jolly hugs Wanton.] Show me a fairer in all your streams. Nor is this my single joy, who am pleased to find you may be cosened; rejoice to see you may be brought to lie with a man for a jest. Let me alone to fit you with a trick too.
Care. Faith, it must be some new trick; for thou art so beaten at the old one, 'twill neither please thee nor her; besides, I mean to teach her that myself.
Plea. I shall never be perfectly quiet in my mind till I see somebody as angry as myself: yet I have some consolation, when I think on the wise plot that killed the coachman. ”

“ He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect things—and there had been many imperfect things—he had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself young. But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all done with. ”

“ You are not trying to score trick against trick, are you? Honest now, between man and man."
"It's God's truth," said I.
He stood looking at me, and his face had set like that of a man who is having a hard fight with himself. It was a long two minutes before he spoke.
"See here, Jock!" said he. "This woman is fooling us both. D'you hear, man? she's fooling us both! She loves you at West Inch, and she loves me on the braeside; and in her devil's heart she cares a whin-blossom for neither of us. Let's join hands, man, and send the hellfire hussy to the right-about!" ”

“ I believe none fair, nor handsome, nor honest, but the kind.
Care. We must make the captain of our plot, lest he betray us. This will gain us some revenge upon the lovers to whom I grudge the wenches, not that I believe they're worth half the cost they pay for them. And we may talk; but 'tis not our opinion can make them happier or more miserable.
[424]
Enter Jolly.
Wild. Jolly! Will, where hast thou been? We had such sport with the parson of our town: he's married this morning to Wanton.
Jolly. Who? the captain's wench? he's in a good humour then. ”

“ Young Jolyon. One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife's case one could not be amused.
"Thank you for that good lie.
Love has no age, no limit; and no death.
Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? 'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. ”

“ Jolly. Faith, and my part is some pleasure; else I have loved, enjoyed, and told, is mistook.
Wan. Ay, but never to love, seldom enjoy, and always tell—foh! it stinks, and stains worse than Shoreditch dirt; and women hate and dread men for't. Why, I, that am a whore professed, cannot see youth [258] digest it, though it be my profit and interest: for to be a private whore in this town starves in the nest like young birds, when the old one's killed.
Care. Excellent girl! 'tis too true. Jolly, your tongue has kept many a woman honest. ”

“ Jolly. What should I say? 'Tis certain the court is the bravest place in the kingdom for sport, if it were well looked to, and the game preserved fair; but, as 'tis, a man may sooner make a set in the Strand; and it will never be better whilst your divine lovers [225] inhabit there.
Care. Let the king make me master of the game. [226]
Capt. And admit us laity-lovers.
Jolly. I would he would; for, as 'tis, there's no hopes amongst the ladies: besides, 'tis such an example to see a king and queen good husband and wife, that to be kind will grow out of fashion.
Capt. Nay, that's not all ”

“ The passions are apt to be serious and solitary, and Jovita evaded them with a jest,—which, if not always delicate or witty, was effective in securing the laughter of the majority and the jealousy of none. ”

“ Jolly looked at his father.
“Do you believe in God, Dad? I’ve never known.”
At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the digging.
“What do you mean by God?” he said; “there are two irreconcilable ideas of God. There’s the Unknowable Creative Principle—one believes in That. And there’s the Sum of altruism in man—naturally one believes in That.” ”

“ In front of the long line of cages they were collected in rows, watching the tawny, ravenous beasts behind the bars await their only pleasure of the four-and-twenty hours. The hungrier the beast, the greater the fascination. But whether because the spectators envied his appetite, or, more humanely, because it was so soon to be satisfied, young Jolyon could not tell. ”

“ One’s legs may be kind even to the verge of agony, but how unkind one’s tongue may be! Jolly’s mind was busy with his own anticipated woes; he did not know he was unkind.
“That’s all,—thank you, I mean,” came wearily, hopelessly, from the pillows. But Morry called the other back before he got over the threshold. There was another thing upon which he craved enlightenment. It might possibly help out.
“Are they pretty, Jolly?” he asked, wistfully.
“Are who what?” repeated the boy on the threshold, puzzled. Guilt and apprehension dull one’s wits. ”

“ A generation later, with his own boy, Jolly, Harrow-buttonholed with corn-flowers—by old Jolyon's whim his grandson had been canonised at a trifle less expense—again Jolyon had experienced the heat and counter-passions of the day, and come back to the cool and the strawberry beds of Robin Hill, and billiards after dinner, his boy making the most heart-breaking flukes and trying to seem languid and grown-up. Those two days each year he and his son had been alone together in the world, one on each side—and Democracy just born! ”

“ Old Jolyon stood, still as death, his eyes fixed on the body. Who shall tell of what he was thinking? Of himself, when his hair was brown like the hair of that young fellow dead before him? Of himself, with his battle just beginning, the long, long battle he had loved; the battle that was over for this young man almost before it had begun? Of his grand-daughter, with her broken hopes? Of that other woman? Of the strangeness, and the pity of it? And the irony, inscrutable, and bitter of that end? Justice! There was no justice for men, for they were ever in the dark! ”

“ So pleased is Jolly to know that he can actually sail through the air on his wings, that he goes out into the wide, wide world to shift for himself. One day, after advising with Jimmy Rabbit, he decides to become general laugh-maker to the inhabitants of Pleasant Valley, and he becomes one of Mother Nature's happiest little feathered folk, going about trying to make things a bit better in the world. ”

“ When Jolly went up to Oxford, Jolyon went up with him, amused, humble, and a little anxious not to discredit his boy amongst all these youths who seemed so much more assured and old than himself. He often thought, 'Glad I'm a painter' for he had long dropped under-writing at Lloyds—'it's so innocuous. You can't look down on a painter—you can't take him seriously enough.' For Jolly, who had a sort of natural lordliness, had passed at once into a very small set, who secretly amused his father. The boy had fair hair which curled a little, and his grandfather's deepset iron-grey eyes. ”

“ Now beholding this tall fellow, Jocelyn knew him for that same forest-rogue had wrestled with him in the green, and sung for his life the “Song of Roguery.” Wherefore he smiled on the fellow and the fellow on him: Quoth JOCELYN: I grieve to see A man like thee In such a woeful plight— Quoth the ROGUE: A Fool in fetters, Like his betters, Is yet a rarer sight.
“Ha i' the clout, good fellow, for Folly in fetters is Folly in need, and Folly in need is Folly indeed! But, leaving folly awhile, who art thou and what thy name?” ”

“ And they sat awkwardly staring past each other, having pitched on their pet points of snobbery. For Jolly was forming himself unconsciously on a set whose motto was:
'We defy you to bore us. Life isn't half long enough, and we're going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine. We are “the best”—made of wire and whipcord.' And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set whose motto was: 'We defy you to interest or excite us. We have had every sensation, or if we haven't, we pretend we have. ”

“ The strange greetings over, old Jolyon seated himself in a wicker chair, and his two grandchildren, one on each side of his knees, looked at him silently, never having seen so old a man.
They were unlike, as though recognising the difference set between them by the circumstances of their births. Jolly, the child of sin, pudgy-faced, with his tow-coloured hair brushed off his forehead, and a dimple in his chin, had an air of stubborn amiability, and the eyes of a Forsyte; little Holly, the child of wedlock, was a dark-skinned, solemn soul, with her mother's, grey and wistful eyes. ”

“ I had woke early that day, and with a little thrill of joy which is a rare thing to feel when a man first opens his eyes. Edie had been kinder than usual the night before, and I had fallen asleep with the thought that maybe at last I had caught the rainbow, and that without any imaginings or make-believes she was learning to love plain, rough Jock Calder of West Inch. ”

“ Jolly was a comfortable-looking little man, smooth and sleek, pleasant and plausible, reasonable honest, too, as the world goes; a nice man to have to do with; the world went so easy with his affairs that you were sure he would make no unnecessary rubs in your own. He came now fresh and brisk to the side of the wagon, with that uncommon hilarity which people sometimes assume when they have a disagreeable matter on hand that must be spoken of. ”

“ In his great chair with the book-rest sat old Jolyon, the figurehead of his family and class and creed, with his white head and dome-like forehead, the representative of moderation, and order, and love of property. As lonely an old man as there was in London. ”

“ XXX. HUMAN STRAWS. There is not much credit in being jolly when the joints of life are well oiled and events move as smoothly as feathers drawn through cream. The glory lies in maintaining your serenity under adverse circumstances; in emulating Mark Tapley, and being jolly when there is not a hand's breadth of blue in all the heavens. There are straws laid upon us every day, which, if they do not break our backs, at least go far to loosen the vertebrae of our temper. ”

“ This was to be again, after years, the idea entertained for "The Jolly Corner," about the composition of which there would be more to say than my space allows; almost more in fact than categorical clearness might see its way to. A very limited thing being on this occasion in question, I was moved to adopt as my motive an analysis of some one of the conceivably rarest and intensest grounds for an "unnatural" anxiety, a malaise so incongruous and discordant, in the given prosaic prosperous conditions, as almost to be compromising. ”

“ Jolly thought he had stopped their loving each other, did he? He held her tightly round the waist, looking at her softly through his lashes, smiling to cheer her up, promising to come down and see her soon, feeling somehow six inches taller and much more in command of her than he had ever dared feel before. Many times he kissed her before he mounted and rode back to town. So, swiftly, on the least provocation, does the possessive instinct flourish and grow. ”

“ Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity." "My people," replied young Jolyon, "are not very extreme, and they have their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte—the power of never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body, and the 'sense of property'." ”

“ Then, ringing for tea, he went out to have it under the old oak-tree.
All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that he thought habitually, like other people, of other things. ”

“ In bed he lay and thought out his little puzzles and steeled himself for what was to come. He pondered over the word Jolly had looked up in the dictionary for him. It was a puzzly word,—Rec-om-pense,—but he thought he understood it now. It meant something that made up to you for something you’d suffered,—“suffered,” that was what it said. And Morry had suffered—oh, how! Could it be possible there was anything that would make up for little, limp, sorrowful legs that had never been?
With the fickleness of night-thoughts his musings flitted back to step-ones again. ”

“ The little bit of envy and jealousy, whose limit is to be the duration of a waltz or quadrille, has somehow its feeling of pleasure. There is the reflective flattery in the thought of a fancied preference, that raises one in his own esteem ”

“ Then she shut the book with a bang, got up from her chair, and paced the kitchen till her aunt came back.
Miss Joliffe was full of the visitor's affability.
"It is always the way with these really great people, my dear," she said with effusion. "I have always noticed that the nobility are condescending; they adapt themselves so entirely to their surroundings." Miss Joliffe fell into a common hyperbole in qualifying an isolated action as a habit. ”

“ The true poetry is that which raises you, as this does, toward heaven, and fills you with divine emotion; which sings of love and death, of hope and sacrifice, and awakens the sense of the infinite. “Jocelyn” always stirs in me impulses of tenderness which it would be hateful to me to see profaned by satire. ”

“ Jolly. You'll be able to say so one day, upon your wife's report. I would he were gelt, and all that hold his opinion: by this good day, they get more souls than they save.
Sad. And what think you of the knight's son? I hope he's a fine gentleman, when his green suit and his blue stockings are on; and the welcomest thing to Mistress Abigail, but Tib and Tom in the stock. [205]
Jolly. Who, Master Jeffrey? Hobbinol the second! By this life, 'tis a very veal, and he licks his nose like one of them. By his discourse you'd guess he had eaten nothing but hay. ”