Great book, The Forsyte Saga pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. Saga 1 by Brian K. The girl passed on, and Aunt Ann looked after her slim little figure. She ought to be very happy. It was her world, this family, and she knew no other, had never perhaps known any other.
All their little secrets, illnesses, engagements, and marriages, how they were getting on, and whether they were making money—all this was her property, her delight, her life; beyond this only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day!
If life were slipping away from her, this she would retain to the end. And what a sad blow to his father and to them all. Such a promising young fellow! A long time ago! Still, he had forfeited his right to be there, had cheated her of the complete fulfilment of her family pride, deprived her of the rightful pleasure of seeing and kissing him of whom she had been so proud, such a promising young fellow!
The thought rankled with the bitterness of a long-inflicted injury in her tenacious old heart. A little water stood in her eyes. With a handkerchief of the finest lawn she wiped them stealthily. Soames Forsyte, flat-shouldered, clean-shaven, flat-cheeked, flat-waisted, yet with something round and secret about his whole appearance, looked downwards and aslant at Aunt Ann, as though trying to see through the side of his own nose.
It was seldom he was so confidential. Soames flushed; his flushes passed rapidly over his flat cheeks and centered between his eyes, where they remained, the stamp of disturbing thoughts. Montpellier Square, they say; close to Soames! They never told me, Irene never tells me anything!
The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit of their success was embodied therein. Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the beginning of the century. Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left over thirty thousand pounds between his ten children. The only aristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit of drinking Madeira.
He was er—an owner of houses, my dear. I remember he used to drink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father? He—er—had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by the sea. James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that they had come from.
He found two old farms, with a cart track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outer wall, and a smaller and greyer chapel. The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigs were hunting round that estuary. A haze hovered over the prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud and their faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content to walk Sunday after Sunday for hundreds of years.
Whether or no James had cherished hopes of an inheritance, or of something rather distinguished to be found down there, he came back to town in a poor way, and went about with a pathetic attempt at making the best of a bad job.
Its age was felt to be a comfort. They collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar.
Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis.
To have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ. Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in their own estimations.
The Haymans again—Mrs. But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square. He himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but they wanted such a price.
Old Jolyon refused. He went down to the front door and saw them into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his spleen—Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene—the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and bounding upon the spring cushions, silent, swaying to each motion of their chariot, old Jolyon watched them drive away under the sunlight.
Soames, glancing at her beneath his eyelids, nodded, and he saw Irene steal at him one of her unfathomable looks. Amongst the last of the departing guests the fourth and fifth brothers, Nicholas and Roger, walked away together, directing their steps alongside Hyde Park towards the Praed Street Station of the Underground. Like all other Forsytes of a certain age they kept carriages of their own, and never took cabs if by any means they could avoid it. The day was bright, the trees of the Park in the full beauty of mid-June foliage; the brothers did not seem to notice phenomena, which contributed, nevertheless, to the jauntiness of promenade and conversation.
She refused him five times. I should like to hear what Timothy would say to it. The train coming in a minute later, the two brothers parted and entered their respective compartments. Each felt aggrieved that the other had not modified his habits to secure his society a little longer; but as Roger voiced it in his thoughts:. There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes. In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?
He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out. It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for things than he had given.
In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face.
An old clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old master.
His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man. He woke. June had gone! James had said he would be lonely. James had always been a poor thing. Serve him right for sticking at the price; the only thing the fellow thought of was money.
Had he given too much, though? He ought never to have allowed the engagement. She had met this Bosinney at the house of Baynes, Baynes and Bildeboy, the architects.
This fellow had no money, but she must needs become engaged to him—a harumscarum, unpractical chap, who would get himself into no end of difficulties. She had come to him one day in her slap-dash way and told him; and, as if it were any consolation, she had added:. Old Jolyon had taken his cigar from under his white moustaches, stained by coffee at the edge, and looked at her, that little slip of a thing who had got such a grip of his heart.
But she, having clasped her hands on his knees, rubbed her chin against him, making a sound like a purring cat. And, knocking the ash off his cigar, he had exploded in nervous desperation:. If you must come to grief, you must; I wash my hands of it. So, he had washed his hands of it, making the condition that they should not marry until Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.
He had hardly seen anything of her since it began. A bad business! He had no notion of giving her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew nothing about to live on in idleness. He had seen that sort of thing before; no good ever came of it. Worst of all, he had no hope of shaking her resolution; she was as obstinate as a mule, always had been from a child. They must cut their coat according to their cloth.
He would not give way till he saw young Bosinney with an income of his own. That June would have trouble with the fellow was as plain as a pikestaff; he had no more idea of money than a cow. And, motionless, old Jolyon stared at the wall; but for his open eyes, he might have been asleep The idea of supposing that young cub Soames could give him advice!
He had always been a cub, with his nose in the air! He would be setting up as a man of property next, with a place in the country! A man of property! Like his father, he was always nosing out bargains, a cold-blooded young beggar! He rose, and, going to the cabinet, began methodically stocking his cigar-case from a bundle fresh in.
That was a cigar! The thought, like some stealing perfume, carried him back to those wonderful nights at Richmond when after dinner he sat smoking on the terrace of the Crown and Sceptre with Nicholas Treffry and Traquair and Jack Herring and Anthony Thornworthy.
How good his cigars were then! Poor old Nick! Of all the company of those days he himself alone seemed left, except Swithin, of course, and he so outrageously big there was no doing anything with him. Difficult to believe it was so long ago; he felt young still! Of all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most poignant, the most bitter.
With his white head and his loneliness he had remained young and green at heart. And such weather! There was no weather now. When June was a toddler of five, and every other Sunday he took her to the Zoo, away from the society of those two good women, her mother and her grandmother, and at the top of the bear den baited his umbrella with buns for her favourite bears, how sweet his cigars were then!
About the house of Forsyte and Treffry in the City had clung an air of enterprise and mystery, of special dealings in special ships, at special ports, with special Orientals. He had worked at that business! Men did work in those days! He had gone into every detail, known everything that went on, sometimes sat up all night over it. And he had always chosen his agents himself, prided himself on it. His eye for men, he used to say, had been the secret of his success, and the exercise of this masterful power of selection had been the only part of it all that he had really liked.
Not a career for a man of his ability. Even now, when the business had been turned into a Limited Liability Company, and was declining he had got out of his shares long ago , he felt a sharp chagrin in thinking of that time.
How much better he might have done! He would have succeeded splendidly at the Bar! He had even thought of standing for Parliament.
How often had not Nicholas Treffry said to him:. Such a good fellow, but a racketty chap! The notorious Treffry! He had never taken any care of himself.
So he was dead. Old Jolyon counted his cigars with a steady hand, and it came into his mind to wonder if perhaps he had been too careful of himself.
He put the cigar-case in the breast of his coat, buttoned it in, and walked up the long flights to his bedroom, leaning on one foot and the other, and helping himself by the bannister. The house was too big. After June was married, if she ever did marry this fellow, as he supposed she would, he would let it and go into rooms. What was the use of keeping half a dozen servants eating their heads off? The butler came to the ring of his bell—a large man with a beard, a soft tread, and a peculiar capacity for silence.
Old Jolyon told him to put his dress clothes out; he was going to dine at the Club. How long had the carriage been back from taking Miss June to the station? Since two? Then let him come round at half-past six! The Club which old Jolyon entered on the stroke of seven was one of those political institutions of the upper middle class which have seen better days.
In spite of being talked about, perhaps in consequence of being talked about, it betrayed a disappointing vitality. Old Jolyon would say it, too, yet disregarded the fact in a manner truly irritating to well-constituted Clubmen. I drink it every night of my life.
He continued to think of it. He naturally despised the Club that did take him. The members were a poor lot, many of them in the City—stockbrokers, solicitors, auctioneers—what not! Like most men of strong character but not too much originality, old Jolyon set small store by the class to which he belonged.
He would have been a member all these years himself, but, owing to the slipshod way his proposer, Jack Herring, had gone to work, they had not known what they were doing in keeping him out. He ordered dinner, and sat down in the very corner, at the very table perhaps! The boy had loved the theatre, and old Jolyon recalled how he used to sit opposite, concealing his excitement under a careful but transparent nonchalance.
He ordered himself, too, the very dinner the boy had always chosen—soup, whitebait, cutlets, and a tart. The two had not met for fourteen years.
And not for the first time during those fourteen years old Jolyon wondered whether he had been a little to blame in the matter of his son. And in four years the crash had come! The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for hearts.
There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him—about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of tiny, helpless things. With characteristic insight he saw he must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could serve in such a situation.
In that lay its tragedy. And the tiny, helpless thing prevailed. He would not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and so to his son he said good-bye. He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon, but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal had hurt him more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his penned-in affection; and there had come such tangible and solid proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or refusal of such, could supply.
His dinner tasted flat. His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days. Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera. In the Times , therefore—he had a distrust of other papers—he read the announcement for the evening. Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days, and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of Russia leather, from habitual proximity to the cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.
The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was struck by their unwonted animation. A few years ago there had been none of these big hotels. He made a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood. It must be going up in value by leaps and bounds! What traffic! But from that he began indulging in one of those strange impersonal speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte, wherein lay, in part, the secret of his supremacy amongst them.
What atoms men were, and what a lot of them! And what would become of them all? He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact fare, walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood there with his purse in his hand—he always carried his money in a purse, never having approved of that habit of carrying it loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays. The official leaned out, like an old dog from a kennel.
Jolyon Forsyte! So it is! Dear me! Traquair, and Mr. Nicholas Treffry—you used to have six or seven stalls here regular every season. And how are you, sir? They had not forgotten him. He marched in, to the sounds of the overture, like an old war-horse to battle.
Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the house. Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his eyes on the curtain.
More poignantly than ever he felt that it was all over and done with him. Where were all the women, the pretty women, the house used to be so full of? Where was that old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great singers? Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and of his own power to enjoy it all? The greatest opera-goer of his day! There was no opera now! That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it.
He sat watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart. From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak about old Jolyon. He was as upright—very nearly—as in those old times when he came every night; his sight was as good—almost as good. But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!
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. If Jo were only with him! The boy must be forty by now. He had wasted fourteen years out of the life of his only son. And Jo was no longer a social pariah.
He was married. I return it, but should you think fit to invest it for the benefit of the little chap we call him Jolly , who bears our Christian and, by courtesy, our surname, I shall be very glad.
The letter was like the boy. He had always been an amiable chap. Old Jolyon had sent this reply:. I hope that you are doing well. My health remains good at present. And every year on the 1st of January he had added a hundred and the interest. And it is difficult to say how much satisfaction he had got out of that yearly transaction.
But the correspondence had ended. In spite of his love for his son, in spite of an instinct, partly constitutional, partly the result, as in thousands of his class, of the continual handling and watching of affairs, prompting him to judge conduct by results rather than by principle, there was at the bottom of his heart a sort of uneasiness. His son ought, under the circumstances, to have gone to the dogs; that law was laid down in all the novels, sermons, and plays he had ever read, heard, or witnessed.
After receiving the cheque back there seemed to him to be something wrong somewhere. Why had his son not gone to the dogs? But, then, who could tell? He had heard, of course—in fact, he had made it his business to find out—that Jo lived in St.
He thought them bad, and did not hang them because of the signature; he kept them locked up in a drawer. In the great opera-house a terrible yearning came on him to see his son. He had been a loving, lovable little chap! After he went to Eton he had acquired, perhaps, a little too much of that desirable manner which old Jolyon knew was only to be obtained at such places and at great expense; but he had always been companionable. Always a companion, even after Cambridge—a little far off, perhaps, owing to the advantages he had received.
Now that June had gone and left, or as good as left him, it would have been a comfort to see his son again. Guilty of this treason to his family, his principles, his class, old Jolyon fixed his eyes on the singer.
A poor thing—a wretched poor thing! And the Florian a perfect stick! In the crowded street he snapped up a cab under the very nose of a stout and much younger gentleman, who had already assumed it to be his own. His route lay through Pall Mall, and at the corner, instead of going through the Green Park, the cabman turned to drive up St. He called to the driver to stop. He would go in and ask if Jo still belonged there. He went in. The hall looked exactly as it did when he used to dine there with Jack Herring, and they had the best cook in London; and he looked round with the shrewd, straight glance that had caused him all his life to be better served than most men.
Young Jolyon, on the point of leaving the Club, had put on his hat, and was in the act of crossing the hall, as the porter met him. He turned pale. This meeting was terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene.
They met and crossed hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said:. And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night they went out and stepped into the cab. In the first book, The Man of Property, the reader is introduced to the family and also to Soames' desire to own things, including his wife, whom he wishes to move away to a house away from her friends. His wife, resisting this, falls in love with someone else, with tragic consequences.
In the second book, In Chancery, the subject is the marital discord of both Soames, and his sister, as they take steps to divorce their spouses. In the final novel of this book, To Let, the Forsyte saga is concluded with forbidden relationships, new ones beginning, and old ones ending, and with Soames realising that for all his attempts, he never really possessed anything he truly wanted. The artwork used for the cover is 'Gustav Fredrikson' by Robert Lundberg.
They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large commercial upper middle-class English family, similar to Galsworthy's own. The three trilogies are published under the collective title of The Forsyte Chronicles. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and "man of property," is married to the beautiful, penniless Irene, who rebels against his values. In Chancery is the second novel of the Forsyte Saga trilogy, the subject is the marital discord of both Soames and his sister Winifred.
The subject of the second interlude The Awakening is the naive and exuberant lifestyle of eight-year-old Jon Forsyte. To Let, the final novel of the Forsyte Saga, chronicles the continuing feuds of the two factions within the troubled Forsyte family.