Man of Property | Page 3

John Galsworthy
obscure human
problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this
family--no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three
members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of
sympathy--evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders
a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of
society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads
of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the
swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. 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.
This was the occasion of an 'at home' to celebrate the engagement of
Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon's granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney.
In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the
family were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the
comer of her brother Timothy's green drawing-room, where, under the
aegis of a plume of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all
day reading and knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three
generations of Forsytes. Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back,
and the dignity of her calm old face personifying the rigid
possessiveness of the family idea.
When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were
present; when a Forsyte died--but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did
not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions
against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who

resent encroachments on their property.
About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests,
there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive
assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in
defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames
Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard.
The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted old
Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family history, made it
the prelude of their drama.
The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a
family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of
raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family
importance, and--the sniff. Danger--so indispensable in bringing out the
fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual--was what the
Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their
armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct
of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of
the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions,
and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale
eyes, had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was
Swithin Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than
his fair share of fresh air, the other twin, James--the fat and the lean of
it, old Jolyon called these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six feet
in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a
balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his
permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some
secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of
surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long,
clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In his
hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening to a
lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired,
rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that

aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an egg which he
knew he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son
of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face,
pondering one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to the occasion
had affected them all.
Seated in a row close to one another were three ladies--Aunts Ann,
Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in
first youth had so far forgotten herself
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