The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property

Оглавление

Galsworthy John. The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. The Man Of Property

PREFACE:

PART I

CHAPTER I – ’AT HOME’ AT OLD JOLYON’S

CHAPTER II – OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA

CHAPTER III – DINNER AT SWITHIN’S

CHAPTER IV – PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE

CHAPTER V – A FORSYTE MENAGE

CHAPTER VI – JAMES AT LARGE

CHAPTER VII – OLD JOLYON’S PECCADILLO

CHAPTER VIII – PLANS OF THE HOUSE

CHAPTER IX – DEATH OF AUNT ANN

PART II

CHAPTER I – PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE

CHAPTER II – JUNE’S TREAT

CHAPTER III – DRIVE WITH SWITHIN

CHAPTER IV – JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF

CHAPTER V – SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND

CHAPTER VI – OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO

CHAPTER VII – AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY’S

CHAPTER VIII – DANCE AT ROGER’S

CHAPTER IX – EVENING AT RICHMOND

CHAPTER X – DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE

CHAPTER XI – BOSINNEY ON PAROLE

CHAPTER XII – JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS

CHAPTER XIII – PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE

CHAPTER XIV – SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS

PART III

CHAPTER I – MRS. MACANDER’S EVIDENCE

CHAPTER II – NIGHT IN THE PARK

CHAPTER III – MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL

CHAPTER IV – VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO

CHAPTER V – THE TRIAL

CHAPTER VI – SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS

CHAPTER VII – JUNE’S VICTORY

CHAPTER VIII – BOSINNEY’S DEPARTURE

CHAPTER IX – IRENE’S RETURN

Отрывок из книги

“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 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. 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.

.....

“Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Forsyte!”

Nicholas Forsyte, cocking his rectangular eyebrows, wore a smile. He had succeeded during the day in bringing to fruition a scheme for the employment of a tribe from Upper India in the gold-mines of Ceylon. A pet plan, carried at last in the teeth of great difficulties – he was justly pleased. It would double the output of his mines, and, as he had often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited the British Empire.

.....