To my wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my works the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy, and criticism I could never have become even...

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 Forsytea...

… You will answer The slaves are ours⁠ ⁠… The Merchant of Venice To Edward Garnett Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight⁠—an...

… You will answer The slaves are ours⁠ ⁠… The Merchant of Venice...

To Edward Garnett...

Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight⁠—an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons...

Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight⁠—an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons...

At five o’clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly sett...

In Swithin’s orange and light-blue dining-room, facing the Park, the round table was laid for twelve. A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant stalactite above its centre, ...

Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days after the dinner at Swithin’s, and looking back from across the Square, confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting. He...

Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great city of London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that groups of modern Italian marble are vieux jeu, Soames...

It was not long before Soames’ determination to build went the round of the family, and created the flutter that any decision connected with property should make among Forsytes. It was not his fault, ...

Old Jolyon came out of Lord’s cricket ground that same afternoon with the intention of going home. He had not reached Hamilton Terrace before he changed his mind, and hailing a cab, gave the driver an...

Forsytes, as is generally admitted, have shells, like that extremely useful little animal which is made into Turkish delight; in other words, they are never seen, or if seen would not be recognised, w...

There came a morning at the end of September when Aunt Ann was unable to take from Smither’s hands the insignia of personal dignity. After one look at the old face, the doctor, hurriedly sent for, ann...

The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was t...

The winter had been an open one. Things in the trade were slack; and as Soames had reflected before making up his mind, it had been a good time for building. The shell of the house at Robin Hill was t...

Dinner began in silence; the women facing one another, and the men. In silence the soup was finished⁠—excellent, if a little thick; and fish was brought. In silence it was handed. Bosinney ventured: “...

Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school’s songbook run as follows: “How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and he sang, like a bird!⁠ ⁠…” Swithin did no...

Those ignorant of Forsyte ’Change would not, perhaps, foresee all the stir made by Irene’s visit to the house. After Swithin had related at Timothy’s the full story of his memorable drive, the same, w...

James said nothing to his son of this visit to the house; but, having occasion to go to Timothy’s one morning on a matter connected with a drainage scheme which was being forced by the sanitary author...

Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting⁠—an ordinary Board⁠—summarily. He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte, which th...

If old Jolyon, as he got into his cab, had said: “I won’t believe a word of it!” he would more truthfully have expressed his sentiments. The notion that James and his womankind had seen him in the com...

Roger’s house in Prince’s Gardens was brilliantly alight. Large numbers of wax candles had been collected and placed in cut-glass chandeliers, and the parquet floor of the long, double drawing-room re...

Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen “those two” (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney’s face. Th...

It is in the nature of a Forsyte to be ignorant that he is a Forsyte; but young Jolyon was well aware of being one. He had not known it till after the decisive step which had made him an outcast; sinc...

The day after the evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley by a morning train. Not constitutionally interested in amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than pleasure, a c...

Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside lodging-houses. On a chair⁠—a shiny leather chair, displaying its h...

“One mockturtle, clear; one oxtail; two glasses of port.” In the upper room at French’s, where a Forsyte could still get heavy English food, James and his son were sitting down to lunch. Of all eating...

Soames went upstairs that night with the feeling that he had gone too far. He was prepared to offer excuses for his words. He turned out the gas still burning in the passage outside their room. Pausin...

Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the Ultra Vivisectionist, then in the bloom of its first youth, would say that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks from his wife’s d...

Many people, no doubt, including the editor of the Ultra Vivisectionist, then in the bloom of its first youth, would say that Soames was less than a man not to have removed the locks from his wife’s d...

Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing to make her guest “more intriguée than ever,” it is difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken. It was not a su...

Young Jolyon, whose circumstances were not those of a Forsyte, found at times a difficulty in sparing the money needful for those country jaunts and researches into Nature, without having prosecuted w...

The morning after a certain night on which Soames at last asserted his rights and acted like a man, he breakfasted alone. He breakfasted by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the town as in s...

In the morning of his case, which was second in the list, Soames was again obliged to start without seeing Irene, and it was just as well, for he had not as yet made up his mind what attitude to adopt...

In leaving the Court Soames did not go straight home. He felt disinclined for the City, and drawn by need for sympathy in his triumph, he, too, made his way, but slowly and on foot, to Timothy’s in th...

June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the...

Old Jolyon was not given to hasty decisions; it is probable that he would have continued to think over the purchase of the house at Robin Hill, had not June’s face told him that he would have no peace...

After leaving James and old Jolyon in the mortuary of the hospital, Soames hurried aimlessly along the streets. The tragic event of Bosinney’s death altered the complexion of everything. There was no ...

And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Shakespeare To André Chevrillon In the last day of May in the early ’nineties, about six o’clock of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree...

And Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. Shakespeare...

To André Chevrillon...

In the last day of May in the early ’nineties, about six o’clock of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges t...

Two days of rain, and summer set in bland and sunny. Old Jolyon walked and talked with Holly. At first he felt taller and full of a new vigour; then he felt restless. Almost every afternoon they would...

The little spirits of the past which throng an old man’s days had never pushed their faces up to his so seldom as in the seventy hours elapsing before Sunday came. The spirit of the future, with the c...

He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts. Experience had also taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight ...

How should an old man live his days if not in dreaming of his well-spent past? In that, at all events, there is no agitating warmth, only pale winter sunshine. The shell can withstand the gentle beati...

Two households both alike in dignity, From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny. Romeo and Juliet To Jessie and Joseph Conrad The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud,...

Two households both alike in dignity, From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny. Romeo and Juliet...

To Jessie and Joseph Conrad...

The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed forever. Nor can ...

The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed forever. Nor can ...

That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes as Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had inhabited twenty years at least would have been more noticeable if the re...

When Soames entered his sister’s little Louis Quinze drawing-room, with its small balcony, always flowered with hanging geraniums in the summer, and now with pots of Lilium Auratum, he was struck by t...

Of all quarters in the queer adventurous amalgam called London, Soho is perhaps least suited to the Forsyte spirit. “Soho, my wild one!” George would have said if he had seen his cousin going there. U...

The butler himself opened the door, and closing it softly, detained Soames on the inner mat. “The master’s poorly, sir,” he murmured. “He wouldn’t go to bed till you came in. He’s still in the dining-...

Trees take little account of time, and the old oak on the upper lawn at Robin Hill looked no day older than when Bosinney sprawled under it and said to Soames: “Forsyte, I’ve found the very place for ...

When young Val left the presence of the last generation he was thinking: “This is jolly dull! Uncle Soames does take the bun. I wonder what this filly’s like?” He anticipated no pleasure from her soci...

When those two were gone Jolyon did not return to his painting, for daylight was failing, but went to the study, craving unconsciously a revival of that momentary vision of his father sitting in the o...

The keeping of engagements had not as yet been a conspicuous feature in the life of young Val Dartie, so that when he broke two and kept one, it was the latter event which caused him, if anything, the...

It was full late for the river, but the weather was lovely, and summer lingered below the yellowing leaves. Soames took many looks at the day from his riverside garden near Mapledurham that Sunday mor...

On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet undertaken in his life⁠—save perhaps his birth, and one...

Soames belonged to two clubs, the Connoisseurs, which he put on his cards and seldom visited, and the Remove, which he did not put on his cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal institution f...

Jolyon stood at the window in Holly’s old night nursery, converted into a studio, not because it had a north light, but for its view over the prospect away to the Grand Stand at Epsom. He shifted to t...

It is so much easier to say, “Then we know where we are,” than to mean anything particular by the words. And in saying them Soames did but vent the jealous rankling of his instincts. He got out of the...

Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just changed out of boating flannels and was on his way to the Frying-Pan, to whic...

Jolly Forsyte was strolling down High Street, Oxford, on a November afternoon; Val Dartie was strolling up. Jolly had just changed out of boating flannels and was on his way to the Frying-Pan, to whic...

Of all those radiant firms which emblazon with their windows the West End of London, Gaves and Cortegal were considered by Soames the most “attractive”⁠—word just coming into fashion. He had never had...

Jolyon found June waiting on the platform at Paddington. She had received his telegram while at breakfast. Her abode⁠—a studio and two bedrooms in a St. John’s Wood garden⁠—had been selected by her fo...

Quivering from the defeat of his hopes, with the green morocco case still flat against his heart, Soames revolved thoughts bitter as death. A spider’s web! Walking fast, and noting nothing in the moon...

The possessive instinct, which, so determinedly balked, was animating two members of the Forsyte family towards riddance of what they could no longer possess, was hardening daily in the British body p...

A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St. Lazare was Jolyon’s haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes abroad⁠—vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, th...

The suit⁠—Dartie versus Dartie⁠—for restitution of those conjugal rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided, followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment. This was ...

The morning had been misty, verging on frost, but the sun came out while Val was jogging towards the Roehampton Gate, whence he would canter on to the usual tryst. His spirits were rising rapidly. The...

Dinner parties were not now given at James’ in Park Lane⁠—to every house the moment comes when Master or Mistress is no longer “up to it”; no more can nine courses be served to twenty mouths above twe...

Jolyon, who had crossed from Calais by night, arrived at Robin Hill on Sunday morning. He had sent no word beforehand, so walked up from the station, entering his domain by the coppice gate. Coming to...

On Forsyte ’Change news of the enlistment spread fast, together with the report that June, not to be outdone, was going to become a Red Cross nurse. These events were so extreme, so subversive of pure...

Two days after the dinner at James’, Mr. Polteed provided Soames with food for thought. “A gentleman,” he said, consulting the key concealed in his left hand, “47 as we say, has been paying marked att...

Imogen’s frocks for her first season exercised the judgment of her mother and the purse of her grandfather all through the month of March. With Forsyte tenacity Winifred quested for perfection. It too...

Soames doggedly let the spring come⁠—no easy task for one conscious that time was flying, his birds in the bush no nearer the hand, no issue from the web anywhere visible. Mr. Polteed reported nothing...

Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred⁠—Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just when ...

Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the “petty tour” with his father, mother, and Winifred⁠—Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland, and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just when ...

Soames returned to England the following day, and on the third morning received a visit from Mr. Polteed, who wore a flower and carried a brown billycock hat. Soames motioned him to a seat. “The news ...

On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received by Jolyon at Robin Hill: “Your son down with enteric no immediate danger will cable again.” It reached a household already agita...

Jolly was tired to death of dreams. They had left him now too wan and weak to dream again; left him to lie torpid, faintly remembering far-off things; just able to turn his eyes and gaze through the w...

A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened in Soames’ pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to the affairs of the New Colliery Company, which, declining almost fr...

His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon’s mind in the days which followed the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further news had come; enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor could he...

Soames left dead silence in the little study. “Thank you for that good lie,” said Jolyon suddenly. “Come out⁠—the air in here is not what it was!” In front of a long high southerly wall on which were ...

Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This would have to be kept from him! Never till that moment had he realised how...

On Forsyte ’Change the announcement of Jolly’s death, among a batch of troopers, caused mixed sensation. Strange to read that Jolyon Forsyte (fifth of the name in direct descent) had died of disease i...

The marriage of Soames with Annette took place in Paris on the last day of January, 1901, with such privacy that not even Emily was told until it was accomplished. The day after the wedding he brought...

The war dragged on. Nicholas had been heard to say that it would cost three hundred millions if it cost a penny before they’d done with it! The income-tax was seriously threatened. Still, there would ...

Soames walked out of the garden door, crossed the lawn, stood on the path above the river, turned round and walked back to the garden door, without having realised that he had moved. The sound of whee...

A simple cold, caught in the room with double windows, where the air and the people who saw him were filtered, as it were, the room he had not left since the middle of September⁠—and James was in deep...

He had much to see to, that night and all next day. A telegram at breakfast reassured him about Annette, and he only caught the last train back to Reading, with Emily’s kiss on his forehead and in his...

To Charles Scribner 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...

To Charles Scribner...

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...

From out the fatal loins of those two foes A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life. Romeo and Juliet To Charles Scribner Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying...

From out the fatal loins of those two foes A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life. Romeo and Juliet...

To Charles Scribner...

Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Stre...

Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Stre...

Emerging from the “pastrycook’s,” Soames’ first impulse was to vent his nerves by saying to his daughter: “Dropping your handkerchief!” to which her reply might well be: “I picked that up from you!” H...

Jolyon Forsyte had spent his boy’s nineteenth birthday at Robin Hill, quietly going into his affairs. He did everything quietly now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he d...

There are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy’s soul st...

“His foot’s upon his native heath, His name’s⁠—Val Dartie.” With some such feeling did Val Dartie, in the fortieth year of his age, set out that same Thursday morning very early from the old manor-hou...

Mrs. Val Dartie, after twenty years of South Africa, had fallen deeply in love, fortunately with something of her own, for the object of her passion was the prospect in front of her windows, the cool ...

To avoid the awkwardness of questions which could not be answered, all that had been told Jon was: “There’s a girl coming down with Val for the weekend.” For the same reason, all that had been told Fl...

When those two young Forsytes emerged from the chine lane, and set their faces east toward the sun, there was not a cloud in heaven, and the Downs were dewy. They had come at a good bat up the slope a...

Lunch was over and Soames mounted to the picture-gallery in his house near Mapleduram. He had what Annette called “a grief.” Fleur was not yet home. She had been expected on Wednesday; had wired that ...

Among those four Forsytes of the third, and, as one might say, fourth generation, at Wansdon under the Downs, a weekend prolonged unto the ninth day had stretched the crossing threads of tenacity almo...

That “small” emotion, love, grows amazingly when threatened with extinction. Jon reached Paddington station half an hour before his time and a full week after, as it seemed to him. He stood at the app...

Fleur sped on. She had need of rapid motion; she was late, and wanted all her wits about her when she got in. She passed the islands, the station, and hotel, and was about to take the ferry, when she ...

To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly would scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on ...

To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly would scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes for a walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on ...

Deprived of his wife and son by the Spanish adventure, Jolyon found the solitude at Robin Hill intolerable. A philosopher when he has all that he wants is different from a philosopher when he has not....

Youth only recognises Age by fits and starts. Jon, for one, had never really seen his father’s age till he came back from Spain. The face of the fourth Jolyon, worn by waiting, gave him quite a shock⁠...

Uncertain whether the impression that Prosper Profond was dangerous should be traced to his attempt to give Val the Mayfly filly; to a remark of Fleur’s: “He’s like the hosts of Midian⁠—he prowls and ...

Soames, coming up to the City, with the intention of calling in at Green Street at the end of his day and taking Fleur back home with him, suffered from rumination. Sleeping partner that he was, he se...

On his way to Green Street it occurred to Soames that he ought to go into Dumetrius’ in Suffolk Street about the possibility of the Bolderby Old Crome. Almost worth while to have fought the war to hav...

One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June Forsyte’s studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evenin...

To know that your hand is against everyone’s is⁠—for some natures⁠—to experience a sense of moral release. Fleur felt no remorse when she left June’s house. Reading condemnatory resentment in her litt...

On reaching home Fleur found an atmosphere so peculiar that it penetrated even the perplexed aura of her own private life. Her mother was inaccessibly entrenched in a brown study; her father contempla...

When Fleur left him Jon stared at the Austrian. She was a thin woman with a dark face and the concerned expression of one who has watched every little good that life once had slip from her, one by one...

On the day of the cancelled meeting at the National Gallery began the second anniversary of the resurrection of England’s pride and glory⁠—or, more shortly, the top hat. Lord’s⁠—that festival which th...

Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast: “Let’s go up to Lord’s!” “Wanted”⁠—something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived during the sixty hours since Jon had brough...

Twofold impulse had made Jolyon say to his wife at breakfast: “Let’s go up to Lord’s!” “Wanted”⁠—something to abate the anxiety in which those two had lived during the sixty hours since Jon had brough...

Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: “As a people shall w...

When Jon rushed away with the letter in his hand, he ran along the terrace and round the corner of the house, in fear and confusion. Leaning against the creepered wall he tore open the letter. It was ...

The announcement in the Times of his cousin Jolyon’s death affected Soames quite simply. So that chap was gone! There had never been a time in their two lives when love had not been lost between them....

“The fixed idea,” which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, ...

The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty to the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and ceremonies⁠—the reading of the will, valuation of the estate, distribution ...

Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled wit...

As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So absorbed in landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for effe...

When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without speaking, till he said suddenly: “I ought to have seen him out.” But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstair...

The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event. In the union of the great-granddaughter of Superior Dosset with ...

When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte⁠—the one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn’t heard of the Great War⁠—they found him wonderful⁠—not even death had undermined...