By John Galsworthy (1867 – 1963)

John Galsworthy is a well-known English novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. He is one of the first critical realists of the 20-century English literature. The “Forsyte Saga”, which embraces “The Man of Property” (1906), “In Cansery” (1920), and “To Let” (1921), is considered his masterpiece. The trilogy delineates the lives of the members of the family, centering about Soames Forsyte, the man of property. It is an exposure of the emptiness, hypocrisy and blind egoism of the comfortable moneyed class. Several generations of the Forsytes are taken as the epitome of the class. Step by step the author unfolds before his readers the gradual decay and decline of the bourgeoisie. But for all that Galsworthy’s criticism is mainly ethical and aesthetical, for he cannot overstep the limitations imposed upon him by his own class – the upper middle class.

To understand the extract presented here the reader must be aware of the following facts: Irene had been Soames’s wife for some years. It was not a love-match on her part. The only feeling Soames managed to stir up in his wife was strong aversion to him and to Forsytism he presented. In the end she left him, and many years later married Soames’s cousin Jolyon Forsyte, the black sheep of the family – a watercolour painter. She had a son by him, whom both of them doted upon.

Through Soames never ceased loving Irene, he married too, for he wanted an heir who would succeed to his property. His daughter Fleur became the apple of his eye.

The opening chapter of “To Let” presents a chance meeting of Jon and Fleur who fall in love with each other at first sight. Fate brings them together several times and they decide to marry. Te young people know nothing about the history of the family and cannot perceive why Soames and Irene are against of their union.

Fleur and Jon meet secretly bur are soon found out, as it is seen from the extract below. [92]

Part Two

Chapter III

Meetings

“Isn’t there any place”, cried Jon, “in all this London where we can be alone?”

“Only a taxi.”

“Let’s get one then.”

When they were installed, Fleur asked suddenly:

“Are you going back to Robin Hill?* I should like to see where you live, Jon. I’m staying with my aunt for the night, but I could get back in time for dinner, I wouldn’t come to the house, of course”.

Jon gazed at her enraptured.

“Splendid! I can show it you from the corpse, we shan’t meet anybody. There is a train at four.”

The god of property and his Forsytes great and small, ¹ leisured, official, commercial, or professional, like the working classes, still worked their seven hours a day, so that those two of the fourth generation traveled down to Robin Hill in an empty first class carriage, dusty and sun-warmed, of that too early train. They traveled in blissful silence holding each other hands.

At the station they saw no one except porters, and a villager or two unknown to Jon, and walked out up the lane, which smelled of dust and honeysuckle.

For Jon – sure of her now, and without separation before him – it was a miraculous dawdle** more wonderful than those on the Down,*** or along the river of Thames. It was love-in-mist – one of those illumined pages of Life, ² where every word and smile, and every light-touch they gave each other were as little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and birds scrolled in among the text – a happy communing without afterthought, which lasted thirty-seven minutes. They reached the coppice at the milking hour. Jon would not take her as far as the farmyard; only to where she could see the field leading up to the gardens, and the house beyond. They turned in among the larches, and suddenly, at the winding of the path, came on Irene, sitting on an old log seat.

There are various kinds of shocks: to the vertebrae;* to the nerves; to moral sensibility; and, more potent and permanent, to personal dignity. This last was the shock Jon received, to coming thus on his mother. He became suddenly conscious that he was doing an indelicate thing. To have brought Fleur down openly – yes! But to sneak her in like this! ³ Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would permit.

Fleur was smiling, a little defiantly; his mother’s startled face was [93] changing quickly to the impersonal and gracious. It was she who uttered the first words:

“I’m very glad to see you. It was nice of Jon to think of bringing you down to us.”

“We weren’t coming to the house,” Jon blurted out, “I just wanted Fleur to see where I lived.”

His mother said quietly:

“Won’t you come up and have tea?”

Feeling, that she had but aggravated his breach of breeding, he heard Fleur’s answer

“Thanks very much; I have to get back to dinner. I met Jon by accident, and we thought it would be rather jolly just to see his house”.

How self-possessed he was!

“Of course; but you must have tea. We’ll send you down to the station. My husband will enjoy seeing you.”

The expression of his mother’s eyes, resting on him for a moment, cast Jon down level with the ground – a true worm. Then she led on and Fleur followed her. He felt like a child, training after those two, who were talking so easily about Spain and Wandson,** and the house up there beyond the trees and the grassy slope. He watched the fencing of their eyes, talking each other in – the two beings he loved most in the world.

He could see his father sitting under the oak-tree; and suffered in advance all the loss of castle*** he must go through in the eyes of that tranquil figure, with his knees crossed, thin, old, and elegant; already he could feel the fain irony which would come into his voice and smile.

“This is Fleur Forsyte, Jolyon; Jon brought her down to see the house. Let’s have tea at once – she has to catch a train. Jon, tell them, dear, and telephone to the Dragon**** far a car.”

To leave her alone with them was strange, and yet, as no doubt his mother had foreseen, the least of evils at the moment; so he ran up into the house. Now he would not see Fleur alone again – not for a minute, and they had arranged, no further meeting! ⁴ When he returned under cover of the maids and teapots ⁵, there was not a trace of awkwardness beneath the tree; it was all within himself, but not less for that. They were talking of the Gallery off Cork Street.

COMMENTERY

1. The god of property and his Forsytes great and small…

In his first novel of the “Forsyte Saga”, “The Man of Property”, Jolyon (Jon’s father) says, the Forsytes are typical English middlemen, met everywhere commerce, science, religion and even art. He calls them pillars of society, whose man quality is their sense of property. [94]

In the cited phrase we find an allusion to Forsyte's worship of their idol — property, whose devoted servants they are.

2. It was love-in-a-mist — one of those illumined pages of Life...

Note the poetic description of Jon's feelings. Galsworthy describes the boy's fleeting emotional experience as something mysteriously blissful and beautiful. "Love-in-a-mist" here must be an allusion to Jon's being in a kind of mental haze. At the same time it has other associations, for it is the name of a West Indian Passion flower. The mention of "pages of Life" and "little gold and red and blue butterflies and flowers and birds scrolled in among the text" is also highly sug­gestive of either children's books of fairy-tales or some eastern stories.

3. To have brought Fleur down openly — yes! But to sneak her in like this!

This is one of the instances of the so called represented speech in the extract.

Represented speech is neither direct speech, which reproduces the speaker's exact words, nor is it indirect speech. Represented speech differs from both direct and indirect speech in that it is a purely lit­erary phenomenon never appearing in oral style.

Usually it renders the character's thoughts which were not uttered aloud.

It is a powerful stylistic device commonly used in modern litera­ture to reveal the character's psychology or temporary mental state.

Though represented speech is neither direct nor indirect speech, it has some traits in common with both of them.

Like indirect speech represented speech is characterized by:

(a) the use of the third person of pronouns instead of the first per­son;

(b) the observance of the rule of sequence of tenses in independent sentences.

Like direct speech it is characterized by:

(a) the use of exclamatory, interrogative, and one-member sen­tences, the use of interjections and the words "yes" and "no";

(b) the use of words and expressions typical of the character's speech;

(c) the use of elliptical sentences.

It is characteristic of Galsworthy to include represented speech into the author's narration without any perceptible transition from one to the other. (See the text.)

4. Consumed with shame, he put on a front as brazen as his nature would permit.

Jon tried to conceal his shame and humiliation under an impudent (brazen) mask (front), but probably did not very much succeed in it for he was an open-hearted well-bred boy. In poetry and rhetoric "front" stands for "face" [95]

5. When he returned under cover of the maids and teapots...

It is a figurative expression which means that shuttling of tea-things and bustling of the maids distracted everybody's mind from what had happened and helped Jon to take himself in hand.