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The Forsyte Chronicles #4-6
The Forsyte Saga: Volume 2: White Monkey, Silver Spoon, Swan Song v. 2
In this second part of John Galworthy's trilogy of love, power, money and family feuding, a new generation has arrived to divide the Forsyte clan with society scandals and conflicting passions
862 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1922
37 people are currently reading
865 people want to read
About the author
John Galsworthy
2,443 books475 followersLiterary career of English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy, who used John Sinjohn as a pseudonym, spanned the Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian eras.
In addition to his prolific literary status, Galsworthy was also a renowned social activist. He was an outspoken advocate for the women's suffrage movement, prison reform and animal rights. Galsworthy was the president of PEN, an organization that sought to promote international cooperation through literature.
John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."
In addition to his prolific literary status, Galsworthy was also a renowned social activist. He was an outspoken advocate for the women's suffrage movement, prison reform and animal rights. Galsworthy was the president of PEN, an organization that sought to promote international cooperation through literature.
John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."
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January 13, 2012
Back when I was a kid I read THE FORSYTE SAGA and then, in due course, A MODERN COMEDY. The first trilogy is all about Soames and Irene, whereas the second trilogy deals with Soames' daughter Fleur and her husband, Michael Mont. Many readers have rated the second trilogy as inferior to the first, but in my opinion A MODERN COMEDY holds up quite well to critical scrutiny. It is very different, of course, in focus and intent. THE FORSYTE SAGA shows the transition, in manners and morals, from late Victorian to post-Great War England. A MODERN COMEDY, on the other hand, is a brilliant satire of London society in the turbulent 1920's. Michael Mont, idealist and do-gooder, is shown in striking contrast to the spoiled, self-centered Fleur; while Fleur's father, Soames Forsyte, represents all the caution, self-restraint and repression of the previous century.
Volume 1, THE WHITE MONKEY, introduces Fleur Mont as a bored, restless society girl. She is stuck in a rebound marriage and still dreams of her lost love, Jon Forsyte. She considers having a fling with poet Wilfrid Desert---her husband's best friend!---just to break the monotony. She decides not to, though---not from any moral scruples but because Wilfrid just doesn't appeal to her physically any more than poor Michael does. We are given to understand that Fleur is frigid in the bedroom. That, perhaps, explains why she's always so desperate to experience "new sensations." Many of Galsworthy's heroines are women like her, beautiful but neurotic and seeking orgasms that they've never had. Fleur's sexual frustration, in fact, becomes an underlying theme throughout the books. And the reader comes to sympathize more and more with Michael, her good-natured and long-suffering hubby. He loves Fleur blindly and foolishly, in the way that so many of Galsworthy's male characters love their women. Ultimately Fleur produces a son and heir---Christopher, nicknamed "Kit"---and for awhile, relations improve on the home front.
In Volume 2, THE SILVER SPOON, Fleur pushes Michael into Parliament so as to jump-start her own career as Society hostess. As for Michael, he proves to be a well-meaning but largely ineffectual back bencher. He tries to promote "Foggartism," an airy Utopian theory that won't fly but sinks like a lead balloon. And then one of Fleur's friends is overheard ridiculing her at a party of Fleur's. Soames, outraged, "shows the insolent baggage the door." The "baggage" is Marjorie Ferrar, granddaughter of a Marquess. Fleur predictably retaliates, writing libellous letters about Marjorie. And the result? A silly lawsuit, since neither of these prideful young women will apologize to the other. In one memorable scene Fleur looks out her window at two graceful cats---emblems of herself and Marjorie---who suddenly arch their backs, becoming all teeth and claws! Miaow!
The case comes to trial. Fleur's attorney puts Marjorie on the stand and exposes her as a woman of "loose morals," which is exactly what Fleur claimed her to be. Marjorie, in turn, defends her own principles with admirable spirit. High drama in the courtroom! And while Fleur (technically) wins the case, it is but a Pyrrhic victory. Marjorie garners all the public sympathy and attention. Fleur, on the other hand, finds herself socially snubbed---oh, horrors!---in the aftermath. Soames then agrees to take his spoiled daughter off on a round-the-world cruise. Michael, left at home with Kit, soon realizes that his son ("the eleventh baronet") is fast turning into a little pampered brat...just like muvver.
The globe-trotters wind up in Washington D.C., where Soames encounters the dead past. By a mischance he sees Irene, Jon and Jon's new wife checking into the same hotel as his own! Soames takes care to keep Fleur unaware, to prevent her from meeting her old love. But he himself creeps out of bed that night to observe Irene, himself unseen. His obsession with her is still alive just as (we know) Fleur is still obsessed with Irene's son. This scene foreshadows the final and very dramatic conclusion to Fleur's story that comes in Volume 3, SWAN SONG.
SWAN SONG begins with the General Strike of 1926. Fleur runs a canteen for railway workers, demonstrating how efficient she can be when given something to do. One day she is shocked to see her cousin Jon among the workers there. Fleur's basic nature is to want what she doesn't already have. Though genuinely fond of Michael she has never stopped desiring Jon, "the one who got away." And besides, she has always been a frigid wife who would like to experience something better. Jon, it seems, is now happily married to a nice American girl but that doesn't deter Fleur. She begins to pursue him...stealthily and subtly at first, later more openly. Ultimately she seduces Jon on the grounds of his old home at Robin Hill, the home that Soames, years ago, had originally built for Irene and himself. Fleur makes all the moves, and when Jon finally kisses her back she whispers "I claim you!"
She's Soames' daughter all right.
The affair doesn't end happily. After the deed is done Jon runs away from Fleur, distraught and confused. He returns to his wife--his PREGNANT wife, as he now discovers she is---and confesses all. He promises never to see Fleur again. Fleur, unused to rejection of this magnitude, becomes suicidal. She returns to Soames' home, which she accidentally sets on fire by smoking in her father's picture gallery. Soames, "the man of property," tries to save his masterpieces by throwing them out the window onto an outspread sheet held below. Later, down on the lawn he sees Fleur deliberately positioning herself in the path of a falling object: a heavily framed portrait that topples off the windowsill. (Ironically it is a copy of Goya's "La Vendimia," featuring a girl that Fleur resembles.) Soames saves his daughter whom he pushes out of harm's way, but is struck by the picture himself. He dies a few days later with a remorseful Fleur at his bedside. She promises to mend her ways, telling her father: "Yes, Daddy, I will be good."
A MODERN COMEDY ends in a sad, surprising and yet appropriate way. Soames Forsyte's character has grown immeasurably since THE MAN OF PROPERTY. Through his adored daughter he has learned to transcend Self. And he gives up his life---the ultimate renunciation of property--- for the person he most loves. Fleur is undoubtedly changed forever by his sacrifice. And Michael Mont, the most decent character here, a truly good man, understands that her obsession with Jon is finally over, that "a swan has sung." We know, too, that Michael will stand by his wife in this, her darkest hour. As he puts it in the final chapter: "It's pretty hard sometimes to remember that it's all comedy; but one gets there, you know."
Volume 1, THE WHITE MONKEY, introduces Fleur Mont as a bored, restless society girl. She is stuck in a rebound marriage and still dreams of her lost love, Jon Forsyte. She considers having a fling with poet Wilfrid Desert---her husband's best friend!---just to break the monotony. She decides not to, though---not from any moral scruples but because Wilfrid just doesn't appeal to her physically any more than poor Michael does. We are given to understand that Fleur is frigid in the bedroom. That, perhaps, explains why she's always so desperate to experience "new sensations." Many of Galsworthy's heroines are women like her, beautiful but neurotic and seeking orgasms that they've never had. Fleur's sexual frustration, in fact, becomes an underlying theme throughout the books. And the reader comes to sympathize more and more with Michael, her good-natured and long-suffering hubby. He loves Fleur blindly and foolishly, in the way that so many of Galsworthy's male characters love their women. Ultimately Fleur produces a son and heir---Christopher, nicknamed "Kit"---and for awhile, relations improve on the home front.
In Volume 2, THE SILVER SPOON, Fleur pushes Michael into Parliament so as to jump-start her own career as Society hostess. As for Michael, he proves to be a well-meaning but largely ineffectual back bencher. He tries to promote "Foggartism," an airy Utopian theory that won't fly but sinks like a lead balloon. And then one of Fleur's friends is overheard ridiculing her at a party of Fleur's. Soames, outraged, "shows the insolent baggage the door." The "baggage" is Marjorie Ferrar, granddaughter of a Marquess. Fleur predictably retaliates, writing libellous letters about Marjorie. And the result? A silly lawsuit, since neither of these prideful young women will apologize to the other. In one memorable scene Fleur looks out her window at two graceful cats---emblems of herself and Marjorie---who suddenly arch their backs, becoming all teeth and claws! Miaow!
The case comes to trial. Fleur's attorney puts Marjorie on the stand and exposes her as a woman of "loose morals," which is exactly what Fleur claimed her to be. Marjorie, in turn, defends her own principles with admirable spirit. High drama in the courtroom! And while Fleur (technically) wins the case, it is but a Pyrrhic victory. Marjorie garners all the public sympathy and attention. Fleur, on the other hand, finds herself socially snubbed---oh, horrors!---in the aftermath. Soames then agrees to take his spoiled daughter off on a round-the-world cruise. Michael, left at home with Kit, soon realizes that his son ("the eleventh baronet") is fast turning into a little pampered brat...just like muvver.
The globe-trotters wind up in Washington D.C., where Soames encounters the dead past. By a mischance he sees Irene, Jon and Jon's new wife checking into the same hotel as his own! Soames takes care to keep Fleur unaware, to prevent her from meeting her old love. But he himself creeps out of bed that night to observe Irene, himself unseen. His obsession with her is still alive just as (we know) Fleur is still obsessed with Irene's son. This scene foreshadows the final and very dramatic conclusion to Fleur's story that comes in Volume 3, SWAN SONG.
SWAN SONG begins with the General Strike of 1926. Fleur runs a canteen for railway workers, demonstrating how efficient she can be when given something to do. One day she is shocked to see her cousin Jon among the workers there. Fleur's basic nature is to want what she doesn't already have. Though genuinely fond of Michael she has never stopped desiring Jon, "the one who got away." And besides, she has always been a frigid wife who would like to experience something better. Jon, it seems, is now happily married to a nice American girl but that doesn't deter Fleur. She begins to pursue him...stealthily and subtly at first, later more openly. Ultimately she seduces Jon on the grounds of his old home at Robin Hill, the home that Soames, years ago, had originally built for Irene and himself. Fleur makes all the moves, and when Jon finally kisses her back she whispers "I claim you!"
She's Soames' daughter all right.
The affair doesn't end happily. After the deed is done Jon runs away from Fleur, distraught and confused. He returns to his wife--his PREGNANT wife, as he now discovers she is---and confesses all. He promises never to see Fleur again. Fleur, unused to rejection of this magnitude, becomes suicidal. She returns to Soames' home, which she accidentally sets on fire by smoking in her father's picture gallery. Soames, "the man of property," tries to save his masterpieces by throwing them out the window onto an outspread sheet held below. Later, down on the lawn he sees Fleur deliberately positioning herself in the path of a falling object: a heavily framed portrait that topples off the windowsill. (Ironically it is a copy of Goya's "La Vendimia," featuring a girl that Fleur resembles.) Soames saves his daughter whom he pushes out of harm's way, but is struck by the picture himself. He dies a few days later with a remorseful Fleur at his bedside. She promises to mend her ways, telling her father: "Yes, Daddy, I will be good."
A MODERN COMEDY ends in a sad, surprising and yet appropriate way. Soames Forsyte's character has grown immeasurably since THE MAN OF PROPERTY. Through his adored daughter he has learned to transcend Self. And he gives up his life---the ultimate renunciation of property--- for the person he most loves. Fleur is undoubtedly changed forever by his sacrifice. And Michael Mont, the most decent character here, a truly good man, understands that her obsession with Jon is finally over, that "a swan has sung." We know, too, that Michael will stand by his wife in this, her darkest hour. As he puts it in the final chapter: "It's pretty hard sometimes to remember that it's all comedy; but one gets there, you know."
August 4, 2025
"And there started up before him the thousand familiars of his past – trees, fields and streams, towers, churches, bridges; the English breeds of beasts, the singing birds, the owls, the jays and rooks at Lippinghall, the little differences from foreign sorts in shrub, flower, lichen, and winged life; the English scents, the English haze, the English grass; the eggs and bacon; the slow good humour, the moderation and the pluck; the smell of rain; the apple-blossom, the heather, and the sea."
I will never properly recover from this story. And it is all due to Soames, due to the way Galsworthy constructed him, Nobel-worthy indeed with this intense generational Mirroring and Transference occurring between the Forsytes throughout their lives, with some mystical traits passed down from the ancestor Forsyte farmer to the young Edwardian Forsytes who drive cars and wear lipstick.
Galsworthy calls this part of Soames's life a Modern Comedy, pertinent for a stuffy, reserved Victorian like Soames on his journey of redemption - he must pass through his own trials by ordeal without even understanding he is on trial in the High Courts of Life, where his solicitor rules are void.
"With age one suffered from the feeling that one might have enjoyed things more. Cows, for instance, and rooks, and good smells. Curious how the country grew on you as you got older. A red-oak leaf fell on to his lapel, another on to his knee; Soames did not brush them off."
Who is this Soames, looking into psychoanalysis and doing Coué mindfulness exercises, bonding with a dog called Ting-a-ling, worrying about a stray pig, feeling both solitude and self-sufficiency, playing golf, attending Ascot, giving money to the poor, choosing his resting place at his house in the countryside, under a crab-apple tree?
"He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by anyone. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing?
It is indeed Soames, or the voice of his uncle Old Jolyon, whose stamina and strength he openly wished he'd have close to him for three consecutive books? Is it the call of the primeval Forsytes that urge him to visit the ancestral home, away from London and close to the sea, so he may gather courage to face his own death, the only things Forsytes truly fear? For what greater loss of propriety than losing oneself?
"Had his forebearers themselves built the house there in this lonely place, been the first to seat themselves on this bit of windswept soil? And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles, no wonder they'd been independent with this air and loneliness in their blood and crabbed with the pickling of it - unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself."
His daughter Fleur and her husband Michael - as tragic a story as Soames and Irene and Soames has nobody but himself to blame - he spoils his daughter to the brink of turning her into a stalking psychopath and he convinces Michael (The Modern Soames who worries about everything, but upholds open honesty) to keep quiet about Fleur's infidelity whilst Soames follows, watches and waits for her to (not) make mistakes that he is quite familiar with, having been traumatised by his experience with Irene wanting to run away with Bosinney.
Soames, who never quite forgets Irene, of whom he thinks she would be beautiful even in death. He last sees her in the short Interlude: Passers By, in 1921 whilst on a trip to Washington where they stay at the same hotel. She never sees him. He secretly watches her playing piano, reminiscing and remembering how she would brush her hair, how she would stop playing when he came into the room and the feeling that it was all wasted on him, which? He had never known, he had never known anything! Just like this father.
"Queer arrangement – the heart! And to think that everybody had one. There ought to be some comfort in that, and yet there wasn’t. No comfort to him, when he’d suffered, night in, day out, over that boy’s mother, that she had suffered, too! No satisfaction to Fleur now, that the young man and his wife, too, very likely, were suffering as well!
Fleur, a frigid girl playing at Modern Woman, who would not give up her Object of Desire, would not see her loving husband and dotting father, blinded by the shiny agalma of Transference she falls in love with her own mistaken conceptions of Jon and would rather burn it all to the ground, herself included, than live in a world where she has everything apart from her sickly love - the same sickness through which Soames loved Irene.
"But, however much or little ‘A Modern Comedy’ may be deemed to reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881, a tale which could but end when its spine snapped, and Soames ‘took the ferry’ forty-five years later."
- John Galsworthy, Preface
That said, Galsworthy plays a trick on his readers with Fleur, especially in the last book she is painted in the harshest of lights, but as her father so does Fleur pass through her own trials; transcending her Self, she creates Art reflecting her Transference and metamorphosizes into an Artist whose work is openly admired by her Aesthetically skilled father. And as the Reader pitied Soames at the beginning of the Saga in 1886, so is Fleur to be pitied at the end of the Comedy in 1926, the generational drama and trauma coming at a full close.
"Were they never to eat of the golden apple--she and Jon? Was it to hang there, always out of reach--amid dark, lustrous leaves, quite unlike an apple-tree's? She took out her old water-colour box--long now since it had seen the light--and coloured a fantastic tree with large golden fruits.
In the end, Soames dies tragically by Spoilers - a shocking end to such a Character and a true end of the Forsyte era as, with the patriarch's demise, a sort of Freedom descends upon the public and for the first time in almost 2000 pages, the Reader experiences the Forsytes through Outsider eyes.
"‘Ah! I knew him from a little boy – took him to his first school – taught him how to draw a lease – never knew him to do a shady thing; very reserved man, Mr Soames, but no better judge of an investment, except his uncle Nicholas. He had his troubles, but he never said anything of them; good son to his father – good brother to his sisters – good father to his child, as you know, young man.’
Old Gradman, the family secretary learns of his master's fate from the newspapers, thus further marking this Forsytean end, as his entire life Soames abhorred the notion of public scandal. It is through the eyes of this minimally constructed character that we finally see Soames and Fleur through public eyes, with Gradman as an experienced man of law summarising the view of the public and casually touching upon what the High Court of Life had degreed for them.
And Michael, ever so fond of Soames, as he sits underneath the crab-apple tree, finally understands that The Man of Propriety had it all wrong, because one cannot take anything with them to the grave.
None of this matters. By the end, there is no man of propriety who cannot allow for a single speck of dust on his coat, there is only a 71 year old man who purposefully lets go of his Propriety, choosing instead to be a steward of Beauty, and just like Old Jolyon, turns his back on Victorian Materialism to rest under a tree.
Soames Forsyte, a proper champion.
***
From Soames's art collection: his favourite Honoré Daumier's Landscape with a Figure, Gauguin's Beautes-a -Tahiti, Henri Harpignies, Charles-François Daubigny, Constable, Watteau, Frederick Walker, David Cox, Fragonard, Chardin, Morland , Gauguin, Goya, Titian, Matisse, Degas, Manet, Picasso, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Arnold Böcklin, Turner, François Boucher, and others from the Barbizon school.
"They stand me in at well over seventy thousand pounds – they ought to make a hundred thousand."
***
My review of the first Saga, here.
***
QUOTES
* Soames sniffed.
* Soames drew up a nostril.
* Soames sniffed audibly.
* Soames masticated.
*So long! An expression, old as the Boer war, that he had never got used to – meant nothing so far as he could see!
*Like most novel-readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel-reader), literature coloured his view of life.
* Soames sniffed. ‘They’re a theatrical lot,’ he said. ‘Did you see Milan Cathedral?’ ‘Yes, sir. It’s about the only thing we didn’t take to.’ ‘H’m! Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in ‘82.
* ‘He called me an attorney,’ said Soames with a grim smile, ‘and she called me a liar. I don’t know which is worse.’
* ‘We don’t grow tragedy in England, Anne.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, tragedy’s extreme; and we don’t like extremes. Tragedy’s dry and England’s damp.’
* That salient characteristic of the English will bear thinking about Why, for instance, do we continually run ourselves down? Simply because we have not got the inferiority complex and are indifferent to what other people think of us. No people in the world seems openly less sure of itself; no people is secretly more sure.
* Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self.
* It was beautiful, amazing! Breathing, in this darkness, as many billion shapes as there were stars above, all living, and all different! What a world! The Eternal Mood at work! And if you died, like that old boy, and lay for ever beneath a crab-apple tree – well it was the Mood resting a moment in your still shape – no! not even resting, moving on in the mysterious rhythm that one called Life. Who could arrest the moving Mood – who wanted to? And if some pale possessor like that poor old chap, tried and succeeded for a moment, the stars twinkled just a little more when he was gone. To have and to hold! As though you could!
* ‘We always look a funny lot,’ said Sir Lawrence, following him into the house, ‘except to ourselves. That’s the first principle of existence, Forsyte.’
* ‘Spoiled,’ thought Michael, ‘by our past prosperity. We shall never admit it,’ he thought, ‘never! And yet in our bones we feel it!’ England with the silver spoon in her mouth and no longer the teeth to hold it there, or the will to part with it.
I will never properly recover from this story. And it is all due to Soames, due to the way Galsworthy constructed him, Nobel-worthy indeed with this intense generational Mirroring and Transference occurring between the Forsytes throughout their lives, with some mystical traits passed down from the ancestor Forsyte farmer to the young Edwardian Forsytes who drive cars and wear lipstick.
Galsworthy calls this part of Soames's life a Modern Comedy, pertinent for a stuffy, reserved Victorian like Soames on his journey of redemption - he must pass through his own trials by ordeal without even understanding he is on trial in the High Courts of Life, where his solicitor rules are void.
"With age one suffered from the feeling that one might have enjoyed things more. Cows, for instance, and rooks, and good smells. Curious how the country grew on you as you got older. A red-oak leaf fell on to his lapel, another on to his knee; Soames did not brush them off."
Who is this Soames, looking into psychoanalysis and doing Coué mindfulness exercises, bonding with a dog called Ting-a-ling, worrying about a stray pig, feeling both solitude and self-sufficiency, playing golf, attending Ascot, giving money to the poor, choosing his resting place at his house in the countryside, under a crab-apple tree?
"He had never seemed to wish to be appreciated, or even remembered, by anyone. To Fleur, so avid of appreciation, it seemed marvellously strange. What secret force within that spare form, lying there inert, had made him thus self-sufficing?
It is indeed Soames, or the voice of his uncle Old Jolyon, whose stamina and strength he openly wished he'd have close to him for three consecutive books? Is it the call of the primeval Forsytes that urge him to visit the ancestral home, away from London and close to the sea, so he may gather courage to face his own death, the only things Forsytes truly fear? For what greater loss of propriety than losing oneself?
"Had his forebearers themselves built the house there in this lonely place, been the first to seat themselves on this bit of windswept soil? And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles, no wonder they'd been independent with this air and loneliness in their blood and crabbed with the pickling of it - unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself."
His daughter Fleur and her husband Michael - as tragic a story as Soames and Irene and Soames has nobody but himself to blame - he spoils his daughter to the brink of turning her into a stalking psychopath and he convinces Michael (The Modern Soames who worries about everything, but upholds open honesty) to keep quiet about Fleur's infidelity whilst Soames follows, watches and waits for her to (not) make mistakes that he is quite familiar with, having been traumatised by his experience with Irene wanting to run away with Bosinney.
Soames, who never quite forgets Irene, of whom he thinks she would be beautiful even in death. He last sees her in the short Interlude: Passers By, in 1921 whilst on a trip to Washington where they stay at the same hotel. She never sees him. He secretly watches her playing piano, reminiscing and remembering how she would brush her hair, how she would stop playing when he came into the room and the feeling that it was all wasted on him, which? He had never known, he had never known anything! Just like this father.
"Queer arrangement – the heart! And to think that everybody had one. There ought to be some comfort in that, and yet there wasn’t. No comfort to him, when he’d suffered, night in, day out, over that boy’s mother, that she had suffered, too! No satisfaction to Fleur now, that the young man and his wife, too, very likely, were suffering as well!
Fleur, a frigid girl playing at Modern Woman, who would not give up her Object of Desire, would not see her loving husband and dotting father, blinded by the shiny agalma of Transference she falls in love with her own mistaken conceptions of Jon and would rather burn it all to the ground, herself included, than live in a world where she has everything apart from her sickly love - the same sickness through which Soames loved Irene.
"But, however much or little ‘A Modern Comedy’ may be deemed to reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881, a tale which could but end when its spine snapped, and Soames ‘took the ferry’ forty-five years later."
- John Galsworthy, Preface
That said, Galsworthy plays a trick on his readers with Fleur, especially in the last book she is painted in the harshest of lights, but as her father so does Fleur pass through her own trials; transcending her Self, she creates Art reflecting her Transference and metamorphosizes into an Artist whose work is openly admired by her Aesthetically skilled father. And as the Reader pitied Soames at the beginning of the Saga in 1886, so is Fleur to be pitied at the end of the Comedy in 1926, the generational drama and trauma coming at a full close.
"Were they never to eat of the golden apple--she and Jon? Was it to hang there, always out of reach--amid dark, lustrous leaves, quite unlike an apple-tree's? She took out her old water-colour box--long now since it had seen the light--and coloured a fantastic tree with large golden fruits.
In the end, Soames dies tragically by Spoilers - a shocking end to such a Character and a true end of the Forsyte era as, with the patriarch's demise, a sort of Freedom descends upon the public and for the first time in almost 2000 pages, the Reader experiences the Forsytes through Outsider eyes.
"‘Ah! I knew him from a little boy – took him to his first school – taught him how to draw a lease – never knew him to do a shady thing; very reserved man, Mr Soames, but no better judge of an investment, except his uncle Nicholas. He had his troubles, but he never said anything of them; good son to his father – good brother to his sisters – good father to his child, as you know, young man.’
Old Gradman, the family secretary learns of his master's fate from the newspapers, thus further marking this Forsytean end, as his entire life Soames abhorred the notion of public scandal. It is through the eyes of this minimally constructed character that we finally see Soames and Fleur through public eyes, with Gradman as an experienced man of law summarising the view of the public and casually touching upon what the High Court of Life had degreed for them.
And Michael, ever so fond of Soames, as he sits underneath the crab-apple tree, finally understands that The Man of Propriety had it all wrong, because one cannot take anything with them to the grave.
None of this matters. By the end, there is no man of propriety who cannot allow for a single speck of dust on his coat, there is only a 71 year old man who purposefully lets go of his Propriety, choosing instead to be a steward of Beauty, and just like Old Jolyon, turns his back on Victorian Materialism to rest under a tree.
Soames Forsyte, a proper champion.
***
From Soames's art collection: his favourite Honoré Daumier's Landscape with a Figure, Gauguin's Beautes-a -Tahiti, Henri Harpignies, Charles-François Daubigny, Constable, Watteau, Frederick Walker, David Cox, Fragonard, Chardin, Morland , Gauguin, Goya, Titian, Matisse, Degas, Manet, Picasso, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Arnold Böcklin, Turner, François Boucher, and others from the Barbizon school.
"They stand me in at well over seventy thousand pounds – they ought to make a hundred thousand."
***
My review of the first Saga, here.
***
QUOTES
* Soames sniffed.
* Soames drew up a nostril.
* Soames sniffed audibly.
* Soames masticated.
*So long! An expression, old as the Boer war, that he had never got used to – meant nothing so far as he could see!
*Like most novel-readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel-reader), literature coloured his view of life.
* Soames sniffed. ‘They’re a theatrical lot,’ he said. ‘Did you see Milan Cathedral?’ ‘Yes, sir. It’s about the only thing we didn’t take to.’ ‘H’m! Their cooking gave me the collywobbles in ‘82.
* ‘He called me an attorney,’ said Soames with a grim smile, ‘and she called me a liar. I don’t know which is worse.’
* ‘We don’t grow tragedy in England, Anne.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, tragedy’s extreme; and we don’t like extremes. Tragedy’s dry and England’s damp.’
* That salient characteristic of the English will bear thinking about Why, for instance, do we continually run ourselves down? Simply because we have not got the inferiority complex and are indifferent to what other people think of us. No people in the world seems openly less sure of itself; no people is secretly more sure.
* Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self.
* It was beautiful, amazing! Breathing, in this darkness, as many billion shapes as there were stars above, all living, and all different! What a world! The Eternal Mood at work! And if you died, like that old boy, and lay for ever beneath a crab-apple tree – well it was the Mood resting a moment in your still shape – no! not even resting, moving on in the mysterious rhythm that one called Life. Who could arrest the moving Mood – who wanted to? And if some pale possessor like that poor old chap, tried and succeeded for a moment, the stars twinkled just a little more when he was gone. To have and to hold! As though you could!
* ‘We always look a funny lot,’ said Sir Lawrence, following him into the house, ‘except to ourselves. That’s the first principle of existence, Forsyte.’
* ‘Spoiled,’ thought Michael, ‘by our past prosperity. We shall never admit it,’ he thought, ‘never! And yet in our bones we feel it!’ England with the silver spoon in her mouth and no longer the teeth to hold it there, or the will to part with it.
January 22, 2021
Kam skaityti? Tie, kurie mėgsta anglų klasiką – būtinai griebkit, o jei dar dievinate šeimynines istorijas, tai čia galėsite paklaidžioti net per kelių kartų istorijas ir pajausti tikrą britišką dvasią.
Išsamesnė apžvalga: https://bit.ly/2Y3proS
Išsamesnė apžvalga: https://bit.ly/2Y3proS
September 5, 2022
Love this book! Can't wait to read volume 3.
July 31, 2025
Galinga antroji Forsaitų sagos dalis, kuri yra tokia pat puiki kaip ir pirmoji. Šioje dalyje daug neigiamų savybių ir net nemėgstamas pagrindinis veikėjas atsiskleidžia kitaip, nusipelno simpatijų, nes parodo daugiau gražių žmogiškų jausmų
Want to read
October 21, 2019Missed London stories in late 1800s and early 1900s, which is my favorite period. But first I think I will reread the Volume 1 before starting this.
June 28, 2013
The White Monkey: 4/5
The story begins a couple of years after the end of To Let. Fleur and Mont are married but, even if he's very devoted, she does not love him. Instead of a marital bliss she is restless, always organising meetings and always wanting to be surrounded by the finest, fashionable and artistic society.
Soames – gosh, how can it be that I love such a character (with this kind of past)? – is still around and is meddled in a Board his son-in-law's father which is causing him great concern.
It is through Mont's and Soame's eyes mainly that we discover this new post-war age, where the high classes are ever so isolated from the rest of the world, thinking they have reached 'emancipation', wanting something but being unable to exactly point out what... I really enjoyed how the author portrays this opposition between the Victorian era (embodied by Soames, even if he feels some of his generation like Mont's father do not quite fit the standards) and the new era, born out of WWI. Galsworthy criticises this society masterfully and again with a great (and very British) sense of humour. I'm not in the least disappointed by this follow-up of The Forsyte Saga!
The Silver Spoon 4/5
Following the events of The White Monkey this novel is mainly centered in two events:
-Mont; Fleur's husband; new job as an MP, and defending a doctrine which includes the end of free trade and sending teenagers to the colonies (to match demand and supply!).
- Soames' encounter with the court after calling a woman in her daughter's salon 'traitress', because she said Fleur was a snob.
But the whole point is to describe this Society - high-class only, of course- which was born with a silver spoon on its mouth. This is put to particular with Fleur - who could be the definition of a spoiled child- and in general with the state of the UK - which still believes itself to be in the golden era when its power is in decay.
I also liked how Fleur and Mont's relationship evolved, him becoming less emotionally dependent.
I also had a few laughs with the book, I'll never stop saying that Soames is a great character.
Swan Song 4.5/5
As the title says it is Soames Forsyte's farewell. Caught up between his principles – advanced but also 'Victorian' – he has no place left in this modern world. This is what he realises throught all the novel, from the General Strike (the book opens there) to his visit to his ancestor's town. In his final round with life Soames has to deal with Jon Forsyte's return, his daughter's old love and the son of his first (and still loved) wife. Unlike in the other two books, Fleur and and Michaell Mont have equal shares of PoVs. Michael has forgotten (a bit) of Foggartism and is now focused on cleaning up the slums (which reminded me of Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier) and this helps him forget about Fleur's behaviour. Indeed,she is a good spoiled child, a woman of the era and the daughter of Soames Forsyte, this fatal mixture will make her crave for what she can't have – that is, Jon, who is now married –, the forbidden fruit. It is interesting to see her point of view and compare it with her behaviour in To Let: The Forsyte Saga – which deals with Jon and Fleur's first love affair –. She is still restless and obsessive – and with a frightening concept of property – but she is now more... hysterical in a way. In these three books Galsworthy makes us see that she is clearly unsatisfied – why I don't know.
But going back to Soames, this is definitely his Swan Song. But, obviously, his leaving of this world is somehow ironical. It fits his character but also shows that what he has done with his life, besides loving Fleur, has been nonsense, that his obsession with property, with collecting stuff, in the end, amounts to nothing, and only feelings are the true legacy.
Anyway, those were three beautiful books. I can't say I fell in love with Soames but he's a character I'll always remember. It is, on top, extremely well-written, with very witty comments (British humour ftw) but also very poetic descriptions, of both landscape and feelings. Overall, I know I'll read these two trilogies again. Maybe in five or ten years, but this is a story to be lived again.
The story begins a couple of years after the end of To Let. Fleur and Mont are married but, even if he's very devoted, she does not love him. Instead of a marital bliss she is restless, always organising meetings and always wanting to be surrounded by the finest, fashionable and artistic society.
Soames – gosh, how can it be that I love such a character (with this kind of past)? – is still around and is meddled in a Board his son-in-law's father which is causing him great concern.
It is through Mont's and Soame's eyes mainly that we discover this new post-war age, where the high classes are ever so isolated from the rest of the world, thinking they have reached 'emancipation', wanting something but being unable to exactly point out what... I really enjoyed how the author portrays this opposition between the Victorian era (embodied by Soames, even if he feels some of his generation like Mont's father do not quite fit the standards) and the new era, born out of WWI. Galsworthy criticises this society masterfully and again with a great (and very British) sense of humour. I'm not in the least disappointed by this follow-up of The Forsyte Saga!
The Silver Spoon 4/5
Following the events of The White Monkey this novel is mainly centered in two events:
-Mont; Fleur's husband; new job as an MP, and defending a doctrine which includes the end of free trade and sending teenagers to the colonies (to match demand and supply!).
- Soames' encounter with the court after calling a woman in her daughter's salon 'traitress', because she said Fleur was a snob.
But the whole point is to describe this Society - high-class only, of course- which was born with a silver spoon on its mouth. This is put to particular with Fleur - who could be the definition of a spoiled child- and in general with the state of the UK - which still believes itself to be in the golden era when its power is in decay.
I also liked how Fleur and Mont's relationship evolved, him becoming less emotionally dependent.
I also had a few laughs with the book, I'll never stop saying that Soames is a great character.
Swan Song 4.5/5
As the title says it is Soames Forsyte's farewell. Caught up between his principles – advanced but also 'Victorian' – he has no place left in this modern world. This is what he realises throught all the novel, from the General Strike (the book opens there) to his visit to his ancestor's town. In his final round with life Soames has to deal with Jon Forsyte's return, his daughter's old love and the son of his first (and still loved) wife. Unlike in the other two books, Fleur and and Michaell Mont have equal shares of PoVs. Michael has forgotten (a bit) of Foggartism and is now focused on cleaning up the slums (which reminded me of Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier) and this helps him forget about Fleur's behaviour. Indeed,she is a good spoiled child, a woman of the era and the daughter of Soames Forsyte, this fatal mixture will make her crave for what she can't have – that is, Jon, who is now married –, the forbidden fruit. It is interesting to see her point of view and compare it with her behaviour in To Let: The Forsyte Saga – which deals with Jon and Fleur's first love affair –. She is still restless and obsessive – and with a frightening concept of property – but she is now more... hysterical in a way. In these three books Galsworthy makes us see that she is clearly unsatisfied – why I don't know.
But going back to Soames, this is definitely his Swan Song. But, obviously, his leaving of this world is somehow ironical. It fits his character but also shows that what he has done with his life, besides loving Fleur, has been nonsense, that his obsession with property, with collecting stuff, in the end, amounts to nothing, and only feelings are the true legacy.
Anyway, those were three beautiful books. I can't say I fell in love with Soames but he's a character I'll always remember. It is, on top, extremely well-written, with very witty comments (British humour ftw) but also very poetic descriptions, of both landscape and feelings. Overall, I know I'll read these two trilogies again. Maybe in five or ten years, but this is a story to be lived again.
June 27, 2024
1400 puslapių, 50 metų, Nobelio premija ir krūva įvairių radijo, teatro, kino ir televizijos adaptacijų.
Šis didžiulis darbas yra paminklas vėlyvosios karalienės Viktorijos epochos anglų aukštosios - vidutinės klasės gyvenimui. Skaityti verta.
Nuo pat pirmų šimtų puslapių pasidaro aišku, kodėl šį dvitomį sovietiniais laikais išleido net dukart, o 1992m. jau ir trečiąkart. Jau pirma pirmo tomo dalis užvadinta "Savininkas" (The man of property) gan atvirai šaržuoja kapitalizmą ir privačios nuosavybės ekonomiką. Ir kaip čia tokia proga nepasinaudosi, kai net anglas nobelistas taip rašo...
Tomai skiriasi. Abu turi po tris dalis (knygas) su interliudijomis tarp jų. Dalys rašytos atskirai su gan dideliais išleidimo tarpais.
Ypač pirmajame tome buvo ryškus įdomus potyris: skyriai dalyse trumpi ir juose pasakojimas eina nuo skirtingų personažų. Pvz. viename skyriuje Somso situacijos matymas ir jo žmona Irenė pasileidėlė, kitame skyriuje jau vaizdas iš Irenės pusės (Somsas - tai vyras, kurio neįmanoma mylėti ir jis tiesiog nepakenčiamas) ir t.t. Požiūris į situaciją iš personažo perspektyvos nuosekliai keičiasi kiekviename skyriuje. Dinamiškumo, įvykių gausos nestinga.
Antrajame tome sumažėja veikiančių personažų kiekis. Bet čia jau Galsworthy's prideda daugiau humoro. Apskritai - stilius pasikeičia, nuoseklumas bandomas išlaikyti, o kai kurie personažai apsiverčia - tampa žmonėmis su visokiais bruožais, ne tik neigiamais, kaip buvo aprašyta pirmajame tome.
10/10 "Monopolio" diedukų su cilindrais ir baltais ūsais. Rekomenduoju visiems, nebijantiems didelių tekstų. O bijantiems - tuo labiau.
Keletas ištraukų be konteksto:
Per pietus apetito neturėjo, suvalgė tik kurapką, užsigerdamas pinta šampano.
Džeimsas buvo perėjęs per meilės ugnį, bet jis buvo perėjęs ir per begalinį metų srautą, kuris užgesiną ugnį; jis patyrė tai, kas visų liūdniausia patirti - pamiršo, ką reiškia būti įsimylėjusiam.
Pamiršo! Taip seniai pamiršo, kad pamiršo net ir tai, kad pamiršo.
Tai jis pastatė nuostabią aukštų raudonų namų eilę Kenzigtone, kurie varžosi su kitais pretendentais dėl "bjauriausių Londono statinių" šlovės.
Jinai labai sėkmingai ištekino tris savo dukteris, nors merginos buvo tokios nedailios, kokios dažniausiai būna tik garbingiausių profesijų šeimose.
Tačiau senasis Džolionas galvojo: "Neturėjo pinigų!" Ar gali būti dar kas nors baisesnio? Su tuo ir visa kita susiję.
Na, tų prancūzų jis gerai nepažįsta, bet anglai iš tikrųjų visai nebloga tauta - jų tik prasti dantys ir skonis apgailėtinas.
Anetė priglaudė ranką prie tos vietos, kur turėjo būti širdis, - nors jos egzistencija Somsas kartais ir suabejodavo.
Jūs ne gražuolis, bet veido malonaus.
Pagaliau Maiklas nužingsniavo, įsikandęs neuždegtą cigaretę, apsvaigęs lyg boksininkas, kurį pirmasis smūgis surietė, o antrasis vėl atitiesino.
Grįžęs į viešbutį, jis tučtuojau nuėjo prie kiosko vestibiulyje, kur pardavinėjami laikraščiai, dantų pasta, saldainiai, kuriuos valgant galima išsilaužti dantis, tikriausiai ir įdėtus vietoj išlaužtųjų.
Kas čia bus dar po pusantro tūkstančio metų? Vėl tankumynai, šilojai, pelkės ar ištisas didžiulis priemiestis - ką gali žinoti? Kažkur buvo skaitęs, kad žmonės gyvens po žeme ir tik sekmadieniais išlįs pakvėpuoti tyru oru, skraidydami nuosavais lėktuvais. Kažkaip nesinori tikėti. Anglai negalės gyventi be atdarų langų ir gero skersvėjo, ir, be to, jo manymu, žaisti sviediniu po žeme visada bus tvanku, o žaisti aukštai ore - neįmanoma. Tie, kurie rašo pranašingus straipsnius ir knygas, pamiršta, kad žmonės turi aistras. Jis net lažybų kirstų, kad ir 3400 metais anglo aistros bus: žaisti golfą, keikti orą, sėdėti skersvėjyje ir rūpintis maldaknygių teksto pakeitimais.
Šis didžiulis darbas yra paminklas vėlyvosios karalienės Viktorijos epochos anglų aukštosios - vidutinės klasės gyvenimui. Skaityti verta.
Nuo pat pirmų šimtų puslapių pasidaro aišku, kodėl šį dvitomį sovietiniais laikais išleido net dukart, o 1992m. jau ir trečiąkart. Jau pirma pirmo tomo dalis užvadinta "Savininkas" (The man of property) gan atvirai šaržuoja kapitalizmą ir privačios nuosavybės ekonomiką. Ir kaip čia tokia proga nepasinaudosi, kai net anglas nobelistas taip rašo...
Tomai skiriasi. Abu turi po tris dalis (knygas) su interliudijomis tarp jų. Dalys rašytos atskirai su gan dideliais išleidimo tarpais.
Ypač pirmajame tome buvo ryškus įdomus potyris: skyriai dalyse trumpi ir juose pasakojimas eina nuo skirtingų personažų. Pvz. viename skyriuje Somso situacijos matymas ir jo žmona Irenė pasileidėlė, kitame skyriuje jau vaizdas iš Irenės pusės (Somsas - tai vyras, kurio neįmanoma mylėti ir jis tiesiog nepakenčiamas) ir t.t. Požiūris į situaciją iš personažo perspektyvos nuosekliai keičiasi kiekviename skyriuje. Dinamiškumo, įvykių gausos nestinga.
Antrajame tome sumažėja veikiančių personažų kiekis. Bet čia jau Galsworthy's prideda daugiau humoro. Apskritai - stilius pasikeičia, nuoseklumas bandomas išlaikyti, o kai kurie personažai apsiverčia - tampa žmonėmis su visokiais bruožais, ne tik neigiamais, kaip buvo aprašyta pirmajame tome.
10/10 "Monopolio" diedukų su cilindrais ir baltais ūsais. Rekomenduoju visiems, nebijantiems didelių tekstų. O bijantiems - tuo labiau.
Keletas ištraukų be konteksto:
Per pietus apetito neturėjo, suvalgė tik kurapką, užsigerdamas pinta šampano.
Džeimsas buvo perėjęs per meilės ugnį, bet jis buvo perėjęs ir per begalinį metų srautą, kuris užgesiną ugnį; jis patyrė tai, kas visų liūdniausia patirti - pamiršo, ką reiškia būti įsimylėjusiam.
Pamiršo! Taip seniai pamiršo, kad pamiršo net ir tai, kad pamiršo.
Tai jis pastatė nuostabią aukštų raudonų namų eilę Kenzigtone, kurie varžosi su kitais pretendentais dėl "bjauriausių Londono statinių" šlovės.
Jinai labai sėkmingai ištekino tris savo dukteris, nors merginos buvo tokios nedailios, kokios dažniausiai būna tik garbingiausių profesijų šeimose.
Tačiau senasis Džolionas galvojo: "Neturėjo pinigų!" Ar gali būti dar kas nors baisesnio? Su tuo ir visa kita susiję.
Na, tų prancūzų jis gerai nepažįsta, bet anglai iš tikrųjų visai nebloga tauta - jų tik prasti dantys ir skonis apgailėtinas.
Anetė priglaudė ranką prie tos vietos, kur turėjo būti širdis, - nors jos egzistencija Somsas kartais ir suabejodavo.
Jūs ne gražuolis, bet veido malonaus.
Pagaliau Maiklas nužingsniavo, įsikandęs neuždegtą cigaretę, apsvaigęs lyg boksininkas, kurį pirmasis smūgis surietė, o antrasis vėl atitiesino.
Grįžęs į viešbutį, jis tučtuojau nuėjo prie kiosko vestibiulyje, kur pardavinėjami laikraščiai, dantų pasta, saldainiai, kuriuos valgant galima išsilaužti dantis, tikriausiai ir įdėtus vietoj išlaužtųjų.
Kas čia bus dar po pusantro tūkstančio metų? Vėl tankumynai, šilojai, pelkės ar ištisas didžiulis priemiestis - ką gali žinoti? Kažkur buvo skaitęs, kad žmonės gyvens po žeme ir tik sekmadieniais išlįs pakvėpuoti tyru oru, skraidydami nuosavais lėktuvais. Kažkaip nesinori tikėti. Anglai negalės gyventi be atdarų langų ir gero skersvėjo, ir, be to, jo manymu, žaisti sviediniu po žeme visada bus tvanku, o žaisti aukštai ore - neįmanoma. Tie, kurie rašo pranašingus straipsnius ir knygas, pamiršta, kad žmonės turi aistras. Jis net lažybų kirstų, kad ir 3400 metais anglo aistros bus: žaisti golfą, keikti orą, sėdėti skersvėjyje ir rūpintis maldaknygių teksto pakeitimais.
November 2, 2021
Голсуорси вывернул все мои эмоциональные кишки наизнанку и развесил просушиться, бессердечный.
October 18, 2021
It is physically impossible to write a review for an entire trilogy, but I will say the two main things I have in my mind after spending almost a month and a half with the Forsyte family by my side:
- I love them deeply, and it is quite a feat because these are very flawed people, some in ways that seem irredeemable, and yet, by the end I had grown fond of the majority of them. The politics played a big part in this one, which was a change from the previous trilogy, and I have to admit a lot of that went straight over my head because I wasn't invested enough in figuring it out, but I was invested in some parts of it, which is also an impressive achievement for Galsworthy. Kudos, old boy. These books were a ride, and as someone who is *obsessed* with character development, these are now at the top of many of my mental lists. Good stuff.
- Clearly, parental death, specifically fathers dying, is a pretty universal experience, and it seems to be something with many layers in most literary cases, as it is in life. It makes for interesting content, but I do wish I could stop running into it so often. This trilogy and the previous ones made me sob unexpectedly a few times, but it wasn't its fault as much as it was my own grief shining through. Still had a good time reading it though.
- I love them deeply, and it is quite a feat because these are very flawed people, some in ways that seem irredeemable, and yet, by the end I had grown fond of the majority of them. The politics played a big part in this one, which was a change from the previous trilogy, and I have to admit a lot of that went straight over my head because I wasn't invested enough in figuring it out, but I was invested in some parts of it, which is also an impressive achievement for Galsworthy. Kudos, old boy. These books were a ride, and as someone who is *obsessed* with character development, these are now at the top of many of my mental lists. Good stuff.
- Clearly, parental death, specifically fathers dying, is a pretty universal experience, and it seems to be something with many layers in most literary cases, as it is in life. It makes for interesting content, but I do wish I could stop running into it so often. This trilogy and the previous ones made me sob unexpectedly a few times, but it wasn't its fault as much as it was my own grief shining through. Still had a good time reading it though.
December 19, 2017
Perhaps even more drama than in the first trilogy, but on the whole this falls lower on the scale. And of course we are continuing with the favourite message of Galsworthy's, that a woman's goodness is in inverse proportion to her force of character and ability to act and decide for herself. Here's the reason, if you like, for these books not being so popular as many other, sometimes even older classics.
October 12, 2017
Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
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The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
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A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
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The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
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Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
.......................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.......................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
.......................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
.......................................................................
A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
.......................................................................
The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
.......................................................................
Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
.......................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.......................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
.......................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
October 30, 2025
The second trio of novels in the Forsyte Chronicles are best commented on together as, like the first tranche, none works 'standalone', so don't start unless you mean to complete the course. And it is well worth the effort. Whilst not quite reaching the giddy heights of the first volume (no-one can quite step into the shoes of Old Jolyon) it is damn near as engrossing. I can't quite get over how masterfully he 'rehabilitates' Soames - why you could almost forget what an irredeemable bastard he was in the first sequence.
April 25, 2018
4.5 stars
November 10, 2018
Glad to be over with the Victorian fuss & romance that fueled Volume 1. Volume 2 is so superior to all that. The modern times (just a century yesterday) resonate with our way of being. Speed, business, courts, public works, travel and... comedy-like feelings, them as well. In any case, a masterpiece.
October 12, 2017
Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
.......................................................................
A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
.......................................................................
The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
.......................................................................
Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
.......................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.......................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
.......................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
.......................................................................
A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
.......................................................................
The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
.......................................................................
Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
.......................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.......................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
.......................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
January 14, 2026
Soames is one of the great characters of literature. Somehow he goes from being the villain of the first saga (understandable but still a villain) to an almost lovable old man in this one.
These young people had no continuity; some microbe in the blood--of the 'idle rich,' and the 'idle poor,' and everybody else, so far as he could see. Nobody could be got to stay anywhere--not even in their graves, judging by all those séances. (p. 563)
Weak-minded! To reflect on the weak-mindedness of his fellow-citizens was restful to Soames, faced with a future that might prove disastrous. (p. 695)
"I wish we had a Mussolini."
"I don't. You pay for him in the long run. Look at Diaz and Mexico; or Lenin and Russia; or Napoleon and France; or Cromwell and England, for the matter of that." (p. 476)
Yes, she preferred the old smooth Irish linen to that new rough French grass-bleached stuff. (p. 498)
These young people had no continuity; some microbe in the blood--of the 'idle rich,' and the 'idle poor,' and everybody else, so far as he could see. Nobody could be got to stay anywhere--not even in their graves, judging by all those séances. (p. 563)
Weak-minded! To reflect on the weak-mindedness of his fellow-citizens was restful to Soames, faced with a future that might prove disastrous. (p. 695)
"I wish we had a Mussolini."
"I don't. You pay for him in the long run. Look at Diaz and Mexico; or Lenin and Russia; or Napoleon and France; or Cromwell and England, for the matter of that." (p. 476)
Yes, she preferred the old smooth Irish linen to that new rough French grass-bleached stuff. (p. 498)
August 7, 2009
Part II of The Forsyte Chronicles - once again three books and two interludes
Book 1: The White Monkey
Interlude: A Silent Wooing
Book 2: The Silver Spoon
Interlude: Passers By
Book 3: Swan Song
The pace of this continuation is slower and centers on Fleur, her husband Michael and of course Soames. There is a lot of description on the social lifestyle and politics of the 1920s. Soames is on the Board of Directors of a company and there are ethical issues. Unemployment is high and people are desperate - modeling in the "altogether" is a high paying job! Is there a cycle that is being repeated nowadays??
Book II centers once again on the politics and social problem of unemployment and a concept of Foggartism which will make people self sufficient with farming to help ease unemployment. This is Michael's idea that he tries to sell to Parliment and it becomes the center of a libel court case when a socialite makes a comments against Fleur and Soames takes the remark to the limit. I felt this was a little to drawn out and couldn't wait to finish reading this section!
The most enjoyable reading was the Interludes, which refer to the past of Jon (Fleur's love interest) and his mother Irene (Soame's 1st wife).
Book III continues with some political and social issues, but I found was the most enjoyable section. The saga of Fleur/Jon's attraction is centered on and it read more like The Forsyte Saga. Soames is always looking out for his little girl and trying to steer her once again. She is very modern and headstrong in what she wants. The ending was sad and ironic how "Soames takes the ferry", but I thought it was brillant and totally unexpected.
Book 1: The White Monkey
Interlude: A Silent Wooing
Book 2: The Silver Spoon
Interlude: Passers By
Book 3: Swan Song
The pace of this continuation is slower and centers on Fleur, her husband Michael and of course Soames. There is a lot of description on the social lifestyle and politics of the 1920s. Soames is on the Board of Directors of a company and there are ethical issues. Unemployment is high and people are desperate - modeling in the "altogether" is a high paying job! Is there a cycle that is being repeated nowadays??
Book II centers once again on the politics and social problem of unemployment and a concept of Foggartism which will make people self sufficient with farming to help ease unemployment. This is Michael's idea that he tries to sell to Parliment and it becomes the center of a libel court case when a socialite makes a comments against Fleur and Soames takes the remark to the limit. I felt this was a little to drawn out and couldn't wait to finish reading this section!
The most enjoyable reading was the Interludes, which refer to the past of Jon (Fleur's love interest) and his mother Irene (Soame's 1st wife).
Book III continues with some political and social issues, but I found was the most enjoyable section. The saga of Fleur/Jon's attraction is centered on and it read more like The Forsyte Saga. Soames is always looking out for his little girl and trying to steer her once again. She is very modern and headstrong in what she wants. The ending was sad and ironic how "Soames takes the ferry", but I thought it was brillant and totally unexpected.
July 9, 2009
Ya gotta hand it to Soames Forsyte - hope springs eternal that Irene, his estranged wife, will suddenly realize the error of her ways and return to him.
This second volume of the Forsyte saga finds the first generation at the end of their time and the mantle is passing to their children and grandchildren. Set at the turn of the century in Victorian London, life is changing rapidly. Motorcars take the place of carriages, the Second Boer War is fought, and Queen Victoria dies. All this is a fascinating backdrop to the continuing story of the Forsyte family.
I liked this volume even better than the first. Galsworthy does not rehash material - his characters grow and change. Soames Forsyte is one of the best-drawn characters I've ever encounted.
Note - read this series in order.
This second volume of the Forsyte saga finds the first generation at the end of their time and the mantle is passing to their children and grandchildren. Set at the turn of the century in Victorian London, life is changing rapidly. Motorcars take the place of carriages, the Second Boer War is fought, and Queen Victoria dies. All this is a fascinating backdrop to the continuing story of the Forsyte family.
I liked this volume even better than the first. Galsworthy does not rehash material - his characters grow and change. Soames Forsyte is one of the best-drawn characters I've ever encounted.
Note - read this series in order.
May 7, 2016
I'll never forget the summer when I read "The Forsyte Saga"-- all of it. I was so engrossed by the plot and the characters that I checked out all the fat volumes from the library at once and stashed them in the trunk of my car. I wanted to be able to snap up each successive volume the very moment I had finished the previous one. (How awful would it have been to wait for some other library patron to finish with the one I NEEDED immediately!) I recently reread the entire saga, and my pleasure was undiminished.
"A Modern Comedy" is quite as fine in style, quite as interesting a foray into a historic period. The characters are their same astonishing/endearing/irksome selves. But for me, the plot just didn't seem to go very far or at much of a pace. Marital infidelity-- prospective, suspected, philosophized upon. Objet d'art and their procurement. Politics. Repeat.
"A Modern Comedy" is quite as fine in style, quite as interesting a foray into a historic period. The characters are their same astonishing/endearing/irksome selves. But for me, the plot just didn't seem to go very far or at much of a pace. Marital infidelity-- prospective, suspected, philosophized upon. Objet d'art and their procurement. Politics. Repeat.
September 14, 2013
Jon, Holly, and Val my favorite characters- Michael a dear.
October 12, 2017
Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
..........................................................
..........................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
................................................................
................................................................
A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
.........................................................................................
The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
............................................................................................
Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
..............................................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.................................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
...............................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013
......................................................................................
......................................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
......................................................................
......................................................................
Tuesday, September 24, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
..........................................................
..........................................................
The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
................................................................
................................................................
A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
.........................................................................................
The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
............................................................................................
Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
..............................................................................................
The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
.................................................................................
Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
...............................................................................
Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013
......................................................................................
......................................................................................
One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
......................................................................
......................................................................
Tuesday, September 24, 2013.
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
August 24, 2022
There is something transcendent about classics. Here’s a book written almost a hundred years ago that feels just as modern and relevant as it must have done in 1924, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why.
Yet, the mix of concern and excitement about technological progress, the ennui and confusion of a generation of twenty-somethings, the preoccupation with how things appear rather than with what they are echo our own concerns, albeit in slightly different forms. Galsworthy has made Fleur, Soames, Michael, and Jon living, breathing people, so that just as with the first volume of The Forsyte Saga, I feel as if I’ve been living in the 1920s for the past few weeks.
I want to go back already.
The Forsyte Sage, vol. 2 consists of three novels, each set roughly two years apart: The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon and Swan Song.
The second one, The Silver Spoon was somewhat hard to get through at times, because it centers on a protracted legal battle. And while I admire Galsworthy for keeping my attention through nearly 300 pages of legal dealings, it was not the most riveting part of the saga.
The other two parts more than made up for it, though, and the final part (Swan Song)moved me as deeply as volume 1 of the whole saga.
To me, Galsworthy is at his best when he deals with emotion. Soames, Irene, and Bosinney in vol. 1, Jon & Fleur in vol. 2 — he makes one feel all the conflicted feelings that drive people to their actions.
That second-to-last chapter, “Fires” is one of the best things I have read. So utterly fast-paced, so symbolic, so gut-wrenching and yet befitting. Deeply emotional, and almost cinematic in style.
Aside from the masterful way in which Galsworthy conveys emotions and unnameable sentiments, however, I just love the way he creates hyper-realistic, flawed but consistent characters.
Soames is not a likeable person, for example. In vol. 1, he is truly awful, and in vol. 2 he is just…really hard to like. And yet…I felt for him. How has he managed that?
How have I become somewhat attached to a guy who is really just not very sympathetic? How have I begun to care for Soames, in spite of everything that happened in vol. 1?
I will have to re-read some parts to figure this out, but I’m in awe.
In closing, some of the passages that struck me most:
“Back on the tender, with the strip of grey water opening, spreading between him and the ship’s side, and that high line of faces above the bulwark — Fleur’s face under the small fawn hat, her waving hand; and, away to the left, seen out of the tail of his eyes, old Forsyte’s face alone — withdrawn so that they might have their parting to themselves — long, chilly, grey-moustached, very motionless; absorbed and lonely, as might be that of some long-distance bird arrived on an unknown shore, and looking back towards the land of its departure. Smaller and smaller they grew, merged in blur, vanished” (550).
“These young people had no continuity; some microbe in the blood — of the ‘idle rich,’ and the ‘idle poor’ and everybody else, so far as he could see. Nobody could be got to stay anywhere — not even in their graves, judging by all those séances. If only people would attend quietly to their business, even to that of being dead! They had such an appetite for living that they had no life” (669).
“Very different now, he was told; but there it was — people posed nowadays, they posed as viveurs, and as all the rest of it, but they didn’t vive, they thought too much about how” (749).
“But even as he spoke them, the words seemed futile and a little brutal. The fellow wasn’t a man at all — he was a shade, a languid bitter shade. It was as if one were bullying a ghost” (783).
The entire final passage is among the very best out there, but I won’t transcribe it here since it’s the end of the book. Truly magnificent.
Thank you, John Galsworthy. On to the next book.
April 6, 2025
Λοιπόν, το τρίτο βιβλίο αυτής της τριλογίας, το Swan Song, είναι όλο καταπληκτικό!, ισάξιο με τα βιβλία της πρώτης τριλογίας ( The Forsyte Saga ) . Σ'αυτό βάζω 5/5. Είναι εξαιρετικό το πώς ο John Galsworthy σε κάνει ακόμα και να συμπάσχεις με έναν τύπο (τον Σόμς ) που από την πρώτη τριλογία εμφανίζεται ως ένας όχι συμπαθής χαρακτήρας - εξαιτίας των πράξεών και σκέψεών του- και από την πρώτη εκείνη τριλογία μπορεί κανείς να πει ότι είναι ο κακός της υπόθεσης. Δεν κάνω spoiler για το υπόλοιπο βιβλίο - ήδη πολλά ανέφερα. Τώρα τα δύο πρώτα βιβλία αυτής της τριλογίας, The White Monkey και The Silver Spoon, μου φάνηκαν μερικές φορές σαν ο συγγραφέας να έγραφε για να έγραφε, - ειδικά στο The Silver Spoon - , σαν να συνέχιζε την ιστορία απλά για να τη συνεχίσει, διαλέγοντας απλά ένα θέμα για να γράψει, και μερικές φορές ένιωθα να βαριέμαι που διάβαζα πάλι στο πνεύμα του ίδιου συγγραφέα της πρώτης τριλογίας (που την είχα διαβάσει ακριβώς προηγουμένως από αυτήν την τριλογία), και επίσης ότι ήθελα τώρα να διαβάσω κάτι στο πνεύμα κάποιου άλλου συγγραφέα. Μεγάλα βιβλία και τα δύο, η πρώτη τριλογία 918 σελίδες, αυτή περίπου 770, ίσως και για αυτό. Όμως, όσων αφορά τα πρώτα δύο αυτά βιβλία του A Modern Comedy, μου φάνηκε ότι δεν είχαν τόσο σοβαρό θέμα και επίπεδο όσο τα βιβλία του The Forsyte Saga ή το Swan Song αυτής της τριλογίας, και ότι ήταν κάπως αλαφροΐσκιωτα. Γι' αυτό σ'αυτά τα δύο βάζω 4/5 και έβαλα 4/5 στην τριλογία στο σύνολό της. Παρόλα αυτά, με τη μαεστρία του ο συγγραφέας δείχνει στο τέλος ότι με αυτά τα δύο βιβλία σε προετοιμάζει για το τρίτο , όπου και το έργο ολόκληρο κορυφώνεται και γίνεται αριστούργημα! Πάντως , ακόμα και σε αυτά τα δύο πρώτα βιβλία της τριλογίας, που μου φάνηκαν μερικές φορές αλαφροΐσκιωτα, δεν μπορεί κανείς να μην αναγνωρίσει την τέχνη της αφήγησης του συγγραφέα και να γοητευτεί από αυτήν, όποιο και αν είναι το θέμα της. Τώρα σκέφτομαι, να αρχίσω απανωτά την τρίτη και τελευταία τριλογία ή να διαβάσω κάποιο άλλο πνεύμα?.. Ίσως διαβάσω κάτι άλλο για να επιστρέψω με περισσότερο ενδιαφέρον στο τελευταίο μέρος...
June 9, 2023
"The world was full of wonderful secrets which everybody kept to themselves without captions or close-ups to give them away!"
If I'm being honest, there was very little that I remembered about the first volume of The Forsythe Chronicles before diving into this next one. And because of that, I really dragged my feet through the first part or so, trying to reconnect with these characters and recall the events of the previous book.
But while it did take me some time to ease back into this world, once I did, there was really no stopping me. This book is massive, but once I got going, it never felt like that. Galsworthy keeps his chapters short, which really lulls you along into one after the other until suddenly you've reached the end of another part.
I'm usually not huge on books with a lot of different character perspectives, but Galsworthy really makes each and every shift count, allowing you to get each's point of view, but often without truly knowing what everyone is thinking, a difficult-to-strike balance which Galsworthy executes flawlessly.
I loved that each part had its own rise and fall in the narrative structure while still maintaining a sense of continuity across all three. It's not easy to weave so many characters and their lives throughout such a big book, nevertheless the other two volumes, but Galsworthy just does it so well.
The last thing I'll really express here is my love for Soames. He is the one character that really stood out in my mind from Volume One, perhaps because he is Galsworthy's protagonist in a way. But I truly think he is one of the most complex characters I've ever read — grumpy and conservative, certainly opinionated and set in his ways, yet you almost become rather fond of him the more you read of him. I think that's perhaps why
So, all in all, while I found this rather slow and a bit drudgy to begin with, I really did get into it and will absolutely be seeing this series all the way through the third volume. but I'm still looking forward to finding out!
June 3, 2020
I just read the three novels comprising A Modern Comedy, published in 1928, to take another look at the difference between Galsworthy and Dorothy Sayers, who wrote around the same time. A Modern Comedy, also, is the bridging trilogy between the more famous Forsyte Saga and the final trilogy, End of the Chapter, which features the delightful Dinny Cherrell and a stronger storyline.
Typically Galsworthy, this trilogy gives us brilliant social portraits and equally brilliant individual characters. Fleur, Michael, Jon and Soames are the outstanding characters here.
The portrait is of a society disillusioned after Darwin's Origin of the Species and then World War 1, in which many of the protagonists have fought. The reigning philosophy is 'keep a sense of humour. It's all that really matters now.' Sad.
The third volume of the trilogy, Swan Song, is by my standards, by far the best. The other two are a bit scatty and anecdotal. Swan Song picks up the saga of Jon's and Fleur's romance, and Soames' love for his daughter. No spoilers! But the storyline is good. It is interesting to see how Fleur and Jon show inherited characteristics from their parents.
Several major events surround the outworking of the Jon/Fleur relationship and the conclusion of the trilogy.
Although not a page-turner, it is a good read, especially Swan Song.
Incidentally, the style is much more dated than Sayers'.
Typically Galsworthy, this trilogy gives us brilliant social portraits and equally brilliant individual characters. Fleur, Michael, Jon and Soames are the outstanding characters here.
The portrait is of a society disillusioned after Darwin's Origin of the Species and then World War 1, in which many of the protagonists have fought. The reigning philosophy is 'keep a sense of humour. It's all that really matters now.' Sad.
The third volume of the trilogy, Swan Song, is by my standards, by far the best. The other two are a bit scatty and anecdotal. Swan Song picks up the saga of Jon's and Fleur's romance, and Soames' love for his daughter. No spoilers! But the storyline is good. It is interesting to see how Fleur and Jon show inherited characteristics from their parents.
Several major events surround the outworking of the Jon/Fleur relationship and the conclusion of the trilogy.
Although not a page-turner, it is a good read, especially Swan Song.
Incidentally, the style is much more dated than Sayers'.
Read
May 11, 2020I thought I would go back and re-read this trilogy as we live through our "once in a century" pandemic. It was written within the decade of the years that concluded WWI and faced the Spanish Flu. It ends in 1926 (published in 1929). John Galsworthy himself describes the times: "Everything being now relative, there is no longer absolute dependence to be placed on God, Free Trade, Marriage, Consols, Coal or Caste." Comparing it with the society that preceded it, he says: "This is really the fundamental difference between the present and the past generations. People will not provide against that which they cannot see ahead." A satire of the British well-to-do classes and considered to be a reflection of the "Spirit of the Age", it provides an interesting mirror to hold up against our own ideas of a progressive society struck by world calamity.
May 3, 2018
But, however much or little “A Modern Comedy” may be deemed to reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881, a tale which could but end when its spine snapped, and Soames ‘took the ferry’ forty-five years later.
With this trilogy, Galsworthy, puts an end to the fortunes and misfortunes of the Forsytes. The story narrates, mainly, the lives of Soames and his daughter Fleur, from october of 1922 to september of 1926, when Soames dies after saving the life of a depressed and suicidal Fleur.
In the end, I couldn't help but being sorry for the "unlovable" Soames Forsyte, destroyed by whom/what (Fleur/a picture) he most loved.
With this trilogy, Galsworthy, puts an end to the fortunes and misfortunes of the Forsytes. The story narrates, mainly, the lives of Soames and his daughter Fleur, from october of 1922 to september of 1926, when Soames dies after saving the life of a depressed and suicidal Fleur.
In the end, I couldn't help but being sorry for the "unlovable" Soames Forsyte, destroyed by whom/what (Fleur/a picture) he most loved.
December 4, 2024
No....., got to page 80 and was totally bored and rather mystified. Very odd and confused writing.
Also, the main character, Fleur, is totally self-centered and disagreeable and unlikeable. In the first vol. of The Forsyte Saga she was a character I had no interest in due to her spoiled selfish nature and, as she is the main character in Vol. 2 I just had no interest.
Galsworthy's writing is very slow-paced and very... boring.
I was looking forward to reading this classic (all three vols.) but I was disappointed in vol. 1 as I found it rather boring and vol. 2 just confirmed that for me.
Needless to say, I will not be buying vol. 3.
Also, the main character, Fleur, is totally self-centered and disagreeable and unlikeable. In the first vol. of The Forsyte Saga she was a character I had no interest in due to her spoiled selfish nature and, as she is the main character in Vol. 2 I just had no interest.
Galsworthy's writing is very slow-paced and very... boring.
I was looking forward to reading this classic (all three vols.) but I was disappointed in vol. 1 as I found it rather boring and vol. 2 just confirmed that for me.
Needless to say, I will not be buying vol. 3.
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June 20, 2022
Na de grandioze eerste trilogie De Forsythe Sage is dit vervolg een tegenvaller. De familiekroniek is vervallen tot een soapserie met kitscherige en slappe gebeurtenissen en eendimensionale personages die met gemak in het verhaal opdoemen om vervolgens spoorloos te verdwijnen. Het is vlot geschreven, beslist, en met veel dialogen, en ik heb het dan ook vlot gelezen, maar vooralsnog geloof ik niet dat Galsworthy in 1932 de Nobelprijs had gewonnen als al zijn boeken van dit niveau waren.
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