He was one of those men who, seated cross-legged like miniature Chinese idols in the cages of their own hearts, are ever smiling at themselves a doubting smile. Not that this smile, so intimate and eternal, interfered with his actions, which, like his chin and his temperament, were quite a peculiar blend of softness and determination.
He was conscious, too, of being a Forsyte in his work, that painting of water-colours to which he devoted so much energy, always with an eye on himself, as though he could not take so unpractical a pursuit quite seriously, and always with a certain queer uneasiness that he did not make more money at it.
It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust:
SHELDRAKE HOUSE,
BROADSTAIRS,
July 1. MY DEAR JO,
(The Dads handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years that he remembered it.)
We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I dont see what is to come of it. She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an engagement and no engagement, and goodness knows what. I have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might take it into her head to come up at any moment. The fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he means. Im afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow is about. You will of course in no way commit June. I shall be glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you have succeeded in gaining any information. The situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it at night.
With my love to Jolly and Holly.
I am,
Your affect. father,
JOLYON FORSYTE.
Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He replied: Nothing.
It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June. She might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyons transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.
He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket, and without having made up his mind.
To sound a man as to his intentions was peculiarly unpleasant to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness. It was so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private relations.
And how that phrase in the letter You will, of course, in no way commit June gave the whole thing away.
Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the rap over the knuckles, was all so natural. No wonder his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.
It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances were saved.
How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So, young Jolyon!
He arrived at the Club at three oclock, and the first person he saw was Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.
Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the first time; an unusual looking man, unlike in dress, face, and manner to most of the other members of the Club young Jolyon himself, however different he had become in mood and temper, had always retained the neat reticence of Forsyte appearance. He alone among Forsytes was ignorant of Bosinneys nickname. The man was unusual, not eccentric, but unusual; he looked worn too, haggard, hollow in the cheeks beneath those broad, high cheekbones, though without any appearance of ill-health, for he was strongly built, with curly hair that seemed to show all the vitality of a fine constitution.
Something in his face and attitude touched young Jolyon. He knew what suffering was like, and this man looked as if he were suffering.
He got up and touched his arm.
Bosinney started, but exhibited no sign of embarrassment on seeing who it was.
Young Jolyon sat down.
I havent seen you for a long time, he said. How are you getting on with my cousins house?
Itll be finished in about a week.
I congratulate you!
Thanks I dont know that its much of a subject for congratulation.
No? queried young Jolyon; I should have thought youd be glad to get a long job like that off your hands; but I suppose you feel it much as I do when I part with a picture a sort of child?
He looked kindly at Bosinney.
Yes, said the latter more cordially, it goes out from you and theres an end of it. I didnt know you painted.
Only water-colours; I cant say I believe in my work.
Only water-colours; I cant say I believe in my work.
Dont believe in it? There how can you do it? Works no use unless you believe in it!
Good, said young Jolyon; its exactly what Ive always said. By-the-bye, have you noticed that whenever one says Good, one always adds its exactly what Ive always said! But if you ask me how I do it, I answer, because Im a Forsyte.
A Forsyte! I never thought of you as one!
A Forsyte, replied young Jolyon, is not an uncommon animal. There are hundreds among the members of this Club. Hundreds out there in the streets; you meet them wherever you go!
And how do you tell them, may I ask? said Bosinney.
By their sense of property. A Forsyte takes a practical one might say a commonsense view of things, and a practical view of things is based fundamentally on a sense of property. A Forsyte, you will notice, never gives himself away.
Joking?
Young Jolyons eye twinkled.
Not much. As a Forsyte myself, I have no business to talk. But Im a kind of thoroughbred mongrel; now, theres no mistaking you: youre as different from me as I am from my Uncle James, who is the perfect specimen of a Forsyte. His sense of property is extreme, while you have practically none. Without me in between, you would seem like a different species. Im the missing link. We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit that its a question of degree, but what I call a Forsyte is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property. He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on property it doesnt matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or reputation is his hall-mark.
Ah! murmured Bosinney. You should patent the word.
I should like, said young Jolyon, to lecture on it:
Properties and quality of a Forsyte: This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity.
You talk of them, said Bosinney, as if they were half England.
They are, repeated young Jolyon, half England, and the better half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts. Its their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without Forsytes, who believe in none of these things, and habitats but turn them all to use, where should we be? My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen, the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones of convention; everything that is admirable!
I dont know whether I catch your drift, said Bosinney, but I fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, as you call them, in my profession.
Certainly, replied young Jolyon. The great majority of architects, painters, or writers have no principles, like any other Forsytes. Art, literature, religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who really believe in such things, and the many Forsytes who make a commercial use of them. At a low estimate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large proportion of the press. Of science I cant speak; they are magnificently represented in religion; in the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself. But Im not laughing. It is dangerous to go against the majority and what a majority! He fixed his eyes on Bosinney: Its dangerous to let anything carry you away a house, a picture, a woman!
They looked at each other. And, as though he had done that which no Forsyte did given himself away, young Jolyon drew into his shell. Bosinney broke the silence.
Why do you take your own people as the type? said he.
My people, replied young Jolyon, are not very extreme, and they have their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte the power of never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body, and the sense of property.
Bosinney smiled: How about the big one, for instance?
Do you mean Swithin? asked young Jolyon. Ah! in Swithin theres something primeval still. The town and middle-class life havent digested him yet. All the old centuries of farm work and brute force have settled in him, and there theyve stuck, for all hes so distinguished.