財産家 — ジョン・ゴールズワージー
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Forsyte Saga, Volume I. Author : John Galsworthy Release date : June 14, 2006 [eBook #2559] Most recently updated: May 11, 2020 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2559 Credits : Produced by David Widger *** START OF *** FORSYTE SAGA THE MAN OF PROPERTY By John Galsworthy Contents PREFACE: THE MAN OF PROPERTY PART I CHAPTER I—“AT HOME” AT OLD JOLYON’S CHAPTER II—OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA CHAPTER III—DINNER AT SWITHIN’S CHAPTER IV—PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE CHAPTER V—A FORSYTE MÉNAGE CHAPTER VI—JAMES AT LARGE CHAPTER VII—OLD JOLYON’S PECCADILLO CHAPTER VIII—PLANS OF THE HOUSE CHAPTER IX—DEATH OF AUNT ANN PART II CHAPTER I—PROGRESS OF THE HOUSE CHAPTER II—JUNE’S TREAT CHAPTER III—DRIVE WITH SWITHIN CHAPTER IV—JAMES GOES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF CHAPTER V—SOAMES AND BOSINNEY CORRESPOND CHAPTER VI—OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO CHAPTER VII—AFTERNOON AT TIMOTHY’S CHAPTER VIII—DANCE AT ROGER’S CHAPTER IX—EVENING AT RICHMOND CHAPTER X—DIAGNOSIS OF A FORSYTE CHAPTER XI—BOSINNEY ON PAROLE CHAPTER XII—JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS CHAPTER XIII—PERFECTION OF THE HOUSE CHAPTER XIV—SOAMES SITS ON THE STAIRS PART III CHAPTER I—MRS. MACANDER’S EVIDENCE CHAPTER II—NIGHT IN THE PARK CHAPTER III—MEETING AT THE BOTANICAL CHAPTER IV—VOYAGE INTO THE INFERNO CHAPTER V—THE TRIAL CHAPTER VI—SOAMES BREAKS THE NEWS CHAPTER VII—JUNE’S VICTORY CHAPTER VIII—BOSINNEY’S DEPARTURE CHAPTER IX—IRENE’S RETURN THE MAN OF PROPERTY TO MY WIFE: I DEDICATE THE FORSYTE SAGA IN ITS ENTIRETY, BELIEVING IT TO BE OF ALL MY WORKS THE LEAST UNWORTHY OF ONE WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT, SYMPATHY AND CRITICISM I COULD NEVER HAVE BECOME EVEN SUCH A WRITER AS I AM. PREFACE: “The Forsyte Saga” was the title originally destined for that part of it which is called “The Man of Property”; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale, though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged period, is not devoid of the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that “family” and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to “talk them out.” So many people have written and claimed that their families were the originals of the Forsytes that one has been almost encouraged to believe in the typicality of an imagined species. Manners change and modes evolve, and “Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road” becomes a nest of the unbelievable in all except essentials; we shall not look upon its like again, nor perhaps on such a one as James or Old Jolyon. And yet the figures of Insurance Societies and the utterances of Judges reassure us daily that our earthly paradise is still a rich preserve, where the wild raiders, Beauty and Passion, come stealing in, filching security from beneath our noses. As surely as a dog will bark at a brass band, so will the essential Soames in human nature ever rise up uneasily against the dissolution which hovers round the folds of ownership. “Let the dead Past bury its dead” would be a better saying if the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty. But no Age is so new as that! Human Nature, under its changing pretensions and clothes, is and ever will be very much of a Forsyte, and might, after all, be a much worse animal. Looking back on the Victorian era, whose ripeness, decline, and “fall-of” is in some sort pictured in “The Forsyte Saga,” we see now that we have but jumped out of a frying-pan into a fire. It would be difficult to substantiate a claim that the case of England was better in 1913 than it was in 1886, when the Forsytes assembled at Old Jolyon’s to celebrate the engagement of June to Philip Bosinney. And in 1920, when again the clan gathered to bless the marriage of Fleur with Michael Mont, the state of England is as surely too molten and bankrupt as in the eighties it was too congealed and low-percented. If these chronicles had been a really scientific study of transition one would have dwelt probably on such factors as the invention of bicycle, motor-car, and flying-machine; the arrival of a cheap Press; the decline of country life and increase of the towns; the birth of the Cinema. Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create. But this long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men. The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world. One has