Dave's Book Blog: "In Chancery" by John Galsworthy

Monday, 22 December 2025

"In Chancery" by John Galsworthy

This sequel to The Man of Property (and the Interlude called The Indian Summer of a Forsyte) is set during the Boer War and contrasts the difficulties of Soames and his sister Winifred as they try to divorce their partners (hence the title, the Court of Chancery was where family and matrimonial disputes were settled). Winifred's husband Monty Dartie is a cad and a bounder who always has to borrow money from his father-in-law to pay gambling debts but Winifred has finally had too much when he runs off to South America with her pearls and a dancer. But the difficulties of the divorce laws of the time mean that she must either prove adultery or plead for him to return to her which, if he doesn't within a certain time, will lead to divorce on the grounds of desertion.

Meanwhile Soames has lived apart from his wife Irene for more than twelve years (she has an independent income thanks to a bequest from Old Jolyon) so her admitted adultery with Bossiney is not too old to be grounds for his divorce; he decides to set a private investigator onto her. Meanwhile Val Dartie, Monty's son, and his cousin Holly, Young Jolyon's daughter, fall for one another and when Holly's brother Jolly finds out he dares Val to enlist with him as a volunteer to fight the Boers.

In this book, Soames progresses from a villain to a tragic figure, a plaything of the gods, as Young Jolyon foresees: “Was there anything, indeed, more tragic in the world than a man enslaved by his own possessive instinct, who couldn't see the sky for it, or even enter fully into what another person felt!” (1.12) Soames wants a son in order to leave his property to. Meanwhile his father James is going senile and is fretting about having no grandson to carry on the Forsyte name.

This book is followed by an Interlude called 'Awakening' and then by the third novel in the sequence: To Let.

It's a fascinating slice of social history. Galsworthy was a scion of the class that he scrutinises and this enabled him to be forensic about his attack on the Forsyte values whilst still recognising that not all Forsytes are the same and empathising with those who are trapped by their upbringing. Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize in 1932 "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga". This is the saga's first installment.

Selected quotes:

“People have a right to their own bodies, even when they're dead.” (1.1)
“Nicholas ... had, of course, never really forgiven the Married Women's Property Act, which would so have interfered with him if he had not mercifully married before it was passed.” (1.1)
“A student of statistics must have noticed that the birth rate had varied in accordance with the rate of interest for your money.” (1.1)
“Placing the revolver against his chest, Dartie had pulled the trigger several times. It was not loaded.” (1.2)
The London mob celebrates the news of the Relief of Mafeking and Soames feels intimidated: “This, then, was the populace, the innumerable living negation of gentility and Forsyteism. This was - egad - Democracy! it stank, yelled, was hideous!... In 1900, Soames, with his Forsyte thousands, had never seen the cauldron with the lid off; and now looking into it could hardly believe his scorching eyes.” Looking at houses, he reassures himself. “After all, we're the backbone of the country. They won't upset us easily. Possession’s nine points of the law.” (1.14)
“Aunt Juley was sure that dear Val was very clever. ‘I always remember,’ she added, ‘how he gave his bad penny to a beggar’.” (2.11)

Notes:
In chapter 1.10, Young Jolyon returns home and is greeted by the old dog, Balthasar, in a scene nicked straight from Homer's Odyssey.

In 2.2, Galsworthy tells us that the word “attractive” is “just coming into fashion”

December 2025; 210 pages

This Novel was originally published in 1920, sixteen years after The Man of Property.

My paperback edition was issued in an omnibus together with The Man of Property, To Let and the Interludes 'The Indian Summer of a Forsyte' and 'Awakening', in 2012 by Wordsworth Editions