Dave's Book Blog: "The Man of Property" by John Galsworthy

Sunday, 21 December 2025

"The Man of Property" by John Galsworthy

John 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.

The book opens with the Forsyte family assembled at Timothy's; they have gathered to meet June's new fiancee, penniless architect Philip Bossiney. Noticeable by his absence is June's father Young Jolyon who has been ostracised for leaving June's mother and running off with June's governess. Soames, who is experiencing marital difficulties with his distant wife, the incredibly beautiful Irene, June's best friend in the family, decides to have a country house built at Robin Hill near Kingston-Upon-Thames and employs Bossiney for the purpose.

Old Jolyon, June's grandfather, who has brought her up, is feeling lonely so he decides to visit his son, Young Jolyon , and is charmed by his other grandchildren: Jolly and Holly.

But Irene and Bossiney have fallen in love. So reconciliation on one level is matched by family discord on another. The plot unfolds to its inevitable, if surprising, conclusion.

It is, essentially, a critique of the English Victorian upper-middle-class. As with Galsworthy's stand-alone novel The Patrician, it isn't always easy to tell where the author stands. These people tend to look on life with a commercial eye, seeking profit from their relationships as opposed to love, so the unregulated love of Irene and Bossiney (both of them, note, outsiders rather than born into the clan) is hugely disruptive. Galsworthy condemns this money-based view of values as Forsyteism, extending the family to a whole section of society. And yet there are sympathetically-drawn Forsytes, such as Old Jolyon (modelled on the author's father) and black sheep Young Jolyon. This is the critique of an insider and the condemnation is balanced with empathy, making it so much more interesting than the black-and-white morality of the recent TV series. Even Soames, cast in the role of villain and capable of black deeds, is fundamentally portrayed as a tragic figure.

Characters: A partial family tree

Jolyon (1770m - 1850) 'Superior Dosset' Forsyte was a housebuilder, property developer and landlord. He had ten children:

Ann, the eldest, is an old maid
Old Jolyon made a fortune in tea.

Young Jolyon, 'Jo', his son, is in disgrace for having run off with his daughter's governess, leaving his wife. He becomes a 'name' in Lloyds and a watercolour artist living modestly in St Johns Wood (now a hugely desirable London address). Once his wife has died, he married the governess.

June is Young Jolyon's daughter from his first marriage. She in engaged to Philip Bossiney, a down at heel up-and-coming architect
Jolly is Young Jolyon's son by his second marriage
Holly is Young Jolyon's daughter by his second marriage.

James, who married Emily, was a solicitor. He has four children:

Soames is the son of James and Emily. He too is a solicitor. He is married to Irene, the daughter of Professor Heron.
Winifred is the daughter of James and Emily. She is married to Monty Dartie.

Val Dartie is their son
Imogen Dartie is their eldest daughter
Maud
Benedict

Rachel
Cicely

Swithin, twin brother to James, was a flamboyant bachelor.
Roger is a landlord. He has five children:

Young Roger
George, a caustic wit
Francie, an atheist
Eustace
Thomas

Julia (Juley) married Septimus Small but he swiftly died and she lived her widowhood in Timothy's house; she is notoriously indiscreet.
Hester is an old maid.
Nicholas is the wealthiest Forsyte and fathers the largest brood of his own.

Young Nicholas

Very Young Nicholas, a barrister
Blanche
Christopher
Violet
Gladys
Patricia

Ernest
Archibald
Marian
Florence
Euphemia

Timothy, unmarried, was a publisher of religious books but then sold out and invested his money in 3% Consols. By saving and reinvesting he has since doubled his fortune. Regular meetings of the clan are held at his house, where gossip is exchanged, but Timothy rarely leaves his bed to attend.
Susan, the youngest, is married. She has five children:

St John Hayman
Augustus Hayman
Annabel
Giles and Jesse who are together known as 'the Dromios', presumably because they are identical twins.

The title comes from the nickname that Old Jolyon gives Soames. Soames himself sees everything as property, including his wife: “Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table ... Could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it? ... Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none. ... He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no more than own her body.” (1.5) But fundamentally the epithet could be applied to almost any of the Forsytes.

The Dickensian influence is manifest, although some of Galsworthy's main characters are more complex than the caricatures of Dickens . Old Jolyon's scruples are undermined by his affection for young children; June is able to forgive her betrayal by her best friend. But Irene, in the role of Helen of Troy, is as bloodless as any Dickensian young women and Bossiney (Paris?) is little more than a cipher. The plot has a tendency to veer into melodrama: love is almost inevitably counterpointed by death as in an opera.

Fundamentally, however, this grandparent of family sagas is an enjoyable read.

Selected quotes:

“He could take nothing for dinner but a partridge, with an imperial pint of champagne ...” (1.9)
“In the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been forgotten that Love is no hothouse flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower, and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always wild!” (2.4)
“As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that sells is not rubbish at all - far from it.” (2.7)
“The pale flame singes men's wings whether they will or no.” (2.12)
“He still hankered in quiet City moments after the tasty fleshpots of his earlier days. Here you were served by hairy English waiters in aprons; there was sawdust on the floor, and three round gilt looking glasses hung just above the line of sight. They had only recently done away with cubicles too, in which you could have your chop, prime chump, with a floury potato, without seeing your neighbours, like a gentleman.” (2.13)

December 2025; 245 pages

The book was first published in 1906.

My paperback edition was issued as an omnibus with the subsequent novels 'In Chancery' and 'To Let', together with short interludes 'Indian Summer of a Forsyte' and 'Awakening' , in 2012.