Dave's Book Blog: "To Let" by John Galsworthy

Sunday, 11 January 2026

"To Let" by John Galsworthy

This is the third novel of the Forsyte Saga. It follows The Man of Property and In Chancery. Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

It is set shortly after the first world war. The baby girl born to Soames Forsyte at the end of In Chancery has grown into a beautiful but slightly wilful and very spoilt young woman called Fleur. The boy born to Young Jolyon and Irene has grown into a naive youth named Jon (short for Jolyon, of course) who was just too young to fight in the war. Fleur and Jon meet and instantly fall in love. But neither know the family secret: that Jon's mother was married to Fleur's father, that the marriage was unhappy, that she had an affair with an architect, that Somaes forced himself Irene, that the architect died, that Soames and Irene separated, that twelve years later Soames tried to persuade Irene to return to him but Young Jolyon helped her fend him off, that Soames then sued Irene for divorce citing Young Jolyon as co-respondent, that that this persuaded Young Jolyon to marry Irene , hence Jon. And that this family feud threatens to split Jon as Romeo apart from Fleur as Juliet.

I remember it vividly from watching the BBC adaptation in the late 1960s, before I was a teenager.

The Forsytes represent the moneyed classes. The old generation, all dead apart form Timothy in this book, made money from property, the law, the tea business, publishing etc, many of the latest generation are living off annuities inherited from the old. The main exception is Soames, a solicitor, the"Man of Property" from the first book. To Let is an exploration of his character as he approaches old age. He continues to collect art, but thinks of it in terms of how much he could sell it for. The most "treasured possession of his life.” (1.1) is his daughter Fleur. He is terrified of being poor “He had always been afraid to enjoy today for fear he might not enjoy tomorrow so much.” (1.2) and also terrified on scandal. He is a nimby: “He was quite of opinion that the country should stamp out tuberculosis; but this was not the place. It should be done farther away." (2.2) And he certainly doesn't believe in any form of positive action to combat disadvantage: "He took, indeed, an attitude common to all true Forsytes that disability of any sort in other people was not his affair, and that the State should do its business without prejudicing in any way the natural advantages which he had acquired or inherited.” (2.2)

But Soames is growing old. He doesn't understand modern art or modern machinery: “The car ... typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life.” (3.7) In general, “As modern life became faster, looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter.” (3.7)

His daughter Fleur has acquired some of his possessive attitude:

“Never in her life as yet had she suffered from even a momentary fear that she would not get what she had set her heart on.” (2.4)
“Instinctively she conjugated the verb ‘to have’ always with the pronoun ‘I’.” (3.5)

The conflict at the heart of this novel is not so much the battle between the young lovers and the family feud as the conflict within Soames himself. He is still in love with Irene, his first wife, whom he lost to Jon's father. His present wife, knowing that her marriage was merely to provide Soames with an heir, is having an affair and Soames is terrified of the scandal this might cause; perhaps realising that to have two wives leave him for another man might reflect badly upon himself. But he dotes on his daughter Fleur, whom he has spoiled, and can't bear the thought of her being unhappy. He's in a no-win predicament.

Selected quotes:

“Mumbling over in his mind the bitter days of his divorce.” (1.1)
“The boy was good looking ... with something sunny, like a glass of old sherry, spilled over him; his smile perhaps, his hair.” (1.1)
“Life's awful like a lot of monkeys scramblin’ for empty nuts.” (1.9)
“ If only we were born old and grew younger year by year, we should understand how things happen, and drop all our cursed intolerance.” (1.10)
“To be kind and keep your end up - there's nothing else in it ... How wonderfully Dad had acted up to that philosophy!” (3.3)
“ The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into something really individual.” (3.6)
“This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick wall!” (3.7)

There is one quote I have included because it seemed to me a clever way of introducing a character by giving the reader an information dump which at the same times as telling, shows the reader the character. It's also a master-class in the use of the semi-colon: “She had never heard anyone say so much in so short a time. He told her his age, twenty-four; his weight, ten stone eleven; his place of residence, not far away; described his sensations under fire, and what it felt like to be gassed; criticised the Juno, mentioned his own conception of that goddess; commented on the Goya copy, said Fleur was not too awfully like it; sketched in rapidly the condition of England, spoke of Monsieur Profond ... as ‘an awful sport’; thoughts her father had some ‘ripping’ pictures and some rather ‘dug up’; hoped he might row down again and take her on the river because he was quite trustworthy; inquired her opinion of Tchekov, gave her his own; wished they could go to the Russian ballet sometime ...” (1.12)

December 2025; 210 page
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