The Man of Property

The first volume of The Forsyte Saga is set in 1880s London among the Forsytes, a prosperous upper-middle-class family bound together not by affection but by a fierce, instinctive sense of property. On June 15, 1886, the family gathers at the Stanhope Gate home of its patriarch, old Jolyon Forsyte, for a reception celebrating the engagement of his granddaughter June to the architect Philip Bosinney. The Forsytes are uneasy about the match: Bosinney has no money, and his unconventional manner has earned him the nickname "the Buccaneer." Among the guests is Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and the son of old Jolyon's brother James. Soames follows his beautiful wife Irene with watchful, longing eyes. Irene, a tall woman with dark eyes and magnetic allure, is introduced to Bosinney by June as her "greatest chum." Hints emerge that Irene has been asking Soames for a separate bedroom. The family also carries an older wound: Young Jolyon, old Jolyon's son and June's father, was cast out years ago for abandoning his first wife and child to run away with a governess.

After June departs for Wales, old Jolyon, overwhelmed by loneliness, impulsively visits a club and discovers young Jolyon is there. Father and son meet for the first time in fourteen years and share a long, confiding evening.

Soames formulates a plan to build a country house at Robin Hill. His motives are tangled: sound investment, social prestige, and, most important, removing Irene from London and the friends who encourage her independence. He selects Bosinney as architect, reasoning the young man will be easy to deal with on money and that Irene cannot object to her best friend's fiancé receiving the commission. When Soames takes Bosinney to inspect a site, the architect finds a superior but costlier hilltop location and insists on it. Soames reluctantly agrees. He tells Irene about the house, but she receives the news with alarming silence, asking only, "Have my wishes anything to do with it?"

Bosinney presents plans for an unusual rectangular house centered on a glass-roofed inner court. Soames recognizes their quality and grudgingly accepts a revised estimate of eight thousand five hundred pounds. He leaves Bosinney and Irene talking together all afternoon, congratulating himself that Irene seems to be warming to the project. When he asks her opinion of Bosinney, she says after a long pause that she finds him "very" good-looking, and Soames feels mocked.

Old Jolyon, increasingly lonely while June devotes her time to Bosinney, visits young Jolyon's modest home in St. John's Wood, where he meets his son's second wife and their children Jolly and Holly. The grandchildren captivate him, and he confesses, "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here, Jo; but I get so lonely!"

As the house takes shape, tensions mount. Soames disputes cost overruns, and Bosinney threatens to resign. The deeper crisis is emotional. One evening, June overhears Bosinney and Irene talking intimately in the courtyard at Montpellier Square, Soames and Irene's London home. Bosinney urges Irene to come see the house on Sunday, and Irene's look of fearful restraint devastates June.

Old Jolyon's brother Swithin, a vain bachelor of immense bulk, takes Irene on a drive to Robin Hill. While Swithin dozes in the sun, Bosinney and Irene walk alone through a springtime copse amid bluebells, and Bosinney declares his love. On the drive home, the horses bolt, and Irene says calmly, "I don't care if I never get home." Swithin later reports to the aunts at Timothy's house, the family's gossip headquarters, that Bosinney follows Irene "with his eyes like a dog."

Aunt Ann, the eldest Forsyte sibling, dies peacefully in September, and her funeral brings the family together in a final show of unity even as the cracks widen. At a dance given by Roger, another of old Jolyon's brothers, that autumn, the crisis becomes visible. Soames watches from a dark balcony as Irene dances with Bosinney, a look on her face he has never seen. June sees the same sight and begs old Jolyon to take her home, sobbing uncontrollably. Old Jolyon carries her off to the seaside at Broadstairs.

Soames, returning early from Henley, finds Irene expecting Bosinney. She asks him to let her go, reminding him of his pre-marriage promise of freedom if the marriage failed. Soames refuses. He invites Bosinney to dinner and plays the trusting husband, but that night he lies awake certain Bosinney is in love with his wife.

Soames discovers that Bosinney has exceeded the agreed cost limit on the house and brings a lawsuit. Irene tells him he is "meaner than I thought" for suing a man with nothing. That night, she locks her bedroom door against him. Soames sits on the stairs in the moonlight, comprehending that her revolt is permanent. Through the summer, he pursues his case while Irene goes out alone with increasing frequency, her calm defiance maddening him. Old Jolyon, meanwhile, revises his will to remove James and Soames from its trusteeship, settling a thousand a year on young Jolyon immediately and leaving the bulk of his estate to his son and June.

On a November morning, Soames, finding Irene's door for once unlocked, forces himself upon his sleeping wife. He breakfasts alone the next morning, haunted by her smothered sobbing. That day, in thick fog, Irene goes out and presumably tells Bosinney what Soames has done. George Forsyte, one of Soames's cousins, spots Bosinney staggering off a train and follows him through the fog, overhearing enough of the architect's anguished mutterings to understand what has happened. Bosinney walks blindly into traffic, and George loses him in the blackness.

The trial of Forsyte v. Bosinney takes place. Bosinney does not appear. The judge rules in Soames's favor. Soames returns home to find Irene gone, having taken only a trunk and a bag. In her jewel box he finds every piece he ever gave her and a note: "I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me." For a moment he understands nearly all there is to understand, that she has loathed him for years, before the moment passes.

June goes to Bosinney's rooms to offer help and encounters Irene. June cries, "You have been a false friend to me!" Irene, her eyes filled with mournful appeal, turns and walks out without a word.

Old Jolyon visits James to negotiate buying the Robin Hill house. During the visit, a policeman arrives with news that Philip Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed. There is talk of suicide. In Bosinney's pocket is found a lady's handkerchief pinned with Venetian gold, scented with dried violets.

Irene returns to Montpellier Square of her own accord, like a wounded animal with nowhere else to go. Soames finds her huddled on the sofa in the dark drawing room, having learned of Bosinney's death. When young Jolyon arrives at the door with a message for Irene, Soames bars his way. He catches a glimpse of Irene in the doorway, her eyes wild and eager, her hands outstretched, but the light dies from her face when she sees Soames. He slams the door, and the novel ends with Irene trapped once more in the cage of his possession.