In Chancery E-Book

John Galsworthy

• Herausgeber: John Galsworthy
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In Chancery is the second novel of the Forsyte Saga trilogy by John Galsworthy and was published in 1920, . Like its predecessor it focuses on the personal affairs of a wealthy upper middle class English family. The novel concentrates on the marital failures of Soames Forsyte and to a lesser extent that of his sister Winifred Dartie and on the building antipathy between Soames and his cousin Young Jolyon Forsyte who develops a friendship with Soames' estranged wife Irene. This friendship eventually leads to an affair and Irene's divorce from Soames....

Leseprobe

In Chancery

by

John Galsworthy

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Part 1

At Timothy’s

Exit a Man of the World

Soames Prepares to Take Steps

Soho

James Sees Visions

No-Longer-Young Jolyon at Home

The Colt and the Filly

Jolyon Prosecutes Trusteeship

Val Hears the News

Soames Entertains the Future

And Visits the Past

On Forsyte ‘Change

Jolyon Finds Out where he is

Soames Discovers what he Wants

Part II

The Third Generation

Soames Puts it to the Touch

Visit to Irene

Where Forsytes Fear to Tread

Jolly Sits in Judgment

Jolyon in Two Minds

Dartie Versus Dartie

The Challenge

Dinner at James’

Death of the Dog Balthasar

Timothy Stays the Rot

Progress of the Chase

‘Here We are Again!’

Outlandish Night

Part III

Soames in Paris

In the Web

Richmond Park

Over the River

Soames Acts

A Summer Day

A Summer Night

James in Waiting

Out of the Web

Passing of an Age

Suspended Animation

Birth of a Forsyte

James is Told

His

Part 1

Two households both alike in dignity,

From ancient grudge, break into new mutiny.

— Romeo and Juliet

TO JESSIE AND JOSEPH CONRAD

Chapter 1

At Timothy’s

The possessive instinct never stands still. Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires, it followed the laws of progression even in the Forsyte family which had believed it fixed for ever. Nor can it be dissociated from environment any more than the quality of potato from the soil.

The historian of the English eighties and nineties will, in his good time, depict the somewhat rapid progression from self-contented and contained provincialism to still more self-contented if less contained imperialism — in other words, the ‘possessive’ instinct of the nation on the move. And so, as if in conformity, was it with the Forsyte family. They were spreading not merely on the surface, but within.

When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left. For this apathy there were three causes. First: the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill — first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate. That burial, coming a year after Swithin’s entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte ‘Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still collected and radiated family gossip. Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie that it was ‘a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate business.’ Uncle Jolyon in his later years — indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June’s lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte’s wife — had noticeably rapped the family’s knuckles; and that way of his own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward. The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot. But the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin on Forsyte ‘Change, a shiver had gone round the clan. Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to “whomever do you think, my dear? To Irene!” that runaway wife of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and — still more amazing was to him no blood relation. Not out and out, of course; only a life interest — only the income from it! Still, there it was; and old Jolyon’s claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once for all. That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan Hayman — at Woking — made little stir.

The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial. Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the fact of owning something really countrified seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains — though what could have put cremation into her head they could not think! The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.