The position of their houses was of vital importance to the Forsytes, nor was this remarkable, since the whole spirit oftheir success was embodied therein.

Their father, of farming stock, had come from Dorsetshire near the beginning of the century.

‘Superior Dosset Forsyte, as he was called by his intimates, had been a stonemason by trade, and risen to the position ofa master-builder.

Towards the end of his life he moved to London, where, building on until he died, he was buried at Highgate. He left overthirty thousand pounds between his ten children. Old Jolyon alluded to him, if at all, as ‘A hard, thick sort of man; notmuch refinement about him.’ The second generation of Forsytes felt indeed that he was not greatly to their credit. The onlyaristocratic trait they could find in his character was a habit of drinking Madeira.

Aunt Hester, an authority on family history, described him thus: “I don’t recollect that he ever did anything; at least,not in my time. He was er — an owner of houses, my dear. His hair about your Uncle Swithin’s colour; rather a square build.Tall? No — not very tall” (he had been five feet five, with a mottled face); “a fresh-coloured man. I remember he used todrink Madeira; but ask your Aunt Ann. What was his father? He — er — had to do with the land down in Dorsetshire, by thesea.”

James once went down to see for himself what sort of place this was that they had come from. He found two old farms, witha cart track rutted into the pink earth, leading down to a mill by the beach; a little grey church with a buttressed outerwall, and a smaller and greyer chapel. The stream which worked the mill came bubbling down in a dozen rivulets, and pigswere hunting round that estuary. A haze hovered over the prospect. Down this hollow, with their feet deep in the mud andtheir faces towards the sea, it appeared that the primeval Forsytes had been content to walk Sunday after Sunday forhundreds of years.