Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming andinstructive sight — an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed thegift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed aspectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleanedfrom a gathering of this family — no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existedanything worthy of the name of sympathy — evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidablea unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads ofsocial progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall ofnations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting — a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success,amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent — one day will see it flourishing withbland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.

On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the observer who chanced to be present at the house of oldJolyon Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.

This was the occasion of an ‘at home’ to celebrate the engagement of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon’s granddaughter, toMr. Philip Bosinney. In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family were present, evenAunt Ann, who now but seldom left the corner of her brother Timothy’s green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plumeof dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting, surrounded by the effigies of threegenerations of Forsytes. Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm old face personifying therigid possessiveness of the family idea.