To Let, by John Galsworthy

Author’s Note

With this volume, The Forsyte Saga — that series comprising “The Man of Property,” “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (from thevolume “Five Tales”), “In Chancery,” and “Awakening”— comes to an end.

J. G.

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:33:24 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

To Let, by John Galsworthy

Part IIEncounter

Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the 12thof May, 1920, with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Street, and looking into theFuture. He walked. Since the War he never took a cab if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot,though, now that the War was over and supply beginning to exceed demand again, getting more civil in accordance with thecustom of human nature. Still, he had not forgiven them, deeply identifying them with gloomy memories and, now dimly, likeall members of their class, with revolution. The considerable anxiety he had passed through during the War, and the moreconsiderable anxiety he had since undergone in the Peace, had produced psychological consequences in a tenacious nature. Hehad, mentally, so frequently experienced ruin, that he had ceased to believe in its material probability. Paying away fourthousand a year in income and super-tax, one could not very well be worse off! A fortune of a quarter of a million,encumbered only by a wife and one daughter, and very diversely invested, afforded substantial guarantee even against that“wildcat notion”— a levy on capital. And as to confiscation of war profits, he was entirely in favor of it, for he had none,