I bought myself three Christmas presents, a beautifully bound 1977 first edition of two John Galsworthy series of three novels, The Forsyte Saga and a Modern Comedy 1052 pages, together with the DVD set of the 2002 and 2003 Granada TV series in six 90 mins episodes, plus Take Care of Your a brilliant visual, tactile and audio reminder of the Sophie Calle work.
I begin with book 1 of the Forsyte Saga A Man of Property which contains a helpful family tree. Joylon Forsyte the earliest recorded ancestor was born in 1741 possible an upper middle class farmer who had four sons and a daughter. One son became a Mayor and another married the daughter of a country solicitor, and this eldest son also Joylon, a builder has who are the generation who have roles in the saga.
The eldest is Anne 1799 1866, who becomes a formidable a spinster wielding considerable influence on family standards and activities.
The eldest son also called old Joylon, at kind heart but upholder of the family’s Victorian moral standards 1806-1892 whose wife dies in 1874 before the break up of the first marriage of their only child, a son, Young Joylon 1847-1920, a visual painter and who with his father are two of the main characters in the Saga. Old Joylon made his money from Tea and married the daughter of a barrister.
His brother, James 1811 1901, founded a firm of Park Lane, London based solicitors where he is joined by his eldest son Soames 1855-1926 also two of the main character of the series. Soames has three sisters, Winifred who marries Montague Dartie, an adventurer, while the other sisters remain spinsters, Rachel 1861 and Cicely 1865. Soames is to marry Irene, who together with Young Joylon and their children form the core contrasting and rival characters of the Saga.
However the rest of the grandfather Joylon’s ten children also have roles. There is Swithin an Estate and Land Agent born 1891, a bachelor living at Hyde Park Mansions. Roger 1813 is into house property has four children who I shall introduce later along with those of Young Joylon and Soames. Julia Aunt ‘Juley’ lives from 1814 to 1905 and her marriage is short lived as her husband dies and she returns to live with her spinster sister Aunt Hestor 1815 1907. They live with another bachelor brother, a publisher and investor, Timothy in the Bayswater Road. There are two other brothers who marry and whose six and five children respectively are to have roles of varying importance.
The Forsyte family are described by Galsworthy as upper middle class with the full panoply of London Houses, carriages and servants and where every important family and season event was marked with a family gathering at which the main course was a saddle of beef, when they presented themselves in their finery and yet the author warns on the first page, no branch had a liking for another and within branches there was often little sympathy expressed between its members.
Having been brought up in the home of six aunts, evacuated to the home of seventh during the second world war and with four brothers, one of whom I can only remember meeting, this is something I can understand.
I commenced the reading after watching the first of the 6 episode 2 DVD set which appears to have its own approach to story development and appear to create action substance before that of the first book. Obviously as I read further what happens in the first part of the DVD may be referred to in the first book, A man of property”, but for the present the differences are disconcerting and suggest that watching and reading in parallel may not be the good idea which I first considered.
The DVD begins with the relationship between the artist young Joylon, his first wife and daughter and his father old Joylon. The grand daughter June has a nanny and this nanny and Young Joylon spend much time together at the bedside of the little girl who is ill. During their Vigil Young Joylon has sketched portraits of the Nanny and of his daughter but none of his wife. We are thrust immediately into the central dilemma of members of the Forsyte family.
They uphold the great English Victorian values. Foremost is making money with everyone measured by their property and income. Marriage is not about love but how much money can be brought into the extending family. The family has roots and therefore breeding and social status are also important when it comes to judging prospective new partners for family members. Great importance is attached social behaviour and appearance,
The roles of men and women are also clearly and separately defined as it is between family members and their servants or those out of whom they makes their fortunes. As the author points out early on in the first book, the location of their homes and businesses address is also important including the shortness of time it takes to reach the Gentleman’s Club. Who you know is important in sustaining social position. The family is upper middle class but not aristocratic because they do not have country houses and estates, yet. They do not appear to be part of the Court or national politics, although this may change as I read further.
Young Joylon’s wife, Frances, nee Crisson, the daughter of a colonel, senses that the relationship between her artistic husband and the nanny has become closer than the marital one but is uncertain how far it has progressed and she insists that the appointment in terminated. Young Joylon accepts this and tells the young woman she must leave but will be given a character. Being the creative he cannot resist disclosing the real reason for her going or his true feelings and the nanny also reveals her true feelings. Being the man he is, he is not the conventional Victorian of means who takes a mistress, while remaining with his wife and family, as his father suggests to him when he confronts his son about the situation after he has moved out of the family home to their club, and where father and son had enjoyed times together in the past. There is also a scene in which his wife pleads with him to stay because she continues to want him. We learn from the first book that Joylon was prone to fall in an out of love and in and out of passion and which at the time had to be translated into engagements and marriage, traditionally a formal affair spread over time where meetings would be chaperoned and then there would be an introduction to all the members of the family for their consideration to assess if the individual would fit in. Father reminds the son of his previous infatuations and passions and that having taken the vows of marriage it should be life, and what of his daughter June, and will he abandon everything for this impulsive wildness? The answer is yes and father tells his only child, I now have no son. Young Joylon goes to his club and then sets up home with the nanny. Old Joylon remains in his palatial London house.
The TV series then makes a jump of decade to introduce us to Irene who is living with her recently widowed mother, her father was a Professor, on the South Coast at Bournemouth. Mother and daughter are in mourning, restricted to walking the pier in the mornings and their attendance at a classical concert in the evening is open to question among their society as premature. It is here that Soames on a visit to a friend is immediately attracted to the beautiful Irene. Following the disgrace of his first cousin Young Joylon, Soames is now the respected head of his generation under pressure to find himself a wife and to carry on the family heritage with the birth of son.
The TV series had held a family dinner party earlier at which we are introduced to Winifred, the eldest of the three sister’s of Soames, who is also a woman like Joylon to put passion before convention and appearance. The party is to mark her engagement to Montague Dartie an adventurer, gambler and womaniser and where Soames and his father have decided not to provide the kind of dowry he had anticipated. Their eldest son Val will in the future marry the daughter of Young Joylon, Holly. Disgraced Young Joylon in addition to the daughter June from his first marriage has Jolly born 1879 before Holly, born 1881.
Young Joylon played in the first TV series by the much loved by the public Kenneth Moore, had to set up home in St John’s Wood which borders Regent’s Park and is now recognised for the national home of English cricket, Lords. When I purchased my first home it was at Teddington close to Bushey Park, Hampton Court and Teddington Lock in 1967 it cost £5000 and was sold for £7500 three years later in 1967, reached a value of £640000 around 2003/04, or at least its semi detached twin was on the market at that price. The same property situation in St John’s Wood would have cost in the region of £900000, such is the difference location can make, with size of plot an important consideration as it has had an extensive but narrow width garden. A property in the North East Tyneside- and Wearside location in a good area could be purchased for a third of that at Teddington and more like a quarter of that in St Johns Wood and although he differential has reduced it is of the same order now as then..
Returning to Bournemouth which I know from having attended a conference there for a few days in the late 1970’s, Soames having made the acquaintance of Irene and learning of the morning walks meets them the following morning, and seeing the attraction, especially when Soames makes another visit soon after, mother goes walking without her daughter in order to speak with the man, at least a decade older, to question him about his means and prospects and to advise that following the premature death of her husband they have only been left with their middle class home and £60 a year, sufficient to employ a servant but restricting their lives or to provide dowry for her daughter.
Soames presses his interest and is invited to the family home where he proposes marriage and is rejected, much to mother’s consternation, but she pushes her daughter into accepting an invitation for both of them to visit Soames at the family home and there a party is held to introduce Irene to the Forsyte family where there is great excitement and enthusiasm because at last it looks as if Soames has set about finding a wife to further the family line. That she and her mother are poor by Forsyte standards is not regarded as an obstacle in the circumstances.
Irene then shocks some of the older members of the family however by agreeing to waltz with Winifred at which Soames egged on by Dartie intervenes and it he that is swept off his feet with desire for Irene. Irene refuses his proposal again. Back in Bournemouth, and out of mourning Irene and her mother are at a Tea Dance with a wealthy but rather uncouth self made businessman with £3000 a year makes an inappropriate advance and mother takes her daughter home berating the girl for her refusal to accept Soames, and which in the first novel, we learn that she has refused him, half a dozen times. There is then the crucial scene between Irene and Soames which is to govern the rest of their lives and becomes much of what is to follow.
Irene explains to Soames that she will accept any further proposal of marriage from him on the understanding that should at any time in the future the marriage not work she will be free to depart without impediment. Soames who remains desperate to win his bride will agree to anything and in any event he is full of Victorian Forsyte self confidence that he will be able to make her happy and become in love with him.
Events in the DVD then move forward to June - Young Joylon‘s daughter, who has reached the age of 17 years and has been raised by her grandfather without apparent contact with her father, his wife/mistress and their two children. June’s mother having died had paved the way for Young Joylon to marry Old Joylon is therefore facing life on his own in a big house when June announces her wish to marry Philip Bossiney, an ambitious self confident and opinionated creative architect, earning a modest £100 a year. Old Joylon agrees to the engagement but on the understanding that the marriage will only take place when her beau as an income of £400. This provides an opportunity for another Forsyte party at which Bossiney is introduced, attended by Soames and Irene, Winifred and Dartie, the infirm old Aunt Anne who comments that Bossiney is no match for June, together with other members of the family excluding Joylon and his wife. Irene and Bossiney are immediately attracted.
Relationships between Soames and Irene have become even more strained and cool than they were at the time of the engagement. She tolerates his love making at night which he sees as his rightful duty and without regard to her feelings and likings. She is taking steps to avoid having a child. When Soames forbids her to attend an exhibition of art work with June and Bossiney she announces she is moving into separate bedrooms. Soames is horrified as he knows where this is leading and that it will become the subject of common gossip promoted by the servants. It was customary for those attending social function to go by their own carriage as well as taking a lady’s maid who would then gather below stairs while the party took place in the above stairs dinning and drawing rooms. There is a scene a church where the family gather and the situation between Irene and Soames, her failure to produce an heir is the main subject of conversation between family members.
Having enjoyed the DVD I then assumed that the book would begin with the same events in similar chronology and was taken aback to finding this it opens with the party to introduce Bossiney to the family although earlier events are alluded briefly. There is also a moment in the TV series that Old Joylon sees his son and nearly approaches him. In the book he finds out his son is at the club when he makes a rare visit and makes his way to him, explaining his loneliness now that June is on her way into a marriage he wonders what to do about his home and whether to move into rooms eliminating the need for his six servants and the food they has to pay for, I assume Butler/personal assistant, Footman/doorman Cook/housekeeper, a maid or two. Kitchen and household, and then the Coachman.
When Old Joylon dies, the Young Joylon approaches Soames and his father, the Executors for the estate fort eh capital to buy a larger home and they refuse, saying they will stick to the terms of the Will although the dislike Soames has for Joylon and his approach to life is more than evident.
As I left the reading to another day I was struck by the intentions of the authors and TV production team to make the readers and view sympathetic to Young Joylon, Winifred, Irene and June and Bossiney, artistic, passionate individualists wanting to following their feelings and instincts and for us to have less sympathy, opposition and even condemnation of Soames and his father, Old Joylon and Young Joylon’s first wife, Irene’s mother, the undoubted scoundrel Dartie and the spinster arts. Yet I have considerable sympathy, born from understanding and experience for all of them. This is because I the creative artist know all about instinct, passion and belief but not only understand the values and context in which others with so different outlooks hold with integrity, as well as hypocrisy. This is a constant dilemma and a conflict, the source of my insight and creativity as well as the self doubt and self criticism
I begin with book 1 of the Forsyte Saga A Man of Property which contains a helpful family tree. Joylon Forsyte the earliest recorded ancestor was born in 1741 possible an upper middle class farmer who had four sons and a daughter. One son became a Mayor and another married the daughter of a country solicitor, and this eldest son also Joylon, a builder has who are the generation who have roles in the saga.
The eldest is Anne 1799 1866, who becomes a formidable a spinster wielding considerable influence on family standards and activities.
The eldest son also called old Joylon, at kind heart but upholder of the family’s Victorian moral standards 1806-1892 whose wife dies in 1874 before the break up of the first marriage of their only child, a son, Young Joylon 1847-1920, a visual painter and who with his father are two of the main characters in the Saga. Old Joylon made his money from Tea and married the daughter of a barrister.
His brother, James 1811 1901, founded a firm of Park Lane, London based solicitors where he is joined by his eldest son Soames 1855-1926 also two of the main character of the series. Soames has three sisters, Winifred who marries Montague Dartie, an adventurer, while the other sisters remain spinsters, Rachel 1861 and Cicely 1865. Soames is to marry Irene, who together with Young Joylon and their children form the core contrasting and rival characters of the Saga.
However the rest of the grandfather Joylon’s ten children also have roles. There is Swithin an Estate and Land Agent born 1891, a bachelor living at Hyde Park Mansions. Roger 1813 is into house property has four children who I shall introduce later along with those of Young Joylon and Soames. Julia Aunt ‘Juley’ lives from 1814 to 1905 and her marriage is short lived as her husband dies and she returns to live with her spinster sister Aunt Hestor 1815 1907. They live with another bachelor brother, a publisher and investor, Timothy in the Bayswater Road. There are two other brothers who marry and whose six and five children respectively are to have roles of varying importance.
The Forsyte family are described by Galsworthy as upper middle class with the full panoply of London Houses, carriages and servants and where every important family and season event was marked with a family gathering at which the main course was a saddle of beef, when they presented themselves in their finery and yet the author warns on the first page, no branch had a liking for another and within branches there was often little sympathy expressed between its members.
Having been brought up in the home of six aunts, evacuated to the home of seventh during the second world war and with four brothers, one of whom I can only remember meeting, this is something I can understand.
I commenced the reading after watching the first of the 6 episode 2 DVD set which appears to have its own approach to story development and appear to create action substance before that of the first book. Obviously as I read further what happens in the first part of the DVD may be referred to in the first book, A man of property”, but for the present the differences are disconcerting and suggest that watching and reading in parallel may not be the good idea which I first considered.
The DVD begins with the relationship between the artist young Joylon, his first wife and daughter and his father old Joylon. The grand daughter June has a nanny and this nanny and Young Joylon spend much time together at the bedside of the little girl who is ill. During their Vigil Young Joylon has sketched portraits of the Nanny and of his daughter but none of his wife. We are thrust immediately into the central dilemma of members of the Forsyte family.
They uphold the great English Victorian values. Foremost is making money with everyone measured by their property and income. Marriage is not about love but how much money can be brought into the extending family. The family has roots and therefore breeding and social status are also important when it comes to judging prospective new partners for family members. Great importance is attached social behaviour and appearance,
The roles of men and women are also clearly and separately defined as it is between family members and their servants or those out of whom they makes their fortunes. As the author points out early on in the first book, the location of their homes and businesses address is also important including the shortness of time it takes to reach the Gentleman’s Club. Who you know is important in sustaining social position. The family is upper middle class but not aristocratic because they do not have country houses and estates, yet. They do not appear to be part of the Court or national politics, although this may change as I read further.
Young Joylon’s wife, Frances, nee Crisson, the daughter of a colonel, senses that the relationship between her artistic husband and the nanny has become closer than the marital one but is uncertain how far it has progressed and she insists that the appointment in terminated. Young Joylon accepts this and tells the young woman she must leave but will be given a character. Being the creative he cannot resist disclosing the real reason for her going or his true feelings and the nanny also reveals her true feelings. Being the man he is, he is not the conventional Victorian of means who takes a mistress, while remaining with his wife and family, as his father suggests to him when he confronts his son about the situation after he has moved out of the family home to their club, and where father and son had enjoyed times together in the past. There is also a scene in which his wife pleads with him to stay because she continues to want him. We learn from the first book that Joylon was prone to fall in an out of love and in and out of passion and which at the time had to be translated into engagements and marriage, traditionally a formal affair spread over time where meetings would be chaperoned and then there would be an introduction to all the members of the family for their consideration to assess if the individual would fit in. Father reminds the son of his previous infatuations and passions and that having taken the vows of marriage it should be life, and what of his daughter June, and will he abandon everything for this impulsive wildness? The answer is yes and father tells his only child, I now have no son. Young Joylon goes to his club and then sets up home with the nanny. Old Joylon remains in his palatial London house.
The TV series then makes a jump of decade to introduce us to Irene who is living with her recently widowed mother, her father was a Professor, on the South Coast at Bournemouth. Mother and daughter are in mourning, restricted to walking the pier in the mornings and their attendance at a classical concert in the evening is open to question among their society as premature. It is here that Soames on a visit to a friend is immediately attracted to the beautiful Irene. Following the disgrace of his first cousin Young Joylon, Soames is now the respected head of his generation under pressure to find himself a wife and to carry on the family heritage with the birth of son.
The TV series had held a family dinner party earlier at which we are introduced to Winifred, the eldest of the three sister’s of Soames, who is also a woman like Joylon to put passion before convention and appearance. The party is to mark her engagement to Montague Dartie an adventurer, gambler and womaniser and where Soames and his father have decided not to provide the kind of dowry he had anticipated. Their eldest son Val will in the future marry the daughter of Young Joylon, Holly. Disgraced Young Joylon in addition to the daughter June from his first marriage has Jolly born 1879 before Holly, born 1881.
Young Joylon played in the first TV series by the much loved by the public Kenneth Moore, had to set up home in St John’s Wood which borders Regent’s Park and is now recognised for the national home of English cricket, Lords. When I purchased my first home it was at Teddington close to Bushey Park, Hampton Court and Teddington Lock in 1967 it cost £5000 and was sold for £7500 three years later in 1967, reached a value of £640000 around 2003/04, or at least its semi detached twin was on the market at that price. The same property situation in St John’s Wood would have cost in the region of £900000, such is the difference location can make, with size of plot an important consideration as it has had an extensive but narrow width garden. A property in the North East Tyneside- and Wearside location in a good area could be purchased for a third of that at Teddington and more like a quarter of that in St Johns Wood and although he differential has reduced it is of the same order now as then..
Returning to Bournemouth which I know from having attended a conference there for a few days in the late 1970’s, Soames having made the acquaintance of Irene and learning of the morning walks meets them the following morning, and seeing the attraction, especially when Soames makes another visit soon after, mother goes walking without her daughter in order to speak with the man, at least a decade older, to question him about his means and prospects and to advise that following the premature death of her husband they have only been left with their middle class home and £60 a year, sufficient to employ a servant but restricting their lives or to provide dowry for her daughter.
Soames presses his interest and is invited to the family home where he proposes marriage and is rejected, much to mother’s consternation, but she pushes her daughter into accepting an invitation for both of them to visit Soames at the family home and there a party is held to introduce Irene to the Forsyte family where there is great excitement and enthusiasm because at last it looks as if Soames has set about finding a wife to further the family line. That she and her mother are poor by Forsyte standards is not regarded as an obstacle in the circumstances.
Irene then shocks some of the older members of the family however by agreeing to waltz with Winifred at which Soames egged on by Dartie intervenes and it he that is swept off his feet with desire for Irene. Irene refuses his proposal again. Back in Bournemouth, and out of mourning Irene and her mother are at a Tea Dance with a wealthy but rather uncouth self made businessman with £3000 a year makes an inappropriate advance and mother takes her daughter home berating the girl for her refusal to accept Soames, and which in the first novel, we learn that she has refused him, half a dozen times. There is then the crucial scene between Irene and Soames which is to govern the rest of their lives and becomes much of what is to follow.
Irene explains to Soames that she will accept any further proposal of marriage from him on the understanding that should at any time in the future the marriage not work she will be free to depart without impediment. Soames who remains desperate to win his bride will agree to anything and in any event he is full of Victorian Forsyte self confidence that he will be able to make her happy and become in love with him.
Events in the DVD then move forward to June - Young Joylon‘s daughter, who has reached the age of 17 years and has been raised by her grandfather without apparent contact with her father, his wife/mistress and their two children. June’s mother having died had paved the way for Young Joylon to marry Old Joylon is therefore facing life on his own in a big house when June announces her wish to marry Philip Bossiney, an ambitious self confident and opinionated creative architect, earning a modest £100 a year. Old Joylon agrees to the engagement but on the understanding that the marriage will only take place when her beau as an income of £400. This provides an opportunity for another Forsyte party at which Bossiney is introduced, attended by Soames and Irene, Winifred and Dartie, the infirm old Aunt Anne who comments that Bossiney is no match for June, together with other members of the family excluding Joylon and his wife. Irene and Bossiney are immediately attracted.
Relationships between Soames and Irene have become even more strained and cool than they were at the time of the engagement. She tolerates his love making at night which he sees as his rightful duty and without regard to her feelings and likings. She is taking steps to avoid having a child. When Soames forbids her to attend an exhibition of art work with June and Bossiney she announces she is moving into separate bedrooms. Soames is horrified as he knows where this is leading and that it will become the subject of common gossip promoted by the servants. It was customary for those attending social function to go by their own carriage as well as taking a lady’s maid who would then gather below stairs while the party took place in the above stairs dinning and drawing rooms. There is a scene a church where the family gather and the situation between Irene and Soames, her failure to produce an heir is the main subject of conversation between family members.
Having enjoyed the DVD I then assumed that the book would begin with the same events in similar chronology and was taken aback to finding this it opens with the party to introduce Bossiney to the family although earlier events are alluded briefly. There is also a moment in the TV series that Old Joylon sees his son and nearly approaches him. In the book he finds out his son is at the club when he makes a rare visit and makes his way to him, explaining his loneliness now that June is on her way into a marriage he wonders what to do about his home and whether to move into rooms eliminating the need for his six servants and the food they has to pay for, I assume Butler/personal assistant, Footman/doorman Cook/housekeeper, a maid or two. Kitchen and household, and then the Coachman.
When Old Joylon dies, the Young Joylon approaches Soames and his father, the Executors for the estate fort eh capital to buy a larger home and they refuse, saying they will stick to the terms of the Will although the dislike Soames has for Joylon and his approach to life is more than evident.
As I left the reading to another day I was struck by the intentions of the authors and TV production team to make the readers and view sympathetic to Young Joylon, Winifred, Irene and June and Bossiney, artistic, passionate individualists wanting to following their feelings and instincts and for us to have less sympathy, opposition and even condemnation of Soames and his father, Old Joylon and Young Joylon’s first wife, Irene’s mother, the undoubted scoundrel Dartie and the spinster arts. Yet I have considerable sympathy, born from understanding and experience for all of them. This is because I the creative artist know all about instinct, passion and belief but not only understand the values and context in which others with so different outlooks hold with integrity, as well as hypocrisy. This is a constant dilemma and a conflict, the source of my insight and creativity as well as the self doubt and self criticism
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