The White Monkey E-Book

John Galsworthy

• Herausgeber: John Galsworthy
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

This book is written by John Galsworthy in 1924. Fleur Forsyte is now married to Michael Mont, but the marriage is haunted by the ghost of a past love story . Fleur is an unhappiness woman , but Michael want to save is marriage , also finds himself caught in another tragic and moving story……

Leseprobe

The White Monkey

by

John Galsworthy

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this

work is in the “Public Domain”.

HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may still be under

copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website. It is your

responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws in your country before

downloading this work.

Preface

Part I

Promenade

Home

Musical

Dining

Eve

‘Old Forsyte’ and ‘Old Mont’

‘Old Mont’ and ‘Old Forsyte’

Bicket

Confusion

Passing of a Sportsman

Venture

Figures and Facts

Tenterhooks

Part II

The Mark Falls

Victorine

Michael Walks and Talks

Fleur’s Body

Fleur’s Soul

Michael Gets ‘What-For’

The Altogether

Soames Takes the Matter up

Sleuth

Face

Cocked Hat

Going East

Part III

Bank Holiday

Office Work

‘Afternoon of a Dryad’

Afternoon of a Bicket

Michael Gives Advice

Quittance

Looking into Elderson

Levanted

Soames Doesn’t Give a Damn

But Takes No Chances

With a Small ‘n’

Ordeal by Shareholder

Soames at Bay

On the Rack

Calm

Preface

To my wife without whom I know not what could have been written, this second trilogy of The Forsyte Chronicles is dedicated.

In naming this second part of The Forsyte Chronicles ‘A Modern Comedy’ the word comedy is stretched, perhaps, as far as the word Saga was stretched to cover the first part. And yet, what but a comedic view can be taken, what but comedic significance gleaned, of so restive a period as that in which we have lived since the war? An Age which knows not what it wants, yet is intensely preoccupied with getting it, must evoke a smile, if rather a sad one.

To render the forms and colours of an epoch is beyond the powers of any novelist, and very far beyond the powers of this novelist; but to try and express a little of its spirit was undoubtedly at the back of his mind in penning this trilogy. Like the Irishman’s chicken, our Present runs about so fast that it cannot be summed up; it can at most be snapshotted while it hurries looking for its Future without notion where, what, or when that Future will be.

The England of 1886, when the Forsyte Saga began, also had no Future, for England then expected its Present to endure, and rode its bicycle in a sort of dream, disturbed only by two bogles — Mr. Gladstone and the Irish Members.

The England of 1926 — when the Modern Comedy closes — with one foot in the air and the other in a Morris Oxford, is going round and round like a kitten after its tail, muttering: “If one could only see where one wants to stop!”

Everything being now relative, there is no longer absolute dependence to be placed on God, Free Trade, Marriage, Consols, Coal, or Caste.

Everywhere being now overcrowded, there is no place where anyone can stay for long, except the mere depopulated countryside, admittedly too dull, and certainly too unprofitable to dwell in.

Everyone, having been in an earthquake which lasted four years, has lost the habit of standing still.

And yet, the English character has changed very little, if at all. The General Strike of 1926, with which the last part of this trilogy begins, supplied proof of that. We are still a people that cannot be rushed, distrustful of extremes, saved by the grace of our defensive humour, well-tempered, resentful of interference, improvident and wasteful, but endowed with a certain genius for recovery. If we believe in nothing much else, we still believe in ourselves. That salient characteristic of the English will bear thinking about. Why, for instance, do we continually run ourselves down? Simply because we have not got the inferiority complex and are indifferent to what other people think of us. No people in the world seems openly less sure of itself; no people is secretly more sure. Incidentally, it might be worth the while of those who own certain public mouths inclined to blow the British trumpet to remember, that the blowing of one’s own trumpet is the insidious beginning of the inferiority complex. Only those strong enough to keep silent about self are strong enough to be sure of self. The epoch we are passing through is one which favours misjudgment of the English character, and of the position of England. There never was a country where real deterioration of human fibre had less chance than in this island, because there is no other country whose climate is so changeable, so tempering to character, so formative of grit, and so basically healthy. What follows in this preface should be read in the light of that remark.

In the present epoch, no Early Victorianism survives. By Early Victorianism is meant that of the old Forsytes, already on the wane in 1886; what has survived, and potently, is the Victorianism of Soames and his generation, more self-conscious, but not sufficiently self-conscious to be either self-destructive or self-forgetful. It is against the background of this more or less fixed quantity that we can best see the shape and colour of the present intensely self-conscious and all-questioning generation. The old Forsytes — Old Jolyon, Swithin and James, Roger, Nicholas and Timothy — lived their lives without ever asking whether life was worth living. They found it interesting, very absorbing from day to day, and even if they had no very intimate belief in a future life, they had very great faith in the progress of their own positions, and in laying up treasure for their children. Then came Young Jolyon and Soames and their contemporaries, who, although they had imbibed with Darwinism and the ‘Varsities, definite doubts about a future life, and sufficient introspection to wonder whether they themselves were progressing, retained their sense of property and their desire to provide for, and to live on in their progeny. The generation which came in when Queen Victoria went out, through new ideas about the treatment of children, because of new modes of locomotion, and owing to the Great War, has decided that everything requires re-valuation. And, since there is, seemingly, very little future before property, and less before life, is determined to live now or never, without bothering about the fate of such offspring as it may chance to have. Not that the present generation is less fond of its children than were past generations — human nature does not change on points so elementary — but when everything is keyed to such pitch of uncertainty, to secure the future at the expense of th