"........You will answer
The slaves are ours....."

--Merchant of Venice.



TO EDWARD GARNETT




PART I




CHAPTER I--'AT HOME' AT OLD JOLYON'S

Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have
seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family
in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed
the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and
properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only
delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In
plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom
existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that