The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's songbook

run as follows:

'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and

he sang, like a bird!...'

Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt

almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park

Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.

The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to complete the simile

of the old song, he had put on a blue frock-coat, dispensing with an

overcoat, after sending Adolf down three times to make sure that there

was not the least suspicion of east in the wind; and the frock-coat was

buttoned so tightly around his personable form, that, if the buttons did

not shine, they might pardonably have done so. Majestic on the pavement

he fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped

top hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a

Forsyte. His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of

pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars--the celebrated

Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the

hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn't smoke

them as a gift; they wanted the stomach of a horse!

"Adolf!"

"Sare!"

"The new plaid rug!"

He would never teach that fellow to look smart; and Mrs. Soames he felt

sure, had an eye!

"The phaeton hood down; I am going--to--drive--a--lady!"

A pretty woman would want to show off her frock; and well--he was going

to drive a lady! It was like a new beginning to the good old days.

Ages since he had driven a woman! The last time, if he remembered, it

had been Juley; the poor old soul had been as nervous as a cat the whole

time, and so put him out of patience that, as he dropped her in the

Bayswater Road, he had said: "Well I'm d---d if I ever drive you again!"

And he never had, not he!

Going up to his horses' heads, he examined their bits; not that he knew

anything about bits--he didn't pay his coachman sixty pounds a year

to do his work for him, that had never been his principle. Indeed, his

reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby

Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers. But someone at the

Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door--he always drove

grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought--had called

him 'Four-in-hand Forsyte.' The name having reached his ears through

that fellow Nicholas Treffry, old Jolyon's dead partner, the great

driving man notorious for more carriage accidents than any man in the

kingdom--Swithin had ever after conceived it right to act up to it. The

name had taken his fancy, not because he had ever driven four-in-hand,

or was ever likely to, but because of something distinguished in the

sound. Four-in-hand Forsyte! Not bad! Born too soon, Swithin had missed

his vocation. Coming upon London twenty years later, he could not have

failed to have become a stockbroker, but at the time when he was obliged

to select, this great profession had not as yet became the chief glory

of the upper-middle class. He had literally been forced into land

agency.