The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

"MY DEAREST BOY,

"You are old enough to understand how very difficult it is for elders to

give themselves away to their young. Especially when--like your

mother and myself, though I shall never think of her as anything but

young--their hearts are altogether set on him to whom they must confess.

I cannot say we are conscious of having sinned exactly--people in real

life very seldom are, I believe--but most persons would say we had, and

at all events our conduct, righteous or not, has found us out. The truth

is, my dear, we both have pasts, which it is now my task to make known

to you, because they so grievously and deeply affect your future. Many,

very many years ago, as far back indeed as 1883, when she was only

twenty, your mother had the great and lasting misfortune to make an

unhappy marriage--no, not with me, Jon. Without money of her own, and

with only a stepmother--closely related to Jezebel--she was very unhappy

in her home life. It was Fleur's father that she married, my cousin

Soames Forsyte. He had pursued her very tenaciously and to do him

justice was deeply in love with her. Within a week she knew the

fearful mistake she had made. It was not his fault; it was her error of

judgment--her misfortune."

So far Jolyon had kept some semblance of irony, but now his subject

carried him away.

"Jon, I want to explain to you if I can--and it's very hard--how it is

that an unhappy marriage such as this can so easily come about. You will

of course say: 'If she didn't really love him how could she ever have

married him?' You would be right if it were not for one or two rather

terrible considerations. From this initial mistake of hers all the

subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so I must make

it clear to you if I can. You see, Jon, in those days and even to this

day--indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can

well be otherwise--most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side

of life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced it.

That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal

knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all the trouble.

In a vast number of marriages-and your mother's was one--girls are not

and cannot be certain whether they love the man they marry or not; they

do not know until after that act of union which makes the reality of

marriage. Now, in many, perhaps in most doubtful cases, this act cements

and strengthens the attachment, but in other cases, and your mother's

was one, it is a revelation of mistake, a destruction of such attraction

as there was. There is nothing more tragic in a woman's life than such

a revelation, growing daily, nightly clearer. Coarse-grained and

unthinking people are apt to laugh at such a mistake, and say, 'What a

fuss about nothing!' Narrow and self-righteous people, only capable of

judging the lives of others by their own, are apt to condemn those who

make this tragic error, to condemn them for life to the dungeons they

have made for themselves. You know the expression: 'She has made her

bed, she must lie on it!' It is a hard-mouthed saying, quite unworthy of

a gentleman or lady in the best sense of those words; and I can use no

stronger condemnation. I have not been what is called a moral man, but I

wish to use no words to you, my dear, which will make you think lightly

of ties or contracts into which you enter. Heaven forbid! But with

the experience of a life behind me I do say that those who condemn the

victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands

to help them, are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had the

understanding to know what they are doing. But they haven't! Let them

go! They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to them. I have

had to say all this, because I am going to put you into a position to

judge your mother, and you are very young, without experience of what

life is. To go on with the story. After three years of effort to subdue

her shrinking--I was going to say her loathing and it's not too

strong a word, for shrinking soon becomes loathing under such

circumstances--three years of what to a sensitive, beauty-loving nature

like your mother's, Jon, was torment, she met a young man who fell in

love with her. He was the architect of this very house that we live in

now, he was building it for her and Fleur's father to live in, a new

prison to hold her, in place of the one she inhabited with him in

London. Perhaps that fact played some part in what came of it. But in

any case she, too, fell in love with him. I know it's not necessary to

explain to you that one does not precisely choose with whom one will

fall in love. It comes. Very well! It came. I can imagine--though she

never said much to me about it--the struggle that then took place in

her, because, Jon, she was brought up strictly and was not light in her

ideas--not at all. However, this was an overwhelming feeling, and it

came to pass that they loved in deed as well as in thought. Then came a

fearful tragedy. I must tell you of it because if I don't you will never

understand the real situation that you have now to face. The man whom

she had married--Soames Forsyte, the father of Fleur one night, at the

height of her passion for this young man, forcibly reasserted his rights

over her. The next day she met her lover and told him of it. Whether

he committed suicide or whether he was accidentally run over in his

distraction, we never knew; but so it was. Think of your mother as she

was that evening when she heard of his death. I happened to see her.

Your grandfather sent me to help her if I could. I only just saw her,

before the door was shut against me by her husband. But I have never

forgotten her face, I can see it now. I was not in love with her then,

not for twelve years after, but I have never for gotten. My dear boy--it

is not easy to write like this. But you see, I must. Your mother is

wrapped up in you, utterly, devotedly. I don't wish to write harshly of

Soames Forsyte. I don't think harshly of him. I have long been sorry

for him; perhaps I was sorry even then. As the world judges she was

in error, he within his rights. He loved her--in his way. She was his

property. That is the view he holds of life--of human feelings and

hearts--property. It's not his fault--so was he born. To me it is a view

that has always been abhorrent--so was I born! Knowing you as I do, I

feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you. Let me go on with the

story. Your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she

lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until in 1899 her

husband--you see, he was still her husband, for he did not attempt

to divorce her, and she of course had no right to divorce him--became

conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a long

attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child. I was her

trustee then, under your Grandfather's Will, and I watched this going

on. While watching, I became attached to her, devotedly attached. His

pressure increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put

herself under my protection. Her husband, who was kept informed of all

her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit,

or possibly he really meant it, I don't know; but anyway our names were

publicly joined. That decided us, and we became united in fact. She

was divorced, married me, and you were born. We have lived in perfect

happiness, at least I have, and I believe your mother also. Soames, soon

after the divorce, married Fleur's mother, and she was born. That is the

story, Jon. I have told it you, because by the affection which we see

you have formed for this man's daughter you are blindly moving toward

what must utterly destroy your mother's happiness, if not your own.

I don't wish to speak of myself, because at my age there's no use

supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should

suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours. But what I want

you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those

can never be buried or forgotten. They are alive in her to-day. Only

yesterday at Lord's we happened to see Soames Forsyte. Her face, if you

had seen it, would have convinced you. The idea that you should marry

his daughter is a nightmare to her, Jon. I have nothing to say against

Fleur save that she is his daughter. But your children, if you married

her, would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of

a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what

that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your

mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the

threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however

deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once.

Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the

rest of her life. Young though she will always seem to me, she is

fifty-seven. Except for us two she has no one in the world. She will

soon have only you. Pluck up your spirit, Jon, and break away. Don't put

this cloud and barrier between you. Don't break her heart! Bless you, my

dear boy, and again forgive me for all the pain this letter must bring

you--we tried to spare it you, but Spain--it seems---was no good.