The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

He began to walk on again toward Hyde Park Corner. No greater change

in all England than in the Row! Born almost within hail of it, he

could remember it from 1860 on. Brought there as a child between the

crinolines to stare at tight-trousered dandies in whiskers, riding with

a cavalry seat; to watch the doffing of curly-brimmed and white top

hats; the leisurely air of it all, and the little bow-legged man in

a long red waistcoat who used to come among the fashion with dogs

on several strings, and try to sell one to his mother: King Charles

spaniels, Italian greyhounds, affectionate to her crinoline--you never

saw them now. You saw no quality of any sort, indeed, just working

people sitting in dull rows with nothing to stare at but a few young

bouncing females in pot hats, riding astride, or desultory Colonials

charging up and down on dismal-looking hacks; with, here and there,

little girls on ponies, or old gentlemen jogging their livers, or an

orderly trying a great galumphing cavalry horse; no thoroughbreds, no

grooms, no bowing, no scraping, no gossip--nothing; only the trees the

same--the trees in--different to the generations and declensions

of mankind. A democratic England--dishevelled, hurried, noisy, and

seemingly without an apex. And that something fastidious in the soul of

Soames turned over within him. Gone forever, the close borough of rank

and polish! Wealth there was--oh, yes! wealth--he himself was a richer

man than his father had ever been; but manners, flavour, quality, all

gone, engulfed in one vast, ugly, shoulder-rubbing, petrol-smelling

Cheerio. Little half-beaten pockets of gentility and caste lurking here

and there, dispersed and chetif, as Annette would say; but nothing ever

again firm and coherent to look up to. And into this new hurly-burly

of bad manners and loose morals his daughter--flower of his life--was

flung! And when those Labour chaps got power--if they ever did--the

worst was yet to come.

He passed out under the archway, at last no longer--thank

goodness!--disfigured by the gungrey of its search-light. 'They'd better

put a search-light on to where they're all going,' he thought, 'and

light up their precious democracy!' And he directed his steps along the

Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting

in the bay window of the Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was

there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous

eye noting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever

constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin's glance. George, who, as he

had heard, had written a letter signed "Patriot" in the middle of the

War, complaining of the Government's hysteria in docking the oats of

race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven,

with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best

hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And

for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy

tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his

perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the

old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink

paper as if inviting him to ascend--the chap must want to ask something

about his property. It was still under Soames' control; for in the

adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty

years back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost

insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.