The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3

Little Jon had been born with a silver spoon in a mouth which was rather

curly and large. He had never heard his father or his mother speak in an

angry voice, either to each other, himself, or anybody else; the groom,

Bob, Cook, Jane, Bella and the other servants, even "Da," who alone

restrained him in his courses, had special voices when they talked to

him. He was therefore of opinion that the world was a place of perfect

and perpetual gentility and freedom.

A child of 1901, he had come to consciousness when his country, just

over that bad attack of scarlet fever, the Boer War, was preparing for

the Liberal revival of 1906. Coercion was unpopular, parents had exalted

notions of giving their offspring a good time. They spoiled their rods,

spared their children, and anticipated the results with enthusiasm. In

choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had

already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight,

whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely.

What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little

prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon

could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played

second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his

mother's heart he knew not yet. As for "Auntie" June, his half-sister

(but so old that she had grown out of the relationship) she loved him,

of course, but was too sudden. His devoted "Da," too, had a Spartan

touch. His bath was cold and his knees were bare; he was not encouraged

to be sorry for himself. As to the vexed question of his education,

little Jon shared the theory of those who considered that children

should not be forced. He rather liked the Mademoiselle who came for two

hours every morning to teach him her language, together with history,

geography and sums; nor were the piano lessons which his mother gave him

disagreeable, for she had a way of luring him from tune to tune, never

making him practise one which did not give him pleasure, so that he

remained eager to convert ten thumbs into eight fingers. Under his

father he learned to draw pleasure-pigs and other animals. He was not a

highly educated little boy. Yet, on the whole, the silver spoon stayed

in his mouth without spoiling it, though "Da" sometimes said that other

children would do him a "world of good."

It was a disillusionment, then, when at the age of nearly seven she held

him down on his back, because he wanted to do something of which she did

not approve. This first interference with the free individualism of a

Forsyte drove him almost frantic. There was something appalling in the

utter helplessness of that position, and the uncertainty as to whether

it would ever come to an end. Suppose she never let him get up any more!

He suffered torture at the top of his voice for fifty seconds. Worse

than anything was his perception that "Da" had taken all that time

to realise the agony of fear he was enduring. Thus, dreadfully, was

revealed to him the lack of imagination in the human being.