Its age was felt to be a comfort. Old Jolyon, in whom a desperate honesty welled up at times, would allude to his ancestors as: “Yeomen⁠—I suppose very small beer.” Yet he would repeat the word “yeomen” as if it afforded him consolation.

They had all done so well for themselves, these Forsytes, that they were all what is called “of a certain position.” They had shares in all sorts of things, not as yet⁠—with the exception of Timothy⁠—in consols, for they had no dread in life like that of three percent for their money. They collected pictures, too, and were supporters of such charitable institutions as might be beneficial to their sick domestics. From their father, the builder, they inherited a talent for bricks and mortar. Originally, perhaps, members of some primitive sect, they were now in the natural course of things members of the Church of England, and caused their wives and children to attend with some regularity the more fashionable churches of the Metropolis. To have doubted their Christianity would have caused them both pain and surprise. Some of them paid for pews, thus expressing in the most practical form their sympathy with the teachings of Christ.