The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no means unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment; certainly they were solicitous of each other’s welfare, glad of each other’s company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other’s presence the existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power of word-analysis bound them together, something hidden deep in the fibre of nations and families⁠—for blood, they say, is thicker than water⁠—and neither of them was a cold-blooded man. Indeed, in James love of his children was now the prime motive of his existence. To have creatures who were parts of himself, to whom he might transmit the money he saved, was at the root of his saving; and, at seventy-five, what was left that could give him pleasure, but⁠—saving? The kernel of life was in this saving for his children.

Than James Forsyte, notwithstanding all his “Jonah-isms,” there was no saner man (if the leading symptom of sanity, as we are told, is self-preservation, though without doubt Timothy went too far) in all this London, of which he owned so much, and loved with such a dumb love, as the centre of his opportunities. He had the marvellous instinctive sanity of the middle class. In him⁠—more than in Jolyon, with his masterful will and his moments of tenderness and philosophy⁠—more than in Swithin, the martyr to crankiness⁠—Nicholas, the sufferer from ability⁠—and Roger, the victim of enterprise⁠—beat the true pulse of compromise; of all the brothers he was least remarkable in mind and person, and for that reason more likely to live forever.