The Pendyce estate must pass intact to the eldest son, and the son has taken up with a married woman — so the squire, the parson and the family solicitor set about correcting him. Galsworthy trained as a barrister, never practiced, and spent his career dissecting the class that produced him: this is the Forsyte world before the Forsytes, with the property instinct working on people instead of pictures. Fifty-eight plates of portraits and gatherings, from the tea table to the dinner table, match Galsworthy's study of a class that defines itself by what it owns and who it marries.
