In this way she
caused herself to be universally respected.
Once, at a time when her emotions were whipped by an attachment--for
the tenor of Roger's life, with its whole-hearted collection of
house property, had induced in his only daughter a tendency towards
passion--she turned to great and sincere work, choosing the sonata form,
for the violin. This was the only one of her productions that troubled
the Forsytes. They felt at once that it would not sell.
Roger, who liked having a clever daughter well enough, and often alluded
to the amount of pocket-money she made for herself, was upset by this
violin sonata.
"Rubbish like that!" he called it. Francie had borrowed young
Flageoletti from Euphemia, to play it in the drawing-room at Prince's
Gardens.
As a matter of fact Roger was right. It was rubbish, but--annoying! the
sort of rubbish that wouldn't sell. As every Forsyte knows, rubbish that
sells is not rubbish at all--far from it.
And yet, in spite of the sound common sense which fixed the worth of art
at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes--Aunt Hester, for instance,
who had always been musical--could not help regretting that Francie's
music was not 'classical'; the same with her poems.
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