It Was the Nightingale

Ford Madox Ford, John Coyne, John Coyle, John Coyne, John Coyle

• Publisher: Lives and Letters
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847776969
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

During a Christmas leave in London, Ford Madox Ford attended a party at the French Embassy, 'a heavy blond man in a faded uniform', wearied by years of war, recalled to a longing for the life of a writer. The evening marks the beginning of a new phase of Ford's life, the years of It Was the Nightingale. Ford evokes the literary milieux of London, Paris and New York between the wars with sparkle, wit and energy. Recollections range across time in a subtle and flexible narrative that fuses fiction and memoir. A memory of a dark January day in Paris, in the weeks 'between dog and wolf', when Ford read the news of the death of the novelist John Galsworthy, triggers an exploration of the transition from an entire pre-war world: a ghost had passed, writes Ford, and Nancy Cunard steps forward 'like a jewelled tropical bird'. Here is James Joyce, whom Ford found dull company with his 'thin little jokes'; Ezra Pound playing Provencal songs on the bassoon; Gertrude Stein driving through the streets of Paris with the solemn 'snail-like precision' of a Pharoah. Behind the vivacity other ghosts, too, are always present: men killed and damaged in the war, mental breakdown and betrayal, out of which Ford was to create his best-loved novel, Parade's End.

PART ONE

“DOMINE DIRIGE NOS”

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WAS NEVER A DAY SO GAY FOR THE Arts as any twenty-four hours of the early ’twenties in Paris. Nay, twenty-four hours did not seem sufficient to contain all that the day held of plastic, verbal and harmonious sweets. But I had a year or so to wait before that ambience was to enfold me. I begin with the day of my release from service in His Britannic Majesty’s army—in early 1919.

Naked came I from my mother’s womb. On that day I was nearly as denuded of possessions. My heavier chattels were in a green, bolster-shaped sack. All the rest I had on me—a worn uniform with gilt dragons on the revers of the tunic…. All that I had once had had been conveyed in one direction or the other. That was the lot of man in those days—of man who had been actively making the world fit for … financial disaster. For me, as writer I was completely forgotten and as completely I had forgotten all that the world had before then drummed into me of the art of conveying illusion to others. I had no illusions myself.

During my Xmas leave in a strange London I had gone to a party given at the French Embassy by M. Philippe Berthelot, since ambassador himself and for long principal secretary to the French Foreign Office. I swam, as it were, up the Embassy steps. Then I was indeed a duck out of water…. The party was given for the English writers who with the implements of their craft had furthered the French cause. And there they all were, my unknown confrères. It was seven years since I had written a word: it was almost as many since I had spoken to a man of letters. Unknown faces filled the considerable halls that were misty under the huge chandeliers. There was a fog outside…. Unknown and queer!

I cannot believe that the faces of my British brothers of the pen are really more pallid and misshapenly elongated than those of any other country or of any other sedentary pursuit. But there, they seemed all unusually long, pale, and screwed to one side or the other. All save the ruddy face of Mr. Arnold Bennett to which war and the years had added. He appeared like a round red sun rising from amongst vertical shapes of cloud….

But I was not on speaking terms with Mr. Bennett and I drifted as far from him as I could.

Just before the Armistice I had been summoned from my battalion to the Ministry of Information in London. There I had found Mr. Bennett in a Presidential chair. In my astonishment at finding him in such a place I stuttered out:

“How fat you’ve got!”

He said:

“You have to write about terms of peace. The Ministry has changed. France is not going …”

We immediately disagreed very violently. Very violently! It was a question of how much the Allies ought to secure for France. That meeting became a brawl. Sir W. Tyrrell got introduced into it at first on the telephone and then personally. He was then Secretary to the Foreign Office and is now British Ambassador in Paris. I have never seen any look so irritated. The chief image of that interview comes back to me as a furnace-hot flush mounting on a dark-bearded cheek. And Mr. Bennett lolling back augustly in his official seat like a marble Zeus on a Greek frieze. I suppose I can be very irritating, particularly when it is a matter of anyone who wants, as the saying was, to do France in the eye. That responsible diplomat uttered language about our Ally! I should think that now, when in his cocked hat he passes the sentry at the door of the Elysée, he would have little chills if he thought of what he then said. I on the other hand had come straight from a company of several million men who were offering their lives so that France might be saved for the world.

When he had stormed out I asked Mr. Bennett if he still wanted my article about the terms of peace. A Chinese smile went over his face. Enigmatic. That was what it was.

He said:

“Yes. Write it. It’s an order. I’ll have it confirmed as such by the Horse Guards if you like.”

I went back to my regiment where, Heaven knows, the work was already overwhelming. I wrote that article on the top of a bully-beef case in between frantic periods of compiling orders as to every conceivable matter domestic to the well-being of a battalion on active service. The article advocated giving to France a great deal more than Mr. Lloyd George’s government desired to give her. A great deal more! As I have said elsewhere, that article was lost in the post—a fate that must be rare for official documents addressed to a great Government department. A week later I received through my Orderly Room an intimation that, as an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s Army I was prohibited from writing for the Press. And I was reminded that, even when I was released from active service, I should still be an officer of the Special Reserve and a paragraph of the Official Secrets Act was quoted to me. I could not think that I was in possession of a sufficiency of Official Secrets to make that intimation worth while, but at that point I had understood Mr. Bennett’s queer smile.

I like what the Boers call slimness and usually regard with pleasure acts of guile attempted against myself. I fancy it must make me feel more real—more worth while!—if a Confidence Trick man attempts to practise on me. But at that party at the Embassy I felt disinclined to talk to Mr. Bennett. Dog should not, by rights, eat dog.

But patriotism and the desire of Dai Bach’s Government to down the French covered in those days hundreds of sins in London town. Dai Bach—David darling!—was the nickname given to the then Prime Minister in the Welch Regiment for which in those days I had the honour to look after many intimate details. It pleases me still to read the “character” that decorated my Soldier’s Small Book on my resigning those duties:

“Possesses great powers of organisation and has solved many knotty problems. A lecturer of the first water on military subjects. Has managed with great ability the musketry training of this unit.”

I notice on the day on which I begin this book that Mr. George has attained the age of seventy and that his message to humanity is stated as being, on that occasion, that what is needed to save the world is men who know how to save the world. I could almost have thought that out for myself….

I stood then alone and feeling conspicuous—a heavy blond man in a faded uniform in those halls of France. Pale faces swam, inspectantly, towards me. But, as you may see fishes do round a bait in dim water, each one checked suddenly and swam away with a face expressing piscine distaste. I imagined that the barb of a hook must protrude somewhere from my person and set myself to study the names and romantic years of the wines that M. Berthelot had provided for us.

Their juice had been born on vines, beneath suns of years before these troubles and their names made fifty sweet symphonies…. It had been long, long indeed, since I had so much as thought of even such minor glories as Château Neuf du Pape or Tavel or Hermitage—though I think White Hermitage of a really good vintage year the best of all white wines. … I had almost forgotten that there were any potable liquids but vins du pays and a horrible fluid that we called Hooch. The nine of diamonds used to be called the curse of Scotland, but surely usquebaugh—which tastes like the sound of its name—is Scotland’s curse to the world … and to Scotland. That is why Glasgow on a Saturday night is Hell….

A long black figure detached itself from Mr. Bennett’s side and approached me. It had the aspect of an undertaker coming to measure a corpse….. The eyes behind enormous lenses were like black pennies and appeared to weep dimly; the dank hair was plastered in flattened curls all over the head. I decided that I did not know the gentleman. His spectacles swam almost against my face. His hollow tones were those of a funeral mute:

“You used to write,” it intoned, “didn’t you?”

I made the noise that the French render by “!?!?!”

He continued—and it was as if his voice came from the vaults of Elsinore….

“You used to consider yourself a literary dictator of London. You are so no longer. I represent Posterity. What I say to-day about books Posterity will say for ever.” He rejoined Mr. Bennett. I was told later that that gentleman was drunk. He had found Truth at the bottom of a well. Of usquebaugh! That was at the other, crowded end of the room.

That reception more nearly resembled scenes to be witnessed in New York in Prohibition days than anything else I ever saw in London. It must have given M. Berthelot what he would call une fière idée de la Muse, at any rate on Thames bank.

Eventually Madame Berthelot took pity on my faded solitariness and Madame Berthelot is one of the most charming, dark and witty of Paris hostesses…. Et exaltavit! …

A month or so later I might, had it not been too dark, have been seen with my sack upon my shoulder, approaching Red Ford.

That was a leaky-roofed, tile-healed, rat-ridden seventeenth-century, five-shilling a week, moribund labourer’s cottage. It stood beneath an enormous oak beside a running spring in a green dingle through which meandered a scarlet and orange runlet that in winter was a river to be forded. A low bank came down to the North. At the moment it loomed, black, against the bank and showers of stars shone through the naked branches of the oak. I had burned my poor old boats.

My being there was the result of that undertaker’s mute’s hollow tones at M. Berthelot’s party. I had told Mme Berthelot, to her incredulous delight, that as soon as the War was finished I should go to Provence and, beside the Rhône, below Avignon, set out at last as a tender of vines and a grower of primeurs. In the lands where grow the grapes of Château Neuf du Pape, of Tavel and of Hermitage! That had of course been the result of seeing those bottles on the long buffet. For years and years—all my life—I have wanted to live in that white sunlight and, at last, die in a certain house beside the planes of the place in Tarascon. I cannot remember when I did not have that dream. It is the whiteness of the sunlight on the pale golden walls and the castle of the good king René and, across the Rhône, the other castle of Aucassin and Nicolette….

But when at last I was released from service I found myself in a rat-trap. They refused me a passport for France.

I cannot suppose that Mr. George’s government feared that with my single eloquence I should be able to stampede the Versailles Congress into giving France the whole of both banks of the Rhine from Basel to the Dutch frontier. But that singular interference with the liberty of a subject had that aspect—as if they were determined that no Briton should speak for France….

A queer, paradoxical rat-trap! If I cannot say, like Henry James, that I love France as I never loved woman, I can lay my hand on my heart and swear that I have loved only those parts of England from which you can see and most easily escape into the land of Nicolette. And, what was queer, whilst I had been the chained helot that the poor bloody footslogger is supposed to be, I had crossed over to France more times than I can now remember and had passed more time than I can now like to remember in parts of Picardy and French Flanders that I should have been very glad to get out of. Now I was free…. But I was chained to the kerbstone on which I stood, forbidden to make a livelihood and quite unfit to stand the climate in which I found myself.

I paid of course no attention to my being forbidden to write. I did not believe that even with the Defence of the Realm Act at its back Authority could have enforced that prohibition. I was quite ready to chance that and did indeed chance it…. If you have been brought up in England you find it difficult to believe in the possibility of interference with your personal liberty though if, outside that, Authority can hamper the Arts it will hamper the Arts….

But the spectre at M. Berthelot’s feast had told me that I was as good as dead as a writer; I had no one to tell me anything to the contrary, and I was myself convinced that I could no longer write. I had proved it before Red Ford received me.

Some queer lunatics I had been with in the Army had started a queer, lunatic, weekly review. They had commissioned me to write articles on anything under the sun, from saluting in the army to the art of Gauguin and the eastern boundaries of France. I had written the articles and those genial lunatics had received them with wild—with the wildest—enthusiasm. They had also paid really large sums for them. But I knew that they had been the writings of a lunatic.

At the same time a certain Review had asked me to write for it. I had been pleased at the thought. That Review still retained at any rate for me some of the aura that it had when Lord Salisbury who wrote for it had been known as the master of flouts and jeers, and some of the later aura of the days when, under the brilliant editorship of Frank Harris, it had been written for by Mr. Bernard Sh...