Random thoughts on BBC’s adaptation of Parade’s End

My wife and I watched the BBC’s adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End last week. Rather than a formal review I wanted to pass on a few random thoughts both of us had on the production.

• Tom Stoppard did an admirable job translating the novels to the screen. FYI—The Last Post was not included in the adaptation. So much of the books come from the characters’ interior world which had to be converted to dialogue and invented scenes, all of which have to be plausible for the work to hold up. Even anachronistic scenes—flappers in 1917/18?—work since in this case the point was to highlight the differences between the fighting and home fronts. 


• The cast was superb. Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed Christopher Tietjens in a much more vulnerable light than I had pictured from the novels. Rebecca Hall did the impossible and made Sylvia Tietjens a likeable character despite her torture of Chrisotpher (my wife commented that her hair deserved its own credit). One thing that came through well was that Christopher’s beliefs and actions were a torture to Sylvia. Since we aren’t privy to Christopher’s interior world, Stoppard does a great job of shaping how we see the character through the eyes of others. Adelaide Clemens captured Valentine Wannop completely and the cast beyond that triangle were pitch-perfect as well. 


• I was surprised how much my wife enjoyed it. She knew nothing about the books (other than seeing me read them). Her comments were along the lines of enjoying watching complex, three-dimensional characters that weren’t just caricatures. 


• Some of the metaphors from the books translated very well. For example, Edith Macmaster’s hatred of Christopher clearly extends beyond the money Vincent owes and covers what the country owes him (and predecessors like him) and his “outdated” beliefs. 


• The biggest compliment I think I can give to the adaptation is that I want to explore the novels again even though I read them less than two years ago. I think my wife has no problem buying me a couple of the annotated volumes after enjoying the show, too! 

My summary page for Parade's End. Be sure and check out the many clips from the series available on YouTube, too.

Parade's End on TV in 2012 (bumped and updated)

Update (21 Feb 2012): I couldn't resist reposting this photo from radiotimes.com. No additional info on airing dates, etc.

A few pictures from filming can be found here and here.


Original Post (21 Sep 2011)

I felt happy while downloading the BBC podcasts of Life and Fate (more on this in *intended* upcoming posts) but this notice makes me giddy. Well, at least what I imagine giddy feels like after plowing through too much stress.

Tom Stoppard at the BBC's site:

The BBC came to me with the idea of adapting Ford's novel for TV two years ago. I had never read it and I fell in love with it. Parade's End has been my main pre-occupation since then. The title covers a quartet of books set among the upper class in Edwardian England, mostly from 1911 to the end of the Great War. I spent about 18 months on the dramatisation of the novel into five 60-minute episodes, working with the BBC producer Piers Wenger and with Damien Timmer of Mammoth, the independent production company. I confess I feel a bit proud of it, and now that Susanna White [as director] has come on board to direct Parade's End I'm thoroughly excited about it."

More on the cast can be found at IMDb.com as more people join the project. Many thanks to Debra Murphy at Catholic Fiction for posting this information. I'm excited to see how this adaptation works.

Of course, I would have loved to have seen Judi Dench as Valentine Wannop. But this will do nicely...

Update (10 October 2011): see the comment from not Bridget for a link to an interview with screenwriter Tom Stoppard and producer David Parfitt.

Parade's End summary

Picture source

This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass-fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous: he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. Each come just from an admirably appointed establishment: a table surrounded by the best people: their promenade sanctioned, as it were by the Church--two clergy--the State: two Government officials; by mothers, friends, old maids...Each knew the names of birds that piped and grasses that bowed: chaffinch, greenfinch, yellow-ammer (not, my dear, hammer! amonrer from the Middle High German for “finch”), garden warbler, Dartford warbler, pied-wagtail, known as “dishwasher.” (These charming local dialect names.) Marguerites over the grass, stretching in an infinite white blaze: grasses purple in a haze to the far distant hedgerow: coltsfoot, wild white clover, sainfoin, Italian rye grass (all technical names that the best people must know: the best grass mixture for permanent pasture on the Wealden loam). In the hedge: our lady's bedstraw: dead-nettle: bachelor's button (but in Sussex they call it ragged robin, my dear): so interesting! Cowslip (paigle, you know from the old French pasque, meaning Easter); burr, burdock (farmer that thy wife may thrive, but not burr and burdock wive!); violet leaves, the flowers of course over; black bryony; wild clematis, later it's old man's beard; purple loose-strife. (That our young maid's long purples call and literal shepherds give a grosser name. So racy of the soil!)...Walk, then, through the field, gallant youth and fair maid, minds cluttered up with all these useless anodynes for thought, quotation, imbecile epithets! Dead silent: unable to talk: from too good breakfast to probably extremely bad lunch. The young woman, so the young man is duly warned, to prepare it: pink india-rubber, half-cooked cold beef, no doubt: tepid potatoes, water in the bottom of willow-pattern dish. (No! Not genuine willow-pattern, of course, Mr Tietjens.) Overgrown lettuce with wood-vinegar to make the mouth scream with pain; pickles, also preserved in wood-vinegar; two bottles of public-house beer that, on opening, squirts to the wall. A glass of invalid port...for the gentleman!...and the jaws hardly able to open after the too enormous breakfast at 10.15. Midday now!

“God's England!” Tietjens exclaimed to himself in high good humour. “Land of Hope and Glory!--F natural descending to tonic C major: chord of 6-4, suspension over dominant seventh to common chord of C major...All absolutely correct! Double basses, cellos, all violins: all wood wind: all brass. Full grand organ: all stops: special vox humana and key-bugle effect...Across the counties came the sound of bugles that his father knew...Pipe exactly right. It must be: pipe of Englishman of good birth: ditto tobacco. Attractive young woman's back. English midday mid-summer. Best climate in the world! No day on which man may not go abroad!” Tietjens paused and aimed with his hazel stick an immense blow at a tall spike of yellow mullein with its undecided, furry, glaucous leaves and its undecided, buttony, unripe lemon-coloured flowers. The structure collapsed, gracefully, like a woman killed among crinolines!

“Now I'm a bloody murderer!” Tietjens said. “Not gory! Green-stained with vital fluid of innocent plant...And by God! Not a woman in the country who won't let you rape her after an hour's acquaintance!” He slew two more mulleins and a sow-thistle! A shadow, but not from the sun, a gloom, lay across the sixty acres of purple grass bloom and marguerites, white: like petticoats of lace over the grass!

“By God,” he said, “Church! State! Army! H.M. Ministry: H.M. Opposition: H.M. City Man...All the governing class! All rotten! Thank God we've got a navy!...But perhaps that's rotten too! Who knows! Britannia needs no bulwarks...Then thank God for the upright young man and the virtuous maiden in the summer fields: he Tory of the Tories as he should be: she suffragette of the militants: militant here on earth...as she should be! As she should be! In the early decades of the twentieth century however else can a woman keep clean and wholesome! Ranting from platforms, splendid for the lungs: bashing in policemen's helmets...No! It's I do that: my part, I think, miss!...Carrying heavy banners in twenty-mile processions through streets of Sodom. All splendid! I bet she's virtuous. But you can tell it in the eye. Nice eyes! Attractive back. Virginal cockiness...Yes, better occupation for mothers or empire than attending on lewd husbands year in year out till you're as hysterical as a female cat on heat...You could see it in her: that woman: you can see it in most of 'em! Thank God then for the Tory, upright young married man and the suffragette kid...Backbone of England!...”

He killed another flower.

( - from Some Do Not..., Part One, Chapter 6)

Pardon me for quoting that again but it is one of my favorite parts of the work. I guess after spending a month and a half with Parade's End it is worth looking back at some of the high (and low) points. I feel I should say something insightful about the books, but frankly I'm too drained (in a good way) to even attempt it. So what follows are some very random thoughts…

I found it difficult to start each volume except for A Man Could Stand Up. I'm not sure why, but it took me a chapter or two to "get into" them. I look back at the start of Some Do Not... and I don't understand the hesitation other than being slowly immersed into what is happening. Even when totally engrossed in the book I could rarely read more than 20 pages a day. Some of the slowness had to do with taking notes, but the main culprit was trying to untangle everything layered in the work. As Ford moves toward recording only the consciousness of his characters, I read slower to try and catch as much as possible. I say this not to discourage anyone from reading it but instead to help in setting any expectations in approaching the books.

By Part Two of A Man Could Stand Up I was reading slowly just to savor Ford’s language in describing what was happening around Tietjens in the trenches. Everything had led up to these moments and I completely fell in love with the work. Some will…while some will not. You can summarize the plotline easily but it will not convey the power from his design in telling it. What actually happens in the books is revealed almost incidentally as the consciousness of the characters mull over the history and context of what is happening in order to bring meaning to the action. Ford’s process makes the nature of understanding and perception a central focus of the books.

In looking at Christopher Tietjens, we see an austere brand of ancient Englishness, passive but dignified. Despite holding him up for ridicule, Ford has him succeed in impossible, changing times. Tietjens succeeds because he embraces the English countryside whose features are “pleasant and green and comely. It would breed true.” The land, having threatened to engulf him and his regiment during the war, remains the one true force that has survived and will continue to do so. Throughout the books, Ford criticizes both pre- and post-war conditions in England, some of which is personified in the Tietjens irony. Christopher seeks a foundation in the past while overlooking the full effect of it, such as the confiscation of the Groby estate from a Catholic family. The pastoral vision at the end stands at odds with the reliance on the industrialized Americans supporting it (not to mention the coal fields owned around Groby).

Despite the defeats meted out to Tietjens, he survives the social and political breakdowns by turning his back on the established order and embracing a pastoral life (albeit a dark one, as alluded to in the inherent contradictions above). Ford seems deeply ambivalent about the lost society as well as the new order. Tietjens, a throwback to an era that didn’t exist as remembered, upholds many of the virtues that were supposed to provide society’s foundation. In one sense, Ford tiptoes around the problem of wishing for traditional values which were unable to deal with modern problems by pointing out that the underlying virtues were only observed in their breach. By assigning a false nostalgia he lightens the contradictions a little. Ford proves to be extremely adroit when presenting contradictions which makes it difficult to ascribe exactly what he is doing. Multiple readings, or at least varied interpretations, are possible. It’s also possible he didn’t even know what he was ultimately trying to say, which may be the most satisfying answer of all for me.

Below are the posts I made involving Parade’s End as well as links to the blogs of those reading along on the work:

Parade's End

Some Do Not... discussion: Part One
Some Do Not... discussion: Part Two

No More Parades discussion
No More Parades discussion: random notes

A Man Could Stand Up discussion

The Last Post discussion
Odds and ends on The Last Post and Parade's End


Related posts

Online resources (updated yet again)

World War I color photos

An excerpt from and link to Ford Madox Ford's poem Antwerp

A look at some poems by George Herbert that appear in Parade's End

So what is Christopher's son's name?

Some random notes on the BBC adaptation of the novels


Also participating in the read-along

Mel U at The Reading Life

Hannah at Hannah Stoneham's Book Blog

Nicole at bibliographing

The Last Post discussion

Last Post bugle call
Picture source


Sadly they whispered away
As I played the last post on the bugle
I heard them say
Oh that boy's no different today
Except in every single way

-- from "Last Post on the Bugle" by The Libertines

It had been obvious to her for a long time that God would one day step in and intervene for the protection of Christopher. After all Christpher was a good man—a rather sickeningly good man. It is, in the end, she reluctantly admitted, the function of God and the invisible Powers to see that a good man shall eventually be permitted to settle down to a stuffy domestic life…even to chaffering over old furniture. It was a comic affair—but it was the sort of affair that you had to admit. God is probably—and very rightly—on the side of the stuff domesticities. Otherwise the world could not countinue—the children would not be healthy.

The Last Post holds a confusing position in the Parade’s End tetralogy since Ford Madox Ford later spurned the work. Despite some weaknesses I think the book generally works and fits well with the previous three volumes. If nothing else the reader sees how things could have gone wrong in previous sections, making me appreciate what Ford accomplished all the more. The Last Post takes place over the course of a few hours in the late 1920s. Christopher Tietjens and a pregnant Valerie Wannop live in a cottage in the south of England. Christopher’s brother Mark and wife, Marie Léonie, live with them. Mark has had a stroke and lies in a thatched hut overlooking the surrounding area. While The Last Post has a similar “feel” to the previous books since we see a series of interior monologues again. The biggest difference comes from the source of the monologues—the bulk of the chapters reside within the minds of Mark Tietjens, who the reader has only seen briefly, and Marie Léonie, Mark’s long-time mistress and now wife. For this discussion, I’m going to focus on only a few of the topics that stood out for me.

In It Was the Nightingale Ford said he "employed every wile known to me as novelist—the time-shift, the progression d'effet, the adaptation of rhythms to the pace of the action." He easily could have said the same thing about those techniques and Parade’s End, but I want to focus a moment on progression d'effet. I can’t find much on this ‘technique’ (so correct me if I am wrong) other than Flaubert saying that each chapter, episode, and sentence should carry the story forward with increasing intensity for maximum effect. Parade’s End builds word by word, each relying heavily on everything that came before it. Mel U, the ringleader of the Parade’s End read-along, had a post on the page 99 (or page 90) test that Ford proposed to judge the quality of a work. Parade’s End should be Exhibit A on how this test can only provide a hint at the quality that lies on a particular page. Whatever you choose in these books relies on the preceding pages for qualities that won’t be readily apparent. For example, the repetition of words and phrases sets the mood and constructs a tension, not just between characters but between values and eras.

As he saw things, public life had become—and must remain for a long period—so demoralized by the members of the then Government with their devious foreign policies and their intimacies with a class of shady financiers such as had never hitherto had any finger in the English political pie—public life had become so discreditable an affair that the only remedy was for the real governing classes to retire altogether from public pursuits. Things in short must become worse before they could grow better. With the dreadful condition of rain at home and foreign discredit to which the country must almost immediately emerge under the conduct of the Scotch grocers, Frankfort financiers, Welsh pettifoggers, Midland armament manufactures and South Country incompetents who during the later years of the war had intrigued themselves into office—with that dreadful condition staring it in the face, the country must return to something like its old standards of North Country common sense and English probity. The old governing class to which he and his belonged might never return to power but, whatever revolutions took place—and he did not care!—the country must return to exacting of whoever might be its governing class some semblance of personal probity and public honouring of pledges. He obviously was out of it or he would be out of it with the end of the war, for even from his bed he had taken no small part in the directing of affairs at his office…. A state of war obviously favouring the coming to the top of all kinds of devious storm petrels; that was inevitable and could not be helped. But in normal times a country—every country—was true to itself.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Parade’s End is about conflict, some of which are hinted at in this excerpt. Christopher and Mark Tietjens withdraw “from public pursuits”, refusing to accept the mantle of country squire or landed gentry for very different reasons. Mark realized early on such a role bored him. Christopher rejects the house and its money in reaction to the beliefs of his father and brother (although how much of that dispute is manufactured is unclear...Christopher clearly accepts the house for his son). With these failures of integrity from the government (Mark) and family (Christopher) causing the rejection of stewardship roles, we see a proto-John Galt course of action. The encroaching bureaucracy from “a nation of small shop-keepers” is antithetical to the integrity shown as lacking. The interesting twist comes from the difficulties that Christopher faced. Those difficulties came from people nominally trying to uphold some prescribed course of action, reacting to his marital and financial situation as they see it. The problem, beyond believing the worst of Christopher without seeking the truth, lies in their lack of understanding the underlying principles of what their actions were supposed to uphold. Campion, for example, felt like he had to do something about Christopher but never grasped why, other than it was expected of him.

In The Last Post we spend time in the thoughts of Mark and Marie Léonie, allowing the reader to explore Christopher and Valentine from additional angles outside of their own consciousness. This book could almost be called Ford’s pastoral novel, idealizing the Tietjens’ move to the countryside and the life it represented. Marie Léonie embodies the direction Mark (and Ford) saw in the last excerpt. She represents a tie to the land, a “Norman of a hundred generations” who felt it “the duty of a French citizen, by industry, frugality, and vigilance to accumulate goods” while at the same time not demanding “a better life than this”. The contrast is not just to the political class of England but to the avaricious Americans caricatured (who “drop down in aeroplanes, seeming to come up out of the earth” just as bombs and Germans did in the war). As with many aspects of this volume, Ford can be heavy handed in his symbolism and message. But he gets his point across—there is no George Herbert in a parsonage on a hill anymore providing serenity. There is only Mark, overlooking the area (as well as the past and future), but no serenity comes this time--only death.

Looking back on Parade’s End, is there a single normal relationship free of tension or conflict? Mark’s association with Marie Léonie is possibly the closest, and even that was bizarre—she didn’t know his surname for over a decade, only seeing him twice a week until his illness at the close of the war. The soldiers in Mark’s regiment were all basket cases, such as O Nine Morgan and McKechnie. We are only given a glimpse inside Michael/Mark junior’s consciousness, but the sexual conflict and tension we see can’t bode well for his future.

The annotated version of Parade’s End cannot come soon enough. Many references are easy to recognize such as Molière or The Mill on the Floss, while Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson plays a central role in bringing the brothers together. Yet Ford draws on many areas for additional meaning, some I’m not familiar with such as the children’s ballads that open and close The Last Post. The twists Ford puts on common expressions (“Lettest thou servant…divorce in peace”, for example) can be more than simply humorous but add to the examination of a world that has turned upside down.

The resolutions at the end of The Last Post, such that they are, feel more forced than the other volumes. Sylvia’s agreement to divorce Christopher seems semi-believable since she has overplayed her hand too many times and has, Ford tells us, felt humiliation and mortification for the first times recently. Yet the sudden concern for the unborn child of Christopher and Sylvia feels contrived. As Ford takes pains to point out, neither can we accept everything will continue to go Christopher’s way. The reader gets to find out what happened the night after the end of A Man Could Stand Up and it wasn’t the happy ending anticipated.

Christopher’s rejection of what society sees as important, turning instead to the land feels less like a rejection of the old or embracing modernity (as critics like to point out) and closer to an embracement of the values that supported the older customs. What I get from Ford is that somewhere along the way the values became divorced from the customs, the latter carrying on without an understanding or linkage to of the former. Throughout the four books there has long been a wistful tone of regret toward the waning old values during the suicidal rush by countries and individuals. Christopher never loses those virtues, adapting and applying them in a very different manner than what was expected of him. By this route he triumphs, staying as firm as the land he believes in.

Christopher presumably believed in England as he believed in Provvy [Providence]--because the land was pleasant and green and comely. It would breed true. In spite of showers of Americans descended from Tiglath Pileser and Queen Elizabeteh and the end of the industrial system and the statistics of the shipping trade, Englandwith its pleasant, green comeliness would go on breeding George Herberts with Gunnings to look after them…. Of course with Gunnings!

The Gunnings of the land were the rocks on which the lighthouse was built—as Christopher saw it. And Christopher was always right. Sometimes a little previous. But always right. Always right. The rocks had been there a million years before the lighthouse was built, the lighthouse made a deuce of a movable flashing—but it was a mere butterfly. The rocks would be there a million years after the light went for the last time out.

Parade's End pop quiz

Note: see the update for partial clarification

The name of Christopher Tietjens’ son in Parade’s End is
a) Tommie
b) Michael
c) Mark junior
d) All of the above

The correct answer is D, all of the above. Or at least I think it is. Through Part One, Chapter Four of The Last Post I have seen all three names used so far. There may be an additional name or two that shows up before I finish the book.

From Some Do Not…:

To his sister Effie, on the day after his wife's elopement, Christopher had said over the telephone: “Will you take Tommie for an indefinite period? Marchant will come with him. She offers to take charge of your two youngest as well, so you'll save a maid, and I'll pay their board and a bit over.”

The voice of his sister--from Yorkshire--had answered: “Certainly, Christopher”. She was the wife of a vicar, near Groby, and she had several children.

To Macmaster Tietjens had said: ”'Sylvia has left me with that fellow Perowne.'” Macmaster had answered only: “Ah!”

Tietjens had continued: “I'm letting the house and warehousing the furniture. Tommie is going to my sister Effie. Marchant is going with him.”

I won’t mention what a “decent Tommie” does and doesn’t do, as mentioned later in the book since Tommie may be passed off as a common term of endearment or a name for anyone in general.

From No More Parades:

She went on with her uninterrupted sentence to Cowley: Of course he may never be going to see his only son again, so it makes him sensitive...The officer at Paddington, I mean...”

She said to herself: “By God, if that beast does not give in to me to-night he never –shall- see Michael again...”

From The Last Post:

The boy was asking him if he would not speak to them. He said he was Mark’s nephew, Mark Tietjens, junior.

My limited experience with Ford shows that he can be both scrupulous and sloppy at the same time. In The Good Soldier, Ford's determination to use the same date for significant events makes for some clumsy blips in the timeline.

In Parade’s End, Ford's inability to be consistent with Christopher’s son’s name probably doesn’t say much in and of itself, but it makes it difficult to know how much to read into other inconsistencies. I have pointed out a couple of minor word changes when characters recall poems. I have not pushed these errors too much because of just such inconsistencies in other areas. In addition for this area, Ford gives Christopher an ‘out’ by saying that poetry isn’t his strong suit despite total recall in almost every other area. So when misquotes change meaning drastically, it’s hard to say what was intended and what wasn’t. I would love to say Ford intentionally undermined the characters' intent by the change of a word or two, but it's difficult to ascribe too much meaning in inconsistency when a character has a different name in each volume.

Update: Oh ye of little faith. And by "ye", I mean me. Ford usually gets around to clearing things up and I should have given him the benefit of the doubt. However he waited until Part Two to clarify the name differences.

The boy had originally been baptised and registered as Michael Tietjens. At his reception into the Roman Church he had been baptised "Michael Mark." Then had followed the only read deep humiliation of her life. After his Papist baptism the boy had asked to be called Mark.

This doesn't take into account "Tommie" in the first volume, but I'm sure Ford didn't know how much of a role the son would play at that point. On a side note, we finally find out what it takes to humiliate Sylvia.

The Last Post and Parade’s End odds and ends

Picture source
(The link has nothing to do with the book, but I thank them for the wonderful cover)

I browsed through the Ford Madox Ford Society’s last online newsletter and noticed in Newsletter 15 (30 March 2009) that "Max Saunders, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Sara Haslam and Paul Skinner are working on an annotated critical edition of Parade’s End (Carcanet)”. It is a work that definitely would benefit the reader.

The Last Post seems to have a controversial standing within Parade’s End. Ford later called it an “afterthought”. The end of A Man Could Stand Up did come to a conclusion, of sorts, on Armistice Day. Although very little resolution was shown, I thought the similarity to a wedding dance in the final scene was enough closure. Ford seems to have wanted more closure at some point, whether in his initial designs, somewhere along the writing of the first three books, or even after A Man Could Stand Up.

Dorothy Parker wasn’t a big fan of The Last Post, saying the book had to be read “with a furrow in the brow. You must constantly turn back pages, to ascertain from inside which character’s head the author is writing.” Anthony Burgess, in a Paris Review interview, commented on Graham Greene’s exclusion of The Last Post in the Bodley Head version of Parade’s End:

Well, the worst example I know of unjustified translation is to be found in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, where in the British edition, under the imprint of Bodley Head, Graham Greene has taken upon himself to present Parade’s End as a trilogy, saying he doesn’t think the final novel, The Last Post, works, and he feels perhaps Ford would have agreed with him; and therefore he has taken the liberty of getting rid of the final book. I think Greene is wrong; I think that whatever Ford said, the work is a tetralogy, and the thing is severely maimed with the loss of his final book. An author is not be trusted in his judgment of this sort of thing.

I probably should have included Ford’s own comments on literary impressionism at the beginning of these posts, but better late than never:

“The point is that impressionism, whether it be prose, or verse, or painting, or sculpture, is the record of a moment; it is not a sort of rounded, annotated record of a set of circumstances that happened ten years ago—or ten minutes. It might even be the impression of the moment—but it is the impression, not the corrected chronicle.”

Ah yes, but as he shows in this work what happens in a moment may include, with everything else happening, thoughts of what happened ten years ago. Not to mention what happens in that moment, or an accumulation of moments like the war, can alter how you record as well as remember an experience.

I cannot find much of Ford’s poetry online, so I’ll provide a few lines from his poem “Footsloggers” that seem appropriate:

It is because our land is beautiful and green and comely,
Because our farms are quiet and thatched and homely,
Because the trout stream dimples by the willow,
Because the water-lilies float upon the ponds.
…
That we shall endure the swift, sharp torture of dying,
Or the humiliation of not dying.

This is the land that Tietjens’ surveyed and commented on in Some Do Not… and looks like we’ll return to in The Last Post (or so it looks…I’m only one chapter into it). In contrast, between these endpoints, the reader has seen the earth almost consume Christopher Tietjens and members of his regiment during shelling.

The Last Post’s epigraph is the opening of a ballad (one version with updated spelling can be found here). The events commemorated in the ballad are as follows:

To the east of the Weardale `capital' of Stanhope, the River Wear is joined from the north by the Rookhope Burn, which means `valley of the rooks'.On December 8th, 1569, this valley was the setting for a border fray in which a large group of mosstroopers (cattle raiders), from Tynedale, made a raid upon the valley of Weardale. The raiders had decided to plunder the Wear valley for its livestock while most of the Weardale men were away (in Teesdale !), plotting against the Queen in the famous `Rising of the North'. Resistance to the raid was expected to be low, but there were still a number of Weardale men left to defend their dale. The raiders were pursued north into the Rookhope valley, as they made off with Weardale cattle and sheep.When the Weardale men eventually caught up with the mosstroopers, a fray ensued in which four of the Tynedalers lost their lives.

Rockhope stands in a pleasant place,
If the false thieves would let it be;
But away they steal our goods apace,
And ever an ill death may they die!

Ford only provides the first two lines, but the third line seems appropriate for what we’ve seen Christopher Tietjens go through, although the ‘false thieves’ were stealing more than just his goods.

Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright

I wanted to take a brief look at some quotes from poems by George Herbert (1593 – 1633) in A Man Could Stand Up:

He hoped McKechnie, with his mad eyes and his pestilential accent, would like that fellow. That fellow spread seventeenth-century atmosphere across the landscape over which the sun's rays were beginning to flood a yellow wash. Then, might the seventeenth century save the fellow's life, for his good taste! For his life would probably be saved. He, Tietjens, would give him a pass back to Division to get ready for the concert. So he would be out of the strafe...Probably none of them would be alive after the strafe that Brigade reported to be coming in...Twenty-seven minutes, by now! Three hundred and twenty-eight fighting men against...Say a Division. Any preposterous number...Well, the seventeeth century might as well save one man!

What had become of the seventeenth century? And Herbert and Donne and Crashaw and Vaughan, the Silurist?...Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky!...By Jove, it was that!...Old Campion flashing like a popinjay in the scarlet and gilt of the Major-General, had quoted that in the base camp, years ago. Or was it months? Or wasn't it: 'But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariots hurrying near,' that he had quoted? Anyhow, not bad for an old General!

…

The only satisfactory age [the seventeenth century] in England!...Yet what chance had it to-day? Or, still more, to-morrow? In the sense that the age of, say, Shakespeare had a chance. Or Pericles! or Augustus!

Heaven knew, we did not want a preposterous drumbeating such as the Elizabethans produced--and received. Like lions at a fair...But what chance had quiet fields, Anglican sainthood, accuracy of thought, heavy-leaved, timbered hedgerows, slowly creeping plough-lands moving up the slopes?...Still, the land remains...

The land remains...It remains!...At that same moment the dawn was wetly revealing; over there in George Herbert's parish...What was it called?...What the devil was its name? Oh, Hell!...Between Salisbury and Wilton...The tiny church...But he refused to consider the plough-lands, the heavy groves, the slow highroad above the church that the dawn was at that moment wetly revealing--until he could remember that name...He refused to consider that, probably even to-day, that land ran to...produced the stock of...Anglican sainthood. The quiet thing!

But until he could remember the name he would consider nothing...

…

The name Bemerton suddenly came on to his tongue. Yes, Bemerton, Bemerton, Bemerton was George Herbert's parsonage. Bemerton, outside Salisbury...The cradle of the race as far as our race was worth thinking about. He imagined himself standing up on a little hill, a lean contemplative parson, looking at the land sloping down to Salisbury spire. A large, clumsily bound seventeenth-century testament, Greek, beneath his elbow...Imagine standing up on a hill! It was the unthinkable thing there!

(from No More Parades, Part Two, Chapter 2)

As Tietjens surveys no-man’s land in the morning, comparing the destruction (of men and earth) with the English countryside, the rising of the sun and the sound of the cornet bring to mind the first line of George Herbert’s poem “Virtue”. The poem has a calming effect even though it speaks of death and destruction. The one exception to everything ending, according to the poem, will be virtue, living on though “the whole world turn to coal”. The poem proves to be fitting for the situation, both with the carnage surrounding him and with the values Tietjens tries to maintain.

"Virtue"
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

Herbert makes another appearance in Chapter 4 of Part Two, although I wonder if the misquote is deliberate:

Don't we say prayers before battle?...He could not imagine himself doing it...He just hoped that nothing would happen that would make him lose control of his mind...Otherwise he found that he was meditating on how to get the paper affairs of the unit into a better state...'Who sweeps a room as for Thy cause ...' It was the equivalent of prayer probably...

Except “The Elixir” (also part of Herbert’s The Temple) says for "Thy laws". That one word is a minor alteration but it makes a world of difference, changing the concept from man working within God’s framework to having God’s blessing for battle. Tietjens’ said in the opening chapter of Parade’s End that poetry wasn’t his strong suit but the change feels deliberate in order to conform to Tietjens' thoughts at the moment (similar to Tietjens misquote of the Alice Meynell poem in that opening chapter).

A Man Could Stand Up discussion

Picture source

Months and months before Christopher Tietjens had stood extremely wishing that his head were level with a particular splash of purposeless whitewash. Something behind his mind forced him to the conviction that, if his head--and of course the rest of his trunk and lower limbs--were suspended by a process of levitation to that distance above the duckboard on which, now, his feet were, he would be in an inviolable sphere. These waves of conviction recurred continually: he was constantly glancing aside and upwards at that splash: it was in the shape of the comb of a healthy rooster; it gleamed, with five serrations, in the just beginning light that shone along the thin, unroofed channel in the gravel slope. Wet half-light, just filtering; more visible there than in the surrounding desolation because the deep, narrow channel framed a section of just-illuminated rift in the watery eastwards!

Twice he had stood up on a rifleman's step enforced by a bully-beef case to look over--in the last few minutes. Each time, on stepping down again, he had been struck by that phenomenon: the light seen from the trench seemed if not brighter, then more definite. So, from the bottom of a pit-shaft in broad day you can see the stars. The wind was light, but from the North-West. They had there the weariness of a beaten army: the weariness of having to begin always new days again...

Day is night...a subtle way of saying the world has turned upside down. Ford alternates between hitting the reader over the head with a point he wishes to make and taking subtlety to a new (for him) restrained level. For those reading along on Parade’s End, here is a reminder of the very beginning in Some Do Not…?

The two young men--they were of the English public official class--sat in the perfectly appointed railway carriage. The leather straps to the windows were of virgin newness; the mirrors beneath the new luggage racks immaculate as if they had reflected very little; the bulging upholstery in its luxuriant, regulated curves was scarlet and yellow in an intricate, minute dragon pattern, the design of a geometrician in Cologne. The compartment smelt faintly, hygienically of admirable varnish; the train ran as smoothly--Tietjens remembered thinking--as British gilt-edged securities. It travelled fast; yet had it swayed or jolted over the rail joints, except at the curve before Tonbridge or over the points at Ashford where these eccentricities are expected and allowed for, Macmaster, Tietjens felt certain, would have written to the company. Perhaps he would even have written to The Times.

Their class administered the world, not merely the newly created Imperial Department of Statistics under Sir Reginald Ingleby. If they saw policemen misbehave, railway porters lack civility, an insufficiency of street lamps, defects in public services or in foreign countries, they saw to it, either with nonchalant Balliol voices or with letters to The Times, asking in regretful indignation: 'Has the British This or That come to this?' Or they wrote, in the serious reviews of which so many still survived, articles taking under their care, manners, the Arts, diplomacy, inter-Imperial trade, or the personal reputations of deceased statesmen and men of letters.

Six years elapse between the beginning of the first book and the third book, yet they seem to describe completely different worlds. The world of “admirable varnish” no longer exists, at least in the same manner as it did. There is no more “virgin newness” in a world experiencing trench warfare.

(A side note: I found it interesting that Ford gets us from June 1912 to November 1918 while showing the reader only five ‘days’. The following calculations are estimates, but I don’t think they are too far off the mark: Some Do Not… Part One covers 48 hours while Part Two spans about 12 hours. All of No More Parades fits in a 48 hour time period. A Man Could Stand Up’s timeframe covers 9 hours total—1 hour in Part One, 4 hours in Part Two, and 4 hours (or less) in Part Three. That’s a total of 117 hours. At the risk of stating the too obvious, this covers only the “physical” time. The “mental” time is much more expansive.)

Part One takes place on Armistice Day (November 11, 1918) at the school where Valentine Wannop teaches gym. Valentine receives a phone call from Edith Ethel Macmaster, although it takes her a while to figure out who is calling and what she wants. Edith Ethel has behaved quite beastly toward Tietjens and Valentine but she proves to be the catalyst that brings them together. Her call isn’t completely altruistic, though. Vincent Macmaster is such a wreck, mentally and financially, that Edith Ethel’s main concern revolves around the money owed to Tietjens.

Part One takes place in Valentine’s mind but there is a strong, disturbing undercurrent in her thoughts or rather what she reflects from the zeitgeist.

But at the Mistresses' Conference that morning, Valentine had realized that what was really frightening them [teachers and administrators] was the other note. A quite definite fear. If, at this parting of the ways, at this crack across the table of History, the School--the World, the future mothers of Europe--got out of hand, would they ever come back? The Authorities--Authority all over the world--was afraid of that; more afraid of that than of any other thing. Wasn't it a possibility that there was to be no more Respect? None for constituted Authority and consecrated Experience?

Some of this ‘reading’ echoes Valentine’s suffragette background, but I think it’s open to a wider interpretation paralleling the overall theme of things changing and no one is quite sure how to deal with the new world. Valentine’s disturbance, once she realizes Edith Ethel is speaking of Tietjens, comes mostly from feeling insulted that she had agreed to give herself to him the prior year but he refused to follow through on their desires. Her suppressed anger and denial is portrayed by her refusal to think of Tiejens by name. He is “that grey mass” or simply “him”, avoiding the personal name of Tietjens until someone else says it.

In each section of Parade’s End Ford chooses words to repeat in order to set the ambiance or drive the point home for the reader, for example “beastly” appears 56 times in Some Do Not…. Here we see Valentine repeating the same things mentally, constantly thinking what stuck with her in the phone conversation with Edith Ethel. Valentine constantly thinks back to the non-affair with Tietjens as well as musing on what not recognizing his porter or not having any furniture might mean for him. As she thinks over all these things, Valentine rejects her parents’ values.

It was suddenly obscured by a recrudescence of the thought that had come to her only incidentally in the hall. It rushed over her with extraordinary vividness now, like a wave of warm liquid...If it had really been that fellow's wife who had removed his furniture what was there to keep them apart? He couldn't have pawned or sold or burnt his furniture whilst he had been with the British Expeditionary Force in the Low Countries! He couldn't have without extraordinary difficulty! Then...What should keep them apart?...Middle Class Morality? A pretty gory carnival that had been for the last four years! Was this then Lent, pressing hard on the heels of Saturnalia? Not so hard as that, surely! So that if one hurried...What on earth did she want, unknown to herself?

She heard herself saying, almost with a sob, so that she was evidently in a state of emotion: 'Look here: I disapprove of this whole thing: of what my father has brought me to! Those people...the brilliant Victorians talked all the time through their hats. They evolved a theory from anywhere and then went brilliantly mad over it.

Valentine accentuates her stance on those rejected values to Miss Wanostrocht, who revered Valentine’s father: “I mean that my father left us so that I had to earn my and my mother's living as a servant for some months after his death. That was what his training came to.” The above quote has yet another inversion in the order of things (another one of many), with Lent coming after Saturnalia/Mardi Gras/Carnival. Everything has been turned upside down, and Valentine concludes it is all right to love Tietjens. In a world where “we've no means of knowing where we stand nowadays”, she decides that she wishes to be with Tietjens.

Part Two skips back to April 1918 and to Tietjens on the front in France. I found this the most powerful section of the series of books so far. Once again we reside inside Tietjens’ mind but there are additional facts from an omniscient narrator (such as how a soldier would die months later) that adds poignancy. The violence is described in an offhand, impressionistic manner that can mask or dull what happens until the results are depicted. Ford adds tension by having Tietjens counting down until some undisclosed (initially) event. Even more chilling can be some of the small moments, such as Tietjens checking which way the wind is blowing—for those that don’t pick up on the reason, Ford will eventually explain it.

By detailing a small part of Armistice Day in the previous section, then flashing back to battles where Ludendorff threatens to defeat the Allies, Ford sets up an interesting tension. The reader knows how the war ends and that Tietjens survives (with some undisclosed damage) but filling in the details makes for stimulating reading. Ford explicitly makes and implicitly allows the reader to make many comparisons and contrasts in this section. Tietjens’ rumination on German and British soldiers’ helmets allows him to compare more than just their equipment:

A very minute subaltern--Aranjuez--in a perfectly impossible tin hat peered round the side of the bank. Tietjens sent him away for a moment...These tin hats were probably all right: but they were the curse of the army. They bred distrust! How could you trust a man whose incapable hat tumbled forward on his nose? Or another, with his hat on the back of his head, giving him the air of a ruined gambler! Or a fellow who had put on a soap-dish. To amuse the children: not a serious proceeding...The German things were better--coming down over the nape of the neck and rising over the brows. When you saw a Hun sideways he looked something: a serious proposition. Full of ferocity. A Hun against a Tommie looked like a Holbein landsknecht fighting a music-hall turn. It made you feel that you were indeed a rag-time army. Rubbed it in!

His imagery evokes comparisons, describing that the German gasmask makes the enemy look “like goblin pigs with sore eyes”. The reader envisages some disturbing imagery during Tietjens’ survey of no-man’s-land as he tries to identify a body (if it is a body) mangled and draped over barbed wire. The human shape becomes harder to recognize as does what it means to be human.

The structure of this section echoes the first Part as well. Tietjens works his way to the conclusion that he would be much happier with Valentine instead of Sylvia, selling antiques instead of working for the Department of Statistics. At this conclusion, Christopher frees himself from the obligations that Tietjens of Groby “must” maintain, much as Valentine freed herself from Edith Ethel and other controlling powers in Part One. The physical and mental strength Tietjens displays in this section shows he is no longer the “Hamlet of the Trenches”, a role he has wallowed in for too long.

Even though the violence of the war covers only a small section, it is powerfully drawn. By unveiling impressions of the action instead of just the action itself, Ford gives immediate meaning to those events. The words Ford chooses to constantly repeat in this section assist in building atmosphere: beastly (again), lachrymose, strafe, portentous, boring, reprehensible. The actions of those in the trenches as well as the general staff (echoing the distinction between the ruling and governing classes in other sections) seem suicidal. Tietjens becomes the perfect, analytical character to record these actions since he refuses to wallow in the misery that surrounds him, maintaining hope despite everyone and everything conspiring against him. For someone whose life has been an open book for everyone to assume the worst about him, Tietjens ironically demonstrates living can be like his assessment of dying…”a lonely affair.”

Part Two deserves its own post, or maybe two or three, so I know I am shortchanging it. I have found myself resisting Parade’s End on some level, but after Part Two all opposition melted away. Everything Ford has done so far leads to this point and for me the payoff hit the mark. Just to demonstrate one point…Tietjens’ mental notes on the construction of the trench was, in some ways, a continuation of the opening passage of Some Do Not...(quoted at the start of this post). Tietjens expects the spit and polish of the carriageway to extend to trench building—both a perverse and a logical view, with many more such extensions throughout this Part.

Part Three returns to London on Armistice Day at the end of the war, a short time after Part One in which Valentine decides to find Tietjens. She and the reader received only a partial description of his condition, leading Valentine (and us) to wonder about his status. His initial contact with her seems to confirm the worst. Tietjens’ actions are logical, in a perverse way, given the constraints he desires to work within. Valentine does not see that yet, though, since their consciousnesses are very far apart. The narration alternates between the minds of Tietjens and Valentine, highlighting their lack of communication and connection. Each is doubtful of the feelings of the other although it should be clear that each acts in the interest of being together. Parallel thoughts in each mind begin to foreshadow their convergence of consciousness. Valentine looks at Tietjens hall, with his bunk and sleeping bag and thinks “The war was over. All along that immense line men could stand up!” Right after that thought she reads some of Tietjens’ notes which use the same language, making her conclude “that he could stand up” and be hers. Unspoken communication occurs right after this example as Valentine, who had been thinking of calling her mother, answers Tietjens’ phone. The following conversation with her mother, uncanny in its timing, follows the pattern so far of words having much more weight than outward meaning. The two women skirt around the issue while both fully understand the significance of the situation.

Bits and pieces of information accrue to both Valentine and Tietjens, reinforcing what they hope to find. Tietjens’ apparent madness had nothing to do with his stint as commanding officer at the front but with having been in charge of German prisoners. Even when other people try to help Christopher, they end up hurting or hindering him. General Campion, always looking out for Tietjens but feeling constraints on what he could do for the younger soldier, “had put him in command over the escorts of German prisoners all through the Lines of several Armies. That really nearly had driven him [Tietjens] mad. He couldn't bear being a beastly gaoler.” Tietjens goes off the deep end because he wishes to avoid responsible for the enslavement of others. I guess there is some irony here because everyone around him in his personal life wishes to enslave him in some manner. And even though Campion was looking out for him and doing what he thought best to protect Teitjens, his recommendation and reassignment ended up shortchanging Tietjens:

So Tietjens had lost all chance of distinction, command pay, cheerfulness, or even equanimity. And all tangible proof that he had saved life under fire--if the clumsy mud-bath of his incompetence could be called saving life under fire. He could go on being discredited by Sylvia till kingdom come, with nothing to show on the other side but the uncreditable fact that he had been a gaoler. Clever old General! Admirable old godfather-in-law!

A few impediments to Tietjens’ and Valentine’s happiness surface at this point. Her mother does not present a formidable foe but represents the questions they will face from society and friends. Mrs. Wannop wants to make sure the two are firmly committed to each other. Another obstruction comes from Tietjens’ regiment members who show up (as promised) on Armistice Day. They prove to be more of a nuisance, providing lots of merriment while continuing some running jokes. The alternation of narratives presenting the minds of Tietjens and Valentine during this part demonstrate their evolving understanding with each other as they synchronize their thoughts. The final scene, the celebration in the almost empty hall, feels like a wedding celebration, which in a sense it is. How Tietjens and Valentine come together despite everything that has happened to them, their families, their country, and the world provides a satisfying conclusion.

The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things. At any rate from his equals! He counted Campion as his equal; few other people, of course. And what he wanted he was prepared to take...What he had been before, God alone knew. A Younger Son? A Perpetual Second-in-Command? Who knew? But to-day the world changed. Feudalism was finished; its last vestiges were gone. It held no place for him. He was going--he was damn well going!--to make a place in it for...A man could now stand up on a hill, so he and she could surely get into some hole together!

A few loose thoughts to end this discussion:

The respect that Tietjens receives from his men stands in marked contrast to the scorn he endures from his ‘superiors’. His behavior to his men seems to be an extension of Tietjens’ outlook that goes well beyond class distinction. He always provided help, financial or physical, to those in need. The protection he gives to his men is a reflection of love and concern, similar in some ways to what he demonstrates to horses. Not to say he viewed the two in the same manner but rather that his code doesn't distinguish when someone or something was in need.

Sylvia has no physical presence in this book but she hovers over much of it. Even in the trenches, Tietjens has to face comments and questions about his wife. Only at the end does she feel excised to the extent that Tietjens and Valentine can carry out their lives together.

So “feudalism was finished”, but was that the age that Tietjens represented? Comments about Parade’s End always talk about the end of the Victorian or Edwardian eras reflected in the story, but Tietjens seems to embody (and constantly looks back on) a 17th-century archetype. I think it’s a mistake to get bogged down on trying to pin what age Tietjens represents. More important are the virtues and ideals he represents, regardless of when or if any such age successfully embodied them. By the end of A Man Could Stand Up Tietjens concludes he is willing to live outside of these virtues, at least to a certain extent, which seems to reflect Ford’s ambivalent tone throughout the grand work. Hopefully there will be occasion to expand on his ambivalence in The Last Post.

Antwerp by Ford Madox Ford

Well, it seems I can't stay away from Ford right now. I had trouble starting Some Do Not... and No More Parades, having to read the first ten pages of each book several times before settling into the work.

Not so with A Man Could Stand Up. So while I return to Parade's End, I thought I would link to Ford's poem "Antwerp". For those reading along on Parade's End, you will recognize many of the book's sentiments in the poem. Here are a few excerpts:


ANTWERP

I
GLOOM!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years …
And doom!
That then was Antwerp …
       In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods …
Those men there, with the appearance of clods
Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God
Ever shrived …
And it is not for us to make them an anthem.
If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them
To a tune that the trumpets might blow it,
Shrill through the heaven that’s ours or yet Allah’s,
Or the wide halls of any Valhallas.
We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours
For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays
Is this:
“In the name of God, how could they do it?”

...

IV
With no especial legends of matchings or triumphs or duty,
Assuredly that is the way of it,
The way of beauty….
And that is the highest word you can find to say of it.
For you cannot praise it with words
Compounded of lyres and swords,
But the thought of the gloom and the rain
And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain,
Shall eat itself into your brain:
And you will say of all heroes, “They fought like the Belgians!”

No More Parades discussion: random notes

Canadian soldiers in a trench
Picture source

Tietjens had walked in the sunlight down the lines, past the hut with the evergreen climbing rose, in the sunlight, thinking in an interval good humouredly about his official religion: about the Almighty as, on a colossal scale, a great English Landowner, benevolently awful, a colossal duke who never left his study and was thus invisible, but knowing all about the estate down to the last hind at the home farm and the last oak: Christ, an almost too benevolent Land-Steward, son of the Owner, knowing all about the estate down to the last child at the porter's lodge, apt to be got round by the more detrimental tenants: the Third Person of the Trinity, the spirit of the estate, the Game as it were, as distinct from the players of the game: the atmosphere of the estate, that of the interior of Winchester Cathedral just after a Handel anthem has been finished, a perpetual Sunday, with, probably, a little cricket for the young men.

Tietjens fills the role of a great English landowner, not to England but in time of war to his regiment (and their horses). There is something Kipling-like in Tietjens’ outlook, symbolic of England’s role in the world in addition to taking care of those that fight for her. Ford paints a wonderful picture of how difficult it is to keep the men together and untangle differences. Was that meant to represent an outcome of overexpansion of the empire?

Tietjens is the perfect cog in the war machine, never questioning why something needs to be done but priding himself on being able to perform x% better than other regiments. He is aware of the political maneuvering, such as starving a leader of men in order to scapegoat him for a failed policy. He sees quartermasters getting medals for cheating soldiers out of what is theirs. The snake imagery Ford constantly uses fits more than the way the lines of men or the trenches look. The serpent-like nature of politics, personal and organizational, seems to portray war as a mirror image of society, only in a more intense context.

The tedium of war would be humorous in some other situation. During air raids and bombing, soldiers are discussing cows or their laundry business while Tietjens engages in word games. The tedium seems to affect other areas, especially the concern for winning the war. The constant refrain “Thank God for our navy” (or some variation) layers a tired confidence on top of their fatalistic outlook.

Sylvia starts out with a warrior outlook determined to win her battle with her husband, intending to “bring him to heel.” Her plans become complicated as she spends time with him and her desire for him bubbles up from underneath. Tietjens’ comment on madness (“If you let yourself go,” Tietjens said, “you may let yourself go a tidy sight farther than you want to.”) could be applied to many other feelings that are in conflict throughout the work.

Later this week I’ll try to write up a book or two I’ve read recently before continuing on to A Man Could Stand Up.

No More Parades discussion

Picture source

The one thing that stood out sharply in Tietjens' mind when at last, with a stiff glass of rum punch, his, officer's pocket-book complete with pencil because he had to draft before eleven a report as to the desirability of giving his unit special lectures on the causes of the war, and a cheap French novel on a camp chair beside him, he sat in his fleabag with six army blankets over him--the one thing that stood out as sharply as Staff tabs was that that ass Levin was rather pathetic. His unnailed bootsoles very much cramping his action on the frozen hillside, he had alternately hobbled a step or two, and, reduced to inaction, had grabbed at Tietjens' elbow, while he brought out breathlessly puzzled sentences...

There resulted a singular mosaic of extraordinary, bright-coloured and melodramatic statements, for Levin, who first hobbled down the hill with Tietjens and then hobbled back up, clinging to his arm, brought out monstrosities of news about Sylvia's activities, without any sequence, and indeed without any apparent aim except for the great affection he had for Tietjens himself...All sorts or singular things seemed to have been going on round him in the vague zone, outside all this engrossed and dust-coloured world--in the vague zone that held...Oh, the civilian population, tea-parties short of butter!...

And as Tietjens, seated on his hams, his knees up, pulled the soft woolliness of his flea-bag under his chin and damned the paraffin heater for letting out a new and singular stink, it seemed to him that this affair was like coming back after two months and trying to get the hang of battalion orders...

...

So, on that black hillside, going and returning, what stuck out for Tietjens was that Levin had been taught by the general to consider that he, Tietjens, was an extraordinarily violent chap who would certainly knock Levin down when he told him that his wife was at the camp gates; that Levin considered himself to be the descendant of an ancient Quaker family...(Tietjens had said Good God! at that); that the mysterious 'rows' to which in his fear Levin had been continually referring had been successive letters from Sylvia to the harried general...and that Sylvia had accused him, Tietjens, of stealing two pairs of her best sheets...There was a great deal more. But having faced what he considered to be the worst of the situation, Tietjens set himself coolly to recapitulate every aspect of his separation from his wife. He had meant to face every aspect, not that merely social one upon which, hitherto, he had automatically imagined their disunion to rest. For, as he saw it, English people of good position consider that the basis of all marital unions or disunions is the maxim: No scenes. Obviously for the sake of the servants--who are the same thing as the public. No scenes, then, for the sake of the public. And indeed, with him, the instinct for privacy--as to his relationships, his passions, or even as to his most unimportant motives--was as strong as the instinct of life itself. He would, literally, rather be dead than an open book.

And, until that afternoon, he had imagined that his wife, too, would rather be dead than have her affairs canvassed by the other ranks...But that assumption had to be gone over. Revised...Of course he might say she had gone mad. But, if he said she had gone mad he would have to revise a great deal of their relationships, so it would be as broad as it was long...

The doctor's batman, from the other end of the hut, said: "Poor--O Nine Morgan..." in a sing-song, mocking voice...They might talk till half-past three.

But that was troublesome to a gentleman seeking to recapture what exactly were his relations with his wife.

Before the doctor's batman had interrupted him by speaking startlingly of O Nine Morgan, Tietjens had got as far as what follows with his recapitulation: The lady, Mrs Tietjens, was certainly without mitigation a whore; he himself equally certainly and without qualification had been physically faithful to the lady and their marriage tie. In law, then, he was absolutely in the right of it. But that fact had less weight than a cobweb. For after the last of her high-handed divagations from fidelity he had accorded to the lady the shelter of his roof and of his name. She had lived for years beside him, apparently on terms of hatred and miscomprehension. But certainly in conditions of chastity. Then, during the tenuous and lugubrious small hours, before his coming out there again to France, she had given evidence of a madly vindictive passion for his person. A physical passion at any rate.

Well, those were times of mad, fugitive emotions. But even in the calmest times a man could not expect to have a woman live with him as the mistress of his house and mother of his heir without establishing some sort of claim upon him. They hadn't slept together. But was it not possible that a constant measuring together of your minds was as proper to give you a proprietary right as the measuring together of the limb? It was perfectly possible. Well then...

What, in the eyes of God, severed a union?...Certainly he had imagined--until that very afternoon--that their union had been cut, as the tendon of Achilles is cut in a hamstringing, by Sylvia's clear voice, outside his house, saying in the dawn to a cabman, "Paddington!"...He tried to go with extreme care through every detail of their last interview in his still nearly dark drawing-room at the other end of which she had seemed a mere white phosphorescence...

They had, then, parted for good on that day. He was going out to France; she into retreat in a convent near Birkenhead--to which place you go from Paddington. Well then, that was one parting. That, surely, set him free for the girl!

He took a sip from the glass of rum and water on the canvas chair beside him. It was tepid and therefore beastly. He had ordered the batman to bring it him hot, strong and sweet, because he had been certain of an incipient cold. He had refrained from drinking it because he had remembered that he was to think cold-bloodedly of Sylvia, and he made a practice of never touching alcohol when about to engage in protracted reflection. That had always been his theory: it had been immensely and empirically strengthened by his warlike experience. On the Somme, in the summer, when stand-to had been at four in the morning, you would come out of your dug-out and survey, with a complete outfit of pessimistic thoughts, a dim, grey, repulsive landscape over a dull and much too thin parapet. There would be repellent posts, altogether too fragile entanglements of barbed wire, broken wheels, detritus, coils of mist over the positions of revolting Germans. Grey stillness; grey horrors, in front, and behind amongst the civilian populations! And clear, hard outlines to every thought...Then your batman brought you a cup of tea with a little--quite a little--rum in it. In three of four minutes the whole world changed beneath your eyes. The wire aprons became jolly efficient protections that your skill had devised and for which you might thank God; the broken wheels were convenient landmarks for raiding at night in No Man's Land. You had to confess that, when you had re-erected that parapet, after it had last been jammed in, your company had made a pretty good job of it. And, even as far as the Germans were concerned, you were there to kill the swine; but you didn't feel that the thought of them would make you sick beforehand...You were, in fact, a changed man. With a mind of a different specific gravity. You could not even tell that the roseate touches of dawn on the mists were not really the effects of rum...

Therefore he had determined not to touch his grog. But his throat had gone completely dry; so, mechanically, he had reached out for something to drink, checking himself when he had realized what he was doing. But why should his throat be dry? He hadn't been on the drink. He had not even had any dinner. And why was he in this extraordinary state?...For he was in an extraordinary state. It was because the idea had suddenly occurred to him that his parting from his wife had set him free for his girl...The idea had till then never entered his head.

He said to himself: We must go methodically into this! Methodically into the history of his last day on earth...

(from Part One, Chapter 3)

My online resources for Parade's End can be found here. If you know of any links that would be helpful to someone reading the work, please let me know and I'll be happy to add them to the list. OK, on with a hastily written post while I recover from picnic day at UC Davis...

No More Parades, the section of Parade’s End I finished this past week, covers only a little over 200 pages but at some point I found a deeper appreciation for what Ford accomplishes. For those that have read Parade’s End, much of this will be old hat. I’m hoping this discussion, which will focus more on Ford’s style than anything else, will help others reading this work for the first time. Or at least appreciate what is going on long before I did. Like The Good Soldier, writing about what happens in Parade’s End is secondary to how it is told. I also hope to tie in a few points I wanted to raise in Some Do Not… that I neglected in my rush to get something posted last week.

A few basics on the book: Fortunately every recent version I’ve seen of Parade’s End comes with all four novels together in the order of their release. If you are tempted to read them out of order, please resist. The second novel of the tetralogy, No More Parades, takes place in a 48-hour period in France (in or near Rouen) during the middle of January 1918. Since I’m going to shortchange the storyline in this post, some of the action can be found at Mel’s blog The Reading Life:

No More Parades

and

Tietjens in the Trenches.

Even though this novel follows a three part structure similar to Some Do Not…, which is mostly chronological but has many layered flashbacks, there are important differences between the two books. Some Do Not… had the feel of a play guided by an omnipresent narrator. In that book we are given glimpses inside the characters’ minds which mostly involve flashbacks. The glimpses into the characters’ minds in this second novel detail the mental state of the characters as they react to what is happening around them. The characters recall past events in order to put current events in context, as well as have dialogues with conscious and unconscious thoughts. Absent or deceased characters also take part in these dialogues because they are present in the active character’s mind. What we end up with is a panoramic novel occuring mostly in the characters’ minds, some chapters never leaving their mind.

One of my favorite sections occurs in Part Two. Sylvia hands Christopher a packet of letters she had not forwarded to him. We watch Christopher read a letter from Mark (Christopher’s brother) through Sylvia’s eyes. She has read the letter already so she recalls Mark’s words while simultaneously giving us her thoughts about what was written. In addition, she provides what Christopher’s reaction appears be to while he reads it. The reader has to keep in mind it is not his true reaction—it is Sylvia’s impression. Another enjoyable section occurs when Christopher finds out Sylvia visited the military base where he is stationed. He is so shaken by her appearance that he attempts to work through his feelings in a methodical, military-like report while trying to make sense of her behavior. At this point he is able to perform this exercise of communicating with himself. In a later chapter, when Christopher reacts to the news from General Campion that he will be sent to the front again, he is unable to perform such a logical examination of his emotional reaction. At this point his thoughts become scattered as he seems close to having a physical and mental breakdown.

Several comments by Ford outline his method in looking at the way the mind works. While General Campion composes letters:

             At the end of each sentence that he wrote--and he wrote with increasing satisfaction!--a mind that he was not using said: “What the devil am I going to do with that fellow?” Or: “How the devil is that girl's name to be kept out of this mess?”

Later, as Tietjens is being interviewed by Campion:

             He exclaimed to himself: “By heavens! Is this epilepsy?” He prayed: “Blessed saints, get me spared that!” He exclaimed: “No, it isn't!...I've complete control of my mind. My uppermost mind.”

As I mentioned in one of the Some Do Not… discussions, Parade’s End contains many conflicts, not the least of which is between the “uppermost mind” and the “mind not being used”. By working from inside the minds of his characters, Ford can show these conflicts whether the characters recognize them or not. Tietjens notes this conflict several times, most often when wondering why he feels compelled to defend his wife. His “hidden mind” continually strives to be heard, whether he talks in his sleep or says comments he can’t recall making. Memory also plays a role in his “mind not being used”. The spontaneity with which memories flood the characters’ minds can seem overwhelming at times. The additional layers that memory impacts, such as how the past interacts with today, assists in highlighting Tietjens’ conflict with modernity.

At some point the reader has to address Ford’s view on the war. In some discussions, I’ve raised the point that battle can either destroy a man or make him heroic (and possibly both—I probably talked about this in The Odyssey). Here, war looks like nothing that Homer could have envisioned. Whether we’re looking at weaponry (O Nine Morgan’s death from above as well as Tietjens’ injury in the previous volume), political considerations (threats to move troops to the eastern theater or the sabotaging of the railway lines by unions), or bureaucracy (ordering supplies becomes a farce), the actual face of battle and death has been many time removed from the old portrayal of battle. Ford also portrays the home front, sometimes overlapping with Homer’s focus (at least regarding infidelity). Several times Ford likens war to adultery, both of which he views as inevitable since the desire for both can seem to be part of man’s make-up. I don’t think Ford is nostalgic for the “good old days” regarding warfare. Rather he seems to point out man’s weaknesses or goals, making killing easier (through weapons at longer distances) while at the same time making war much more difficult for those involved (which stretches back to their home).

In addition, how removed are we from previous standards when knighthood can be granted for providing skewed statistics? Or were previous standards just as distorted but a false nostalgia has taken their place? Many writers have covered these points but Ford lets these points develop naturally, almost under the radar. Ford can still be heavy-handed at times. O Nine Morgan’s death and the responsibility Tietjens’ feels for it, especially in comparison to a government sending thousands of men to their deaths for political reasons, seems overplayed at times. Even then, Ford balances such heavy-handedness with General Campion’s philosophy about sending men into battle. He realizes the trade-off of what is needed to fight a battle as well as how to maintain the discipline and respect that are needed. Campion is probably the one character that improved the most in my estimation between the two books—he represents an older view in dealing with the modern world while being the one character that understands Tietjens the most. His philosophy on earning the men’s trust highlights the government’s inability to understand what it takes to lead. A society that lets accomplishment become secondary while arbitrarily handing out rewards will reap what it rewards.

There are several running jokes that Ford seems to have in the series, one of which involves Tietjens’ uniforms. He doesn’t have the physical appearance of a ‘hero’ and his uniforms never quite fit him. But the real gag revolves around how dirty his uniform always appears and how others judge him because of it. In Some Do Not… Sylvia threw a salad bowl at her husband, staining it with olive oil. In this book Campion upbraids Tietjens for wearing shabby uniforms with grease stains on them, causing Christopher to apologize. He finally tells the general that his other uniform was unwearable since O Nine Morgan bled all over it while Tietjens tried to comfort him during his death. Tietjens’ uniform seems to mirror much of the rest of his life, constantly being damaged and judged by others regardless of what caused them to be sullied.

A couple of closing notes:

How does Sylvia threaten her husband? So far she talks of “corrupting” their son, but Tietjens willingly allows the boy to be brought up as a Roman Catholic. While her behavior has led to the death of his parents (through the help of others), what drains the color from his face is her threat to rip up a tree at his estate. Is this a sign that the past is more important to him than the future?

There is a decided ambivalence from Ford on Tietjens regarding Christopher's historical and moral foundations while navigating the modern world, as if Ford is making fun of Christopher while at the same time realizing that such a foundation is needed regardless of the age. Tietjens proves to be an anachronistic character, yet one seemingly needed in (and sacrificed by) the modern world.

One more quote that the more I read, the more I love. This happens inside Sylvia's mind while she is in a Rouen hotel ballroom with her husband and other partiers. Meanwhile they are under blackout orders, in fear of a German bombing raid, while anti-aircraft guns (stationed next to the hotel) are firing loudly every few minutes:

There occurred to her irreverent mind a sentence of one of the Duchess of Marlborough's letters to Queen Anne. The duchess had visited the general during one of his campaigns in Flanders. 'My Lord,' she wrote, 'did me the honour three times in his boots!'...The sort of thing she would remember...She would--she would--have tried it on the sergeant-major, just to see Tietjens' face, for the sergeant-major would not have understood...And who cared if he did!...He was bibulously skirting round the same idea...

But the tumult increased to an incredible volume: even the thrillings of the near-by gramophone of two hundred horse-power, or whatever it was, became mere shimmerings of a gold thread in a drab fabric of sound. She screamed blasphemies that she was hardly aware of knowing. She had to scream against the noise: she was no more responsible for the blasphemy than if she had lost her identity under an anaesthetic. She had lost her identity...She was one of this crowd!

(from Part Two, Chapter 2)

Recruitment poster for Kitchener's Army
Picture source

Some Do Not... discussion: Part Two

He said: “Yes I believe I did. I used to despise it, but I've come to believe I did...But no! They'll never let me back. They've got me out, with all sorts of bad marks against me. They'll pursue me systematically...You see, in such a world as this, an idealist--or perhaps it's only a sentimentalist--must be stoned to death. He makes the others so uncomfortable. He haunts them at their golf...No; they'll get me, one way or the other. And some fellow--Macmaster here--will do my jobs. He won't do them so well, but he'll do them more dishonestly. Or no. I oughtn't to say dishonestly. He'll do them with enthusiasm and righteousness. He'll fulfil the orders of his superiors with an immense docility and unction. He'll fake figures against our allies with the black enthusiasm of a Calvin and, when that war comes, he'll do the requisite faking with the righteous wrath of Jehovah smiting the priests of Baal. And he'll be right. It's all we're fitted for. We ought never to have come into this war. We ought to have snaffled other peoples' colonies as the price of neutrality...”

“Oh!” Valentine Wannop said, “how can you so hate your country?”

He said with great earnestness: “Don't say it! Don't believe it! Don't even for a moment think it! I love every inch of its fields and every plant in the hedgerows: comfrey, mullein, paigles, long red purples, that liberal shepherds give a grosser name...and all the rest of the rubbish--you remember the field between the Duchemins' and your mother's--and we have always been boodlers and robbers and reivers and pirates and cattle thieves, and so we've built up the great tradition that we love...But, for the moment, it's painful. Our present crowd is not more corrupt than Walpole's. But one's too near them. One sees of Walpole that he consolidated the nation by building up the National Debt: one doesn't see his methods...My son, or his son, will only see the glory of the boodle we make out of this show. Or rather out of the next. He won't know about the methods. They'll teach him at school that across the counties went the sound of bugles that his father knew...Though that was another discreditable affair...”

- (from Part Two, Chapter 4)

“I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.”

- (from Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 37)

Forgive the rushed nature of the post, but there is so much I want to include and not enough time to organize it as I would like.

The structure of Some Do Not… is relatively straightforward, providing scenes or events in roughly chronological order. Part One covers a forty-eight hour period surrounding the summer solstice (June 21-ish), 1912 in Rye. Part Two occurs in London during an August 1917 afternoon and evening. From this framework Ford weaves past events into the present. With many of the scenes including conversations in confined spaces (living room, dining room, train coach, etc.), large parts of the novel can feel like a play.

Many of my first impressions (and related reservations) about characters I described in the post on Part One have changed dramatically as Part Two seems to undermine some characterizations of the first half. While everything you know is *not* wrong, many things appear differently in this section. Mrs. Duchemin made a brief appearance in that section, mostly as a suffering wife. Her husband’s insanity seemed a little over the top but the reader was only shown his actions on a Saturday (after his Friday fast) when his behavior was at its worst. We were also shown her falling for Vincent Macmaster’s charm, figuring at that point she would be another one of his many married conquests. However Macmaster becomes her conquest as she strives for social standing that has eluded her and seeks the money that was denied her after Mr. Duchemin’s death. While it was clear Mrs. Duchemin (Edith Ethel) did not like Tietjens in Part One, his assistance to the couple adds to her contempt and his tarnished reputation seals his doom with the couple despite Macmaster’s good intentions. While Edith Ethel appears as a snob in her actions to both Tietjens and Valentine, it is Valentine that sees first-hand the monster lurking beneath the surface.

Sylvia Tietjens also provides a dramatic transformation between sections. While far from a model wife, it appears that she now shows affection to her husband, at least in her own way. Her torture of Christopher in the first two years of their marriage has already done irreversible damage to both of them. Her reputation carries forward over the five year interval between sections (as symbolized by the wonderful eagle/herring gulls recollection). In Part One, Sylvia grudgingly accepted compliments of her husband’s intelligence, unable to see any worth in him. Yet she questions the damage he received while fighting in France. Her realization that the impairment is genuine causes a breakthrough for her on several levels, most of all in her affection for him. By this point the reader can be excused for believing it’s too little too late, that neither will have what they are seeking from their partner. Tietjens’ strengths lie in areas different from what Sylvia seeks. He won’t reprove her for her actions, something she says she wanted and needed from him.

While many characters display a gritty determination what sets Valentine apart is the selfless nature of her sacrifices. As I mentioned in Part One, the reader can see Ford interweaving conscious and unconscious thoughts and actions of a character. Ford can be subtle in doing this, although with Valentine arranging the cushions for a possible tryst he beats the reader over the head with it. But then, Ford isn’t always known for subtlety, especially when it comes to dates. The Good Soldier had many events happen on August 4th. Likewise Some Do Not… has several important events all occur on the eve of the invasion date. I find Ford much more enjoyable when understated, such as having Valentine’s brother drunkenly pass out on the cushions she had hoped to use for other purposes.

Christopher Tietjens is the one character who changes the most between the two sections, but then being undermined and attacked by a wife, friends, society, work, and a war tends to wear on a person. The one thing Tietjens has maintained is his rectitude, even if only a few people understand the worth of it. I made light of errors in Tietjens’ famed intelligence in Part One, but there is little doubt as to his ability after this section. Unable to recall simple names or facts he can perform complex calculations even with the damage he sustained (described as numbing two-thirds of his brain).

Mel at The Reading Life has commented on Parade’s End as possibly being an “encyclopedic narrative”. I’m not sure it qualifies in all the criteria listed but the work certainly is encyclopedic. Quotes from Milton, Ovid and Shakespeare (among many others) are used as integral parts of the narrative and action in this section. Christina Rossetti’s poem “Somewhere or Other”, about death occurring before finding the person intended for you, resonates within Sylvia and moves her for reasons she cannot (consciously) fathom.

Some Do Not… revolves around many conflicts that shape the characters: conscious vs. unconscious, modern vs. old, memory vs. reality, appearances vs. substance, etc. That’s not including more ‘trivial’ ones like Anglican vs. Catholic or north vs. south. How the characters face and resolve these conflicts, if indeed they do, also impacts the way we look at them. Tietjens maintains control in most of these conflicts, but those that he has no control over he tries to ignore. That doesn’t mean he is passive, as his confrontation with Port Scatho shows. Tietjens doesn’t shy away from hardship, which he seems to view as a cleansing process (see his thoughts on joining the French Foreign Legion).

As Sylvia aptly described, Tietjens “was an eighteenth-century figure of the Dr Johnson type”. As such he reminded me at times of an Austen character caught in a bind, wanting neither to lie nor offend. His principles cause similar dilemmas, having to nimbly choose how to resolve conflicting standards. Elinore Dashwood’s quote at the top of this post reminded me of Tietjens, someone punished for things he should be able to enjoy. Tietjens becomes a symbol on several different levels, mostly for being a man that has lived past the end of his world in addition to someone who has lost so much from the war.

A few additional points I wanted to touch on before going on to No More Parades:

The war is entering its fourth year and the reader gets a glimpse of its impact for the homefront. In some ways, Tietjens isn’t the only one stuck in the past—many characters expect class distinction or well-placed contacts to assist them in avoiding the leveling effect of war. Tietjens realizes he is asked to provide propaganda instead of fact-based reports and understands the human toll it will cause. His refusal is viewed as a betrayal and reasons, other than the true ones, are fabricated by his friends and enemies. Much of Ford’s focus rests on the leaders and their delinquency of duty: “We were fitted neither for defeat nor for victory: we could be true to neither friend nor foe. Not even to ourselves!” I’m sure with the next two books, the war will play a central part of the discussion.

Tietjens is certain he is the father of Tommie, but his conviction raises as many questions as it answers. If there was a mathematical certainty, why did he not come to this conclusion earlier? Does his impairment play any role in his conviction?

I mentioned in the previous post that this is a very political novel. Part of the reason I included the opening quote was to point out Tietjens’ (and I’m assuming Ford’s) outlook that the ends should not justify the means. Teitjens believes his progeny will benefit from the war in the same way he benefited from methods he found deplorable under the previous administration. Corrupt practices, by either Lloyd George or Walpole or even further back, will be masked and a national myth established to justify disgraceful actions. His charges dovetail nicely with the theme of false nostalgia, or reality vs. memory. Sylvia, of all people, comes out with one of the more damning statements about the politicization of the war:

”Father Consett,” she said, “was hung on the day they shot Casement. They dare not put it into the papers because he was a priest and all the witnesses Ulster witnesses...And yet I may not say this is an accursed war.”

The trial and execution of Roger Casement (who was hanged, not shot) provides a glimpse into fallout from the Easter Rising in Ireland (among other things), where actions on both sides would have been viewed by Sylvia just as ‘accursed’ as the war. Yet she feels she can not express herself about the war without being condemned (such as Valentine and her family). I’m guessing Ford chose Casement since he was executed on August 3, Ford's ‘anniversary’ date of choice for this book so far.

While there are many other things to talk about in Some Do Not…, I feel a need to move on to No More Parades or I will be forever bogged down here…such is the depth and richness of Ford’s work. I’m sure some of the additional points can be incorporated in future Parade’s End discussions.