It has all been quite simply and completely compelling and is sure to be sadly and sorely missed. Great drama is always so inspiring and uplifting. It seems he spent a decade of his life with an Australian painter, whom he first met as he struggled with his own distinct disorientation caused by the after shock of World War I.
Her name was Stella Bowen. Instead it will leave them all imagining the soaring and transforming passion that can now take place between Christopher and Valentine, which we catch just a brief glimpse of. There she is in his London townhouse, welcoming all his friends from the front for a celebration.
Despite him declaring to her that he will not divorce his wife, the mother of his son we know that Christopher and Valentine will continue on long after we have come to the end of playing our own part in this entirely enjoyable parade about life and love.
Here's how we all really look As an era fades, so too does a particular way of English, gentlemanly life, and Tietjens will hold on to it until it nearly destroys him. But after seeing nearly every facet of his life crumble and corrupted, you yearn for Christopher — as his wife Sylvia long has — to finally submit to some kind of emotion. To break free and reclaim his life. But the finale takes a while to get going. Mark becomes upset that the Allies will not advance into Germany at the end of the War.
The English failure to occupy Germany means that the years of war have been for nought. And there is an argument you could frame that way, and that argument was a serious consideration for the Allies of WWII who determined not to fail to occupy Germany again — they wanted the German populace to understand that they had lost and not, as in , conclude that their victorious armies had suffered a stab in the back.
Perhaps Ford, too, thought this in , but here it is just one more fringe concept, just one of many thoughts and interpretations of events floating through the present that may or may not be of value in the future.
Anyway, Mark is upset and determines never to speak again. No one asks her if she wants to be married; it is assumed that a woman of her class could want nothing more. She is devoted to Mark, anyway, although she has looked ahead to her future and given some thought to going back to Normandy if Mark should die.
Now, though, she is mistress of Groby, a member of the gentry. I can handle her. The clash between the stolid, firm Norman and the flaky English emotional cesspit!
Mark, completely silent and immobile, lies in a cot in a bower constructed for him. She runs that farm very well. Even though there is friction between herself and the local peasantry over Norman vs. War: No More Parades is set in the trenches in France. Christopher works at putting together units and shuffling them back to the front.
There are a number of Canadian Railway Service workers, for example, who present an amusing spectacle in their furry hats. And there are Welsh soldiers — the Welsh are always good for a chuckle — some with names like 09 Morgan. See, there are so few family names in Wales that groups of men with same last name are often found in military units and numbered somehow to tell them apart.
But Ford undercuts all the humorous set-ups that he creates. The men have to be got ready to move out and Christopher oversees their writing of their wills. One fellow has a girl in each of three different countries and wants to leave each of them a bit of dosh, and we have another almost comic turn. Ford was proud of writing about the Great War and hoped that his work would aid the cause of peace, or so he said.
I think that what he was really proud of was giving an honest account of modern war — it is not so much the skill or valor of the individual warrior that counts any more; it is where he is standing when the stray shell drops.
A great German offensive is expected at any time. Senior officers have been killed and Christopher is in command of his unit. He bustles about, preparing for the assault on his position due to start any minute. He is not completely mad, though a little strange — he obsesses about the angles of trench lines and toys with the idea of sticking his head up above the trench. Then there are these drainage pipes that he had run horizontally instead of vertically because that would better drain the trench, he thought, except that there are vast muddy areas in the trench.
A German shell explodes and half-buries Christopher. He digs himself out. This mirrors a situation in No More Parades, where Christopher does not give the Welsh soldier, 09 Morgan, leave to straighten out his marital problems at home — the local police tell him that if the man returns, he will be murdered — so Christopher has him stay in France where 09 Morgan is killed.
Christopher cannot even trust his own instincts, his best intentions may make things worse. Anyway, General Campion shows up and relieves Christopher of his duties because, oh, Sylvia and this and that. Christopher is re-assigned to looking after prisoners-of-war, thus losing command pay. Later, someone does Christopher a favor and de-mobilizes him a little early, thus costing him army pay. Christopher is broke on Armistice Day when he and Valentine meet in his rooms. There is a mention that there are sanitoriums for veterans like that — a concept that fills me with dread since I expect they are actually prisons meant to keep these men from embarrassing anyone.
He is reading the encyclopedia to regain facts that have been lost to him. Before the War, Christopher sneered at people who use encyclopedias. I think Ford wants us to know that our boy has picked up a little humility — though it is hard to tell, what with that stoic, stolid visage of his. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, photograph by Lewis Carroll [ via lewiscarroll. Three Stars, gazing into a mirror that reflects their fetid selves and gilt sunfish and drop chandeliers and plates sickening with cold bacon fat and gurgling about passion.
Let it all out, let that bacon fat sicken, I can smell it from here reflected in your words. Duchemin recalls Ruskin:. Fragments of all the worst stories that in his worst moods her husband had told her of [Ruskin] went through her mind. She imagined that the shameful parts of her intimate life would be known to [MacMaster].
So much for sublime angel connubial bliss! Later, when Mrs. Duchemin thinks MacMaster has knocked her up, she curses him in such a way as to indicate she knows her way around the block. Apparently, she has an abortion.
So much for all that angelic innocence and ethereal feminine sensibility! And then there is the mad Rev. Now let me pause right there: Christopher is thought by everyone to be incredibly smart. He has a calculator brain that breaks things down to numbers. Christopher also favors himself as a bit of a classicist and has an argument with Valentine, who knows a bit of Latin herself, over a quote from Ovid.
And he writes critical essays for Mrs. Wannop that make her reputation as well as reports for the Department of Statistics including one that MacMaster takes credit for which earns him a knighthood which are always truth because a gentleman does not tell lies.
Okay, but this Smart Guy also does some dumb things, like buy Ukrainian bonds in When he knows a War is coming. And he is supposed to be an expert on East European matters, too!
Rumors of War: There are various odd notions aired throughout the four novels as characters try to make sense of world events. For instance, there is the notion, held by General Campion, that England is withdrawing supplies and troops from France and sending them to Turkey to fight for the Middle East and Empire. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: in England begins shipping resources from the Turkish front to France, leaving T.
Lawrence to battle for the Middle East all by himself. I have heard World War II vets who, years later, would repeat similar theories about their war. Put everyone under the same leader and watch what happens! That was the theory. In , the French, in the form of Marshal Foch, took over the single command and the German Spring offensive failed, but what probably made more of a difference than the single command was throwing , American troops into the lines, with many thousands more to follow.
Furniture Business: Christopher has a rare talent: he can look at a piece of furniture and know if it is a fine antique or junk. This is one of two talents that Christopher possesses — the other one is a remarkable facility with horses — but horses are going out and motorcars are coming in, so Christopher sells furniture to Americans.
His is not an Antiques Road Show skill, Christopher never looks on the bottom or pulls out the drawers, he just looks and knows, right away, this cabinet is a fine antique but this other piece is crap. Anyway, Christopher is an idiot-savant of furniture, and is flogging every piece that he can locate. But he is not making much money. He has a partner in the United States who, everyone says, is ripping him off.
The partner is a guy Christopher met when he was sorting German prisoners and he is a Jew which deserves some more attention, see Scot-Jew. Birds and Plants: Birds and local plants are repeated themes throughout the four novels, pretty much one major episode per book. Christopher recites English plant names as a mantra, he and the soldiers chat about the larks at the front, and so forth.
Ford is pulling out an old trope here: the English countryside with all its humble lifeforms is a renewing, wonderful source of Englishness, and even as the country falls apart, well, nature is renewing, so England is renewing. Or something like that. Christopher is particularly given to let his consciousness stream to Shakespeare and the list of flowers that float around drowned Ophelia, particularly the long purple flower which liberal shepherds have given a grosser name.
The model was Elizabeth Siddal who later married Rossetti. After she died of a laudanum overdose, Rossetti buried his unpublished poems with her body. Later, he dug her up and retrieved the poems. So, guilty on both counts, I will stand clear. I will hazard a guess that, if the BBC production has any traction, we will soon have a personality disorder named after Sylvia. And maybe one for Christopher.
The person that is worrisome is Valentine — in Last Post she seems depressed and distraught and it looks like her pregnancy may not end happily, either miscarriage or post-partum troubles.
She is already practically drooling over the thought of a bromide that the doctor may give her. Wait until she discovers the other drugs that were over-prescribed back in the day! And she was so healthy, too! Scot-Jew: In the railway carriage scene that opens the first novel, MacMaster mentions that Christopher should be careful about how others in his civil service office see him.
Tietjens agrees:. It might very well object to having a man whose wife has bolted amongst its members. It is the sound, in his phrase, of "sex ferocity". Greene wrote that " The Good Soldier and the Tietjens series seem to me almost the only adult novels dealing with the sexual life that have been written in English. They are our answer to Flaubert. One of Flaubert's great developments not inventions — no one really invents anything in the novel was style indirect libre , that way of dipping into a character's consciousness — for a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, sometimes for just a single word — showing things from his or her point of view, and then dipping out again.
This is a direct ancestor of the stream-of-consciousness narrative so richly deployed by Ford. Much of Parade's End takes place within the heads of its characters: in memory and anticipation, reflection, misunderstanding and self-justification. Few novelists have better understood and conveyed the overworkings of the hysterical brain, the underworkings of the damaged brain after his first spell at the front, Tietjens returns with partial memory loss , the slippings and slidings of the mind at the end of its tether, with all its breakings-in and breakings-off.
The name Freud occurs only once, on Sylvia's lips: "I … pin my faith on Mrs Vanderdecken [a society role model]. And Freud. But Freud is more widely present, if — since this is a very English novel — in a subtle, anglicised form: "In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other. Later, Valentine had always known something "under her mind"; Tietjens refers to "something behind his mind"; while General Campion "was for the moment in high good humour on the surface, though his subordinate minds [sic] were puzzled and depressed".
Ford moves between these levels of the mind as he moves between fact and memory, certainty and impression. Tietjens compares the mind to a semi-obedient dog. Nor is it just mind, memory and fact that are slipping and sliding; it is the very language used to describe them.
General Campion, one of the least hysterical of characters, is driven to wonder, "What the hell is language for? We go round and round. The narrative also goes round and round, backtracking and criss-crossing. A fact, or an opinion, or a memory will be dropped in, and often not explained for a dozen or a hundred pages.
Sometimes this may be a traditional cliffhanger: a character left in a state of emotional crisis while the novel ducks off for 50 or 60 pages at the western front. More often, the device becomes something much more individual and Fordian. An explosive piece of information, murderous lie or raging emotional conclusion might casually be let drop, whereupon the narrative will back off, as if shocked by anything stated with such certainty, then circle around, come close again, back off again, and finally, approach it directly.
The narrative, in other words, is acting as the mind often works. This can confuse, but as VS Pritchett said of Ford, "Confusion was the mainspring of his art as a novelist.
He confused to make clear. But it applies particularly to Parade's End. It will be a very rare reader who does not intermittently look up from the page to ask: "But did I know that?
Have we been told that already or not? Did we know that Mrs Macmaster was even pregnant, let alone that she had lost a child? Have we been told Tietjens is under arrest? That his stepmother died of grief when Sylvia left him? That Macmaster was dead? Has Mark really been struck dumb? And so on, confusingly and clarifyingly, to the very end. Since nothing is simple with Ford, one of the unsimple things about Parade's End is the status and quality of the fourth volume, Last Post.
When editing the Bodley Head edition of Ford , Greene simply omitted it, thus reducing a quartet to a trilogy. He thought the book "was more than a mistake — it was a disaster, a disaster which has delayed a full critical appreciation of Parade's End ". He charged it with sentimentality, and with damagingly clearing up "valuable ambiguities" by bringing them into "the idyllic sunshine of Christopher's successful escape into the life of a Kentish small-holder".
Half a century on, it's hard to see Last Post as having delayed "a full critical appreciation" of Parade's End. Cyril Connolly , in The Modern Movement , followed Greene by referring to Ford's "war trilogy" though, far from newly appreciating it as such, he patronisingly dismissed the whole book ; but most subsequent editors have chosen to view it as a quartet rather than trilogy.
And over those years, the reputation of both Ford and the novel itself have remained pretty much what they always have been. Ford enthusiasts are ever in the minority and ever undeterred. To be a Fordite is rather like being a member of one of those volunteer groups who help restore Britain's canal system. You run into them, muddy and sweaty, spending their Sunday afternoons digging out some long-disused arm which once brought important goods to and from, say, Wendover.
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