Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 1020
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... The aged steward explains that he does not understand the Strasbourg dialect very well. He is very apologetic. He was in Strasbourg only during the war. Thirty years long he was in the Kaiserliche Marine. They drafted him into the Brandenburgers in garrison at Strasbourg. In time for the first Battle of the Somme. We had the Second Brandenburgers — the famous Cockchafers — over against us at Pont de Nieppe, by Armentières.... A mild, aged man, like the White Knight, with a grey face and tender feet. Gentle! Like a mother.... Yet of the famous Brandenburgers.
... A still, green field in the Indian summer weather, with apple trees over behind their trenches. A quiet sector, the Brandenburgers climbing the trees to shake down the apples. He must have seen us against the level sun.
... The lady is relieved. That aged fellow has proved to her that this is a Jewish boat. She had been worried.
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... “We shall put up against a wall — and shoot — all Jews, all Catholics, all Communists, all the... Ahem!”
... The Nazi Professor, slim and dark, speaks in the smoking-room after midnight.... “Up against a wall.
... All that Vermin!”
... He is very intoxicated. He peers up against my face. He is going to Harvard to assist a colleague at the University. In Philosophy.
... Lean, with disordered black hair and sparkling eyes.
... He withdraws his face two feet. His Government, he sputters, lacks tact in international handlings. They produce false impressions. They desire nothing but Peace. Peace always. Deepest Peace. All these marchings in uniforms are only for Youth. Youth insists on marchings in uniforms and commands from the full chest. That is the proper expression of life for the young, adult male. There is no other proper expression for the young, adult male and no use in the world for anything but adult Youth. Youth must be taught that. The world over. In Harvard as in Heidelberg.
... He elevates his full glass of brandy, swaying on his feet. I had imagined people like that to be fabulous monsters. He gives a toast. The brandy has disappeared into him.
... To Peace. Peace. Nothing but Peace. Then we shall be strong. Invincible. We are sailing the world over in a proud Nazi ship. With a Nazi cell. And two Nazi detectives to listen for treason among the passengers. The relatives of passengers speaking treason had better beware at home. The Nazi arm is long.
... He gesticulates wildly, his glass above his head, in a roll of the boat.... “Up against the wall.... Alle Juden!... Alle Kaetzer... Alle Communisten.... Alle... alle... His wild eyes are gibbous; he shakes back his black locks, plastered to his forehead with sweat.
... “Allé Franzôsiche Affen.... All the French Monkeys.... Up against the wall.”... And smashes his glass onto the linoleum floor. No less noble toast shall ever be drunk from it.... In the morning he sends a Dutch Professor to apologize for him. I don’t know what he wants to apologize to me for. I am given to understand that a Nazi “cell” is not a cage. It is a political unit; a cell in the Imperial hive. All the ship’s officers, stewardesses, stewards, crew, cooks, dish-washers must belong to it. Not a cage.
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... I assert, in the pale morning sunlight, on the motionless deck, that the English-like, red brick, red-tiled cottage close at hand, beneath us is on Sandy Hook. All the other passengers — none of whom have passed the place half as often as I, coming from the East — all the others, then, assert that it is something else. It is Fire Island, Governor’s Island, Staten Island, the Shore of the Sound. I know it is Sandy Hook. For twenty-nine years, which is pretty nearly its age, it has annoyed me, that cottage. A generation ago when I first saw it it shocked me, though I do not remember what was there before. Wooden shacks, I think, with a wharf. I always wanted to see something American on that flat strip of green land, beneath a gently rising ridge. Not a Cockney commuter’s villa such as I could see thousands of in Bedford Park, London, W.... as you might say, the Oranges.... Not out of patriotism. I am not American except, as you might say, a little from the lips inwards.
No, that annoyance was the product of the Traveller’s mind. I felt — and feel — like the lady who, visiting the harem of the Sultan of Morocco, was shown first, as its chiefest treasure, an empty Odol can.
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... Ought not one to be greeted by a white Colonial Mansion, with tall white pillars supporting a classical charpente? But encased in shining and transparent cellophane to unite the old glory that was Man’s to the New Deal of the Machine.
... Of course later there is the chewing-gum sign. Certainly that sufficiently separates the Old World from the New.... Also there used to be.... I imagine She is still there.... We could not see Her, however, for the scarlet swastika-banner that at that point broke from our forward flagstaff. No doubt, by moving one’s position, one could have seen Her....
... So we went gliding into Weehawken Dock beneath that proud symbol of Jews, Catholics, Communists, and — but here you whisper — all the French, set up against the Great Wall that would appear to be the symbol of human regeneration. For apparently, if you wish to picture Utopias, “Set ’em up against a wall” is the first command you must give.
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The ordeal of entering America is not so formidable. The grey-white official, sitting at one of our shining dinner-tables, says: “Coming to America for pleasure, Mr. Ford.
... Hope you get it.” The grey-white Customs official says: “What is eau de vie de marc, Mr. Ford? A sort of brandy? That will be all right, Mr. Ford.” The beady-eyed brother of the vaudeville artist had already extracted from me in Paris the assurance that I was neither Anarchist, Polygamist, nor suffering Trom disease, and entertained no designs against the Brain Trust. So presumably America was safe from me and I might plunge ankle-deep into the mud of Weehawken.... There are other frontiers where you seem to die a hundred deaths before a thousand walls.... I wonder why all the dockside guardians of this land have grey-white faces and manners of gentle disillusionment. They cannot all be one family. This is not the South.
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Skidding in the brown mud that separates the landing-stage from the Nazi Company’s bus you see suddenly America; not the tempestuous and tormented wall that, across the grey river, rages up against the greyer heavens and is called Manhattan. This is a dark bluff, seen through whirling snow-flakes. Dark olive green, cluttered with frame houses that all appear a little cock-eyed — lead-white boxes dropped at incongruous angles, as if the builders had possessed neither spirit-level nor plumb-line. That is the America that has inspired a thousand million hopes from Pekin to Polperro. You observe that I am recapturing a little of the spirit of my boyhood and the inverted kitchen table... and of Pocahontas rather than of Columbus.
... For don’t believe that in our hot, European youths we set out to find the gold-paved streets of the city that is not America. In that we differed from all the navigators of Hakluyt who were all mercenaries and make me a little tired. There was not any real romance about Columbus or Raleigh or Hudson. They endured hardships and made their wretched crews endure hardships even worse — for they always had private caches of provisions in their cabins — they endured hardships with the hard eyes of company promoters speculating in specie or in black ivory. But we were not mercenaries. We set out on inverted kitchen-table-hardships in the pure spirit of Romance and never did we make our crews endure more than we had to ourselves. After Hudson had been manacled, but before he was set adrift, bags of biscuit and bottles of wine were found hidden in his quarters and he prolonged his miserable voyages in order to make, on the side, a little money by inefficiently slaughtering sea-lions in order to sell their pelts in Amsterdam. As far as I can remember he only managed to kill one sea-lion, but he let in the thousand followers who incarnadined the seas with the blood of those innocent and inoffensive beasts.
... But don’t believe that I ever refused to interrupt a voyage on the Spanish Main. I always let my crew — Walter Atterbury — go and get a drink from the tap over the sink. No, it was not the gold of the Aztecs for which we longed: it was really Weehawken with frame houses which we mistook for log cabins and, over the bluff behind them, teepees with scarlet totems and mustangs and the feathers of eagles in braided hair. You did not know that those things were behind Weehawken. Ah, but they are — at just about the place where the Pulaski Speedway begins its course among dismantled boilers.... And also there, in addition to Pocahontas, were Sam Slick and Artemus Ward and O. P. Q. Philander Smiff and John P. Robinson and Tennessee’s Partner and Mliss and the Betsey and I who were out and the One Hoss Shay.... What do you know about all those?... Ah, but they were the land of Freedom — of Bird o’ Freedom Sawin — that we used to see from near the kitchen sink on our voyages West.
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Not many people will come to Weehawken. New York is too centripetal and few know the way. I should not have known it myself but for the efforts of Mr. Hitler to establish a clandestine mercantile fleet. So the one friend we had to meet us had to return in five minutes. To go into Court. New York called too insistently. That Orpheus could not stomach those dimnesses while the gold-paved streets awaited him. So there were more partings than meetings. Our shining Fuehrer leaves, with the twins and the cradles and the matron of Roman calm. And the Dutch Professor and the tiny wife of the artist scurry past the open door of the bus, bound for Brooklyn.... Brooklyn.... Imagine! For even in Weehawken and a snow-flurry the New York spirit descends on us. Weehawken is all right because we happen to be there.... But Brooklyn! It’s a foreign country. Un-American, that’s what it is, I was once lost in First Street, Brooklyn.... And badly frightened. I thought I should never get away.
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... From behind us in the bus-dimnesses an English voice says: “My dear! They assured me that she was British owned and registered in Montreal!’” That little, frail old lady is going to Montreal. A foreign city, but not so foreign as the territory across the East River. They have scarlet letterboxes with G.R. in gold on them in Montreal. You used to go to Montreal to get liquored up. No one ever crossed Brooklyn Bridge for that purpose.
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... The bus at last heaves its shoulders, slithering like a bison in and out of shell-holes. I did not know that the Enemy forces had so devastated this district. You would think we were back on the Baileul-Armentières Road in 1917. In those milder days you did not put them up against a wall. They fell backwards into the carefully prepared shell-holes and the slime covered them.... Far away and long ago! As far away as Brooklyn. As long ago as Pocahontas and Artemus Ward. Or as, to-morrow, will be the vexation that we felt at being on that non-Aryan-owned, Flemish-registered vessel from Hamburg. We live in to-day. Or we shall when we are across the river.
... For the moment the Past is too much with us. Architecturally. The foreground is a landscape of up-ended girder fences and of corduroy roads. We are rolled one against the other as thankeemarms jolted the first dwellers in Weehawken. Driving, top-hatted and with whisker-fringes above our stocks, we are, in our sulkies to the Ferry. Going from our cock-eyed frame-houses to market once a month in West Twenty-Third Street. Make it a century ago.
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... Pre-1840. All this landscape is that. When you are on it the troglodytic, covered-in ferry frames the distant sky-line with the effect of calculated and artificial chiaro-scuro; the silver-grey, fretted river with the snow-flakes falling into it to dissolve; the silver-grey water-front beyond it; turrets and spires dim behind the snow shower. All that, seen from the black shadows of our embarkation! Like a vignette on the title-page of a very early Lady’s Companion.
... Lady in a poke-bonnet with cherry-satin ribbons and crinoline. Jolting on a buck-board with Lord and Master, top-hatted, in a blue jean tail-coat, silver-mounted whip a-flourish.
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... Even now that we are across the river and shouldering our way up Twenty-Third, the century-old atmosphere remains strong. Like a powerful perfume from a forgotten drawer. Below West Twenty-Third Street to West Fourteenth is Chelsea.... Below West Fourteenth Street to Washington Square is Greenwich Village. They call it the Village now, but when I was first here it was Greenwich, tout court. There was an old public-house, London, England, style, in the shadows of the L at the corner of West Eighth Street. With polished brass plates and tankards and, in the window, the portrait of a great, grey Tom Cat, labelled old tom. Old Tom is the best brand of London gin.
... Yes, the perfume lingers. Years ago I was passing that sign with a lively Englishwoman. She said: “The wages of gin is breath.” There were Prohibitionists before the Prohibition that is itself hardly a memory.
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The aged, light-uniformed nigger drives away all the other porters of the Pennsylvania Hotel. He pounces on our baggage, chattering like a hen-wife who has scared hawks from her poultry. It is as if, with his accent, you caught the rustle of crinolines and the clitter of ice in juleps under the shadows of Colonial stoeps. The South! We shall be going South in March.
... Perhaps we ought never to have left those islands. The wet trodden snow crunches under the wheels of our taxi, overwhelmed with luggage and with the Dutch Professor, his New England wife, my patient New Yorker who hates New York, and myself, all sardined inside.
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... That touch of Africa.... I wish it had not so immediately greeted us. I am always a little depressed when I see negroes; they spoil even The South for me, with their constant presence. I hate to be reminded of Africa, that mournful continent, protected by an avenging Nemesis that cannot keep her from being despoiled but always pursues her despoilers with dire persecutions and disasters.
... Do you know what caused the Civil War, the late war, the Punic Wars that for generations ravaged Rome?
... Spoliations of Africa. And the next war? Every time I think of that continent a shiver goes down my spine — a goose walking over my grave. The taxi slithers down Seventh Avenue.
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... Why do furriers always hang, in boom-times or during crises, in knots, in bunches, in assemblies at the corner of all Seventh Avenue Streets from the Pennsylvania down to Twenty-Third? They were there when we went away; they are there still. Chattering, gesticulating, waving arms abroad, gnashing teeth, hat brims pushing red ears forward. A few, motionless, thrust hands deep into trouser pockets, their heads hanging dejected. A few strikingly blond; mostly very dark or rufous. Wallachians, Croats, Ruthenians, Poles, White Russians, Hungarians.... Does their work do itself, manlike machines, functioning passionlessly, till the final, master’s touch is needed?... I don’t suppose so.... You hear from every group: “Put ’em up ergenster wall.... All the schwein employers.”
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... We swing between canyons of furriers into Sixth Avenue... Peire Vidal was a furrier’s son and Peire Vidal was the greatest of the Troubadours, over there in the sunlight of the Narbonnais. I wonder if men in these crowds canimprovise sirventes to the plucking of the lute. I daresay they can. You never can tell with these Wallachians, Monte negrins, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croats. But you can bet your hat their sons will prefer to twiddle radio buttons.... One up to the Technocrats.
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.... The very young visitor asks:
“And what are your impressions of New York, Mr. Ford?” his overcoat draped over my armchair, his hat beside him on the floor.
I say:
“It makes me shiver when I think of Africa, over there in the white sunlight. It’s still there, you know, and I shiver when I think of disasters to come.”
... He does not want my impressions of the climate; he wants me to talk about the skyscrapers. I say you can’t have impressions of skycrapers after you have been ten minutes in Manhattan, and when we came in this morning those glories of Gotham were obscured by the swastika. What could you say about skyscrapers except “Oo-er” if you happen to be from the East End of London?... I said: “The last Partition of Africa took place — began to take place — in 1883. For thirty-one years the spoilers quarrelled about morselling out the quarry. Then they fought....”
“Were you ever in New York before, Mr. Ford? If so was the Empire Building...”
... One does not notice skyscrapers in New York. You might in Chicago where they are rarer. Here they are just the goodly fruits of the earth. One doesn’t have impressions. One has one’s job and goes about it at the bottom of canyons. If you lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon you would not be looking up at it all day and uttering the local equivalent of: OO-er! You might notice it if a special sunset was got up for your benefit.... On such an occasion Stephen Crane’s Jimmie, Maggie’s brother, said “wonderingly and quite reverently, ‘Deh moon looks like hell, don’t it?’”
... The young man said that his city editor had bidden him collect my impressions of skyscrapers. He insisted that it was my first visit to New York.
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... Well, then: I was impressed when I first saw the Flat Iron, twenty-nine years ago. I was coming down Fifth Avenue on a horse-bus. It was radiant and tall and white, like a Greek column. But I have not had any “impressions” in the last quarter-century. I haven’t noticed the Empire State Building, not to mention — but I have noticed that it has a corner store to let that was to let when I was last here. I should be astonished if it let; but I am not astonished that the building is there. I should not be astonished if it weren’t.
... Impressions are sensations that impinge and leave scars in the consciousness of the transient. But New York sensations flow over me as if I were a pebble in the bottom of a stream. I tell that young man that when I first struck this city his mother was still unborn. Compared to him or the average New Yorker who, as everyone knows, arrived here three weeks ago from Terre Haute or Rochford, Illinois, I am a Manhattan Methuselah.
He brings out boastfully:
“But I’ve been to Weehawken.”
