Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 305
“If you will wait here,” she said, “for so long as to give Mr. Williams time to put on a cassock which he has borrowed from Parson Blore, I will be with you again.”
She was away for a full twenty minutes, during all which Mr. Bettesworth sat motionless before the fire. He snuffed the candles once, but otherwise he might as well have been carved out of wax. He felt singularly little of elation; but, upon the other hand, along with the sense of entire tranquillity he had that of presenting to the world an extremely fine figure. He seemed, in fact, to himself to be almost as perfect, to be almost as semi-divine as he had ever dreamed of being; at the same time it was as if his heart had forgotten to beat, and he had no desire to make any motions of his limbs at all. He was, in short, Mr. Bettesworth, and that was all there was to it.
He was aware at last that in the gloom next the door Lady Eshetsford was leading in a square white object. A little later he perceived that this moved upon the two legs of Mr. Williams. Lady Eshetsford was carrying the clergyman’s large Prayer-book, and she had him by the elbows to direct him, since his face and the greater part of his body were hidden by his burden. Mr. Bettesworth understood nothing, nor did he make any effort to understand. He imagined that her ladyship might have been leading in some sort of portable altar, something connected with the Church, of which he knew little and cared less. They passed indeed very close to him, so that he had to step a little on one side. At last, under the guidance of Lady Eshetsford, Mr. Williams set down his unwieldy burden upon the easel that had held the Pompeo; Mr. Bettesworth perceived that obviously it was a picture covered by a white cloth. This caused him a minute dissatisfaction, for he had been accustomed to regard the “Rape of Ganymede” as his choicest cabinet picture. Moreover, Mr. Williams’ face was exceedingly flushed, and his band was to one side, matters which appeared to Mr. Bettesworth to be wanting in formality and respect; whilst upon the skirt of his own coat, at the moment when he was to say “I will,” he observed four specks of snuff; these he considered must have been left there by the Signora Poppæa, who, he remembered, had taken snuff twice whilst she had been with him that evening.
The candles shone, the flames on the hearth rustled, Mr. Williams read the marriage service, but because he was very shortsighted, and he had lost his spectacles during their Odyssey, his nose travelled along the lines of his Prayer-book and they heard almost none of his words. Lady Eshetsford stood with the negligent inattention that it was proper to bestow upon parsons; and when, having finished the service, Mr. Williams erected his head, and with a fanatic lustre beginning to illuminate his black eyes, said that the present was an opportunity upon which he might well indulge himself with a few words, Lady Eshetsford took him up sharply.
“Mr. Williams,” she said, “these doctrines may be very well for the lower orders, and I make no doubt that they are — nay, I wish you every prosperity — but we have very little time to waste, and we are persons of good conscience and well assured of our own minds; preaching to us would make us no better nor worse.”
Mr. Williams looked with an affecting timidity at the face of Mr. Bettesworth. “Oh, Mr. Williams, you need not doubt that Mr. Bettesworth in all that is proper will perform his promises to you; nay, he has every reason to regard you with gratitude, and I for him. So that if I should find him inclined to be remiss in them I would myself hold him to it; but you must see that where matters of importance are on foot such things as orthodoxy and heterodoxy must stand aside. Nevertheless, as a token of the favour that I hold you in I will give you the privilege that I would grant to but few other men, since it is hardly fitting that you should take that of being the first to kiss the bride, which most country parsons claim, but I will allow you to unveil for me that picture upon the easel!”
To remove the draperies upon the picture Mr. Williams must go behind the easel, so that for the time he disappeared. At his operations the cloths appeared slowly to unsettle themselves, there appeared the shoulder of the gilded frame; the edge of the cloth seemed to crawl along by inches, then suddenly it dropped all down.
Mr. Bettesworth’s body inclined itself forward; in spite of him his two hands came up in an attitude of discovery. A maiden was sitting at the foot of a tree; her dress was of greyish-white sprigged with pink silk in lines; a great hat hung from her left arm by a broad pink ribbon. At her feet lay a little frail in the shape of a cream-jug; all round her was massed brownish foliage of the colour of soup; and upon her figure fell, from nowhere in particular, a single ray of light. Beneath the picture the candles threw their light upwards, and as they still waved in the draught of air made by the fall of the cloth the figure wavered and appeared alive.
Mr. Bettesworth’s jaw remained hanging down, his eyebrows arched themselves into an entire incredulity. Mr. Williams emerged from behind the easel and looked up at the picture mystically, whilst he bent down to pick up from the floor the fallen white cloths.
“This picture, Mr. Williams,” Lady Eshetsford said, “is the famous one of ‘Celia in her Arbour,’ which Sir Francis Dashwood was gallant enough to sell to me six days ago.”
Mr. Williams straightened himself, the cloths trailing from his hand.
“Madam,” he said, “‘tis a very excellent portrait of your ladyship; yet I wonder that the great of this world have so much time to bestow upon vanities thus idle.”
“Mr. Williams,” Lady Eshetsford said, “if you will write your very excellent lessons down in a book you may set me down at the head of your list of subscribers, but in the meantime, whilst giving you all my thanks, I beg that you will carry these cloths to Mrs. Jakins the housekeeper.”
Mr. Bettesworth recoiled a full three paces from his wife.
“So that you,” he said, “are Celia?”
“Why,” she answered, “is it then so great a disappointment that your fine eyes have not captivated a Celia that is another.”
“But if I have not done that,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “then I have achieved nothing, for sure it was only because there seemed to be another Celia who was ready to surrender to me, that either by good fortune or by my proper parts I should have made a conquest and achieved a victory.”
“Nevertheless,” Lady Eshetsford said, “you will be the most heroical figure in London in four days’ time, for will you not have found, fetched, housed, wedded, and led to a dinner of the Dilettante Society, Celia who has come out of her arbour? Sure you will be the talk of the Town, and may for nine days or so hold your head higher in every assembly than the victor of Ramillies.”
“But I,” Mr. Bettesworth insisted; “you have played with me as if I were a fish upon a hair-line, and here I am.”
“Oh, my friend,” Lady Eshetsford said, “take your laurels and wear them, and do not inquire too closely what hand holds the knife that cut them, for I think most great victories are like this, and most great victors, if you could search their hearts are much as you are; for it is nine parts fortune and one of merit, and so the world goes on.”
THE SIMPLE LIFE LIMITED
This obscure novel – one of the scarcest of Ford’s works to survive in book form – was written at a difficult period of the author’s life, having recently been displaced as editor of The Fortnightly Review. The novel verges on the experimental, hinting at what would become known as Ford’s impressionistic work in his mature years. The Simple Life Limited (1911) is a satire on Utopian lifestyles, focussing on characters that corrupt the ideals of the simple-life movement for their own gain. The novel presents caricatures of literary figures that Ford had been associated with, while he had been living a ‘simple life’ himself on Pent Farm, Kent and Limpsfield, Surrey. These figures included anarchists and proto-socialists such as Kropotkin, Edward Pease and the Garnetts. Writing at the expense of many of his former friends, it will come as no surprise that Ford chose to write the novel under the pseudonym Daniel Chaucer, which he continued to use for The New Humpty-Dumpty.
The straight-forward plot of the novel revolves around the lives of a group of ‘Simple-Lifers’ that are led by the charismatic Simon Bransdon, a clear parody of Joseph Conrad, who resides on land belonging to a Tory squire. They adhere to alternative pursuits such as vegetarianism, abstemiousness, weaving, maypole dancing and homeopathy, whilst investigating paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and thought transference. Nevertheless, this idyllic existence is threatened when one of the more enthusiastic supporters leaves the colony for university, returning later as a critic of the leader’s actions.
Pent Farm, Postling, Kent — Joseph Conrad’s home from 1898 to 1907. After staying here, Ford was inspired to caricaturise Conrad’s ‘simple life’ in his novel.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
PART III
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
PART IV
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
PART I
CHAPTER I
MR LUSCOMBE was standing with his hands deep in his pockets, his chin resting upon the dishevelled crown of the head of his little boy called Bill, who stood upon the window-seat before him and, like him, gazed at the pouring rain. It came down in such sheets that a small river flowed on each side of the carriage-drive. Because the County did not call upon Mr Luscombe and his wife, Mr Luscombe was solitary in his habits. He was friendly with the Vicar and he had some acquaintances whom he met at the Golf Club on the neighbouring common. But his most constant companion was his little boy Bill who was then aged seven, had dark, uncombed hair, a brownish, freckled face, wore a rumpled blue jersey and short blue knickerbockers.
“By Jove, we’d better ask them to come in,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed. “That tree’s no kind of a shelter. The rain comes through it like a sieve.”
The boy continued to gaze out of the window. “Don’t ask them, father,” he said: “they are ugly people.”
“They’re jolly wet people,” Mr Luscombe said. “You couldn’t even ask Sitting Bull to look beautiful with all the paint washed off him.”
“But,” the little boy retorted, “they don’t look like pirates, and they don’t look like Indians, and they don’t look like highwaymen or anything nice.”
“But they look wet, Bill,” his father urged.
“They look like wet tramps,” the little boy said. “They’ll come in and they’ll spoil our game, and Filson says that tramps are poison.”
“But they don’t look like tramps, Bill,” his father pleaded. “I should say they were foreigners if they weren’t so fair.”
“Then they’re German spies,” the boy said. “Filson says the country is full of German spies.”
“Then,” Mr Luscombe said triumphantly, “our duty is to lure them into the house and then to have them arrested.”
“That,” the little boy answered, “would be against the laws of hospitality.”
“Isn’t it,” his father said, “still more against the laws of hospitality to let them get wet? They’re the strangers within the gates, you know. For they are inside the carriage gates. If they’d stayed outside it would be different.”
“Then if you give them anything to eat,” Bill uttered firmly, “I shall drop some salt into it as Morgiana did to the captain of the Forty Thieves.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the hang of that, old man,” his father said. “It was that she got suspicious when the captain said he wanted his food cooked without salt.” Mr Luscombe went from the large and rather gloomy dining-room into the large and rather gloomy hall. He opened the door and stood in the pillared porch. The rain poured down and in the long drive the cypresses and holly trees drooped dejectedly beneath the weight of water. Above the gate that gave on to the road there towered two enormous chestnut trees, against whose trunks were pressed the backs of two slight figures. Mr Luscombe stood as far out in the porch as the driving rain would permit: a blonde, rather heavy man of perhaps thirty-five or a little more, he was dressed in a shooting-jacket, had a heavy jaw, a thick moustache and sagacious, rather dog-like eyes. He was a little slow in his actions and he had a pleasant smile which uncovered white and level teeth. He stood just six feet high, his shoulders were more than usually broad and his chest more than usually full. When he had beckoned three times with his hand he succeeded in attracting the attention of the cyclists but, in answer to his gestures, both the young creatures — who in spite of their costumes, which he found so extraordinary, appeared to him of a dazzling fairness — vigorously shook their heads.
“Damn them,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed good humouredly, “I believe they think I am telling them to go away.”
He repeated his gestures, bowing his body forward and shovelling with his hand towards the doorway as if he were inviting pigs to enter a sty. But his efforts were rewarded only by a similar indifference. He breathed little sounds of vexation between his teeth, and returning into the flagged hall he came out with a large umbrella which was used by his coachman upon wet days. Having opened this he walked gingerly — for he still wore his slippers — down the carriage-drive, picking his way over little runlets of water in the sandy track. The heavy drops fell with loud sounds from the boughs on to the surface of his umbrella and the rain itself made a loud and continuous crepitation.
“Why the deuce,” Mr Luscombe exclaimed, “did you not come in when I beckoned you? You’ve made me get my feet wet.”
Both the young people gazed at him with expressions of singular solemnity and portentousness.
The girl, who was of singular fairness, wore upon her head an ungracious cap. It appeared to have been crumpled haphazard together out of a piece of the grey cloth of which her dress was made. She wore also a coat of grey so ill fitting that one of her shoulders appeared to be higher than the other. Her short skirt only just reached to her knees, her stockings were of grey worsted and her cycling shoes were laced with pieces of string. Her male companion, who was as fair, as young and even more slender, had the greater part of his form concealed by a grey horse-blanket, through a hole in whose centre his head stuck out. Upon his head, itself, there was crushed a grey wide-awake so sodden by the rain that it flapped down on each side, concealing the greater portion of each cheek. From between it his pink and white cultured features looked out like an old woman’s from a deep poke-bonnet. The girl was about to speak when the young man spoke in tones that combined at once a quality of gentlemanliness and aggression:
“We ought,” he said, “to inform you that we object to the abominable institution of marriage. We were married yesterday morning, but we desire to enter the strongest possible protest.”
Mr Luscombe raised his eyebrows, whistled between his teeth, and smiled in a slightly puzzled manner.
“Well, well,” he said. “I’ve heard of repenting at leisure, but I never heard of a couple who found out their mistake so soon. Consider the protest made and carried and come in out of the rain.”
The young man after a pause was about to speak when the young girl spoke. Her voice was lady-like and she, too, appeared to force into it a certain note of aggression.
“Do you own this property?” she asked.
“Oh,” Mr Luscombe said, “I own this house and grounds and the cottages round the Common and a certain portion of the Common itself. You can hardly call it a property.”
“But it is a property,” the young girl said. “You ought not to own it.”
A slight shade of vexation came into Mr Luscombe’s face.
“How do you know?” he said. “Is this an impertinence? Are you connections of mine?”
The young man spoke again in his high tones:
“Except in so far as all men are brothers,” he said, “we cannot claim connectionship with you. But we object...”
The young girl raised her hand as if she were addressing a meeting.
“We object,” she began, “to all such things as individual property, marriage, revealed religion, the unequal distribution of wealth...”
“Oh, well,” Mr Luscombe said, “you don’t seem to object to rain. Come in and we will have a fire lit.”
The young man said:
“We think we ought to tell you all the things we object to, for we have been told that we have a corrupting influence, whereas our consciences make us see that we must never cease to proselytize. So we warn you....”
“Oh,” the young girl suddenly exclaimed, “if you own all the cottages round the Common you own the one with the yellow jasmine on it and the seat in the porch just beyond the duck-pond. Will you let it to us?”
Mr Luscombe regarded them reflectively. “To do that,” he said, “I should have to turn out the people who are there now.”
“You could find them another cottage,” the boy said. “We have decided that that one would exactly suit us.”
“We desire,” the girl exclaimed, “to lead the Simple Life.”
CHAPTER II
MR LUSCOMBE’S history had been peculiar and somewhat unfortunate. His father, like himself called Gerald Luscombe, had been a man of a gloomy and resentful turn of mind, who, towards the end of his life drank himself steadily into a lunatic asylum. And, since Mr Luscombe senior was of this cast, his wife had been rather notoriously unfaithful. She was in the habit of absenting herself for long periods — though generally during the hunting season — with a man called Melville. Amongst the families of County rank of that neighbourhood, as indeed amongst the relatives of Mr Luscombe, this fact had at first caused consternation and extreme anger. Mr Luscombe, the father, however, silent and saturnine, paid no attention either to the behaviour of his wife or to the remonstrances of the rest of his acquaintances. And if he would not divorce Gerald Luscombe’s mother he did not in the least attempt to limit her goings-out or her comings-in. A silent, bitter man with, about the corners of his mouth, such a smile as if he were a spectator at a cruel comedy, he was finally put under restraint at his own request when Gerald Luscombe was about fourteen. At that point Mrs Luscombe retired definitely with her lover to the Continent. Gerald Luscombe passed his days at Harrow where he attracted very little attention, spending his holidays with his mother and Henry Melville, to both of whom he was doggedly attached. This gave rise to a rumour that Gerald was the son, not of his father but of his mother’s lover. This rumour caused him considerable unpleasantness at Oxford, where two of his cousins, who were his next of kin, happened to he up at the same time as himself. Between these cousins and himself there had always been considerable dislike. They were dark young men who affected intellectual interests. At Oxford they read Swinburne, attempted to form a Kelmscott Lodge, a Socialistic Community named after that of the late Mr William Morris at Hammersmith. They had therefore always called Gerald Luscombe the Oaf, for Gerald was fair, rather heavily made and as untidy as it was then possible to be at Oxford. Being a remarkably good cross-country runner he kept a little pack of beagles of his own. He pulled rather a good oar, he was not afraid of work, indeed he had rather a taste for the Latin humaner letters, whilst he had a real passion for gardening. He was moreover comparatively abstemious and had none of the, what were then called, decadent tastes affected by his cousins, the Nevill-Luscombes. The Nevill-Luscombes, whilst affecting an extreme freedom of thought, deemed it fit, at the beginning of their second year, to wait upon their cousin and to inform him that his mother’s behaviour was so scandalous that, as members of his family, they must beg him altogether to refrain from countenancing her. Having with some difficulty — for he was not a very proficient boxer — thrashed the elder of the two cousins, Luscombe threw the younger through his window. And this caused so much comment amongst the men that, in order to account for it, the Nevill-Luscombes were forced to tell the reason for the fracas to several of their more intimate friends. They did it with some reluctance, and the revelation caused them to be regarded with considerable distaste by the more athletic members of their college. This again engendered further bitterness of spirit in the Nevill-Luscombes, who from that day forward called their cousin no longer the Oaf but the Bastard.
