Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 524
He read them minutely, and they took him a long time to read. All the while the poet swung backwards and forwards from one faded, maroon-coloured wall to the other. From time to time George could hear a sharp grating sound. He made out that Curtius was grinding his teeth, painfully grating one jawful upon the other, with enormous strength. Like George himself, he took newspapers with a seriousness that to me seems inexplicable.
Certainly the poet got a large share of the newspaper abuse that for several years was destined to be showered, in two countries, on the head of the unfortunate George. The boy had been permitted to bring some of the cuttings home with him, and from what he translated for me I fancy the German papers of that day must have been even more excitable than our own. The poet apparently besieged the journals with reasons for the release of George; the papers of the Left — Socialist and Liberal — agreed with him, faintly; the Right — the Junkers and the Nationalists — poured out upon the poet vials of abuse that must have struck him strangely enough, since he was accustomed to laudations such as we should accord only to the semidivine. And, when the writers of that complexion had done with the poet they turned their attentions to George.
He said that their written hatred for him was so incredible that it made him feel at first sickish and then almost unconscious. The journalists applied to George, Lord Marsden, epithets almost unimaginable. The tone of the German press is, I understand, more vivid in matters of personal abuse than is our own — and exactitude of accusation is seldom aimed at by them. And George said that the first epithet they applied to himself was one that might, just nearly, have been true. He did not tell me what it was. Every human soul has his secret dread of weaknesses within himself. And reading that word he had suddenly the dreadful feeling that this German journalist had, by some fatality, unveiled the most private details of his life.
That was nonsense, of course: the epithet must have been so loosely flung as to appear almost meaningless even to the writer. For he continued by calling George “ This low English sneak-thief; this English poisoner of springs; the English by-profession-cleaner-out of latrines”; and even “the English by-starvation-murderer of babies.”
And, by one of those pleasing coincidences that Destiny sometimes contrives, whilst George was reading that out to me, the Evening Paper, just coming on sale in the streets, was referring to George as the Hun baby-murderer!
Finally a very weighty organ of what in England we should call a moderate Whig complexion pointed out that, in contemplating the release of Lord Marsden, Authority was acting with an enlightened regard for the credit of German civilisation throughout the world.
After that there was only one article. It took the form of a proclamation from the poet, and appeared to be printed in every paper in Germany. The poet said that his effort for the credit of German civilisation having been crowned with success, he, Edouard Curtius, in order to demonstrate that he was a true son of the Fatherland, had determined not to take advantage of Law So-and-so, which would have left him free to sit throughout the European struggle in his professorial chair, but, casting away the pen of the poet and girding on the warrior’s sword....
At this point George looked up from the crabbed print: “ It is because of me, then,” he said, “that you have become a soldier. Because you have secured my release!” The officer in his long cape and with this immense helmet came to a stand beside the boy.
“Because of you!” he exclaimed. “No! it is because of the honour of the Fatherland.”
George said that, by now, owing to sheer fatigue and nerves, he was rather hazy about the rest of his interview in the shabby room with the poet Curtius! He said that he was by then intolerably weary. He had been walking all night in a snowstorm; he had had nothing to eat since seven the night before, and all that brandy he had consumed was working off and leaving him intolerably depressed. And he said he had to battle with two temptations: One was to overwhelm that tall grim poet with torrents of abuse, the other to put out his hand and say: “Old chap! let’s chuck this acting! “He had the torture of fearing that he might slide into drowsy insensibility, as you might slide down a sandhill — and that he might come to himself and find, either that he was overwhelming Curtius with filthy curses, or slobbering over his hand in maudlin remembrance of their former intimacy.
In order apparently to make sure of striking at least one firm note of “correctness” before he collapsed, he seems to have said:
“You understand, Lieutenant, that if, as I gather, you are here to release me, I shall at once enlist in the British Army and fight against this country?”
The poet had answered:
“We had hoped not: we had hoped you would have essayed a conciliatory course. Nevertheless I am instructed to say that your release is unconditional. Germany does not bargain when she shows mercy!”
George was going on to tell me that at that point the poet had mentioned the love George’s father had felt for Germany, saying:
“Herr Graf! Your father attempted to initiate a certain great work for the benefit of civilisation....”
“At that moment,” George said, “the thought of my father came over me with such a black wave that I cried out: ‘That’s too late! Keep your teeth off my father’s name. You murdered him. That is enough of an achievement!’”
Curtius sprang up, his body recoiling rigid over the chair that his legs had knocked down. He cried out:
“By God! You say we murdered your father!” — and he caught at the hilt of his sword beneath his cape. George himself had hastened to say:
“I meant that you murdered my father when you murdered the honour of your country. He hung himself when your troops crossed the Belgian frontier!”
At that the poet, who had been swaying on his long legs, appeared simply puzzled: he shook his head as if he had been dizzy. And then, positively, he smiled:
“Oh, that!” he exclaimed, with the tone of superior knowledge that a teacher uses to a foolish pupil. He even sat down again beside George and in a reasoning voice began a long political discourse. Of that George remembered nothing.
He seems to have gone on and on, trying to persuade George as to the essential humanity of his compatriots. George said that he did not really doubt this; but, partly from stubbornness, partly from sheer fatigue, he could make no comment at all; and no doubt he produced on the poet an impression of hatred greater than he really felt. And the poet went on and on until, George said, flesh and blood could not bear it any longer. He had for long been afflicted with sleeplessness.
“I imagine” — George put it to me—” that I must have irritated him exceedingly by something I said: no doubt it was in favour of the French. I seem to remember that he had been abusing the French a great deal; quite comprehensibly of course. At any rate he suddenly startled me into wakefulness by a dramatic action, so that I remember clearly the next speech or two.
The poet made a melodramatic gesture with his cape, flinging his hand towards the door:
“It is open,” he said. “ You are now free.”
George said:
“But perhaps you did not know that my mother was French?”
He said he felt his heart begin to beat with great enormous pulsations, so that the arteries prickled in his forehead. He did not know what was coming over him; he did not know what he was going to say. The poet did not answer. And George heard himself going on:
“Or do you really hold my father’s papers? Or will they be returned to me?”
He commented to me: “You see, I was not then as I am now. As you see me. Oh; fit and with a place in society. Low enough, but still a place. And ready to wait till the end of the war for a better. Though there can be no better!.... So that, in those days, without realising it, I had been attaching satisfaction to the certainty — It had grown to be a certainty by then that I was, for what it was worth, an English Earl. Yes, I had attached satisfaction to that thought. You see, it had been rather dreadful. Not only then and there, but for long before, I had had to feel that I had no place in the world! None! Not the darkest corner of the hut of the most obscure peasant! And then — at that moment — for a long period of time, with my heart bursting my throat, I felt:
“‘In two seconds, now, I may hold the proofs that I am a real member of human society!’”
He said that the poet looked at him in the eyes for a long time, impassively, without expression. Then he said, very slowly:
“Those we shall retain!”
George cried out:
“You cannot! You dare not!”
The poet said; “Do you think we are going to put a gun — power! — into your hands? To fight us with! No! There is a limit to clemency. If you have no papers of your own you are nobody. You say you hate us and shall fight against us in arms. Then be nobody!”
George said that he exclaimed, almost derisively:
“You are trying to bribe me with my own property, that you have stolen, to betray my country! This is your honour!”
The poet said:
“No! by God! It would be to betray one’s country to enable you to be powerful. That is all. That you can understand. No offer is made to you!”
George said that he heard himself remark, with a sort of peasant derision:
“You forget that my mother’s marriage lines are in the hands of M. le Notaire Flamenc, of Ys-près-Armentières in France. You see, I know the address. I can get at those!”
The poet said calmly, as if he stood upon a cliff and were unattainable:
“Ys-près-Armentières, too, is in our hands. And we shall retain it!”
George said that the poet, grey cape, pickelhaube, sabre, jackboots and all, seemed to grow to a height of several hundred feet.
He came fully to himself only on the platform of the Western Station, Berlin. Fat German women, beneath restless arc lamps, were saying impassioned farewells to their husbands, travellers in soap-substitutes, who were going to towns thirty miles distant.
CHAPTER V
I DO not know that he had a very gay fortnight even after they had set him free. The first two nights and the intervening day he spent on the Swiss frontier in a baggage shed, no one being at all anxious to accept the responsibility for him. It was a tranquil foretaste of a more exciting future.
As an international phenomenon he cannot have been very inviting. There he was, turned out of Germany by a silent officer who, the poet having come no further, had accompanied him from Berlin. And the only credentials he had were a laisser-passer fantastically signed by no less inconvenient a person than the ruler of Germany. That was the doing of the poet Curtius, who must have loved the romantic touch. Or, of course, he may have imagined that he was doing George a service. He was not. The document was inscribed with a testimonial to the effect that George was a writer who had earned his liberty by his service to the German Fatherland. That was not calculated to make him very acceptable as a charge to most of the innumerable consuls and vice-consuls of that troubled corner of a neutral state. It described him, moreover, as George, Earl Marsden, in the Kingdom of England.
That did not help him with the British Consul. So that he might well have stayed very much longer in that baggage cell with a Swiss sentry at the door if an amiable official of the consulate of the French Republic had not, being a Jew himself, taken it into his head that George was a Jew — because of his alternative name of Heimann and his claim to French birth. They did not want him in France, those people, but they were willing to export him to England, and they gave him a pass as far as the Home Office, London.
And continuously and unceasingly these vicissitudes brought up into his mind the painful matter of his birth. He said that at that time he had not the slightest doubt that he was the legitimate son and heir of his father. He had nothing left of what Miss Jeaffreson would have called a sex-complex as to that. But it was always intensely disagreeable to him to have to face the curious glances of the people to whom, one after the other, he had to display that portentous German document and explain the singular circumstances of his birth and early years.
Foreigners would hear the story with equanimity. But when he got to England the eyes of the people to whom he explained would grow large and rather alarmed; their mouths would pucker up into whistling shapes. And usually they did not seem very bright. George would explain minutely and conscientiously how he had lived with a gentleman who purported to be his uncle and called himself Heimann, whilst really he was certainly Earl Marsden. Then they would say:
“Now you claim that your father was Earl Marsden? Or was that your uncle? And who was this fellow Heimann? You call yourself Heimann, don’t you? Why do you do that?”
These were, of course, English civil servants. I imagine there are no other created beings who have just that simplicity of mind. And George said that there seemed to be innumerable corridors and rooms full of them. He said that without exception they were very amiable and extremely anxious to be of assistance. A fellow at one end of a large room would say:
“I think we can give you a certificate C.F.X.B. 1142,” and he would conduct George to another man at the other end of the room, to whom he would tell George’s story all wrong, so that George would have to tell it all over again. And they would decide that he could not have that certificate but had better see Mr. Earle of the I.W.T.B. department. One of them would very amiably conduct George to the door and call a messenger to guide George to Mr. Earle.
He said that at that time he was undoubtedly in the Home Office, but he walked so far through corridors and in and out of quadrangles and blind alleys that he might well have got into some other department. And they had offices that dealt with every imaginable case, yet none that just fitted his.
Finally they sent him to the Foreign Office. At the Foreign Office they rather jumped at him as a person who might give them information, but they were relatively little interested in his own personal dilemma. They did, however, want information, and gradually, he said, he felt himself being transferred higher and higher in the official scale. He came at last rather suddenly to a bad-tempered gentleman of fifty or so, who said:
“What do you want?” — snatched George’s papers out of his hands, glanced at them for an incredibly short space of time, and said:
“You ought to be in prison: not here. Get me Debrett!” George made a slight movement and he said: “Not you!” There was an agreeable young man at a table behind George.
The disagreeable official was seated at an immense desk of dark oak. The room was handsome, tall, with three long windows. He said:
“What have you got to tell us? No nonsense now. No: not about yourself. You’ve been, according to your own showing, at large in Germany for seven months.” He plunged his fingers into the fluttering pages of an immense gilt book. The young man had slid it on to the desk as if it had been a trayful of eatables. He muttered: “Hewl... Kings.... Lums.... Marlbo.... Marsden.” After a second he exclaimed, as if with intense distaste:
“Pugh Gomme? Do you know who Mr. Pugh Gomme is? Do you know him? Does he know you?”
“Lady Ada Pugh Gomme is the daughter of the second and the sister of the third Earl Marsden. She has permitted me to know her very intimately.”
The bad-tempered man said:
“Oh, sit down. Put me on to Sir Arthur. No: not you. Now, tell me how you got here. From where was it? Dover? You ought, you know, to be in the Town Gaol there.”
George said:
“They did not know how to deal with me. I don’t believe anybody does!” He had reached Dover at four o’clock that morning. The men at the gangway had turned him on to a man with a flat peaked hat. He had conducted George to a man whose cap bore a red worsted anchor; from him he had been taken to a military officer in a little wooden box at the inner end of the pier. The military officer had said, frankly, that he did not know how to deal with the boy. He had recommended him to report at the Home Office. That George said he had done.
The bad-tempered man — he had tiny grey side-whiskers — said:
“These damfool military! I suppose he was attracted by your sunny appearance!”
He seemed to say the words with deep disgust. George said:
“How was he to deal with me? Do you know? I don’t believe you do. I’ve got a perfectly good French passport as far as the Home Office. The Home Office has sent me here. Well then?”
He had been, he said, on his feet ever since the boat had got in at Dover at four in the morning. It was six in the evening then, and he wanted it settled, even if it meant a night in a police station. He said he did not resent being regarded as a suspicious personality; positively he had come to regard himself as a suspicious personality. But he wanted to lie down, and if insulting this fellow would bring that about he was ready to insult him.
He had raised his voice for his last two sentences, because the bad-tempered man, regarding him under his eyebrows, had begun to talk whilst George was determined to finish. But the other, his head bent on one side, went on talking. It took George some seconds to understand that he was speaking, partly into a hidden telephone, partly to George himself:
“Arthur!” he said; “here’s a young fellow who says he’s the son of Lord Marsden, who called himself Heimann. Oh! He says Lord Marsden hanged himself on the fourth of August last. Oh, by God, I’m sorry, old man. Of course you were attached to him. Yes! The fourth of August. Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Six foot! — You’re six foot, aren’t you? — Dark, yes. Quite good manners. No! no beard. Where’s your beard? — He shaved it off on attempting to escape from the place called Zell. Yes: where Sophia Dorothea was imprisoned. No: according to his story, which I quite believe, he did not escape. Released by the German Emperor at the intercession of an epic poet. Probable, is it? It does not sound so. But I quite believe it. — Where did you last meet Sir Arthur? — At the Night Club, last July. With Lady Ada. — A Miss Honeybun. No: the Miss Honeywill; danced. You danced with her and... er Marie Elizabeth. That girl with the cards. His sister, of course. Hold the line.”
