Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 688
So I go out of public life of that type.
But don’t believe that I, Gringoire, Hippolyte, de l’institut de France, go out of public life! No, I go into it. For I go to prove that a decent life, clean, contemplative, intent, skilful, and with its little luxuries, may yet be lived by the Gringoires of the world — hominibus bonae voluntatis. For, though I am a poet, it is thus that I interpret the message of the angel. For it is thus that I see the world —— as a world of a few Gringoires and of infinite millions that are the stuff to fill graveyards. I can’t see it any other way.
And I said to myself in the wash-house of Madame Rosalie whilst some fragments of iron and rubble pattered down on the tiles of the pent-roof from the nearby church that, for the rest of my life I would be what I will call self-supporting — at any rate after the war was finished — and I will govern!
For I will be dependent on the profits of no man’s labour, and I will produce more food than I eat and more thought than I take from the world. So, to the measure of the light vouchsafed, shall some fragment of the world be dependent on me. It is the only way to govern.
All this wangling for power in newspapers, meetings, marketplaces, and drawing-rooms is a weariness — and when you have it, what is it? A handful of dried leaves that crumble under the touch. If you have a platoon you can make it smart; if you have a garden, you may make it fine, luxuriant, producing marrows as large as barrels. Or if you write a poem, you must make it beautiful. Everything else is vanity.
I...I who speak to you...can house myself, clothe myself, discipline, entertain, and think for myself — and I can feed more than myself. As the old saying went: I can build a house, plant a tree, write a book, and beget a son. No man who cannot do all these things is fit to govern. He cannot govern — for I and the men who are with me, of good will, shall withhold his food, his clothing, his thoughts for his mind.
Y — ou may say, Mr Compiler, that you who write falsehoods for the newspapers, who organize in offices the carrying of things on wheels, who dig in the bowels of the earth, and hammer on iron plates — or who take the profits of those who do these things - that you will govern, or inherit, the earth and the civilization of the earth. You cannot. If you withhold the labour of your hands or your minds — the world goes on. If I should — you would starve in body and soul — and in jazz noises!
In the end, I think, the world will be driven to become a great beehive: there will be the workers who think of nothing but their work. They will think nothing of the profits. And there will be the drones who provide the jazz noises and the wheels — and who will be killed off from time to time.
That is what I have gathered from the ruined houses in Flanders and from the aloof quality of the faces that came back to me whilst I sat dozing and Rosalie Prudent sewed. The faces were those of the Lincolnshire Private, of Lieutenant Morgan, of Henri Gaudier, and of the caretaker in the house at Albert — and of the Quartermaster of the Wiltshires. But, so that you may not think that I limit myself to one class of society, I will add the faces of Lord Kitchener, of Sir Edward Grey, and of the French Minister, whose name I have forgotten. I did not need to see in imagination the faces of the orderly or of Mme. Rosalie, for they were with me.
1 Note by Gringoire. I do not know why I am haunted by the remembrance of this man. He was killed by the direct hit of a shell. When I last saw him, he was reading a paper with the spectacles at the end of his nose like the caretaker at Albert. His tunic — with ten ribbons! - was open over his fat stomach, and he wore carpet slippers. He was as brave as a lion and as simple as a sheep: no soul then alive knew his job better. He was a butcher of Stratford-on-Avon. If he have left a young son, may the shade of the Divine William guide that young son’s footsteps gently and humorously through the ways of life!
You will object that I single out for salvation in Gomorrah only those of whom I have talked. Certainly, it is only those that I single out - those of that type, for those, for me, are the homines bonae voluntatis who must be preserved if the State is to continue. They have rather abstracted expressions since they think only of their work; they have aspects of fatigue, since the salvation of a world is a large order, and they bear on their backs the burden of the whole world; but they look at you directly, and in their glance is no expression of pride, ambition, profit, or renown. They have expressions of responsibility, for they are the governing classes. Others will have that title in the newspapers - but they govern only those who makethe noises of jazz-bands. The food supply and the supply of poetry is in the hands of the Gringoires.
Buzzing noises make the world pleasant; it would be a grim and silent world without them. I should not like it, nor would the other Gringoires like it. It was in Coventry Street that I last met Lieutenant Morgan-Gringoire. But, from time to time, the buzzers must be killed off. Destiny is remorseless: either those who buzz must die in occasional crowds or those who live to give food and poetry must go starve and the others with them. Destiny is remorseless.
But destiny is also just. The drones of the hive have a good time —— and give a good time. Moreover they make splendid soldiers of the type of the Cockney or the Parigot. That, perhaps, is how destiny means them to get killed off. So they will have their good times; and they will also have glory, the glory of finding the person of the Sacred Emperor in some such low tea-shop as was the Bois de Mametz on the 14/7,”16 when the 38th Division was murdered.
And maybe that is the best glory of all. God forbid that I should say it is not. And I like to think that, along with the good time that they had and the glory of standing in the presence of the Sacred Emperor, they found also — sanctuary. For I like very much to remember the smile that was on the face of Lt. Morgan when they dug him out from under the dirt of the communication-trench.
Do you remember the old Catholic idea that a man may find salvation between the saddle and the ground? Well, we know little of death — nothing of death. So I hope it is not a heresy to think that, as the eyelids of those who fell closed on their glory, they had long, long visions, like that green vision that came to me from time to time. For time is a very relative thing; and may they not well have had long, long illusions, seeming to last for years and years? - to the effect that they had found, each his imagined sanctuary, where there was the gingerbread cottage that, hand in hand, on tiptoe with some Gretel, they explored, crossing their fingers and crying ‘Feignits’ in the face of destiny — and where the Hou-Hou-oo of the wolf upon the Montagne Noire shall sound so very distantly as to be only the comforting reminder of the Grimm we knew as children.
—— Something like that.
That is all I have to say about the war, here and now. But you have poked your sardonic fun at me from time to time, Mr Compiler, and though bargaining is no part of my nature, a deter-mination to have my own way was bom in me as pawkiness was in you. And now, I say this:
‘You have poked your fun at me as writer and as cook, and decorated with only those attributions of yours — as if each of those little, half-concealed smiles were a rag and tatter on my shining-seated pantalons, you propose to exhibit me to your public. Well, you shan’t except on my own terms. The first is that, as you have spoken of me as writer you should enshrine — like a shining fly in amber — in the gum of your lucubrations a specimen of my own writing as it came to me, precisely, in Nieppe. And the second is that, since you began this compilation with what purports to be an account of the entertainment of the guests who honour this lowly roof of ours, you shall, as truthfully entertain your readers — as truthfully as you can, for God gives to some of us vision and to some the gift of recounting things askew for the entertainment of those wider of mouth than of intelligence — you shall then entertain your readers with an account of the dishes which since early morning I have been preparing for the evening degustation of yourself, of my dear Sélysette and your friend Mrs Carmody. For I observe that, though you poke fun at my hospitality you are not averse from begging your dimity madams to share what you have called, I think, our rough oaken board.’
Mrs Carmody was no more than the wife of the Headmaster of the King Edward VI Grammar School where your Compiler gives lessons in the English language and drill, in the neighbouring town. She had expressed an urgent curiosity to witness the domestic felicities and the supposedly eccentric habits of my friends. For it is not to be imagined that a figure so marked as that of our poet could conceal itself in an isolated dingle of a Home County without setting a considerable part of that county agog with curiosity — any more than it is to be imagined that an usher in a diminutive but immensely ancient public school could forever stave off from contact with his most intimate friends the young and agreeable but still imperious wife of his Head.
But to the alarmed, but only half-expressed remonstrances of your Compiler — for what, he wondered would Gringoire insist on inserting into his pages; and wouldn’t his patiently prosecuted work when, if ever, it saw the light, wouldn’t it have the aspect of a mere rag-bag? To these alarmed, if only half-expressed remonstrances, Gringoire, arising to his lean, grey height, announced his immutable programme for the day. It was by then towards four of a very hot, but fast cooling, July afternoon. The sunflowers drooped on their stalks, flycatchers made their curious, interrupted flights into the shining air and back to the old roof. The cows from the meadow had crowded to the other side of the quickset hedge, and rubbing themselves unceasingly to get rid of flies from their backs made a curious sound like the tearing of thin paper interspersed with the deep, tranquil sighings of their breaths. It was in short an English July afternoon — a time when, if ever, men should sit and ruminate in quiet.
But there was such a clamour! Y ou would have said that the itch of all the authors and all the regimental sergeants major had entered into our friend. Quick, the boy, dozing behind the house, must put in the mare and go to the station and see if the Bombay duck had come for the curry. Quick, the maid must bring tea half an hour before that diminutive creature was accustomed to bring it. Or, no.... She must put back tea an hour and Madame Sélysette must with her own incomparable fingers blow three quarts of shandygaff and not forget the lime-juice. And Madame Sélysette must find the article he had written at Nieppe, and must put out paper and pens and cut two quills just as he liked them and come down and entertain Compi — your humble servant the compiler — and see that no wasps had got under the cabbage-leaves that covered the syllabubs in the spring and see that the boy did not take the traces up two holes too short and...
Madame Sélysette put her charming and provocative bust out of the little square window space above and to the left of the porch.
‘You propose to write, my friend?’ she asked. ‘But you swore this morning that you would send me to Coventry for a week if I did not goad you into picking the greengages....’
Gringoire made a sound like ‘Grrh’, as if the Wolf of the Mountains had humorously snarled. He said:
‘You have no soul!’ She made at him a little grimace and disappeared. But I could hear their endearments as they met on the sounding little wooden stairs and felt all the summer regrets of the nearly old bachelor.
There was however no rest that afternoon. It was well to have the great blue three-quart jug of shandygaff on the seat in the porch; it was agreeable to have Madame Sélysette to one’s self whilst she dotted a few of the ‘i’s’ and crossed the ‘t’s’ as to the entangled career and theories of her great man — and there is no better drink of an English July afternoon than shandygaff that has a little edge of lime-juice given to it and that since dawn has had all its ingredients cooled in an ice-cold spring. And there is no pleasanter topic in the mouth of a gay and tranquil young woman assured of the adoration of her mate than her expressions of her humorous adoration for Himself and his crotchets. You reply that the adoration of a lively young woman expressed to yourself would be more agreeable, but that is not the case. For lively young women do not express adoration to the faces of their males; but, failing and replacing that, it is pleasant to sit in a porch and hearken to adoration of a roaring genius overhead. For it causes you to have daydreams of a time when you in revenge may sit in an upper room, with a lively young woman expressing to a third the adoration that she feels for yourself....
But continuously our Gringoire’s voice rumbled from inside his upper room. Then coming to the window he would shout:
‘Sélysette — Sé...ly...sette — What is the colloquial English for...’ Some phrase that I did not catch. Or:
‘Sé...ly...sette...Est-ce que...’ And again something that I did not catch for my French is none of the strongest. But I should gather that it had something to do with his pots that were on the stove in the disreputable shanty that he called his cookhouse. For Madame would enter that erection like Eurydice disappearing into Orcus. Immediately would come the thunder of Gringoire descending the stairs as if he had fallen. He too would enter the cookhouse and there would be the sound of impassioned and farcical altercations. Then Gringoire would approach the porch with a face that resembled a beetroot with the heat. He would drink a pint of shandygaff at a swallow, exclaim:
‘The stuff’s bilge — No, I don’t mean the shandygaff. There is no one like Sélysette for compounding cold drinks. I trained her. I mean my prose. My prose is bilge....’ And he would thunder up the stairs whilst Madame tranquilly resumed her place.
Once she asked some questions about Mrs Carmody and when I said that lady had the greatest possible admiration for Gringoire and even had some of his verses by heart she expressed amused relief. ‘For,’ said she, ‘there are going to be great storms and dinner won’t be ready till ten.’
It wasn’t.
For, you understand, in the sometimes tranquil, sometimes tempestuous but always complex nature of my friend, the pride of authorship had for the moment come uppermost and he was determined to get his prose into his compiler’s volume. But of late he had only written in French as he has told you. So he would come to the window and shout to me the question whether he would be allowed to insert his French prose. Without waiting for me to answer his question he would shout: ‘No, of course you won’t!’ and disappear. Then he would shout:
‘But I can’t translate my own damned stuff. In heaven’s name what’s the English for...The beastly colloquial English.
Towards seven, just when I was thinking that I must go and tidy myself for the approach of Mrs Carmody, he appeared before me, dishevelled and with a mess of written papers dangling from his hands.
‘Here, you,’ he exclaimed, ‘get your reporter’s notebook and come with me!’
And, at the bottom of the garden, under the hedge beneath the damson trees he made me lie down in the grass which was there long and began to dictate to me. He couldn’t, as he said, translate his own French prose because his own French was near his heart and his English much less. You might say that his passions were for English countrysides and for French prose and here the two met to his confusion. Perhaps it is impossible to interpret French prose in the long grass beneath an English quickset hedge.
In any case Gringoire was distracted as he dictated and I was distracted, using a shorthand that I almost never employ to take down his words that he whispered or shouted or intermingled with ejaculations that I was not intended to record.... And I was the more distracted because at the top of the garden I could see Mrs Carmody and Madame Sélysette carrying implements and provisions for the dinner from the house door to the little platform beneath the enormous oak that overshadowed the spring. Those gay young things laughed over their burdens — for Mrs Carmody, out of her School House, was at least as gay as Madame Sélysette. And every time that they laughed Gringoire, lying in the long grass, groaned and writhed with the whole of his immense length. I have relegated his French, for which he gave me the copy from some Swiss magazine, to an appendix. I can only hope that his French is better than his English version of it. But as to that I am no judge. I only wish that he had not insisted on my presenting an untidy book to the world, for in common, I believe, with most readers, I much dislike appendices. For when on a bookstall I see a book and, examining it, find appendices at the end, I think either that that is a learned work for which I am seldom in the mood, having studies enough of my own to pursue, or that the author is an untidy-minded fellow who has not given himself the pains to digest and put into his own phraseology matter that will almost certainly be tedious to read.
But in this case I have no alternative. The rages of Gringoire are things that I have no mind to face. Print his lucubrations I must or there would be the devil to pay. I am not certain that there won’t be at least a minor fiend to propitiate as it is — I mean when Gringoire comes to look for his prose and finds it at the end of the volume.
There certainly was a tremendous row when he discovered that he had kept the ladies waiting. He howled with rage, sprang to his feet, rushed into his cook-house....
And the first view that Mrs Carmody had of a poet for whom, as you shall discover, she had a real veneration, was rushing along the face of the house towards the dinner-table beneath the oak. He was hatless, coatless, his shirt-collar was widely unbuttoned and he was bearing a huge tray covered with little saucersful of the piquant messes that he calls hors d’oeuvres.
We dined.
I am, alas, no Brillât Savarin and Gringoire as cook is to say the least inarticulate. When he is not that he is profane. We had his hors d’oeuvres. Then we had his curried lobster. What shall I say about his curry?
