Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 974
For me, I like to be precise when I am in the mood — but to have to be so when that mood is not on me is rather torturing. It is not merely the French language. It is that there every stone calls up the memory of a great artist. Nay, every table in a restaurant does. At that one, Cézanne sat; at that other, Verlaine. Before them you cannot sit in your dressing-gown and slippers. Even the chimney pots spur you on. From the back window of my apartment in the rue Vaugirard you could see an incredible number of chimney pots, and under everyone a masterpiece had been produced. My apartment itself had housed the servants of the great Condé; beneath its windows Mirabeau had been born. Latterly it had housed Jules Janin and Professor Darmesteter, the philologist. Jules Janin was no great shakes, but beneath his shade and that of a philologist you have to be very careful of your words … and your thoughts.
My brain, I think, is a sort of dove-cote. The thoughts from it fly round and round, seem about to settle and circle even further than before and more and more swiftly. I try in the end to let them come home with the velocity and precision of swifts that fly at sixty miles an hour into their apertures that you would say could not let them through. I hope thus to attain to a precision of effect as startling as any Frenchman who is for ever on the make. Perhaps I do.
During my first days of each stay I make in that august Quarter I feel exactly like Dick Whittington. But without even a cat for capital. After directionless wanderings I sometimes find a sou of thought and get along somehow with that. But sometimes I do not.
It is a curious and, to me, a tragically suggestive fact that Paris is equidistant from the Rhine at every point from where it takes its rise to where it loses itself in the sands of Holland. It is also, like London, situated on the first ford from the sea that is practicable for heavy wagons bearing merchandise. But for that the art-centre of the world might have been near the birthplace of all the world — might have been in a clime less rigorous and less open to Nordic dangers. It would have been in the territory of those mighty rulers, the Counts of Toulouse…. In Provence!
PART THREE. “E PLURIBUS MULTA”
CHAPTER ONE.
THE Transatlantic Review WAS BORN amidst turmoil, and had a tumultuous if sometimes gay career. Foreseeing this, we took for its crest the ship that forms the arms of the City of Paris and, for its motto, the first words of that city’s device: “Fluctuat….” “It is borne up and down on the waves.” Had its career been prolonged we had intended to add the rest of the device: “Nee mergitur”—”and does not sink.” … It was not to be.
Before setting out on that tilt against the windmills, I had to settle the question of my return to England. I remember the exact hour of my coming to that decision — though the exact date does not come back to me. But I had a date with Mr. Joyce at the old Lavenue’s, which used to be one of the best restaurants in Paris. As I stood outside it the clock on the Gare Montparnasse marked five-and-twenty past seven. I can see the spidery black hands on the pallid, opaline face of the dial! I had asked Joyce for seven-thirty; so I bought an English newspaper and sat down to an apéritif outside the restaurant in an evening of golden haze…. So it was perhaps in August, 1923.
The English newspaper was yelling with triumph. All across the front page it yelled the words: “Big Axe’s First Chop!” … The British Government had abolished the post of Historical Adviser to the Foreign Office. It was then that I said:
“Perhaps I had better never go back to England!”
A country whose Foreign Office lacks Historical Advice is no country for poets — or for anybody else! … It was then 19.h.27.30…. The clock had moved on two and a half minutes….
It was not, of course, the first time that such an idea had crossed my mind. On the 12th of November, 1922, when I had just reached Paris, I had read — within a hundred yards of that spot — of the fall of Mr. Lloyd’s George’s Government…. I had only meant to come to Paris for six weeks, but then I thought it safe to go as far as St. Jean Cap Ferrat. And I had said:
“Perhaps I need never return to England.”
It was a curious sensation — of relief! I am no David and any slingstones of mine would rebound like peas from the brazen brow of Dai Bach. I am even no politician. I never talk politics except when I get excited by the ascent to power of somebody like Mr. George or his friend Mr. Hitler. Even at that I soon tire of the subject. Once you have said that Mr. Lloyd George was responsible for all the sorrows that now beset our poor civilisation or that Mr. Hitler is the anti-Christ of culture, you have said all that is to be said, and it is monotonous to repeat even truth. Still less do I ever write about politics, though for purposes of my own I have always followed with deep attention the public affairs of the countries round the Atlantic. So I did not see that my presence in England could in any way help that country.
But, till that November day I had felt as if I were doing what motorists call watching the traffic. As if I had been in an immense public automobile careering above precipices, at the mercy of a mad driver, who had never travelled those roads before. One is unwilling to get out and petrified with terror at the thought of staying there…. In any case, even a rat should not desert a sinking ship….
Mr. Baldwin, the new Prime Minister, appeared to be another nice middle-aged gentleman for a quiet tea-party. Less lugubrious than Mr. Bonar Law — whose face would have wrecked any party — he appeared to be even more inactive. At the same time he was a charming speaker, his pleasant voice and pious, anodyne opinions making of his sentences so many gentle opiates. So it seemed to me that he was what my country most needed — somebody who would do nothing for seven years, and let the English people work out its problem for itself.
England at that date — and still! — presented the aspect of a nation divided into two hostile camps by a line running, say, from the Bristol Channel to the Wash or thereabouts. In the north was an immense industrial city of thirteen million inhabitants. The district between Liverpool and Middlesbrough was one metropolis, tramways running between uninterrupted houses from one to the other, right across England. In the south was another city of thirteen millions — London and her outskirts. The north was being ruined by the lowness of the franc; the banking south would be ruined if the gold standard was not maintained.
Of the latter proposition I had no supporting evidence. It was generally stated that the prosperity of London depended on its remaining the banking centre of the world, and that it could only be the banking centre of the world if it had the gold standard. How that might be I had no means of knowing. But I had evidence enough of the other proposition — that the industrial north was being ruined by the lowness of the currencies of the lesser breeds. Evidence of that hit me everywhere. In the Paris that I had known before the war the names of British products blazed in advertisements from every wall, and from the columns of every newspaper. Now there were none, and if you wanted anything English, you had to seek for a tiny shop in a side street and pay from three to five times as much as you would have to pay for a similar French product. The French product would not be quite so good, but, in face of the difference in the prices, what choice had one? …
I had made, in the Cévennes, a little tour in the car of a friend who was a French automobile manufacturer. He had told me that he could turn out three automobile wheels of the standard of a famous British house for the same price as that for which that house could manufacture one. So M. Chose could employ three times as many men. In addition he eventually supplied the British firm — which had hitherto advertised that it sold only British products — with its automobile wheels, thus putting more British-mechanics out of work and giving employment to more French-men. In addition, the British firm actually re-exported the wheels to France, having made some slight alterations to their attachment, and were able, on the strength of their name, to sell them for more than M. Chose’s own wheels would fetch. This, however, was put a stop to by legal action, so that even that slight profit, due to the once famous British reputation for workmanship, was put an end to….
All this was matter as to which I could hardly judge. I was neither captain of industry nor financial leader. My interests went out to the artist and the agriculturist. For me the manufacturer was more pestilential than the banker, and the banker more pestilential than the manufacturer. Between those hideous upper and nether millstones what chance had the farmer? and the poor poet! What a hope was his? …
A peculiar incident had, even before my leaving England, predisposed me towards expatriation. This was the call of an election agent — a Tory, I think. He asked for my name on his rolls. I said he could have it, because I never refused anybody anything that was mine to give and the Liberal agent had never called on me….
I will here interpolate a little anecdote that has always amused me when I have thought of it. And it may be of use to electioneers…. I was once returning officer in Sussex. An aged, nearly blind labourer came in to vote. He said to me:
“Which be I to vote for, zur, Conservative or Liberal?”
I expressed proper horror and explained that, presiding at the poll, I had to be strictly impartial. He said:
“Well, it be like this, governer. The Conservative gen’lman come to see me and he never gave me nothing. The Liberal gen’lman never came to see me, but what I thinks is: if he had a come he might have given me sutthing. So I shall vote for he!”
This Tory gentleman certainly gave me nothing — except food for thought…. When he had taken down my name he said oilily: “And what profession shall I put, sir?”
I said: “Writer?”
He exclaimed:
“What?” … and only after a second remembered to add: “Sir!”
I said:
“I’m a writer! I write books for a living!”
He was appalled and became almost lachrymose. He said.
“Oh, don’t say that, sir. Say: ‘Gentleman.’”
I explained that I was not a gentleman. I was a poet.
He became almost frantic at that. He said:
“Oh, I can’t say that, sir. It would make my roll look ludicrous. I should be laughed out of my job if you made me say ‘poet’…. Make it ‘gentleman’, sir….”
And, sitting there, outside Lavenue’s, I was reminded of something else. When I was employed in demobilising my battalion after the Armistice, I had to sort men into categories. There were eighteen categories. They regulated the rate of priority of discharge according to the use of the individual to the community. In the first category you had Administrators — Bankers, Manufacturers, Employers of manual labour. After that you had classes labelled: “Productive” — skilled artisans, coal-miners, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, breeders of animals…. When I came, in my inspection of the Army Order making these regulations, on the XVIIIth and last category, which was labelled “Totally unproductive,” I found huddled together, and not even in alphabetical order, those who were to be last discharged. They were utterly useless to the community. They included:
“Travelling showmen, circus performers, all writers not regularly employed on newspapers, tramps, pedlars, all painters not employed as house, factory, industrial, carriage, or sign-painters; all musicians, all unemployable persons …” and, oh, irony! “Gentlemen, independent.”
I pondered over those things whilst I waited for Mr. Joyce…. It was by then 8.10…. Indignation took complete possession of me. That artists should be lowly rated was supportable. But that they should be labelled unproductive, being the creatures of God who produce entirely out of themselves, with no material aids and no hope of help! I could imagine, even with sympathy, the honest Army Officer who composed that document in his Whitehall office…. But that the State should, to its eternal shame, let pass such a compilation — that appeared to me intolerable….
And on top of that that Election Agent! It appeared that for me and my brothers there was no escape. One way or other — either as Artists or Gentlemen — we had to be in the XVIIIth Category…. And more than anything I resented being forced to be a Gentleman. An artist cannot be a Gentleman, for, if he is a Gentleman he is no artist. The best Gentleman is he who, with the pink cheeks of urban health, inhabits a glass showcase. He at least will never commit a solecism. His clothes at least are for ever perfectly pressed. He at least will never express despair, intelligence, fear, animation or passion! And I on an electioneer’s sheet must write myself down — that!
I pondered like that as the hands of the station clock reached 8.15!
And now Mr. Baldwin’s Government had moved. They were no Gentlemen, they had allowed themselves to be badgered by the cheap Press into action. With an axe! The cheap Press with the voices of jackals demanded Economy. For them Mr. Baldwin’s Ministry had, like the Russian mother, thrown to the wolves the Foreign Office Adviser in History. No British diplomat from henceforth was to know what was the Pragmatic Sanction, or what was enacted by the Congress of Rastatt, the Convention of Cintra, the Venezuelan Arbitration award — or the very treaty of Versailles, which by then was historic….
Two ladies passed and bowed to me — Miss Sylvia Beach and Miss Nina Hamnett.
They said:
“We shall see you at Joyce’s dinner at nine. Opposite!”
I said:
“No: he’s dining with me here at 7.30….” It was then 8.37.
They said:
“Joyce never dines with anybody, anywhere but opposite, and never at seven-thirty.”
I said:
“He is dining with me to-night to try the Château Pavie, 1914.”
They said:
“He never drinks anything but white wine.”
I said:
“Anyhow, I am never going back to England.”
They said:
“How nice!” and passed on.
So it will appear to the reader that I have nothing to say against my country which any Englishman would resent. For all that I have said amounts to that the English State and the English social hierarchy believe in keeping the imaginative artist in his place — his place being the XVIIIth Category. The admirable Staff wallah who compiled that schedule would merely shake his head in bewilderment at reading my reasons for living outside his shadow. He would say:
“This seems to be rather tosh. Does Mr. F. really think that banks are not more useful to — er — the Community than … er, novels? … Surely not novels! … Or that coals are not more necessary to England than pictures…. Even hand-painted oil ones!” … And he will shake his scarlet hatband in perplexity and add: “The johnny must mean something. But what?”
And the tragedy is that that man is an admirable personality inspired by the very best sense of duty. The very best! If you could get him to see that a training in the Arts was as salutary to mankind as Army physical training, he would spend a month of slow arranging and rearranging his schedules, so that every Tommy would get at least as many hours a week of Æsthetic and Literary training and exercise as he spends on P. T. And that Staff Officer would see to it that that instruction was the best to be got, and that the regimental officers saw to it that there was no shirking.
But the tragedy is that you could never get him to see what every peasant here in Provence knows — that to the properly circumstanced man frescoed rooms are infinitely more salutary than artificial heating — or than anything that is the product of steam-driven machinery…. So they fresco their rooms with those admirably primitive, local paintings that have had so great an influence on modern art and make no provision whatever for heating. And, on occasion, it can be cold here.
I think I have said enough to make it plain that I regard the British Army as a human machine with so great an admiration that I can hardly write of it without hyperbole. With an admiration almost equally great I regard the British Constitution, the British legal machine and administration of justice. The one and the other are inspired by a deep tradition of humanity that as long as there are wars and laws and rulers mankind would be foolish indeed to let die. England may or may not, in saving France on the 4th August, 1914, have saved civilisation by her arms. But there is no doubt that she could now, in the department of life that I have mentioned, save civilisation by her example.
And even in my resentment of her treatment of the artist I bear no personal feeling. It is to me a matter of pure indifference how I am treated by English people. What I should bitterly resent at the hands of a Frenchman leaves me, on the other side of the Channel, completely indifferent. It remains hypocrisy to search for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a low tea-house and to expect urbanity from the barely adolescent is to give evidence of ignorance of the nature of man.
No, what enrages me is the thought that the same grossness might be shown to great artists. Imagine, say, Matisse in England and understanding the social nuances by which, supposing him to be painting a portrait in an English house, he should realise that he ranks a little after the governess and a little above the butler — or that his “état civil” is in the company of tramps and the unemployable! … To have, when abroad, to blush for one’s country, is the most painful of all experiences.
But for the rest, it was that day at 8.49 my humble prayer that the reigning house might for ever protect the laws of Great Britain; that her arms might be for ever victorious; that her commerce might for ever prosper; that Kent might always hold the county championship; England retain the Ashes, the British Empire the Davis Cup, and particularly I prayed that a British heavyweight might be found to stand on his legs for six rounds out of any ten-round contest, anywhere. Oh … and might Mr. Lucas’s favourite paper find now and then some really side-splitting ones. Then England will, for ever, know happy sunsets….
