With thanks to Connie Ruzich* for reminding me that I had not yet posted about Ford Madox Ford.
Ford, who was named after his maternal grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, was the eldest of three children - his brother was Oliver Madox Hueffer and his sister was Juliet Catherine Emma Hueffer, the wife of David Soskice and mother of Frank Soskice.
In 1889, after the death of their father, Ford and Oliver went to live with their grandfather in London. Ford was educated at University College School in London. In November 1892 he became a Catholic,
In 1894, Ford eloped with his school girlfriend Elsie Martindale. The couple were married in Gloucester and moved to Bonnington. In 1901, they moved to Winchelsea. They had two daughters - Christina (born 1897) and Katharine (born 1900). Ford's neighbours in Winchelsea included the authors Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, W.H. Hudson, Henry James in nearby Rye, and H.G. Wells.
In 1904, Ford suffered a breakdown due to financial and marital problems. He went to Germany to spend time with family and undergo treatments.
In 1909, Ford left his wife and set up home with English writer Isobel Violet Hunt, with whom he published the literary magazine “The English Review” Ford's wife refused to divorce him and he attempted to become a German citizen to obtain a divorce in Germany. That was unsuccessful.
During the First World War, Ford initially helped out with the Propaganda Bureau. He joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in 1915 and was gazetted as a Second Lieutenant on 13th August. He was posted to the Somme in July 1916 and was blown into the air, losing his memory for a few weeks and was sent to No 21 Casualty Clearing Station in Neuville, a district of Corbie in the Somme, France.
After recovering, Ford was sent to the Ypres Salient. He was hospitalised with lung problems, possibly due to gas inhalation, and was invalided home in March 1917. The Medical Board refused to pass him fit for service on the front line and he was put in charge of a Company of the King’s Liverpool 23rd Regiment based in Yorkshire. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 1st July 1917 and to the rank of Captain on 7th January 1918. From mid-March to August 1918 Fordh eld the temporary rank of Brevet Major. He left the Army on 7th January 1919.
Ford changed his name to Ford Madox Ford in 1919, partly to fulfil the terms of a small legacy, partly "because a Teutonic name is in these days disagreeable".
The Journals created by Ford - “The English Review” and “The Transatlantic Review” - were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
Ford spent the last years of his life teaching at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. He was taken ill in Honfleur, France in June 1939 and died in Deauville on 26th June 1939.
Ford is remembered now for his novels “The Good Soldier” (1915), ““he Parade's End” tetralogy (1924–1928) and “The Fifth Queen” trilogy (1906–1908).
According to Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p.129, Ford Madox Ford published the following collections of verse related to WW1:
“The good soldier; Selected memories; Poems (The Bodley Head, 1962)
“On heaven, and poems written on active service” (The Bodley Head, 1916)
and Ford had poems published in 6 WW1 Anthologies.
*You can read Connie’s interpretation of Ford’s poem “Albade” on her wonderful website Behind their Lines here: https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2016/09/an-early-morning-love-song.html
Here is Ford’s poem about the fall of Antwerp, which T.S. Elliott commented “The only good poem I have met with on the subject of war.”
In October 1914 [Antwerp] BY FORD MADOX FORD
I
GLOOM!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years . . .
And doom!
That then was Antwerp. . .
In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods. . .
Those men there, with the appearance of clods
Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God
Ever shrived. . .
And it is not for us to make them an anthem.
If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them
To a tune that the trumpets might blow it,
Shrill through the heaven that's ours or yet Allah's,
Or the wide halls of any Valhallas.
We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours
For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays
Is this:
“In the name of God, how could they do it?”
II
For there is no new thing under the sun,
Only this uncomely man with a smoking gun
In the gloom. . .
What the devil will he gain by it?
Digging a hole in the mud and standing all day in the rain by it
Waiting his doom;
The sharp blow, the swift outpouring of the blood,
Till the trench of gray mud
Is turned to a brown purple drain by it.
Well, there have been scars
Won in many wars . . .
Punic,
Lacedæmonian, wars of Napoleon, wars for faith, wars for honour, for love, for possession,
But this Belgian man in his ugly tunic,
His ugly round cap, shooting on, in a sort of obsession,
Overspreading his miserable land,
Standing with his wet gun in his hand . . .
Doom!
He finds that in a sudden scrimmage,
And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass . . .
An image that shall take long to pass!
III
For the white-limbed heroes of Hellas ride by upon their horses
Forever through our brains.
The heroes of Cressy ride by upon their stallions;
And battalions and battalions and battalions—
The Old Guard, the Young Guard, the men of Minden and of Waterloo,
Pass, for ever staunch,
Stand, for ever true;
And the small man with the large paunch,
And the gray coat, and the large hat, and the hands behind the back,
Watches them pass
In our minds for ever . . .
But that clutter of sodden corses
On the sodden Belgian grass —
That is a strange new beauty.
IV
With no especial legends of marchings or triumphs or duty,
Assuredly that is the way of it,
The way of beauty . . .
And that is the highest word you can find to say of it.
For you cannot praise it with words
Compounded of lyres and swords,
But the thought of the gloom and the rain
And the ugly coated figure, standing beside a drain,
Shall eat itself into your brain:
And you will say of all heroes, “They fought like the Belgians!”
And you will say: “He wrought like a Belgian his fate out of gloom.”
And you will say: “He bought like a Belgian his doom.”
And that shall be an honourable name;
“Belgian” shall be an honourable word;
As honourable as the fame of the sword,
As honourable as the mention of the many-chorded lyre,
And his old coat shall seem as beautiful as the fabrics woven in Tyre.
V
And what in the world did they bear it for?
I don't know.
And what in the world did they dare it for?
Perhaps that is not for the likes of me to understand.
They could very well have watched a hundred legions go
Over their fields and between their cities
Down into more southerly regions.
They could very well have let the legions pass through their woods,
And have kept their lives and their wives and their children and cattle and goods.
I don't understand.
Was it just love of their land?
Oh, poor dears!
Can any man so love his land?
Give them a thousand thousand pities
And rivers and rivers of tears
To wash off the blood from the cities of Flanders.
VI
This is Charing Cross;
It is midnight;
There is a great crowd
And no light.
A great crowd, all black that hardly whispers aloud.
Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother!
She has a dead face;
She is dressed all in black;
She wanders to the bookstall and back,
At the back of the crowd;
And back again and again back,
She sways and wanders.
This is Charing Cross;
It is one o'clock.
There is still a great cloud, and very little light;
Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd
That hardly whispers aloud. . .
And now! . . That is another dead mother,
And there is another and another and another. . .
And little children, all in black,
All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places,
Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room
In the dim gloom.
These are the women of Flanders.
They await the lost.
They await the lost that shall never leave the dock;
They await the lost that shall never again come by the train
To the embraces of all these women with dead faces;
They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and foss,
In the dark of the night.
This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock;
There is very little light.
There is so much pain.
L’Envoi
And it was for this that they endured this gloom;
This October like November,
That August like a hundred thousand hours,
And that September,
A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years. . .
Oh, poor dears!
Sources: Wikipedia,
Reilly, Catherine W. “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliograph” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978),
Source for featured poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57289/in-october-1914-antwerp
And: https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/ford-madox-ford/
https://fantastic-writers-and-the-great-war.com/war-experiences/ford-madox-ford/
