The Good Soldier

Ford Madox Ford

You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.

You can't kill a minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white satin favours. The mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon may fall, but surely the minuet--the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls?

Well, there you have the position, as clear as I can make it--the husband an ignorant fool, the wife a cold sensualist with imbecile fears--for I was such a fool that I should never have known what she was or was not--and the blackmailing lover. And then the other lover came along...

For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.
So, for a time, if such a passion came to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar ; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story.
And yet I do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman--or no, that is the wrong way of formulating it. For every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination has set her seal for good. He will travel over no more horizons; he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders; he will retire from those scenes. He will have gone out of the business.

Well, it is all over. Not one of us has got what he really wanted. Leonora wanted Edward, and she has got Rodney Bayham, pleasant enough sort of sheep. Florence wanted Branshaw, and it is I who have bought it from Leonora. I didn't really want it; what I wanted mostly was to cease being a nurse attendant. Well, I am a nurse-attendant. Edward wanted Nancy Rufford, and I have got her. Only she is mad.

And no doubt, she had her share of the sex instinct that makes women be intolerably cruel to the beloved person.

I don't know. I know nothing. I am very tired.

In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor--a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so--that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily.

If ever you feel the need to be depressed by a picture of four very confused, clutching, petty, and vain people, The Good Soldier is for you. This perhaps puts it a little harsh, and I do not want to sound like a prude. But my reasons for such a harsh castigation of Ford's two couples are clearer: it's not that they are like so many pauper children mucking about in the sewers--we all of us aren't much better than that--nor is it that they are selfish people who don't care for much outside of themselves--I don't think I could recognize a human who wasn't selfish--nor is it even that they glory in their own vanity--I believe most people are secretly as consoling and petting of their persons; no, what is most dismal about The Good Soldier is that not one of the four tries. There is not even a feeling to inspire. No one is reaching for the shining sun, those lighter realms of the atmosphere where love is pure and kindness exists. It doesn't matter so much how far the stretching fingers are, but it does matter that fingers stretch.
The Good Soldier is incredibly well written--the story drips out of Ford's fist like so much sand, he relates the tale with more control than many and far better style than more. For that reason alone it's almost worth reading, only, it would be such a dreary story.
Thankfully, I bear some charm which I cannot explain. The book I read immediately after The Good Soldier was the antidote to everything that was poison in Ford's book. Look up to see what I mean.