Lines I Wished I’d Written: Sylvia Contemplates Revenge, from Parade’s End

I am nearing the end of my four or five year journey through Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End tetralogy.  The fourth novel of the series is titled The Last Post.  Perhaps the overly deliberate pace I’ve been reading has caused to make me lose sight of the novel’s themes, but it’s still a wonderfully written work.  In technique and skill, this is one of the highest achievements of modernist literature.  But for now let me just highlight another wonderful passage.

Here we have Sylvia Tietjens again.  Her husband Christopher has finally left her because of her infidelity.  Christopher had come back from the war (WWI) and taken up with a young lady, Valentine Wannop, having fallen in love with before he went to the war, but in which he did not consummate the relationship.  He was honorable and had intended to stay with his wife before the war, but the war seemed to have changed everything. 

In order to grasp the context of this passage, you have to understand a few things.  Sylivia is Catholic, and despite her many sinful actions, she is a believer.  Christopher is High Anglican, and he too is a believer.  Christopher, unlike the other upper class British in the novel, is chivalrous to the point of being saintly.  Sylvia actually calls him a saint in this passage.  Father Consett is a priest who had known Sylvia for most of her life and had died sometime during the war. 

Sylvia in this passage is bitter that Christopher has left her, and she contemplates some sort of revenge.  Gunning is a yeoman farmer on their estate and he makes the suggestion to Sylvia that she could induce a miscarriage to Christopher and Valentine’s baby that Valentine is carrying.  It took some contemplation before Sylvia realized what exactly Gunning was suggesting.

We also see in this passage the modernist technique of narration that Ford uses.  It’s in third person narration but in free indirect discourse style.  That means the author speaks in a third person point of view but shifts in and out of a character’s mind using the character’s interior thoughts to move the narration.  It’s almost like a stream of conscious narration but controlled by the author’s third person view.  I marvel at how Ford executes it with such skill throughout the novel.  So much of what passes through Sylvia’s mind resonates with events her life that Ford has built a detailed mind filled with psychological depth.  Here Ford starts with Sylvia thinking about religion and morality and ends with her horror struck when she realizes what Gunning has actually suggested.

Anyhow the case had been a fiasco and for the first time in her life Sylvia had felt mortification; in addition she had felt a great deal of religious fear.  It had come into her mind in Court—and it came with additional vividness there above the house, that, years ago in her mother’s sitting-room in a place called Lobscheid, Father Consett had predicted that if Christopher fell in love with another woman, she, Sylvia, would perpetrate acts of vulgarity.  And there she had been, not only toying with the temporal courts in a matter of marriage, which is a sacrament, but led undoubtedly into a position that she had to acknowledge she was vulgar.  She had precipitately left the Court when Mr. Hatt had for the second time appealed for pity for her—but she had not been able to stop him.…Pity!  She appeal for pity!  She had regarded herself as—she had certainly desired to be regarded as—the sword of the Lord smiting the craven and the traitor to Beauty!  And was it to be supported that she was to be regarded as such a fool as to be decoyed into an empty house!  Or as to let herself be thrown downstairs!...But qui facit per alium is herself responsible and there she had been in a position as mortifying as would have been that of any city clerk’s wife.  The florid periods of Mr. Hatt had made her shiver all over and she had never spoken to him again.

And her position had been broadcast all over England—and now, here in the mouth of his gross henchman it had recurred.  At the most inconvenient moment.  For the thought suddenly recurred, sweeping over with immense force: God had changed sides at the cutting down of Groby Great Tree,

The first intimation she had had that God might change sides had occurred in that hateful court and had as it were, been prophesied by Father Consett.  That dark saint and martyr was in Heaven, having died for the Faith, and undoubtedly had the ear of God.  He had prophesied that she would toy with the temporal courts.  Immediately she had felt herself degraded, as if strength had gone out of her.

Strength had undoubtedly gone out of her.  Never before in her life had her mind not sprung to an emergency.  It was all very well to say that she could not move physically either backwards or forwards for fear of causing a stampede amongst all the horses and that, therefore, her mental uncertainty might be excused.  But it was the finger of God—or of Father Consett, who as saint and martyr, was the agent of God…Or, perhaps, God, Himself, was here really taking a hand for the protection of His Christopher, who was undoubtedly an Anglican saint….The Almighty might well be dissatisfied with the relatively amiable Catholic saint’s conduct of the case in which the saint with the other persuasion was involved.  For surely Father Consett might be expected to have a soft spot for her whereas you could not expect the Almighty to be unfair even to Anglicans….At any rate, up over the landscape, the hills, the sky, she felt the shadow of Father Consett, the arms extended as if in a gigantic cruciform—and then above and behind that an…an August Will!

Gunning, his bloodshot eyes fixed on her, moved his lips vindictively.  She had, in face of those grossly manifestations across hills and sky, a moment of real panic.  Such as she had felt when they had been shelling near the hotel in France when she had sat amidst palms with Christopher under a glass roof….A mad desire to run—or as if your soul ran about inside you like a parcel of rats in a pit an unseen terrier.

What was she to do?  What the devil was she to do?...She felt an itch….She felt the very devil of a desire to confront at least Mark Tietjens…even if it should kill the fellow.  Surely God could not be unfair!  What was she given beauty—the dangerous remains of beauty!—for if not to impress it on the unimpressible!  She ought to be given the chance at least once more to try her irresistible ram against that immovable post…. She was aware….

Gunning was saying something to the effect that if she caused Mrs. Valentine to have a miscarriage or an idiot child ‘Is Lordship would flay all the flesh off ‘er bones with ‘is own ridin’ crop.’  ‘Is Lordship ‘ad fair done it to ‘im, Gunning ‘isself, when ‘e lef ‘is misses then eight and a ‘arf munce gone to live with old Mother Cressy!  The child was bore dead.

The words conveyed little to her….She was aware….She was aware….What was she aware of?  She was aware that God—or perhaps it was Father Consett that so arranged it, more diplomatically, the dear!—desired that she should apply to Rome for the dissolution of her marriage with Christopher and that she should be freed as early as possible, Father Consett suggesting to Him the less stringent course.

A fantastic object was descending at a fly-crawl the hill road that went almost vertically up to the farm amongst the breeches.  She did not care!

Gunning was saying that that wer why ‘Is Lordship giv ‘im the sack.  Took away the cottage an’ ten bob a week that ‘Is Lordship allowed to all as had been in his service thritty yeer.

She said: ‘What!  What’s that?’  Then it came back to her that Gunning had suggested that she might give Valentine a miscarriage….

Her breath made in her throat a little clittering sound like the trituration of barely ears; her gloved hands, reins and all, were over her eyes, smelling of morocco leather; as felt as if within her a shelf dropped away—as the platform drops away from beneath the feet of a convict they are hanging.  She said: ‘Could…’  Then her mind stopped, the clittering sound in her throat continuing.  Louder.  Louder. 

Descending the hill at the fly’s pace was the impossible.  A black basket-work pony phaeton, the pony—you always look at the horse first—four hands too big; as round as a barrel, as shining as a mahogany dining table, pacing for all the world like a haute école circus steed and in a panic bumping its behind into that black vehicle.  It eased her to see…But,…fantastically horrible, behind that grotesque coward of a horse, holding the reins, was a black thing, like a funeral charger; beside it a top hat, a white face, a buff waistecoat, black coat, a thin Jewish beard.  In front of that a bare, blond head, the hair rather long—on the front seat, back to the view.  Trust Edith Ethal to be accompanied by a boy-poet cicisbeo!  Training Mr. Ruggles for his future condition as consort!

She exclaimed to Gunning:

‘By God, if you do not let me pass I will cut your face in half…’

It was justified!  This in effect was too much—on the part of Gunning and god and Father Consett.  All of a heap they had given her perplexity, immobility and a dreadful thought that was gripping her vitals….Dreadful!  Dreadful!

She must get down to the cottage.  She must get down to the cottage.

She said to Gunning:

‘You damn fool….You damn fool….I want to save…’

He moved up—interminably—sweating and hairy from the gate on which he had been leaning, so that he no longer barred her way.  She trotted smartly past him and cantered beautifully down the slope.  It came to her from the bloodshot glance that his eyes gave her that he would like to outrage her with ferocity.  She felt pleasure.

She came off her horse like a circus performer to the sound of ‘Mrs. Tietjens!  Mrs. Tietjens’, in several voices from above.  She let the chestnut go to hell. 

It seemed queer that it did not seem queer.  A shed of long-parings set upright, the gate banging behind her.  Apple branches spreading down; grass up to the middle of her grey breeches.  It was Tom Tiddler’s Grounds; it was near a place called Gemmenich on the Fourth of August 1914…But just quietude: quietude.

Mark regarded her boy’s outline with beady, inquisitive eyes.  She bent her switch into a half loop before her.  She heard herself say:

‘Where are all these fools?  I want to get them out of here!’

He continued to regard her, beadily, his head like mahogany against the pillows.  An apple bough caught in her hair.

She said:

‘Damn it all, I had Groby Great Tree torn down: not that tin Maintenon.  But, as God is my Saviour I would not tear another woman’s child in the womb!’

He said:

‘You poor bitch!  You poor bitch!  The riding has done it!’

She swore to herself afterwards that she had heard him say that, for at the time she had had too many emotions to regard his speaking as unusual.  She took indeed a prolonged turn in the woods before she felt equal to facing the others.  Tietjens had its woods onto which the garden gave directly.

Her main bitterness was that they had this peace.  She was cutting the painter, but they were going on in this peace; her world was waning.  It was the fact that her friend Bobbie’s husband, Sir Gabriel Blantyre—formerly Bosenhair—was cutting down expenses like a lunatic.  In her world there was the writing on the wall.  Here they could afford to call her a poor bitch—and be in the right of it, as like as not!  (p. 873-7)

What I think Ford wants you to see in this passage is Sylvia’s mind integrating her immediate action of riding a horse, her recent bitterness at her husband leaving her, with Gunning’s proposal of a future revenge, and with the morality established in her core as a child.  Perhaps this is not the most exciting passage in terms of events, but it’s one of great skill.  

Sunday Meditation: Light from Light

From Psalm 36:9.

 

For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.

 

Perhaps that’s a mixed metaphor, fountain and light.  But it’s wonderful.  Think of it as a fountain of light.  But there is more to contemplate there as well.  What other interesting thoughts come to mind from this verse?

Utopia by St. Thomas More, Part 1

We’re reading Sir St. Thomas More’s Utopia.  More speaking in first person, narrates a fictional discussion with a fictional character named Raphael Hythlodaeus.  Raphael tells him of a certain island that has formed a perfect government.  In my edition, the description of Utopia starts on page 45, which a more than a quarter of the way through the entire book.  Here, Raphael is speaking, starting his description:

“The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds.  In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck. For even they themselves could not pass it safe if some marks that are on the coast did not direct their way; and if these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that might come against them, how great soever it were, would be certainly lost. On the other side of the island there are likewise many harbours; and the coast is so fortified, both by nature and art, that a small number of men can hinder the descent of a great army. But they report (and there remains good marks of it to make it credible) that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent. Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and uncivilised inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labour in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it to a speedy conclusion. And his neighbours, who at first laughed at the folly of the undertaking, no sooner saw it brought to perfection than they were struck with admiration and terror.”  [Sir Saint Thomas More. Utopia (p. 45-6). Kypros Press. Kindle Edition.]

The book was originally published in Latin in 1516, when More was thirty-eight years old.  It is interesting and not surprising that so much literature of the time had to do with remote countries and exotic people.  This book was published only twenty-four years from Columbus’ crossing of the Atlantic.  I wonder if More’s book was the first such genre of literature.  An English translation was first published in 1551, some sixteen years after More’s famous beheading.

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Kerstin Commented:

I suppose in those days one could really let the fantasy roam and describe a place that was for all intents and purposes terra incognita.

To me the description of the island serves to point out how inaccessible and remote it is. Only in this isolation a utopian society can emerge.

My Reply:

Good point. I've been trying to see if this genre has a name. I would call it Voyage Literature. Sort of a voyage to a strange and exotic land. As I think of it, this genre has never gone away. It's now voyaging to strange and exotic planets as part of science fiction.

Sunday Meditation: Christ Magnified

From today’s second reading, from Phil 1:20.

Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.

The word “magnify” can be so powerful. I think St. Teresa of Avila will help us understand this meditation.

Personal Note: My Recent Absence

Where do I start?  Thursday, three weeks ago, my mother fell.  For those that don’t know, my mother is eighty-six and less than two months from her next birthday.  You can read a bit about her here.    A good number of posts about my mother have to do with hospitalizations.  This is no different.

How dumb is this.  She was cleaning the oven, put one of those racks inside the oven on the floor, walked away, walked back, and slipped on it.  She fell in her right side.  Luckily she did not hit her head, but still she broke her right kneecap ( fractured patella), and got a deep bruise on her right shoulder, but no tear or break.  She spent a week in the hospital, mostly for rehab.  Luckily also they had room for her at the hospital rehab or she would have had to enter a nursing home.  And wants to do that these days?

She was discharged on the following Thursday with a brace on her leg.  She is allowed to put weight on the leg but not allowed to bend it.  She has trouble lifting her right shoulder.  For a week she had a visiting nurse come to the house and a physical and occupational therapists coming to the house.  That was going well.

Then I had to take my mother to the ER again this Thursday night.  Why is everything happening on Thursdays?  This time it was her stomach.  Everything was repeating and she was belching non-stop and couldn't hold down anything.  After this was going on all day I took her to the ER.  They did an endoscopy and no ulcer or cancer but she does have gastritis, which I guess is the best possible outcome.  She was a little better today but still not good.  Between her knee, her shoulder, her stomach, and a headache on top of it, she is one uncomfortable woman.  She’s also understandably crabby.  It’s a cross I’ve had to carry…lol.

She's always had some gastritis but it may have been inflamed from some of the meds she was taking for the pain.  It may have been my fault.  When she was discharged last week, they had added a stomach acid med (Omeprazole?) but for some reason Medicare didn't cover it.  I didn't realize you could get it off the shelf.  By the time I figured this out almost a week had gone by and perhaps the Tramadol she was taking for pain inflamed her gastritis.  They are giving her a couple of other meds (Protonix and Maalox I think) while she's in the hospital.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon. 

The meds for gastritis have helped but not solved it.  The doctors thought there may be more going on.  Something called Gastroparesis.  It involves the transfer of food from the stomach to the small intestine.  It's when the small intestine doesn't open.  It could be caused as a side effect from some of the meds she already takes.  It didn't turn out to be that. 

By the way, I've heard some big burly guys belch, but they have nothing on my mother.  Her belches are probably the most unfeminine belches I've ever heard...lol.

She finally returned home from the hospital this afternoon, again on a Thursday.  How coincidental.  She was supposed to have been discharged each of the last couple of days but every time she would eat her gastric symptoms would return.  As far as the doctors can tell, it's only gastritis, no ulcer, no cancer.  They wanted her to hold down more food before being discharged.  She was reaching a point where she didn’t think she would survive this or ever return home.  But today was a complete turn.  She was lively and moved around briskly, or as brisk as she could with a brace on her right knee.  She was happy to be home.  She was worried about holding down food but so far so good.

Say a prayer for her continued recovery.

Sunday Meditation: Herod

Edit on 9/13/20: On further thought I’m going to change this to a Sunday meditation for the future.  I think Sunday fits better as a day to meditate since it is supposed to be the day of rest and you can use the entire week to contemplate the sentence.  I’ll change my introduction below accordingly.

I’m going to start a new category for the blog.  A short meditation for one to ponder on for the weekend the day of rest and for the week ahead if it so carries you.  This is different than Faith Filled Friday.  That’s usually a longer piece of writing that is full of thought and ideas.  A Saturday Sunday meditation will be a sentence or less.  Here you can absorb and weigh every single word.  Hopefully the words selected lead you to some new or interesting insight.

I take this first meditation from Mark 6:20, from “The Death of John the Baptist.”

When [Herod] heard [John the Baptist] speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him.

John is excoriating Herod, and yet Herod “liked to listen to him."  Why?

Matthew Monday: Eleventh Birthday

I know I’ve been absent.  The complications of life.  I’ll provide a personal note in a few days.  For now, Matthew had his eleventh birthday last week.  It was simple, just the three of us at home.   A home cooked dinner and a homemade birthday cake and eleven candles.

He’s getting to be such a big boy.  He’s growing too fast.  I want him young forever.