THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE FICTION OF FORD MADOX FORD: THEORY AND PRACTICE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY DENNIS BAUMWOLL Norman, Oklahoma 1964 THE FICTION OF FORD MADOX FORD; THEORY AND PRACTICE APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOINLEDGMENT I am especially indebted to Dr. A. J. Fritz, for introducing me to the work of Ford Madox Ford and for the invaluable aid and encouragement he contributed both as friend and as director of this dissertation. ' I am grateful also to Dr. Victoi A. Elconin, Dr. Cal­ vin G. Thayer, Dr. Jack L. Kendall, and Dr. William H. Maehl, Jr., who graciously accepted the burden of serving as a reading committee and from whose teaching and personal friendship I have profited im­ measurably throughout my graduate studies. I l l PREFACE WITH A NOTE ON THE CRITICISM Granville Hicks once described Ford as "a man who has been in the thick of every literary fray and yet is ignored by the lit­ erary historians, a man whose individual books have, as they appear­ ed, been greeted as unusual achievements but whose work as a whole has made little impression on the contemporary mind. In several rather detailed studies of modern literature his neune is not even mentioned, and no one, so far as I know, has ever made an effort to estimate his importance. Everyone knows he exists— it would be rather hard, all things considered, to ignore the fact— but there are few people who could accurately tell you what he has done." 1 2 Hicks wrote those words in 1930» and he repeated them in 1942; there is little in the passage that requires revision to bring it up to date. Despite his own achievements as an author and the almost incalcuable shaping influence he exerted on two generations of writ­ ers, Ford is still neglected by literary historians and is still relatively unknown— even among quite literate people. It is true that during the past two years three full length studies of his ^Granville Hicks, "Ford Madox Ford— A Neglected Contem­ porary," Bookman (N.Ï.), LXXII (December, 1930), 364. 2 Granville Hicks, "Homage to Ford Madox Ford— A Symposium," New Directions. Number 7 (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1942), p. 4WI iv novels with glances at most of his poetry and non-fiction have been published,^ thus satisfying Hicks' implied plea that someone consid­ er Ford's work as a whole. But against that gain we may set the loss since his death in 1939 of Ford's almost monotonously regular output which annually brought his name before the public, at least in the columns of reviewers. Not only did Ford produce more than thirty novels (counting his collaborations), a dozen volumes of verse, some thirty books of non-fiction, and literally innumerable periodical essays but also he founded and edited what were incon­ testably the two most distinguished literary magazines of the first quarter of the century and was connected in one way or another with almost every significant literary figure who lived between I88O and 1939» And now, less than twenty-five years after his death, having mentioned his name, one almost automatically feels compelled to add "modern British novelist , * . editor of the English Review , • , di.ed in 1939," or some such identifying phrase. Even if Ford were not a consummate artist himself (and he was), one would expect literary historians to pounce upon him as a subject simply because of the associations he had. His maternal grandfather was Ford Madox Brown, the Pre-Raphaelite painter; his father, Dr, Franz Hueffer, was for many years the music critic of The T jndon Times and himself a librettist and a considerable scholar; William Rossetti was his uncle by marriage, and Dante Gabriel and ^Richard A, Cassell, Ford Madox Ford; A Study of His Novels (Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins Press, 19^1); John A, Meixner, Ford Madox Ford's Novels (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1962); Paul L, Wiley, Novelist of Three Worlds; Ford Madox Ford (Syracuse, N.Ï,; Syracuse University Press, 1962), Christina thought of him as a "connection." Both his father's and his grandfather's houses were constant gathering places for the Victorian Great, and as a child Ford came into close and constant contact with Swinburne, Buskin, William Morris, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, the fiossettis, the Garnetts, Watts-Dunton; and he at least met Turgenev and Franz Liszt. His associates as a young mem pre­ sent us with an even more impressive panorama. He was on terms of intimacy with Henry James, Stephen Crane, W. H, Hudson, Ezra Found, H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, and, of course, Conrad, with whom he collaborated. And he knew well Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennet, Shaw, Wyndham Lewis, B. B. Cunninghams Graham, D« H. Lawrence, Max Beerbohm, Walter de la Mare, Lady Gregory. After the war new but no less impressive names clus­ tered around Ford; Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Hemingway, Dreiser, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams— to mention considerably more than a few. And almost every one of these writers has gone out of his way at one time or another to pay Ford tribute as writer, critic, editor, or mentor. Still, one adds almost automatically "modern British novelist . died in 1939*" Ford seems to have all of the attributes that would make a man attractive to the literary historian. When we turn, however, L to V. S. Pritchett's The Living Novel, or Arnold Kettle's An Intro- 5 duction to the English Novel.^ or Bichard Church's T ^ Growth of V. S. Pritchett, The living Novel (New York: Beynal & Hitchcock, 1947). 5 Arnold Kettle, M Introduction to the English Novel (2 Vi the English Novel,^ we discover that his name fails even to appear in any one of those "basic texts." William York Tindall in his Foi'ces in Modern British Literature. 1885-1956^ is more generous; he finds it in his heart to give Ford one paragraph and two footnotes. Samuel C. Chew in his section of A Literary History of England dis­ dains to waste any of his text but does mianage one footnote in which he lists a few of Ford's titles and then edifies us with the informa- 0 tion that "his fiction has failed to take a lasting place." Wagen- knecht laments his lack of space but does give Ford a paragraph in the appendix to his Cavalcade of the English Novel— a paragraph in the first sentence of which he informs the world that Ford was the Q son of "a Germeui physician," a fact that would have come as a great surprise had he lived to read of it to Framz X. Hueffer, Ph. D., Gottingen University. Similarly, Joseph Warren Beach, who mentions him several times in connection with Conrad, regrets that he simply does not have space in The Twentieth Century Novel^^ to give Ford the attention he deserves. Ernest A. Baker, although he lists sev- vols; New York: Harper & Brothers, I960). ^Richard Church, The Growth of the English Novel (London : Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1951). 7 William York Tindall, Forces in Modern British Literature. 1885-1956 (New York: Vintage Books, 1956). g Samuel C, Chew, "The Nineteenth Century and After," A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York: Apple- ton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1§48), p. 155J. 9 Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade of the English Novel. 195^ Edition (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1954), p. 554. Joseph Warren Beach, The Twentieth Century Novel (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1932). vii eral of Ford's early novels in both his Guide to the Best Fiction in English (191))^^ and his A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)^ cannot find room for him among the ten volumes of The History of the English Novel, except to identify him as D. H» Lawrence's first pub­ lisher emd as Conrad's collaborator»^^ Brooks emd Wimsatt make a number of passing references to Ford throughout their Literary Criticism; A Short History and credit him and Conrad with develop­ ing the technique of the time-shift,^^ but again there is no extended treatment of him or of his works; and the same is true of William C, Frierson's The English Novel in Transition, 1885-1940»^^ One could extend the list indefinitely. That he has been slighted by literary historians, however, does not mean either that Ford is primarily interesting to us because of his literary friendships or that he has ever lacked champions* The fact is that Ford has always enjoyed what has been termed a "sub­ terranean reputation," and this chiefly among other creative writers. Conrad, of course, had a great admiration for him and his work; H. G. Wells thought him "too much neglected"^^ and hailed The Good Soldier ^^Ernest A. Baker, Guide to the Best Fiction in English (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913)i pp« 211, 27^^75. 12 Ernest A. Baker, A Guide to Historical Fiction (London; George Boutledge & Sons, Ltd., 191477 pp. 41, 42, 39, ll8 , 172, 215. 13 ^Ernest A. Baker, The History of the English Novel (10 vols; London; H. F. & G. Witherby, 1924-193977 14 William E. Wimsatt, Jr. and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criti­ cism: A Short History (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 685. 15 ^William C, Frierson, T ^ English Novel in Transition. I885- 1940 (Norman, Okla.; University of Oklahoma Press, 1942). ^^H. G, Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (New York; The viii 17 as a great book; Galsworthy always thought him a great writer.