No More Parades (novel)
.jpg) |
|
| Author | Ford Madox Ford |
|---|---|
| Series | Parade's End |
| Publisher | A. & C. Boni |
|
Publication date
|
1925 |
| Pages | 309 pp. |
| OCLC | 681214 |
| Preceded by | Some Do Not … |
| Followed by | A Man Could Stand Up — |
No More Parades is the second novel of Ford Madox Ford's highly regarded tetralogy about the First World War, Parade's End. It was published in 1925, and was extraordinarily well-reviewed.
Part I deals, primarily, with Captain Christopher Tietjens at work.
I.i. The novel opens with Captain Christopher Tietjens, ably helped by Sergeant-Major Cowley, trying to move a draft of 2,994 troops, among them a contingent of Canadian railway workers, from a base camp in Rouen to the trenches at the front. His efforts are blocked by having orders given and then countermanded; by having inadequate supplies for these troops from a quartermaster who profits by holding them back; by contending with a French railway strike meant to prevent the withdrawal of British troops from the front but which also prevents them from being sent to the front; and by fighting the interference of the British Garrison Police, who constantly harass the Canadian volunteers whom they willfully and mistakenly take for conscripts. Moreover, General Lord Edward Campion, Tietjens’ godfather, has assigned to his godson’s staff the shell-shocked and intermittently mad, though highly decorated, Captain McKechnie, a classical scholar and proud of it. He has just returned from divorce-leave without getting a divorce. All this while Tietjens’ hut is being shelled by the Germans, whose shrapnel kills O Nine Morgan. He bleeds to death in Tietjens’ arms—Morgan a Welsh soldier whom Tietjens had declined leave to settle matters with his unfaithful wife in Pontardulais because he would have been beaten to death there by her lover, Red Evans Williams, a prize-fighter.
I.ii. The ‘All-clear’ signal is sounded: the German attack is over. Morgan’s and McKechnie’s marital troubles trigger Tietjens’ brooding on his own as he recalls his ‘excruciatingly unfaithful’ wife, Sylvia. Tietjens tries to distract McKechnie and steady his own mind by writing a sonnet for McKechnie to translate into Latin. While composing the sonnet, Tietjens attends to the problems of his draft, helping the soldiers to write their wills among other things. In the midst of intense occupation with these matters, Colonel Stanley Levin from General Campion’s staff arrives and insists on speaking privately to Tietjens, who presumes, incorrectly, that Levin wants his advice on the problems he is having with his fiancée, Mlle de Bailly, and her family. But he actually wants to talk to Tietjens about another woman altogether—one who is waiting in the general’s car to see the captain. Thoughts about Levin’s fiancée lead Tietjens to thoughts about Valentine Wannop, whom he loves totally but neglects completely, refusing to write to her while married to Sylvia. But when a Canadian soldier requests two hours leave to visit with his mother who has come to Rouen, Tietjens thinks of having two such hours with Valentine. Consequently, military work that urgently needs doing is interfered with by forces both personal and impersonal. This becomes more urgently the case when Levin tells Tietjens that the woman in the general’s car who is waiting to see him is Sylvia herself, who has pursued him across the Channel without passport or papers.
...
Wikipedia