Ford Madox Ford and “The Mystery That Comforteth”: Romance as an Escape from Positivism

Abstract

FORD MADOX FORD AND “THE MYSTERY THAT COMFORTETH”: ROMANCE AS AN ESCAPE FROM POSITIVISM JAMES B. SCOTT Red Deer College JLhat the modern British novel is rooted in the values and literary practice of the Romantic poets has, within the past few decades, become a widely accepted premise. Yet among the pioneers of the new novel form one whose contributions as a “romanticizer” of the novel have often been overlooked is Ford Madox Ford, his role in the development of this form often being over­ shadowed by the work ofhis turn-of-the-century neighbours, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. Ofthe three, Ford was infact the most ardent proselytizer for the new prose aesthetic, one that would serve to sunder the “mind-forg’d manacles” that were so disturbingly symptomatic of an industrialized mass culture. Believing the “nuvvle” of traditional prose writers to be both a consequence and a cause of such manacled thought, Ford endeavoured to establish the romance as the generic basis from which a prose artist could induce in a reader a sharply increased breadth and intensity of conscious­ ness. Although his romances are not his best works, they do exemplify well the extent to which his theory for “the new novel” is explicitly romantic, especially as this term is defined by Frye, Abrams, Bloom, and Langbaum. This theory drove the creation of his more polished novels (as well, I would argue, as those of other early modern writers), but is most evident in three of his romances: Mr. Apollo, Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, and The Young Lovell. As could be expected for someone raised in “a hothouse atmosphere of Pre-Raphaelitism,” Ford lamented the extent to which the dawning of the twentieth century was distinguished by a debilitating emphasis at every social level on logic and highly specialized thinking. To him, such a devel­ opment necessarily resulted from the upsurge in technological developments that virtually demanded that any one mind could address itself only to one field ofstudy; the generalist simply could not be sufficiently knowledgeable to function effectively in any scientific or manufacturing enterprise. A corollary to this, as Ford saw it, was the need for specialized or compartmentalized corporate structures, political systems, and even religious organizations. In The Soul of London, Ford describes “the Modern Spirit . . . [as] great organ­ isations run by men as impersonal as the atoms ofour own frames, noiseless, and to all appearances infallible” (41).1 As a result, the individual within E n g l ish St u d ie s in C a n a d a , x v iii, 3, September 1992 any such structure would find it difficult, if not impossible, to get a broad understanding of the purpose or scope of that structure. And, being aware of his or her status as a functional component within an institution, the individual would feel impelled to accept such circumscription of awareness as a feature of contemporary life. To remedy such narrowness of vision was, Ford contended, the novelist’s mission; as Paul Wiley points out, Ford’s slogan, “The Impression over the Statistic,” gave responsibility to the imag­ inative artist for “present[ing] a unified vision of the world at large” (43). For Ford, “that particular and very frightening Figure in the Carpet, the moral purpose of the universe,” can not be apprehended rationally — only aesthetically (James 45-46). Moreover, Ford felt that throughout the last few decades ofthe nineteenth century his culture had grown increasingly reliant on science to offer rational explanations of phenomena whose nature had previously been inexplicable, so that it seemed as if all phenomena could (and soon would) be described as manifestations of the inviolable laws of Newtonian mechanics, thermody­ namics, and the like. Accordingly, any mode of thinking that lacked either a logical or empirical basis (such as intuition, divination, faith, extra-sensory perception, superstition, communion with non-empirical beings or forces) was coming to be treated as risible. Ford, however, saw any limiting of cere­ bral activity as a lessening of the breadth and intensity of one’s life. This does not mean that he shared Yeats’s beliefin the Sidhe or attended Madame Blavatsky’s séances, but he nonetheless...