364. Some Do Not... - Part Two

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Part Two

P166 [Sylvia] She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honorable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumors? It made you suspect that honor had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye. . . . 

So this brings up another aspect of this story that I intend to keep an eye on, the Stoic perspective. Christopher is for all intents and purposes the Stoic Job. Entirely honorable and yet everyone suspects him of every kind of dishonor. And he responds in good Stoic fashion by simply keeping on keeping on.

P173 [Sylvia to Christopher] “...But, oh, Christopher Tietjens, have you ever considered how foully you’ve used me!”

Tietjens looked at her attentively, as if with magpie anguish. [??]

“If,” Sylvia went on with her denunciation, “you had once in our lives said to me: ‘You whore! You bitch! You killed my mother. May you rot in hell for it. . . .’ If you’d only once said something like it . . . about the child! About Perowne! . . . you might have done something to bring us together. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“That’s, of course, true!”

“I know,” Sylvia said, “you can’t help it. . . . But when, in your famous country family pride -- though a youngest son! -- you say to yourself: And I daresay if . . . Of, Christ! . . . you’re shot in the trenches you’ll say it . . . oh, between the saddle and the ground! That you never did a dishonourable action. . . . And, mind you, I believe that no other man save one [Christ, presumably] ever had more right to say it than you. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“You believe that!”

P173 “As I hope to stand before my Redeemer,” Sylvia said, “I believe it. . . . But, in the name of the Almighty, how could any woman live beside you . . . and be for ever forgiven? Or no: not forgiven; ignored! . . . Well, be proud when you die because of your honor. But, God, you be humble about . . . your errors in judgement. You know what it is to ride a horse miles with too tight a curb-chain and it’s tongue cut almost in half. . . . You remember the groom your father had who had the trick of turning the hunters out like that. . . . And you horse-whipped him, and you’ve told me you’ve almost cried ever so often afterwards for thinking of that mare’s mouth. . . Well! Think of this mare’s mouth sometimes! You’ve ridden me like that for seven years. . . .”
...

“Don’t you know, Christopher Tietjens, that there is only one man from whom a woman could take ‘Neither I condemn thee’ and not hate him more than she hates the fiend! . . .”

So this is where I got the horse idea. I should have known if was from Ford.

Next Sylvia is talking about how Christopher should “sleep with the Wannop girl to-night; you’re going out to be killed to-morrow.”

“...I’ve been a wicked woman. I have ruined you. I am not going to listen to you.”

He said:
P174 “I daresay you have ruined me. That’s nothing to me. I am completely indifferent.”
...

“I don’t care. I can’t help it. Those are -- those should be -- the conditions of life amongst decent people...”
...

Now we come to the bit about the Groby curse and the heir of Groby which I must include.

P175 Sylvia said:
“You mean that I may bring the child up as a Catholic.”

Tietjens said:
“A Roman Catholic. . . . You’ll teach him, please, to use that term before myself if I ever see him again. . . .”

Sylvia said:
“Oh, I thank God that he has softened your heart. This will take the curse off this house.”

Tietjens shook his head:
“I think not,” he said, “off  you, perhaps. Off Groby very likely. It was, perhaps, time that there should be a Papist owner of Groby again...”
...

P176 “...I fought your influence because it was Papist, while I was a whole man. But I’m not a whole man any more, and the evil eye that is on me might transfer itself to him.”

He stopped and said:
“For I must to the greenwood go. Alone a banished man. . . . But have him well protected against the evil eye. . . .”
...

178 [Sylvia] “...Your father died of a broken heart,” she said, “because your brother’s best friend, Ruggles, told him you were a squit who lived on women’s money and had got the daughter of his oldest friend with child. . . .”

Tietjens said:
“Oh! Ah! Yes! . . . I suspected that. I knew it, really. I suppose the poor dear knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn’t. . . . It doesn’t matter.”

II

This is one of the sections that are slowly built up to where everything finally happens. Strangely though, there’s nothing I feel I need to quote.

But I did have an irresistible thought while reading this again. Keep in mind that I now have both the book and the Tom Stoppard miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch in my head as I read. At the climax of this scene after Christopher has been ruined by Brownie, a banker in love with Sylvia, he goes from being overdrawn for a matter of hours the previous day to having Sylvia being thwarted at depositing a thousand pounds into his account, his brother Mark offering him a thousand pounds a year, and finally Lord Port Scatho, Brownie’s uncle and the head of the bank, saying Christopher can draw on his personal account. 

So it seems to me that they could have done one take of this scene in which Cumberbatch reacts to all this by yelling “I’m rich!” and running out of the room. Then one take of the subsequent scene with Mark and Valentine could be shot with Cumberbatch holding bags of candy and with chocolate smeared on his face. If nothing else it would be the hit of the blooper reel.

363. Some Do Not... Part One cont.

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Some Do Not... 

V

We get Mrs Duchemin and Valentine in conversation before the “breakfast.”

P 81 Miss Wannop said:
“Wait a minute. I haven’t finished. I want to say this: I never talk about that stage of my career [when she was in service after her father died] because I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed of it because I think I did the wrong thing, not for any other reason. I did it on impulse and I stuck to it out of obstinacy. I mean it would probably have been more sensible to go round with the hat to benevolent people, for the keep of mother and to complete my education. But if I’ve inherited the Wannop ill-luck, we’ve inherited the Wannop pride. And I couldn’t do it...”

Couldn’t this be said of Christopher as well? About the pride?

P83 “...I could harangue the whole crowd when I got them together. But speak to one man in cold blood I couldn’t. . . . Of course I did speak to a fat golfing idiot with bulging eyes, to get him to save Gertie. But that was different.”

Great way to have the love interest describe her future mate.

...

“Oh, the right man!”Miss Wannop said. “Thanks for tactfully changing the subject. The right man for me, when he comes along, will be a married man. That’s the Wannop luck!”

Christopher, upon first properly seeing Valentine at breakfast, and after having learned the evening before that half the world thinks her his mistress.

P88 “By Jove . . .” he said to himself: “It’s true! What a jolly little mistress she’d make!”
...

...He looked back at Miss Wannop [after dismissing Mrs Duchemin], and considered that she would make a good wife for Macmaster; Macmaster liked bouncing girls and this girl was quite lady enough.

What’s funny about this is that Macmaster, when first meeting Mrs Duchemin, was pairing her with Christopher. 

I don’t quite understand Mrs Duchemin’s instant antipathy towards Christopher. It’s important for the plot of the story, but you’d think a person would tend to make allowances for the best friend of the person they’re falling in love with.

VI

This is the part I’ve been waiting for.

P109 [Mrs Wannop to Christopher] “My dear boy!” she said, “My dear boy; it’s such a satisfaction to have you under my roof!” [They are in fact on the road to her house.]

The black horse reared on end, the patriarch [I have no idea. A type of bit?] sawing at its mouth. Mrs. Wannop said unconcernedly: “Stephen Joel! I haven’t done talking.”

Tietjens was gazing enraged at the lower part of the horse’s sweat-smeared stomach.

“You soon will have,” he said, “with the girth in that state. Your neck will be broken soon.”
..

P110 Tietjens addressed the driver with some ferocity:

“Here; get down, you,” he said. He held himself the head of the horse whose nostrils were wide with emotion; it rubbed its forehead almost immediately against his chest. He said: “Yes! Yes! There! There!” It’s limbs lost their tauntness. The aged driver scrambled down from the high seat... Tietjens fired indignant orders at him:

“Lead the horse into the shade of the tree. Don’t touch his bit: his mouth’s sore... blast you, don’t you see you’ve got a thirteen hands pony’s harness for a sixteen and a half hands horse. Let the bit out three holes: it’s cutting the animal’s tongue in half...”

“Loosen that bit, confound you,” he said to the driver. “Ah! You’re afraid.”

He loosened the bit himself, covering his fingers with greasy harness polish which he hated...

... He stood back and looked at the horse: it had dropped its head and lifted its near hind foot, resting the toe on the ground: an attitude of relaxation.

“He’ll stand now!” he said. He undid the girth, bending down uncomfortably, perspiring and greasy; the girth strap parted in his hand.
...

P112 ...This fellow hasn’t been swindling you. He’s got you deuced good value for money, but he doesn’t know what’s suited for ladies; a white pony and a basket-work chaise is what you want.”
“Oh, I like a bit of spirit,” Mrs Wannop said.
“Of course you do,” Tietjens answered: “but this turn-out’s too much.”
...

[To the driver] ...”You did damn well. Only you’re not what you were, are you, at thirty? And the horse looked to be a devil and the cart so high you couldn’t get out once you were in. And you kept it in the sun for two hours waiting for your mistress.”

“There wer’ a bit o’ lewth ‘longside stable wall,” the driver muttered.

“Well! He didn’t like waiting,”...

P112 Tietjens addressed Miss Wannop:
“What hands your mother’s got.” he said, “it isn’t often one sees a woman with hands like that of a horse’s mouth...”

“I suppose you think that’s a mighty fine performance,” she said. 

“I didn’t make a very good job of the girth,” he said. “Let’s get off this road.”

“Setting poor, weak women in their places,” Miss Wannop continued. “Soothing the horse like a man with a charm. I suppose you soothe women like that too. I pity your wife. . . . The English country male! And making a devoted vassal at sight of the handy-man, The feudal system all complete. . .”
...

...”I’m sorry I was rude to you. But it is irritating to have to stand like a stuffed rabbit while a man is acting like a regular Admirable Crichton, and cool and collected, with the English country gentleman air and all.”

Tietjens winced, The young woman had come a little too near the knuckle of his wife’s frequent denunciations of himself. And she exclaimed:

“No! That’s not fair!I’m an ungrateful pig! You didn’t show a bit more side really than a capable workman must who’s doing his job in the midst of a crowd of duffers...”

So. There will be more, much more, but here we have Christopher and horses vs Christopher and women. He sees horses and knows how to care for them. And his line about this being too much horse for their needs applies to Sylvia and himself. What he needs is what he says Mrs Wannop needs, a “white pony.” In other words Valentine.

So we are at the point in this story where in Pride and Prejudice we first see that Darcy and Elizabeth are made for each other. Or maybe we are at the point where Darcy realizes this but is so struggling with his pride that he can only offend Elizabeth. Alas, I don’t think Valentine ever does see Groby.

VII

P124 Jumping down from the high step of the dog-cart the girl completely disappeared into the silver... she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow... Here there had been nothing.

The constation interested him...  


P125 He would have asked: “Are you all right?” but to express more concern than the “look out.” which he had expended already, would have detracted from his stolidity. He was Yorkshire and stolid; she south country and soft, emotional, given to such ejaculations as “I hope you’re not hurt,” when the Yorkshireman only grunts...

He returned to his constations of the concealing effect of water vapour...

P142 [Christopher to Campion after Campion’s car has injured the horse in the fog] “Go away,” he said, “say what you like. Do what you like! But as you go through Rye send up the horse-ambulance from the vet.’s. Don’t forget that. I’m going to save this horse. . . .”

“You know Chris,” the General said, “you’re the most wonderful hand with a horse . . . There isn’t another man in England . . .”

“I know it,” Tietjens said. “Go away. And send up that ambulance...”


Day 83 of the pandemic 

I haven’t written for a while. Chaotic times. Now the pandemic has been pushed aside by another Black Lives Matter moment. It does surprise me that Minneapolis is so often behind these episodes. It could be anywhere, given the racism in America, so I guess Minnesota is as good a trigger point as any. I have friends in the neighborhood where Mr Floyd was murdered so I've been following events as well as I can at this remove.

At any rate, the protests are still going on here and around the country, though the looting seems to have stopped locally. The shopping district below me was hard hit and I lost my drugstore. But here on the hill the only change has been more windows boarded up, just as the plywood was starting to come down for the pandemic. We have been stuck at 43 deaths from COVID-19 for quite some time now -- which is good. But the expectation is that the numbers may start going up as a result of the crowding at protests. We shall see. 

I’ve now made two attempts to buy better face masks online and have nothing to show for it. One online vendor’s system died even before we got to the credit card information. The other seemed to work, but I canceled the purchase after a couple weeks passed with no goods and no response to my inquiries. This isn’t a problem now but it may become a problem when things start to open up again, possibly later this month.

In other pandemic news, the big three when it comes to daily deaths are now the USA, Brasil, and Mexico. The published numbers for several countries are rather suspicious. Mexico has a surprisingly low number of cases for the death rate, no doubt because they aren’t doing much testing. Russia has a huge number of cases but few deaths, I imagine a comparison of year to year deaths will tell a different tale. The USA is up to 111,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and still going strong at around a thousand a day. 250,000 before the election still looks like a reasonable number.

362. Some Do Not. . . - Introduction, Part One

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Parade’s End

by Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928

Introduction by Robie Macauley

I had to go to Wiki to learn who Robie Macauley was. 


An interesting life. He was responsible for the great writing I enjoyed in Playboy back in the ‘60s and then went to Houghton Mifflin when I was in the retail book business. But as much as I would like to praise him here, I can’t really say much for his introduction. I’m sure it is fine and probably contains insights I’m overlooking, but he doesn’t help me understand the political or religious aspects of the work. Like what Ford means by “Tory” and to what extent Chrisopher is a Protestant Christ figure. And Macauley may be a generation too late to grasp the significance of horses in the work, especially with regard to Sylvia and Valentine. This reading, we will see if that insight really holds up.

Interesting to note that the last volume of In Search of Lost Time was published before the last volume of Parade's End. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Some Do Not. . .

by Ford Madox Ford


Part One

P10 The hansom ran through nearly empty streets, it being very early for the public official quarters. The hoofs of the horse clattered precipitately. Tietjens preferred a hansom, horses being made for gentlefolk...
...

P11 When he paid the cabman, in front of a grey cement portal with a gabled arch, reaching up, he said:

‘You’ve been giving the mare less licorice in her mash. I told you she’d go better.’

P12 “The cabman, sith a scarlet, varnished face, a shiny hat, a drab box-cloth coat and a gardenia in his buttonhole, said:
‘Ah! Trust you to remember , sir.’

P14 ...he [Macmaster] hadn’t got over that morning. He had looked up from his coffee cup -- over the rim -- and had taken in a blue-grey sheet of notepaper in Tietjen’s fingers [the letter from Sylvia asking to be taken back], shaking, inscribed in the large broad-nibbed writing of that detestable harridan. And Tietjens had been staring -- staring with the intentness of a maddened horse -- at his, Macmaster’s, face...

P15 He could still feel the blow, physical, in the pit of his stomach! He had thought Tietjens was going mad: that he was mad. It had passed. Tietjens had assumed the mask of his indolent, insolent self...

II

Here we are introduced to Sylvia’s mother, Mrs Satterthwaite, and Father Consett and we first meet Sylvia. Sylvia is presented as utterly hateful but not all that different from her mother when it comes to men. But there’s nothing here about horses so I’m not going to bother quoting... but this would be a good section to reread after finishing the work as there is a huge amount of foreshadowing.

III

Had forgotten that Christopher and I share a dislike for the game of golf.

IV


This is where we learn that everyone already believes Christopher is cheating on Sylvia with Valentine, even though they hadn’t yet met. Since I read that Ford was a fan of Jane Austen, I now see in this the seeming inevitability in many of Austen’s novels. The couples are usually obvious, the question is how will it come about. (I was only able to finish Mansfield Park because I couldn’t see how it was going to end, not realizing how different attitudes were back then towards first cousins marrying.) The difference here is the problem is entirely Christopher's. Or Christopher. It could all be resolved in a chapter or two if Christopher weren’t so much who he is. It’s really a wonder that Valentine doesn’t end up hating him as much as Sylvia does.

106. Cincinnati and Traveler

Previous - 105. Tower of Power

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Absalom

p269 ...though nobody ever did know if Bon ever knew Sutpen was his father or not, whether he was trying to revenge his mother or not at first and only later fell in love, only later succumbed to the current of retribution and fatality which Miss Rosa said Sutpen had started and had doomed all his blood to, black and white both... the next Christmas came and Henry and Bon came to Sutpen's Hundred again and now Sutpen saw there was no help for it, that Judith was in love with Bon and whether Bon wanted revenge or was just caught and sunk and doomed too, it was all the same....

I am so ashamed. Here's a lesson I thought I had learned from reading Parade's End and yet I had forgotten it until now. The lesson was to really pay attention to horses when they are described in any detail in books set before the automobile became the dominant means of transport. The horse Sutpen rides into this novel on is described as roan. Here is the definition for "roan horse:" "Roan is a horse coat color pattern characterized by an even mixture of colored and white hairs on the body, while the head and "points"—lower legs, mane and tail—are mostly solid-colored. Horses with roan coats have white hairs evenly intermingled throughout any other color." 

In the section of the book I'm reading now, when Sutpen returns to Jefferson -- with the headstones --during the war we are repeatedly told Sutpen is riding a black stallion. (An odd choice for a war horse, I believe.) 

p277 ... [Quentin] Am I going to have to have to hear it all again he thought I am going to have to hear it all over again I am already hearing it all over again I am listening to it all over again I shall have to never listen to anything else but this again forever so apparently not only a man never outlives his father but not even his friends and acquaintances do.... 

I can't tell if that "to have to have" is a typo or not. 

And so we come to the retelling of Sutpen's second reverse in the battle between men and women. When Rosa reacts as anyone else would have known she would. While I don't really follow how Charles Bon was played into his part in this tragedy -- or how he himself could have known how to position himself, the situation with Rosa is simple enough. But what is the significance of Sutpen's relationship with women generally? I don't see that gender played any part in the story of either Race or Class in the South, aside from the usual desire on the part of women to support what ever side they happen to fall into. I'm clearly missing something here.

p286 Sutpen's black stallion and the mare produce a male foal, a horse "...the spit and image of his daddy when I rode him North in '61...." And Milly, Wash's granddaughter, I presume, gave birth to what? "horse or mare?" Shreve suggests a son, which makes no sense. 

p290 ...[Wash Jones, according to Quentin's father] 'Brave! Better if narra one of them had ever rid back in '65' thinking Better if his kind an mine too had never drawn the breath of life on this earth. Better that all who remain of us be blasted from the face of it than that another Wash Jones should see his whole life shredded from him and shrivel away like a dried shuck thrown onto the fire... And Wash slaughters his own granddaughter and great granddaughter -- well at least that it was a mare makes more sense, if that's the word I want here. And so it does come down to the boy-symbol after all.

Rare books

Two of the oddest -- and also most interesting -- works in my library are a self-published account of the beginning of the Pacific War in the Philippines -- by a U.S. Army doctor who had moved to Manila Bay a bit before the Japanese invasion, given to me by a friend whose family had been neighbors of the man after the war. (He survived the Bataan Death March and all the years of captivity.) And a multi-volume history of the American Civil War first published in 1911 that some friends gave me for Christmas one year. (The Photographic History of the Civil War the Blue and Gray Press) One of the more curious features of this latter work is the section on war horses of famous generals. Really, it's about famous horses because it seems that people during and after the war were interested in these horses. They would have had their own Twitter accounts. 

Chapter 11, "Famous Chargers", includes photos and bios of many of the horses. Grant, for example had at least three mounts at the end of the war including the most famous "Cincinnati." Even Lee had other horses in addition to "Traveler." It appears that most of these mounts were geldings though at least one of Grant's was indeed a stallion. 

Here's a passage about General Meade's horse, "Baldy," that is worth quoting, 

...He was wounded twice at the first battle of Bull Run, before he came into General Meade's possession. Left on the field for dead at Antietam, he was later discovered quietly grazing, with a deep wound in his neck. Again, at Gettysburg, a bullet lodged between his ribs and rendered him unable to carry his owner again until after Appomattox. "Baldy" was a bright bay horse, with white face and feet. This bullet-scarred veteran followed General Meade's hearse to his last resting-place in 1872, and survived him by a decade....

Entropy

I'm having a problem understanding the concept of entropy. But I've come up with a metaphor that I think might work for me. Still not sure. My idea is to apply entropy to military science.

A classical army -- in theory -- was directed by a commander and everyone did what that commander directed. But as the size of armies increased it was necessary to divide the total force into divisions, each with a sub-commander following the overall direction of the commander. As this process continued, it became more and more complex with lower level leaders (centurions, for example) in place to keep each component of the force in order.

As armies grew to much larger size in the Modern period, armies were divided into corps which were in affect armies in their own right, but following the direction of the army commander through the work of the chief of staff. This level of complexity increased yet again during the Great War when nations fielded army groups instead of individual armies.

Then, in response to the stalemate on the Western Front (resulting from the maturation of industrialized warfare with machine guns and advanced artillery and explosives) new infantry tactics evolved requiring a more complex command structure at the lowest levels, with captains, lieutenants, and even sargents playing a crucial role in directing field movements.

Today, the increasing role of elite (or special) forces approaches the point where each individual soldier plays a role in the direction of the force. (This trend is magnified by a technological trend to connect individual fighting vehicles, aircraft, and even individual soldiers into a distributed communications network where they all share data and where decisions may either be made by any individual or, alternatively, by staff or even political officials far away but linked into the same network.)

To summarize, military decision processes have gotten more and more complex and it's hard to see how they will ever get simpler. So ever increasing levels of entropy.

Here's something from Wiki that makes me feel a little better,

This implies that there is a function of state which is conserved over a complete cycle of the Carnot cycle. Clausius called this state function entropy. One can see that entropy was discovered through mathematics rather than through laboratory results. It is a mathematical construct and has no easy physical analogy. This makes the concept somewhat obscure or abstract, akin to how the concept of energy arose.

If, on the other hand, you think of a military force -- call it an army -- in the same way you think of a heat engine, the military potential of the army should drop as it is warn down over time by casualties and illness and simply the friction of use. This would seem, intuitively, to be true, but is not an invariable law. I've written before how the "military potential" of Caesar's legions or "Stonewall" Jackson's corp tended to increase even as their numbers and condition dropped. Instead of being expended, they turned into a more experienced, more cohesive force that larger, less experienced units could not resist.

And it occurs to me that, in this respect, a military unit is a bit like a steel sword blade. It's almost as if the energy -- in the form of heat and hammer blows -- that goes into the creation of the blade is conserved. The more "work" that goes into either forming the blade or training the unit, the greater potential each has. I suppose education works the same way, at least in theory. Though, interestingly, the potential of physicists, if you judge by their Nobel worthy production, does seem to drop over time -- as in a heat engine -- rather than increasing as with a military unit or a sword. At least in this metaphorical sense, entropy can either increase or decrease (in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics) depending on the circumstances.

I should be adding really confusing notes to Wiki science entries. It would be like an entirely new form of trolling.

Next - 107. More social contract