Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (353 page)

“Cousin,” Mr. Bettesworth said, and for the first time he smiled, “is there any stone that you have left unturned?”

“Very few,” she answered. “So that if you will marry me within the half-hour, and Mr. Williams is very ready to perform this formality, I do not see why my coach should not be stored, a sufficiency of clothes in our trunks, and the servants ready to take the road by midnight.”

Mr. Bettesworth exclaimed, “In half an hour!”

A look of incredulity appeared upon his face, but he remembered himself sufficiently to clasp his hands in rapture.

“Why,” she said, “the marriage should come before the preparations for the journey; and if we must travel together it is better that, as against evil tongues, we should be first married. That you should go to London alone I am very unwilling, for how should you find Celia there if I be not there to guide you? and, in short—”

“Polly,” he interrupted her, “what could I have to urge against it?”

“My friend,” Lady Eshetsford said, “this appears to me hardly so much the moment of romantic heroics. More by token that the less we indulge in them now the more there shall remain for the time to come which is always good. But the point that I would ascertain of you is whether a marriage by this Mr. Williams should be a good marriage, for though I do not at all think you would trick me, yet very much attaches to it, and if there is any doubt it would be better to send to the parsonage, though I understand that Parson Blore is usually drunk at this hour?”

Mr. Bettesworth wrinkled his brows. “Why,” he said, “I think that of that there can be no doubt, for Mr. Williams is in Holy Orders; and, for the matter of that, I have seen his papers; and although the doctrines which he had may hereafter prove heretical, yet until parsons and the like are unfrocked such marriages as they make are marriages. For the principle of the law of England as regards the estate of wedlock—”

“Your Worship,” Lady Eshetsford said, “then be it Mr. Williams.”

She approached the little picture by Pompeo Cibboni, that stood upon the easel behind the candle, and having removed it she set it carefully into the recess of Mr. Bettesworth’s chair; then she set the legs of the easel wider apart, doing it in an engrossed manner that checked any questions upon his lips.

“If you will wait here,” she said, “for so long as to give Mr. Williams time to put on a cassock which he has borrowed from Parson Blore, I will be with you again.”

She was away for a full twenty minutes, during all which Mr. Bettesworth sat motionless before the fire. He snuffed the candles once, but otherwise he might as well have been carved out of wax. He felt singularly little of elation; but, upon the other hand, along with the sense of entire tranquillity he had that of presenting to the world an extremely fine figure. He seemed, in fact, to himself to be almost as perfect, to be almost as semi-divine as he had ever dreamed of being; at the same time it was as if his heart had forgotten to beat, and he had no desire to make any motions of his limbs at all. He was, in short, Mr. Bettesworth, and that was all there was to it.

He was aware at last that in the gloom next the door Lady Eshetsford was leading in a square white object. A little later he perceived that this moved upon the two legs of Mr. Williams. Lady Eshetsford was carrying the clergyman’s large Prayer-book, and she had him by the elbows to direct him, since his face and the greater part of his body were hidden by his burden. Mr. Bettesworth understood nothing, nor did he make any effort to understand. He imagined that her ladyship might have been leading in some sort of portable altar, something connected with the Church, of which he knew little and cared less. They passed indeed very close to him, so that he had to step a little on one side. At last, under the guidance of Lady Eshetsford, Mr. Williams set down his unwieldy burden upon the easel that had held the Pompeo; Mr. Bettesworth perceived that obviously it was a picture covered by a white cloth. This caused him a minute dissatisfaction, for he had been accustomed to regard the “Rape of Ganymede” as his choicest cabinet picture. Moreover, Mr. Williams’ face was exceedingly flushed, and his band was to one side, matters which appeared to Mr. Bettesworth to be wanting in formality and respect; whilst upon the skirt of his own coat, at the moment when he was to say “I will,” he observed four specks of snuff; these he considered must have been left there by the Signora Poppæa, who, he remembered, had taken snuff twice whilst she had been with him that evening.

The candles shone, the flames on the hearth rustled, Mr. Williams read the marriage service, but because he was very shortsighted, and he had lost his spectacles during their Odyssey, his nose travelled along the lines of his Prayer-book and they heard almost none of his words. Lady Eshetsford stood with the negligent inattention that it was proper to bestow upon parsons; and when, having finished the service, Mr. Williams erected his head, and with a fanatic lustre beginning to illuminate his black eyes, said that the present was an opportunity upon which he might well indulge himself with a few words, Lady Eshetsford took him up sharply.

“Mr. Williams,” she said, “these doctrines may be very well for the lower orders, and I make no doubt that they are — nay, I wish you every prosperity — but we have very little time to waste, and we are persons of good conscience and well assured of our own minds; preaching to us would make us no better nor worse.”

Mr. Williams looked with an affecting timidity at the face of Mr. Bettesworth. “Oh, Mr. Williams, you need not doubt that Mr. Bettesworth in all that is proper will perform his promises to you; nay, he has every reason to regard you with gratitude, and I for him. So that if I should find him inclined to be remiss in them I would myself hold him to it; but you must see that where matters of importance are on foot such things as orthodoxy and heterodoxy must stand aside. Nevertheless, as a token of the favour that I hold you in I will give you the privilege that I would grant to but few other men, since it is hardly fitting that you should take that of being the first to kiss the bride, which most country parsons claim, but I will allow you to unveil for me that picture upon the easel!”

To remove the draperies upon the picture Mr. Williams must go behind the easel, so that for the time he disappeared. At his operations the cloths appeared slowly to unsettle themselves, there appeared the shoulder of the gilded frame; the edge of the cloth seemed to crawl along by inches, then suddenly it dropped all down.

Mr. Bettesworth’s body inclined itself forward; in spite of him his two hands came up in an attitude of discovery. A maiden was sitting at the foot of a tree; her dress was of greyish-white sprigged with pink silk in lines; a great hat hung from her left arm by a broad pink ribbon. At her feet lay a little frail in the shape of a cream-jug; all round her was massed brownish foliage of the colour of soup; and upon her figure fell, from nowhere in particular, a single ray of light. Beneath the picture the candles threw their light upwards, and as they still waved in the draught of air made by the fall of the cloth the figure wavered and appeared alive.

Mr. Bettesworth’s jaw remained hanging down, his eyebrows arched themselves into an entire incredulity. Mr. Williams emerged from behind the easel and looked up at the picture mystically, whilst he bent down to pick up from the floor the fallen white cloths.

“This picture, Mr. Williams,” Lady Eshetsford said, “is the famous one of ‘Celia in her Arbour,’ which Sir Francis Dashwood was gallant enough to sell to me six days ago.”

Mr. Williams straightened himself, the cloths trailing from his hand.

“Madam,” he said, “‘tis a very excellent portrait of your ladyship; yet I wonder that the great of this world have so much time to bestow upon vanities thus idle.”

“Mr. Williams,” Lady Eshetsford said, “if you will write your very excellent lessons down in a book you may set me down at the head of your list of subscribers, but in the meantime, whilst giving you all my thanks, I beg that you will carry these cloths to Mrs. Jakins the housekeeper.”

Mr. Bettesworth recoiled a full three paces from his wife.

“So that you,” he said, “are Celia?”

“Why,” she answered, “is it then so great a disappointment that your fine eyes have not captivated a Celia that is another.”

“But if I have not done that,” Mr. Bettesworth said, “then I have achieved nothing, for sure it was only because there seemed to be another Celia who was ready to surrender to me, that either by good fortune or by my proper parts I should have made a conquest and achieved a victory.”

“Nevertheless,” Lady Eshetsford said, “you will be the most heroical figure in London in four days’ time, for will you not have found, fetched, housed, wedded, and led to a dinner of the Dilettante Society, Celia who has come out of her arbour? Sure you will be the talk of the Town, and may for nine days or so hold your head higher in every assembly than the victor of Ramillies.”

“But I,” Mr. Bettesworth insisted; “you have played with me as if I were a fish upon a hair-line, and here I am.”

“Oh, my friend,” Lady Eshetsford said, “take your laurels and wear them, and do not inquire too closely what hand holds the knife that cut them, for I think most great victories are like this, and most great victors, if you could search their hearts are much as you are; for it is nine parts fortune and one of merit, and so the world goes on.”

This obscure novel – one of the scarcest of Ford’s works to survive in book form – was written at a difficult period of the author’s life, having recently been displaced as editor of
The Fortnightly Review
.
 
The novel verges on the experimental, hinting at what would become known as Ford’s impressionistic work in his mature years.
 
The Simple Life Limited
(1911) is a satire on Utopian lifestyles, focussing on characters that corrupt the ideals of the simple-life movement for their own gain. The novel presents caricatures of literary figures that Ford had been associated with, while he had been living a ‘simple life’ himself on Pent Farm, Kent and Limpsfield, Surrey. These figures included anarchists and proto-socialists such as Kropotkin, Edward Pease and the Garnetts. Writing at the expense of many of his former friends, it will come as no surprise that Ford chose to write the novel under the pseudonym Daniel Chaucer, which he continued to use for
The New Humpty-Dumpty
.

The straight-forward plot of the novel revolves around the lives of a group of ‘Simple-Lifers’ that are led by the charismatic Simon Bransdon, a clear parody of Joseph Conrad, who resides on land belonging to a Tory squire. They adhere to alternative pursuits such as vegetarianism, abstemiousness, weaving, maypole dancing and homeopathy, whilst investigating paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and thought transference. Nevertheless, this idyllic existence is threatened when one of the more enthusiastic supporters leaves the colony for university, returning later as a critic of the leader’s actions.

Pent Farm, Postling, Kent — Joseph Conrad’s home from 1898 to 1907.
 
After staying here, Ford was inspired to caricaturise Conrad’s ‘simple life’ in his novel.