Man in Trench, William Orpen © IWM (Art.IWM ART 3030) |
“But I think that, in these sad days and years, we have got to believe in a Heaven….”
--Ford Madox Hueffer, 1918 (“Preface,” On Heaven and Other Poems).
On August 23,
1916, Ford Madox Hueffer (who would in 1919 change his name to Ford Madox Ford, disavowing his German father’s surname, because it was, well, too German) wrote
a letter home. He described his experience
of the Western Front as “a dreamy sort of
life in a grey green country & even the shells as they set out on their
long journeys seem tired. It is rather
curious, the extra senses one develops here. I sit writing in the twilight
&, even as I write, I hear the shells whine.”
Two weeks later,
on September 7, 1916, the 42-year-old British 2nd lieutenant wrote the
poem “Albade.” The title refers to an early morning love song, specifically a love
ballad sung from a window or doorway to a sleeping woman.
The little girls
are singing, "Rin! Ron! Rin!"
The matin bell
is ringing "Din! Don! Din!"
Thirty little
girls, while it rains and shrapnel skirls
By the
playground where the chapel bells are ringing.
The stout old
nuns are walking,
Dance, little girls, beneath the din!
The
four-point-ones are talking
Form up, little girls, the school is in!
Seven stout old
nuns and fourteen naval guns
All around the
playground go on talking.
Dirty Day in Flanders, David Baxter © IWM (Art.IWM ART 3245) |
Where the seven
angels watched around your head,
With no shrapnel
and no Huns
And no nuns or
four-point-ones…
Getting up to
catch the train,
Coming back to
tea again
When the Angelus
is sounding to the plain
And the statue
shells are coming from the plain
And the little
girls have trotted home again
In the rain…
Darling,
darling, say one funny prayer again
For your true
love who is waking in the rain.
--The Salient, 7/9/16
The poem plays with sound, inviting readers to listen to the absurdities of war. Rain and shrapnel skirl above the chatter of German artillery fire, while civilians desperately strive for normalcy. As the four-point-one guns boom in the distance (four-point one is British slang used to refer to the 10.5 cm German Feldhaubitze guns that fired 4-inch shells a distance of nearly 4 miles), Belgium nuns admonish young school girls, “Dance, little girls, beneath the din!” Seven stout nuns raise their voices to be heard above the roar of fourteen navel guns, encouraging the children to ignore the war that supplies the booming background music of their playground recess. Adding to the cacophony, church bells call the faithful to the service of Angelus, and gun fire crackles from the field.
And yet across
the Channel in England, a woman (the poet’s “darling”), quietly wakes to a
peaceful morning, “With no shrapnel, and no Huns/ And no nuns or
four-point-ones.” As shells drop on the Western Front, this beloved
Englishwoman returns from her errands to take a tranquil break for tea.
The poem offers
readers a curious grouping: celibate religious women, young school girls,
German gunners, a sheltered Englishwoman, and a soldier in the trenches who
wakes to rain and begs for prayer.
Despite their differences, all share one thing in common: a deep and
heart-felt desire to survive the war.
Ford Madox Hueffer/Ford |
In the preface
to his war poetry collection (1918), Hueffer/Ford wrote,
I know at least that I would not
keep on going if I did not feel that Heaven will be something like
Rumpelmayer's tea shop, with the nice boys in khaki, with the haze
and glimmer of the bright buttons, and the nice girls in the fashions
appropriate to the day, and the little orchestra playing,“Let the Great Big World. . .
." For our dead wanted so badly their leave in a Blighty, which would
have been like that — they wanted it so badly that they must have it.
And they must have just that. For haven't we Infantry all seen that sort
of shimmer and shine and heard the rustling and the music through all
the turmoil and the mire and the horror ? . . . And dying so, those images
assuredly are the last things that our eyes shall see : that imagination is stronger than death. For we must have some such Heaven to make up for the deep
mud and the bitter weather and the long lasting fears and the cruel hunger for light,
for graciousness and for grace!....
Second Lieutenant Hueffer/Ford did survive the war. His novels The Good Soldier and Parade’s End are recognized as some of the finest fictional accounts of the First World War. His war poetry, however, has been largely forgotten.*
*An excerpt from Hueffer/Ford's poem "Footsloggers" appeared earlier on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment