SOURCE: A review of Parade's End, in Shenandoah, Vol. 1, No. 3, Winter, 1950, pp. 29-36.

[In the following essay, Tobyansen offers a thematic overview of Parade's End and discusses the novel's principal characters.]

Parade's End is a single volume containing four of Ford's earlier novels, Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up and The Last Post, and an introduction by Robie Macauley. The four novels, published originally over a five-year period (1924-1928), achieved only brief popularity. When they first appeared, they were considered as merely another group of "war novels." In the Knopf volume they appear as what they should be—one great novel—titled Parde's End, The whole volume is an accurate presentation of the personal and univeral histories of several people and a country in the years immediately before, during, and after the first great war. This was a period in which tradition, the British moral aristocracy, was perishing due to the strains imposed by modernism, the new statism, while both elements were at the same time allied in fighting a devastating war.

Tradition is wounded and then dies before the sniping power of modernism. The pathos of tradition's death is that modernism's weapons are usually being aimed by opportunists. Christopher Tietjens, the epitome of landed aristocracy, bends slowly before the fire of Vincent Macmaster, Mrs. Duchemin, and the interim-war officials who have sensed the inevitable social upheaval and who have joined "the new movement" to further their own ambitions. Valentine Wannop, representing the modernist element in Some Do Not, is actually closer to Tietjens than any other of his intimates. Although she represents the social change that is pushing him aside, she loves and admires him because of his respect for traditional decorum and pattern.

The immediate purpose of Some Do Not is to indicate the pattern that the four novels (often called the Tietjens series) follow. Ford did not write the four novels so that each one would stand as a complete story in itself. The Tietjens story is a "saga" with each of the four novels concerned with a particular phase of the saga. Some Do Not is a novel that must be read carefully, for in it Ford introduces his themes, his people, and their conflicts. The characters and their actions symbolize and predict the strains and changes England will undergo in the years from 1914 to 1926. Ford wrote a history of those fateful years as shown by the lives of Christopher Tietjens, one of the last great landed aristocrats; Valentine Wannop, one of the first suffragettes; Vincent Macmaster, a parasitic opportunist; and Sylvia, Tietjens' unfaithful wife, but ultimately savior of his estates. The richness of the four novels is augmented by the portrayal of several other well-drawn characters, but they, in their turn, all refer to the main characters. Thus there should be no confusion as to the basic pattern of the saga.

Mr. Ford's characters are actually too complex to serve as mere symbols—indeed it is their complexity that keeps the series from becoming a barren recital of history—but if we are to consider Some Do Not as the novel that will enable us to identify the clashing themes and conflicts in Parde's End, we must take the temporary liberty of labelling the main figures in the books. Once we have established the pattern by this means, then we will consider more fully the paradoxes within the principal characters.

The first meeting of Christopher and Valentine is symbolic of the respect the conflicting ideals permit each other. It also symbolizes the triumph that modernism will eventually enjoy. The setting is a golf course where Tietjens ("I loathe the beastly game") is part of a foursome which has a brush with a group of suffragettes. Valentine Wannop enlists his aid to help one of her friends escape the police. Tietjens succeeds in effecting her friend's escape. Valentine feels that she must explain herself to this man.

He rides in a dogcart through a dense fog with Valentine, and the dialogue symbolizes, again, a dawning realization of the fact that modernism might eventually triumph.

.… He called out:

"Are you all right?" The cart might have knocked her down. He had, however, broken the convention … His last thought came back to him. He had broken their convention: he had exhibited concern: like any other man.… He said to himself:

"By God! Why not take a holiday: why not break all conventions?"

When the war takes Tietjens from England, he is attacked socially by the opportunists at home, particularly by a banker named Brownlie. He is trapped into accepting this petty social attack because of the self-confining mores of his own traditional philosophy, the philosophy that forbids an active resistance to modernism.

"That was quite proper, for if the ennobled family of Brownlie were not of the Ruling Class—who had to go (to war)!—they were of the Administrative Class, who were privileged to stay.…"

Mr. Ford establishes the underlying theme—the destruction of a system of life—by noting all the subtle ties, not by posting open notices of the fight due between the past and the present. But there are minor themes that are as capably handled as the major idea. In Some Do Not, love is the obvious motive of the story, not a simple love, but the triply-complex relationship between Tietjens and his wife; Tietjens and Valentine; and Sylvia and Valentine. Tietjens' wife, Sylvia, hates him because she understands him. Valentine loves Tietjens but understands him less than his wife. Tietjens endures his wife and yearns for Valentine, but can never bring himself to any overt demonstration of love for Valentine. But are traditionalism and modernism ever close enough to exist tranquilly together? Obviously not in the early stages of the clash between the two philosophies, and so it is that Mr. Ford never allows Christopher and Valentine to indulge their love for each other.

Some Do Not also leaves one with the impression that Ford is writing history. But the dialogue and actions of his characters give the history of these times a personal meaning. The history is so neatly connected with the characters that a reader finds himself wondering about the outcome of a story that has already been told.

No More Parades is concerned chiefly with what was referred to by GI's of the recent war as red tape and chicken. It is a recital of and report on the mounds of unnecessary paper work a base officer is buried under at a replacement depot. If there is a weak link in the series, this would be the novel to be inspected for lack of strength. Until Sylvia arrives in France and further demonstrates her determination to drive her always composed and superior husband to the breaking point, the novel is no more than a protest against military bureaucracy.

Sylvia's conduct results in Tietjens striking a fellow officer and insulting a General, both of whom have violated the privacy of their bedroom at the hotel where she and Christopher were preparing to retire for the night. The incident expands because of the many military and personal complications and misunderstandings involved, so that it is necessary to send Tietjens to the front in order to preserve the decorum of the depot where he is stationed.

The trenches, mud, and frustration are the backdrops for the third novel, A Man Could Stand Up. The greater portion of the book is taken up with a single day in the trenches. Ford uses the impressionist technique, the method in all four novels, more clearly here than in the preceding books. The characters react to a scene or action as they see it. There is little attempt at "descriptive" detail. He relates the subconscious association of images and symbols that his characters experience as a result of a situation. He does not depict the situation. His characters suggest it for him. The reality of Tietjens' situation, in the trenches, is forced again and again on Tietjens' reflecting mind. He hears voices from a German mining tunnel beneath his feet, "Bringt dem Hauptman eine Kerze"; then he is snapped back to his immediate circumstances. The officers with whom he associates are all suffering from monotony, fear, and frustration. Inconsequential items are given ludicrously passionate attention. Only the frayed nerves of these men have survived the sacrifice of minds in this macabre life in the mud. The last incident in the trench section illustrates the tragic-comic plight of these men. After being buried by a German shell and escaping, Tietjens is confronted by his commanding officer—who relieves him of his command because of his dirty uniform.

The last part of the novel takes Tietjens to London, to an empty house with Valentine Wannop. They are in love; they have decided to violate convention. It appears as if he has at last decided to cast off the outmoded mores that had him trapped. They are visited by the physical and mental ghosts from the war which used to annoy and confound Tietjens, but they no longer worry or affect his state of mind.

In The Last Post, Ford demonstrates even more fully that pure impressionist technique so clearly evident in the third novel. Ford accomplishes his denouement through the thoughts of Tietjens' brother, Mark, who, paralyzed in an outdoor bed, reflects on the Tietjens' estate called Groby. He considers Christopher's and Sylvia's child. This is the son who will inherit Groby and the tradition for which it stood. Mark ponders Sylvia's conduct and the events that have taken place in the preceding novels. Groby, Tietjens' son, and Sylvia sum up, in themselves, all the complexities of the preceding novels. The thoughts of Mark turn continually to Christopher Tietjens or to things which are concerned with him. Christopher appears only briefly at the end of the book. We see Christopher through the eyes and thoughts of other people, and these thought patterns are so skillfully woven that the intersection points never tend to destroy the novel's continuity and purpose.

In Mark's mind the events are reviewed from Tietjens' initial journey on a train with Macmaster ("A journey from the present into the future," according to Robie Macauley's brilliant preface to the volume) to the present fall of Groby into the hands of a Catholic. But Mark sees it all as no failure, rather as a retirement with honor. Virtue in the sense of adhering to the precepts of the Tietjens' traditional philosophy has been preserved. The series is resolved on a Faulknerian note of hope. The possibility of salvation lies in the exchange of the Groby tradition for the Catholic tradition. The hope for salvation is present despite the threat of modernism. Christopher Tietjens has been true to his own set of values and retires before the forces of moral anarchy and modernism, defeated outwardly, but inwardly proud and strong.

Having surveyed the history and major theme in Paade's End, let us take a closer view of the characters. Ford has drawn them almost too richly to permit an exhaustive analysis, but it is only by examination of the individual problems that the paradoxes within the people can be appreciated.

Christopher Tietjens possesses a brilliant mind—perhaps the most brilliant in all England. He has a tremendous knowledge of the classics, a remarkable talent for figures, and a fund of odd information and talents that enable him to entertain intelligent opinions on a variety of subjects. He is the past—a landed independent aristocrat in the most traditionally individualistic manner—and he is out of place in the present. He has a set of chivalric, humane rules that he applies to other men, nature, God, and women. Nothing can alter his determination to abide by these rules. He and his brother Mark are scornful of titles and ostentation. They remain above the petty court jealousies, secure in their identity as Tietjens of Groby.

Tietjens refuses to divorce his wife, Sylvia, despite her scandalous conduct. When she wires him, after running away with another man, that she is ready to return to him, he accepts. His rules require that a husband always provide a wife with a home. Despite Sylvia's repeated sins and infuriating actions, he never loses his composure. His rules require coolness in the face of calamity.

In one scene, at breakfast with Sylvia, Tietjens is presented as having an injured memory due to the effect of a shell burst in France. Sections of his vast knowledge are missing entirely. He confesses that he has been reading the encyclopedia to restore his knowledge. (This is a typical Fordian twist, England's greatest mind studying the encyclopedia.) His bank account is overdrawn. His wife tells him that her lies have driven his father to suicide, to which Tietjens replies: "I supoose the poor fellow knows better now. Or perhaps he doesn't.… It doesn't matter." Once again his standards of conduct and philosophy fail to tremble before the neurotic schemes and attacks of his treacherous wife.

Sylvia is the most fascinating of all the Ford people. She is dedicated to bringing her husband to his knees. She hates his composure, his tolerance, his code, his knowledge, and most of all, his indifference. Paradoxically, hating Tietjens as she does, she cannot divorce him. No other man can mean anything to her, yet she encourages these other men so that she can have the satisfaction of turning them down. She is a Catholic, but an example of the moral anarchy of the times. She exists to try to make Tietjens show emotion because that would be a sign of weakness. While she is so terrifyingly busy trying to destroy Christopher, she is actually, but accidentally, his savior. The old estate called Groby, which is the source of Tietjens' individuality, is fated by legend to return to the hands of a Catholic. It is Christopher and Sylvia's son, a Catholic, who lives to inherit Groby and its traditions. That Sylvia should accomplish the material salvation is again a Ford paradox.

Valentine Wannop, who loves Tietjens but never understands him as his wife does, presents another interesting paradox. She is a complete realist. With the collapse of her family fortunes, she goes to work as a maid. Later she supports herself as a physical education teacher. When the same group of fair weather friends who have rejected Tietjens reject her company, she accepts their action as an expected and practical one. She does secretarial work for her mother who attempts to earn a living by writing. She and her mother are always in dire economic straits, but neither of them complain or look for loans from Tietjens.

Despite Valentine's ardent desire for modernism, she is remarkably patient in waiting for Christopher, and trying to understand him. Outspoken and passionate in her opinions on social issues, she is tolerant and almost reticent about her man. Yet this failure to fight for him wins him for her, because his intimates drive him into her arms. She presents more of a problem to Sylvia because of her tolerance than she would if she had been more forward and had blatantly become Tietjens' mistress. She remains stoically above the jealous sniping gossip of the opportunists. She who should be opposed to the Tietjens' estate and all it stands for, is respectful of it, and her family is saved by it. (Christopher's father leaves the Wannops money.) Sylvia, who is of the Tietjens' "class," tries to destroy the estate and all it stands for, but inadvertently becomes its savior.

Ford had no choice as to the basic factual situation at the end of the volume. History had decided the end as Ford wrote the novels. But the facts are not only an evaluation of the value of Tietjens' individuality as opposed to Sylvia's moral anarchy. Nor are the facts only an evaluation of the landed tradition's death before the new statism. Ford's skill in drawing his characters prevents history from deciding which philosophy was the right one. Ford lures his readers into the lives of his people. At the end of the volume, history has its influence, but the evaluation is up to the reader in so far as the reader has, by means of the impressionist method, been led into a psychological identification of himself with one of the central characters.

Ford's very subtle interchanging of person and theme (or individual and historical attitude) gives both width of scope and depth of intensity to Parade's End. This is not to say that the impressionist method is the only method of encircling a subject from every possible point of view, but Mr. Ford refuses to over-simplify the paradoxes in his extremely British characters, and he refuses to lose sight of the dominant theme which binds the paradoxes together.