作者：Ford Madox Ford
出版社：Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
The Benefactor by Ford Madox Ford - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)试读：
The Complete Works ofFORD MADOX FORDVOLUME 7 OF 46The BenefactorParts EditionBy Delphi Classics, 2013Version 2COPYRIGHT‘The Benefactor’Ford Madox Ford: Parts Edition (in 46 parts)
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.
© Delphi Classics, 2017.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
ISBN: 978 1 78877 758 2
Delphi Classics
is an imprint of
Delphi Publishing Ltd
Hastings, East Sussex
United Kingdom
Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com
www.delphiclassics.comFord Madox Ford: Parts Edition
This eBook is Part 7 of the Delphi Classics edition of Ford Madox Ford in 46 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Benefactor from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Ford Madox Ford, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.
Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Ford Madox Ford or the Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford in a single eBook.
Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here. FORD MADOX FORDIN 46 VOLUMESParts Edition Contentswww.delphiclassics.com The Children’s Fiction
1, The Brown Owl
2, The Feather
3, The Queen Who Flew
The Novels
4, The Shifting of the Fire
5, The Inheritors
6, Romance
7, The Benefactor
8, The Fifth Queen
9, The Privy Seal
10, An English Girl
11, The Fifth Queen Crowned
12, Mr. Apollo
13, The ‘Half Moon’
14, A Call
15, The Portrait
16, The Simple Life Limited
17, Ladies Whose Bright Eyes
18, The Panel
19, The New Humpty-Dumpty
20, Mr. Fleight
21, The Young Lovell
22, The Good Soldier
23, The Marsden Case
24, Some Do Not…
25, The Nature of a Crime
26, No More Parades
27, A Man Could Stand Up
28, Last Post
29, A Little Less Than Gods
30, No Enemy
31, When the Wicked Man
32, The Rash Act
33, Henry for Hugh
34, Vive Le Roy
The Poetry
35, The Collected Poems
Non-Fiction
36, The Soul of London
37, The Heart of the Country
38, Rossetti: A Critical Essay on His Art
39, The Spirit of the People
40, Henry James: A Critical Study
41, Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance
The Memoirs
42, Ancient Lights and Certain New Reflections
43, Return to Yesterday
44, It Was the Nightingale
45, Provence
46, Great Trade Route
www.delphiclassics.com
The BenefactorA TALE OF A SMALL CIRCLEConsidered by many critics to be Ford’s most accomplished early novel, The Benefactor (1905) tells the story of George Moffat, a mildly successful poet who is the victim of aspiring writers, desperate for a ‘lift up’ into the literary world. Moffat is abandoned by these aspiring authors once they have had their first success and so due to his naïve and generous nature, he faces financial ruin. Moffat only receives the pity of Clara Brede, a lonely neighbour doomed to the caring of her insane father, the local rector.It is clearly a work heavily influenced by Henry James’ novels, with such Jamesian traits as extended use of commas, italicised expressions, inverted commas and the ambience of a small circle of literary characters. Nevertheless, the novel has been celebrated for its counterpointing of action, deftly flitting between different characters’ perspectives and the monitoring of interpretations of more than one character in a scene, which Ford uses in this novel successfully for the first time. The subtle shift between physical action, dialogue and thought processes creates a rich reading experience, vividly bringing an otherwise very simple tale to life.Interestingly, George Moffat, the typically indecisive Fordian character, foreshadows the role that Ford himself would later play in real life. Ford would go on to help launch the careers of such writers as D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and many others, much like how Moffat does in the novel. In the creating of this character, Ford appears to have fashioned a model for his own life, which he then proceded to act out. The first edition’s title pageCONTENTSPART I. THE JEWELLER AND HIS STONES.CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.CHAPTER VI.CHAPTER VII.PART II. THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.PART III. THE BLACKENING PEARLS.CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.CHAPTER VI.CHAPTER VII.CHAPTER VIII.PART IV. THE BANKRUPT JEWELLER.CHAPTER I.CHAPTER II.CHAPTER III.CHAPTER IV.CHAPTER V.CHAPTER VI.CHAPTER VII.CHAPTER VIII.CHAPTER IX. PART I. THE JEWELLER AND HIS STONES.CHAPTER I.“Oh, I don’t suspect him — What’s his name? Hailes? — of an eye to your spoons,” Mrs. Gregory Moffat said to her husband’s brother; “but I’ve said a hundred times, George, that I don’t see why you should turn your house into an asylum. What claim has he?”George Moffat said: “Everyone has claims of one sort or another,” with his large air of peaceable and majestic obstinacy. He had argued the matter too often.“Precisely,” Mrs. Moffat snapped in her high, convicting voice. “I suppose he writes, or something. You’d do much more good if you did some work of your own” (George made a placid and amused gesture of negation) “instead,” Mrs. Moffat finished, “of wasting all your time and most of your money on these creatures. You know they usually turn out rank impostors.”She cast meaning glances, first at her husband, then at Mrs. Henwick. Her husband, Gregory Moffat, beamed through gold-rimmed spectacles. He held his head as the very short-sighted do, and seemed on the point of uttering a small joke. He did not. Mrs. Henwick, with the air, not so much of a tiny marchioness as of an enlarged, but still tiny, marquise, pointed a little foot at the brilliant carpet. She might have been pointing at it as a proof that George Moffat was still the same. His drawing-room was not up-to-date, yet it was still gloriously sumptuous, and, in a grand way, “artistic.” George had given a unique price for his carpet to one of his Arts-and-Crafts portégés — the two ladies called them parasites, and said they had ruined George.Mrs. Moffat had not seen her brother-in-law for some years, but she recognised that he remained emphatically the same. He had not aged markedly, though he was beginning to suggest that softening of the outlines that the middle age confers — he was quite turned forty-five. But George was the same, glamour and all. Mrs. Moffat had long since outlived her appreciation of the glamour, but her meaning glances to her companions indicated that she very much acknowledged George’s sameness. Everyone, save those who for the moment were sufficiently new to him to lie under his inevitable and tremendous spell, always indicated that George was the same. They indicated it by glances, shrugs or smiles. Yet it can hardly be said that Mrs. Moffat sighed. George’s famous show house stood just outside a little town right down on the extreme south coast. Mrs. Moffat, in coming to see him, had taken roads that her chauffeur had desolately intimated would ruin the entrails of any automobile. She had dragged with her her husband, who didn’t express any desire to see his brother, and her friend who had already been mixed up in one of the mysterious broils that seemed always to move in the vicinity of George; she had made a curve of seventy miles on these disastrous south-eastern roads. She herself did not quite know what she wanted of George. Perhaps it was only a curiosity to see how he was “getting on” — to see whether it might be practicable to use him at last as a “lion.” For all she knew, he might have published something lately, or might be going to do so soon. He had begun his career so well, and the articles that he still very occasionally wrote for the more majestic reviews were received, she believed, with much respect. She knew he had some standing of a desirable, rather donnish kind. The trouble was that you couldn’t tell just where he stood.She had formulated a mere strategetic idea. She was one of those leading ladies in whose great drawing-rooms new religions are born, and new feminine-social-political and generally-in-the-swim movements serve to make transitory notorieties. It might be a pleasant feature of her autumn campaign if George, reunited to his wife, could be got to figure among her guests. Of his making an impression she had no doubt.He certainly overwhelmed anyone who was new to him. And Mrs. Moffat could claim triumphantly that all her acquaintance — except her permanent body-guard of the really good people — were the very newest of the very new. They couldn’t possibly have had either time or opportunity to let George’s attractions be exercised and lose their charm.She would even receive George not re-united to Mrs. George.There had been nothing piquant about the rupture of her brother-in-law and his wife. Mrs. George had complained of no infidelities. They simply could not get on together. George was said to have acted nobly — to have placed two-thirds of his capital in the hands of his departing wife. Mrs. Moffat knew the truth of this because her husband was Mrs. George Moffat’s trustee. George’s few remaining thousands had continued to pass steadily into the hands of George’s innumerable hangers-on; whilst Mrs. George’s “managing” had as steadily added to her share. She led a determined, forceful life, in a large, bleak, white house, in the recesses of a northern moor, among her own people.Mrs. Gregory Moffat’s world was a matter of a western hill in Town, and a house in a western county where fourteen gardeners raised things under glass in the season, and ladies, caucus-meetings in the shooting months. She shivered at the thought of Mrs. George’s life, though she recognised the eligibility, for those who could stand it, of her old-fashioned county familydom.* * *She looked round George’s drawing room, wondering how in the world he managed to exist. The oak beams of the ceiling — George was understood to have paid a fabulous price for them — remained. But the more noticeable of George’s treasures had vanished. Sir Graham’s famous “Heloise” had departed from above the great open hearth. A number of Grigson-Turner’s pictures of lamp-flames still hung out their green-gold frames, but they were such remarkably premature efforts of that master as to be practically valueless in the sale room. Grigson-Turner had been one of the very earliest of the innumerable strugglers George had helped to fame. Before Grigson-Turner had finally and so lamentably dropped poor George, George had — she could do Turner that justice — possessed some really representative third period Turners. But in one of his blazes George had given them to that odious Lamley Smith — to improve Smith’s sense of line, George said. That had, as usual, been just before Smith had become famous, and, as usual, just before his disgraceful treatment of poor George. Smith’s own contribution — George had paid about four times the market value for it — remained. It was the giant oak book-case with carvings rendering bubbly sea-weed. A motto: “Troth bideth frendeshepe,” sprawled large red Gothic letters in a diagonal droop across the glass and seriously interfered with the view of the books. It stood in a dim corner of the magnificent room. The white vellum book backs of the poets since become notorious, and the yellow and blacks of the novelists now forgotten nearly three seasons ago, had given place to a number in colours as yet unfamiliar. These represented presentation copies in repayment, mostly of loans from George to the crop of young lions who would roar this year, next year, were just beginning to roar, or might never roar at all. George had the gift for discovering new talent. The pity was that as soon as the men he had helped stood on their own feet they invariably dropped George and generally insulted him.It irritated her that George himself had never aped them. “Heaven knows,” she thought, “He’s nursed so many litters of lions that he might have caught the trick of roaring.” Yet, for “reception” purposes George’s soft, indefinite, yet most undoubted eminence was well worth having.George apparently couldn’t and wouldn’t fade. He was always somebody — the Mr. Moffat. Even if no one in her large drawing room which overlooked twelve miles of park chimney-tops, and smoke; even if no one knew exactly what George had. done, they had at least a feeling that the want of knowledge left them inferior. It was true there were the dangers.George’s rare visits at Campden Hill had been followed by incomprehensible imbroglios. The affairs sometimes involved families, sometimes whole côteries. On the last occasion her best friend, Mrs. Henwick; Mrs. Henwick’s husband, who normally counted no more than her own; and Mr. Frewer Hoey, her own particular friend, had, as it were, rushed violently to George’s magnet. They evolved three political pamphlets between them — George correcting the “style” — and then parted with all sorts of mutual injuries. The pamphlets had even shaken some of her own “tail.” Yet that George himself had been to blame she was not prepared to advance; it might have been coincidence. George always was a magnet; people generally rushed to him. They as generally quarrelled, but, most frequently, with George himself.She accepted George’s invitation to stay the night, and sent her husband out to tell the chauffeur that he could put himself up at the inn. Left alone with Mrs. Henwick and George, she returned to the charge.“I really should have thought you would have learned, George, not to pick up these young strays, after all the eye-openers you have had.” Her brother-in-law stirred his considerable form uneasily, and Mrs. Moffat noticed that one of his cuffs was very minutely frayed. It reminded her of Mrs. George’s despairing: —“He would give the shirt off his back. He’s incorrigible.”.“My dear Ella,” he got under weigh, “this young man, Hailes, if the matter’s really worth discussing, has a quite genuine talent. He’s, as the saying is, at a loose end. Well, I’m tiding him over. If I didn’t, he’d probably never have a chance.” He uttered his slang words with the amused, and as if savouring, air of a man very choice in his language. He could afford to condescend.George Moffat excused his incorrigibility by his tradition. He was the elder son of Sir Graham Moffat, the late great portrait painter. Sir Graham had left a highly respectable fortune to be divided between George and Gregory, and a sister who had quarrelled with George at a very early period. But Sir Graham had known days of extreme want. He had been one of a brilliant young band who had undoubtedly established a sort of tradition — that of giving lifts to youth and brilliance even at the cost of their shirts. It was all recorded in the biography of Sir Graham by George. The traces of loans, offered more often than repaid, formed a great proportion of Sir Graham’s earlier correspondence, and George, in struggling through the mass of his father’s letters to get material for his book, had had the great tradition constantly before his eyes. And during his childhood George’s father had impressed upon him that you must never lose a chance of helping any lame dog over a style, because you never know what he might not become. But whether that alone was responsible for George’s generosities, was much debated in his family. His sister Mary said that meddlesomeness was at the bottom of his character.George had attempted to advise her in her first love affair. She had had a slight quarrel with her suitor — about the right of women to vote — and George had given her hints as to how the man should be managed. The first lover, worn out by George’s subtle handling, had accepted an official position on the Gold Coast, and had died there. Unfortunately, he had never had a successor, and Mary had not spoken to her brother for twenty years.George inherited a reputable fortune from his father. He wrote an official biography, splendid in appearance and notable for its avoidance of delicate topics. The members of the brilliant young band had quarrelled lamentably when they had reached maturity and eminence. Afterwards George found a certain glamour descend upon him, a glamour, if not distinct from that of his father, at least partially his own. His verse was considered to give tone to the best of the magazines and reviews of those old-fashioned days; but he wrote very little, and his writing was so very little an essential part of the man that, as Mrs. Moffat said, hardly any of her own friends knew that he wrote at all.Tall, with hair that waved away from his forehead, and in his moments of inspiration appeared almost like the wings on a Hermes’ cap; with a chestnut beard that in the early ‘eighties was called Vandyke; with a nose and forehead that might pass as Grecian, yet with an air that one might have mistaken for Southern French, George had married years ago a brilliantly beautiful Scottish girl in the young softness of her strong character. She had appealed to him because the simplicity and directness of her speech and her decision of character made a quaint contrast with her youth and suppleness. Her family accepted him because of the brilliance of his father, who passed his summers on their moors.On her adolescent eyes George had produced the effect of a godhead. In his father’s studio he had seen all the world sitting for its portrait, and he had splendid anecdotes of the great. He rather disliked the deerstalkers and heather-forest lords, who were his wife’s people, and he carried away to the south his bride and her emotions. Long before then he had selected a unique spot for them to live in. Wickham was a town that had dwindled to a village. Glorious panoplies of history seemed there to moulder and to die tenderly, among the wallflowers on gateways, and ruins that were crumbling and quaint rather than architectural, grand or complete.He bought the best house in the place. It was old, battered, rat-ridden, and spacious. It had been a fortified dwelling. It had been a manor house, and, when George bought it, it had sunk into the hands of three families of agricultural labourers. It had been plastered and tarred in places, but its old stones were intact, and, under the whitewash and paper of the inside, George discovered the ancient beams and fireplaces as large as small rooms. It was the house in which later the interview with Mrs. Gregory Moffat had taken place. It stood beyond a strip of park, at the end of a gapped and spacious street of cottages. Its buttresses rose to the roof line, and a background of immense elms sheltered it, fan-like, from the west winds.To Mrs. George, for the first few years, the house was a palace of romance. She was excited at finding the old fireplaces and carved corbels, and to discover primitive and ugly frescoes under coatings of wall-paper seemed the most important thing in life. ‘She was very young; she admired looking up to her husband; she came to it out of a dull northern castle, where turnip fields ran almost up to the drawing-room windows, and where her family had been so considerable that there had been no one she could talk to within fifteen miles of moor roads.But gradually she became very religious, and the marriage turned out a lamentable mistake. George’s tolerance made her horribly unhappy, and in the conversations of the young men whom he aided she imagined constantly that she detected loose ideas and impiety. She grew at last to consider that, in helping them to write, George was committing a sacrilege. She left him after five years that were miserable to them both.George’s large and tolerant figure had, in fact, got on her nerves. She could not stand it. She went back to her own people — the people whose scientific farming carried turnips up to their back windows. Charity she could understand, a whole-hearted district visiting, a bestowing to help the deserving poor of a tithe of one’s goods. But it seemed to her that with George it was give, give, give — to the undeserving as to the meritorious, a continual giving of his time, his counsel, his brains, his money, and, above all, of his excuses. He would find pity for an adulteress, she said, and he would give the shirt off his back. He could not give any reason for it, and she could not believe that it did any good.Her brother approached him on the subject of a separate establishment. George gave her not her jointure alone, but a considerably larger sum. It left him almost poor, but she accepted the sacrifice because she considered that the money would otherwise dwindle into the hands of his parasites. Her family made efforts to reconcile them, and George wrote to her at times, but as the years went on she grew more and more intolerant. One day George’s name headed a petition for the release of a man who had been committed to gaol for militant agnosticism. The
试读结束[说明：试读内容隐藏了图片]