The Return of the Good Soldier: Ford Madox Ford and Violet Hunt's 1917 Diary

by Robert Secor, Marie Secor

The historical setting of this diary offers us a glimpse of England at war through the eyes of a person who, though affected by it, did not cultivate political consciousness. Hunt emerges from her diary as a woman caught between unreconcilable her desire for respectability and her pursuit of amorous sensation; her shrewd insight into her and Ford's character and her self-destructiveness in protracting a relationship she knows is doomed to failure; her self-dramatizing instinct, always ready to step back and watch herself in action, and her spontaneity; her pride and her abjectness; her wit and her sadness.

98 pages, Paperback

Published March 23, 2016

Reviews

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is long and a little confusing -- the main text of it is Violet Hunt's 1917 diary, while she was in the process of navigating the end of her romantic relationship with Ford. There's a long & well-written introduction beforehand that gives a lot of useful context about their lives and work (they were both writers) and the ways in which they each re-imagined their relationship after the fact. (Spoiler: FMF was awful about Hunt!) I loved the chance to hear her voice -- she's someone who shows up tangentially in a lot of other diaries/letters/memoirs I've read, but this was the first time I got to read her own words, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed seeing her thinking through her own desires and reactions and choices. I'd love to read an entire volume of her diaries or letters, but for now I think I'll look for some of her autobiographical writing.

[Felicity · Rating 2 out of 5]

My interest in Violet Hunt was aroused by Norah Hoult's sympathetic treatment in There Were No Windows of the decline of a formidable author, presumed to be based on Hunt's descent into senile dementia. Deserted by erstwhile friends, the objectionable FMF and other lovers, and by her own mental faculties, Hunt's later years must have been harrowing. However favourably disposed I may have been towards her in her dotage, this diary, written when Hunt was still enjoying the admiration of her peers, a quarter-century before her death, did little to endear her to me. The diary contains more dinner engagements than revelations or intimations, and the references to these ladies who lunch are rarely gracious. One of the few fellow diners to escape character assassination is a Mrs Pennell -- could this be my hero, the estimable Elizabeth Robins Pennell, writer, art critic and indomitable cycle tourist? -- who may have remained resistant to charm or the conspicuous lack of charity. Hunt's apparent animus towards other women, however, will not deter me from reading her numerous fictions of feminism.

[Dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about adultery and deception as perceived by John Dowell - the wronged Edwardian husband. This story is him trying to understand what has happened by piecing events together. The book is about his ‘impressions’ of what took place. This makes the book quite difficult to get into because like many first impressions they are wrong. So Dowell revisits and mulls over these events in his mind, and how he feels about the different characters in the story, to gain more understanding of what took place. You have to image that when you are reading this book you are sitting next to him, either side of a fireplace, and he is telling you his story. If you could image that you are telling one of your friends something that had recently happened to you, then like him, your story would not run as one continuous narrative. You would stop and start, digress and come back to events that you had forgotten to tell your friend about. In this sense how the book is written is quite clever but it doesn’t necessarily make easy reading. You need resilience to read this book. It was suggested in the book club that you needed to run at – not stop and start at it. It was described at being ‘good valuable literature’.