Missing page and Ford Madox Ford manuscript are reunited at library

Page 38 of Ford Madox Ford's inscribed French translation of his novel The Good Soldier. Cornell Rare and Manuscript Collections

By Franklin Crawford

A missing page of history has been returned to its "writeful" place in the Cornell University Library's Ford Madox Ford manuscript collection. Page 38 of Ford's French translation of his novel The Good Soldier has been reunited with the original unfinished manuscript. It's the last page of this translation, as it turns out. But there's another tale to be told, according to Lorna Knight, curator of manuscripts in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

In 1915 Ford took a commission in the U.S. Army. He was 41. While stationed at the Somme, he began a French translation of The Good Soldier from memory. Ford had completed 38 pages of the translation when his battalion was bombarded and the author suffered a severe concussion. At some point Ford, wisely, mailed the manuscript to his publisher, Harper & Brothers in New York, for safekeeping. However, Ford never completed the translation and, in 1930, his publisher returned his manuscript to him.

In 1937, Ford moved from Paris to the United States and during that summer stayed with friends in Clarksville, Tenn. There it is believed he met Francis Neel Cheney, a librarian working at Vanderbilt University. It's unclear when Ford met Cheney, nor does any correspondence to or from Cheney survive in Ford's papers. However, on page 38 is carefully inscribed in Ford's hand: "This is a specimen of the adaptation into French of the 'Good Soldier' that I made in the line during & after the 1st battle of the Somme July to Sept. 1916 For Frances Cheney with gratitude from Ford Madox Ford Clarksville, Tenn. 4 July '37."

According to Ford's biographer, Alan Judd, "there is evidence that the entire book was completed and the manuscript lost, probably during the Second World War." The discovery of page 38 puts an end to that belief. As a sign of friendship and gratitude, Ford removed the final page of his draft manuscript, inscribed it and gave it to Cheney.

Did Ford complete the manuscript?

Early in January, an e-mail message from a bookseller at James Cummins Bookseller helped the Cornell library solve the mystery. Cummins' representative informed Cornell librarians that page 38 of a manuscript in French in Ford's hand had surfaced.

Clearly, it was a continuation of Cornell's manuscript, but Ford's translation ends midpage. Close examination and comparison of the two manuscripts ensued and a sale concluded the investigation. Now, the final page has rejoined the first 37 and the manuscript is complete in its original incompleteness. A French translation of The Good Soldier as Le Bon Soldat, by Andre Simon, not Ford, was published, at last, in 1964.