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Little could be more salient than Ford Madox Ford's life-long interest in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with particular reference (besides his estimable grandfather Ford Madox Brown, with whom he was very close) to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In Some Do Not. . ., we immediately encounter Tietjens on the train with his flatmate Macmaster, who is making the final corrections to his first book, a monograph on Rossetti. As an example of 'Great poetry', Macmaster recites:
'Since when we stand side by side
Only hands may meet,
Better half this weary world
Lay between us sweet!
Better far tho' hearts may break
Bid farewell for aye!
Lest thy sad eyes, meeting mine,
Tempt my soul away!'1
Ford uses the poem to arrange the problem of adulterous desire that sets the terms for the sex war that parallels the First World War in Parade 's End. Curiously, though, the poem is not by Rossetti at all - although it sounds the Rossettian note. Now, thanks to the literary detective work of Max Saunders in the new Carcanet edition, we leam that 'Better Far' is a song 'written in 1883 by E. B. Williams [. . .] set by Frederic Hymen Cowen', the well-known British composer who was close to Ford's father Franz Hueffer; evidently, Ford knew the song from this parental connection and may have heard it around the house growing up. Saunders comments: 'It's possible that Ford (who was writing the novel in France, almost certainly without access to the score) misremembered it as Rossetti' (SDN 22), which might be consistent with an uncorrected childhood idea that the song was by Rossetti, not the relatively obscure Williams. Saunders considers the idea that Macmaster is testing Tietjens' knowledge of Rossetti. But Saunders' final thought, that 'in the world of the book' the poem is supposed to be by Rossetti and 'Macmaster is humiliated that Tietjens knows better than he does himself the subject on which he wants to set himself up as an authority' (SDN 22), seems to me to be the best explanation for what I take to be a curious, perhaps Freudian, slip on Ford's part. The song was clearly of great importance to Ford, who threads the adulterous themes of Some Do Not. . ....