“Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life” by Max Saunders (post 3): Subtitle of two-volume, 1326-page biography actually refers to multiple personality

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), previously discussed in regard to his most celebrated novel, The Good Soldier (1915), was born Ford Hermann Hueffer in England. He changed his name to Ford Madox Hueffer, and finally changed it to Ford Madox Ford in 1919. Multiple names (apart from standard cultural practice or job necessity) raise the possibility of multiple personality.

In my previous post, I made an issue of the fact that the novelist in A Good Soldier, when writing, addressed himself to a “silent listener.” I speculated that it was an alternate personality. That might seem contradicted by Ford’s statement in 1930 that he and his friend Joseph Conrad used to read their works-in-progress to each other (1, p. 114). But then they wouldn’t have been “silent” listeners.

And Volume Two of this autobiography, which discusses Ford’s imaginative, revisionist memory, would suggest that Ford’s “silent listener” was probably an imaginary “secret sharer” (the title of Conrad’s famous short story, previously discussed), who was possibly envisioned by Ford as his friend, Joseph Conrad.

“Many have testified to Ford’s ‘imaginative memory’…‘That is how it comes back to me’, he could note, as if with surprise, at his own reminiscence: ‘but no doubt my memory is doing a little imagining for itself’ ” (2, p. 439). If it is doing something for itself, it is probably an alternate personality.

Because Ford had spoken of himself as being an example of “homo duplex,” and since there is a literary tradition of thinking in terms of duality (e.g. Jekyll/Hyde, although people with multiple personality rarely have only two personalities), the biographer refers to Ford’s multiple “literary roles”:

“His literary roles were multifarious. He was the Poet, the Historian…, the Novelist, the Art Critic, the Topographical and Nature Writer, the Literary Critic, the Travel Writer, the Cultural Commentator, the Autobiographer—often most of these in the same book” (2, p. 461). But these multiple roles were probably played by multiple narrative personalities.

Since, today, Ford is mostly known for The Good Soldier, it may not be appreciated the degree to which his later novels show “preoccupation with the double, or doppelgänger. We have seen the centrality of dual personalities and doubled protagonists in Ford’s writing. The figure of the double becomes progressively more explicit and important in the five last novels” (2, p. 386).

What is the relation between Ford’s vivid, revisionist memory and multiple personality? People with multiple personality may be among the most highly suggestible. Some are highly hypnotizable by others; others are not easily hypnotized by others, but are prone to self-hypnosis. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can sometimes create false memories. So, in therapy, implausible memories must be corroborated.

However, people with multiple personality often also have exceptionally accurate powers of memory (except for memory gaps for times when another personality was in control), which can be corroborated. It is complicated. But suffice it to say that Ford’s memory was not unique.

1. Max Saunders. Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life [1996]. Volume I: The World Before the War. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.

2. Max Saunders. Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life [1996]. Volume II: The After-War World. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.