No enemy : $b A tale of reconstruction
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2026-01-28 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77802 |
Description
"No enemy" by Ford Madox Ford is a novel written in the early 20th century. Framed as “A Tale of Reconstruction,” it follows Gringoire, a poet and veteran, whose postwar life with Mme. Sélysette in a ramshackle “Gingerbread Cottage” blends frugal gardening and passionate cookery with haunted memories of the front. A visiting “Compiler” records Gringoire’s monologues as he wrestles with economy, landscape, and conscience, seeking a private sanctuary after collective ruin. The book centers on the inward work of recovery—how a sensitive man rebuilds meaning from soil, pots, and remembered battlefields. The opening of the novel introduces Gringoire through the Compiler’s weekend visits, sketching a long, lean, boastful-yet-modest poet turned trench veteran who now lives simply with the loyal and lively Mme. Sélysette. We see his fervor for economical cookery and intensive kitchen gardening (and his impatience with explaining methods), his credo that “brains” beat manure, and his war-forged desire to make a gracious life on a minute pension. The narrative then shifts to Gringoire’s war-time “landscapes”: rare, piercing moments when the world broke through the pressure of conflict—Kensington Gardens poised under a threat of invasion, a small Essex station just as news of a great commander’s death arrives, and a Somme hillside flooded with the blue shimmer of swallows’ backs. He recalls an officers’ camp beneath a sky pricked with observation balloons, a sudden inner vision of a protected green nook—a gingerbread cottage with a trickling stream—that becomes his emblem of peace. Sent to a hilltop observation post at Mont Vedaigne, he notes the vast views over towns and ridges, the meticulous stitch of shells along enemy lines, and, while waiting hours for a late-arriving general, feels the ache to be across the sea in an inviolable corner of English country. An interlude after peace finds him in the garden, debating the word “Hun,” distinguishing his scorn for the warmongering intelligentsia from any hatred of common soldiers, and steering the talk back to the interior task the tale means to illuminate. (This is an automatically generated summary.)