Ford Madox Ford

The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford

THIS is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams fornine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy-or, rather with anacquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with yourhand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible toknow anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. Thisis, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothingwhatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had neversounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows. I don't mean to say that we were not acquainted with many English people. Living, as we perforce lived, in Europe, and being, as we perforce were, leisuredAmericans, which is as much as to say that we were un-American, we were thrownvery much into the society of the nicer English. Paris, you see, was our home. Somewhere between Nice and Bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and Nauheim always received us from July to September. You will gather from thisstatement that one of us had, as the saying is, a "heart", and, from the statementthat my wife is dead, that she was the suffere