The Middle Parts of Fortune
As the 1920s progressed and confidence started to return, the artistic community was increasingly looking back at the war. The demand for written material started to grow. The big catalyst was the play Journey's End written by R. C. Sherriff which first appeared in 1928. Davies urged Manning to use his undoubted talent in conjunction with his intense wartime experiences to write a novel. In an effort to capture the moment, Manning had to work rapidly, with little opportunity for second drafts and revisions. The result was The Middle Parts of Fortune, published anonymously by Peter Davies in a limited numbered edition of about 500 in 1929, copies of which are now rare collectors' items. The book is an account in the vernacular of the lives of ordinary soldiers. The central character named Bourne is the filter through which Manning's own experiences are transposed into the lives of a group of men whose own personal qualities interact in response to conflict and comradeship. Bourne is an enigmatic, detached character (a self-portrait of the author) who does not survive to the end, but leaves each of the protagonists alone with their own detachment, privy to their own thoughts.
This was a potent brew, forcibly written, too forcibly for what were seen as the sensibilities of the contemporary readership. An expurgated version was published by Davies in 1930 under the title Her Privates We. There is a quote from Shakespeare at the start of each chapter, and this particular reference occurs in Hamlet. In Act 2, Scene 2, there is a jocular exchange between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
- Guildenstern: On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
- Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?
- Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.
- Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
- Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.
- Hamlet: In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet.
There is quite clearly a sexual connotation, a negative one, albeit subtle. The original publication of this edition credited authorship to "Private 19022", possibly a simple desire for anonymity or possibly a further pun on "private soldier" and "private parts". Manning was first credited with authorship by name posthumously in 1943, but the original text was published widely only in 1977. Amongst the voices raised in praise were those of Arnold Bennett, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound (who cited Manning as a literary mentor) and T. E. Lawrence, who claimed to have seen through the anonymity and recognised the author of Scenes and Portraits. Be that as it may, Scenes and Portraits was re-published by Peter Davies in 1930, and Manning lived out his life basking in the afterglow of what is widely regarded as one of the very finest novels based upon the experiences of warfare.
Read more about this topic: Frederic Manning
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