Chapter I: Front Matter

DEATH
OF A HERO

_A NOVEL BY
RICHARD ALDINGTON_

1929
COVICI · FRIEDE · INC · NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY COVICI-FRIEDE, INC.

Second printing, July, 1929
Third printing, July, 1929
Fourth printing, October, 1929

_Manufactured in the United States of America
by the VAN REES PRESS, New York_

_“See how we trifle! but one can’t pass one’s youth
too amusingly; for one must grow old, and that in
England; two most serious circumstances, either of
which makes people grey in the twinkling of a bed-staff;
for know you, there is not a country upon
earth where there are so many old fools
and so few young ones.”_

HORACE WALPOLE

TO
_HALCOTT GLOVER_

MY DEAR HAL,

Remembering George Moore’s denunciation of prefaces, I felt that what I wanted to say here could be best expressed in a letter to you. Although you are a little older than I, you belong essentially to the same generation—those who spent their childhood and adolescence struggling, like young Samsons, in the toils of the Victorians; whose early manhood coincided with the European War. A great number of the men of our generation died prematurely. We are unlucky or lucky enough to remain.

I began this book almost immediately after the Armistice, in a little Belgian cottage—my billet. I remember the landscape was buried deep in snow, and that we had very little fuel. Then came demobilization, and the effort of readjustment cost my manuscript its life. I threw it aside, and never picked it up again. The attempt was premature. Then, ten years later, almost day for day, I once more felt the impulse return, and began this book. You, I know, will read it sympathetically for many reasons. But I cannot expect the same favour from others.

This book is not the work of a professional novelist. It is, apparently, not a novel at all. Certain conventions of form and method in the novel have been erected, I gather, into immutable laws, and are looked upon with quite superstitious reverence. They are entirely disregarded here. To me the excuse for the novel is that one can do any damn thing one pleases. I am told I have done things as terrible as if you introduced asides and soliloquies into your plays, and came on to the stage in the middle of a scene to take part in the action. You know how much I should be interested if you did that—I am all for disregarding artistic rules of thumb. I dislike standardized art as much as standardized life. Whether I have been guilty of Expressionism or Super-realism or not, I don’t know and don’t care. I knew what I wanted to say, and said it. And I know I have not tried to be “original.”

The technique of this book, if it can be said to have one, is that which I evolved for myself in writing a longish modern poem (which you liked) called “A Fool i’ th’ Forest.” Some people said that was “jazz poetry”; so I suppose this is a jazz novel. You will see how appropriate that is to the theme.

I believe you at least will be sympathetic to the implied or expressed idealism of this book. Through a good many doubts and hesitations and changes I have always preserved a certain idealism. I believe in men, I believe in a certain fundamental integrity and comradeship, without which society could not endure. How often that integrity is perverted, how often that comradeship betrayed, there is no need to tell you. I disbelieve in bunk and despotism, even in a dictatorship of the intelligentsia. I think you and I are not wholly unacquainted with the intelligentsia?

Some of the young, they who will “do the noble things that we forgot,” think differently. According to them, bunk must be parried by super-bunk. Sincerity is superannuated. It doesn’t matter what you have to say; what matters is whether you can put it across successfully. And the only hope is to forbid everybody to read except a few privileged persons (chosen how and by whom?) who will autocratically tell the rest of us what to do. Well, do we believe that? I answer on your behalf as well as my own that we emphatically do not. Of course, these young men may be Swiftean ironists.

But, as you will see, this book is really a threnody, a memorial in its ineffective way to a generation which hoped much, strove honestly, and suffered deeply. Others, of course, may see it all very differently. Why should they not? I believe that all we claim is that we try to say what appears to be the truth, and that we are not afraid either to contradict ourselves or to retract an error.

Always yours,

_Paris, 1929_ RICHARD ALDINGTON

NOTE

This novel in print differs in some particulars from the same work in manuscript. To my astonishment, my publishers informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even passages, are at present illegal in the United States. I have recorded nothing which I have not observed in human life, said nothing I do not believe to be true; and I had not the slightest intention of appealing to anyone’s salacious instincts. My theme was too seriously tragic for that. But I am bound to accept the advice of those who know the Law concerning the published word. I have therefore asked my publishers to delete everything they consider objectionable, and to substitute asterisks for every word deleted. I would rather have my book mutilated than say what I do not believe.

En attendant mieux,
R. A.

P.S. I feel bound to add, in justice, that the expurgations required in the United States are much fewer and shorter than those demanded in England.

_CONTENTS_

PROLOGUE:
_MORTE D’UN EROE_
_ALLEGRETTO_

3

PART ONE
_VIVACE_

33

PART TWO
_ANDANTE CANTABILE_

109

PART THREE
_ADAGIO_

239

EPILOGUE

397