Ford Society members might be interested in a review ‘At Dungeness’ by Susannah Clapp on p.26 of the latest London Review of Books. It is a review of Dominic Gregory’s Lifeboat at the End of the World, about volunteering on the Dungeness lifeboat. She writes: ‘It’s freighted with quotations from Ford Madox Ford, who thought Dungeness was the end of the world, and Joseph Conrad, for whom it was the first sight of England.’
The Ford quote is from The Cinque Ports (1900, p.161):
Dungeness itself is a place far more desolate than even Littlestone – but desolate in a different, a pleasanter, manner. It is nothing but shingle, nothing but shingle to the close of the chapter. Once there, one is at the end of the world – at the end of the world’s Fifth Quarter. One sees no land, only shingle and sea. The lighthouse reaches up into the clear sky. A few persons, isolated figures, glide over the ridges; oneself, one staggers and plunges dismally. One is at the end of the world.
Only 525 copies were issued of The Cinque Ports, and it was never reprinted. Of course, these days the author need not have actually read the book, but even knowing about it surely puts him in a relatively exclusive club!
