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138 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
typed by McAlmon while it was being readied for the printer. He
recounts that he arbitrarily changed some of the words, and that
some of his typographical errors appeared in the final version. So it
is with literature.
On one occasion, says McAlmon, a dinner party by the editors
of The New Review in honor of Pound almost became a tragedy.
A Maltese youth was seated between Pound and McAlmon, and
across from them was an English youth who was the rival of the
Maltese in some sort of an affair. The Maltese was under the influence
of drugs, and he had come to the dinner party, not in the
service of literature or because he was hungry, but merely to assassinate
his rival.
As Ford Madox Ford arose to deliver an oration on the achievements
of Ezra Pound, McAlmon saw the Maltese draw a stiletto
from under his jacket, and lean across the table to dispose of his
enemy. The English boy jumped out of the window, and the drugcrazed
youth then turned on Pound. McAlmon seized his wrist, and
managed to stop him. After the police had taken the Maltese away,
McAlmon found that his coat sleeve had been entirely cut away by
one pass of the knife. It had missed his artery by a fraction of an
inch. The incident was hushed up, and the American papers published
in Paris never mentioned it. And, says McAlmon, Ford
never did get to make his speech. 18
The ubiquitous Ford was on hand in Paris to chronicle Pound's
doings. No longer Hueffer, he was now officially Mr. Ford. His
change of name and active service in the British army had done
nothing to convince Ford's neighbors in London that he was not
a German spy, or that confidential documents stolen from Whitehall
had not been cached nightly beneath the stern visage of
Gaudier's Pound in the garden. After all, the neighbors reasoned,
why wouldn't a German spy try to deceive people by enlisting in
the British army?
One cannot reproach Mr. Ford for leaving England and seeking
a more hospitable environment. As he points out, it was actually
dangerous for an English veteran to live in England after the war,
for the populace was filled with bitter hatred against the men who
had saved them from the Germans. The perfect army (and I
believe there was such a corps in the history of Greece) is one