Tee Time and Women's Rites: Parade's End

Either I'm reading in a fog (quite possible) or Ford Madox Ford is writing in a fog, but I am having a hell of a time making sense of the first book, Some do not..., in his quartet, Parade's End. I finished the section in which a golf excursion gets derailed when one or several suffragettes show up on the course and protest; the next chapter involves an afternoon tea of some such social gathering, and the hostess talks quite a bit to one of the young woman guests who, it turns out, was the lead suffragette in the demonstration; he's worried about getting  picked up and sent to prison for her activities - which I'm sure did happen and could have happened. She says she's not very brave or heroic - just committed - and we know (wasn't A Brief History of Women about this?) that some of the suffragettes starved themselves to death in prison, so things were pretty intense and gruesome, though it sure does not seem this way at this tea party. Turns out suff. #1 is the daughter of a late professor and a mother with a literary bent - the mother forces her way into the social event without an invitation because she wants to talk to one of the guests who she thinks can help her get published - it turns out that the guest is the young civil servant, Macmaster, whom we've been meeting on and off through these chapters; and along with him comes the disheveled but brilliant friend, Tietjens, and the young suffragette - who'd startled T. on the golf course - seems to be interested in him. Hard to tell. We're also drifting away from the plot line that involved T.'s estranged and her odd, incomprehensible, desire to reconcile - even though by her own account she hates him and hates their child! A lot of talk and I can't keep the characters straight and can't see the connections between the diverse elements. Ford is notable for giving very little back story, very little context - if any, and that makes it really rough going, especially for an American reader a century later, who does not and cannot possibly pick up all the social cues and political references. I feel like an uninvited guest at that tea party - bewildered and out of place.