A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster
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15 Some homosexuals he knew: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 125.
15 The truth was that to the younger man’s ear: Ibid., 126.
15 “I have shared with Alec”: Forster, Maurice, 212.
16 “imprisoned within the jungle”: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 126.
16 Apprehensively, he asked Christopher: Ibid.
16 “Eyes brimming with tears”: Ibid., 127.
16 “bright-eyed little rat”: Parker, Christopher Isherwood, 277.
16 “committed to wandering the world”: Ibid., 282.
16 “I think what might happen”: EMF to CI, April 27, 1933, Huntington; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:118–19.
17 “I am ashamed at shirking”: EMF to CI, June 25, 1948, Huntington.
17 “But Gide hasn’t got a mother!”: Parker, Ackerley, 338.
17 Then, after the war: EMF to CI, Aug. 28, 1938, Huntington; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:159.
17 “briefly and blazingly written”: EMF to CI, Aug. 28, 1938, Huntington; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:159.
17 But Morgan’s earlier skepticism: For thorough discussions of the homosexual prosecutions in the decades after World War II, see Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, and Johnson, The Lavender Scare.
18 Morgan jocularly called the packet: EMF to Wheeler, Oct. 15, 1952, Beinecke.
18 In Christopher’s study: Lehmann, Christopher Isherwood, 121.
18 But the men shared a reverence: Philip Gardner’s editor’s introduction to the Abinger edition of Maurice (1999) describes the peregrinations of the various Maurice manuscripts.
18 “How annoyed I am”: EMF, Locked Diary, KCC. There is no specific date for this addendum, but Forster’s notation that he was almost eighty-five gives it a rough date in the mid-1960s.
19 “knowledge would bring understanding”: Forster, Maurice, 220.
19 “can only be legalised”: Ibid.
20 “writer so socially acceptable”: GW to CI, Sept. 20, 1971, Huntington.
20 “there can be real love”: Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, 126.
20 “Of course all those books”: Lehmann, Christopher Isherwood, 121.
1: “A QUEER MOMENT”
25 “I own, but not quite”: Marianne Thornton to ACF, quoted in Forster, Marianne Thornton, 285.
25 While Lily rested at the hotel: Ibid., 287.
26 By the time they returned to London: Ibid., 287.
26 “months of languor and sickness”: Ibid., 289, 287.
26 “she was accustomed to”: Ibid., 287.
26 “fond of pleasure, generous”: Ibid., 278.
26 “[S]he felt that her life”: Ibid., 288.
26 “I wish tonight”: Forster, “Record of letters, books etc destroyed by me after my mother’s death, 1945,” KCC. ACF to Mamie Synnot, n.d., 1882.
27 “a great heroine”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:3.
27 “always had known best”: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 282.
27 “a discipline and an institution”: Forster, “Henry Thornton,” in Two Cheers, 194.
28 “votive offerings of people”: Forster, Howards End, 346.
29 “haze of elderly ladies”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:28.
29 “not wild like L[ily]”: Mrs. Farrer to Laura Forster, Nov. 7, 1876, in Forster, “Record of letters,” KCC.
29 “won’t be too old maidish”: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 286.
29 “the implication was obvious”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:31.
29 Aunt Monie had given Morgan: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 289.
30 “our usual game at Bézique”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:21.
30 “would much rather be”: Ibid., I:20. The contents of the letters come from Forster’s own transcription of letters he burned following the death of his mother in 1945. In Forster, “Record of letters,” KCC.
30 “half a girl”: ACF to MT, in Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:23.
30 “I’m a little boy”: Ibid., I:19fn.
30 “[t]iresome to be interrupted”: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 300.
30 Learning to read opened: Forster, “Nottingham Lace (Unfinished Fragment),” in Arctic Summer and Other Fiction, 14.
30 “It is not”: Forster, “Notes on the English Character” (1926), in Abinger Harvest and England’s Pleasant Land, 5.
31 “Maurice had two dreams”: Forster, Maurice, 12.
31 “We built a little house”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC. The diary, a separate section in the Locked Diary, is marooned on its own. Internal references date the beginning of this sexual reminiscence to the mid-1930s, when Forster was in his mid-fifties.
31 “[W]e all went to Bournemouth”: Ibid.
31 At Rooksnest he soon outstripped: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 304.
32 “I used to hang on the branches”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC.
32 “Soon after Mr. Hervey came”: Ibid.
32 “presently . . . ‘help me get rid’ ”: Ibid.
32 “Morgan never came out”: Interview with Mollie Barger, Hampstead, July 24, 2001.
33 “Felt deeply about boys in books”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC.
33 “long serial stories”: Ibid.
33 “sleeping with naked black man”: Ibid.
33 Sexual issues began to ossify: Weeks, Coming Out, 14–15.
34 “A few more cases like Oscar Wilde’s”: Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 10.
34 “I knew that [Aunt Monie] was ill”: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 322.
34 “Have you seen Forster’s cock?”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC.
35 “Having concluded he spoke to me”: Ibid.
35 “effect on [his] development”: Ibid.
36 “We know from the Bible”: Ibid.
36 The lesson of the pedophile: To name just a few examples: There is the cowardice of Mr. Ducie, Maurice’s headmaster, who gives the boy a frank facts-of-life speech, but (seeing ladies come near) rushes to erase his anatomical diagrams in the sand. In A Passage to India there is a British official who mistakes Dr. Aziz’s missing collar stud as proof of the doctor’s “slackness” and inability to dress properly because the doctor has lent it to his English friend Mr. Fielding—the real slacker. In Howards End there is Henry Wilcox’s matter-of-fact response to the young clerk Leonard Bast’s loss of his job, though Henry Wilcox is responsible—through bad business advice—for the young man’s unemployment.
36 “I made an entry in my Diary”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC.
37 “Later in the term”: Ibid.
37 “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and bies”: Forster, “Breaking Up,” The Spectator, July 28, 1933.
38 “Forster? The writer?”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:42.
38 “The position of a young man”: Gosse to J. A. Symonds, March 5, 1890, in Bartlett, Who Was That Man?, 80.
39 “Learnt that there was queer stuff”: EMF, Sex Diary, KCC.
2: KINGS AND APOSTLES
40 “silly and idle” fellow: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 87.
40 For more than four hundred years: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 1.
40 “automatic and effortless advancement”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 23.
41 “team work . . . and cricket”: Ibid., 22.
41 the “oddities and the crudities”: Ibid., 23.
41 “crept cold and friendless”: Forster, The Longest Journey, 5.
42 “could be seen rushing up”: Forster, “Presidential Address to the Cambridge Humanists.”
42 To be listened to: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:51.
42 Socially and academically: Plomer, conversational notes toward Forster biography, Durham.
42 “unsure of my clothes”: Forster, Comments at Founder’s Day, Dec. 2, 1952, KCC; EMF to ACF, late Nov. 1897, KCC; also in Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:16.
43 “it is difficult for an inexperienced boy”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 22.
43 In the sprin
g of his first year: EMF, Diary, May 1898, KCC.
43 “shelter of the dell”: Forster, The Longest Journey, 27.
43 “Walked into old chalk pit”: EMF, Diary, May 1898, KCC.
43 “The green bank at the entrance”: Forster, The Longest Journey, 27–28.
43 “tell most things about”: Ibid., 21.
44 At the head of stairway W7: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:61.
44 Within weeks of meeting Morgan: Forster, “Presidential Address to the Cambridge Humanists.”
44 They sent a representative: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 47.
45 “The idea of a god becoming”: Forster, “Presidential Address to the Cambridge Humanists.”
45 “It so happened”: Ibid.
45 “no formula for unknown experience”: Williams, Culture and Society, 334.
45 “Athens in particular”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 106–107.
46 “The love that dare not speak its name”: Hyde, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, 236.
46 “They attended the Dean’s translation class”: Forster, Maurice, 37–38.
46 “saw in King’s the material”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:54.
47 “soul-fingering”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 19.
47 “a deposit of radium”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 25.
47 “a bully and a liar”: Ibid., 24–25. The list is from Dickinson’s memoir at King’s.
47 “Whatever his make up”: Ibid., 25.
47 “the hero of a lost play”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 13. The quotation is from Nathaniel Wedd’s memoirs at King’s.
47 “in his inner room”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 26. The words are Forster’s direct quotation from Dickinson’s then-unpublished memoirs.
47 “Eton sacked OB”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 18.
48 In the city, too, women: Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge, 92. Winstanley served as a searcher alongside Forster in Alexandria during the First World War.
48 In the 1890s Cambridge was: Ibid., 121–43.
48 “as usual the women”: EMF, Locked Diary, Sept. 19, 1910, KCC.
48 “get a less superficial idea”: EMF, Diary, Dec. 31, 1904, KCC; quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:122.
49 “could not make out why”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:171.
49 “5 Nov. (Sunday) [1899]”: EMF, Diary, KCC.
49 “To him more than to anyone”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 61.
49 As a King’s undergraduate in 1882: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 24.
50 As a don, Wedd remained: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 61.
50 “a desirable accomplishment”: Ibid.
50 “gave all his time and energies”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 24.
50 “wonderfully clever & amusing”: EMF to ACF, Nov. 5, 1899, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:35.
50 “advises me to think of journalistic work”: EMF to ACF, Sunday [Apr. 23, 1899], KCC.
51 “While his pupil read out”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 12.
51 “I came towards the end”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 25.
51 “in a lecture”: Forster, “My Books and I,” ms., KCC.
51 “He tells me that I might write”: Ibid.
52 “What the public really loathes”: Forster, “Author’s Note to Maurice,” Maurice, 220.
52 “I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort”: Forster, Maurice, 134.
52 “Rubbish, rubbish!”: Ibid.
53 “associated with action”: Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 160. Here he is quoting Keynes.
53 “We were at an age when”: Keynes, My Early Beliefs, 81.
53 “Are crocodiles the best of animals?”: Beauman, Morgan, 85fn.
53 “Is self-abuse bad as an end?”: Ibid., 85.
53 “suddenly lifted an obscure accumulation”: Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 161.
53 “We should have been very angry”: Keynes, My Early Beliefs, 86.
54 “nicknamed him the Taupe”: Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 188.
54 “the elusive colt of a dark horse”: Keynes, My Early Beliefs, 81.
54 “He was strange, elusive, evasive”: Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 187.
54 “a streak of queer humour”: Ibid.
54 “Strachey issued [an] edict”: Keynes, My Early Beliefs, 84.
55 “jockeying to procure [the] election”: Wilkinson, A Century of King’s, 51.
55 In Dickinson, Morgan: Forster, “Author’s Preface” to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, xxii.
55 “tended to inhabit the university”: E. M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 28.
55 “rope . . . people in to get ideas”: Ibid., 83.
56 “a thin veil of melancholy”: Forster, “Author’s Preface” to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, xxi.
56 “My sister has a bone to pick”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 46.
56 “the only man who could”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:79.
56 a “maieutic” gift: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 89.
56 “teaching . . . could not be distinguished”: Ibid., 85.
3: “A MINORITY, NOT A SOLITARY”
58 “Baedeker-bestarred Italy”: EMF to Wedd, Dec. 1, 1901, KCC; quoted in editor’s introduction to Forster, A Room with a View, ix.
58 “Our life is where we sleep”: EMF to GLD, March 25, 1902, KCC; quoted ibid.
58 “the hotels are comfortable”: EMF to Dent, Oct. 22, 1901, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:46.
59 “Philip could never read”: Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread, 12.
59 “M is much quieter”: ACF to Louisa Whichelo, May 19, 1902, KCC.
59 “took her to buy butter dishes”: Karen Arrandale to author, May 6, 2008.
59 “never saw anybody so incapable”: ACF to Louisa Whichelo, Nov. 3, 1901, KCC.
59 “Now I am older I understand”: EMF, Diary, Jan. 22, 1953, KCC.
59 “I missed nothing”: EMF, Diary, Oct. 10, 1901, KCC.
60 “[C]herish the body”: EMF, “Museo Kichneriano,” ms., KCC.
60 Even the tourist venues: EMF, Diary, Oct. 20, 1901, KCC.
60 “I’ve tried to invent realism”: EMF to GLD, Dec. 15, 1901, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:51.
60 “Perugia would be nicer”: Ibid.
60 “Traveling does not conduce”: EMF to GLD, March 25, 1902, KCC.
60 “all females”: EMF to Wedd, Dec. 1, 1901, KCC; quoted in editor’s introduction to Forster, A Room with a View, x.
61 “It is not what happens”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:91.
61 “Where all is obscure and unrealised”: Forster, Maurice, 12.
61 “I would bring some middle-class Britishers”: Forster, “Three Countries,” in The Hill of Devi, 290.
61 “down on the theme”: Forster, “Introduction to the 1947 edition of Collected Short Stories,” in The Machine Stops, xv.
62 “disquieting smile”: Forster, “The Story of a Panic,” in The Machine Stops, 8, 11, 15.
62 “Then he showed Maynard”: Forster, “My Books and I,” ms., KCC. Transcribed in The Longest Journey, 300–306.
63 “no thought of sex”: Forster, “My Books and I,” ms., KCC.
63 “because he thinks”: Ibid.
63 “I watch my own inaction”: EMF to Dent, Jan. 25, 1902, KCC.
63 “Would you care”: George Trevelyan to EMF, May 9, 1902, Trinity College, Cambridge. Quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:94.
64 between the two “monsters”: Forster, Maurice, 193.
64 “I am afraid I enjoy”: EMF to Dent, Oct. 30, 1902, KCC.
64 “rational enjoyment and hard work”: Davies, The Working Men’s College, 30.