A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster
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104 “I go about saying”: EMF to GLD, Nov. 21, 1910, KCC.
105 “I am not vain”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 8, 1910, KCC.
105 “is evidently deeply shocked”: EMF, Locked Diary, June 16, 1911, KCC.
105 “main causes of my sterility”: EMF, Locked Diary, Sept. 19, 1910, KCC.
105 “sorrow has altered her”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1911, KCC.
105 “trivial and effeminate”: EMF, Locked Diary, July 17, 1911, KCC.
105 “just like his father”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:218.
105 “feared to tell mother”: EMF, Locked Diary, July 26, 1911, KCC.
105 “Satanic fit of rage”: EMF, Locked Diary, Oct. 31, 1911, KCC.
106 “mother does not think highly of me”: EMF, Locked Diary, May 15, 1912, KCC; quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, I:218.
106 “a bright healthy young man”: EMF to FB, Dec. 24, 1911, KCC.
106 “I say! Your son”: Interview with Mollie Barger, London, July 24, 2001.
106 “a honeymoon slightly off colour”: Gardner, ed., Commonplace Book, 217; EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1911, KCC.
106 “is a photograph of us”: Gardner, ed., Commonplace Book, 217.
106 “ ‘Out of the way brother’ ”: EMF to ACF, Jan. 15, 1913, KCC.
107 a “[v]ery great happiness”: EMF, Locked Diary, Sept. 9, 1912, KCC.
107 “Here smut postcard”: EMF, Indian Diary, Oct. 11, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 120.
107 “a little nip of frost”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 113.
107 “argued about the shape”: Ibid., 117.
107 “evanescent . . . shooting out little glints”: Ibid., 113.
107 “It’s not a star”: EMF, Indian Diary, Oct. 21, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 125.
107 “very intimate with the natives”: EMF to FB, n.d., Oct. 1912, KCC. This letter was posted from S.S. City of Birmingham “off Perim.”
107 “perpetually in love”: Proctor, ed., The Autobiography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 178; EMF, Indian Diary, Oct. 15, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 122.
107 Morgan spent hours with him: EMF, Indian Diary, Oct. 15, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 122.
108 “spread . . . out over the plain”: EMF, Indian Diary, Oct. 25, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 128.
108 “superb in his uniform”: Proctor, ed., The Autobiography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 178.
108 “fitted indifferently into official circles”: Forster, The Hill of Devi, 26.
108 “unconventional, ardent, fearless”: Ibid.
108 “The Darlings are ideal”: EMF to ACF, Feb. 26, 1913, KCC; quoted in The Hill of Devi, 182.
109 “I didn’t go there to govern”: Forster, “Three Countries,” in The Hill of Devi, 296.
109 “in a sort of starved omnibus”: Forster, The Hill of Devi, 131.
109 “I came out with no feeling”: EMF, Indian Diary, Nov. 17, 1912, in The Hill of Devi, 145.
109 “a cultivated man”: EMF, Indian Diary, Jan. 4, 1913, in The Hill of Devi, 172.
109 “so kind, but whatever”: EMF to FB, Jan. 14, 1913, KCC.
109 “winced with horror”: Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 115.
110 “the oddest corner of the world”: EMF to ACF, Dec. 16, 1912, KCC; Malcolm Darling to EMF, May 1907, quoted in The Hill of Devi, 17.
110 “a waistcoat”: Forster, The Hill of Devi, 8.
110 “brown tennis-ball”: Ibid., 9.
110 At Chhatarpur, Goldie noted: Proctor, ed., The Autobiography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 180.
110 “not even a little flirt”: Forster, The Hill of Devi, 226, 223.
111 “he who might be slipping away”: EMF, Indian Diary, Nov. 18, 1912, KCC.
111 “Long and sad day”: EMF, Indian Diary, Jan. 13, 1913, KCC.
111 Perhaps because of this: EMF, Indian Diary, Nov. 18, 1912; March 14, 1913; Jan. 1913; March 14, 1913; March 25, 1913.
111 “I am dried up”: EMF to Forrest Reid, Feb. 2, 1913, KCC.
112 “It’s an awful pity”: EMF to Masood, April 11, 1913, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:201. This letter is not included in the published Forster-Masood letters, ed. Kidwai.
112 a “radiant moment”: EMF, “Mother,” 1945, KCC.
112 “modern life had absorbed”: Dent, “Angel Wings,” in Beith, ed., Edward Carpenter, 26–27.
112 Carpenter was approaching seventy: Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams, 147.
113 “We’re all in heaven here”: Ibid., 163.
113 For his part, Carpenter: Ibid.
113 “escap[ing] from culture by”: Forster, “Some Memories,” in Beith, ed., Edward Carpenter, 74–75.
113 “candor about sex”: Ibid., 75.
113 “a creative spring”: Forster, “Notes on Maurice,” in Maurice, 215.
114 “A happy ending was imperative”: Ibid., 216.
114 “unhappily, with a lad dangling”: Ibid.
114 “I was determined”: Ibid.
114 “I tried to create”: Ibid., 209.
114 The third figure: Ibid., 217.
115 a “ghastly old boy”: EMF to FB, Aug. 10, 1915, KCC; Forster, “Notes on Maurice,” in Maurice, 217; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:229.
115 “unfair on Clive”: Forster, “Notes on Maurice,” in Maurice, 217.
115 “it bored him dumb”: EMF to Forrest Reid, March 13, 1915, KCC.
115 “Hugh can’t again”: EMF to FB, Aug. 10, 1915, KCC.
115 “I have talked to you so much”: EMF to FB, June 29, 1914, KCC.
115 “a new and painful world”: EMF to FB, March 28, 1915, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:223.
115 “I am so happy that”: EMF to FB, April 27, 1915, KCC.
116 “beautiful . . . the best work”: EMF to Dent, June 13, 1915, KCC.
116 Morgan entrusted his most heartfelt discussion: Ibid.
116 “My smooth spurt is over”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 17, 1913, KCC.
116 “3 unfinished novels”: Ibid.
116 “Forward rather than back”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1913, KCC.
116 “the Scudder part”: GLD to EMF, Dec. 11, 1914, KCC.
116 “breaks my heart almost”: Ibid.
116 “are on a basis”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1914, KCC.
117 “sublimated . . . sublime”: Taylor, The Green Avenue, 104.
117 “Dear Reid . . . My perspicacity”: EMF to Forrest Reid, March 13, 1915, KCC.
118 “To give these people a chance”: Ibid.
119 “I should have prophesied”: LS to EMF, March 12, 1915, in Levy, ed., The Letters of Lytton Strachey, 246.
119 “I really think the whole conception”: Ibid.
119 more than he “would have liked”: EMF to LS, March 14, 1915, KCC.
119 “No one ever breaks”: EMF to LS, Nov. 1, 1913, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:208.
119 “You can scarcely imagine”: EMF to Dent, March 6, 1915, KCC.
119 “My work is all wrong”: EMF, Locked Diary, Aug. 1, 1914, KCC.
120 “[I] do not think”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1914, KCC.
120 “a sandy haired passionate Nibelung”: EMF to Forrest Reid, Jan. 23, 1915, KCC.
120 it “is a beautiful book”: Frieda Lawrence to EMF, Feb. 5, 1915, KCC.
120 “you belied and betrayed”: DHL to EMF, Jan. 28, 1915, KCC.
120 “In [your] books”: DHL to EMF, Wednesday [Feb. 3] 1915, KCC.
121 It emerged that Lawrence’s: DHL to Bertrand Russell, Feb. 12, 1915, Boulton, Zytaruk, et al., eds., Letters of D. H. Lawrence, II:283.
121 Lawrence told a friend: DHL to Barbara Low, Feb. 11, 1915, ibid., II: 280.
121 “which is beautiful”: EMF to Dent, March 6, 1915, KCC.
121 In his diary, Morgan: EMF, Locked Diary, Sept. 9, 1915, KCC.
121 “up till the last moment”: Proctor, ed., Autobiography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, 189.
/> 121 “Don’t say ‘face facts’”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:2.
122 “What’s to occupy me”: EMF to GLD, Dec. 13, 1914, KCC.
122 “I am leading the life”: EMF to FB, Aug. 10, 1915, KCC.
6: “PARTING WITH RESPECTABILITY”
123 “a very pale, delicately-built young man”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:25. The speaker is the daughter of Aida Borchgrevink.
123 Zealous self-described “brigades”: Gullace, “White Feathers and Wounded Men,” 178.
123 He had rebuffed: Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:19.
124 “Who’s for the khaki suit”: Jessie Pope, 1915. In Flanders Fields: Poetry of the First World War, ed. George Walter. London: Allen Lane, 2004, 21.
124 “khaki of sorts”: Forster, “The Lost Guide,” in Alexandria, 355.
124 “My uniform is well received”: Forster, “Incidents of War Notebook,” KCC.
125 found her “shrewish”: EMF to ACF, Nov. 21, 1915, KCC.
125 “mother was too much against it”: EMF to FB, Aug. 10, 1915, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:229.
125 “All one can do”: EMF to Masood, July 29, 1915; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:224.
125 “a vague scheme for a book”: EMF to GLD, April 5, 1916, KCC.
126 “This room contains nothing of beauty”: Forster, Alexandria, 94, 95, 97.
126 the “specimen is not even”: Ibid., 121.
126 “One can’t dislike Alex”: EMF to ACF, Nov. 21, 1915, KCC.
126 From his “comfortable” room: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:232.
127 Forster was unaware: See Dunne, “Sexuality and the Civilizing Process.”
128 It was “unthinkable”: This was Judge A. C. McBarnet. See ibid., 191–92.
128 The first friend: EMF to EC, April 13, 1916 (“I knew [Furness] slightly” at King’s), KCC.
128 “I have long been a policeman”: Robert Furness to Maynard Keynes, April 25, 1907, KCC.
128 For Furness, the city: Dunne notes in “Sexuality and the Civilizing Process,” “In 1910, 786 boys and 1,477 girls had been intercepted at the Port, and they probably represented a small fraction of the sexual commerce in the town.” 183.
128 Like many British gentlemen: EMF, Mohammed el Adl Notebook, KCC.
128 “frugal, pungent” style: Furness, Introductory Note, Poems of Callimachus, xii.
128 The little vignettes: Furness stayed in Egypt all his professional life. He was the head of the Egyptian Boy Scout League, and later a professor of literature at Fuad University in Cairo. Furness married in his sixties and had a daughter late in life, in England. He died in 1954.
129 “what the inhabitants”: Forster, Alexandria, 354.
129 “I went to the Red Cross”: Ibid., 355.
129 the “ambitious and westernising Ottoman”: Haag, Alexandria, 9.
129 “a good deal of horse racing”: Forster, Alexandria, 355.
129 “the only buildings”: Baedeker’s Egypt, 16.
130 “handsomely fitted up”: Ibid., 9.
130 “I . . . start out”: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:232.
130 “intense and unbelievable blue”: Forster, Alexandria, 354.
130 “coalesced into a set”: Ibid., 355.
130 “cerebral and ruffled heron”: Grafftey-Smith, Bright Levant, 70.
130 “discarding my uniform . . . [to] plunge”: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:233.
130 “symbolizes for me a mixture”: Forster, Alexandria, 355–56.
131 Anastassiades, a cotton broker: EMF to Virginia Woolf, April 15, 1916, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:234.
131 “All that I cared for”: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:233.
131 “I imagine it is here”: EMF to Virginia Woolf, Apr. 15, 1916, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:234.
132 “I came inclined”: EMF to Malcolm Darling, Aug. 6, 1916, HRC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:238–39.
132 “so pleasant and grateful”: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:234.
132 One young private: Forster, “Incidents of War Notebook,” KCC.
133 “After giving careful evidence”: Ibid.
133 “‘I’m awfully interested in ideas’”: EMF to GLD, July 28, 1916, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:237.
133 “If one does get news”: EMF to Masood, Dec. 29, 1915, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:232.
134 “little nameless unremembered acts”: Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” ll. 34–35.
134 The conscription that the Red Cross: Four months after this initial call, the act was revised to include married men; by April 1917, it was expanded still further to include men discharged because of wounds or illness. Eventually, by April 1918, all men between the ages of seventeen and fifty-one were required to register for the draft. I am grateful to Laura Harbold for her research on conscription.
135 Only his friends: EMF to FB, July 2, 1916, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:235.
135 “I am quite shameless”: EMF to ACF, July 10, 1916, KCC.
135 “a splendid creature”: EMF to FB, July 2, 1916, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:235.
136 “[w]e must have a numerous”: Forster, “Incidents of War Notebook,” KCC.
136 “I was bathing myself”: EMF to GLD, July 28, 1916, KCC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:237.
136 “It’s evidently not to be in our day”: Ibid.
137 “Come here Mustafa Pasha”: Forster, “Gippo English,” Egyptian Mail, Dec. 16, 1919, 2; quoted in Haag, Alexandria, 26.
137 “I don’t want to grouse”: EMF to EC, April 12, 1916, KCC.
138 “do the . . . brotherly” thing: EMF to GLD, July 28, 1916, KCC.
138 “No admission this way”: Forster, “Gippo English,” Egyptian Mail, Dec. 16, 1919, 2.
138 An essay on the strangeness: Forster, “Army English,” Egyptian Mail, Jan. 12, 1919, 2.
139 “We went up pitch black stairs”: EMF to EC, May 18, 1916, KCC.
140 “A few days after”: EMF to Malcolm Darling, Aug. 6, 1916, HRC; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, I:239.
140 “sickened to the vitals”: EMF to EC, April 13, 1916, KCC.
140 A friend described him as: Liddell, Cavafy, 180.
141 “a literary evening”: EMF to ACF, Aug. 24, 1916, KCC.
141 a “Greek gentleman in a straw hat”: Forster, “The Poetry of Cavafy,” 13.
141 “to give the impression”: Liddell, Cavafy, 129–30.
141 “Where could I live better?”: Ibid., 180.
142 “continuously adjusting the light”: Ibid., 182.
142 “his better furniture”: Ibid., 181.
142 “I am back from my work”: Forster, “The Poetry of Cavafy,” 40.
143 “sensation that I love”: Cavafy, “Come Back” (1904), trans. Keeley and Sherrard, 43.
143 “How strong the scents were”: Cavafy, “In the Evening,” The Complete Poems of Cavafy, 73.
143 Even more exciting: Sherrard, “Cavafy’s Sensual City: A Question,” 96.
143 For his nighttime self: Liddell, Cavafy, 130.
144 “expressions . . . that one might actually hear”: Forster, “The Poetry of Cavafy,” 14.
144 “the world within”: Ibid., 15.
144 “burn . . . his fingers”: The journal’s editor was Stephen Pargas, who went by the pseudonym Nikos Zelitas. Haag, Alexandria, 68.
144 “The best Alexandrian I know”: EMF to GLD, Jan. 10, 1917, KCC.
144 liked his own outrageous jokes: Grafftey-Smith, Bright Levant, 36. Sometimes the joke would go too far. “When Johnny decided to raise a gale of laughter by going to a very English party with a mahogany girdle round his waist and a min
iature gilt cistern over his head, pulling his little gilt plug-chain to spray his hostess with perfume, no one was amused.”