A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster

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by Wendy Moffat


  13: “I FAVOR RECIPROCAL DISHONESTY”

  276 “present goodness warmth”: EMF to JRA, April 11, 1951, HRC.

  276 Morgan “disliked” Gore Vidal: EMF to CI, June 25, 1948, Huntington.

  276 “Bob’s indifference to me”: EMF, Locked Diary, Oct. 8, 1948, KCC.

  276 “After three miserable days”: Ibid.; quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:282.

  277 He imagined that the reason: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 27, 1948, KCC.

  278 “Ihave got so fat”: EMF to PC, April 21, 1949, KCC.

  278 He asked Morgan: Britten to Henriette Bösmans, March 18, 1949; Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 499.

  278 “a bleak little place”: Forster, “George Crabbe: The Poet and the Man,” in Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes, 3.

  278 “the sweetest people”: EMF to WP; Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:282.

  279 The adjoining room: Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 257.

  279 “For my dear Morgan”: Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 363.

  280 a “savage fisherman”: Forster, “George Crabbe: The Poet and the Man,” in Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes, 4.

  280 “such a feeling of nostalgia”: Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes, 148.

  280 “To talk about Crabbe”: Forster, “George Crabbe: The Poet and the Man,” ibid., 3.

  280 Crabbe’s “uncomfortable mind”: Ibid., 10, 11.

  280 the same “inner tension”: Ibid., 18.

  280 Morgan’s “revealing article”: Britten, “On Receiving the First Aspen Award” (1964), in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 156.

  280 “Would you rather I loved”: Pears’s Grimes monologue, quoted in Philip Brett, “Peter Grimes in Progress” in Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes, 50.

  280 He quoted Crabbe directly: Forster, “George Crabbe and Peter Grimes,” in Two Cheers, 177.

  281 whose “behavior was excusable”: Pears, quoted in Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes, 57.

  281 “The more I hear of it”: Pears to Britten, letter 1189, Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 1.

  281 a complicated, closeted opera: Matthias, “The Haunting of Benjamin Britten,” 4.

  281 “Music had a warmth”: EMF, Diary, Nov. 5, 1963, KCC.

  281 the same “telepathic and simultaneous” thought: Britten quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 270.

  281 to “keep human beings”: EMF to Britten, Dec. 20, 1948, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:235.

  281 “an old man who has experienced much”: Forster, Crozier, and Britten, Billy Budd, 7.

  282 his job was “rescuing . . . Vere”: EMF to Lionel Trilling, April 16, 1949, Columbia; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:237.

  282 Placing the gorgeous, innocent figure of Billy: EMF to WP, March 10, 1949, Durham.

  282 “Why is it Vere’s touch”: EMF to Lionel Trilling, April 16, 1949, Columbia; Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:237.

  282 “soggy depression or growling remorse”: EMF to Britten, early Dec. 1950, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:242.

  283 “yet he is Billy, not Christ”: EMF to Britten, Dec. 20, 1948, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:235.

  283 “immersed in Billy Budd”: Crozier to Nancy Evans, March 4, 1949, Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 497.

  283 “sixteen remarkable Billy Budd days”: EMF, Diary, April 12, 1949, KCC.

  283 the “welter of technical [naval] terms”: Crozier to Nancy Evans, Fri. [March 11, 1949], Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 498.

  283 “typically generous”: Crozier to Nancy Evans, March 4, 1949, quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 282.

  283 “going through a period of revulsion”: Crozier to Nancy Evans, March 6, 1949, quoted ibid.

  283 “The great goodness and love of Bob”: EMF, Diary, April 12, 1949, KCC.

  283 Morgan began to plan: Ibid.

  283 “ought to be away from England”: EMF to PC, Feb. 21, 1949, copy at KCC.

  284 “I wish you could have [sketched] Bob”: EMF to PC, April 21, 1949, copy at KCC.

  284 “It was sad not seeing you”: EMF to PC, June 18, 1949, KCC.

  284 “Mr. Forster[’s] lifelong beloved”: GW to Bernard Perlin, April 20, 1949, Beinecke.

  284 “‘For being Morgan’”: EMF, American Journal, 1949, KCC.

  284 He crowed to a friend: GW to Bernard Perlin, April 20, 1949, Beinecke.

  284 “profound but not disturbing”: EMF to GW, Feb. 28, 1949, Beinecke.

  285 “In the American culture”: Rosco, Glenway Wescott, 19.

  285 a “prophet of a New America”: Ibid., 46. This is the headline of a review in the Boston Evening Transcript.

  285 “Glenway Wescott, Thornton Wilder and Julian Green”: Ibid., 41.

  285 “When you matriculate at the University of Chicago”: Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 200.

  285 “Freud Madox Fraud”: Rosco, Glenway Wescott, 24.

  286 “Dear Little George”:Phelps, ed., Lynes, Wheeler correspondence, 1927–29, Beinecke.

  286 It was Glenway’s “own fault”: GW to George Platt Lynes, June 24, 1927, Beinecke.

  286 The three men lived: Phelps, ed., Continual Lessons, 107. This is from a letter to Lloyd and Barbara Wescott, Feb. 26, 1943.

  287 “seemed to consider the world a gift”: Windham, Tanaquil, 84. Tanaquil is a novel, and this phrase describes Page, a photographer modeled on George Platt Lynes.

  287 “worldliness personified”: Wescott, ms. of “A Dinner, a Walk, a Talk . . . ,” Beinecke.

  287 was “worried about it”: GW to Bernard Perlin, June 1, 1949, Beinecke.

  288 linking “ancient and primitive religions”: Program, The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Ceremonial Program, May 27, 1949.

  288 It presented the “actual behavior of people”: Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 3; quoted in Gathorne-Hardy, Sex the Measure of All Things, 259.

  289 four percent of the men: Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior, 651.

  289 may have deliberately shaped his method: Gathorne-Hardy, Sex the Measure of All Things, 259.

  289 “all the staff”: LK to CI, “Aug. last, 1949,” Huntington.

  289 “went like a charm”: GW to CI, May 16, 1949, Huntington.

  290 “the cancer of unenforceable laws”: Wescott, ms. of “A Dinner, a Walk, a Talk . . . ,” Beinecke.

  290 not as much to “lumbermen, cattlemen, prospectors, miners and hunters”: Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior, 631, 633.

  290 Glenway was “surprised”: GW to CI, May 16, 1949, Huntington.

  290 “I favor reciprocal dishonesty”: Monroe Wheeler datebook, Aug. 1949, Beinecke.

  290 “I must say that it comforted me”: Wescott, “A Dinner, a Walk, a Talk . . . ,” in J. H. Stape, ed., E. M. Forster: Interviews and Recollections, 107.

  291 “Effeminacy is only a manner”: GW to CI, Sept. 20, 1971. Despite the date of the letter, GW makes it clear that the quotations are taken from contemporaneous notes on Forster’s conversation.

  291 “A writer . . . who chose”: Forster, “Art for Art’s Sake,” in Two Cheers, 88.

  291 “I am the outsidest of outsiders”: EMF to PC, Oct. 31, 1943. He is referring both to his limitation as a visual observer and his status as an artist.

  291 “I would sooner be a swimming rat”: Forster, Two Cheers, 93–94.

  292 “beat it” to Glenway’s farm: GW to EMF, Feb. 20, 1949, Beinecke.

  292 “nature to advantage dress’d”: Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” II:297–98.

  292 “I don’t even use my truncheon”: Wescott, “A Dinner, A Walk, a Talk . . .,” in J. H. Stape, ed., E. M. Forster: Interviews and Recollections, 105.

  292 “Mutual secrecy”: Forster, Aspects of the Novel, 47.

  293 “perfect for each other”: Interview with Jon Ande
rson, Oct. 10, 2007.

  293 “the toughest man”: LK to CI, April 26, 1950, Huntington.

  293 “reject[ing] intimacy without impairing affection”: Forster, “T. E. Lawrence,” in A. W. Lawrence, ed., T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, 285.

  293 “Now, don’t you see better?”: Wescott, “A Dinner, A Walk, a Talk . . . ,” in J. H. Stape, ed., E. M. Forster: Interviews and Recollections, 106.

  294 “[w]hen a camera approaches”: Roerick, “Forster and America,” in Oliver Stallybrass, ed., Aspects of E. M. Forster, 62.

  294 “the subject whom he was photographing”: Windham, “Which Urges,” 27.

  294 “When Lynes photographed me”: Ibid.

  296 “the greatest collection of dirty art in the world”: LK to CI, “Aug. last, 1949,” Huntington.

  296 “great affection for America”: EMF to GW, Nov. 22, 1951, Beinecke.

  296 “The American life would have proved unendurable”: Wescott, ms. of “A Dinner, a Walk, a Talk . . . ,” Beinecke. Though GW refers to “someone” telling him this, Kirstein, Cadmus, and Isherwood were likely his sources.

  296 “Sometimes I wish”: EMF to Monroe Wheeler, Jan. 1951, Beinecke.

  296 a suspected “cancer?”: EMF, Diary, Dec. 27, 1948, KCC.

  297 “a tendency to dry-dock feeling”: Eric Crozier quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 287.

  297 “in a funny abstracted mood”: Britten to Erwin Stein, quoted ibid., 297.

  297 “one of [my] corpses”: Mitchell et al., eds., Letters from a Life, 521. Letter from Crozier to Nancy Evans, July [n.d.] 1949.

  298 “Morgan was slow”: Burrell, quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 290.

  298 “To me, [Morgan] was chilly but polite”: Crozier quoted ibid., 290.

  298 “berated [Ben] like a schoolboy”: Crozier to Furbank, in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:285.

  298 “I am rather a fierce old man”: EMF, Diary, Dec. 31, 1950, KCC.

  298 “Heavens the excitement”: EMF to Tom Coley, Nov. 21, 1951.

  299 a way to “wrestle with the void”: EMF, Diary, June 29, 1950, KCC.

  299 “gnawed by my failure”: Ibid.

  299 “As for Bob,”: EMF, Diary, Dec. 31, 1950, KCC.

  299 “but not at an accessible layer”: Ibid.

  299 “a little polished shell”: Ibid.

  14: “THE WORM THAT NEVER DIES”

  301 “offered a Knighthood”: EMF to JRA, Dec. 2, 1949, HRC. Morgan told Ackerley that he was surprised to have been approached, since Benjamin Britten had a theory that the king would not offer a knighthood to a homosexual.

  301 “the nursing home”: EMF to BB, Dec. 2, 1949, KCC.

  301 “I seem to be a Great Man”: Ackerley, E. M. Forster, 3.

  301 “My fame is much more of a pleasure”: EMF, Locked Diary, Jan. 10, 1949, KCC.

  302 “if the Queen had been a boy”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:289.

  302 “Well, I got my little toy”: Quoted ibid.

  302 the boy with “a tattoo on his fingers”: EMF to WP, n.d., Durham.

  302 Their friendship was a “prank”: EMF, Locked Diary, May 11, 1966, KCC.

  303 “deprived of a house”: Forster, Marianne Thornton, 205.

  304 “I assumed the letters would be nothing much”: EMF to Furbank, July 16, 1958, Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:271.

  304 a “silly idle useless unmanly little boy”: Forster, “The Other Boat,” in The Life to Come, 170.

  304 “Two people made to destroy each other”: Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:303. This entry is from Furbank’s diary, dated Oct. 25, 1958.

  305 “Peace Broke Out”: Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, 167.

  305 “forecasts an allotment in Hell”: EMF to WP, March 27, 1954, Durham.

  305 a “vast ham”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 27, 1948.

  306 “the vices of Sodom and Gomorrah”: November 4, 1953, quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:335, 334.

  306 Newspapers were in a race: Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, 288–90. Higgins includes a facsimile of the article; Weeks, Coming Out, 163.

  307 “Incomprehensible and utterly disgusting”: Forster, “Society and the Homosexual: A Magistrate’s Figures,” The New Statesman, Oct. 31, 1953; Lord Samuels to EMF, Nov. 29, 1953, quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:335.

  307 The Wolfenden Report recommended: Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, 115. The recommendation was number one of nine.

  307 “mild and aetiolated”: Weeks, Coming Out, 156.

  307 the “distasteful” subjects: Wolfenden, June 20, 1955, in Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship, 15.

  307 “I think the only thing we can do”: Dr. Eustace Chesser, quoted ibid., 19.

  308 homosexual behavior was “catching”: Rev. Dr. Holland, quoted ibid., 26.

  308 He was only one of a “number of homosexuals”: Houlbrook, Queer London, 254. This is from an undated memo of the committee in the Public Records office.

  308 a purported “orgy of perversion”: Parker, Ackerley, 228–29. Coverage, including JRA’s letter, in The Spectator, Nov. (20 and 27) and Dec. (4 and 18), 1942.

  308 “in the vanguard of darkness”: EMF, Locked Diary, Oct. 12, 1939, KCC.

  309 “Note in conclusion”: Forster, Maurice, 220.

  309 he wrote a letter to The Times: The letter was printed in The Times, Dec. 11, 1959.

  309 defended the honor of the “married women”: EMF, Letter to The Times, May 9, 1958.

  310 “The older one grows”: EMF, Locked Diary, Oct. 27, 1958, KCC.

  310 “the police here are filthy as anywhere”: EMF, Locked Diary, July 11 to 17, 1964, KCC.

  310 Bobbie’s “entrance arrangements were culpably slack”: EMF to JRA, Jan. 7, 1958, HRC.

  310 “Be frisky”: EMF to JRA, n.d., Jan. 1958, HRC; quoted in Parker, Ackerley, 338.

  310 “touched . . . his clothes”: EMF, “Notes on the Future of Civilisation,” undated ms., KCC.

  310 “[Liberace] is the summit of sex”: The Times, June 12, 1959.

  311 “cost me many years”: Pyron, Liberace, 228.

  311 “My feelings [about homosexuality]”: New York Times, June 9, 1959, 43.

  311 he had “laughed all the way to the bank”: Pyron, Liberace, 168. The first instance of Liberace using this phrase is a letter dated to 1954. But he repeated it as a laugh line in his performances after the Cassandra case.

  311 “very high literary merit”: EMF, quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:312.

  311 “did D. H. Lawrence”: EMF to JRA, Dec. 4, 1960, HRC.

  311 “I am very excited”: EMF to WP, Dec. 4, 1932, Durham.

  312 “a handsome boy”: JRA to EMF, n.d. [c. 1958], quoted in Parker, Ackerley, 402.

  312 “I sometimes have the frightened feeling”: EMF to WP, Jan. 4, 1956, Durham.

  312 “He was everything to me”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 31, 1955, KCC.

  312 “She has been as if dead”: EMF to JRA, Thurs. [March 10, 1960], Lago and Furbank, eds., Selected Letters, II:276; n.d., winter 1960–61, HRC; EMF to JRA, Oct. 16, 1961; quoted in Furbank, E. M. Forster, II:317.

  313 the “very sad loss”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 1966, KCC; EMF to JRA, Aug. 4, 1960, HRC.

  313 “seven feet tall”: LK to CI, April 26, 1950, Huntington.

  313 “sitting side by side”: EMF, Locked Diary, April 14, 1962, KCC.

  313 “Little Clive”: EMF, Locked Diary, Jan. 16, 1962, KCC.

  314 “Dec. 25. Thinking of Mary’s wretched life”: EMF, Locked Diary, Dec. 25, 1962, KCC.

  314 “As soon as a man”: EMF, Locked Diary, Jan. 16, 1962, KCC.

  314 “the joyful resurgence”: EMF, Locked Diary, Jan. 7, 1963, KCC.

  314 “The worm that never dies”: EMF, Locked Diary, April 21, 1962, KCC.

  314 “not the least afraid of dying”: EMF to Eric Fletcher, Sept. 24, 1951, KCC.

  314 “I was told the Dead were upstairs”: Gardner, ed., Commonplace Book, 227.

  315
“convinced me that death is nothing”: Ibid., 231.

 

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