A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster (56 page)

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.

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 spring 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.