The New Collected Short Stories (2 page)

Let us turn for another example of prose mastery to ‘Dr Woolacott’. Forster was not an experimental novelist in the Joycean sense, yet on occasion he could go quite far in the dislocation of normal prose-conventions, and in ‘Dr Woolacott’ the theme of a self-induced haunting is enacted by quite strange verbal means – an ambiguous handling of the personal pronoun and a collapsing syntax. Introduced by no ‘He said’, we read:

‘I put her to sleep as I passed her, this is my hour, I can do that much . . . ‘ He seemed to gather strength from any recognition of his presence, and to say, ‘Tell my story for me, explain how I got here, pour life into me and I shall live as before when our bodies touched.’ He sighed. ‘Come home with me now, perhaps it is a farm. I have just enough power. Come away with me for an evening to my earthly lodging, easily managed by a . . . the . . . such a visit would be love.’

In these later shorter stories the artistic impulse is in a kind of competition with the erotic impulse. It is a problem that in ‘Dr Woolacott’ seems to me completely and most cunningly solved. For the story is, as you might say – and this makes it an original enterprise – an imaginative justification for that despised activity, erotic day-dreaming. The invalid Clesant recognizes at a certain stage that the young stranger from Wolverhampton is his own invention, the product of his sexual frustration, but – so the narrative manages to contrive – health and virtue and our own sympathies range themselves on his side as he desperately, resourcefully, prolongs the dangerous fantasy. Better, far better, death, we are persuaded, than half-life and Dr Woolacott’s ‘Do let me patch you up, oh but you must just let me patch you up.’ Humanism goes with the flouting of prejudice and the braving of taboos, and in this story Forster proves himself a true and adventurous humanist.

‘The Other Boat’, it seems to me, suffers a little more from the conflict I have mentioned. There is no doubt the descriptions of physical love in it are rather over-heated and self-indulgent: this is written into the contract according to which such stories are produced. But that said, the story is a memorable achievement. The way it came to be written is curious. Forster, a few years earlier, had come upon a forgotten fragment of an unwritten novel of his, dating from before the First World War. It concerned an Anglo-Indian wife and her children returning from India, and her children’s shipboard friendship with a half-caste boy. He thought it good and had it published in
The Listener
, but later he began to speculate as to what might have happened had the elder son Lionel and the half-caste met again in adult life. The theme that emerged for him could be said to be about insight. Lionel, now an Indian Army officer, has a romantic and ‘heroic’ lack of insight: he really knows nothing at all about himself and is altogether deceived when he thinks he has thrown off his social and sexual inhibitions. In Cocoanut (it is an original conception) a thoroughly unromantic practicality goes with insight and foreseeingness on a grand scale. And the third member of the triangle, Lionel’s absent but symbolically ever-present mother, presents a sinister combination: knowledge of a kind, indeed omniscience, joined to utter lack of insight. (‘She understood nothing and controlled everything.’)

Structurally, the story is masterly. So much is expressed – the whole conception of Lionel as, in several senses, between two worlds – by the simple opposition of deck to cabin: the deck where Lionel’s ‘light military guffaw’ rings out among his bridge-playing Anglo-Indian compeers, and the cabin where Cocoanut lies scheming. With what subtle effect, too, the ship’s motion, the symbol of ceaseless change, is quietly but repeatedly registered, taking on a quasi-magical significance in the final detail concerning Cocoanut’s dead body.

The native crew had become interested in it, no one understood why, and when the corpse was lowered were heard betting which way it would float. It moved northwards – contrary to the prevailing current – and there were clappings of hands and some smiles.

It is a very large design, and new for Forster in a certain way. As late as 1930 he noted in his commonplace book that ‘Two people pulling each other into salvation is the only theme I find worth while.’ Nevertheless, as some point he came to suspect this notion of spiritual rescue as perhaps a fraud. Thus it was fascinating to him to be depicting, in this story, two people pulling each other into destruction.

P.N. FURBANK

London, 1984

These fantasies were written at various dates previous to the first world-war, and represent all that I have accomplished in a particular line. Much has happened since; transport has been disorganized, frontiers rectified on the map and in the spirit, there has been a second world-war, there are preparations for a third, and Fantasy to-day tends to retreat or to dig herself in or to become apocalyptic out of deference to the atom-bomb. She can be caught in the open here by those who care to catch her. She flits over the scenes of Italian and English holidays, or wings her way with even less justification towards the countries of the future. She or he. For Fantasy, though often female, sometimes resembles a man, and even functions for Hermes who used to do the smaller behests of the gods – messenger, machine-breaker, and conductor of souls to a not-too-terrible hereafter.

The opening item, ‘The Story of a Panic’, is the first story I ever wrote and the attendant circumstances remain with me vividly. After I came down from Cambridge – the Cambridge to which I have just returned – I travelled abroad for a year, and I think it was in the May of 1902 that I took a walk near Ravello. I sat down in a valley, a few miles above the town, and suddenly the first chapter of the story rushed into my mind as if it had waited for me there. I received it as an entity and wrote it out as soon as I returned to the hotel. But it seemed unfinished and a few days later I added some more until it was three times as long; as now printed. Of these two processes, the first – that of sitting down on the theme as if it were an anthill – has been rare. I did it again next year in Greece, where the whole of ‘The Road from Colonus’ hung ready for me in a hollow tree not far from Olympia. And I did it, or rather tried it on, a third time, in Cornwall, at the Gurnard’s Head. Here, just in the same way, a story met me, and, since the ‘Panic’ and ‘Colonus’ had both been published and admired, I embraced it as a masterpiece. It was about a man who was saved from drowning by some fishermen, and knew not how to reward them. What is your life worth? £5? £5,000? He ended by giving nothing, he lived among them, hated and despised. As the theme swarmed over me, I put my hand into my purse, drew out a golden sovereign – they existed then – and inserted it into a collecting box of the Royal Lifeboat Institution which had been erected upon the Gurnard’s Head for such situations as this. I could well afford it. I was bound to make the money over and again. Calm sea, flat submerged rock whereon my hero was to cling and stagger, village whence his rescuers should sally – I carried off the lot, and only had to improvise his wife, a very understanding woman. ‘The Rock’ was the title of this ill-fated effort. It was a complete flop. Not an editor would look at it. My inspiration had been genuine but worthless, like so much inspiration, and I have never sat down on a theme since.

One of my novels,
The Longest Journey
, does indeed depend from an encounter with the
genius loci
, but indirectly, complicatedly, not here to be considered. Directly, the
genius loci
has only inspired me thrice, and on the third occasion it deprived me of a sovereign. As a rule, I am set going by my own arguments or memories, or by the motion of my pen, and the various methods do not necessarily produce a discordant result. If the reader will compare the first chapter of ‘The Story of a Panic’, caught straight off the spot it describes, with the two subsequent chapters, in which I set myself to wonder what would happen afterwards, I do not think he will notice that a fresh hemisphere has swung into action. All a writer’s faculties, including the valuable faculty of faking, do conspire together thus for the creative act, and often do contrive an even surface, one putting in a word here, another there.

The other stories call for little comment from their author. ‘The Machine Stops’ is a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H.G. Wells. ‘The Eternal Moment’, though almost an honest-to-God yarn, is a meditation on Cortina d’Ampezzo. As for ‘The Point of It’, it was ill-liked when it came out by my Bloomsbury friends. ‘What is the point of it?’ they queried thinly, nor did I know how to reply.

Original publication was in two volumes. The first was named after ‘The Celestial Omnibus’, and was dedicated ‘To the Memory of the
Independent Review
.’ This was a monthly, controlled by an editorial board of friends who had encouraged me to start writing; another friend, Roger Fry, designed the book-cover and end-paper. The second volume came out many years later. It was called
The Eternal Moment
, and I dedicated it ‘To T.E. in the absence of anything else.’ T.E. was Lawrence of Arabia.

Now that the stories are gathered together into a single cover, and are sailing further into a world they never foresaw, should they be dedicated anew? Perhaps, and perhaps to a god. Hermes Psychopompus suggests himself, who came to my mind at the beginning of this introduction. He can anyhow stand in the prow and watch the disintegrating sea.

E.M. FORSTER

Cambridge, 1947

I

Eustace’s career – if career it can be called – certainly dates from that afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. I confess at once that I am a plain, simple man, with no pretensions to literary style. Still, I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiased account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago.

Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we met some charming people. There were the two Miss Robinsons, who had been there for six weeks with Eustace, their nephew, then a boy of about fourteen. Mr Sandbach had also been there some time. He had held a curacy in the north of England, which he had been compelled to resign on account of ill-health, and while he was recruiting at Ravello he had taken in hand Eustace’s education – which was then sadly deficient – and was endeavouring to fit him for one of our great public schools. Then there was Mr Leyland, a would-be artist, and, finally, there was the nice landlady, Signora Scafetti, and the nice English-speaking waiter, Emmanuele – though at the time of which I am speaking Emmanuele was away, visiting a sick father.

To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture to think, a not unwelcome addition. But though I liked most of the company well enough, there were two of them to whom I did not take at all. They were the artist, Leyland, and the Miss Robinsons’ nephew, Eustace.

Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent.

I am fond of boys as a rule, and was quite disposed to be friendly. I and my daughters offered to take him out – ‘No, walking was such a fag.’ Then I asked him to come and bathe – ‘No, he could not swim.’

‘Every English boy should be able to swim,’ I said, ‘I will teach you myself.’

‘There, Eustace dear,’ said Miss Robinson; ‘here is a chance for you.’

But he said he was afraid of the water! – a boy afraid! – and of course I said no more.

I would not have minded so much if he had been a really studious boy, but he neither played hard nor worked hard. His favourite occupations were lounging on the terrace in an easy chair and loafing along the high road, with his feet shuffling up the dust and his shoulders stooping forward. Naturally enough, his features were pale, his chest contracted, and his muscles undeveloped. His aunts thought him delicate; what he really needed was discipline.

That memorable day we all arranged to go for a picnic up in the chestnut woods – all, that is, except Janet, who stopped behind to finish her water-colour of the Cathedral – not a very successful attempt, I am afraid.

I wander off into these irrelevant details, because in my mind I cannot separate them from an account of the day; and it is the same with the conversation during the picnic: all is imprinted on my brain together. After a couple of hours’ ascent, we left the donkeys that had carried the Miss Robinsons and my wife, and all proceeded on foot to the head of the valley – Vallone Fontana Caroso is its proper name, I find.

I have visited a good deal of fine scenery before and since, but have found little that has pleased me more. The valley ended in a vast hollow, shaped like a cup, into which radiated ravines from the precipitous hills around. Both the valley and the ravines and the ribs of hill that divided the ravines were covered with leafy chestnut, so that the general appearance was that of a many-fingered green hand, palm upwards, which was clutching convulsively to keep us in its grasp. Far down the valley we could see Ravello and the sea, but that was the only sign of another world.

‘Oh, what a perfectly lovely place,’ said my daughter Rose. ‘What a picture it would make!’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Sandbach. ‘Many a famous European gallery would be proud to have a landscape a tithe as beautiful as this upon its walls.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Leyland, ‘it would make a very poor picture. Indeed, it is not paintable at all.’

‘And why is that?’ said Rose, with far more deference than he deserved.

‘Look, in the first place,’ he replied, ‘how intolerably straight against the sky is the line of the hill. It would need breaking up and diversifying. And where we are standing the whole thing is out of perspective. Besides, all the colouring is monotonous and crude.’