Howards End Read Free

which made him an Honorary Fellow and provided him with rooms. The standard—and exceptionally readable—biography of Forster is the work of P. N. Furbank, who became acquainted with the Honorary Fellow at Cambridge shortly after the latter took up residence at King’s.
    None of the foregoing is inconsequential; none of it is answerable to our desire. Satisfying personal accounts of Forster do, however, exist in number. There are splendid bits in Furbank about a quality of Forster’s that the biographer calls insight:
    He felt as if, on occasion, he could see through to “life”: could hear its wing-beat, could grasp it not just as a generality but as a palpable presence. The feeling communicated itself. I remember him, once, describing [an Indian friend‘s] children, and their love for their companion, [a young guardian] who was not quite right in the head. He spoke of it in a delighted tone, as if that was what life was made up of: the whole of life was present in it, and there was nothing beyond. I remember too, another even tinier incident. For some reason we were sharing a hotel bedroom, and as he undressed, the coins dropped out of his pocket, chinking as they fell, and he said, in a tone of mock-superstitious resignation: “When they begin to sing, it’s all over with them.” There was the same joyful note in his voice, and it was oddly ghostly and impressive, as if he truly had insight into the workings of Providence.
    Explaining to himself how such a person as Forster could be an unbeliever, the poet Auden once remarked: “As I see him, Morgan is a person who is so accustomed to the Presence of God that he is unaware of it: he has never known what it feels like when the Presence is withdrawn.”
    And we have beyond this several testimonials about excellence of character (they are, to be sure, composed by close friends) that are wonderfully persuasive. (By persuasive I mean that they give us a living Morgan Forster who seems good enough to be connected with the authorial presence treasured by lovers of Forster’s work.) I like best among these testimonials a tribute produced by J. R. Ackerley, himself a gifted writer and editor, whose friendship with Forster stretched over five decades. Ackerley’s summary of the man runs as follows:
    I would say that in so far as it is possible for any human being to be both wise and worldly wise, to be selfless in any material sense, to have no envy, jealousy, vanity, conceit, to contain no malice, no hatred (though he had anger), to be always reliable, considerate, generous, never cheap, Morgan came as close to that as can be got.
    â€”Benjamin DeMott

Chapter I
    One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.
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    HOWARDS END.
Tuesday.
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    DEAREST MEG,
    It isn’t going to be what we expected. It is old and little, and altogether delightful—red brick. We can scarcely pack in as it is, and the dear knows what will happen when Paul (younger son) arrives tomorrow. From hall you go right or left into dining-room or drawing-room. Hall itself is practically a room. You open another door in it, and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel to the first-floor. Three bed-rooms in a row there, and three attics in a row above. That isn’t all the house really, but it’s all that one notices — nine windows as you look up from the front garden.
    Then there’s a very big wych-elm—to the left as you look up—leaning a little over the house, and standing on the boundary between the garden and meadow. I quite love that tree already. Also ordinary elms, oaks—no nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though. However, I must get on to my host and hostess. I only wanted to show that it isn’t the least what we expected. Why did we settle that their house would be all gables and wiggles, and their garden all gamboge-coloured