The New Collected Short Stories Read Free

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

The Celestial Omnibus

THE STORY OF A PANIC
     
    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