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Letters between
Forster and Isherwood on
Homosexuality and Literature
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Letters between
Forster and Isherwood on
Homosexuality and Literature
Edited by Richard E. Zeikowitz
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letters between forster and isherwood
on homosexuality and literature
Copyright © Richard E. Zeikowitz, 2008.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2008 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60675-3
ISBN-10: 0-230-60675-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
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First edition: August 2008
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Printed in the United States of America.
All letters by E. M. Forster are reproduced with permission from the Society of Authors as agent for the Provost and Scholars of King’s College Cambridge.
All letters by Christopher Isherwood are reproduced with permission from Don Bachardy.
Cover drawings of Forster and Isherwood drawn from life by Don Bachardy.
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For Don Bachardy and James White
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Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction
1
1 The
1930s
17
2
The War Years: 1939–45
87
3
The Postwar Years
135
Biographical Glossary
165
List of Correspondence
173
Notes
179
Bibliography
193
Index
195
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Acknowledgments
I thank the Research Foundation of the City University of New York (CUNY) for a generous grant that enabled me to travel to Cambridge, England. I also thank the Huntington Library for a one-month residency fellowship. I was able to examine and transcribe the letters at both King’s College Cambridge and the Huntington Library with the help of the very knowledgeable and friendly staff. I thank Patricia McGuire, the archivist at King’s College, who was always very attentive to my needs. I also thank Peter Jones, the librarian of King’s College Library, for his assistance in obtaining permission to publish E. M. Forster’s letters to Christopher Isherwood. I am indebted to Elizabeth Haylett of the Society of Authors for granting permission on behalf of King’s College, Cambridge. I am grateful to Sue Hodson, the curator of the Isherwood papers at the Huntington Library, for her enthusiastic support for this project. I also thank the staff of the reading room at the Huntington Library for their assistance.
I wish to express my gratitude to Chris Suggs, the former chair of the English department at John Jay College, CUNY, for his support. Without the one-semester release time I would not have been able to complete this project in a timely manner. I also thank Steven Kruger, Michael Shugrue, and James White for their support and encouragement.
Lastly, I would like to thank Don Bachardy for graciously permitting two drawings he made of Forster and Isherwood to be reproduced here.
As far as I know, he is the only artist to have drawn both Forster and Isherwood.
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Introduction
In the fall of 1932,William Plomer took Christopher Isherwood to meet E. M. Forster for the first time. Isherwood had long been an admirer of Forster’s work. The two writers belonged to two different generations: Edward Morgan Forster, born in 1879, came of age during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods; Isherwood, born in 1904, was a member of the post-World War I generation.1 Each, too, was in a very different stage of his writing career. Forster was the author of several highly regarded novels, particularly Howard’s End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924), and was well established within the literary circles of the time. His professional acquaintances and friends included Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury group. Isherwood had just completed his second novel, The Memorial, which reveals stylistic influences from Forster. Forster had read the novel, liked it, and expressed a wish to meet the young author.
Isherwood recalls his admiration for Forster and excitement at meeting him that day: “It was tremendous for Christopher. Forster was the only living writer whom he would have described as his master. In other people’s books he found examples of style which he wanted to imitate and learn from. In Forster he found a key to the whole art of writing. . . . A Forster novel taught Christopher the mental attitude with which he must pick up the pen.”2
Often looking back at that auspicious meeting and Forster’s kind words about The Memorial, Isherwood would say, “My literary career is over—I don’t give a damn for the Nobel Prize or the Order of Merit— I’ve been praised by Forster! ”3 Isherwood also had a great deal of respect for Forster as a person. On a visit to Forster in 1947, Isherwood reflects that he was in awe of Forster not merely as his literary master but also because “Forster demanded truth in all his relationships; underneath his charming unalarming exterior he was a stern moralist and his mild babylike eyes looked deep into you. Their glance made Christopher feel false and tricky.”4
While their professional relationship was one of mentor and disciple, their personal relationship was cemented by an equal caring for one another.
Forster was loyal to his intimate friends and expected the same from them.
Isherwood was indeed loyal throughout the thirty-eight years of their friendship.
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2
LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
The letters are a personal record of these two writers’ lives, both profes-sionally and personally, over a period of more than thirty years. The sub-stantial number of letters exchanged during the increasingly turbulent years of the 1930s reveal how Forster and Isherwood each came to grips with the rise of fascism in Europe and the threat of war as both writers and human beings helplessly caught in the midst of a world on the brink of disaster. On a more subtle level, the letters tell two parallel but very different stories of love and devotion between each writer and his respective male partner. The letters of the war years juxtapose the strikingly different worlds in which Forster and Isherwood were living: London and its envi-rons during the Blitz, and the southern California community of exiled writers and artists, respectively. Each friend informs the other how his life—and view of life—is being shaped by events, whether unfolding within his midst or thousands of miles away. The postwar letters, although sparse, particularly after the early 1950s, record moments in the later careers of the two writers, such as Isherwood struggling to find a new voice in his novels, one that treats homosexual characters more openly and Forster embarking on new projects and fitting himself into the role of elder statesman. In these later letters, the two friends also continue their ongoing conversation to find a suitable ending for Forster’s ground-breaking but yet unpublished novel, Maurice.