INTRODUCTION
13
inserting a new penultimate chapter that brings Maurice and Alec together.49 Forster, who is insecure about the relevancy of his pre-World War I story, is touched that Isherwood still likes it and cares about it. In response to Isherwood’s suggestions, Forster writes in 1952,“I was not at all sure that you would still like M[aurice] and feel very happy.” He begins drafting a new chapter that is eventually inserted. In gratitude for Isherwood’s help and no doubt also an acknowledgment of Isherwood’s faithful encouragement over the years, Forster assigned Isherwood the rights to publish Maurice in the United States after Forster’s death.
When viewed together the letters describe an evolving friendship.
Despite the fact that Forster and Isherwood hit it off well immediately, they develop intimacy gradually. In his first letter to Isherwood, Forster begins:
“Dear Isherwood—we do drop ‘Mr’, don’t we?” Forster’s dropping of “Mr”
and use of the last name alone (which Isherwood does as well in his letters) is in keeping with the familiar yet formal style of address male students usually adopted at elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge at this time. After addressing one another in their letters as “Isherwood” and
“Forster” and closing with “yours” followed by signatures of their complete names for several years, they begin to close with “love,” and shortly there-after address and sign off to one another by first name. One can trace this growing familiarity and affection in the changing content and tone of the letters themselves. Isherwood reveals more and more information about his relationship with Heinz, Forster freely mentions Bob, and as the political climate in Europe becomes more dire, they both let down their guard, expressing their fears and anxieties.
In 1935, Forster and Bob traveled to Amsterdam to visit Isherwood and Heinz and spent several days together as two “couples.” In that milieu Isherwood and Forster would relate to one another not merely as disciple and mentor but also as friends having a good time with their respective partners. Isherwood later recalls that visit: “Forster, beaming through his spectacles, was probably enjoying himself most, since Bob Buckingham was with him. They kept exchanging glances full of fun and affection.”50
Although Forster writes upon his return to England that he enjoyed himself but regretted that they had little time to spend alone with one another (and presumably talk about their writing), the visit drew him closer to Isherwood; for it is in this letter that Forster first addresses him as
“Christopher” and closes with “love, Morgan.” In subsequent letters, Forster closes with “much love” and “very much love.” In the postwar years, one can read Forster’s continued affection for Isherwood in his excited anticipation of Isherwood’s visits to England. Isherwood’s letters reveal that he considers Forster much more than a mentor. In the mid-1930s he pal-zeik-00intro 4/21/08 10:23 AM Page 14
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
writes with concern and worry about Forster’s health following a series of operations Forster underwent. Fearing that Forster is suffering from food shortages during the war, he sends him food packages. When at the height of the bombings too much time elapses without word from Forster, Isherwood sends a telegram begging him for reassurance that he is safe.
Although there are very few letters after 1952, Forster and Isherwood maintained their friendship. Isherwood regularly paid visits to Forster in England. Their last written correspondence dates from 1966 (four years before Forster’ death at the age of 91). Suffering the effects of several strokes, Forster dictates a brief letter to Isherwood: “Much love to you, naturally & to your work though I am sorry it is not bringing you to England.”
P. N. Furbank, Forster’s biographer, remarks that “[t]he central preoccupa-tion of his life, it was plain to see, was friendship, and he had a rather special attitude towards friendship. He never casually dropped friends, as most people do, out of forgetfulness or through change of circumstance. . . . [I]f someone became a friend of his, he might expect to remain so for life.”51
This observation is echoed by Don Bachardy, Isherwood’s companion for more than thirty years and who had visited Forster together with Isherwood in the 1950s and 1960s. Bachardy remarked that when Forster admitted someone into his inner circle, he was a friend for life.52
Obviously, Isherwood was one such intimate friend. The letters reproduced here trace this mutually intimate, long-lasting friendship within the contexts of the extraordinary—and everyday—social, cultural, and political events of the mid-twentieth century.
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E. M. Forster
Drawing from life by
Don Bachardy,
September 1961
Christopher
Isherwood
Drawing from life by
Don Bachardy,
November 1, 1976
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1
The 1930s
12-10-32
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking.
Dear Isherwood—we do drop “Mr,” don’t we?—
I was very glad to have “All the Conspirators.” I don’t like it as much as
“The Memorial,”1 but that is not the point, and there are things in it I do like very much. Thank you for sending it, and for the letter in it, and for
“The Seven Pillars,”2 which I found at the club, packed with incredible care.
I hope you found your friend better than the news suggested. It is an awful worry, that illness at this time of the year. I’m very sorry you’ve got this on you, and annoyed with life generally for being so often just wrong.
Again and again the wonderful chariot seems ready to move.
I have read The Orators3 and liked what I understood of it and what I couldn’t too. There’s a very impressive voice at it, and an active eye. Only, I had a queer feeling that everything might suddenly stop, and the lights of common day be switched on. This may merely be because I know Auden is a schoolmaster: it is the profession which, after hospital-nurses, disquiets me most, and renders all my judgments hysterical.—I think that last ode is very agitating and marvellous: I get from it all sorts of sounds and sights outside the ones he actually provides.
I hope you’ll write again and let me know when you are back in England, and I’ll let you know if I ever come to Berlin. I hope your novel is going well.
I am broadcasting, worse than schoolmastering [ sic] it might be argued, still I do get anonymous letters signed “a disgusted listener” or “the old ladies who remember you 20 years ago at Perugia and can’t help feeling sorry.”
Yours
EM Forster
* * *
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
[October 1932]
Berlin W. 30
Nollendorfstrasse 17
Bei Thurau
Tuesday.
Dear Forster,
Thank you for your letter. I didn’t send you my novel so much because I thought it has any particular merit as because I once refused to show it you, and this seemed to me afterwards silly.
I’m glad you like the Orators. Auden isn’t by any means what one expects from a schoolmaster. Perhaps he more resembles a hospital nurse—a comic one in a film. He is coming out here at Christmas. I suppose there is no chance of your joining us?