Note in conclusion on a word hitherto unmentioned. Since Maurice was written there has been a change in the public attitude here: the change from ignorance and terror to familiarity and contempt. It is not the change towards which Edward Carpenter had worked. He had hoped for the generous recognition of an emotion and for the reintegration of something primitive into the common stock. And I, though less optimistic, had supposed that knowledge would bring understanding. We had not realized that what the public really loathes in homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it. If it could be slipped into our midst unnoticed, or legalized overnight by a decree in small print, there would be few protests. Unfortunately it can only be legalized by Parliament, and Members of Parliament are obliged to think or to appear to think. Consequently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.
September 1960
With a small number of exceptions, the 1960 typescript has been faithfully followed, even where it reads a trifle oddly — as when Alec Scudder, batting in a cricket match, is made to "resign" (i.e., retire), or "Whitmannic" is used in place of "Whitmanesque", or some sentences in the Terminal Note need revising in the light of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. The exceptions are as follows.
1. The surname of one of the characters has, on the author's written instructions, been altered throughout, and one or two contingent changes made.
2. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization have, where no nuance is involved, been regularized in accordance with normal practice today.
3. A number of obvious typing errors (or in some cases possibly slips of the pen) have been corrected.
4. Rather more diffidently, the following readings have been adopted with the aim of correcting what appear to be either typing errors or slips on Forster's part:
PAGE / LINE / BEADING ADOPTED / TYPESCRIPT
37 / 8 / but he held… Durham / but held… he
39 / 20 / watching for Durham / watching Durham
42 / 25 / was / is
61 / 21 / kicking / kissing
103 / 16 / coasting (hooting?) / hoosting or boosting
169 / 5–6 / evidently he had / had evidently
183 / 11–12 / that he should telephone next week / for next week
5. Finally, on page 116, a famous phrase from Sophocles ("Not to be born is best" — Oedipus Coloneus, 1224 — 5) has been inserted where the 1960 typescript has a blank space, and an earlier typescript supplies a slightly inaccurate version of the quotation.