Some Interviews with E. M. Forster, 1957-58, 1965 - British novelist

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1997 by Wilfred Stone

EMF No. But there were some political changes. I was pro-Boer War for a time and then changed.

WS Gide said he abjured politics because politics was fraught with fraud. Were you apolitical for similar reasons?

EMF No. English politics have less fraud than French. I would say because of their essential futility. It's preposterous to read Gaitskell's answer to Macmillan on the economy on the same page as Sputnik!

WS I was much interested in your letter to Juliall Bell before he went off to the Spanish War - and the activist/quietist question generally. I wonder if the ideal of l'homme engage is much in vogue today? I rather think that that kind of heroics doesn't much appeal to today's - postwar - generation, and what you offer is perhaps closer. [I felt on most uncertain ground here!]

EMF Do you think so? I hope so. That's interesting. [Said with serious emphasis.] Is there in the U.S.A. today a cult comparable to the angry young men over here?

WS Perhaps James Dean, the "rebel without a cause"?

EMF I think that youth worship is rather the dominant characteristic there. [With that, things tapered off and I made my way to the door.]

JANUARY 10, 1958, 2:00-3:15 p.m.

I first returned the envelope of pamphlets he had loaned me, the book of newspaper cuttings, and the Stallybrass checklist. In this session I mainly asked prepared questions, but first EMF offered tea and spent a few minutes in preparing it. I remarked that I was glad to see him on his feet again. (He had to walk out the door and across the hall to get water for the tea.) He brought up (Howard Overing) Sturgis. I had mentioned Belchamber in a note to him earlier.

EMF No, I don't think I was influenced by him, though there are some similarities between Sainty and Rickie. [He mused over the facts that he read Belchamber in 1904 and that The Longest Journey didn't appear until 1907, but nothing came of these musings.]

My notes on this meeting show only the gist of EMF's replies to my sometimes lengthy questions. I am therefore amplifying the record sufficiently to make the conversation intelligible.

WS Was [G. Lowes] Dickinson the editor of, or only a contributor to, The Independent Review? [In reply EMF produced a first issue of the journal from which I copied down the names of the editorial board. Edward Jenks was the editor.](17)

WS I can't get over the feeling that The Longest Journey ought to have been the first book you wrote. Can you tell me something about when your books were begun and how long you worked on them?

EMF The Longest Journey wasn't the first. A Room with a View was the first begun, then I laid it aside. I talk about that in The Hill of Devi. With Passage, I wrote as far as Fielding's tea party in 1912. I took the manuscript with me to India in 1921, but I couldn't write in India.

WS Were you consciously working in a Wellsian (or anti-Wellsian) manner in "The Machine Stops"?

EMF Yes.

WS In 1919 did you have a regular position as drama critic for the Athenaeum?

EMF No. I'm surprised to hear that I did much drama criticism.(18)