business, but I don’t think I shall be able to catch on.
Dinner party at Stephen’s. Tea with John Lehmann. M. Fouchet, editor of Fru [?] French Fontaine, to lunch, très parisien, né en Venezuela, and full of gossip about Gide.43 Slump in Arnold Bennett. Attacks on Milton failing. Do you know anything about Mark Twain? Am rereading Ulysses.44
When, where, how often, and how have you crossed (i) the Mississippi (ii) the Missouri? Have you ever visited Cairo or St Louis? This cannot reach me in time for my broadcast to India on Nov. 4th. Still I should be glad to know.
My most important news is a revisit to Rooksnest, Stevenage, Herts (the original of Howard’s End).45 It is very strange. The strength of such feelings. (I don’t think you know much about them—Richard probably does.) This house really bores me though I shall be upset when I have to quit it. I must go down now and have some Oxo [?] with my mother in the drawing room. It is pouring wet day but mild, and the leaves of the tulip tree, the guelder [rose], [. . . ?], the Japanese Cherry and the azaleas are all lovely different colours.
I will write again before long. I have not written to you for a long time, but I think of you and talk of you a lot.
Love as always from Your affectionate Morgan
[enclosed Postcard:]
Christmas 1943
With love to Christopher from:
[signed names:]
Leo Charlton
Tom Whitchelo
May Buckingham
William Plomer
Joe Ackerley
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Bob Buckingham
Morgan Forster
Oct. 20th 1943
9 Arlington Park Mansions
Chiswick W.4.
* * *
Vedanta Society of Los Angeles
1946 Ivar Avenue
Hollywood, California
July 27 [1943]
Dearest Morgan,
If this ever reaches you, it will be by the hand of Bill Roehrich, who needs no other introduction because you will like him, too.
As always,
your loving
C.
* * *
1946 Ivar Avenue
November 27. [1943]
Hollywood 28. Calif.
Dearest Morgan,
Your letter intended for Xmas arrived nearly a week ago: you were pes-simistic. The mails aren’t that bad. I loved getting it, and the card with signatures. Yes, wouldn’t it be funny if I did walk in? I might, I suppose: if this war goes on long enough or stops. What should I say as my opening line?
How would you answer?
At Xmas you will get a parcel from me, I hope. It was guaranteed to be delivered then. It will probably have the most futile collection of oddments in it—three genuine San Diego shrimps, a piece of scrapple from Philadelphia, one Idaho potato, and so forth. Talking of geography, I have never visited Cairo or St. Louis. (I was once in Memphis). Not counting our journey from Vancouver down through Canada, via Chicago to N.Y. in 1938, I have crossed the continent five times, always by Chicago except once, when we went down by bus to New Orleans and up through Texas. So that’s 5 Mississippi crossings. Am vague about the Missouri because it’s at right angles.
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LETTERS BETWEEN FORSTER AND ISHERWOOD
About God helping us. “Helping” is [a] misleading word, perhaps. Let’s say, for example, that there is something inside you which is larger than your personality, and which has some kind of access to what is outside you, just as the smallest inlet of the sea anywhere has access to all the oceans.
Call it your genius, if you like. You half sarcastically acknowledged its existence when you burnt those stories in order to get on with The Passage to India. (of course, that could be written off to innate Puritanism: but I think that’s superficial.)46 Well, this “genius” lives in you all the time, and it is not merely literary. Literature is only a function of it. It is there, neither friendly nor hostile, not in the least “sorry” for your troubles or “made angry” by your failures or “pleased” by your successes. It just exists, and you can communicate with it or leave it alone, as you please. Communicating with
“it” consists in realizing that you are it—or rather, it is you. The only “you”
there is: because Morgan Forster is only real in a temporary sense, like a cloud or a storm. While you are communicating with your “genius” you lose all sense of being an individual Morgan Forster, and so you lose all Morgan’s fears, doubts, desires etc. etc. You are just as much Bob, or Joe, or William, as you are Morgan—because they too have inlets leading to the ocean, and you are the ocean. And that “helps.” In fact it’s about the only thing in life which does help. Giving soup to Czechs, etc., is just a way of saying, by token action: I know you have a drop of the ocean inside you, too. Otherwise, to hell with the soup. It might as well be arsenic.
I wish you would write me about Stephen [Spender]. I know so little about his present life, wife, ideas etc.
Am very much occupied with our translation of the Gita, which is going to be quite curious, partly verse, partly prose. I never thought I would turn into a poet in my old age.
Later. Reading through what I’ve written about God etc. I feel bored. It’s so badly put. Full of religious clichés. And as always I feeclass="underline" how impossible to say these things directly, much less write them. If I saw you, maybe I could convey something which was nearer the actuality—while I was talking about the weather, or the poetry of Blunden, or Prague.47 After all, what can you tell me in so many words about Bob? You can only talk around it.
But I get something of what you feel.
Am reading Lorca—Spender, and La Chartreuse de Parme (which gives one a glimpse of what postwar Europe could be, if the worst comes to the worst).48 Wystan is making a Tennyson anthology, and a collected works.
We wait with the greatest interest for Willie Maugham’s new novel, which is reputed to deal with mysticism in India.49 It is alleged to be the most expensive film-property he has ever written. Isn’t he a wonder? Aldous gets nicer and nicer: so truly kind and full of thoughtful attentions to everybody. He pal-zeik-02 4/21/08 10:33 AM Page 117
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expects to finish his novel soon. The sun shines and shines. The gas-ration decreases. We dig new flower-beds. The dummy Santa Claus figures are up all along the Boulevard; and a plaster snow-man. I have an ingrowing toe-nail and a bad tooth: otherwise am well. The war, as Hemingway says, is there.
Excuse this lousy letter. I must get something off to you today. Love to everybody. And write again soon.
Always your loving
Christopher
* * *
14-12-43
West Hackhurst,
Abinger Hammer,
Dorking
Dearest Christopher,
You do send me good things—Bill Roehrick, and now I get a delicious food parceclass="underline" most welcome butter, and other delicacies. The dried bananas are new to me, and we shall have some for Christmas. You have sent me a letter also. But I will begin with Bill, who completely bears out your note about him, and speaks of you with affection such as goes straight to my heart. I have only seen him twice so far: we lunched and he took me to his show and Stephen took us to tea at the Ritz afterwards, and the next morning we went about to book shops. I like him immensely, we have written to each other since, and all being well shall meet in London. At present they are on tour, and as he will be in Birmingham for Christmas I have put him in touch with John Simpson. He has such good observation too: few people would have overheard one lady saying to another in the Ritz “We still manage to wash the cow all over everyday.”