A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster Read Online Free Page A

Christopher the typescript of
Maurice
. Like John Lehmann and Christopher almost forty years later, Morgan and Christopher sat side by side in the Brunswick Square boîte with the precious draft between them. What did he think, Morgan wanted to know? The master appealed to the pupil, and the pupil was overwhelmed. The truth was that to the younger man’s ear, Morgan’s writing about sex sounded “antique” and prudish. The scene when Maurice announces that he’s slept with Alec made him cringe with embarrassment. Morgan had concocted a ridiculous euphemism for making love—the word
sharing
.
“I have shared with Alec,” [Maurice] said after deep thought.
“Shared what?”
“All I have. Which includes my body.”
    But the novel’s occasional solecisms were almost beside the point. Morgan came from a different time. The man who had penned the word
sharing
could hardly be expected to call himself gay. Morgan’s lifelong resistance to labeling had nothing to do with caution or cowardice. Whatever its locutions,
Maurice
was passionate and honest. Christopher was moved by the thought of Morgan so brave and alone, “imprisoned within the jungle of pre-war prejudice, putting these unthinkable thoughts into words.” He understood that being shown the novel was Morgan’s expression of a quasi-paternal connection with a gay man from the thirties generation. Morgan struck Christopher as immensely lonely, and Morgan was sensitive that the novel had lived in the hothouse for too long. Apprehensively, he asked Christopher: “Does it date?” Christopher’s response was a perfect blend of compassion and honesty. “Why
shouldn’t
it date?” he replied stoutly. “Eyes brimming with tears,” the young acolyte told Morgan that he admired the novel profoundly, that it was pioneering work, that he thought it was wonderful and brave. Hearing this, Forster leaned forward and gently kissed Christopher on the cheek. The moment cemented their friendship for life.
    But acquiescing to Christopher’s desire that the novel should be
published
was another matter altogether. Here it was impossible to distinguish Morgan’s self-protectiveness from timidity. Christopher hammered away all summer long, in letters from abroad. Heinz had tried unsuccessfully to enter England, ostensibly to work for Christopher as a domestic servant, but he was interrogated at Harwich and deported. Auden, who was a witness to the event, guessed that the malevolent customs officer, a “bright-eyed little rat,” was “
one of us
.” So Christopher left England, “committed to wandering the world until he found somewhere they could both settle, unharried by immigration checks and customs officials.” For a time, that place was the Canary Islands.
    Morgan’s letters to Christopher in this warm paradise led Morgan to speculate on his fictional lovers as if they were real people living in the world. Confiding in the young man, Morgan ruminated on the question, still quite raw after Bob’s marriage, of what he could expect in the way of fidelity and intimacy. He cast the discussion in terms of strategies to revise the novel, but the idea was clearly a proxy for his own emotional state.
I think what might happen is a permanent relationship, but with all sorts of vagaries, fears, illnesses, distraction, fraying out at its edges, and this would take a long time to represent. One may shorten it, perhaps,if one made them take a vow, and Maurice could take it, but I doubt about Alec, as about myself. We are, both of us, more likely to look back and realise that we have, after all, sacrificed enough to bring the thing off.
     
    Despite the mess with Heinz, Christopher assured him that
Maurice
should be published, and that to do so would be inspiring to gay readers. But Forster wouldn’t budge. He was not at all sure that attitudes toward homosexuality had progressed since his youth.
    The younger man took the lead. Isherwood pressed Morgan to relent—in 1938,