E M Forster and Me

Some time ago an article in one of the many newspapers that find their ways into my home, suggested that it was not only important to read, but also to re-read. The author spoke of the value one can derive from reading again, perhaps in another period of one’s life, books that have influenced or moved one in earlier days. This summer at a sale in the basement of a nearby church I picked up a new biography of one of my all-time favourite writers, Edward Morgan Forster. A Great Unrecorded History by Wendy Moffat, takes the reader back again through the fairly well-known story of Forster’s life in England and abroad. But writing in an era of greatly increased acceptance of homosexuality and having access to letters and diaries not available to Forster’s earlier biographer, P. N. Furbank, Moffat is able to penetrate more deeply into Forster’s inner life. One cannot read her book without being profoundly moved by the courage and fidelity to his own sense of who he was evidenced throughout his life by, as Wendy and all of his friends called him, Morgan. An astute social critic, he was nonetheless a person who valued human relations above ideology or personal gain.

Forster, or Morgan as I now also think of him, is one of that group of writers who have profoundly influenced me in my own journey toward greater understanding of myself in the context of life as I have known it. Finishing Wendy Moffat’s book, I embarked upon a re-reading of Morgan’s works: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room With a View, Howard’s End, and A Passage to India. I have also sent for some collections of his short stories and for a copy of Maurice, a book which he wrote in mid-life but allowed to be published only after his death because of the overtly homosexual relationship at its core. At the moment I am re-reading Furbank’s biography, many parts of which are now quite familiar to me. Looking especially through the lens afforded by Moffat’s book, many aspects of Morgan’s stories become more intelligible.

In a way I have more or less spent the summer with Morgan and in some fashion this experience has encouraged me to write my own “biography.” At so many junctures in my life I have felt under particular forms of threat, inner as well as outer, that disallowed me from speaking, even often from thinking, with complete openness and honesty. In a post-Wildian world, Morgan was under enormous constraint to keep a central feature of his being, his sexuality, hidden not only from public view, but even from his family and most of his acquaintances. Still, over time he did find people with whom he could completely share his inner self, releasing himself in this way from a terrible life of loneliness.

I have also been blessed with ever-developing friendships that have given me the space and the courage to no longer hide behind my fears. The things that I am writing now may be rarely read by any other than particular people who care about me, but none of that matters to me. I know that there is little point in writing about my life with an agenda to hide particular facts, really to be dishonest in any fashion. It is a spectacularly freeing experience to write in this way. Maybe that is one of the blessings of getting older: you know yourself better and you have a lot less to lose.