BOOKS
From 1909 to 1967 E. M. Forster kept a locked diary, yet to be published. In 1924, having discovered in the house, West Hackhurst in the Surrey village of Abinger Hammer, inherited from an aunt, a large notebook kept as a commonplace book by John Jebb, subsequently Bishop of Ire- land, and bequeathed by him to his cha- plain, Forster's grandfather, he decided to continue it himself. From then on, until both books were abandoned within a year of each other, Forster increasingly tended, like some absent-minded old codger who, in inadvertence, repeatedly drops socks into his handkerchief drawer, to enter into the commonplace book material that one would have thought more suitable for the diary.
What precise purpose — or purposes did Forster have in mind as he now copied (often inaccurately, as the scrupulous edi- tor, Philip Gardner, reveals in his notes) some passage from some author whom he had been reading; now entered some liter- ary impression or judgment (the former more common than the latter, since, his attitudes constantly fluctuating, he eschewed rigidity); now produced some pens& unnerving in its unexpectedness or some epigram that continues to shift in the mind, revealing new facets, long after one has read it; and now, like one of the Struldbrugs (Swift was a writer whom he did not admire, perhaps because there is so little `fun' in him), inflicts on himself some unsparing physical examination, catalo- guing incontinence, hardening of the toe- nails and vexatious loss of memory, or some no less unsparing moral examination, accusing himself of laziness, 'pseudo- sadness' and the metallic gaiety of a 'hard little chatterer in the darkness'?
My guess — which coincides with Profes- sor Gardner's view — is that, when Forster first embarked on the commonplace book, making it a repository for readings and thoughts for both his Clark Lectures on Aspects of the Novel and a paper on Ibsen, he was writing only for himself. Later, as he included more and more not intended to be put to use in this way, he began to think of an anthology, similar to Maurice Baring's Have You Anything to Declare?, and so came increasingly to address himself to the reader of the future whom, at one moment when he is writing of J. A. Symonds's then unpublished autobiogra- phy (Professor Gardner seems to be under the impression that it is still unpublished) he even invokes with the question: 'Will anyone who reads this remember that?' (i.e. that the autobiography was once under embargo in the London Library).
One surprise of the book is that it shows Forster accepting the advent of old age far earlier than most of us would be prepared
Ragbag full of surprises
Francis King
COMMONPLACE BOOK by E. M. Forster edited by Philip Gardner
Scalar, £25
to do so, so that already, in his early fifties, there are entries suggesting a man 20 years older. To those who did not know Forster personally and so may never have guessed at the contradictions composed to make up the literary persona in all its courteousness, tolerance and altriusm, there will be other surprises. One of these is the gritty stoicism — as when, in the piece from which I have already quoted, he describes himself as 'a hard little chatterer in the darkness' with which he would write out his own equation. Yet, to counterbalance that re- fusal to be hoodwinked by his own reputa- tion, there is the odd way in which he repeatedly measures himself against some such giant as Voltaire, Coleridge, St Jerome or even King Lear Cold, idle and trustful, and so far like myself). When he makes a comparison between himself and Eliot, he has no doubt as to who has the more moral inches CI feel now to be as far ahead as I was once behind'). Again, there is the tartness, probably unexpected by anyone who never heard him in private conversation and has never read his letters, with which he puts down this or that 20th-century writer. Maugham has 'lost that scrap of innocence that prevents most men from becoming a bore.' After reading Cyril Connolly, 'I thought of the new generation knocking at the door, and wondered if it is more than a set of knuckle-bones.' The Powys brothers are `Hardyesque fungi'. More than once compassion fails, and on those occasions Forster bleakly records its failure. Thus, when the second child of his protégé, Frank Vicary, almost dies, Fors- ter can only feel 'More expense for me'. Again, on the death of the only son of his beloved policeman Bob Buckingham, Forster surprises himself, as we often surprise ourselves, by feeling less than the expected grief (later it intensifies). Ragbag though the book — first pub- lished in extremely expensive facsimile in 1978 — undoubtedly is, it is full of the kind of sentences and even phrases that illumin- ate their subjects far more effectively than whole paragraphs, pages or chapters by writers less gifted. 'Gulliver is Robinson Crusoe in Fairyland.' Sterne is 'floppy but tenacious'. 'Long books are usually over- praised because the reader wants to con- vince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.' Tennyson, Housman and Jane Austen, all favourites, draw out some striking comments. Inevitably, since writers tend to resort to notebooks of this kind at their moments of unhappiness, self-questioning and stress, Forster's rare capacity for enjoyment shines out only intermittently, with the result that the book gives the impression that he was far less happy than he was. But from time to time some passage reminds us of how much pleasure he derived, even in extreme old age, from books, from music, from people, especially if they were male and young, and from merely gazing at the world around him (this last experience is beautifully described in the companion pieces 'Eastern Sunset' and 'Western Radiance'). Professor Gardner has not merely contributed an excellent introduc- tion but provided notes that, some few trivial errors apart, could not be bettered.
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