Dare one say it?
Julian Mitchell
THE PRINCE'S TALE AND OTHER COLLECTED WRITINGS by E. M. Forster, edited by P. N. Furbank Deutsch, £25, pp. 344 EM. Forster was rarely hearty; hearti- ness was against everything he stood for, but he did heartily dislike schoolmasters. For schoolmasters who were also mission- aries the dislike became positive hatred, as C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, headmaster of the CMS School Srinagar, discovered to his cost.
The Indian climate has much to answer for [Forster wrote] but it can seldom have pro- duced anything quite so odd as Character Building in Kashmir — anything quite so noisy, meddlesome and self-righteous, so heartless and brainless, so full of racial and religious 'swank'.
P. N. Furbank, Forster's friend and biographer, introducing this entertaining gallimaufry of previously uncollected reviews and talks, suggests that Forster was most masterly when dealing with the second- and third-rate, and this seems a good example. Tyndale-Biscoe was a fanatical imperialist pedagogue, who in the name of Jesus threw his pupils in the river, caned them, fined them and insulted the religion of their birth. Forster makes one wonder if he may not be personally respon- sible for the present dire situation in Kash- mir. But Forster would not be Forster if all he did was assail an obvious target.
Much unselfishness and heroism went to the growth of Missions, but they also met a home need. There was surplus money in England, seeking a sentimental outlet.
This is devastating, probably true, and typi- cally pithy. But isn't that tone of voice just a little pedagogic itself? Isn't the man who made a point of thinking for himself rather too keen on instructing the rest of us how to think?
Furbank, who claims with some justifica- tion that Forster was one of the best reviewers of the century, rightly remarks how unfashionable such sermonising now is — but not without reason, surely? History has not been kind to the authoritative pro- nouncements of 60 years ago. Forster's tenacious belief in the importance of per- sonal values over public ones can still be admired, but it is severely tested here in some pieces from the 1930s. While others are at Olympia, battling for or against Oswald Mosley, Forster is at the cinema, watching a new Mickey Mouse. He hates everything Mosley stands for — he even goes so far as to exclaim 'My hat!' at the man's outrageous presumption — but rather than deal with the practical reality of Nazism, he slides off into a discussion of the honours system. He knows where he stands — he has signed the Peace Pledge, and rearmament is a 'ramp' — but the inadequacy of his position makes him fall into something like despair as war draws ineluctably nearer. All he can advise is 'Do good, and possibly good may come from it. Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.' This is noble in its way, but of course any- where else in Europe he would have got squashed.
The title piece refers to The Leopard about which Forster wrote with wonderful discernment and enthusiasm in his old age, and half the collection, highly suitable for the beside, consists of book reviews. Some of the books have long lost what little inter- est they once had, and one reads simply for the pleasure of the demolition. If it weren't so hearty an analogy, I'd say the annihila- tion of Ella Wheeler Wilcox reads like Alex Ferguson on Colwyn Bay of the Unibond League. Here, though, are Forster's briefer thoughts on such important writers as Virginia Woolf, Gide, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, H. G. Wells, Belloc, Tolstoy, D. H. and T. E. Lawrence and many others. The man who wrote but suppressed Maurice ought, one would hope, to have much to say about A. E. Housman, who `Oh do do stop nagging dear — it'll all be over by 12 July.' almost suppressed his whole self. But Forster trod very cautiously here in 1936. He accuses the poet of timidity, which is a bit rich, and makes coded reference to `stblen waters'. The piece is uneasy and reveals more of its writer's timidity than its subject's. The warm essay on Crabbe which set Britten off on Peter Grimes is here, and there's a witty assault on Bayreuth under Wieland Wagner. Many readers will prefer the personal to the critical essays. There is a charming memoir of his time as tutor to the children of Countess von Armin in 1905, another of his period in charge of his maharajah's waterless garden in India. His pieces on how he lost his faith and on growing old are lucid and touching. The tone is always his and his alone. He calls himself 'vinegary' at times, but it's more camp than that — 'Yes — oh, dear, yes the novel tells a story'. One might call it tough-liberal, or — dare one say it? schoolmaster-soft.
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