12th August
In August 1910 he was thinking about being a godfather. He wrote to his friend Malcolm Darling declining, after much thought, a request to be godfather to his new son. He told Darling that he had agreed to play the role once before, but 'that was to parents whose atheism was even more pronounced than my own’. After saying that he hoped to be of use to the boy one day, he observed that 'outside of my family, no grown up person was ever of any use to me – what one really wants is a god-brother, not a godfather. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 12 August 1910)
