23rd May
In May 1917 he was thinking about love, and fear. In a latter to his confidante Florence Barger, sent from Alexandria in Egypt, he described how he had started 'an anxious but very beautiful affair’. He told her that he was glad he 'took the plunge’, because 'if you pass life by it’s jolly well going to pass you by in the future’. He noted that the decision had not frightened him, although he felt that 'if you’re frightened it’s all right – that’s no harm; fear is an emotion’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 29 May 1917)
