In August 1910 he was thinking about Howard’s End. He wrote to his friend Malcolm Darling about the 'stodgy novel’ coming out in the following Autumn. His humorous self-deprecation continues: he wrote that the new book 'dealeth dully with many interesting matters’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 22 August 1910)
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)
In August 1921, he was thinking about Indian religion. In a letter to Cambridge don Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, he became quite impatient with Hindu customs. 'This month’, he wrote, 'we celebrate the birthday of Lord Krishna and have already chosen for him 8 new sets of clothes and given orders for his bed and for his mosquito curtains’. His objection is not just based in a lack of sympathy for another culture. He noted that alongside this great expense, they were also closing 'the one High School in the state’. He intended to go to the celebrations, but feared that insects, or perhaps worn-out socks (no boots allowed), would spoil them for him. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 6 August 1921)
In August 1931 he was thinking about pain. In a letter to George Thomson, a Cambridge friend, he worried that 'the doctrine that pain’s an opportunity for the spirit… gets used by people who have forgotten what pain is’. He acknowledged that pain might be 'distilled’ by the memory into a form of happiness, but he claimed a 'high place’ for 'direct happiness’, without pain. He remained uneasy about attempts to elevate pain: it 'can be so overwhelming that it has tempted people of all ages to look for some inherent value in it’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 1 August 1931)
In July 1929 he was thinking about diamonds. In a letter to his mother from Kimberley, South Africa, he wrote about a visit – a most vulgar and interesting day’ – to the diamond mines. He deemed it in some ways 'most impressive to see the whole countryside turned upside down for the sake of diamonds’, and conveyed vivid scenes of 'barbed wire everywhere, black convicts working, police, rubbish heaps like mountains, holes in the ground 3000 feet deep’. In the end the experience was a negative one ('It is the most imbecile industry in the world, I suppose’) and he concluded that 'I don’t think I shall now ever give you or any body a diamond bracelet’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 29 July 1929)
In July 1922 he was thinking about Thomas Hardy. He wrote to his mother about a 'simple, almost dull tea’ at the Hardy home in Dorset. The elderly novelist and poet showed him the graves of his pets. The stories of their deaths caused an irreverent reaction in Forster: 'I could scarcely keep grave – it was so much like a caricature of his own novels and poems’. The letter is an affectionate portrait of a living legend mainly bothered by 'interviewers, American ladies, and the charabancs that whirr past while the conductor shouts “Ome of Thomas ’Ardy, Novelist”’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 19 July 1922)
In July 1933 he was thinking about whether Maurice would ever be published. He wrote to the writer Christopher Isherwood, expressing delight that he liked the novel so much. He agreed that 'if the pendulum keeps swinging in its present direction [if toleration of homosexuality increased] it might get published in time’. Meeting decent people, he said, helped him forget 'the millions of beasts and idiots who still prowl in the darkness, ready to gibber and devour’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 16 July 1933)
In July 1917 he was thinking about happiness. In a letter to the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy he wondered whether 'at the bottom of one’s soul one craves not happiness but peace’. He suggested that for some people, 'something fundamental in man… finds its repose not in fruition but in creation’. Cavafy was undergoing some sort of personal crisis of which Forster was only vaguely aware, but he tried to offer consolation: 'you will go on writing, I believe’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 1 July 1917)
In June 1923 he was thinking about relationships. In a letter to his friend Sebastian Sprott he doubted that psychology could give much insight into his unhappiness, even though 'your psychology is of course better than other people’s’ (Sprott became a prominent psychologist and sociologist). 'Science’, wrote Forster, 'when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong – I refrain from adding in booming tones 'and always will be.’ Not surprisingly, he concluded that 'Art is a better guide than Science’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 28 June 1917)
In June 1917 he was thinking about patriotism and snobbery. In a letter to Cambridge don Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, he opined that 'you can remain a patriot if you will become a snob’. The particular target is the middle class: 'Officers, stockbrokers, politicians, grocers – they run us, but they are not England numerically, and their self-righteousness is not our national characteristic’. By choosing the 'lower class’ as the 'typical Englishmen’, he felt it was easier to feel patriotic attachment. Playfully, he describes the lapse in tolerance: 'We used to pretend we shrank from no one. But it’s no good. Middle-class people smell’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 25 June 1917)
