25/5/25Arctic Summer by EM Forster is only about 100 pages and unfinished. This book basically tells us the feeling that he had between publishing his book in 1910 and the book in 1924. He wanted to write a second book on homosexualism after Maurice which he could not dare publish. So he could not write any novel after that finally he published Passage to India but that was his last and best novel. Galgut's understanding of the interplay between love and power animates this final section of the book. It was Forster's time in Dewas that allowed him to return to his unfinished India novel and bring it to a triumphal conclusion.
EM Forster 1879 to 1970 novel
- (1905) Where Angles Fear to tread set in Italy
- (1907)The Longest Journey
- (1908)A room with a view set in Italy
- (1910)Howards End
- 1913–14, Maurice. published posthumously in 1971)
- (1924) A passage to India (Published 11 years after he started it)
Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut 2014, 336pg
The year is 1912, and the SS Birmingham is approaching India. Edward Morgan Forster ,is 33 years old, has writing block and has to come to terms with his homosexualism. This is only 17 years after Oscar Wilde landed up in jail1895 The novel mostly takes place between the publication of “Howard’s End” in 1910 and the publication of “A Passage to India” in 1924.
In England Morgan lives with his mother his best companion but a problemed relationship. EM Forster was private secretary to the Maharajah at Pondicherry, 1934
On the ship he meets Kenneth Searight and army officer on the Khyber Pass frontier who talks too openly about his having male Indian friends. Flesh was generally more visible in India than at home.
Morgan had been to Cambridge at Kings collage where Goldie was a don, their friendship slowly flowered after he left Cambridge. Morgan had been asked to coach Masood son of a maharaja in Latin and he was now going to visit him. Discretion was the first line of defense after what happened to Oscar Wilde. Morgan had a number of encounters with boy and many Indians. Morgan knew nothing of Mohamadans and this was irksome to Masood.
His father died when he was 2 and his middle aged mother was perpetually unhappy. He had always wanted a brother, there had been another baby before his birth that had died. In religion he considered Jesus boring and lacking in intellect. His good friend and lover Hom was a student at LSE and said that their relationship was good enough for the Greeks. However Hom as many of his lovers gets married and he feels a loss.
To Morgan most females felt a different species and scared him. He worked this theme out of himself in Where Angles Fear to Tread. He was attracted to a young shepherd who offered him a puff on his pipe and only when the boy stood up that he saw he had a clubfoot. Morgan saw himself with that foot in another life where he got married.
By the time he was married Homs role as a lover had been taken by Masood.
Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936 was always singing about the virtues of the British and inferiority of the natives and the gory glory of a patriotic death.
A friend Malcolm Darling from Kings in the Civil Service in Dewas wrote to compliment Morgan on his book. Morgan had written about marriage but when Malcolm met him accompanied by Merz just before Malcolm's marriage asked him about himself he would not admit he was lonely. Morgan and Merz walked towards their homes together said goodbye and the next day Merze was found hung by his own hand. Morgan had been the last to see him alive. What had befallen Ernest Merze was a warning to him.
Back home, Malcolm was married with twins could identify himself with Morgan's book they met and kissed.
Massood said if he came to India they could get closer than they were in England. Masood was in London practicing for the bar. Morgan was back in Italy where he had been a number of times and had set 2 of his novels there.
After Morgan had published a book of short stories. He now wrote some short stories not to express but to excite himself. Then went on to a novel of that nature, called Arctic Summer. Howards End was selling well and he had enough money to afford a trip to India.
In India starting in Aligath ,he visited a cave that had been polished into a temple, where you voice echoed. In England Masood was out of place but in India Morgan was. He wanted to meet Masoods mother but she kept strict purdah and cannot show herself before you. The discussed that the Balkans was the death battle of Islam and why was Sir George Grey (1911)the first to recognize Italy's colonizing Tripoli. The Bulgarian army (1912) is within 25 miles of Istanbul.
Indian men were seen walking hand in hand and hung to each other. The society was totally divided Moslems and Hindus but the Hindus were stratified with Brahman down to the untouchables. Under the British at the bottom of the heap were Eurasians, the professional men, railway employees, tea planters then army officers and floating at the top the Viceroy. They had clubs that did not allow in Indians. The English are bored in India and their bad manners towards the Indians upset Morgan.
1912 The Capital of India moved from Calcutta to New Delhi announced by George V. A bomb thrown at Lord Charles Hardinge's elephant in a procession into the new capital. He suffered only flesh wounds. Delhi was a predominantly Muslim area at the time. Morgan explained that much of Brittan's foreign policy was fear of German and not hatred of Islam.
Masood was getting married which was much more inevitable here than in Britain. He visited Lucknow whose Residency was the site of the Mutiny outbreak and siege against the British East India company in 1857.
"Do the English think that they will rule us forever?" The Raj will be defeated it will take 50 to 500 years. He was not proud of the treatment the English meted out to the locals, his anger of this showed in his writings. The subject of power , racial power and its ugliness.
Edward Carpenter 35 years older than Morgan had supported ideas like socialism, vegetarianism and women's rights. He spoke of male companionship that went back to the Greeks and shared his home with a younger working class man for over 20 years. Finally he found another person that understood his attitude to India.
In Aligath Morgan visited the Anglo-Oriental Collage had 2 Muslim men students who loved each other and when the were forced to part killed themselves. One drowned himself and the other ran in front of a train.
1854 The Working Men's collage was set up in London and many of Morgan's friends worked there. By now his Indian book had been forgotten and he had writing on homosexualism material that he could never publish, Goldie asked him what is the purpose of writing stuff you can't publish? He couldn't even show it to many people. "There will be a time when I can." He was starting middle age with 3 unfinished novels in his hands.
1914 Britain was at war and everyone else was volunteering. He observed European civilization set back 30 years. He could not see himself working as a nurse. He was offered a job cataloguing at the National Gallery.
He got on well with the young novelist DH Lawrence who had a young German wife.
Duncan Grant a Scottish artist 1885-1978. His father was an army major and his childhood was in India and Burma. He was part of the Bloomsbury group.
Alexandria
Morgan heard that they needed researches in the war hospital for soldiers who were lost or missing. He went for an interview with Gertrude Bell (1868 -1926) He was sent to Alexandria. This was the city founded by Alexander the Great home of Callimachus and Theocritus and death place of Cleopatra. He traveled around the hospital wards and made notes of who had been reported killed. He was responsible to Miss Victoria Grant Duff the head of the Wounded and Missing Department. After 3 weeks she told him his were the best reports of the team of 4 and London was pleased with them.
One of his very good friend here was C.P. Cavafy a leading Greek poet of Constantinople extraction and Morgan translated and introduced his poems to the English speaking world in 1923. Morgan and Cavafy never discussed the secret they had in common. The hospital in Montazah had once been the Khedival palace, build in 1892.
Morgan has a close relation to Mohammod el Adi a tram conductor. With a letter to the Government Employment Bureau he got Mohammod a better paying job. In bed with Mohammod one night who told him he planned to marry his late brothers wife, a common practice, cheaper as no dowry is needed and there is a child that needs a father. Mohammod was diagnosed with consumption and Morgan paid for a private doctor who said it was caught it time and could be cured.
A letter came from London making Morgan head researcher and this upset Miss Duff, he did not want the status and the conflict this caused.
1914 Nov. Armistice signed and Morgan returned to London. When Mahomed landed up in jail Morgan sent him £10 to pay his fine.
1919 Amritsar Punjab massacre's this marked the start of the end of the Raj. caused through stupidity and arrogance of a British General in dealing with a big crowd.
His friend Malcolm brought an invitation from the Maharaja Bapu Sahib for Morgan to be his secretary.. Morgan now went to India and stopped in Egypt where he saw Mohamad who was in debt and very ill of consumption.
The Ghoul Ashtami Festival celebrated the birth of Krishna perhaps this could provide the material that Morgan's book needed. He had read the Bhagavud Purena (written between 500 to 1000CE)and knew the Krishna story.
1921 Prince Edward of Wales visit to India at a time when Mahatma Ghandi was urging Indians not to wear foreign imported clothes. Morgan decided it was time to return home as he all projects he was involved in for the Maharaja stopped because of lack of funds. He would miss the daily lust with Kanaya.
The Muslims had been upset by the break up of the Turkish Empire after WW1. Muslims were united behind The Congress Party supported Ghandis civil disobedience. Everyone in Masood circle objected to the royal visit. The Empires dream was dying Morgan said because of rudeness in Railway carriages.
Going back trough Egypt Mohammad was not able to meet him as he was too ill and he had to go to Mansourah and he knew his friend was dying.
Passage to India this would be dedicated to Masood as he was the reason Morgan went to India. They had , had 17 years of friendship.
Back in London Leonard Woolf suggested he read through what he had written and try to finish it. he realized that what he had written was more substantial than he thought but he has not touched it since 1914.
In Egypt he had loved Mohammed but what could Mohammed have felt in return, he had been excited and flattered to be courted by an Englishman and had been eager for the financial help.
Suddenly he thought the answer was to turn the book into a mystery of violence and ghosts. Leonard wanted to publish it through his Horgath press but Morgan was bound to Edward Arnold (Mathew Arnold the poet was his uncle) 2 of his travel books came out to raving reviews.
Alexandria: A History and Guide (1922)
Pharos and Pharillon (A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages) (1923)
When Morgan visited Edward Carpenter,(1844 to 1929 early activist of gay rights) he was the one who had suggested the title Passage to India from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Rumour was that Whitman and Carpenter had been lovers.
With the publication Morgan found himself famous and wealthy. Letters from Civil Servants said he did not know India but was just a visitor there. In the book he never portrayed the British in a very good light. At Lyons Corner House he heard a women saying you must read his book. Look at EM Forster he is not well dressed." I've heard that his life is unhappy, he lives with his mother and is not the adventurous type.. A timid soul who has only lived in his mind."
He returned to India aged in 1945 aged 66. He was now able to meet the loftier echelons of British society and dined with the Viceroy(1943-1947) Lord Archibald Wavell. It took him 3 days to get to India in a flying boat via France, Italy and Egypt.
Masood had become vice Chancellor of the Aligath Muslim University previously the Anglo- Oriental Collage. Then Minister of Education for Bhopal State. He died in 1929 of kidney failure. The Maharajah of Dewas had died 6 months later as he had brought his estate deep into debt. This university bestowed on Morgan an honoree life membership. Finally he visited Masood grave which had been totally neglected and overgrown with weeds.
Note Damon Galgut the author is openly gay. Born 1963 Won Booker prize in 1921 for The Promise.
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