E.M. Forster, portrait by Dora Carrington, 1920.
To your deep shame and embarrassment, you — in your youth — played the viola.
You are slightly less posh than the family you married into. They have sent you to Italy so you don’t teach your common ways to your daughter.
You are a lady novelist who travels by yourself.
It is a plausible idea for you, in industrialized, Edwardian England, to sneak off to live in a new forest with your lover and not expect to be found.
You once did a terrible thing. Someone knows, but will not reveal it.
It is easier for you to be attracted to people when their class is indistinguishable because they are wearing cricket whites.
You are abroad. The landscape speaks to you in a way that none of the people do.
You realize that you have mistakenly agreed to marry a man who reminds you of a windowless drawing room.
Conveniently, your ex-lover looks enough like his sister that you can transfer your flirtations to her.
It isn’t possible to love and to part, though you wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, you have strong feelings about the various railway termini.
You would like to be friends with someone but are aware that 500 years of colonial oppression means it is not possible yet, the land and sky will not allow it.
You have lost your guidebook to Florence, and thus do not know how to look at art.
It is easy for you to sympathize at a distance.
You stand at the extreme verge of gentility. You are not in the abyss, but you can see it, and at times people whom you know had dropped in, and counted no more.
A grove of trees reminds you of the woman you love.
Your only quirk is your pierced ears, which you allowed yourself to get after you got engaged.
A man confuses your expression in the middle of an argument for that of an expression of love. Later, you marry him.
You once did a kind thing. Someone knows, but will never reveal it.
You love the idea of Italy, but perhaps not Italians, or even Italy itself.
You first learn about sex from a teacher who draws diagrams in the sand on a beach walk. He invites you to come to dinner in ten years with your future wife. Ten years later, you and your boyfriend run into him, and neither of you appreciate the irony.
The woman you are engaged to lives in a house with furniture purchased from Tottenham Court Lane. Aside from that flaw, she will do.
You like being told that your notions of life were sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense; Votes for Women nonsense; Socialism nonsense; Art and Literature, except when conducive to strengthening the character, nonsense.
You have read the Symposium over your school vacation.
You give up writing short stories to work at a second-rate public school.
Someone puts your most embarrassing secret into their novel as a fictional event. You are angry, but can never tell why.
There is a password to life and you cannot learn it, and the editor of literary journal who has just rejected your short story cannot teach it to you.
You discover you have a half-brother. You resent him for being stronger and healthier, and are disgusted when he sings a dirty song with a soldier.
You think you have had a revelation. In reality, you have gotten yourself in a muddle, and later it makes you miserable.
If you ever take to living as you play piano, it will be very exciting indeed.
Sarahhhhhh this is so good
Someone puts your most embarrassing secret into their novel as a fictional event. You are angry, but can never tell why.
Do short stories count?
This is PERFECT, and very timely, as I just watched Room with a View for the umpteenth time last week. xoxo
I have a totally irrational theory that Helena Bonham Carter’s character in A Room With A View is related to her as Bellatrix in Harry Potter. I have absolutely no proof for this theory, but I am totally committed to it regardless.
Living passionately can be a slippery slope, I guess.
It isn’t possible to hate and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute hate, ignore it, muggle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
Have you read the book? It’s…..not good. Lucy’s decisions make NO sense. She gets engaged to someone completely not interesting right AFTER meeting George, but the entire courtship takes place off-page, so you have no idea of her motivations. And count the number of times she actually has a conversation with George. They basically don’t speak, ever, just share longing and passion. So yeah, I give that marriage a year, tops.
Side note: have you ever counted the number of times Marianne and Col. Brandon speak? Almost nil. He spends the entire time talking to Elinor. With whom he has far more in common, and whom she deserves more than what’s-his-name. I suspect that if you compared the number and duration of meaningful conversations of courting couples in classic novels with romcoms, the romcoms would win. How’s that for depressing?
Sense and Sensibility was vastly improved by Emma Thompson’s script, and by Alan Rickman’s excellent acting abilities. It was still a bit of a jarring romance, but much less so than in the book.
I wrote an S&S/Harry Potter cross-over once where Marianne falls in love with Snape.
Buying/reading her script and production diaries is almost completely worth it for Rickman’s dry one-liners. The man WAS Snape.
It’s on my list of the two times the movie is way better than the book- A Room With a View and The Last of the Mohicans. Although it’s possible that LOTM doesn’t count because they had to change so much about the book to make it filmable.
Plus, Daniel Day-Lewis is in both films, but you can’t recognize him from one to the other.
To your deep shame and embarrassment, you — in your youth — played the viola.
Had to keep myself from bursting out in laughter at work because I did play the viola. In my youth.
I still play the viola, to my deep shame and embarrassment.
High five! I still have mine, but haven’t played in about five years. I miss it – the warm dark notes of the viola really spoke to my emo teenage soul.
Do you play in an orchestra or any chamber groups?
I actually have a degree in it (useful, right?!) and was so burned out by school I didn’t play for several years. But now I can enjoy it again, so I’m auditioning for a community orchestra. 🙂
Heyyyy, I did the same thing with double bass! Got too burned out to play for like five years, but have been playing sporadically again the last couple years. Glad it’s not just me. =)
Oh hey, me too (violinist here)! I’m sporadically getting back into it but it just doesn’t hold the same joy. How depressing.
Well, actually, the lack of joy is probably caused by two things: The knowledge that I’ll never again be as good as I was in college, and the knowledge that even then I wasn’t really good enough to make a real career out of it.
Burned out ex-violinists represent! I was in a number of youth orchestras, seriously considered trying to turn pro, played in a semi-professional orchestra for a couple of years, and at twenty, decided I was done. I haven’t played for nearly thirty years, though I still have my violins, but I sing in a local oratorio choir and love it.
Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis is so gooooooood!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I love this
You love the idea of Italy, but perhaps not Italians, or even Italy itself.
This! There is a whole sub-category of novels that could be called “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all British people could live somewhere besides Britain?” But without the people that now live there. And with the same traditions as back home. But with, you know, nicer weather and views not obscured by fog.
Closely related is “it would be nice to have social mobility, but only if the upwardly mobile act exactly like we do, and always accept that they aren’t quite as good as us.”
I live in Mexico and there are PLENTY of retired white baby boomers (mostly from California) whose happiness would be complete if only there weren’t so many Mexicans around.
If I’m not mistaken Flashman fits almost perfectly into that category.
I believe we call this “Australia”.
Spot on! Isn’t sympathizing at a distance what social media is *for*? (or “are for”, if I’m going to be proper.)
“There is a password to life and you cannot learn it, and the editor of literary journal who has just rejected your short story cannot teach it to you.’
I feel like Forster was writing about Ted Cruz here
You are crushed to death by a bookcase; an ironic comment on the failure of your intellectual aspirations.
hahaha
And your death is mentioned in a subordinate clause.
Conveniently, your ex-lover looks enough like his sister that you can transfer your flirtations to her.
See also: How to Tell if You Are in an Evelyn Waugh Novel.
You are listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and you insist on visualizing goblins and elephants. Then you steal a hapless young man’s umbrella.
you wonder whether wasps can go to heaven
You are queer but not particularly bothered by it, or anything else, and so you’ll have to wait decades to be published.
Cecil!
“I promessi sposi!”
Tottenham Court Road! Not Lane. Otherwise, perfect!
“Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, you have strong feelings about the various railway termini.”
Well what else are you supposed to talk to people about after you’re done with the weather, feelings?
I have only read one Forster but I trust that this is all perfectly accurate and wonderful, even the bits I don’t get.
The landscape speaks to you in a way that none of the people do.
It me.
You have a daughter, and then a son, and then another son. Your eldest child is a son. You have two children. Your best friend is allowed to see a photograph of your late wife.
Okay but in all truth I am terribly afraid of growing up to become Poor Charlotte.
This would be spot-on for me, except that I speak to my husband. This makes me a minor character but a notorious social pariah.
Alas, all I know of Forster is The Machine Stops, which I constantly encourage everyone to go read and which is beyond the scope of the above list.
It’s really pretty great and it’s easily found online.
NOW WE SHAN’T NEVER BE PARTED
I just finished this yesterday and I love it
It's tremendously inspiring to hear from not one but two people who began playing again. I have a degree in music and haven't played my flute in years for many and varied reasons, but I still have a spark of hope that I will play again. Every time I've tried I was discouraged by the gap between how good I used to be and how clumsy I am now. I think it would help to have some refurbishment done on my flute – *surely* I should be able to play one note in tune for one brief moment, right? But it's daunting to imagine paying money I don't really have to get it fixed and then discover that it was my extinct skill rather than the corroded pads all along.
TOO TRUE.
It is really better that you did not learn the second movement of the Beethoven.
Mallory, PLEASE do "How To Tell if You Are in a Dissertation."
"I DO begin to see what you mean."
"Well… with a haircut."
I have only read a libretto he co-wrote, Billy Budd, and it’s a subtext goldmine. It’s not so much sub as text, really.
Oh, this was so lovely and so desperately needed, you can’t know. Bless you, Sarah, not only for getting it but for parsing it as beautifully as Forster might have himself.
Oh, this was brilliant, Sarah. A wonderfully satisfying piece to help wind down this Toast series.