A passage to India
little laugh, “I can’t explain, because it isn’t in words at all,
but why do my wife and her brother like Hinduism, though they take
no interest in its forms? They won’t talk to me about this. They
know I think a certain side of their lives is a mistake, and are
shy. That’s why I wish you would talk to them, for at all events
you’re Oriental.”
Aziz refused to reply. He didn’t want to meet Stella and Ralph
again, knew they didn’t want to meet him, was incurious about their
secrets, and felt good old Cyril to be a bit clumsy. Something—not
a sight, but a sound—flitted past him, and caused him to re-read
his letter to Miss Quested. Hadn’t he wanted to say something else
to her? Taking out his pen, he added: “For my own part, I shall
henceforth connect you with the name that is very sacred in my
mind, namely, Mrs. Moore.” When he had finished, the mirror of the
scenery was shattered, the meadow disintegrated into butterflies.
A poem about Mecca—the Caaba of Union—the thorn-bushes where
pilgrims die before they have seen the Friend—they flitted next;
he thought of his wife; and then the whole semi-mystic, semi-sensuous
overturn, so characteristic of his spiritual life, came to end like
a landslip and rested in its due place, and he found himself riding
in the jungle with his dear Cyril.
“Oh, shut up,” he said. “Don’t spoil our last hour with foolish
questions. Leave Krishna alone, and talk about something sensible.”
They did. All the way back to Mau they wrangled about politics.
Each had hardened since Chandrapore, and a good knock about proved
enjoyable. They trusted each other, although they were going to
part, perhaps because they were going to part. Fielding had “no
further use for politeness,” he said, meaning that the British
Empire really can’t be abolished because it’s rude. Aziz retorted,
“Very well, and we have no use for you,” and glared at him with
abstract hate. Fielding said: “Away from us, Indians go to seed at
once. Look at the King-Emperor High School! Look at you, forgetting
your medicine and going back to charms. Look at your poems.”—“Jolly
good poems, I’m getting published Bombay side.”—“Yes, and what do
they say? Free our women and India will be free. Try it, my lad.
Free your own lady in the first place, and see who’ll wash Ahmed
Karim and Jamila’s faces. A nice situation!”
Aziz grew more excited. He rose in his stirrups and pulled at his
horse’s head in the hope it would rear. Then he should feel in a
battle. He cried: “Clear out, all you Turtons and Burtons. We
wanted to know you ten years back—now it’s too late. If we see you
and sit on your committees, it’s for political reasons, don’t you
make any mistake.” His horse did rear. “Clear out, clear out, I
say. Why are we put to so much suffering? We used to blame you,
now we blame ourselves, we grow wiser. Until England is in
difficulties we keep silent, but in the next European war—aha, aha!
Then is our time.” He paused, and the scenery, though it smiled,
fell like a gravestone on any human hope. They cantered past a
temple to Hanuman—God so loved the world that he took monkey’s
flesh upon him—and past a Saivite temple, which invited to lust,
but under the semblance of eternity, its obscenities bearing no
relation to those of our flesh and blood. They splashed through
butterflies and frogs; great trees with leaves like plates rose
among the brushwood. The divisions of daily life were returning,
the shrine had almost shut.
“Who do you want instead of the English? The Japanese?” jeered
Fielding, drawing rein.
“No, the Afghans. My own ancestors.”
“Oh, your Hindu friends will like that, won’t they?”
“It will be arranged—a conference of Oriental statesmen.”
“It will indeed be arranged.”
“Old story of ‘We will rob every man and rape every woman from
Peshawar to Calcutta,’ I suppose, which you get some nobody to
repeat and then quote every week in the _Pioneer_ in order to
frighten us into retaining you! We know!” Still he couldn’t quite
fit in Afghans at Mau, and, finding he was in a corner, made his
horse rear again until he remembered that he had, or ought to have,
a mother-land. Then he shouted: “India shall be a nation! No
foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be
one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab
nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the
world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman
Empire, she shall rank with Guatemala and Belgium perhaps! Fielding
mocked again. And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that,
not knowing what to do, and cried: “Down with the English anyhow.
That’s certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We
may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don’t make you
go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it’s fifty five-hundred years we
shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman
into the sea, and then”—he rode against him furiously—“and then,”
he concluded, half kissing him, “you and I shall be friends.”
“Why can’t we be friends now?” said the other, holding him
affectionately. “It’s what I want. It’s what you want.”
But the horses didn’t want it—they swerved apart; the earth didn’t
want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single
file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the
carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from
the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in
their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not
there.”
Weybridge, 1924.
[END]
_Mr. E. M. FORSTERS NOVELS_
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
“A remarkable book. Not often has the reviewer to welcome a new
writer and a new novel so directly conveying the impression of
power and an easy mastery of material. Here there are qualities of
style and thought which awaken a sense of satisfaction and delight;
a taste in the selection of words; a keen insight into the humour
(and not merely the humours) of life; and a challenge to its
accepted courses. It is told with a deftness, a lightness, a grace
of touch, and a radiant atmosphere of humour which mark a strength
and capacity giving large promise for the future.”—_Daily News._
“Mr. Forster has succeeded, with a cleverness that is almost
uncanny, in illustrating the tragic possibilities that reside in
insignificant and unimportant characters when they seek to
emancipate themselves from the bondage of convention, or to control
those who are dominated by a wholly different set of
traditions.”—_Spectator._
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
“This novel is a very remarkable and distinguished piece of work.
This new book is one of the most promising we have read from a
young writer, not only for many publishing seasons, but even for
many years. Its abundant cleverness fills even the more strenuous
passages with vivacity. The strength of the book consists in its
implicit indictment of the mean conventional, self-deceitful
insincerity of so much of modern English educated middle-class
life. This is certainly one of the cleverest and most original
books that have appeared from a new writer since George Meredith
first took the literary critics into his confidence.”—_Daily
Telegraph._
“It is interesting and living and amusing.”—_The Times._
A ROOM WITH A VIEW
“Mr. Forster’s new novel is not only much the best of the three he
has written, but it clearly admits him to the limited class of
writers who stand above and apart from the manufacturers of
contemporary fiction.”—_Spectator._
“It is packed with wonderful impressions and radiant
sayings.”—_Evening Standard._
“This is one of the cleverest and most entertaining novels we have
read for some time. The characters are as clear and salient as a
portrait by Sargent, and there are many of them. One is continually
moved to appreciative smiles by clever little touches of description
and enlightenment. The story, too, is interesting and real.”—_Daily
Mail._
“This odd title suggests a story rather out of the common, and it
does not prove in the least misleading. The book is both original
and delightful, presenting scenes of everyday life almost
commonplace sometimes in their fidelity to nature, but chronicled
in such a happy vein of quiet humour and with such penetrating
observation as makes each little incident and dialogue a source of
sheer joy to the reader. The characters are admirably drawn.”—_Pall
Mall Gazette._
“We have originality and observation, and a book as clever as the
other books that Mr. Forster has written already.”—_Times._
“Mr. Forster has earned the right to serious criticism. His work
has revealed individuality, distinction, and a power of suggestion
which opens large issues. ‘A Room with a View’ might stand for a
title of all his work. There is a spirit of high comedy in it. Mr.
Forster can describe with sure touch the queer satisfactions and
still queerer repugnances which make up the strange region of
modern things. Had this element been there alone, the book would
have been merely an excellent satirical judgment of manners and
conventions. Had the other elements stood alone—the revelation of
the hidden life—it would have been mystical, intangible, illusory.
By the fusion of the one with the other, he is able to present work
humorous and arresting, with a curious element in it of compelling
strength and emotion.”—_Nation._
HOWARDS END
“‘Howards End’ is packed full of good things. It stands out head
and shoulders above the great mass of fiction now claiming a
hearing. The autumn season has brought us some good novels, but
this is, so far, the best of them. ‘Howards End’ raises its author
to a place among contemporary novelists which few even of those
whose earlier work shows promise succeed in attaining.”—_Daily
Mail._
“There is no doubt about it whatever. Mr. E. M. Forster is one of
the great novelists. His stories are not about life. They are life.
His plots are absorbing because his characters are real. All will
agree as to the value of the book, as to its absorbing interest,
the art and power with which it is put together, and they will feel
with us that it is a book quite out of the common by a writer who
is one of our assets, and is likely to be one of our glories.”—_Daily
Telegraph._
“Mr. E. M. Forster has now done what critical admirers of his
foregoing novels have confidently looked for—he has written a book
in which his highly original talent has found full and ripe
expression. A very remarkable and original book.”—_The Times._
“The clash of modern culture and modern materialism has seldom
found a more vivid interpreter.”—_Spectator._
“There is life, imagination, and the very flame of action giving
quality to this novel over and above the technique with which it
is built up and the wisdom with which it is informed.”—_Daily
News._
“With this book Mr. Forster seems to us to have arrived, and if he
never writes another line, his niche should be secure.”—_Standard._
“‘Howards End’ is a novel of high talent—the highest.”—_Daily
Graphic._
“This novel, taken with its three predecessors, assures its author
a place amongst the handful of living writers who count.”_—Athenæum._
LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.