Meeting E. M.

Abstract

The Bracknels¹ brought me neither fame nor fortune, but it brought me two friendships — with E. M. Forster and with Walter de la Mare² — which have lasted from that day till this. E. M. I got to know shortly after the book was published. He had read it, written to me, and a little later, when he was over in Belfast, we met.³ The spot suggested by him, I find, was the Carlton Restaurant, and I was to recognize him by the clues of ‘a lightish cloth cap, purple and white scarf, and great coat’. I think I should have recognized him without these clues, and I am quite sure that the meeting did not take place in the Carlton, but in my own house,⁴ for I have a distinct recollection that Pan and Nyx and Puss were present to welcome him, and that James⁵ joined us later. I can even remember James asking him how he thought of his plots — a perfectly natural and innocent question, yet one which no writer would ask, and which rarely elicits responsiveness. De la Mare, out of sheer good nature, would have risen to it determinedly, and the conversation would have become metaphysical. With E. M., who is not metaphysical, the conversation temporarily languished.

From Private Road (London: Faber and Faber, 1940) pp. 115–17.