Item 60 - Letter from E. M. Forster to Elizabeth Trevelyan

2 sheets

W[est] H[ackhurst]. - Is signing the card 'After some indecision... with a slight modification of its text'; though there are 'some weighty arguments against it', he feels it is 'a good thing to testify to the possession of compassion and a heart, when one has or things one has them. Everyone is or is pretending to be so hard'.

After he visited Bessie, 'a cloud, then no bigger than a man's hand, turned into the shape of an aeroplane', and now it really seems he will fly to India in ten days for a [P.E.N. ] conference of writers at Jaipur. Can 'hardly believe it, and of course there may be last minute hitches'. Hsiao Ch'ien has lent him a 'wonderful cane suitcase', which he can 'carry with one finger' when empty. Is only meant to be away for two months, and the household 'hopes to limp through' in his absence, with the help of Florence [Barger], Aunt Rosalie and others. Agnes [Dowland] 'has been very sweet about it, her only objection being that I am sure to crash'.

His only companion will be Ould, the secretary of P.E.N., who is 'pleasant and easy to get on with'; they hope to fly via Karachi to Delhi, where Forster will stay with friends [including Ahmed Ali], then to Jaipur for the conference, then he thinks to Calcutta and Bombay. He may of course 'be turned off the plane at the last moment if a V.I.P. (official phrase for Very Important Person) wants my seat'. Looks forward to going, 'despite the unhappiness and the politics which I am certain to find there'; will be 'such a change', though he fears he will be 'in a daze for at least a fortnight, and lose Chi'en's suitcase during it, with all my clothes therein'.

[No signature - incomplete?]

Written on the back of two pieces of a printed letter from the secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, F. R. Durham, regarding subscription renewal for 1946.