Item 80 - Letter from E. M. Forster to Elizabeth Trevelyan

1 sheet

King's Coll. Cambridge [on headed notepaper]. - Bessie has written him 'Two very lovely letters', which he 'value[s] greatly'. Has 'enjoyed becoming seventy, thanks to good health, and everyone's kindness'. What Bessie says about his 'Fiction Fragment', and his 'broadcasting of it', also gives him 'much pleasure. How nice it is to be praised, and I cannot believe it does one much harm'. It would do so 'if it led one to think one was always a success; but with the world as it is, and so completely ignoring the good advice one gives it, one cannot be led into that error.

Glad to hear of Bessie's 'better domestic arrangements'; hope they continue. Owes Bob a letter: has not yet thanked him for his From the Shiffolds. Was 'so glad to read that poem about Goldie again - it never fails to move me'. Hopes to come and see them both again in the spring.

Asks if Bessie knows that Florence [Barger] is a grandmother: the baby [Jennifer] was born to Evert and his wife in New York, and 'cradled in the cradle that lately cradled the baby of Lionel Trilling, who wrote a book on me' and lent it to them; 'Rather charming. All seems well'.

Is 'distressed to learn of Julian's unhappiness', and hopes 'life will become easier for him'.

Forster's 'Fiction Fragment' is probably 'Entrance to an Unwritten Novel', published in the Listener 1948, and later read by Forster on the BBC Home Service on Sunday 23 January 1949 (it subsequently became the short story The Other Boat, published in 1957.