Item 30 - Letter from E. M. Forster to Elizabeth Trevelyan

1 sheet

Bessie shall have ‘the first two penny half penny letter’ he which writes; wonders why two and a half pence was ‘once a term of abuse’, they ‘must now speak of the sum with awe’. Gets home tomorrow or Friday, and hopes they can meet soon. Has just been for a weekend near Birmingham, and lunched with George [Derwent?] Thomson.

Agrees that, like Bessie, he is ‘courageous by fits and starts’. Reminds himself periodically of ‘two helpful truths’: ‘that everything is very interesting, and that one can usually be of a little use to someone’, but does not think that either is ‘a truth of the highest water. You can’t promote civilisation either by staring about you at the mess or by lending an occasional neighbourly hand to others who are involved in it’. Also, ‘endurance is not an adequate substitute for hope’.

Reads a good deal, which his illness had previously put him off doing. The Ministry of Information want him to write a pamphlet, and the B.B.C. want him to ‘talk about books to India’. Is ‘gladder to have written that Daily Telegraph letter [on ‘Nazism and Morals: Dangers of “Gestapo” Methods’, published on 16 Apr 1940]’, and very glad that Bessie liked it. Augustus Daniel ‘chaffed me gaily about it on the steps of the National Gallery yesterday’, thinks he was ‘actually a bit shocked’. Forster was on his way to hear three Mozart violin sonatas, ‘one very boring, another (in E flat) with a marvellous slow movement’.