Chipsandmorrie

(The images of the letter can be found here at King's College's archive. Below is my transcription followed by photocopies of the letter. )

PS: 1) "MS" is the abbreviation for "manuscript".

23 Aug. [1914?]

My dear & blessed E.M.,

(I wish you had a name. Why do you always hide behind initials? What do your friends call you? My name is Edward, or ‘chips’!)

I have read your ‘Maurice’ after all, and am very much pleased with it. I don’t always like your rather hesitating tantalizing impressionist style - though it has subtleties - but I think the story has many fine points. You succeed in joining the atmosphere with the various characters, and there are plenty of happenings which is a good thing. Maurice’s love affairs are all interesting, and I have a mind to read them again, if I can find time - so I won’t send the MS back for a day or two. I am so glad you end up on a major chord. I was so afraid you were going to let Scudder go at the last - but you saved him and saved the story, because the end though improbable is not impossible and is the one bit of real romance - which those who understand will love.

I wish I could write more, but I am devoured just now by innumerable things. I expect to be in and about London from the 1st to 8th Sep. - so give me a cue to see you.

Your Edward C.

Transcription of vertical writings on the second page of the letter: 

I am sending my birthday reply to the papers on Sep. 1 with a lot about the war in it. 

Only a small part of the letter has been transcribed then included in reviews, or different Maurice editions. Which is why I wanted to transcribe the whole response from the real-life Maurice to the author of fictional Maurice after he read Maurice. The entirety is far more interesting.

Below: Edward Carpenter in 1886 and 1897.

Some contexts: based on Forster's diaries, Maurice was first finished in June/July, 1914, so Carpenter did read the first complete MS—with or without the epilogue is unclear since there's no solid proof for when the epilogue was written (though it appeared in the novel by February 1915 at the latest.)

However, since Carpenter said he liked the happy ending he read (and fun fact: the first complete MS which he read actually had a fairly different ending between Maurice and Alec than the published version's), we know that even from the first draft, Forster remained unwavering about how a happy ending is imperative.

More contexts: according to a letter from Forster to a friend, he thought Carpenter was "too unliterary to be helpful"—meaning Carpenter probably wasn't much interested in reading literature. And Carpenter sort of confirmed that in writing "I read your 'Maurice' after all", implying he was indeed reluctant to read at first.

Still, it made absolute sense for Forster to send the story back to the man who, in a manner of speaking, held the copyright of Maurice in flesh before Forster even finished it.

(Inspiration and source for this post: "Edward Carpenter and the Double Structure of Maurice" by Robert K. Martin, Ph.D.)

WE KNOW that E.M. Forster was directly influenced by Edward Carpenter (and his life with a lower class man, George Merrill) to write the happy ending of Maurice. Forster himself was a disciple of Carpenter; specifically, he subscribed to Carpenter's belief in the "Uranian" love (love and loyalty between two men that can include a physical relationship). Forster said in the Terminal Notes of Maurice that Maurice and Alec are capable of such love and loyalty—as defined by Carpenter—between each other.

But it wasn't Carpenter who first "invented" that idea of love and loyalty; it was, in fact, Carpenter's influencer and mentor, American poet Walt Whitman.

Carpenter was a disciple of Whitman, and Forster was a disciple of Carpenter. Below, the texts from each's relevant works in chronological order will enlighten on the origin of the inspiration behind Maurice—i.e., what made the happy ending between Maurice and Alec possible, way before Forster even knew Carpenter.

—Walt Whitman in 1856: "Song of the Open Road" from Leaves of Grass

Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

—Edward Carpenter in 1902: "Hafiz to the Cupbearer" from Towards Democracy

"Come, son (since thou hast said it), out of all Shiraz Háfiz salutes thee comrade. Let us go A spell of life along the road together."

(FYI: this poem was written by Carpenter to commemorate Merrill braving a blizzard to finally move in with him in 1898.)

—E.M. Forster in 1914 and 1932: Maurice (published in 1971)

“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his." (First written in 1932.)

"They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. " (First written in 1914.)

"He could die for such a friend, he would allow such a friend to die for him; they would make any sacrifice for each other, and count the world nothing, neither death nor distance nor crossness could part them, because 'this is my friend.'" (First written in 1914.)

It's as if Whitman originated the idea of finding a friend who would last his whole life, and whose love is valued above class and society;

and he instilled it into Carpenter who later was able to live out that idea in real life with Merrill;

and Forster, having witnessed that idea lived out in real life through Carpenter and Merrill, wrote it into fiction so that it's lived out through Maurice and Alec—"for the ever and ever that fiction allows,” in the greenwood.

That's the very symbolic meaning of Maurice and Alec roaming the greenwood: Carpenter and Merril weren't immortal, so their love for each other obviously wouldn't last forever in that literal sense; Forster knew that, but he did what others couldn't: he immortalized their love and Whitman's idea of "Someone to last your whole life" through Maurice, so that for as long as Maurice and Alec roam the greenwood, the love between Carpenter and Merril would live on even if not in real life, and Whitman's idea would thus never die.

Whitman's philosophy is like an heirloom passed down from him to Carpenter to Forster. The connection is more in the clear if you put Forster's and Whitman's lines side by side:

"They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death."

VS