Maurice

by E.M. Forster

The second dream is more difficult to convey. Nothing happened. He scarcely saw a face, scarcely heard a voice say, “That is your friend,” and then it was over, having filled him with beauty and taught him tenderness. 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.”

Was he a Greek god, such as illustrates the classical dictionary?

All that came out of the chaos were the two feelings of beauty and tenderness that he had first felt in a dream.

He was less troubled by carnal thoughts. He stood still in the darkness instead of groping about in it, as if this was the end for which body and soul had been so painfully prepared.

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be—flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design—but as he strolled about the courts at night and saw through the windows some men singing and others arguing and others at their books, there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.

Maurice became modest and conscious of sin: in all creation there could be no one as vile as himself: no wonder he pretended to be a piece of cardboard;

He was not attracted to the man in the sense that he wanted him for a friend, but he did feel he might help him—how, he didn’t formulate.

“You can always learn something from an older man, even if he hasn’t read the latest Germans.”

For a whole hour he might have been watching for Durham.

But his heart had lit never to be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.

Next term they were intimate at once.

Maurice in a chair, and Durham at his feet, leaning against him. In the world of their friends this attracted no notice. Maurice would stroke Durham’s hair.

The craving for notice grew overwhelming, so he talked, talked.

Maurice had contrived to move his seat so that he could glance at his friend.

a profound irritation against his womenkind set in.

His replies were equally long. Maurice never let them out of his pocket, changing them from suit to suit and even pinning them in his pyjamas when he went to bed. He would wake up and touch them and, watching the reflections from the street lamp, remember how he used to feel afraid as a little boy.

He stared at the ceiling with wrinkled mouth and eyes, understanding nothing except that man has been created to feel pain and loneliness without help from heaven.

Durham could not wait. People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, “I love you.”

He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.

No one might want such love, but he could not feel ashamed of it, because it was “he,” neither body or soul, nor body and soul, but “he” working through both.

cried “You love and are loved.” He looked round the court. It cried “You are strong, he weak and alone,” won over his will.

he found himself crossed at an early age by this other desire, obviously from Sodom.

he was damned.

Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end, and besides, between Clive’s temperament and that religion there is a secular feud.

He wished Christianity would compromise with him a little and searched the Scriptures for support.

But books meant so much for him he forgot that they were a bewilderment to others.

The whole day had been ordinary. Yet it had never come before to either of them, nor was it to be repeated.

Their love belonged to it, and particularly to their rooms, so that he could not conceive of their meeting anywhere else.

“Maurice! Maurice! you’ve actually come. You’re here. This place’ll never seem the same again, I shall love it at last.”

“Clive, you’re a silly little fool, and since you’ve brought it up I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.”

And their love scene drew out, having the inestimable gain of a new language. No tradition overawed the boys. No convention settled what was poetic, what absurd. They were concerned with a passion that few English minds have admitted, and so created untrammelled. Something of exquisite beauty arose in the mind of each at last, something unforgettable and eternal, but built of the humblest scraps of speech and from the simplest emotions.

ecstasy cannot last, but can carve a channel for something lasting,

They were together still.

But every Wednesday he slept at Clive’s little flat in town. Weekends were also inviolable. They said at home, “You must never interfere with Maurice’s Wednesdays or with his weekends. He would be most annoyed.”

He had stopped loving Maurice and should have to say so plainly.

How happy normal people made their lives!

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.

“Ada has Maurice’s voice, his nose, by which of course I mean the mouth too, and his good spirits and good health. Three things, I often think of it. Kitty on the other hand has his brain.”

“He has had your wire from the office,” announced Kitty. “He wants to know whether you’re here.” “Say I am.” “He’s coming back tonight, then. Now he wants to talk to you.”

He was neither angry nor afraid, he only wanted to heal,

Clive must love him, because his whole life was dependent on love and here it was going on as usual.

Maurice did not cease to love, but his heart had been broken; he never had wild thoughts of winning Clive back.

He hadn’t a God, he hadn’t a lover—the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heaven.

“I say, in your rounds here, do you come across unspeakables of the Oscar Wilde sort?”

“I’ve been like this ever since I can remember without knowing why. What is it? Am I diseased? If I am, I want to be cured, I can’t put up with the loneliness any more, the last six months specially. Anything you tell me, I’ll do. That’s all. You must help me.”

He never saw her naked, nor she him. They ignored the reproductive and the digestive functions. So there would never be any question of this episode of his immaturity.

He didn’t care for Clive, but he could suffer from him.

“It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

“All the world’s against us. We’ve got to pull ourselves together and make plans, while we can.”

In a way they were one person. Love had failed. Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.