[In the following essay, Pinkerton finds that Forster's treatment of the character Leonard Bast in Howards End prefigures his ending of A Passage to India.]

E. M. Forster, in “The Challenge of Our Time” (1946), clarified what he saw as the dilemma of Victorian liberal humanism:

The education I received in those far-off and fantastic days made me soft, and I'm very glad it did, for I have seen plenty of hardness since, and I know it does not even pay. … But though the education was humane, it was imperfect, inasmuch as we none of us realized our economic position. In came the nice fat dividends, up rose the lofty thoughts, and we did not realize that all the time we were exploiting the poor of our country and the backward races abroad, and getting bigger profits from our investments than we should. We refused to face the unpalatable truth. …

All that has changed in the present century. The dividends have shrunk to decent proportions and have in some cases disappeared. The poor have kicked. The backward races are kicking—and more power to their boots. Which means that life has become less comfortable for the Victorian liberal, and that our outlook, which seems to me admirable, has lost the basis of golden sovereigns upon which it originally rose, and now hangs over the abyss.¹

Perhaps there is no better gloss on the ideas and questions raised and explored in Howards End [hereafter referred to as HE].

Reconciliation is problematic and uncertain, but can best be attempted through personal relations. Forster defines his dilemma: “But in public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.”² The cult of personal relations provides a means of connection. Yet in Howards End Forster's ambiguous treatment of Leonard Bast undercuts his vision. In revising the manuscripts, Forster isolates Leonard from the personal relationships of the novel through his use of pronouns. He treats Leonard with increasing irony and distance, deleting Leonard's interior monologues. At the same time, Forster struggles to develop Leonard as a character, and finally he attempts to raise Leonard to mythic stature by making Margaret's reflections upon his death parallel her thoughts upon the death of Mrs. Wilcox. For these reasons, Forster's treatment of Leonard betrays the precariousness of his vision and anticipates the conclusion of A Passage to India.

In the revised Howards End manuscripts one pattern becomes apparent: Forster inserts hundreds of personal pronouns, underscoring in a concrete grammatical way one theme of the novel—the importance of personal relationships. Forster adds pronouns frequently, deletes them less often. Of a total of 794 changes involving pronouns, 601 are insertions, and 193 are deletions. Forster inserts pronouns more than three times as often as he deletes them. The quantity of these changes is not nearly as significant as the qualitative effect they make upon the tone of the published text. The inserted pronouns are most often possessives usually linked with a noun indicating family relationships (my son, my sister, her brother, his son, etc.). Ruth Wilcox and Margaret Schlegel use these constructions most consistently in their own speech. Likewise, these tags are used to identify them. Forster increases pronominal usage to heighten the theme of connection and relatedness in a concrete grammatical way. Shared experience and the importance of personal relationships provide the theme of the novel and consequently dictate certain stylistic choices.

Several examples indicate the care with which Forster thought over his earlier drafts and revised them accordingly. For example, Miss Avery refers to Ruth Wilcox first as “Mrs. Wilcox,” then “her old friend Mrs. Wilcox,” and then simply “her old friend.”³ Likewise, Forster will sometimes delete a personal pronoun, replace it with a proper name, only to eliminate that in favor of the possessive pronoun and familial tag. For example, Margaret says “It certainly is a funny world but as long as they govern, it'll never be a bad one—never really bad” (The Manuscripts of Howards End [hereafter referred to as MsHE] 271:11). In revision “they” becomes “the Wilcoxes” and finally “my husband and his sons” (MsHE 271:11). When Margaret suggests that Paul may still have some feelings for Helen, Mrs. Wilcox replies: “Not that I know of” (MsHE 66:12). With revision, the personal note is added and the response becomes: “Oh no; he often—my Paul is very young, you see” (HE 66:12).

Not only are personal and familial relationships affirmed through the use of pronouns; true ownership of Howards End becomes a focus through Forster's care in inserting and replacing pronouns. When Mrs. Wilcox suggests the excursion to Howards End, for example, she phrases it this way in the manuscripts: “It is in the morning that my house is most itself. I cannot show you the meadow properly except at sunrise” (MsHE 84:10-11). In revision this becomes: “It is in the morning that my house is most beautiful. You are coming to stop. I cannot show you my meadow properly except at sunrise” (HE 84:10-11). And Miss Avery's niece says to Margaret: “Of course Auntie does not generally look after the house” (MsHE 263-24). In revision the last two words become “your place” (HE 294:8). Even more significant are Forster's changes in Margaret's plea to Henry that Helen be allowed to spend one night at Howards End. In the manuscript version, first Forster writes: “She has the idea that one night in the house would give her pleasure and do her good” (MsHE 302:32). In revision Forster changes the house to our house, then that house, and finally your house. The change is enormously significant.

As established as this pattern of pronoun insertion is, Forster departs from the norm in his treatment of Leonard and Jacky Bast. Forster eliminates personal pronouns, and in so doing he conveys their intensified alienation from each other, from other characters in the novel, and from society at large. Of 193 pronoun deletions, 54 refer to Leonard, Jacky, or both. Predictably, Henry and Charles Wilcox are also affected, though less dramatically, by the deletion of pronouns. Here again, statistics are not the whole story, for it is the quality of the text which results from these changes that is striking. Again, selected examples prove to be representative. Instead of describing Leonard greeting “her” (Jacky), Forster revises the passage to read: “greeting the apparition with much spirit, and helping it off with its boa” (MsHE 48:330).

Instead of using personal pronouns to refer to Leonard, he becomes “the boy” (MsHE 52:8), “a nice creature” (MsHE 141:11), “the victim” (MsHE 314:15), “the father” (MsHE 313:5; 328:5), “the missing article” (MsHE 111:33), and “the fellow” (MsHE 188:2). Rather than “her husband,” he becomes “the husband” (MsHE 228:12). “His sentimentality” becomes “Romance” (MsHE 120:22). “His face” becomes “the face” (MsHE 122:26). “His commercial training” becomes “a commercial training” (MsHE 137:28); “his letter” becomes “a letter” (MsHE 315:22); and “his brother” becomes “a brother” (MsHE 315:24). Forster also replaces the pronoun with Leonard's proper name (MsHE 309:5, 335:19, 336:7), and he deletes “they” to write “the Basts” (MsHE 307:29, 314:28, 238:22). All of these changes combine to depersonalize Leonard, setting him apart in a grammatical way from the normal relationships of the novel. And with the deletion of personal pronouns, Leonard is distanced and subjected to increased irony by Forster's narrator. To use Forster's words, “Leonard seemed not a man, but a cause” (HE, 309:5-6).

Prior to the death scene, the manuscripts and revisions show Forster struggling to humanize Leonard. In the rejected drafts Leonard is mercenary (MsHE 233:17), obsequious (MsHE 232:26), lying (MsHE 115:4) and incompetent (MsHE 221:38). In the published text, Leonard is a victim of economic and social forces which he is unable to comprehend. He tries to maintain his dignity in the face of few options; he is not be blamed. At the same time, Forster curtails his use of interior monologue in characterizing Leonard (see especially MsHE 47:29 and the radical reworking of Leonard's thoughts during the aftermath of Oniton [MS p. A6, 7, 8-11], which appears in the published text as the beginning of chapter 41). The manuscripts recount Leonard's thoughts, feelings, and motivation. Forster describes the events of Oniton in a more graphic and emotional manner there than he does in the published text.⁴ Narrative comment is kept to a minimum and clearly marked. And in the manuscript version, Forster draws a clear parallel between Helen and Jacky (MS p. A8, MsHE 323-324). The cumulative effect of all these changes is to distance the reader from Leonard, to remove references to his thoughts and motivations, and to delete physical details which serve to explain the affair. In the published text, the presentation becomes more abstract, less personal, and more highly ironic in its use of narrative strategy. At the same time Helen is portrayed as thoughtless and “in love with the absolute,” and consequently Forster drops the analogy between Helen and Jacky.

This increased narrative distance and heightened ironic tone are consistent with Forster's handling of the prelude to their affair. In the coffee room of the Shropshire hotel, Helen addresses Leonard with condescension. She snaps at Leonard and cuts him off, quite aware that she is snubbing him. Forster writes: “Once or twice during the day she had encouraged him to criticize, and then had pulled him up short. Was she afraid of him presuming? If so, it was disgusting of her” (HE 232). In the dialogue which follows, Forster pinpoints the lack of understanding and communication possible between Helen and Leonard.

Since his initial interview with the Schlegel sisters, Leonard has changed. He no longer hungers for literary discussion, nor does he seek adventure by nighttime walks in the woods.

“Walking is well enough when a man's in work,” he answered. “Oh, I did talk a lot of nonsense once, but there's nothing like a bailiff in the house to drive it out of you. When I saw him fingering my Ruskins and Stevensons, I seemed to see life straight real, and it isn't a pretty sight. My books are back again, thanks to you, but they'll never be the same to me again, and I shan't ever again think night in the woods so wonderful.”

(HE 235)

Nor does Leonard harbor any illusions about Jacky. Leonard has become more pragmatic, realizing that he must secure a job and an income before he can again think about pursuing ideals. So Helen's impassioned speech on the struggle between death and money dramatizes their differences. Cruel circumstance has changed Leonard from a dreamy ineffective romantic into a more pragmatic materialist. Forster writes:

Leonard looked at her wondering, and had the sense of great things sweeping out of the shrouded night. But he could not receive them, because his heart was still full of little things. As the lost umbrella had spoilt the concert at Queen's Hall, so the lost situation was obscuring the diviner harmonies now. Death, Life, and Materialism were fine words, but would Mr. Wilcox take him on as a clerk?

(HE 236)

Leonard feels his own stupidity while Helen sees the paradox of Death with increasing clarity. Her plea rises in a dramatic crescendo: “‘So never give in,’ continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience it resisted her” (HE 236).

Ironically this provides the only information leading up to the liaison between Helen and Leonard. Their positions are counterpointed to a degree which precludes communication, so it is not surprising that Katherine Mansfield could remark: “And I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.”⁵ It is important to note, however, that Helen is seen as extreme, and in her obsession with absolutes and the “unseen,” she is as limited as Leonard is by his narrow vision of material possibilities. The gap between them is poignant, and clearly Leonard is more aware of it.

When Leonard recollects the events of Oniton during its aftermath, Forster downplays “realistic” motivation as well as physical detail as he revises.⁶ Instead of beginning with the following morning, Forster separates the events of chapter 41 from Oniton by weeks and months. Instead of emphasizing passion, Forster stresses “remorse.” Leonard suffers for his actions, but his suffering is presented with great narrative distance, ambivalence, and irony. The published text is ambiguous about which party had been the sexual aggressor, who was to blame (HE 314).

By deleting physical description and developing Leonard's suffering, which is based upon misperceptions, Forster prepares for the events that follow. Leonard's disorientation, described in the chapter opening, anticipates his hallucinations the night before he sets out for Howards End. Only by describing Leonard's intense self-loathing does his desire to meet Margaret and confess become credible. The distanced perspective and the irony, though they contribute to the ironic outcome, do make it difficult to sympathize with Leonard. Leonard must be woebegone and filled with remorse if he is to find his way to Margaret at Howards End in order to speak the truth and beg forgiveness; in revising this section, however, presentation of Leonard's subjectivity and humanity are sacrificed to the demands of the plot.

However, Forster's revisions do indicate some attempt to establish Leonard as a believable character. Instead of detailing Leonard's search for employment and the singularity of his feelings for Helen, the published text presents his strength of character unequivocally. In addition to his newly acquired tenderness for Jacky, which was also developed in the rejected draft, Leonard is presented as “alive” and unmuddled. Leonard grows as a character in these few pages of the published text. He is able to rise above his circumstances in a manner that would have been beyond the character presented in the draft version. There we are given a continuation of his earlier characterization: he is irritable for lack of money (MS p. A9, MsHE 324) and once “his stomach was filled” he “was again touched by the world's exasperating beauty” (MS p. A9, MsHE 325). Page A10 of the draft shows Leonard brooding upon the sea, home of Romance, still aspiring to walks and excursions with the fishermen (MsHE 325). Instead of dwelling upon Leonard as an ineffectual romantic, the published text presents him as an active agent of his fate.

The development of Leonard's character in the published text moves beyond these naive aspirations. Leonard is disillusioned. He goes to St. Paul's “partly to avoid the rain and partly to see a picture that had educated him in former years.” Of this experience, we are told: “But the light was bad, the picture ill-placed, and Time and Judgement were inside him now” (HE, 316). The following sentence in the manuscripts is: “Death alone, with her poppies, still charmed him—Death contending with (Mammon) Money / for the soul of man, and her lap on which all the generations of men shall sleep” (MsHE 316:18). With revision this becomes: “Death alone still charmed him, with her lap of poppies on which all men shall sleep” (HE, 316:18). This sentence clearly indicates that Leonard has changed since his discussion at Oniton where all that concerned him was money. Though his family has answered his begging pleas for money, the “blackmail” has created ill will and hatred on both sides.

The emphasis upon death at this point picks up the theme of Helen's impassioned speech and prepares for further development of the plot. But equally important, these many changes make Leonard a character of greater strength and substance. The details that present him as a pitiful victim or a romantic fool have been eliminated. Instead, Leonard is presented as disillusioned, but resigned and admirable. As Forster puts it, “Leonard was driven straight through its torments and emerged pure, but enfeebled—a better man, who would never lose control of himself again, but also a smaller man, who had less to control” (HE 313).

Leonard no longer has illusions about himself or his life, and he moves toward his end almost fatalistically. Forster says: “He did not suppose that the confession would bring him happiness. It was rather that he yearned to get clear of the tangle. So does the suicide yearn” (HE 316). Leonard now yearns for the absolute. Ironically, his acceptance of his own fallibility has led him to a “conviction of absolute goodness elsewhere.” He understands Helen's idea “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.” Forster describes Leonard's state: “As he approached the house all thought stopped. Contradictory notions stood side by side in his mind. He was terrified but happy, ashamed, but had done no sin. He knew the confession: ‘Mrs. Wilcox, I have done wrong,’ but sunrise had robbed its meaning, and he felt rather on a supreme adventure” (HE 321).

Leonard's openness to the absolute and his acceptance of contradictions may help to explain the depersonalization which asserts itself again in the description of his death. Forster attempts to give Leonard's actions archetypal significance. As he enters Howards End, Forster writes, “He entered a garden, steadied himself against a motor-car that he found in it, found a door open and entered a house” (HE 321). In the manuscript version, Leonard's actions are more particularized by Forster's choice of article: “He entered the garden, steadied himself against a motor-car that he found in it, found the door open and entered the house” (MsHE 321:17-18). In the manuscript version, Forster first struggles to capture the experience from Leonard's point of view:

It did not hurt him where it struck him, but in the heart, which was odd. Down fell a book case. Nothing had sense. Faces bent over him—Margaret's, Helen's<—Margaret's nodded, and he died>, an old woman's, the faces of all women … [or rather three short dashes (Stallybrass's italics)] He was fainting.

(MsHE 321:27)

This peculiar, inconsistent use of point of view with its abrupt shift from Leonard's interior monologue to the narrator's comment is excised through revision, leaving the description more dignified and less sentimental: “It hurt him, not where it descended, but in the heart. Books fell over him in a shower. Nothing had sense” (HE 321:27). Peter Widdowson has also noticed the archetypal quality of this scene, many of the details of which are later explained in realistic terms.⁷ The published text treats Leonard's death with greater narrative distance, paralleling the effect of those changes at the chapter opening.

In the “baptism” scene which follows, the manuscripts avoided the use of personal pronouns in reference to Leonard, creating an icyness and objectivity which seem singularly inappropriate: “They laid the corpse on the gravel, and Helen poured water over it” (MsHE 321:33). Although this would have been consistent with Forster's treatment of Leonard elsewhere, Forster may have recognized his own lack of feeling here, so the passage is changed to read: “They laid Leonard, who was dead, on the gravel; Helen poured water over him” (HE 321:33-34). Or, perhaps it is only at his death that Leonard is most a “person,” since Death is an ally of the personal.

Forster's strategy in handling this episode marks this as a moment where the novel expands. Forster succeeds in eliminating Leonard, for as Widdowson points out, “Leonard has to die to clear the way for his son to be ‘Liberal England's’ heir untrammelled by the drab reality of his father's life and class; Leonard himself would not fit into ‘Howards End/England’ but the child brought up in the right environment will.’ And Helen could not credibly ‘have married a Bast.’”⁸ But Leonard's death does not give closure to the novel; it is not a moment of completion.

Margaret's subsequent meditation upon Leonard's death draws clear connections between his death and Ruth Wilcox's by incorporating the same symbols, language, and antithetical structures to arrive at a comparable conclusion. One of the most carefully structured passages in the novel is Margaret's reflection upon Mrs. Wilcox's death which pairs nouns, phrases, clauses, and sentences to convey the sense of extremes which Mrs. Wilcox has managed to reconcile with her death.⁹ Aside from the opening and one short centrally located sentence which was inserted in revision (“She had kept proportion”), every sentence is antithetical in some way. Forster removes the literal introduction of the manuscripts, tightens oppositions through revision, and inserts the telling pronouns so that the passage in the published text reads:

She was parting from these Wilcoxes for the second time. Paul and his mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out of it for ever. The ripple had left no traces behind; the wave had strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker, she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that tells so little, but tells a little, and watched the outgoing of this last tremendous tide. Her friend had vanished in agony, but not, she believed, in degradation. Her withdrawal had hinted at other things besides disease and pain. Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart—almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die—neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

(HE 100)

And the passage concludes optimistically:

The death of Mrs. Wilcox had helped her in her work. She saw a little more clearly than hitherto what a human being is, and to what he may aspire. Truer relationships gleamed. Perhaps the last word would be hope—hope even on this side of the grave.

(HE 101)

With that comment, Margaret turns her energies toward the survivors.

After Leonard's death, Margaret has a parallel moment of reflection which recalls through its imagery Ruth Wilcox's death, and through its unreasonable paradox the ambiguity of Leonard's final moments:

Events succeeded in a logical, yet senseless, train. People lost their humanity, and took values as arbitrary as those in a pack of playing-cards. It was natural that Henry should do this and cause Helen to do that, and then think her wrong for doing it; natural that she herself should think him wrong; natural that Leonard should want to know how Helen was, and come, and Charles be angry with him for coming—natural, but unreal. In this jangle of causes and effects what had become of their true selves? Here Leonard lay dead in the garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels.

(HE 327)

This passage also echoes Margaret's reflections upon the tree and the house: “Their message was not of eternity, but of hope on this side of the grave. As she stood in the one, gazing at the other, truer relationships had gleamed” (HE 203).

Forster carefully works to integrate Leonard's death imagistically, thematically, and structurally into the novel through the parallel between Leonard and Mrs. Wilcox. But, Leonard's death is not grounded in a web of relationships with people or place. In Mrs. Wilcox's death, Margaret gains a vision of proportion, of mediation. With Leonard's death, she grasps a contradiction: his death was “natural, but unreal.” In spite of Forster's efforts to elevate Leonard to mythic stature, he is undercut by his own assumptions and his strategy of revision. Connection can come only through personal relationships of which Leonard has been deprived as the pronoun changes indicate. At the same time, Forster treats Leonard with greater irony and narrative distance as the novel evolves. Both of these strategies create an undercurrent which makes Margaret's moment of vision upon Leonard's death precarious at best. And later in the novel, Margaret remarks to Helen: “Then I can't have you worrying about Leonard. Don't drag in the personal when it will not come. Forget him.” The ensuing interchange between the sisters provides the final comment on Leonard. Helen asks,

“Yes, yes, but what has Leonard got out of life?”

“Perhaps an adventure.”

“Is that enough?”

“Not for us. But for him.”

(HE 336)

This final condescension and the refusal to make Leonard a protective genie or an agent of the unseen raises the question of Forster's class consciousness and points to the problematic role of Leonard in the novel. Forster's treatment of Leonard provides an important example of an attempt to combine visionary and realistic elements in a single novel.¹⁰

Notes

1. E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., 1951), pp. 56-57.

2. E. M. Forster, Howards End, ed. Oliver Stallybrass. Abinger Edition Vol. 4. (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), p. 79. Subsequent references to the novel will appear as internal citations (HE). My italics.

3. E. M. Forster, The Manuscripts of Howards End, ed. Oliver Stallybrass. Abinger Edition Vol. 4A. (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), p. 16. Subsequent references to the manuscripts will appear as internal citations (MsHE). My italics.

4. J. H. Stape, “‘Leonard's Fatal Forgotten Umbrella’: Sex and the Manuscript Revisions of Howards End,” Journal of Modern Literature, 9 (1981-82), 124.

5. Katherine Mansfield, Journal (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1954), p. 121. Curiously enough, John Middleton Murry deleted this irreverent comment from the earlier edition (1927), and it has not been restored in the most recent American edition (New York: The Ecco Press, 1983). Other critics have found fault with this turn in plot development. Samuel Hynes, for example, says “Howards End is the weak novel it is because it has heterosexual relationships at its centre—an engagement, a marriage, and a fornication move the plot—and Forster could not handle any of them convincingly. And so the events that should be fully treated are either shuffled off-stage or are brought on so wrapped in rhetoric as to be quite meaningless (all that stuff about ‘rainbow bridges,’ for instance).” See Hynes, “Forster's Cramp,” in Edwardian Occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 117. John Stape has discussed Forster's revisions of this episode particularly as it is recalled later in the novel, first in Helen's words, and later through Leonard's recorded thoughts and feelings. Stape argues that Forster's initial descriptions were presented with sufficient psychological and physical detail for the time. He dismisses Hynes' hypothesis that Forster was limited by his homosexuality in his presentation of heterosexual relations. Instead, Stape suggests that Forster adopted a more cautious treatment particularly of the Leonard-Helen incident because of his sensitivity to the reading public. See J. H. Stape, note 4 above. See also Forster's concern over the incident as expressed in a letter to his publisher and a diary entry quoted by Oliver Stallybrass, “Editor's Introduction,” Howards End. Abinger Edition Vol. 4. (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), xiii.

6. Stape, 123-32.

7. Peter Widdowson, E. M. Forster's Howards End: Fiction as History (London: Sussex University Press, 1977), 104.

8. Widdowson, 104.

9. John Russell, Style in Modern British Fiction: Studies in Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Lewis, and Green (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 102.

10. My understanding of visionary and prophetic elements in modern fiction has been greatly clarified and influenced by Dan Schwarz of Cornell University who directed an NEH summer seminar “Critical Perspectives on the Early 20th Century British Novel” during the summer of 1984, in which I was a participant.