The Gay Experience - 2. Chapter Two: E. M. Forster "…you look like a boy who looks all right…"

Chapter Two: E. M. Forster "…you look like a boy who looks all right…"

While there’s a strong wistfulness about D. H. Lawrence’s A Poem of Friendship, an author in 1911 had two choices, and two choices only, if he wanted to print anything savoring of same-sex love – make it appear unconsummated, or end it tragically.[1] It's this fact which drove E. M. Forster to write Maurice in 1913. He wrote to his Gay friends when passing around the typescript for feedback that he wished to show happily-ever-afters are just as logical for same-sex couples in literature as they are for opposite-sex ones.

The feedback he received spoke of his ‘boldness,’ yet the book seemed to inspire Radcliffe Hall to actually do it. Her 1928 Well of Loneliness dared to show a female couple battered and bruised by piggish society and pseudo-medical quackery, but ultimately finding peace and quiet: a life together.

Forster penned the second piece to appear in Gay Short Stories. Whether or not Mitchell-Leavitt chose it for this purpose, it carries on the thread of wistfulness from Lawrence’s story, but shows a sexual consummation and its aftermath; it adds a bitter to the sweet.

Arthur Snatchfold was also written in 1928, but not published until the 1970s.[2] In it, a wealthy older man is bored. Sir Richard Conway has been ‘enjoying’ an incredibly staid week-end at the country house of his sometimes business partner/rival when the appearance of someone genuine on the scene shakes him out of him complacency.

He looked into the dull costly garden. It improved. A man had come into it from the back of the yew hedge. He had on a canary-coloured shirt, and the effect was exactly right. The whole scene blazed. That was what the place wanted – not a flowerbed, but a man, who advanced with a confident tread down the amphitheatre, and as he came nearer Conway saw that besides being proper to the colour scheme he was a very proper youth. His shoulders were broad, his face sensuous and open, his eyes, screwed up against the light, promised good temper. One arm shot out at an angle, the other supported a milk can. “Good morning, nice morning,” he called and he sounded happy.

“Good morning, nice morning,” he called back. The man continued at a steady pace, turned left, and disappeared in the direction of the servants’ entrance, where an outburst of laughter welcomed him.

While he’s thinking 'That is a nice-looking fellow,' he relishes the natural ease with which the young man had hailed him: “Good morning, nice morning, as if they were equals." He waits to see the boy in canary yellow come back across the garden, but he does not appear. Instead the maid clatters into the room with tea and apologies. The milk had not arrived until just now — via the boy — so things had been delayed.

Conway then begins to plot a rendezvous. Since his wife died he’s been lonely, and a nice romp with the pleasure of a challenging pursuit might be just the ticket to elevate the monotony of his weekend. He thinks of himself as "a man of experience with plenty of resources and plenty of armour," and yet "a decent human being too." He looks down on his hosts for a lack of adventurism, and tells himself they are not ones 'to go in for sport or love.'

And what of Richard Conway, by way of contrast…? The author tells us:

He believed in pleasure; he had a free mind and an active body, and he knew that pleasure cannot be won without courage and coolness. The Donaldsons were all very well, but they were not the whole of his life. His daughters were all very well, but the same held good of them. The female sex was all very well and he was addicted to it, but permitted himself an occasional deviation.

Yet despite his devotion to coolness, thereby only permitting himself an occasional diversion – and his insistence on a lack of sentimentality – the man dresses himself with the following fantasies coursing through his head:

Where had he gone off to now, he and his voice? To finish his round, welcome at house after house, and then for a bathe perhaps, his shirt golden on the grass beside him. Ruddy brown to the waist he would show now. . . . What was his name? Was he a local? Sir Richard put these questions to himself as he dressed, but not vehemently. He was not a sentimentalist, there was no danger of him being shattered for the day. He would have liked to meet the vision again, and spend the whole of a Sunday with it, giving it a slap-up lunch at the hotel, hiring a car, which they would drive alternately, treating it to the pictures in the neighbouring town, and returning with it, after one drink too much, through dusky lanes. But that was sheer nonsense, even if the vision had been agreeable to the programme. He was staying with the Trevor Donaldsons; and he must not repay their hospitality by moping. Dressed in cheerful gray, he ran downstairs to the breakfast-room. Mrs. Donaldson was already there, and she asked him how his daughters were getting on at their school.

What follows is a very dull day indeed. Sightseeing at a church with a mediocre rose window; golfing at an insubstantial country course; and boring food only made the more unbearable by business talk of 'aluminium' prices.

It drives Conway to take his raincoat up to his room at the end of the evening, and reinforces a desire to make things happen the way he wants them. The morning would be his one and only chance to encounter the young man.

He set his alarm watch for an hour slightly earlier than the hour at which he had woken in the morning, and he put it under his pillow, and he fell asleep looking quite young.

Seven o’clock tinkled. He glanced into the passage, then put on his raincoat and thick slippers, and went to the window.

It was a silent sunless morning, and seemed earlier than it actually was. The green of the garden and of the trees was filmed with grey, as if it wanted wiping. Presently the electric pump started. He looked at his watch again, slipped down the stairs, out of the house, across the amphitheatre and through the yew hedge. He did not run in case he was seen and had to explain. He moved at the maximum pace possible for a gentleman, known to be an original, who fancies an early stroll in his pyjamas. “I thought I’d have a look at your formal garden, there wouldn’t have been time after breakfast” would have been the line. He had of course looked at it the day before, also at the wood. The wood lay before him now, and the sun was just tipping into it. There were two paths through the bracken, a broad and a narrow.

Conway spies the object of his affection sauntering up the path towards him, again wearing his striking yellow shirt. What follows is Forster's remarkable exchange of dialogue; flattery and cajoling and out and out attraction are cresting and ebbing through the conversation. The men are negotiating, but they are doing so as equals. It's this element which first aroused the older man, and perhaps celebrating it is his primary goal, standing in his raincoat and pajamas as he is. The older man – the pursuer – leads off the verbal chase:

“Hullo!” he called in his easy out-of-doors voice; he had several voices, and knew by instinct which was wanted.

“Hullo! Somebody’s out early!”

“You’re early yourself.”

“Me? Whor’d the milk be if I worn’t?” The milkman grinned, throwing his head back and coming to a standstill. Seen at close quarters he as coarse, very much of the people and of the thick-fingered earth; a hundred years ago his type was trodden into the mud, now it burst and flowered and didn’t care a damn.

“You’re the morning delivery, eh?”

“Looks like it.” He evidently proposed to be facetious – the clumsy fun which can be so delightful when it falls from the proper lips. “I’m not the evening delivery anyway, and I’m not the butcher nor the grocer, nor’m I the coals.”

“Live around here?”

"Maybe. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I flop about in them planes.”

“You live around here, I bet.”

“What if I do?”

“If you do you do. And if I don’t I don’t.”

This fatuous retort was a success, and was greeted with doubled-up laughter.

“If you don’t you don’t! Ho, you’re a funny one! There’s a thing to say! If you don’t you don’t! Walking about in yer night things, too, you’re ketch a cold you will, that’ll be the end of you! Stopping back in the ‘otel, I suppose?”

“No. Donaldson’s. You saw me there yesterday.”

“Oh, Donaldson’s, that’s it. You was the old granfa’ at the upstairs window.”

“Old granfa’ indeed. . . . I’ll granfa’ you,” and he tweaked at the impudent nose. It dodged, it seemed used to this sort of thing. There was probably nothing the lad wouldn’t consent to if properly handled, partly out of mischief, partly to oblige. “Oh, by the way. . . .” and he felt the shirt as if interested in the quality of its material. “What was I going to say?” and he gave the zip at the throat a downward pull. Much slid into view. “Oh, I know – when’s this round of yours over?”

“’Bout eleven. Why?”

“Why not?”

“’Bout eleven at night. Ha ha. Got yer there. Eleven at night. What you want to arst all them questions for? We’re strangers, aren’t we?”

“How old are you?”

“Ninety, same as yourself.”

“What’s your address?”

“There you go on! Hi! I like that. Arstin questions after I tell you No.”

“Got a girl? Ever heard of a pint? Ever heard of two?”

“Go on. Get out.” But he suffered his forearm to be worked between massaging fingers, and he set down his milk-can. He was amused. He was charmed. He was hooked, and the touch would land him.

“You look like a boy who looks all right,” the elder man breathed.

“Oh, stop it. . . .”

But then suddenly, the negotiation is done. The boy says very artlessly, "All right, I’ll go with you.” Conway's reaction again betrays his self-professed lack of sentimentality, but what he thinks rings of genuine connection and beauty:

Conway was entranced. Thus, exactly thus, should the smaller pleasures of life be approached. They understood one another with a precision impossible for lovers.

And, as if in a dream, the two men also silently arrange what they want from each other; Conway starts in front, but the young man's forceful hands lead the older men behind him.

He laid his face on the warm skin over the clavicle, hands nudged him behind, and presently the sensation for which he had planned so cleverly was over. It was part of the past. It had fallen like a flower upon similar flowers.

The trance broken, Conway has climaxed and the next thing he's cognizant of is the concern and care in boy's voice. The charming dialogue resumes, but this time it's natural and unstrained.

He heard “You all right?” It was over there too, part of a different past. They were lying deeper in the wood, where the fern was highest. He did not reply, for it was pleasant to lie stretched thus and to gaze up through bracken fronds at the distant treetops and the pale blue sky, and feel the exquisite pleasure fade.

“That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Propped on his elbows the young man looked down anxiously. All his roughness and pertness had gone, and he only wanted to know whether he had been a success.

“Yes. . . . Lovely.”

“Lovely? You say lovely?” he beamed, prodding gently with his stomach.

“Nice boy, nice shirt, nice everything.”

“That a fact?”

Conway guessed that he was vain, the better sort often are, and laid on the flattery thick to please him, praised his comeliness, his thrusting thrashing strength; there was plenty to praise. He liked to do this and to see the broad face grinning and feel the heavy body on him. There was no cynicism in the flattery, he was genuinely admiring and gratified.

“So you enjoyed that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Pity you didn’t tell me yesterday.”

“I didn’t know how to.”

“I’d a met you down where I have my swim. You could ‘elped me strip, you’d like that. Still, we mustn’t grumble.”

But before the older man can even indulge in the pleasure of knowing his fantasy about the yellow-clad boy's swimming hole is a reality in fact, the young man conjures up a dark thought amidst the morning sun and flowers.

He gave Conway a hand and pulled him up, and brushed and tidied the raincoat like an old friend. “We could get seven years for this, couldn’t we?”

“Not seven years, still we’d get something nasty. Madness, isn’t it? What can it matter to anyone else if you and I don’t mind?”

“Oh, I suppose they’ve to occupy themselves with something or other,” and he took up the milk-can to go on.

Not wanting the connection to be broken just yet, Conway offers a gesture; it's one the milkman takes offense at.

“Half a minute, boy – do take this and get yourself some trifle with it.” He produced a note which he had brought on the chance.

“I didn’t do it fer that.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Naow, we was each as bad as the other. . . . Naow . . . keep your money.”

“I’d be pleased if you would take it. I expect I’m better off than you and it might come in useful. To take out your girl, say, or towards your next new suit. However, please yourself, of course.”

“Can you honestly afford it?”

“Honestly.”

“Well, I’ll find a way to spend it, no doubt. People don’t always behave as nice as you, you know.”

Conway could have returned the compliment. The affair had been trivial and crude, and yet they both had behaved perfectly. They would never meet again, and they did not exchange names. After a hearty handshake, the young man swung away down the path, the sunlight and shadow rushing over his back. He did not turn round, but his arm, jerking sideways to balance him, waved an acceptable farewell. The green flowed over his brightness, the path bent, he disappeared. Back he went to his own life, and through the quiet of the morning his laugh could be heard as he whooped at the maids.

Spoiler Alert **do not read further if you do not want to know about Forster's story twist**

Conway returns to his room, unseen, and sloughs off his raincoat just in time for the maid to arrive with tea and more apologies for the delayed milk. The man smiles to himself and is happy.

Several weeks go by.

Trevor Donaldson is less a friend than an investment rival at the moment, but in any event, Conway invites the man to lunch at his London club.

It's a very dull situation indeed, as the 'country man' is fearing a severe loss and having to sell his manor. He spends most of their time talking down the place and the entire humdrum of village goings-on.

However, one oddly exciting piece of news slips out. It seems the local hotel had received complaints of an unsavory kind.

Meanwhile, there was one point in the conversation it amused him to take up now that business was finished with: the reference to that “extraordinary case” connected with the local hotel.

Donaldson opened his eyes when asked, and they had gone prawn-like. “Oh, that was a case, it was a really really,” he said. “I knew such things existed, of course, but I assumed in my innocence they were confined to Piccadilly. […] Indecency between males.”

“Oh, good Lord,” said Sir Richard coolly.

Conway is upset. He excuses himself to get the men some brandy and a moment to collect his thoughts.

He was suddenly worried in case that milkman had got into a scrape. He had scarcely thought about him since – he had a very full life, and it included an intrigue with a cultivated woman, which was gradually ripening – but nobody could have been more decent and honest, or more physically attractive in a particular way. It had been a charming little adventure, and a remarkably lively one. And their parting had been perfect. Wretched if the lad had come to grief! Enough to make one cry. He offered up a sort of prayer, ordered the cognacs, and rejoined Donaldson with his usual briskness. He put on the Renaissance armour that suited him so well, and “How did the hotel case end?” he asked.

“We committed him for trial.”

“Oh! As bad as that?”

"Well, we thought so. […] This man made an awfully bad impression on the Bench and we didn’t feel that six months, which is the maximum we are allowed to impose, was adequate to the offence. And it was all so revoltingly commercial – his only motive was money.”

Conway felt relieved; it couldn’t be his own friend, for anyone less grasping. . .

“And another unpleasant feature – at least for me – is that he had the habit of taking his clients into my grounds.”

“How most vexatious for you!”

“It suited his convenience, and of what else should he think? I have a little wood – you didn’t see it – which stretches up to the hotel, so he could easily bring people in. A path my wife was particularly fond of – a mass of bluebells in springtime – it was there they were caught. You may well imagine this has helped to put me off the place.”

“Who caught them?” he asked, holding his glass up to the light; their cognacs had arrived.

“Our local bobby. For we do possess that extraordinary rarity, a policeman who keeps his eyes open. He sometimes commits errors of judgment – he did on this occasion – but he’s certainly observant, and as he was coming down one of the other paths, a public one, he saw a bright yellow shirt through the bracken – upsa! Take care!”

“Upsa!” were some drops of brandy, which Conway had spilt. Alas, alas, there could be no doubt about it. He felt deeply distressed, and rather guilty. The young man must have decided after their successful encounter to use the wood as a rendezvous. It was a cruel stupid world, and he was countenancing it more than he should. Wretched, wretched, to think of that good-tempered, harmless chap being bruised and ruined. . . the whole thing so unnecessary – betrayed by the shirt he was so proud of. . . . Conway was not often moved, but this time he felt much regret and compassion.

“Well, he recognized that shirt at once. He had particular reasons for keeping a watch on its wearer. And he got him, he got him. But he lost the other man. He didn’t charge them straight away, as he ought to have done. I think he was genuinely startled and could scarcely believe his eyes. For one thing, it was so early in the morning – barely seven o’clock.”

“A strange hour. . .” said Conway, and put his glass down, and folded his hands on his knee.

“He caught sight of them as they were getting up after committing the indecency, also he saw money pass, but instead of rushing in there and then he made an elaborate and totally unnecessary plan for interrupting the youth on the further side of my house, and of course he could have got him any time, any time. A stupid error of judgment. A great pity. He never arrested him until 7:45.”

“Was there then sufficient evidence for an arrest?”

“There was an abundant evidence of a medical character, if you follow me – what a case, oh, what a case! – also there was the money on him, which clinched his guilt.”

A sinking dread enters Conway's consciousness. Donaldson was not referring to the 'habit of taking clients' at all, but a one time, early morning dalliance the boy had been led into. He inquired coolly about the other man seen 'in the act.'

“What was the description?”

“An old man in pyjamas and a mackintosh—"

Sir Richard, a real man of his class and privilege despite his self-congratulatory brand of "a decent human being," immediately has dark imaginings of villainy on the boy's part. Later:

Getting up, he felt faint, the blood rushed to his head and he thought he was going to fall. “Tell me,” he said, taking his enemy’s arm and conducting him to the door, “this old man in the mackintosh – how was it the fellow you caught never put you on his track?”

“He tried to.”

“Oh, did he?”

“Yes, indeed, and he was all the more anxious to do so, because we made it clear that he would be let off if he helped us to make a major arrest. But all he could say was what we knew already – that it was someone from the hotel.”

“Oh, he said that, did he? From the hotel.”

“Said it again and again. Scarcely said anything else, indeed almost went into a sort of fit. There he stood with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, barking at us, ‘Th’otel. Keep to th’otel. I tell you he come from th’otel.’ We advised him not to get so excited, whereupon he became insolent, which did him no good with [the judge], as you may well imagine, and called the Bench a row of interfering bastards. He was instantly removed from the court and as he went he shouted back at us – you’ll never credit this – that if he and the old grandfather didn’t mind it why should anyone else. […].”

“What was his name?”

“But we don’t know, I tell you, we never caught him.”

“I mean the name of the one you did catch, the village boy.”

“Arthur Snatchfold.”

After Donaldson got in his cab and departed, Conway returned to sit. Waves of shame rolled over him that the young man had suffered because of his seduction, and he felt gratitude too at the boy's heroism – a heroism that had saved Conway's freedom and reputation.

Taking a notebook from his pocket, he wrote down the name of his lover, yes, his lover who was going to prison to save him, in order that he might not forget it.

□□□□□

There are many interesting aspects to this story. At first I wondered why David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell chose it for the anthology, when there are other Forster stories I personally regard as superior. However, taken in context with the collected pieces around it, Arthur Snatchfold presents another piece of the 'world' in which Gay men had to navigate and the many real fears they confronted on a daily basis.

That being said I also find one of the more interesting aspects of the story to be how neither man is portrayed as exclusively driven to form affectional bonds with men, but nevertheless are put in severe jeopardy by laws designed expressly to punish Gay men for ‘their condition.’ What message Forster wished to express to his small band of out readers (with whom he shared these private stories) is not clear. However, the sense of indignity that any person has to be robbed of their liberty and good standing for matters beyond the moral purview of the law is clear.

Concerning Arthur's orientation, there may be hints in Forster's text subtly telling the reader he's Gay, but these are slight. For example, Donaldson mentions the boy was under special watch, so perhaps contemporary readers would have interpreted that as meaning the young man was too free and open with the boys, so to speak. I feel this is subject to debate however.

What are your thoughts on this story…?