Like Vashti in “The Machine Stops,” Miss Raby is in many ways a Wildean character; certainly, there is a touch of Gilbert in her rather pessimistic view of western culture:
She was not enthusiastic over the progress of civilization, knowing by Eastern experiences that civilization rarely puts her best foot foremost, and is apt to make the barbarians immoral and vicious before her compensating qualities arrive.
At the same time, her refusal to simplify or deflect responsibility for what is in essence the ruination of a place she loves, or to pretend other than that “the world had more to learn from the village than the village from the world,” is pure Forster:
The family affection, the affection for the commune, the sane pastoral virtues—all had perished while the campanile which was to embody them was being built. No villain had done this thing: it was the work of ladies and gentlemen who were good and rich and often clever—who, if they thought about the matter at all, thought that they were conferring a benefit, moral as well as commercial, on any place in which they chose to stop.
Near the middle of “The Eternal Moment” Miss Raby remarks that in her view “there is not much wickedness in the world. Most of the evil we see is the result of little faults—of stupidity or vanity.” Forster’s innate pessimism, however, keeps him from ever idealizing Miss Raby’s even-keeled contemplation of her own unintended sabotage, for in his universe, to acknowledge is never adequate: instead only action changes the world, and action is the one thing to which Miss Raby, like so many of the characters in these stories, proves unequal.
NOTES
1 Forster’s motives were practical as well as literary. Until the very end of his life, both sodomy and “acts of gross indecency” between men were crimes in England. In theory, by publishing the stories, he could have opened himself up to prosecution as well as scandal.
2 An exception is the recent Abinger Edition of the stories, for which editor Rod Menghem chose the title The Machine Stops and Other Stories.
3 The corrosive hopelessness of Forster’s frankly homosexual stories is exemplified by “The Obelisk,” in which a husband and wife are separated and seduced by two sailors: the wife ends up paired with a gallant and the husband with a buffoon. In “Arthur Snatch-fold,” by contrast, Conway (Sir Richard Conway) does find himself paired with a gallant—the story’s eponymous hero—yet proves unequal to his rustic lover’s dignity and, having had his pleasure, recompenses the boy, who has gone to jail to protect his identity, only by making a note of his name, which is both strange and ugly.
4 The title may allude to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Rail-road” (1843), an uninspired gloss on Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
5 In The Cave and the Mountain (1966), Wilfred Stone observes that Bons is “snob” backwards.
6 In A Room with a View (1908), Cecil, Lucy, and Mrs. Honeychurch have a talk about fences, during which Cecil asks, “It makes a difference, doesn’t it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?”
7 A propos Sophocles, Wilfred Stone has observed that “the old man plays at being Oedipus and the (despised) daughter at being Antigone.”
8 P. N. Furbank, his first biographer, does not, however, know when or how he learned to play the piano.
9 In the film adaptation of Gilbert Adair’s novel Love and Death on Long Island, the narrator attempts to see a movie of “The Eternal Moment”—which, more than any of Forster’s other stories, could indeed serve as the basis for a marvelous film.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Considering his reputation and stature, surprisingly few critical or biographical works about E. M. Forster have been written. Of the two full-length biographies, only the first—P. N. Furbank’s E. M. Forster: A Life (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1977—1978)—is worth reading; so, too, are the biographies of two of his best friends, Peter Parker’s Ackerley: A Life of J. R. Ackerley (London : Constable, 1989) and Peter F. Alexander’s William Plomer: A Biography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
The outstanding critical work on Forster remains Wilfred Stone’s The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E. M. Forster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966). Rose Macaulay’s The Writings of E. M. Forster (London: The Hogarth Press, 1938) was the first major consideration of the author, Lionel Trilling’s E. M. Forster (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1943) the most influential. Finally, there is a memorable portrait of Forster in Cynthia Ozick’s novel The Cannibal Galaxy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983).
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The text is based on volume 7 of the Abinger Edition of the literary works of E. M. Forster, which brings together the stories published in The Celestial Omnibus (1911) and The Eternal Moment (1928) under the title The Machine Stops and Other Stories. This edition takes into account all known published versions, as well as all typescripts and manuscripts, of the stories. A few minor typographical errors in the Abinger Edition have been silently corrected.
Original publication dates of the stories are as follows: “The Story of a Panic” (1904); “The Other Side of the Hedge” (1904); “The Celestial Omnibus” (1908); “Other Kingdom” (1909); “The Curate’s Friend” (1907); “The Road from Colonus” (1904); “The Machine Stops” (1909); “The Point of It” (1911); “Mr Andrews” (1911); “Co-ordination” (1912); “The Story of the Siren” (1920); “The Eternal Moment” (1905).
The Story of a Panic
I
EUSTACE’S CAREER—if career it can be called—certainly dates from that afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. I confess at once that I am a plain, simple man, with no pretensions to literary style. Still, I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiassed account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago.
Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we met some charming people. There were the two Miss Robinsons, who had been there for six weeks with Eustace, their nephew, then a boy of about fourteen. Mr Sandbach had also been there some time. He had held a curacy in the north of England, which he had been compelled to resign on account of ill-health, and while he was recruiting at Ravello he had taken in hand Eustace’s education—which was then sadly deficient—and was endeavouring to fit him for one of our great public schools. Then there was Mr Leyland, a would-be artist, and, finally, there was the nice landlady, Signora Scafetti, and the nice English-speaking waiter, Emmanuele—though at the time of which I am speaking Emmanuele was away, visiting a sick father.
To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture to think, a not unwelcome addition. But though I liked most of the company well enough, there were two of them to whom I did not take at all. They were the artist, Leyland, and the Miss Robinsons’ nephew, Eustace.
Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent.
I am fond of boys as a rule, and was quite disposed to be friendly. I and my daughters offered to take him out—‘No, walking was such a fag.’ Then I asked him to come and bathe—‘No, he could not swim.’
‘Every English boy should be able to swim,’ I said, ‘I will teach you myself.’
‘There, Eustace dear,’ said Miss Robinson; ‘here is a chance for you.’
But he said he was afraid of the water!—a boy afraid!—and of course I said no more.
I would not have minded so much if he had been a really studious boy, but he neither played hard nor worked hard. His favourite occupations were lounging on the terrace in an easy chair and loafing along the high road, with his feet shuffling up the dust and his shoulders stooping forward. Naturally enough, his features were pale, his chest contracted, and his muscles undeveloped. His aunts thought him delicate; what he really needed was discipline.
That memorable day we
all arranged to go for a picnic up in the chestnut woods—all, that is, except Janet, who stopped behind to finish her water-colour of the Cathedral—not a very successful attempt, I am afraid.
I wander off into these irrelevant details because in my mind I cannot separate them from an account of the day; and it is the same with the conversation during the picnic: all is imprinted on my brain together. After a couple of hours’ ascent, we left the donkeys that had carried the Miss Robinsons and my wife, and all proceeded on foot to the head of the valley—Vallone Fontana Caroso is its proper name, I find.
I have visited a good deal of fine scenery before and since, but have found little that has pleased me more. The valley ended in a vast hollow, shaped like a cup, into which radiated ravines from the precipitous hills around. Both the valley and the ravines and the ribs of hill that divided the ravines were covered with leafy chestnut, so that the general appearance was that of a many-fingered green hand, palm upwards, which was clutching convulsively to keep us in its grasp. Far down the valley we could see Ravello and the sea, but that was the only sign of another world.
‘Oh, what a perfectly lovely place,’ said my daughter Rose. ‘What a picture it would make!’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Sandbach. ‘Many a famous European gallery would be proud to have a landscape a tithe as beautiful as this upon its walls.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Leyland, ‘it would make a very poor picture. Indeed, it is not paintable at all.’
‘And why is that?’ said Rose, with far more deference than he deserved.
‘Look, in the first place,’ he replied, ‘how intolerably straight against the sky is the line of the hill. It would need breaking up and diversifying. And where we are standing the whole thing is out of perspective. Besides, all the colouring is monotonous and crude.’
‘I do not know anything about pictures,’ I put in, ‘and I do not pretend to know: but I know what is beautiful when I see it, and I am thoroughly content with this.’
‘Indeed, who could help being contented!’ said the elder Miss Robinson; and Mr Sandbach said the same.
‘Ah!’ said Leyland, ‘you all confuse the artistic view of Nature with the photographic.’
Poor Rose had brought her camera with her, so I thought this positively rude. I did not wish any unpleasantness; so I merely turned away and assisted my wife and Miss Mary Robinson to put out the lunch—not a very nice lunch.
‘Eustace dear,’ said his aunt, ‘come and help us here.’
He was in a particularly bad temper that morning. He had, as usual, not wanted to come, and his aunts had nearly allowed him to stop at the hotel to vex Janet. But I, with their permission, spoke to him rather sharply on the subject of exercise; and the result was that he had come, but was even more taciturn and moody than usual.
Obedience was not his strong point. He invariably questioned every command, and only executed it grumbling. I should always insist on prompt and cheerful obedience, if I had a son.
‘I’m—coming—Aunt—Mary,’ he at last replied, and dawdled to cut a piece of wood to make a whistle, taking care not to arrive till we had finished.
‘Well, well, sir!’ said I, ‘you stroll in at the end and profit by our labours.’ He sighed, for he could not endure being chaffed. Miss Mary, very unwisely, insisted on giving him the wing of the chicken, in spite of all my attempts to prevent her. I remember that I had a moment’s vexation when I thought that, instead of enjoying the sun, and the air, and the woods, we were all engaged in wrangling over the diet of a spoilt boy.
But, after lunch, he was a little less in evidence. He withdrew to a tree trunk, and began to loosen the bark from his whistle. I was thankful to see him employed, for once in a way. We reclined, and took a dolce far niente.
Those sweet chestnuts of the South are puny striplings compared with our robust Northerners. But they clothed the contours of the hills and valleys in a most pleasing way, their veil being only broken by two clearings, in one of which we were sitting.
And because these few trees were cut down, Leyland burst into a petty indictment of the proprietor.
‘All the poetry is going from Nature,’ he cried, ‘her lakes and marshes are drained, her seas banked up, her forests cut down. Everywhere we see the vulgarity of desolation spreading.’
I have had some experience of estates, and answered that cutting was very necessary for the health of the larger trees. Besides, it was unreasonable to expect the proprietor to derive no income from his lands.
‘If you take the commercial side of landscape, you may feel pleasure in the owner’s activity. But to me the mere thought that a tree is convertible into cash is disgusting.’
‘I see no reason,’ I observed politely, ‘to despise the gifts of Nature because they are of value.’
It did not stop him. ‘It is no matter,’ he went on, ‘we are all hopelessly steeped in vulgarity. I do not except myself. It is through us, and to our shame, that the Nereids have left the waters and the Oreads the mountains, that the woods no longer give shelter to Pan.’
‘Pan!’ cried Mr Sandbach, his mellow voice filling the valley as if it had been a great green church, ‘Pan is dead. That is why the woods do not shelter him.’ And he began to tell the striking story of the mariners who were sailing near the coast at the time of the birth of Christ, and three times heard a loud voice saying: ‘The great God Pan is dead.’
‘Yes. The great God Pan is dead,’ said Leyland. And he abandoned himself to that mock misery in which artistic people are so fond of indulging. His cigar went out, and he had to ask me for a match.
‘How very interesting,’ said Rose. ‘I do wish I knew some ancient history.’
‘It is not worth your notice,’ said Mr Sandbach. ‘Eh, Eustace?’
Eustace was finishing his whistle. He looked up, with the irritable frown in which his aunts allowed him to indulge, and made no reply.
The conversation turned to various topics and then died out. It was a cloudless afternoon in May, and the pale green of the young chestnut leaves made a pretty contrast with the dark blue of the sky. We were all sitting at the edge of the small clearing for the sake of the view, and the shade of the chestnut saplings behind us was manifestly insufficient. All sounds died away—at least that is my account: Miss Robinson says that the clamour of the birds was the first sign of uneasiness that she discerned. All sounds died away, except that, far in the distance, I could hear two boughs of a great chestnut grinding together as the tree swayed. The grinds grew shorter and shorter, and finally that sound stopped also. As I looked over the green fingers of the valley, everything was absolutely motionless and still; and that feeling of suspense which one so often experiences when Nature is in repose began to steal over me.
Suddenly we were all electrified by the excruciating noise of Eustace’s whistle. I never heard any instrument give forth so ear-splitting and discordant a sound.
‘Eustace dear,’ said Miss Mary Robinson, ‘you might have thought of your poor Aunt Julia’s head.’
Leyland, who had apparently been asleep, sat up.
‘It is astonishing how blind a boy is to anything that is elevating or beautiful,’ he observed. ‘I should not have thought he could have found the wherewithal out here to spoil our pleasure like this.’
Then the terrible silence fell upon us again. I was now standing up and watching a cat’s-paw of wind that was running down one of the ridges opposite, turning the light green to dark as it travelled. A fanciful feeling of foreboding came over me; so I turned away, to find to my amazement, that all the others were also on their feet, watching it too.
It is not possible to describe coherently what happened next: but I, for one, am not ashamed to confess that, though the fair blue sky was above me, and the green spring woods beneath me, and the kindest of friends around me, yet I became terribly frightened, more frightened than I ever wish to become again, frightened in a way I never have known either before or after. And in the eyes of the ot
hers, too, I saw blank, expressionless fear, while their mouths strove in vain to speak and their hands to gesticulate. Yet, all around us were prosperity, beauty, and peace, and all was motionless, save the cat’s-paw of wind, now travelling up the ridge on which we stood.
Who moved first has never been settled. It is enough to say that in one second we were tearing away along the hillside. Leyland was in front, then Mr Sandbach, then my wife. But I only saw for a brief moment; for I ran across the little clearing and through the woods and over the undergrowth and the rocks and down the dry torrent beds into the valley below. The sky might have been black as I ran, and the trees short grass, and the hillside a level road; for I saw nothing and heard nothing and felt nothing, since all the channels of sense and reason were blocked. It was not the spiritual fear that one has known at other times, but brutal, over-mastering, physical fear, stopping up the ears, and dropping clouds before the eyes, and filling the mouth with foul tastes. And it was no ordinary humiliation that survived; for I had been afraid, not as a man, but as a beast.
II
I cannot describe our finish any better than our start; for our fear passed away as it had come, without cause. Suddenly I was able to see, and hear, and cough, and clear my mouth. Looking back, I saw that the others were stopping too; and, in a short time, we were all together, though it was long before we could speak, and longer before we dared to.