E.M Forster and the Egyptian Tram Driver
It’s Sunday night, the rain is beating heavily against the window-pane and I’m beyond bored and fed up, so nothing new there. At 6 o’clock I shake myself up, take myself upstairs and pour myself a deep bath (as hot as I can stand); pour myself a VERY large gin and tonic (as cold as I can stand), adapting Noel Coward’s recipe for a Martini by pouring in the gin and waving the glass in the general direction of the Scheweppes factory in Hendon (NW London) rather than towards Italy. Not as sophisticated or exotic, I know. Ablutions over, I slink downstairs, slump into a chair and begrudgingly switch the television on where, to my great joy and surprise, the BBC are re-airing Michael Palin’s classic Around the World in 80 Days.
“What is this old fart on about?” I hear you cry in consternation and angst, “he promised us gay culture”. Well, shut your face, as Frankie Howerd might have said, and read on, you might just learn something. During the programme, Mr Palin passed through Alexandria where he made a somewhat fly-away comment that, in my opinion merited a little more exploration. He said that the whilst working for the Red Cross in Alexandria the legendary writer of ‘A Passage to India’ and ‘A Room with a View’, E.M Forster, fell in love with an Egyptian tram driver. That was it. Nothing else. No further explanation or expansion. My mood suddenly improved as I ran to my bookcase and frantically began to look for some more information about this delicious nugget of literary history but, alas, nothing. In fact, there was a lack of information on Forster generally and, come to think of it, I know very little about the man at all, as a prolific gay writer. After trawling the internet and the local library (yes, they still exist), what follows may well be of interest.
In 1917, E.M Forster met tram driver Mohammed el-Adl with whom he embarked on an intense and deep relationship, something which he had longed for. After a romance with his Indian Latin pupil back in England, Syed Ross Masood, Forster lost his virginity to el-Adl in a world which would have condemned him not only for being gay but also for embarking on a inter-racial relationship. Despite having to leave Alexandria, Forster continued to correspond with el-Adl and harbour a great affection for him even after el-Adl started a family of his own. Unfortunately, in 1922, el Adl died of tuberculosis leaving Forster ‘depressed to the verge of inanition’, according to Virgina Woolf, ‘without a novel and without the power to write one’.
Despite Woolf’s comments, Forster did find the power to write a novel which became one of his best known: ‘A Passage to India’. What is most touching is a diary entry he made on completion of his work:
“Finished A Passage to India and mark the fact with Mohammed’s pencil.” (January 21st, 1924)
Now, I don’t know about you, but I found that rather moving, which is unlike me (I’m usually stone cold sod). To think that one of Forster’s greatest works was spurned on by a relationship with an Egyptian tram driver, of all people, is something that I didn’t know and thought others might find interesting (but who knows) — it certainly lifted my miserable Sunday mood.
Talking of his other great novel Maurice, E.M Forster said: ‘I was determined that, in fiction anyway, two men should fall in love and remain in it for ever and ever’. Well I’m happy to say that, one hundred years after his death, it is not only in fiction that two men can fall in love and remain in it forever and I like to think that Forster and Mohammed el-Adl are up there smiling down on us, together at last.
